You Spin Me Right Round Baby

Shit is getting real here at the barn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, not that kind of shit.

Crazy barn drama type of shit. Last night I went to the barn just for a normal ride. I went through my normal routine which includes being very careful to follow all the rules of the barn. I swept up after myself, turned off lights, cleaned up poop, etc. I got into the arena for a ride and had a wonderful and productive ride for about 25 minutes and then, I still think just to mess with me, the barn owner decided to start fixing something.

At 8:15 at night.

I mean it’s his barn, he can work on it whenever he wants. But generally that means just briefly checking in with anyone at the barn to make sure that you aren’t causing a dangerous situation before you start some construction project. Thanks to a complete lack of communication my pony tried to kill both of us by getting so completely wound up that she spun circles around me for about 20 minutes. She was so scared that even her eyes were sweating and this is a pony that is nearly bomb proof. The weather is chilly and all the horses are on edge but that is just so much more of a reason to briefly check in with the person that is paying to ride at your barn before you start some noisy project. If he had told me before he started causing a racket I would have just dismounted and left so that I didn’t put any of us in that situation but instead he ended up prolonging my ride by about half an hour which meant that I was there after barn close. That meant that he tossed all my stuff, including my phone and jacket, off to one side in the barn isle and shut the lights off on me.

All I could think is where am I right now, preschool? The Twilight Zone?

People just don’t behave like this in real life. This is reality show style drama and that’s coming from someone who has worked in HR for the last 5ish years and has seen some crazy drama.

After I got Katai to stop spinning and lower her head a little I climbed back on so that she wouldn’t be dwelling on that scariness over her day off. I got a nice walk and trot in each direction and then climbed off.

After the ride I went out and got her groomed up and swept all the dirt into a pile again but then she decided she’d had it and wasn’t standing in cross ties anymore so I removed both of us before something dangerous happened and walked her up to her pasture. It was when I got back that the lights were off and all my stuff was piled to the side of the isle and the pile I had left had been swept up. At first I wondered if I’d left something in front of a door or something so he’d had to move it but no, it was just passive aggressively moved. I turned the lights back on, put my stuff away and then grabbed some miscellaneous items that I normally keep at the barn so that I can get that stuff back home and organized before my move. I felt guilty for leaving the pile of dirt but was absolutely going to pick it up as soon as I got back and it would never have even been left if the owner had been just a little bit conscientious since then my pony wouldn’t have been so wound up that I had to leave it like that.

Typing this up is still making me upset enough that I’m shaking and again, this is coming from someone that deals with a lot of conflict. I just don’t want to deal with conflict at the barn since that’s my happy place. I have no ill will towards the owners or the barn or the people that I’ve enjoyed spending time with over the last few months. I was going to continue to highly recommend this barn to people but after this behavior over the last couple weeks I just can’t in good conscious recommend that anyone board at this loony bin which is unfortunate since it is a truly beautiful facility and there are some great people boarding there. I’ve been trying to just keep a low profile since I was aware that this type of drama was going to occur during my last few days but now I’m really going to need to be extra cautious. Unfortunately looks like I’m not going to be able to move this weekend and since they are demanding to be on the property when I leave (drama with the person who’s picking me up who apparently "said bad things" about the owner’s wife) I’m limited to which days I can get out of there. Luckily I do have a trailer I can borrow just in case I can’t get schedules to work out but since it’s all the way across town I’d rather try this avenue first.

Well Tonight Sucked

I have nothing positive to say other than that we didn't kill each other.

I'm normally a really positive person and on my blog I find the sun behind the clouds or the half full glass but tonight that just isn't the case. I really did know that she wasn't going to be her normal self at the new barn, in a new environment, around new horses, in a new arena but I hoped that some smidgen of the Katai that I know and love would remain. Instead I got some sort of devil pony in her place tonight.

I think she was more scared than naughty and I treated it as such being gentle but firm but when she continued to blow through my aids on the lunge I got firmer and it barely made a difference. On top of that, and I'm aware it wasn't helping me at all, I had an audience. All things considered it was the best audience I could have had of a few of the more"rough and ready" riders that have dealt with young horses but they've been boarding there for many, many years and although nothing Katai did was any different than what any young horse might have done I still feel like it's going to be the gossip of the barn.

I stayed almost two hours late at work so that I could get to the barn late, and I easily had enough work to do to fill the time since it is retirement plan audit season, so I got there around 6:30. I ate my dinner and changed so that I was catching and tacking up closer to 7:00 and hoped the barn would be quiet and it was for a little while. I wanted nothing more than to have the place to myself the first couple of times I worked her so that I wouldn't make a scene or disturb anyone else. It did sort of work since not one of the three people that showed up rode their horse but Katai did certainly get a lot of attention. They cooed over her while I tacked her up and she wasn't great in the cross ties but not as bad as I'd feared either. Then I got her into the arena and all hell broke loose. I knew she'd look at the mirrors but what I didn't guess was that she would think that every time she saw them she was seeing a friendly herd member that immediately trotted away as soon as she went past. She was transfixed staring at them since that was the only way to keep the "friend" there and every time I got her to go past the mirror she about had a heart attack. The one thing I'm proud of, and yet still second guessing myself on, is that I rode.

After close to 30 minutes of lunging, all over the arena and in different directions, she was calming down just enough that I thought I might actually have a better shot if I were mounted. As I said at the beginning we did survive but lots of turn on the forehands later and a couple of fairly reasonable short walks in a straight line at my direction and I climbed off and called it a day. She felt like she either wanted to rear or bolt the entire time but she did listen to me and kept all four feet on the ground with some help from me.

Its tough to know if it was the right thing to do and I was evaluating the situation the entire time I was in there trying to figure out what my options were to turn the situation around. I think a whole bunch of stuff like the weather, seriously?!? 8 days of pouring rain and crazy howling winds at below 40, or the new place or the people while I tacked up hugging her and making a fuss over her certainly didn't help and I do realize they are all things that she needs to get used to and I WANT her to get used to it's just that I wanted to do my best to ease her into all of it and not have it strike at once.

I'm still trying to pick out anything positive that I can and I'm definitely not by any means giving up. I'll be out there again tomorrow to repeat the whole process. Hopefully minus that craziness.

We're Still Here

I promise :-)

Things have been weird lately. Crazy weather dumped 12-18 inches of snow on my area while leaving places only 20-25 miles away completely clear. Spring has hit in a big way, other than the previously mentioned snow storm, so pony mare has been NUTZ. Easter. The EHV-1 thing has been staying quiet, knock on wood, but after being put off so many times I still kind of feel like I’m stuck in limbo and was having trouble getting excited for the move plus work has been busy and I’ve got a big independent project I’m working on that I’ve been having fun with so I’ve put a lot of focus into that.

Because of all of the above I missed going to the barn from Monday-Friday last week and which made everything feel even weirder. When Thursday came around and I had my lesson I regained motivation and was pumped to get back and work with Katai. Since then I haven’t missed a day.

Friday I lunged her with side reins for the first time in a long while and had them a bit shorter than I normally do and she was excellent! I also groomed her and fed her her grain which is more necessary than it has been in awhile since I can see her ribs! Saturday I rode and made a lot of progress. I felt like I was actually retaining some stuff from my lessons and it was working the way it’s supposed to! She was more through than she’s been but she was also INCREDIBLY spooky. She just does these funny little jumps in place and then moves right on but after about 10-15 of these things it started to get funny, and a little frustrating, since I felt like even though she was listening pretty well her mind was somewhere else. Sunday I spent a couple of hours with her on Easter morning and the weather was spectacular! Warm, humid, warm, sunny, warm! I remembered what it was like to not feel like you’re just trying to survive outside. We went on a short trail ride and despite the temperature she was amped up.  She really does a good job of listening and not being overly naughty but she was right on the edge of even listening so I kept it short and positive. After we got back, in one piece, I took her out to graze and her gratitude was so clear that I actually teared up. All of the other horses, whos’ owners rarely make it to the barn, were staring at us and trying to convince me to take them out as well.

Tonight I was out again and it was rough. The hussy mare has decided that she CAN'T SURVIVE without her friends, cue sappy music. She had lost her mind, gone, poof, no mind here, and spun wildly back and forth while tied to the wall. I may not always be the smartest human but I realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to make any positive progress doing anything that involved brain cells so I brought her outside to the round pen to gallop in crazy speedy circles for awhile and finally worked on clipper and spray bottle desensitization. I am extremely proud to say that we are finally making some progress with those things and she stood fairly still for both tonight. I groomed her, rebagged her tail and let her graze and eat her grain and then put her back. 

Hopefully the hormones will calm down soon and I'll have my reasonable Katai back.