Preparing for the Spring Semester

There are exactly 26 day's until my first class of the spring semester, 18 day's until I leave for my second national 4-H public speaking competition, and 23 days until I head back to New Mexico. I have already been home for nearly two weeks and the time has flown by. Next semester is going to be a very interesting one.

My schedule is filled with 17 credits:
Animal Science Career Development
Companion Animal Management
Horse Fitting and Selling
General Chemistry
Chemistry Lab
Ballet Technique (which I may drop considering I'm having knee surgery sometime next semester)
Science Ethics and Society (Honors)
Lifeguard Training

Most student's would worry the most about taking chemistry as it is a very difficult class and takes a lot of focus. However, I enjoy Chem and am prepared to study as much as needed to make an A in the class. The class that frightens me the most is ANSC 288 "Horse Fitting and Selling". The class objective is to "teach" student's how to prepare horses to sell. This sounded like a fun class until I discovered that we would be working with yearlings that have had minimal to no exposer to humans.

The NMSU horse farm breeds Thoroughbreds and Quarter Horses. If you know anything about these two breed you know that Quarter Horses can be slow and dumb but aggressive if not started young, and Thoroughbreds can be high strung but very intelligent and pick up on things quickly. I'm prepared for what ever yearling I end up with to be firery and challenging. I don't believe that the school should be breeding horses unless they are imprinting correctly and using more natural methods of training. That's just my personal opinion and a lot of students will not agree with me but these horses a dangerous to have students around.

Last semester I took a special topics class on halter breaking weanling's. I learned a lot about the wrong way to train horses and what I agreed and disagreed with. The goal of the class was to "break" the weanling's so that when it was time to train them in ANSC288 they would already be semi manageable and also to use students as free labor. Most of the weanling's in that class progressed nicely, turning into manageable young horses. A few of them where problem children but I think it was all because of the way the school believes in doing things. The first batch of weanling we worked with will be about 10 months come the start of next semester. Probably not old enough to use for the fitting and selling class but I can only hope that something happens and they have to use the little guys for 288.

Before going to college I hadn't had a ton of experience working with younger horses. I started riding when I was four years old but never learned as much as I should have about ground work. I took a break from riding when I started high school and have now been riding off in on since the beginning of last year. I enjoy being around horses and training them more than I do riding. I believe that it has helped to make me a better dog trainer. Horses are animals that spook easily and must be handled carefully. If you do something to mistrain a horse it takes you ten times longer to retrain them than it does with a dog. Since I have started working with younger horses, I have learned to control patience better when working with my dogs. (I'm probably going to make another post about this at some point)

The other challenging thing about next semester is knee surgery. Nearly a year ago I made a wrong move in a parking lot and manage to tear my  Medial Collateral Ligament (the one that keeps your knee from swinging out sideways) and break off some of the cartilage that covers my femur. I tried several rounds of physical therapy which helped but only covered up the problem. I'm really lucky to have a great physical therapist who has given me lots of advice and education on this whole thing. Last month, I went back to the surgeon again to see what else could be done with my knee to make the pain go away and get me back to doing triathlons. It's been over a year since I have competed in any triathlons, open water swims, or mountain bike races. They suggested surgery to clean up the knee and remove any cartilage floating around inside although they had previously been trying to avoid surgery. The MRI taken of my knee is inconclusive it shows a perfectly normal looking knee with only a small amount of wear. The surgeon who I trust a lot thinks that the pain, swelling, locking up and everything else I deal with are congruent with chunks of missing cartilage floating around my knee. yay! Both he and my physical therapist suggested that surgery was the best option to get me back running and doing everything I love again. However, it means that I get to limp around, go to therapy, and try to train a horse on one leg for part of the semester which could be challenging. I'm trying to prepare myself now by getting everything school related organized before surgery happens. I don't know when I'm having surgery but I have a pre-surgery appointment on the 24th to get everything set in stone. I'm not excited about it but I am excited to hopefully start running again next semester!

There are lots of things to do at home as I prepare for the spring semester. I'm very excited to start my second semester at NMSU as the plan is for it to be a 4.0 semester.

Signing off,
girl minus pup with potentially crazy horse to train