Bob Harley update

 

 
Bob Harley is growing up. Fast. His body has taken on the look of a mature horse with a head that still fits into a yearling halter.  He is 15+ hands, maybe 1100 lbs, conformationally correct, nice big black feet, a chest and hip that are pretty, pretty, pretty. His brain however, is light years from maturity.  He meets me at the stall door and can't wait to get his head into the halter. He seems to love being fussed over, clipped, bathed, brushed and saddled. He stands fairly still and while he doesn't doze off like an older more seasoned horse might do he is respectful. If he isn't the one getting the attention he throws quite a little fit. While being the naughty onlooker he will pin his ears, throw his head around, weave back and forth, go in and out of his stall to his paddock and generally act out like a spoiled rotten child.

He is quirky. He is impish. He is busy. He is sensitive. He has an incredible amount of desire to please. He tries and tries and tries again. For the most part he only gets in a snit occasionally and when he does, you can usually take him back to a place he is confident and he comes right back to the trying and pleasing side of his personality. There are times when I am riding him and I almost feel like he is saying to me..." Hey mom - Look at what I can do". Usually just about that time he trips or something shiny catches his eye and I come back to the reality that he is just a baby. A four year old baby in a very horse sized body.

It has taken me a while to figure him out. There have been times when I was ready to ship him down the road with a a bunch of disclaimers and buyer beware warnings.  I have really struggled with what to do with him. He isn't like my other horses.  I am in over my head with his training. I don't have the time to provide the consistency that he so desperately needs. I have made two mistakes with trainers already and he has weathered those storms. Recently, I sent him off to another trainer and am hoping the 3rd time is a charm and that it is a good fit for him. I haven't really stopped thinking about him since I dropped him off. I am pretty sure that I know what call I am going to get. The call that says "come get this nut job and buy yourself a better horse". The plan is that he is being evaluated for 90 days. At the end of 90 days I will be given the opinion of said trainer as to whether or not he has the potential for a working cowhorse and / or ranch versatility prospect. Basically whether or not he is worth dumping a lot of money into.

The thing is - for whatever reason - I see something in this horse. He has such a drive to please. Such a willing attitude to try and excellent retention of what he learns. He is going through some pretty extreme growth spurts and still shows so much athletic ability. All that said,  I don't think that any trainer is going to give him the type of attention and spend the time figuring him out to allow him to blossom. All of this swims around my head and I find myself daydreaming about what he is going through. I swear it is like having a special needs child and putting them on the regular school bus for the first time. You just want them to be like all the rest, but you know they are just a tad different and no matter how much try and desire they have, the world isn't going to bend and mold to accommodate them.


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Stocking Up

It seems that I have plagued with vet issues lately.  It all started with Semper last fall, then Lily, and now Bob has a little issue going on.   His hind legs started to get "stocked up" in the stall.  At first it was just one and pretty minor. Then it got worse. Then the other hind leg started swelling. With exercise they would go down, not completely but some. A week ago last Monday I had just had enough... and called the vet.  Decided to take Lily and have her rescanned to see how her healing was coming along.  I am all about the "two birds with one stone" thing.

The vet scanned Lily first and she is doing marvelously.  Visually they look much better to the Vet.  I see them everyday so it is hard for me to see a difference.  It made me feel better to have her comment on how good they look.  When she did the scan we couldn't see any open spaces, the tissue is looking very good and got the o.k. to increase her paddock size. The vet even said maybe some light riding in 6-8 weeks. Since Lily doesn't understand the concept of light riding, I think we will just wait it out till the healing is just a little further along.

Then Bob.  He was pretty swollen in both hind legs. No visually apparent reason. No cuts, scraps, etc. The vet presses her thumb into the inside of his leg right about his fetlock joint and holds it for a about 30 seconds. When she moves her thumb out, there is a depression that stays for minutes - this is called pitting edema.  She explains that this means that each individual cell is retaining fluid. Not that the leg has fluid building under the skin.The body is not being efficient enough to get all the lymph moved out of his limbs. It can be caused by over work or lack of movement and excessive heat exacerbates the problem.  She watched him move and he isn't lame, but he isn't comfortable either.  She flexes him and when I trot him off, he is lame for the first few steps. She decides that we should bute him and turn him out for 7 days to see if we can get it to go down all together. I take him home for turn out and give him a loading dose of 2 grams of bute.  The next morning -  no swelling. Both hind legs are back to normal. I give him another gram of bute and go off to work.  When I get home - his legs look perfect -  but I followed Drs. order and give him another gram of bute with is dinner. The next morning when his legs still look great I decide to see what happens if I take him off the bute.  And guess what? Nothing, nada, none, zip, zero, no swelling.  He looked fine with just the turn out.

Bob was rechecked last night and the vet gave him a clean bill of health. We talked about what causes the "stocking up",  how to avoid it and what to do when I happens.

Solutions that we talked about are: cold hosing his legs after he is worked and turn out.  Pretty simple. 

I haven't ever had a horse that did this so any insight from those of you that have been there would be more than welcome.

Another feather in Bob's cap... he has never been a horse that likes having his hind legs messed with, but he has been a perfect gentleman during all this. Absolutely perfect. 

Bob Upate #2 - general observations

So things are chugging right along with Mr. Bob.  I have taken him out on the trails twice since our Memorial Day ride and he hasn't spooked or got the least bit silly.  He sure walks out nicely.  The only thing he does that I find odd is that he has to smell EVERYTHING. I mean everything. At first I thought he was trying to take a bite of the vegetation along the trail because he kept swinging his nose over to every tree, shrub and rock, etc.  He never slows down and he never opens his mouth to take a bite so I started watching him and he is smelling it.  Weird. 

In the arena he is getting better and better.  As long as you keep it quiet and have a spot to bring him back to when he gets a little anxious he can learn by leaps and bounds.  I have found that my trot circle is where we can go to give him that mental break when he needs it. Yesterday we were working on him staying in frame and transitioning from a walk to a trot to a lope. He does the walk to trot well. The trot to the lope he wants to give me attitude.  I put him in his circle, pushed him into the bridle and asked him to trot in frame, then ask him to lope, letting him have his face if he stayed on his arc and quiet. He would do it, but he would shake his head and get all wiggly. So back to the trot and pushed up and into frame he would go.  It didn't take long for him to figure out that loping off quietly and not giving attitude would give him some "relief" from the working trot. And... he is much better if I pay less attention to his head and more attention to where I want to go.  Big lesson right there!  He is going to train me to look where I want to go.

Funny thing about Bob... We also worked roll backs on the fence. With Semper, Scooter and Lily, if you were to work a roll back on the fence and you did the same thing 3 or 4 times, they would begin to anticipate it. They would all start to slow at the fence and be thinking "turn now".  Not Bob. I must have done the same thing at least a dozen times each direction yesterday and he never once anticipated the turn. He never even gave it a thought. 

It was kind of nice that he wasn't thinking as much about what we were going to do next and more about what we were doing right then.  It can get a little tough when you are riding those big thinkers.  They are pleasers and get so tuned into what you are GOING to do next that they don't pay attention what you are actually trying to get done.  Bob stayed with me and went when he was asked instead of constantly saying "want me to do it now" & "how about NOW". 

I keep thinking I should have one of those OSHA signs posted in the barn that counts the number of days accident free.  It would say... "60 + days and counting since Bob had a meltdown". He has been with me at the barn for 8 weeks and he is still not exhibiting any bad behaviors. In fact, he is turning into a rather solid citizen.

Bob update...

I took Bob for a ride at the lake on Memorial Day.  I picked my favorite trail because I thought that it would be less traveled.  Ha ha ha.  We saw lots of house boats with loud music blaring and dogs barking. We saw rabbits, turkeys, ducks, geese, and a whooping crane. We saw bicyclers clad in Lycra and shiny helmets. We had a game warden come at us an his Polaris ATV at about 30 miles an hour. We went through gates, over bridges and creeks. Up and down hills, through grassy areas, over logs and down rocky paths. We walked, long trotted and loped. Bob spooked and whirled several times. What you would expect from a green 3 year old.  We had been out for about two hours on the trail and were about to the point where I was going to start heading back and we came around a corner to see - picture this...  an older, heavy set, gray haired man, in a red Hawaiian print shirt, Bermuda shorts, hugging a large pine tree.  Actually he was trying to untie his house boat that was tethered to the tree. The tree was kind of leaning over the lake and he had shimmied up the tree had his body laying on the tree and both arms and legs wrapped around the tree.  As I approached the man turned his face towards me and said hello.  It was at this point Bob literally looks back at me as if to say "o.k. I give. I don't know what you are expecting but I have seen it all and I don't care anymore."  Bob turns back to the trail, drops his head and just continued walking like the guy wasn't even there. From that point on... he didn't spook at a thing. He just put his head down and walked, trotted and loped like an old seasoned horse.   I think we had a "moment".

Bob Harley, Bob Marley's redneck cousin

When events happen in your life do you try to make a learning experience from them? I want to learn something from every experience I encounter.  In some instances that might be a big expectation but in my horse life, I examine everything for a lesson learned.  The problem is that I do end up making the same mistakes over and that makes me feel like a total loser.  I find it helps if I write my "lessons learned" done. And then you all get to read what a big, fat, dorky loser I can truly be. My current lesson is an "in progress" lesson.  I think. Maybe.  I really don't know. But I do know that there is some kind of lesson to be learned here, it just isn't crystal clear yet.

Today you all are going to meet Bob Harley, Bob Marley's redneck cousin. AKA In a Smoking Instant

We went to a UCDavis sale a few years back to bid on a a stud horse for a friend of ours.  He was going to be out of town and really wanted the horse so we took a trailer and went to do his bidding. Before we got there they pulled the horse he wanted from the sale. We decided to stay and see what they had to offer.  Mr. Wonderful gets a bidders number. Now.... Mr. Wonderful with a number is not usually a good thing. He likes auctions and he loves to gamble.  I figured it was a horse sale and I was safe. Not so much.  The last horse through the sale was a bred mare. She was eight years old, an AQHA pleasure bred mare, but looked more like a cow horse than a pleasure horse. She was bred to the stud we were there to buy, Little Doc Belle.  He is by a big time cutting horse sire out of Texas - SR Instant Choice. Mr. Wonderful couldn't help himself and placed the opening bid of $375.  No one else bid. No one. Nada-nother bid. So we went home with a bred mare.  He just kept repeating... But the stud fee was $750. I got a good deal. 

Bob was born the next spring. Mr.Wonderful always refers to him as HIS horse. Whatever. The minute he hit the ground I said...oh baby, baby- What a looker, he is all mine.  And he has always been a real looker. Very stylish. You got to love a pretty bay horse. But Bob has had his issues. Bob is not like any of my other horses. He has always been a little obnoxious. At about 3 weeks old, he learned he could push his momma away from her feed. He would literally run backwards and kick the crap out of her. She would just move off and act all butt hurt. She never did the momma mare thing and discipline him. He grew increasingly bold. At four months I decided to have him gelded to see if that put a damper on his attitude. That along with the ground work was helping but he still was a bratty little thing.  After  I got him to the point where you could catch him, lead him, trim his feet, etc. I pretty much left him alone to grow.  But the mistake I made was I left him alone, as in without other horses to teach him some manners.  I should have put him out with the twisted sisters. Hindsight is 20/20.  So he spent the winter and most of his yearling year on his own. As a two year old I sent him to a cowboy to get him started.

This is the post after I picked him up:
I took Bob Harley to the trainer to start his education. Here comes some of the bad. The trainer feels that he has no sense of self preservation. Not good. I sent him to the same trainer that started Scooter for me. I really like and respect him. I listened to what he said when I picked him up last week and am mulling it over. I turned Bob out with the broodmares and am going to give him until next spring to kind of soak up what he learned and then give him one more chance at a trainer to see if he matures or changes in his time out. I hate to give up on a horse to easy, but on the other hand I hate to throw money away too.

The other issues that my cowboy trainer warned me of was that Bob would try to bite or kick him while he was mounting and dismounting and that he would charge the stall cleaner while she was cleaning the stalls. But the good news was that he was not a bucker. 

I did as I had planned and I put him out with the twisted sisters and left him to deal for about 5 months. Beginning of this year, I brought him in and started taking him up to RD's with me.  She and I worked with him several times on the ground and then one of us would get on him in the round pen.  Things were going o.k.  He was a little spastic but I wasn't seeing any of the behavior that the cowboy trainer had mentioned. He was standing still to be mounted and dismounted. He is reactive still but he seemed to be really trying to be good. When I brought Lily home, I left him with RD.  I shared all the information that I had from cowboy trainer and we decided to give him some time and see where it went. She called me three days in and said "get rid of this horse, he is dangerous".  He had gotten untied and she grabbed at the lead rope he was dragging and he had kicked her in the back. RD has a young daughter and the thought of her possibly getting kicked by my horse overwhelmed me. If he was so ready to fire, he wasn't safe.  I corresponded with another horsey friend and asked her opinion. She said the same thing... get rid of him. I had made my decision. Mr. Wonderful was NOT on board with this decision.  He said that I was being to quick to judge. He said that I had not spent enough time on this horse to know if I was making the right decision. Frankly I didn't care what he thought, he wasn't the one that had to spend the time or take the risk of getting kicked, bit or bucked off.  A week later, RD calls me back and says that she was too quick to judge. That he was coming along nicely and she admitted that it was probably her fault that she got kicked. That she had startled him, she knew what kind of young, reactive horse he was and that she had put herself in a position that she shouldn't have. Well. o.k.  Now what?  I scrapped the plans to sell him  and decided to leave him there for now. 

My original plan was to have Scooter go out for training first as he is a year older than Bob. Not being to sure that RD is a perfect fit for Scooter, I sent him to TL. Which is MY choice. But that also means that I have to pull Bob out of training.  RD is more than annoyed with me over pulling him.  She says he is coming along fine, that he isn't displaying any BAD behaviors but he has a huge motor and that he can and will put up a fight if he doesn't want to do something.  She is worried that I can't get through to him or that I will be afraid to go there with him.  When I went to pick him up she rode him for me.  He walked off while she was getting on, which I hate. She said that she could fix that. He was grinding on the bit and was a nervous mess. She had ridden him that morning and said he was way better in the morning than he was that afternoon. I hate to say this... but I felt that her annoyance with me, had flowed over to my horse.  And then I felt guilty. 

I decided that Mr. Wonderful was right. Now... here comes the lesson part, finally.   I was relying on second hand information to tell me what to do with this horse. I should know this horse better than anyone and I don't. (You would have thought I would have figured that out by now - see Lily posts) I owed it to Bob Harley to get to know him for myself.  I took him to the boarding facility where Semper is and started over. 

The first day, he was... na,na,na,nervous. Gnawing on the bit. Wouldn't stand still to be mounted. He didn't offer to nip or bite, just would not stand still.  So that is all I worked on. I must have gotten on and off eight or ten times before he gave it up and stood still. I just sat there for a good 15 minutes. Wouldn't let him walk off. When he was standing relaxed I got off and put him up. No fight. No mess. Just quiet. Went out the second day and started again. And you know what? He was quieter. It only took two tries and he stood still. Less chomping on the bit and he didn't offer to move off until asked. I walked him around and he was in a hurry and anxious.  I quietly asked him to go into a small circle when he got in a hurry. After a few circles he just soften and relaxed.  We walked and jogged for about 20 minutes and when he was good and relaxed, soft and willing, I quit, got off and put him up.

This has been the scenario for the last several weeks. Each day adding a little more. I changed things up and put him in  a bosal, I spent time working him from the ground, some days before I rode, some days after.  TL rode him and she likes him.  Sunday I took him out on a trail ride with a good friend. She rides a seasoned trail horse and it was a perfect outing for our first time. We met Lycra clad, helmet wearing bicyclist and he took it all in stride. We even saw a snake on the trail - not a rattler but a snake none the less and he was fine.

I have to say, I couldn't be more disgusted with myself and pleased with him all at the same time. Disgusted because I was so willing to become a sheep and just go along with the hype. Disgusted because I didn't do my due diligence in spending time getting to know this horse. Disgusted because Mr. Wonderful might have been right. (OK not really - I am actually happy he was vocal and persistent) Pleased to know that this horse might just become a good citizen after all.  I am not saying he is perfect, or that he is going to be a fabulous show horse, or a kids horse, but pleased because he is teaching me something.