So Dustry seems to have recovered from his illness enough to begin working again, but to be on the safe side he is getting more days off than usual during a week just to make sure he doesn’t get too pooped by being worked again (judging from the divots I found all across his field the other day he has plenty of energy!)

Today I took him for a lesson to help get us back on track and re-focused. We planned to have a fairly short lesson to make sure he wasn’t overworked, and spent the time running through a prelim test. With homework under our belts we boxed back up, and set off home with instructions to ‘enter a couple of prelims in the next few weeks’ So I am now on the hunt for a suitable competition in the near future….

Pics are courtesy of the mother-ship who was trusted with my SLR and did a pretty good job too!

Oh and in other news GHE now has its own FACEBOOK page which you can find if you click here

On Monday morning when I arrived at the yard Dustry was suspiciously quiet and subdued, I instantly knew something was wrong! After a visit from the farrier to rule out an abscess (he was recently shod, seemed to have a hot foot, and find moving hard, and was favouring the verge on the way to his paddock) the vet was called.

It seems he has some sort of infection (bacterial or viral) and it was causing him to have a high temperature, lose his appetite, and just generally feel uncomfortable and sorry for himself. He was given antibiotics and painkiller, but after a day it was clear the intramuscular antibiotics weren’t strong enough so he was changed onto a 3 day course of intravenous drugs. His legs swelled up as a result of the infection too, but thankfully are coming down little by little every day with him walking it off.

As a result of this I have become an OCD temperature taker, and these were stats over the last few days…

Monday
morning – 40
afternoon – 37.6

Tuesday
mornign – 40.7
midday – 37.6

Wednesday
morning – 40
midday – 38.6
afternoon – 37

Thursday
morning – 38.6
midday – 37.6
afternoon – 37.6

Friday
morning – 38

Thursday morning was his lowest morning measurment which then remained low, which was a good sign that he was over the worst, phew! He now has a 5 day powder antibiotic course to finish and a ‘blood tonic’ to help address his low iron levels. He is MUCH perkier in himself and apart from his remaining puffy legs he is now pretty much 100%

It’s scary when things like this happen as there is no answer as to where/when he might have got this infection, and no telling really what/where he was infected. So the vet treated it like it was similar to a case of human flu, generally affecting the whole body, and debilitating him. Thankfully his blood tests came back clear of anything nasty, and once he has finished his drugs he will have a secondary set of bloods taken to see if any more conclusions can be drawn from this.

I am so pleased that I swapped over my insurers for Dustry after the nightmare of dealing with Soap’s treatment and destruction, and KBIS have been brilliant so far. Thank goodness as I hate to think what the final total will come to!!! Yikes!

I recommend to anyone to buy themselves a thermometer, and practise how to take a horse’s temperature as it’s such a quick and easy way to see if there is a strong indication of illness. They can’t tell you they are poorly so having such a simple and quick method for answering this question is priceless.

Once he has finished his treatment I can then play it by ear about when to begin working him again, but hopefully it won’t be long till he bounces back. He’s certainly very bouncy today as the yard have all been confined to barracks to avoid this terrible weather and Dustry is making his objections known by whirling his head around like a banshee…..something tells me he’s feeling MUCH better already

There is some good info on a healthy horse’s vital signs here, but as an indicator a healthy horse’s temperature should be in the range of 99-101F or 37-38C, and a digital thermometer costs around £8-£10 well worth the investment!

Neck strap, check. Kan back protector, check….this can mean only one thing CROSS COUNTRY!!!!!!!

Today Dustry jumped his first EVER xc jumps, and I mean ever he hasn’t even popped a twig out hacking so this was going to be a true litmus test! When we arrived he was very lit up, and seemed to have forgotten all his ‘don’t barge the 2 legger, and walk all over her’ manners. Once a little more settled, I tacked up and lead him round the outdoor arena which settled him more. He likes to know what’s going on, and tack on means work, and work means a direction to focus his energy in, and he finds that reassuring. I hopped on and despite never have been in an arena filled with jumps, fillers, piles of poles etc he was ‘Mr Chill’, and didn’t put a single hoof wrong, warming up like a total pro, doing his canter poles and popping some little x-poles really sweetly. We then picked the 1st and last jump from a triple and came in on an angle popping the little planks and fillers. No more than 1ft high but these are the first fillers he has seen, and he didn’t give them a second thought. He is such a brave little horse.

We went out in the XC paddock after our little warm up and this is when things got more exciting for D-Bobs!!! I knew this would be a big test for him, out in a big grassy area, with other horses cantering and jumping, and YES it did prove VERY exciting. Let’s just say thank goodness for my ‘grabby strap’ as it got some serious use today!!! He was so brave though and went positively towards every new fence I rode him at. He did have a few stops after he had jumped the odd fence a little awkwardly he stopped the next time, unsure about it, but presented again he popped it and then went from strength to strength. I need to keep working on getting him to lower his neck and look at what he’s doing, but he’s getting better at ignoring his old racing habit of getting excited, tense and going rigid and upright in his neck. After jumping a range of little fences we had a play on some little steps and through the water which he was very good at (we go through puddles not round them at home ) and he enjoyed a good splash about, pawing with his front legs.

I’m so pleased with how brave he is, and how nonplussed he is by new experiences such as rustic fences and fillers. I’m sure the next time we go things will be less exciting for him, and his ‘outbursts’ will gradually become less and less, and in the mean time we can work on improving his jumping style and flexibility in the neck at home.

If you are looking for a nice venue with lots of small ‘baby fences’ to jump then I recommend Rabson Manor it was just ideal for what we wanted to do today

Firstly apologies for the delay in getting these videos live I have been plagued by pathetic upload speed for the last few weeks, waaah!

So this is what I’ve been up to with Dustry in my last few lessons…

we have been working on an essential flat work skill, crucial for when it comes to stringing a course of fences together, and that is cantering over poles on a circle. Sounds easy right?…well it’s not!!!

Since I began reschooling Dustry my instructor Amanda Brewer has always emphasised the importance of training a balanced and supple horse, that works equally on both reins. One exercise she uses to judge evenness is to trot on a 20m circle and at each 1/4 point on the circle change leg, so that for 2x 1/4′s of the circle you are trotting on the wrong leg. The aim of this is to highlight the difference between both reins, and which one needs more work. In an ideal horse you shouldn’t be able to tell the trots apart wrong leg or not.

On the circle in canter another good way to highlight a stiffness/weakness/area that needs more work in the canter is to try and canter over poles on each 1/4 of a 20m circle. We started with just the one pole, and built up to 3. On the left rein it was fairly easy once into the exercise to spot a good stride to each pole and meet them on a nice quality canter.

On the right rein however…..our right rein inadequacies really showed up! It was MUCH harder to ‘get him in the neck’ which impacted on the quality of the canter and in turn made it MUCH harder to see a good stride. As my instructor says ‘it’s not a stride you need to look for it’s the quality canter that’s essential, after that the strides will come’  and as always she was right!

So off we went with our homework, and this is the result after a week of practising, can you spot the difference?…

The next week in our lesson things were a little more exciting!!!!! Spring grass fever seemed to have taken hold of Dustry and he spent a large majority of the early part of the lesson on his back legs. Now whilst I admire a nice birds eye view of the countryside as much as the next person, I do prefer to ride at a slightly lower altitude, and thankfully he was easily convinced this might be a better plan too He did however have a bit of a relapse when we began jumping, and this was the result…..less bascule more jumping goat impression! (watch the vid to the end to hear the lols!)

So again back home we went with more homework, this time it was just to pop a little fence a few times during the week just to get him familiar with it, and jumping in a more relaxed, calm manner. I’m pleased to say he was fab at home, and managed to keep a lid on it in his next lesson, see video.

Because he’s not a natural jumper, and when stressed/excited/tense can revert to a rather disappointing style we are just keeping things small for now, and when he has a little more experience behind him we can then begin to build things up, and test his scope!

…to spot this whilst snooping about on the internet

thank you very much Cape Horse Link!