Eclectic

Today's post will have even less of a unifying theme than normal.

I didn't ride this morning. I got up at 7, to go ride at 8 after Dixie had finished her breakfast, but the wind was already howling. The weather said sustained winds of 40 and gusts up to 65, and I believe it. I was going to study a bit, but I ended up studying with my eyes closed under a warm blanket, if you know what I mean.

I headed into town shortly before noon to get a haircut and do the grocery shopping. The wind was amazing! On the highway, I hit three tumbleweeds and one fairly large chunk of wood, and barely dodged a big piece of hard plastic and a flappy loose sheet of tin. While I was stopped around town, I started recording some videos to try and show yall what it was like. (I have wide ranging tastes in music - you are forewarned.)

You can't take a picture of the wind, not under any normal circumstances. But you CAN take video of large metal poles swaying in the wind, so here's the Dancing Poles at Plumb and Kietzke.

Crazy wind in Reno, NV from Funder on Vimeo.

When I went to get gas at Costco, the wind wasn't howling quite as badly but the storm clouds were coming down the mountain. The trees are whipping, but the whole truck is shaking too.

More crazy wind in Reno from Funder on Vimeo.

When I got out of Costco, it was sort of slush-raining. As I climbed out of the valley back to our home on the mountain, it turned into snow. Please remember that I was born and raised in Mississippi, where it NEVER snows. Any snow at all is cause for panic, school and work closures, and lots of celebration by kids. Our grocery stores sell out of milk and bread. Little old ladies publicly implore Jesus to save us from the white death. Little kids run outside to make 12" snowmen, everybody slides off the road into the ditch, and rednecks do donuts in the empty parking lots. I am fully aware that other parts of the country get so much snow that they're just jaded about the whole thing, but I am not. I get as excited as a little kid when the white stuff appears!

SNOOOOOOW! from Funder on Vimeo.

Cersei, on the other hand, doesn't approve of water falling from the sky. She loves to snuffle snow and wallow in mud puddles, but she doesn't like feeling the snowflakes or raindrops falling on her back. She's kind of torn between snuffling the snow and running back home to get away from the flakes! (I actually talk in this one - a rare video indeed. I probably sound like you think I sound.)

Cersei is not so sure she likes snow from Funder on Vimeo.

And now for the horse stuff. Dixie needed a cooler to help her dry off, but I wasn't sure if I should get fleece or wool. Plus, those things are really expensive, and I can't turn her out in a blanket! The weather here fluctuates too much (see above), and one of the other horses in the field is a master at undressing his friends. So I decided I'd only blanket her to dry her off after rides, and something homemade would do - at least for now. So I bought 2 yards of soft, fairly absorbent fleece and one of those horribly ugly grey wool "emergency blankets." I clicker-introduced her to the fleece, made some markings, and brought the fabric home. I sewed some velcro to the neck and belly of each piece of fabric, and I have homemade coolers.

Would you like to see Dixie's fleece? I thought you would! Here is a rather long video of me and my obviously colorblind horse. This is the fitting, where I just tossed it on her and marked it - tomorrow I will see how well it velcros on.

Dixie must be colorblind from Funder on Vimeo.

I really think everybody should do a bare minimum of clicker training with their horse. It's like teaching a horse a one-rein stop - it doesn't take very long, and you don't have to c/t every interaction, but it's there if you ever need it again. I showed her that fabric, asked "touch it," and she got a treat. You can see she's not too sure about it the first couple times I wave it around, but she clearly knows that standing still will get more Frosted Mini-Wheats. And she was totally unconcerned - after I turned off the camera, I kept fiddling with it and it flapped wildly in the wind and she did. not. care. one. bit. What a good girl! C/T is a really easy way to make Scary Horse Eating Things seem like Good Things Where Food Appears, and it complements classic training quite well.

Putting the "slow" in long slow rides

Oh man, today was Scary Day Part 2. We did 2.09 in 50 minutes - lots of stopping!

It's trash day in the neighborhood, so we have to very carefully make our way around those sneaky trash cans sitting at the end of each driveway. I encourage her to investigate them and I praise her mightily when she does! But each new driveway has a new trash can, and horses just don't generalize well. Stop, all bug-eyed, and stare. Approach the monster can in full imitation Arab mode, stepping very lightly with an arched neck. Slooowly stretch that neck out and sniff the monster can. Relax almost completely, because it's obviously not a monster, just a trash can. Move 50 yards to the next monster can.

When we left the road, she changed to looking for monsters in the scrub. Lots of slamming on the brakes and staring around. I eased her through it until she started slamming on the brakes without her head up - that's when she's gone from really afraid to "I wonder if we can just go home now?" Sorry, Dixie, we cannot just go home now.

We'd just worked through all that and started to pick up some real forward movement when ZOMG monsters! Actually, it was the neighbors, on two horses, so she calmed down real quick and let me talk to them for almost 15 minutes. Then they rode off in one direction and we headed off in the other - look, a training opportunity! She got "frozen" and wouldn't move for a while, but she wasn't trying to turn and run, so I'll call it improvement.

Then we racked almost all the way home. She is getting fitter!

I am getting the Garmin figured out. It's not very intuitive. I told it I'm riding a bike, so at least it displays my speed as MPH and doesn't auto-pause when we stop!

Confused

I do not understand the weather here. From the venerable National Weather Service:

Friday: A chance of rain between 10am and 4pm, then snow likely, possibly mixed with rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 61. Very windy, with a south wind 20 to 25 mph increasing to between 35 and 40 mph. Winds could gust as high as 55 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%.

Do you see what I see?
Friday: A chance of rain between 10am and 4pm, then snow likely, possibly mixed with rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 61.

So. The low on Thursday night will be 38 (above freezing, for my metric friends). Then Friday, after 10 am, it will snow and/or rain, and it will get up to 61 (which is sleeveless-vest weather, even if you're a thin-blooded Southerner). How can it snow when it's above freezing and headed up to 61?

Who knows. I should try to ride before 10am, I suppose, before the driving slush knocks me off my horse and I die of hypothermia in tee-shirt weather.

Ambushed by Satan's Minions

Yay, I used the Forerunner today! It works ok, except it wants to tell me my pace in minutes per mile instead of miles per hour. I think there's a way to change that, but I haven't tried yet. Also, the damn thing auto-pauses if we stop moving. That's cool in some circumstances, but I think it's more honest to let our time standing still drag down our total pace.

Her best head-nodding let's-go-somewhere forward walk was about 14 minutes/mile, and her fast rack or medium trot is 7 minutes/mile. I think that's about 4.2 mph and 8.5 mph, respectively. We did the whole Mines (4 miles) in exactly 1:01... plus the untimed pauses.

The biggest pause was when the demons appeared. We were chugging on towards home, in the canyon, when we came around a corner and HOLY SHIT DEER. Only 50' ahead, halfway up the canyon wall, were a big mule doe and a lovely 6 point buck. Dixie froze, head as high as it would possibly go, and started shaking. The doe looked at us and the buck didn't even climb to his feet. Dixie started slooowly backing away and I asked her to stand, so she did. Everybody kept staring at everybody else, except for Cersei, who hadn't figured out why we stopped. After a couple minutes, I said "Shoo!" The deer stared at me. I said, louder, "Bang bang!" The deer were unfazed. Then Cersei (bless her heart) realized what the horse and I had been looking at and let out an enormous bark. The buck leapt to his feet and he and the doe headed over the hill.

Dixie was still terrified, and it took a lot of very gentle coaxing to convince her to keep going. But she did, and she stayed in the gait I asked her to be in! Almost all walk, a little trot, and a little rack.

Yall might remember that Dixie doesn't usually like to be brushed. I spent a long time trying different brushes, techniques, ways of approaching her, and I finally gave up. I must brush the dirt off before I ride, so she must stand still for it - sorry, kiddo. When we got back today, my poor hairy yak was pretty sweaty, so I rubbed her down really well with a towel and walked her dry. And you know what? She loved it! Stuck her nose out and waggled her lips around, making happy horse faces. Yay! Then when I turned her back out she absolutely wallowed in the dust and got back up as a rare brown-and-bay paint. Sigh.

Clinton Anderson review

I really wanted to go ride today, to try out the Forerunner, but I thought Dixie deserved a rest day. We don't actually go very fast yet, but she still needs down time. I really don't want to injure her! So today's post is a brief yet rambling review of the Clinton Anderson gaited horse DVDs.

He works with two horses, a lazy stiff pacey black mare and a hot bolting palomino mare. The owner of both is a Fearless Teenager - she demonstrated the palomino bolting when she drops the reins, and she was more annoyed than anything else. I often wish I was a fearless teenager! The black mare needs constant kicking to go forward at all, and she paces pretty bad. They're flat shod, but she rides in the usual long-shank curb bits.

I watched the first couple sessions with the lazy black mare and all the sessions with the hot palomino. I haven't seen any other Clinton Anderson stuff (other than the demo at the show), but he says he treats gaited horses exactly like trotting horses. The videos are filmed a week apart for 4 weeks. He gets some respect from the ground, then mounts up and teaches them NOT to take off when he drops the reins. Then he does a lot of "suppling," every single ride - he wants the horse to yank its head around and touch his boot when he picks up the rein.

This is the first point where I was like "well I am not going to do this and I'm not so sure it's a good idea." I don't want a horse that snaps her head to my boot when I touch a rein - I want a horse who will eventually touch my boot if I keep asking her to bend. And he drills this suppling exercise HUNDREDS of times a ride, after doing it hundreds of times from the ground, every single ride. I don't think this is a good idea for a couple of reasons - I do not want an unthinking automaton horse with a conditioned response like that, and I am not sure that's a physiologically good way to stretch your horse.

After all the suppling, he teaches the horses the one-rein stop, then "cruise control." Cruise control means (obviously) "don't break gait." It's sensible enough, and follows standard training procedures. 1-2-3, ask very softly, then more forcefully, then whap the horse with the end of the lead rope til you get the speed you want. As long as the horse is in the gait you want, leave it alone. ORS if it speeds up, 1-2-3 if it slows down.

Here's where Clinton Anderson differs from most gaited horse people: He does NOT care if the horse trots or canters. He says that in his experience they'll gait once they get strong and/or supple enough, so he just rides out the trot and canter as they appear. In the last videos, the horses are definitely doing a four-beat moderately fast gait - not real running walks or even fast racks, but a walk at a nice trail speed. Maybe 5-7 mph.

He did some other drills - turn on the haunches and turn on the forehand - but again, they're very Western-ish reining style moves, not the dressage-ish stuff I am going for. I honestly didn't pay all that much attention. Again, I don't want my horse to do a reining spin when I pick up a rein and put my leg on! And again, he drills and drills the horse on the moves. I thought reining people thought there's only a certain number of spins in a horse's hocks and you shouldn't waste them?

Anyway, I'm glad I borrowed and watched the DVDs. I wouldn't be thrilled if I'd bought them, but I don't think I'm the target audience anyway. They'd be very good if you were scared of your horse - "here is exactly what to do to stay safe and get a rideable horse." And it's nice to see someone ride a gaited horse WITHOUT hauling back on a huge curb bit.

There's other clinicians I'd really like to see / work with - Howe They Walk, Liz Graves, or (warning: TERRIBLE site ahead!) Walkin' On Ranch, just to name some of the gaited clincians. There's plenty of "normal" horse trainers I'd like to work with too, of course. I don't feel like I wasted my time with the CA videos, but I don't think I'd go to one of his clinics either.

Many miles

Big update!

Saturday S and I did the Palomino Valley ride.
Distance: 9.53 miles
Elapsed Time: 3:54:24
Avg Speed: 2.4 mph
Avg Pace: 24' 35" per mile
Min Altitude: 4,928 ft
Max Altitude: 5,702 ft

The good thing was that Dixie was completely comfortable walking over the roughest rocky part of the ride.

The bad thing: she was never really mentally with me the whole ride - she led ok for the first half of the ride, then rode along Summer up and down the mountain, but she wouldn't ever give me her attention. I got frustrated and started trying to get her to pay attention to me when we were about 1.5 miles from home - asking her to circle and change speeds. She got more and more frantic as Summer got further ahead of us, and I ended up getting off and leading her for a while. She was so mentally checked out that she wouldn't even drop her head and look at me when I was in front of her, and I was so frustrated and angry. I walked for a half mile or so, til we'd both calmed down, then got back on and rode her home.

It's just one more challenge for us to work on. She does fine alone, and she does fine if she's leading other horses, but she gets totally unglued when another horse passes her. This will never work for endurance, or for any sport other than "leading QHs on very slow trail rides," so we'll deal with it.

Sunday I did not want to deal with it. I rode with three other people, and I let Dixie lead. This was the Canyon Ride, and I am quite impressed that the iPhone didn't lose satellite signal down in there. I forgot to turn the tracker on when we left, so it's maybe .4 miles longer than it says:
Distance: 5.56 miles
Elapsed Time: 2:02:13
Avg Speed: 2.7 mph
Avg Pace: 21' 58" per mile
Min Altitude: 4,804 ft
Max Altitude: 5,513 ft



I am always on the lookout for new places to ride. When I zoom in on the sat map, it looks like there's a jeep trail / horse path leading up out of the canyon about halfway along the trail - just south of where the trail changes from N-S to NE-SW. I will have to remember to bring the iPhone next time we ride, so we can pull up a map and look for that maybe-trail in the right spot.

Anyway, my horse was superb on Saturday. I have been really concentrating on halting with my seat before I pick up the reins, and it was showing - she halted so softly, often just from my seat, and waited pretty patiently for the other horses to catch up. (No, she has no problem at all leaving other horses behind; she just doesn't want to be the one getting left!)

Today I really meant to give her a light day, just a little schooling, but it didn't really work out that way.
Distance: 5.81 miles
Elapsed Time: 2:01:57
Avg Speed: 2.9 mph
Max Speed: 10.4 mph

We worked on being forward about going out, and coming home without rushing. There's one particular spot where she loves to rush home, for no reason that I can see, so we worked there for quite a while. I am extremely amused at this picture.



She eventually quit blowing me off and walked nicely around that corner and we got to go home. But as we got back, S had just gotten home and I decided to do a tiny ride with her. Tiny, hahahha. We were out for another 1:15, and the sun was behind the mountains and it was FREEZING by the time we got back. I rode Dixie just at the edge of her comfort level, right at the point where she and Summer got nervous about being so far apart. I kept her paying attention to me - wandering through the sagebrush, halting softly, backing softly. She did well, but it'll take more time, I know.

When I got home, the charging cradle for my Forerunner had arrived. I'm reading the manual and watching MNF. I just can't keep using the iPhone GPS for all my rides - today's 2 hour ride sucked over half my battery, and Saturday's 4 hour ride took 95% of the battery. It looks like the Forerunner will give me the same info, plus I can overlay my track onto Google Earth and get screenshots - it's just a crappier interface.

Things are clicking into place

I have read a lot about horses in the three years I've owned them - just about everything online, all the horse training books in all the libraries I've lived near, books my friends have mailed me. The thing I never read, that I wish I had read, was some kind of reassurance that eventually things start to click into place. Apparently, they do!

Today Dixie and I did the Mines. The SCARY Mines, down in a canyon where a bear could eat us, going past the mineshafts that clearly have demons lurking in them. She was fantastic! Not perfectly loose and relaxed, but not so antsy she made me nervous and I made her more nervous. I watch her head mainly, and her head was held juuuust below the point where she's really nervous.

Another thing that's paying off - when I think she's nervous, I ask her to stop. When she's nervous, she sometimes even stops on her own. Then we just stand there, facing the scary unknown, until I sigh - and then she will sigh, and her head will drop a bit, and I'll ask her to walk forward, and she will. My horse RULES.

Here's today's results:
Name: Track 006
Date: Nov 13, 2009 3:13 pm
Distance: 4.45 miles
Elapsed Time: 1:17:32
Avg Speed: 3.4 mph
Max Speed: 8.4 mph
Avg Pace: 17' 26" per mile
Min Altitude: 4,766 ft
Max Altitude: 5,377 ft

Notice that this trail is a bit steeper - we went up a bit, then down about 500', then climbed gradually back up to about 5,100'. With the altitude, and the "new scary all alone" factor, I'm pretty happy with 3.4 mph. And this time I am pretty sure 8.4 mph was our true max speed - I managed to grab the phone while she was trotting up a straight jeep trail, and it said 8.4, and it felt about that fast. Again, she surprised me with her walk, hitting 5 mph a couple of times.

The most horrible thing we encountered was a flock of Terror Birds when we were almost home. We were rockin' on up the last straight jeep trail at a very nice forward trot when the Terror Birds (probably some kind of jays) started plotting her dismemberment (squawking at each other) and circling around to hamstring her (flying out of the junipers away from us). She almost lost her cool, but I got her to stop and stare til the birds finished squawking and moving away from us.

Here's our map. Hope y'all had lovely days with your horses too!