The Factory Reset Button

(As you may have noticed - I scratched from the Carriage Classic. I am super bummed to say it, but my truck still is not working quite right. The engine needs more work before I put a horse in the trailer behind it. It *might* have been fine to drive, but O is worth more to me than that risk. I would rather stay home and miss a row rather than risk an accident or even just a breakdown from overtaxing the engine. I know I made the right choice - but it still sucks. Ah well, what can you do! Part of being a good steward to my beasts, making these kinds of decisions. Also adulting. Adulting hardcore.)

I think I have found the factory reset button on Dylan. He spent his first week incessantly walking the fence - but on Wednesday, he stopped. He just.... stopped! I'm SO thankful for this, I was getting worried about it!

The trainer he was with said that Dylan's fencewalking was incessant. It literally went on 100% of the time that he was outdoors. He spent quite a lot of his time inside - maybe only getting 2-3 hours of turnout a day, if it was a nice day. He would walk the weight right off of himself, so I certainly can't blame them for bringing him in! I am pouring food into him - he looks about the same as when he arrived, a bit on the thin side, but I think now that he has quit walking, he will gain weight again. K said she figured he would walk a week and then chill out - and she was right! We just needed to factory reset him to Horse-mode. It was surprising to me how it went from one to the other literally overnight though - one day he was walking walking walking, the next he wasn't anymore. And hasn't been!

(Although, technically, when I am in doing something with the mares, he walks a bit. I think he takes it as a personal insult. He also goes to the far end of the pasture and shows off a bit for the horses across the way by trotting a few times back and forth. Once he has done that though, he comes back and eats his hay again. Good boy!)

Yesterday was Dylan's first workout since he arrived. I wanted to wait until he had settled in to the daily routine before I started working him - I wanted him to quit walking. I didn't need him to burn more calories than he was already wasting! He can be hard to catch - another one of his little quirks - and he thought about giving me the runaround for a few minutes. Once he decided to be caught - and he does have to decide, otherwise he will NOT be caught! - I brought him up, groomed and tacked him, and took him to lunge. I am trying to decide if he needs a stud chain or not - he is very, very responsive to pressure on his nosey, and it seems like the stud chain is a little much for him. Still, he is a mature stallion, and while he is quite gentle you still have to pay attention, because you never know. He is very much a stallion and does like to prance, scream, and get a little light in his front end when the mares are moving about. I personally think he is quite easy to handle and pretty gentle, but still, he is not a sleepy gelding by any means. 

Tailmasta now can go by the secondary title, Manemasta. His mane is not thin or long but it is SO silky, shiny and to die for!

He was a very good boy. He is SUPER active with his mouth - I don't think he closed it once while he worked. He rolls his tongue back and forth up around the bit, and bobs up and down towards and away from the contact. I don't think I will lunge him much, if ever - he is more schooled than that and he doesn't need it. Lunging is really helpful for O, but I don't think it will be helpful for Dylan. I will probably long line him a fair bit though! I am going to play a bit with nosebands and bits to try and quiet that mouth a bit. I am pretty sure he had his teeth done recently, but my dentist will check and do him when she comes next month if he needs it. 

I also pulled Dylan's shoes yesterday. I didn't trim him at all - pretty par for the course the first go around, although usually if I am doing client horses I round them off a bit and tidy them up. I didn't bother doing that with Dylan as I already know the process and the changes that are going to take place. I need to snap some pictures though - always interesting to document the process in photos. 

Today was my first ride on the beast! I conned asked B2 to come ride O so that I wouldn't be alone for my first workout on him. You never know! 

B2 on O... I see I need to adjust O's hackamore a bit! I think I had it set for Pmare, it was a long time ago so I can't rememeber. I will have to mess with it. 

Oh yes... this will be good fun times.

I had a GREAT ride. I got a really good feel of this horse's personality and training and I like what I saw. He was great out in the pasture - took a minute to settle while I was mounting up, standing still is not his favorite thing. I walked and trotted him for a few minutes, getting a feel of him and enjoying it. He is very smooth, and very classically Spanish - and he has buttons and more buttons. He is very responsive to half halts and weight. I have to decide if I want a spur or not - I doubt that I will need it but I think I will want them for occasional use. I almost always ride with a spur, though I very rarely use them. 

He is super trained, but he is also super wound. He gets these great moments of relaxation where he strides out and stretches down, and then the next minute he has a very up-and-down walk with his head tucked in. As I rode, he chilled out and because to relax over his back. The trainer said she did a whole lot of gymnastic work with him, and I totally agree that this is going to be the key to keeping him loose and supple through his back.

Once we had warmed up a bit, we headed out for a hack through the subdivision across the way. I wasn't sure how Dylan would react, so I relied on O's quieter nature to help get us back some of the spooky stuff out there. Dylan tried a few times to spook and turn on his heel and go back the other way, but after a few times of that I got tired of it and gave him a bit of a boot forward. Surprisingly, he jumped right ahead and didn't try it again. He led almost the entire way. On the way back is when things got interesting - he started to get increasingly up and up, and started jigging sideways and piaffing in place. He would not. Stand. Still. No matter what I did, he could not keep his feet from moving. He had a few minutes where he verged on a bit of a meltdown, and we went from rapidly backing up, to turning in some tight little circles, to piaffing and piaffing and piaffing. (It wasn't really quite real piaffing, but it was close enough to call it that.) Finally, we moved on and he relaxed. After that, he was great! He walked the whole rest of the way on a longer rein, stretching and leading the way. We had a few little kids who wanted to stop and pet O, but she was feeding off of his energy and she was not exactly on her best behavior either. B2 has driven and now ridden her, so she was able to compare the two - she astutely commented that while she drives the exact same way that she rides, she feels much less stable and sane under saddle than she does when driving. I completely agree with her - for whatever reason, she just enjoys driving way more than riding. She is fun to drive, and not terribly fun to ride. 

I can not WAIT for more rides. I can't tell you how much fun I had. Even when he got antsy, even when he got tight, he was so easy to sit chilly on - we will get on very well. 

What A Week!

We had SUCH good and productive workouts this week! I'm really, really pleased with how things are going, and I hope they continue on in this thread.

O's not-shine coat is shedding out rather dramatically. Underneath the not-shine is a SUPAH SHINE, which makes me feel a lot better. Her fecal came back negative, so honestly I think it comes down to the fact that her system got shell-shocked a few times with freezing weather. She is still shedding quite a lot.... many attacks with my curry are helping to expedite this process. She's been shedding since March! I have to be careful this time of year as well - this is prime sweaty season, which makes for sunbleachy season as well. O lives outside and spends almost all of her day out in the blazing sun (she has a shed and shade trees, but she doesn't use them often). If I don't rinse her after every good sweat, I'm in big trouble. 

After a day off on Sunday, we got back to work on Monday. O was back in her 'snaffamore' combo - her Happy Mouth mullen mouth with her long shank hackamore overtop of it - and she was VERY good to start. She gave me some pretty decent walk-trot-canter work in both directions, which was great - the fact that we can trot AND canter in a circle now AND stop is super exciting. I had to abandon my snaffle and get tough with her for a minute, but it seems to be paying off. She knows full well that she can gallop off out of control in the mullen mouth, but I still want something in her mouth that is gentle and inviting. She still needs to learn to stretch out to the contact and take it, so I don't want a harsh mouthpiece. I do, however, need *something* to give me some brakes for when she tunes out my half-halt and takes off - the hackamore is very effective for this. I can ride her along with the snaffle most of the time, and if she decides to get strong or take off, I have an e-brake. Having this backup is super liberating - now I can circle, move off the rail, move sideways, and generally ride wherever I please while doing flatwork. In a snaffle, as soon as we turn onto a circle or go off the rail, she speeds up and bolts, and there is nothing I can do aside from crank her around in a one-rein stop. I tried to make it work for a long time, hoping she'd just settle and relax, but we were truthfully getting nowhere, and I had to make a decision to add something much stronger. I'm so glad I decided to do that, and now that I have some brakes, we'll be able to get so much more done.

After our ride, we went for a nice hack through the cow pasture...

... aaaaand then her mare friend trotted off away from her, and she absolutely wigged. We had to reschool everything we had already gone through earlier and then some. We did eventually get a very nice quiet canter, towards and past her friend, and then were able to trot quietly back. All in all, it was a full two hours of riding and hacking, and she was pretty tired by the end (thankfully).

Zzzz... sooo sleeeeeepy.

You can see how the hackamore sits just in front of the bit - the hackamore rein is generally held very loose, but it there in case of backup. This has a LOT of whoa, but even when she was being back she still was able to sull up against it and brace when she really decided to.

On Tuesday, I had a very busy day, so I decided to lunge her first thing in the morning before I had to head off to work. I didn't have a ton of time to work with, and I think I won't try to do that again in the future. Working while rushed, or working when I don't have much time (in case she needs more time than I have to give), is just a stupid idea.

On the lunge, especially to the left, O likes to travel crooked. She is more than happy to turn her head and neck to the outside, let her shoulder bulge in, and motorbike around every turn at high speed. Once you straighten her out and achieve proper bend, it completely slows her down and engages her.... but it isn't always easy to achieve. I fiddled with the lines a few times, but it wasn't enough. Eventually I ran my lunge line up through her bit to the surcingle, and tried to straighten her out that way.

Mostly it irritated her. She engaged, definitely, but she also came in VERY close on the circle, and refused to go back out again (avoiding the contact). 

After a few minutes of her avoiding and avoiding, I took the line back off and instead let the right side line all the way out to the very end, and pulled the left side line all the way as tight as it would go. The nicest thing about the Faux-ssoa is that it is a very fluid system, and once she moved back out on the circle, it settled into a perfect setting for her (not too loose on the right, not too tight on the left). She loved that configuration, and stretched out nicely into it. Thank god too, I had to get a move on and head off to work!

On Wednesday, I had the day completely off, so S and I decided to finally get off the property and go for a good long hack. We needed one! 

We didn't travel too terribly far, just down the road to Benbrook Lake, but there are miles and miles of trails, and we even found a new one that we hadn't noticed before. It was super nice, very grassy and flat (versus most of the rest of the park, which is very rocky and hilly), and we had an awesome time.

Yes, we *did* pack the saddlebags full of the essentials... beer, and beer, and more beer. It was an extremely mellow ride.

We went 12.66 miles. Mostly we just power walked (the horses picked that speed), with some trotting near the end of it. We were gone for nearly 4 hours! She had a well-deserved day off on Thursday after all of that.


Friday was another super hectic day for me, so I decided I better just opt for a short lunge instead of a ride. I did the same thing I did before, on both sides (one line all the way loose, one line all the way tight), and she loved it. She has quite a lot of freedom to stretch out, but has to bend in the proper direction, so everybody wins with this configuration.

Check that out... she's actually bending in the proper direction! Nice!



We had a great ride today too, but I'll write more about that shortly... I'm pooped and I need to get to bed. So much work and play, so little time to write!

Share Your Barn Blog Hop - The Barebones Edition

It's time for a blog hop of barn tours! Ever wonder where your horsey Blogger friends spend most of their day? Want to show off the amazing place you get to keep your fur child? Now is your chance to share and get to know your friends just a little bit more!

Here's how it's going to work; its simple and fun!

Share with us the following 5 photos:

A View of the Barn
Your Horse's Living Space
The Tack Room
View of Where You Ride
Your Favorite Feature of Your Facility




I *had* to join the blog hop, because our operation is BAREBONES at best. And also, it is the BEST.

If you want to see a TRULY incredible facility, go check out the one I used to manage when I lived in CT. Now THAT place was unreal beautiful.

HOWEVER. Since that time, I have changed almost all of my management practices. My horses are SO much happier, super sound, and super well cared for, even though our facility is humble and small at best. We do not need big fancy stalls and big fancy arenas. Sure, they're pretty and all, but who is benefiting from all of that - us or them?

1) A view of the barn

Yep, there you go. That's the entire barn. There are four big stalls (12x15), one of which is filled with random storage things. The horses don't go in the stalls except for random things (feeding if we're being lazy, it's a tornado outside, etc). There's a feed room that is filled with the best quality timothy/orchard/alf that we can get - we have it shipped in from WA or OR. There are two big paddocks with horse-safe pipe fence, one of which belongs to my mares. There is an additional 15 acres of native pasture that S's horses run on, and sometimes mine run on too. 

2) Your horse's living space

My mares have it MADE. A huge run-in shed with soft sand to sleep in, a big tank with fishies in it, and two or three big huge bags of slow-netted high quality hay that they have in front of them 24/7. There are rocks and weeds and bushes and some trees in and around their pen. What horse wouldn't want to live there! I am very lucky to be able to offer this kind of arrangement to them. I can't ever imagine having horses in stalls after seeing how happy and healthy they are living out all the time. 

3) In the tack room

HA! Tack room. That's funny. 

I groom in the barn, then lead up to my trailer, tie and tack there and off we go. Tack doesn't stay in the barn because there is nowhere to lock it up, and also the kitties like to scratch on saddles... no bueno.

4) Where you ride:

Wherever there is relatively flat and un-potholed ground. Those are ground poles. Actually they are big sticks cleaved in half. 

We have a 15 acre pasture that has a flat upper portion, and that's where I do most of my flatwork and lunging. (I don't recommend lunging in a wide open space, but you do what you have to do.) I do flatwork down by the barn sometimes, but it is on a hill so it's not great. We have somewhere between 50-100 acres of awesome cattle pasture directly behind us that we have access to and ride on all the time - we have jumps set up and everything. Across the road is a field that we mowed and set up a dressage arena in (or well, we have measured cones, it's close enough). We have miles of quiet roadway to hack down. We trailer out to arenas when we need to, but we often don't need to. We make the best of what we have - we ride rain or shine!

5) My favorite feature

What DON'T I love about this situation? It's quiet. It's private. It's self-care - S and I are the only ones there and we take care of each other's horses. We feed whatever we want, however much we want. We only feed the best stuff, and I can afford to do that because I don't pay board. We have a Theraplate, which is excellent. The horses get to live out all the time and they love it. We have a lot of beers and go ride all day sometimes. 

Yeah, we don't have an arena, and sometimes that sucks. It's a solid half-hour away and that's an annoying drive to make every day. But these are very small sacrifices to make. I've been here officially a year now, and this is the longest I've stayed at a barn since I've owned horses, literally. 13 years of horse ownership ya'll. That's a LOT of barn moving. I am a hateful boarder, I am horrible to deal with because I tend to be  constantly picking about details and I can't deal with ignorance or laziness. Picky is a cute and polite term for it... maybe a more accurate description would be 'hatefully OCD.' I was a fantastic barn manager because I am a neverending whirlwind around the barn, always fixing and improving things, always changing a blanket out here, altering a feed schedule there. But when my horses are not under my direct care and supervision - if I am not laying my hands on them EVERY day, or if I don't know they are in seriously competent care - I am not happy.

In summary... it's not fancy, but our horses look ridiculously incredibly awesomely good and they are happy and healthy. They are all rippling muscles and gleaming. There isn't a single vice in our barn, not one. No lamenesses, no colics (ok, knock on wood for this one... not one lameness or colic YET I should say!). They are all performance horses and we ride them HARD, so things can and do happen, but even when things teeter around on the edge of a problem - like with O coming back after her ride on the edge of having a gastritis - our situation is excellent for curbing those kinds of things and keeping them at bay. Two days of aloe/slippery elm/marshmallow root/bentonite and munching hay and my horse is brilliantly vivacious again. 

So really, what more could I ask for? 

(I tried to do that linked in code thing. Unfortunately I am computer illiterate and have the patience of a rabid squirrel, so I gave up trying after about 3 minutes.)

By the way, speaking of places to ride, check out adorable little Tre on a trail ride today...

She is so cute it's criminal. Don't you just want to squeeze her??

Hauling Some Butt

O and I GOT TO IT today in our workout. We headed out at around 10am, and made for the big cow pasture. She wanted to GO, and I let her. We did 5 miles in 30 minutes, which included our walk warmup and several breaks to walk down hills and to check out the cows. The GPS clocked her max speed at almost 27mph! I really thought we were just canterimg, but apparently we were Hauling Ass. She really, really needed to get the zooms out of her system, so I let her pick a speed and just cruised along for the ride. S was tacking up and getting ready to get on her mare, so I headed back to the barn after zooming for 6 miles, and let her have a drink and a snack before we headed back out again down the road. We rode for another 9 miles just at a walk... the sun was out, the sky was blue, and everything was warm and drying out. It was SUCH a nice change after our horrible ice storm!

Much to my dismay, back at the barn I discovered that my soft fleecy girth - the one I have been using on her for SIX MONTHS - had for some reason caused her entire girth area to swell up. The ENTIRE area where the girth made contact was HOT and SWOLLEN and PAINFUL to the touch. Wtf!? What is up with this mare and her sensitivities!? I have NO idea what caused it... same girth, clean horse, not really a longer or harder ride than usual. And since it is O, you know it's going to be swollen for weeks... her knees and back knob are finally down, but the leg where she got chewed on by the neighbor's dog is still big. Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff.

Today's Workout!

I guess I'll be looking for a new girth... suggestions? 

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As for Miss Tre, this is what we did today!:

She pretty much does anything and goes anywhere. I also confirmed her changes today.... they're there and they're easy to get! 

I logged 4 hours on O and 2.5 on Tre.... pretty sure I'm going to sleep well tonight. 

Tre-il Ride

Tre has been doing really, really well under saddle - she is starting to understand the idea of forward and taking a contract, and she is also starting to ride out away from the barn. Therefore, it was high time to take our first trail ride!

You guys know me - I try to make my horses broke, broke, broke. I want them to go anywhere and do anything, and I want them to be able to physically and mentally take it all in stride. I want them to be confident and careful about their footing. I want them exposed to EVERYTHING, and I want them to learn that they never have to be scared so long as I'm with them. I did the same thing with O, and now she rides anywhere on a long rein at any speed no matter what is going on. I wasn't sure how Tre was going to handle her first ride out, but it was time to give it a go! We opted to go ride out in the big cow pasture instead of down the road, which is a nice place to start them out. (Obstacles to deal with on road: cars, emus, donkeys, running dogs, mailboxes... a lot of things. Obstacles to deal with in the cow pasture: cows, water, scary looking debris... also if she were to freak out and dump me, she wouldn't be loose out on the road!!)

She really surprised me with how bold she was. O is more of a tag-along model - she likes to tailgate the other horses and follow behind the others, she is not really interested in leading. If she is by herself, she's the same (although it took a long time for her to be that way). For as speedy as she is at the trot and canter, she has a pretty slow walk, and usually the other horses outpace her anyway. Tre, on the other hand, totally surprised me by being the immediate leader, barging in front of S's mare and walking along at about 9000 miles an hour with her ears pricked. S's mare is a real hothead, and she couldn't even keep up. She broke to the trot several times - she wanted to go! Despite that, she took all of her half-halts REALLY well, and was easy to maneuver and turn.  

Her old owners told me she had been on a trail ride once, and that the only thing she really didn't like was he water (apparently they had to back her in). There are a LOT of water crossings and puddles out in the pasture, which is good practice! At the first little puddle, she followed S's mare right across. S's mare actually skirted around one side, but Tre just stomped right in! At the next puddle - a BIG LONG puddle - she looked down, paused for a second, and then plowed in. Halfway through, she quit following S's mare and turned of her own accord so that she could stay in the water! She had fun splashing around for a few minutes, and then she started to do that leg-buckling-I'm-about-to-lay-down thing, so we exited with haste. The final water crossing she encountered was pretty scary, complete with muck and moving water. S's mare went first, and with some hesitation, Tre bounded across too. O doesn't like that water either, I can't blame either of them!

There are large piles of debris around the old cow shed, and we decided to go check the stuff out (there are many things to make jumps with over there!). Tre wasn't afraid of any of it, but wanted to check it ALL out. She was more than happy to walk back and forth over a giant white plastic pipe (looked a bit like a huge PVC pole), and didn't care about all of the debris around. She is a little too bold for her own good - she walks TOWARDS anything that she isn't sure about! There were even several huge tractor tires piled up next to the trail that she gave a wary eye to, but then decided that she better go check them out. She stepped right up to them, clonked both fronts on them (and didn't care about the noise), and stuck her nose right into the center of one of them!

The last test was the group of cows. The cows see us all the time so they don't care about us, but of course Tre hadn't seen them before. She wasn't completely sure what to think of them, but true to her form she went marching boldly up to them - I had to actually stop her so she wouldn't get too close too fast! She didn't like when they were behind her and walking towards her very much, but she'll get used to that. SERIOUSLY impressed... some horses totally melt down when they see a cow. I suppose she is a QH after all...!

Can't tell you how impressed I am. She led the way, walked boldly up to all the scary things, and kept her cool the whole time. Not bad!!!!

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Both ladies had really great lunges today too. O is back to work, not because her legs are no longer swollen, but because I was getting tired of her sassy crap. She is sound and she is SASSY - her bumps will continue to go away with time, but somebody was going to get creamed if she didn't get back to work. She always comes to me in the pasture, but apparently she won't let S catch her anymore, and the other day when S got her into a corner to bring her in for breakfast, she fired off a couple of double barrels directly at her. NOT okay! She's never done that before - I really didn't think she had it in her, and I'm surprised she did it. Either way, she needed some work before things got any more out of hand. 

When working on the lunge, Tre and O could NOT be more opposite. Tre likes to give her best little low-headed trit-trot and slow pokey canter. You have to really engage and push her up into a proper working gait, and it takes reminders to keep her going forward, especially in the trot. O is her polar opposite - her working gaits are WAY too fast and forward, and she likes to go in a very high-headed, totally inverted way, with her front legs running out in front of her and her hinds flying out the back. I did the same exercises with them both today, but used them for completely different reasons, and had great results with both. 

The exercise just involved the Faux-ssoa and three trot poles. I feel like I lunge these two quite a lot.... I'm normally not a lunger and not a gadget person, but I really like the results I've been getting. I won't use the Faux-ssoa on them forever and I certainly will totally cut out the lunging when they are ready, but it is doing great things for them both right now. 

The three trot poles were spaced so that Tre had to stretch to make them, and O had to compress to make them. Same distance for both, their length of strides is just that different in the trot - and it is totally opposite in the canter, since Tre covers twice the ground that O does in the canter. 

For Tre, we warmed up, and then started trotting over the trot poles. We then did lots of quick transitions, trotting over the poles and then up into the canter, and down into the trot right before the poles came up on the circle, then back up into the canter right after the poles. It really engaged her hind end and stretched her back out, and she really had a great trot going by the end, complete with super soft slobbery mouth. (I lunge them both in a Happy Mouth mullen mouth and just a headstall, no cavesson.) 

For O, I let her roll for a few minutes before getting to work (she was SO FRESH), and then we started doing trot poles. We did LOTS of trot poles before we even thought about the canter. I actually think doing quiet cantering in the lunging system is really going to help her canter under saddle out a lot, since it will help her figure out how to balance herself better and not get so dirt-bikey. The canter started out rushy at first, but what I did was canter for a minute, then go back down to trot and put her right back over the trot poles. When she comes down from the canter, her tendency is to just run as fast as she can out of control in the trot - she has speed in her head after the canter and that's what she wants to do! When she came down out of the canter and had to go right to the stride-regulating trot poles, she had to really adjust herself. It worked really well, and by the end, she too had a super slobber goober mouth!

We started with this...

Hollow back, running, compressed neck, no contact, ticked off.... not good.

Then we did some of this...

Top picture was early in the session, bottom picture was later, as you can tell by the sweat... you can see how she was really starting to use her body as time went on.

Then she offered up some of this on her own....

Stretch that back woman!

And we ended with something more like this:

Loose and swinging, relaxed through her back, taking a contact, much happier, much better rhythm/balance/cadence/speed/everything. 

And a nice goobery mouth to finish on, which she doesn't always have!

She says "phew that was hard." SO glad I clipped her, look at her sweating! 

Trailventuressage

Uh oh. We have a minor problem on our hands. Next Sunday is our FIRST EVER EVENT! It's just a little tiny schooling show, but hey, we gotta start somewhere! She has already jumped around the entire little XC course that we'll be doing, although we will definitely school it again the day before, and she's also good and game over pretty much every stadium fence I've pointed her at (simple things, obviously... she might think differently when they get more complicated!). So what's the problem here?

We, um... can't canter.

Well, I guess that's not entirely true... we CAN canter, and gallop, and do both all the time... but to do it in a respectable dressage-y manner? Not so much. We've spent a LOT of time doing simple walk-trot stuff, but mostly I've just let her canter when it felt right or when we were jumping, as her balance permitted. She was such a runaway freight train that cantering up until now has just been TOTALLY out of the question - if you can't stop a horse when they're trotting, you sure aren't going to be able to stop them when they are cantering! Up until recently, she was still having moments where she would bolt off in the trot at high speed with no steering or brakes, so I felt that she just wasn't ready for canterwork. Now that her walk-trot work is really coming together and she has really become fairly quiet and relaxed, it is time to start adding canterwork. Unfortunately for us, our test this weekend has canterwork in it... and we're definitely not ready yet. She will be ready, it won't take *too* much time.... but she's not quite there yet. 

She's funny in that she doesn't really know the proper dressage-y cues for canter, as far as I can tell. If you lean at her over whichever particular shoulder you want your lead to be on and kiss at her, she'll usually pop up into the canter. If you half-halt, sit down, and cue her, she explodes forward with her head in your lap, and goes zooming off in every direction. Good luck with the lead, you have a 50% chance of getting the right one! I'll have to do some experimenting this week to see if I can sort of fake it for the test, but usually when she gets cantering, she gets that zooming, churning, grunty-snorting, dirtbiking thing going on that is definitely accentuated on a circle. This week I am jam-packed at work, and the sun is going down a LOT earlier than it used to, so we'll see how much *real* dressage time I get.... it should be, uh, interesting this weekend in the test!

I had a blast at the AECs this weekend, and had a ton of fun cheering on old and new friends, but it was back to the grind today! I was going to trailer up to WD to do some dressage work, but it was so gorgeous this morning that I was craving a trail ride... but I needed to do dressage..... but I wanted to trail ride.... oh what to do! 

I decided to compromise and do both at the same time. Hey, why not? Dressage is where you make it!

Those of you familiar with Fort Worth will recognize both the skyline and the Stockyards! O was a little bundle of jumpy nerves for most of the ride, although I can't blame her - it's a pretty scary set of trails. She didn't do anything wrong, but she was quick to start at everything that moved or didn't move (AHH a squirrel! AHH a bag! AHH a guy! AHH water! AHH a car! AHH a rock!). Once we set in to do our flatwork, she was pretty good in the walk and trot, but the canter was pretty messy, as expected. The more canterwork you do, the hotter she gets, so it's kind of a delicate process.... well, we'll get there!

I'm getting excited though... we're less than a week away from our first event!

Addy-Tude

After our wonderful success last weekend at O's inaugural dressage show, we've had another good week of work mixed with some days off. She got Monday and Tuesday off, quite rightfully (not that she worked hard on Sunday at ALL, it was easy-peasy compared to her usual, but I did feel that she deserved it anyway!), and then she was back to work on Wednesday with a nice long hack. It was dark by the time we got back.... there is part of me that wants to gripe about that, but it means that cooler weather is coming, so I guess I can't whine too much!!

It was back to work on Thursday with a very light dressage school. Our flattest area on the property, which I use for my flatwork, is unfortunately also currently full of rocks, all of which seems to have sprouted after our last massive rainstorm. It's a bit tricky to do anything serious up there because of this, and I didn't put O's boots on, which was not a smart thing to do. We got some very productive walk and trot work done, but that was about it, and I called it a day after a short but very successful session. 

O also made a new best friend....

S's little niece was there visiting, in all her precious cowgirl attire. She is 4 and she was in loooooove with O. O has really become super gentle and quiet since I've had her, and was more than willing to follow the tiny little human around wherever she wanted to go. 

Kind of reminds me of another little mare and her pet kid...

Gogo and my old boss' little 6 year old son, who did in fact carry his Hobbes around with him everywhere. Gogo doted on him and followed his every move... seriously adorable.

Today was supposed to be another easy hack, just because I was enjoying the cooler weather so much and wanted nothing more than to just toodle around, but that didn't work out quite the way I was hoping. We set off down the road, but O gave me a little bit of a sour face when we turned away from the barn. It wasn't any outright misbehavior, but she had her ears pulled into that not-quite-back-but-not-quite-relaxed position, just a little bit of attitude about having to leave the barn. I gave her a minute to change her attitude and legged her on, but when she continued to be just a little balky and crabby about leaving (not doing anything wrong, just moving out a little stickily and turning her head from side to side like she'd really rather turn around and go back home), I booted her onward and we took off down the road. The entire reason I got this mare for so darn cheap was because of her totally unchecked bossy attitude, so anytime she gives me ANY grief of ANY sort, no matter how subtle, I put my foot down. We had a decent workout after that, trotting and cantering back and forth up the road, but I never really felt like her attitude was totally 'with it', if you know what I mean. She was obedient and didn't do anything wrong per se, she just wasn't particularly amused by it. Sorry mare, we were supposed to just go for a nice walk, you know!

Tomorrow, she gets the day off..... BECAUSE OF THE AECs!!!!!!!!!! That's right, they are right here in Tyler, TX for the next three years! It's about a 2.5 hour drive from here.... I'm going up for the whole day to spectate and have fun and shop and enjoy myself!!!!! The goal for next year... COMPETE in it! 

I also have some news.... some very big news. Some very very big news! Some of you guessed on Facebook already.... but.... I am going to make you wait for the official announcement until next week when it is official! Let's just say that finding little cheapie fixerup projects might really be my calling... 

Catch-Up!

I am definitely making it a goal to keep more lengthy blog updates and keep better tabs on my bloggy friends.... I feel like I've really not been a part of the blogging community much ever since Gogo died. I've not actually been part of the human community either.... I've been very solitary for the past two years, probably to a fault. Something else that should probably be addressed, but I really enjoy my alone time, so maybe not.

Anyway. Catch-up time! When we last left off, we were having some nice flatwork sessions in the barrel saddle. Obviously we can't exactly show in western tack (although there is that weird western dressage thing...) so this week it was high time to get back into my other saddles. On Sunday, I trailered out to WD to get some more serious flatwork done... and we were just NOT on that day. She was due for her shot, which I think was part of it, but the other part... well, who knows. Sometimes a cranky red mare just doesn't want to play the game! She couldn't relax through her back at all, and curled up and gnashed away at the bit for a solid hour... she just would. Not. Relax. I mistakenly tried to see if she'd blow off a little steam in the canter and maybe relax a little once she tired out - 20+ solid minutes of canter (with no breaks, at all) later she was still chugging away at high speed, so I canned that idea and went back to the walk. We had a few good moments, but I finally came to the conclusion that we just needed to find somewhere to end the session on a good note. 2 hours in and it wasn't getting any better at all? Time to pick something she's good at and end there. Overall, it was not a very good day, but we did finish on a halfway decent note. Phew!

Yep that's about how I felt about the ride too.

She had Monday off, as I was not feeling very well. Tuesday we got back to work with a nice flatwork session - at a barrel race! (Yes, that means I was back in the barrel saddle.... but oh well. You gotta blend in after all!) She started out being a total monster, tearing off around the ring at high speed and blasting through all my aids. She had just had her shot that morning, so I wasn't expecting her to be settled yet, but she surprised me when I finally got fed up with her and trotted her right out of the ring and over to an empty parking lot - she loosened up, stretched out, took a contact, and got to it. A few laps around the parking lot and we trotting back to the ring, where she then was totally quiet and foot-perfect. Random, but I'll take it! We toodled around after that, watching people make their runs in the below-ground air conditioned arena (!!), and we finished up the evening with a nice bath and some grazing (and some beer for yours truly). 

Geez she's so cute I could just die whenever I look at her!

Wednesday night we were slated for a good long walk hack, so we spent two hours walking around in the cow pasture, inspecting the remnants of a fire that the neighbors' dumb welder started a few days prior. Who welds when it hasn't rained in 3.5 months and it is howling windy out? That guy, apparently! He also has let the neighbors' horses out several times, and left his equipment in their paddock, which cut up and crippled THREE of the horses already. Next he'll be burning the house down!

Thursday was flatwork-slash-trails. I've had really excellent luck schooling her out on the trails, where she has other things to think about rather than go around and around in a boring old sandbox, and I can go on straight lines for as long as I please. We do a LOT of flatwork on the side of the road and on the road itself, as odd as that sounds. Unorthodox, but it really seems to work for her. She started out a little tight in her back, as we were going away from the barn (and while she is obedient, she'd really rather not leave the barn and generally takes some ongoing 'please-walk-faster' conversations), and at some point I again got tired of it and gave her a few wake-up transitions to smarten her up. She fussed and tightened up, but we did some leg yields back and forth across the road and she melted right into the contact, right where she should be. That isn't usually the case, but now that she is learning more about isolating one side or another versus leg-on-means-burst-forward, I'm thinking this will be a good suppling tool for her. After that, she was GREAT, and we did some extremely nice, extremely relaxed flatwork all the way back to where S was schooling her mare (somewhere back up the road). S got unceremoniously dumped at this point - her new project mare reared and twisted in an attempt to avoid the right lead canter - but she laughed and got back on. I glanced up at the sky, and noticed that there were some angry black clouds way west of us. "Hm, I wonder if it is going to rain," I wondered outloud. We trotted back on up the road for a little way, finally reaching the top of the hill and patting our mares for their good work. I looked up again at the sky and did a double take - were those clouds closer? "I think we might get some rain," I told S. She nodded, but said that she figured she'd at least be able to get 15 minutes in on her other horse once we got back, and we started up the road towards home. About 45 seconds later I looked up again, and the clouds had taken on the form of a big angry wall cloud, and it was ON us. "Uh... maybe we should trot back?" I casually asked as the thunder started. Trotting back turned into a nice canter for O, who was surprisingly obedient considering the temperature had suddenly dropped about 20 degrees and the wind had started to howl. S's mare was not so obedient, and I heard some choice curse words and yelling behind me as the mare went careering out of control across the field behind us! We all made it back in one piece, and no sooner had we ripped off our tack and gone trotting back down to the barn than all hell broke loose. Lighting, thunder, sideways pelting rain and hail all came smashing down, and everything flooded. We checked the forecast, saw that it was supposed to do that ALL night and all day today, and decided to leave the horses stalled for the night. I wasn't sure how O would deal with it, but she was very quiet, and hung out all day today as well while it downpoured. I was going to go with S to WD, but after I spent all morning in the rain I was feeling pretty grumpy and cold and crappy, so I decided to give her the day off instead. They're back out in turnout as of tonight, thankfully!

"Pardon my flymask nosey rub, I may or may not have seriously sensitive redhead syndrome"

Tomorrow, we ride and go over tests one final time, clip and clean up (is it worth giving a bath tomorrow in the mud? Probably best to wait until the morning of!), clean tack, polish boots, find out what the heck happened to my show clothes... and Sunday, we show!!

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!