ANATOMY OF A BOLT

These pics open myself up for ridicule, but I feel it is important to realize that there are bumps in the road, and those bumps can be overcome. Bolting is a bump!

And we continue on with our trotting. The important thing is to continue like nothing has happened. Did I smack him in the mouth with the bit? Of course, he caught me by surprise, but he will learn that bolting is uncomfortable, and being a calm, relaxed horse is easier.

Progress with Andi

Andi is my Icelandic gelding. He is almost 6, and I've had him since he was 11 months old. He started his saddle training one year ago with a trainer that I trust. Andi has always been a horse prone to panic and bolting. I know there are those that disagree with me, but I firmly believe this panic/bolting behavior is bred into the Icelandic for the "showiness" in the competition ring. Not all Icelandics are like this, but there are enough in a breed that has low numbers to have it be a concern to breeders. Some bolting in the Icelandic are due to poor saddle fit and training. But there are still enough horses out there like Andi who have had good, kind, training, and proper fitting tack that it is time for the breeders to get their head out of the sand.

Andi's panic and bolting came out to the extreme this past summer as I was attempting to train Andi to a harness and a cart. He got the nickname "little yellow freight train" after bolting thru a 16' pipe corral gate in a panic. After more training, Andi proved he did not have the correct temperment for a driving horse, and I saw that I really had to get a handle on his panic behavior and re-train his mind. Some horse trainers say to control the mind you have to control the
feet. I disagree. I think that to control the feet, you have to control the mind. I use clicker training to control the mind. This type of training is based on 100% positive training and no punishment. Wrong behaviors are ignored, and correct behavior is rewarded. This gives you a horse who wants to work for you, work with you, and wants to please you. After all, a horse is a prey animal, and to a prey animal, punishment means he is going to get eaten.

In the past, I have refrained from lunging Andi because he lunges in panic mode, and goes faster and faster until he is in a blind panic. Well, this then was the perfect place to start. I started just walking and whoaing. Andi got clicked and treated for nice, calm walks, and smooth transitions from whoa to walk. From there we progressed to calm trots. It took a lot of time, patience, and carrots to get a calm trot on the lunge. Today was the first day I asked for a canter on the lunge. I set my camera on the fence and filmed part of our session:

Andi and I are progressing quite well. Andi is learning that speed does not mean he has to run for his life, and I am learning to trust him more. Andi is the type of horse who can read your mind. Since he is so overly sensitive, I owe it to Andi to become a better rider, so I've also been taking equitation lessons on Andi, and we are improving as a team. We have come a long way, and we still have a long way to go. Here are a couple of pics from my last lesson:

Andi gets his winter haircut

Andi has gotten the thickest winter coat already, and it's only the first week in November. Since a horse grows it's winter coat based on the amount of daylight, and not the cold, he is WAAAAY overdressed for our 60 and 70 degree weather. I had done a lousy clip job on him last year. I say lousy because while I own clippers, they are not heavy duty clippers. So I asked my friend and neighbor, Sharon, to clip him for me and she agreed. Here is the outcome:




Sharon did a beautiful job! Lucky for me, she used to clip for competition horses, so her being a clip perfectionist just makes Andi look all the more sexy in his new haircut! And now, he doesn't get so overheated and soaking wet when he gets ridden. By the time the bitter cold nights of January and February get here, the clipped areas will have grown in enough to keep him warm.

High Desert Classic Endurance Ride

Whisper and I went to the High Desert Classic Endurance Ride with the intention of doing Saturday's 30 mile Limited Distance Ride. Ride Camp was located at the Boy Scout Camp at Fort Churchill on the Carson River. We have been to this camp many times for trail trials, trail rides, and this was Whisper's first camping trip over 2 years ago. Whisper and I got to camp by 1pm on Friday afternoon, and we got a nice choice spot that would provide Whisper shade no matter the time of day. I don't go out in the camper much by myself, so was quite proud for getting set up, the propane turned on, and the hot water heater turned on by myself. Here is Whisper settled in quite nicely in camp:

She even looks ready for a nap here! Luckily, Whisper is a very good camper and is content to be tied to the trailer. She has plenty of room to move around, and would be able to lay down if she desired. Of course, having a full hay bag in front of her at all times helps! Under her number on her hip, I placed a pink breast cancer awareness ribbon. This is October which is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, after all!

My friend, Jaimie, was due to arrive before dinner. She was going to help me and be my crew. She also used to do a lot of endurance rides, and was going to help me find someone safe and sane to ride with the next day.

5:00 AM Saturday morning, I got up, got Whisper a new bag of hay, started up the generator and put on a pot of coffee. The 50 miler's started at 7:00 AM, and we 30 miler's were to start at 8:00 AM. I got Whisper booted up in her Easyboot Epics, tacked up and was mounted at 7:30. Whisper was cool as a cucumber - and this was only her second ride! We wandered over to where my ride partners were, Peggy and her granddaughter, Brittany, and they weren't quite ready so we wandered around camp a bit. I was joking with Whisper to "calm down" because if she was any calmer, she would have been asleep. I was quite pleased by her demeaner! It's way easier to hop up a horse than it is to calm one down! Finally, we headed out to where the starting line was, and started out about 8:20 since we wanted the "hot shoes" to get a good chance to get out of sight of our horses. To get to the start, we had to ride a trail parallel to the highway before we crossed over it. Whisper had never been that close to fast moving traffic before, and had never seen an 18 wheeler, let alone one going 65mph. She acted as tho she had seen traffic daily! What a good girl! The ride to the vet check was close to 16 miles, and we went up and down hills, over a railroad track, paralled the railroad for several miles (all the while I was praying no train would go by) and about 2 1/2 miles from the vet check, Whisper had a good trip, but recovered, but then slung her head back at me several times. This did not bode well. I did take a couple of pics while we stopped and Peggy opend and then closed a gate for up. Peggy is dismounted, and I also got a good pic of Brittany on her 1/2 mustang. The last pic is Princess Whisper.

Once at the vet check, Whisper trotted out for the vet (the famous "Duck") and he said to go remove Whisper's boots and come back because she seemed "off". We were both hoping that there was a rock in her boots. No such luck. Evidentally, there was a rock on the trail with Whisper's name on it, and her ride was done. We got a trailer ride back to camp on the ambulance trailer with another horse, a 50 miler, that had a rock on the trail with her name on it! Oh well, that's part of the heartbreak of an Endurance ride. When we got back to camp, I found another vet who verified which foot was bothering Whisper with the hoof testers. He did find an increase in the pulse to that hoof, but no swelling, so he recommended at least a week off. Whisper had on boots with pads, and even if she had on shoes with pads, that same rock may have found her. Here is a link to our trail that was downloaded from my Garmin 305 GPS with heartrate moniter:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=7006300

If you go to the map, then click satellite, then below the map, click google earth, you can zoom in and see the trail. This is a really cool feature of the Garmin 305.

Peggy and Brittany finished in time and got their completions! I may not have gotten a completion, but I met new friends and had a great time doing it! That's why the sport of Endurance is so much fun! The people are the best anywhere! We stayed for dinner and the awards ceremony and enjoyed a good night's sleep in the camper before packing up and heading home at around 10:00 AM Sunday morning. By then, Whisper didn't seem owey on her foot at all just walking around camp. Now we have all winter to get her feet in condition along with the rest of her!

Where did the Summer go???

Here I am sitting in my hotel room in Hawthorne at my second job, looking at the mountains with a dusting of snow, 23 days left until the most historic Presidential Election, wondering, "Where on earth did the summer go?" And, oh my goodness, I havn't written in my blog since July 12? Lazy, lazy, lazy...well, not really, more like busy, busy, busy. So, what's been happening since then? Well...

I have been riding Whisper regularly with my friend down the street, Sharon. Sharon is a 3 Day Eventer, so conditioning her horse is simular to Whisper's conditioning for Endurance. With one BIG exception - Sharon would like to do canters and gallops, and Whisper does these annoying "whoohoo" bucks when I ask her for speed, and since I would rather not get launched off my horse at 18mph, I tend to keep the speeds down. We are cantering on a regular basis, just not fast enough for Sharon's horse, Phynn, to get in a good canter gait as his stride is so much bigger than Whisper's. At least riding with Sharon is pushing my envelope and making me do things I have been afraid to do in the past.

With my rides on Whisper getting longer and faster, Mom just didn't have the ability to keep up, so Raven now has a job! After getting ridden maybe 6 times in the past 2 years, Raven is now the "mom horse". Of course, since she is fat and out of shape, Mom has had to slow down and shorten her rides for me and Raven. Raven is enjoying her job, and now winnies at me when I go out and get a horse. Raven and Whisper vie for who is going to go first.

Andi got a break from riding as I had been concentrating on training him to pull a cart. I went to a couple of clinics with him, and he freaked out over wearing blinders and went crashing thru a 16' pipe corral gate going full speed. I worked with him another 6 weeks, but I just don't think I want to put in the time to make him a driving horse. So I will begin riding him again after next weekend.

What happens next weekend, you ask? Well, Whisper and I have a 30 mile Endurance ride out at Fort Churchill. Even tho it has been snow flurries all this weekend, next weekend it is supposed to be in the 70's, so it should be perfect for an Endurance ride. She will be wearing her new saddle, a Specialized which I am able to tweak and fit perfectly to her back. She will also be wearing Easyboot Epics on all 4 hooves instead of shoes. So I will be able to see if I have everything "tweaked" correctly after doing 30 miles in 7 hours.

Bruce and I went on a camping trip in September. Bruce ended up inviting his department at work to meet us there, and we all had a great time. With disel prices pushing $5/gal. we stayed fairly close to home and went to Berlin-Ichthiasaur State Park about 90 miles away. Here is a slideshow I put together of our trip:



Last weekend, we took the Amtrak from Reno to Truckee. The train follows the Truckee river and stops just short of Donner Pass. It was breathtaking and !cheap! at $23 round trip per person. The train ride was just over an hour, and not nearly long enough, so in January or February, we will take the train on over to Sacramento and spend the night and return the next day. It should be beautiful going over the Sierra's in the snow and I am looking forward to it! Here is a slideshow I made of the train ride:



Well, that's the quick catch up! Hopefully I will have a successful Endurance ride to write about after next weekend!

Whisper is a Hero!

Yesterday, I had no one to ride with (Whisper will not go out alone), so my plan was to try her Easyboots with the dome pads in the front, and go up and down our gravel road to see how she did in them. When I took her up to the mountains with a hard pack road and rocks, she was very owey even in her boots, so I thought the pads would help. Anyway, after booting her up yeasterday, my neighbor Judy, rode up with her very expensive and highly trained cutting horse, Julia. They were going on a trail ride and asked if I wanted to go, so off we went! Whenever Whisper and Julia get together, they are both full of beans, so we trotted about a mile to get them to settle. They are both in good shape and very fit and well conditioned, and neither of them was puffing and Whisper's heart rate was only about 120 for the trot. That is her usual trotting HR. We backed down to a walk, and suddenly, Julia just stopped. Judy thought she had to pee, so we gave them a chance and when it was obvious they didn't have to pee, we asked them to move on. Julia refused and she doesn't normally do this so Judy knew something was wrong. She immediately dis mounted and tried to lead Julia forward to no avail. Julia wouldn't budge even one foot! She was tying up. This is a veternary emergency with a horse where the huge rear end muscles cramp up. First thing you do is DON'T MOVE THE HORSE. Second thing is get it to the vet as quickly as possible. The horse that has tied up needs immediate attention by a vet because this can lead to death at worst or even kidney failure. However, we were in an area of the desert that was inaccessable to a horse trailer. We needed to walk Julia a mile to get her to an area that a horse trailer could get to, but Julia was going nowhere while she was tied up. Luckily, both Judy and I carry a cell phone with us while we ride and I had the local vet pre-programmed into my cell. The vet would give Judy a shot of Ace which would relax Julia enough to uncramp her muscles and allow us to walk her to where we could get a horse trailer. Our other neighbor, Sharon, was called and just happened to be in the area of the vet, so she would pick up the Ace and I would ride Whisper home and bring Sharon back in our quad since the area we were in was inaccessable to anything but a quad or a Jeep. But this would mean riding Whisper home alone, and she has refused in the past to go out alone. I told Whisper we HAD to do it and that Julia needed us. So off we rode towards home. Leaving another horse behind on the trail is also a big challange, but Whisper rose to the occasion and not only went home, but went home at a trot the whole way without the slighest hesitation!

Once home, I untacked her and put her up all sweaty and dirty and didn't even take her boots off! What a bad horse mommie! I did shove several carrots in her mouth and promised her I would take care of her later, and I really think she did understand the situation. About the time I finished getting water in a container for Julia, Sharon arrived with the shot of Ace and we went tearing out into the desert back to Julia. Judy administered the shot, we gave Julia some water and waited for 30-40 minutes for the shot to take effect so Julia would be able to walk. We then got Julia walking the mile to the point where Judy could get her horse trailer and Sharon and I waited with Julia while Judy took the quad to her house to get her horse trailer.

I later talked to Judy and Julia is doing fine and the vet says Julia was treated just in time and the best thing Judy did was not move her when it began. Forcing Julia to move at that point might have ended up either killing her or ruining her kidneys which would have eventually killed her.

I am so proud of Whisper I have no words. She came thru for me and Julia when it was needed. I think she knew we were on a rescue mission and I was depending on her. She is the best mare in the world!

Mom's 75th Birthday Ride

My Mom turned 75 today, June 28, 2008. Wow! That's 3/4 of a century! Yesterday, in celebration of her birthday and to stick her tongue out at aging, we went on a 10 mile trail ride on our horses! How many 75 year old's do you know that are capable of saddling up her own horse and go riding for 10 miles? Not too many, I'd wager!

When Mom goes riding, she is a minimalist who rides in jeans and moccasins. Due to our heat in the desert, I talked her into getting a camel pak to ride with to make accessing her water during a ride easier. I have been riding with a camel pak for over 4 years now, and I love mine and even wear a small one in the winter. A regular camel pak was too big for Mom, so she got a child size one. So armed with her camel pak on her back, and a fanny pack attached to her waist to carry carrots for her horse, she felt overloaded and thought she looked like she was outfitted to climb Mt. Everest! Wonder what she thinks about me in all my crap!

Here is a video I took of our ride:

I'm not certain I will live to be 75, let alone still be on the back of a horse then! Mom still has dreams of doing a 25 mile Endurance ride with me. At this rate, I think she'll make that ride this year!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!