Cob Jockey

In yesterday's post, I laid out my reasons for choosing a hard sided slow feeder over a haynet in my quest to ensure Connor has hay in front of him for longer, and the various other products I considered before settling on the Savvy Feeder.


In today's post, I'm covering how it's actually worked out in real life.  We've had it for two weeks at this point.

Dog for scale

I ordered the Savvy Feeder on a Saturday night, and I have to say, the company was AMAZING to work with in terms of customer service.  The scratch 'n dent model I originally ordered was going to come with a grate with holes too big for Connor's grass/alfalfa mix.

They reached out to make sure I was aware of what grate size it came with, to ask what type of hay I was using, and went WAY out of their way to make sure I wasn't getting the wrong product.  We probably exchanged over 20 emails after I ordered and before it shipped.  It shipped out Tuesday from Iowa, and arrived Wednesday.

Great customer service and product, questionable graphic and web design choices

The horses had already been fed when I got it to the barn, and I had to laugh at Connor giving me a sign that I was doing the right thing (if not by him, by my trainer who buys our hay!):


It comes with instructions on how to introduce your horse to the feeder.  They err on the side of assuming the horse might be frustrated with the feeder.


I found loading it to be super easy, and my trainer and our barn workers agree.  As shown in the images above and below, you flip it over, pull the springloaded pin that secures the bottom, slide the bottom over, drop the hay in, and replace the bottom and pin.

The feeder is big and sturdy, but light enough that it wasn't hard for me to carry it around.  I can definitely see taking it to shows without issue.

From top to bottom: bottom shown with cover slid out, top shown filled with hay, and the springloaded pin on the side that keeps the bottom in place.

The grate is secured to the sides with "heavy black fabric" (vinyl?), which allows the grate to move up and down as the amount of hay in the feeder changes.  The grates are replaceable and come in 3 sizes.

The size shown here is the medium size, which is recommended for "most grass and grass alfalfa mix hay.  Not for very thick or coarse hay such as first cutting alfalfa or peanut hay," and also for introducing horses to the feeder.

Small is for soft/fine grass hays like Bermuda, medium (shown) is for most grass/grass alfalfa mixes, and large is for stemmy alfalfa, peanut hay and old horses that have a tough time grabbing hay.

Connor took to it immediately.  I knew he would, and I was pretty lazy about introducing it to him.  I put hay in there, pulled some through the holes, and sat on a stool in his stall for a half hour, watching him munch hay and listening to the rain on the barn roof.

I gave it to him on Valentine's Day, and texted JenJ "Roses are red, violets are blue, I made your dinner harder to eat, haha poor you."

I've been happy with it so far.  It's no small hole hay net, but it definitely takes him longer to get a bite out than free-choice does (video below).  I may get the small grate at some point to experiment with slowing him down even further.  I haven't timed it, but he's taking longer to finish his hay in general now.  He's also wasting far less hay than before.


The biggest downside is that it is specifically designed not to be secured to the wall, which means at first Connor's stall was a disaster as he pushed it around to see if that would get the hay out easier.  His stall has gotten better with time as he gets better at eating out of it and has stopped pushing it around so much.

Here are two short video clips of Connor eating out of the feeder:



Bottom line:  This is totally my pick for a slow feeder haynet alternative.  I don't feel like I compromised on anything with this one, and it's doing exactly what I hoped it would do.  I personally feel like it's the best on the market unless you need to soak your hay inside the feeder, in which case you should consider something like the PortaGrazer.

What: Savvy Feeder
Price: $299 (new), $274 (factory seconds).  They regularly offer 10%-14% off coupons around holidays with a maximum coupon of 20% off on Black Friday.
Grate size choices: Small (soft/fine hays like Bermuda), Medium (most grass hays and grass/alfalfa blends, also recommended for introducing horses to feeder before using small grate) and Large (stemmy alfalfa, peanut hay, and feeders that will be used by senior citizens)
Colors: Dark grey, light grey and tan are standard, but they have occasionally had limited runs of other colors, such as red, lime green and teal.

One day about a month ago, I was walking around the barn and realized Connor was the only one without a haynet.

Now, I'm not going to get him a haynet just to fit in with the crowd, but given his probable successful ulcer treatment, I would like him to have hay in front of him for longer than it currently lasts. 

But...I don't like haynets.  In fact I would say I hate them.  It's just a personal thing.  I don't like the angle horses hold their heads at to eat out of them.  I don't like that you can't hang them low enough for optimal respiratory system health.  I don't like that they're rope, since Connor's gotten himself caught in one before.  And I really don't like filling them myself or asking the barn staff to fill them.

Haynets in trailers are a necessary evil though.

So I started looking into alternatives that would slow him down but allow him to eat as naturally as possible, with the enthusiastic blessing of my trainer (anything to cut down on hay waste!).

I did a ton of research before settling on one, and thought I'd use this blog post to help guide others looking for the same type of product.

High Country Plastics Slow Feeder Saver Jr

Product: High Country Plastics Slow Feeder Saver Jr
Cost: $189
What I liked: Easy to fill, nylon webbing, cheaper than others, good reviews, seemed durable, designed to be strapped to the wall
Why I passed: Reviews were overall fantastic but there was one thorough review that completely turned me off, saying horses ended up getting their noses through the generous webbing openings and scratching their faces.  One review also said the edges of the box were sharp from the molding process.  Several reviews mentioned that it was a great hay saver but not a good slow feeder.

Porta-Grazer

Product: Porta-Grazer XL
Cost: $259
What I liked: Easy to fill, plastic "lid" instead of nylon webbing, overall good reviews, you can either strap it to the wall or the horse can roll and play with it if they want (Connor would)
Why I passed: Horses have to stick their head all the way into the cylinder to get to the end of their hay, and several reviews said they noticed horses not finishing their hay because they didn't like that.  One also said the inside of the tube got hot and humid in the summer and her horses developed skin funk on their faces.

HayLo

Product: HayLo Horse Feeder
What I liked: It's similar to the Porta-Grazer but seems overall better designed and is slightly wider, hopefully eliminating some of the issues with the PG.
Why I passed: Doesn't ship to the US!

E-Z Feeder

Product: Health E-Z Hay Feeder
Cost: $37.95
What I liked: Leah loves it! You can hang it from the ceiling to really slow them down, the price can't be beat, easy to load hay in
Why I passed: Although the manufacturer says it can be mounted as high or low as you want, I didn't like the idea of it on/near the floor.  I am considering getting one for my trailer though.

And finally, the one I decided to buy:



Product:  Savvy Feeder
Cost: $299 (I paid $235.64 + shipping with a 14% off coupon and by buying a "factory 2nd w/minor scratches")
Why I bought it: I scoured the internet and could not find a single negative review for this one.  It ticked all of my boxes: won't scratch his face, won't damage his teeth, allows him to eat with his head down, slows him down, and won't make him put his face in a dark tube to eat.  It's also easy to load.  Bonus, it's light enough to travel well.

Tomorrow I'll review how the Savvy Feeder's working out for us.

Last Friday I had a lesson.  We've definitely hit a plateau, which is fine, or at least that's what I keep telling myself after six straight weeks of amazing rides and now a string of mediocre rides.  You can't have progress without getting out of your comfort zone...right?

One of us is excited for our lesson!

We started out getting him really good and on my aids and using both hind legs equally.  Lots of counterbent circles and lateral work.  Also that SI - half circle - half circle - travers movement from 2-2.  I am kind of in love with what that movement does for us right now.

Not quite the best he got this day, but look at my torso moving forward instead of backward with each trot step!  #progress

Once he was really on my aids, my trainer had us work on the canter.  All winter I've been working through the laundry list of items NK dumped on me during our last lesson in October, and the canter is the last thing we haven't yet focused on.  I told my trainer recently I want to focus on the canter these last two months of winter.

She put out two sets of parallel poles and, to greatly oversimplify her instructions, told me to canter through both sets of poles.  To the right, this was REALLY hard.  Like, we completely missed the poles sometimes

I had every intention of going through the second set of poles here and...didn't make it.

This exercise preyed on all of our weaknesses.  I turn into a pretzel on the right, I'm still so used to affecting the canter with my hands that I struggled to do my new "forward" hands, he runs through the outside aids (I'm probably causing that somehow) so it was tough to hit the poles, he was basically a motorcycle, he only has one canter speed, I have almost no ability to affect the gait...


To the left things were better:


I'm sitting better, I'm more upright, he's way straighter and not as inclined to run through my outside aids.  In comparing the two videos while writing this post, I'm seeing an overuse of the inside hand to the right but not the left, which makes sense.

I can tell there's a lot to unpack that was highlighted by this exercise, and I'm interested to see where my trainer takes my request to "focus on the canter" from here.

My last couple of rides before my lesson last night weren't great.  I started focusing so much on the canter (which is actually usable now!) the trot and walk suffered.

I couldn't figure it out, but didn't stress too much.  I figured my trainer would see whatever it was - and she did.

"Okay, this is new, but tonight it's actually the right side of his back that's lower than the left.  It's always been the other way around.  So that's a good thing, that means we're having an effect on him, but now we have to deal with something new."

Sometimes you just gotta work through something at one gait and in one direction.  That day was yesterday.

She had me slow him down with my core and put him on a counterbent left 15m circle, and whaddaya know, within a few minutes he felt amazing.  The more I thought about why that worked, the more I think I'm finally using my left leg for the first time ever, and now I don't have enough right leg now to keep him from going through me on that side.

And then!  I have no photographic proof of the things that happened next, but we first worked on the SI/half circle/travers movement from 2-1 and then we worked on travers by itself, and suddenly my trainer was saying "This is the best I've ever seen you sit and the best I've ever seen him go."

9.3!  For...like one second.  But I'll take it.

Swooooooon.  He felt SO GOOD!

Of course that was the one ride all week I didn't video, though!  Next time.

For a few years now, I've had fairly minor pain in the front of my right shoulder when doing certain overhead lifts in CrossFit.  It didn't feel structural/wasn't chronic, and it came right back after a whole year off, so I knew it was something mechanical.

In class last week, part of our workout included a minute of light push presses every 5 minutes.  And one of the other movements we rotated through was kettlebell swings.

This is a push press.

This is a kettlebell swing.

The shoulder pain came back during the push press.  I asked that class's coach, one of our best biomechanics guys, to watch me for mechanical issues.  It took him most of the workout to figure it out, but finally, he said:

"When you put your ears through your arms at the top of the lift, you're looking down and pushing your head down and forward, which is putting a lot of stress on the exact spot of the pain in your shoulder.  Do you sit at your desk like this?"

Guilty.

"And I'll bet you ride your horse like that too," he said.

Oh my god.  I had a flashback to JenJ telling me to put my torso forward.  I suspected I was about to find out the thing that was causing my shoulder pain was also holding me back in the saddle.  The CrossFit coach doesn't know the first thing about riding biomechanics, he was just pointing out that this is probably something I do everywhere.

When I did my next push press looking "up", the shoulder pain went away, but it all didn't really come together for me until I did my next kettlebell swing, which, at the top of the movement is somewhat similar to the push press.  I used the same "look up" visual cue, and suddenly I FELT IT. 






I felt the whole front of my body lengthen, in a "zip up your abs" kind of way.  I felt muscles fire I  was pretty sure I'd never used before, like my upper back.  I felt my shoulders open up and my torso get through my arms.  And most importantly, I felt how much easier it was to go overhead when my shoulder girdle was on top of my torso instead of in front of my torso.

...and it hit me that this is what everyone has been trying to teach me in the saddle.  Thinking about it as "shoulders on top of your torso instead of shoulders in front of your torso" must have lit up some neural pathway in my brain that the cues of "shoulders back", "put your shoulder blades in your seat pockets", "stick your boobs out" and "torso forward" never did, because they're all trying to say the same thing, but nothing has gotten through to me like this did. 

(Or maybe it was doing it under weight that made it make sense in a way the same language would never have conveyed in the saddle, I don't know.  One way or another - this worked for me).

From the way way WAY back machine: April of 2012, shoulders "in front of" my torso.  PC: my mom

(It should be noted here that I did this in conjunction with tensing my abs so that my pelvis stayed underneath me instead of becoming a duck butt.  Very important.)

APT = Duck Butt

Since then, I've been able to apply that both in the saddle and in CrossFit.  Keeping that in mind during things like front squats and overhead squats means my upper back muscles have been sore a lot (because I've never used them before!) but it also means that as those muscles develop this should become easier for me to hold both in the gym and in the saddle.

I have a long way to go before I have the muscles and the muscle memory to make this my default, but this way of thinking about it is finally sticking.

Where I am right now, for posterity.  I'm leaning too far back, but my torso is more forward than it usually is. (February 12, 2018)

And - my shoulder hasn't hurt since!

Much to Connor's Aunt Mary's chagrin, I am not the World's Greatest Groom.  Mary likes to keep her horses "a bath away from the hunter ring" and pretends to be mortified by Connor's feathers on a semi-regular basis.

Two years ago

But Mary's going to start being proud of me now.  I have a copy of Emma Ford's grooming book on order, and I also clipped for a third time last weekend, which I've never done before.

"...this again?"

I did it because the clinic will coincide with peak fugly coat time.  His summer coat won't have visibly come in yet, his winter clip is still obvious, and the grey guard hairs stand out like crazy.

Sexy grey hairs

With a little encouragement from some awesome bloggers, I committed to the third clip.  I'm glad I did.  This was about the latest I could do it and not significantly affect the summer coat, so I got on it.

Before

After

I...loved it.  I might be doing this every year.
This clip actually turned out the best out of all my clips this year, which is weird because he hasn't had a bath since October and it's the same two sets of blades I've been using all year.  The only thing I did differently was soak him in Vetrolin Shine Spray before I started.

NOW STAY THIS WAY!

My trainer agreed, and in her very British way, said, "This clip looks a lot better than your last clip."  Which translated means "Your last clip looked terrible and secretly drove me crazy but I didn't say anything."  I just laughed.  This is how we roll.  Outside the barn, we're great friends.  Inside the barn, I both try to be the easiest boarder ever and also push her buttons sometimes.  Life's about balance, right?

Everything turned out great, except when my trainer walked by with hay when I was doing detail work with my little clippers and he slung his head around and gave himself that beautiful black clipper mark.  It adds character?

I think I'm finally ready to talk about Connor's warmup without feeling like I'm going to jinx it.

Close your ears, just in case.

I've written in the past about how it takes him like 40 minutes before we get really good work.  How the first part of every ride is a slogfest of me trying everything under the sun to get him going.

And...I'm just going to let these recent ride times speak for themselves.

Ignore that outlier in the middle, the Equisense malfunctioned.

That amazing canter leg yield ride I wrote about yesterday?  It was 25 minutes long because it got so good so fast.  Super productive rides of less than 30 minutes have been consistent since January 1.

Here's what we're doing:

1. Lunging, suggested by you guys.  For like...less than five minutes each side.  Maybe even closer to 3 minutes.  Just until he's forward with an open throatlatch and I see him softly chew the bit.


2. Setting the tone that, from the second I get on his back, we're there to work.

3. Learning to identify things like the right amount of impulsion and when a particular hind leg isn't joining the party instead of trying everything under the sun and hoping something works.

4. I hate to bring purely anecdotal evidence into the "Does BoT work?" conversation, but...Back on Track.  I've been letting him stand under his saddle pad, quarter sheet and his non-BoT cooler while I'm grooming him, then he lunges with the quarter sheet on.  The first "productive and short" ride was also the first time he wore the BoT.  No idea if the ceramic fiber heat thing is working, if he just likes the saddle pad better than our other pads, or if it's just a super crazy coincidence, but there it is.  And I am superstitiously not going to change a thing.


We've had enough rides in a row like this, even when I've had to take a break for travel, that it seems to have stuck.  We can be productive in 30 minutes or less instead of our usual 50-60 minutes.  And I feel a heck of a lot better going into the clinic with a horse that can show up and get to work.  So happy!

A long while back, Karen wrote about putting Hampton on Nexium.  I got curious and started to look into it myself.

I've always wondered if Connor might have ulcers.  He's a nervous dude. He's also a stoic dude - I've seen many horses complain over far less than he'll put up with when it comes to discomfort.  He's always looked a a bit uncomfortable when I do up the girth, and then there's that constant quirky spooking.

"This horse is a worrier!" was the first thing JLC said when he saw Connor's face at that clinic.

After seeing the difference in Hampton with my own eyes, I discovered a huge thread of people on COTH that had similar good results with it.  The active ingredient in Nexium, Esomeprazole, is a Proton Pump Inhibitor (PPI) just like Omeprazole (the active ingredient in Gastroguard), and a whole treatment would cost me $43.  I decided to try it.



I put him on a course of three Nexium Clear Mini's every morning (so 60mg of esomaprazole) for one month in September/October.  I chose Clear Mini's because they're the smallest Nexium pills available, and ideally you want these to survive whole into the stomach.  I figured they had the best shot at making it without being chewed.



Within just a few days, I saw a big difference in him.  He no longer flicked his ears back and raised his eyebrows when I did up his girth.  And his whole demeanor just got more relaxed - he actually walked flat footed through the open field and stopped teleporting sideways after seeing invisible monsters when we went past the open doors of the indoor.

December 2016, still hilarious.  This has been this horse's MO as long as I've known him.  He was spooking at the tiny green light from the Pixio beacon that he'd gone past dozens of times at this point.  You can even see his ears slowly move forward as he realizes it's there and starts planning to spook.

After the month treatment was over, I started him on an ulcer preventative SmartPak (a story for another day), started giving him 5x1000mg tablets of peppermint Tums before each ride, and started weaning him off the Nexium, which they can't stay on forever.  After a month at 3 pills a day, he got 1 week at 2 pills a day and 1 week at 1 pill per day.

How I made sure he was getting the right amount of pills

Since then, he hasn't had any spooking incidents.  The worst he's done is give the Suspicious Spooky Ear to my quarter sheet hanging on the gate.  He got a bit girthy again after the Nexium course ended as I figured out which preventative was best for him, which has since gone away.  Overall, I'm super happy with how this worked out, and for $40, I'd do it again if I had to.

Continuing with the outtakes from the "Not Blogworthy" photo folders I have...

Hoo boy.  This was 7 months ago!

That photo is from the test in which the judge called out his "head nodding" and specifically said my rigid elbows were causing it.  That stung - but I knew it was true.

Literally pulling backwards with each stride

For whatever reason, that feedback has finally stuck since my lesson last week when my trainer came out guns blazing on this subject, and I have done an above average, unusually good job of implementing that position change.  And it has made THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE. 

Say what?  Is this my horse?  Is that me?

I've had to completely re-learn how to ride the canter.  I had been using so much hand, I'd been keeping Connor from using his body effectively.  First I had to let go and just accept him splatting on the forehand while I taught my hands how to move forward instead of back.  But then I needed to fix the splat...

So since I don't know what I'm doing, I googled "how to get horse off forehand at the canter" and was led to a helpful COTH thread that, in summary, said, "try leg yielding at the canter."

I did that and oh MAN did that work.

What up, highest symmetry score ever.

I found it was most effective to leg yield off my left leg in both directions, (probably because I was actively engaging the weak leg in both directions?) so quarter line to rail on the left rein and rail to quarter line (we didn't really get there, but it's the thought that counts) on the right rein.  We also played with some counterbending in the canter.

This GIF was taken eight days after the one above it!  It looks so different!

Toward the end of the ride, I felt his front end lighten a ton and his neck looked like it grew six inches taller.  Of course I didn't video that ride (GIF above is from a few rides later), but the Equisense did show some of our highest canter front end elevation numbers to date at that point in the ride:

Side note, the newest Equisense app update can now do minute-by-minute breakdowns of your rides in certain metrics like this one.  SO COOL!  No more guessing.

All the heart eyes!

I just can't believe this is the same horse, and that that one position flaw has made this big of an immediate difference.  Just amazing.

His neck is above his withers and his nose is out in front of him and not curled into his chest on the downbeat of the canter.  Compare that to the photo at the beginning of this post.  I am just amazed.