Rachel and Grandma and the Arabian Horse Crash and Burn!

The first post of the Rachel and Grandma and an Arabian Horse series was posted several months ago and documents Rachel's journey on her way to her dream of competing one day at the Arabian and Half Arabian US National Championship Show.

I haven't posted in these series in quite a while because things just haven't been going well with Rachel and Grandma and for that matter with Dandy, the Arabian horse. I've written before about the problems that this particular Arabian horse has with a saddle fitting him correctly.

The horse has always been difficult to fit and I have had to make adjustments with pads and padding to accommodate his back since I am unable to find any saddle that fits him properly. The whole time I have had the horse under saddle and in my care (that would be fourteen years), he has never experienced a bare spot on his back because of this issue.

I have stayed on top of it by inspecting his back each and every day before I saddle the horse and after I ride. That way if there is even the slightest sign of the tell tale "fried hairs," I can make the proper adjustments so the horse doesn't have to hurt. AND I sew satin onto the underside of the back of the pad. This stops the pad from pulling the hairs in the first place. As you can imagine this satin must be replaced often

Rachel has not been as diligent with this project. The result is that on at least four separate occasions during the two years the horse has been in her care, the Arabian horse has ended up with a bare spot, or spots on his back right about at the loin.

At first I chalked it up to her being new at this whole riding and saddling thing. Then I decided it was because she is dyslexic, maybe it was going to take her a bit longer to learn how to be saddling the horse properly and adjusting the pads. Also I was concerned maybe she wasn't quite understanding what she should be watching for to detect a problem.

The third time I decided was my fault because I allowed Rachel to take the horse to a schooling show knowing there was already a problem with rub marks on his back. I thought I could control it. Frankly, Rachel was so excited about showing, I put her needs above the horse. Had it been just me, I would have never taken the horse to that show.

Rachel and Grandma and an Arabian Horse Youth Nationals Here We Come! Part 3 tells about this particularly bad incident. The horse actually ended up with burns on his back. I really thought that she had finally realized what she had done to him.

We laid Dandy off after that incident and I really hoped that would be the end of this problem. I hoped the amount of time it took for the horse to heal had made an impact on Rachel. Well, I was wrong.

Right about the time of the fall I took off of Reflection in Nov, I was saddling Dandy myself for the first time in I don't know how long (because Rachel normally does the saddling, then I school the horse and then give her a lesson), I found two large bare spots on the horse's back again.

That was not the only issue I had caught Rachel on. Just days before, she had come to me telling me that Storm had a bump on the inside of his cannon bone that had not been there before. In actuality I had found that bump (a splint) three weeks before and had it checked out at that time.

I hadn't told Rachel because I knew she would say it hadn't been there before. I wanted to see how long it would take for her to notice the injury. And I wanted her to admit she was doing some slacking.

I guess it should have dawned on me if she wasn't doing a good job of checking the horses legs before she was putting polo wraps in place, then she probably was taking shortcuts on other things as well. It just hadn't occurred to me that one of those things would be watching out for problems with Dandy's back.

To say this was the final straw for me would be a gross understatement. I was so furious I could hardly talk. I knew that Rachel was going through a period of feeling like she was "put out" with the work involved in caring for the horses, but I had never imagined that she would shirk her responsibility to Dandy so badly.

The first thing I did was to retrieve Dandy's special pad, the one with the satin sewn on the back side. I flipped the pad over and the satin was in tattered shreds. It was so worn out, it hadn't been protecting this horse's back in weeks. This was a continual pattern of neglect. My furor went up another notch.

I believe that we are responsible for the care and well being of the horses we are blessed with. For me it was never about just teaching Rachel how to ride and get to Nationals, it was about teaching Rachel to be a responsible horse woman.

To be continued..................

Crash and Burn Part 2



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