Skating on grass

Today I had a lesson with Ben Netterfield, showjumping extraordinaire, smartarse and all-round good guy, in the searing heat of Canberra. It was, without doubt, bloody hot! Too hot for the flies, even, which was the only plus about the whole thing.

The last jumping session I did with Assegai on Thursday was a bit of a mixed bag, with me practising like mad the 'sit still, support, do nothing unless you have to' mantra Ben had installed in our last lesson. Once the jumps went up, though, Assegai seemed to lose all confidence and began crashing through them and getting tense and hollow. I asked Obi Ben about this reaction....

He watched me jump a couple of fences, including the one stride vertical to vertical I'd set up, about 80cm or so high, and advised that Assegai was finding the going slippery. This time of year, the ground is rockhard and the grass is very dry, creating skating conditions. I know it's like that on the front hill of Equestrian Park at Canberra ODE (aka 'The Prairie') but hadn't felt him slipping at all at home. Ben seemed to think the slipping got worse the tenser Assegai got, creating a bit of a vicious cycle of tension and badness for all.

We talked about what this meant barefoot-wise and I was surprised to learn that Ben had kept a few showjumpers barefoot in his time. He was quite open to the idea of keeping Assegai barefoot and said to cross the shoeing bridge when we really had to down the track (like when the jumps go up past piddly height!). I mentioned the concept of rasping tread into the hoof wall (see pic here: http://barehooves.webs.com/barefootperformance.htm) and he thought that was worth a try. Awesome!

The lesson went well, focusing very much on calmness, supportive leg, just letting him work out the fence as it goes up. Ben calls horses that react to a change in height as 'having a tape measure' and it's quite interesting how these horses really notice and respond to height change. I will treat it as a positive that Assegai reacts to a change in the fence height. Hopefully, this will make him careful - he hates to hit a rail already, hooray! But it does make him quite freaked out about hurting himself, understandably.

Got the ponies trimmed today and took a couple more crappy pics. The first one shows the way Assegai wears his front hooves square at the front - we think it's the breakover worn in as the wall grows a bit too long. This is before the trim:

I was talking with a friend who trims her horses herself and found it really interesting hearing her technique as it differs from my trimmer's significantly. There seems to be two main camps in trimming:

1. Load the hoof wall at toe and heels, or
2. Trim the wall down to the level of the sole, allowing the sole to also bear weight.

There are obviously lots of other variations but this seems to be a fairly major difference and both camps hotly contest that theirs is the right way (like so many aspects of equine care!). For Assegai, I've found the second way makes him sore and lame, but the first works great. Here's what it looks like after trimming (please excuse the crappy pics - the sweat was making my fingers slip on the phone!):
NS Hind

 OS Fore

 As you can see, the wall is most definitely forming a weight-bearing ring around the sole with an obvious channel between the wall and sole. The bars are the same level as the frog. If anyone wants to know more, leave a comment. In fact, feel free to leave comments in general! Yes, this is a very self-indulgent exercise, but the intention is to be helpful....

Happy riding! Keep hydrated! (Beer and gin and tonics count....)