Love

I've always kind of wondered if Katai likes me. Obviously it doesn't really matter but since she's my partner in this dressage journey I'd really like for her to enjoy her time with me. Often when I look at her she'll look a bit crabby so, while she whinnies to me as I drive up and walks up to me in the pasture, I've just assumed that she's not particularly fond of me.

Then I watched this video that I took to show Katai's progress with the hose and the wash rack. I can see here how connected she is to me and how, while she is looking for peppermints she's also looking to me for reassurance. So fun to be able to see this and to know that maybe she is sort of fond of me :)

Honesty Is the Best Policy

I had another post all planned out about my ride on Tuesday and today but then I realized that it was another post where I talked about Katai being a little sore or off and that by now anyone reading probably either thinks that;

A: My pony is broken
B: My pony is broken and why haven't I called the vet
C: That I'm a horse hypochondriac (spoiler alert, this is a little true)

So, I decided that instead of posting that again I'm going talk a little about what this is all about. Call this a little personal therapy session if you will ;-)

The first thing that feeds into this is that Katai is extremely honest. She really is a sensitive flower and is very clear about things when they don't feel completely well or if she's even slightly sore or uncomfortable. It doesn't mean that I give that any less weight to what she tells me, just that I need to translate that from the normal equivalent and I'm not very good at that.

who could say no to this face

The other thing is that I am a bit of a horse hypochondriac. At any small slight shortness or sore muscle (I poke and prod at her after ride especially if there's any type of shortness or attitude) and look for that kind of stuff. Plus, then when I find something like that I never know when I should actually ride and when I should call it and give her the day off or maybe just walk.

I know that I baby her too much but I'm just not sure what's ok. I know that to get her strong enough she needs to occasionally work with sore muscles, after all I do the same, but at the same time when is that ok and when is it not.

This also always gets worse when I fall in love. I had some horrible experiences when I was growing up on the farm. Many animals that I loved died and some in horrific ways. Sometimes they were babies or young animals that just shouldn't have died that early in their life. I learned to keep my heart at bay and now it takes me years in some cases to actually love. I've only just started to really be able to give my heart to Katai and with that comes treating her like glass. Also, every time she's a little off I start trying to pull my heart away since part of me seems to think that every time she's a little off it's a career ending injury or something that will lead to needing put her down.

Crazy I know but those scars are going to take awhile to heal since they were the first 20 or so years of my life.

So, my question to you is when do you call it. When do you ride through soreness and when do you call it and either do an easy ride or not ride at all. Or, is your horse the stoic type where you never know and just give them an easy day after you know they've had a tough one.

The Feeling is Mutual

From The Heart

Long and mushy post to follow so if you want to skip to the lesson update it’s at the start of paragraph 7. 

 

I’ve known for a while that I never get that attached to animals, even close pets. I rarely, truly involve my heart in their care. I believe that this started because I grew up on a farm and so I learned from a very young age about death and suffering, there is really no nicer way to put it. I saw lambs that I had fed from birth die for no apparent reason and baby bunnies that I had saved and spent hours with getting eaten by one of our pet cats. I also was taught how to raise an animal for meat. These are things that the majority of people never experience especially from such a young age and in many ways I know it made me a stronger person but it also taught me to keep my heart out of things.

 

Of the eight horses I’ve owned I only ever really loved one of them and that was Sora. Even with her, when she was hurt and I had to make some tough decisions I pulled away and insulated my heart so that by the time I lost her it was only really painful for a few days. I’ve actually always been happy and even kind of proud that I don’t get hurt and don’t mourn the loss of pets/horses like other people do. It was reading Viva Carlos that made me start to question myself. At first when I started reading J. Williams' blog  after she lost Carlos I was extremely heartbroken for her but at the same time I was sort of proud that I’d never gone through that myself. However, the longer I followed her blog and the more I read the more I started to wonder why I’ve never felt that way. Was it because I handle grief differently or was it because I’d never really loved any of the horses that I’ve owned. Maybe the reason that I’d never felt real grief when they moved on to different homes, which is of course different than having to make the decision to put them down, was because I’d never really let myself get attached to them in the first place.

 

This is a topic that I’ve spend a lot of time thinking about recently and I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that since my teens I’ve never really let myself get attached to, or love, any animal or pet that I’ve owned. I’ve always done my best to keep my heart out of the way. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ve slowly learned, while dating of all things, how to open up my heart and love someone even though there is the possibility of getting hurt and it is ultimately a good feeling, a better feeling than just keeping myself from getting attached. I bring this up now in this blog because I feel I’m at a crossroads with Katai.

 

Down one path I put some more training into her, find her a little girl and use the money from that sale to buy myself something else.  I’m not exactly sure why I would do this other than to get something a little taller, and I do mean a little taller because I absolutely adore this height range. I’d love to be able to afford a fancy GRP with warmblood movement in a small package but that unfortunately won’t be in my price range. Right now since I don’t really know how talented Katai is I don’t know if I could afford something with more talent.

 

Down the other path I keep her, ride her, train her, show her, and learn how to get truly attached to her. This path is scary to me for several reasons but especially because I don’t know what the future will bring. I can only partially trust any advice I get from anyone on her ability to do dressage because all they can see is her height or maybe her coloring. She is not what anyone of the people I know, who own warmbloods or quarter horses, would want so of course they advise me to sell her and get something different. That means that the only way for me to figure out if she has what it takes to get to 2^nd or 3^rd level, which would be where I’d like to ride at eventually, is my knowledge and I don’t have a lot of that at this point. Of course there is also the possibility that I will put my heart into her and she will top out at 1^st or, and I doubt it, training. That, of course, doesn’t make this the wrong path but again it does make it tough for me since I like to keep my heart out of it until I KNOW that things will work out. I think Katai is incredibly talented and I see her doing things that people say are good signs such as her easy balance at the canter and the fact that it has always been easy for her to canter at the drop of a hat, even on the lunge. She is built uphill and has reasonably good, balanced confirmation especially for a mutt pony :) She balances on her hindquarters more naturally than any horse I’ve owned and her penchant for rearing, more of a Lavade, means that she does naturally balance her weight on her haunches.

I’ve even heard one of the instructors at the barn, while watching Katai pull her lavadeesque naughtiness on J comment that “she tucks under well” which was said in an excited and impressed way. Ultimately I’m more likely to hold us back than Katai and I realize this as well.

 

Right now I feel like I’m about 80% - 90% sure that I’m going to head down the second path but I need a little more time to think about it and commit.

 

All of this is funny to go over right now because I had a horrible lesson last Thursday. Katai was absolutely convinced that she didn’t want to work with us and was resisting absolutely everything we asked for. I believe that she was in heat again due to a new mare being added to her pen. She seems to get tight and sore when she is in heat, and of course crabby which I can relate to, which leads to her trotting around with her head in the air stiff as a board. I also blame myself because it has been proven to me time and again that all she really needs is consistency and last week I was completely unable to provide that because of stuff going on in my life. Since that lesson I’ve had two good rides on her and I finally moved from my old apartment to the new one on Monday so my life should settle down again. Yesterday she was absolutely fantastic and we had the best, maybe only, real stretchy trot that we’ve had. She did it nice, and slow, and uphill in both directions.

I couldn’t stop grinning.

My Anchor

My boyfriend broke up with me yesterday on my way home from work, the week of Thanksgiving, by text. I'd had a gut feeling for the past two weeks that something was going on but I never thought it was that. I feel completely blindsided especially because I truly loved the guy and there was no indication that he didn't love me. He was still looking at me with gooey eyes, holding me close, kissing me on the top of the head, pulling me onto his lap on the couch when we were watching a movie together and we were having fun in bed.

I really didn't see it coming.

I did get him to admit that he "bumped into someone else and just went crazy" so whether it was someone he knew from before or just someone new I'll never know. I'm completely positive that he broke up with me because the relationship wasn't new and exciting anymore.

I'd rather never pull my outside life into my horse blog but this relationship has been so important to me and such a wonderful thing that I need to address it and mostly I needed to say that Katai is truly my anchor.

Tonight it was cold and dark out and I was sad and wanted nothing more than to go home, curl up in a little ball and cry but I wanted so badly to see Katai's fluffy ears, to hear her high little whinny when she sees my car because she knows that I'm there for her, and to put on her nice warm blanket to protect her from the cold. I even missed my turn on the way home from work because I was too lost in thought so I went the long way to the barn and sure enough she greeted me with a whinny.

I love her so much and this actually came at something close to the right time, if there is such a thing, because things have been going so well with her. I have been spending so much time at the barn that when I saw the text one of my first thoughts, after how could this be happening, was that at least I would get to spend more time at the barn with my pony.

I don't really know what to do with myself right now other than spend time at the barn. I didn't just loose my boyfriend I feel like I lost my best friend, or at least my best human friend.

Tonight I had nowhere near the mental capacity to ride. I brought Katai into the arena, out of the wind, and free lunged her over some jumps. She was full of herself and snorting smoke in the cold air, doing her best to make me laugh so for a little while I forgot about stupid boys and enjoyed my girl. When she was done I fed her her grain, put on her nice fluffy blanket and cried into her mane for awhile. She was calm and patient and wise way beyond her six years and wrapped her neck around me.

I needed my night with her tonight and I'll need my time with her this week more than every. I'm so glad that I have such a true friend.