Equiband System

*unrelated to blog posts but blogger suddenly stopped displaying my feed earlier this week and so in my spare time (🤣😬🤬) I've been trying to recreate it in Feedly, so if I've missed reading/commenting on any blogs I'm so sorry!*

After we did responsible things with our 3rd stimulus payment (which was literally so long ago I can't actually remember what we did haha) I had a little left over so DH told me to buy myself something fun, since we'd been spending so much on responsible things at the time. In retrospect, probably would have been good to hold on to for all of Cici's medical bills or his new car 🥴 but at the time I didn't know those things were coming and I had some money to burn, and so I checked something off my wish list and grabbed an Equiband System! 

Cinna being a good dog for our fitting. Ignore all the bloodstains, the horseflies are rabid right now 🙈 I wish fly spray made a damn lick of difference to them but alas 🤷‍♀️

It's been sitting in the tack shed for aaaaaages. I kept thinking "oh I should wait until they're more fit" and then once they were actually more fit it just seemed like so much #effor to actually get the bands set up for each individual horse so I kept just moving that to next week on my internal to-do list.

On the plus side, since the negative parts of the cellulitis have been lingering, my coworker gave me this handy dandy little machine he got after a knee surgery that circulated ice cold water through a wrap I could put around my elbow, and it was perfect for an afternoon of couch surfing and Dr. Who!

This past Sunday was another hot and humid disgusting summer day. I woke up and my left arm (still recovering from FUCKING CELLULITIS) was basically dead weight. I didn't want to waste the entire weekend day, since those are about the only days I get to work both horses, so I tried to figure out what I could do that didn't require both arms to be functional. Aha! Set up the equibands, since it would be a lot of standing around fiddling with them and the horses shouldn't spend too much time actually working in them in the beginning. I watched all of the fitting videos, read through the instructions, and finally meandered out to the barn to grab the horses. 

I know I posted one of these shots in my WW but it's too cute. 

Ruby was snoozing, so I started with Cinna. I was a bit mentally prepared for that to be a shitshow, both after her shenanigans Saturday morning, and also standing still is not always her favorite thing. But I kept my expectations low, tacked her up with the Equiband saddle pad and a surcingle, her rainbow bridle (since ya know, IT DOESN'T HAVE REINS), and a lunge line, and headed out to the arena. I parked her by the mounting block where I had the instructions and the extra stuff sitting, and started fiddling with the bands. I had good intentions to stuff my pockets full of bribes, but I forgot. Poor abused Cinna. Nevertheless, she stood like a statue as I followed the instruction video and showed her the bands, rubbed them around her body, and then eventually started fiddling with the length on the abdominal one. 

"Why is my human so dumb?"

"Siiiiiigh"

Literally gave less than zero fucks. 

After a lot of struggling (geez the lady in the video made it look SO EASY), I finally got it adjusted-ish. I'm not saying it's at the perfect length, but I got it to a reasonable adjustment and sent her out. Also sorry she's still only wearing the one fly boot I was too lazy to take it off lol. 

After being content with the abdominal band's adjustment, I started on the hindquarter band. I've seen some differing ideas on whether or not you should do both or just start with the ab one, but I figured I could at least adjust it, that didn't mean I needed to USE it right away. This one took me even longer to adjust, but Cinna was a saint and just stood there with a hoof cocked, baking in the sun and heat. Just adjusting these bands and walking around her had me DRIPPING SWEAT like a disgusting faucet, but she was cool as a cucumber. 

Letting me grab media. I think this first adjustment was too loose, when I sent her out to walk it sort of balled up around her butt, so I changed the tension. 

Being a good dog trying to figure out WTF I was strapping to her body. 

"Weird, but whatever you want crazy human"

Definitely over my shit. 

I just sent her around in a few circles to see how she felt in them, and UNpredictably, she gave zero fucks lol. I'm still not sure I have them adjusted right, but I labeled her bands and I'll watch some more videos/read a bit more before pulling them out again. Still just sort of fun to get set up, I think it'll be a useful tool over the long term! Ruby was up from her nap by the time I finished with Cinna, so I pulled out my next long-suffering victim.... errr, horse who doesn't mind all my weird experiments. 

She was less enthused about me rubbing these all over her, and actually at one point where I stretched them over her and let them make noise she was like oh fuck no and peaced out, lol. I had her loose with me in the arena because I needed both hands for the bands, so I just set them down, caught her, brought her back, and started over. The second time around she didn't care. 

I did get faster at adjusting the bands -- Cinna's took me FOREVER, and Ruby's took me like... half of forever, lol. 

Ho hum trot. 

"Are you done yet?"
Nope. More bands to fit!

After I got the ab band situation, I fussed with the hindquarters one. Initially I had it shortened wayyyy too much and it wouldn't even stretch all the way around, so I had to fuss with it more than once to get it at a more acceptable length. 

Then she kept swishing her tail at flies and getting pieces stuck, lol. 

Once the hindquarters band was on, she realllllllly wanted to canter instead of trot, but did eventually consent to just jog around. 

Very ho hum trot, I didn't get many good photos. 

I labeled her bands, put the lot of it away, and let her go back to napping :) Hopefully now that they're at least SORT of set up, I'll be more inclined to reach for them in the future as we work towards getting more fit and making... you know, actual progress? ;)