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.

The beast

Guess who's got 4 hooves, red hair, and is a complete beast............ REILY IS!!!!!

That's right, you heard me, Reily is a total baller.  This is probably only his 3rd or 4th XC schooling and this horse just upstaged about every other greeny I know.  Hell he upstaged my own horse who I've been riding for 8 years and can't seem to get past Novice.  You guys heard me praising his very first XC schooling where he trotted right over the ditch but this is absolutely amazing.

The weather was unseasonally nice, close to 70, so even though he was super fuzzy we took him over to Green Hill to have some fun.  We warmed up on top of the hill then started with a few simple logs and coops which he cleared in fine fashion.  Then I figured it was nice out and we hadn't brought Boo cause Ben wanted to walk with Oscar, the new puppy, so I didn't have any reason to cut the fun short.  We went on to jump bike racks, tiger traps, trakners, a hogs back, roll tops and boxes, the ditch, the ditch and brush (!!!!!!!), the cabins (both the Beg. Novice and Novice one!!!!!), and an up and down bank.  Talk about excited and proud!  That doesn't even begin to explain how I felt.  I never got the chance to compete Scotty in eventing before I retired him, so this is the first horse I've ever ridden who is just completely fearless XC.  It's the most amazing feeling ever.  This horse is going to go places, I just hope I can keep up with his talent!!

Oscar the Wylde man

Just a little guy

We got a puppy!!!!!!!!  This was completely unplanned and honestly it wasn't even my fault.  Some friends had a Halloween bonfire on the 27th and when we got there we walked into a crowd of canines because almost everyone had brought their dog/s.  But the very first thing I saw was the cutest little puppy ever.  I was sort of confused because I didn't recognize him as any of our friends' dog but I quickly learned that the friends who were hosting the party were fostering him for the Roanoke Valley SPCA and he was available for adoption after the foster term was over.  RVSPCA won't adopt them out until they're 10 weeks and he was only 9.  As much as we all know I love puppies I really wasn't even thinking about getting him.  I was DD for the night though and by the time 12:45 rolled around and Ben was still having a good time I knew I needed a nap or I was never going to make the 45 min drive home.  So the puppy and I took the warmest, cuddliest nap together for an hour or 2 until everything was winding down.



Puppy ball



Let me be clear about it now.  The boyfriend had already started warming up to the puppy himself and he's not much of a dog guy, infact he's pretty predominantly a cat guy.  By the time we were ready to go home he'd decided "It can't hurt anything to take him for a week and see if he and Maddie [my dog] get along and he's not scared of the horses and stuff".  We were having a bonfire at our house the following weekend and our friends would be coming down for that anyways.  So we drove home with an exhausted and confused little pup, a drunk and happy boy, and a weary but happy me.  I knew if we got another animal I would be blamed for the acquisition.  That's why I want it to be known I made the boyfriend make the final decision and he's the one you want to point the finger at.

But I can't complain, we already love him.  He had to go back with our friends to the SPCA to get his booster shots and get neutered then we got to pick him up today :)  We named him Oscar, we're guessing he's a pit bull/rhodesian ridgeback mix, but there's really no telling.  All I know is he's the cutest, he's going to be a big boy (yay!) and he LOVES to cuddle!

Happy Anniversary to us



First ride on Nov. 12, 2011



Reily came home one year ago today, and what a year it's been!  This horse is just spoiled rotten.  He get's oil on his food, tons of cookie stretches, and all the loving he can stand.  Even when he's a turd it's impossible to stay mad at him for long.  He gives you those big sad eyes and a gap-toothed grin and you just have to give in.

Reily has turned out to be the coolest horse I could have asked for!  Scotty was the best first horse I could ever have because he already knew his job, took care of me, let me do anything I wanted, and jumped everything I pointed him at.  He's never been a fancy horse, he's got sort of awkard confirmation, a great big head and it's impossible for him to produce a collected canter.  But when you're a kid, none of that matters to you because all you want to do is run like the wind and jump everything in your path and that was Scotty's forte.  I was so incredibly lucky to have him as my first horse and that's why he's got a home with me until the end of his days.  He more than earned his happy retirement.  But Reily is going to give him a real run for his money.  Not only is Reily fearless and forward, but he's got that extra bit of athleticism and poise that makes him quite a fancy horse.  And with that big, bold blaze and puppy-dog personality he's already attracting fans (like he did at the BCHA show).  Sometimes I feel like "geez, it's been a year, why haven't I gotten him further in his training?!" then I get sort of discouraged about it.  But considering that:

1) I have a full-time job that involves a desk 8+ hours a day (well, not this second, but for a majority of the last year).

2) That job required extensive overtime for 4 months, add on daylight savings time and you get a poor neglected horse who only gets ridden twice a week and a really grumpy rider who wants more saddle time.

3) I'm an amature, this is my first horse straight off the track, and I've had less than a handful of lessons with him.

4) Trips, weddings, pony health scares and generally life can really mess up your riding plans.

So keeping all of that in mind I'm not quite as sad about our progress.  He's still come leaps and bounds from where he was last November!  And in a way I'm glad it's been slow progress, seeing as how he's only 4 I don't want to rush into doing the big stuff so it means we can take our merry time getting there so that when he turns 5 for real (April 4th!) I'll feel more confident about asking more of him.  He has definietly grown more but I expect he's just about done now.  Hopefully next year we can do a lot more lessons and showing :)  Here's to many more wonderful years together

Worst day of my life

So for the last 5 days I've been up at my trainers place farm sitting for her and her boyfriend while they went to the beach.  I took Boo and Reily up there with me so I could ride them the whole time and utilize her wonderful sand arena to get Reily ready for his show last Saturday.  I got up there Wednesday night and they left Thursday morning.  While they were gone I was taking care of all the animals and also riding several of her horses for her.

Wouldn't you know it, while I was riding the second horse for the day I saw several of her horses in an adjacent pasture come running out of the shade of the woods and it looked like they were just playing and I didn't think much of it.  After finish the horse I was on I took care of him and headed out to his pasture, which happens to be the same one where the horses were running earlier.  I had brought out the halter for the next horse, Cannon, who is this massive 18+ hand warmblood (draft/TB cross) and coincidentally who I was planning to work next.  But when I got out there Cannon was still acting like a maniac and when he finally got close to me and the other horses I saw why and my heart started beating about a million miles an hour... a 2 foot long piece of old barbed wire was wrapped around his right hind leg.  In addition there was one pesky horse fly buzzing around and on the entire farm there is only one horse who absolutely loses it's mind over flies, and of course that's Cannon.  I manage to get his halter on but with his butt going bonkers about the horse fly there was no way I could get the barbed wire.  In a stroke of luck he was stomping and kicking so much that he actually untangled himself and the wire fell off.  I kicked it to the fence so none of the other horses could do anything stupid and tried to keep Cannon under control enough to get him back to the barn.  Now imagine me, all of 5'3" trying to hold a frantic 18+ hand 1,250 lb horse walking across 2 fields back to the barn being chased by a killer horse fly.  I can't jump high to save my life, but my feet grew springs and somehow I managed to jump up high enough to stun that horse fly and finally get Cannon under control.

I knew it was bad but I couldn't really evaluate it until I got him up to the barn and see how extensive the damage was.  Once I got him up I looked all over his legs and he had several minor scrapes and cuts on both hind legs but on his right hind he had a good 3 inch gash straight through the skin to the tendon.  I called Pat right away and she called the vet and explained the situation to them and told them it was an emergency.  After a couple of hours they got there and stitched him up and said it wasn't good, but it wasn't the worst they'd ever had.  We decided to leave him on the farm but if at any point it started to look like something I couldn't or didn't feel comfortable handling I'd haul him up to the VT vet school and they'd take over his care.  He was on a ridiculously large amount of antibiotics 2x/day, I had to change his dressings 1x/day cold hosing for 20 minutes each time then re-wrapping him, he could be hand grazed a couple times a day but only enough to stretch his legs not to the point of exercise, and otherwise he was confined to stall rest.  I was glad that Pat trusted me enough to take care of him, but it was a less than ideal situation.

Well if I thought that was bad, things were about to get much, much worse.  My trainer and her boyfriend got home late Sunday night and on Monday morning I was supposed to go with Pat to look at a pony several hours away.  We were planning to leave around 9, but my phone rang at 7 and it was my boyfriend.  Now, he had been taking care of Scotty and Napoleon for me while I was gone and you always worry when someone taking care of your animals has to call.  I picked up the phone and by his tone of voice I immediately knew something was wrong.  He said, "Hey, I was just feeding Scotty and he's fine, but I'm kinda worried about Napoleon"... instant panic mode
"What do you mean, what's he doing?!"
"Well he's just coughing a lot. I don't know he doesn't seem normal." This is coming from a boy who knows next to nothing about horses so my mind and heart are racing.
"Coughing how, explain it to me"
"I don't know, just coughing and drooling a lot and there's some funky stuff coming out of his nose."
"SHIT!!!! It sounds like he's choking!!! Did he eat anything?!"
"I didn't feed him anything, but there's all these piles of goo or drool or something"
I had already jumped out of bed and was literally throwing everything into my bag.  We hung up and I was running down the stairs and telling Pat I had to leave while I was flying out the door.  They helped me get everything in my truck and load the horses right away.  I called my vet and told her I had to get her to go to the house immediately but she said I had to find someone to hold him because she couldn't tube him by herself.  I had to call the neighbors who, thankfully, are home most of the time and they agreed to help hold him.  Because I was driving the truck and trailer I knew it would take me at least an hour to get home.

When I got home I just parked the truck and left Boo and Reily on for the time being to go check Napoleon.  I was literally in tears.  She had him tubed but wasn't getting anything out.  She said she was hitting the blockage a few inches from his stomach so it was far down but definitely stuck.  He looked so broken, he was sweaty and exhausted and completely lethargic.  She pulled the tube back out and said to give him a few minutes.  I just sat there holding his head and crying and apologizing to him.  My vet said she didn't feel comfortable tubing him again because she'd done it 4 times but wasn't making any progress and the last time she got blood back from this esophagus.  She said she was using the softest tube she had but was afraid that if it was bleeding, tubing him again might cause it to rupture and then we'd lose him for sure.  I don't have the money to spend right now but losing Napoleon is NOT an option.  He's not that old yet and I've had him for 20 years, I love this little pony more than anything else in the world.  She called Tech and got a quote on doing a scope and ultrasound, it would start at $250 and I'd have to decide how far to take it from there.  I couldn't not take him.  So we grabbed the big horses off the trailer, threw them in the field took out all the hay and put Napoleon in the trailer and I turned around and got straight back on the road heading to Blacksburg.  Needless to say, if anyone looked at me on the road that day I'm sure they would have thought I was a suicide case.  I cried the entire way to Blacksburg. 

THANK GOD, when we got there and they got the scope down his throat they found that whatever the reason (maybe he finally relaxed enough in the trailer to pass it the rest of the way down, maybe he finally coughed it loose, there's no telling) the blockage was gone.  They also found and took pictures of the laceration that was causing the blood in the tube.  They did the ultra sound as well and found a bit more fluid then normal (for his age some fluid is normal) so it was apparent he had aspirated some as well.  With the scope, ultrasound, blood work, floating for his teeth, and meds (almost $200 alone!!) I walked away with a $700 vet bill but my treasured pony was in one piece and would live to be fuzzy for another day.  It was more than worth it.

Poor little Napoleon is on 4 weeks (holy shit!) of stall rest plus 2 antibiotics, 1 anti-inflammatory, 1 pain killer, 1 dental rinse and a limited diet for at least the next 2 weeks.  So in a way I'm happy that I'm jobless right now, despite the vet bill that happened at arguably the worst time possible.  He has to get medications and feedings every 4-6 hours a day for the next 14 days so I'm very, very glad I'll be home to take the best possible care of him.

However, my brother's wedding is this coming weekend... horses have the worst timing ever.  Thank goodness for good friends!

BCHA=cheap fun

The Botetourt County Horseman's Association hosts a show at Green Hill Park every year.  Now, what I love about this show- 1) It's actually got jumper classes, an annoyingly scarce occurance at GHPEC shows for some stupid reason; 2) It has incredibly affordable classes, typically $8 or $9.

Maxin' and relaxin' in the in-gate crowd

I still haven't found a job but I felt like Reily was getting REALLY bored with the same old, same old at home.  I'd been doing some odd jobs/ horse work to make a little extra money and felt it was worth the $27 to take Reily to the show and let him do something new and exciting.  Boo-who got to stay home because there was no excuse to spend the extra money.

So Reily went and we had him entered in 3 classes at 3 different heights (2'-2'3"; 2'3"-2'6"; and 2'6"-2'9").  The course was not entirely to my liking because it just had a really rangy feel.  It was really a hunter course set-up with an added narrow on one end of the ring so for the "jumper" course it was a ton of single fences, no lines, bending lines, related distances or anything and I just felt like it was lacking in the educational department.  Essentially you jumped either the in or out of a hunter line, went around to the other end of the ring jumping the in/out of another line, and so on and so forth.  The only change up was that (and this was again really poor planning) the narrow fence was added in for the jumper course and it came directly after the only oxer in the ring... who does that?  Anyways, due to the course design it meant you jumped big over this oxer then made and almost 90 degree turn to the narrow, landed then make another 90 degree turn to get turned back towards the final jump.  Did I mention that the oxer was headed straight for the in-gate...yeah, poor course planning.

I figured something new is better than nothing and since the course was the same for all the jumper classes I figured if we had real issues in one class we had 2 more chances to school it.  And it proved to have some educational merit after all.

In the first class (2'-2'3") I tried to stay as out of his way as possible I wanted him to make the decisions on where to take off but if he was hesitating I'd give him a little squeeze and he responded immediately.  Since I care more about his training then I do about some silly ribbon we made big wide turns to help him (and me) regroup as needed.  He got almost all of his lead changes naturally which I was so happy about!  If he was on the wrong lead and felt unbalanced he'd swap.  We had a big steering issue after the oxer at 7 to the narrow at 8.  As I was ranting about earlier the oxer was right before the narrow and headed straight for the in-gate.  So when he jumped 7 he was staring straight at the in-gate and not listening to me so once I finally got him turned in the right direction we met the narrow fence really crooked.  Thankfully it was so small for him it didn't matter so with a little cluck and squeeze of the heels he popped right over anyways.  He earned himself a 2nd place ribbon even with the great big turns we made and the turning issue.  Reily's got big, ground covering strides but it really goes to show you, good training is a hell of a lot better than reckless riding, tearing around the course ruining any good you may have ever done at home or in lessons.  And unfortunately I see that a LOT from the people who show at Green Hill.

The second class (2'3"-2'6") was the same course but this time we weren't so lucky.  Now that the jumps were a bit bigger he jumped the oxer with even more enthusiasm and I just didn't sit up and take enough.  So this time we meant the narrow at about a 45+ degree angle, and of course hindsight is 20/20 and if I could do it over I would have just circled him and presented it straight rather than asking something outrageous of him.  If he was already at, say, training level then it wouldn't be such a stretch to ask him to jump it as such an extreme angle, but he's a little green bean still and this was only his 3rd show.  Bad riding and pilot error this time, but after a correct approach he went over just fine.  Even with the faults and time he still got 6th.

His last class (2'6"-2'9") I was determined to make it work at that turn.  So coming down to the oxer I actually bridged my reins and asked for a big whoa on the landing.  We made a good, all be it, tight turn to the narrow and I made a big fuss over him because that was my only real goal for that class, for him to learn that if I asked for a whoa I meant listen now, not later.  We did pull a rail at 9 because I cut the turn a little too tight and sort of buried him at the base.  But I couldn't care less about that because I was just happy we made that turn.  He earned himself a 4th in this class.

Teaching while Reily naps

I also helped school a couple girls and their horses which was great fun cause I love seeing that my input is actually improving the way they go.  It makes me feel like a real trainer ;)  Reily just stood around with me while I raised and changed jump poles and some little girl came over asking if she could hold him for me.  I was sort of baffled but the way she was asking I think she thought something might happen if I was holding him and doing that at the same time.  I'm not sure what made her think that because Reily was napping and being perfect the whole time.  I was like "He's fine, but if you want to, sure" and handed her his reins while he dozed away.  Then she looked at him harder and was like, "Hey, this is that horse that I really liked in that jumper class.  He was so cute!".  I just chuckled cause I thought it was adorable Reily was already collecting fans.  He can't help that he's so handsome and wonderful.

All-in-all, great success!!!

Mini XC

We don't have much in the way of jumps/poles etc. at home but we make do with what he have.  Since I still had Pat's (amazing!) camera and the girls had been exercising the boys for me while I was gone I felt comfortable the boys were fit enough to do some makeshift XC schooling last night.  I have a few trees and PVC pipes to use as poles, a couple of barrels and I repurposed the compost "house" to make a coop jump.  The weather was fabulous and the boyfriend agreed to take pics for us.

Boo was good.  He had his usual cheeky, tantrum moments but no refusals or major bucking fits.  He's such a funny horse.  He's rarely a joy the whole time you're riding, but when he's good he's very fun to ride.  Not to blow my own horn (especially since it only took what, like 8 years?!) but he's really a pretty well trained horse.  He's decenlty adjustable and good to the aids, but damned if he doesn't make you work for every second of it.  He can be such a pain in the ass, but he's made me a lot better rider for it!

Reily was also great.  He had never seen a lot of this stuff before.  Barrels, the PVC poles, and skinny jumps were all new for him.  Pardon my disgusting equiation in some of these pics.  It's awful but sometimes he would jump so big he'd jump me out of the tack and other times I was pinching a lot with my knees and just got way ahead of him, subsequently crawling up his neck.  Sixteen days without riding and my eq went to sh*t  :'(  What matters most to me is making sure I don't catch him in the mouth so honestly as long as I'm not doing that I can live with myself while I get back in the swing.  Riding through some of his big leaps was hysterical, but looking through the pictures is even more hilarious!  He's such a good boy though, he'll really go anywhere you point him and it's great for him to do tons of stuff at this level.  I want him to learn where to take off while the jumps are little like this so that, later on, when we get to the bigger stuff and I get him to a fence funny he can save both of our butts.  So as funny as it is to see pictures like this one... where he took off WAAAYY long, I want him to learn that if that happens here's what he'll have to do to still safely get us to the other side.

It was a great night of riding :)