Let’s see… how to sum up how we’ve spent the end of winter and beginning of spring.

As the winter progressed and Tucker got bored with seeing the four walls of the indoor, those four walls began hiding dangerous (read: imaginary) predators.  My patience wore increasingly thin, Tucker’s theatrics grew increasingly more… spectacular (and I do not mean that in a complimentary fashion). Finally, just as I was ready to give him a vacation until the snow melted, I went back through the blog and figured out that every time he stops listening to reason, I can usually fix it by treating his tummy for ulcers.

This time instead of treating him with a prescription ulcer medication I kept him on his SmartGut and added a  half-cup of aloe juice to each of his meals.  On the advice of one of Tucker’s vets, we give him the aloe for ten days and then two days off, so his stomach pH-levels stay normal.  The spooking has become less frequent and much less explosive (ponies and children no longer cower in fear while we ride) .  Either the invisible mountain lions living in the indoor have decided to migrate elsewhere, or he’s feeling slightly better.  So that’s where we’re at on that front.

The more we worked over the winter, it became clear that Tucker had a weakness in his hind end — which is part of the reason we started doing dressage in the first place.  We decided to give him until Spring and keep working on strengthening.  When the “weakness” started looking like slight unevenness, I made a vet appointment for him, and we ended up injecting his hocks.  He wasn’t seriously lame, but Tucker is not exactly stoic when it comes to pain. Delicate little flower that he is.

So, we had three days of hand-grazing and then gradually back to work.  I took some great pictures while we didn’t have much else to do.

Day 1: Stopping to smell the dandelions

Day 2: Making friends with the retirees next door

Day 3: Raining, so we went inside and met a really good looking horse

That was about three weeks ago (sorry, I wanted to make sure he was back to work and sound before I wrote about it), and he’s feeling really great now.  An expensive vet visit, yes, but well worth it.  I’m just happy that this was the first time I’ve had to inject my eleven-year-old horse.  Unfortunately they only come with a ten year warranty…

As for me, I am loving dressage and what it is teaching me.  I feel like I’ve got a whole new toolbox full of ways to deal with all my horse’s various evasions and to get him really working to his full potential.  He’s always been like one of those smart kids who goofs off in class, so I’m trying to find the right balance between keeping him challenged and motivated, and not letting him think life is getting too hard.  We go back to jumping this week, so I imagine that will make him happy.  Hopefully not too happy.  

For right now, I’m a little too worried about the EHV-1 threat in New Jersey right now to take him to any shows, so we are going to stay home a while longer and keep working away.  I know it’s probably ultra-conservative of me, but there’s only one Tucker, so I’m not taking any chances.

Anyway, that’s where we are at.  I’m going to start providing more regular updates on the blog, so we can avoid these somewhat tedious summaries in the future.  Thank you for reading… it feels good to be back in the blogosphere!

Today is the Gorgeous Boy’s 11th birthday.  It is really hard to believe this picture was taken ten years ago:

Or that this picture was taken eight years ago (his first summer of work!):

Today is an extra special birthday for Tucker because it is also Kentucky Derby Day.  The day Tucker was born, it was Kentucky Derby Day, so Tucker was actually originally named Kentucky, which eventually got shortened to Tuck, and evolved into Tucker.  I remember when I turned to the trainer I worked for and said, “I think we should call him Tucker.”  She smiled and said, “That’s perfect, every barn needs a Tucker.”  And you all know the rest, I fell in love with the awkward, gangly baby, and had to bring him with me to law school, and then the rest of our adventures began.

Every year on the blog I usually spend some of the post gushing over my beautiful boy, and I’m afraid this year is no different.  So, here goes.  Thank you Tucker, for a decade full of countless moments of pure happiness and gratitude, teaching me how to be a better rider, reminding me to be a better person, and helping me keep all my priorities in order.  I cannot imagine what life would have been like without you.  Here’s to many more birthdays.  I love you.

I am off to take Tucker for his birthday ride, and enjoy the absolutely perfect weather we are having in New Jersey today.  Hope you all have a wonderful Kentucky Derby Day and Tucker’s Birthday Day!

Hello dear readers!

I know I owe you all a Tucker update, but will save that for another post.  Suffice it to say I’ve made some big changes lately, one of which has allowed me the freedom to do a lot more writing for Sidelines Magazine.  In this month’s issue, I wrote a really fun article about Lucy Matz, daughter of Olympian show jumper and Triple Crown trainer Michael Matz.

By the way, have you subscribed to Sidelines yet?  No?  Well, you should — I love it, and I’m not just saying that because my name is lucky enough to grace its pages these days.  Seriously, I keep mine with me all the time so I can read whenever I have a minute, and I end up reading it cover-to-cover every month.  If you don’t have a subscription yet though, you are in luck, because you can read my article about Lucy for free here.  Check it out!

I had so much fun researching and writing this article.  Lucy is incredibly sweet and, like her dad, seriously humble about her success and her quasi-celebrity status.  As for her pony jumper Wiseguy, well, I think you know how Tucker and I both feel about adorable ponies.  He’s a Connemara imported from Ireland, and he is pretty much the cutest guy ever:

Now put this pony in the Dixon Oval at Devon (you all know I think it’s the most magical place on earth), making the pony jumpers look just like a mini-grand prix, and I am straight up in love.  And Lucy is a great little rider.  She is without a doubt one to watch as she moves up to the Junior Jumpers this year.

For the interview, I asked Lucy about her rounds at Devon with Wiseguy in the NAL pony jumpers.  In 2010, Lucy won the class, but Wiseguy was a little, um, exuberant… and it wasn’t perfectly smooth.

In 2011, Lucy returned to Devon and was second in the NAL Pony Jumpers with Wiseguy.  Even though this round didn’t deliver the blue, it is pretty flawless.

When I asked Lucy which round she was more proud of (the winning round, or the better ride), she said she was happier with the 2011 round, where her pony was so good, even though it’s nice to win.  I know the feeling.  Some of the ribbons on my wall (yes of course I still hang up my ribbons even though I am supposedly a grown up) that make me smile the biggest are yellow, white, or even purple, because they remind me of an awesome round or a great day with the big brown horse.

What about you?  What makes you happier, the blue ribbon, or the good ride?

Wayyy back in November, Tucker and I took a lesson with Jeff Cook, one of my favorite trainers, at our friend’s beautiful farm, Stoneleigh (Tucker and I have farmsat there a few times).  Since Tucker was just getting back to work after time off to recover from popping his splint, and wasn’t quite at his usual fitness level, we took it easy but still got some valuable feedback from Jeff, which I’ve been meaning to share with you.

You may recall I was a little MIA for a while because of a trial that lasted all summer… this had the unintended side effect of leaving Tucker looking generally like a wildabeast.  So, before we could go anywhere we needed a little Extreme Makeover: Horse Edition.   

Before: 

(everyone always looks grumpy in the before photo)

 After:

So much better!

I’m not sure Tucker fully appreciated my efforts given that it was a little chilly that morning for a bath, but you know, the price of beauty and all that….  Thankfully it warmed up by the time we were ready to ride, and ended up being a crisp, sunny fall day.  Perfect weather for horse stuff, if you ask me.

Since the last time I rode with Jeff in the Spring, I’ve been working on getting my leg position more solid, sitting up straighter, and making my hands quieter.  Jeff was really complimentary of my leg position and my upper body posture at the posting trot (yay!) but still wants me sitting more “on my pockets” and opening my chest at the walk, sitting trot, and when I sit the canter.  My hands have definitely improved (I swear my left hand used to fidget of its own accord), but apparently I still fall back on a little left-right-left when Tucker braces, especially through transitions, and I am still dropping my left hand.  But… last time I saw Jeff he told me “quiet hands” every time he glanced my way, and this time he only commented on my hands twice.  So I think my hands have improved even if they still need work.  (I’ll take it!)

As for Tucker, we need to work on getting him to work with his nose in front of the vertical rather than behind.  Thankfully this is pretty much exactly what we are working on in our lessons with Cindy, so I suspect over time all these things will come together.  Nice to know that Jeff and Cindy’s advice is in sync though, right?  (Confirms my belief that good riding is good riding, in any discipline.)  I also noticed in the clinic that his canter to trot transitions were really weak, although those have improved over the past couple of months as well.

In the jumping portion of the clinic, Tucker was a downright angel. To be honest I had no intention of jumping, and came out with no standing martingale in a plain loose ring snaffle.  But when I told Jeff that Tucker hadn’t jumped since coming back to work (assuming we’d be on the same page about not jumping during the lesson), Jeff responded with a cheerful “oh okay, we’ll just jump a little bit then!”  (Insert moment of panic here.)

Thankfully, I had absolutely no reason to worry, since Tucker decided to wear his halo that day.  We were conservative and probably didn’t do more than a dozen jumps, but enough to make me fall in love with the big brown horse all over again.  He was soft, and responsive, and quiet, and landed almost every lead like he hadn’t missed a beat.  Such a great horse.

Also — and here’s what got me super excited — he is straighter!  The dressage is working!  One of the exercises was to canter up the quarter line and then about midway, turn up the diagonal to a little oxer.  When I first saw it I inwardly groaned because I was sure I’d lose his outside shoulder on the turn.  But I just remembered our “quarter turns” on the haunches, pushed his shoulders in with my outside leg and seat, and rode from one straight line to the next… And it worked!!  Lightbulb Moment Number One!  (There are more, but I’ll fill you guys in as we go.)

As for me, Jeff repeatedly said I am a “beautiful two point rider” which made me beam like a little kid, but (how come there’s always a “but”?) that means I need to stay still at the jumps because otherwise I’m jumping way ahead.  Also, when the distance is tight, then I need to get into a half seat in front of the jump so I’m out of Tucker’s way.  I could feel myself jumping ahead and was able to fix it a couple of times, but… apparently the three months off took more of a toll on me than Tucker, and while he came back swinging, I was pretty darn rusty. 

All in all though, we had a great day.  After the clinic Tucker hung out in the barn (he loves visiting Stoneleigh) with his ice boot on and the girls went to lunch and talked horse, and then we sat on the deck in the sunshine with some wine and talked more horse.  Absolutely perfect. There is nothing like getting your horse home and all ready for bed after a good day’s work, is there?

Someone was a bit tired.

One last post this year… just for old time’s sake…  New Year’s Resolution: START BLOGGING AGAIN!

I have been a terrible blogger as of late, but (prior misrepresentations and broken promises notwithstanding), I am resolving to start writing again in 2013. Life has been getting in my way again, but I have a few blog post fragments that I’ve drafted in my absence that I’ll finish up and share with you at some point next year, including:

• A Jeff Cook Clinic Recap (Tucker was brilliant, and Jeff was inspiring as always),
• A Hurricane Sandy Success Story (I swear, something good did come out of the horrendous storm that ravaged my home state and almost destroyed my childhood home),
• A Bernie Traurig Clinic Recap (a.k.a., that time I traded mounts with one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse), and
• The Tale of Goldilocks and the 300 Dressage Saddles (still a work in progress).

For now, let me catch you up on what we’ve been doing. We are still learning dressage, and I love it (go ahead DQ’s, tell me you told me so, tell me how much fun your sport is and what all I’ve been missing, I get it now). Tucker loves it too. In fact, Cindy’s been riding him once a week and he’s picking it up way faster than I am.  

All dressed up like a dressage horse!

I always suspected he’s smarter than me, and this basically proves it. These days, when I ask for something, he won’t do it if I don’t ask right. While he used to just humor me and “kind of” give me a shoulder-in, even if I didn’t ask perfectly, now I get: “um… that’s not how you’re supposed to do it.”

This results in conversations such as the following:

Hmph. Teacher’s pet.

Learning dressage reminds me of when I was learning Italian in college. I had ten years of French under my belt, and when I would struggle for a word, I’d fall back on the French word, with an Italian accent. Which was sometimes close, but almost never right. That’s what it feels like learning dressage. I’ve been riding my whole life, and I feel like I should know how to ask for something, but it’s all just a little different these days and while I have a pretty decent background, it still feels pretty foreign sometimes.

There are some awesome “Ah ha!” moments though, and I live for them. The first time I felt his haunches actually get lower behind my saddle (who knew this thing came with hydraulics?), or the other day when I got him to engage at the walk and squealed out, “OooOOh!  He just got bouncy!” — those are pretty awesome. They usually come in between me grunting and sweating and cursing under my breath (which by the way is a really bad idea when you’re wearing an ear piece with a mic — “I heard that”). Just when I feel like I’m really getting somewhere and I put in a really good workout, Cindy tells me that was just the warm-up. I’m beginning to understand why other disciplines call us Hunter Princesses.

Speaking of Hunter Princess, we haven’t ventured too far to the darkside just yet. While I am shopping for dressage saddles (more on that later), we still consider ourselves hunters. I went for a jumping lesson with Alicia last week and we both agreed that the dressage is really, really helping Tucker (and me). Turning to the jumps was just like steering a car. No bulge in the corners, no drift in the lines, no haunches slipping to the outside as we turn up the diagonal.  Best of all, Tucker is — for the first time in his life — opening up his canter in the lines and staying balanced and level. No more falling on his nose and getting strung out when I ask him to move up. This is coming partly from me learning to use my core, and partly from Tucker learning self-carriage.  

Very proud of himself after his jump school.

 So we’re using dressage as a training method to get the horse and rider stronger and straighter… I feel like we are really onto something here! Oh wait, that method’s been around for thousands of years now, hasn’t it? Well no use reinventing the wheel….

So the good news is, trial is now officially over, and I can get back to riding, and blogging about it.  The better news is that we won the trial, so all that hard work wasn’t for nothing.  The judge didn’t hand me a blue ribbon at the end, which I found a little odd… but perhaps it’s in the mail.

Tucker and I have been back to regular work for about three weeks and he’s doing really, really well.  We’ve been taking dressage lessons from the trainer at our farm (Cindy, you may remember she once let me ride one of her dressage mares — results were comical) and I am loving them.  Not that I’m going to leave hunterland anytime soon, but I am definitely going to keep up with the lessons as a way to get Tucker more supple, straight, and forward.

I think part of what I like so much is hearing things from a new perspective.  The concepts aren’t new, just presented differently.  Example:  I’ve always worked on keeping Tucker from popping his outside shoulder.  Now I’m working on not letting him collapse his inside shoulder.  See?  Same concept, just approaching it differently.  I like thinking of it this way better, it feels less like a game of whack-a-mole that I’m never going to win.  Everything is falling under the general umbrella of “forward and straight,” which is a goal we can work with.

The first lesson, we worked a lot on getting him forward, and straight.  Cindy started off by pointing out that a crooked horse doesn’t go forward.  Yes, agreed.   I like the idea of always sending him forward through and after every exercise, since that’s what we need to do over fences as well.  We started off with a bunch of quarter turns (squaring off the “corners” of our twenty-meter circle).  Tucker was at first pretty reluctant making quarter turns to the right, but we’ve been working on them and now he thinks they’re pretty easy (not to say we’re doing it right, but it’s a close enough approximation for my standards).  Cindy told me not to ride each direction using “textbook” aids, but to use the aids Tucker needs in each direction, which of course makes perfect sense.  So, to the right, since he’s stiffer, lead him with an opening right rein and outside leg, instead of outside rein and leg. 

Then we worked on some leg yields, some shoulder-in, and renvers (haunches-out, as I’ve always called it).  The renvers is pretty pitiful at this point, not going to lie.  For the shoulder-in we really just need to work on getting less angle, which is something I’ve worked on before.  For the renvers… I just can’t seem to get my weight to shift in the saddle the right way and I end up feeling all crooked and there’s poor Tucker with a big old question mark in a thought-bubble over his head.  It just needs work, we’ll put it that way.

The second lesson, we had some really nice moments.  At the trot we worked on getting me riding “up the hill” (a concept completely familiar to my DQ readers and brand-spanking-new to me).  We also incorporated lots of leg yields to free up his shoulders so I can move his shoulder where I want it.  I was amazed to find that when I open up my right shoulder, Tucker is more willing to move his right shoulder (amazing how riding properly fixes things, isn’t it?).  At this point Cindy has me working on just getting him going forward and moving laterally, not worrying just yet about getting actual cross-over (I assume at some point the finer points will come to us). 

All this work really helped with our canter, so I could keep his shoulders straight instead of just letting him throw his shoulder to the outside, and keep riding “uphill” so he doesn’t just fall on his forehand and swing his haunches around like a fish.  In fact, it worked so well that at one point after about three or four really straight, engaged canter strides, Tucker decided this was really just much hard and protested by leaping through the air and striking his front feet at the ground while simultaneously swapping his lead back and forth… impressive.  Apparently he decided that if it was tricks I wanted, he would give me some tricks.  We had been doing smaller ten-meter circles, pushing his shoulder to the inside and then getting the inside bend, so he’d engage his left hind, but after the little, er, explosion, we went back to the more familiar leg yielding exercise and then back to our canter, and got the same end result from a different approach. 

Funny horse.  When certain concepts are first introduced to him in our lessons, he worries so much about what I’m asking and whether he’s doing it right that he ends up stressing himself out too much to actually do it.  The next two rides after each lesson are great.  It’s like he needs to go home and think about it, and then the next time I’m in the saddle he’s goes from, “Omigod please stop torturing me I am not a dressage horse,” to, “Ohhhh you want my shoulder over there.  Yeah I can do that.  Here you go.”  And then he gets lots of praise, which, after all, is all he’s ever wanted.

I bet for your average dressage rider, these lessons would be appallingly boring, but for Tucker and me, we are working our little tails off.  Seriously.  At one point Cindy laughed at Tucker, who was drenched in sweat half way through the lesson despite Cindy’s observation that he “really wasn’t working too hard.”  I pointed out that I was also drenched in sweat and for the record, we were working really hard.  All a matter of perspective, I suppose….

Wow.  I’m so sorry, I let the entire month of August go by without even a word.  I hope you’ve all enjoyed the end of your summers… I’m still in trial hell, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel at the moment, which means those of you who are still willing to follow along will be treated to much more frequent blog posts.  I promise!  I have about two more weeks of trial left, and then the dust should settle.

The good news is, you didn’t miss much on the Tucker front for the month of August.  The bad news is, that’s because he was lame for most of the month.  Nothing major, he popped a splint on his right front, and although he was sound at first, he soon decided it really hurt.  (I’m pretty sure the other horses tipped him off that he could be getting a vacation and major sympathy points if he limped, so he did.)  It was actually perfect timing, I was too busy to ride, and he was too sore to work, so he just had a three week vacation of turnout and rest.  Thankfully (I can’t stress that word enough), I have an amazing barn manager, Cindy, who took great care of him while I couldn’t get there and treated the offending limb with surpass and ice.  He’ll probably be left with an ugly bump on his leg, but let’s face it, he wasn’t exactly a conformation hunter to begin with.

This weekend we went back to (mostly walking) work, and I can’t tell you the difference it has made in my general outlook on life.  I’m sort of glad that there haven’t been too many witnesses for these rides.  I don’t think they’re very pretty.  I couldn’t care less though.  It feels so nice to be back on my horse, and I can’t get enough of this view:

I tell you, Tucker fixes everything.  I was starting to get cranky, and irritable, and kind of depressed, focusing on all the wrong things and forgetting how lucky I am.  Three days of riding and currying and bathing and tack cleaning, and I am 100% better.  I have learned that I am definitely NOT the kind of girl who could ever give up the horses, not even temporarily. I’m completely and utterly miserable without my horse time.  This will be a lifelong affliction, I am afraid.  There are worse vices to have though!

As for Tucker, he was very happy to see me and has been incredibly affectionate and snuggly, which I just adore.  So nice to feel loved.  The first day I got there he was already out in his field, talking to his girls over the fence, and when I called his name he spun completely around and flung his head straight up in the air with his big old ears pointed right at me, and my heart just melted.  Then he met me at the gate and just couldn’t get enough of sniffing my hair and snuffling my tummy and licking my hands….  A non-horse person would think this is completely nuts, but it actually brought tears to my eyes, I know you all can relate.

He’s not so happy, on the other hand, about all the walking we are doing undersaddle.  If you recall, the last time we were recovering from an injury, all the walking resulted in him hacking into my blog and begging for help.  He’s equally enthused about it this time, and keeps trying to see whether instead of leg yielding maybe I meant trot?  Or maybe instead of just one longside at a time, I might like to keep going around the ring a few times?  It’s so tempting, because his trot feels great, but I don’t want to push him too hard or make him sore, and I have to be the sensible one.  So we walk for about 40 minutes and trot for maybe a total of 5, spread out over the course of the ride, and only in straight lines for now.

I’m trying to keep him entertained at the walk with lateral work and lots of circles and changes of direction.  The first time I asked for a leg yield, it felt like I was riding one of those two-person horse halloween costumes, I’d either get the front or the back to move, but not in unison.  Today’s ride saw some slight improvement in that area, though I’m pretty sure we’d still fail a field sobriety test with our walk down the centerline (in his defense, he’s not entirely sober.  I’ve been giving him a little bit of Ace to make sure he doesn’t pull any stunts and hurt himself).  He finds all of this mind-numbingly boring, though he does appreciate all the praise he gets for doing work that really isn’t very difficult.

Last time this program got him looking really muscled up and nice by the time we were done, so let’s hope the same will be true this time:

It’s good to be back, readers and bloggers.  I may not have time to catch up on everyone’s blogs this week, but hopefully next week.  I can’t wait to see what you and your lovely horses have been up to!

Don’t you hate when life gets in the way of your riding?  I’ve been defending a trial for one of my firm’s municipal clients which means, essentially, that I’ve been living at the office.  Now that the worst of it is over, I’ve come to some shocking revelations:

1.  I have a horse!  He’s really great, too.  Almost forgot about him….

2.  I have a blog!  Two blogs, actually.  And there’s been nothing but tumbleweeds rolling around on here the past few weeks.  Sorry about that, I hope no one has dust allergies.

3.  It’s summer!  I was having trouble determining the season given that I’ve been living in air conditioning and under flourescent lights for three weeks.

Tucker eyes his saddle suspiciously... vaguely recalling its purpose

 This weekend, once my eyes adjusted to the daylight, I finally got to spend some real quality time with my horse, other than the hour or so I’ve been able to sneak in to check on him over the past three weeks.  (I’ve been told by a few people who drive pick-up trucks that Tucker has been coming to the fenceline expectantly when they pull in, hoping it was me, which is basically just the saddest and sweetest thing I’ve ever heard).

I’m happy to report that Tucker was really super this weekend!  Even after three weeks off, he wasn’t spooky or fresh or tense when I rode him yesterday, just lovely and forward and relaxed.  I lunged Saturday, and while he started off playing a bit, he settled right down in a few minutes, kept one ear trained on me, and responded to all my voice commands, which was a good sign.  My fingers are tightly crossed that the Ulcer Gard is working, and it will be the solution to all the ridiculous spooking and carryings-on as of late.  I don’t think I can say for sure until I’ve had a few more good rides, which I’m planning to do this week.

  We now have a new goal, which is to determine whether my horse is, in fact, pregnant, or whether some of this can be shed away with a few weeks of exercise:

I swear I saw the baby kick....

 Looks like both of us need to get off our butts and start being mindful that it’s bikini season!  Thank goodness at least I don’t stay out all night eating….

After a week of relatively relaxed rides at the new-old barn. . . we had another not-so-great ride yesterday.  As you recall, I suspected a few weeks ago that Tucker may have been having a mid-life crisis.  Yesterday I had to get off and lunge the poor beast (on a really hot day, which I really hated doing to him), because he was spooking (at something that shouldn’t have been quite that scary) so badly that he was becoming unsafe, for both of us.  (Read:  I do not trust my big clumsy horse to stand on his hind legs and not kill us both.)

As you know, these situations cause an immediate morph into Rider-Scientist Extraordinaire.  I’ll walk you through my varied list of hypotheses as to the possible causes of this errant behavior, and show you where the Process of Elimination has gotten me so far.

1.  I went with the easiest solution first — maybe it’s just a little extra-special Spring Fever, and maybe he just needs a few pro rides.  Limited success there, I know the pro I was using had one very good ride on him.  Since he was spooking and occasionally acting like a moron (sorry Tucker, but it’s true dear) even with the pro, though, I don’t think that was the solution.

2.  Next guess was the grain, and this hypothesis definitely had merit.  When I switched barns, we also switched feeds.  He has been on Omelene 400, which is a grain that I love, for about 3 1/2 years now (he also gets beet pulp, but that didn’t change).  It’s low sugar, low protein (12%), and high fiber, and it’s forage-based (beet pulp), not grain-based, which seems to be better for Tucker.  It also has the Amplify nugget built right in, which is a weight-gain supplement I had looked into even before I started this feed.  When we moved, we switched him to Triple Crown Complete, which was the preferred feed of the barn manager there, who is very knowledgeable about nutrition and feeding.  It’s also beet pulp-based, and it’s the same 12% protein level, so I figured it was comparable.  It is, however, higher in sugar and lower in fiber, and anyone who has ever been on a diet will know immediately that means more calories.  Since Tucker was high as a kite, I thought maybe the change in feed was making him fresh.  Long story short, he’s back on the O-400 (has been for several weeks now), but the issue still isn’t resolved.  So, the grain-switch may not have helped matters, but the buck (haha, pun intended) does not stop here.

3.  Though this one wasn’t on my original list, it occurred to me after I moved that I might have been stressed out by outside factors (read: barn drama), and Tucker was picking up on the bad vibes and responding.  I’ve been blissfully happy since moving back to the new place, so I don’t think that was it.  I am usually 100% willing to take the blame when things go awry, but in this case, I don’t think it was my nervous energy causing all the problems.

4.  My next guess is ulcers.  The last time we had stomach trouble, it was after Tucker’s first away show.  When we came home, he was cranky undersaddle, super-sensitive to my leg, and throwing temper tantrums in his stall at feeding time (pawing, pacing, slamming his sides into the walls).  We treated for ulcers, then put him on SmartGut, and the behavior stopped.  That was about two years ago.  This time, we moved barns, we switched grain, and I gave him a heavy dose of wormer right before the move (in hindsight, that was bad timing).  I’ve been gathering as much info as I can, searching the COTH forum, reading veterinary articles, talking to other horse owners, etc.  It seems a lot of horses showed signs of ulcers in the form of massive spooking.  Many riders described it as “Jekyll and Hyde” behavior, which fits Tucker right now to a tee.  Some days he is lovely (like our cross country day, and our hack in the dark the other night), and other days, it is like trying to ride a fire-breathing dragon.

So, I talked to my vet’s office today, and we decided to go through a round of UlcerGard.  I’m going to give him one tube per day for about ten days, and will see if he shows any signs of improvement.  If he does, we’ll keep going for another 18 days (good lord that is going to hurt my wallet), and if not, I’ll set up a physical with my vet and see if everything is okay otherwise.  (Spooking could be vision-related, or he could be having pain elsewhere, so the tension when he spooks could be increasing the physical discomfort, say if he’s already got stiffness in his back or something).  Then again, if all this is inconclusive, he could just be going through a naughty phase, but I’d like to think better of him than that, for now.

Incidentally, FarmVet is having a sale on UlcerGard right now, $29.99 per tube if you buy twelve at a time.  Offer is good until this Friday… which gives me just enough time to transfer money out of my savings.  Sigh.  As quick as I save it, Tucker finds a way to spend it . . . .

Most of us horse owners aren’t fortunate enough to spend all day with our horses, and many of us are stuck in an office all day, instead of covered in dirt and dust at the barn like we ought to be.  For those of us like me, who are chained to a desk most of the time, there are fewer joys in life better than seeing how our beloved horses are spending their time.  Nothing brings a smile to my face quicker than getting a picture of my boy in the middle of my day.

 Here’s a little sampling from this week:

So sleepy....

"Hey can somebody open this so I can visit the girls?"

Just chillin' with Tigger

And here are a few I took myself last night, when I got to the barn.  There is something so rewarding about dragging yourself out to the farm after a long day at work, when all you want to do is curl up on the couch.  I always get a second wind as soon as I get there and kiss that velvety nose.

Who's that?

"Who, her? That's just my mom."

"She does this a lot. Just keep eating and try to look cute."

"Hmm. Okay."

Had a great ride last night after I took these, just a long and low hack in the big outdoor ring.  We finished in almost total darkness, but Tucker didn’t mind.  He sees better than me in the dark, so I let him lead the way back to the barn.  I think it makes him feel important.  Such a good boy.