Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Blowing Hot and Cold - Arya Update

Riding a lot has continued on, with a small break to road trip across the country and move the hubs home, which was... entertaining, given that COVID has made interstate travel a bit of a crapshoot, food and bathroom wise. We even had to call and make sure our hotel was open (it was not, we had to move to a different hotel). But, for all the stress, the solo horse farm experiment is over with. I am more capable and more gritty and slightly better at making lists and getting shit done. 



I mean, I still procrastinate like crazy, but I'm slightly better, at least. 

Before the roadtrip, I brought Arya into work slowly and had some really good rides with her, mixed in with a random swollen knee that has kind of... persisted, in a very mild, not enough to have the vet xray it once I saw my spring shots bill kind of way. My rules with Arya are that she doesn't get to trot unless she can walk relatively obediently, and she doesn't get to canter unless she can trot without shenanigans (at least, without major ones). She tends to get more explosive the faster she's going, and is more likely to unseat me (at least, she was, new update on that below...) so I feel like that's not too much to ask. Walk nicely. Trot nicely. Then you can canter, and please don't canter in a teacup. We had progressed to that, and I was happy to give her time off while I drove for several days. Getting back to it on the other side, I put her back into her lunge, then lunge with tack, then get on routine over the next week or so. She was naughty, and I picked a fight with her over side-passing and poles that ended up with a argumentative ride. And now we are regressing. 



Ugh.

I actually took video of her with my phone (not with my Pivo, just setting it on a fencepost) and I don't know if it's just knowing I have a camera on even if I never have to keep the footage or let it see light of day, I tend to not have good rides when I video. She was very bad - less rearing than her previous badness, but a lot more foot planting. The next ride was almost worse, because, as I babbled to her "I came to a sword fight with a sword this time" (aka I was carrying a whip) and the whip, of course, causes drama when used, and tightness when she does start moving. I got on her several days in a row, trying to end my rides on positive notes, keep the rides short and basic. After our first bad ride, my next ride was (as I suspected a sore back from a bad heat) literally getting on her to walk two circles in each direction without nonsense. This took around 20 minutes, because nonsense of course happened. The next ride, she must have caught some anxiety from me or else she's just a Velociraptor of a mare, and decided to rear, back, and fling herself sideways all the way out of the arena gate, which doesn't have an actual gate on it. And she also tried to back into the fence once, which brought back major nightmares of "what if she rears and loses her balance and kills us".

So she's lost privileges to use that end of the arena. She also went sideways over the mounting block, because #drama. 

I'm pretty burned out and fed up with her, to be honest. She's on the last few paks of that mare supplement I tried out last year, trying to weather this heat out (and decide if it's actually heat related) and I'm giving her more magnesium, which she isn't excited to eat. It's tough to get on and walk and maybe trot, and not even get full circles without her trying to either start shit (I use this term a lot, so starting shit = pushing my leg around with her shoulder, popping her shoulder, going sideways, swinging her barrel and seeing if I react and ask her to fix it, trying to stop or randomly leaping) or actually... pulling shit. I try to hard to be a stone. I don't react to her bad behavior, and praise good behavior like she just ran around Rolex. I'm being unbelievably whiny, and if you made it this far, a gold star to you. 

I don't want to give up on her, but also... she makes me want to tear my hair out.

At least Bailey is being good? 

I plan to keep working with her, and keep trying new things. We'll be moving her down in the arena, and I have a new beating stick that seems to make an impression (and it's all hers, I realized after it arrived it's too long to carry at a show at 31") and I'm still using a breastcollar and oh shit strap to keep me out of her face when she rears. I just want her to be good!!


2 comments:

  1. Oh goodness. Arya is a continuing challenge, isn't she? Gracious!

    When I was having struggles with Q several years back I reached a point where it was No Fun (and I really believe horse time should be enjoyable) for me and I finally gave in to myself and set a deadline for the end of the year. If things weren't better by then, she was getting a new zip code in order to benefit both of us. Making that pact with myself ended up removing a lot of the pressure and let us find a common ground. Perhaps a similar approach could work for you two?

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    1. I’ve been fairly resilient with her so far, but this new and so far, not really improving behavior is definitely putting her into the “no fun” category. It’s hard for me to figure out what I could do with her if I didn’t keep her; since she came from a rescue technically I’m supposed to contact them, but I also am really protective of her. I feel like very few owners would put up with her and that she’d end up in a bad place... but it’s a good thought. Riding really should be fun!

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