I haven't updated Jen's blog in quite some time, mostly due to time-constrains, and I what I feel is nothing exciting that someone would want to take the time to read. But I'll bore you anyway with the "not much" that has been going on here.
Jen is still doing well. She weighs about 850 pounds now, she has gained over 200 pounds since she arrived here back in March of 2007. She does have some significant muscle atrophy to her back, and is backsore, likely from the saddle that I am told used to rub her raw ("extreme" curlies do not lose their hair and skin from a properly fitted saddle!). I will continue to do EquineTouch on her, which I admittedly have not done enough of, only a few sessions over the years.
In attempting to ride Jen, we have found that she is very very anxious about being ridden. she completely freezes up as if she is "waiting for the ball to drop". My daughter has taken it upon herself to spend a lot of time with Jen getting her over her fears. Jen has been a very stressy horse. She stresses over everything, gets anxious and upset over any little change in her life (doing something different during the course of the daily feeding chore, any change in her paddock arrangements, being asked to do anything at all (since it isn't done daily). So Mandy visits with Jen almost every day, it was every day at first, now she has reduced the number of days and increased the amount of time. She would just spend time with Jen at first, haltering her, grooming her all over, picking her feet and talking soothingly to her to let her know that she wasn't going to "do anything to her". The way Jen gets upset is that she stands perfectly still like a statue, with her head held high. She stops blinking, and she clenches her jaw, purses her lips, and her eyes become hard and distant, she just goes away somewhere. So to someone who really doesn't get horse-speak, it appears as though she is allowing.
As Jen relaxed into just the difference in her schedule of being caught and having one-on-one attention, Mandy introduced tack. Jen gets upset and anxious when she sees tack. So Mandy just introduced tack while using t-touch calming circles, which Jen just LOVES. She would just bring the tack out at first and let Jen sniff it, then not do anything with it. Then she progressed to putting it on her, without cinching up the saddle. She put the Bitless Bridle on her and didn't ask anything of it. Jen won't take a bit, period, and there is no way you are getting her to unclench that jaw to allow it in, and its amazing how far back she can invert that neck and have her head backwards.
So once Jen was bored with the tacking process, Mandy started taking her out of the stall while tacked and leading her around. Oh, she also lead her around untacked for awhile too, and then combined the two. At first Jen was upset and didn't want to leave the safety of the barn with tack on. She eventually graduated to leading her away from the barn, and then up in the upper paddock. She progressed to leading her over stones and logs, backing her over them as well, and following trails. Jen has become bored with that process as well, and will readily leave the barn area fully tacked.
we have now progressed to taking Jen outside the paddock to hand-graze her. At first she was upset, as were the others left behind, so we only grazed right outside the gate. Then Mandy started leading Jen further away, and we plan to continue that process over the rest of the summer, eventually getting her out of sight of the other horses, and then do that tacked.
Oh, Jen is actually more worried about having tack removed, and gets really scared when you take the saddle off her. She also gets upset if she is tacked up and you raise your arms over your head, so we've been doing that randomly and she is getting better about it.
Physically, Jen is doing pretty well. She finally finished abscessing in her feet, and is finally starting to grow an upright hoof. It was very flat and pancaked for so long, and once she got rid of that toxic buildup, she's growing a heel and a nice tight little foot. The dentist was out again yesterday, and made the comment "Wow, her mouth is a MESS! If we worked on this mouth every 6 months for 5 years, I don't think we would make any progress".
Poor Jen. I don't know the reason for the problems in her mouth. It could be a combination of factors. Her neglect, the fact that she had a halter on too tight to the point that it grew into her face and appears to have altered her skull structure (by comparing her head size and shape to her full siblings and parents), and/or the fact that she was ridden in a Tom Thumb bit with aggressive riders. I even recall seeing a photo of her with her reins tied over the top rail with her head cranked up, trying to evade the pressure, in a Tom Thumb. Jen is only 14.1H.
Jen is creating muscle, she has shoulder muscles now, and chest muscles. I think her chest has doubled in width! Here are some photos from yesterday.
