Post by heathera on Dec 9, 2009 19:01:59 GMT -1
Drummer was 3.5yrs old when he came to live at our house. I'd had a few years of OTTB ownership where I didn't ride more than I rode due to lameness issues. I decided I needed a Native that was more robust, easier to handle and that could be my first ever horse to start under saddle myself. The time seemed right and I had a good support network in place. I had always loved my friends Dales ponies and she loaned me her old mare for the summer to see if it was what I really wanted. Turned out it was so, in November '98, a very hairy, knobbly knee'd, weedy, scraggy, wild eyed bundle of hair and attitude walked down a horsebox ramp and into our lives, courtesy of Bill and Catherine to whom I have been grateful ever since.
After a while as a young stallion's field companion his behaviour was interesting at times. We learned in the first week that his striking accuracy with a front hoof whilst standing on his back legs was very good.
He also kicked with very little warning, stood on your feet with unerring speed and vigour and his teeth were no strangers to human flesh. That first winter was spent showing him that it was far easier and more pleasant for everyone concerned if you let people pick your feet up without trying to kick their heads in first, that shiatsu and massage are lovely rewards for standing calmly and not biting, pawing or tossing your head so hard in dominance anger that you fell over or knocked yourself silly on the tying up post.
The following summer we did some in hand shows, having spent many hours with a clicker and treats and a short stick, used in almost equal measure at first, he learned to stand calmly and squarely, be touched all over and to be OK about judges picking your tail and feet up and peering at you hard. We were always last or next to last and were often asked if we were sure we were in the right ring as he was so weedy that judges thought he should be in with the 2/3yr olds. It never phased him, he always knew he was the bestest and most vigorous pony in the ring. He would regularly Tigger bounce in excitement to show his prowess and presence, one of the first things he learned was that it was OK to Tigger bounce (piaffe and capriole were in his repertoire right from the start) as long as you did it over there and not over me.
Whilst he found line ups boring he loved the movement aspects of showing, in one class they held us all to wait for entrants who were late. A lovely Welsh stallion was in the ring and Drummer decided he needed to display back. Cue us two riders keeping them quietly opposite each other, respecting each others space and doing multiple transitions and circles for 20mins to keep them calm while their appendages whapped their bellies and arched necks became more and more archy. We were fine until a novice rider cantered her mare so close we almost clashed stirrups, coming past both of us at speed on the inside. The Welsh rodeo'd and Drummer stood on his hind legs and waved at the lovely girlie. I quickly regained control by our tried and trusted method of putting his nose on my knee and twirling him on the spot whilst telling him that was quite enough thank-you as he rolled his eye at me angrily and snorted for all he was worth. Thankfully the steward asked the mare owner to stand outside the ring and normality resumed. Needless to say we didn't win the class but we did get asked what Drummer's stud fee was
When I bought him I dreamed one day of doing the Royal Highland Show, a major, national event for Scotland. Drummer helped me achieve that dream, being pulled in first out of around 18 ponies in his in-hand class and finally coming 4th after some dangerous 'ringcraft' behaviours from other competitors caused him to have to be repeatedly moved in and out of the line up. In the ridden class we were pulled in sixth behind many Fells and a few competitors that had 'interesting' ridden shows but who were on first name terms with the judge. Catherine made me the proudest woman alive when she said that she wouldn't be ashamed to take him in the ring.
It confirmed to me though that showing really wasn't our thing and we've never been serious about it ever since, using it simply as an excuse for an outing and a way to gain youngster experience and nothing else. I was so proud of my pony to cope with what he did on that day and to look after me so well despite me having muscle tremors and weakness during the ridden class. He showed me what true sportsmanship was all about.
I set aside a whole afternoon once when he was young to teach him to load into a borrowed horsebox. After a quick sniff and paw he walked calmly up the ramp and that set the tone for the rest of his life. A friend came to stay once and I asked her to load him onto a box for me as I held onto another pony. She turned her head as they approached the ramp to ask what he was like to load only to find herself being hauled up it as he firmly dragged her to the top, positioned himself sideways and then peered at me from under his forelock as if to say, "These new handlers... honestly they're ever so slow". He always loved to be up high to gain a better view.
In the autumn that he was four we started trying to teach him to lunge. He very quickly showed us how powerful a short Dales pony neck is once it's braced rigidly into position to allow for optimum effect of rearing and yanking away. Using two lines to have the ability to turn him and calmly send him the other way when he did this simply saw him look me square in the eye and lie down on his keel with his ears flat back and his teeth snapping at the lunge reins. Driving friends who were helping me told me to never try and put him in a carriage
Having plunged into my learning theory manuals and attended a Mark Rashid 
(so cold the ponies wore hats) and Rob Oakes clinics I built up more tools in my toolbox that winter and we finally got the long lining and lunging going beautifully by using a combination of pressure halter and clicker training, calm persistence with light pressure only, lots of groundwork, short sessions spaced close together and some not very pretty moments where I had to defend my space after he decided to see if charging me with teeth bared would stop me asking. I developed a fine skill at being the calm centre in the middle of the storm and merely quietly repeating my request once the bother was out of his feet and his brain.
Over the years he gave lunge lessons to countless children and was lead rein pony for more than one persons first trotting lessons. We never told most of them how he was as a youngster and he earned gold stars and the hearts of all those that he taught so calmly and steadily, he always knew when his cargo was special and he had to contain his natural exuberance. He taught quite a few people how to long line, being polite while they took their first fumbling steps but also knowing when they were experienced and confident enough for him to step up and show them a few tricks such as throwing in lateral work if the contact was uneven or breaking into canter if their body language was too loud or zooming into changes of rein at Dales trot if they positioned themselves wrongly.
He had the wickedest sense of humour I have ever seen in a pony, often looking to me for my reaction before being 'snorty norty' and testing his rider/handler out. He loved to 'engage' with his environment, giving us a new descriptive phrase of, "It has been Drummered" to mean it has been played with to the point of destruction. He loved to supervise our repairs to make sure we were fixing things correctly, ready for the next round of engagement.
In the late summer that he was five I started hopping up and down next to him, he wore the bareback pad round the shed in the evenings, we spent time going for endless walks in hand, something we took up againonce he was too ill to be ridden, scrabbling up and down hills, in and out of ditches and through some real knee banger gates with baler twine 'hinges'.
He loved going scrumping for wild raspberries in autumn and fresh hawthorn in Spring.
I was anxious about backing him but one night, when he was eating his feed, I had a feeling that everything was right. It was The Moment. All the preparation was done. So I put his halter on, a mounting block next to his side and leaned over him as usual. Then I swung a leg over and lay on his back for the first time ever. It's a moment you never forget, the first time you ever sit on the first ever horse you are starting. It's an honour to be allowed onto them and something that is an amazing privilege with a huge amount of responsibility. It sets the tone for the rest of their lives. Drummer merely paused a moment, flicked his ears a little, bent his head round and sniffed my left foot (click, treat), then bent his head round and sniffed my right foot, twisted his head to look me in the eye as if to say, "Oh, you're that side too" and calmly went back to eating. He was always keen to make eye contact[/url], often twisting his head or flicking his forelock out the way in order to do so. When anxious he would sometimes make eye contact from half a field away, if I gave him a calming thought and relaxed body language in return he also became relaxed and was reassured.
A couple of months after this we did another Mark Rashid clinic
The winter that fell between his 5th and 6th year he grew two inches in height and made his final 14.2hh. When he wasn't busy being the clumsiest pony I've ever met, falling over his own feet or banging into things, we did under bareback pad work in walk and trot a couple of times a week. For 20 mins or so at a time we'd walk round the arena, learning to halt and steer from weight and seat, doing the s-bend, back up, sidepass, ToF, ToH. By the time Spring came round we were doing most of the TREC obstacles in hand including logs, drops, steps, ditches etc and walking and trotting. By the autumn we were ready for our first ever TREC competition, it just happened to be a Level two Scottish championship
. After a fantastic orienteering day full of exuberance and some lovely canters across stubble fields and wades through streams he did a very slow but foot perfect obstacles round, including our first ever drop fences and log jumps, to bring us in with our pair in sixth position. Not bad for a middle aged woman late to riding and a weedy Native. We spent that winter doing the TREC winter series as it was then, complete with orienteering.
In the following two years he represented Scotland at the national championships, being on the winning nations team both times. We also competed both on our own and as a pair and won the obstacles part of the competition many times. I remember one wet and muddy day up north when many horses were refusing to do obstacles we went round a particularly tricky Lvl 2. The ridden slope was a Lvl 3 one and deeply churned. We teetered on the brink, like a mountain goat on the edge of a precipice, before my quiet, "Walk on Drummer" reached his ears in the howling gale and rain. With my feet almost touching his quivering ear tips we slid down the slope with him sat on his tail, his hind feet sliding and his front feet digging in at each step to act as brakes. He stayed within the markers and we were the only combination to score a perfect ten at that obstacle.
At another competition he tried to take me over the 3'6" lvl 4 log fence and I had to use a very open rein to bring him onto course for the Lvl 2 log hidden behind it. He was so miffed at being asked to jump the little fence that he gave it 3'6" anyway and left the judges with open mouths and me with an inability to breath for a few strides until my heart caught back up with my chest. He always did give his fences plenty of room.
He loved to gallop, once he discovered how. I remember the first time he managed the drop down in gear. We were behind Sailor on a grass, kilometre long gallops. Sailor went off in front and Drummer and I tried to keep up. Drummer couldn't manage it and tried to buck me off so he could go faster. When this didn't work he tried running with his head on the floor which also didn't work. Finally I went into jockey position, brought his head up and crouched down aboard him and he found fifth gear. The shear power of a muscly cob bum discovering turbo boost has to be experienced at least once in everyone's life. I don't know whether the tears down my face were from laughing, crying or wind driven G-force but the memory of his mane whipping in my face as we overtook Sailor and he discovered that effortless stretching speed of the gallop stride will always stay with me.
Once he hit seven and started to fill out he began to question my leadership when on board. People started to advise that I sell him to a dealer to 'be sorted' or that he be shot. More than one person told me he needed beating until he lay down then beating until he got back up again. I knew there had to be another way, beating him or subduing him with force would either end up with him killing me or me killing something that was essential to his essence and being.
At a Deb Bennett clinic she asked us all to remain passive on board our horses in a line. She walked in front of us with a sparkly cheerleader pompom tied to a schooling stick dragging behind her. Some horses spooked backwards at high speed, another reared. Drummer's head came up into alert mode, his ears flicked around and then went into 'locked on and running' radar dish mode and he strutted out the line up, snorted at the pompom and proceeded to chase it down with much front leg stomping. I kept him from stomping too much and everyone fell around laughing except Dr Deb who said he was dangerous and had never been started properly. She told everyone at the clinic, over her mike, that he had to be taken through the grief of losing his freedom and realising that he could no longer do what he wanted when he wanted. That I hadn't started him properly as breaking them to be ridden is like a mini-death to them. I was horrified, I never want to see that hopeless, dead and flat look in any of my horses eyes that comes from being 'broken' or subjugated via learned helplessness into being a 'good ole trail oss'. I vowed then and there that he would never leave me and we would find our own way through this that left us both intact and whole.
Out hacking we had a few scary episodes of him deciding it was time to go home and simply taking me there, at speed. He never bolted, just set his neck and carted. After one episode, which had him falling over underneath me as he tried to handbrake turn round a ninety degree bend at speed on loose gravel with me fighting him for control, we took ourselves off to 'naughty pony and remedial rider' training camp for a fortnight. He loved it, three hours of work every day, two teenage girls as well as the main trainer to ride him and lots of pony club games and jumpies. We came home a new team, both of us intact, and spent a magical autumn hacking round the fields, woods and lanes solo and, sometimes, with friends for hours every evening. We would explore new places, backing out of bogs if we went splodge with his front feet, pushing through bracken and under branches to open up marked tracks through patches of forestry and wading/swimming across rivers just to see what was on the other side. We would come home tired but happy, the buzzards wheeling and calling above us, as the sun set.
That winter we started our dressage career. Over the years we reached Medium level at home with the help of a BHSII friend and a classical trainer from Germany. Out competing we, sadly, never got out of Prelim. We always came home with a rosette and more than 60% though, sometimes scoring in the 70% region and placing from 2nd to sixth but we never won a class. I said I didn't feel ready to move up until we'd done so, something I'll always regret as at our one and only Novice we were placed in the top five. He found dressage boring but did it because I asked him too. We came to the arrangement over the years that he would school for me in all these weird movements even though he could never see the point of doing more circles once you'd already done one and, as his reward we'd do some jumping or have a YEEHA blast around the field. I'll always remember our BHSII friend asking my why I would ever want an Andalusian when I already had a pocket size Iberian. I learned how to teach a horse many movements I never dreamed were possible for a short and dumpy rider and pony, going grey together, to produce. When my German trainer got on him one day and showed me how well he could do half pass I cried.
He'd have made a good bullfighting or reining pony. As the cowboys say, he had a lot of cow in him. He loved to be used as a sheep pony, herding the neighbours ewes from field to field and playing 'dodge' with the wiley old ewes who thought they could jink past him. The eventual limitation with our livestock work was the lack of a western saddle, he used to lock onto his sheep and then spin or levitate sideways and leave me sitting in thin air where he used to be a few seconds ago, just like the cartoons,complete with 'uh oh' bubble above my head. We could never turn him out with sheep as he would send them into exhaustion just playing herding games all day. With dogs he defended me and his hacking companions more than once, striking out with front feet when barking dogs came at us and trying to pick them up with his teeth in order to break their backs. I never scolded him for this behaviour as he would stop if I asked him to and I was grateful for it a couple of years ago when he waded into and laid about a pack of three Labs that were attacking my friends collie. It was one of the scariest things we've ever done but it saved the collie's life as the Labs fled once he'd struck out and hot the first one he reached.
I've never been a brave jumper, having fallen off and broken my sacrum in my fifth ever jumping lesson. With Drummer though I got my first ever clear round rosette in a SJ ring and I learned to love XC. We would often pop logs out hacking and we once did a 3'3" drop from an embankment as we wanted to try a new route that was only accessible by doing the jump. That's a long way down on a 14.2hh pony, no matter how big his heart. He was a forward going rocket XC but always thought he should be stopped and congratulated after every single SJ in an arena.
Just as our jumping started to improve I had a mystery illness, a five day migraine that has left me weak and in pain ever since. I had to stop riding and Drummer went, overnight, from being an active competition pony to being turfed out in a field and patted twice a day by my SO. He adapted well and seemed to know he had to be gentle with me. When I first started going out to be near him again he would position himself alongside and let me hold onto his mane and neck for support. An instructor friend who did RDA teaching started coming over, tacking him up and leading me round the arena for ten minutes in walk a couple of times a week until my SO felt confident to do it as well. I would often collapse to the ground as my legs gave way on dismounting and Drummer would stand and brace so I could use him as a support, we were often seen with him standing quietly while I held on tight waiting for feeling to return to my legs and for my knees to be able to hold my weight.
The first few hacks out we had were done with foot soldiers and in walk. Even when we reached the places where we had always done fast work before Drummer would walk gently along, refusing to go into trot even if I asked. He became my therapy RDA pony and held that role for nearly two years while I slowly clawed my way back to some semblance of a normal life. As my energy slowly started to recover he became a good judge of how I was doing. I would mount up and, if I was having a good day, we would have spontaneous bursts of Dales trot along with head flips to toss his mane and forelock as if to tell the world how he was out and about again with his mum. We would go hacking with friends and spend the whole time in very collected trot with shoulder fore alternating from side to side with a few straight strides if he could contain himself from flying into canter. He would arch his neck and his feet would fly as his withers and back came up to meet my gently containing seat as I sat on this amazing powerhouse of personality and graceful beauty.
He was the first pony I ever rode bareback and bridle less in all three paces.
He was an amazing ambassador for the breed, being a magnet for children and adults alike to stroke and 'oooh' and 'ahhh' over, to make the inevitable, "Hasn't he got a lovely mane/tail" comment
He gave many people pony rides and showed them Dales trot, invariably bringing people back with a 'WOW' on their lips. At competitions he always had a trail of admirers, all asking what breed he was, and I was proud to be his skivvy and the person who was allowed to have him with me for a while and take him to parties. I do remember an animal communicator telling me once that they had tried to 'talk' to him when we were camping at a TREC competition. Apparently he turned to them and merely replied that he was terribly busy right now and could they come back later please?
18 months ago he injured his back. He was very cross about it and became quite surly about the whole thing, frustrated that his once vibrant body would no longer do as asked. He became subdued and internalised and dull. It was only in Spring of this year that he started to pick up again. As the lunging, long lining, TTEAM, shiatsu and ridden work began to pay off he began to show his true character again. I still remember the first lesson I had with our current instructor where he showed his true paces and his charisma shone through. I turned to look at her after demonstrating our flying changes done during a serpentine to find her open mouthed and speechless.
Two weeks after this he seemed a little 'off' in our lesson, two days later he was lame. We thought it was a recurrence of the back injury and laid him off. At the same time I was experiencing higher and higher pain levels to the point of passing out sometimes. It was agreed that I needed to sort my pain out and that, while he was recovering, would be a good time. During my time in hospital and the first few days following surgery I escaped the pain and complications by day dreaming of galloping Drummer through the woods and glades once more, of doing pony club games and our first Elementary test. When I came out of hospital he gently wuffled me all over and requested his usual snogs, reassuring himself that this strange person was me
We spent many days with me in a deckchair in the garden, reading and dozing, with him the other side of the fence, grazing and dozing. I lost track of the number of times I feel asleep sat in the field and woke to find him standing guard over me.
When I was strong enough we took him over to the vets and found out the true problem, malignant melanoma. My brave little pony then began his last fight, letting us syringe foul tasting medicine down his throat at 8 hr intervals for six weeks whilst enjoying having three meals a day for the first time in his life. Sadly the life that burns brightly tends to burn fast and he was sent over to Valhalla to raise havoc there just a few weeks ago.
He has left us a rich legacy of experiences and memories.
He has taught the youngsters herd dynamics and manners.
Shown them how to be curious and play with objects
I have his niece, Tola, who seems to be living up very well to reminding me of Drummer and how full and strong his personality was every day
