Dear Winter...You suck

I think Reily and I both feel this way, but for two very different reasons.

I hate winter because winter means cold.  Cold means big bulky layers of clothing.  Bulky clothes mean awkward, imprecise riding.  Awkward, imprecise riding means I get sad.  Also I hate cold wind.  Also I hate getting up in the pitch dark because I can't even see where I'm throwing the hay.  Also I hate static electricity because it means I can't kiss pony noses without shocking us both and consequently making them hate me.

Reily hates winter because winter means draw reins and lots of boring flat work.  Draw reins mean he has to learn to carry himself correctly in the canter without making me hold him up.  Self carriage means hard work.  And lets face it, horses hate hard work.

Our contact and aids have gotten continually better.  He's doing well with turn on the forehand and walk pirouettes.  We're still working on getting his turn on the haunches up to par and I need to start working on haunches in with him.  He's doing well going on the bit consistantly at the walk and trot but he's still resistant in the canter.  I don't want to yank his head down and be heavy handed with him, and I definitely don't want him to think it's ok to only go on the bit at the canter if he makes me hold up his entire front end.  So, draw reins it is.  We'll still do plenty of trail riding, hacking, and hill work so life doesn't get too boring but I've decided that essentially every ride we flat will be in his dressage saddle (good for us both to get more practice in it) with draw reins.

According to Reily, life officially sucks.  But we'll both be better for it.

Multi-tasking

I have to do this update, if for no other reason but my sheer admiration for Reily.  Yesterday it was cold, very cold, and not just comparatively because of this freakishly mild winter, I mean it was low 40's with a wind chill in the low 30's.  Now the wind wasn't continuous but it was pretty darn persistent, I'd say it was blowing at least 85% of the time.  So needless to say I wasn't looking forward to riding in this weather, but I couldn't think of a good enough excuse to worm out of getting him worked, we'd used up his "get out of work free" card on Saturday when one of my college friends was back in town.  Unfortunately there just wasn't enough time after having to work a half day in the morning for my friend to come out to the house and meet the ponies/see the property/hang out/catch up and still get the boys ridden before it got dark.  Sadly, Saturday was pretty nice and we got stuck with the weather Sunday but I had to get him ridden regardless.

I figured if we were going to have to ride we should go for a hack on the mountain, hoping the trees would act as a bit of a wind block for us.  But I knew that the last time we went over the mountain poor Reily had a really hard time getting under the vine that hangs down over one part of the trail and through all the saplings and underbrush that have been growing up on another stretch of the trail.  I'd been meaning to take a folding saw with me for ages so I could clear those areas but hadn't had a weekend free to do it, so I decided that yesterday was the day and there's no better way to keep yourself warm than to do manual labor.  Well I bundled up and put my western saddle on Reily and packed a small, folding hand saw and an extra lead rope and off we rode.

When we got to the top of the mountain and reached the part where the hanging vine was I climbed off and clipped the lead rope through his bit under his chin and walked him over to a small tree just a couple feet behind me and loose tied him while I cut the vine multiple times to get it out of the path and (hopefully) keep it from growing back.  He stood wonderfully for those few minutes (I think he was more than happy to have a minute to catch his breath after the steep climbs) but as I untied him and walked down the path to where the underbrush started I was apprehensive about how much I'd be able to get done.  After all, he's only 3  and just over 4 months off the track, and this wasn't just one or two little things to cut down, this was 0.5-3" saplings growing up in tight quarters over at least a 50 yard stretch of trail.  I really wanted to get a solid 4-5ft wide walkway cut out so neither the horses or I had to worry about getting smacked in the face with limbs and cobwebs anymore.  I resolved to work for as long as Reily could take it and assumed from the start that it was going to take multiple trips to get this done.  Boy was I mistaken.



Simply for your viewing pleasure, pictures
of Reily as a 2yo, sent to me by his former
owner (who's proved to be a real gem!)



You know how everyone says if you assume the worst the outcome can only get better?  Well this was a classic example.  We spent, at the very least, 45 mins on the 50 yard stretch and Reily was the most perfect gentleman, you'd have thought he was an 18yo, life long ranch horse.  He stood tied to small trees about half the time and the other half of the time, when a small tree wasn't close or handy, he stood ground tied right behind me and never put a foot wrong.  WHO IS THIS HORSE?!? I mean seriously, who would ever expect a 3yo of any breed to be so patient, but considering he's a 3yo OTTB, it seems like a physically impossible feat!  Granted there were a couple times he walked around the tree once or twice while he was tied and towards the end he showed his boredom by doing the cutest little nose nudges on my back.  He would softly bump me asking if we could get going, but I couldn't possibly consider either of those a bad behavior.  He was absolutely perfect, despite the cold, the wind, the fact that he hadn't been ridden in a couple days, and even despite the fact that I had my dog with us and she was running around all over the woods making noise where he couldn't see her!!

So, thanks to the perfect gentleman we cleared the entire stretch of the trail that had grown up and we moved on further down the logging road to finish off the last few obstacles (cleaning up the footing around some fallen logs, cutting off problematic limbs, etc. so we could safely use them as jumps) of the day.  When we finished those I remounted and we went on our way, following the neighbors switchback driveway all the way down the mountain until we could cut through the woods and back to our own driveway. We were gone for almost 2 hours.

This TB can do it all!! What a WONDERFUL boy!!

No hoof, no horse... no kidding

So Reily (and Boo and Scotty) got his little tootsies done on the 11th, but after having stood out in the cold with our farrier for 2+ hours holding the horses it was just too miserable to suit up and ride so the boys got off lucky.  Sunday was worse... even colder and wind like a tornado so they lucked out again.  Monday I worked late and Tuesday was wet.  Wednesday finally rolled around and I was so excited to get home in time to jump on for a few minutes.  I went to get him out of the feild and as I put his halter on and started to turn him towards the gate I saw him take an odd step... something I'd seen him do that morning but written off because there was some gravel under his hoof then and I thought he just caught one sharp edge.

With knitted brows I took him out of the feild and trotted him in hand on the grass, nothing.  Ok, maybe I was seeing things.  We walked across the driveway and I didn't see any more off steps but I could see, and hear, that his stride was just the very tiniest bit shorter.  Hmm, now what?  I tried pulling him in tight circles in both directions, nothing.  Well, I figured the only way to find out if I was crazy or I'd actually seen something was to get on and try him under tack.  So we tacked up and walked in the yard just fine, ok so lets try the trot... still normal.  Moment of truth, we started down the driveway and everything seemed fine walking straigh across, but once we got a little ways down on the shoulder we had a 10 yard stretch of all gravel to go across.  Sure enough, that's when I got my answer, he was off.  Granted it wasn't bad, it was just there, ever so slightly, but it was there.  So right around we turned and back home we went with a big :'( face for me.  Bless his heart he was trying to do everything I asked but he was trying so hard I couldn't even figure out where it was coming from.  No heat, no hot nails, nothing.  So I called my farrier and after explaining everything, he figured that he must have cut his soles just a little too close.  So we went through a bute regimen for 5 days to give him some time for his soles to harden up.  Lucky, lucky Boo, he got to take up all the slack and carry me around for both of them!

Reily has great feet but I guess we're still figuring out what his feet need, it was only his second time after all.  But we got a little lucky between rain and snow (did winter finally come... and go again already? Calling for 67 DEGREES TOMORROW!!) the ground stayed soft for him and when I finally got to ride him yesterday he was 99% sound.  We went for a hack down off the road and had just a couple off steps (none on the gravel, but a couple on the pavement) in that whole time.  Tonight we hacked up the mountain (he'll have those buns of steel in no time!) and did two easy laps around the loop.  We w/t/c and even jumped some tiny logs, all sound.  I even trotted him on the gravel driveway on the way back home and he felt smooth.  Hopefully tomorrow he'll be absolutely 100%... I'll let you know!

Horses vs. Mountain Goats

Yep, it's official my Thoroughbreds are actually mountain goats disguised as horses.  One of my very good friends, who coincidentally owned Scotty back when he was a young'en, was in town for the holidays and I was lucky enough to have the day off of work because of the holidays, so she came over to meet Reily and go for a trail ride.  Now I've always really admired that she's gotten out there and done a lot of really cool things in her life, one of which includes being a TB exercise rider at tracks both here in the States and over in France for a time.  So she was looking forward to meeting Reily and I was really excited to get her opinion of him in person.  We chatted while we groomed and tacked up Boo and Reily then we headed out for a nice long trail ride.  We didn't want to take Reily on the road yet and we had her dog with us too and it was her pup's first time around horses in general and therefore her very first time running along on a trail ride so we didn't want her near the road either.  So instead of heading down the driveway we headed up the back of the property to the mountains that our farm butts up against.  There are plenty of old logging trails up there and they range from nearly flat to VERY steep.  The longest trail you can follow goes over the mountain and comes out the other side at a house owned by an old family friend who has always allowed me to come out at her house and then zig zag back down the side of the mountain on her driveway which eventually comes back out on the road that leads to our driveway.  However to get across the very top of the mountain there's only one choice of trail... and you guessed it, that trail is about a quarter mile climb up a 60 or so degree incline, then a nice resting spot before another slightly shorter, less steep climb. No joke.  Boo and I use this mountain on a somewhat regular basis to keep him fit and do conditioning for Horse Trials but I was pessimistic about whether Reily was going to be able to handle this, or if it was fair to ask it of him.  In the end we decided we'd just make as many stops as we needed to on the way up and concluded that it would be good for his butt muscles to make the climb, so up we went!

And wouldn't you know it, those two scrambled right up that path like they'd been doing it all their lives.  Well, Boo has for a long time, but I was impressed that Reily only needed one short breather on the first climb and went right through the second just fine.  He was a total champ about the experience all together!  There are a few tight paths where you have to squeeze through single file, including one spot where a vine hangs down right at the horses' chest level and you have to walk them up far enough to grab hold of it and hold it up out of the way for them while you walk under it.  Now that's something he's definitely never done before but it was all just no big deal with him.  He's so laid back and he thinks things through before tackling the issue.  I love him and I love his very good brain!

We got over the mountain and started down the driveway.  When we were still a little ways off the road we cut off into the woods again, avoiding the road as mentioned, coming out on our driveway and walked them back home that way.  We had a great time and when we got home my friend and I played musical horses so she could ride Reily for a minute and feel how me moved.  I was glad to hear that she felt he has a lot of potential.  Afterwards we finished cooling them out, untacked and groomed them down.  The boys were happy to get end of ride treats, and we were happy to hand them out liberally after such a good ride!