Building Base

Well, the one good thing about taking forever between updates is that I can sift through copious notes, footage, and thoughts to create some kind of interesting story or coherent narrative out of the journey in ridden and driven training that isn't as boring as the weekly or monthly updates. We will start with where we are as of today, in terms of what we have accomplished as well as a few new changes in Levi's routine that have impacted him. Right off the bat, we have a beautiful surprise to show you in the form of a brand new little herd member! Let's jump right into it, with some videos letting the horses tell the story better than I can.

If you are gasping with delight at this little bundle of joy, join the fan club - this gorgeous little chestnut filly is miss Indy Blue, a purebred Morgan who just celebrated her first birthday last month. Baby Indy has been at the farm for about six weeks and we collectively decided that Levi would be an ideal turnout companion for her, as he is very gentle but also will teach her the social skills she needs to thrive with other horses. The two are thick as thieves yet have only been together for a couple of weeks now. How special to have another Morgan at this farm! We are very lucky to have such a nice baby here. The series of photos and videos below tell their little story so far.

The two Morgans, despite being purebreds, are quite different in type even when age is considered, aren't they? I think Indy Blue will be taller than Levi at her adult height, and she is more narrow as well (although she will fill out as she grows). Even when he was at her age, Levi was compactly built, and with denser, thicker bone, with a wider forehead, shorter face length, and button nose. I see a more gracile and delicate, even ethereal, appearance over all for the filly. It will be interesting to see how the two horses differ based on their breeding, once she grows up. So far, Indy's lovely human family is just letting her enjoy a large, safe place to mature and she is learning basic handling, although they have expressed some interest in teaching her to drive eventually when she is ready in a couple of years. I often need to access their shared paddock to turn in or out, but I don't handle this filly very much, although it's pretty difficult to refrain sometimes given how sweet and approachable she is! Right now, we are all friends, and she can decide how much or little she is comfortable with in that regard. There is such a thing as handling little ones too much and I don't want to overwhelm her or create a situation where she would be confused about how to interact politely with people. I usually just greet the filly over the fence, as in the video above, and let Levi do all of the disciplining and communicating with her. The "surly uncle" torch has now been successfully passed on to Levi: as a newly minted adult, he will soon be expected to lead small groups of young horses and assist us in bringing them up properly to learn their jobs with human beings. The sooner he is comfortable with this, the better he will be at this role. He is already taking to it surprisingly well. I think he feels very high up on himself and proud about reaching a brand new social tier, now that he has a "mare" of his own, which no one else here has! When she first arrived, there seemed to be some discussion back and forth among the geldings (and the two mares!) about who was going to take the baby into their herd. It may have come as a surprise that the horse who is lowest on the totem pole, and less invested with the baby, was the one who swooped her up!

In case you were wondering what happened during our winter, you didn't miss much during January and February. In fact, I have one image in particular that best describes those two months, and that is this monolithic sheet of ice revealing treacherous misery to all who attempted to so much as step outside:

Despite this dangerous condition, we soldiered on and I was at least able to keep Levi in fighting shape, with a couple of workouts (mostly lunging or short but intense riding sessions) each week during those two months. Since he was working so hard and we were also putting effort on trying to improve our canter, I decided to limit working in the cart so that Levi could simply save energy.

Under conditions like these, the horses' top priority is not performance but survival. I didn't want to put him through unneeded physical stress when we were working so hard at intense levels during very cold weather already. However, there were warmer days ahead in late February and March; Levi and Mozart had a few snow days where just playing in turnout was all the work they needed to do. This was a nice mental break for Levi as well; building downtime and play opportunities into his daily routine, even if it's just making snow angels from fresh powder or chasing pals around, is so important.

I am happy to report that we have actually accomplished breakthroughs with canter quality recently. I really want to show you footage of this, but I haven't captured any yet, and will ask our instructor to film us next time, if she's comfortable with that, so you can see the difference. I also made some additional changes to his diet and supplements as well, which are giving him extra energy and nutritional support without making him 'hot'. Also, limiting strengthening of 'pushing' muscles with the shoulder by keeping him out of driving training for the past couple of months (until recently) also helped. We are driving again now that the weather is warmer, and his driving frame has been completely transformed.

We are continuing to work not only with our current (and amazing) dressage instructor, who is really helping us navigate this process, but also with our former barn manager turned driving instructor, Sam, who is helping us in the cart. I would really like to show Levi under cart this year, and with Sam's great help and advice, we are likely to succeed.

I'll share more about how we started to work together on Project Levi in the next post, as this is too long already for most. Thanks for coming along with us as we support the development of this beautiful and special horse.