Pretty Pictures

Riding out at Otiro hunt riding Kiwi Icon whom has to be one of the best hunters ever. He never touches a fence regardless of how bad the distance is. Fastest front end ever.

So happy to be back on this guy even if we did go sideways for the early part of the hunt. Jumped 2 full wires. After the first two runs I pulled up and mostly watched because he has lost a lot of fitness and felt a little stiff hear the end. 

Small field for the Wednesday hunt made for competitive hunting and peer pressure to jump things. So despite the less than pretty prep on the fences my horse was a super star. He tries hard. Jumped tapes even

Looking across the South Wairarapa; the Rimutaka Hills in the background with the light shining off of Lake Wairarapa 

Ike got to try the new compression suit after he whipped all day at the hunt. Very interested to see how he goes tomorrow. The lovely Butch with his white stockings pulled up to his knees.

Bojangles

My horse is funny looking. He is a very very pretty colour and has lovely white socks in the front which I like. He has a swayed back and his shoulder is bigger than his hindquarter. His neck is tending to be muscled all the wrong way. Despite this he is a pretty mover and he tries so hard and he is a super jumper with an awesome back end. 

He has been so wearying. There was a moment about 2 months ago when I had just had a gutsful of him. He requires a very precise ride and previous riders have created some anxiety I'm constantly working against to keep him relaxed and settled. He can be lazy but also can over react to the spur and get rattled by it. He loses condition easily and puts it on slowly. He windsucks and he has this coffin joint issue and he is the highest maintenance horse I have ever owned by a lot. 

And then I evented him and I found his calling. He loves it so much and he is so good at it. Well his dressage sucks but that will come we can fix that. And he hunts like a gangster. He isn't the big warmbloody powerhouse Sjer of my dreams, not even close. He is a slightly simple, quirky sensitive difficult horse. He was so grumpy when I first brought him and at least now he is more cheerful and likes cuddles and being engaged.

Not being able to ride him has been so frustrating and I realised something yesterday. I love him. I never used to love him, and maybe he didn't turn out to be the horse I wanted and I better get braver eventing because thats where he belongs, but I love him anyway.

One Sick Pony

So out hunting two weeks ago, Butchly got to small cuts on his back legs. He then missed the showjumping day and I catchrode a baby for my old boss, because his front legs had swollen up. I think this was from the red clover diet and because he stocks up when he isn't moving much. He looked to be improving until Friday of Easter and then cue two hot fat swollen back legs and a very poorly pony.

The swelling even spread to the front of his face (weird) and two patches under his belly. So cue all the antibiotics and one sad pony. He is quite sore in the neck from the injections and he wouldn't eat of the ground for a long time, though I make him eat his hard fed off the ground because he needs to use his neck to stop it hurting.

The downside is I wont make the 3DE at Taupo for the national championships because I needed one more qualifying score and I will miss the last two chances to compete because they are inside his drug withholding. That is far less important than getting my horse right of course but a shame all the same.
Horses.

No Interwebs

It's a painful painful thing to have no internet! Things have been happening that I don't even know about! Still in this brief window of internet I will catch you all up. So last weekend was the Northern Hawkes Bay Autumn event, run over two days. Now I did enter the Pre-Novice which was a big step up from the Training. It's set up at 1.05m and they can go up to 1.25m with the brush. Which is scary being that my horse doesn't brush.

The dressage was an improvement for him. He warmed up so perfectly (Had a dressage weekend last week) but of course I lost the rhythm and swing some once I got into the arena. He didn't break as often and I lost silly marks not riding accurately so I got a 47 which is pretty bad, luckily the judge marked everyone hard. Well apart from the good tests but that is fair enough.

Then we showjumped and he was of course perfect to showjump. Even the judge said it was a lovely round, just like a big rocking horse. So I was 23rd after the dressage out of 27 which isn't ideal and moved up to 20th after a clear showjumping. The XC was very very large. Actually the first two fences were ok but the third fence was a huge oxer/couch hedge. Freaked me out! He came round and I sort of felt him go really? and I was like yes and he was like ok lets do this. It felt like we spent about three days in the air, the brush would have been 1.20m high and about 1.50m wide and he made sure he didn't touch a leaf.

Then it was two sort of narrow houses set on a showjumping five strides and I jumped in and collected him and I was like come on and my distance was there and boom, easy peasy.  Two straight forward fences and then it was a jump to a uphill climb to a hanging log with a very steep landing. I kept the power on and he popped over. The landing was so steep I got that stomach dropping feeling. He had a bit of a bounce, I think it came as a bit of a surprise to him. Then it was smooth sailing until the sunken road. This was a drop and then jumped out and up again two strides to an arrow head with brush that would have been 1.20m again. Luckily I was given some advice that you have to get your two strides in the bottom of the sunken road or you wont get the ride out. So I landed and rode on for the two strides, got my jump up and was like come one pony! Help your Mumma and he just flew over it. He had a wee bobble jumping into the water jump, where he just hesitated a little but seeing as its third water jump in competition thats fine.

The only other really big question was a very skinny upright in the middle of an empty space and he sort of wanted to go around but I kept my leg on and used my laser eyes and he jumped over perfectly. The final fence was a double jumping across a lane way with some overhanging trees. He jumped it perfectly but ducked under the trees which cracked me up. It had rained really hard just before the start so the ground was really greasy just before my class. I had gone in with the mentality that I wouldn't push for time, but with the rain some more economical lines I had walked got dropped. I just let him roll around in his rhythm which meant I had 16 time faults to add. Which is a lot. Like 40 seconds to make up, but I could have to be fair because I never opened him up on the straights and he finished with heaps tank in the gas.

He was an absolute rockstar and the most confident and perfect XC horse ever. Now I just need to get into this dressage thing sorted out.
 

Tally-Ho

Opening hunt today. I wasn't going to go today and after have relief milked for most of the week I didn't wake up until 9 am and was in bed reading when the peer pressure piled on at 10.20 ish which made for a bit of a rush to get there in time to get saddled for a 12pm ride out. The problem with an experienced hunter is that they just know and he jogged and flubbed his lips all the way out. Still he jumped awesomely all day as he does. He loves it so much. Flying changes don't exist at home but he does them easily hunting or xc :/ . 

It wasn't the fastest day but there were a few good runs. I did have one moment when we jumped a very tall lowered wire with metal standards so it wasn't very visible. We got to a decent distance and I thought he would take off but he bobbled and sort of looked through the fence, then chipped in and jumped it. He generally isn't the chipping type but it's nice to know he can, so he ended up touching that with his front in and it was just a funny moment. Like not actually scary or dangerous but just like a damn that could have gone the other way sort of thing. The next fence was exactly the same and he obviously had given himself a wee fright because he jumped so hard over it he hit me in the chest as he jumped up through his shoulder. Good day that ended earlier than hunting normally does because it was really muggy, the horses were fairly poked and we had had a kill.  Butchly is about to get his third feed for the day and he has been well washed and linamented and has his magnetic rug on. Then I shall go have a nap. 

Interesting post title

From my eventing days in the distant past.

Ha see what I did there. I wish more interesting things were happening but the craziest thing I have done this week is ride in a dressage saddle. And thats weird. So weird. After 9 years of knee rolls and short stirrups, it was completely bizarre. I think Butch liked it though he felt super light and loose. Interestingly I found a real weak point in my horse and it really ties into my thinking that he is tighter along his right hand side and this is where stickiness turning left comes from this. When I asked for haunches in to the left, Butchly had a tantrum complete with kicking at my leg. Never had that before. I think more lateral work and bending will help with this.

Otherwise he seems quite sound. Maybe not 100% on a small circle turning right, there is a little shortness in his stride with no head nod, and trotting done the tarseal he feels really good. It's hard because when you are looking for something, every funny stride is like OMG he is LAME! He will never be sound!! Woe woe! But with Butch funny steps happen a lot, as he is a baby giraffe. You are all welcome to come have a ride so you can feel it for yourself.

Anyway, I have entered for Northern Hawkesbay and I did upgrade to the pre-novice. The dressage test will suit him better than the training test, anyway, he is scopey as hell, 1.05m is nothing for him and I'm a good enough rider to cope with the technical questions. I hope! Gotta keep pushing eh! I really want to qualify for the 3DE in May and I need two scores, so I might as well have a crack at it. I can always downgrade for the next show, or at this show if in the lead up I feel he isn't ready. I just need to nut up and stop being a coward. Hoping I don't have a rail in the SJing that would be a bit lame! The field is pretty intimidating with lots of professionals, but hey someone has to come last!
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V.E.T

So I'm sure we all remember that in April last year Butchly was lame and it turned out he had a shadow in his x-ray over his pedal bone that we took to be a haematoma. In the Spring when he came back to work he was pretty good, though took some lame steps as he got close to needing new shoes. When he got new shoes he would improve again. He is a very oddly shaped horse who moves oddly and has  quite thin soles so it's not unheard of for him to get muscle sore from correct work and to just take the odd uneven steps.

Still as the season wore on and the ground got harder he started taking uneven steps sooner after his new shoes- 4 weeks instead of 5 etc and with the switch to eventing and more trot work it started to become more apparent. The amount of galloping in eventing probably doesn't help. Anyway I thought it would be related to that haematoma and I was curious to actually see what was going on in that foot,

So off for my basically annual visit to Southern Rangitikei Veterinary Services. I love these guys and can't recommend them highly enough. The equine vets compete as well so they get it. Anyway, so blocked his heels and he was sound after initially being a 1/5 on the straight, a 2/5 circling left and a 3/5 circling right on concrete. Last time we had to block from the fetlock down to get him sound. So anyway we did a full set of foot x-rays. The happy news is that his foot is really very balanced especially considering the shoes were six weeks old. His sole depth is over 1/2 an inch so I can no longer consider them thin!  On the x-rays his legs showed some conformational deviations but in other happy news there is no side bone, no osteoarthritis, and his navicular bone is perfect perfect perfect. The site of the other injury from last year shows bone remodeling so it looks slightly different but the bone density is good and the vet was really happy with it.

The bad news is that there is no apparent issue which of course makes it harder to treat. So he has had a diagnostic shot of corticosteriods into his coffin joint. If he has issues with his cartilage or his impar ligament this shot will help and I should see an improvement in a week maybe 10 days. However long the improvement lasts will help show what the issue is. If it doesn't help then we start looking for bruised heels though this seems unlikely as I always ride him in bell boots and he hardly hustles around the paddocks. He only walks and grazes.  So that is where we are at the moment. I had some vague hopes of qualifying for the national 3day event but that is fading into the distance a little, though if he responds well we have a chance!

ETA when the needle was in his joint space a lot of joint fluid flowed out which is apparently a sign that something is going on in the joint and the joint tries to protect itself by producing more fluid.