Tomorrow is the day...

...that Chinook goes from wild stallion of the west to best mustang gelding in the world. He and Brandy will come with me to school tomorrow so the equine service can castrate the boy and inject Brandy's arthritic coffin joints with some steroids. Is it sad that Brandy travels much worse than Chinook? Yes. But it just goes to prove that while the boy can be very annoying, he's pretty good in the end. :)

Putting the mustang to work!

It's hard to believe, I know, but I actually do make Sage work sometimes. I have been trying to ride often in my few weeks at home, and it has worked out fairly well. We've been doing lots of trotting! Long straight line trotting, circles, roll backs. She feels quite good! Almost too good, perhaps...


So I decided to challenge her. That is, lunge on a crisp fall day out in the big pasture. You would think that wouldn't be too hard, but when Sage gets spicy and decides to try to buck, bolt, and run away, she knows just how to throw her head and shoulder so I can't stop her (physically, at least). So I have to teach her to do the right thing, and the only way to do that is to challenge her focus, have her try to run away, and successfully stop her. Look at how cute she is when she applies herself:

It's really hard to take pictures while lunging; suffice to say that she was not this cute the entire time. We had two run outs, to where I had to let go completely and go catch her again with the lunge line trailing. But by the end, I felt like she was responding much better. I stopped a few run outs and got her listening, stopping and turning a lot. I didn't want to chew up the ground, so once we got some calm circles (which, by the way, often come in between big explosions), we moved inside. I think she did kind of get the point that bucking and rearing is bad. I am not afraid to get on her in the arena as I know she feels like she has nowhere to go, so she won't take off. We rode inside for a little bit and called it good. Just had to take a picture to prove it, but she did get sweaty!


She wanted to make a point about how tortured she is:

Which, I guess she kind of was, because I once again attempted to put bell boots on her. There is something about them she really dislikes--most especially the velcro noise, but it's not just that. It's the combination of the velcro noise and something trying to eat her leg. Except that she's dead calm when you wrap ropes around her feet, and she's much better with polo wraps, so I'm not sure what the deal is. I figured that like everything with her, it would get easier each time I tried.

However, I was wrong. It took me an hour to get them on, and one I could only get on her cannon. So I left them on, figuring at some point she would have to be fine with them. Which she was, except until I tried to take them off, which was another half hour ordeal. The thing I can say is that she is much better about the velcro noise now, but this whole concept really gets her in a tizzy. So much so that she was willing to go for a walk with me in the pasture (in the wind, which usually gets her going) and just walk quietly after I took them off.

You might be wondering what the point of all this is, and so here it is: I want to be able to trail ride this horse. No, she will never probably wear bell boots ever. But there is no reason to put shoes on her, and although her feet are excellent, I will not ride her on sharp gravel without some sort of protection. I'd like her to be able to wear hoof boots, which basically grasp the pastern in a similar fashion as bell boots. But if she's going to come undone about it, this may not be reasonable. We'll just have to keep working, and I'm making a note to expose Chinook to things like this early.

The little man himself has been doing reasonably well. He is now 12.2 hands and weighs 500 lbs. I trimmed his feet for the second time yesterday, and he was great with a bit of hay in front of him. He can be pretty squiggly otherwise!

He's learning to not be so pushy about his food, and he's learning to trot up in hand (always a useful skill). He's also wearing a sweatshirt for a saddle and he could care less. I've started feeding him Purina's Ultium Growth feed along with his alfalfa pellets, and at first he was a bit of a pain, spitting it out for the first few days. Not okay at $27.99 a bag!! But he has learned to like it, and he has also finally learned to eat apples all on his own.

Tonight was the first time he was ever really bad. I took him for a walk out in the pasture and he did the buck and bolt trick of his mom...except, he tries to run through you because he figures that's the best way out (instead of running away). He's fairly block-headed and does not respond to sharp tugs on the halter. Or at least, he didn't until tonight. He got in big trouble, and then he went on another walk and was a very good boy. We are constantly working on the back up cue because he's just so pushy. Now it's a matter of backing up quickly, because he's often not very responsive and does things like try to walk on top of you.

He is, however, a very sweet little boy and he loves hugs and kisses. He is going to grow up to be a nice gelding!

Happy fall!

Lots of news from here! Fall has fallen and the horses are spending a lot of time in the barn (by choice, of course...they can go outside whenever they want, but who would want to when it's raining sideways?). The girls helped us harvest the 135 pumpkins that we grew in the manure pile this summer! Sage was not really convinced that pumpkins are all that cool, but Brandy on the other hand...

Chinook is back out with his mom and Brandy, but now he's a big boy. No more nursing, just time to get some schooling from the mares. He's been a good boy overall. Although he gets pushy when I am away (and I was away for the last week working in Bend), he is capable of learning how to not be pushy again.

He leads like a champ, is much better about his feet, and has a generally chill attitude about everything. He'll stand tied for over an hour! He does haunch turns, forehand turns, and backs up. He, like his mom, is hard to get moving but he'll trot if you really get him going. Today he wore a stirrup leather around his girth, very similar to the setup I first started Sage in, and he didn't have a care in the world. He also wears sweatshirts and saddle blankets over his back with no issues at all. I lay over his back and scratch his belly, and he doesn't even flinch. I am still hoping to hold out until January on gelding him, and so far so good on that front!

Although my time has been very short, I had a little bit of time off this afternoon and set to work on Sage. The only thing we've really done since the last post is go for a walk up the road/field, where she was good but had a few spooky/bucking moments. I had asked my farrier if he would ride her the next time he came out, because I hadn't been getting anywhere and wanted to see her respond to someone else. Of course, I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me thinks there is no problem with where we are at, and the other part tells me she needs something more.

So today I vowed that I would try my hardest to get her trotting no matter the consequences. I am fully capable of riding her even if she bucks, which is just what I had to tell myself. So I got on and I kicked her forward, clucked to her, told her to trot. At first, she did what she typically does: bunches up, slows down, lifts her head, acts like she's thinking about doing something bad. But I kept kicking, and encouraging, and FINALLY she took a few steps of trot. After a few more tries, all I had to do was lay my leg against her side and cluck and off we went! She was so ridiculously floaty, so balanced for a young horse. I felt like I was riding a broke horse. It was like once she figured it out, it was no big deal. We might have done a few circles of the arena total, but I'm sure she knew I was thrilled with her. I can't wait to get out there again and do some more trotting!

AND...as I was in Bend last week, I happened to catch the beginning of the BendFilm Festival. Amazingly, they were showing "Wild Horse, Wild Ride" (http://www.wildhorsewildride.com/), and I was able to get a ticket. If you haven't already heard me babble on about this movie, I have wanted to see it for months! It follows several trainers in the Extreme Mustang Makeover and has several scenes showing how amazing mustangs are. The filmmaker was also present and answered several questions about the movie. It was fabulous! So, if you get a chance to see it, definitely do!

My schedule is very busy for the next month: traveling to St. Louis and then back to Calgary, giving my senior paper presentation on the unwanted horse, and taking the national veterinary board exam. So, posts may be slow, but I swear we're still all alive and well. :)

The terrible terribles...

Things have been busy recently, but I did find some time to try to work with Sage the other day. Since I know she has serious issues with Velcro-products around her feet, I decided to try polo wraps. Once again, we had quite the run around. She just gets incredibly, irrationally nervous. Tried bell boots again and it was the same deal. I'm not sure we were really successful at all. In fact, I think we made it worse. However, we did have a great round-penning/free lunging session shortly after where I feel she's been the most responsive ever. So I guess it wasn't all for naught. Chinook, on the other hand, has been moody and crabby. He kicked my mom the other day, and just tonight he kicked out "at me" (well, he kicked the wall) when I went to scratch his barrel while he was eating. I did some work with him on the halter and picked up his feet, backed him up, etc. He did fine. I think it's just the hormones speaking. Kids!!!

Training always continues

Since the last time I updated, I've done a bit more with Sage and Chinook. First, I have walked Sage at least three times since the last post. For most walks she was really good: loose on the rope, responsive, no rearing. Except up on top of the hill on one walk, she saw two cows and decided they MUST be horses, and just started whinnying and carrying on. Although she would listen when I asked her to back up and stop, she really wasn't listening to me well. And of course, walking back to the house is always a big struggle with lots of stopping and going. It's not like she's overtly bad, but I can just tell that if I was riding she probably wouldn't be listening--more like running away.

But I did ride her at the house, for the first time in a month or so. She was really pretty good. She's been lunging much better (has more perk in her step now, and doesn't require the plastic bag), but still no trotting under saddle. I'm pretty sure that she knows I am afraid she'll buck and she can feel that though I'm asking her to trot, I really don't want her to. This is where I fear we're going to need someone professional. I mean, otherwise we probably won't ever get anywhere. This is not to say that she's done anything bad while I ride. She listens, she steers, she's just young.

Chinook also went on his first walk up the road all by himself. He was super good! He was very relaxed walking up the road but we did have some arguments about his speed going back to the barn. This is inevitable, and I'd like to try and nip it in the bud while he's still young.

Well, we'll see what happens. Next month I will be traveling to Bend and to Calgary for externships and equine hospitals. It will be pretty busy, and the ponies will likely get a few months off this fall and winter!

Clinics suck away your life!

I am pretty sure it's been eons since I've posted, and really not much has happened in this time because I've been on both Small Animal Medicine and now Small Animal Surgery. These are busy rotations and my time with my horses now mostly consists of getting the essentials done: mucking, feeding, watering, and trimming.

Chinook and Brandy have been living together for several weeks now, and he has basically no attachment to Sage at all. Sage is pretty much dried up, and eventually I will put them all back together--probably when it starts to really get rainy here.

Sage has been feeling extra frisky, and I suppose you can imagine what happens if you take a three-year-old wild horse out on a walk on the first chilly evening after summer (and right before her expected dinner time). We made it up the road without too much fuss and I was having a good time controlling her with lots of stopping, backing up, and turning. But Sage can be quite the spitfire, so I was expecting a rearing/bucking explosion. Which didn't happen...until I got her back into our pasture and was walking her back up to the barn. She squealed, she bucked, she reared, she trotted in circles. But I didn't let go, and she didn't win. Or at least I don't think she thinks she did...It's hard to tell with her. We did some arena ground-work after that and of course she was well behaved. But I knew she was still feeling frisky because I could lunge her (with some effort) without a plastic bag on the end of the line. This may be a continuing saga that involves getting a professional trainer to put some time on her...

Then I took Chinook up to the house for his first walk all by himself, and he was a star. Since he was weaned, he has been pushy: walking through you, pushing you away when you try to feed, and just generally thinking you're a pathway to something. Now that he is on his own, I have been able to teach him some manners, and he is much better. He has always lead very well on the halter, but now he's even easier to handle. I also teach all my horses to back up before I hand them their grain pans, which was something that with my hard-headed colt took a lot of yelling and slapping my hands on his face to keep him from running me over. This morning, I walked up to him with his grain and he backed up before I even asked. What a star!

A weanling?!

Why yes, he is. It is done. It has been 36 hours since his last sip of milk, and about three hours since his last bit of whining.

Chinook's just about 4 months old (which in my mind is a little young to wean), but circumstances being as they are, it had to be done. I was about to let him go on for another few months, but we had an incident in the barn aiselway where he nearly ran me over because he couldn't see his mom for just a brief moment. This is in contrast to when he chooses to leave her miles away and doesn't care because it is his idea.

At that point, I made the decision. He's too big to be acting like that, and if that's what it's going to be like in 2 months when he's bigger, I don't want to have anything to do with it. Plus, Sage has been getting thinner and thinner. And the weather now is ideal for weaning because everyone can be outside and I'm not stuck with what the rain dictates.

So on Friday afternoon, instead of going out in the big pasture, Brandy and Chinook went into the pasture just to the north of the arena, and Sage and Gabby stayed in the paddock just to the west of the arena. They can, of course, still see each other, but they are separated by a super reinforced electric fence that does not allow nursing.

Sage, to say the least, looked very relieved. Brandy and Chinook are good friends, and she takes very good care of him...except when he tries to be a brat, as below:

Needless to say, he was not too thrilled with the new situation, but that did not stop him from eating hay and generally nourishing himself, which is good. Over night Sage developed a very full udder, which is terrible to witness because you just have to let it do it's own thing (milking it out would encourage her to produce more). She ate throughout the day, but it was obviously uncomfortable.

In an effort to get her moving around a little bit to reduce some of that swelling, I put Sage and Gabby in the far north pasture over night and Brandy and Chinook in the far south pasture. They can just barely see each other if they both stand at the gates. I'd hoped getting Sage out grazing would get her to walk around more, and she did toodle around for a little while. Until sometime in the middle of the night when Chinook got upset and she took to galloping around, too. Which ultimately helped her out a lot, as when I brought them all in for breakfast this morning, her udder was no longer full and tight.

Now they are back to where they can see each other for the day, and Chinook is still a little concerned about his mom. Sage has adapted very well and I think is quite pleased not to be nursing him anymore. It will only be a short time before Chinook figures out his new life as a big boy and settles right down.