Whoops. I continue to neglect this blog pretty badly. Not my intention at all. I've just been doing so much that finding the time to sit down and summarize things hasn't been the most appealing use of my time, even though it's rewarding and useful.
I had a couple of bad weeks. My usual lesson horse turned into a weird spooky explosive beast my second ride on her during my horse-sitting week. It was a windy cold day with random loud gusts coming through and rattling leaved and gates and things. Still, she doesn't usually react much to that sort of thing. Well, she spooked twice, jumping and shying suddenly, while I was still just leading her into the ring. Shouldn't have been a GREAT surprise that she gave me a pretty nasty big spook under saddle, but usually she goes into work mode right away when I ride her, so I had kind of counted on that happening. Well, it didn't. I walked her a few more minutes after surviving the BIG SPOOK (a multipart shy-and-run that I'm pleasantly surprised I sat through) then hopped off and lunged her, where she continued to randomly have little explosions at seemingly nothing. And then it poured rain the rest of the week and the footing went to crap, so that was my last ride attempt for close to two weeks.
Other fun things during my horse sitting week included the two geldings getting buddy sour and becoming next to impossible for me to lead into the barn. My coach's horse panicked in his stall and it got dangerous in there, so I had to let him bolt out of there to avoid getting hurt, and long story (and a couple bad decisions) short, I wound up with TWO loose horses and a broken stall door.
After that week, we moved the horses up to their winter accommodations with the indoor arena. This was extremely hard on them for some reason. More so than most moves. The mare stress-colicked after my second or third ride on her there, and the other three horses have been anxious, most especially my coach's horse who has taken the last two and a half weeks to finally settle down enough to be rideable.
My first ride, after my anxious week of horse sitting and the horses being so UP at the new place, was just walk and a liiiiittle bit of trot. Even though the mare has always been really solid, I was very shaken by the spooky day. I confess, I got on and she was still so perked up and anxious, that as soon as she whinnied back to the other horses, I just walked her a few more steps and hopped off. :/ I did make myself get back on again, after hand-walking her around a bit, and it went slightly better but it was still pretty fraught for both of us. It didn't help that the horses were outside in the paddock JUST outside the arena and I was worried that SOMETHING would happen. I've since done my rides with them waiting in the barn BEFORE they go out. Much more peaceful!!
The ride before she colicked was a peaceful walk-trot and the first time since the big spook that I was actually feeling more like myself riding her. The colic episode was bizarre and scary, and I had no idea what was happening. She kept craning her neck out and curling her lip, and would lie down on her side with her head elevated off the ground and her lip curled and her jaws crossed. And not move at ALL. A couple of times I wondered if she was dead and/or having a stroke. It didn't help that there was blood in her spit, which in hindsight I think was from scratching her mouth while giving her a dose of bute.
Turns out that was all pretty normal for her when she has an episode, but I hadn't seen those specific colic episodes so it was definitely scary.
I'll resume my recap in the next post, but I'm happy to say things got better from there.
