Showing posts with label cows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cows. Show all posts

Friday, February 19, 2016

Future Event Horse Series - Maybe?



Having baby horses is just the most fun thing on planet Earth. Having been the first person to handle Pax literally from the moment she was born (I pulled her out, if you remember!), and having been largely the only one to handle her thus far, it has really just been SO NICE to have a little beast who doesn't need nine million things fixed, retrained, and reschooled. I've had largely nothing but adult horses needing much in the way of fixing over the last several years, so to have this little babe from scratch - I just love it. Pax is smart, and easy, and doesn't question things. Her main problem is that she is overly friendly and sometimes all up in your space, as heavily handled babies tend to be. She likes me, and she thinks I am super interesting, so whenever I come into the pasture, she is the first to come straight to me. Things don't frighten her, and even when they do cause her concern, she readily accepts them as just part of her baby world - like a little sponge, she just sucks it up. She is still very immature about many things - she is only 10 months old, after all! - but her brain will mature as her body does. 

I have no intention of rushing anything with her, or doing things that I don't think she is mentally or physically capable of until she is really ready for them. That said, I was mulling it over and over in my head recently, and I decided - why not do the yearling section of the Future Event Horse series this year, if she is mentally capable? 

The Future Event Horse program, if you are not familiar with it, is run by the USEA. It is not to be confused with the Young Event Horse program, which showcases the potential talent of 4 and 5 year olds under saddle. I don't really agree with many of the things they are asking these super young horses to do under saddle, so I wouldn't participate in that series if I ever get back to eventing. But the FEH is shown exclusively in-hand, and evaluates the potential for horses as upper level event horse prospects.
Is Pax really an upper level event prospect? Eh, not really. I think she is and will be totally capable of cruising around mid-level, with either myself should I decide to get back into eventing (and maybe I will!), or with another person should that time ever come. But, I think these programs are great exposure for these babes - they are local, they are pretty low-key and they are good life experience. There are a few of them within two or so hours of me, so we wouldn't have to go on long stressful trips or spend extended periods of time away from home. Since there are only a few of them a year, the rest of the year she can go be outside growing and playing like any baby should - and this is highly encouraged by the program. They specifically state that it is more important for a baby to be turned out and look a little scruffy versus be super shiny and slick and fat from standing in a stall, which I really appreciate. 


I started looking up dates for the FEH events in our area. Oh crap.... there is one at the end of next month. That is NOT very far away!


On Wednesday, I loaded and took Pax around the block in the trailer, as her first ever totally solo ride. She has been in the trailer with her mother a few times, and practiced loading by herself at home, but hadn't ever been totally shut in and going down the road by herself. She handled it well, and only had a minor fit when we got back home and all of her idiot marefriends started having a total panic attack. Even Dylan was going, "I don't know these beasts..." Pax almost fell down when trying to turn herself around in the standing stall (not small enough to do that anymore!), caught herself, then stood still and waited to be unloaded. She still can't figure out how to back out, but she is able to turn around and walk cautiously down the ramp. Thankfully she is not a leaper - she is a thinker, mostly.


The side-eye is strong with this one




Yesterday, I decided I had better see how she was going to handle going off property for the first time by herself. I figured she would be pretty awful, as babies tend to be. and boy was I ever right. She was just AWFUL, although she did eventually settle down some.

I can't blame her for her awful behavior. Going off property for the first time is scary. Being without your herd is scary. Seeing things like cows for the first time is scary. It is quite a thing, to be frightened of these things. But, my main problem was not that she was afraid of things. She wasn't afraid, not like I expected. She screamed bloody murder the entire time for the other horses, and she did spook half to death when she saw the cows go by, but her main problem was her fallback tantrums she has when something is overwhelming for her. When she can't handle something (as toddlers are wont to do), she goes into bananas bersek mode and comes at her handler, She doesn't try to get away from you, she tries to come at you. This works in the pasture, because at 10 months old she is the literal boss of the entire mare herd. She shakes her head and she shoves her body around, and all of the other mares - her own mother included - get out of her way. And P herself is kind of a cow sometimes, and fully had her old owner taken advantage of in the same way - she just barged around, and the old owner got out of the way. She doesn't do it with me, but I know she would if I let her.

It's not like this is anything new. I've been dealing with this attitude since she was a neonate. I sat on her and squashed her more times than I can count when she was very small. I still have a mark on the back of my neck from where she reared up and struck me with her little needle hooves as a very tiny babe.

About 2 weeks old, trying to kill me

She's not nasty about it. She doesn't pin her ears, or bite, or kick, or be mean. She just barges her giant brown body around and she expects this to get the point across... like her mother does.

Needless to say, there was some major baby beating going on in that area for a little while.



BUT, that all said, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I took her back to the trailer and tied her for awhile longer. She gradually became more quiet, ate some hay, and actually stood still. I took her back in the arena, practiced some more handling, and was pleased to find that she was listening. She loaded well back on the trailer, rode well all the way home, and today seems to not hate me for having put her through this ordeal.

Pax know how to stand still in an open position, leads very well at the walk, and trots in hand better than nearly all the other horses on my property (save for O, who is super good at this). She just.... has these giant baby tantrums.


Her reaction to seeing cows

SO much side-eye

There are cows over there and cows are outside my worldly knowledge or comprehension


So, I think the FEH at Meadowcreek next month is still on. She will stand, lead, and trot in hand fine, I am sure of that. She just might, you know, show off some of her redheaded side at the same time. If you're going to Meadowcreek... you might want to some watch the fireworks!





Friday, March 14, 2014

Self Exploration


Phew! I have some catching up to do. I have another post to follow about my birthday, but I better catch upon this one first!


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Little Miss Tre left for her new home this past weekend! After this experience I can safely say I am NEVER EVER EVER doing the buying and selling thing ever again, EVER. It was a horrible, frustrating, money-bleeding experience, and I never want to take part in it ever again. She went to a great place, but not for what I wanted and not within the time frame that I wanted. It was a learning experience for me, but mostly all that I learned is that while it seemed like a great endeavor, it was not, and I am not made of the stuff that horse sellers are made out of. I am never. Ever. Doing. That. Again.

EVER.

Doing this also gave me some good insight into my own workings though, and for that I am grateful. I realized at some point that I am really just a one-horse kind of person. I really like just have one single one to spoil and dote on. It's very hard for me to have two that are both in work at the same time (having one retired one or one youngster plus a working one is a different story, that is doable). I don't know, I'm just sort of... horsey monogamous, I suppose. Only having one means that the one that I have doesn't have to want for anything. Only having one means that I can take as long as I feel like every day, because there isn't a time constraint. 

From here on out, it will just be O, and of course Pmare when she comes home. Obviously, at some point in the (way distant) future, that will change in some way or another (I get rich, somebody dies, something unexpected happens, etc), but not now. Now is a time for conservation instead of excess. Now is a time to focus on building up the things I have instead of trying to reach for outside things. 2014 looks like another huge year for personal and professional growth, and not surprisingly I am feeling a little wiser with every passing day. My 29th birthday was yesterday.... hard to believe I am approaching the end of my 20's. What I know today is certainly far more than I knew at this time last year, or the year before, or especially five years ago, or ESPECIALLY ten years ago. Ten years ago at this exact time, I was waiting for my brand new horse Metro to arrive from Canada, while doting on my old man Quincy. Five years ago at this time, I had just recently moved to Connecticut, and was prepping young Gogo for her Novice debut in Area 1. Two years ago, I had just moved into a house with Future Hubs and was wondering how in the heck I had survived a year already in Texas. Last year, I was about to get struck in the ankle with a rock and have everything in my life completely change for the better. At the end of my 20's, I am seeing that everyone was right - your 20's is a RIDICULOUSLY dynamic period in your life. It is a time for growth, a time for huge decisions, a time for successes, and a time for mind boggling mistakes. A time to really figure out who the heck you are, and where you want to be going with your life. I know that I will change every year - that's just life - but I know a lot more about my older, wiser self now than I did my younger, more irrational self. I am also old and wise enough to know that I am neither old nor wise in reality, and that I don't know nearly as much as I used to think I did. 

Anyway, I digress. 


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The past two weeks has been absolutely insane. I was sick for a week and a half, which threw off all of my appointments, and then the weather tanked which didn't help any of the complexity. I then ran myself ragged trying to catch up with everyone, and finally everything is back to normal. In the interim, I only had time to lunge a few times and go for a quick hack, but hey, at least it was something! This week things have finally gotten back to the normal level of crazy, so I've been happily back in the saddle. 

O doesn't like to do the same thing every day. If she lunges two days in a row, she'll be much worse on the second day. Same thing with flatwork, or conditioning - some combo of being bored and using the same muscle groups makes her much less pliable on the second day. She seems to do quite well if you space out her more intense workouts with either a day off or some very differing kind of work. After our dressage ride on the 1st (a Saturday), she had a day off on that Sunday (when the weather tanked), and then on that Monday we went for a 5 mile hack. We checked on all the new baby cows (so far there are 14 new little squeezy cute beef tips!), trotted over some raised poles, patterned on the barrels for a little while, and then called it a day.




It was REALLY COLD, and I had to practically peel my frozen self out of the saddle. Is winter over yet!?


The rest of the week passed in a whirlwind of business. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, she had off, and Wednesday and Friday she lunged in the Faux-ssoa. Putting a day off in between the two of those sessions was very helpful, although I did think that on the second day she was a bit less cooperative than she had been on the first. We worked on our usual stretching out, trotting and cantering over raised poles, and relaxation.



(If you couldn't tell from the change in background weather/scenery, those were taken on two different days.)

On Sunday (the 9th), I decided to try a little experiment. I had the idea long ago (meaning, a month or two ago) that I should try a pelham on O for some flatwork. This pelham has a short shank and the same Happy Mouth mouthpiece as the snaffle I ride her in. My idea was that I could ride off the snaffle, and then would have an extra bit of "excuse me whoa there wild animal" with the curb if I needed it. And that was a good idea, of course, but in reality it seems as though O has recently really connected with the idea of a half-halt. She stretched out and took a nice contact, moved off my leg, took half halts from my seat perfectly well, and was in general just fantastic. I ended up tying up the curb rein and just riding off the snaffle anyway, because I had a horse who was listening to my body and just taking a nice relaxed contact with the snaffle. I was also surprised to find that we have leg yields in both directions, really nice ones! I didn't know we had them... we certainly didn't have them before. Not sure when she picked that up, but she did!
She was great. Back to the regular snaffle, because all good dressage-y things come from a simple snaffle and that's how it should be!


She sure did look cute though!


We had another lunge, which looked quite a lot like this (although this was taken a few days earlier):



Awwww good mare.

We also had a fun day of desensitizing with a rope and playing on the barrels. She has started cantering the barrel pattern and is REALLY pretty good at it all things considered. I tried to get a video of that, but unfortunately all I ended up shooting was a long video of the sky. But, at least I got a short clip of playing around with the rope!




Caveat: do not be this lax with your own personal safety unless you really know the horse. I'm being very sloppy about safety in this video because I know this horse and I knew she wasn't going to do anything. Still, that doesn't mean that something unexpected could have happened - practice safety!

You can see that she's not particularly keen about it flying around near her head, but it won't take long for her to get used to that. I am a total goob with rope handling, so I won't be swinging around off of her anytime soon, but this is a good place to start. Not surprisingly, she didn't care about it much. You also get to see some very poor leading skills on my part... I suppose I've been letting her be too lazy with the leading as of late. I will get back on that now that I have noticed her trying to drag along behind me.

Phew, I think I caught up with all of the riding stuff!



Thursday, December 12, 2013

Uhh, brrr.

Hooray, Icemageddon 2013 is finally mostly over! My yard and driveway are still covered in several inches of ice, but all of the roads are clear, and it was in the 40's today. Hopefully it will continue to melt over the next week or so.

It hasn't been very much fun being trapped like rats in our own homes for the past 5 days though. This is what we've been doing to entertain ourselves. I know, I know, that outfit.... at this point I have a PhD in layering, even though it makes me look a bit like a hobo Eskimo. Can't say we're not innovative about finding ways to have fun in the dismal weather though!

Thank GOD, we finally managed to get by Tuesday. The city of Fort Worth finally decided on Tuesday they they should probably do something about the several inches of ice still on the roads, and were laying down salt on the bridges and blocking traffic for HOURS. Yes, it really did take them five days to figure out that maybe they should try to make the roads passable, since the sun was not coming out and the ice was not magically just going away. I lived in the Great White North for 25 years and I've never seen anything like this. It was absolutely insane.

Tuesday morning, I had had quite enough of staring blankly at the walls of my own home (seriously, what do homebodies do all the time? I need to be outside, I can't live in a building forever!), and made it to the barn before I had to leave for all of my make-up appointments (seriously, being iced in will RUIN your tight schedule). It was absolutely bitter cold, even by northern standards - my truck said it was 16 degrees. My trailer tack room door was frozen shut, so I had no way to get to my tack, but I still wanted to ride. I hadn't been on O in over a week, given 1) the dog attack, 2) the truck mishap, and 3) Icemageddon. It was 16 degrees and the horses were all spinning around like tops. Hmm, what to do?

S and I were tired of sitting sidelined, and we decided to go anyway. We hopped on our horses with their blankets still on, S's horse in a simple snaffle and O in a sidepull/halter. Lucky for us, both of us have exceptionally chill and awesome horses, and jumping on with just their blankets on and halters when it was only 16 degrees out and neither of them had been worked in a week was no big thing.










Omigoodness, when it warms up, MUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT FUZZHAWK. 

I tell you what though, six months ago I could DEFINITELY not have ridden this horse on a 16 degree day at all, much less on a 16 degree day with no saddle or bridle, after a week of no work, through a huge wide open field, right up to a big herd of cows. She's such a cool cucumber now that I can do just about anything I can dream up. 

She is just. Too. Cool.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Tre(s) Bien


Now that Tre is here, O (much to my surprise) looks like a perfect angel compared to her. Not that Tre is naughty.... I just don't know her and don't know what to expect from her all the time. I look back at O and how horrible she was that first week that I brought her home (thrashing around in the crossties, dragging me around, trying to kill me under saddle with no steering and brakes... you know the drill. She was just AWFUL!), and look at her now, and can't really believe how far she has come. She's just SO cool about everything!
I try every ride to incorporate a little dressage into everything that we do. This is a great payoff for both of us - we don't have to sacrifice fun for training, or training for fun, because we get to do both at the same time! For example: last night, we went to one of the local barrel races. S is DESPERATE to get O running (and to be honest, she'd be really good at it!), so I exhibitioned her for fun. She is patterned on the barrels, so she went trotting into the huge scary coliseum all by herself, saw the first barrel, and got right to it. (She's actually only ever seen the blue barrels before... these were brightly colored pop up barrels, but she didn't care!) The footing was very deep, so she fumbled around the third a little bit, but came galloping on home like she had been doing it her whole life. Once we were finished, we did some nice w/t work and ended on that.
Another example: last week we hacked down the road for awhile, and then decided to go check the neighbor's cows. O used to be VERY afraid of the cows, but has since gotten used to them and quite enjoys chasing them around now. S and I pushed the lot of them (41 cows/calves) into the holding pen, pushed them back out, drove them down to the stock pond, pushed them around the stock pond, and pushed them back up and into the pen again. O is more than happy to chase down breakaway calves, keep everyone together, and even run at the cranky old bull. And the best part is that we are doing dressage while we are working the cattle! Everybody wins.




(Be proud... I resisted the urge to roach it and just pulled it instead!)


Tuesday, after a week of groundwork and walking over poles and up hills, I finally got on Miss Tre. I made sure S was around (because you just never know), but she was perfectly quiet for tacking and mounting. I walked around in the small pen for awhile, trotted a lap or two around to see how she feels (she feels a little weak all over but sound), and stood for awhile while mounted. She was perfectly quiet and agreeable. S hopped up on her big yellow horse bareback, and we went for a lap around the top part of the field (where ideally I'll be doing most of her rehab/legging up). She was forward and broke to the trot once, but behaved herself otherwise. S needed to go grab something from the barn, so I stayed up where we had been riding while she rode him away. And Tre.... Tre did not appreciate this. She pitched a little hissy fit and spent a few minutes fussing. She finally settled down into a figure-8 pattern at the walk, and was actually quite good from then on. Not exactly how I had planned on our first ride going, but there you go! In her defense, I don't know that she has ever been ridden alone, she has not been in work for several months, and she assuredly has limited out-of-arena time. It was kind of a lot of ask of her! I think she just needs more miles. I'll be riding her down closer to the barn for a little while just to get her going, and then when S gets back from being away, we'll start toodling on the trails some. (Or I will pony her off of O, but O does not like that much!)


I was going to do a lot of tackwalking to get Tre going, but honestly, the horse is sound. She looks great! She is ready to roll and she looks better and better every day. The more she moves around outside - the more she walks and eats and relaxes - the better she gets. Better and better and better! I decided to start lunging her lightly and keep an eye on her movement, but she honestly just looks GREAT.



Here's a quickie link to a video her Tre lunging yesterday!



And today, I decided to put the Faux-ssoa on... and she was even BETTER!





JEEZ. Pretty mare, no?

Pretty, pretty mare. 



Happiness and nomnoms for all. 

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Catch-Up Post, Part I (Or, Attack of the Emus)

I am long overdue for an update on all of our rides this week!! I'll try to keep it short and sweet, and now that I am getting back on track with blogging I will try to make sure I do it on more of a regular basis, for my sake as much as anyone else's! Writing things down every few days makes it easier for me to track progress, and to keep memories fresh and alive, since my horses tend to like to, you know, die on me and stuff.


Saturday:
Saturday was our first ride back after O's two week long vacation! I'm glad I did her little mini-break, and I'll continue to do them more often than I have in the past - it's nice to let them have a little down time to relax mentally and physically. (Me too, although admittedly I was getting a little too much sleep and not enough saddle time!) Our first ride back was *supposed* to be nice and relaxing, just an hour long walk hack, but we all know how the best laid plans fall apart in the face of a very fresh mare just back to work. She held it together well for the first 45 minutes of the walk, although it took a bit of encouragement to get her going forward away from the barn. She was on the tail end of her heat cycle, so she felt more or less glued to the barn and not really willing to leave her boyfriends, but after a a few wake up bumps with my spur, she quit walking like a drunken noodle and starting moving properly forward. Halfway through our ride, we were accosted by a very angry pit bull who was guarding his property (and of course, Monster Dog Queen of Dumb Dogs decided to ignore me and run over to make friends... thankfully nobody got hurt in the process!), but we managed to make it safely around and made our turn back for home. On the route we normally take down the road, there is a pair of emus that roam one of the fenced in ranch properties. I have no idea why these people have emus, but they do, and the horses do NOT like them. When they are just walking around, O gives them the stink eye but doesn't do anything more, and we can pass on without incident. We passed them on the way out with no problems, but on the way back, they had become separated by a corner of fence and couldn't figure out how to get back around to one another. Seriously though, how stupid are emus? They literally could NOT figure out how to walk 5 feet around a corner and get back to one another, so instead they ran frantically back and forth against the piece of fence that separated them, leaping up into the air and kicking out at the fence, wings waving and feathers flying. Poor O took one look at this chaos and froze, absolutely immobilized with fear. I could literally feel her heart hammering through my saddle. They were admittedly terrifying, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and dismounted, leading her over to them so that she could get a better look. The stupid things finally figured out at that point how to get around the corner back to each other again, and everything settled down momentarily... until the neighbor's horses decided to all come galloping across their field right at us. We were obviously on the other side of the fence, but O at this point more or less short-circuited, and we spent a good 15 minutes re-learning how to back up in hand (she had conveniently forgotten how to do this in the midst of all the chaos). When I got back on, she was a little bit fried, so after working on some failed walk-trot-halt-holdfreakingstill transitions, we just trotted off down the road to blow off some steam. Wouldn't you know it, she stretched out over her back, took a contact, and worked like a wonderful little angel. We trotted for quite a distance down the road, and when I finally halted at the end of it, she came to a smart stop and held perfectly still. Fantastic note to end on, if I do say so myself! Unfortunately at this point, it was already almost dark (what happened to just riding for an hour!?), so we called it a day and made our way home.




Sunday:
Since our Saturday "light hack" turned more into a dressage school than anything else, I decided to hack out in the late afternoon with S and do our nice little hack then instead. We admittedly had a few drinks as we were tacking up... ok, several drinks.... and by the time we got on we were feeling pretty good. (NOT CONDONING THIS.) S's little hotrod was acting up on our way out down the road, so we bumped it up a notch and trotted off. O, once again, totally surprised me by stretching out, relaxing over her back, keeping a perfect tempo, and taking a good contact. At the halfway mark (it was getting dark!) I let her stand quietly and relax while S worked her horse a bit more, and then we trotted/cantered back, O acting just as perfectly as she had on the way out. At the tail end of it, things got very interesting - S decided that the best thing to do for her horse was to breeze him up the hill past us, just to let off a little steam. As soon as he zoomed by, O lit up and exploded after him. Being slightly intoxicated, I just hung on for the ride and let her go.... probably not the best idea I've ever had, but it felt good to just let her rip. We walked down the next hill and let them go again on the way back up, and I can say with certainty that I can't remember ever having gone that fast on horseback ever before in my life. She blew right back S's extremely speedy barrel horse and kept on going until we reached the top of the hill. It was GREAT.

Back at the barn, we enjoyed a nice session on S's new favorite toy, the Theraplate...


If you've never experienced the awesomeness of vibration therapy (and get your mind out of the gutter, you pervert!), it's WONDERFUL. Check out more info on it here


Monday:
On Sunday night, S and I got a text from the guy leasing the pasture behind her house asking if we would come help push his cattle in the morning so that he could separate calves for that day's sale. We were planning on heading to WD in the morning, but of course agreed to help him, so at the crack of dawn we were saddled and out riding to meet him. Neither O nor I have ever helped move cattle, so it was brand new for the both of us, although it wasn't hard to figure out. Most of the cows followed the feed truck over to the holding pens, but it was left up to us to get the ones who weren't interested in following. O was a very good girl, more than happy to run at the stubborn little bull calves who are all getting old enough to be getting ornery, and even chased down a Longhorn and her calf who were trying to break away (there is one Longhorn out there with the rest of them, apparently owned by somebody else who wasn't smart enough to consider the fact that you can't run Longhorns through a chute!) On the way back to the barn, I gave her another brief flatwork session, and she was just as perfect as the two preceding days.... awesome!! Interestingly, she was in a western saddle with the blue bit in... I haven't been able to decide if she loves the blue bit or if she loves the other loose ring snaffle, but I think I will do more work in the blue bit... and who says you can't school dressage in western tack anyway? ;)

Back at the barn, we had a nice little surprise when a giant tent from the neighbor's house came blowing in the wind over to O's pen.... it must have been one heck of a gust to send that thing flying our way! O, true to form, looked at it with mild interest when it came crashing into the fence, but went right back to eating her hay. Giant tent monsters = 0, O = 1.




Tuesday:
Tuesday was a somewhat un-anticipated day off! I had intended to give her Thursday off instead of Tuesday, but S wanted to go to a local barrel race on Thursday and asked if I wanted to join. Well, of course I did, so I decided that since she had been so very good for each of our previous rides, I could let her have a nice relaxing day off instead of a workout. I groomed her, fussed over her feet and tail, and gave her some extra cookies, just because she is awfully cute when she's finally not in heat anymore.

I also got a few quick shots of the changes in her feet!

Note: She has NOT been trimmed in this interim save for knocking a few edges off here and there! This has ALL been done through movement and diet!

Left: when I first got her. Center: 2.5 months of change. Right: 4 months of change. You can see how crappy, thin-soled and thin-walled she was in the first photo - weak, underdeveloped frog, long toe, quarters broken out with some WLD problems. I could depress her sole with my thumb!! Center photo showed massive frog improvement, a thicker sole, better development at the back of the foot and a shortened toe with a better breakover (you can see where she creates hers, off to the side, since she is slightly toed in). Her bars are long, but they have filled in in place of the weak wall in the quarters that was still being treated for WLD. The most recent photo is slightly deceiving, since the morning light makes it had to see the back of the foot and she had a flap of extra frog hanging over her central sulcus that makes it look like a big crack (it isn't a crack at all, just is being covered by the extra flap a little). Sole and extra bar material is starting to crack up a bit as it prepares for exfoliation, but just LOOK at how much thicker that wall is!!! New research has shown that new wall growth not only grows down from the coronary band, but also generates outwards from the laminae as well, which shows quite clearly in this photo. In the bottom photo, you can see just how different her new growth is from the old crappy stuff, which was thin, shelly, weak, and prone to cracking and chipping. She is getting increasingly surefooted every day - it wasn't long ago that she couldn't even walk on pavement without being crippled. Now she is starting to walk over gravel and rocks with increasing confidence - she isn't totally "rock crunching" yet at this point, but loves her boots and rides great in them. We ride without boots as much as we ride with them, whereas before I couldn't do anything at all without the boots. Progress!





I'll have a Wednesday-Friday report shortly!