My farrier works miracles (slowly)

   I have to 'post and boast'.

Raven the Beautiful

 

     Look at this gorgeous beast. This was taken in July at a local dressage test. Raven was wired to the max. My gosh, he was high voltage. Sue even wondered if she should do the second test on him, he was so much horse. But we encouraged her to do the test and she came out of it with some very high marks indeed.

     I have made some big steps in riding him. I took a lesson from our super trainer and she's helped me a lot. I am even riding him at the trot bareback, having finally been able to make that transition. Literally. 
My hardest part right now is collection. I still don't have that feel for when he's truly up underneath me. As I noted in my last post, he is not an easy horse to ride. He's long backed, which makes it more difficult for him to collect, and I'm not rider enough..yet... to know it when he is.
But when I do it right, and we're trotting, suddenly it's easy to ride him. Those moments are fleeting yet exhilarating when they do come. They keep me motivated.

      Last year at this time he had just settled into his new home at New Barn. In January we realized that his feet were deteriorating so quickly that soon he would be lame. So we changed farriers. Matt, our new farrier, took Raven's feet as a challenge and ...well, here are some photos of then and now.

     I have, in the past, kept a running account of the progress on his feet. I will condense that to the worst of his hind feet, the left hind. This is a picture of his hoof from January 2015, after we'd been dinking around with the feet for six months of the old farrier. I cannot remember if this was taken before his trim or after. I believe, judging from the fuzz on the ground, that it was after. It was also after we'd given up on the epoxy in his feet.

 

Left hind outside January 2015

 

 

      I still cringe when I look at this. It was so bad. It had white line and, now we know, thrush as well. The crevices were from nail holes that had rotted out. Literally. So we took him out of shoes permanently. Old farrier had steadfastly warned us that "this horse can never be barefoot." With this foot, there was nothing left for a nail to hold onto, as was evidenced in the right hind, which isn't pictured here.

       Now look at this same hoof, 7 months later, after trimming:

Left hind outside post trim August 2015

 To quote an old tv ad.."Isn't that amazing'"

     It IS. We've been feeding him Trifecta, a supplement that contains biotin. We know now that he must have biotin for the rest of his life. Small price to pay for a good hoof. 
We also give most of the praise to Matt, our Wonderful Farrier. He had the courage to take on these ugly feet. We obeyed his 'commands' in dosing the white line, the thrush, and keeping the hoof dry with his concoction of Venice Turpentine/Iodine. 

    What? Yes, it is. It's the same foot. I swear. 

     Matt has done miracles. Notice how he also has slowly improved the angles of the foot to what they're supposed to be. Old farrier had paid so much attention to the 'rotten' parts of the hoof that he trimmed them to the point where there was no heel contact. The heels were contracted. 
     Matt has gently and slowly brought the hoof back into alignment. The heels are opening nicely and in contact with the ground now. He will never go back into shoes. He doesn't need them, and in another few months we hope to take his fores out of shoes, too. The only problem they had was again, Old Farrier had trimmed them to the point where they were beginning to club. 

   Raven is very happy in his new feet. Earlier this month, he was busting around in his paddock with his buddy and tore up the outside. But it was, in my opinion, the very last parts of the old bad hoof. Within days the bent up portion had worn off without damaging the underparts.

   These are new feet. 

    I'm telling you. If and when you find a GOOD farrier, treat him like a king. (well, you know what I mean.) Matt has our business for as long as he wants to keep us. They're minting new veterinarians every year, but I cannot think of more than one young man who is taking on the job of farrier. Every other one is in his early fifties and older. Horseshoeing is part science, part experience, part empathy, and a little bit witchcraft. It uses the same tools as from five hundred years ago. It's archaic. It's also a science, and an art. When you find that man who can do the job right, treat him nicely. You won't regret it. 
 

Someone who rides worse than me

   I’ve learned that the reason warmbloods are usually scored higher in dressage tests is NOT because the judges prefer them over ‘home growns’ like Quarter Horses and Arabians. 

    It’s because, as I heard a highly ranked judge tell a complaining woman, ‘Warmbloods are not easy to ride.” My god, is that true. Raven is very difficult to ride. He’s not stubborn, but he makes you earn every correct step. Every single time. Whereas your typical mellow Quarter Horse is like a Labrador retriever, always happy to make you happy. Thus, a higher scoring rider of a warmblood EARNED it.

     I’m not going to pretend I know how to ride dressage. I am learning to ride dressage. It’s frustrating, time consuming and at times, so aggravating I sometimes wonder if I should just give up even trying.

    I don’t blame dressage in and of itself for that. I know without a doubt, it’s ME.

Having grown up poor, I didn’t own my own horse until I was grown, although I’d taken every chance I could to get aboard a horse as a kid. Those horses were always wearing a western saddle. It was de rigueur. Only sissies rode "English". Only the bluebloods rode “English”. Only the English rode "English". Thus I came to riding often late in life, long after my body had settled into its muscular routine.

My training in riding a western saddled horse was simple:

1. Get on.

2. Kick the horse’s sides to get him to go.

3. Hang onto the horn.

4. Yank on the reins to stop.

    I don’t say that all Western riders are as poor a rider as I was. Although I must say that Western Equitation (to differentiate it from plain ol’ cowboy Western) appears to be designed to give novice riders a ribbon no matter how they ride.

   I’ve seen western riders; reiners, range riders, barrel racers, ropers, cutters-ride as if they were glued to the saddle. These riders (whom I have much respect for) let their horse travel at a good canter with its head up.  Indeed, my 1965 copy of “Breaking and Training the Stock Horse”, despite its title, could be retitled “Breaking and Training the Dressage Horse in Western Drag.” Charles O. Williamson, a cowboy from the early 1900’s, wrote “when there is work to do or action wanted, it is necessary that (the horse) be collected.”¹

 

     The Western Equitation folks have gone so far from Williamson’s training advice that it may as well be called “Arena Riding.”

    I got back into horses in my forties. By then I’d realized I had no desire to ride western, especially western equitation. The barn I boarded my horses was strictly a hunter/jumper barn. My horses were anachronisms and I was sneered at, but…board money is money. I tried riding in a jumping saddle. No way. I just couldn’t get it, and I don’t jump, something my horses were in full in agreement with. I tried an English saddle and sadly, didn’t care for that, either. Thus I found myself riding bareback…and loved it.  

  I still ride bareback more often than not. Riding bareback has taught me all the basics of balance, rhythm, soft hands, etc., that are so important to riding in general.

     I didn’t like English because the lack of a horn unnerved me. Deep inside I knew one wasn’t supposed to hang on to the horn, but I had no concept of collection, contact, or most importantly, balance. The horn was a crutch, both psychological as well as physical.  

     Western riders didn’t talk of doing the work of carrying oneself. You got on the horse and rode. The more miles you had in the saddle, the more adept you became at staying aboard-but the horse was doing all the work.

One steered the horse by neck reining.

The latter has changed.  Indeed, these days, there seems to be a mindset, at least in the show ring (which again, seems to have been usurped by the Western Equitation folks) that the reins aren’t used at all.

     It wasn’t until much later in life that I first rode a friend’s 4^th level dressage horse in a dressage saddle. To say that I was completely unprepared for the exquisite sensitivity and instantaneous response a well-trained 4^th level horse provides is putting it mildly. Only because the mare loved me did she even tolerate me aboard her.

    But the saddle-the saddle! gave me the physiological equivalent of an ‘aha’ moment. It felt RIGHT to me. I immediately went out and purchased a used dressage saddle for my horse.

   As for western riders: it appears that the Western Equitation fad is dying out. Thank god. Too many truly Western loving riders were sickened and disgusted by the artificial and (let’s say it out loud) cruel way of forcing a horse to go “western Equitation style”. Horses are meant to move out in a fairly rapid speed with their heads UP, not dragging in the dirt at the pace of a slow turtle.

   But the cadre of people who learned to ride western via western equitation is legion. Like a pig through a python, it’s going to take a generation of riders to get past the WE style.

   This style, I learned, involved not using the reins whatsoever. Indeed, I wonder why they even had a bridle on the horse, as the rider would stick her hands way out in front of her, the reins drooping like wet rope from her extended fists.

Here are a few pictures of a high ranking WE rider. 

She’s not as bad as some I’ve seen, although she looks as if the reins are hot. I’m a bit pissed at the heavy mascara on the horses. When I was into Arabians, I was under the impression that makeup on horses was illegal. Apparently the show folks worked their way around that. Jesus, look at that grey. He looks like a clown.

   I feel sorry, honestly, for those folks. (although in the above pictures, the horses seem to be happy).  The only thing they can do is ride a slow horse in an arena. It’s like they’re a cult, and can find acceptance and validation only within that cult. The rest of the riding world, to include Western riders, thinks of them as vapid and silly. But it brings in money. And that’s what drives the horse business. 
   I've used this picture in the past, and will add it here, to truly give the sense one gets of the horse in Western Equitation:

    THIS is what disturbs the 'old fashioned' Western rider, and me. THIS is what Western Equitation wants a riding horse to look like.

   In the past two or three years, a new concept has arisen in the Western riding world, and in my opinion, it's way overdue and very welcome.

  It’s called “Western Dressage’. I cannot say for sure, but it seems to involve age old concepts of: collection, contact, and balance. (Concepts used daily by dressage and English riders). They’re learning that making a horse use both sides of his body enables the horse to go further, keeps him supple, and keeps him in better shape. Riding using dressage principles teaches the rider to carry herself in order to lessen the burden on the horse. Dressage is a team effort.

   It’s an admirable concept, a daring departure from the western equitation fad,and I think it’s going to do a world of good for western riders.

  But it's probably come too late for some. At our last dressage test, where a ‘western dressage’ test had been added, I saw a rider who I can (in my own mind..I'm not a boaster)(although a case could be made that is exactly what I'm doing here on my blog.) see someone who rides dressage worse than me. At last, I can look better than someone who probably is a better rider than I’ll ever be, but was, unfortunately, trained to ride Western Equitation. Which means, she’s got a handicap that she’ll be laboring under for a very long time. Old habits are hard to break.Just ask me.

    Look at this. 

  

I was embarrassed for her. I have no idea what the judges scored her. The judges in my region have proven to me (at least) that a training show is strictly that, so they aren’t savage with their pens. But the judge HAD to have seen this girl riding like this. She did TWO tests like this. She obviously has miles and miles of Western Equitation under her belt. Her horse was very willing, but didn't seem as if he was out of control or going too fast. I don’t know the rules for Western Dressage. There were four other people in her class and they all rode in Western saddles. Maybe one can ride western dressage in a dressage saddle? It’s weird.The thought hit me, maybe she's a dressage rider who wants the score but not the reputation, so she entered a western dressage class? I have no idea.

    I don’t know who, if anyone, is training her, but if so, that trainer should be hammered. Any trainer, who allows a person to do a dressage test like this, who thinks that one’s arms are supposed to be stuck out like that, should be ashamed of herself.

   But then again, perhaps the trainer (again, if there is one) was trained WE as well.

  Whatever, I am very glad that it isn’t me riding like that in front of god and everybody.

ADDENDUM:
Just when I thought I'd found the worst WE image on google, I found even more egregious ones. This is a screamer.  The rider is showing him both english and western, and oh my gosh. It's bad, folks. Really bad, when she gets ribbons for riding like this:

 If that is 'collection', I'll eat my boots. But I will give her this: her arms and hands are down.

Cite:

¹ “Breaking and Training the Stock Horse” (5^th Ed.), pg. 52.  1965  Williamson, Charles O. , Caxton Printers, Ltd, Caldwell, ID Lib. of Congress number 62-22012

Due to such early printing, no ISBN has been assigned to this edition.

When the professionals cheat, revisited

    I used to blog on word press. 

   Here is a post I made on it last August. Please excuse any issues with it's appearance. Word press used to be the very best blogging site but they decided that they would make blogs primarily for a phone.  Do you know ANYONE who is willing to type out 2400 word blogs on a PHONE? 
Me neither, nor any of the other thousands of bloggers....some of whom had paid for their personal word press domain. Word press made the change total, all encompassing and literally said EFF you if you don't like it. 

   Most of us didn't. Word press ignored the thousands of complaints from many word pressers. Like many of them, I left and began this blog on Blogger. 

   So saying, I am unable to export any of the posts I made on that blog website. If you'd like to read them, go to http://throughthebridlelightly.wordpress.com and have a look. 

   In the meantime, please read this, as I'm going to add the 'punchline', so to speak, BEFORE the original post. I suppose you call this a "forward". 

   After I posted 'When the Professionals Cheat", it still kept eating at me, so I finally contacted the United States Dressage Federation. 

    I told them the entire story, this time with names intact.

   I was soon contacted by a very high official in the USDF. I mean Nose Bleed high. 

   First she thanked me for being a volunteer, and encouraged me to continue. Volunteers are the lifeblood of any sort of venue, be it a horse show or a car race, and they are always desperate for idiots like me to come and work their butts off for free.

   That official then contacted the owners of the farm in question. One of them is the one who begged me to volunteer, as I've used her professional services in a different horse related situation. The other is the rider I talk about, the professional who cheated. She did NOT talk to me. I'm far too lowly for her, it seems.

 I'll refer to the one who called me as P.

   I've known P for several years. She called me and we had a long chat about how,well, you know, it was a mistake. It was the GROOM who did the tacking up of the horse, NOT the Professional Rider. She made all sorts of apologies for Professional Rider, none of which were sincere, in my humble opinion. She was just afraid I'd take it further than I already had. 

   I didn't back down, though. P is a professional rider herself. She knows that, ultimately, it isn't the groom who is responsible for the horse/tack. It is the RIDER. You never ever hear the groom being credited when a horse wins the Olympics. Nope, it's the rider. 

   I told P that. She said, yes you are right (but). 
    
  Oh, the unspoken 'but'.

   I could hear a slight threat in her voice. 

   This pissed me off. I don't start fights but I'll be damned if I'm going to turn and run when someone thrusts one on me. If you knock me down, you better kill me, because if I get back up, I won't stop fighting until someone is dead.  

   In this case, though, I knew it wasn't worth fighting over. In the long run, Professionals win every time, because they have big lawyers. I can't afford a lawyer good enough to go against Big Money. P and her business partner/professional rider have that sort of money. 

   And, when the professionals cheat, we remember. All I have to say is a few names: Lance Armstrong. Tom Brady (of the Boston Patriots). See?

   I'd made the decision to not go back. However, that decision was taken out of my hands. 

   I was NOT invited to come back this year.

   Break my effing heart.  

   So, without further ado, here is my cut and pasted post, "When the professionals cheat", taken from my wordpress blogpost of Aug 2014


This past weekend, I volunteered at a 2nd level dressage show.

I’ve done this before. Last year a TD (technical delegate, a person officially designated by the USDF and USEF, to know and enforce all the rules and regulations at official shows.) trained  and supervised me on  bit checking. So I went in on Saturday feeling comfortable that I knew what I was doing. I also had a copy of the regulations, and there was (supposedly) a TD on the grounds.

“Bit checking”, at a sanctioned show, entails several things: checking the bridle and cavesson to see if there is two fingers worth of looseness, feeling or opening the horse’s mouth to feel the bit in order to insure that the bits are regulation (i.e. no sharp edged or cornered bits, no Dr. Bristols, no twisted wire, etc), check the rider’s spurs, run a hand down the side of the horse to check for blood from non-regulation spurs, check the length of the whip.

One wears disposable latex gloves and changes them out with every horse. That’s to prevent transmitting ugly diseases such as stomatitis.

Finally, USEF/USDF regulations call for a third of the class be checked. The classes at this show, at least in the afternoon, were very small. In some cases, there only four horses in a class.

The farm where this particular show was held is a professional barn. The owners (two of them) buy or import European Warmbloods as well as breed their own. They train them to FEI levels, and sell them. The prices they ask for a horse would buy me a very comfortable house, so you can understand that these folks have money in very large amounts.

I met the Technical Delegate (not the same one who trained me last year) in the morning. I helped her check the ring’s fences. That is the last time I saw her as anything more than a retreating back.
I took over bit checking in the afternoon (I swapped jobs with another volunteer. I’d been doing in gate work in the morning).

The afternoon’s classes were all higher level stuff-specifically, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th level dressage.

The last class of the day had ONE horse in it,owned and ridden by  one of the farm owners. I’ll call her Professional Rider. PR had ridden not only several of their own horses, but horses owned by several other people not connected to her barn. This means that sometimes she rode three horses in the same class.

The woman (another volunteer), who’d done bit checking in the morning’s lower  level classes (which were more heavily populated) told me that Professional Rider had complained to HER (not the TD) that she’d been checked “8 times”. I said, ‘she’s a pro. She knows that, in a class of four horses, she’s probably going to get checked.”

Now mind you, the entire time I was working gate or bit checking, I saw the TD perhaps twice. She spent the day, I believe, sitting in the shade of a large canopy,  next to the announcer. (it was bloody hot, in the high 80’s (30 C) and bit check/in gate had NO SHADE). Of course not. One can’t have a canopy inside the ring.

Therefore, I and my co-volunteer got a really good roasting. We spent the entire day out in the sun.
Professional Rider rode several horses in the afternoon. In the 3rd level class, I stopped her to bit check her horse, and she said, “You already checked me.”

I said, “Yes, but that was in the last class, right?”

She said “Yes” in a tone of voice that clearly meant “You effing turd, how dare you.”

The last class of the day was 4th Level. Professional Rider was riding her horse, the only horse in the 4th level class. She has competed on this horse, by the way, at FEI level shows for at least two years.
She finishes her class. The in gate lady, the judge and her scribe all leave the ring.
Instead of exiting the ring, Professional Rider continues to ride her horse in circles in the ring.
She spends, oh, five minutes riding in circles. Perhaps it’s to cool down her sweaty horse?

At a trot??

No.

NOW I know why. She was waiting for me to leave, without conducting a bit check.
I may not be the brightest spark, I may not own a horse, I certainly do not have the money to afford a 100K horse on a $500K farm.

I’m just a volunteer, but damn it, I’m a good one.

I go by the rules. Always have, always will.

Simple math tells me, one horse in the class means that one horse gets bit checked. To me, it doesn’t matter that the show is over for the day and all the officials have left. I do bit checking until my task is done.

Finally she stops her horse and I approach her, saying, “Excuse me, but I need to bit check your horse.”
I should have looked at her face, but I didn’t. It would have told me what was going to happen.
No, I make eye contact with the horse and say, gently hey big horse as I approached him. This horse is FEI level. He’s had bit checks done hundreds of times.

I begin my regimen of  bit checking.

I tried to run two fingers under the cavesson.

They wouldn’t fit. The cavesson was so tightly cranked down on his face that I couldn’t even get a finger tip under it. I said, “Wow, this cavesson is too….”

That’s as far as I got.

The horse knocked me sideways with his head. He began head tossing, and dancing,  avoiding my touch. I’m not afraid of horses, and I know they can be testy, so I let him toss his head, waiting for him to rest. The moment he did, I again tried the cavesson and he began the head tossing again. Again, I let him come to a stop and thought, OK, I’ll check the bits before I try the cavesson.

The flash noseband was on so tightly that I could only just barely fit a finger into his mouth. I ran it up the curb, but try as I might, I couldn’t get to the back of the mouth to feel for the snaffle. And again, the horse was violently resisting, pushing, tossing, pulling away. Maybe (I know now) it’s because that bit was pulled back..HARD. Professional rider had tightened on the reins.

OK. I’ll try the other side.

I run my hand down his right side, behind the riders leg.

The horse cowkicked at me. As athletic as he was, he almost hit me. I yelled at the horse and the rider said, “He’s hot and tired”.

Well, damn it, so am I, and you are not making this job any easier I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

I walked behind the horse to get to the left side…and the horse backed up so quickly I almost got run over.

Still, I tried. I checked his left side, and then was heading for the cavesson, when Professional Rider  rode away.  I hadn’t ‘released her’ by saying, Thank you very much, as I did with her and every other rider. She rode away, dismounted about fifty feet from me and led her now calm and quiet horse away.
She KNEW she had the cavesson cranked down too tightly. She KNEW the flash noseband was so tight the horse couldn’t have opened his mouth.

She’d purposefully held back from exiting the ring,  knowing the judge had left, knowing that the TD had made no attempt to help at the gate, allowing the volunteers to do all the work. Professional Rider had counted on me leaving, too. She’d seen me roasting in the sun like a rotisserie chicken, and figured I’d leave, too. She’d get away with cheating.

But I hadn’t left. There I was, patiently waiting for her.

She’d tried intimidating me earlier, and learned that I won’t be intimidated by anyone (unless they have a gun aimed at me.)

So she made her horse act up, figuring I was enough of a horseman to know that it’s not worth getting hurt.

Which means, she succeeded in making me back off, she succeeded in getting away with blatant abuse of her horse.

She was cheating. She probably got high scores on her 4th level test because her horse was forced into obedience. That’s not the spirit of dressage, when a horse is supposed to be willingly obedient.
She was pissed at me because I’m a nobody who insisted on playing by the rules, and if she had, too, she would have gotten lower scores on her test..which, ultimately, means her standing in the Dressage lists would be lower.

Damn the comfort of the horse. A couple of numbers on a list, is what matters to her, and if a horse has to suffer to get those numbers, so be it.

Damn that woman. I won’t name her, because people who can afford several hundred thousand dollars of horse can also afford several hundred thousands of dollars of lawyer.

The saddest part of all is, all the rest of the riders, all of them, were amateurs. They weren’t riding Very Expensive Horses.  They were riding ten dollar ponies. (well,not really, but you know what I mean).

Not a one of those folks cheated.

Not a one.

They played the game by the rules. They were beaten by Professional Rider, who cheated.  A professional rider who, I believe now, has reached the nosebleed heights of dressage riding, by  cheating. For YEARS.

I’m absolutely certain this isn’t the first time she’s cheated.  She was too practised for it to be the first time, oops, I did tighten it too much, didn’t I.

It’s just the first time someone caught her.

And is unable to do anything about it.

The ethics of horse selling, or "Caveat Emptor"

     "Caveat Emptor" is not just a phrase in Latin, it is the foundation of many transactions in the US. It means, "let the buyer beware".  It means, the seller of something is under no obligation to disclose certain things about the thing you are buying. In most cases it applies to used cars. Used (or these days, the phrase '''pre-owned'') car dealers are notorious for being shysters. They will lie to you in a newyorkminute and it is on you, the seller, to check the condition of the vehicle. Again, these days, this means taking the car you're looking at to a reputable car mechanic and having him check it over. 
   Even then, it's no guarantee that the thing isn't going to leave you stranded five miles from the lot.

    The same applies to horses, but even more so, as horses are living creatures. It's pretty difficult to open the hood on a horse and do a compression check. Every horse has a history, sometimes one that affects him for the rest of his life. I have heard too many horror stories about folks buying a horse on the spot, without so much as a vet check, only to learn later on that the horse has Issues. Sometimes they're game changers.
It's one of the reasons I will never, ever buy a horse at auction (although my Jordan was purchased from one, by the last owner, and I am so grateful she did.) There are too many instances of a horse being drugged on the auction ground, sold on a bid based on watching the horse walk or trot around a tiny pen, only to be found to be a nut job the next day, after the sedative and/or pain killers have worn off. 

   We've all been in the situation where we want to get rid of a horse, for any number of reasons: we can no longer afford him, he's no longer or never was suitable, he has taken you as far as he can. The latter will never be an issue with stuck-in-intermediate-riding-abilities me. I'm old. I understand my capacities. I'm happy being a perennial Advanced Beginner and don't plan on being anything more than the 'happy to be on the back of a good horse' level of rider. However, Raven is trained to second level and Sue is working for that, and I will support her as much as I can.
    There's no crime in selling a horse. We do it every day. We buy them and we sell them. We swap them, we barter, we lease. 

   So what do you do when you know a horse has some sort of medical or physical condition that is so bad that it makes the horse virtually useless...and the owner isn't telling when she puts up the Sale ad for him?

        Above is the listing on Dream Horse for the very first horse I ever leased. I was getting back into horses after a eight year dry spell of being horseless. I wanted to ride again. I wasn't sure, though, if I wanted to own again. So I looked around and found Hank.

     Hank was owned by a young lady (NOT the one in the above picture, or the one who is selling him). The girl...well, I'll call her D. D was no longer interested in horses. She'd been given Hank, along with many lessons with a trainer whom I've written of before, in the hopes that the horse would steer her away from the bad crowd she'd taken up with.

    It didn't work. D showed Hank for a while, then lost interest in him.Daddy kept the horse, why I don't know, but Hank was available for leasing when I wanted one. 

   I should have known early on that there were problems. D wasn't interested at ALL in the horse, not a lick. She had her saddle (a heavy silver encrusted western show saddle) at the barn that I could use. She came out to the barn where Hank lived, ONCE, to show me his paces. She was rude, and hard on Hank. Threw the saddle on his back without bothering to make sure the blanket was smooth and wrinkle free, and yanked the cinch home with one mighty tug. Hank took it all without a whimper. Then she rode him in the arena. He was 'spur stop' trained in Western Equitation, she said, and had won many ribbons in WE. She put him into a "jog" (a trot so slow I could have kept up with him at a walk) and then a "lope", a canter, again so slow that I could have kept up with him at a trot. She rode with her arms stretched straight out in front of her, like they were wood, and had no contact whatsoever with the bit. Oh, by the way, he has navicular. She then handed me the reins to her horse, said See ya, got in her car, and left.
    I never saw her again. I could have done anything to that horse, up to and including killed it, and she wouldn't have turned a hair. 
    Drugs like meth will do that to you, I'm told. If you know what I mean, but since I don't have proof all I can do is conjecture. 

    Hank was gentle as a lamb. He was uncomplaining, one could do anything with him. Up to a point.

   I don't know how to ride Western Equitation the way it is. That meaning, a horse forced to move so slowly, with it's head hanging below it's knees, it's paces so mincing and short you wonder how in the world it manages to move at all. WE people want their horses dead quiet and will go to a lot of lengths to get that. 
    I've ridden in western saddles and am never quite sure what to do. I can't feel anything. While they're comfortable, to me, they seem to encourage a bit of laziness on the rider's part. I honestly feel a bit embarassed to be seen in one, but I have to admit that horn is a nice thing to have when one is trail riding on a frisky horse. 

   So instead of using a bit on him, I put him in a hackamore (English hackamore, which is basically a heavy duty cavesson). And I never rode in D's saddle. I rode him bareback. I ride every horse bareback. I prefer it.
I could never get Hank to move any faster than that slow, slow jog. I could have slept on his back while he was 'jogging'. Canter? I got him to canter, once. That didn't last more than three steps, then he went back to a walk. A dead slow and quiet walk, head down. It was unnerving, his head down so far. It was like being on a barrel without a head. There's a horse here? Really? Later on, when he realized he didn't need to carry it so low, he did raised it up, a bit. But never UP, where I could see it. He never got his head higher than my knees. 

   I'd leased him for about a month when he came up lame. I called Daddy (not mine, D's Daddy, the man who wrote the paycheck.) Will he pay for the vet if I call him out? Sure. But it's probably because he's run out of meds. 
What meds? 
This was the first time I learned he was on pain killers. Strong ones. 
The vet came out and the first words out of his mouth were "Who in the hell is the farrier."
I told him who. "Why in the eff are you using that man, he's a butcher. Look at these feet." I said, I'm not the owner, I'm leasing the horse. "I get more business from that man than anyone else in the entire county." he said.
Well, Hank had been trimmed two days before and had been 'scalped'...his soles pared down so much that you could see pink. 

   But he was also out of meds. I had to call Daddy again,  who said, oh, yeah, I'll get them. 
In a week they showed up, but in the meantime I was unable to ride my leased horse. And I was very bothered by the fact that I'd not been told about the need for medications. 

   When he stopped being lame, started back on his meds, and his soles had thickened, I started riding again.
   But this time, something was wrong. Hank was so very well mannered, so very quiet. But he began to develop a bad habit-that of moving away from me as I was mounting from the block.

   This is a bad habit for a horse. I want him to stand like a statue while I'm mounting and even after I'm on his back, I sit there for a while. I do NOT want a horse to bolt from the block. It's a good way to get hurt. 

   So I called Tonia, the trainer. I wanted her help, please, (and willing to pay for it) to nip this bad habit in the bud.
After telling me how famous she is, she began to question me on what I was doing. How could he be stepping AWAY from me, when I have my foot in the stirrup? Well, I don't mount from the ground. I mount from a mounting block.
   No way! That's what a western saddle is designed for, he's a Western Equitation horse! You're supposed to mount From The Ground.
Well, I ride him bareback.

   NO. NO. NO. He's trained WESTERN EQUITATION. That means a WESTERN saddle, (you idiot, I could hear under her  breath). You can't ride him bareback. NO. You ride him in a saddle for 60 days and then I'll maybe come out and give you lessons.

    Well, this was odd. I never in my life heard a riding instructor/horse trainer tell me that she DIDN'T want my money. Nor do I want lessons in riding Western. This bimbo had 'trained' Hank and now she didn't want to help fix a problem?
She was hiding something. I could hear it in her voice. She didn't want to address a problem she was much to aware of. So she blamed the victim. Me. 

    Eff you, witch. I don't need you or your arrogance. 

    All this time, I'd known that Hank, while he looked QH through and through, was only 1/4 QH. The rest was Appaloosa. He had no spots, save what I thought was a spot on his left hip. It was white and about 6 inches long, three inches wide.

    I learned later on, too late, really, what it really was.

    I began working on Hank's budding habit of moving away from the mounting block. I would give him a treat once I was aboard and didn't ask for him to move away until a minute or more passed. 

    But he got worse. He wasn't even waiting for me to attempt to mount, he was moving  the moment I stood on the top step of the block.

    One day, he was moving and I got aboard in motion. 

    He stopped. I waited for a while, then asked for a walk...and he exploded.
For what seemed an hour but was probably no more than thirty seconds, I was atop a bucking tornado. He was spinning, backing up and bucking all at once. I fell forward onto his neck and hung on for dear life. I was NOT going to fall off underneath those feet.

   Finally he stopped. Two other women had been in the arena and both came over at once. I 'dismounted' (a nice word for half fell, half jumped) onto the ground. I was shaking like a leaf. Hank didn't run away. "What happened?" one of the women asked, "I don't know. I have no idea. I'd just got aboard and he freaked." (by the way, I don't ever wear spurs). "I"m amazed you stayed on!" "Me too!" "He acts like his back hurts".

   Then it dawned on me. That is exactly what the problem was. Hank's back hurt. Badly.
I'd noticed that when I curried his back, he'd flinch. But he's such a stolid, patient, generous horse. He probably has been hurt many times by unwitting humans and has just come to accept it. But I'm a massage therapist. I should have investigated further. I didn't. 

Ordinarily, when I fall off a horse, I get right back on. But in this case, I knew the woman was right. Hank's back hurt, and I was the cause of it.

   In the barn, Jorge, the barn hand, was alone. It's the only way he could relate to me what Hank's problem was without being fired for gossiping..or in this case, telling the truth.

   A year ago, Tonia the Spur Stop trainer, her butcher of a farrier husband, and D decided to go trail riding in the hills. They trailered their horses and Hank to the trail head.
Hank is NOT a trail horse. NOT NOT NOT. He is an arena horse. Being outside a fence is terrifying to him. I learned this when I wanted to walk him off the property into the woods...hand walk, mind you, and he bolted when a robin flew past his nose. Nope,Hank is NOT a trail horse.

   I don't know how long they rode. What Jorge told me is that Hank panicked, reared up, dumping D, and flipped over backwards....down a steep rocky slope. I remembered hearing about it. I have no idea how they got him out of the predicament. 

   What I do know is that Hank had/has a broken back. NOT the spine, but the vertebral spinous processes, the parts of the spine that stick up. The white spot on his hip isn't a spot, it's a scar. His back may have healed, but with a few broken spines, that back has got to be tender. By riding him bareback I was hurting him. 

    Apparently the combination of a western saddle and a lot of drugs in his system makes him rideable.
    But he's only that way artificially. 

   I vacated the lease shortly thereafter. I called Daddy and told him so (I never, ever lease or do anything without a contract, so there wasn't much he could do). He sounded...nervous when I spoke with him. He was hiding knowledge,  I could tell. I didn't tell him what I knew. I didn't want him to blame ME for Hank's injuries. By the way, did I want to BUY Hank?

  NO. I didn't say why. He KNEW. 

    It's a shame because I doubt the girl in the picture above, the one who's selling him, knew about the accident when she bought him from Daddy. (D, I believe, is already in prison or in rehab, I don't know. Meth will do that to you, so I'm told). I doubt she's ever ridden bareback a day in her life. 
   She is telling the truth about Hank being gentle. She is telling the truth about him needing medications for his navicular.
But she's not saying a word about his back. 

   She wants to get what she paid for out of him. I'm sure she wants to use the money she gets from him to buy something she can ride without meds. 

   Poor Hank. What he needs is to be retired, permanently. It's not right to continue to keep him on drugs solely to win ugly ribbons. It's not right. He should be considered nothing but pasture jewelry. He's not rideable unless he's drugged. 

   Is that right? No. It is unethical, and cruel, but that is the lot of a horse, sometimes. The girl wants to make money on him, without relaying the truth about Hank's back. 

   I am torn. I am not a veterinarian so I didn't X-ray his back, but I"m a massage therapist that didn't pay attention when grooming him. He'd flinch when I'd curry his back. I didn't pay attention. I didn't know.

   But now I do. But what DO I do? Do I post an ad saying this horse has this issue along with navicular?

   That's a good way to get sued. And Daddy knows lawyers. 

   So I am telling you all. If and when you buy a horse, get it vet checked. THOROUGHLY.

   Poor Hank.

   Poor sweet, kind horse. Nothing but a horse.