The Terrible Patient

My horse is a very very very bad patient.  If anything ever goes seriously wrong with her, I have no idea how I will ever administer to her... well, I guess it would involve lots of drugs.

As you've probably guessed, Dee managed to bang herself up somehow.  When I brought her in today she had a big fat right front, seemingly caused by several scrapes on the inside and outside of the leg.  Not entirely sure how she managed it, but luckily it doesn't look serious.  I got to cleaning it, and she got to doing everything possible to avoid having it cleaned.... pulling it away, squealing, striking, stomping, and even attempting to lay on top of me at one point.  Eventually, after much cursing and threatening, I got her to let me finish cleaning and putting antibacterial cream on it, but man, she can throw a tantrum.

Imaginary Dragons...

No... not the band.  I am 99% sure Dee was seeing imaginary dragons yesterday.

When I caught her, she seemed quiet enough.  Then, as soon as we started up the path to the barn, her eyes started bugging out of her head and she managed to do some fairly impressive pretend-piaffe as she debated between bolting and behaving the whole way up to the barn.  Luckily her ground manners won out and she kept a lid on it (mostly).
I decided to just get on and see what happened, since I try to avoid lunging unless a) that's our only plan for the day or b) I think it would be unsafe to get on otherwise.  In retrospect I just should have started at b, but luckily she didn't do anything too terrible.  She did, however, feel as though she was half a second away from completely losing her shit when I got on, and when I asked her to trot, she had a mini meltdown in which she sort of bolted while shaking her head around and also traveling sideways.  I managed to get her back into a sort of normal trot, but we were very clearly not going to accomplish anything, so I hopped off once she was behaving, and put on the lunge line.  Very contrary to her usual good behavior on the lunge, she tore away from me squealing and running as soon as she was hooked up.  Absolute bedlam.  I eventually got her back under control and eventually went the other way (at which point we had bedlam ensue again).  By the time she finished, she was dripping sweat and still prancing around with saucer-eyes.  So, I climbed back on to let her cool out and maybe do some quiet trotting since, I thought, she must be exhausted.  false.  She was not exhausted.
I had her on the buckle because I wanted her to chill out and cool down.  She proceeded to try to bolt about 5 times in a row (there was some really impressive cantering in place as she debated between behaving and bolting).  Eventually I did get some flat-footed walking and some sort of well-behaved trotting and then I quit.  The ride was clearly not going to get any better as we went.  She was 100% checked-out.
Luckily it was a warm day, so I was able to hose her sweat-soaked self off and get her rubbed down with liniment, and then brought her back into the arena to hand-walk until she was dry.  Amazingly, she was still trying to bolt at every opportunity.  Darn those imaginary dragons!  Hopefully they will be gone or the hallucinogenics will have worn off by the time I get up there again.

Success!

Sweaty Fuzz-Monster!

I finally got to ride my fuzzy beast today.  I hesitate to call her a horse because she looks more like a yak these days.  I tossed her on the lunge for a few minutes before I rode, and she was pretty darn good.  We had one slightly squirrelly moment after she set off on the right lead, but then she settled and cantered along nicely.  All in all I was proud of her for keeping it together.

Where the Wild Mares Are

I haven't ridden in almost a month, thanks to a combination of spending 80% of my weeks in the law school from 9-9, the the other 20% either desperately trying to catch up on work or desperately trying to convince my renegade horse to stop being an asshole and just come close enough for me to catch.  Daytime turnout sucks.

"Stupid human... I am feral now."

Finally, after a solid month of not being able to catch her, she actually let me grab her on Saturday.  Of course, she immediately started acting like she hadn't been handled in years and didn't understand simple things such as: going through gates without trying to bolt and run over the tiny human, respecting the human's space while walking, not spooking at trees and other innocuous objects, and standing to be groomed.  I had, before even going up to the barn, decided that I would just lightly lunge and do groundwork.  I mean, it's been a month, I would have felt bad just getting on and expecting her to work.  I figured a groundwork refresher would be in order.  Well, the minute we got into the ring and I asked her to walk off on the lunge, she took off like a rocket.  A rocket that had apparently forgotten how to not yank my arms out on the lunge line and be polite.  After she careened around for awhile, I got fed up, made her stop, unhooked her, and decided to free-lunge.  Go figure, the minute I decided to free lunge, she decided she could stay on a perfect circle around me.  She zoomed around for awhile longer, but eventually settled and trotted around like a semi-adult individual.  She even did some halfway decent in-hand work.  It was not great by any means -- she was distracted and still pretending that she had forgotten 90% of the things she's learned -- but by the end she was at least being polite and responding correctly to the questions I was asking.

Dare I think that I might actually get to ride this weekend!?

Insert Lawyer Joke Here...

Ok, well, I've been a bad horse mom lately.  School has been out of control and it looks like it will be awhile before miss thang and I can hang out.  That said, I got a few texts from my bestest friend (of 15 years) today about a show she was working, where lawyers were playing live music (I think she said battle of the bands).  Here are the relevant highlights:

"Your world and mine should never mix."

"I understand its charity and these people paid way too much to rent our club, but when professional people can't make you sound better it's awful."

"You may all have money, but lawyers are a sloppy drunk."

Thanks, friend.  haha.

Apparently I have all that to look forward to.

Spin Cycle

This sums up Dee's general reaction to being cuddled.

Beast was good today.  She's turning into a fizz-ball, though, and the heat has been making her a sweaty, disgusting mess.  Poor beast.  At least she's still in good spirits.

Showing me where she would like us to go... outside!  

Unfortunately, I'll probably see little of her this week... thanks to this:

The dreaded brief... with the dreaded word-limit... which we are currently over 3000 words OVER.

Today, Today

For reasons still mostly unknown today, Dee's breeder decided to name her Today.  Me and this name have had a tumultuous history, but I think it's grown on me.  Yesterday, after my ride, I patted Dee and said "You were so wonderful today!"  At that, I had to smile a little, because it really works both ways: she was wonderful that day, and she is Today.

Yesterday, she managed to do little canter loops, which are basically a way to introduce the counter-canter.  A month ago, she couldn't do those at all.  The whole canter crumbled because she wasn't strong enough or balanced enough.  Yesterday, she was like "oh yeah, no biggie mom, I got this."  No fuss, no muss.  What a good baby!