Life With Archie: midlife with horse

Pony DeJa Vu

Life With Archie: Mid Life With Horse

 Welcome to my world--which seems to be shaken up a little. I  have acquired a horse. Again. There was the (great)big grey horse (Hobbs) who outstayed his welcome by walking through fences and eating the house-- and the home. In a stunningly deft bait and switch, grey Hobbs moved out and red Archie moved in. Archie clattered into the barn, selected the  biggest corner stall-with-a-view, decorated it with pictures of his favorite rock bands and hung out a shingle, "The Dude Is In." 

Despite our generational age difference, the therapeutic  benefit of having a ready made combo stairmaster, tread mill, free weights and Pilates all rolled into a furry creature who doesn't yak your ear off and works for hay, is hard to beat.

I don't need a horse, we don't need a horse, we really can't afford a horse, there's not enough time between work, life, kids, their kids, and all the stuff we do when we don't have a horse-- but I am on Cloud Nine. 

This is all about me--and recovering that delight and connivance that is horse and girl. We are going to ride bareback through the fields, I will whisper my deepest secrets in his soft, furry ear and I will cater to his every whim. We will be Velvet and Pie.  My grown  children are NOT going to understand--but their children will.

Now if I can just make sense of the directions in that owner's manual...   (Note-this story begins...HERE)

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Winter Woes

 Now I am  Six and As Clever as Clever, I think I'll stay Six for Ever and Ever (AA Milne)

In the Life of Archie, his five-going-on-six winter would probably not be at the top of his list unless you turned the list upside down. Let's see, the visiting demons in order:  ulcers,  Lyme, and  Colic. Add in a dramatic full gallop, no -bridle-rider-on-board bolt with Archie launching me at high buck and we were both Lame which brought Lethargy.  Late winter brought Liver and some curious connections with low Vitamin E levels  and all of the Above.

The good news--Archie is still very much Archie, blooming and gorgeous and putting divots in his pastures as he races about and Bob at the Insurance Agency grew resigned to forking over the whole year's wad in vet's bills, emergency clinic runs and a battery of tests. The bad news after acknowledging that either horse owning is delicate business or that I am a total flop at it is--What Next?

It does seem to be rather bad manners to go into detail about what happened during each of these dramatic episodes but one thing I have learned about horse people is that they love talking about their horses' woes nearly as much as they love talking about their joys. 

 

Shall we start with Lyme?

Horse Has --- Ulcers?

Chemical Composition of Gastrogard (Meril Labs)

I had no idea that ordinary everyday horses get ulcers. Okay I understand why a hot-headed race horse being revved up to get home first might have tummy issues, but Archie? How could life be less stressful than three meals a day, a nice roomy paddock next to your mates and all the hay you can eat? Throw in a couple of hours a day of human demands: put on halter and walk to pasture, put on halter and walk back to barn. Get dressed. Obligingly carry your grateful and  fairly undemanding rider around for a  while until she gets off and feeds you a nice warm mash. When they talk about metaphor for Life of Reilly, they mean Life of Archie.

So what's wrong with this picture? Last week Archie looked dangerously like a Case of Colic coming on. Off his feed, a funny sort of dazed gaze, he looked  weak around the eyeballs in a wobbly way. Since Archie's poop is nearly as riveting a topic of observation as his feet, it was duly noted that his poop was  frequent, mushy, green and with an odd vinegary cow manure tang.

Vet advice by phone: cold weather colic. Remedy? Keep him warm, electrolytes, probiotics, lots of warm water and a quarter tube of the horse equivalent of human  heartburn med Prilosec only at a million times the cost. When the vet came by to float his teeth (and where does the float part come into that procedure?) she took one look at the result of his teeth grinding and said, "Ulcers, let's take a look".  

"Let's take a look" is not actually as simple as it sounds. It requires the services of the equine-gastro specialist, a videotape/tv attached to a camera at the Archie- end by a three foot lighted nasal hose fed into his sedated stomach, a bucket of hot water on a cold day and the very reluctant  cash input by Bob at the insurance agency. 

Archie had to stay inside all day with no food or water. I "stripped" his stall so there was not even a morsel of hay and we hung out together waiting for the vet. When I had to leave for a while I played the radio for Arch and he chewed on his stall door. By 3 pm he was sucking on bucket hooks and no longer interested in watching me dance to Bob Marley or looking at the pictures of T Touch massage while I practiced on his poll.

Once the vet arrived and hooked up his electronic stuff we all crowded around to see Inside Archie, oohing and awing over the creaminess of his healthy esophagus, the deep plum of the underside of his stomach and the hose's search for Margo, according to its conductor, the vet. Who's Margo? She's actually Margo Plicatus (I kind of think I remember someone sort of named like that in fourth grade) and she is a very remarkable "folded edge of the mucous membrane between the large non-glandular portion of the  horse's stomach and the dorsally located glandular portion" of the stomach. What we could see when we found her was the demarcation between the plum side and the creamy side of the stomach or the southern and northern hemispheres as the vet advised us, helping us to visualize Archie's stomach as planet earth.

Margo in a healthy horse shows a pie crust-shaped line as it circumnavigates the hemispheres. Archie's Margo was serated with jagged little edges where acid reflux from his gut has chewed away at the lining. Ouch. The camera hovered over several pink ulcer spots which dotted the creamy side and a whoosh of water and air sent down the hose brought a small crater ulcer into definition.  Double ouch. The vet pulled the long hose out from Archie's nose who made a suprised snort while still napping, and said, "Grade Two Ulcers." There are apparently four grades to these things and a low grade is better than  a high one. Treatment? The only one on the block that is FDA tested for horses, the Big G: Gastrogard.  Merial Drugs, who own the monopoly on this highly regarded paste of what humans take as Opremazole in its generic (and cheap) form, charge what they can get away with until the patent is open--another 4 years. 

Let's see....28 days of a full tube at $35 a tube, 32 days at half a tube ---that's ummmm.... $1540. Triple ouch. Bob back at the insurance company is not going to be pleased. But the stuff, apparently, works. What causes ulcers? According to the vet, it's stress--just like humans. It can be the mean horse across the aisle, fear of snowmobiles, diet, training, trailering, winter or  just plain air.
Horses left to be horses are generally ulcer-free. Archie has always had an off again/on again issue with his stomach as evidenced by his poop, his occasional nappiness and a recent tendency to see dead people, which gets better when he is out on the summer pasture currently buried under three feet of snow.

We walked back to  the feed room to look at What Archie Eats. Well, let's see, this week's menu is a quart of a nice grain called Stable Smart which is low carb/easy gut, and a whole menu of top dressings: a scoop of Equipride ( the  good-for-the -gut coffee-colored leavings from what some South Dakota cattle farmers get after home brewing their own Guinness),  a soupcon of Ex-Stress, two tablespoons of Lysine (shiny coat) and a cup of Digest-It.  Oh--and a bale of  second-cut grass hay. Archie went off his enthusiasm for hay cubes last week so we looked sadly at the 50 pound bag sitting pouchily awaiting consumption. Archie's winter  diet is a direct reflection of which salespeople catch me first when I walk through the stalls at the annual November Equine Affaire with that big label saying Sucker on my forehead.

The vet was very kind and refrained from making any wisecracks about what a  well-meaning middle-aged woman spoons down her horse's throat. He gently suggested that we put everything aside except the Stable Smart and the Bale of Grass Hay and add to that the tube-a-day of Gastrogard and a syringe of pink Horsie Maalox or a handful of TUMS 30 minutes pre-ride and 'wait and see.' Archie's going to miss that Guinness.

So--Day 1 of post-diagnosis and we're having another Snow Event. This will give Archie an opportunity to get wet and cold outside for a while and then come in and enjoy a nice tube of Gastrogard to chase down his 60 second guzzle of grain. This stuff works so fast, he should be feeling fab in three--count 'em--three days. Let the treatment begin.

 

Lunging: the view from the center of the 20 meter circle

I don't know about the rest of the equestrian world, but turning my feet in a circle to guide a trotting horse around and around makes me dizzy. I expect it makes the horse dizzy as well. It took me many months to convince Archie that this was a good idea. He knew about natural lunging (no line, round pen) but thought that my standing there at the end of a piece of rope expecting him to go around me was a very poor variation of this. He would pleasantly make a few casual passes around and then stop, look at me and say, "You're kidding, right?"

This winter saw a huge leap in his positive activity level as I took a firmer position on who's in charge here but not without cost. Even now I can expect that Archie will demonstrate his displeasure in this form of exercise by at least one, and usually two embarrassingly dramatic leaps, caprioles or sideways plunges at a noise, shadow or shape. After that he resigns himself to the boredom and moves around with some show of participation. He does do all his gaits on verbal cue but his favorite one is still 'whoa'.

 

Although I appreciate the concept of lunging, I wonder if it can't be improved upon for both lungee and lunger. I have compiled a short list of pros and cons and welcome creative suggestions for possibly re-thinking the 20 meter circle from the inside out.

Looking at the plus side of lunging:

1. The horse burns off excess gaiety with me safely on the ground. His dips, plunges and whooshes are confined to the arena area at the end of a (20 meter) rope which extends from my hand to his bit. 
2. The horse practices balance without having to balance a human on its back.
3. Lunging is great for the "cold-backed" horse, which is apparently a label Archie is pinned with. This means essentially, that he requires an overtime warmup to get his system happy.
4. Lunging is great for the cold-backed rider as well as the constant release and draw of the lunge line as the horse trots around, feeds warmth into cold muscles.
5. Lunging is a good way to avoid riding when you are too lazy, don't have time, or feel it would be in the best interest of the horse to relate to you on the ground rather than on its back.
6. Moving your horse in a circle for a while may convince him to express any negative feelings prior to your coming onboard rather than during.

The cons of lunging?

1. The horse may challenge the very underpinnings of the conceptual idea of running around in circles at the end of a 20 meter rope.
2. It annoys everyone else in the arena who is trying to to ride horses who are not attached to lines.
3. Trying not to fall over while trying to balance a long coil of cotton rope, a long lunge whip and a horse.
4. Constantly reminding yourself not to let the rope wrap around your hand or thumb so that these parts do not detach themselves should the horse express a sudden interest in plunging outside the designated circle.
5. Actually convincing your horse to attempt athletic tasks he isn't particularly interested in doing even though you're the one holding the whip.
6. Using a lunge whip in an intelligent and positively encouraging manner that does not mean wrapping it around your own legs.
7. Wondering if you can  stop now and just get on.

photo courtesy of the Cowgirl Diary

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Winter Muck

 January

One thing I really hadn't given too much thought to when I became a horse owner was frozen poop. Who would? In the summer it's flies and smell and mush and stall deodorizer and cold post-stable showers. It's all shovel and muck and what is on the ground very readily shifts to the Big Pile Outside. It's actually kind of pleasant flinging poo into a wheelbarrow in the grass pasture as the sun sets after another hot day.

Now it's January and while that resolves the flies and smell issues, it does not address cold. Getting dressed for the barn requires an entire costume change. Long underwear, thermal socks, heavy cotton jodphurs, tee shirt, turtleneck, fleece jacket, down vest, down jacket, one set double mittens for stable work, one set thinsulate gloves for horse care, fleece hat,double-sided  full seat insulated  over- trousers zipped over thermal winter boots, it takes me 15 minutes just to waddle to the door. That's nothing compared to what Archie wears.

Once inserted in car, heat on high; arriving at the yard means automatic frozen fingers for the first half hour. Wave to Archie in paddock, secure wheelbarrow, pitchfork and broom, it's time- intensive work to discern what's wet, what's poop and what's just frozen in his stall. I use a flashlight propped on a feed bucket to see past the gloom but it's pretty dim in there and everything on the ground gets glued together after a below zero night.  Today I found the glove I lost last week frozen into the sawdust piled in the corner. 

Scoop, shake, rattle and toss. Empty wheelbarrow and dig energetically to refill it with frozen sawdust that clumps with cold. Smack clumps with shovel and stamp on the ones you missed that make it back to the stall.  I am now very, very warm. Winter is no longer the enemy. I take my wet mittens off, switch to the gloves and shove the hat into my jacket pocket. Sawdust spread in thick pee-happy piles over stall floor, warm water steaming in corner, four flakes hay to ward off cold-colic, it's time to retrieve Archie. 

Trudge up path, unchain all halters and ropes, secure Archie's and re-hook the rest. Slide under electric fence without getting zapped and convince Archie to do fun tricks in exchange for apple slices. Back up, put head to ground, turn on foreha

I check Archie's rugs (three deep and snug), his ears (lukewarm) and pick ice out of his borium- shod hooves. He hurries into his stall and plunges into fragrant second-cut summery hay which brings a pleasant whiff of  'remember when' while I haul out the wheelbarrow and head back to the paddock to de-poop.

Everything is ice. Some of it keels over when I kick it and some of it resists any dislodge. The pattern of poop indicates that Archie is loathe to wander anywhere his fetlocks might freeze. Rising like volcanic rock in the increasingly pee-pocked snow, small hillocks of dung show brown and permanent on the frozen tundra. The wheelbarrow is now loaded with poopsicles and needs to be trundled to the muck heap where its contents clatter when pitched.

Back inside, Archie has indulged in his favorite winter pastime: peeing on a deep bed of sawdust. He looks (and is) relieved. I skip out th e wet patch before it freezes and fill it in with the corner stash.  Archie plows into his hot mash dinner. I watch him eat and rub his ears until they are not lukewarm. I check all his blanket straps to make 

sure they are not strangling any major arteries, blow a "pwwwww" at Arch as he sticks his nose at me and call it a day.  

The weather report says more snow Wednesday which means the entire process takes  twice as long and my shoulders will ache at bedtime from carving wheelbarrow trails in new snow. The plus side to all this?   Ground hog day is coming. Soon. Fingers crossed.

Winter Horse: Big Snow

Some people look forward to the first Big Snow, but most of them grew up somewhere warmer or ride snowmobiles. Ours arrived over the past 24 hours and did not stop until it climbed up walls,  buried my car and kept the horses captive in the barn.

Horses love habit. When I finally dug our car out and crawled to the barn slowly, aware that both the Governor and the Mayor had declared a Snow Emergency, a row of noses whickered me down the aisle to Archie. The snow and wind had slowed enough to encourage me to dig a path to a nearby paddock into which I dumped a flake of hay. Archie spent a couple of hours there eating the hay but when I went to get him the only hoof track was in the gate and at the hay. Two feet of snow is intimidating to a five foot plus person like me, but is apparently also off-putting to a tall horse.  When I went to get him, I could just see Archie's ears facing the barn over the snowdrifts. "Bring me in" came over loud and clear. So I did. Once we got there, Archie thought he should walk out the backdoor to his 'real' paddock, which was a no go due to three feet of drifting snow.

  Here's what humans are supposed to do when horses in their charge are stuck inside:    

1. Don't make them be stuck inside. Turnout blankets are made for all-weather warmth and comfort.  A heated water bucket, flakes of tasty hay and some company are well worth braving a few hours of blowing snow. 

2. If outside is not a choice (in this case there was no way to walk to the paddocks without sinking in drifts), provide lots of hay and water and if access to indoor arena, a good ride or lunge. If no indoor arena, a hand walk or a snowy canter through soft powder for a change of scenery is mandatory.  The world in monochrome can be weird to an equine so be prepared for a shy. Bundle up. 

3. Think about studded snow tires on your horse's feet. Borium-nailed winter shoes protect on ice and make winter rides slide-free. Put a layer of fuzzy boots on all four legs to protect them from strike. Put steel toes on your fuzzy-lined two feet, same reason. 

4. Play music. No honestly. Just imagine being stuck in a stall all day with a bunch of stuck in the stall all day horses. We all know people who leave the radio on for their dogs--who says horses don't love salsa? 

5. Provide clean bedding and lots of it. There is nothing more annoying to a horse than to be incarcerated for hours in its own poop. Plus it's totally comforting to make a nice bed for the nice horse.

6.  Warm is good. Soak those hay cubes in warm water, make a mash out of the grain that you've cut down on, cut in apples and carrots or a splash of fruit juice; provide a warm drink in the water bucket. 

7. Breathe. Winter is awful for about six weeks. Pretty  soon it's the February thaw and spring is coming.

The Truth About Horse Clipping

 Wintertime, and the horses are hairy. Despite my best efforts to defy Archie's developing total fuzz, it's there.  Cooling off after a hard day's work takes longer and longer. What to do, what to do.   I bundle him into last year's outgrown on sale pink turnout at the first sign of frost as he could possibly catch a chill,become ill and miserable, require night and day nursing and weeks off from work. The blanket reaches only to his mid flanks and he looks a little geeky. Healthy, relatively warm--but geeky. I'm thinking some hair removal and a new rug might be in order, operator-owner education required.

Many of the horses in the barn are in one stage or another of fur shearing, so I spend some time observing, asking questions. Some go for the full monty,a few take artistic swoops off necks and bellies and still others seem to arrive at a sort of collage effect that allow hot spots a little ventilation. 

I have a long and checkered history of haircutting, with a particular low having been the year my mother foolishly asked teenaged me to cut two inches off all around, which I  interpreted as take it to  two inches all around.  She disappeared all household scissors from then on, and never really got to that place where we could just have a good "Remember when..." laugh about it. I  really did use a pudding bowl on my children's heads and bribed them with small chunks of  Sky Bar to keep still.  Clearly I need some education and thank god for the internet.

Googling How To Clip A Horse I get several  informative YouTube videos suggesting  that I trace clip low or high, hunter clip or full clip. One gives intriguing instruction on  how to clip a  palm tree motif and another on designer clips in your stable initials, a hair tattoo or I Love Mom. A nonchalant male British groom advises wearing a shower curtain or other floor- to -ceiling garment while clipping  as, "None us want horse hair in our knickers or bra."  Quite frankly, this looks like a piece of cake.  Looking at Archie from several  handcupped photogenic angles,  I decide to take just a little off the top.

Following the instructions in the videos I carefully go through the preparatory steps:

1. Get some clippers. I go over to Heather's and borrow hers. This is what Horse People Do. 

2. Sharpen and oil the clippers. They look pretty sharp but I squirt a little oil on them and let it snick through for a while until everything is  nicely lubed. I now understand better the need for the shower curtain. It's a good feeling handling power tools, this must be why men love chainsaws. 

3. Catch the horse. Easier said than done. Archie is sequestered in a winter paddock which requires some complex moves to free him. First --slide through the fence without triggering an electric jolt and halter him. Then  slide back out and unlatch his gate which leads into the adjoining paddock, shoo the eagerly advancing horses in that paddock away and admonish Archie to just wait, while  latching the two gates together.  Archie and I then slither out and pass the gauntlet of bared teeth and rushing hooves from the inmates of paddocks we must pass to reach the barn. Both of us do some nervous skittering even though we are fully aware that there is am electric barricade between them and us. If they were dogs, I would throw a hamburger into each pen as we pass.

4. Wash the horse. All the YouTube videographers must live in balmier climes than we, but here in icy New England, we do not wash between November and April.  I disrobe Archie and give him a good currying. Satisfied with this we go to Step 5.

5. Trace the line of  clip with chalk. I have "borrowed" a stub of sidewalk  chalk from  my granddaughter Aquinnah, whose eagle eye will note its absence, but not until tomorrow. Tracing a graceful line behind  Archie's  ear down the muscle midneck to his shoulder and then under his chest at about demi-bra height is easy. Seeing the chalk in his red hair is not, but its indentation is clear. Matching the line on the left side with the line on the right side is tricky but we're nearly there. Archie is clearly puzzled by this horse chalk drawing. I give him some apple. 

6. Clip the shape right side. This of course  requires turning on the clippers, which I do. Archie startles and leaps to the opposite wall. I turn the clippers off. Then on. Then off. Archie stays glued to the wall.  I leave them off and play The Friendly Game with the clippers. This goes well. I turn them on and ramp the friendliness up to Round Two which Archie submits to. Voila, a neat outline on neck side one. Brilliant. I give the whole exercise five minutes to done. I am a genius.

7. Clip the shape left side. What the video does not advise  on is how to deal with cords.  I have to reach around Archie with the cord and hope that he stands still. He does not. I have had to faux cross tie him on one side as that tie is broken and it quickly unravels --as does Archie.I try facing him the other way but he's on to the cross tie thing.

Still on Step 7, I handhold my dancing horse and take a few  hopeful swipes at the chalk outline. Archie is not relating well. None of the videos show horses not relating well.   All the YouTube horses stand peacefully and patiently while the video camera whirrs, the Clipp-ers nonchalantly chatting away while the Clipp-ees wonder what's for dinner.

I go to the tack room and find some fuzzy horse earplugs and put them confidently in Archie's ears. Archie shakes them out. I give him some more apple and I give me some apple and we sit and think for a moment.  I wish I had some Sky Bar, but not the caramel section. Archie's undercoat shows up a rather unattractive pale apricot, making the peculiar path the clippers have thus far made look like a skier's track who has crashed into a tree.

  Step 8: Call it a day for now. There is always tomorrow. Blanketing Archie in his brand new supreme loft heavy duty full neck winter turnout in boyish blue, I vow to get to the barn before anyone can see him in the morning.

Step 9: I don't make it. By the time I get there his neck has been exposed to some rather ribald comments. Repeating steps 1-7, I invite Sarah to hold Archie for me and quickly shift to suggesting that she clip and I hold.  Sarah is very firm with Archie about "invading her space". This works marvelously even though Archie clearly feels that if there is an issue of space invading, it is we who are in his. Archie trembles but suffers the clip, keeping his strength up with two apples, several rounds of The Lion Sleeps Tonight (his favorite) and the opportunity to rest his full head and at least 500 pounds of his front bodily weight on my shoulder while Sarah trims under his neck.

Step 10. Finished. The two sides symmetry of the neck are not entirely d'accord but we all know what happens once you go down the path of a little off this side, a little off that. Memories of my mother's hair help me to step away from the clippers.

Later that afternoon when I ride Archie in the indoor arena, I dress him in two fleecy saddle pads and a quarter blanket  but he complains that these do not ease the chill of cold air on shorn neck. I tell him he looks swell and remind him that every moment of reduced cooling off time is one moment closer to a hot dinner.  Archie  snarkily suggests that if we quit now, there will be no need for cooling off time.

Next year  we're going to do our own  reality You Tube clipping segment showing the nitty gritty underbelly of the beast, the drama, the pathos, the joy. Stay tuned.

 

 

Horse Makes Divots

  We had a nor-easter last night and it rained. A lot. Archie spends his days in Pasture Six, a lovely long field with good grazing--which gets muddy in rain. There are clear farm expectations that the field will remain grass and not succumb to mud. When it rains (a  lot) Arch has to stay inside to avoid churning up the turf with his Archie-sized hooves.

The rain stopped pretty much by mid morning, so Archie went out.  I wasn't sure, given the ground saturation, if it was okay for him to go out, but he insisted that out was where he wanted to be and that he planned only to hang out and sun bathe. Some days there are two horses in the field next to him, one wears a bell, and they parallel graze across electric fences. Some days Archie is all alone. He's good at alone, but  far prefers friends.

When I returned to the barn later in the day, and headed out back for a wheelbarrow, I gazed down for a glimpse of  grazing Archie.  The wind had risen and the sky darkened with threatening clouds. A gleam of red, raised tail fanning his muddy legs which propelled him circle after circle, Archie galloped fueled by some demonic force.  I looked and listened to try to see what he saw: barking dogs, cheers from the high school two fields over, passing geese, a leaf blowing across the field? I watched as he tore around twice more, waiting for him to calm--but he didn't. Calling ,"Yo Archie! Woah!"from my clever vantage point up the hill near the muck pile, he slowed, looked up as he always does, but not for long. Off again, he churned up grass divots the size of old fashioned LP record discs, alternated with long, grass shearing mud slides as he braked at the pasture boundaries.

Trudging down to rescue both horse and pasture, Archie trotted up to me, head alert, sniffing wind; high on ionic change. Still  dancing at the end of his lead rope, he suggested a quick green grass fix on the nice lawns between pasture and barn. His barefoot hooves sank into the sodden turf, leaving  island-like dents which created a whole network of tributaries and ponds. 

Arch pawed in cross ties until he had his pre-ride Maalox -laced snack  and then settled
down while I sorted the good from the bad in his stall bedding. By the time he was girthed and bridled, he was more himself but his contribution to a lively ride was seriously compromised by the exhausting 20 furlongs he'd indulged in an hour previously. Yawning and claiming hunger, he called it quits early and walked himself back to the crossties to be dis-robed,brushed down and blanketed against the cold air blowing in with the back end of the gusty storm. Impatiently ushered into his stall, he fell into a face- full of  hay, followed by an agressively consumed chaser of  grain.

While Archie munched, I went down to survey the pasture damage. Not good, it looked like a herd of large pigs had partied heartily, inviting guests from the elephant and rhinoceros clans as well as a 14 year old with his first 4x4.   We were in Big Trouble. Nothing shows up brown mud as clearly green grass.  Humps and bumps of scored pasture looked like a battlefield of horse poop. Disaster. Solution? Iron out the divots.  Available tools? Feet.

An hour later, I had literally followed in Archie's thousand footsteps, pulling, coaxing, stamping turf back into holes created by  churning quarterhorse feet. The long slides were out of my control and remained mud, albeit flattened mud. My jodphur boots squelched  muddy water through my toes.  The wind raged as the nor-easter chased itself out of town; gray skies, a shudder or two of rain and wild trees shedding autumn leaves at rapid rates. The sun sank. By the time the pasture had stopped screaming train wreck, I was late for everthing else, and my feet were un-pleasantly un-warm.  The pasture looked a little more peaceful. Would we get away with it?

So I covered the evidence. Would I have done so for one for our boys when they were teenagers? Car dents remained to be ironed out by the perpetrators, and  racing around the house and punching holes in the wall,  no matter how elequently explained away ("I punched the wall instead of my brother--you mean you'd rather I punched my brother instead of the wall ?") resulted in Loss of Privileges.  Does this mean I have subjugated my moral standards for my horse which may eventually come to No Good? Quite, quite possibly.  So it goes.

Horse Gets Stuck

 

Archie and I moved stables at the start of September due to Heather's burgeoning school pony herd,  and he is now berthed at a curiously combo classy co- op barn. Co-op is all the rage out here--it means you rent the facility, you supply the food and bedding and do the daily upkeep for your horse.  Our barn,very wisely offers breakfast and turn out as part of rough board so that no one is hollering for a nosh when everyone else is chowing down.

The transition wasn't easy for Arch. Even though he was moving only a mile from his old 'hood, and never seemed overly fond of his paddock mates, he was rattled by his new surroundings. New stall (Arch was turned out all summer), new mates (the big morgan down the aisle lunged out and  bared his teeth whenever we passed his stall), new paddock and no familiar territory, Archie was not brave. He is five, has been  auctioned once in Kentucky, been  to Kansas, auctioned again, came back from Kansas very, very hungry, and spent who knows how long at the Cowboy's before he whickered at me.  If change was under Archie's control it would consist only of more meals. Two months on, with two squares, grazing and summer hay, he seems to be reconciled to the change and his new equine family.

13 year old Katie's Appaloosa Sugar is Archie' s next door neighbor in the barn  and despite their shared  and somewhat competitive enthusiasm for food, Archie lets  peaceful  Sugar play alpha mare. I'm not sure Sugar needs him, but he needs Sugar. So, we said a delighted yes when Katie's father Charlie  generously offered us a ride in his rescued trailer to the  organized hilltown trail ride. Charlie's pickup is a shiny half ton and  the circa 1982 trailer has been painstakingly restored, much like an old wooden  boat, with solid planks underfoot and excellent tires. Small and dated compared to the huge vessels other barn dwellers park at the yard, it goes and so did Archie. Led after Sugar and before an apple, he hesitated for a nanosecond, loaded right into a stuff- your -face haybag opp, and off we went. Up into the hills, past old homesteads, farms and new swamps, we came to the  meeting  site, backed out Sugar and expectantly waited for Archie to do the same. He didn't.

There are horse whisperers who speak horse talk. Archie does not require a whisperer as he is usually unashamed to be heard by the whole neighborhood.  In this case he said, "What are you nuts?Me step into a black void? I am SO not getting off this trailer." Kindly people came to our aid. Here is what they offered as tried and true cures to unstick horses:

1. Pressure the horse to back (I think that means pushing steadily in his sternum) and when he takes a step release. Rationale--the horse is yielding to pressure and encouraged to comply when it is released.
2. Dangle a bucket of grain under his tummy and make him bend his head down impossibly far to get it so that he has to Step Back. Rationale--he will take a greedy step too far and fall out.
3. Pull his tail. Rationale--beats me?
4. Wait--Rationale--Got another idea? 

After a combination of  Good Ideas 1-3 and many helpful hands, Archie clomped out.  We saddled up and mosied off to a great day out which included fording a busy river (twice) and stopping with the group for a meadowy lunch where I realized I'd forgotten a halter and leadrope so ate my sandwich with Archie (he is fond of 8 grain bread and salt and vinegar chips) looking enviously at the ponies who ground tied.

Several sunny hours later we trotted back to the parking lot and reloaded, heading downhill to dinner. Horse dinner. Archie had not had any water (he turned his nose up 
at the idea of drinking it while it rushed past him in the river) and snorted no at the  bucket that was not His Bucket. When we got back to the farm Sugar happily backed out and went off for a lovely massage and warm meal. Archie (neck u- turned back in his trailer stall) and I looked longingly at her. Charlie waited patiently for Archie to follow suit. He was still waiting 40 minutes later when I suggested he drop the trailer and pick it up tomorrow when surely Archie would have disembarked?

Archie insisted he was not getting off. I sat thinking positively that he would; shaking a bucket of grain every now and again, hopping on and doing pressure which was supposed to yield movement and release and sitting glumly wondering what else to do in between takes. I tried pulling his tail but we both thought that seemed dumb.  Finally I just sat on the hood of the car  playing with my iphone and figured Archie would eventually figure it out on his own.  He kept craning his head around to look at me, and his part of the conversation was  an effronted, "Get me out, you idiot."

After an hour  or a year or a decade or so had passed and people had done evening stables, they amused themselves by driving by and calling out, "Want us to bring you dinner?" "Need a flashlight?" "Want a lift?" Ha Ha. Two strong men stepped up and "exerted pressure" on Archie's chest .  Archie counter-exerted.  As far as he was concerned there was a 100 foot cliff  and shark infested waters right behind him.  Someone  suggested making a pile of shavings behind the trailer. Someone else said that given Archie was going nowhere any time soon, I had plenty of time to  build him a ramp. All good ideas if Arch would just take one teeny tiny step backwards...

Eventually no-nonsense Annabel who runs the stable and has the kind of confidence Archie and I wish we had,  drifted over and within two  head straightening, treat soothing minutes, magicked Archie out. He was fairly dramatic about his exit, waving a foot in the air over the six inch chasm, but once released, pranced to his stall and was extremely put- out to discover that  while I was twiddling my thumbs awaiting his exit, I was not simultaneously cleaning his stall and preparing a tasty evening meal. He stood snorting his annoyance in cross ties until all was in readiness.

So what did we learn? Well, Charlie is a good friend. He doesn't ride but escorts his daughter and her pony where they would like to be. He also shares pasture poop cleaning duty with me which we do even -steven, even though we both know that Archie's share of droppings is twice that of Sugar's. My guess is though, that he won't be offering us any trailer rides in the near future.

We also learned that even though a super smart Quarter Horse can tie his shoelaces and drive a golf cart, he can be terrified of stepping down sight unseen backwards. It goes against all his smart common sense and even though it's all about trust, there are very few people in the world we might trust to lead us down a cliff backwards. What I learned is that should I ever come into the 'I can afford a truck and trailer' horse owning class, I will think wisely about ramps. Ramps make sense, although I believe they cost about a million dollars more than no ramp.

Addendum: two weeks later, Archie found himself once more incarcerated in a trailer, yielded to Patty, our local horse whisperer's pressure on his shoulder and her 'being in his moment' and stepped back.  Here's how much of the ride we missed: nada.  When we got back to the barn after a lovely day out, he thought about the cliff theory for a moment, gave an impressive sigh, and stepped off. He has lived to tell the tale. With any luck we'll be asked out again.

 

 

 

 

Horse is Cross Country Prodigy, Rider Does Not Fall Off

  

May, 2010  

Archie, it turns out. is a superstar. That makes me, like Calvin Burrell; a superstar's jockey. The only big difference I can see is that I used  the $50 I won on the Kentucky Derby with Calvin,  to pay to jump with Archie and Calvin got to buy a swimming pool. So it goes.

I have to admit that although I was excited about tackling our first cross country course, I had my doubts about galloping with an uber-charged first timer whose big picture of  cross country  might mean  setting off across the lush mid- Connecticut meadows, galloping straight home to western Massachusetts. To this end, I'd offered Arch a few back- of -the- tongue grams of a sweet herbal  paste called "calm and cool" whose marketing had instant appeal to me--mellow a hot horse right on the spot--an hour prior to his trailer junket. My guess is that the placebo effect was more on me than on Arch, but he traveled curious and calm the hour and a half to the course, unloaded like a champ and stood to be brushed and tacked up, despite his fascination with a really hot filly parading around next to us.

We checked our gear (helmets, safety vests,  gloves, taut girths, sunglasses, iphones, crops and a nonchalant air of old hand) and filed down to to warm- up in the high  meadow ring, popping over a few small fences with panache. The cross country course required a haunch- hopping descent down into a long hilly valley where we had the opportunity to bounce down the drop fence (no problem) and size up the choices.

Archie was listening to me, swiveling  his ears around, chomping his new bit  and letting us  trumpetingly  know that the hot filly was joining us. I talked to him a lot. "Well Arch, this is a ditch, we're just going to walk through it" etc. and other dumb stuff like that while Archie snorted as we upped the ante to leap ditch, then  logs, then coop. So far, so good.

Heather had us put a circle loop of fences together which tested the caliber of our whoa. Archie has a  bouyant tendency to treat small jumps like they need wings, and played the air- leaping game on our first circuit. This game begins with a sensible approach to a fence even I could jump over on two feet. Archie pretends he is going to gently glide over as one with a canter stride, arrives and whoosh--he pushes his mighty quarter horse hocks into the ground, arcs several feet over the fence which has a knock-on  effect of arcing me several feet into the air over the horse where I watch us both jump the fence from my vantage point in space, and we (thus far)  miraculously reunite as I float gently down to find the saddle.  We found each other at the exit stride after each leap in this go-round, and cantered on happily to the next. 

Michelle volunteered to take the fall we knew was coming to one of us, but gamely clambered back on board Braveheart and went around again.  Archie loved the whole effort--the wide open spaces, the joy of leaping over interesting jumps and  into grassy meadow. He never hesitated, and his enthusiasm was contagious. Running and jumping, laughing, blue sky, sun,  confidence and a springy sense of go; we were hooked. 

Heather led us over another few fences on the lower course and we cantered up a steep hill to the high meadow where the fences were a little larger and more challenging. Archie's edge was off now, and he cleared his jumps sensibly, allowing me to actually stay with him over  the logs,  the snake, the rails, the coop,  the brush. Whee!

Calling  it a day (Archie and I needed to be hauled in--we foolishly felt as though we could jump on and on) we ambled back to the trailer. I was annoyingly euphoric. More, more, more! When can we do this again!

Heather praised us all and told me that  it's not all whoopee--if Archie and I want to do novice eventing, we will have to perfect our  dressage, which is a concept we are not keen on, so it's back to the shoulder-in, the twenty meter circle and the right lead canter on a touch. Onward--and, if this jumping stuff is any measure of what the future holds--upwards.

Horse Jumps Fence

 

It is early morning and I am finishing my last gulp of comfort tea. I am wearing my new highly sticky full seat  Kerrits' breeches (am currently stuck to kitchen stool), and eying my new  bulky Charles Owen Safety Vest which  was highly expensive and will hopefully bounce. These items, along  with my British Pony Club Approved Safety Skull Cap, my enthusiasm, Archie's enthusiasm and our heads up, heels down go- go attitude should fuel our first jump cross country experience. Or not. I have already willed my complete set of Pat Smythe books to Aquinnah should I fall on the far side of Beecher's Brook. 

Archie and I are headed, along with Michelle and Braveheart, under Heather's tutelage, to have a little tootle round this lovely schooling course in lovely central Connecticut. Apparently they have these open days, where you rent the course for an hour and jump over things. 

Archie and I have been jumping to get ready set go (he still arcs over most jumps like the cow and the moon) but more importantly, we have been practicing how to stop. We are ept at woah, sliding stops (he IS a quarter horse) and pulley rains, where you plant one hand on your horse's neck and pull the other one towards your belly button.  Hopefully this happens while you are holding the reins but if they are gone, gone, gone this is not a bad position to be in when you fall. Off.

The past few days we have watched a Julie Goodnight video several times on how to stop your horse when you horse is less inclined to do so, and I think we have it down. I have also purchased a JP broken kimberwick bit (the "kind" and highly expensive  kimberwick designed by a jockey) which Archie will complain about, but the curb chain, like a seatbelt, or an airplane oxygen mask,  is there for our safety.

Archie's  last experience into the world (a schooling show which required a lot of schooling before he decided to use all four legs rather than just two) was a bit overwhelming for him (and me), but of course that was winter, and he was a mere four. Older and wiser  with another season of falling snow behind him, this should be fun. Gulp.

Note: The talented chestnut in this post's photo is not me 'n Arch. It's us next year.