This New Year brings in a New Energy

With the New Year come resolutions, statements of intent, affirmations, SMART goals, whatever your preference. I’m sure we all share a feeling, around about this turning of the year that it is a time of change and that we can try to focus this for the better.

My statement of positive intent is that this New Year brings in a new energy.

First things first. Rocky went to the physio for assessment on the 2nd and got a very good report. The muscles in his back are no longer in spasm, and appear to have developed a bulk more in keeping with the size of his vertebrae. This is despite him essentially being left to rest, recuperate and just grow for the last three months.

My friends will know that my life has been somewhat changed over the last few months. I decided to give us all a break and go old school with Rocky’s mild kissing spine injury and try a bit of Dr Green and a whole lot of love.

I’ve probably managed to work him in hand one or twice a week since we moved back to livery in mid-November, he’s been out in the field every day and in at night, and we did a course of treatment with the Arc equine. Rocky, me and all the other animals are also learning about energy healing, after what in retrospect has been a tough time emotionally and psychologically.

Rocky looks really good. So the plan now is to do a couple of months in hand, building a back that one could sit on, and then aim to get back on and hopefully get going.

And hopefully we will find that the new year brings in a new energy, and a new positive start.

It’s a funny old thing, life. It is completely possible to keep trudging on from day to day, keep oneself busy, particularly with a demanding job and horses at home, and completely fail to check in with ourselves.

I liken my recent experience to working in the office at dusk; it gradually gets darker and darker, but as long as we can see the screen and keep typing, we don’t realise how much we are actually struggling until a colleague walks in and turns on the light.

Once the fluorescent striplight is on, it throws everything into sharp focus, the seemingly familiar is briefly and strangely illuminated. If we happen to glance up at that moment of unguarded change, we may get a surprising flash of clarity. The pile of boxes in the corner may seem more intrusive than usual, or the mess more disturbing.

And in that moment of stark illumination, we get to choose. We either blink and carry on, ignoring the familiar mess, or we decide that the situation must change. And from that point, if a decision is made to change, then nothing can ever look quite the same again.

And the New Year brings in a new energy.

I have always said that to learn about horses is to learn about life. Horses are first sentient; however their language isn’t one of words but of energy. The power of positive expectation cannot be over estimated

https://blog.dressagenaturally.net/107-the-power-of-expectation?utm_content=81684869&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&hss_channel=fbp-58052143396

nor can the power of negative energy be understated.

https://www.wikiart.org/en/edvard-munch/the-scream-1893

We have to remember our responsibilities

And to look after ourselves first

and to make sure that we spend enough time doing the things that make us happy

Photos by Jo Prestwich

Positive energy gives you wings!

And the greatest energy is love, self love and universal love.

Simple. But not always easy xx

May you also find that the New Year brings in a new energy.

Thanks to the fabulous Jo Prestwich for the lovely photos.

And to Charlie Mackesy for permission to share his wonderful drawings. Do check out his other work.

https://charliemackesy.com/

The Rocky Road to Rehab

It’s taken me a few weeks to be able to write about our glorious youngster’s diagnosis and the Rocky road to rehab.

I know all about the road to rehab- it’s almost 7 years since Cal fractured his carpal bone. And I completely believe a good outcome is possible – Cal’s fracture taught me to trust the process and detach from the outcome. He has become the most fabulous horse you could wish for. And the fracture, although well healed, made sure he was another horse I could never sell. (How does anyone manage to sell a horse?)

I clearly remember the early uncertainty, the agony of box rest, the hundreds of miles we walked in hand, and then finally the relief when he jumped his first course and stayed sound.

I just never expected to be on the road to rehab with Rocky.

We bought him as a yearling.

Well bred, well handled, but completely unspoilt, from a trusted source. He came home with us from the South Coast, after Paddy dumped me in the ditch at Longleat. Paddy did share some wise words with him on the trip home though- he travelled like a pro and learned to eat out of a haynet on the way.

We turned him out with another colt at a friend’s place and let them be boys, living out and razzing around together. We brought him in to the livery yard aged 3, a couple of months before we moved into our own place. Once our land was sorted the three horses went out together full time, and gelled as a little herd straightaway.

Paddy was hiding – Ernie thinks they are his brothers anyway

The pity party

The reason it’s taken me a few weeks to share a bit more is that I have been having a proper pity party. Everything we have learned about over the last few years, the entire focus of our horsey learning, has been about correct classical training, that is meant to preserve the health of the horse and prevent this type of injury.

The stages of balance, from Egon Von Nendirf’s beautiful book. Rider is Melissa Simms, who passed away only recently.

Good work is meant to be therapeutic. Rehab is really just about going back to absolute basics, working on the ground for now, opening up those intervertebral spaces and building the muscle in between. It’s basically what we should be doing all along.

Rocky had the joint space medicated, and this was followed up with some ultrasound to the muscles of his lumbar region, as these also were in spasm.

Rocky working at camp this spring

The ODGs knew all about kissing spine- correct classical training focuses on opening the back, elongating the top line, thereby preventing them occurring. Piaffe, the test of collection, also shows maximal length from tail to poll, when done correctly, along the arch of the top line.

Nuno showing an exemplary piaffe- all on the seat

Levade requires even more topline

Einsr Smit-Jensen archive
The lumbar back is curved, the loins coiled, the hind legs and hocks flexed.

We’ve taken it really slowly

We did 6 weeks of in hand work and sat on him briefly at 3, did about 3 months in hand work and rode him away for 6 weeks at 4, and then did a bit more with him in his 5th summer, a few fun rides, a bit of light schooling and hacking, a bit of polework.

This year, his 6th year, was meant to be when the work got a bit more consistent. As often happens, our working lives have been the limiting factor, as well as Rocky’s ‘tricky nature’.

Do we even believe horses can have tricky natures?

https://sophieshorsetales.com/done-with-well-behaved-horses/

This is not a young horse that has been over-worked…

Or was he?

I was starting to use judgmental words about him though- ‘backward’, the ‘work ethic of a flea’, because he would stop dead when tired and have a little buck when asked to go forwards.

I’ve written about this before

https://www.nelipotcottage.com/use-your-words-carefully/

I should have known better.

So the pity party has been all about where did we go wrong?

Have we done too much ridden work with him?

http://www.equinestudies.org/ranger_2008/ranger_piece_2008_pdf1.pdf

Have we ridden him too much, when we should have been building a stronger horse with good in hand work and just riding a little?

Is the injury the result of an unfortunate conformational glitch?

Did the injury occur when he got stuck under the partition in the truck a couple of years ago? He didn’t thrash around or panic but still…

And then after a couple of days madness, I gave myself a slap and a talking to. It doesn’t matter how it happened- we just need to focus on the rocky road to rehab.

Rehab is a rollercoaster of emotions, hopes and dreams, where actually we just have to knuckle down, do the work and trust the process. All the previous learning, all the work on posture, timing, training, helping horses find biomechanically correct movement, will surely get put to extra good use now.

The value of good in hand work

The value of good in hand work can not be overstated. I never manage to do as much as I should. Only last week, Cal, my supposedly advanced horse, was the demo pony for a Patrice clinic, which meant I was the demo human (gulp). We found a few holes in the simple work- for example the SI left has too much neck bend, and so doesn’t weight the inside hind or stretch along the outside, and leg yield left, he doesn’t actually choose to step past his barrel with his hind leg-the mistakes are much easier to feel and correct from the ground if we are observant and honest enough with ourselves.

It’s also important not to pussy foot around with the rehab horse. We mustn’t look at them as if they are broken- they find this really disconcerting. Instead we should look at them with soft eyes, taking in the details of the movement, the stretch needed here, the balance needed there. We should do all the best work, asking nothing less than enough, yet noticing and rewarding every try that gets us towards better. We should remind them of their magnificence, encourage them to use themselves fully and correctly, and welcome the moment when the whole fabulous horse turns up.

In hand work also teaches us about our horses’ training brain. Rocky has always thrown his whole genetically gifted body at any task. When I ask him to slow down and actually work within himself, paying attention to the details of which leg goes where, he then needs to work really slowly, with lots of breathing and thinking breaks. This is timing and observation I will need to take forward to the ridden work once we get back on.

Some vets recommend a Pessoa or similar training aid when rehabbing a horse with kissing spines. The advantages are that it stretches the horse ‘over the back’- that horrid modern phrase. The disadvantages are that any training aid attached to the mouth only serves to teach the horse to avoid the bit- imagine jagging yourself in the teeth every time you move a leg?

In classical training, the bit belongs to the horse.

The horse has to learn to trust the bit, to take it forwards, to use it as a point of reference to reach towards and work around. The bit should never be used against the horse, neither as a means of control nor as a tool to ’round the neck’. Even the subtlest of left/right actions backwards on the bars of the north or downwards on the tongue teach the horse to avoid the aversive pressure and duck behind the bit to relieve the pain. Working them in a training aid that attaches to the mouth isn’t subtle, and there is no way the bit can act in the corners of the mouth, as it should, when the head is strapped down.

I have been using the equi-bands, to encourage Rocky to lift his tummy and round his back – this specific training aid has no front part so all influence on the head is from the human hand to the front of the cavesson, teaching the horse to stretch forward over the topline. The connection to the cavesson should be like the connection to the rein- and the line held like a rein- it only acts forward and up, and continually places the contact in front of the horse so that he learns to take the contact forwards.

Manolo- the photo shows beautifully how asking for a forward long neck extends the spinous processes. His contact is a bit vague in this moment but you get a good sense of elbow bent, line held correctly, lower arm opening forwards encouraging the topline to reach.

And perhaps most of all we should never underestimate the healing power of love, positive energy, and sunshine.

Rocky chilling out after a work session with his Arc gizmo on in the sun