Sunday, December 25, 2016

Christmas Eve

Nothing special around these parts, just a super-foggy day and a distribution of all the cookies.  We'll be more festive next time; the Santa hat is in the mail...



Saturday, December 17, 2016

Winter Is Coming

Screenshot from earlier this week

Perhaps not surprisingly given the area of the country I live in - cold is not my thing.  In fact, the whole group of us at the barn tend to resoundingly and unanimously decide that if the weather isn't going to get above 50 degrees, that's a nope situation.

The forecast screenshotted above is for my house; the barn, being 40 or so miles farther north, is generally a few degrees colder.  That forecast also doesn't show the freaking wind chill, which is supposed to reach single digits.  Today narrowly avoided the nope because the temperature was going to be comfortable into the early afternoon - but that didn't mean any of us wanted to hang out for long! 

So I stopped at the weanling pasture to say hi to the little guy, and to check on Project "Make Justice Fat."  (He grew inches and winter hair at once.  It was... even more not pretty than his usual baby awkwardness.)

Ugh, that neck is so sad. Go play more, baby!


Fatter, taller, and still a cutie.  Awesome.

White spot check: butt spots still present, although not as many as before.  One small white spot on the muzzle.  And then there's the tail.
I halfway expect a white tail by mid-summer.

At this point, it was 45 degrees and falling.  The wind was blowing.  The sweatshirt was not enough.  Still, I'd said I was going to grab Cessa and blanket her, so off to the main pasture to collect her.

She wasn't thrilled with her blanket again, but did let us put it on her.  Once she's convinced that yes, it's going on, she's fine - but getting her there is still a bit of an adventure.
Level of impressed with the cold front: low.
Pretty girl.

All of the horses were on alert, because not only was the temperature dropping - by the time I got back into the car, it had dropped another five degrees - but the wind was blowing at a good 15-20 with gusts of much higher.  Cessa was a bit squirrely, but settled down once we walked away from the area where she was most agitated.

When we headed down to the arena to have one of the BOs check my blanket fit (more adventures in horse ownership: fitting the blanket isn't something I really had to do as a lesson kid...), the colts in the arena started running around.  We shrugged and figured they were wanting to play - which it did turn into play after a few minutes - and let it be.

Then I turned Cessa out, and we all cracked the hell up.

See, she went trotting off to the herd, who were standing there on high alert because winter and wind and hose in the trough making weird noises.  The herd took one look at her and took off running as though their lives depended on it.

Cessa chased after them - why are we running? - until they got to the far end of the pasture.  At that point, the herd decided there was a new horse in there with them (yeah, not so much, guys) and started chasing her off (she's usually high-ranking in the herd) and generally being a pain.  Miss Thing needs to lose some weight and a night or two of not standing at the bale of hay 100% of the time isn't going to hurt her at all, so we were still cracking the hell up.
I'm pretty sure she was sulking.

I have a Santa hat coming, so there may be festive pictures next weekend, assuming it isn't still this freaking cold...

Monday, December 5, 2016

Haiku Farm Blog Hop

Aarene over at Haiku Farm started a blog hop and it's kind of spreading through the blogs I've been lurking on - and hey, I've been meaning to start up a blog about my beasties anyway and I didn't get barn time this weekend (40s for the high, 40s for the low, and 100% chance of rain? Yeah, no way.)... So blog hop it is!

Here's the directions:

Answer the questions (below) on your own blog, and leave a link to that post in the comments here.  In your post, invite readers to answer the questions on THEIR blogs, and link those blogs to yours AND to here.  Let's see how far this can travel!

Pictures!  Let's see lots of pictures of people and horses!

*  Introduce yourself!

*  Introduce your horse(s)!

*  What's your favorite horse sport?  Do you cross train in other activities?

*  Who else in your family rides?

*  What's your proudest equestrian accomplishment?

*  What was your lowest moment as a horse owner/rider?

*  What's the most important small thing you ever learned in a lesson?

*  Do you have any riding rituals or superstitions?

*  What are your short term goals for yourself/your horse?

*  Long term goals?

*  If time and money were no object, what is your dream equestrian vacation?

*  What kind of horse activities were you doing 10 years ago?

*  What kind of horse activities do you think you'll be doing 10 years from now?

*  What is the quirk about your horse that you like most?


*  Introduce yourself!
I'm Sarah.  I'm an English rider in the land of Western riders (Seriously, if you ever wanted to know where all the big-name reining trainers are?  They're here.  All of them.), which is sometimes challenging and sometimes just frustrating.

I've been riding since the mid-1990s, almost exclusively as a lesson kid, and at last count I have ridden with eight different instructors at nearly fifteen barns.  And today is my one year anniversary of horse ownership!

*  Introduce your horse(s)!
I have two horses, because my barn friends are terrible enablers and somehow convinced me that I needed two horses instead of one.  (Okay, so I only needed a little convincing...)

SHC Estrella Princessa (Stonewall Sport Horse)  (11 years old, also kind of a shit)


Justicar (Sugarbush Draft Horse [SDHR])  (18 months old, sweet baby boy)



*  What's your favorite horse sport?  Do you cross train in other activities?
I've always loved eventing, but I honestly haven't jumped since 2000 or so, and never outside an arena.  So I'm not sure if my love of watching eventing will ever translate to a love of riding eventing - but I'll definitely try it some day.  Second place goes to dressage, which I enjoy doing but don't really enjoy watching as much.

Cross-training is awesome.  I've been forced to cross-train the human more often than not - my long-time instructor was a Western Pleasure specialist and I've ridden in a IPHDA clinic, among other things - and I spend a lot of time reading blogs for disciplines not my own because I always learn something.

*  Who else in your family rides?
One of my mom's cousins.  There's a running family joke that I have the wrong parents.

*  What's your proudest equestrian accomplishment?
You know, it's a small thing, but I spent probably two years riding my current BO's mother's mare.  The BO's mother is a very sweet lady, but she has a hard time laying down the law.  I have no such problem.  It was really fun to feel the difference between where we started and where we were two years later - and what happened when the BO's mother got on.

*  What was your lowest moment as a horse owner/rider?
Oh, that's a story.

Some time in the mid-to-late 1990s - I could probably dig up the year if I tried, but I'm not too worried about it - I started having confidence issues while riding.  Most of them started when I was riding with a lady that started off as a really cool dressage instructor and turned into a raging bitch when she realized that my parents were serious about not buying a horse from her.  (Also the psycho that sent me up a hill, alone, in a thunderstorm to get a horse and canceled the lesson when we got back to the barn because it was still raining and thought that teaching beginner lessons on green-broke three year old colts was appropriate.)  It's a challenge to get a horse-crazy teenager to sit in the car and cry every week when she should have been excited about horses and riding, but that woman was totally up to the challenge.
A few years before the crazy...

We left there pretty quickly and moved to a different barn... and into a similar situation with a different person.  (I have the worst luck with instructors named Linda, apparently.)  And then we moved again, ending up with the lady I lessoned with for over a decade.
An old friend - and the reason I love bays.

The problem is, my confidence didn't recover.  I was okay?  But I wasn't okay.  I fell off of a beginner-safe lesson horse one day, and that didn't help either.
Not a terribly clever mare, but safe.

I started not being able to canter a horse.  Then I couldn't trot a horse.  The lowest point came the day I was sitting on one of the lesson horses - sitting still, mind you - and couldn't stop freaking out because she was stomping at flies.
That pretty face didn't deserve my freaking out. She was a good girl about it, though.

It took four years for me to be comfortable on a horse again.  It took longer to be able to trot, and even longer to canter.  I'm still iffy at the canter; I have to trust the horse before I can do it.

*  What's the most important small thing you ever learned in a lesson?
Elbows.  Apparently I lock them.  I did not know that was a thing.

*  Do you have any riding rituals or superstitions?
Rituals, yes; superstitions no.  I have a very specific grooming routine - curry everything but the legs and face, brush everything, clean out hooves - and if anything disrupts it, I feel guilty.  All those years as a lesson kid, I guess.

*  What are your short term goals for yourself/your horse?
Short-term for me is easy: get back in the saddle.

Short-term for baby J is to be a baby.  We're tossing around the idea of doing the halter classes in a local schooling show in the spring, but mostly he's on "be exposed to things and get fed treats" duty.
He's ok with this plan.

Short-term for Cessa is a two-parter.  Part 1: un-learn this whole "I'm bored and don't want to stand tied anymore, so I'm going to break this halter and head for the hills" crap.
Yeah, I'm impressed too, mare.  That's three halters now...

Part 2: get under saddle, because yes, I'm the genius that bought a baby and an unbroke broodmare.

*  Long term goals?
For me, mostly I just want to ride.  I'd love to do some dressage shows; I'd love to get back to jumping, and maybe even try this whole "jumping mostly immovable objects in a field" thing.

I don't have huge plans for Cessa.  She's my girl; we'll figure out whether I want to take her to shows or whether she's a trail ride and putter around kind of girl later.

As for Justice?  Show pony and husband horse.  Show pony because holy hell, baby boy is fancy, and husband horse because there's no way I'm putting my inexperienced hubby on Cessa; she would eat him alive.  He'll be 2 in June; we'll start experimenting with placing blankets and saddles on his back some time after that, but he isn't going to formally go under saddle until at least 4.

*  If time and money were no object, what is your dream equestrian vacation?
Spanish. Riding. School.  I got the chance to see them when they toured the US ten years ago, but seeing them in a stadium isn't the same.

I'd also like to see the Percheron races in France.  Thundering hooves!

*  What kind of horse activities were you doing 10 years ago?
 Let's see... 10 years ago, I was taking hunter-jumper lessons at the barn I originally rode at when I first started lessons... which has new owners, a whole new lesson staff, and is now situated in the middle of a mega-subdivision.  (So surreal.  And sad - a lot of the barns I've ridden at are now subdivisions.)

*  What kind of horse activities do you think you'll be doing 10 years from now?
What I'd like is to have my own place and the ponies in my back yard.  What's more realistic is boarding and still riding - and probably still searching for good English instruction in the sea of Western folks.

*  What is the quirk about your horse that you like most? 
 Justice will totally fall asleep with his head in your lap.  It's hilarious.
(photo texted to me by one of my BOs)

He is also officially a mystery color.  He's got the Appaloosa gene, but no pattern.  So while he looks plain brown, over the last year he's popped up with an ever-shifting array of spots - from an egg-sized round dot we uncovered when shaving him in March to his current scatter of pencil-eraser-sized polka-dots across his hindquarters and a big fat silver streak in his tail.


Cessa actually tries to get me to save her from things.  I've had to stand between her and a llama that was 75 feet away (but going to get us, Mom, can we run?).  I also was apparently responsible for saving her from her pretty new blanket, which was fine to put on but after that was terrifying.
"It's eating me, Mom!"

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Crappy photos for a crappy week

I almost didn't go to the barn this weekend.  We lost our little dog on Tuesday, and I just... was out of emotional steam, I guess.

But the barn owner has a little dog she rescued, and I had probably eight or nine pounds of small dog food that was only going to go to waste here.  So I went and cuddled Justice for a few minutes.
And then headed over to the main barn to hand off the food and visit Cessa.

It's weird how I was able to get rid of all kinds of other stuff that was the dog's and it was fine, but there was something about giving away her food that almost had me in tears all the way up there.  I walked out to visit Cessa and just kind of lost it again as I tried to call her name.

And for all that she was an absolute shit last weekend, this time she walked right up to me from probably thirty feet away and stayed next to me until I'd finished crying on her neck.  She's a pretty stoic animal, so I sometimes have to take other peoples' word that she really does like me; I definitely appreciate that she decided today was a day to make herself pretty damned clear.
No barn time next weekend because of Thanksgiving.  I could technically do it, but considering my holiday is going to involve a five-hour drive, I'm not coming home and then immediately making an hour drive unless there's an emergency!

Saturday, November 12, 2016

Seriously?

Seriously, mare?  Seriously?
Yup.  She pulled back again and pretty much destroyed another halter.  (It might fit a full draft head now...)

Not only did she destroy the damn halter, she also led me on a merry ten minute chase around the property, because food and screw you, human.  Trust me, the look on her face isn't half as pissed-off as the look that was on mine.  Effing mare.

So I guess the next step is multiple halters and convincing her she's dying if she does it again.  This is so frustrating; I'd love to go do some stuff with her in the spring, but if she's still pulling back, I'm not taking her anywhere.  I'm not paying for a bunch of trailer repairs because she's popped rings off of shit, and I don't want to send her to a trainer (even if I could afford it right now) when she's a damned embarrassment that won't tie.

At least I got some cute pictures before she decided to be a shit.
"Hey, aren't there treats in here?"

And an excerpt from the cutest selfie ever.

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Hot pursuit

Not much motivation for anyone at the barn today, so I didn't even bother to halter the beasties.  Just gave them some petting.

And amused myself terribly.  Ever wonder what it looks like when your horse is pretty sure you're going to fall on your butt because you're trying to take video and walk backwards at once?


Saturday, October 29, 2016

Nothing too exciting

As happens with babies, nothing too exciting this week.  Just all the hair:

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Road again - and height

Proof we went on the pavement!  Once again, he was super-brave... well, until we got back to the driveway and he had to walk through a puddle.  Puddles apparently eat baby ponies.  Who knew?

I also got a sort of height comparison on the little guy, as requested by my SO:
Yes, we're hiding half the baby.  Frankenbaby effect is still going very, very strong.

I still have no idea how tall he's going to be.  Momma is right around 16 hands, and he's her first foal.  Daddy is a true 17 hands.  I'm assuming he'll be somewhere between the two?  Probably?

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Down the road

So this happened:
Intentionally!

Justice has been living in the weaning pasture - aka the BO's best friend's house - and pretty much we've got a pasture and the driveway to play in.  Today, we grabbed Justice and one of the other babies and wandered down the road a bit, introducing the kids to things like pavement and the horses across the street.

But first he had to investigate the mobile tack trunk:
 We finally found a treat he likes that isn't alfalfa cubes!  Stud Muffins FTW.

The most hilarious moment was when the other baby - a year older and the baby herd leader - flipped out, first at the sight of a roadside cross with a couple of ribbons flapping in the breeze and then at the fact that the rest of the herd was over a hundred feet away omg.

Justice?  Did not care one bit.  Flappy ribbons: Mom, can I eat that?  Down the road a bit farther away from his herd leader: Sure, we can do that.

As much as I enjoy a bit of a challenge, the easy ones are so nice.

The saga of Justice's color continues.  Now his formerly all-black tail has a big silver streak in the middle of it, and the tiny dots have gone from top-butt-only to across his entire hindquarters.

Saturday, September 17, 2016

Sleeping on the job - and new spots!

Man, I have a wild, crazy baby on my hands.  He didn't want to go through the gate, which lead to this hilarious snapshot:
Yep, that's right: he tried to go to sleep.

And in the continuing saga of Justice's spots, we've lost the butt-cheek spots and now have this across our butt instead:
Still Captain Awkward, so sadly that's about all the body I'm willing to share on the internet.  I know he'll be fine in the end, but oh my god, he's all parts right now!

Saturday, August 27, 2016

New halter

So you may notice that Cessa has had a few halters:
 
Our latest iteration is this charming blue number with the pair of knots on the nose:

Why so many halters?

Well, it seems that a certain bay mare has decided that pulling back when tied is fun.  The navy and baby blue halter was a cheap Horseloverz purchase, so it wasn't exactly a shock when she sat back in it for the second time and it snapped.

The purple rope halter... well, I still have it, but Miss Thing sat back in that one, too.  In case you didn't know, rope halters can stretch.  A lot.  It still fits, sort of.

Our new plan is a sturdier rope halter, with knots on the nose that might help deter her, and we'll see what happens.  If she doesn't give up next time, it may be time for a come to Jesus meeting...


Thursday, August 18, 2016

Sometimes the outtakes are the best

My selfie game is... let's call it amateur hour.  And that might just be generous.  I have shown my collected selfies for a day to others and gotten the response, "You know when you're taking the picture, right?  So why is your mouth open?"

On the other hand, the outtakes are sometimes the best.
"No, Cessa, that's a phone - not a treat..."

Today was supposed to be farrier day, but unfortunately, the farrier was kicked in the back by a client earlier in the day.  He had good intentions to show up until we told him to go the hell home and rest!

Sunday, June 12, 2016

When she's good, she's very, very good...

And when she's awful...

Don't let that cute face fool you.  We took terrible selfies before I started contemplating turning her into glue.

After the selfie session, we wandered around the pasture for a bit, doing this and that.  Walk over these poles, check.  Back up between the poles, check.  Walk around the pasture, check.

She started ignoring me, and we had a discussion about that.  Part of that discussion was a quick "go out on the end of the lead rope and move, dammit."

"Move, dammit," was being greeted with a whole lot of "I don't wanna," so I swatted her with the end of the lead rope a couple of times.

And then Miss Thing decided it was a great time to cow-kick at me.  Barely nicked my arm - I'm developing a pretty hilarious bruise - but you'd better believe I checked that out after I made sure she understood that this was Not Allowed To Happen Ever Again.

Thank god it wasn't worse; today was one of those rare days when I was out in the barn alone...

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Artsy

Well, his head's still cute, even if the rest of him is Dr. Frankenstein's monster territory.

Draft horse babies: when the awkward comes to town, it really comes to town.

He also now has new spots!  The big spot on his side has vanished, to be replaced by a pair of spots on his butt that look like he leaned against a freshly-painted post.