a hot headed standardbred... wait, what?

Last week, i got my christmas present from William. a beautiful new hdr saddle!

I couldnt wait for saturday to come so i could get to the barn and ride in it..Shadow has another idea.

He was super pushy on the ground, then dom arrived and helped me finish adjusting and fitting everything and he continued with his pushy-ness.

We started out lessoning on the lunge... dom's response "i didnt know you had an un-broke 3 year old! congrats on your new mustang"

he.was.crazy.

when he finally calmed down i got on, and he was acting like he had just came off the track or something. asking him to move forward he would burst into a canter and then pace. if i moved even the slightest bit, my hands, my legs, my butt, he was cantering. he didnt care.

OF COURSE. so now.. is it my new tack? what is going on? he was not himself whatever it was, he even had a different look in his face/eyes. like he was a crazy man inside there. 

i got down and dom rode for the duration all the while he was threatening to rear, spinning into the inside, bulging into dom's leg instead if moving off of it, all things shadow doesnt do. physical? behavioral? giving signs of both.. hmm. 

Lesson is over, dom is holding the gate for me and shadow come barreling out of the gate like a mad man and stops right in front of me. why? no reason. crazy horse. 

Sunday came and i had hope for better results. started on the lunge and he was better, but still not himself. Under saddle still the same rude antics, and a buck and kick to add to it. 

Switched saddles to my dressage saddle which i know he works perfectly fine in, and still the same attitude.

Had my saddle new checked, fits fine, a little low on his withers, but nothing a half pad doesn't fix to make it perfect. he was a little short strided in his bad leg, but worked right out of it. i checked him fore soreness, a little in his bad leg, but nothing out of the norm. I rubbed him down with thermaflex and went home.

I have seen this horse dead lame and still try his heart out so what is going on!!

Come to find out he has been eating left over dengie from one of the older horses, because he doesnt eat it all and shadow doesnt waste anything. 

Okay so maybe this behavior is from the weather change and this added protein in his diet? makes sense, right?

i gave him monday off... to recover from any lingering soreness that i may have missed.

Today his attitude on the ground is back to the normal shadow attitude, i checked him top to bottom to see if he was back sore or sore anywhere for that matter, nothing. i stretched him out, tacked him up and hoped for better results this time

 he lunged like a champ.. moving perfectly. what stifle injury, mom?

So with that i got on him. he was walking very short and choppy, so i asked him to move forward a little and off we went, into the canter and then pacing. over and over and over. i barley even had to move and we were running off and then putting our nose to the ground and cutting into the center.

I dont know what to make of this. 

Calls are out to the chiro and the vet to see if there is something i am missing. Have made sure he doesnt get anymore of the left over dengie and dom is coming back out tomorrow. 

ive already lost my mind and cried about it because i am at a loss and i hope that there is not something i am causing more damage to on him somewhere but he is showing no signs of anything. 

this girl is stumped.HELP.

WW: My heart horse

Even when he isn't feeling it, he gives 110%

<3

Updates!

I haven't had much time to blog, or do anything really, with school and work consuming my life.

Where to start...?


Oliver:

The office I work at, just so happens to be a house. In a neighborhood, in Lakewood.

I was leaving work on a Friday, or I thought  I was leaving work. I walked out the door and to my left was this little white face staring at me. A cat.. great. I am so allergic to cats, but I am an animal lover through and through, so of course, I could NOT just leave him there alone and hungry. I came about inside and grabbed the only cat worthy thing we had in the cabinet for our lunch which was two cans of tuna and I fed them to him, gave him some water, said goodbye and finally went home, an hour later than I wanted to. I didn't know at this time if he was someones cat or if he was really a stray. I didn't get to close as I didn't want to bring any fleas home to Gucci, but he was purring away and trying to rub on me and talking to me. I came back to work Monday morning, and guess who was waiting for me? Yeah, that cat. So of course, me being who I am, I went out and stocked up on wet and dry cat food for this baby. Now assuming he was a stray because he was here waiting for more food after a long weekend of me not being there, so who knows if he even ate at all. I kept telling myself to just feed him and let him be, there was nothing more I could do for him. He was not a kitten, he was not neutered and again, I'm very allergic.  So i continued on just feeding him for a few weeks, then feeding him turned into him coming into my office to eat and then he would sleep on a blanket at my feet all day. He knew when it was time for me to leave for the day and he would gracefully get up and go back outside to wait for me to come back the next morning. When I would leave on Fridays I would try and leave as much dry food as possible for him so he would have something while I wasn't here, but I'm sure that didn't work according to my plan considering our resident ground hog is fearless and quite fat. This whole ordeal went on for about 4 or 5 weeks before I noticed that he was limping. I finally got a closer look at his paws and his one paw had a cut at the top of it and the other had a chemical burn of some kind on his pad. I obviously saw that he was in pain and I tried not to worry to much about it, after all i still didn't know if he belonged to someone and was just coming to me for food or if he was really a stray, but either way he was not my cat to take care of.  After a week or so of watching him limp, or walk or three legs, I caved. I came up with this plan, I was going to take him to the vet, get his paws fixed and then get him neutered and let him live his life at the barn free, fat and happy.
I made a vet appointment and I named him Oliver. Then of course things couldn't just go the way I had planned, it would be too easy. He came back FIV positive. Yes, I know that they can live with FIV, but under the right circumstances, which I did not have for this poor guy. I had already contacted rescues and shelters and tried to place him through friends, but nobody wanted a scruffy outside cat that was not fixed and the rescues are all so over whelmed with cats and kittens. I was faced with having to put him down or watch him go back outside and infect other cats and get more sick and eventually die outside, alone somewhere. So my friendship with Oliver came to an end on August 20th. I was devastated, I have never had to put an animal down and for at least 3 days after this all I could do was cry, I felt like i killed him. Like i should have just left him outside and never even bothered with him because now he was dead and it was my fault.

He was such a sweet boy and in the short time he was hanging out with me, i loved him and his company so much. I have never met a sweeter cat in my life.

Also in the time I found Oliver, i found a sick little kitten hiding behind him one day (he was not very happy about it might i add). So again, being me, I saw this sick baby hiding under a bush, I wrapped her in a towel, wiped her booger nose and rushed her to the shelter. She was very very very sick. When I wiped all the dried snot off her nose, it all came pouring back out like a waterfall, she was very skinny and seemed to have an eye infection. For her, bringing her to the shelter was her best shot, I couldn't have saved her. I have a friend who works at the shelter and on the following Monday i sent a text to find out how the baby was doing, and she had passed, the night i dropped her off (Friday). She just couldn't fight anymore. That made me really sad too, but I did the best I could for her.

My heart still aches of Oliver, but I don't know what else I could have done. I hope he understands that I made the best decisions under the circumstances at hand. My little angel kitty <3

Shadow:

He is doing fab.

He has started doing some work over cavaletti and he just wants to canter, canter, canter.

Trotting is nothing now, we could trot all.day.long.

His cavaletti work is not the prettiest, but he is working over 2ft, and doing a great job, we just have to get on the same page with timing and it will be fine. We are going to stop at 2'6" probably, as I don't want to push that stifle to hard. He is taking these 2ft cavaletti at about 3ft, but that okay, we don't need to actually do 3ft. lol

His canter transition is flawless and he just goes and goes and goes, he still needs some fine tuning, and some balance, but he is really doing great.

He is like a totally different horse from when this season started and sometimes I can't believe my eyes. Shadow is 16, going on 5. He we are working over the cavaletti he is so forward and so excited and he anticipates the cue to canter every corner, which I am trying to work him out of because i cant have him rushing corners and breaking stride to do what he wants all the time.

I had a wonderful lesson with him and Dom with past Saturday and the the Saturday before I wasn't there but Dom came to ride and Mike snapped some beautiful photos.

This spring/summer with Shadow has really put all my doubt as to what he can do behind me and he has turned out to be everything I wanted when I started my search for a horse. He is such a love.


here are some photos from Dom's ride with him two weeks ago:

Stretchy Trot!! He looks so beautiful!!!

Thanks for reading!!

WW: Whoops!

it's okay to forget how many legs we have sometimes, right?

Throwback Thursday/Happy Gotcha Day

Here is an older picture when from one of our first lessons with Dom, after Shadow came home with me.

Today is 1 year that I have had Shadow already, I feel like that went so quick. 

Looking back at all the photos from when we first started working together and riding him and watching him move now, is like two different horses. 

No matter what anyone thinks or has to say, we are a great team even when we are disagreeing and I wouldn't want any one but him in my corner. 

Happy Gotcha Day big man, I love you!!

Catching Up

i'm probably the worst blogger on earth. Life just doesn't seem to want to slow down for five minutes for me to even think about writing, so today I'm making time.

Shadow has been doing wonderfully. Jamie was home from Texas and we did a lot of riding that week.

He has been improving weekly, and I am sure to ride him every chance i get. It is great to see how well he is actually doing.

I think we have the trot pretty much down to a science, he is finally consistent and riding on a looser rein. I don't have to hold him up as much.

The canter is still a little rough, and we can't hold it around the ring fully, but we will get there, i'm not really in a rush, I would like the trot to be a little less work still before i move onto anything else.

He is such a good boy.


New Opportunity.

Dom has moved Dancer in to live with us, to hopefully help her sell him. We have a cute little barn which is rather inviting and is a nice place to show a sale horse.

I am leasing him from her until he sells and riding him every time i get to ride shadow.

Shadow and Dancer are in fields right next to each other and they love each other! It;s nice to see Shadow getting along with another because he has been in a feild alone since I brought him home almost a year ago.

Saturday night i went out and rode both boys and they were wonderful.

I really enjoy riding Dancer, he is alot less work that shadow and i dont have to think much, I can just ride. Riding him improves all my strength and helps me ride Shadow more effectively.


This is a wonderful opportunity I have been given by Dom and I can't wait to get back into jumping with dancer, after all, jumping was always my passion.

 They're twins, it's crazy!

Shadow and I will be together for one full year this week. 

I can't believe how fast it has gone and how far we have come. I love that horse with my hole heart <3 

One step closer..

Every week shadow is improving tremendously.

Saturdays have turned into quite the busy day at the barn with back to back lessons for Dom and I really enjoy the time to get away from the real world and worry about what makes me happy. 

The last two Saturdays were like, my first real lessons I guess you could say. No lunging and Dom didn't ride first, just me and shadow and Dom on the ground teaching, which I'm really enjoying.

This past weekend he really felt great and he offered so really beautiful canter. Dom took some photos but we didn't get any of him cantering because we weren't ready, lol. Dom said it was a real canter there was no pace to it at all, great! 

He is really improving at the walk, it's almost perfect and he is really getting the hang of the free walking. For the last two weeks I have gone home all smiles. Just the thought of how well he is doing after I though our whole game plan was out the window with how lame he was at the beginning of spring.

The regimen I have him on is working wonders and I didn't even have to put the wedges on him, which makes me even happier. 

I really can't even say how proud I am, he is really coming along better than I could have expected so far. 

Head shot of my handsome by Dom

Never imagined him to look this good 

Top is august of last year and bottom was this past Saturday, major improvements!!