Cob Jockey

I feel like my life is just about under control enough that I can start blogging again...aaaaand I leave for the CrossFit Games in Los Angeles for 10 days tomorrow.  I'll have a mix of horse posts, CrossFit posts (for the CrossFitting ladies I know are in the audience), and no posts over the next ten days.  Cheer on Nicole Holcomb if you happen to catch any of the Games footage next week!

Nicole today, already in California, fourth from the right.

I saw my trainer teaching lessons in the open jump field, so I put on jump tack, which of course meant we ended up not jumping, but it was productive and fun, so no complaints.

He tried on his insanely amazing halter Hillary sold to us, thank you, Hillary!  It fits beautifully!

We had a biomechanics lesson entirely on a 20m circle on a slight incline.  She has been working the horses on a slight incline to magnify any imbalances they have so she can fix them - and Connor's were immediately obvious.  We focused on aligning his head with his center of gravity, and not letting it go in or out of the circle.

Connor's preferred method to go downhill was throwing his forelegs out in front of him to stop himself, but not slowing his hind legs down at all.  We've noticed this on the flat too, and for a pulling breed, it makes sense.  He has no concept of where his hind legs are or how to slow them down.  Going downhill, it meant he swung his hindquarters out to either side to avoid running into his forelegs.

Does this look like a pony who doesn't know where his own hind end is?  Well...yes, yes it does.

This was one of the more fascinating lessons I've had, because I felt the whole 'teaching a new concept to a horse' process from start to finish.  The goal was to walk downhill with his hind feet behind his forefeet.  I needed him to learn to slow his hind legs down and shift some weight back onto them.

At first, he didn't know what I wanted and just barreled down the hill.  As I gained more control of his body, he started listening to me, and got confused - he'd stop and think for a second before continuing on, asking me what I wanted.

When he aaaaaalmost had it, he suddenly realized how much work it was, and we had a really funny Welsh Cob moment: he stopped on the decline, and shook his head up and down for probably 10 or 15 seconds - long enough for me to laugh and then exclaim to my trainer "Oh my gosh, he is literally telling us 'no, this is too much work!''

#myhorseisadachshund

From there he got better and better each time, and by the end, after several free walks in between good declines and lots of 'Good boys!' he was keeping it together on a fairly loose rein and I could tell he understood what I was asking and wasn't just complying with my aids physically.

My trainer said, "I know what your homework is!" and I grinned and said, "Uh, I know what YOUR homework is, he's all yours for the next 10 days," (She's putting three rides on him while I'm gone in exchange for the lessons I will miss/have missed.)   Looking forward to seeing what he feels like when I get back, I'm going to miss the little guy!

Just realized how long that mane is...oops.

Usually we don't pack up in the road, but a fallen tree was blocking the other side of the circle drive on Sunday.

He always faces backward, since the front stalls are pretty small when configured as a 6 horse (it can also be configured as a generous 4 horse), usually we put the bigger guys in the rear facing forward.

Connor's "luxury suite" in the generous 4 horse configuration for the 5 hour Fox River Valley trip last year.

This is an old pic, but see the stall in the below picture?  That's what he looked like when we left the farm on Sunday.  When we arrived at Twin Towers after a nearly 3 hour trip, Connor was standing about 2 feet into the center area of the trailer, out of his stall, tethered only by a quick-release trailer tie to the outside wall.

As close as we can figure, my Curious George of a Welsh Cob learned how to pull out the ring pin that holds the chest bar in place (visible in the picture above), and freed himself.  Luckily he did not walk forward and also divest himself of the quick release trailer tie and go wandering the trailer, but even still, how did he balance without a chest bar going up and down the steep hills of Ohio?  Mysterious.

So he has been relegated, probably forever, to the middle rear-facing stall, because that stall's chest bars attach with giant carabiners, which he hasn't figured out how to open - yet.


My initial reaction to seeing him free was to laugh (this makes me a good candidate for Welsh Cob ownership) but my secondary reaction was "OH MY GOD so many things could have ended horribly in this situation!"  Thankfully, the worst he did was untie his hay net which ended up under the shoe of the guy next to him, which got stuck and had to be pulled out.  Which I realize is still not good, but everyone ended up fine.

Ponies.

My trainer and her fiancé are on a well-deserved vacation to visit family, so we're kind of a well-organized co-op barn this week.  Everyone's taken some shifts on either AM, PM or night check.  It always works well for us, but of course, things aren't exactly the way they should be:

I wasn't sure where Connor's halter was, so we made one off the communal rack work...sort of.  Ha!

The Aiken contingent returned, and Connor had to spend one more night in the indoor.  She tried hard to think of someone else that could do it, but in the end, he's the most "go with the flow" guy we have the in barn.  I take that as a compliment, and I really didn't mind.  He has a blast in there, I swear he prefers chaos to order:


A very well-intentioned friend who owns arguably the most accident-prone horse in the barn was super worried about the fact that Connor had a water bucket on the ground that he could get his foot caught in, and offered her soft sided tubs.  I thanked her, but really, between jump standards, poles, and bag chairs, the bucket is the least of my worries!  He's smart, and I don't want to push my Welsh Cob luck too far, but he's not prone to doing things like that.  In fact, he's only had one single scrape the whole time I've owned him, despite doing things like upending jump standards constantly.  And everything did turn out just fine.

This is my house now.

Our barn was a rallying point for a group of riders headed to Aiken, so for one night, they put Connor in the indoor instead of his stall.

They put horses in there infrequently, when we're full or have a new horse that can't go out with the herd yet. The horses are always fine, but Mr. Curious George himself is not a horse, he is a Welsh Cob.  It's like owning a puppy.  As soon as I saw the note on the board that Connor was in the indoor, I knew I would be walking in to the results of mischief of some kind.  I was not disappointed - he knocked every single jump standard down and in some cases moved them several feet, except the blue and purple ones:

Seriously, if someone asked me to take a photo that describes the personality of the Welsh Cob, this would be it.

Jumps and pony were all uninjured, so it was just funny.

"I really couldn't tell you what happened here.  They just fell over."

My trainer laughed and laughed when I sent her the picture.  I wish I could have seen that happening, I'm sure he had a blast.  All the same, I don't think Connor will ever stay the night in the indoor again!

If he is a champion of nothing else, he is a champion of self-entertaining!

Hahaha. Aaaahhahaha.  I love him.

If only I could actually housetrain him...I wonder if my board bill would go down...hmmmm...

This is his boredom behavior.  He opens his mouth just a bit, flings his head in short quick strokes, and lets his lips flap around.  Honestly, I could care less as long as he has all 4 feet on the ground, so I let him self-entertain.

Tiny

"I am a majestic giraffe and I refused to let you take a good conformation photo of me."

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that water has always been a...challenge...for those responsible for Connor's care.





So I was not entirely surprised when both a barn staff member and my trainer told me separately last night that Connor had broken 3 bucket hangers this week, and could I please figure something out?

The problem is that they moved him to a new stall without moving his Classic Equine bucket hangers, which don't prevent him from playing with his bucket, but do prevent him from breaking either said bucket or its hangers.  So that is easily fixed by bringing my spare CE bucket straps from home.

But they also requested that I look into a stall toy for him, because even though he's only stalled at night, he's self-entertaining by playing with his bucket.  And they requested that it be rubber and not plastic, so his playful antics don't drive everyone crazy.

So I am asking you guys: what's your favorite stall toy?  Ideally I want something that could be hung, since he loves batting his bucket around and also jangling the chains that hung in his old stall.  Thanks in advance!

I've sat on this post for two months because I didn't know whether to believe what I was seeing.  I've gathered enough data now, though, to officially call this a thing.

Every single ride, toward the end of our warm-up and after several minutes of being somewhere between here:

Meh.

And here...



...Connor shakes his head twice, juuuuuust as I'm asking him to really do stuff and he realizes he can't get out of it.  This head shake tells me three things:

1. My warmup is working.
2. He knows what I'm asking for, and he's in his own head deciding whether to play along with it or not.
3. I am T-1 minute from getting total body control and really good work out of him the rest of the ride.

That exact process has happened every ride for months now.  My trainer said a few months ago that as the work gets harder and more complex, horses often develop something like that.  Some grunt, some cough, Connor shakes his head twice.

It's like the obstinate part of his brain is making one last stand against what the obedient half of his brain is about to give in to.  "Obedient brain, you hear me?  This is going to be hard work!  She's going to make you go in circles with your inside hind leg underneath your body!   You want no part of that!"  Two head shakes later, obedient brain wins out and we're ready for the Olympics.  Or at least a Beginner Novice Dressage test.

Anyone else's horses ever develop a really specific behavioral response to work?

Welcome to another edition of "Where Connor is vs.Where Connor is Supposed to Be."

The electric fence on the interior of the wood board fence in the former stud paddock he lives in is currently not working for reasons the BO is not totally clear on.  Connor has figured this out.

"Your horse was on the outside of the electric again yesterday.  I called him when I went out for his dinner, and he stared at me before turning around and walking all the way around to the other end of the pasture where the gap is biggest between the 2nd and 3rd strands, and jumped through it without touching it before trotting back down to me for his dinner.  It was kind of impressive, not gonna lie."

Where he's supposed to be, and the gap he escapes into.

That story was told to me three weeks ago, and the electric hasn't looked like this until yesterday, when I again found him in the perimeter zone:


I don't know if he tried to jump through where it's too narrow here, or if he took his hoof or nose and pushed it down until it was wide enough for him to jump - the second one seems more likely, knowing him.

Morning doze in a sunny patch...where he's supposed to be.

One of my favorite things about the Welsh Cob breed is their cheeky sense of humor - which admittedly, isn't right for everyone (though I would argue that it's right for most people!)  “You have to have a sense of humor to train a Welsh Cob, they don’t take life too seriously,” Dr. Marks told me as she was trying to convince me to take Training and Handling II and saddle break her young Welsh Cob, Castleberry’s Protégé.  “You have the right personality.”  That’s the story of how Welsh Cobs chose me.

Though Connor is maturing, the cheeky cobbiness that I love so much is still alive and well, as he’s shown several times this summer:

Click to enlarge. Squiggly line denotes where Connor "escapes" to.

Story 1:
Connor lives in the former stud paddock, a near-drylot with wooden 4 board fence, a gap (large in some areas, small in others), and then an inner 3 strand rope electric fence.  I came out to find him grazing in between the two fences and when I asked, I found out that he had figured out that the electricity was down on one side of the fence and, uh, exploited that to get to the green grass on the other side. Several times they put him back, then found him on the other side of the fence again an hour later, so they finally just left him to “mow the lawn” until the broken part could be replaced.  (He’s in no danger of escaping or hurting himself.)  Bonus: He's super easy to catch while out there.

Story 2:
He bolted from his pasture when the 3 strand electric rope gate was open because his buddy ambled out of instead of into the pasture during turnout.  While his buddy meekly allowed himself to be caught, Connor gleefully ran up and down the lane past all the pastures for twenty minutes before they could catch him.

Story 3:
Connor’s buddy’s fly mask has not stayed on for more than a day at a time all summer.  Nobody knows exactly how it’s coming off, but as I told my trainer, “Doesn’t it seem like something Connor would find fun?”  At least he’s polite about it and takes it off gently and in one piece!

Shae and I on graduation day

Those stories drew up memories for me of Shae, Castleberry's Protege, who once picked up the garden hose Dr. Marks was using to fill her trough and chased her with it, shaking water at her as he went.  He also upended a feed pan with a giant salt block in it, picked it up, carried it about 200ft across his pasture at the College, and dropped it in his stock tank.  Funny how so many funny Cob stories are about water...

"...what?"

I need to rename this blog's subtitle from "Eventing the Welsh Cob" to "Staying One Step Ahead of the Welsh Cob."  Some weeks I'm convinced that managing him is harder than riding him - like when I come to the barn to do chores on a Saturday morning, only to find that he was not where he was supposed to be, which is inside his new paddock with his Andalusian girlfriend.  See my not-to-scale and fairly inaccurate diagram below:

His new paddock was originally designed for studs, so the black perimeter line represents white wooden board fence, and the orange represents three-strand electric that is tape for the top row and braided cord for the bottom two.  There's a 3 strand gate, as well as a pipe gate, separating him from the outside world.

For some reason, his electric was unplugged last night, so he thought it would be a good idea to go for the dark green, luscious grass in the "no man's land" area between his paddock and his next door neighbor's pasture by going over the middle rope and below the top tape.  So when I got there, I found him trapped in a 5 foot by 20 foot area, unable to get back out the way he came, and barely able to turn around.  Awesome.  He probably spent most of the night there, if I had to guess.  Thankfully, there's a pipe gate just to the left of the words "Where Connor was this morning" in the diagram, so I didn't have to cut fence to get him out.

After that incident, I put him in jail until I could confer with my trainer on what to do with him - "jail" being the teeny tiny paddock next to the indoor arena that's almost never used.  So he did what most people do when put in jail:

Sleep.

 Ponies are sneaky.