Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Thanksgiving vacation before and after

This is an update of the few days before I left for Thanksgiving vacation and the day after I got back to get everyone up to speed.

Before: Werther had Friday off and I hacked him on Saturday so we decided he did not need to get chased in the indoor on Monday. If the horses get two days or more off in the Minnesota winter, we like to turn them out in the indoor for a short time and chase them so they can run around because with the ground frozen outside they tend not to do much in their paddocks and get wild.  Saturday all the jumps were out of the ring because the guys were going to water, roll, and drag the ring for the next week so I decided to practice serpentines. I alternated between sitting and posting trot so I could practice my diagonals which I have a hard time feeling because of my CP my right side is so much stronger than my left. He got a little nervous doing the serpentines, he was really anticipating, and I think he might have thought we were going to train on him for flying lead changes. When I did go to canter, I decided to use all the freeded up space in the indoor to practice making a shorter turn down to quarter line and he was definitely anticipating a lead change there on the straight line, so instead of letting him worry about it, I just encouraged him to go forward and relax. Monday we decided not to chase him and he was very good, the course for that week mainly consisted on two jumps on the center line and two on the far quarter line so I decided to use the available space in the front of the ring to do some figure eights, but I could only to two before he started anticipating what we were doing so I stopped. Monday night my friend Chelsey from college had come to Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving vacation with me, we went out to the barn together on Tuesday which was really fun. I hacked Werther, than let Chelsey get on a do a little walk/trot work (Chelsey and I rode together in college). It was really fun to see someone else ride Werther, and since Chelsey rides mainly at a rescue facility these days, it was night for her to ride a horse that was really fit and well broke. 

After: Chelsey came out with my family to our home in Arizona for Thanksgiving vacation, we got back Sunday night and she left yesterday morning. I went to the barn that afternoon. Werther was so good to catch today, I used to have a lot of problems catching him, but he came up to the gate today before I even got to the paddock. Werther had Thanksgiving vacation off so I turned him out in the indoor and chased him. He ran around like an idiot and did some turns at top speed that would have made a barrel racer proud. He was so cute when he was finished running, he was at the far end of the indoor and I called out to him, then I turned around to get his halter and set down my whip. As I was walking away, he lets out this big whinny and trots up to me with this worried look on his face, "don't leave me Mom". Werther was good when I hacked him, I was surprised to find he still had energy when I got on him. I was rusty on the canter transition and had some issues with Werther rooting at the first stride of canter, but I was happy that even though he pulled the reins out of my hands I was able to stay balanced. My Mom and I were on our way home when Andre called me, one of our barn cats was hurt. Mom and I turned around and we took Malibu to the vet, Dr. Bob x-rayed it and he has a high humerus break. He was never outside of the barn and it did not look like a dog bit him, so we don't know how he broke it. We think he jumped from something high and fell. We left him at vet and he is scheduled for surgery on Wednesday or Thursday to put a plate in.

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