Opposite Day, or That Time My Lazy Pony Bucked Me Off

I honestly can't remember the last time I came off my horse, you guys. It's been at least two, maybe three years. Moral of the story: I was due.

I headed out later in the evening, after trading off the puppy and cleaning around the house, tacked up in his jump saddle and figure-8 bridle, and set in for some conditioning & hills work.

Conditioning has proven ever so slightly tricky because on the farm I have too much of a good thing: hills! We're going up or down as soon as we set foot out the front door. It's actually harder to find good long straightaways for road hacking. I can't modify the difficulty level, really.

Last night I tried out a bit of a system that I'd been pondering in my head: namely, circling all the upper paddocks at various gaits. So we started walking around the entire area, about a mile and a half. Then we trotted up the hayfield hill, then walked back down and around the furthest paddocks.

We repeated that for two trot sets, one canter set, and another trot set. The first trot set was ugly; the second perked up halfway through; then after that it was smooth sailing: he was stretching into contact, pushing from behind, and not quitting at the top of the hill.

Red outline is the first walk set we did, purple is the hayfield hill, about a half mile steady rise. The entire red outline is some kind of hill - the trailers near the upper right part of this image are the highest elevation point in this image.

For the last set, we trotted up the bottom part of the rectangle, then turned and had an easy canter for about 1/3 of the way up. Then I bridged my reins and asked for some speed.

BOOM. He launched himself for about three strides in glee, then chucked his head down and let fly with two or three decent bucks. I was caught totally by surprise, and on the third buck found myself on his neck.

They weren't running bucks, more like he had bolted, landed, thrown his head down, and bucked mostly in place. I had a split second's realization that I was going down, and yelled "YOU LITTLE SHIT" at the top of my lungs. I landed on my side and my hip and rolled to my butt, still holding on to the reins, glaring up at him.

He looked so pleased and confused that I couldn't stop laughing. I stood up, made sure he was steady, and got back on, and within a stride or two asked him for the gallop again.

YAHOOOOO for two or three strides, but this time I was ready and yanked his head back up and KICKED, and then he settled right in to a nice big power gallop the rest of the way up, with firm contact and a fistful of mane on my part. I had to stand up in the stirrups a bit to slow him down when we got to the top of the hill.

He was clearly sweaty and tired and very pleased with himself. I laughed the whole way back to the barn, and then turned him out into a gravel paddock to hang out and finish cooling off, bringing a bucket and sponge out instead of using the wash stall.

Best part: other than my hips & thighs from the two-point work I did, I am not the slightest bit sore from the fall. Whew!

He'll get tonight off, then a dressage school Thursday, then road hack on Friday.

What's on your walls?

I bet quite a few of us have some horsey art on our walls. Last night, I decide to go around and catalogue all the horse-related art or decorating I have. In the process, I discovered that the disposition of art on our walls is basically 50% horses, 20% old maps, 20% 1940s propaganda or tourism posters, and 10% seriously geeky stuff like, you know, a replica of the painting that Adama has in his office on the Galactica. We have an atypical, geeky sort of style.

So here's the horse stuff, attributed when I can.

Brave little metal pony. He has suffered so much from both the cat and the puppy crashing into him on a regular basis. Arya particularly likes to get her Kong stuck underneath him, bash into him a few times in an attempt to get it out, and then sit down and whine until one of us comes and helps her. It's a drag not having opposable thumbs.

The first piece of art I ever bought, at Everything Equine in probably 2006?

Fun story! The 1956 Olympics were actually in Melbourne, but the quarantine restrictions for animals were so difficult that the equestrian events were held in Stockholm. It's the only time in history that it's happened. Fiance's family is Swedish and he found this as a gift for me.

  

A friend's photograph of an old school horse named Thumper that I used to ride. Thumper was a Standardbred who was D-O-N-E with being a school horse. You had to pony kick him repeatedly to get him out of a walk. He was a long suffering soul.

A gift from my parents. This particular artist does a ton of these. I believe my brother has one of a soccer ball turning into a soccer player.

This is actually a paper cutting that my grandparents brought back from China - the black is the paper, the white is the background piece. It's amazing up close.

My helmet from riding in France. Way not ASTM/SEI approved, therefore relegated to decoration.

I wish I could remember the artist. This is one of my favorite piece of art of all time - the horse's head looks just a little bit like Tristan.

TRUTH. 

These are custom ink drawings by the amaaaaaazing Mackenzie Kincaid. She did the bottom jumper one as a brief throwaway sketch, and I begged her to complete the set for me. I love them. I asked the fiance to frame them for me for three Christmases in a row, and the matting is...not great. Sigh.

So: what's on your walls?

Blog Hop: Unpopular

Some of us have a lot of ideas and thoughts, well probably all of us. So this is your time to shine and really make a ruckus (no really actually let's not fight about this we can all just agree to disagree about stuff). What is 1 unpopular horsey opinion you have?

Whoo boy. So many opinions, so little time, so little desire to have everyone hate me.

Let's go with #1: I am entirely in favor of horse slaughter.

I am not a vegetarian. I eat meat, primarily poultry. I try to make good decisions about what I eat and when I eat, but as much as I love animals, I have no reservations about how delicious they are.

If we slaughter animals for meat, there is no reason we should not slaughter horses as well.

The overpopulation problem is huge. There are many horses out there who will live desperately miserable lives through neglect or mistreatment. They will never be trained up to a useful career. There are many terrible human beings out there who would rather let them starve in a field or abuse them rather than give them a humane end of life.

That said, I have reservations about the way horse slaughter is done in North America. Captive bolt is a terrible way to kill horse, who are not the placid animals that cattle are. Rounding mustangs up in order to slaughter them is really atrocious wildlife management. And finally, if horses are going to become part of the food supply there need to be strategies for regulating the medication & supplements that we use in them.

I will never personally eat horse, much the same as I choose not to eat lamb and would choose not to eat dog if it were presented to me. That's my personal choice. But I don't think it should be ruled out entirely for sentimental reasons.

First Aid Kit for the Trailer: Spring Checkup

Okay, so it's more like midsummer checkup, but still: yesterday, I went through the first aid kit that I keep in the trailer. It's a fairly obsessive kit, because my theory is that while I'm at the barn, I can find just about anything I need or run out to buy it posthaste. If I'm out on the road, who knows where I might be or what I might find?

I keep it in this tupperware box, which is about 12"x9" - pretty decent size. It's not packed to the gills. First up was going through the checklist that lives with the kit itself.

Sadly, because I'm a loser, this checklist is left over from the last time I went through the kit, and is no longer accurate. So I just checked again and made additional notes.

Missing this time: two rolls of vetwrap, the lube, the 60cc syringe, the scissors from the suture kit (huh?), the tube of banamine, one of the two pens, one of the two bags of electrolytes.

The antibiotic ointment had expired, as had the saline solution. I threw away the antibiotic ointment but saline solution doesn't really expire, thanks marketing guys.

I tested the flashlight batteries and the in in the pen, then the thermometer - I stuck it into my armpit. I once nailed some Pony Clubbers on their horse management inspection because while they had a digital thermometer, the batteries were dead. Since then, I've been very careful about checking my own during these inspections, because: karma.

Some things I decided not to replace: the second pen, the second roll of tape, the scissors, and the second dose of electrolytes.

Some things I replaced right away: I had already replaced the banamine and just kept it in my main tack trunk, so I transferred that over to the kit. I have enough leftover vet wrap to cover my entire horse head to tail, so it was easy to grab two rolls out and get them to the kit.

I stopped by Walmart on the way home and bought more lube (which necessitated a fair bit of considering time in front of the personal pleasure section at Walmart while wearing my breeches, earning me more than a few sideways looks), a tube of antibiotic ointment, and one addition to the kit: a travel size tube of antibacterial hand wash.

I am not a big believer in the stuff on a daily basis, but I've seen how effective it can be around the barn for biosecurity. Every new horse gets a quarantine stall and a big pump jug of the stuff on the door. Our barn is an interesting confluence of several circumstances - rural area with a few other not-great barns nearby, super-fancy and $$$ horses in for training or sales all the time, one or two pregnant mares or new babies at all times, and a very particular ban manager. It's really great, but it does mean there's a higher level of care taken about that sort of thing.

Today, I stopped by Tractor Supply and picked up another 60cc syringe with catheter tip. Pre-surgery, I had a half dozen of these around; during Tristan's rehab, one after another succumbed to broken parts, staining from betadine, or just plain old got lost. Time to re-up.

All I have left to do is update the inventory list and the emergency contact information inside (new barn, need to add the fiance since he would probably care if something terrible happened).

Always bring peppermints!

#mindyourmelon - Happy National Helmet Awareness Day!

L. Williams at Viva Carlos recently asked about unpopular opinions, and I'm working on a post about that, but in the meantime here's one that is unpopular in certain circles.

I believe that if you are not wearing a helmet you are an idiot. Pure and simple. I'm sure you have many other fine qualities. But at some level, you are a fucking idiot. If you fall off, you will cause misery and grief to your friends and family; incur thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars worth of medical bills, and ruin your life. I do not say these things lightly.

Go ahead, gauge the impact: take everything in your life, and erase it. Now put yourself in a hospital bed. For months. Perhaps years. Perhaps even underground. How is that trade-off worth a few seconds of inconvenience? IT'S NOT.

If you post a picture of yourself on horseback without a helmet, I am judging you. I believe you to be a fucking idiot. It's that simple.

Here's my helmet story. About six years ago, Tristan and I had a bad ride at a home show. The next day, I took him back out to the arena where he'd lost his marbles, and I rode him for an hour and a half through bucking, bolting, sourness, crankiness: you name it. He was an utter shit for 80 minutes straight.

Finally, dripping sweat, he gave up. He walked calmly on a loose rein, and was content with the world. I was proud of him: as soon as he cooled out, he was going to get a few days off.

Then several things happened very quickly. The herd of cows across the street startled at something. Tristan's head shot up to look at them, and at that moment he stepped in or on something. He stumbled. He went down, hard, tired from his exertions of the last hour plus.

Tristan went down onto his knees, and I was wholly unprepared. I shot forward and slid straight down his neck on my stomach. My head hit the ground, and I had a split second's thought that my stomach was trapping his head on the ground. I rolled over my shoulder and onto my back, and then I blacked out.

Honestly, I don't remember anything after glancing over to see the cows startling, save for that brief, dizzying sensation of my stomach pressing against my horse's head on the ground. I don't know how long I was blacked out for, or whether I was actually unconscious or simply have no memory of lying there dazed.

It didn't seem like a bad fall at the time - probably because of that memory loss, which I hadn't quite realized yet. I just assumed it had happened very quickly.

So I got back on. Yep. I rode for another 15 minutes, at a walk, around the same field. Then we went into the barn.

Here's where my memory is crystal clear. I took off my helmet, and put it down on a bench. Only I didn't. I kept missing. I could not for the life of me set it on the bench: three, four times I missed, and then I finally put it on the bench and looked at it.

I had landed on my right temple, and that corner of the helmet, right where the visor met the rest of the helmet, was crushed in. The visor had snapped half off. The foam underneath the plastic shell was compacted, and I could pop the plastic shell in and out over the spot with ease.

It was like confronted with that reality everything else started to sink in. A dull ache started through my head, and my occiptal lobe, around my eye, started to throb. I got dizzy. I got tired. I felt thick and woolly headed. I put Tristan away and called my mother, an emergency room nurse, and talked to her on the way home (yes, stupid again) to keep me awake, then called another friend when I got home.

I was really, really lucky. If I'd fallen slightly differently, I could have broken my neck. I could have smashed several bones in my face. I could have fallen with much more impact and really truly jostled my brain.

I had about two weeks of headaches, off and on. The initial dizziness and thickness faded after a day or two. I sported a ghost of a black eye around my right eye for a few days.

The much large problem turned out to be my lower back, which had compressed and nearly slipped two vertebrae with the impact. I spent two years in PT, from chiropractic work to massage. It's still not right, and it probably never will be, though it is vastly better than it could be because of that early attention.

If I hadn't been wearing that helmet? I would be dead, or severely injured. My life would be totally different. I have no doubts about that.

So, don't be a fucking idiot. Wear your helmet.