Having Pangea is a very interesting lesson in how to just relax and enjoy going for a ride. I get into a mindset where I feel like I should do dressage or should do conditioning because she needs this muscle here or that stamina there, when in reality there is nothing I need to actually be doing at all that I don't want to. If I feel like going on a walk trail ride, then hell, I'm going on a walk trail ride. I do miss the rigorous schedule that comes with conditioning and training a show horse, but admittedly it is nice to just get on and do whatever I want to do.
Donkey girl... look at those EARS!
Also, my boots.
Broken zipper yet again... someday I'll have nice things. I can't really justify going out and spending a zillion dollars on a new pair of nice tall boots when I'm not showing right now, so I make do for now with vetwrap and eternal trips to the cobbler.
The weather has been beautiful - sunny and in the mid-90's, which is downright chilly here for this time of year. Perfect for hackventures! So long as we can avoid the storms, of course:
They were east of us so we were safe.
Random beautiful back road I discovered... there was a Paso breeding farm across the street from where I was riding, and they all came gaiting up to the fenceline when we went by. Bless her heart, her eyes got a little round but she didn't do anything else except continue to just stroll along.
Look at the SUNFLOWERS! Boy they are getting tall.
Oh and PS, remember the horrible tail that has been half ripped out and matted with dreadlocks every day despite my meticulous care? After many, many washings I seem to have revived it a bit:
Having always had stalled-with-turnout horses up until I turned Gogo out last year, I think I somewhat underestimated how much work it is to try and keep a pastured horse clean. Basically, it is a completely impossible and totally futile task that causes me daily agony and misery. Gogo was always so clean, so sparkly, so brilliantly shiny and colorful, and with SUCH A BEAUTIFUL THICK GLOSSY TAIL ZOMG MY EYES I'M BLIND. This was largely due to the fact that she lived inside in the shade with a fan, and wore a flysheet in the summer whenever she was out.
As for Pangea, with that beautiful, rich, dappled coat? It has vanished with the temperature spike, replaced by a horribly dull, pale, burnt-looking sunbleached mess of washed-out color, crispy and dry as can be. Why? Because when the temperature spiked, she spent every day of her life soaked in sweat, standing out in the blazing sunlight (she chooses not to stand in the shade of her shed or her shady trees), letting the salty grime give her streaky blonde highlights in the areas that she sweats the most. The result? Patches of gold on her neck and back, along with a nice golden stripe down each front leg where the path of sweat runs. And it isn't a nice gold either... it is faded and crispy. No amount of rinsing her sweaty self managed to help prevent the issue. As for her poor tail, she spends so much of her time swatting at flies that it gets coated in sweat as well, and of course snags on everything that it comes in contact with. As a result, it is grimy, tangled, and half torn out. She is also very itchy due to all the sweat, so she grinds dirt into her coat every time she gets too hot - which also tears out more of her tail. Also ALSO, she pees in her tail. I CAN'T WIN.
Basically, my beautifully dappled bay has turned into some sort of weird dun/buckskin hybrid with a rump still full of butt dapples and a front end that doesn't match the rear. She looks horrible... I am truly embarrassed. There's not much that I can do until her coat sheds out and she grows a new one... arghhh!
I have a fly sheet on her for the moment, but it is just as an experiment - I am pretty sure that even the lightest one that I have will be too hot for her. It's a bit too late anyway.... sigh!
Yeesh, how embarrassing. If anyone has tips on keeping a sweaty horse who lives outside from sunbleaching, PLEASE do share! Same goes for keeping a decent tail on a pastured horse as well! Gogo had the same issue last year with her tail and the sunbleaching.... it was awful!
Check it out, I caught her doing a naughty when she was at the pool barn yesterday - I never net hay and elevate it as a rule (not good for TMJs to eat anywhere but off the ground) but when she is there for the day, I net it to keep it from blowing away in the nonstop gale force winds we have going. She, as you can see, was NOT amused by the slow feeder and made several attempts to tear it down (only succeeded once).
Naughty girl.
Sigh... but really, this horrible bleaching-in-sweaty-areas-only issue. Tips?? I'm not suspecting a nutritional issue at this point since it seems so perfectly connected with the sweat and heat and blazing sun, and she was so gleaming and dapply up until two weeks ago, but I'll keep it in mind as a possibility.
The health benefits of 24/7 turnout are obviously massively greater than keeping her stalled and inside, but it is a truthful PITA, and I never realized just how messy it could be - or remembered, I guess... Quincy used to live outside, after all!
EDITED TO ADD: Please, please keep my sweet Mimi in your thoughts... she is in kitty ICU right now with a blazing fever of unknown origin, no appetite for food or water, and strange jerky eye movements. It might be a simple infection that will clear with antibiotics, or it might be something so sinister that we could lose her. Please send good positive vibes our way... I'll just die if something happens to my precious Mimer.
Yesterday was Pangea's weekly pool day, a few days later than usual given the fact that I did not wake up to my SIX alarms on Wednesday and was therefore late to work instead of early to the barn to pick her up on time. (Not my usual... I was totally thrown off all day long. Hate that.) Yesterday was also our first trot day in the pool, which I am very excited about - this should give her the strength and flexibility she needs to prevent Pogo Trot when she begins her warmups under saddle. The AquaTread puts a mean topline on everything it sees, I can attest to that!
She did a power walk for 8 minutes, trotted for 3, then power walked again for 4. Absolutely no need to do more than 3 minutes of trot... fitness will come in time. Soundness, strength and flexibility are all products of smart choices when it comes to fitness and there isn't any need to rush. We're not exactly training for Medal Finals or anything.
In terms of her conditioning, while I have started to very lightly play around with other speeds (mostly to just get an assessment of how she is feeling under saddle), mostly I am still doing all of my work at the walk. I believe in walking for fitness - those of you who read the Eventing-A-Gogo blog will remember our weekly 2 hour walk hacks to Dunkin Donuts - and did most of exclusively as roadwork in an effort to turn her tendons into iron. Of course, that did absolutely nothing for her as she blew both hind SDFTs out at the end of the season... so much for that idea. At least my mind was in the right place? Maybe? I try not to think about it too much anymore because it makes me too sad.
Aside from all that, I am super happy to report that her manners have vastly improved over the course of the past few weeks. She only needs to be scolded for naughty behavior once (at most, twice), and then she understands and doesn't try it again. Last week she was a pawing maniac in the barn, completely ignoring every reprimand I gave her in her persistence. This week, I tried a different tactic: completely ignoring her when she paws. This seemed to have a profound effect on her mind. I noticed that when she was pawing and I scolded her, she perked her ears towards me and occasionally nickered while still continuing to paw. Basically, any sort of noisy attention I was giving her was good fun, and she in her own way felt as though she was being rewarded for it. D'oh! How about we take two on that one. Her brain finally wrapped around this idea of "pawing = no attention" when we pulled up in the trailer for our swim date at the barn. She wanted to get OFF the trailer RIGHT NOW, so she started to paw as I went for the side door. And I walked away. I made it all the way into the barn before she realized I was no longer there, and stopped. I walked back. When she saw me coming out the window, she started to paw again. I turned around, and walked away. She stopped. I turned back around, and walked towards her. She started to paw again. I walked away. And so on until the wheels turned in her head and she stopped pawing the moment I started to walk away. "Crap, she is leaving when I do that... maybe I should stop it" would be what was floating above her head had she been able to produce a visible thought bubble. She eventually stopped entirely, and I unloaded her. The effect lasted on into the barn, where she refused to paw even once when I was walking around to and away from her. She did paw every time a horse got in or out of the treadmill, but with a verbal "quit!" from me, she stopped immediately. (Yes!!)
Following her pool session, she got a full on bubble bath completely with salon-style tail care, spritzed down with conditioner and fly spray as a finisher. Yep, our flies are out in full force... we've had spring weather for weeks and weeks and the bugs are mad crazy already! (Oh, and the black widows too... the black widows are EVERYWHERE. I'm amazed I haven't been bitten yet... I'm sure that time is coming, and you'll get to hear about a lovely story like this one.)
And as a final torture session, Pangea got to enjoy the Theraplate for 30 minutes while drying!
She was a good girl and walked right into the stocks with no issue. We keep the Theraplate there in the stocks because a) it fits perfectly and b) we can tie up a quiet horse and leave it to cook there for 30 minutes while we do other things without worrying about it moving/leaving/wigging/etc. If you've never seen a Theraplate, it's essentially one big humming, vibrating metal plate that you stand on for vibration therapy. Like hyberbaric chambers, Theraplates are being toted as the next big fix-everything miracle machine... only time will tell if that is true or not.
She was mostly a very good girl around standing quietly on her own little personal earthquake pad, save for a moment of uncertainty when it first begain. It feels incredibly weird at first, so I can't blame her! I think I will also start standing on it whenever I get a moment.... my back has been killing me and I need some relief!
What a good girl. Well, almost...
I was going to trail ride today but had a new client to attend to with several horses, so I spent most of my time doing that instead. We'll see tomorrow how she feels under saddle!
Poor Pangea. When she tumbled off the trailer onto Texas soil, she had no idea she'd fallen into the snares of a grooming maniac. (No seriously. Gogo used to walk out of her stall completely ungroomed looking this sparkly. Notice the shavings in her tail? Completely untouched by grooming tools. I just kept her THAT clean!) She looked like a bit of a hot mess - so much hair! so much dirt! - and there was no way I was going to live with that!
"Ummmm... what are you going to do to me?"
Ohhhhh dear. Well this will never do. This is also a lesson on how to make your horse look as unflattering as possible. Notice the excess hair, long scraggly mane, beard, raggedy tail, and most awkward pose ever. I promise she's not built so horribly in real life. You'll see what I mean in a minute.
Ohhhhhh dear....
Well that's gotta go.
MUCH better.
Uh ohhhhh....
Phew, all better!
I also did her scraggly, thin, gnarly mane.... I had to cut it with scissors instead of pull it because it was too thin and long!
My clippers were uncharged, so I couldn't get rid of all her crazy whiskers, but I managed to give a scissor cut to the worst of her mare-beard. She looks less like a circus side show bearded lady now, and more like a real lady instead.
Voila:
Now THAT'S a pretty mare! Can you imagine how nice she'll look with some topline on her?
Tomorrow she'll get a bath (it will be 80 degrees!) and then she will finally look like a REAL respectable horse!
