German summers. Gotta love them.

   When you see advertisements of Germany, you always get the same, beautiful image.

White, cold winters with snow everywhere. Lush, green springs with white flowers scattered in every field. Warm summers with the cattle grazing and the sun shining brightly. 

Let me tell you... wrong. wrong. wrong. WRONG. If you had a picture in your mind anywhere even close to what I just described, please.. remove it, immediately. The truth is...

 Freezing cold icy winters, with little, to no snow. Just icy winds and chilly bones. Rainy springs with left over bitter ice wind from the winter. Occasionally, the rare glimpse of sunshine. Mostly just muddy fields. Summers are dark, cold, rainy and just yucky. A warm day is very, very rare. Even then a warm day is never above 95 degrees. 

pulling him out of his secret hideout.

  So, now that you know how the real German weather is, I can say that today we had a very warm day. The poor horses were being rained on and freezing their butts of this entire summer that they have a somewhat thicker coat then they should have. It's not good for horses to go from freezing cold, to super warm. Everything gets messed up. Today I had to squeeze past horses huddled together under the wooden shed. They were all squeezed super tight in there to keep from the sun and bugs. Poor things. It was even warmer in the shed because all their hot bodies were together. I couldn't leave my poor Udex out there in that!! Also, the cut on his leg was being swamped with flies [again.. ugh] so I had to take care of that. Udex was really happy to be in the cool shade the stable had to offer. I hosed him down with cool water. It was refreshing for both him and me!! Nothing beats the feel of being splashed with cool water on a blistering hot day. Ahh. priceless. I also sponged down his face so that too would stay cool!!! He really, really, really enjoyed being pampered like that.

  After our little "water party" I put cream on his wound and put him in his stall. For him it was a sun free, cool day!! Happily munching on his hay. Tonight I think there should be some light showers. Usually light showers are fine with me, but since he has a nasty open cut I would rather him be inside and dry. Some days with Udex are fun! Today was one of them!! I'm really happy he is my horse. I still can't believe he is my horse!! I also can't believe that the choice to use rollkur was made when training and riding him. It's been hard undoing all the damage rollkur has caused, but everyday it's getting better. I can't beleive how fast his recovery is going!! It is really weird looking at when I first got him just six short months ago and looking at him today. Wow!! He really is a new horse!! I'm so proud to know that I'm (with the help of my parents, friends, and trainers!!) the reason this horse is feeling better. It's a feel like no other.

I saw an extension I had no idea existed.

   Today I decided to free run Udex as his warm up, and then get to work with the pessoa. I have recently switched his feed to a performance mix with his pellets made into a mash. Although its only been a few days of him being on it, I can already see a big difference. For example, lets take today! I saw an extension I had no idea existed within Udex. When he free runs he has a great extension, I love it. Never over exaggerated with his front legs, but always has them "pretty high up there." Today however he gave out such a mighty extension. I could not believe I was seeing my horse give out a trot that was the exact same as his grandpa, Weltmeyer. It was so floaty, high, elegant, and most of all, he did it with ease. That did make me even more excited to take him back up the levels again! I can't wait!!!!
  Pessoa session was good with Udex. He always does his best, even when you can tell it doesn't feel so well on him. I do feel cruel putting the pessoa on him. I know if I was a horse I would not want that thing on me.. But at the same time I have to remind myself that it is helping his muscles and going to make him the horse he used to be again. I just want to pull out my hair and scream! ROLLKUR! Ughhh. It's the reason for a lot, if not all, of the pain and problems in poor Udex's life. If only that small choice of not using rollkur was made... Humm.. Overall, I am thankful though that he was rollkur ruined. Because of that I can help to get the word out that rollkur is cruel and hurts more then it does good. Udex needs justice.
  So yup!! Udex was a joy!! My 14th birthday is Thursday, and I plan on buying Udex a double bridle and a few new bits. Who knows how soon we will get to the double, but it's still a nifty thing to have!! I know he prefers the double, since he was trained with it. I am so thankful for my talented sweet horse. <3 If I was asked to design my very own dream horse, it would have been Udex. <3

Hard keeper.

He may not be grey but he is definitely NOT an easy keeper!

   A lot of people say how hard their horse is to keep. "My horse is grey, I have to rug him in the summer so he doesn't get skin cancer!" or, "My grey horse has a pink nose, I have to put sun cream on him so he doesn't burn!" or even "when my grey horse lays down he gets coated with manure stains!" I do have to say that it does make me a little upset when owners of greys consider their grey horse to be the hardest keeper of them all. Uhm, I have a chestnut, but he is just as hard to keep as a grey, if not worse! He is allergic to bees, so I too must keep a constant fly sheet on him PLUS check daily for any bee bites and anaphylaxis. Also, he has a pink nose too so I have to constantly re-apply sun cream on him as well. When my chestnut rolls, he rolls his white blaze in the mud. One too many times I have had to curry his face because it was coated inches deep in mud! I don't even know how many times his forelock had been invisible to due being buried in the mud! Udex is a pretty hard keeper if you ask me!!
  Udex was gaining weight and muscle left and right... Until. -Ah, how I despise that word until.- Until that terrible farrier damaged his hooves! For about a month in a half Udex had been in constant pain. It was a loose, or loose, situation for us. Our options were to turn him out with bad feet and every step be painful for him, but at least he would be happy with his friends... OR. We could keep him on stall rest where he would pace himself and work himself into a sweat everyday. We went with the first choice, of turning him out with his friends. Since then his bruises had turned into an abscess, resulting in even more pain. Every horseman knows that when a horse is in pain, they loose weight.

Skinny lil' thang

 Yes, that is exactly what happened to Udex. He was looking so great, with just a faint outline of his ribs showing. Now you can make out his ribs again. He looks nowhere near as bad as he did when he first got there, but then again he looks nowhere near like he did last month. I have to say, I am really, really, really angry and upset about all this. I worked SO hard to get him looking decent, and now have to re-do all my hard work. Ughh! Talk about upsetting! However, I do keep telling my self that this all happened for a reason. I am just thinking "okay, no problem! As soon as he can work again without a limp we are going to start our once to twice pessoa sessions every week!" I know this happened for a reason, it had to have. I have to stay positive about this, because being angry won't help anything at all.
   So, back to being a hard keeper. I swear, owning Udex is the most challenging thing I think I may ever have to do. Of course, it is too rewarding to regret any second of it all! As I write this, Udex is in a big paddock with just two other horses enjoying the sunshine and munching on delicious fresh grass scattered with miscellaneous juicy flowers! I am sure that in no time this grass will put the weight back on him! Until then, I'm just going to keep on having fun with him!

Wow! Twenty days since I last posted and so much has already happened!

     Oh wow!! I last posted twenty days ago, and already worlds new of stuff has happened with Udex and I! For starters, a terrible farrier came and messed up his hooves! Ah yes, now my poor Udex's hooves are pretty much stone bruised terribly. He had his feet bandaged up and was on stall rest for a while. (Now the bandages are off, and he is outside with his friends!) However, the stone bruises are still there, and he still does walk with a limp. All we can do now is wait for the better farrier, and Udex's hooves to grow out. (Yes Udex, that does mean a mini holiday for you without any riding!) We are thinking Udex may need a corrective shoe to help his feet now. *Sigh* I'm really bummed about that and seriously hope that there is a better solution to this problem other then resulting to shoes!

walking a lame Udex

Anyways, long story short; Udex's hooves were getting extremely long and our regular farrier could not make it out. The owner of the barn told us his farrier was coming that day, and said if we would like we could use him too! After thinking about it we decided to go with it, because after all Udex's hooves were getting prettty bad. Anywho, the farrier was terrible with Udex. He was punching and hitting Udex the entire time! Udex is almost always a good boy for the farrier, but with this one Udex was trying to explain that taking out chunks so deep from his hooves that the color of it was red was not a very comfortable thing to go through! Enough about farriers; I'm getting angry just thinkin' 'bout them!

     So, since Udex has been lame for a week and a half now, I haven't been riding him! I am sure he is extremely happy about this! It means more time to play with his paddock buds! The only work he has been doing is free running in the hall, taking walks with me, and playing games with me! Yesterday Udex and I had a little beach party in the arena! We turned on the sprinklers in the arena, and ran around them like crazy! We were both a sandy, muddy, drippy mess afterwards -but we sure did have fun!!!-

Look at that back!

Lookin' good Udex!

    Udex got his first bath of the summer the other day! He was hosed down and lathered up with baby shampoo! In no time he was a happy go lucky, playful, lovely smelling, squeaky clean boy ready to join his palls back outside! Everything with him is alwaysss a surprise, so I do have to say, bathing him was especially fun! I almost peed myself when I put the hose on his haunches and he made his back exactly the way he should naturally hold it!!! [for those of you that don't know, Udex was trained with Rollkur (a terrible elite dressage training methood.) Holding his head in the rollkur position for so long resulted in the locking if his lumbar spine, causing him to trot in "two" parts, and giving him a sway appearance. I have been doing exercises and riding him properly to strengthen his back muscles to get them back to where they should be.] Anyways, Mr. Udex decided to keep his back perfectly for a few minutes at a time! I say out of our forty five minute bathing session, fifteen minutes of it went to his back being held great! Talk about a proud owner!! Already his back doesn't have such a sway appearance as it did when I first got him, and now he goes along and makes his back perfect!? Five months ago he could not even hold it right for a full second!

Not so skinny!

He is looking worlds better!

   Udex is looking a lot healthier! He is gaining muscle beautifully; not too fast, nor too slow, but just right. Too much weight too soon can result in sooooo many problems.! I am very pleased with the nice steady pace he is taking this at! His ewe neck is slowly fading away!! [Once again, the ewe neck is due to muscle growth on the bottom of his neck... Due to holding his head in the rollkur position so long.] Udex's haunches are looking a lot fuller with muscle and healthy fat! Also, as I mentioned before, he is getting the right abdominal muscles to carry himself correctly! His hips are no longer these extremely pointy, knife-like triangles, but rather round, nubby curves on his body! You can only see a faint outline of his ribs when you look at him now!!! Before you could count every rib and stick your fingers between them he was that skinny. To just see only a little rib right now is enough to make me the proudest person on earth!!

     If you haven't ever took in a horse that had mental/physical problems that classified him as worthless, done for, a failure, or a lost cause... Then my best, most important advice to you is to go right now and find a horse that needs help and give it all the love and time it deserves. As I'm writing in this blog with all the pride in the world, I can't begin to describe to you how amazing the feeling I get when I look at my horse. I look at him and think to myself. "Wow.. If it wasn't for me what would have been of this horse... Look how time and effort has really payed off!!! Look how happy he is right now, and how thankful he is!!!" I can't even tell you how amazing that feeling is. You feel like you changed someones life, because over all, you did. You changed your equine partners life, and you did it for the better! If we think about some of the best horses in history, we come to find that they usually were a rescue horse before it was their time to shine. The reason I think these horses went down in history is simple.. It was because they knew how bad off they were, and then that special person came a long and saved them. The horse forever gave himself to that special person, because the horse knew that without the special person; he wouldn't be the horse he was today.

It's warm, it's summer, and things are going great!

     Guess what? It's warm, it's summer... and there is grass! Okay? Grass? No big deal, right? NOT! Grass is a definite big deal when your horse is skinny and needs to gain some weight! Since it's warm Udex gets to be grazing outside 24/7 (okay more like 20/7 because I do take him in to work him!) Anywho, this grass will be the number one reason he starts gaining weight! So, shall I say it again? GRASS!!!! Different meaning this time, right? Okay, okay, maybe I am obsessing a bit too much... Oh well, point is it's warm, constant grazing, and Udex is getting bigger and happier each and every day!

Wow! Look at that back!

     So Udex is gaining weight. Yip-yip-hooray! Not only is it just "weight" it's muscle! He is looking so great! On his rump and legs is where you can see the most muscle! His ewe neck is going away (thank goodness!) His back is getting bigger! I remember before sitting upon him bareback was a painful thing to do, but now, he feels worlds better! He looks fantastic! He still does not look good in the eyes of a stranger, but compared to before he looks more then amazing. 

Ms. Meagan playing with the green foals in the paddock

     A very amazing friend of ours came and taught me a bit of Parelli natural horsemanship! What a treat! She is a very talented woman who knows a lot about horses. She is one of those special people that click with all animals. I don't think I ever mentioned Udex getting nervous if he is brought into the barn and there is no other horse with him or in sight. However, if I am riding him in the arena, then he is fine. Anyways, tacking up a huge horse (over 17.hh tall) while he is pacing, throwing his head up, whinnying every five seconds right in your ear,  and kicking out is not a very easy task to do! Ms. Meagan taught me what to do with him, and oh boy! The techniques she showed me were amazing! Udex calmed down and was actually quiet! He was alone in the barn and when I first brought him in, a bit nervous, but as soon as Ms. Meagan showed me what to do with him and we preformed it on him, he was a new horse! I was amazed! If you ask me if I had ever witnessed a miracle, that would have to be it! I am so thankful for such amazing friends like Ms. Meagan who are kind enough to share their talents with others! Udex and I are so, so, SO thankful!

     As I write this it is around 12:30 at night, and constant worries are going through my head, as always. Typical worries that every owner of a horse share. "Will my horse be warm enough tonight?" "Will he have a freak accident in the paddock!?" "What if he starts to colic in the middle of the night?" I guess thoughts like those are normal when you love another life just as much as your own, if not even more. I am so thankful to have an amazing horse like Udex. I watch him do his fancy natural extended trot in the paddock and just think to myself about how God must like me a lot more then I could have ever imagined! To put such an amazing boy into my arms and to be giving me the opportunity to bring him back up to where was. Oh man! I am so, so, SO blessed! I have a lot of amazing friends! Each and every one of them have helped me so much!  I can't thank them enough for helping in the ways they have!! I'm not lucky.. I'm just blessed. Every night before I go to bed, and as soon as I wake up I say a prayer... and instantly all my worries of Udex fade away and I feel stronger then ever that we can do this and make it to the top. 

Sharing the Arena

Tonight I was very impressed with Udex. Although he has been in the arena numerous amounts of times before, tonight was his first time sharing the arena with another lovely horse. To be more specific, the other horse is not boarded at the barn, but trailed to the barn for use of the arena, (making the horse a total stranger to him.) At first, I was a little nervous to see Udex's reaction to this new mare. I was lunging Udex when the mare arrived. At first, Udex was a bit excited and did start to speed up his canter. Though after about a minute he calmed down and slowed down to a very nice relaxed, ideal, canter. He handled the situation perfectly, I could not have asked for better.

HUGE improvement!

       Now, as you know, Udex's muscles are not as good as they used to be. In order to re-develop his muscles, I need to walk Udex a lot more then I would a normal, up to par horse. When he walks, he is working on using his hind leg muscles, resulting in him developing those muscles! (Yay!)  For the past few days I have been walking him a lot... Today I saw the difference. HE WALKED WHILE HE WAS ON THE LUNGE!!!!!! This is great news!! Before, udex would not want to walk, due to it being a bit uncomfortable for him. Today I saw the past few days really pay off. The fact that he decided to walk instead of just stop or start a trot, really means a lot to me!!! Already my horse is improving drastically! To name a few improvements, he is walking more, looking shiny, listening to me perfectly, recognizes his name, a lot calmer, and so many other things I could add to the list!

    Overall, I am very impressed with him tonight! There are many other ways that the night could have went, but luckily for me, my horse trusted me enough to show him the way. I am so thankful for Udex, and his willingness to learn. Tonight was fantastic!

The Journey

       Why buy a horse like Udex? I mean, who in their right mind would want to buy an underweight, un-muscular, scrawny, HUGE, energetic warmblood? ("Me! Me! Me!!") An ideal first horse for a thirteen year old girl, would probably be a horse that is calm, sweet, muscular, well fed, and well ridden, that you could take to shows several months after buying, and ride everyday after it arrives at your barn. That's not the case with my Udex though!

   While looking for a rescue horse to fix up, I came across Udex. I almost immediately knew that he was the horse for me.
I am truly lucky to have such an amazing horse. I honestly can say that I am proud that my horse needs work. To me, that means that my horse and I are on a journey together. On our journey, we will both become disappointed, share our happy moments, have many laughs, have our falls, have our times when giving up comes to question, spend lots of time on just working out little flaws, and also become frustrated, but most importantly... We will achieve the one thing that matters most in the horse world... A bond. I know that together, Udex and I can accomplish all of our goals and prove many people wrong. The key to success with a horse is trust, a bond, patience, and love. I know that it will be anything but easy to complete our journey. There will be many days when I will question the goal... But I know, that in the end, we will complete our journey successfully and that the prize is oh, so worth it. So here we are, at the beginning of our very long journey. I know that together, Udex and I, we will do this.