Not Broken!

I'm happy to report that my pony is not broken after all. Two weeks ago I posted that Junior was having issues with weight and balance. Though the issues are not completely resolved, he is very much on the road to better times. He is showing improvement all over and increasing muscle in his hind end. I did increase both his grain and his hay rations but I won't get into the details just now. The biggest steps have actually been in the way we've been working. I've been riding more frequently, and have switched back to my english saddle and a snaffle bit. We've been trotting for 25-35 minutes every other day and have been working on keeping his back up and increasing impulsion. I don't suppose that sounds like much, but remember how lazy I am and how it's winter and how f*ing busy I am with work right now - it's my busiest time of year. But improvement is visible and palpable.



We had a session with an equine chiropractor/massage therapist on Friday morning. We'd been trying to get her and she happened to have a cancellation. I can clearly understand why she's in such high demand. She spent over an hour with us. He was "out" in his poll, neck, both shoulders, a couple of ribs, and his pelvis was twisted. Though she said none of that was "scary". She attributed most of his left hind issue to his pelvis. When she was done working on him he was incredibly calm. He even stood by his open stall door while I put his blanket back on and didn't move an inch even though there was a pile of lovely hay in his stall. He was super chill. She also took a gander at my training saddle which I've always questioned whether or not it fits him. She said it seems fine, but that the skirt is too long for him considering how far back his shoulder slopes. So my hunt for a new saddle has a somewhat limiting new factor. I WILL do a post on that eventually, I promise.

Today we had a lesson with Monet. Yet again my mind is completely blown. She says our biggest issues are increasing straightness and impulsion. Which in a way means that we don't know jack sh*t because straightness and impulsion are kindergarten. But I'm okay with that. In the 17+ years I've been riding I've had to accept that I will probably always be in kindergarten. I'm very comfortable with our reality. I didn't think that way when I was about 17 and thought I was the queen of the ring, but we all thought ridiculous things when we were teenagers, right? But I digress. The lesson was great and exhausting for both me and Junebug. But he was such a champ. I did feel his LH go ONCE but it was when I brought him to a walk improperly because I needed to take a break from all of that standing and pushing and releasing and swinging and half halting and whatever other 200 things I was trying to do all at the same time. And I learned today that he DOESN'T lose the LH when he's USING his LH, only when he's NOT using it. So I have to keep him using it. Kindergarten again.

Here's two clips from today. The first is Monet riding him. She mentioned that he feels much better to her now than the first time she was on him back in late summer. Then it's some of the last 10 minutes of our lesson when I finally started putting things together and he (because Monet had been on him) had started to figure out what on earth all my in-saddle shenanigans were all about. You'll notice I look completely ridiculous and flappy. Snicker away. I sure did when I watched it! But just like teaching a horse to steer, you have to exaggerate in the beginning. Don't watch me, just watch him MOVE!




I do love him.

Junior's Weight - The Never Ending Saga

One year ago I began drastically changing Junior's ration. As you know, this was based on an Equine Nutrition Class project. I took TJ's data and made some choices. Our goals at the time were to:

• Lower his BCS with a low starch/low sugar/high fiber concentrate. The digestibility of the hay was very low so this would help the digestibility of the hay, too.
• Not lower his busy-work feeding - he was stalled too much - he had begun cribbing out of boredom and frustration.
• Somewhat affordable because there was no discount on board if I stopped feeding the 12% barn grain - so the feed costs were additional. AND I had to pay for any hay over the 4 thin flakes/day. This was MY goal, TJ did not factor in cost, only suitability.

The whole "Plan" is HERE, but due to some questionable grain storage practices I ended up switching entirely to the Safe N Lite instead of the 50/50 mixture I had listed.

We seemingly met our goals in the Spring. The barn move greatly helped with a number of things including increased pasture access (from random less than 5 hours to up to 12 hours/day.)

However, as the winter began we noticed weight loss and I believe some energy loss as well. I don't mind having this calm, collected guy, but his BCS is too low. So it's back to the math.

I can't (thankfully) make this Rocket Surgery type science this time because I'm estimating the DE in the hay rather than having it analyzed. I think we were, in fact, underfeeding him this fall. When he was getting all that grazing (1.5 lbs/hour estimated) he was fine. The BM thinks he currently gets an estimated 18-25lbs grass hay per day. He gets a good 18-20 in his stall, but some hay is fed in the pasture so it's hard to accurately guess how much he's getting of that. I can't really do math with 18-25lbs, so I'm using 20. He had been getting 2lbs Safe N Lite each day. Then in fall it was upped to 3lbs/day. With that ration he SHOULD have been fine on DE of 21.48 Mcal/day, but apparently not. NRC guidelines list 20 Mcal/Day for adult horses in light work.

He is currently getting 5lbs S&L/day bringing him up to 23.4 Mcal/Day. This SHOULD be enough... wasn't he an easy keeper!?!?!

A new puzzle piece to this problem is that I will now be going through 1 BAG EVERY 10 DAYS!!! That is a lovely $52/month for 3 bags. When I made the choice to move him to S&L it was cheaper per bag than now and we were feeding so very little. I get an $18 discount on my board for providing my own grain. If I switch to one of the barn grains: Strategy or Kalm N EZ, I can pay only $18/month for grain AND not have to make trips to the feed store.

So what next? Some more math and research. Kalm N EZ was one of the grains TJ analyzed for me. She was looking for low starch low sugar feeds so she did not analyze Strategy. Max is on Strategy Healthy Edge, but that has to be bought by the owner.

A possible switch to KNEZ will be feeding him 2lbs/day giving him 21.44 Mcal/day. I just bought 3 bags of S&L, so when she's at the last bag I'll probably start switching him over. If the 23.4 Mcal/day seems to be helping over the next few weeks (he's been on that a few weeks now) I might do 3 lbs/day which ups it to closer to the DE he's on right now.

Sigh...

On a side note: I missed two days at the barn due to long work days and crappy winter snow. It's amazing how quickly 3" of snow can cripple a city that doesn't have enough plows. Anyway, I rode last night with the help of the BM telling me when he was "round" like Monet told me to make him. I'm much more of a visual thinker than a tactile one. I would LOVE mirrors in the arena! His neck was not solid but the two hard bumps were definitely there. Before and after the ride I did stretches. I broke down and did it with treats - need to go buy carrots. I was reading an article and it said to do the stretches in a special location to help prevent the horse from being grabby. His annoying grabbiness has been the reason he doesn't get treats. Can I train him to know the difference? He certainly stretched further and longer with the food reward than with the pat/verbal praise award. Hopefully we can keep him from being like this:

Update and Award

First the update...

I got some advice from my wonderful dressage trainer. I sent her the same info I gave you all, and since she's seen him do this in person I figured she's a good place to start. She said he's not using his left hind. She said he needs to get rounder and over his back so he can use his hind end. She told me to slow him down, get him over his back, get his belly swinging and keep him at the trot. I will see her on the 29th and she can do some body work with him then, too. In the mean time I'm going to do exactly what she said. I started tonight.

I did about a 25 minute ride. His neck seemed very stiff, probably from the lunging yesterday and the very damp weather. I tried to massage it and did our carrotless stretches before and after the ride. I only felt his leg go about twice. His attitude, though not excited about the work, was fine. No defiance or arguments. He did what I asked, had a soft wet mouth, and I could see him licking and chewing (in our shadow silhouette) so I don't think he's hurting or anything.

Found out I can do the Alpha Stim with a gel instead of water so we might do some of that, too. Of course the next five weeks is going to be my busiest time of the year at work, so I have some juggling acts to do about going to the barn as often as I feel I should be, even if it's just for stretches and massages.

Anyway, my dear blog-friend In2paints, over at R Lil Bit of Cash has awarded me the "Stylish Blogger Award."

As with all of these little awards, there are 4 duties to perform to receive this award:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award
2. Share 7 things about yourself
3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

I'll be honest that I don't even READ 15 blogs! So I'm going to narrow that down to 5. Sorry for breaking the rules, but that's just the way it is.

1. Thank you, In2paints for thinking we are stylish! Your award was a bright spot in my recent overanxious worries! For those of you who do not follow Becca, Lilly, and AJ, you really should. There are great pictures, and though they've been having a bit of a rough year, their journey is fascinating and heart warming.

2. 7 things about myself...

• I just bought what I consider to be my first "grown-up lady" purse and I'm 31 29 years old!
• I almost completely stopped cooking when I began living alone about 4 years ago. I wascooking AND eating for 4 and I couldn't make it stop. So now, sadly, I eat a lot of "food-in-a-box" otherwise I'd weigh 200 lbs. I'm trying to cook more... but there's also that little issue of time...
• When I moved to Ohio there was a washer and dryer in my apartment. It was an old rental unit. The apartment managers clearly did not know it was there so when I moved last September to another unit I took it with me... and they never said a thing about it. WIN!!!
• I have 2 unfinished quilting projects I started in the summer of 2004....
• When I'm stressed and have major work deadlines I will clean and organize my house/tack box/car, anything but actually do the work. This is the worst when I have papers to grade.
• My recyclables really need to be taken out, but they keep moving the drop-off locations and now it's a place I never go.
• This morning I ordered 3 custom-made lime/black zebra print biketards (leotards with bike-short length shorts) for 3 college boys who do not yet know they will be dancing in them in front of the entire campus/community..... bwahaha.... sometimes my job rules.

3. Award 5 great bloggers!

1. Bexley Chickens is a blog about four urban chickens and their family. Since raising chickens was a very big part of my life for a few years, I find their pictures and videos to be a slice of home. It has also been very educational about the increasing trend in "backyard" chickens in urban environments.
2. Welcome to Joshland is a blog by a very active member of the Cystic Fibrosis community. Whether or not you know someone whose life has been affected by CF, Josh's blog is full of honesty, reality, and hope that you won't find very many places. I knew Josh in the 5th grade but my family moved away that summer. We found eachother many years later in the blog-o-sphere. It's a small world.
3. Eventing A GoGo is a blog about a girl and her extremely stylish and beautiful mare, Gogo. They focus on eventing and the barefoot horse which I as a barefoot showing horse person enjoy. And NOTHING is as stylish as Gogo's most recent clip job!
4. Musings From the Judge's Box is a blog by an open horse show judge. She is extremely kind in her answering of questions (including a recent slew of my own!) and gives honest and useful answers. I think I would like to show under her someday!
5. Side Saddle Girl is across the pond! She rides side saddle on EITHER SIDE and has lots of posts about side saddle habits and tack which really appeal to my clothing history addiction.

4. Here I go!!!

And here's some pictures from yesterday of Junior's buddy, Little Red. SOOO FUZZYYYYY! I cannot resist petting him. I want to put him in my pocket and take him everywhere with me.

Weight and Balance

In some ways I hesitate to post what I'm about to post. Though I know that you, my loyal readers, will only have constructive comments and suggestions, but being the "Overanxious" person that I am, I dream up all sorts of horrible things in my head like someone telling me that I'm doing something so obviously cruel that I should be ashamed to call myself a horse owner or that I've ruined my horse beyond repair.

So please be kind and be assured that as we speak I'm already soliciting answers from professionals. I'm just sharing the case study with you. For those of you who have not followed this blog from the beginning I have some history re-caps:

First a little history re-cap about "Balance": In the beginning I used to call him "The Eight Legged Moose" or say that he had "four left feet." I also said he had ADD because several of the incidents included him looking off to the side quickly when he saw another horse. For a long while he was stumbling in the front end at the canter. Often. We actually dropped to his knees on at least two occasions. There was a time early on that I worried about cantering him at all, convinced we were going to go ass over tea kettle like I did once with Banee. These are the only two I have on film: the first in a lesson during our first few months (Nov. '08), and the second at the last show we were in (June '10).

THESE seemed to be front-end related, only at the canter, and the one in June was the last time he's done it... knock on wood. I had him checked by Chiro #1 shortly after that and his only response was that he was "stiffer in the neck than I expected" which doesn't make me feel like I got my money's worth. Then he was tight in the right shoulder and I started doing the Alpha-Stim and stretches, which I've not done much of since he shoulder got better. Possibly related or unrelated is this other issue: every so often and with increasing regularity in the last few weeks an issue seems to be expressing itself in his left hind. I know this has happened on and off for a long time. If I can describe what it feels like during the ride, it feels like he forgets the foot behind himself. It hesitates to come forward. This is mostly happening at the trot, more so the more I ask him to extend and hardy at all when we are jogging. He happily exhibited it to Monet who gave me some homework to do to help it, which I promptly forgot and therefore didn't really follow through with. When I had my jumping lesson on Nov. 21, she told me the bumps on his neck were evidence of vertebra out and she adjusted him. Fast forward to now: he's still got the bumps and that left hind is very frequently "catching". This is from today. You can see it if you stare at his left hind. I slowed it down a few clicks so that it's easier to see. It feels bigger than it looks:

History re-cap on Weight: Bought him in early September '08 and he was underweight. Not dangerously so, but thin. This is him that first month:

I'd say he was a 3-4 on the BCS scale. He proceeded to gain WAY too much weight and he yo-yo'd for a good while. In the fall of '09 my friend TJ used Junior as her project horse in her college Equine Nutrition class and in January of 2010 I changed his grain and started measuring and bagging his meals since I couldn't rely on the barn feeders to get it right. Further history in the Topics tab under "Equine Nutrition." When TJ did the project we palpated him at an 8.5 on the BCS scale and looked like this:

Now he looks like this and I think he's at a 4 (BTW you really have to FEEL a horse to estimate accurately, pictures are far less accurate):

If you compare the rear shots, he not only is more triangular, on the topline, the top of the hips is narrower than the bottom, which looks disproportional.

And ribs, even visible through the fuzz. :( Only positive thing is that his tail is much fuller and longer than it was even a year ago. But that's just cosmetic of course. :( Nobody cares about the paint job if the engine is broken.

You can look at his full profile in the Christmas pictures, but we'd been outside for a bit and his hair had fluffed up. He's just been unblanketed in the three that are here.

What was most upsetting to me today as I compared these images, is that even though his side view from 9/08 is similar to now, the rear profile is much flatter in todays images. This leads me to think that he's lost more than fat: he's lost muscle and that's not a good thing.

Is the muscle loss the cause or the effect? Or are we looking at two different things?

I wish I knew the answer. I know the possibilities: sore back? sore hip? hock? caused by what? bad tack? does he have a mild injury somewhere? Does he need more chiro? Certainly not from Chiro#1, but we're trying to get Chiro#2 scheduled. More massage? A supplement? More Alpha-Stim? Where do I do the Stim? Stim is difficult in the winter because the horse has to be wet. Though well insulated, the barn is not heated. Should I lunge him instead of ride him? But I can't get him to extend a trot on the lunge line so that won't work him very deeply.

I did some sensitivity tests, running my comb down his back from withers to spine but didn't get much reaction so maybe his back/loins are fine and the issue is in his hip? He was doing this before Chiro #1 saw him, but like I said, I didn't get much information out of that guy.

I know I NEED to get that muscle back, but I need to ask for some professional opinions on how that should be accomplished. I want a better diagnosis that what I have so far and I don't want to do any more damage. He seems perfectly willing to work, just not as willing to extend as he should be because clearly that's difficult/painful. He's not fighting me, I just need to keep pushing him and if I let up at all he drops right down to a slower jog.

All of the preceding questions were rhetorical, of course. I'm afraid no one can really answer those from watching a video or looking at pictures. If that were the case Vet's wouldn't need to make farm calls. So we've got some work to do.... just not sure what it is just yet.

As always, I'll keep you posted.