Wordless Wednesday

Memory Monday

It was a warm, sticky day in July.  The air hung heavy with humidity, but not as heavy as my eyelids.  I was in a new relationship and had spent too many hours up talking late into the night and not too many hours sleeping in my sagging summer camp cot.  I was a wrangler, riding hours each day and teaching dozens of children, leading numerous trail rides for campers, outside groups, and girl scouts. 

And this was ride number four of the day.  I looked across the group of horses and selected a small bay mare.  I liked to rotate horses so the favorites weren't used as much and so I settled on Ana.  She didn't have much in the way of redeeming features in my opinion, since she was a bit scrappy and prone to either biting other horses at will or throwing in a small, happy buck.  But she hadn't been ridden that day, so Ana it was.  She, in typical feisty fashion, had gotten into a scrape and had a bite mark in her cinch area, so she couldn't be saddled.

No worries.  I hopped onto her bareback and was ready to head out on the ride.  The group wasn't my favorite, but I wasn't paid to give my opinions, so everyone was safely settled aboard their steed and out we went.  I decided to lead, as I yawned and scratched Ana's neck.  The group was quiet and we set about enjoying the scenery of a green Wisconsin forest.  The horses quickly snatched leaves from the trees as we meandered and ambled. I yawned again and then urged Ana back forward.  She was leading and I would prefer her to keep her mind in the game and not be too enthusiastic about this task.

A moment later I looked up at my surroundings.  We were heading back towards the home trail.  What the??  I thought we had just headed out moments before and then I quickly checked my watch.  No, somehow I had managed to lose a good twenty minutes.  Twenty minutes?  How had I managed to not be aware of the time and trail for twenty minutes? 

I realized that I had managed to fall asleep.  On a horse.  Bareback.  On a horse that occasionally bucked.  How was this even possible?

I still don't know.

But I smile warmly upon that summer day when things were simple, riding was all I needed to do, and in desperate times, a nap could be had on the back of a little bay mare.

Moving On

Sometimes moving on and breaking up is quite difficult.  I tend to give people chances, wait, and hope things will get better.  I see only the good and not the bad.  I remember all the positive times and not the negatives.

But Thursday, I made the plunge and broke up.

With my farrier.

I had a different one out on Thursday morning to work on the girls.  The previous farrier wasn't bad.  He was pretty good with the horses and chatty sort of fellow, but as time progressed, I became a little more unhappy and dissatisfied.  I began to question if my horses were really sore because of the summer and the angulation that I was seeing was really their conformation. 

After all, being a photo junky, I have at least a thousand photos of my horses.  My husband would say at least two thousand.  Too bad, they aren't all high quality pictures.  

My husband asks what's the point of this picture.  I don't really have an answer.  I just like pictures.

I digress.  I took the plunge and signed on with a different farrier.  I don't subscribe to radical thoughts of pretty much anything and this is no different.

This new farrier is female, which makes no difference to me, but what does make a difference is her desire for knowledge and education.  I am pretty much a knowledge junkie.  I need to know why something is good or bad.  I want to be able to apply what I know about physics and angles. I'd like someone to tell me how to improve my knowledge in order to benefit my horses.

So, so far so good.  I am looking forward to taking some more photos and seeing how their feet progress in the next month or two.

I rode the semi feral mare tonight and she was pretty good.  No tripping, which shows a positive sign for her angles on her hind feet.  When her toes weren't rolled off in the past few years, I'd occasionally have issues with her stumbling and tripping.  While she does have hock arthritis issues and injections do help, a good trim job seems just as important.  The last weapon in my arsenal with a sore hocked horse is the back on track boots too.  So if anyone has similar issues, feel free to see if any of these changes will benefit your sassy (or not so sassy) equine.

So while, this immediate change is a little uneasy for me, as I am not a fan of creating new relationships (comes with the whole introverted thing, I'm sure!), I am hopeful that it will be a good solid relationship for the future. 

How about you guys?  Easy to move onto a new professional?  Worried about change?

Love A Little Love

Some memories are incredibly precious.  Here is one and just in time for the holiday season is a fuzzy tale to warm our hearts.

It's about a princess of a red mare named "Love".  My part in this story began when I was in school.  I was not an equine science major or anything along those lines, but for kicks and giggles, took the  intro to fences riding course my senior year, last semester.  Perfect for a senior in full throes of senioritis.

One other back story here.  I have a bad left knee (among other things).  That was a horse injury, but it meant that some horses were much more difficult to ride than others due to the jostling in a rough trot.

The original horse I had been assigned to ride had a bit of a brutal trot and I thought I would possibly die or at least saw off my leg if I had to keep riding him, so I was reassigned to a chestnut mare that I would later know as Love.

What I would also learn is that Love, while smooth gaited didn't really know anything about fences.  We did some interesting type maneuvers in that class, while not always clearing said obstacles. But still, I could tell she was a good mare and had been well trained, if not misunderstood at the school.

I graduated and moved with the Semi Feral Mare in tow, but never forgot the red mare.  I had a friend still at the university keeping tabs on her.  The thing is, that many people don't realize is that university horses are just another piece of property.  It depends school to school on how they get rid of them, but most are pretty slick and just call up a horse dealer/seller/whatever and off they go.  Some just dump the horses at auction with no information and so forth.  There is no calling the donator to see if they want said horse back or offering the horse for public sale or whatever, which is a shame because so many of these horses were high end horses at one point.  I knew this and am a bit of a soft person, hence trying to keep in the loop on what was occurring.

Well, I got my chance.  Fortunately, my friend had heard that the red mare's days were numbered.  I also happen to have some of the best friends that are also a little soft, so between a group of women, we managed to get the mare paid for, transported to my new boarding barn, have a place to live at said boarding barn in exchange for doing lessons, and so forth.  Amazing how quickly things can come together, as if it were meant to be.

I should also say, I had found out after I graduated who this mare was.  She was a mare that one wouldn't think would be casually discarded, having won many ribbons up to the National level.  Safe, sweet, sane, and sound.  I also managed to find her owner who donated her to the university and I realized that she had no idea what happened to donated horses.  She was and is still incredibly helpful with everything regarding her youth show mare.  She thought that this mare would be an incredible lesson horse since she had a lot to offer, which was true, but often donated horses are at a whim of a certain person's approval or disapproval and it seems that the red mare didn't fit the desired look of the university herd.

Also falling into place was the fact that my best friend J (who keeps making regular appearances on this blog!  Soon she'll have to do a guest entry or something, geeze) was working in the area for the summer.  Since I now had three horses and not much time...could she please come ride?

A couple days after she came down from the university.  She began to literally brighten up with her new surroundings.

I'm sure everyone can guess what happened.

It's hard to not fall in love with a horse named Love.  J took her home.

This past summer, Love returned to the Class A Arabian show ring with a person who had never shown at the recognized level.  Actually, correct that, she carried two people into the show ring: one being her owner and the other myself.  She came home with ribbons and looked so incredibly different than when I first met her in the muddy school field.  She was regal, proud, and majestic.  She strutted and danced. 

See Clueless rider. That would be me.  ;)  Her owner is a lot more competent I think. 

What a star of a mare who almost ceased to exist. 

And that my friend is such a precious memory and who couldn't love a little Love?

Thank you to everyone who helped with Love's rescue, placement, recovery, and continued endeavors.  I am so grateful to have been a part of this. 

Where Did The Day Go?

Ever have one of those days when you have no idea where the time went?

That was pretty much my day today.  Did barn chores this morning, which was fine.  More horses in than normal, so it took a while.  I'm also looking forward to Daylights Savings so I don't have to turn horse out in the dark.  Unfortunately, I found out this morning that when aiming for the handle in the dark, it's possible to touch the electric fence.

That was a little hair raising and considering I have a lot of hair, I'm sure there was plenty being raised.

The feral mare and myself the first year I met/had her.  Notice copious amounts of hair to which I could easily frizz.

But besides that, I did all that typical stuff, did some home errands, went to job #2 and back to the barn and fell into the vortex of horsedom.  I do vaguely remember lunging the semi feral filly and putting her tail up and getting the semi feral mare out.

I have been trying to work on being softer in my trot/halt & walk to halt cues and being more self aware and consistent with my seat as the primary aid.  Harder than it seems, especially when I keep trying to stiffen and protect my back which in turn locks my pelvis.

I find it amazing how horses are willing to trudge through when we are so conflicting and inconsistant.  Really, they are quite good natured critters.

But back to the void.  After that, who knows what the heck I was doing?  Somehow I managed to be at the barn from four thirty until nine thirty.  One would think I might have accomplished more, but who knows? 

Anyone else have a tendency to get sucked into the void? 

What a Fino Weekend

Or part of a weekend I should say.

My friend J has been seizing the dream and applying to jobs all over the country.  She ended up being a finalist for a job in my state, so I did what any supportive friend does and told her that we should go barn shopping together.  So she lined up a few and we did the typical scouting out for boarding barn thing.

However, we also had attended a symposium in the past at a fancy Paso Fino barn and we had also wanted to ride one of them.  She went ahead and scheduled up some lessons and off we went.

I had a big (apparently big for a Paso Fino) grey gelding named Cris.  My friend had a very beautiful, more delicate black mare Jazmin. 

The instructor is big about working with the horse from the ground up.  Build a bond before getting in the saddle, lead the horse around the arena (and lead and lead) before mounting to work on extending and shortening the walk, and getting in synch with the horse there first.

We did eventually get into the saddle though.  Hurrah. 

The lesson I would summarize was a lot of equitation and body control influencing the horse's way of going.  I have such a mixed background in riding that I have finally reached a point where I realize that proper strength and equitation is actually there for a purpose.  My more recent dressage based lessons certainly came in handy in fino land.  My friend J has recently delved into the hunter world after doing the camp/western/reining thing, so it was a very different experience for her too.

Lots of opening and closing hip angle and breathing to compress and extend the gait.  The paso corto (the gait sort of equivalent to the trot, except it is lateral) can really get flying when asked.  Cris was perfectly responsive and a good judge of when I was doing things correctly.  Set him up and off we went.  It was enjoyable riding a horse where really my hands did very little work and the rest of my aids were the predominant force.  Something to strive for with the semi feral mare I think!  

Somehow I managed to get quite sweaty from the lesson which is a first for a lesson in cold October Wisconsin weather.  Cris was more than a little sweaty too, so we wandered around the arena for quite some time.

All in all, an enjoyable experience.  I am a big fan of new experiences across disciplines to try and widen my horizons.  The instructor (who hosts that symposium I mentioned) is also a fan of this.  That symposium we previously attended had Denny Emerson, Richard Shrake, Lynn Palm, and Gayle Lampe all working together to educate an audience and a rider across disciplines on ways to improve the riders and subsequently improve the horse.  Something that's right up my alley. 

It seems to easy a lot of times to say the horse needs fixing first, but the older I get, the less I am finding this is true. Hah, what nuggets of wisdom am I to find in the next few decades of riding horses! 

Memory Monday: Why Balance Is Importance

Instead of "one time at band camp", it seems to progress to "one time...at summer camp..."

And this Monday, it's no different.  However, this memory was the day I realized that having good balance and a good seat was important.

See, I had subconsciously started to figure this out when I was younger and more stupid and willingly rode horses that needed some fine tuning.  Perhaps fine tuning is attributed too much to me as a riding, since it's implying I had some mad skills.  More like, I was the WD-40 that woke the horses up and asked them to please not try and be idiots on a daily basis.  Just please walk, trot, canter and go the direction you are asked with the proper number of hooves on the ground and in a period of suspension at the correct time.  Nothing more, nothing less.

So back to the story.

It was time to go round up the herd again.  Being horses, they eat a lot and there are lots of fields to send them out to graze upon.  Some are closer, some further.  The one involving the little Arab was a close field.  The one on this particular day: not so much.  It was pretty much the furthest point that one could go. 

However, the horse staff did get a little wiser.  If the fields were close, we would walk out on foot and catch a wiley steed which could be entertaining in forty-plus acres of woods at any point and time.  This location was so far that we had left some horses back in our home corral so we could saddle and ride out in the morning.  Saddles were also a new idea, but not a bad one considering we had chosen some "interesting" horses to leave behind, as it wasn't always fair to use the steady eddies.

I don't remember who I had originally rode out the night before, but it was a pretty reasonable horse.  My friend had chosen and rode out an off the track Thoroughbred.  I love them.  They are pretty cool, but understandably, can occasionally loose their marbles galloping in a large group until pretty well schooled.  This Thoroughbred was in the not-yet-well-schooled category.  Friend had saddled him up and on the way out, realized that this may be a bad idea. 

I try to be a nice person, so I offered to switch.  I reflected about 35 seconds later that may also be a bad idea.  After all, I had already had a major concussion earlier that summer.

Too late for second guessing oneself, right?

The group and I cruised on out to go find the herd of horses.  The saddle on my steed was a little uncomfortable and in typical lazy Semi Feral fashion, I hadn't bothered to adjust the stirrups.  Who the heck needs those.

The herd was eager to come in and pretty quick.  Some days, they move slower than oxen in Texas heat, but not that morning: unfortunately.

Steed and I spent a mile or two galloping mostly at a 45 degree angle to anything we were intending, exerting way too much effort for the task at hand.  I did find myself for once wondering why I didn't have stirrups.  Eh, just an afterthought.

At the end of the ride, I slid off the big gelding and realized something.  Somehow in the chaos of the morning, the cinch hadn't been knotted or done up properly.  I hadn't checked it when I got on because I had assumed original rider had and you know how these things go.  What I found was just a latigo run through a couple of times, giving the semblance of a cinch being on the saddle, but just barely.

It was the equivalent of one of those fancy belts on dresses actually serving a purpose. 

My next thought was how on earth was the saddle still on the horse?  We had galloped up and down a few hills, did a mile or two (or seven as I imagined in my overly active imagination), and not on an easy ride.  Someone else proudly exclaimed that it was the mystical term "Balance".

So, perhaps on that day, I found out why being balanced on a horse is important.  Of course, at that point I wasn't thinking beyond "Cool, I didn't get another concussion."

I also insist on trying to bring my own luck in these situations too. 

One more stepping stone on my path to someday being a good rider.  ;)