Teach Me Tuesday: 12x12 stalls

The best at mixing things up

Well, I suspect I already riled up the natural horse care side of things, so this week's round of Teach Me Tuesday will probably rile up the other side of the aisle. Here's another thing I totally do not understand about the horse industry:

12 x 12 stalls.

What.

Why. 

Does not compute.

I mean, I get them in the case of medical emergencies sort of depending on what is going on. Beyond that? No. A horse is a huge animal. I live in a tiny house and I think my bedroom is about 12x12.

It's a stall, but he has a run too.

I may be fat, but I'm not exactly horse sized.

Can someone explain the logic here? Or where they came from? Or anything? This whole thing just draws a blank for me.

Disillusioned

photo by horselessinhalifax

Don't take my ridiculously emo title too seriously. I'm sitting at my computer sipping a screwdriver (best.drink.ever.), listening to the rain outside with a snuggly puppy on my lap. Life is good and I'm not complaining.

Noted: I am writing this on Sunday night, so it's not like I'm some Monday-morning-boozeaholic. Everyone knows the only thing you can drink in the morning is mimosas. Or Bloody Marys, but I'm not into those.

Anyways.

Everyone needs puppy bath spam

Courage threw a shoe on Wednesday and I haven't sat on him since. He's supposed to get completely reshod on Monday and that's all fine and dandy and the time off is probably good for him. It's definitely good for me. Not only do I get more puppy cuddle time, but also I get to think about what exactly I'm doing and where I'm going with Courage.

And the truth is, I don't know. I know I don't have enough knowledge to bring him along on my own, but I also know that a show situation is all wrong for us. Show people have show goals that are more important to them than the slow, steady upbringing of a horse. That's all well and good if you have a horse that's a little thick and takes pressure well, but if you have a Courage, it's a recipe for disaster. Just because he can jump a big fence doesn't mean he should.

Don't want to ruin this face

If anything, it means that he should jump less of them until he's got a solid grasp of the flatwork and basics that he needs, because the temptation to just jump up will be too much. It's not that big jumps are bad. It's that if he doesn't have the strength and balance to jump them correctly, he can't handle the pressure and we start taking mighty metaphoical leaps backwards.

photo by horselessinhalifax

And maybe I just sound like a whiny ammy babying my precious pookykins. But you know what? 1) If I am, that's my prerogative and 2) Not every horse person in the world is ramming and jamming horses up the levels. I'd venture to say that the better ones don't.

I know all that.

I just feel kind of alone in knowing it. At this moment, there isn't a trainer I trust with Courage's development. (excluding S. She is awesome and I love her, but she doesn't exactly train full time due to the "real person job" thing". I feel desperately alone with no way to fix it. I know I'm not the be all and end all and I know I don't want my horse ruined by going too fast or by me putzing around and messing things up.

I've seen what that does to horses (haven't we all) and I want no part in it.

Maybe we will master standing still.

So yes, I will continue to plunk along mostly by myself and not rush and I know we'll get somewhere eventually. It just absolutely kills the perfectionist side in me to feel like I'm not progressing and training my horse the way I think I could with more oversight. I want the ability to move him forward confidently.

I want it and I can't have it. It's out of reach.

It makes me want to say "**** it" (you're welcome kids. you win this round) and just take up western. Or pull his shoes and give him the winter off. Or almost anything other than keep hacking away at something I know I can't master on my own. Is that so very unreasonable?

Gone to the Dogs

I guess they needed a brother

This is a horse blog, but I have dogs too. Cute ones who are well trained and good to be around. If you've been here a while, you're familiar with Lewis the giant corgi and Chaucer the beagle.

They are great. They get along well, they're happy to hang out, they know our routines, all that. I like having two dogs. It is the most dogs I have ever had and I think it is plenty.

little brown dog

Fun fact: we are super short handed at my job right now, so instead of normal office flunky/other duties as assigned, lately it's been all "other duties aka field work" and yeah, when you work in construction, that shit is hard work.

Regardless. I show up at the jobsite on Monday and there is a random little brown dog running around. No one knows where he came from, the jobsite is right off a busy highway, and we're running heavy equipment all over the place. It's no place for a dog.

The construction dog

I do the grown adult thing and call animal control. He's a cool little dog and I feel bad for him. I'd love to go knock on some doors on find his owners (who must be frantic), but that whole work thing was getting in the way. I left my number with the super nice AC officer just in case, but he was way too cool a dog to be alone.

Or so I thought.

After the requisite three days, I get a call from the nice AC officer telling me the brown dog was abandoned and no one is looking for him. And she picked up another one just like him the same day, like someone dumped littermates.

and he cuddles like a champ

Ugh. I told her to list him with the local rescues and see what happens, but I also poked around local rescue websites and discovered that they were all full.

And the poor guy had just been dumped on a busy highway, then locked up in doggy jail.

And my husband is as big a softie as I am and said I could do whatever I wanted.

I called Animal Control again, just sure that someone had snapped him up or claimed him, but the little guy was  hanging out at the pound.

And so I took a long lunch and drove up and got him.




I initially thought he was housebroken and about a year old. I now think he's a puppy puppy, like under six months :-/ eek! Long time since I have had one of those. Best guess is that he's a dachshund/chihuahua cross, which sounds horrific. Thus far, he's been calm and quiet and puppyish, but not bad. We're crate training and potty training and he's integrating into my little pack well.

I'm still picking out a name. No clue on that one. The vet laughed when I made an appointment for "unknown breed and age, name Brown Dog".

I didn't want three dogs, but how do you say no when they find you?

Tokens and Trainer Rides and Making Good Decisions

yay release!

At the show barn I used to work at, we sometimes talked about the concept of tokens in relation to horses. There are so many horses who are willing to be good most of the time, but they all have a limit. You pull on their face or bounce on their back or catch them with spurs 97 times, but then the 98th time, you are out of tokens and your usual saint of a horse leaves your ass in the grass.

So. From time to time, we'd put trainer rides on client horses that were almost "out of tokens" in terms of dealing with normal ammy things.

demon right hand

It's not that the owners were bad people or scary riders or anything horrible. It's just that we work hard and sacrifice and love our horses too much to be really objective in all our dealings with them, so occasionally, someone needs to make sure all is well.

With that in mind, I'm the one who has jumped Courage the last few weeks. He's been great and I'm riding pretty well right now. For the most part, I'm giving good releases and riding forward to the jumps.

I find it helps to pull more with the right hand more

Except when I'm not. Sometimes I don't quite give with my right hand and then Courage hits it and he can do that a few times without getting mad, but not for too long.

Because then this happens.

It's a fascinating combination of flailing and dolphin leaping that's actually exceptionally easy to ride, but it tells me that Courage isn't happy. Also that I'm not riding great.

Cha ching goes the token!

In light of recent success, I was eager to hop on and go another round, but I decided to stick redheadlins on again this week so she could put some tokens back in the bank. Courage is still green (a shade lighter than neon, I hope) and even if he wasn't, it's only fair to him to make sure that his job still makes sense to him.

It's just bringing along a green horse, ammy-style.

STFS blog hop: Why I Do What I Do

Thanks to Jenn for the great idea! (And all the great comments. She is seriously the best instagram follower of all time. Holla Jenn!)

Hunters?

I have loved reading though everyone's editions of this blog hop and learning about all of you, but I didn't think I could participate, because I don't really "do" anything. I don't have a trainer that I pay money to. I don't have a show that I'm aiming for. Hell, I've only been to one show this whole year and it was hardly a stunning success.





And then my favorite 900fbpony did a hop and I was like "Well, I'm not quite as scattered as she is," so here goes.

Courage and I are a bit between disciplines right now. The only thing he's 100% solid at is racing and he doesn't want to do that anymore.

And me?

Eventers?

I grew up in 4H, which is basically breed showing on mutt horses. I wasn't very good.

I transitioned over to eventing. I only ever took two XC lessons, didn't know what a trot set was, and couldn't afford to join USEA, so BN only. I was ok, not great.

Then I did some dressage. I was not the best at it, though I'd guess perennially riding green horses didn't help much.

I spent too long trying to get my wildly unsuitable mare going and killed all the confidence I had as a kid that made me a solid rider.

We had something special

And then I met Cuna, the eventing machine, and we were KICK ASS in the most kick-ass-ing-ist way possible.

And that was awesome.

But all Courage knows is he doesn't want to be a racehorse. We tried doing XC, but my heart is just not in it. It still scares me (thanks bitch mare) and without Cuna there to be my rock, there is just no point.

10 jump. Or something.

So I told Courage he was going to be a hunter. I told him his ideal event horse conformation was not a big deal and he would just show off his 10 jump and wow everyone in Kentucky at the Derby in a couple years.

Or you know, we could just do jumpers.

I like that idea. I like jumping. I like things that fall down. I like the idea of having more than one chance to win a ribbon. I like the idea that if I screw up, I don't have to wait til the next thousand dollar show to try again. (Srsly how do you eventers do it? So expensive.)

who knows. why pick?

But I like other things too. I love trail riding. I really do want to hit a mini endurance ride and see how it goes. Courage and I need to play with cows just for funsies/and/or win a belt buckle.

So yeah, we aren't really showing now because I think Courage needs more miles before we can be competitive and I don't feel like flinging down money to go suck at shows this year.

I do plan to get back in the ring next year (I know, the universe laughs) and maybe then we'll at least look like we have a discipline to define ourselves with. Until then, we're just having fun.

I'm ok with that.

Teach Me Tuesday: Helmet Cams

I do get ears pics. 

And another round of Teach Me Tuesday! I suspect this issue is a little less divisive than last week's topic, but to me, it's just as baffling. Can someone explain the allure of helmet cams?

Seriously.

I do not understand.

I should probably back up and say that I dislike videos in general. In large part, that's because I'm a very fast reader, so it takes waaaay longer to watch a video than just read a good summary. There's an element of George Morris saying "video hides a lot of flaws that pictures show off" too.

But my personal quirks aside, what is the deal with helmet cams? When they first became a thing, I watch a Rolex video and that was kind of cool I guess.

They are obviously popular with lots more than Rolex competitors nowadays. Can someone tell me why? What do they bring to the table? Do I need to throw caution to the wind and BUY ONE NOW???

I have no idea.

Thoughts?

In Search of Confidence: Finding Fun

In fairness to me, he jumps everything like a big jump.

One of the big obstacles I've faced in my quest for solid jumping confidence is other people's expectations. I get so sick of hearing "oh, but you won't grow unless you're pushing yourself" and "that needs to be bigger" and "it's not about the jumps".

Because when confidence is your problem, those little crossrails might actually be what pushing yourself looks like and when you're that vulnerable, it's easy to let that little bit of social pressure push you over the edge to changing what should have been a confidence building experience into something scary and unproductive.

Happy over little things

And yeah, sometimes it is about the jumps. So there.

Anyways. The lovely Alyssa came out to play yesterday. The jumps were all teeny and easy looking, and Courage and I jumped around like the biggest badasses at the baby show. I did the hard work in the corners and settled toward the jumps and gave big releases and rode happy and forward and (GET THIS) nailed every change. Yeah, we do those now. Well, he does them if I ride straight and forward, but it counts.

Begone, latent oxer phobia!!

Anyways. I was really happy with our round. I stopped and chatted with Alyssa and looked out at the jumps. And I thought about how well I rode and how good my horse was.

And I asked her to raise them.

And then I jumped them again with no fear and I rode well and my horse was awesome.

Are we "there"? We're getting closer. It is a HUGE step for me to ask for jumps to go up and even bigger to not wory when they do. It wasn't a complex course and the raised jumps still weren't what I'd call "big", but that's not the point.

All photos by Alyssa.

The point is that it's working. The mental work behind the scenes, the trainer rides, the extensive flat work, the jumping little things until I'm blue in the face. I'm getting there and it's working and IT'S SO MUCH FUN. :-)

The SprinklerBandit and Courage, having fun.

A Family Tree for Courage

Our photographer/historian/biggest fan, Ellie, put together a sweet pedigree with pictures for my man C-rage. I'm not a bloodline nut (although I should be), but I really, really like going through it.

I don't know enough about thoroughbred research yet to say anything really definitive, but Ellie's addition of pictures is fascinating.

Blushing Groom

Courage naturally moves with a tense underline and his head up. It's not just race training because A) different race horses go different ways and B) the angle at which his head joins is neck just accommodates it. Here's Blushing Groom, from his sire line.

Look familiar? I'm seeing that extreme engagement and uphill movement with head up and ears pricked. It's like my horse in red!

yup. all those things.

I don't have a picture, but his next closest relative on the male line is Explosive bid. In her searchings, Ellie ran across a COTH thread discussing his offspring.

And I quote: "Brilliant over fences, very balanced, the older he gets the better. Requires a very firm, quiet rider, at this point could not be ridden by someone who wasn't very sure of themselves, not because he's bad but because he requires leadership. "

Huh. It's like they were writing about my horse.

Majestic Prince

Then there's Majestic Prince. He's pretty far back. We could talk about the slope of his shoulder or that strong loin connection or that nice hind end or even his well set neck and intelligent head, but why break it down like that when we can all just admit one thing:

That is one sexy-ass horse.







So is that. 

Obv

And who can forget Lord Carson? He was one of the classiest sires on the west coast until his untimely death in a tragic breeding accident.

Yeah, try explaining that one to your non-horse friends with a straight face. I can't.

Still. This isn't an action or conformation shot, but I love the way it catches his confidence and soft, intelligent eye. You might also catch a wiff of plain bay...








I'm the farthest thing from a bloodlines guru, but I love looking at where my horse came from and I absolutely believe in learning these names. I find that because Thoroughbreds require live cover, bloodlines tend to be very regional. Thus, the popular sporthorse TB sires on the east coast are pretty inaccessibly to me, but by learning about horses I know and like, I can find lines to follow. :-)

Teach Me Tuesday: Group Turnout

Excellent use of turnout

Here's another round of teach me Tuesday! Again, I'm addressing a topic I just don't understand. I don't really have an opinion one way or another, and I'm open to new ideas.

Today, let's talk about group turnout for riding horses.

Let me clarify. I absolutely 100% understand group turnout for retirees, broodies, babies, and horses who aren't in work. It provides them with social structure and helps them understand how to interact with other beings and that is great.

Things he doesn't need help destroying.

HOWEVER.

I really and truly do not understand group turnout (aside from well-matched, same gender pairs) for horses that are in regular work. It seems like the injury risk goes through the roof and the horses become bonded to each other instead of their riders. Expensive blankets (that are required because riding horses are clipped) get destroyed, vet visits go up from kicking and playing too hard, and the potential for things to go wrong is just so high.

Helpful corgi wants to know

Obviously, other people disagree with me. Lots of riding horses live in group turnout situations. I assume their owners are very happy or they would change that. So what's the compelling reason here? I understand the drawbacks very well. What are the positives to group turnout situations? Are there any?

Color Me Unimpressed: Two Horse Tack Review

But so pretty?

I somehow missed the bus on Two Horse Tack Reviews--I know other bloggers got free things and I so wish I did. But I didn't. So rest assured, this is a not-for-compensation completely honest post. Well, I write those anyways, but here goes.

After seeing some reviews floating around the blogosphere, I got interested in Two Horse Tack. They purported to provide high quality beta biothane tack in vibrant colors. I specfically wanted a grooming halter--I clip a lot of horses in the winter and an adjustable grooming halter that is easy to both clean and recognize would be fantastic. I went to the website to place my order.

I thought the price was a little high at $28 + $6 shipping for a single grooming halter that went in a flat rate envelope, but hey, I wanted the product and I could definitely justify the cost/benefit ratio because I could also clip client horses in it. I checked their product sizing guide and found it rather user-unfriendly. They prefer you don't measure and just want you to go by company guidelines.

Um, ok.

As if

Courage wears cob size in literally everything I have ever bought him, so I ordered cob. He's not even "big cob size" or "small cob size". He's just totally average cob size.

And then I waited. It took it's time getting to me--I guess not unusual for a semi-custom item and I have no idea what their wait list is like. When it finally came, I took it out to the barn to try on Courage.

Yeah... never going to fit. That was it's largest adjustment and it wasn't any closer to fitting on Prisoner, who is a chiseled 15.2 and even smaller than Courage.

Out of curiosity, we ended up putting it on Pandora, Alyssa's 13 hand Quarter pony, and it did fit on her on the largest hole.

So....

Obviously, not going to work.

I immediately contacted Two Horse Tack via email.

And if the headstall goes up, the nose might not fit.

SIX DAYS LATER, they saw fit to respond, if not to answer any of my questions about, you know, sizing, exchanging, and a potential return. All I got was a link to their returns and exchanges page, which basically says "you're f*****".

Again, I replied promptly to try and at least get an answer to what size I should have ordered in the first place. I mean, if cob is this tiny, does my cob size horse actually need oversize? Are there measurements or something I can check?

**crickets**

I finally (more days later) get an email with a 20% off code, which means I could reorder the same product in what may or may not be the correct size and still pay full shipping. It would cost me $30 on top of the $34 I'd already spent and I had no reason to believe that the sizing would be any better and no comparison of any kind that made sense. One data point can't be extrapolated. Plus, the service rep was still not answering any useful questions or even referring me to someone who could. Nothing.

Needless to say, I decided to cut my losses. It really is a nice product and I wish it had worked, but the customer service was useless and at that rate, I was looking at what would be a minimum $64 grooming halter and more likely a $94 halter if the next size I chose at random didn't work.

As such, unless you already have a piece of their equipment to get sizes from, I wouldn't buy from Two Horse Tack. It's not that the product is so bad--it's that the sizing makes no sense and the customer service is that bad. There's no way around it.

Feet. Always Feet.

He is the best at remembering

No foot, no horse.

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost...

And so on.

You know why so much colloquial equine wisdom is lamenting shitty feet?

Because they are the worst thing ever.

Ugh. Courage actually has decent-ish feet. He has heels on all four and the shape isn't terrible. He hasn't lost a lot of shoes and hasn't really presented any soundness issues thus far.

But this summer has been absolute hell on his poor feet. Despite all the other horses in the barn being COMPLETELY FINE, he isn't. His feet cannot handle the wet/dry cycle of (GET THIS) a little bit of dew on the grass in the morning.

Put it on thick

Yeah. That. At his last farrier appointment, his feet were flared and chipped out and all manner of awful above his still-attached shoes and he hadn't even grown very much hoof. I tried moving his turnout time back a little combined with adding bag balm to his hoof walls every single morning to act as a moisture barrier and only turning him out on the field with grass that was quite short to minimize potential dampness.

And yeah, apparently that got us nowhere. Homeboy is trying to completely disintegrate his feet again. Like 4 weeks out from his last shoe job. Sooooooo.

No benefit other than looking shiny.

New plan. Courage spends the first few hours of turnout on a drylot with some hay. When the grass in the fields is well and truly dry, then and only then, he may go out.

It's such a frustrating balance to strike. I really do believe strongly in turnout for horses' brains and bodies, and I cannot spend all of my management energy on making the farrier perfectly happy, BUT I have to take good care of his feet or there's no point in having a horse in the first place.

Maybe I should have gotten a draftie.

Soundtrack of the Ponies

Alyssa did a post talking about what songs remind her of her horses and why. When she told me about writing it, I laughed and told her that Courage came with a song, the homage to his barn name at the track, "big papa":



Cuna had a really obvious one too.


But the obvious choice isn't always the right one. Cuna's song was really this:


I realize it's a lot more obscure, but bear with me. Jugni is an Indian idea, referencing a firefly, or "the essence of life". Essentially, an innocent character that reveals a much greater truth, almost a totem of an idea. Cuna was my rock, but more than that, my guiding light. He had this way of just knowing about everything and those big expressive eyes of his didn't need poetry to express themselves. This song captures that idea (and I apologize to those that can't relate to Hindi music).

Even now, I can't listen to it without crying.

My relationship with Courage isn't like what I had with Cuna. I still love the little guy, but he's less the embodiment of everything I need and more my partner in crime. He's a cocky little bastard. He's gorgeous and he knows it. And yes, he would absolutely say, "If you want the world, I suggest you come with me."


So there you go. The soundtrack of my horses. I guess I left out Izzy. I'm sure there's a song called "homewrecker" or "I'm a Raging Bitch" or something like that out there. Just think of her when you hear it.

I think this should be a blog hop. Who else has a song for their horse? What is it? I'm usually annoyed by videos (and rarely watch them, guess I fail at the internet), but I'm loving this idea.

Trouble in Bridle Paradise

It's possible you've noticed that I'm a bit of a tack ho. At last count, I owned (gulp) seven bridles. It breaks down like this:

See by this logic I really need two more. It would make a better infograph.

Top: Cob size Nunn Finer Figure 8, Horse size Nunn Finer event bridle, Cob Size Aramas fancy stitich.
Middle: Cob Size Circuit figure 8, Cob size M Tolouse fancy stitch, Horse size Mark Todd with flash.
Bottom: Cob size micklem, TBA, TBA.

Despite his mellow look here

Anyways. People think that's a lot, but it really isn't. Courage can't even fit in the two horse size entries. The Mark Todd is out on loan because it's too pretty to sit around and the other one, well...

S the biomechanics instructor has me ride in a loose cavesson to keep everything super mild. That's all well and good since I have um... three... of those, but sometimes I get bored. I stuck the little bay horse in a figure eight last week and yeah. Ladies, meet C-RAGE. Not even kidding. Despite the fact that most of the riding we did last year and this spring was in either a micklem or figure eight, SOMEONE's little brain COULD.NOT.DEAL.

Not at all. It was bad. (Oh, and he also doesn't do full cheek keepers, in case anyone was wondering. Yes, I tried.)

D'awwww

So. Horse size bridles out. Figure eights out. Micklem out. The M Toulouse is on loan to everyone's favorite Prisoner, so that's out too. It's also just a hair small for Courage, so that's ok.

Realistically, that leaves me with the Aramas that I stole off of ETT but has a broken keeper and then my ridiculously patched together bridle that I flat in. It's the body of the (borrowed!! thanks Ellie!!) Nunn Finer Figure 8, the cavesson off the horse size model, and a horse size browband with fancy laced reins I threw on because they're pretty.

This face needs more bridles

So how does a tack 'ho end up with essentially 1.5 bridles?

I don't know and it isn't right.

Who wants to go bridle shopping?? I'm looking for recommendations for something that I don't already have but would want to own. I like details and nice leather and Courage can't do more than about an inch of cavesson, so nothing too huge.

What's everybody wanting?

In Search of Confidence: Putting the Pieces Together

And then this happened. Photo by horselessinhalifax.

Riding my horse.

That's why I'm here.

We had a lesson two weekends ago that was really quite educational. I mean, they all are, but this one felt almost more like starting to ride my horse correctly like he understands his job, instead of constantly compensating for how green he is. I had to put my
leg on and ride STRAIGHT and trust my horse.

He's a damn good horse, by the way.


In case you doubted.

photo by horselessinhalifax

I was thrilled with him and happy with how I rode (once I got my possessed right hand sorted out) and felt like it was a great experience to build on.

And I felt like I needed more flatwork. Once I got Courage really balanced and going forward around his turns, he almost didn't know what to do with all that power and I was taken aback by how, well, FAST it felt.

Normally I like speed--Cuna and I spent more time galloping through the hills than taking dressage lessons, that's for sure. Since I don't have access to all hills all the time and I sort of think galloping laps around our arena is a mix of boring and terrifying, I had to come up with something else to get both of us rolling forward in balance.

Apparently the only picture of riding in the field

Enter pasture #3. It's my favorite field at our barn--it's flat at the top (by the neighbor's fence) and bottom (by the arena), but has this lovely little slope in between. It's big enough to really get flowing with forward motion and wide enough that I can do any number of swoopy curves.

So Monday, we went out there. I focused on riding really correctly--leg to hand, steady outside rein, keeping my inside rein honest. He responded with some of the best trot work we've ever done and then we rolled up into the canter.

Completely unrelated picture

Wow.

Just wow.

My little man was so freaking awesome. I finally got that really connected feeling with him at the canter--we almost didn't touch the ground and the fence posts were just flashing by. Up, down, figure eight, flying change. Hell, we even counter cantered a lap and it felt amazing.

As I rode him back to the barn, the jumps in the arena were just calling my name.

I didn't have time today, but even just the feeling of wanting to is so good right now. :-)

When I Have Nothing to Say

I wish I had something really cool and inspiring and interesting to say, but I'm having a shitty week piled on top of a really shitty year and about all I'm good for is staring at pony pictures and wishing I could afford some form of dairy-slathered carbs topped in protein to stuff my face with. Since that's out of the question, here's a fun picture collage I put together.

Photos by horselessinhalifax

Shots like this make me laugh at myself for worrying about big jumps. The fence is a solid 2'6" (I measured!) and he's a good foot over it.

Oh little man. Still my bright spot in a dark year. <3