The Joys of Rehab (and my disdain for stupid people)

Ah, rehab. That joyous time of bringing an unfit horse back from injury or time off. At least the rehab this time around involves bringing Goose back from a few weeks off due to surgery that for once didn’t affect any of his limbs, just one particular non-weight bearing appendage. 

I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in bringing horses back to work, but I’ve learned a thing or two over the course of the last few years. Goose has graciously granted me several opportunities now to bring him back to work from square one. He’s just enhancing my skill-set, really. This will be the fourth time I’ve brought him back after a significant amount of time (more than a month) off, and I’m going with my plan of slow, steady, and correct.

Now for my tangent:

If there is one thing that drives me absolutely nuts in the horse world (okay, one of many things that drives me nuts), it is people who do not respect their animals and treat them like a piece of equipment to be taken out and used at their leisure. In the past week, I’ve seen three social media posts of girls who should absolutely know better bragging about their horses having a month off and they’ve “still got it!” by jumping 3’4”, 4’3”, and 3’6”.

What. The. Bleep.

Now, I tend to take a super conservative approach to getting Goose in shape. This is because he falls out of shape rather quickly, so even a month off shows a lot of muscle loss. He also is on the hefty side both in body structure and body mass – he is a big horse to begin with, and is also an air fern so packs on pounds easily. The last thing I want to do is injure him, so we start slow with lots of walking, bending, softening, marching forward at the walk and coming round, and then add in trot and canter as we are ready. It doesn’t necessarily take months, especially this time since he only had about 6 weeks off, but it does take a few weeks... and then a few more weeks of incrementally building up to longer and harder rides before I consider putting him over courses of jumps. We do start poles and crossrails somewhere in between all that.

This process is slow but it works best for Goose and it works best for me. Rather than rush to put fitness on him, I'd rather take the time to develop the proper muscles first, and fitness comes along with that. Obviously more athletic animals (like most Thoroughbreds for example) keep their fitness a whole lot better than my draft cross. That being said, I cannot come up with any situation that warrants any horse getting a month off work to then have a few flat rides and go jump around big fences. That is not fair to the horse's mental or physical health, and is quite frankly asking for disaster.

Horses are not baseball bats; you cannot leave them in the corner only to pick it back up to start cracking away again. The bat doesn’t care, but the horse sure as hell does. It’s irrelevant if your horse “hates crossrails,” or “loves to jump the big ones,”. I get that, really I do. I've ridden those horses and keeping things small is frustrating at best. But as the thinking human, we have a responsibility to keep their best interests in mind even if it’s not the most fun way of doing things for all parties involved. It is physically painful for me to watch these videos of horses jumping big fences with captions that brag about their owners’ stupidity. What is wrong with people? All three captions to the videos I am referencing stated something along the lines of “first jumping session after a month off! We’ve still got it, (insert horse here) didn’t even touch 4’3”!”

I just don’t get it. If a runner took time off, would they immediately go into sprints or do hurdles their first day back? Perhaps this is a poor reference because maybe they would, I am not, nor will I ever be, a runner. But the point stands. Horses are athletes who need conditioning and training to be able to perform what they are asked without injury. Not everyone needs to take my conservative approach, because what works for my horse will not work for every horse, but I think the height of these fences is excessive for that amount of time off. If the jumps had been smaller, okay I totally get it, those horses were very likely fit enough to handle full courses at 2’6”, even 3’ after a few weeks off. That being said, I still don’t understand people who throw big fences, even just one or two, in front of their horse their first time back jumping after having a length of time off from any sort of work and only a few flat rides under their belt. Perhaps I’m wrong, feel free to correct me, oh wise people of the inter-web, but seeing these videos makes me want to slap people.

Stepping down off my high horse now (I promise I don’t think I’m perfect and I’m sure there are things I do that drive others nuts), and back to my conservative approach to my own steed.

In case you didn't get the memo, I believe slow and steady wins the race. Goose had about 6 total weeks off: three were necessary post-op, and then he got another three because I was going home for the holidays for two weeks. There were a few days in between when he was cleared to ride and when I had to leave for NJ, but I didn’t think it was fair to him to hop on for a few days and then give him a few weeks off, and I also didn’t feel it was fair to ask someone else at the barn to deal with his winter crazy while I was away. Thus, 6 weeks winter vacation. Shouldn't we all be as lucky!

In an act of self-preservation, I decided to free lunge in the roundpen on Saturday. Goose is a good boy and doesn’t often go crazy on the lunge, so I wasn’t worried about him running around like a lunatic once set free (this time when I set him loose, he stood staring at me like, "But Mommmmmm, I'm retired now remember?"). The plan was to mostly walk with a little trot and maybe canter if he offered, and that’s exactly what we did. We were in there for about 35 minutes total, and started off with him just walking the perimeter. I’m working on improving his response to changing direction and he picked up the cues very quickly, good boy! I love working with this horse because despite his lazy demeanor, he is wicked smart and on the ground is always willing to please. We walked for about ten minutes, changing directions often, and the only times he got fresh was when the blanket hanging on the fence blew in the breeze right as he was going past. He spun and snorted, sniffed the blanket in terror, then took a deep breath and looked at me like “I totally meant to do that, I knew it was just a blanket all along,”. There is a reason I wanted to lunge first! He doesn’t really get fresh, but he gets hyper spooky about nothing after time off in the winter and tends to teleport.

We picked up the trot and threw in a few walk, change direction, pick up the trot again for good measure. He offered a few changes at the trot which I was happy with too, but not quite what I was looking for to keep things simple day one. I kept him trotting on and off for about 10 minutes, and then he offered a canter when I asked him to go forward. Taking advantage of this, he cantered for a few laps before I brought him back to trot and then changed directions. I took a few videos, they’re pretty boring but I caught a pretty good spook, he really cracks me up, and you can see how much muscle he’s lost. We’re at square one, yet again. 

We finished the session with walking changes of direction for the last ten minutes, then he came to me and we went back to the barn. I’d call it a successful start back, if I do say so myself!

Finally making friends with the flapping blanket of doom

Sunday I rode with Brenna who was hacking Billy, and we decided to ride in the covered arena to have the best chances of not getting killed on the spooky beasts. It was windy and chilly, but Goose stood like a statue while I climbed on and was quite a gentleman the entire ride. The last time Goose was sat on was our hunter pace! Also the last time I rode, and oh have I missed it. Because it was cold and I’m not the biggest fan of the covered arena, we kept it to a walk ride. I was happily surprised when Goose offered to come onto the bit after only a lap or two around, and he held it for the majority of our stroll. I was really thrilled with how bendy he was and really should have put spurs on - he's the only horse I know who needs spurs his first ride back in a month! Brenna and I chatted for 45 minutes as we moseyed around, Goose only spooked once at a person walking up to turn the water by the arena on, and then we called it a day.

I’m happy with where we are our first weekend back at it, and am excited to get a few more rides in this week if the weather cooperates. I’ll save throwing him over big fences for the spring, thankyouverymuch.

Honestly though people, why do you throw things like that at your horse? Do you not know any better? Bad trainers who don't teach you right from wrong? Are you just plain stupid, or do you really not care about your horse? This is one of the most direct posts I've written yet, and I won't apologize for it. As someone who knows the frustration and reward of bringing a horse back slowly to the benefit of the animal, I just cannot wrap my head around why some people do what they do to the animals that are meant to be their partners.