Before I left for GenCon in Indianapolis last Thursday, I had set up a time for my old Livejournal acquaintance/friend J to come out and give Gwyn a massage.
The mare herd. The paint filly has taken a liking to me and Gwyn
Odd cuts on her mouth. I wonder if it's something she's eating in the pasture?
We accidentally got the puppy stuck. The kids ran wild while Gwyn got her massage
Bodyworker's notes included:
overall body condition is good yay!
Tenderness in hamstrings and low back
pelvis was pulled forward into her low back on her right side, stood in a hollow pelvic posture
left shoulders and base of neck were adhesed
poll locked up, more on the left
good lumbar sacral range of motion
good limb flexibility after massage
Follow up:
benefit from hamstring stretches after exercise, drawing hind legs forward under her body
stretching the shoulder forward adn back will help maintain suppleness
She was starting to fall asleep. I think it was feeling good.
Her shoulders were uneven. She's showing me how to do stretches.
Containing Hazel helped by the end.
My friend came out with her daughter for a pony ride. Everyone took a turn and Gwyn was foot perfect, even with giant dump trucks driving in and out of the property. They belonged to a dairy farm in Monroe and they lease one of the far fields and were amending the soil to prepare for winter wheat planting.
In stark contrast to previous times she's been put up on Gwyn, Hazel was thrilled to ride Gwyn, and wasn't scared. Now she wants to ride more. I'm plotting already.
Friend's child
Then I had a lesson the next week with Cortney and Jim. Cortney brought her 'baby' Reign. I worked on applying the stretch to really establishing Gwyn being in contact and not throwing it away or holding it too tightly. Apparently I went too far in the opposite direction from no contact to too much.
Gwyn is dubious, I just got off but the lesson wasn't over...
Demonstrating how it's done.
Sunset in Fall City
I can do it too right after Jim rides her.
Gwyn proceeded to be an absolute ass loading onto the trailer and Cortney and I had to chase her around before finally being able to catch her and load her up. Of course once she decided to load, she was fine. This ultimately was a foreboding incident.
I also got new toys.
Over the weekend I was determined to get out and ride. Between a DnD session that I was running being planned at the last minute, to Eric working an extra day on Sunday, I wasn't sure how I would fit it in, but Eric got back early enough that I thought I could fit in a short, local trail ride at Lord Hill.
Goober knows she's in deep shit.
I decided to load in the resting pasture since it would be fully contained. Unfortunately, it's also several acres in size and Gwyn has... become herdbound and is NOT food motivated. She got away from me twice before I even asked her to load, so she's also starting to anticipate my efforts to mitigate her previous running away attempts by twisting and pulling the leadline out of my hands.
I am not happy with her. I need to get gloves. Or a fucking chain over her nose. Either way, she was cantering and trotting across the pasture for between 45-60 minutes. Then once I caught her for good I lunged her ass from the bottom of the field up to the trailer, tied her to the trailer and got my lunge line set for loading and she walked on with no fuss. She arrived sweaty. And then I made her fucking work on those trails. I had no sympathy.
Cars aren't supposed to use this lot. It's got the easiest entry to the park because horses so the humans use it even though they have a dedicated path that just happens to have more elevation change.
It was nice and cool in the forest. There were surprisingly few bugs and no mosquitoes. It has been pretty dry, though I did see some spots of marshy water.
The light had that beautiful, end of summer, evening golden look to it. It was hard to capture on film.
I didn't bring a whip or crop since I wanted Gwyn to walk all the hills and not power up them through the magic of momentum. She was tired and not at all motivated to move forward.
She did seem to move well with the scoot boots on though, which bodes well! This trail is not barefoot friendly.
There was one other rider who left right before I did. I only saw her at the very end. We ended our ride at the same time. No drama getting on to go home. We'll see if the lesson was learned. I was not about to lose that fight of stubbornness.
Also, her dam's influence shone through on this ride. When she was going away from the trailer she minced her way downhill in the scoot boots and I thought for sure something was wrong and the boots were rubbing or something. But once she realized that we were heading back toward the parking lot, she moved out and power walked up and down hills with no issue. Stella used to do the same thing. She'd gimp her way away from home and the moment we would turn around, the head bob would be gone.
I checked her feet all over at the end. No rubs after 4.5 miles. We walked, trotted and cantered. We'll see how it holds up to longer distances. I'm already planning an outing with Cortney on Saturday. Lake Washington Saddle Club has a Wine Prize ride and we are going!
Gwyn says it wasn't fair. I say if we want to move up to 50s, or even just do LDs out here in the PNW, she needs to get over it.
I think I've previously mentioned this, but I live just on the outskirts of a very horse-central town in Michigan. Their activities revolve around horses and it's like... magic for a horse crazy person like myself.
They have a Horse Celebration at the end of summer and have breed displays and draft pulls. There's a yearly barn tour of the fancy schmancy barns in the area. Pretty much the Metamora Hunt members are likely also the Metamora Chamber of Commerce members and so what they say goes and I'm totally okay with that. It's their thing.
A few days before the hunter pace, my Megasus Horserunners FINALLY arrived. This was, of course, after I caved and put shoes on Gwyn. I grumbled to Eric about the irony and the hit to our checkbook when I had to have the shoes replaced days after they were initially put on. They had been holding.
Had been.
A couple days after the hunt pace I went out to feed and Gwyn was once again missing a shoe. I wailed about a bit and gnashed my teeth and finally opened up the horserunners box because dammit I wasn't about to pay YET AGAIN to have the farrier put shoes on when these should do for such a situation. Nor did I want to miss out on a moonlight trail ride in two days and I also did not want Gwyn to be on that ride missing a shoe.
So... the unveiling:
I kickstartered for 2 sets. Apparently I also got the winter version? I don't remember that being an option and I'm a little miffed about it as I would have gotten the summer ones, TBQH
Fancy packaging. Was this the delay?? Who knows.
Like I said, we got the winter edition? They'll have to deal with being used in the summer because I'm not paying again for these fuckers.
They are pretty solid and a garish orange and blue that makes me flash back to grad school at the University of Florida.
The thickness. Those slots are where the clips that attach to the hoof slide into
All of the additional gear needed to attached these suckers to the hoof
The tiniest nail polish size bottle (with nail polish brush) of solvent I've ever seen. Smells like paint thinner
The covers, more on this in a moment
Nice bright blue
The tapes attach to the hoof and provide one side of the 'velcro' that the clips lock onto
The side clips
So I got to prepping Gwyn's foot for Megasus attachment. First up was cleaning her hoof. They wanted me to bloody buff the hoof but I settled for wire brushing it. I might go find a buffer to sand down her hoof to get better adhesive attachment for future tapes but I'm not displeased.
You start by putting in the front two clips. You mark on the hoof where the center is and line that up, then also mark where the clips are. This is your guide for putting on the tapes.
You can see the nasty crack I've been fighting. Also, there's still nails in her hoof from the shoe. WTF is up with that? I rasped and wire brushed her hoof and then avoided touching it since the instructions say to not have grease of any kind on the foot or it'll ruin the adhesive. You mark around the hoof on the shoe itself.
It looks long in the back, but that's okay, because it pretty much is guaranteed to get removed.
With those markings all set and ready to go, you use the solvent on the hoof and let it dry, which will happen quickly because it's a solvent and pretty much trying to evaporate as soon as it hits air. Then you carefully remove the backing on the tapes and apply them to the hoof, starting at the markings you made from where the front clips land.
Now, I misplaced these on the hoof. They should curl up more and be further from the ground. But again, I'm not too put out by the error and it's working okay for now.
Then I set up the covers, which go on over the tapes.
I put the covers on at night and went back the next day to prep her for my night trail ride. The covers were gone. So much for what I said about them in the video. As of this writing, I have only recovered one cover from my pasture. So that leaves 3 horse shoes and 1 megasus cover unaccounted for.
Friday I also used the jigsaw to cut away the extra shoe. The whole thing is a pretty thick plastic. Gwyn is pretty solidly a perfect fit to this size so I really didn't need to do much adjusting. It also meant that I didn't have to worry about sharp edges. I did use a rasp to take it down a little bit. I did not do the recommended 45 deg angle under the heel as I just didn't have the time.
Upon retrieving her and inspecting the tapes, the back bit of tapes pulled away from the hoof, but that's also where I wasn't able to really rasp down the hoof and prep it for adhesive. I clipped away what was no longer sticking. Everything else was solidly attached so I went ahead with doing the final clips and adjustments. Then we loaded up for our trail ride!
The previous owners of our house are starting a non-profit designed to help veterans with PTSD and they were hosting a Full Moon Trail ride on the Polly Ann Trail! She needed to get a special permit for the ride as after dark usage is not permitted.
I met Alicia there and it was great. My tail lights were out of battery, which made me sad because that would have helped at some points on the ride as it turned out. Instead I had reflective gear, which was at least beneficial for the road crossings. Alicia forgot her cinch, and ended up riding bareback. Oops...
The following pictures are screen grabs from the go pro.
Just after mounting up, 9pm at the Leonard trail head. Moon has not risen.
Gwyn immediately thought we were going to go fast again. Oops
Crossing Rochester Rd. If you turned right and went a few miles you'd get to my house!
Bareback Alicia
Two happy horses in the lead.
Gwyn pretty much took off at a swinging walk. She wasn't impeded at all by the Megasus shoe and in fact was moving very confidently. We were leaving the quarter horses in the dust and they had to trot to keep up with us.
This the field where later a fucking truck was off roading at nearly 11pm at night and scared the FUCK out of Gwyn and she went spooking toward this opening only there's a bloody chain across it and thankfully I stopped her in time.
The full moon, also a blood moon, as seen on the go pro, lol
The ride was very eventful. I think Gwyn likely has at least some bit of moonblindness as she got incredibly spooky once it got dark. While she is very much a 'must be leader on the trails' kind of mare, she was much happier after dark following other horses. The final nail in that coffin was when a fucking bicyclist was coming at us. Us humans couldn't see him, he wasn't lit up at all and Gwyn lost her mind. Remember, we had a special permit for night use. He should not have been there.
We all may have yelled at him, made him get off the damn bike and talk constantly as we passed him. Gwyn thought she was going to get eaten.
Did I mention that two of the horses were studs? They were decently well behaved until one spooked a little and his bit got caught in his breast collar. He went up and over backwards with his rider - who was not wearing a helmet - and we all freaked out. Old house owner S hopped off immediately to help, her daughter who is like 12, was freaking the fuck out and Alicia just calmly started running through a concussion screen like it's her job because it basically is (she's a vet tech).
The rider was shaken but thankfully okay, and so she and S walked a bit of the trail on foot for a while to calm down. We were still 2 miles from the trail head. We had done an hour out but two of those miles in the hour out were at a decent clip and it was not going to be the same time going back as we were much slower.
On top of it all, S's horse (one of the studs) was in the pen they have and ran into a nest of yellowjackets and they both came running out in a panic because he got stung and S is allergic.
So it was eventful. But it was also beautiful. The fireflies are still going so the darker forested parts of the trail just sparkled and glittered with their blinking light. We were dive bombed by bats feasting on the bugs. I didn't get one mosquito bite. It was almost chilly, in the upper 60sF and while there were some clouds, they cleared as the moon rose, beautiful and red, with Mars trailing to the side bright as could be. Alicia and I laughed and laughed, even through some of the scarier parts because I'm a nervous laugher. But we had an amazing time. The shoe held up quite well and was a pain to get off, which I'm calling a positive because if I have to freaking pry the thing, it's not going to just come loose on the trail. I have an amazing mare who trusts me and is game for pretty much anything, which is my dream horse. Instead of being frustrated at our slow return pace, I worked on using my seat to rate her back and she was mindful and listened. I hold no blame for her spooks. I knew this is an eventuality with her eye injury and because she's part Appy. I blame the idiots who were joy riding. I blame the moron riding his bicycle where he was not allowed.
She's my best mare and my buddy and it was really nice to have 'just' a ride with friends that night. It was the perfect end to a really long work day.
