Little Red Corvette

Wow what a day!!! I think O is going to hope that I don't have any more days off anytime soon... I messed with her ALL. DAY. LONG. So many things got done today and I am exhausted!

Yesterday in the mail, two packages came for me, both things I had ordered. One was a driving whip - a nice one, a little shorter than I thought it would be but it has a nice long lash - and a liverpool with the same mouthpiece as my Happy Mouth mullen mouth. It's made by Zilco, but it's basically the same thing.

Santa came early!

Eager to try everything out, I headed to the barn in the early morning, fed the girls, and left them to munch hay for a little while. I pulled out my cart, switched out my snaffle for the liverpool, and off we went to do some dressage work.

Mom y u do dis

I put the liverpool on the first slot. There are a lot of different ways to attach your reins to a liverpool; I might try the next mildest next time. Mostly it's trial and error, seeing what she likes and what is too much vs. not enough.
She's a very interesting case in that the more you put the pressure on her, the harder she pushes back against it. She doesn't relent to pressure, she sulls up against it. She is an absolute buttermouth with a light touch on the reins, but if you pull hard on her mouth, she will clamp down, root to the spot, and completely lock up against you. I liked the way that the liverpool gave me a really solid feel - no reins sliding around the rings of the bit - but it took her a minute to realize that she could still continue to be nice and light without consequence. She was kind of ehh for about a 1/2hr, and then we had a nice long walk break to let her regroup her mind and relax a little. Once she had done that, she was very happy to goober up, take a contact, and be a little rounder than she has been. And, who knew - she can bend to the right after all! She just kind of forgot how with a snaffle I suppose! We did a of transition work, and ended on a really good note.


I had a few clients to do, so I left for awhile and got that done. On the way home, I got in touch with the lady I was buying the new cart from - we decided I would come pick it up today!!

Before I did that, I decided that it was high time to clip O. It has been very warm lately, and she has been getting pretty sweaty during workouts. I hadn't decided on what theme I was going with, and mulled some patterns over in my head while I bathed her and prepped her for her clip job. A hazy idea popped into my head... she's a zoomy mare, zooming around... she should have some flames, but flames are hard.... maybe she could have some racing stripes... yeah... like, a little sports car...

Because I am stupid, I decided to freehand the entire thing, and used big huge clippers with giant wide blades. It therefore did not come out particularly well, but it's pretty cute anyway:

Little Red Corvette! And that's not an E, that's a chomp mark from another horse - she likes to hump the fence and let the other horses bite her when she's in heat.

I guess, considering the super wide blades (that are at least twice as wide at the stripes) and the freehand job, it's not terrible. But remind me next year to tape it and use smaller blades - imagine how much better and cleaner it would be that way!

Once that way done, I released the wild beast (who galloped away bucking), took the divider out of my trailer, hooked up, and headed out to pick up the new cart! Getting in and out of their property and loading the cart were all little puzzled to be solved... it was tricky, but we got it done. Let me tell you what though - I will be making a serious effort to figure out how to get my cart into the bed of my pickup. Taking the divider out of my trailer was a HUGE pain in my ass, and I tried for 30 minutes to get it back in without any luck. Given my wrists and shoulder, I shouldn't really be doing that anyway, so eventually I just gave up! SO infuriating. Getting the cart in and out of the trailer is hard enough as it is - it nearly mowed me over when I was unloading it. I will have to get creative in order to figure this one out. 

I let O check the cart out after dinner - she didn't care, and was happy to stand between the shafts and look at it. 

Whatever, can you please leave me alone now

She'll have tomorrow off, and then we'll go for our first drive in the new cart on Monday!!