A Hypothetical Christmas Wishlist!

She Moved to Texas just did a hilarious post about what Simon would put on his Christmas list. I think if O and P could create one of their own, there would be only one thing on there: alfalfa. 

Alfalfa is horsey crack. I just bought a few bales for Pmare - she's about to enter her final stretch of pregnancy, and the jump in calories and protein needed calls for some feed changes, which include the addition of some alfalfa to her free choice grass hay. O is getting some too - it's perfect for a hay meal right before a workout. Our climate makes for crappy grass hay - we can only grow coastal around here, which is why we pay out the nose to have timothy shipped in. The lack of grass hay is somewhat made up by the legume hay - they grow some AMAZING alfalfa here. AMAZING. The horses smell it, and their eyes start rolling around. They see me walking by with a flake, and they go NUTS. The stuff I got is all leaf, green and soft and sweet smelling and gorgeous. They're only currently getting 1/2 flake each once a day in addition to their grass hay, but that's the stuff they make a BEELINE for in the morning.

Yes. If the mares had a Christmas list, I'm pretty sure the only thing listed would be alfalfa, in huge capital letters. ALFALFA FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WE WANT MORE ALFALFA, ALL THE ALFALFA ALL THE TIME FOREVER MOAR ALFALFA.

As for me, I have a few other things that I'd like Santa to bring me.... stuff I don't really feel like I should spend money on, and stuff that definitely won't actually be under my tree, but these might be on the list of purchases over the next year or so!

1) Freedom collar (and new traces)

 I love these collars. Love them! My current breastcollar probably used to be pretty nice back in the day, but age and wear has left the backside of it somewhat rough - it's just a flat piece of leather with no padding. Fine for schooling with a harness pad, but not really a show quality piece of equipment. My saddle is really nice with beautiful patent leather on it, and my bridle has patent leather blinders as well, so a gorgeous brass and patent leather breastcollar would be awesome. I'd also need new traces, since my traces are sewn in.

2) Brown show reins

 Driving reins are always brown. There's some tradition behind this - in the old days, black dye was not very fast, and in a rainstorm (or with a sweaty horse), the black dye would run all over your clothes if your reins were dyed black. (And your horse too.) So the reins were left undyed and brown - and so were leather driving gloves. My current reins are half brown and half black - that's kind of a cheaper way of making reins that still don't stain your hands, since it takes a higher quality leather to make brown reins (black dye hides imperfections). The leather on the black part is definitely not as nice as the brown leather, and I don't love them. They're fine for schooling, but I definitely would like a nice pair to save for shows.

3) Show clothes

If I'm going to be showing this year, I need a wardrobe for it! I have EVERY piece of riding show clothing I could ever want in my life, but I have no show clothes for driving whatsoever, save two hats that I got at the driving club's holiday party. Nice brown leather gloves, a show apron, and an appropriate coat/shirt/scarf are all things I'm going to need. Luckily most of these things I can score for relatively cheap or secondhand!

4) A Money Tree

Because you need one for this sport... and for horses in general!

O drove like a little sports car yesterday.... I put her back in her usual Happy Mouth and she was SUPER happy about it. She was incredibly responsive, light, easy, and listening, which was a nice change from the last few drives! She was filthy and muddy (and the mud was fresh and wet black gumbo, so there was no getting it off!), so pardon the lovely grooming job in the pictures... at least you can see her nice goobers.

She had a day off today, gets back to it tomorrow and Sunday, and then will have the week off for Christmas while we are away on vacation. Yes, I know we were just off on vacation... but we get another one, because we are lucky m-fers!