FAIL

I haven't updated, mostly because I have nothing to update about. After our disastrous ride on the 16th, I gave Dee the weekend off hoping she would sort herself out a little and be fresh and happy on monday. TOTAL FAIL. She felt awful once again. Usually, with 4 days off, she would be bright and playful. Instead, she was grumpy and sluggish, totally behind the leg, focused on everything but me, grunting and squealing at the leg, stiff as a 2x4 and about as responsive. She just seemed... miserable. She usually enjoys working, but she was acting like it was the worst thing in the world. So, I called the vet about a lyme titer, just to check. I mean, I suppose it could be this lingering heat, but I want to cover all my bases. She's on vacation until I get the results back, which should be any day now - the vet came on Thursday.
Fingers crossed that it was just silly hormones, since she seems to be less mare-ish to handle this week.

Heat

Poor Miss Dee has had a rough week. She is in an absolutely crazy heat right now and just seems a little miserable. Yesterday was our weekly lesson, and for starters, I'm pretty sure that she just sat hard on the butt bar the entire ride over, because her tail was a matted mess and I could feel her being a little all over the place while I was driving, which is not usually like her. Then, as soon as we got into the ring, she peed (and had squatted about 7 times while I was grooming her at home). When I got on, she was feeling very stiff behind and just tense in general. Normally, she's a tad bit lazy, but once you tell her 'forward', she's good to go and pretty good about maintaining the engine by herself. Yesterday, she just kept stalling. She was determined to be behind the leg most of the time. We spent about 15 minutes just trying to get her to relax and go forward, and it helped a little, but she just wasn't in the game. After that, we had her hop over a little cross rail a few times. Even doing that, she was tense tense tense - stiff as a board in the turns and just lit up about the whole thing. At one point, I'm pretty certain that we did about 6 flying changes in a row down the center of the ring after the jump... impressive, but not at all what I wanted, since she was basically just running away with me a little. I finally convinced her to quiet down a little bit and then Nancy saddled up one of her horses and took us out on our FIRST TRAIL RIDE! It seemed like the perfect thing to do, because Dee was obviously not feeling so hot physically and we've been talking about taking her out. She was, of course, absolutely brilliant. First, she had to leave the indoor through a narrow doorway with a little drop down to the outdoor ring. She didn't even bat an eye at that, and then she dealt with turned out horses running the fence line, a wooden bridge and a big mucky puddle like she'd seen it all a million times. What a good girl! To celebrate, she peed in the aisle when we got back.
Today was nothing short of a disaster. She was SO stiff behind and SO reluctant to go forward. I didn't end up doing much, because she was just totally out of sorts (she even squealed at my leg once, which she's NEVER done). I can't really blame her - I know she's having a bit of a tough time with her hormones this week. So tonight I put lots of shavings in her stall and gave her a giant pile of hay so that she could just chill out and unwind. She usually goes out at night (and often during the day) unless it's bad weather, but I know that she enjoys being in her stall for some alone time. I'm hoping she'll benefit from just having a good rest. We'll see how she does tomorrow.


Still a bit skinnier than I'd like, but look at that face! It was pretty overcast when I took the pictures... I wish the sun was out, because her coat is looking absolutely gorgeous lately and these pictures don't show it at all.

My little Kindergardener

Dee and I had another very good jump school today. She jumped a grid with three elements, and just attacked it like a pro. She was focused, quiet and balanced, but most of all, she felt CONFIDENT. Then, my very long span of NOT jumping caught up with me a bit. We turned one of the little blue boxes into a little x-rail oxer (around the box). Well, that freaked her out a little, and she made a HUGE, deer-style leap over top of it. I totally lost my leg and ended up in a heap on her neck, which only served to freak her out MORE. Of coarse, being that this mare has a heart of gold, she gamely jumped it again, even though mom was a disaster the time before. It's just very frustrating to me, because my position used to be SO much better. Now, I can FEEL myself sucking, but the fix-it tools seem to have fallen out of my tool box. With nancy there to yell at me to take a deep breath, sink my weight into my leg and keep my upper body back, we managed to have a few nice go's over it, but it doesn't change the fact that I let her down the first few times, and I'm pretty upset with myself for it. I mean, this mare is truly amazing. I don't want to mess her up. I guess I'll just have to spend lots more hours in the tack to get my form back where it used to be.

Nancy and I were chatting about young horses today, and she told me something that I really liked, and therefore have to share:
When you start taking the youngsters to competitions, you sort of need to think of them like a kid in Kindergarden - the experience is not as much about the competition as it is about singing and holding hands. I just love that, and it's completely true. Just as Kindergarden teaches the child the student role, the first few competitions of a young horse's career teaches her the role of competition horse. It lays the groundwork for the rest of the horse's career. Sure, right now Dee is still in pre-k, where we play in the sand box and try to avoid eating the paste, but I'm sure she'll graduate soon, and I can't wait to start singing and holding hands with her in the fall.

Jumping Fool

Dee is so utterly brilliant. We had our second ever jump lesson with Nancy today, and you would have thought the mare has been doing this her entire life. Today's exercise was a little grid. We started out simple, with just one pole. Dee locked onto the pole and actually JUMPED over it. Next it was half of a cross-rail. No issues there. Next was the full cross-rail, and she just quietly popped over that going both ways. So, Nancy set up a pole 18' from the cross-rail. We figured that might back her off or make her a little nervous. NOPE. She locked onto the cross-rail, jumped it, BALANCED HERSELF and cantered the pole. BIG pats for that. Then the pole turned into a cross-rail. We thought that this would SURELY make her hesitant. Wrong again! She once again trotted the first cross-rail, landed, took a canter stride and jumped the second. No big deal. So THEN Nancy made the second fence a little oxer, with one side of it down. I don't think Dee even noticed. So then we put the back rail of the oxer up completely. Now... this is really when you would expect a baby to go 'whoa, this is weird'. Not my mare. She jumped the cross-rail, balanced and jumped the oxer beautifully. So then nancy had me go around and jump the blue box. I jumped up her neck a little bit at it, but Dee saved me and jumped it nicely anyway. Then we went around to the other blue box, which had a very short approach out of the corner. Now... steering isn't always our forte. I tend to lose either the shoulder, haunches or both when we have a tight turn, and that did happen, but as soon as she saw that there was a jump, she straightened out and just got to it. She jumped it brilliantly. I honestly cannot believe how amazing this horse is. She didn't put a foot wrong and acted like she's been doing this her whole life. It was like she said 'well, you taught me how to do this last week, so now I know all the answers.' She is brave, clever, and a lovely jumper, which means I'm a very happy camper! I honestly CAN'T wait for next week. If we continue along this way, we'll be eventing in no time at all!
Now, as promised, here's a picture from Rachael's visit. Not very good, but oh well.