Mango Gets Her Work On

Since Mango is officially the most expensive horse at the house right now (yay colic bills), that means she needs to actually get into some work and get sold ASAP.  At least that's my thinking and goals here.  I love when priorities change :/

So we've been lunging before and after the trip in side reins to get her more relaxed while accepting the aids (basically a less dramatic version of Katy's issues) and she's been doing well.  She's a cute fancy little thing that weighs 900 lbs at 13.2h.  That shouldn't happen, but no one told Mango that.

Here's her after her workout in all her winter Hereford coat glory wondering why she can't just lay out in the pasture:

Vacation!

Its been about five years since the Hubs and I went on vacation.  He's been whining about it for a while but the fact is, we're not great travelers.  When we went on vacation Jan 2010, we basically got bored on the cruise.  The thought that taking a 3 year old human child on a boat with no ability to escape had terrified us, but in reality it was fine.  We had hellacious seas though and spent 5 of our 7 days at sea rather than on land so that sucked.  I think I still have Date Night, Ice Age 3, and A Team memorized from all the times it rotated through our tv.

Also, having a farm makes it hard to leave.  You  have to A- find someone crazy enough to take on these tasks and B- responsible enough to actually carry through with them and make good decisions.  I also tend to do sooo much OCD prevention and checking on the animals that I know someone else won't be able to be that crazy so I have to figure out how to let it go but warn them enough of things to look for.

Yay cray people.

So I had my first work trip ever to California and originally it was a 3 day trip where we just checked out some bone processing I'd been looking forward to checking out.  My boss though does Marine Mammal Vet things and we were joking about running from LA to Monterrey to see the aquarium because... MARINE THINGS!  Next thing I know our 3 day trip is a 10 day trip that encompasses us starting north in Sausalito and DRIVING the coast to LA over the week with several stops along the way.  I badgered, begged, and borrowed to get back stage to some of these places and we were pumped.

Except my husband.

He was whiney... I couldn't figure out why and since he's the moody one in this partnership, I let him sort it out and he finally came up with words for his feelings:  "I want to go..."

So in OCTOBER we dragged out money for plane tickets and decided to drag the kiddo too since a research trip will add to his knowledge and everyone else we know is busy and we like our kid.  Weird, I know.

So basically we're prepping for that trip and it involves things like a full truck bed of feed:

Since this is about the horses, I'll spare the COPIOUS amounts of pictures I took of redwoods, elephant seals, octopi, space shuttles, and other epic things and share one of the final ones of my boys playing football on a beach in LA while we wait for our late flight time.

Nigel Weight Gain: One Month

This isn't a terribly exciting post, just some pictures about Nigel's weight gain.  I can at least TELL he's gaining weight at this point but its a bit depressing to see how far we have to go.  I'm considering an additive in the next month or so like Nutrena Boost, so we'll see where we get in the meantime.  He's steadily eating more hay and we had added alfalfa but we're moving on from that as it was too rough for his stomach right now.

Enjoy :)

And for good measure he managed to mangle two of his legs mysteriously in the pasture that has nothing to hurt himself on.  Awesome.

Red Horse Update!

So red horse has a name now:  Nigel.  Yes, I know he's not a dark horse but Nigel also means Champion in some languages and well, he's a Nigel.  I don't know how to explain it.

Boy has a ways to go with his weight but we've been slowly and methodically taking care of that.  I don't normally keep track of how well they're gaining weight as I don't like to drive myself anymore crazy over things I can't really control than I have to.  Since some people on Facebook asked about how long this will take, I decided to track his progress to some degree.

Right now he's on 12-8 pellets, the same as my other guys and we worked up to 6 qts 2x a day.  I don't recall the actual weight, but its a crap ton of feed.  Since he was getting hardly any roughage, we've been adding that in too slowly but I know that's what would help him the most.  One step at a time, right?

His previous ulcers are present to some degree but again, I don't want to throw the book at him right away so here we are.  Early November and Zero Body Fat horse is blanketed in a 350 fill blanket.  Here we go winter!

For training, he's been doing my patented "working in the pasture" work and he's doing great when its not feeding time.  During feeding time, he's a demon and we're working on that at this time.  First game I play?  "Where's your bucket?"  So he has to find the bucket FIRST before I'll approach. He's super smart and clever so he's getting this quickly.  Now to work on the ear pinning, kicking out, and shoving during this time (y)

Nigel about a month in here.

Colic.

So when you have horses this is the dreaded "C" word, right?

I've been passionate about avoiding this situation since I was in high school and aside from a few small Banamine fixed bouts, I haven't had to deal with straight up, go to the clinic colic ever before so this was a new one for me.

Australian Shepherd Nationals were being held in Bryan this year so I naturally was attending and my friend from AZ was coming in for a week of fun (and loads of dog related work!).  That morning I'd taken Katy for a lesson with Sarah and as I was parking the trailer I noticed that Mango was laying down mid day.  Nothing dramatic, but she was down and sleeping.  I've learned that on weekdays during the day my pasture mares love to sunbathe so I just wrote it off.

Mango in Jail Recovering

Trailer unloaded and horses done, I set about packing and changing things up for the dog shows we had.  I kept looking out at Mango and she would get up, get water, graze, walk around and then end up laying down at some point.  No rolling, nothing uncomfortable looking, just chill.  I tend to be overly paranoid (see above paragraph about colic avoidance), so naturally I was a bit obsessive as I washed dogs and get things ready.

My friend rolls into town and I go to check on Mango one last time and I KNOW she's more rotund than normal and I don't want to deal with this this weekend so I load her up and we head to the clinic for some Bute and Banamine.  Upon arrival we unload and she calmly goes into the stocks.  At this point she's looking more like a balloon and I'm getting more worried.

I have a strict "no surgery" opinion about colic to this point as I've seen very few horses have long term success after having it so I'm eyeing up Mango as they pull an obscene amount of fluid from her stomach.  After the 4th 3 gallon bucket I'm all making my peace.  They aren't too happy about anything they're finding and now I'm sure we're heading towards euthanizing her.

The final test they do is to check the fluid past the obstruction and... its totally fine.   Fluid before it is fine too.  They go for another ultrasound and due to her thick conformation can't see anything.  Rectally they find out her colon is over her spleen.  What?  So yeah...

We run her in the round pen after giving her some meds to shrink her spleen and I leave her to marinade at the clinic overnight.  Next day, no dice.  We opt to just roll her and she comes through that just fine.  Colon is righted and everything gets back to normal.  Three days at the clinic and she comes home, happy as ever and we move on.

Horses.  And Dog Shows :)

Me tormenting Mango while she eats :)

Outside Time With Arthur - Home Edition

*sigh

So after the rousing success that was the other day at Sarah's, I decided to try to ride Arthur at the house but outside the round pen.  He's been worked 53422353453 times out there and since he was doing well IN the round pen and basically doing everything but being ridden extensively OUTSIDE it, there should be minor issues with riding him outside, right?

Well... not so much.

It wasn't a complete failure and there wasn't (really) any bucking so I guess that's a success.  Technically.  From the start, Arthur was a little tense but nothing bad.  I got on and it was uneventful.  My goal was really to duplicate what we'd done at Sarah's and if that wasn't happening, then I wanted to work him through a few of his fits so he learned he had to keep working after.  His fits at this point are basically he starts to "act up" and then pauses (which is AWESOME!) and then we basically have to start over.  Like.. ALLLL over.  Normally one rein stops where he circles for like 5 minutes before finally stopping.

So I had some poles on the ground as well to keep his mind busy just in case that helped.  Poles were great but general walking around... eh.  Not bad but not great.  We did some flexing and he came back to me.  Finally he gets back to rockin' awesome and I'm all FINALLY!  So I go for a trot circle to end and... he humps up BUT STOPS.  No idea why but whatever.  I start the flexing process to a stop again and he FINALLY stops once I'm thoroughly dizzy.

While circling 24354645 times, I realized that he wasn't EVER moving his inside foreleg.  Prefect pivots on the thing and while he was doing his one rein stops, he was totally chill.  The ONLY time he wasn't was when he was like OMG... yes?  and then I'd ask him to one rein stop and he'd just circle calmly until he finally stopped.

What was going on?

It was like he was trained to do this weird pivot on the fore thing.  Ugh, maybe that's a HUS thing?  So we end the ride fine and I get to researching.  Come to find out, it IS a breed show exercise in one of the EQ and possibly trail classes?  So at least I know what that was all about but now I've got the NEW issue that Arthur is grabbing onto old training that I might not know about.  Time to learn even more about breed shows.

*le sigh

Red Horses

I need another horse like I need a hole in the head.

Sadly, its becoming apparent that unless I want to swap to APHA breed shows (watched one and nope) or H/J shows (QQ), Arthur will not be the awesome event horse I'd like him to be.  Also, from a business standpoint, he's not an event horse and his value will be better recognized in the other rings.  Also, if I sell him, I can better finance things around here for my pleasure and so yeah.  I need to be realistic.

Piper is in the same boat, once she makes me a baby horse of awesome, I'm probably going to train her, show her, and sell her to some lucky Pony Club kid to go rule the world with.  While my baby horse grows, that leaves me with an elderly QH type mare (Katy) and a chunky white pony (Mango).  Also, I'm tallerish and my trainer seems to think that riding a larger horse with my crazy long legs will help me progess faster.

*sigh

I've been watching CANTER when I can for upcoming TB projects to replace Arthur with over the horizon and I found a cute local guy but if they're not free, then I'm not buying.  Husband would kill me if I PAID for another horse right now.  Said cute horse was available in August and then I heard nothing about him until.. now.  He was a "war horse" having won almost $100K and was a nice red gelding - exactly what I was hoping for.  A nice kind look in his eye and I was vaguely interested.

I heard nothing again (which was fine) until one Friday at about 4:30pm I see a red horse come up on the CANTER Facebook page needing help TODAY or.. else?  Being local I was like omg, lemme go help out.  I'll get him home and evaluate him.  It ended up being the red horse from August so I was doing a little, fate? thinking but we had little time so I headed home and grabbed my trailer quickly while shoving my son at my husband and mentioning a free horse before bolting out the door on him.

Again, poor husband.

I get to the barn and find a skinny, pissy, tall guy that didn't want to load in the trailer.   Lucky for him, trailer loading is my thing apparently and in less than 20 minutes he loaded himself.  The boarding barn crew didn't seem too happy that I succeeded and I waved cheerfully as I loaded up my truck to head home. 

So here we go, again Project Horse 3436456  "I'll Make It Up" aka Nigel

Pictures BEFORE I got him:

 

Pictures from Day One *sigh:

Katy vs the Canter

Remember how Katy is really supposed to be the treadmill pasture pet?  Well, she's my most advanced and overall easy to ride horse at this time.  She has a show behind her and most always I can count on her to put up with my crap.  Therefore, she is getting "advanced" trained probably more than I like for my sake though, not hers necessarily.

Except Cantering.

We've hit this wall with her cantering and I know its tied to her general iffy relaxation.  For the most part, Katy is chill - until she's not.  When she's not she's high headed, belligerant and just in general fearful.  You can't do anything with her except diffuse the bomb and things will go back to normal.  Luckily she's pretty self preservering so that helps but ugh... when something is bothering her, there's no uhh help?  Its a full on OMG I'M DYING GERROFF GERROFF thing until she can be convinced she's not dying.

Enter her canter lately.

We're working on it being more balanced, responsive, rhythmical - SOMETHING.  This requires me to sit down to varying degrees which she loathes.  Especially to the left.  I can't find any saddle pain and so I'm left thinking its just overall fitness weakness at this time.

Which means we have to work it.

Sarah recommends us just lunging and using side reins and I'm skeptical, but after seeing Katy through THE BIGGEST fit over the side reins, I think we're on to something.  So this starts Katy really accepting the bit (to SOME degree) and the fact that she's going to be "trapped" while doing dressage and that's not a big deal. If I did hunters, Katy would probably love life but alas, I don't and she needs to chill the crap out and relax.  Hopefully we can unlock her jaws of life.

Side rein sessions totally seemed to rock her world in a good way though and I see it carrying over to our half seat canters.  Someday we'll get things together.  And a dressage saddle might make my life easier.

*sigh

Outside Time With Arthur - Gulp

Aside from that one boring bucking thing, Arthur hasn't been any trouble to ride at all.  My anxiety is a bit of a different story, but its getting better.

I had a riding lesson at Sarah's today with Katy and decided I'd bring Arthur to try him "outside" the round pen for the first time.  Normally I wouldn't pick a new location but he normally does better in new places plus I knew Sarah would actually STAY outside in case 911 needed to be called unlike my husband.

Heh.

So I lunge him and he's boringly easy, I tighten his girth and again, boring.  I get on him and he's.. yup boring.  We end up doing walk, trot, half halt and some other small things before calling it quits.  Total ride time had to be less than 20 minutes but he totally rocked it, so why not?

Keep on keeping on project horse!

Arthur Bucks and I Laugh

So now Mr Arthur is working in the round pen.  I'm not sweating to death over getting my foot just in the stirrup and we're basically working on walking and trotting with some turns here and there to install some better steering.

Its not terribly exciting (thankfully) but I suspect Arthur is getting bored too.  Whatever, suck it up bucking pony.

So we've been aiming to ride about 3-4 times a week and its been going decent.  Today was a little different and naturally I'm always waiting for when he finally freaks out.  Can I handle it?  How bad will he be?  What will trigger it now?  Its got to be in him still, right?  I'm not really the horse whisperer (how much easier would life be then?!)

Today we were just trotting, trotting, trotting and suddenly Arthur's head goes a little further down and he's... off.  But not off.  But now his back feels weird. OMG HE'S TRYING TO BUCK!!!  But it was totally in slow motion and I easil ybent him to a stop.  I think he was more confused that the bucking even started... maybe he fell asleep into it?  No idea but it wasn't that bad, I didn't die, and I guess I could do it again if I had to.

But I'd rather not kthnx.

WE WENT TO THE AECS!!!

And just jump judged luls.

Maybe someday but this weekend was not our weekend to actually show at Texas Rose Horse Park.  I mean, there's like qualifications and rules and junk.  Not sure my one spin on Katie at GAG will get me there.  *cough

So hubs had to go to Austin to work so that meant I had to drag the child with me.  Poor kid, right?  Skipping school to do an event.  Granted we woke up at 2:30am to be on the road by 3am but meh, no sympathy!  We headed out in the van (trying to be cost effective and not waste fuel by driving the beast truck) and WHAM!! (literally)  I get a deer smashed into my van.  I even slowed down and junk.  The chick was hanging out in the middle of a four lane divided road and watches, watches, I slow down and then she's all OMG *freaksout* heads one way as I'm slowing down more, scrambles on the concrete, then decides to launch at my car.  Wth.  Basically she glances off, but as the minivan is SUPER SAFE, the crumple zone has crumpled some.

Thanks.

I stop and check the headlamp (which is out naturally) and contemplate heading back home.  QUITTER!  So yeah, I text the hubs and keep on driving.  Nothing was going to fall out the way it was and well, sitting at home all day sounded like a massive fail.  Upon arrival at Texas Rose though, I find out my passenger door won't open and its a bit more gnarly than I thought.  Moop.

We arrive at check in at 6:30a and get our swag, instructions, and gear. I'm not given a Training level fence, just Prelim through Advanced and am like, uh, when does Prelim start?  11am.

Yes, 11am.

I could have avoided the deer issue and been way on time AND dropped my kid off at school if I'd known that ahead of time.  I promise, I coulda picked up the orientation thing later on.  Oh well :P  It gave me a chance to go take some pictures of the Training peeps at the new water complex until my battery on both my camera and phone gave out.  Derp.  I'd only planned on walking to see where my jumps were so it wasn't completely a BAD PHOTOGRAPHER moment.  I did have the spare in the car, so ne'er.

MORE PICTURES

I decide at this point that it was time to move the van right to the course since there was copious amounts of parking there and I knew at the end of the day I'd love it.  We began the long trek back while checking out the fences we were passing.  Wandered back towards the barns where a nice lady offered us a lift on her golf cart.   That got us half the way back and we were good to go.  With the van now in a BOSS position right at the gate for official peeps only on cross country, we sat in the van watching Pacific Rim, charging the phone, and eating our swag snacks.  Pierce took a nap which looking back was a smart move.  Wish I'd thought of it :/

Soon enough it was time to get in position so we packed lots of things and headed out to our jumps in Never Neverland.  Imagine my glee that there was a HUGE TREE and a PORT A POTTY at a great vantage point for the jumps.  I've never been so happy to be near a toilet.  We set up camp and started the day.  Our jumps:

Horses, riders, snack bringers, score sheet takers, all sorts of people came by and it was wonderful.

Somewhere during Intermediate in the afternoon though there were some crowd control issues so I began asking people to move.  This lead to me yelling at a lot of people to MOVE NOW A HORSE IS COMING when "heads up!" wasn't getting it through to them.  Some bizarre person came tweedling up the galloping lane in a golf cart and I was like omg wth?  I mean, golf cart on course = official person but whatever.  Maybe someone let the riff raff in.  Despite my waving and yelling and threatening air stewardess like movements, they kept moving MORE in the way as a horse was coming.

So I screamed.

It was basically an appropriate version of "Move Bitch Get Outta The Way!"

Grumbling, I called in that I needed some muscle as I was running all over about 2 acres to keep my jumps clean plus the lanes.  The TD asked me about the golf cart people and I looked around and pointed at the right one.  "That's the course designer"  I smiled and laugh about how he should know where to stand.

And then I sit down.

And think about it.

Who IS the course designer?

Oh, Captain Mark Phillips.

Derp.

Not a fail moment, not a winning moment, just one of those moments were you can say you screamed at someone like that.  Go me.

I also probably miffed off the TD cause one of my refusals was challenged and I wasn't questioned about it.  When I asked about if I was supposed to be, he asked me questions THEN and I was like huh?  Seems a bit late?  I mean, I saw this! And I used arm motions and such to show.  He ends with, well there was a video and we went with that.  You were wrong.

SHOULD HAVE OPENED WITH THAT.

And so I felt a little dumb for getting all *finger in face* about that, but well.  He asked.  And I'd just gotten off yelling at 5249 people for stumping around like zombies on the course.

Oh and Mark Phillips.

Did I mention that?  Yeah.

The child did alright, he loved the golf carts coming around as the ladies kept giving him snacks and gatorade.  I cut him off and people were like awwww poor kid!  Whatever.  He was covered in so much dirt, candy, food, drink that he looked like a 3 year old and not an almost 7 year old.  I mean, come on.  He also got a blister and LOST HIS MIND about it cause there was like 1 drop of blood.  Naturally as a horse was coming by so I growled at him within an inch of his life to stop yeowling and keep his shit together.

He did and yayness.

The day wore on and Advanced was definitely awesome to watch.  My corner jump made me have to stand out near where they were riding and man, those horses and riders are beastly up close.  It was so cool to see them.

We headed out after that, stopped for some crazy slow DQ (there were NO fast food places on the trip back and forth from my house to there, seriously! Just two Subways and then I went out of my way to find some breakfast at 5 am.  The van was a rock star on the way home and I did some serious soul searching about seeing if I can sell it for what I owe.  Its a great car that's "cheap" to drive, but I can't escape that its costing me WAY more than a tank of diesel for my truck just sitting around. :/  I need to pay off some debts/credit cards/horse trailer and the sooner I do that, the sooner I can do funner horse things.

Sacrifices.

But heading to the AECs, as interesting as the trip was to get there was fun and I'd totally recommend it for anyone that wants to see some awesome riders do some awesome things :)

Arthuring Around

Progress to make Arthur my main man has begun with a vengeance.

I've been wrestling with this whole idea for a while, but especially the past month as I've realized I won't have Piper as functioning for as long as I was hoping.  Since Arthur is the only one around here that can't get pregnant, isn't 500 years old, and isn't 13hands tall, he's the obvious choice for a regular partner.  Also, I haven't put all this work into him to not ride him.  So this was the first reality I accepted.

Next, Mr Shane texted me out of the blue that he had a client horse back at the farm and could meet with me some more to work Arthur.  If this wasn't fated I don't know what is.  Also, Shane and Kathleen are the best.  If I had a million dollars I'd give it to them for helping me with Arthur and my hot messness.  Since I don't have that, I just offer a million thanks for now.  This was reality number two.

Last Thursday I met up with a local dressage trainer and talked to her for a bit and then watched her teach a lesson.  It was really fun hearing about haunches in, collection, and uphillness once again.  Never once was a mention of making a circle in the wrong direction mentioned.  It felt great to be in this environment once again and the proximity to my house makes it a no brainer.  Our area is sometime really awesome for quality things.  After chatting with her about all my beasties, she thought Arthur was the best bang for my buck, but it wasn't really her speciality until I could walk, trot, canter him but she was willing to help as she could.  This is reality three.

So with these three realities coming about at the same time, I knew I had to do something in earnest.  I'm feeling fitter, riding better, and eating healthier.  The days are plenty long and its only going to be dark and cold if I wait until the winter to do things.  So I set up a time to meet Shane and off we went.

This was on Friday.

I'd warned Shane that I was going to be a hot mess.  From the previous month I knew this was going to happen.  From the moment I knew I was going to be riding Arthur I felt nauseous to a slight degree.  Logically this was a bit insane, but I have to have at least ONE girlie moment.  So I rode Friday night.  Aside from some mounting block issues (Shane fixed that in 5 seconds before I wrecked it again in 5 more seconds), Arthur did great and I managed to not throw up.  We did a couple of turns and that was probably about it.  I'm not sure, I was too focused on not dying.  Plus sides were that I didn't sweat profusely and wasn't shaking like a leaf.  I also found a few moments where I could think and actually react without delay (more like normal).  Shane pointed out (wise sage that he is) that I needed to trust Arthur and that he was a really nice horse.  BUT HE'S A BUCKER - in my head.  But he hasn't been a bucker for me and I need to let it go.  Sometimes it feels like people that cheat... he cheated before so he was going to cheat on me.  Maybe that's a bad analogy but that's kinda how I felt.

On the way home, a few of my dog training clients called in for Saturday night training, leaving me free to torment Shane again.  I immediately texted him about coming out again on Saturday.

Saturday was a lot of reflection.  I'm not by nature a weenie, its a developed trait that came about with getting a freaking amazeballs life, husband, kid, job, etc and I realize how quickly that could all change should I get hurt.  So I'm taking calculated risks.  Horseback riding is one of these things.  Oddly enough.  However I came up with some more truths: I needed to trust Arthur (honestly) to give him a fair shot.  He wasn't a cheater, he was a horse that was mistrained an misused.  Since I've had him (even at his worst), he has never been a monster.  He's a sweet, kind horse that tries his hardest to please.  Next thing was that I had to let go of this "not dying is good enough" crap.  Its been a crutch for about a year now and I need to shed that.  Working out and all that is part of the plan, but working Arthur and manning up to the rider that lives in me is the other part.  Finally, I wasn't going to waste Shane's time any further by being an idiot.  We have work to do here and its going to get done.

Big girl panties on.

That evening I loaded up Arthur and the husband stayed at home (another safety blanket thing of mine gone) while I went out to the farm.  We got started right away and naturally there were horses and roping steers all around the round pen.  Awesome.  Arthur was minimally distracted and we worked through that in less than 5 minutes.  Out of things to work on the ground with him on, we went to the mounting block and he stood like a rock.  I got on and everything was fine.  Clucking him off I focused on relaxing (particularly my back which I'd recalled being particularly tight previously on him) and using my hips casually to get us around the pen.  Arthur did great and was fully focused.  From there we worked on our one rein stops, turning/steering, halting and then a few steps of back up.  Oh and we trotted.  Hear that?  WE TROTTED!  OK, so it was like 2 steps.  Maybe 4.  My body didn't know if I should sit it or post it... it was just so much trot and so much lovely.  We easily came to a halt right after and I was happy.  Shane kept saying the magic words (trust him, trust your horse, etc) and I kept it up.  It was a great ride and I wasn't a flailing hot mess.  Win.

Today was the first time I've ridden Arthur at the house in a month or so.  I waited until the end of the day as that's when I normally ride.  My son was riding his battery powered four wheeler all around and Arthur was interested in it.  No spooking, but not his normal comatose self either.  Oh well.  We tacked up and I told my son to stay away while I rode.  I did a few things in the round pen with my beastie and then my son came around with his four wheeler yet again.  This time I told him to get off completely and wait.  He went to the garage and I started to mount.  The mounting block started to be an issue on round one, but I regrouped and on round two, everything was fine.  I mounted, adjusted my stirrups and heard the whirring of the four wheeler just as Arthur's head jutted up and locked onto it.  Awesome.  I yelled something at my son (including a lovely expletive I believe) and that was the end of that.  Granted the yelling from his back was more frightening to Arthur than the four wheeler, but at least we didn't have any episodes so I felt pretty good about it.

At this point I'll say that I believe in Arthur being able to work around these types of distractions.  I will also acknowledge that part of the issue was me.  It was our first time to do all these new exercises at the house.  I wanted it to go smoothly and then we can move on later to introducing things like 7 year olds and four wheelers.  We already had plenty of road traffic about 20 feet away.

After that fiasco was over, we got into working on our turns, one rein stops, backing up, and yup, trotting.  This time I completely trusted him and let him do his thing.  Man that boy is soooo smooth and wonderful.  I let him go about 1/4 of the way around before asking him to one rein stop down.  It was pretty tempting to let him keep going but we're working on lots of small good experiences so I let it go.

Now for tomorrow!

The Pipes Are Piping!

So I have a confession.  If you've slogged through most everything I've written before this, this may not come as a huge shock to you.

I don't like riding Piper.

OK, I know, I know!  Granted it was nice when Erica was riding because she was smaller and looked less insane on the painted pony.  The really nice thing about it though was that I didn't have to ride her.  I don't like riding her.  We always fight. About.stupid.things.

OK, so timeout again.  We normally fight because Piper KNOWS her job.  Sadly that job tends to revert back to her previous training which is a "barrel racing, roping, running madly across the roads with a teenager on her back" training.  But she owns it!  Much like she owns everything in her life.  So my normal "conditioning" hacks end up a full on, "no Piper, you canNOT drop your shoulder and dive out at an imaginary barrel".  "No Piper, we are not going from 0 to full tilt after a cow".

Paint horses. Western horses.  Sketchy training and gutsy horses.

Also, when Erica rode Piper, she let her do things that I wouldn't.  Kinda like when your mom's not around, the kids go nuts.  It was less Erica and more Piper (she's a persuasive bossy thing) and who's going to tell a 14.1h pony that no, we shouldn't jump that jump again epically for fun.  This meant that once every few weeks, I got on the pony (normally western saddle and rope halter for steering) and reminded her of several truths: we do not fall in on a circle, we do not move around like a wet noodle, we do not floor the gas when we do a transition, we do not bounce to the sky going from walk to trot, and we do not drag our riders forward like a racehorse leaning into the bit.

I'm not the fun person.

After I rode her she'd be fine.  It would be 2 hours of me asking consistently over and over and over and over and over and over again and rewarding anything that resembled moving in the correct direction.  Eventually she'd get it (aka, let go of old habits) and we'd get off for that session.  It was never fun for me but I mean, at least I can do it, right?

Then Erica went her way and I was left with this talented greenie beastie.  Now pregnant.  Trust me, I get how fabulous she is!  I thought about selling her to a shorter person that might like her more, I thought about a lot of things. I'm excited about a baby from her but honestly, I want to ride her myself long term.  I want it to be fun.  I want to rock a cross country course on a pony that's gutsy, balls to the wall, and everything in between.  She's never refused a thing and she's got seriously limited jumping experience (like less than 20 sessions over fences) and this is what she can do:

• Prelim level drop
• Training level benches
• Novice Trakheners
• 2 foot wide, 2 foot deep ditches
• Water jumps of all kinds to Novice
• Novice Banks
• A bunch of other things I can't recall right now

So basically in my mind, THE HARD PART IS DONE!  Unlike Arthur, she doesn't worry me when I ride her (she's about as safe as the day is long ironically and actually will take care of you within reason).  I just hate that a 30 minutes hack turns into a 2 hour "remember this" session of blahness.  So Step One was ride the beastie.  I got that easily.  Step Two, jump the beastie.  Ugh.  Shes' way rounder, bolder, full of herself than Katy.  The day I did it in June I just basically set the crossrail to about 18" and trotted back and forth.  Naturally she flung herself at it and jumped about 3 foot.  At that point I was like fine, game on and I worked her like a normal horse until she jumped 2 foot without rushing.  Again, that "fighting" thing we do until she realizes that my insistently consistent cues mean something besides balls to the wall.

So mission accomplished but not pretty.

Then Piper started to get HUGE from baby growing.  I decided to work on Katy and *gulp* Arthur so I have something to work on while Piper goes all preggers.  Then I took a lesson on Katy a few weeks ago that was bad.  Just.  Bad.  Like, I may have never ridden a horse before - bad.  OK, maybe not THAT bad, I did stay on, but I was all over the place and nothing was responding to how it should.  Naturally this was the hunter jumper trainer so I got an equitation lesson (which is really what I like :) ).  It was painful, it was awful, but I felt a lot better in short order.  The jumping was disastrous to watch but I got the job done (not the terminology the hunters want to hear).

I earned no style points.

Also, she mentioned that Katy's short trot will probably not fully "exercise" my core and all that.  I debated Piper.  The other thing we worked on was keeping the horse basically within a 6 inch area between your legs/hands/chest.  You stay the constant and they fall in.  I thought this was a bit of hoodoo, but then I saw it work on Katy and was like I WANT TO TRY THIS ON PIPER!  

Last night I did.  Sure she's kinda rotund (already) but she was happy to be worked and I - wait for it - had fun riding her.  She tossed her head a few times, got on the bit, off the bit, sideways this sideways that, bounce here bounce there but I just softly countered and rode with more leg than hand and she... got it.  In 35 minutes :)  We had one fight where she tried to snatch grass while we free walk (that's going to impress a judge one day >< ) so I kicked her into some lateral work that was difficult and brought her back down to relax.  Message was received that hard work would ensue should she take advantage and we were good.

I kinda want to ride her again tonight :)  Grumpy soreness and all!  Maybe she's not so bad :)

Night Cap Riding

AKA: How do you do all these things?!?

This is what happened today:

2:30am - Went to bed after working on this blog, organizing pictures, and reading some Game of Thrones.
10:00am - Woke up due to husband's lack of food protesting
10:30am- Came back in from letting dogs out and feeding horses.
11:00am - Pancakes made.
11:00am-5:00pm Messed around on the internet and watched TV.  I think we made some nachos for a lunchy thing
5:00pm Made some epic Panko crusted turkey meatballs on cous cous.
6:00pm-9:00pm Watched TV/aka Family Time
9:00pm - Put kid to bed, went to ride Katy.  In the dark.  With minimal lighting.
10:00pm - finished riding, untacked, fed/brought in dogs
10:20pm - trained the puppy
10:25pm - in the shower
10:45pm - on the computer/watching tv

So you may be wondering why I'm putting this nonsense up there.  Well, its to point out that you can do LOTS of things in a day.  The key is to be focused and stick to a training plan.  It was 100 degrees (F) today and felt like 105 at 6:00pm.  While I could have ridden, I decided it was better to just chill out and avoid heat stroke.

I'm funny like that.

For my focus on the day, it was to rest up.  We've started to do a lot of things lately and we really need to let our bodies, minds, and wallets rest.  My goal while I rode today was really to work on my equitation (shut the front door, I know!).  I need my core stronger in order to get better and do a good job riding Arthur and Piper so here I am.  The program I'm wanting to use is more of an endurance racing/eventing hybrid.  Week One is walking for 30 minutes increasing to 1 hour.  Katy can do trot work for an hour with interspersed canter but I wanted to work on a harder surface than normal to help her legs get a little tougher and hopefully her feet too as they're normally softish.  Considering that I was meaning to work on a walk, I ended up trotting most of it while focusing on me to avoid boredom and the Eq work at the walk was too easy.  So long as Katy went where I told her at the speed I told her, I left her alone and worked on my things.  She's awesome like that.  I tried a canter and I sucked.  I found a nice stopping point during the canter and rewarded her with some walking before finishing out with a trot cycle.  So basically, the canter falling apart was my fault BUT my goal in this lesson didn't involve canter, but to work on my eq at the walk/trot.  Don't throw out your plan or pick a fight when your goal was something else.  Find a decent quitting spot on that sticky situation and move on.  Did I canter the other way?  No, and yes it bothers me because I like everything to be symmetrical, but again, it wasn't going to be good due to me not being strong enough.  I was out there to work on that.  Derp.  Don't make it harder than it has to be.

For the dog training, people think I spend 500 hours a day training my dogs.  Nope.  I spend some time with them each day and make sure (like the horses) that when I'm around them they're learning something and I'm consistent.  I wanted to work on my puppy's downing after several weeks of focus/motivation work so I brought her in, grabbed 10 treats and worked on what I needed before hitting the shower.  Sure I could have trained her for an hour, but they don't learn well that way and I don't have time for that.  Leave them wanting more too.

Because of these short sessions, I tend to jump around a bit, but always am working towards a goal.  Keep sight of your goal, but break it into tiny parts and work on each individual part until they're as good as they can be and press on.  If you ever need to go back a step, you can always do that since you made up 10000000 exercises to get to the final product.

So back to my schedule, you're probably thinking suuuure you sat around a lot but its Sunday!  What about a normal work day?  Oh here you go (Monday through Thursday, Friday we take off from the gym and do date night or something):

7:00am - up and getting ready

7:10isham- feeding horses and letting dogs out

7:30am - leaving the house

7:40am- drop kid off at camp/school

8:00am- at work

5:00pm- leave work

5:30pm - get kid

6:00pm- home and changed into workout clothes

6:15- hubs and kid grabbed, head to gym

6:30pm- workout

7:15pm- home from workout/dinner/family time/tv

9:00pm- kid to bed, me to horses

10:30pm- done riding/critters fed, take shower/tv

Now mind you, just like my training, I've gotten to this point in tiny pieces.  I started working on the gym a month ago.  This meant I haven't been riding.  Then I got good at that and added in eating less (portion control).  That got decent and then I started eating healthier (see the difference?).  Next up was adding in riding.  I tried a lesson and it just really bottomed me out during afterwards (Friday night), I spent the next week tweaking my nutrition to keep up with the energy demands.  With that better now, I'm adding riding in this week.  Yay Soreville!

Why go through all this?

I want to ride.  I need to work.  I want family time.  I train dogs.  I'll be going back to school for a PhD in the spring and will need to have a schedule down pat in order to continue.  The other thing about all this is... I feel great.  For the first time in over a decade, I'm DOING not WISHING.  If you want it bad enough, you'll figure it out.  My body is starting to feel great - no nightly abdominal pain, no headaches, no weird sleeping patterns.  Also, don't beat yourself up if you mess up a day or two here and there.  Sometimes you just want to veg, or pig out, or whatever and that's ok (your body, your training, your money, your horses, all of it!).  Restart the next day and push on.

You can do it; I swear I'm not Wonder Woman! :)

Schillering

I haven't talked about my "methods" for fixing my train wreck of a horse (Arthur) in a while.  When I started things with horses, there wasn't someone hocking their goods online, videos available at the flip of a something, or anything like that (gosh I sound old *waves cane).  I learned from the horses mainly and with some awesome trainers (sometimes not awesome) that showed me what to do.  And watching lots of people fail epically with their own horses.

In general, I like finding out how things work as well as fixing things and most importantly, doing it efficiently.  This is why I'm good at training animals (and people but we won't talk about that today).  Clinton Anderson was the first marketed person I perused and while I liked what he's doing and something is better than nothing, I wasn't sold on the "program" and once more, did my own thing as it made sense to me.  Shortly before I got Arthur though, I was looking for some reining videos to try something with Piper and stumbled upon a trainer named Warwick Schiller.  I was watching the videos more to see how things looked and if I agreed, but while listening to him he totally spoke to me.

His techniques are about being structured, doing things for the right reason and letting the horse figure out the right thing.  I mean, that's so me!  So I watched some more of his YouTube things and come to find out, while he's competed in the WEG for Australia in reining, his main thing is "fixing" broked horses in CA.  He also works with each horse in the timeframe the horse needs to be worked in and takes into account the personality differences.

Oh and his subscription is like $25 a month and he literally walks you through training each horse from start to finish with hundreds of hours of video.  I could just watch and learn with him narrating.  Also, one of his project horses was a "Bucking QH" that I swear has the same backstory as Arthur so why not?

Now things aren't perfect and you need to use your brain, but in addition to the copious amounts of hours of video, Warwick also actually haunts his Facebook group himself and will reply regularly to questions and such.  Warwick's strengths are definitely his lack of bravery (why get ON a horse that you can't even catch?!), his well thought out action, his demonstrations, and background in horses in general. Oh and his main speciality is fixing dressage/eventing/etc giant warmbloods that have been mentally wrecked. 

So most of Arthur's journey has been using Warwick's methods and its been nice to have a virtual training coach to help out.

Granted it doesn't help me feel confident when I stick my foot in the stirrup, but I'm not sure anything less than a 6 pack of something would do that.

Check him out here:  http://www.warwickschiller.com/

Eating Healthy, Barf

OK so my workouts are going great.  Well, aside from being mind numbingly boring but effective.  I can tell I'm getting stronger (or at least the readout says I can go farther and burn more calories in the same amount of time so yeah?) but now I need to work on losing weight.  Sadly, just working out isn't making me lose the weight and I'm now so hungry I want to eat a baby moose after a work out so here we go.

I'm going to not only watch portions (I rock at this), but make better choices more often than not for foodz.  Basically, more protein and good fats, less refined sugar and awesome carbs.  Lame.  At least I like meat and there's no way dairy is coming off the plan.  But I've decided I'm not really dieting per say, I'm just going to watch my foods, tweak based on what my body says and go from there.  Its like an Atkinsy Paleo whatever type thing.  I'm totally making this up.  I'm just logging things on Lose It to watch in calories and out calories plus fat and protein.  Super high tech, I know.

So far its going ok, but I'm going to have to get creative about the things I eat as I'm getting bored already.

When interviewed, Chris Pratt had someone ask him what was the first thing he cut out of his diet when he started working out.  His response?  "Fun"  <-- me right now

I DIDN'T DIE! Despite What My Body Seems To Think

Ok, so Shane rode Arthur a few months ago at Cowboy Country.  It went well and in my mind it was something I should have been able to replicate.  Shane DEFINITELY thinks that (he obviously has way more faith in my body than I do!) and I'd really run out of ground work things to do.

Yes, shocking I know.

So that left me + Arthur and only needing to work on riding type things.  At the very least, I needed to ride him to find out more ground things I needed to work.  Talk about an impasse.  So I made the decision and it seemed a bit last minute.

I'd gotten home from work and just grabbed my riding pants, my gear, and told the husband to sit outside and watch in case 911 needed to be called.  No really, I wanted him there to watch.  Arthur was tacked, ground worked without event, and then I tormented him with a mounting block.  Nothing was phasing him and I was starting to panic.  I had nothing to work on, this was going to HAVE to happen.  I.was.going.to.ride.my.crazy.horse.

So I took a breath, wiped the copious amounts of sweat from my eyes and agree to just sit on him.  I look over to my husband for some moral support and realize... he's not there anymore.

Seriously?

I was going to have to die alone. Obviously.

So I swing my leg over and Arthur looks completel bored.  In my mind though, this is the end.  I'm shaking like a leaf, my body is producing the most amount of sweat I've ever produced and my brain is just an OCD ADHD smattering of freaking out and trying to remember what to do now.  Arthur meanwhile is standing like a rock.

So I pet him.  "Thanks for not freaking out like I am buddy."

Then I sit up.  NOT THAT MUCH LEAN BACK OVER.

I grab some mane.  WAIT NOT THAT HAND IN CASE YOU NEED TO FLEX HIM OUT OF HIS BUCKING.

Arthur is barely conscious.

I sit up a bit more.

He's still barely conscious.

I vaguely recall I should flex him on both sides.  IF HE DOES THIS I'M GETTING OFF ASAP.

I flex him and he moves his head freakishly easy.  OMGWHATSHEDOING!?!?!  Oh right, I trained in responsiveness.  Derp.

OK, so he flexes.  NOW WHAT DO I DO?  Umm... let's... disengage.  Or get off.  No disengage.

I ask, he does.  I'm sweating enough to fill a swimming pool and my legs are hurting from shaking so badly.

OK, not dead, horse is working fine and possibly coping better than I am.

I struggle to recall what comes next when I suddenly recall the next step is to let him move forward.  THAT'S LIKE RIDING OMG.

But I get up my nerve (at this point I'm annoying me), and ask for the disengage and let him spiral out.  He does so beautifully and we walk once around the round pen and I bend him to a stop and I get off easily.    Arthur yawns.

I might need some medications to help me through this part of retraining...

My Body Hates Me

I already knew my body was going to be on strike, but in addition to cardio, I decided to work on my jumping form.  My husband grumpily took pictures of the Meadowcreek incident and while I didn't die (in case you didn't read that post, I'm sure Die is the most used word in it), I also didn't really like the way I looked in the photos.  (Turns out my stirrups were different lengths and also too long but more on that in a few more months).

Naturally I went to a riding lesson and was like HUNTER JUMPER PERSON!   Torment me in EQ!  And so she did.  And my legs screamed.  Katy was confused with the odd bouncing cavaletti and some other weird things they had us do to force me to think about my position.  By the end of it I felt really fancy and the HJ people seemed happy with me.  I wasn't too sure what to think but I looked more like them and everything hurt.  That's a win right? :S

Work It Out!

I hate the gym.  Like, seriously hate the gym.  Its so boring, its so gross, its so ugh!  I also hate running and most forms of boring exercise.  Why can't horses involve more cardio?  Well, at least cardio that doesn't invole a horse trying to kill you/itself and therefore getting your heart rate up.

Due to the issues that I had at Meadowcreek, it was impossible to ignore the fact that my bum needed to be a bit smaller, my heart a bit stronger, and just get myself fit.  Sadness, but it is what it is.

So since hubby loves the gym (weirdo) but never manages to go due to me?  I made it a "family" thing and set new rules:  Monday-Wednesday was gym time.  We'd take Pierce and make him sit in a chair and play games while we worked out.  Husband whined about some logistic things but I was prepared so we began the horrible, terrible, no good workouts.

Luckily the new stair stepper/elliptical thing isn't so bad and every machine has a television on it so I guess I can function for the short time I need to do this torture.

*sigh

Show Day!!

So as mentioned in the previous post, I was last minutely competing in a schooling show on a horse that I hadn't ridden in two weeks, with a dressage test that I hadn't worked on for much longer than an hour, and a husband and son that would have rather been left at home.  But I like the security of my husband being there in case I die.  Who else will drive my trailer home?

Poor man.

Katy was loaded fairly early in the morning but not before dawn.  This was a new thing for me as I've never shown GAG and hadn't shown below BN in like... forever. 2-3am and the accompanying nausea was what I vividly remember from showing in my younger days.  Speaking of those, I'd like to mention this was my first show since 1997. 

WTF.

So the goal for this was to basically survive.  I know its not a seriously awesome goal, but I'm working on baby steps here and my brain insists on reminding me of the millions of ways I can die on a horse and doubting any skills I have despite contrary evidence.  I have issues, I know.  I've never been to Meadowcreek and what I recalled of it from my youth was that it was "harder" than Pine Hill.  Well, thanks.  So naturally my brain was thinking GAG = Prelim jumps.  WHAT IF THERE WAS A DITCH UNDER A LOG.  Oh wait, we've already jumped that and THIS IS GAG.

I seriously hate my brain.

Since I've never been to Meadowcreek, I punch in the address in my phone and we set out.  It takes us about 10 miles the wrong way.  I figure this out and re enter the address.  It wants me to continue the wrong way.  I look up the show site's website and it agrees with me and not the gps.  Awesomesauce.  We turn the rig and head back the other way.  I recalled seeing something with horses so we go back there.  Yup, that's it.

Derp.

I pull in and pick a spot way away from other people so my husband and kid can throw the football or whatever.  With the trailer parked, the horse tied to it, and grumpy hubby sitting in the truck, I head to check in.  Upon arriving there, they have no idea who I am.  Robbie is called in and they scramble to give me a number and are very apologetic.  Again, I'm just happy to be there so I'm super agreeable like normal.  I'm running last in the last group of the last division.  So basically, the day ends with me.  I've never experienced this with a horse show but whatever.  Its all good.

I wait for my dressage time and head down with my horse fairly amped.  Since there's a horse eating bridge to cross, I walk her on foot the first time to make sure we don't fall into the abyss and die before even doing dressage.  She's blowing hard but we make it across without trolls or anything stopping us.  I mount and start warming up on cross country for the dressage.  Katy starts eyeing up the cross country jumps.  The bit checker comes over and I have a moment of panic as she starts to ask me about my bit and I recall Katy's pesky habit of trying to freak out when people grab her cheek piece and/or anything that looks like wormer.  Again, might die before dressage due to bit check.  Luckily the person just asks me what it is and we go on about our way.  I mentally make a list of things I need to work on before next time - that being at the top of the list.

DEATH BY BIT CHECK.  No thanks.

We warm up, warm up, wait.  Warm up warm up, wait.  The numbers are getting close to mine and just when I think there's one in front of me... they swap the order for reasons I don't know.  Huh?  Oh well, I only came her to not die.  Whatever.  So after an hour and a half, its our turn.  I've decided to just go for relaxed and ride Katy like a hunter.  Just do the moves and move on.  Relaxed and rhythm, doesn't sound too bad for GAG.  We go down the center line and I notice Katy is freakishly straight heading towards the judge's booth.  I salute and we keep on going.  Again... perfectly straight.  As we start to turn, I realize what's going on... ITS TIME TO JUMP THE DRESSAGE RAILS AND POSSIBLY INTO THE JUDGE'S BOOTH.  Uh... what? I get her turned (it looks slightly mangled) and then she's locked onto the SIDE dressage rails.  Awesome.  We go back and forth with me trying to recall the test before she gives up on the idea.  Finally.  The rest of the test was rather unremarkable and our walks were awesome, the canter was pleasant, and by the end, Katy was recalling that she should be forward and on the bit.  Nice touch old mare.

I get off and we go back to the trailer.  Later (to my shock), I find that our dressage score was really not that bad and I think wow, that might be the highest I've scored at a show before.  That was kinda sad but also yay :)  Show jumping comes up and I manage to arrive WAY too early yet again despite trying to keep a better eye on things.  Katy naps under the trees with my family near us in chairs while other horses wheel around out of control.  I like having chill(er) horses sometimes.  My butt goes numb and I try any variation of sitting in the saddle I can to keep feeling to my lower body.  Finally it looks like my class is going and there are only a few before me.  I don't' trust this, but now's as good a time as any to find out how Katy feels about flapping flag lines that line the jumping warm up area.  Luckily she's only slightly looky at them, but much more focused on the proposed jumps in the area.  Now?  Now I get to play?  I trot around quietly and we pop over the jumps in a systematic way with me watching the people showing.  It looks like things are out of order again or something.  I stop warming up since its uneventful and she's behaving, but now she's ready to go and won't stand still (not that I blame her).  We walk a million quiet circles to keep her busy and happy until its our turn.  The LAST people of the day.

My goal was to trot EVERY jump on the stadium course.  I figured it would give her plenty of time to assess and me time to react.  Katy had other ideas.  The GAG jumps were boring to her.  She wasn't to canter, not trot.  I managed to trot #1, #2 but between #2 and #3 I tried to pull her back to trot and she was like ehhhhhh I got this, lemme go.  She gave into me right in front of the jump and I botched her takeoff, causing a rail.  At that point I was like OH FORGET THIS, and rode her like a real horse.  We finished the rest of the course easily and headed over to cross country right after.

I let her walk easily to the course and noticed a fair amount of ATV type of activity but whatever, score sheets getting picked up, dunno.  I was happy we were doing things decently and not dying.  As I sauntered my mare around the water jump (barely keeping her out of it), someone comes over to me in an ATV and is like, you schooling?  I was like uh... no?  show?  And she was like oh no....

They'd pulled all the jump judges thinking they were done for the day.

I shrug and agree to let them follow me in the ATV and score my jumps instead.  No big deal.  I was hoping for a run down on how the "new" start box rules were but instead it was vague and I just laughed.  They gave me a 30 second countdown rather than the "now" I'd requested so that was naturally more circles to keep Katy happy.  We started the course and Katy did great.  The ATV trailed us and I let the mare do her thing while I tried to push any of my concerns about "this fence and green horse here, this fence and green horses there" out of my head.  It worked and about mid course I found my legs and heart rate were horrible feeling.  When did this get so hard?

I ended up letting Katy pick the pace and riding one handed with posting canter for most of the course, gathering up the reins for the jumps and letting her back out after.  She didn't even look at a single thing, which was a bit alarming as there was brush, fake ditches, and things she COULD look at but nope.  Nothing.  Over and done without any issues, despite me riding like a sack of potatoes.

We crossed the finish and I remembered how fun it was yet again.  Katy had done a great job and we hadn't died.  I was sore and out of shape though which was the most concerning part.  Luckily my horse was in much better shape and she came back down to resting quickly.  We waited for the scores as we packed things up.  I ended up in 5th place I believe but would've been 3rd if I hadn't knocked that rail.

Suddenly not dying didn't sound like the best goal at these things.  Until next time!

PICTURES

End of a Good Thing

So things have changed around here, again.  Erica has moved on to other things suddenly and it all happened the week before heading out to the show.  I'd been riding Piper 5 days a week to make sure she was ready but Erica was dropping off noticeably.  Its fine, but the last minuteness meant I was left scrambling a bit.

I'd already paid for the show.  I wasn't sure I could jump the bouncing pony over Beginner Novice things considering I'd never really jumped her.  Ever.  Figuring it out the week of the event seemed like poor planning.  Robbie at Meadowcreek was exceedingly nice and swapped Katy for Piper and BN for GAG so I knew I could survive the show and possibly even enjoy myself.  So with 2 days to prep and a horse that hadn't been ridden in 2 weeks, I hopped on her and tried out the dressage test.  We did okish and my brain seemed to grasp the new test decently well.  I gave Katy the Friday off and we loaded everything up Saturday morning to head out.

So yeah, I'm riderless which is fine.  I hadn't realized how little I was riding and therefore how much my brain was freaking out about riding all the horses once again.  Its so nice to have someone else ride and you can tell them what to do a la puppeteer to figure things out.  I've never had that before, so it was a bit addicting as its easy to doubt what you're feeling when you ride alone.

I will admit this is making me reprioritize things (granted that I should have pushed myself to do sooner), but that's not a bad thing I've decided.  So while I enjoyed having another horse person around, I once again have been reminded its really my path, my journey and I need to shape my focus around that and keep at it.

Baby Horse Blob Update

Baby Piper Horse Update!

We went back in for (another) body violating ultrasound - this is according to Piper's reaction each time.  Found a heartbeat and I tried to take a sneaky ninja video even though I didn't have to be that fast.

AWKWARD PERSONALITY MOMENT.

So yeah, *cough*  I got some video and if you watch the blip, you can see the flashing part.  That's the heartbeat. :)

Show Prep!?

That aforementioned show is coming up and we're trying hard to make sure Piper is ready for it.  I've decided that for everyone's sanity, Beginner Novice is the place to start so we're working on the tests for that.  Naturally this won't be the best showing I expect, but I'm just looking to get out there, get back on that horse (figuratively), and see what Piper and Erica can do.

The dressage test isn't horrible but it isn't perfect either, but I saw for a schooling show its passable.  we know the jumping won't be an issue with the black and white pony!

Round and Round We Go!

I finally found some time to grab the big bay horse and toss him in the round pen.  He's been free lunged one or two times before but not at the house.  I decided to just tack him up in whatever and toss him in there to see if he'd recall how to work in the pen and all his "tricks."  Aside from being a touch sluggish, he did fine and the round pen was awesome.

Now to get my nerve up to ride in it.  *gulp

PREGNANT!?!?

I'm going to keep this short and sweet.

Piper went in again for her violation ultrasound and yep, there's a blob/black hole in there cooking!  Now for another 340 days give or take and we'll have a mini me Piper running around tormenting everyone!

Mango Update

So I bought this pony approximately a year ago on Mother's Day.  It was more the idea that it might evolve into a pony that my son could ride/learn on but true to my nature, I found a pony that kicks ass.  She was chunky, a bit moody, but over all a tough cookie that looked like she wanted to blitz across cross country with some amazing level of cuteness.

She was fat though, like whoa.  Her feet also freaked out between the weight and moving from the Oklahoma border to a much wetter climate here.  We've been working on that consistently and she's trim and sound.  What does that mean?

LETS SEE WHAT SHE WANTS TO JUMP!

So we saddled the pint sized pony up and started working her this week on basic concepts.  She did a nice walk and trot and we worked up to poles and then a single cross rail followed by a short gymnastic.  Besides trying to bluff her way out of it, she locked onto the jumps and ended up having a blast.  End result?  2'6" oxer in a one stride in and out done.  Happily.  Energetically!

Ponies.  Mares.  Red Mares.

But she was adorable and did a great job or trying.  Very proud of her.  Now to find time to work her into the riding rotation more!