SFM Adventure

If you are new and joining us, there is something to know about the Semi Feral Mare (SFM).  She is well, semi feral at times.  OK, she doesn't do anything too off the wall, but she isn't brave or well versed in many things besides eating, preferably eating large quantities of treats.

Trail riding isn't really her think either.  She spends most of the time worrying and figuring out if she will die.  Given my back issues, I don't always appreciate unintentional leaping. 

So, when a friend suggested that we venture out of the indoor arena to wander around the frozen tundra fields, I was a little uncertain.

She can be looky.

OK said the other person.

Cool, let's go.

Another friend decided to join us.  Awesome for me because we can do my favorite technique with chicken little horses and wedge them between horse one and horse three, so they don't nearly have the space to be worried or stupid.

We made it outside. 

And she was perfect.  We just walked since the snow was still fairly deep in some places, but it was good.  I daresay she may have enjoyed herself after a cold, bitter winter with seeing nothing but snow, ice, and the indoor arena for months on end.  She may have just volunteered herself into becoming a true trail pony.

The verdict is out on her true feelings about this suggestion.

After all, she is the Semi Feral Mare.

Memory Monday: A Lucky Day

It seemed to be a very unlucky week indeed.  The red filly had choked the day previous and I had the vet out since I get a little paranoid about respiratory inhalation during choke and the subsequent infections.

But fortunately by the time SuperVet came out, the choke had resolved and her breathing was clear.  Good news indeed.  Apparently I just had a super talented horse that was choking on hay/pasture (read: special).

The following day, I went out to feed her the evening grain to watch her chew.  I had her in the barn eating, when I noticed the semi feral mare laying down.  During dinner time.

This was a problem.

My father was out with me, so he went and brought her in and I realized she was colicing.  She had in the past, an occasional gas colic, usually from her skill of consuming food in massive quantities in a very short time.  She is the only horse I've ever seen eat a bale of hay in an hour.  Seriously.  More than once.

So this time, I thought it was probably another gas colic.  She looked like a beached whale or at least a ten month pregnant Arabian mare. 

Another individual at the barn is a vet tech and took a quick listen to her gut and we realized that there were no gut sounds.  Cool.  I had already called the vet, given banamine per orders, and was walking her as she was a little uncomfortable.  At least with banamine on board, she wasn't trying to lay and roll.

Her gums began to pale.  Her head dropped to the levels that would make any western pleasure Quarter Horse proud.  She stopped caring about walking over the nefarious garden hose/snake. 

I don't exactly know when I realized this was something else.  That this was no longer simple.  I called the vet again, who was on her way.  It was late on a Friday evening (of course).  

Verdict: Still hydrated, no organized gut sounds, pale gums, and apparent large colon displacement.  The unfortunate thing is this is usually surgical.  The Semi Feral Mare is nicknamed this for a reason.  Mostly because things like extended stall rest (or even stalling post hock injections) don't go over well.  Staying in one place doesn't necessarily go over well. 

I didn't think she would ever tolerate surgery and the post care, in addition to the obvious finances of it all.  So we decided to go ahead and try the "bumpy trailer ride" route.  Sometimes a jarring trailer ride can displace enough gas or shift enough to cause everything to revert to its proper place.  This of course, required the mare to load onto the trailer.  Despite the fact she was feeling quite dopey, she wasn't particularly interested in loading onto a pitch black trailer at nine thirty at night.

Reason number 765 I love my vet.  She stayed and helped me load that mare on the trailer.  I can load a horse, but sometimes, it's just plain helpful to have someone else.

One bumpy trailer ride later, I had a slightly irritated horse, but still no reduction in gas or manure passing.  Damn.

By this time, the superfriend J had arrived.  I was reaching a point when I realized this was going to be very ugly indeed and despite being involved in the veterinary industry for a while, when it's my own animals, emotions are certainly at play!  J was definitely a good rock that night.

The vet tech friend stopped home and brought sleeping bags so we didn't freeze to death and a couple drinks to ease my nerves.  ;)  We settled into a routine of sleeping in the barn aisle and walking, chasing, lunging, and pretty much anything every hour or so to see if anything would make a difference.

I think it was about midnight when I pulled up her gums and I saw they were red.  I tried mentally to prepare for the worst.  I didn't see the end for this, but at least with enough drugs on board, the mare was fairly comfortable.  She wasn't rolling, she wasn't upset.  She just stood there and stared at us.  

J decided to go get the giant horse soccer ball.  A few years previous, I had attended a clinic involving the soccer ball and it became apparent that is the one thing of which this horse was deathly afraid.  She had run backwards so quickly, she actually ended up laying down.  So perhaps, the soccer ball could scare her out of death.

We went ahead and were kicking it around the arena.  One end of the arena was a little wet and slippery from where an individual always dumped her water buckets.  J went ahead and kept kicking the ball and the mare slipped hard on that slick spot.  She slid across part of the arena, acquiring impressive road rash.  She stood up, shook herself off a bit, and literally began to deflate.  

It had happened.  Somehow in that fall, she was replaced the displacement and moved enough gas around.  She brightened up.  I felt a flutter of hope.  Could it be?

The night was still long and cold.  Like clockwork, we woke up and peeked at her in the stall at short intervals during the night.  As dawn broke and she got restless and pacey from being inside, I knew that she was certainly feeling better.

What a lucky day for a mare.  Who knows how long things may have progressed before being spotted if I hadn't been there checking on the filly's choke?  Don't know, but like to think that early intervention and care (and a slick spot) made a difference.  :)

Shiver Me November

OK, so it wasn't really so cold today, but still cold enough.  I definitely need to start digging out the colder weather horse gear.  

The semi ferals and myself are based in the frozen tundra. This is a good thing at times since in winter, we no longer have bird sized mosquitoes to carry us away.

The downside is the whole...well...you know frozen tundra part. 

But hey, I finally had time to make it out to the barn this evening.  My other shifts this week have barely let me out before 10 pm which isn't really conducive to barn hours and riding.  Today, I was a kind soul and covered for a 4 am shift.  I came, I saw, and conquered enough microbiological testing for a small army and hurrah--I found myself on the way to the barn.

The only downside is that when I was up, blindly fumbling for my coffee pot at 3 am, I didn't really plan ahead on what I needed for appropriate barn wear.  But, it's been a couple hours since I've been home and I think I found my toes again.  Sad thing is, it's still pretty warm here.  Good grief. 

Semi feral mare after she was undressed.  She's busy checking out her beau.

Since my hours have been so long, semi feral mare has been well...semi feral for the last week or so.  Weather is cool, so I decided to just go for it and hopped on.  Usually, I would go for the good old standby and lunge her, but I thought that a.) I can actually ride so why not and b.) I would probably freeze lunging two horses since I still had the filly to work.

Mare was actually pretty good.  We spent probably five or six minutes walking like a drunk giraffe until we settled down to business.  Good trot circles to the right, drunk trot circles to the left.  The left is our bad side, given her injuries and mine, so I know we need to keep on working.  I think I need to look into a few more exercises to start working on to keep strengthening her side and I know that I need to keep up on my strength and core training to help make up for her inadequencies.  

But something I finally noticed tonight, which of course, is trivial to many people with more advanced horses, is that tonight was the first night that she seemed to be responding to the idea of leg being lateral without her immediate reaction that had been drilled into her of leg=speed.  I like doing variations of spiral circles and she was truly starting to understand with the leg associated with it.

Small baby steps. 

Even though we will never get to a high accomplished level, if I can learn to be a more effective rider on a horse that is honest and shows my flaws, then I can be an even better rider on a horse that will carry me higher.

How about you guys?  Any particular exercises or adventures in working the one sided horse?  I worry about drilling so hard on left circles since she did fracture part of her left hind a couple years ago and had a flexor tendon injury last spring and so forth. 

Zero to Hero?

OK, not to quote Hercules (or as I prefer Herakles, the Greek form of the name), I have been trying to hopelessly get the semi feral horse and the semi feral human (me) back in some form of shape besides round.

I recently have switched to an earlier shift at work, which is great because I now have time to ride after work.  Unfortunately, this means I now get a lot less sleep because I haven't managed to figure out how to commute, ride, shower, eat, do something domestic (and not in that order) and get somewhere close to 8 hours of sleep.

But I will enjoy the riding. 

I am far from a perfect rider.

I have a lot of faults that I am desperately trying to correct.  I used to ride some difficult horses and started a few colts, so I end up looking down a lot and have a tendency to have my leg swing a little too far forward.  I had a back injury last year, so I also spend a lot of time guarding my back.

This meant that while I was riding my accident prone little horse, I was upsetting her balance with my crappy balance and I was finding myself getting frustrating.  She was erratic in keeping a chosen gait and wasn't willing to soften and seek contact.  We more resembled a monkey perched on a giraffe, rather than an elegant horse-rider pair.

Well...

I'm sure I'm still in giraffe mode, but I finally kick started myself with an honest riding lesson.  And sure enough, semi feral horse started off semi feral, but actually resembled more of a horse by the end.  And I truly discovered when I sat back (up), kept my elbows back, got rid of the soft puppy paws and looked at someplace besides the dirt, I actually could ride.  Go figure.

Easier said than done.

Tonight, I took SFM (Semi Feral Mare) out to the outdoor.  Seriously a big step.  SFM has very little life experience, except for eating grass and making babies.  We rode out from the indoor and while she has been out on the trail a few times, she has not been out by herself.  She is also very timid.  It took a few minutes to convince her that the Bobcat isn't so terrifying and has nothing to do with its feline counterpart.  We made it down the driveway.  Then we were stalled by the in gate to the outdoor (go figure).

I realized that the barrel jumps were just too much for a little grey pony's brain to handle, so I walked her in and off we waddled around the outdoor.  She had a good time looking at all the scary jumps and couldn't figure out which ones to look at the most.  The barrel jumps ended up being the clear winner though.

My goals are simple.  Better equitation and being soft with my body, while trying to instill confidence in my horse.

We weaved and walked around the jumps.  Worked on less giraffe, and more bend and using her body.  We trotted.  I decided to sing (and good thing no one else was there because a dying frog could sing better than I can) to try and keep focus and I think it's a bit soothing to the horse.  Maybe not, but I kept a nice steady trot much better that way and I remember to breathe at the same time, so win for me.

We waddled over some of the ground poles.  Poles with stripes are more terrifying than poles without.  But less terrifying than barrels on the ground. 

Overall, pretty good ride.  I keep my expectations low, hah, but it's all a good experience for me.  I've had a chance to ride some phenomenal horses, but I am finally learning a lot about how to correct my habits and become a better rider so the next time I have the chance to ride or show a "made" horse, then I can achieve more from our partnership. 

And on the homefront--I was probably more domestic than normal.  Loaded this dishwasher, made dinner, and prepared the crockpot for tomorrow.  The horrors of becoming too civilized!