The New Place

2 posts in one day! I am ambitious tonight. Actually I just really want to catch this up to present day. We have gone through so many things lately, that I want this to be a current chronicle, not always 10 years ago.

I went up the road to look at a new place, just a couple of miles away from Big Name Barn. A couple of miles away in distance, but lightyears away in standard of care. I went for my tour and was very impressed with the small barn. It was older and not as well lit, but the horses had large grass pastures and the stalls were spacious and very clean. Sign me up!

I arranged the day for the new barn owner to come and pick him up. It was the very beginning of November. It was a Friday evening and I was sick. I had left work early, feeling feverish and dizzy. I went out to the barn with my roommate to wait for the new barn owner. It was drizzling and very cold. I sat and waited with Sammy in the cold drizzle and felt more and more miserable. My roommate finally ordered me back into the barn, and she took control of the situation.

The new barn owner pulled in and we loaded Sammy. He trailered nervously the couple of miles to the barn and when we got there, he had managed to shove all the mats against the door of the trailer.

We got him there and unloaded. Once he was in his new stall, he calmed down. I told the new barn owner I was usually out every day and that I would probably be out in the next few days. Instead I ended ups getting sicker and sicker.

I called in sick for work on Monday and then again on Tuesday. It was Tuesday night, the night of the 2000 presidential election. I felt like a knife was being stabbed into my ribs with every breath or every movement. At midnight, my roommate took me to the ER. We were a bit upset to think we were going to miss the election results. Little did we know that the election was going to last 5 weeks before a decision would be reached. In any case, my diagnosis was pneumonia. I was unable to go to the barn for 2 weeks.

When I was finally able to go out to the barn, I was happy to see that Sammy had water and food and a clean stall. I was too weak from the pneumonia to ride, so my roommate rode him for me while I watched.

The new place was a big improvement and Sammy seemed happy. I couldn't wait to be strong enough to ride, now that I had a trained horse and a good place to keep him. Boy, was I in for a surprise! Apparently 45 days of training isn't enough to consider a horse fully broke. Who knew?

More to come!

Real Training

Do you ever feel like life moves along way too fast? I can't believe I am still working on telling you this part of Sammy's story. His real training was 10 years ago! Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to update the blog. Eventually, we will get caught up to today.

Sammy was at Big Name Barn for just 2 months. While he was there, he learned how to be "civilized". He learned how to be in a barn, how to take a bit in his mouth, and how to move off leg. No more whacks on the butt with the leadrope. He was round pen trained and learned to be very light on the lead. I appreciated the training, but I didn't always appreciate Big Name Barn.

We had some negative experiences there. When I first dropped him off, I had no idea what I was getting into. I knew this was a big barn with a big reputation. I was young and ignorant. Right out of college, but with no idea about real life.

The day after I dropped Sammy off, I came back to the barn to watch his first training session. I was very excited to see how he would do. When I got there, he was already in the roundpen, looking very nervous. There were a few spectators watching the action. I wasn't sure what had happened so far, but I immediately noticed he had a cut over each eye. What the heck?

"What happened to his face?" I asked the trainer. "We were going to ask you the same thing," was the response. Uh, say what??!?

"He didn't look like that when I dropped him off yesterday." All the spectators just looked at me. Clearly, they didn't believe me. I could tell we were off to a rocky start.

Then there was the cleanliness issue. Sammy was a "training" horse, as opposed to a regular boarder. This meant he had to share a stall. My poor boy who had never seen the inside of a building in his life now had to be in a tiny stall with a sloping ceiling all day and then be outside all night. Another horse was in the stall all night. So it never dried out. Ever. It reeked in that stall. Ammonia. Oh, and I figured out what caused the cuts over his eyes. It was caused by the bail on his feed bucket. When he put his head into the bucket to eat, that wire bail rubbed the spot over his eyes raw. I could just imagine his first frantic day locked in that stall, nervously shoving his head into the feed pail again and again.

Then there were the paddocks, for Sammy his overnight place. No shelter and up to the fetlocks in mud if it rained. Sometimes there was no water in the giant stock tank. Luckily I was out almost every day, so I was able to fill his water up. And yet I stayed. This place had a great reputation, so what did I know, right?

Then there was the day I decided to play with Sammy in his paddock. I had watched a few roundpen sessions by now, so I thought I'd play with him and get him to move away and change directions like I had seen the trainer do. He was going at a nice trot around the paddock for me when a voice called out to me.

"What are you doing?"

I turned to see the trainer.

"I'm just playing with him," I said back. The trainer was on another of his horses in training. Clearly heading out for a ride out, which he told me he was going to do with Sammy.

"Well don't, you're going to confuse him." He turned the horse and rode off toward the driveway.

Properly chastised, I made sure not to do any kind of work with Sammy. I sat in his paddock and brushed him in the evenings or led him around the indoor arena at a walk in the daytime. No more playing. No more roundpenning. Until I took a lesson or 2 on him. That was the rule.

I took my first lesson on Sammy and it was great! He walked, trotted, cantered, and stopped . . . on his head. It was ok, he was learning and was still unbalanced. It's pretty common for a young horse to stop heavy on the forehand. I wasn't worried about that, I was riding my horse. Finally!!

We participated in a clinic at the Big Name Barn on the Barn Owner's suggestion. My Saddlebred, very green, was in the arena with all those quarter horses. And he is Mr. ADD. Chink, chink, chink, chink he was constantly fidgeting with the bit. Dance around, chink some more. The Barn Owner tried to give more directions to the people in the clinic. Ask your horse to lower his head and then have him walk across the arena like that. Did I mention Sammy is a Saddlebred? Did I mention he is very high headed. When standing with his head up, he measures 7' tall at the ear tips. His neck comes straight up out of his withers. He doesn't "do" head-on-the-ground. Sorry, he doesn't.

Barn Owner wasn't happy with Mr. Antsy Pants and his constant bit chinking. He asked me to get down and give my horse over. So I did. Again, young and ignorant. Barn Owner proceeded to pull on the reins and so Sammy, being sensitive (did I mention he's a Saddlebred?), put his face behind the vertical to escape the pressure. Barn Owner gets mad the he is going behind the vertical, so he proceeds to kick, kick kick while still hauling on the reins until Sammy at last sticks his nose out. Well, that was a good lesson (note sarcasm). He gives me my now completely frustrated and hyped up horse to ride back to the barn. Surprisingly enough, he held it together enough to ride back down to the barn.

The last straw was when I went out to Big Name Barn to ride. Sammy had been there about 2 months, but only had 45 days of training. He had started to be very difficult to bridle and the trainer claimed he didn't know why. I got out there that day and managed to get the bridle on him. I led him out to the arena and got on, but he seemed very dull. Not his usual sassy self. He walked at a slow plod. I asked him to trot and nothing happened. I insisted and he broke into a shuffling trot for a couplpe of steps and then quit. Something was obviously wrong. I jumped off and took a closer look at him. His eyes seemed dull and he was just listless. I noticed some funny streaks on his legs and realized they were dried snot. Sammy was sick! He had been having thick nasal discharge and wiping it on his knees. Poor baby!

I brought him back into the barn and started untacking him. Just then his trainer walked by.

"He seems like he is sick," I said.
"Yeah, I noticed he's been really sick the last couple of days," was his response.

Say what?? No one ever told me? No one ever called a vet? That was it. There were days I watched the barn crew hitting horses as they brought them in, days my horse had no water. The farrier disliked Sammy just because he was a Saddlebred. The barn princesses stuck their noses up in the air everytime I walked by them. The barn was smelly and unkempt. The paddocks were gross. So many people and horses were coming and going that I had no idea who was supposed to be there and who wasn't. There were rumors of people just showing up there and riding horses or stealing tack. I finally woke up to the fact that Big Name Barn may have a good reputation, but reality was something slightly different. It was time to move on.

Time to find a new place . . .