# My 2 Mares were stars on Trail today!



## egrogan

For quite awhile now, I've been wanting to be able to confidently ride my mare out on the trail (many of you were very helpful after my questionable first foray onto the trails earlier this spring...)

Today the BM and a couple of other women were heading out to explore some trails that we've recently been given permission to use, and asked if Isabel and I wanted to join. Figuring going out in a group of her pasturemates would be a great way to test the waters, I eagerly said yes- and she was GREAT!! I couldn't be happier. We rode for about an hour, and she encountered a lot. She rode across a big open hay field, through wooded trails, up steep inclines and down the other side, crossed the road (twice), through a parking lot with people honking and waving at us, past someone carrying a giant patio umbrella, and back across a hay field with mowers going and guys throwing tarps over other equipment. Never once did she look at anything funny, balk, shy, nothing. I'm so proud of her! 

There were two things that we can clearly improve next:
1. It was hard to hold her back from riding over the horse in front of her. She was pretty happy to be 2nd in line, because the leader was moving at a good pace (this was all walking...), but she didn't like being 3rd or 4th behind the pokier mares. These are all buddies, so it wasn't a problem this time, but obviously not good etiquette.
2. Relatedly, she was very heavy on my hands and was chomping away at the bit (literally) the whole time I was trying to hold her back from riding up on the horse in front of her. I didn't like hauling on her mouth, but I didn't feel like there was much else I could do. So will need a lot of work on that.

I'm not sure I'm ready to say I'm 100% confident yet that I can ride her out alone, but it was so wonderful to have this experience today and know that it is pretty reasonable to expect eventually I can get her there. It was just a huge confidence booster all around- and a ton of fun. SOOOOOO much more fun than riding laps around the arena! Can't wait for our next ride!


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## Atomicodyssey

Congrats! There's not much else that can put a grin on your face than a real good ride on the trails. You know its right when you don't want to come back into the barn 

Does your mare behave the same way concerning the bit in the arena, and with other horses in the arena? I'm not sure of her history, but this is just my experience with my horse... he was ridden hard as a barrel horse in his younger years in a HUGE bit. He was with this person from the time he was 2 til 7. Then his previous owner bought him and had him for 8 months, had him sent to a trainer, and rode him in a D ring snaffle. His long time owner was AMAZED he could be ridden, and stopped in a snaffle. I've had him just over a month now, and one day I decided to try him in a side pull in the arena of course... a much different horse. He was so much more relaxed and actually halted and listened to my cues much better than even a snaffle bit. I'm not saying this is the case with every horse but if she is uncomfortable, things are worth trying to see if she is happier!


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## egrogan

Atomic, you're totally right, I had a huge grin on my face and my husband had to listen to the minute-by-minute account over dinner  He was happy for me, but I figure you all "get it" in a way he doesn't...

Anyway, as for the bit, she goes in a simple dee ring snaffle and always has since I've had her. She doesn't usually grab on to the bit in this kind of tug-of-war. She can be a pretty forward little mare, but we don't typically "argue" about it. I think mostly she was just feeling good and excited to be out, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Just want her to be a little more responsive to backing off the horse in front of her.

I was happy with her when we headed for home though, she didn't get any worse or any stronger. I was able to turn her away from the barn and ride back out down the driveway before making her whoa one last time, and she listened well to that without trying to run for the barn, so I thought that was a positive note to end on.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

We had a great weekend of trail riding adventures. We started Friday night by actually heading out alone. I was not sure how this would go, as in the past when I've tried to take Izzy out alone, she'll quickly realize no one else is around and start doing this annoying thing where she swings her entire body in one circular motion to try to get pointing home. She doesn't bolt, she doesn't rear, but she just leans her entire weight around so that I can't physically pull her back straight or disengage her hind end to prevent it.

-BUT- happy to say, she did not do any of that nonsense at all. We marched down the driveway, crossed the road, and walked calmly across the hay field. Since I know part of the problems with trail riding alone are my own nervousness, I set a pretty modest goal for us- it was simply to ride across the road, across the field, and do a little trotting at an old outdoor sand ring that is probably 1/4 mile, if that, away from the barn. She was so good and calm with that, I decided to actually make things a little more challenging and ride past the ring into the woods on the trail. She was a little more hesitant there, as it had rained pretty hard last week and there were lots of really thick mud spots, which she generally doesn't like. But, she listened, rode as far as I wanted to until we got to a clearing, and then turned around to head back. She was a little quick going home, so we did some circling and changes of direction, but even though her walk was a little jiggy, she was generally ok.

Saturday we went back out with a group, and it's been interesting to see how she does in various positions in line. She definitely likes to be near or on the lead. She did well when she was 1st or 2nd (of 4), but she was miserable when she was 3rd- pulling and pulling so much and running up on the horse in front of her. We really need to work on this, because I couldn't find anything that helped her slow down and back off that horse, and eventually just had to ask to go past. I felt like I was just sawing away at the reins, which I hate. But there was nothing else that would get her to slow down (though hauling on the reins wasn't effective either).

I would love advice about getting her more relaxed and responsive when not allowed to be in or near the lead.

Finally, a couple of pictures!

Trying to work on patience while #3 in line (she's the little bay)









Treats! She was helping me take some pictures we would use to promote a "movie night" at the barn, so I got some cute ones of her with her nose in a big bowl of popcorn (get it, horses + popcorn=barn movie night ) She wasn't quite sure about the popcorn, but she looked funny playing with it.


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## egrogan

Had a so-so ride out today. I did my usual 30 minute ride in the arena to warm up, and then headed out. Another horse came into the arena for schooling right as we were walking out, and he started calling to Izzy as we were riding down the driveway. I was impressed that she didn't call back and didn't hesitate walking off the property even with him calling to her. So that was good.

We headed across the street, and she gave me a little "I don't really want to do this" pause as we walked through the gate to the big hay field. Still, she went forward with just firm legs, so again, that was good.

We got out into the field, and she was a little gawky looking around at the haying equipment and pickup parked out there. But this is where I felt that the ride didn't go great. She hasn't done this to me in probably a year, but last year when I was feeling really down about the possibility of her ever being a trail horse, she used to do this annoying thing to me in open fields where she'd bulge her right shoulder around in this spin-type move to pull us around 180 degrees so we'd be facing home. And then when I tried to turn her around, she'd just keep spinning around. OK, so today, this wasn't as extreme, maybe I'm more confident or maybe she is (probably me) but I could feel her taking baby steps to trying to pull this maneuver. I kind of wish someone had been filming because I'd actually love to see what it really looks like, but here's what it feels like it looks like:

1. We are walking straight, and gradually I feel her start to get twisted with the front half of her body.
2. As she gets twisted, she snakes her head/neck/shoulders around to the left (her head gets so cocked around, it's almost like she's doing a one-rein stop- but I'm not asking her to do that)
3. As she gets her head all twisted, she bulges out her right shoulder dramatically and you can feel her really shift her weight to the right (like her energy is really coiled in that front right shoulder).

In the PAST, what would happen is that I would try to get her to straighten up by using the right rein to ask her to bring her head back around. I think that was sort of the opening she was looking for, because she'd quickly go from being hyper flexed left to saying, oh thank you for opening that door, you want to pull me right, I'm going to REALLLLLY go right and basically put all my power into spinning around that right shoulder and turning back towards home. She doesn't spin around and bolt, she spins around and continues walking along as though she was asked for a quick turn, which obviously she wasn't.

So, I have no idea if this is some kind of evasion move that people could put a name to, but it's really pretty annoying. For whatever reason today, when she tried to do this, my reaction was not to try to pull her around to the right, but rather to keep firm leg on her right side so there was really no way to spin around, and do more of a gradual tickle on the right rein to get her to straighten out. Does that make sense? It seemed to work ok, we never got to the point where she could lurch her body around to head back home. But curious if anyone has any thoughts about this and what I could do?

The footing was really terrible as we've gotten drenching rain the past couple of days, so I didn't really do much more than ride the perimeter of the hay field, but it's been great to have these short outings alone to continue to build confidence. 

At the end of the ride when we do turn around to head back, I don't like that she's still so fixated on getting home that she gets really prancy at the walk, but so far she does listen enough to technically stay at the walk. I make it a point not to just ride a straight line home, we do lots of loops and circling around bushes or other random objects. It seems to make her pretty annoyed, but I feel like right now it's a level of "annoyed" that I can still make my point and be safe doing it. Any other tips?


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## Wallaby

egrogan said:


> In the PAST, what would happen is that I would try to get her to straighten up by using the right rein to ask her to bring her head back around. I think that was sort of the opening she was looking for, because she'd quickly go from being hyper flexed left to saying, oh thank you for opening that door, you want to pull me right, I'm going to REALLLLLY go right and basically put all my power into spinning around that right shoulder and turning back towards home. She doesn't spin around and bolt, she spins around and continues walking along as though she was asked for a quick turn, which obviously she wasn't.



Lacey would do the same thing!! 
With her, the trick ended up being just riding her forward. Giving her a solid kick [or a smack with the crop if a kick didn't work] seemed to do the trick if she managed to get her head around. Of course, there were sticky spots [she had specific spots where she believed we "needed" to head home] but I realized that mostly it was MY fault. I'd get so "oh this is a lovely trail!" and she'd do her head thing as a sort of "hey! I'm here too, buddy!"
If I stayed conscious as a rider, kept her impulsion up, I found she would rarely even try. The minute I let her get ploddy, the more she'd start taking charge of the ride and swing her head around.

With the trying to lead/getting prancy, if she's anything like Lacey, it's just her inexperience showing. Lacey felt safest when she was leading so, as a green trail horse, I generally let her lead [I suppose it's something like being backseat driver? haha She wasn't sure the horse in front could handle whatever might happen, but she _knew_ she could handle it better. :lol:] since she was a perfect ride in the lead and the people I'd generally ride with loved not having to worry about leading.
As she gained more experience on the trail, she became fine anywhere in line - no fighting [actually, she got SO comfortable that getting her going, in company, became an issue hahaha]. My only guess is that, at first, she wanted to see the scary stuff first and didn't like feeling blocked in. Later on, she realized that she wasn't missing much so she might as well take the easy job. :lol:
Same with prancing - it's something that just went away as she gained confidence on the trail. In Lacey's case, prancing directly correlated to nerves which directly correlated to energy. SO, back when she was green, I'd take her out and let her run away from home. We'd go out for hours and she would be happy to plod home. Again, as time progressed and she became more confident on the trails, we could have rides that were all walking and no running. But, at first, we did some walking, mostly trotting, and some long stretches of cantering. [somewhere in this transition phase, I also started using a pelham when we went out on the trails - I just kept the curb rein handy "just in case" as my emergency brake, and rode on the snaffle rein. But, that way, I knew I could stop her if she got overly excited at any point]


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## TownesThatBigChestnut

Can I just say she's GORGEOUS? 

Carry on...😊
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Wallaby said:


> Lacey would do the same thing!!
> With her, the trick ended up being just riding her forward. Giving her a solid kick [or a smack with the crop if a kick didn't work] seemed to do the trick if she managed to get her head around. Of course, there were sticky spots [she had specific spots where she believed we "needed" to head home] but I realized that mostly it was MY fault. I'd get so "oh this is a lovely trail!" and she'd do her head thing as a sort of "hey! I'm here too, buddy!"
> If I stayed conscious as a rider, kept her impulsion up, I found she would rarely even try. The minute I let her get ploddy, the more she'd start taking charge of the ride and swing her head around.


This is really helpful! I think because I've been a bit nervous about riding out of the ring, working on letting myself be calm, and "enjoy the ride"- I could very well be so focused on myself that I am sort of ignoring the fact that I actually have to ride. I will check on this next time!


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## egrogan

TownesThatBigChestnut said:


> Can I just say she's GORGEOUS?
> 
> Carry on...😊
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Aww, thank you. She hears this enough I think it's gone to her head


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## egrogan

Big day guys, we went on an honest-to-goodness solo ride today. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, it was just too good to pass up. We have a 45 minute trail loop that has some nice hills, some nice woods, and some easy turnaround spots, so I figured it was time to try.

I'm probably not young or hip enough to do the "selfie" thing, but I tried to snap one to show off the oh-so-sexy construction worker vest my husband thoughtfully bought me to protect us when on the road (we got a good laugh out of the "one size fits most" label on the package):

(Isabel has some Swat under her eyes to keep the bugs away)









It was a bit nerve-wracking in the beginning, we need to ride about 1/4 mile on the road to get to the trail. It's a twisty, country road and people don't tend to respect the speed limit or Horse Crossing signs. However, a very nice woman did see us and slow down plenty- problem was, she slowed down to a creep and wouldn't pass us at all, which was freaking me out. So, I asked Izzy for a trot, she moved forward smartly and I was able to "park" on the shoulder of the road for the lady to go by. Of course when we stopped about 200 feet from the barn driveway, Izzy thought about trying her whole spin-towards-home move, but we successfully got going forward again. I really focused on keeping her moving forward, riding along rather than sightseeing, and keeping her mind busy. At first she was a little gawky, but she settled right down, gave me a couple of nice big sighs, and was a very good girl!

I will probably look back at this in the future and think it was silly to feel so invigorated about walking a couple miles on an easy trail, but I have to say, I just really feel like we accomplished something! I honestly never knew if we would be able to ride like this, and it just feels so great! :lol:

Here we are "pulling into the driveway," safe and sound (though with a few more bug bites than either of us would like):









Tirrreeeddd old lady- you'd think she just did a long distance ride:










And yaaaawwwwnnnn (wish this was with a real camera instead of crappy cell phone):









Next step: Begin to build in some trotting and cantering in some of the nice open stretches on the trail.


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## egrogan

Interesting ride Friday afternoon. Some really good things happened, but I think maybe I pushed a little too hard in some respects.

Started off by riding out with two people and horses I don't typically ride with. One of the other women joked, "if you could pick three horses at this barn most likely to kill each other on a trail ride, it would be these three." Everyone was perfectly behaved though, and interestingly, Isabel got the spot at the back of the line, and actually did well there. No crazy pulling/rushing, she generally stayed a respectful difference from the horse in front of her unlike the last time we went out with a group. That was definitely positive. The other two were just using the trail ride to cool out their horses from jumping, but for me it was a warm up. I didn't think I could ride away from the group and keep going on the trail, so I went back to the arena with the others, did a little w/t/c in the ring alone, and then decided to ride back out to a different trail alone. 

This is where maybe I pushed my luck a little, by going back to the barn and riding out a second time?

OK, so we ride to a different trail, and I decide today will be the day I try trotting away from the barn. There is a nice, long stretch of open field, so we trot off, she's a little bit of a "drunken sailor" and we're not necessarily going straight. Across the hay field, there's an old sand outdoor riding ring, so I decide that's where I'll continue asking for a little trotting. This is where she starts to have a bit of a meltdown. I ask her to keep trotting, simple figure 8s and serpentines, and she's feeling a bit on the verge of out of control. First of all, she has herself completely washed out and drenched in sweat. Whenever we turn through a corner and are trotting in the direction of home, she is going at super speed, these awful short little choppy strides. When we turn back away from home, she is a little more controllable and relaxes a tiny bit, which I try to reward with a little more give to the reins and deep breaths. But it's not a huge outdoor arena, so for every 10 calm-ish strides, we're turning a corner again and she gets frantic again. I really, really wanted just one simple lap of the ring with a completely calm trot, and we were probably out there for 15 or 20 minutes trying for it. It was starting to feel really counterproductive because she was just not getting any calmer, so I asked her to walk and walked away from the ring continuing along the trail. That seemed to give her a bit of a mental break, she did calm a bit. At that point, when she was calmer, we turned around and walked home. I don't know if this was the right decision (did it just make her think that being all worked up was the ticket out of trotting?) but we'll try again.

Yesterday we took it easy, just a quick ride in the arena. I'm meeting someone to ride together this afternoon, and that should be fun- we're going to try a new trail extension. 

Here are a few pictures. I finally couldn't stand her scraggly mane anymore, so I bit the bullet and "pulled" it- "pulled" in quotes because I'm horribly impatient and don't show and just can't stand taking the time to really pull it. So as you can probably tell, this was a scissor job, but even so, I think it looks a ton better. And look at all the mane that actually came off!! It grows super-fast, so I'm sure by the end of the summer it will be long again...

Before:









After:


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## egrogan

Just a quick addendum from today-we found a great trail connection and ended up being able to ride on nice dirt roads around the perimeter of several large corn fields. Isabel got to be the leader (actually made her quite pokey at first being out there in front) and barely batted an eye when a bunch of deer ran out in front of her and a big mama turkey and her 6 poults flew out of te corn into a tree. All this while a big thunderstorm was blowing in so the wind was picking up. She really doesn't seem spooky about stuff at all, which is only giving ME confidence (very clear that I'm the problem here!). Couldn't be happier with our ride today 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Another great solo ride this morning! We covered most of the territory we did on Sunday at the trot, which cut the time basically in half. It was so nice to let her move out a bit, she seemed to like it too. 

She's so darn smart though...I wanted to see if one of the new roads we just found this weekend went any farther in a different direction- we've only ridden on this particular loop once, but when I "missed" the turn to head home and went a different way, she obviously knew it was not the way home and looked around over her shoulder like "hey lady, do I need to get us back to safety or are you paying attention to where we are?"- and was none too happy when I made her keep going in the "wrong" direction before turning back.


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## egrogan

Such a great ride yesterday! I really do think that with every ride, she's getting even better at taking in all the sights and sounds outside (or, I am ) Mounted up outside just as the septic truck was pulling in to the barn, making a ton of noise as they started pumping. She really didn't care at all.

Had a bit of a dicey moment crossing the road to get to the hay field, but we made it. I asked her to trot out right away, and she was a little resistant at first. Typically I do warm up briefly in the ring before we go, but it was being used yesterday so I figured I'd just head out. Maybe she needs a little more warming up before being asked to trot on.

The best part of the ride though was that I finally got the nerve to ask her to canter- and she was amazing. There is a really nice clearing between one of the wooded trails and a road, slightly uphill but a nice long stretch, and I decided it was time to just go for it- and it was wonderful. I felt like a rider having my first canter, it was just such an invigorating feeling. And her canter was so much nicer outside, really smooth and powerful, not the sort of half-hearted stutter step she's giving me inside. I know it sounds cheezy, but it just really feels like this is what riding should be like! 

Good girl get a few nibbles of grass in the shade after her bath:


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## Wallaby

egrogan said:


> The best part of the ride though was that I finally got the nerve to ask her to canter- and she was amazing. There is a really nice clearing between one of the wooded trails and a road, slightly uphill but a nice long stretch, and I decided it was time to just go for it- and it was wonderful. I felt like a rider having my first canter, it was just such an invigorating feeling. And her canter was so much nicer outside, really smooth and powerful, not the sort of half-hearted stutter step she's giving me inside. I know it sounds cheezy, but it just really feels like this is what riding should be like!



1. YAY!! Congrats!!

2. I totally, totally, get that!! I feel the same way! There's nothing better than a good canter or gallop when you're trail riding. 
I'm jealous that you have indoor stuff AND lots of trails...can I move in with you? :lol:


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## egrogan

Wallaby said:


> I'm jealous that you have indoor stuff AND lots of trails...can I move in with you? :lol:


I do feel pretty lucky. The indoor is absolutely vital in our cold New Hampshire winters! The trail thing is new this year, as we recently got permission from the barn's "across the road neighbor" to ride through his fields and woods, but it's amazing that he said yes, because it allows us access to a ton of other space, and decent roadside options too.

You'd have to travel quite a ways to get here, but we'd love to have you. Isabel is also a therapy horse dropout, so I'm sure she and Fabio would have some good stories to tell each other


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## Zexious

Sounds like things are going really well!! She's looking good, too :>


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## egrogan

Picture perfect day to ride yesterday. Beautiful blue skies:









We rode around the corns fields, and I figured out that there are actually 3-4 huge adjoining fields, all with a nice dirt track around them, so we went exploring a little farther than I expected, but she did great:









It was the perfect space for going for a nice, long canter, and we actually even hit a hand gallop for a minute- who knew the old lady could even move that fast?! I probably _shouldn't _have let her do it, as I didn't really ask her to, and I don't want to instill any "runaway horsie" thoughts in her head. But to be honest, it was just really fun, so I let her go for a bit before reining her back in 

She's really getting to the point where you can just point her anywhere and she's happy to go, even if she hasn't been that way before. We rode off on a deer path coming out of one of the fields, and pretty soon we were in the middle of a meadow with grass up above my waist. She really didn't care at all.

It is clear to me though that I need to use our arena time to work on downward transitions. She gets really eager, particularly at the trot, and I feel like I'm just hauling on her face to get her to come down a gait. She's not super responsive off your seat to begin with, so I feel like when she's a bit amped up, I could be the heaviest, limpest sack of potatoes on her back and it wouldn't really matter to her. So I need to work on that.

I have a question for all of you who are more experienced than me- talk to me about "surefootedness." I have always assumed that in dicey spots on the trail, you sort of give the horse her head and let her find the best way through. Obviously staying balanced in the saddle and not getting in the way, but at the end of the day, it seems like it's her responsibility to keep us standing, right? (As an aside, at 35 years old, I've never learned to ride a bike, and my friends are always incredulous about this given they know I ride horses. In my opinion, a horse and I share a mutual desire to stay upright, something a bike's not going to do for me!!) We have a couple of places through the woods where we really have to scramble through some pretty thick mud, with tons of rocks, on an incline. It seems like Izzy is really clumsy and just sort of stumbles and trips her way through (she has grabbed her front right heel bulb at least once on the way through)- and it sometimes seems like she's going exactly the wrong way, finding every big slippery rock she can step on, rather than going around them. I don't know if this just takes practice, or if there's something I should be doing to help her pick the best path through?


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## Zexious

I really can't speak about sure footedness, as I have only ever ridden on trails through those silly companies.

But! I did want to, again, congratulate you on how well she is coming along! That, and these between the ear pictures are my favorite <3

I'm sure it says on the first page, but what are your long term goals? Are you planning to do anything competitive?


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## egrogan

Thanks, Zexious! My biggest goal in all of this was really just to gain the confidence to ride off the property alone, and I think I've managed to accomplish that! 

As a longer-term personal goal, I think some day I'd really enjoy trying some long distance rides, but I'm not sure if this is the horse that's built to do that. Also, I don't have a trailer or any friends who are in to long distance rides, so it's hard to imagine when that will become a reality, but it's just something that sounds really appealing to me one day. For now, "happy hacking" seems like it will be perfect for both of us.


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## egrogan

It's funny, but I feel like all this solo exploring is actually changing Isabel's demeanor. I'm not really one who thinks a lot about having a "bond" with my horse, but I do want her to be respectful and follow directions. In a way I can't quite explain, she seems much more interested in me these days. Yesterday I went out to the field to grab her for a ride, and she saw me at the gate and came running from the far end of the pasture to meet me, eyes fixed on me the whole way. For the first few months I knew this horse, I had to chase her around the field to catch her (a.n.n.o.y.i.n.g). We've long been over that problem, but she's never been the kind of horse that meets me at the gate. It was sort of sweet, I have to admit, even though that sounds a little mushy. 

I also feel like she's a lot more responsive undersaddle. Turns are much more precise, she's a lot "handier" in that I can get her to go through spaces that I wouldn't have attempted before, and she just generally seems to be more focused on me (i.e., ear flicked back waiting to see what we do next). I rode in the arena last night because I wanted to focus on downward transitions, and for awhile had her trotting on a completely loose rein and was actually getting her to listen to my seat well enough she would come back to a walk easily. This sounds like a small thing, but it's really not something I've been able to do with her (she is definitely NOT the kind of horse where you just think about stopping, and she stops). This wasn't as successful after we cantered a bit, which I expected. She gets pretty hyped up after cantering and trotting after that tends to be a little fast and choppy (something else to work on). But it's good to know there are a couple of obvious things to work on.

I don't know how else to explain it, just feels like we're working together in a different way all of a sudden. It's really cool!


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## egrogan

Just got this neat picture of Isabel from the Office Manager at the barn- she does love a good roll in the dirt!


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## egrogan

OK, all that sentimental stuff I wrote up there ^^^ you can disregard that!

So with all the good rides I've been having, we were clearly due to have a bad one. Yesterday was sort of a perfect storm set-up for having a bad day. We have single-gender turnout where I board, but the pasture set-up recently changed and this week, the girls and boys now share a fenceline in the larger pasture, which has been split in half. So Isabel is now in raging heat, and consequently hugely herdbound and obsessed with one little pony gelding. It was also a really hot day yesterday and the bugs were terrible. All in all, by the time I tacked up and mounted, I was getting on one irritated horse who was not interested in going for a ride.

We rode out of the ring as one of the suddenly irresistible geldings was coming in, which she did not appreciate. We had a little argument about crossing the street, and she was trying to be evasive and spin around towards home for the first 15 minutes of the ride. We got to our next road crossing, and had to stand and wait for a minute as 3-4 cars went by. At this point, she pretty much had a temper tantrum- apparently having to stand and wait is the greatest indignation a horse can experience! When the cars passed and I asked her to walk forward, she threw her head up and down and did a spin so we were facing the other way. I think she actually surprised herself though, because she spun and then just stopped stock still (I used to be a teacher, and I have to admit, her reaction to her naughtiness kind of made me chuckle in the same way that you would laugh when an adorable student would misbehave in a totally innocent way). So anyway, after this little tantrum, I got after her, we crossed the street, she fretted and jigged a little bit. Then suddenly she decided that everything in the corn field (the same we've ridden in a dozen times in the past few weeks) was going to eat her. She was shying away from the corn stalks, snorting and blowing, just acting ridiculous. But I just kept riding her forward, and eventually we managed to ride at a reasonable walk for the rest of ride, even being able to give her a loose rein for the last couple of minutes as we headed back to the barn. She was completely drenched in sweat by the time we got back- I guess a combo of a 90 degree day and this ridiculous behavior. It took a really long time to cool her out.

It's funny how these blowups happen when you're least expecting it- it was so hot yesterday I went out to the barn intending to have a leisurely, walk-only ride and just enjoy the scenery. Obviously Isabel had other ideas!


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## Wallaby

But hey, you stayed on and you worked through it! I'd call that a success. :hug:


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## egrogan

Ha! Wallaby, you are right- I suppose staying on is something. 

I was actually thinking about a post you made earlier, about how Lacey didn't like you just being a passenger and wanted you really plugged in to riding. I got on in the mindset of just having a lazy ride, and I think my lackadaisical riding from the beginning set me up for the attitude I got from Izzy. Oh well, no riding tonight as I had to do a volunteer training for our therapeutic riding program, but I gave my lovely lady a pat on the nose while she was eating her dinner and left it at that.


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## egrogan

OK, back on track today. Izzy is still in disgusting raging heat but she was over the worst of the herdboundness and rode out without too much trouble. I rode her much more aggressively. We warmed up w/t/c in the ring, and then when we headed out, we immediately trotted right on. I rode the loop with more hills today, and she seemed to enjoy trotting/cantering up the hills and across the fields. The weather was nice and cool, but the flies were the worst I've seen them. At one point, I looked down and she had a swarm of them all over her head and neck. Poor girl.

One funny moment- she was swatting at the flies nonstop with her tail, and with one swat, she actually broke a dead branch off a tree _and it got caught in her tail_. So she's dragging this 3-4 foot long branch, the thickness of a dressage whip, behind her for a good 10-15 minutes. Good girl though, she didn't bat an eye. I was having these mini nightmares of her thinking something was chasing her and spooking wildly, but once it was clear she was going to ignore it, I just left it until it dropped out (there's really nowhere on the trail that I could comfortably remount unless it was really an emergency. Unless I really have to, I would much prefer to avoid mounting her from the ground, given her somewhat weak back and me really being at the top of her weight limit). So, another "test" on the trail that she seems to have passed with flying colors.

Not sure if it was all the cantering uphill, but this is the first day I can remember when she was not pulling and rushing to get home. I was able to give her a pretty loose rein and she walked calmly the whole way, despite the awful bugs. Good girl!!

Also, someone over in the trail riding section recommended an iPhone app called "viewranger," so I tried that today. I'm still figuring it out, but it was pretty cool from what I could see. We rode about 3km, and traveled at a top speed of 15 km/hr. Not quite Kentucky Derby time, but still just so neat to see our zigzagging route through the woods and fields, and roughly how fast we were going at different parts of it. I would definitely recommend it if you're looking for a way to track where you're going.


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## egrogan

Does this look like a horse that wants to go for a ride on a muggy, rainy day!? :wink:


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## egrogan

So Isabel got an impromptu day off today- I got to the barn this morning, and they let me know she had not been turned out as they found her this morning with her eye swollen shut and streaming tears. It looked much better by the time I got there, but was still irritated. As far as I can see, looks like she may have a tiny scratch on the lens. She's had this problem before- I think her eyes are easily irritated to begin with, they get itchy so she rubs, and actually causes a bigger problem. Meeting the vet this afternoon to take a look and see if we're back to eye medicine, which is never fun with Isabel.


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## egrogan

Didn't ride much at all last week. Isabel did something to irritate her eye in the middle of the week, so the time I would have had to ride during the week was taken up with meeting the vet and doing eye ointment. She ended up being fine, but this is the second time she's had this same issue. The barn assistant finds her in the morning with her eye basically swollen shut, tears streaming down her face. It has a slightly cloudy look in the middle. As the day goes on, the swelling goes down and she goes back to normal. The vet was great, came right out as he doesn't like to mess with eyes, she did get a course of ointment that day, but by day 2, it was totally back to normal. Not sure what she does, but I think she just gets itchy/irritated this time of year, and then starts rubbing, which makes it worse. 

We also went away this weekend, spending Saturday at Saratoga watching the races. Here are a few fun pictures:

Palace Malice, last year's Belmont winner and potentially this year's Horse of the Year (though he didn't run well in the Whitney on Saturday):









Will Take Charge, last year's Breeder's Cup Classic runner-up- you can sort of tell in this picture, but this colt is a GIANT. Much more impressive in person:









A little starstruck standing next to trainer Graham Motion after he emerged from the winner's circle with a promising two-year old colt. The interview was all about whether or not he thought this colt will be a Breeder's Cup winner. 









Stretch run:









Trackside with my lovely husband (who trounced me in our betting competition):









Got home Sunday, the weather was gorgeous and I finally had time for a ride. Isabel was super stiff when we warmed up in the ring- almost to the point where I felt like she was a little off somewhere on the front end. I just spent a lot of time slowly warming up, and she seemed to work out of it. We spent most of our trail ride just walking on a loose rein. This is the first time I've really trusted her enough to just let her walk along and pick her way, and she responded really well- I could really feel the tension leave and she put her head down and seemed to carry herself a lot more nicely than she was warming up. When we got back to the ring, I had her t/c on the same loose rein for a bit, which was also unusual for her. She's fairly unbalanced at the canter (particularly after a week off) and she did reasonably well without me holding her together. 

Snapped a ton of pictures yesterday since she was being so easygoing about everything.

One of my favorites:









Love this one too:


















Ever since I pulled her mane, it's been so "bouncy" when she moves:


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## egrogan

I was out of town for most of last week, in Seattle for work. So, had a bit of a break from riding. But, I agreed to let Isabel be used in the Advanced Beginners summer camp at the barn, so she did get used a little bit while I was gone. The instructors reported she was VERY lazy for the girl that was working with her during the week. Looks like she made a new friend though:









I got to ride Saturday, and I could definitely tell she had been packing a kid around all week when she tried some silly stuff like pulling towards the gate and ducking out on me when I asked her to canter across the hay field. Quickly got it sorted out though, after a minute she took a deep breath and just seemed to say, "oh, you're back, huh?" :wink:

After a couple of weeks without a lot of riding, it was almost like she was being introduced to the trails again. I took her on one of our regular routes, and she was a little wide-eyed and snorty, like she was when we first start riding out there. So, we worked on just staying calm and listening, and then I let her have a good long canter around one of the corn fields, which seemed to let her blow off some of that nervous energy.

Fun ride yesterday. My husband is a runner, and he will often run from town to meet me out at the barn and then ride home with me. He must have been in sprinter mode yesterday, because I was just finishing tacking up when he showed up at the barn. So, I decided to ride our little 3-mile loop, and he came for the walk with us. It was fun to have someone to talk to while riding, but bonus was that we had a photographer along with us!










Not sure why I have such a weird look on my face here, but it shows a bit of our pretty forest trail, and I think Izzy looks cute:









Being impatient standing for the camera:









Still not really thrilled about standing still:









She really HATES to be asked to just stand out on the trail. She definitely interprets that to mean she should try to drag me around in whatever direction leads towards home. Need to keep working on that.


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## egrogan

I had planned on yesterday being an arena day- really wanted to work on her gaits and balance. However, I showed up, and the hay guy was there with a massive trailer and a couple hundred bales to deliver, and they have to use the arena to access the hay loft. Soooo....that plan went out the window. 

Instead, I decided to take her to the farmer's field across the street and work on some of her patience issues. We just walked. When she got fast, we stopped. She got ****ed. She pawed the ground like a circus pony. She tried swinging her haunches around. She snorted. In hindsight, it is funny to see how hard this was for her. In the moment, it was annoying. We just walked around for 30 minutes or so, until she finally offered a calm, evenly paced walk. Then we went home. That was about it.


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## egrogan

It's been awhile since I was excited to work in the arena, but it was actually a bit overdue as I think we were overdue for just a good, straightforward schooling day. Did some basic w/t/c, made sure she was really working in balance and doing the work of carrying herself, and she felt good. She was able to canter around a 20-meter circle on a loose rein without falling on her nose, which was good (she really relies on me to hold her up in the canter). Also managed to get a nice, even trot after some cantering, rather than a frantic shortstrided mess.

After 20-30 minutes in the ring, we walked across the street to the farmer's field to cool out. Guess who was happy to take a nice leisurely walk around the field? :wink: Looks like a real workout was just the solution to her impatience.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Instead, I decided to take her to the farmer's field across the street and work on some of her patience issues. We just walked. When she got fast, we stopped. She got ****ed. She pawed the ground like a circus pony. She tried swinging her haunches around. She snorted. In hindsight, it is funny to see how hard this was for her. In the moment, it was annoying. We just walked around for 30 minutes or so, until she finally offered a calm, evenly paced walk. Then we went home. That was about it.


Been there, done that with my morgan mare...and will probably be dealing with this in the future. Good for you that you stuck it out until she was able to relax.


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## egrogan

I've been traveling for work a lot over the past couple of weeks, so hadn't ridden much at all until this weekend. 

Got to the barn Friday finally having time to ride, and Isabel was less than energetic- it went from cool and brisk back to hot and muggy, and she was not all that interested in riding:
(yes, she actually was dozing while I fixed the girth and stirrups)









Although the weather has been pretty miserable, my last few rides haven't been great as she's just been soooooo lethargic and unwilling to go forward. If she was moving any slower, I think she'd really just topple over. Not sure what's going on with her. I'm shopping for a new saddle, and trialed a few at the beginning of last week, hoping that when I put something new on her she'd be "unlocked" and eager to move forward. That definitely didn't happen with any of the 3 I tried. The chiro is coming on Friday, so maybe that will help, but I just really can't figure out why she seems so unwilling to be ridden. I have noticed she requires a longer warm-up these days (I'm going to post another thread about that) and I'm sure that will only get worse when it starts getting cold again. But even after she's had ample time to warm up, she still just feels so nonresponsive.

She was acting this way a bit in the spring, and I figured she was just bored and ring sour- when we started riding on the trails more, that did seem to perk her up, but even over the past couple of weeks, she's started resisting riding out of the arena towards the trail- so, doesn't want to be in the ring, doesn't want to be on the trail. She is 20, but she is physically in great shape, vet sees nothing wrong, feet are good, so I don't get it. I know some horses will tell you when they're ready to retire, but that just doesn't make sense to me since physically I think she's good. She's never had a strong "work ethic" in the years I've known her (I'm sure she'll be perfectly content when retirement does come for her), but this just feels different.

Anyway, I guess one of the benefits of her being slow as molasses is that we had a really pleasant, leisurely amble across the trail on Saturday, and I snapped a couple of nice pictures:



















Wish these were better quality, but this is her opinion of the ride after getting back to the barn...mind you, we did nothing but walk 3-4 miles of flat trails!


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## Wallaby

The things that come to mind for me with her being so slow are pain and/or some kind of deficiency in her diet - salt, perhaps?

Lacey would do that slow-slow thing when her eyes were bothering her. Particularly in the summer, she'd act like trail rides were the worstttt...turned out that, for her - due to her ERU, she needed to wear a UV blocking flymask while riding [like she wore all the time in the pasture - I had been taking it off for rides because of aesthetics, basically]. As soon as I added a flymask to our riding routine, the pep came right back into her step.

Of course, Isabel is gonna have different things "at work" for her than Lacey did...but you know. 


It is the muggiest hottest part of the summer and older horses often realllly don't do well with that [everyday it was over 75*, Lacey _needed_ to be hosed off at least once a day or she'd get heat-stroke-y and confused]. Hazel, though she's a goat, is similar - she goes from morose and out of it to peppy and alert with a simple hose down.
Is your girl being hosed off regularly? What's her "hot weather situation" look like? 


Just throwing everything at you I can think of!


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## frlsgirl

Ana was acting the same way when summer came. She would fall asleep while tacking up and just didn't seem interested in doing any work. All she wanted to do is eat and sleep. I gave her some electrolytes and that did make a difference. I also switched my riding schedule to early mornings as she's much more alert and eager then. Once it gets cold out, I'll switch my riding schedule back to afternoons.


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## egrogan

Thanks, Wallaby and frls. You gave me a couple of different things to think about:

1. Diet. This is sort of a "duh" moment, not sure why I didn't think about this already  The pasture that she's on is pretty much blown for the summer, so it really only gives them something to do during the day, not serious nutrition. They still get hay morning and night, and she is on a ration balancer- however, I cut it back in the spring when the grass was plentiful, maybe I need to revisit. 

She does have a Himalayan salt block in her stall, and I notice that she goes through them really fast. I suppose this could be another sign that she's deficient in something.

Diet/nutrition is something I never feel like I understand well enough. I had a "feedxl" subscription back in the spring when I was making some decisions about the right ration balancer, but I probably need to learn more.

2. Environment. I started thinking about when she became resistant to going on the trails, and I think it was about the time when the horse/deer flies starting getting really out of control- to the point that her entire head and neck would just be swarmed with them. She rides out on the trail with a fly bonnet, and I spray her down intensely before we go out, but even with all that, it got pretty miserable. Add that to the heat, and I can see her starting to make the association that riding outside=uncomfortable.

She does get hosed down after really hot rides, though I would say that's not something she particularly enjoys either...

Hopefully this is our last week of heat and mugginess, and then fall will really be here. 

I'm running out to the barn this morning just to say hi and do a quick grooming, don't have time to ride today unfortunately due to work.


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## egrogan

And here's the lovely lady today. Had to sponge her face off as she decided to rub her flymask off in the middle of an irresistible mud puddle out in the field.


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## egrogan

The chiro came to see Izzy on Friday morning. Izzy was very tight in her SI, and really her whole hind-end. She was a little short on her left hind when she trotted on the lunge, and just generally looked uncomfortable. 

She's always a little unsure of what's happening with the chiro, but she mostly cooperated. I also described her lethargic attitude to the chiro, who suggested acupuncture to "release her chi." Now, I'll admit, I'm not much of a naturopathic person, but I went ahead and had the acupuncture done (much to my husband's amusement- at first, he though I was kidding!). 

Isabel got Saturday off after the adjustment, but the chiro said to expect her to feel much perkier on Sunday when riding. The indoor was having some roof repairs when I went to ride yesterday, so unfortunately I wasn't able to really give her a good w/t/c through some school figures to see how she was really moving, but I just went ahead and jumped on and headed right to the trails. Since I didn't know for sure how she'd be moving, I generally just kept things to a walk. I do agree she was much more energetic, and seemed to move more freely behind. The statistician in me can't say for sure if it's definitely because of the chiro work, or because of the beautifully brisk fall weather, but regardless of the cause, it was nice to have a clearly happier horse back!

Here's Izzy looking sweet and relaxed at the end of our hour-long ride:


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## Wallaby

Yay! I'm so glad she was better today!

I totally know what you mean about the hippy-dippy stuff - it can feel a little silly but sometimes it really does help! I was amazed at what equine massage did for Lacey and has done for Fabs, who knewwww! 
Or weird herbs! Like I basically cured Fabio's ulcers with herbs and I realllly did not think that would work! :lol:


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## egrogan

I've had a really crazy work week, so not much riding, sadly. 

I am still on the hunt for a new saddle, and have a wonderful one on trial. I am not so sure the fit is exactly right (****- it's a great deal on exactly what I need). But, I have through the weekend to try it out.

Not sure if anyone is familiar with the Trilogy "Debbie MacDonald" model. I am mostly unfamiliar with the brand, but my saddle fitter mentioned a couple of weeks ago that they are "great for short people"- which I am!- so I was enthusiastic to try it.

I took my first test ride yesterday, and it was certainly a great saddle. I told my trainer, it felt like getting a hug from the saddle! I'm not 100% sure the sizing is right for my horse or for me, but I'm going to ride in it again a couple of times this weekend.

I need to talk to the saddle shop though, as I'm not sure if Trilogy makes a MW in the Debbie MacDonald. That's really what Isabel is. The one I have on trial is an XW, and the only reason I took one that size was that I read they tend to run a bit small, and I thought perhaps the fitter could make it work if it was really sort of a wide. I'm still not certain that will be the case, but I'm not even sure if the equivalent of a MW is available. My guess is these are designed more for big beefy warmbloods?

I didn't spend a lot of time trying it on her without pads yesterday, because she was a bit damp from the rain, but when I did briefly, it definitely sat down on her withers more than I'd like and seemed to really be gaping over them. I will get pictures and probably start a new thread this weekend.

But, because of her slight swayback, I typically ride her with a regular dressage pad plus one of those fleeceworks pads, and when I had her padded up, the spacing over the withers didn't look as weird. I know you want your saddle to fit well without having to use a lot of pads, so that's why I'm thinking this isn't ideal. But here are a couple of pics with the saddle and pads, I wonder if people would think it's a bad fit without knowing hte context:

















I rode her in it for about 20 minutes, and at first she was a little hesitant (I think mostly because I was trying to find my balance in it), but she wasn't throwing her head up, pinning her ears, tensing up or anything that would make me think it was sliding around or slamming down on her withers. So maybe there is some hope. 

My final question is whether it really fits me. I think I could go with a 17.5" or an 18" seat, depending on the model. This seems to be a bit of a deeper seat than I'm used to in my County, so I'm not sure if it's a tad too tight (I sort of felt like I was humping the pommel- sorry for that description) and my knees were _almost_ coming ahead of the flap. I might be able to adjust my stirrups a bit though to get a better leg position. My husband can come to the barn with me Saturday to take some video, so I think that will help me decide. I'm not usually an indecisive person, but it's been so hard for me to commit to a new saddle.

And I'll end with one more picture of the cute girl herself:


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## frlsgirl

She certainly is cute. I need a fleece pad like your for Ana. I bought one of tack trader but it ended up being too flat...what brand/make/model is yours? (sorry, off topic)

Anyway, it's hard to tell from the pictures if the saddle fits her well since you're using the thick pad to fill in any gaps. Overall it looks balanced to me (not too far back or on her shoulders). 

Can you post of picture of you in the saddle? Sometimes, once you add the riders weight, the saddle can suddenly become unbalanced which is what you might be experiencing.


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## egrogan

No problem frls, it is a Fleeceworks half pad. It's sort of a knockoff/cheaper version of the really nice Mattes pads. 

I started a saddle fit thread if anyone wants to take a look and let me know:
http://www.horseforum.com/saddle-fi...ision-trial-saddle-sunday-480098/#post6203386

I think I'm actually more unsure about whether it fits ME than whether it fits Izzy-she seems pretty happy in it as is, and she'll get a visit from the saddle fitter if I get the saddle.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

It's funny, I started this thread back in June wondering if Isabel could become a happy trail horse, and now that the summer's over, I think the answer really is, "YES!"

We had a great ride yesterday afternoon. I've been test riding a new saddle (which I decided I'm going to keep), so we went out on our regular 4 mile trail loop. It was a perfect fall day, cool breeze, sunny skies, just a perfect day for a ride. I really let her have her head and take a good gallop around one of the corn fields, and she was eager to gooooo. She actually worked up quite a sweat. 

But the greatest thing is, when I pulled her back to a walk, I was able to walk her home quietly the entire way on the buckle. She walked through the woods, she walked across the farmer's field where she always wants to prance and jig, just just walked calmly on the buckle. I don't think it was out of exhaustion, as it was a nice, forward walk, but it was _relaxed. _

I have to say, I feel really proud that in just a few months, she's taken to this so naturally. It also strikes me that almost all of our rides have been solo, which also makes me happy. Feels like it's been a really productive summer! Actually makes me a bit sad that hunting season is almost here, which will limit our trail options, and that winter isn't all that far behind it...

Testing the new saddle:









Getting to nibble some grass while cooling out:









Deciding which mare she's going to harass out in the field:


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## egrogan

So a bit of a frustrating update on Izzy today. I went out to the barn yesterday, and discovered she had pulled down a bunch of the boards on her run-out paddock. Turns out, she has been systematically _eating _one of the boards separating her from the next horse over _since this winter_. I was incredulous- I couldn't believe no one told me she was being so destructive!! I offered to pay for repairs, and to pay for electric tape to put up over the top board to keep her off it and BM declined- but geez...clearly this is an indication that she's super bored overnight. 

I love my boarding barn and BM, but am just really surprised that I didn't know about this until I found shards of board in her paddock and asked if it was her that had been eating the fence. The fencing is sort of old, and it's all chewed on, so I guess I just assumed that it was already like that, not that she was eating it down. Although looking back, I should have been paying more attention and noticing it was getting worse...

Anyway, I'm not sure what to do to help her overnight. She's not interested in toys (have tried a jolly ball in the past). I could give her "lick-its" but I hate the thought of her eating all that sugary stuff. I think the real problem is that hay is fed out around 6pm- she gets a flake on the ground and two in a slow feeder, but obviously that's not enough and she's through it by about 9pm. I think it could be an option to up her hay and leave her another haynet, but I just wonder if that's really enough to make any difference- if she just eats that by 10pm, have we really helped her? And do I want to put more food in front of her when we've been trying to get weight off her this summer? 

Uggh...moments like these I do wish I had her at home so she could just be turned out all night. Unfortunately that's not an option at the boarding barn because there is no paddock with a shelter.


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## frlsgirl

Yikes. It sounds like she's trying to get closer to the horse next to her, since she's eating the board that separates them. Instead of repairing the damage, could they just make a window from the hole? That way the horse's can see each other?

When Ana gets bored, she gets herself into all sorts of trouble; she dismantled the sattelite dish at the last boarding facility. Now that she's got company on pasture/paddock board, she's much happier.

Hopefully you can figure something out. It's always embarrasing when stuff like this happens.


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## egrogan

I guess I've been delinquent in updating. Not too much going on recently. Have had some really lovely rides the last couple of weeks as it's been absolutely beautiful and fall has really arrived. So I'm just going to spam you with some of my favorite ear shots from the past couple of weeks:


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## egrogan

One more...


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## egrogan

Saddle fitter came yesterday and made some slight modifications to raise up the back of the saddle to accommodate Isabel's swayback, but otherwise, he felt like it was a great fit.

The chiro comes on Thursday for a 6-week recheck.

After all that individualized attention, Izzy should be good to go through the winter. I will be sad for our late afternoon trails to be less accessible as it gets dark so much earlier and *gasp* the snow starts to hit. Daylight savings time starts on October 26th, which seems way too soon!

But that's all a couple of months in the future- here's Izzy enjoying some grazing (note eyes closed but mouth wide open )


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## egrogan

_Someone _found the burrs out in the field and filled her forelock with them:









Looking a bit embarrassed after they were out:








Had a quick ride this morning. I really like how secure the saddle feels after the fitter made some minor adjustments to it yesterday. Rode in the ring for a few minutes and popped outside for a quick walk around the neighbor's hay field. This is a bit gross, but there's been a dead possum in the road just passed the barn driveway for a couple of days (surprised the coyotes haven't cleaned up...) and I was wondering if Isabel would give me any trouble going by it. She walked right past with just a sideways glance.

I did realize one thing I need to work on though. She is really lazy about backing up when I ask, sometimes she'll go sideways instead as though she's going to do a turn on the haunches, which is obviously not something I want but don't often work on explicitly. It almost got dangerous today though-we were about to cross the road to go back to the barn, and just as we were about to step off the trail (where I always whoa to look around for traffic) onto the pavement, a car came around the bend. No big deal, I asked Izzy to back, and she went sideways, basically putting us parallel to the road, not quite in it, but just about. The car was going slow and gave us plenty of room anyway, but geez, that gave me a mini heart attack. Definitely need to get rid of THAT behavior pronto!! Needless to say, we practiced it successfully a few times before going to the barn, but I don't ever want to wonder if she's going to go sideways instead of backwards again.


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## frlsgirl

We've had some forelock malfunctions as well; she somehow manages to get half the pasture stuck in it. I braided it before I left last night to see if that would help. We shall see. 

Regarding backing up - Ana isn't quite proficient in that either so we've been using the arena wall to cheat. Once she gets more straight, we will try without the help of a wall.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Regarding backing up - Ana isn't quite proficient in that either so we've been using the arena wall to cheat. Once she gets more straight, we will try without the help of a wall.


I think unfortunately with Isabel, backing up is one thing where it's not that she doesn't know _how_, it's that she _doesn't want to_, and I have just not been on top of her to make her because it's something I need to do so infrequently. But now that I see a clear reason why it has to be precise, we're going to work on it!


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## egrogan

Had a nice visit from the chiropractor this morning as a bit of a tune up from when she was here about 6 weeks ago. Isabel was feeling really good in the couple of weeks right after the first visit, but then started getting a bit tight again. The chiro found her to be fairly tight in the neck (particularly on the right side), and also some tightness in her left stifle. For neck and poll tightness, the chiro reaches right in to her mouth and does some kind of crazy manipulation of the tongue, which I don't fully understand, but it has this magic effect of unlocking tightness through the head and neck. Wish I had thought to video that happening, because it's pretty funny.

Here she is enjoying some grazing afterwards- she's starting to get her fall fuzzies:


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## egrogan

Really nice ride today. It was absolutely gorgeous out. Perfect fall day. Here are a couple of ear shots:


















The corn fields we've been riding around have finally been harvested, so we now have this odd, vast flat set of fields to navigate. It's amazing how much different it looks- Isabel was definitely very interested in the wide open spaces. We did _a lot _of trotting- while she was initially hyped up, she eventually settled in to that nice, ground covering relaxed Morgan trot and just sort of floated over the ground for maybe a mile or so? 

We also practiced the backing up issue. After all that trotting, we walked along on the buckle to cool out (she has her winter coat coming in so she was really drenched in sweat). It helped that we had rounded the field and were clearly heading home- she REALLY likes to go home, so I used that to my advantage. We worked as follows:
1. I would ask her to whoa. If she got ****y and fought that, we'd turn around and starting walking away from home. I'd ask again. If she halted politely, we turned around and walked towards home on a loose rein, where I would again ask for a polite whoa. It only took a couple of times of doing that.
2. I'd ask for the back from the whoa. 

The first two times, she was ****y about it, lurching to the side or trying to go forward through it. OK, no problem, didn't make a big argument out of it, just decided that we'll just turn back away from home, walk, halt, try again to back. We did this twice, with her not listening or cooperating. The third time I asked, she halted, backed 6 or 7 steps straight and politely, and we didn't have to turn away from home. We just walked on like it was no big deal on a nice loose rein.

I doubled checked this 2-3 more times on the way home, and we never had to turn around and walk the other direction, each time the whoa and back was "yes ma'am," not ****y. 

The big test was back at the road crossing to the barn, where we had the issue the last time. It's definitely a test, because I often let her canter up the last hill on the way home- when you get to the top, it basically spits you out at the road crossing, so she has to come back from something really exciting to listening well. We got to the road, halted on a dime, backed 3-4 steps politely down the hill, and walked across with no issues. Success!!

Love these ears:


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## Saddlebag

I hope the chiro showed you how to get the horse to lift it's back. If not, run your finger underneath until you find her midline. Starting just behind where the cinch would sit, press all four fingers of one hand and see if she'll lift. If not move along a few inches and try again. The horse doesn't always respond the first time the right spot is pressed. Place your other hand on her back to give you some support. If you get to the navel, you're past the spot. Sometimes the first time a horse lifts it scares them a little. Use the hand that's on her back to rub her. Don't worry about trail riding after dark, she won't miss a step even if you're having trouble seeing. This teaches the rider to trust the horse. The nicest time to ride is often around midnight as the wind is usually calm, moonlight......beautiful time to be out.


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## egrogan

Hey Saddlebag, yep, we've tried the belly lifts, but the weird thing is that Isabel has almost no response when you run your hand, a hoof pick, etc. along her bellyline. You actually do have to go way past her navel to get any kind of reaction, and it's very slight. She's much better when you run your hands/hoof picks down either side of her rump and make her contract her belly muscles to lift. She also responds pretty well to the tail pulls.

I LOVE your image of the midnight trailrides. We have so many coyotes around though, it scares me to think about seeing their beady little eyes in the fields and the trees. Our barn assistants have seen them really close to the barn already this fall- a couple of nights, she hasn't been able to do outside water buckets in the fields because she sees them right there at the water.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> I LOVE your image of the midnight trailrides. We have so many coyotes around though, it scares me to think about seeing their beady little eyes in the fields and the trees. Our barn assistants have seen them really close to the barn already this fall- a couple of nights, she hasn't been able to do outside water buckets in the fields because she sees them right there at the water.


We have them, too! Fortunately, Ana shares her paddock with a mini-donkey; those things are fiercely protective of their herd. I actually saw a picture on FB where a donkey had captured a coyote and was carrying it in its mouth! It's hard to picture a cute little donkey hurt another creature.


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## egrogan

Another very nice ride yesterday. We did a lot more long trotting, she actually never got into the wild, rushy feeling trot and just settled in to a very rideable, balanced, even trot. Walked home on the buckle, nice and relaxed. No more corn in the fields though:









I also had another mini-victory. This will sound silly given the miles of trails we've put in this summer, but the last real block was this "trail" around the main turn-out field behind the barn. It's really just a grass path mowed two horse-widths wide. When I first started thinking about trails last spring, this was the first option I had to start riding outside the ring, and Isabel would fight me tooth and nail about going on it. She'd balk, back up, throw her head around and pulls the reins out of my hands to avoid it- she was even so bad that I could barely hand walk her out there, she'd try to rub me up against the electric fence even when I had a dressage whip in my hand. Really discouraging. So even though we've ridden so many different places this summer, I'd avoided asking her to go on this "trail"- yesterday, she was really sweaty so I needed to keep walking her out after we got back to the barn, and I figured we should try it. She acted like it had never been a problem, headed out there on the same nice loose rein and was interested in what her pasture mates were up to:









Two long trail rides in a row, Isabel let me know how she felt afterwards:









Heading out to the barn now and planning on a light arena day.


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## Zexious

So glad to hear she is doing well  Between the ear pics are my favorite


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## egrogan

Haven't posted in awhile as things have been crazy at work. Izzy has basically gotten a three-week vacation as the time just slipped away from me. We're into hunting season here now, so I am also a bit more limited in where I can ride.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a fun Halloween show at the barn for the therapeutic riding program where I teach, so Isabel dressed up with another bay Morgan mare as the Dr. Seuss characters "Thing 1 and Thing 2"- they were pretty cute. 









Yesterday I finally jumped on for a real ride, and she was feeling good. Spunky but fun. Today we had a Mounted Games day as a Volunteer Appreciation event for our therapeutic riding volunteers- we played all the silly games we have our riders play, and it was a blast. Here we are in action doing some "pole bending" (ignore my yucky piano hands please! )









And that's us right in the dead center, relaxing while the other two teams played and we waited our turn. For a horse that doesn't show and never does group lessons, she was pretty unfazed about having 9 horses in our tiny arena.









It's going to be pretty busy right up through the holidays, but I am really hoping I can get in more barn time, I miss how much I was riding all summer. This early dark thing stinks!


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## egrogan

Took my wooly mammoth out for a ride on a cold, blustery day. The wind was biting, but compared to my friends who have 5-6 feet of snow out in Buffalo right now, I'll take a little bit of cold wind and clear ground!

I don't think Isabel was too impressed with the weather. Every time the wind kicked up in her face, she let me know she thought we should be heading back to the barn. Still had a nice little ride though.

_Seriously lady, are you CRAZY? The pond is frozen, and look, there are snowflakes in my mane:









_Wind tousling her mane:


















Looking longingly towards home:


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## egrogan

We're going into a bit of a warm spell, so took advantage with a nice ride yesterday. She definitely warms up more easily when it's even just 10-15*F warmer than it has been on the really chilly days. I'm going to have to think hard about our winter riding schedule to try to keep her pretty flexible and comfortable.

But, no need to think about that this week, when it's going to be 50-60*F!










She knows my lovely husband is the treat man when he comes to visit:


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## egrogan

*Isabel has a snow day!*

It's been a crazy day weather-wise. We are bracing for a Nor'Easter- just in time for Thanksgiving. 

When I went out to see Isabel this morning, some flurries were just starting:









At the beginning of our ride, still not much snow, so kept the door to the indoor open:









The snow got a little heavier as we warmed up. She was absolutely fascinated by the snow falling, and kept drifting over to the door, wanting to go out:









So we did:









And it got progressively heavier:









We were both pretty covered by the time we were done:



























She was pretty happy to go back inside after our little adventure:


















Put her back outside, and she immediately had a good roll. Her buddy Tinkerbelle was feeling pretty frisky, having a good buck and fart:





Glad that I'm tucked in at home now and don't have to go back out on the roads today. It's pretty slick out there!


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## SueC

*Super* photos there!  That one of you on your horse in the snow beaming is one to enlarge and frame and put on your wall!


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## egrogan

Thanks, Sue! I was lucky someone was outside when we rode by, it was a great photo op! I have almost no pictures where Izzy is actually looking at the camera- luckily, a field full of dopey geldings was directly behind the person with the camera, and that held her attention.









The weather here is just crazy. We had at least a foot of snow yesterday- we shouldn't have that much for at least another month.









Chickens were NOT impressed this morning:


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## egrogan

Isabel had an exciting "first" today- we went on our first real winter trail ride. The snow had melted considerably from the 12" we had a few days ago, but there were still several inches on the ground.

I am not a big "black Friday" shopper, but my local tack shop did have a great deal on riding sheets. No one is going to mistake us for a deer riding through the woods. 









Appropriately visible, we set off on our normal route through the hay field across the street. Stupidly, I had not ridden Izzy in the new quarter sheet at all to test it out. I'm not sure if she didn't like the feel of it, or she didn't like the snow, or she was just feeling frisky because of the weather and several days off- but whatever the reason, the sassy thing _tried to buck me off!_ This is the least disobedient horse in the world, so I actually don't even really know if it was a full buck, or a little crowhop, or what, but all of a sudden she started snorting and had a little tantrum. It was actually quite funny. I just squeezed her on, and we headed across the field and into the woods.









Of course, there were monsters hiding on every tree branch. 








I am sure the woods did look completely different to her, since the branches were hanging lower under the weight of the snow, the ground was covered, etc. She looked and snorted at everything, but kept going. It was actually quite fun to have to think about really riding her instead of just letting her go on auto-pilot. My go-to with her when she's nervous is to sing, so I belted out all the old sorority pledging songs I could remember, and we made it through our loop. 

As soon as we turned for home, her head was up and she got a little jiggy, so we just did big serpentines all across the field and took our time. 

I think riding in this new landscape will be like teaching her to trail ride all over again. Look forward to having more adventures with her this winter!


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## egrogan

Stopped by the barn quickly this morning just to run my hands over her legs and make sure the snowy footing didn't strain anything or make her sore (I'm a worrywart, I know...). Of course, she was fine.

Couldn't resist sharing this nose shot though:


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> My go-to with her when she's nervous is to sing, so I belted out all the old sorority pledging songs I could remember, and we made it through our loop.


Funny...I do the same thing with Ana...but our song is "She's a good girl, loves her momma, loves trail rides, and pasture buds, too" :lol:


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Funny...I do the same thing with Ana...but our song is "She's a good girl, loves her momma, loves trail rides, and pasture buds, too" :lol:


Love it! I can totally hear the tune- will have to add this to our playlist. I am not a big music person and always run out of songs I can remember the words to! I often resort to Christmas carols too, and enjoy changing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" to "Isabel the big grumpy mare."


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## SueC

Ah, it's so nice to see I'm not the only crazy person around here! :rofl: I've done the same thing: Sing when trail riding. When you're doing a posting trot, you kind of have to have something with a matching rhythm, or it goes all belly-up!

I will also confess to crazier stuff: Teaching horses onomatopoeic words to associate with different objects/animals they may spook at. (Works in my dog too: If I say "broom-broom" she immediately runs for the car waiting to get in...) ...so if there's a cow behind the bush and I know it's a cow and the horse doesn't yet, I might say, "That's right, boy, it's a cow. Mooooooo!" And when he sees it, "See, told you. Mooooo!" It kind of stops them spooking to do that... especially when they learn the sounds and notice you are predicting the experience correctly.

Kangaroos are harder: They are silent, so I make a "boing-boing" sound to alert my horse to kangaroos, in imitation of their jumping through the undergrowth. It's fun, and helpful. Doing this crazy noise thing also relaxes the rider, I suspect, and that transfers to the horse, as with singing (unless it's really bad singing... I have been known to sing the Lumberjack Song when running out of ideas... :rofl...


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## kenda

Your journal has seriously inspired me. I've read the whole thing and I've been wanting to get my mare out on the trail but was seriously lacking in access, not having a trailer and my coach/friends aren't so much into trail riding. I managed to arrange a mountain trail ride on my mare for her first one ever during the summer which was awesome. I was intimidated to go out on my own on the road with my girl at the barn I was at. But I moved to a new barn last weekend that has direct access to lots of trail miles.

Today was perfect weather, although a little windy and chilly, and I sucked it up and rode out alone and she was fabulous! A little spooky and very look-y, but we got out! I even got to let her go almost on the buckle for bits of it! It was amazing and I'm so glad I proved to myself, and she proved to me, that we could do it. Anyways, thanks for the inspiration!


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## egrogan

kenda said:


> Your journal has seriously inspired me. I've read the whole thing and I've been wanting to get my mare out on the trail but was seriously lacking in access, not having a trailer and my coach/friends aren't so much into trail riding. I managed to arrange a mountain trail ride on my mare for her first one ever during the summer which was awesome. I was intimidated to go out on my own on the road with my girl at the barn I was at. But I moved to a new barn last weekend that has direct access to lots of trail miles.
> 
> Today was perfect weather, although a little windy and chilly, and I sucked it up and rode out alone and she was fabulous! A little spooky and very look-y, but we got out! I even got to let her go almost on the buckle for bits of it! It was amazing and I'm so glad I proved to myself, and she proved to me, that we could do it. Anyways, thanks for the inspiration!


Wow, Kenda, what a lovely story. I'm so glad to hear that you and your mare are embarking on this adventure. It sounds sort of cheesy, but the freedom of riding out of the ring has really changed my whole perspective on my horse and my riding. 

Looks like you have a gorgeous place to ride in and I wish you many happy miles of trails together! Please post back here when you feel like it. 

I absolutely love between-the-ear pictures and this little journal is my outlet for them. My lovely husband tries to be supportive of horsey things but thinks that every ear shot looks exactly the same


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## kenda

I totally know how you feel. When my husband asks me how the day was it's a happy "it was great, took Ry out on the trail and it was awesome!" But with my horsie friends, they get the whole play by play, every spook, every success.


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## egrogan

WELL. We had a bit of a dicey ride today. Now, I fully own that it has been basically two weeks since I've ridden, and I wasn't even out to the barn during the week for a groom and a pat at all this week because work is absolutely crazy. Seems that I have seriously offended Miss Isabel, and she let me know what she thought of being pulled out of her paddock and asked to go on a ride today.

We headed out on our regular trail route. This is a 4-ish mile loop in which we ride across a big hay feed, skirt the outside of the parking lot of a manufacturing facility, and around some cornfields. The footing was a little rough (slippery, wet, slushy) coming through the woods between the hay field and the parking lot, and I could tell Isabel wasn't super comfortable. We don't usually have to ride _on _the paved parking lot but the snowbanks meant there was no "shoulder," and she was a bit suspicious of that. But she really started getting jiggy and worked up when we headed around the cornfield. Now, my intention was just to walk, since we haven't worked at all and it was chilly, didn't want to ask too much of her. Usually if she's wound up, she'll relax nicely if I give her her head and just ride on the buckle. So I tried that, here she is fairly relaxed:









But, not so long after I snapped this picture, we came around the last corner of the cornfield, which is a spot where I usually let her canter a bit. The footing wasn't good, and I really intended to walk, so I held her back. She started throwing her head all around, and then went into her patented "bad behavior" move- snake her head to the right, grab the bit, drop her shoulder, crowhop, and try to bolt. Usually as soon as I feel her drop that shoulder, I can straighten her out, but she caught me this time. It just so happened we were riding along a line of 5-6 small trees that are a buffer between the cornfield and the road. She bolted right through them (was wearing a helmet but could feel the branches slapping my head), and I tried to get her back by circling around them. Grabbing hold of her mouth made her buck, at which point I lost my stirrups (not quite sure how) and then she did bolt, so here I am with branches hitting me in the face and cantering stirrupless, thinking she may truly be a runaway at this point. I really am not sure how I stuck on, my abs are sore so I assume I just clung on for dear life. I eventually was able to one-rein stop her (probably the scariest part because she was heading for the icy shoulder of the road and I was worried we were going to go down). I got myself rearranged back in the saddle again, regained my stirrups, but she was not done, kept crowhopping and for a minute I seriously considered just getting off and walking home. But, I thought that would probably cause more problems in the long run, so stayed on. Once we got off the cornfield and crossed back into the woods, she was at least a little better. I was able to halt, leg yield a little both ways, and do some circles around bushes and other natural obstacles to disengage her high end a bit when she started to get all coiled again. By the time we got the hayfield, she was walking relatively calmly like nothing happened. Uggh. Not a fun ride at all. We got through it, but lesson learned. As much as I trust her, taking a super fresh horse out across less-than-ideal footing on a brisk, windy day is not the smartest thing. We'll have an arena day tomorrow with our cool-out around the hayfield.

Here she was just a couple of minutes before her little fit- alert, but not devilish looking, right?


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## egrogan

Back to normal today. Warmed up for about 30 minutes in the indoor, with the silly quarter sheet on. It occurred to me that the only two times that she's acted up so badly were the only two times she'd ever worn the quarter sheet, so seemed like a little desentization wouldn't hurt. She was stiff-stiff-stiff today. I am not riding nearly enough these days, and it shows. After working a bit, I got her moving reasonably well in all 3 gaits and decided to head outside. 

Instead of moseying down the driveway like we usually do, we trotted off with a sense of purpose. As soon as we crossed the road to the hayfield, I could feel her thinking about trying to pull back towards home. I put that right rein on her neck and my right leg on, and just drove her forward. She didn't try any nonsense again. I let her trot and canter around the hayfield, and she was fine, if a little strong at canter. But we can work on that. She was listening and going where I wanted when I wanted. 

When we came back to the barn, I turned her loose in the indoor so she could roll in the sand (the ground outside is slushy and muddy). Contemplating the right spot to roll:









After that, she just sort of followed me around like a puppy. I sat down on the tall mounting ramp we use for therapeutic lessons, and just watched her for a bit. Very peaceful to just hang out with her like that. Eventually she came up to where I was sitting and dosed off with her nose in my lap. 









She looked old to me today. I hate that I am so busy at work right now and don't have more time to spend with her.


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## SueC

She's looking all right!  Horses always look older when they're in shaggy winter coats and having a sleep. Here's a horse that really does look old for comparison:










You can't see the telltale deep cavity above the eye as it's covered by the tree lucerne, but you can see how grey he's getting around the face. This is our Romeo half a year ago. He turned 30 in November and has been four molars down for a year now, and getting large twice-daily feeds of soaked horse cubes, copra and canola meal in fine-cut chaff, to supplement green growing things he can pick up from the pasture. He's been unable to process hay for several years, but is still enjoying his life, and having regular running sessions with his friends.

Not spending as much time working with our horses as we like: Life is often like that. So many things to do just to keep the head above water...

A Merry Christmas season to you, family, friends and, of course, your horse!


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## egrogan

Aww, Sue, Romeo has such a sweet face. Looks like a lovely boy. 

Of course you're right that they don't look their best in the winter woolies, but Isabel has so much more grey in her coat this year. She will be 21 this February.


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## SueC

Well, you know how they say old is relative, and when you turn 40, cultivate the friendship of octogenarians for perspective! ;-) The life expectancies of Morgans and SBs are around the same, and most of my father's older SB horses died between ages 25 and 29. This one holds the record, and he was ridden (lightly) until he was nearly 29. There are also a few reports of SBs living into their early and mid 30s.

Horses that die of age-related natural causes usually get a bit uncoordinated and doddery a few months to a year or so beforehand. One 28-year-old mare we had just slowed right down, and then detached herself from her grown-up daughter and best buddy, and started walking around all over the farm by herself, looking the whole of my parents' 120 acres over, going walking on the fastwork track by herself and all around the bush tracks she'd trained on as a young horse. She was extra snuggly for the whole week, and in good spirits, and eating well. One morning my father found her curled up in her box. She just looked asleep, but had actually departed. That was quite remarkable. Her daughter just seemed to know and didn't call for her as buddies usually will.

One thing that's for sure is that exercising them and keeping their lives interesting improves their health and prolongs their lives, so you guys are totally on the right track!


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## Northernstar

SueC said:


> Ah, it's so nice to see I'm not the only crazy person around here! :rofl: I've done the same thing: Sing when trail riding. When you're doing a posting trot, you kind of have to have something with a matching rhythm, or it goes all belly-up!
> 
> I will also confess to crazier stuff: Teaching horses onomatopoeic words to associate with different objects/animals they may spook at. (Works in my dog too: If I say "broom-broom" she immediately runs for the car waiting to get in...) ...so if there's a cow behind the bush and I know it's a cow and the horse doesn't yet, I might say, "That's right, boy, it's a cow. Mooooooo!" And when he sees it, "See, told you. Mooooo!" It kind of stops them spooking to do that... especially when they learn the sounds and notice you are predicting the experience correctly.
> 
> Kangaroos are harder: They are silent, so I make a "boing-boing" sound to alert my horse to kangaroos, in imitation of their jumping through the undergrowth. It's fun, and helpful. Doing this crazy noise thing also relaxes the rider, I suspect, and that transfers to the horse, as with singing (unless it's really bad singing... I have been known to sing the Lumberjack Song when running out of ideas... :rofl...


HaHa You crazy Aussie! I do stuff like that with my girls too! We four have our own 'universal language'


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> WELL. We had a bit of a dicey ride today. Now, I fully own that it has been basically two weeks since I've ridden, and I wasn't even out to the barn during the week for a groom and a pat at all this week because work is absolutely crazy. Seems that I have seriously offended Miss Isabel, and she let me know what she thought of being pulled out of her paddock and asked to go on a ride today.


Ha, ha...Ana does that too...it's like she's saying "Well, well, well...look who decided to show up today"...followed by "how dare you drag me out of my pasture ?!?"


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## egrogan

Very proud of Izzy today. On Saturday mornings, I teach a few therapeutic riding lessons, but this morning, I also subbed in for another instructor to cover a beginner "able bodied" lesson. Got to teach two adorable little 7 year olds who are just learning how to post the trot. 

I decided to use Izzy as one of the lesson horses, and she was just wonderful. I jumped on her bareback first thing this morning to be sure she wasn't full of herself, and then lunged her for a few minutes after that. We started the lesson with a volunteer leader just so the rider could get comfortable with a new horse, and then for the rest of the lesson, this little girl was riding independently. Isabel was great for the trotting portions, and the rider had a great little seat. Izzy held herself in a nice little frame and was a great teacher for the posting trot.

Her previous home was a family that had 8 little kids, and she just loves being around them. She's so polite and careful, and her eyes just turn all soft and lovey when kids are around. It's really nice to see her happy like that. She looked so proud of herself when she got her carrot at the end of the lesson.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Very proud of Izzy today. On Saturday mornings, I teach a few therapeutic riding lessons, but this morning, I also subbed in for another instructor to cover a beginner "able bodied" lesson. Got to teach two adorable little 7 year olds who are just learning how to post the trot.
> 
> I decided to use Izzy as one of the lesson horses, and she was just wonderful. I jumped on her bareback first thing this morning to be sure she wasn't full of herself, and then lunged her for a few minutes after that. We started the lesson with a volunteer leader just so the rider could get comfortable with a new horse, and then for the rest of the lesson, this little girl was riding independently. Isabel was great for the trotting portions, and the rider had a great little seat. Izzy held herself in a nice little frame and was a great teacher for the posting trot.
> 
> Her previous home was a family that had 8 little kids, and she just loves being around them. She's so polite and careful, and her eyes just turn all soft and lovey when kids are around. It's really nice to see her happy like that. She looked so proud of herself when she got her carrot at the end of the lesson.


Awww, how adorable. Ana is the same way. She just loves kids; she will walk extra slow so that they don't get scared. Horses are so smart!


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## egrogan

A perfect horsey Christmas Eve.

First, Izzy got to come in from the rain and have the whole ring to herself to roll and run and buck:




































Then, she got a bowl full of carrots, apples, and mints from her favorite treat guy:
_


















Got any more in there??



























_Merry Christmas everyone!


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## frlsgirl

Looks like the perfect way to spend Christmas!

Merry Christmas!


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## egrogan

I have just been loving this vacation. I've ridden 10 out of the last 11 days and seen Izzy every day. Can't think of the last time I could say that. We've been keeping the rides short (~30 min) since both of us are so out of shape for riding, but I have been doing most of it stirrupless and really working on my seat and the quality of Izzy's walk and trot. We've mostly been in the ring since it's been unseasonably warm and rainy (40*F in December is almost unheard of here!) and while the warmth is great, the rain (and melting snow) does mean the outdoor footing is pretty soggy and I don't want to tear up the ground around the barn or at our neighbor's. So, no trail rides to speak of.

Here's Miss Isabel looking cute but also like she has gigantic mule ears:









All the walk and trot work has been worthwhile I think, but Isabel has really not been wanting to canter in the ring. I don't really know how to describe it, but she just feels "sticky," like she just doesn't want to go forward. I think a lot of it is fitness and balance (hence much more work at the trot). The last couple of days when I've been able to get outside a little more, she has been so much better when she's just got some wide open space in front of her, so we've been doing long canters up hills and down the driveway to the barn. She moves much more freely in that situation than in the ring. Much more fun for me too.

Still a bit unbelievable that it's December and all the snow is _melted_. 









It's going to be an unpleasant shock when it gets cold and back to normal later this week. Oh well, we have definitely enjoyed the warm weather and all the great riding!


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## frlsgirl

Wanted to share this with you...Ana loves going on trail rides but her expression changes when we have to return to the barn. I've never met a horse that's so happy to go out on the trail and throws such a fit when we have to go back.


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## egrogan

Ha! Ana has so much personality. I can't quite figure out Isabel's preferences. If we're riding in the ring with the doors open, she looks longingly out the door every time we go past and is always ready for the slightest indication that I'm ready to go outside. She seems to love riding all around the barn property and checking out all the other horses in their paddocks. She seems less enthusiastic when we cross the road and ride out towards the real trails. We cross a hayfield that's long and flat, so room for a nice free canter, and she will do that enthusiastically- but when we hit the end of the field, we have to ride across an old outdoor ring that used to be used for Pony Club, and you'd think the second her hoof touches that dirt footing, she's about to be swallowed up by quicksand. She HATES that spot, followed pretty closely by the ride through the woods which connects us to another set of fields. She's generally pretty happy once we get out to the open corn fields (another good spot for a good trot or canter). She is also usually pretty enthusiastic about going back to the barn though. Who knows!

Anyway, had our last ride of 2014 this morning. It was a cold one!









We were out early enough it was very pretty with all the frost still on the ground:



















We had to ride through some dicey frozen mud/rocks through the woods, and she _really _didn't want to go through it. I feel sort of bad, I think I should have listened to her telling me she didn't feel good about it, when we got back she seemed a little short on her left hind so I'm wondering if she didn't tweak something a little? Her feet were all fine and nothing in that leg was obviously hot or swollen, but we'll see how she's moving tomorrow.

It's a shame though that there's this one really rough spot in the woods, because the rest of the trail was really clear and nice, if a little hard. 










I'm going to have to think about how I can still use the trail in the woods even with the one rough patch- it would mean riding on the road a little more than I'd like, but I could enter the trail at a different point and wouldn't have to go through the spot that is perpetually slick.


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## kenda

Maybe you could do a little bushwacking on foot in a shallow loop through the woods around that slick spot?


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## egrogan

Kenda, that's a good idea. However, we don't own the land- it belongs to the neighbor across the street from where I board- and I wouldn't want to do something like that without permission. He's notoriously hard to get in touch with though, so I'm not sure I'd be able to have a conversation with him in a timely way.

That said, since the trees are bare, I might be able to just squeeze through a different opening between the field and the trail, so that could be an alternative option.


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## SueC

Loved the photos, especially the Christmas ones!  Happy New Year to all of you.


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## egrogan

Well, back to reality today. My two-week vacation is over, bummer. After a great first week, where I was riding every day, I got the flu last week and was in bed for most of it. We also got an awful ice storm over the weekend, and the footing everywhere is just rotten, so I probably wouldn't have been able to do much riding anyway. Temps are looking to be in the single digits, and even on down to -10*F this week, so doesn't seem like the footing will improve any time soon. Not quite sure what that will mean for outdoor riding the rest of the winter. I'm hoping that when we have a deep layer of snow on top of the ice, it will be safe to ride out, but I do worry about that.

At any rate, I was finally feeling good enough this morning to hit the barn before work, and did a short lunging session with Izzy. It's been forever since I've done any real longe work with her. I'm definitely an amateur with the line, but a few years ago I was fortunate enough to have a series of lessons with a former trainer, who taught me all the fundamentals of in-hand work in the short time we worked together. I only wish she had stayed at our barn longer, there's so much more I would have liked to have learned and she really knew her stuff. 

I worked with Isabel for about 15-20 minutes, did some simple w-t-c in both directions and then added in a few poles on a circle and a little crossrail with the poles on some risers. She did surprisingly well- she picked up her feet like a pro. Her right canter is by far her weakest gait, and she did stumble a little over the crossrail in that direction the first time, but after that she cantered right over it twice more with no incidents. I'll have to see if I can get a video of her doing this, but I swear this horse just has no back muscles at all- there is just no lift when she steps over poles. I really wish that my schedule would allow us to have a more consistent riding/workout routine. But, I suppose this light lunging work is another tool to get her moving at least a little on days I don't have time to go and ride. I have a book of lunging exercises somewhere, I'll have to dig it up and see what sorts of fun exercises I can use- she does seem to respond really well to something new and unusual. She had a lot of pep once she realized we were doing something interesting and different with the poles today, so that was fun to see.

And here she is, after working SO HARD for 20 whole minutes, she just couldn't wait to get back to her paddock for a drink, and absolutely had to take a few bites of snow on the way:


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## frlsgirl

I hear you on the weather and being sick; that sucks. I'm sick with a sinus infection and it's bitterly cold out; haven't done much with Ana this week which means she'll be a fire cracker next week.

Longe work can be great for building muscle and stamina; that's how Ana got most of her muscles. She seems to enjoy longe work providing that I don't do it too often.

You may need to wait until Isabel adjusts to the longe work before adding ground poles; I usually do three in a row and I set them up in a fan shape; then I make sure she's got a good forward trot; that helps with rythm and suspension. Longe work can be so much fun - Enjoy!


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## egrogan

Finally got in my first ride of the year! Phew- that was a long time in coming. We are out of the polar vortex, temps are comfortable again (i.e., about 20*F) but the whole place is just a skating rink. I think we will be riding in the indoor for the foreseeable future:









Anyway, Isabel was NOT having a good day today. She was pushy and reeeealllly herdbound. Wow, I have not seen her pull that herdbound stuff in forever. Today she was in a small turnout with 2 other mares (space is really at a premium right now because of the ice everywhere), and the lead mare (Tinkerbelle) went sort of ballistic screaming and screaming for Isabel, who promptly started calling back. 

As soon as I got the bridle on her, her head was up, her eyes were big, and her mind was clearly elsewhere. She was very rude on the ground leading to the mounting block, but I hopped on, and that definitely helped her settle. The first 5 minutes of the ride she continued to call back and forth with the other mare (didn't help that the turnout is directly outside the arena, and the door is frozen open, so every time we rode by they saw each other). 

But, once we got to work, she actually softened a ton and really put her mind on the job. Since it's been nearly 3 weeks since she's been ridden at all, I kept it to a short walk/trot session, probably just 25 minutes or so. We did a ton of direction changes, serpentines, went over ground poles, stuff to get her busy bending and listening. I was actually pleasantly surprised that she wasn't really stiff and seemed to actually carry herself fairly nicely on a long rein. Of course, I didn't really ask for much, but she moved much better than I was expecting. Hopefully the weather will stay warm enough that we can get back into a routine.
_
Tinkerbelle...are you out there..._









_Mind back on business:
_


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## frlsgirl

20F is comfortable? Yikes, I wouldn't last long; my bottom is 27F and even then I just do light work.

Glad you got to ride though; it's weird how they can be totally independent one day, and the next day they are stuck together like superglue. We are going through the same thing right now with Ana and her pasture mate.


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## egrogan

Poor Izzy, the snow is getting to be so extreme that I almost lost her in a snow drift walking back up from the field today!!









She doesn't really seem to mind it though, even though the snow is up to her belly. 









I think she's a bit bored because she kept trying to drift off towards the woods/trails, even she's ready for a change of scenery and something to do....But it was 7*F today, I just can't bring myself to ride when it's this cold. 

Poor girl, she was definitely a grump when I turned her out in the indoor to burn off a little steam today. She was mad at the empty feed bucket, mad at her reflection in the mirror, mad at the little rope keeping her confined in the ring...





Spring IS coming, right?! _Seriously..._


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## kenda

She's so adorable. My little mare does the exact same head swing when she's annoyed. We've had gorgeous weather but I can't ride because we are dealing with hind end lameness right now. She is going to get her stifle injected this week and then hopefully we can start getting back to work soon. I'm getting a little stir crazy with these gorgeous sunny, 15+ C days we've been having and no horse to ride.


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## egrogan

Thanks, Kenda. She is definitely one of the bossy-mare types. When I put her back out in the field, she went charging through the deep snow to make sure one of her pasturemates could no longer have access to _her _pile of hay. She is going to be a ton of fun to ride later this spring 

Sorry to hear about your mare's lameness issues. Hope she does well with the injections- that doesn't sound like fun at all.


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## kenda

I've got my fingers crossed that the injection does the trick. My vet believes that the stifle is at least 75% of the problem, so if the rest is down to compensating for the stifle, than I'll be a happy girl. If not, well we'll have to explore further. She's not three legged lame by any means, in fact you'd have to look very closely to see the gate abnormality, ridden or not. But she flexed quite lame so I've not ridden for the last month and have had some blocks/xrays/US done. Anyways, fingers crossed.

Here's hoping you get some better weather so you can get back out there.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Thanks, Kenda. She is definitely one of the bossy-mare types. When I put her back out in the field, she went charging through the deep snow to make sure one of her pasturemates could no longer have access to _her _pile of hay. She is going to be a ton of fun to ride later this spring .


 Ana is the same way; it's HER hay and she makes sure that everyone is very clear on that :lol:


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## egrogan

Woohoo! 25*F and sunny today. The sun felt so WARM. It was great to get blankets off the horses too:








(That's the "boss mare," Tinkerbelle, on Izzy's right).

It was too nice not to ride! 









Given it's been about a month, we took it nice and easy. The outdoor grounds were too icy to go outside, so we just stayed inside, just a leisurely stroll around the indoor, some bending, walking over poles, a little walk/trot. 









She is super stiff, but hey, she's had the better part of two months off, so what can you do? 

It was just nice to sit on a horse again!


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## egrogan

Gorgeous bright, sunny day today. Stopped by to see Izzy this morning, I didn't have time to ride but we did take her for a walk down the road for bit.

It's been so fun to see my husband get more comfortable with her over the years, he's gotten good at handling her:









A little dicey walking on the road because there are no shoulders with all the ice and snow, and people go around some of the corners pretty quickly. So, we'd didn't go far, but it was nice just to do something different!









All the geldings were about 1/4 mile up the road and ran to the edge of their pasture to check out what was happening- Izzy appreciated the attention:









And a little turnout in the ring, you can see it's still cold. 









The sun makes it feel better though. Next week we should have temps consistently touching 30*, should be nice.


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## Wallaby

This: 









is such a sweet picture! I love it. 

To be honest, I am SO jealous of all the snow you guys have gotten. I adore snow and we haven't gotten any this year...not one single flake.  
We usually get at least a few inches every year, but I guess last year, when we got a few feet, was "enough" for two years. :lol:

...can we trade for a week, just kidding, a few days? haha


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## egrogan

Aww, thanks. I like that picture a lot too 

I would be happy to ship you as much snow as you want- 1 foot? 2? 4? Sounds like we're getting more tonight, so just let me know how much you want! Seeing your green pastures in Fabs' thread makes me extremely jealous.


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## egrogan

*Happy 21st Birthday Isabel!*

Izzy celebrated her 21st birthday on Monday. She got a big ginger molasses cookie, some carrots, a walk around the farm, and a "pedicure" (i.e., farrier happened to come that day too :wink









No one at the barn can believe she's as old as she is.

Since it was her 21st, I really wanted to bring her out a Guinness to celebrate, but I ultimately decided that as a therapy barn with lots of kids around, that probably wouldn't have made the best impression. I'm sure somewhere in my contract, it says no alcohol on the property. Oh well, would have been a funny picture but she thought the molasses cookie was just about the best thing she had ever seen, so she was happy.


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## frlsgirl

Happy birthday Izzy!


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## SueC

...is your husband extraordinarily tall, or was that a camera angle thing?

...when my husband first met Sunsmart eight years ago, he said, "I am never going to be on the same side of the fence as that monster!" (He was used to my sweet, polite, small-ish, senior citizen Arabian mare, so a cranky, large-ish, late-cut stallion was a bit of a contrast.) And my reply was: :rofl: ...it only took him a couple of months to get past that statement. And these days, they positively hobnob...

Happy birthday Izzy!


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## Zexious

Happy birthday, Izzy! She doesn't look a day over 8 ;D!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> ...is your husband extraordinarily tall, or was that a camera angle thing?


Sue, he is fairly tall, a bit over 6 feet, and she's pretty tiny, 14.1-14.2

I think the issue in that picture is that I'm standing up a hill behind them taking it, he's walking on the hard-packed snow path that is higher than the softer snow she's sinking in to as she walks off the path. She does look tiny next to him generally, but I think that picture overstates it.

Thanks for all the birthday wishes everyone! 

We got in a brief outdoor ride yesterday after some arena work. Boy, the two of us are realllllly out of shape. We rode around the barn a bit, things are still a bit slick so we took it slow, but it's melted enough that there's slush and ice instead of just ice.









Here is the lovely lady eagerly waiting for dinner after her "workout" (i.e., walking around for 25 minutes).


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## frlsgirl

Ana will be 7 in June and she acts the exact same way; if I ride her around on a loose rein for 30 minutes she thinks she had a work-out and needs to "rest" lol.


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## egrogan

It was 52*F yesterday! I snuck out of work early to get in a late afternoon ride, and I'm so glad I did, it was beautiful out. Mud season is definitely here! Someone enjoyed rubbing her face in the mud at some point during the day:









We had to stay primarily in the ring, since the footing is so sloppy and snowbanks are still around, but even being able to open all the doors and smell the fresh air was good.

I've decided for the next week or so, I'm going to plan for ~20 minutes of walking while Isabel gets used to being ridden again, with a bit of trotting as she gets too bored with walking. We did tons of school figures, walk/halt transitions, etc. It IS boring, but I think it's necessary as she's just really very out of shape. 

Tracking right has always been her worst direction, but I was having a ton of problems with her being very counterbent in all of our work to the right. I don't want to make too big a deal of it as she is stiff and out of shape, and so am I- I know I tend to have a problem with how I hold my right hip, so I think I contribute to her crookedness. It's still frustrating though. I will need to get a video next time I can get my husband out there with me so I can get some extra eyes on our problems.

Anyway, after our 20 minutes of walking, we did go outside to walk around the property where we could. 

Isabel has never really liked walking through puddles, and usually the ones we encounter are tiny enough that she can evade them by sort of dragging her feet through the very edges and not having to walk through them fully. But, this huge lake in the parking lot was a great opportunity. 








She reeeeallllyyy did not want to go through it, but I just urged her on, gave her her head, and kept her going forward. She stopped in the middle, and pawed and splashed in it. I think maybe she worries about not being able to tell about the depth of the water, so she'd prefer to avoid it. Anyway, we rode through it a few times approaching it from different angles. She didn't love it, but she did it.

When we got to the end of the driveway, it was clear that the snowbanks on the other side of the street were still too high to allow us to cross through to the fields, so we just stood looking longingly across the street for a minute and then turned around for another lap of the driveway.









Here's Izzy with her doppleganger, another 20 year old bay Morgan mare:


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## Zexious

Glad the weather is clearing up for you! I totally hear the ground being sloppy--my barn is a giant mud puddle. Thank goodness for indoors!


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## egrogan

Izzy and I had a GREAT ride today. Not really sure why, she was just full of energy in a good way. I could actually feel her lift her back up, she was very forward, just ready to go. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been riding in very small increments at mostly walk with a little trot thrown in, because it was such a long winter off. Today though, she was super energetic, so we still walked a lot, but she was clearly very ready to do more trotting. She felt so good and balanced on a 20-meter circle we even cantered a bit, first time for that in a good 3 months or so. 

I'm also happy with myself, this will sound silly but I definitely am at times a nervous rider. We had a snow squall last night into this morning, and enough had accumulated on the roof of the indoor that once the sun came out, big chunks were sliding and dripping off the roof, which freaks out a lot of the horses at the barn. One of the steady eddy school horses had a bit of a meltdown from sliding snow right as I was getting ready to ride. Now, normally I would get myself psyched out about Isabel flipping out (the one time I've fallen off of her, it was because of a big sliding snow incident, and I've just never shaken it). Instead, rather than anticipate that she was going to lose it, I convinced myself that she may very well notice it, but that extra energy she generated would actually be a lot of fun to ride- and sure enough, it was, the ride was great. I know, logically, that she's a great horse who is not going to do anything dangerous, but I sometimes just can't control that involuntary physical reaction. I have to be honest, after reading so often on this forum when people are given the advice "don't anticipate your horse being scared or freaking out," I think I've finally turned the corner with my personal mindset.










Best news of all, after I rode I handwalked her around the farm a bit. We walked across the street to check on the snowbank melting progress, and great news, the snow has melted enough that we can connect back with to the neighbro's hayfield, which is ultimately the conduit to the trails! Wooo hooo! Non-arena riding will be upon us soon!


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## egrogan

A little bit of photo spam from a really nice weekend.

Saturday was "Maple Weekend" here in New Hampshire, so my husband and I visited a friend's sugarhouse to see their new equipment, which was super impressive. Had some delicious maple cream made that morning and hot syrup that had just finished boiling- hard to beat that! 

We spent most of our day at the sugarhouse, but swung by the barn to see Izzy on our way home. Poor thing is shedding like mad, she is itchy everywhere. Her favorite treat guy helped her out with some good brushing:


















Oooohhhh....that's the spot....










Sunday, I got in a morning ride. We rode in the arena but cooled out by riding across the street in our neighbor's field. It has melted a lot. There is still snow, but a considerable portion of the field is now grass again (though the footing was still pretty hard and frozen).

Here's the snowy part:









But the grassy part!


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## frlsgirl

She's so cute. I love her fuzzy ears.


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## egrogan

Did something a little different with Isabel yesterday. She's shedding so much, I knew I wanted to use most of my barn time to give her a really intense grooming, and didn't have time to do that plus ride. So instead, we took a few minutes and went on a nice in-hand trail walk.

We checked out some big branches that had been blown across the trail over the winter:








We marvelled at the thawing wetlands:









We admired the beautiful stone walls around the property:









We ambled along the snowmobile trails until more downed trees got in our way:









As you can probably tell, Isabel mostly saw this as an exciting opportunity to lip at some dead grass which was no longer covered by the snow.

Then, we had a massive shedding-out session:









She's starting to look a little shiny again. It's going to be 70*F today, definitely sneaking out of work a little early this afternoon to ride


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## egrogan

Got in a couple of rides this weekend with the warmer weather. Look, hardly any snow left out there:









*I would love some Forum feedback though*. I haven't been very happy with how Izzy has been moving the last couple of weeks now that I'm riding more. You all know it was a long, hard winter of very little riding. So, we're both out of shape, obviously (warning: massive hay belly in the video below!!). But I am getting increasingly worried that she is very resistant to moving forward, choppy in her motion, and seems really stiff in the hind end. I initially thought she was moving really short in her back right, so I got a video clip yesterday. But after watching it a couple of times, it almost looks like she's shorter on her _left _hind in the video? Do you see that too?








https://youtu.be/zUGgriB8dUk

And, my horrible leg-pumping and excessively high and upright posting is a symptom of just how slow and choppy she's moving, but it's embarrassing to see such yucky riding  So overlook that if you can for now...


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## frlsgirl

I watched the video; it's not horrible or anything, she just looks a little sluggish and out of shape. Have you trotted her outside? Ana is a lot more forward outside so that is always a good way for me to tell if she's off. There have been times where I swore she was off but it disappears when we go outside. In the indoor, Ana will take her sweet time to get around; something about being confined in a small space just sucks the enthusiasm out of her. Izzy sure is cute; I recognize the tail swishing; Ana is a chronic tail communicator.


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## kenda

I would expect to see a lot more tail motion if she was in pain, given that she is a bit of a tail-talker. I think you are probably seeing the effects of lack of fitness. I would try doing some turn on the forehand from the ground or ridden and if she is significantly stiffer or more reluctant to one side, maybe consider having a vet out. In the video she doesn't look significantly one-sided to me, just not really working forward in general.

That being said, if in doubt, have the vet out. I let my girls little signs go for far too long before finally getting her looked at and I wish I had been more pro-active.


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## egrogan

Thanks for taking the time to check out the video.

Very funny you both picked up on her "tail talk"-she's also too smart for her own good, the tail swishing was totally because it was the time in our ride when we would typically start cantering, and she was anticipating that.

I rode again tonight, and she felt about the same. Very rough and choppy. 

I haven't done much more than walk around outside because the ground is still very unpredictable- fairly normal in spots, then ice under grass in others, and even really deep, sucking mud that has us sunk up to her pasterns. So I've just been taking it easy. But, her whole demeanor definitely brightens up when we get outside, and her walk at least improves, she has a little spring in her step.

The vet is coming next week for spring shots and check-ups, so I will certainly ask him to pay attention to her legs and back. Then the chiro will be out a couple of weeks after that.

But it sounds like neither of you saw any concerning lameness/shortness, just an out of shape horse and her out of shape rider?


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## egrogan

Our ride tonight:


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## kenda

Was she more forward and comfortable feeling outside?


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## egrogan

Kenda, I'm having some trouble telling how she is moving outside because the ground is so darn boggy. She seems more alert and relaxed walking down the driveway away from the barn, but when we get on the grass, it's very soft and squishy and she honestly acts like she's about to die. She moves One. foot. at. a. time. slowly and just acts like she's walking through quicksand. Forget asking her to trot. 

But aside from just acting different, I really do think something underneath me just doesn't feel quite right. For one, she seems to be tripping a lot more. I've noticed that her bars are very overgrown right now, which is unusual for her, as nothing has changed about her trimming schedule and she's never had a problem before. So maybe the stumbling is because her feet need some attention (he comes next week I believe, will check my calendar). Her left front seems very sensitive all of a sudden too- when I brushed the sole and around the frog with the hoof brush yesterday, she yanked her foot away pretty violently, something she's _never _done, she is super polite with her feet. Her frog looks a little thrushy, maybe that's making her uncomfortable too.

When riding though, she just feels weak under me. I can't really quite explain it. Now of course, she's very out of shape (exhibit 1, check out this belly):








Unfortunately because of my work schedule I've been in a bit of "weekend warrior" mode so far this spring, and I know that's not helping. I may consider seeing if one of the girls who works in the barn would like a little money to ride a couple of time a week for the next month to help Izzy get back in shape.

But otherwise, I don't know, she just feels sort of off to me in a nonspecific way. Vet comes for his spring visit on Tuesday, so I will get his opinion too, but my guess is he will say she's just out of shape, needs to drop some weight, and have more rides. All probably true. I just want to be sure I don't miss something important that she's trying to tell me...

A more flattering picture of our ride yesterday:


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## kenda

Well I hope you get everything figured out. I know how awful it is to have the feeling that something just isn't right but your horse can't tell you. If my girl had just limped ONCE I would've had the vet out a long time ago, but her symptoms were so vague and hard to read and everyone around just kept saying she was being a cow and I needed to push her through it and I allowed myself to along with that.


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## egrogan

Spppprrrriiinnngggggg is here! First ride in a t-shirt yesterday:








(Not sure about the stink eye-look on Izzy's face here. Trying out her best Mean Girl face I suppose.)

We had the ring to ourselves so warmed up inside briefly, but it was too nice to stay in so out we went. We rode all around the barn property, trotted up hills around the pastures a few times until the geldings were too riled up. Cooled out on a nice long rein by walking through the neighbor's fields. 

Still experienced more tripping than usual, and she wasn't super willing to trot when asked. Vet comes tomorrow, we'll see what he says.

In a sure sign of spring, all of my chickens laid yesterday- first time in months that's happened. They are happy girls


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## egrogan

Alright, so the vet came today for the spring visit. Unfortunately, our appt was for 1pm, but he was called to an emergency in route to our barn, so he wasn't able to get to us until 4pm. I had to get back to work and couldn't wait for him, so I had a long talk about my concerns with the BM before I left, and she brought all my concerns to the vet. She just gave me his assessment.

The news isn't great. Not terrible, but not great.

Izzy is definitely lame on the right hind. The vet thinks it is some mild arthritis in her lower hock just due to age. He said how I treat her is my call, really based on how much I want to do with her. Exercise is good for her and if I just do light riding she will probably be fine. He recommends:


Joint supplement like Cosequin. He says only give to her if there is a difference in her - otherwise don't waste the money. He's told me in the past that there is no good empirical research supporting it, yet his wife absolutely swears by it and her horse is always on it. He's seen individuals where it helps and others where it makes no difference.
Give her a good warm up before work.
Could bute her on days that we ride (if it is just like 1x/week) or consider something like Prevacox for more serious pain management if we are going to do more strenuous riding and want to spend the money.
He says trails are better for her then ring work and circling as that puts more strain on her hock
He can do an x-ray work up if I really want him to - but he said she still has good movement - just is stiff and limping a little on that hind.
This would be why she is tripping if she is trying to take weight off of her hind end and getting heavy on the forehand. 


So, I guess I'm not surprised about any of this, in fact I'm glad to know that I wasn't crazy and something really was off and now we can come up with a plan to make her feel better. But it is a little sad to think about her really starting to age and needing to slow down. 

Truth be told, I'm perfectly comfortable as a happy hacker and her needing a light riding lifestyle doesn't affect me much. It's more just the realization that her needs are changing and this is a new stage for her. 

I'm still processing all this right now, but would love to hear from anyone else who has helped an older "friend" through this transition. 

_Bonus hay pile all to herself while waiting for the vet:

















_


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## frlsgirl

Sorry to hear that; I know it seems a really shocking and terrible right now, but most older horses are on some kind of maintenance, so in a way, Izzy has just been really lucky to be able to work for so many years without it.

Ana's BFF is a 19 year old retired Jumper with a heart condition; she rides her when she has time, and if she doesn't ride her for a while, that's ok, too. She gets joint supplements and injections and is still bringing home blue ribbons in Dressage schooling shows. Most weeks she only gets ridden once or twice; a busy week for her would be maybe 3 rides, and most of that is just walk and trot. Now it's not good for her to sit for weeks without working, so she has her daughter-in-law or me ride her in between.

So there are many options, especially if you are only planning on doing light riding.


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## Saddlebag

I noticed she moves strung out with a hollow back. Can you get her collected so she'll lift her back? this will strengthen her whole back end.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Sorry to hear that; I know it seems a really shocking and terrible right now, but most older horses are on some kind of maintenance, so in a way, Izzy has just been really lucky to be able to work for so many years without it.


Yep, definitely. And she's not in intense, three-legged lame pain, so we have time to get her feeling comfortable again.

I read a few research papers this morning that looked at Cosequin supplements in older horses. The research is definitely mixed, some studies show good results, others show treatment and control groups look no different at the end of the trial. I've talked to a few people who have had older horses do really well on it. So, I'm going to go get the Cosequin ASU+ at our feed store and we'll start the "loading" dosage tomorrow. I figure I'll give it about 45 days (seems to be the amount of time given in the studies I read) and then reassess how she's doing with it.

We have two older dogs who are both on the doggy version (Dasequin). Our older guy (11 yrs old) has had a miracle transformation- a couple of years ago, he was struggling on our daily walks, and after he started taking it, he could happily walk all day. Our younger girl (8 yrs) just started showing arthritic symptoms a month ago, so she's been started on that + fish oil in the last couple of weeks. She's still limping noticably, especially after she's been laying down for awhile. But we'll give it a little more time to see if it helps her the way it has with the older dog.

I think what made the news from Isabel's vet sad is that all our animals are just getting old. Our two dogs are seniors, our cat is 14, our chickens are 2-3 years old. My husband and I don't have kids, and though we're not the "our pets are children to us" types, we do get a lot of enjoyment out of having them around and are pretty attached to our little herd. It's just sad to think about this generation of pets moving on. Hopefully we have a lot of good years left with all of them, we are really lucky to have a great group of furry and feathered friends right now!


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## egrogan

Saddlebag said:


> I noticed she moves strung out with a hollow back. Can you get her collected so she'll lift her back? this will strengthen her whole back end.


Saddlebag, you're definitely right that she's very hollowed out. So uncomfortable to ride with her moving that way! Coupled with the complete lack of impulsion, it's not a very pretty picture to watch.

She doesn't have the muscle strength right now to collect- probably a combination of sitting all winter and just age-related loss of muscle tone.

My goal for the spring/summer is to be able to ride 3-4 times a week for increasing amounts of time to up her overall fitness. We have gentle hills and varied terrain on our trails. I think we're at a pretty basic place in terms of first, getting her more comfortable physically, and from there, thinking about establishing rhythm and a willingness to go forward again.

When I think back to how she was 5 years ago when I first met her, she was much more able to round up her back. For the first year she was at our barn, she did work with a dressage trainer, and while she never went beyond Training Level movements, she did move more elegantly then. The trainer was doing a lot of lunge work with her to build up her back and get her moving more correctly, and she moved nicely without a rider. Even back then, adding a rider made her imbalanced, particularly at the canter. If the trainer had stayed at the barn at kept working with her, I'm sure she would have made a lot more progress than she did with me.


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## egrogan

Had a couple of easy, relaxing rides the past couple of days. Went for a nice long walks around the neighbor's fields. The weather has been beautiful, and I had a riding buddy both days with made things much more fun. Today's ride:



















I got a new helmet cover to make us more visible in the places we have to ride on the road- I think people will see us fine!









Both of my riding buddies were happy to just keep things at a walk. As we're going through the Cosequin "loading" phase, I'm just going to take things easy and do nice long quiet walks. Izzy has not shown any interest in doing more- I've pretty much given her her head in the spots where she typically wants to trot and canter, but she's kept things at a walk. So, we'll just walk for now.

In addition to any soreness she has right now, she also got her spring shots on Monday, so I think that likely made her a little pokier than usual. Oh, and she's in disgusting raging heat, which always make her slow as molasses. We rode with a gelding yesterday, and she made sure he knew all about her by the end of the ride.  Mares!!

I fed her dinner after we got back from our ride, and she turned her nose up to her grain with the new supplement in it. It does have a really strong fake apple smell to it, but I'm hoping she gets over her aversion and doesn't start giving us problems eating it! I've never seen her get fussy about food, but we'll see. She needs to eat it though, so we'll give it a couple of days and then reassess.


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, even 7 year old Ana turns into molasses during her spring heat; it's embarrasing walking her up from the pasture, because we have to walk past all these geldings and she has to let them all know about her "condtion"


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Yeah, even 7 year old Ana turns into molasses during her spring heat; it's embarrasing walking her up from the pasture, because we have to walk past all these geldings and she has to let them all know about her "condtion"


OK, maybe too much info for an online forum...I had to have a very awkward conversation with a few teen girls who were in the barn when Isabel was backed up against the door of a gelding's stall being a mare, literally peeing all over his hay while he very enthusiastically encouraged her. They didn't understand what she was doing. Oy.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was a day of spring cleaning.

Got out to the barn, and found a field full of mares dozing in the warm sunshine. This was mine:









We went for a short ride since it was so beautiful. The fields are finally dried out so with the footing being much better, Isabel is a little more willing:









When we got back, she was pretty hot and sweaty- even just from walking. Seemed like the perfect excuse for a spring spa day!

So, I shortened her mane way up to get all that weight off her neck, and banged off her tail. Then it was in to the washstall, which she absolutely hated. She was terribly behaved for the entire bath, but we got through it.










When I turned her out, she let me know exactly how she felt about that bath:









Cleaned all my tack and brushes yesterday too, it felt great to wash away all that winter dirt and grime.


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## egrogan

The weather was just drop-dead gorgeous yesterday. The horses couldn't get enough of the sunshine. The entire field looked like it was full of "dead" horses stretched flat out in the sun. This is how I found Isabel:









We went on our short 1 mile jaunt around the field.









Interesting to see here that even when she stretches down pretty nicely, she still has so little lift in her back:


















She offered to trot up the last hill, so that seemed like a good thing. She was also back to her typical "speed walk" towards home, it felt good for her to step out rather than just crawl along.


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## SueC

Do you think the lack of back lift could be related to a saddle issue? I'm only saying it because I realised with horror that my late mare I rode for over 25 years had a saddle fitting issue with the "nice comfortable" saddle I bought for her as an upgrade to her first one. At the time it was looked at and okayed by various people. In retrospect though it was pretty clear to me that there was an issue of some sort, since she didn't lift her back when ridden in that saddle (but did when ridden bareback), and gave signs of disliking being saddled (as opposed to bareback). It's something I really regret not noticing properly when it mattered. My little mare could have potentially been more comfortable, if, if, if...

Hasn't your landscape greened up? Funnily, it's also greening up here - April/May brings the showers that end the summer drought and the dry, dusty landscape. We love this time of year.


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## egrogan

SueC, I thought about this a lot today, and my honest answer is that I think I have been so worried about hurting her I've just been climbing on and sitting there like a passenger, feeling sorry for us that she has to take things slow.

I got on today, and realized that even if we're just walking on our rides, she can still DO stuff, she doesn't just have to drag herself around without trying.

I think this started because I realized I'm creating some problems with her starting to get a bit spoiled. She's been getting really anxious walking through soft, squishy ground, and I think it's probably true that it does hurt more on ground like that. So, I've been sort of letting her say "no" if there's a part on the trail she doesn't want to go through that looks wet and squishy. But I realized today that she's now started saying "no" to going other, perfectly reasonable places that she doesn't want to go. That was sort of a lightbulb moment for me, we may be walking, but I can still RIDE. I just need to be smart about where I'm telling her that we're riding so that there's no reason for her to refuse to go where I want to go. 

After I had that little conversation with myself, I picked up some contact with her, put my leg on, engaged my own core, and lo and behold, she marched right on, with a little spring in her step and lift in her back. She even offered to trot on her own (per my comment above about her making TOO MANY choices, I did ask her to walk and trot and walk again right after, my choice, just so we don't get any crazy ideas about bolting off :wink. We did some serptines and big, loopy figure eights in the big hayfield, and her demeanor changed, she was really listening and trying. She almost seemed relieved to have something to actually do.

I think this is just going to be a process of me learning what her new limits are, and when she's feeling fit enough to ask a little more from her. She has another week of the "loading dose" of Cosequin, and they we need to decide if she goes down to the maintenance dose or if we continue double dosing for awhile. I think she was feeling pretty good today- a few more days of this, and I'll feel like we're back on track.

The chiro comes next week too, which will be good for her. To answer your actual question about saddle fit, it was professionally fitted last fall by a person I've worked with for awhile and trust, but obviously her shape changed a lot over the winter since she was out of work, so it's probably a good idea just to reassess and see if it's sitting uncomfortably for her. We'll check off all those boxes.

_Right after we had the "I'm not doing it" argument that knocked some sense into me...








_I love that left ear back, I guess I got my message across and she realized we were riding again, not wandering aimlessly.

_Pretty face:








_


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## SueC

Hah, she really is a cutie!  (And probably knows it!)


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## frlsgirl

These Morgan mares can be tricky! It's hard to distinguish between a valid excuse (saddle fit issue, arthritis etc.) and malingering; even if you narrow it down to malingering, you can't push them too hard mentally or they'll shut down on you. It's a delicate dance.


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## Zexious

Gah, she's got such a beautiful face.

You'll have to coerce someone into taking pictures of that pretty walk you mentioned ;D


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> You'll have to coerce someone into taking pictures of that pretty walk you mentioned ;D


I sure will try. She sees the chiro today and farrier tomorrow, so it doesn't look like I'll have time to ride until the weekend. Hopefully I can convince my lovely husband to come out for a new photo/video shoot.

Went on a trail ride with a friend from the barn last night. It was a chilly, but beautiful, evening. I really enjoy having someone to ride with-Izzy, not so much. She's a grump when she has to follow behind other horses, so we're working on it!









Do you have peppermints for me?!


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## Zexious

Haha adorbs <3
Would she rather lead? Or rather go out alone?


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## frlsgirl

Ana isn't much of a follower either; she rudely pushes herself to the front of the pack while I apologize.


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> Haha adorbs <3
> Would she rather lead? Or rather go out alone?


She's very happy alone, but in a group she really wants to lead. I tried some of the "patience" techniques with her, like making her halt while the other horse rode away, or turning her in the other direction and making her ride away from the other horse, or giving her a loose rein and insisting she walk slowly, but none really worked all that well.


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## egrogan

Well, we had a very enlightening visit with the chiropractor yesterday. I'll admit, I've been using the chiro for awhile, but have never been totally convinced it really made any difference. 

Yesterday though, I could see a pretty clear effect. We trotted Izzy on a circle a bit, chiro agreed with the vet that she was mildly lame on her right hind (she put her at 2/5 on the lameness scale). She did her initial assessment, and Isabel about jumped out of her skin when she ran her instrument over the accupuncture points around her stifle/pelvis. I have never seen her have such a clear pain reaction before. In the past, she's been "out" in her right pelvis, but she has never been sore to the touch in that area before.

So, the chiro spent some time working on her pelvis (and, if I understand correctly, there are also some connected points in her neck/shoulder area that were also stiff and locked up that could be associated with being out in the pelvis?). She had accupuncture as well. At the end of about 40 minutes of work, when the chiro ran her instrument over the points on the stifle that had caused such a reaction before, nothing. She was totally relaxed and didn't flinch at all.

I won't pretend I understand the physiology well enough to explain exactly what happened, but I do know that just watching the purely physical reaction from the horse before and after was pretty unbelievable. The vet had speculated that the arthritis pain was in her hock, and the chiro said that very well could be given her age, but that she thinks getting this pelvis/stifle issue resolved could help tremendously. I'll admit I'm probably more confused now than I was before.

The chiro said to give her 48 hours to adjust to her "new" body, and ride tomorrow to see if she's feeling any better. I'm really eager to see if there's any difference.


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## Mercy98

egrogan said:


> She's very happy alone, but in a group she really wants to lead. I tried some of the "patience" techniques with her, like making her halt while the other horse rode away, or turning her in the other direction and making her ride away from the other horse, or giving her a loose rein and insisting she walk slowly, but none really worked all that well.


One thing i always did was:

If they want to be the leader, take them to the front and do lots of circles/serpentines/sidepassing, etc. Basically make them WORK. Never let her feet stop moving!

Then take them back to the back of the pack and let them rest! 

She'll figure out that being in the back is actually more fun! Then eventually you'll be able to go from front to the back without her acting up!

Hope this helps


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## egrogan

Thanks, Mercy. There are some places when we're out on the fields where I could definitely try this out. Other spots, like on the woods trail, are a little tight to be doing a lot of work out front, so I will have to pick my spots carefully!


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## Mercy98

Yeah! Trails are awesome, but it is hard to correct this on the trail  Let me know next time you do this how she does!


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## egrogan

Isabel had a busy week last week, got her chiro visit and then her feet done the next day. She had Wed/Thurs off for those events, but I rode Friday night.

She was TERRIBLE Friday night. I took her out in the late evening, while the horses were in eating dinner, and she did not appreciate being taken away from the barn while everyone was eating. She was "up" on her toes, kept trying to break into a trot or canter. On the one hand, after how dull she's been, I didn't mind seeing her spunky. On the other, I don't appreciate being dragged across a field  So, we just did a lot of circles, and every time she tried to accelerate towards home, I just turned her around and rode away. She eventually got the point. Once she was walking calmly on a long rein, at that point, we went home.

Today was a much nicer ride. She felt energetic and interested in the ride, and felt pretty comfortable moving out. I kept her at the walk the whole way, but it was a nicer walk. I didn't have anyone to take pictures of me riding, but maybe tomorrow...

Not many days prettier than this one for riding!








Today is the first day she goes to the once-daily dose of the Cosequin, so I'll continue our light riding for the next week or so and reassess if she seems to be moving better, or if we should bring the vet back out for more diagnostics.


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## egrogan

I had one of those days where I didn't really feel like riding- it was hot, I have a hectic work at week, etc.- but husband was late coming home from work, so I figured why not.

Glad I did, we had a really nice ride around our regular hayfield loop. Even though it was dinner time, Isabel rode very nicely on a loose rein, kept a reasonable tempo to her walk and even trotted a little bit. She was a bit warm when we got back, so she got a quick rinse off.

Caught a sweet shot of her while she was hoping for another peppermint before dinner:


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## egrogan

Haven't posted in awhile, but things with Isabel have been good. I haven't had my husband out to the barn in awhile so don't have any photos/videos of Isabel moving better, but she's been good.

We've been doing lots of trail riding and she seems to really be enjoying all the outdoor time. I've had a few people to ride with recently, which make it more enjoyable for ME too!  And, the weather has just been as nice as can be (with a couple of really hot days thrown in there), so it's easy to want to get out and ride, unlike a month or two ago.

We've done a little trotting but are still mostly sticking to walking on the trail. The horses are now getting turnout in a much larger field, so with the combination of me riding more and her spending more time getting "natural exercise," she's slimmed down a little (one girth hole already!) and seems to be a little less stiff. She's _still _in heat (apparently being turned out next to geldings you've lived with for years is still enough to get the hormones ranging!) which always makes her very pokey under saddle, so I'm eager for us to get through that.

Photo spam!

Our ride yesterday, apple trees are blooming









SPRING!!! Green, blue, colors are gorgeous wherever you look









Cute face









So much riding, sooooo tired:


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## egrogan

And just a couple more from today.

_Finally, _she is looking shiny and dappled out:








I guess the hours of currying over the last couple of weeks are finally helping. We need to work on body condition, but it's nice to see her looking like this.

Thought this was cute, after brushing her down this morning she was _very _excited to get back out on the grass with her friends:
https://youtu.be/vtux0I3XZx8
(tried to embed the youtube video so you don't have to click the link, and it shows up embedded in the body of my draft post, but then when I save, it disappears. Hmmm...any tech thoughts on that?)
https://youtu.be/vtux0I3XZx8


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## egrogan

I've been posting a lot of our updates over on the trail riding thread, since it's pretty prime weather to be out doing that. But thought I'd do a quick update here too.

We had a nice weekend of riding- including a nice 3 mile jaunt on Sunday. Isabel seems to be moving sound again. I still need to get someone out to get a video of me riding, but I think the Cosequin and warmer weather has helped.

I still get really nervous letting her do more than walk though, after she was short-strided last month. We did some trotting this Sunday out on a nice flat stretch, and my intention was just to trot for a bit and let her slowly build up her strength doing that a few days before cantering. But I think I got really nervous about her hurting herself, and tensed up on her, so she broke into a canter. The canter was actually pretty nice and smooth, and she seemed happy about it. She transitioned back down easily and didn't seem any worse for the experience. I just can't get it out of my head that I'm hurting her. Maybe I _should _just have the vet out to do the x-rays, if only for my own peace-of-mind...

Anyway, here is the lovely lady after our Sunday ride, hoping for a peppermint:









This isn't a proper confo shot, but from what you see, does she have too much under-neck muscle?


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## kenda

It doesn't look over-developed or bulgy to me.

She looks great!


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## frlsgirl

I'm terrible at judging confo but I do love the dapples; Ana looks like a totally different horse in the summer, as she not only gets dapples but her color lightens up several shades.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> https://youtu.be/vtux0I3XZx8
> (tried to embed the youtube video so you don't have to click the link, and it shows up embedded in the body of my draft post, but then when I save, it disappears. Hmmm...any tech thoughts on that?)


I'm not a tech really, but I've noticed clips are not automatically embedding anymore and I'd say it's probably a bug in a forum software upgrade (unless it's deliberate).

You horse is looking nice! 

Confo question on neck: I found just having horses turned out to free range on pasture 24/7 as opposed to barns with partial turnout makes a lot of difference to the neck musculature. When horses graze for their own sustenance, the tops of their necks are constantly engaged in the actions involved in biting off the grass. Hand-fed horses can be more upside-down, especially if they are eating from cribs, feeders or racks that are higher up than ground level. If that little observation is of any help to you! ;-)


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Confo question on neck: I found just having horses turned out to free range on pasture 24/7 as opposed to barns with partial turnout makes a lot of difference to the neck musculature. When horses graze for their own sustenance, the tops of their necks are constantly engaged in the actions involved in biting off the grass. Hand-fed horses can be more upside-down, especially if they are eating from cribs, feeders or racks that are higher up than ground level. If that little observation is of any help to you! ;-)


Sue, yes, she does have a slow feeder hay net hung overnight (or else she'd probably be standing without food by 8pm!!). I have had other people mention the same thing you did, that their undersides do get overdeveloped when they eat this way.

I think this is just one of those unfortunate things about boarding- their "night check" is really early, and last feeding is done around 7pm. She has enough hay out that she still has some left in the morning, so I think she's got what she needs overnight, but it does need to be kept in the net.


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## SueC

Any way to hang it low while avoiding potential entanglements? (The slow feeding net is great, better mimics intake patterns when naturally foraging.)


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## frlsgirl

Sue & Egrogan,

Ana grazes 24/7 and her top line is not developing like I thought it would; maybe it would look even worse if she wasn't grazing; anyway, here is a picture of her neck for comparison; she was scratching her muzzle on the post and that really made her neck muscles stick out.

I know her top line is developing because when I ride her bareback I can suddenly feel back muscles contracting which I never felt before we started training; but you can cleary see a dip between the bulging muscle and the crest. 

She hasn't been eating all of her alfalfa either so maybe she just needs more protein; for some reason she's more interested in hay than alfalfa.


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## Zexious

^They could be practically twinsies :O


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Any way to hang it low while avoiding potential entanglements? (The slow feeding net is great, better mimics intake patterns when naturally foraging.)


She's not particularly accident prone, but I think I would worry about it all night just knowing what could happen. So unfortunately, I think it probably needs to stay as is.


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> ^They could be practically twinsies :O


I think we realized that they share a great-great grandsire or something like that


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> Sue & Egrogan,
> 
> Ana grazes 24/7 and her top line is not developing like I thought it would; maybe it would look even worse if she wasn't grazing; anyway, here is a picture of her neck for comparison; she was scratching her muzzle on the post and that really made her neck muscles stick out.
> 
> I know her top line is developing because when I ride her bareback I can suddenly feel back muscles contracting which I never felt before we started training; but you can cleary see a dip between the bulging muscle and the crest.


She's a lot better than a lot of horses, I guess you have high expectations!  I always think she looks great in your photos. And yes, she may have a genetic predisposition towards ewe neck, and so be harder to get that dressage neck than horses not so predisposed. I certainly see the difference between my late mare, who was naturally cresty and rounded in the right places, and my gelding, who has some ewe neck genes and needed a lot of work to get looking acceptable (and the grazing helped too, when we took him on, he was ex-dry lot/stable).


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## egrogan

Somehow my first day of "vacation" turned into a busier day than a normal work day. I had a meeting at the barn that I had to look respectable for- i.e., not covered in horse hair and stinking like a ride- so I just gave Izzy a peppermint and a pat on the nose and told her we'd hit the trails again tomorrow:


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Somehow my first day of "vacation" turned into a busier day than a normal work day. I had a meeting at the barn that I had to look respectable for- i.e., not covered in horse hair and stinking like a ride- so I just gave Izzy a peppermint and a pat on the nose and told her we'd hit the trails again tomorrow:


Awww; pretty girl. She has this "how may I assist you?" look on her face; it must be a Morgan thing.

I hear you on not getting enough horsey time; it's been 3 days since I've seen Ana; between work and crazy weather I just haven't been able to make it out there.


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## egrogan

The cutest pictures are always the ones at feeding time- she sticks that cute head out the door and begs everyone with her eyes to bring the grain bucket around.


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## egrogan

I could really get used to being able to ride and garden all day, without feeling tethered to email  I am enjoying vacation a ton, even if the weather has been a bit hot and humid all week.

We got in a nice ride today before the afternoon thunder storms. Isabel is feeling much more like her old self. I don't know if it's the supplement kicking in, being ridden more consistently, being fitter and getting the winter weight off, or all of it, but it's nice to feel like I can ride her confidently without fear that I'm hurting her.

Here we were heading into the woods:









This trail has a great wide open field for a nice canter, so we took full advantage of that. 

Our neighbor's hay fields have really sprung up- it looks like he's getting ready to do his first cutting soon.









And finally, thought you all might appreciate these random shots of the beautiful rainbows over our house last night after storms went through. I haven't seen rainbows like this since I was in Ireland 10 years ago.


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## egrogan

I was looking back to the beginning of this thread, and I just have to gush with pride a little bit. 

When we first started taking baby steps towards riding outside the arena, I really didn't know what to expect. A lot of advice that newbie trail riders get is "find a calm, been-there-done-that horse to go out with your nervous one to show them there's nothing to worry about." It's been more than year since we've started riding outside, and Isabel is now the horse at the barn that is the "been-there-done-that" horse that takes out the other nervous/less experienced horses to show them that trail riding is fun. 

Last Friday, we went out with our regular trail buddy and another rider on a big scaredy cat gelding. Last time she rode him on the trail, she said he spooked at everything, and reached a part of the trail where he simply refused to continue walking forward, even when the other horse they were with rode off and left him there. On our Friday ride, he was calm and didn't refuse anything, and she commented how Izzy made him much more confident! Saturday, we went out with another gelding, who hasn't been on trails in over a year, also typically spooky and snorty and a little nervous. Izzy led the whole ride, and he happily followed along, without any worries at all. 

It might sound a little cheesy, but I'm just so happy that she's really taken to this new "job" so well- not only does she seem to really enjoy it, but she's turning into a great babysitter for younger, less experienced horses too! 

I think about the dour, unhappy horse that dragged her feet around the ring with no spark in her eye a few months ago, who has become one who enthusiastically heads out on rides now. I just feel so fortunate that I was able to find something she enjoys doing.

Here we are on the Friday ride (Izzy out in front with the gelding in the middle):









Hanging out in the shade, munching some yummy summer grass and drying out after getting hosed off- it was almost 90*F and realllly humid all weekend


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## SueC

I think you ought to be proud of yourselves! 

A lot of horses these days are brought up in barn environments and have difficulty being relaxed in a natural environment, which is sad. It can take a lot of work to get horses like that comfortable on a trail. Do you know if your mare was born into a pasture herd, or in a more confined environment?

The most spooky horses we've ever had in our family were born in stables / yards and never had much if any chance to run with a herd or be in a roomy paddock with a horizon to run to. Conversely, the most unflappable ones were, without exception, horses born into herds with at least moderate room to roam, and lots of things to see.

My Sunsmart was born at my parents' stables. Their horses are stabled at night and turned out in the daytime into smallish runs with one buddy only, so a pair to a run (except for stallions). This represented an improvement from the limited turnout, mostly in barn boxes arrangements we had for our horses in Europe back in the early 1980s, but it still creates a lot more health and behavioural problems, plus spookiness, than being born and continuing to live in a good herd/paddock environment (with ample natural shelter and sufficient care - not all paddocked horses have wonderful lives).

It was a lot of work over a number of years to get Sunsmart to the point where my herd-born Arabian mare was at the outset of her riding career, but it was worth it, for him and for me. He's so laid-back these days compared to at the start, and he just loves discovering new scenery.

Good feeling to make such progress, isn't it?


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## frlsgirl

That's great Erogran! Ana is Ophelia's babysitter when we go hack around the property. Ophelia is a total chicken without Ana; she's spent her whole life in the ring so even going hacking around the property seems really scary to her.


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## egrogan

Thanks, Sue! It sure does feel good. In terms of Isabel's background, I know a couple of things, but there are a lot of gaps because I didn't meet her until she was around 17. I know she was bred and foaled at a fairly serious show barn, but I have never been there physically so am not sure about how young horses are kept. I also don't know how long she stayed there, but my understanding is that she got basic riding and driving breaking like all their young horses do, and then was sold when she didn't make the cut for the show string. I believe at that point, she was sold as a riding horse for a family with 8 little kids, and lived on their small farm. Maybe there was another owner in the middle, but I'm not sure? My guess though, is that in both those homes, she probably got great care but was most likely stalled with some turnout- in my part of the country, big wide open spaces with room to run a herd are not super common, so most farms are barns with smallish pastures/turn out paddocks. That's a bit of a generalization, of course.

As the kids outgrew horses, she and her two mini donk companions were donated to the therapeutic riding program I had just begun to volunteer at- and that's how I met her. Even though she is great with kids, she never took to being a lesson horse. I started working with her because she was getting a little hard to handle since she was so bored, and needed something to do. I think she's a pretty typical "one person horse," at least at this point in her life. Once they realized she wasn't going to be a lesson horse, she was put up for sale- and, the rest is history!

So- all that to say, I really don't know a whole lot about how she lived or what she'd seen through her late-teens. She's been at the same barn since roughly 2011.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> That's great Erogran! Ana is Ophelia's babysitter when we go hack around the property. Ophelia is a total chicken without Ana; she's spent her whole life in the ring so even going hacking around the property seems really scary to her.


I think it's so funny that these two little mares are the protectors of big giant drafty horses


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## SueC

That's a great history there, egrogan!  Don't we sometimes wish animals could talk? We adopted a young Kelpie a couple of years ago, who'd been dumped at just under one year of age, they think by driving her to a faraway place and then pushing her out of the car and driving away. I wish she could tell us her story.


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## egrogan

Wow, I've really neglected Izzy's thread since I've been posting all of our updates over in the trail riding thread.

We've had a very pleasant late spring/early summer. She's really slicked up with her summer coat. Several people have remarked how shiny and healthy she's looking. The winter hay belly is gone. I wish she'd add some more muscle and lift to her back, but I think it's just how she's going to be now that she's older. 

She'll have a check-up with the chiro next week, but she's seemed so much more comfortable as she's come back into work and gotten into better shape. I'm excited to hear what the chiro has to say.

She's so funny though, I wondered if now that's she's in better shape and seemingly not sore in her hind end at all if she'd move better in the indoor. I was going out for a trail ride last night with a friend, and I was tacked and ready a little earlier than she was, so I jumped on in the ring and thought I'd do a little warm up in there. Wouldn't you know, Isabel pinned her ears, dragged herself around, and acted all shortstrided again. As soon as we went outside...ears up, stepped out, was totally fine. Does she really just hate working in the ring that much??

Couple of recent pics:

Looking for peppermints when she heard me walk by her stall:









Ready for our trail ride, ultra-visible for our road-riding portion:


















Yesterday's trail ride:


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## frlsgirl

They say orange is the new black  She looks really good.


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## SueC

Nice to see this journal continue!  Izzy is looking great. When my mare got over 25, free-lungeing her in a roundyard with lots of trot and canter and up and down transitions and direction changes really helped her back muscles, as did uphill-downhill riding. A spot-on comfortable saddle fit is also really helpful, and in retrospect, my mare's fit wasn't anywhere near as comfy as Sunsmart's saddle fit after we had a super fitter out to individually adjust not just the gullet angle but the panel stuffing to suit him to a T. New saddle technologies helped there, but how I wish my mare had had it that good...


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## egrogan

I love this horse! 









Yesterday we had our spring horse show for our therapeutic riding students. It's a really fun event, where we have our students with disabilities as well as our recreational riders together in really small classes (just 3-4 riders per class) to show off what they've been working on all session. As often happens, as we were getting the lesson horses ready in the morning, one was obviously lame. So, Izzy stepped in to give a ride to a 6 year old girl with down syndrome. It can often be difficult for our students to break their routine and ride a horse they've never met before, but Isabel was calm and careful and kept her little rider safe. I so wish I could post the adorable picture of the two of them receiving their ribbon, but for confidentiality reasons, I can't. But let's just say Izzy was rock solid, and just loved all the attention. Here she is getting prettied up by a volunteer, feeling very special:









After the show and family cookout that followed, I decided to squeeze in a ride as it's going to be pouring rain all day today. We had an excellent ride, enjoyed a nice gallop around the cornfields and then walked home on the buckle to cool out. I love how she was able to mentally switch gears like that- trusty packer in the morning, fun and responsive in the afternoon.


















_Are my adoring fans waiting for me in the office?









_


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## egrogan

I got to see Izzy a lot this week!

Monday, we had a chiro appointment. This woman is good at what she does, but man, she is _never _on time, which just drives me nuts, especially when I purposely schedule for the first appointment of the day so I can get back to work. Here's Izzy's opinion of waiting 30 minutes for the chiro to show up:





We ended up having a pretty abbreviated appointment since I was going to be late for meetings, so she didn't watch Izzy move on the lunge or under saddle at all, and just got right to work. Isabel was mildly out in her withers (this is unusual for her) and in her right pelvis (she's always out there). But the chiro agreed that she seemed MUCH more comfortable than earlier this spring. No acupuncture needed this time.

I was off from work Thursday and Friday, so I got lots of riding in too. Lots of time on the trails, Thursday with a couple of friends and Friday on our own. Friday we discovered a new trail network in the woods near some big fields we often ride in. I've been riding in that area for two summers now, and never knew the trails were there- am excited to explore with my trail buddy on Monday night.

I just jumped on for a quick ride around the property this morning, but my lovely husband met me at the barn and I finally got some short video clips and a couple of pictures. I'd love people's thoughts on what they see. 

Compared to some of the "in-motion" pictures I posted back in April or May, she looks a lot better to me, more comfortable, balanced, and just overall less awkward. I'm a disappointed to see her walk still looks a little short behind. 

Walking:


















And here's a short video clip, walk/trot. We have a pretty messy transition here, but we had done a lot of cantering right before this so you can see she wants to pop into the canter (and I see here, as I can also feel, that she throws her head up as she anticipates the canter). And then she keeps trying to lug into the middle of the circle because my husband is standing there, and she sees him as the treat man and can't resist standing right next to him...but I know my leg comes too far back in an attempt to push her out, which is not very effective.





After she was being so annoying about pulling towards him, I took her off to another area to get her paying attention again. He took this cute clip as we were walking back towards him- you can see how excited she is to see him again 





What else do you see going on with either of us?

And finally, here they are cooling out from their respective exercise-he jogged out to the barn to meet me, and then decided to catch up on some reading while waiting for me to clean up...


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## frlsgirl

She is so adorable and you look like a great match. 

It's nice to see an older horse be so reactive to your aids. I also put my leg too far back at the posting trot whenever I try to move her over. I think it's a combination of saddle balance and lack of push from behind; because I don't do that on big moving WBs. I ended up putting front risers in her saddle pad for a while and that helped a ton. 

The only position critique I can offer is to point out your hand position; remember to keep your hands upright; no "piano" hands


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## egrogan

Thanks, frslgrl. And yes, oh my icky hands. It's one of those things where in my mind, I KNOW what I need to do, but my body won't cooperate. I really do remind myself every 10 minutes to fix them, but well, you see how well that works...


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## SueC

Hi Erin, I got that recipe for you! 

Harira is a real personal favourite at our home. This is Ramadan food Muslims use to get through their daytime fasting periods. It's full of super stuff and I always feel better after eating it. You can cook it with or without meat.


*Harira Soup*

200g dried chickpeas (garbanzos)
350g dried brown or green lentils
200 g broken-up vermicelli or spaghettini pasta
500g cubed lamb (or beef, or chicken) - optional
1/2 cup olive oil
1L hot water and enough vegetable or chicken stock powder for quantity
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
2 bay leaves
1tbsp sweet paprika
1tbsp ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste
1 lemon
1/2tsp chilli powder or 1/2 finely chopped red chilli
4 crushed garlic cloves
2 diced onions
2 sliced and chopped red capsicums
2 diced potatoes 
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes (or equivalent chopped fresh ripe tomatoes)
1 big bunch flat leaf parsley
1 big bunch coriander (cilantro)
Crusty bread and fresh dates to serve on the side

Soak the chickpeas in water overnight, then cook in plenty of water until tender (while preparing rest of recipe). Set aside until needed.

Heat the olive oil in the biggest cauldron you have and sautee the onions on medium heat until glassy and starting to soften. At this stage, turn up the heat, add meat cubes and possibly more oil, and start to seal the meat. (If you haven't got experience doing this combined without burning the onions, you can use a separate frypan to do the meat, and combine later.) When the meat is mostly done, add the garlic, celery, red capsicum, potatoes, grated ginger, and all the spices (but not the fresh herbs), stirring gently. Add the hot water and stock powder, reduce heat, and simmer.

Meanwhile, bring a large pan of water to the boil and add lentils, and the set aside chick peas (because most varieties of chick peas can always benefit from more cooking - or go to a Lebanese deli and ask for a decent tender-cooking variety - these are larger than what you get in a supermarket). When the lentils are nearly cooked, add the broken pasta and continue cooking until pasta is al dente. Then drain the whole lot into a colander.

Meanwhile, you'll be continuing with the meat/vegetable pan. Some people just use the juice of a lemon, I like to whizz the whole (unsprayed) lemon in a blender and add the whole lot because it adds zest and depth. Try using small amounts of whizzed lemons at first and work up to the full amount next time if you like that taste.

When the meat and vegetables are ready, I like to use a stick blender to blend at least half of the pan's contents to give me a nice thick texture. Yes, I blend at least half the meat too. You don't have to do this.

Then, add the diced canned tomatoes and drained chickpeas / lentils / pasta to the main cauldron. (If you use fresh tomatoes, add them with the capsicum etc earlier on.) Turn off heat, add finely chopped parsley and coriander (I use my blender) and stir and taste to see if your seasoning needs adjusting or you need more stock. You should have a _very_ thick, chunky soup.

This dish always tastes better on the second day, when the flavours have fully developed. It's excellent for re-heating, and the quantity will last for days (plus it freezes well). It's about an hour to make the whole lot but it then sits in the fridge and gives you several amazing meals in-between other cooking over the next four days (don't keep it longer without freezing). I never get sick of this stuff. If you're feeling under the weather, this will really lift you. Traditionally Harira is served with a good crusty, crunchy bread (toast wholemeal Lebanese flatbreads if you don't have a nice crusty loaf) and fresh dates.


PS: We're making that Pumpkin Risotto again this week! 

:apple:


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## SueC

Re your critique request: You guys look lovely together!  Horse and rider are in harmony and enjoying themselves.

Now I'm going to ask if you can spot the similarity between a photo of you riding and me riding (other than that we're both beaming and riding towards our husbands ;-)). There is definitely a problem with the one of me riding (it lasted longer than just the photo).



















You can click on the above photo to look for the problem up close (although to me it sticks out like a sore thumb, but then I'm super critical of myself...)

So this is a photo of Sunsmart and me in our first month together after I brought him down to Albany six years ago (before we had our farm; I was agisting him solo down the road from where we lived). I was using my old saddle on him and I kept slipping to the right!!! Do you see how much lower my right stirrup is than my left? It was driving me nutty. Why couldn't I stay laterally balanced?

Took the saddle to the saddlery, and they said, "Oh, your tree is broken, you need a new one!" I didn't think the tree was broken but they were convinced. Anyway, it was a Bates Caprilli I'd bought 20 years previously and second-hand, and I was nearly 40, so my husband said, "You should definitely have a new saddle for once in your life, and this seems like the perfect time!"

So this is how we got a custom-fitted Ascot Romana AP (one of the recommended options when you ride a tank of a horse with a huge thorax, big shoulders and a broad flat back, and you're 5ft11 to boot). The fitter who was out was positively brilliant. She said to me, "No, your old saddle tree isn't broken, it's just become ultra-flexible with age. And the reason your saddle was slipping is because the horse is asymmetrical!" So she adjusted the stuffing to counter the horse's asymmetry (and as that improves, you can play with the stuffing again). No more slipping, and the problem of trying to stay symmetrical on my horse mostly solved:










I say mostly, because I also have asymmetry myself in my back/pelvis, and because I've not done any Pilates classes since we moved to our farm, it's not as good as it was. (Really must get back to Pilates classes, but funny how much falls by the wayside when you're house building.)

Anyway, blah blah blah, but the point is, sometimes the reasons for one stirrup appearing higher than another are not simple ones, like having the leathers at different lengths. And this particular problem, for me, was a bit of a detective piece to solve, and I needed help to do it. So I just pass that on whenever I see one stirrup lower than another.


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## egrogan

Ha, yes, I didn't even need to read your text to see what you were talking about. I will post a few more pics, this is always a problem for me. These were taken over the past couple of years, so you can see this isn't a new critique!!









(Grumpy Izzy face)


















For awhile I even considered riding with my stirrups different lengths on purpose, but that was just a crutch and made me even more unbalanced. My right hip is very tight and has a tendency to "lock up" and I think I over compensate. Tracking right is also Isabel's weaker direction, so I think over the years we've sort of reinforced each other's weaknesses. I really do need to make time to ride different horses, as at this point, riding her is like slipping into an old pair of shoes, they're molded to you- for better or worse 

Your story about your saddle is interesting. The fitter hasn't been out since probably this time last year. I bought this saddle secondhand, but it was in good condition and the fitter was pretty thrilled about the quality and how it fit. I struggled for months to find something with short flaps and was so happy to find something this comfortable that allowed my leg to actually touch the horse! But it's a good reminder to revisit fit.


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## egrogan

And that recipe sounds delicious, thanks. I'm mostly vegetarian, so always good to find something that has good protein on its own, or could easily have the meat added to individual servings. We're in a week of very hot weather right now, so will tuck this away for when we're ready to have a big hearty stew.


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## SueC

Well, asymmetry or not, I still think you guys are like a 1000W lightbulb together! 

While I think of it, stretching out our legs and back also helps with our little human symmetry ailments and general suppleness. It's just hard to remember to do it before jumping on a horse! I must remember to do it...


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## egrogan

I've been saying for awhile now I need to force myself to find time to ride horses other than Isabel. So today, I blocked out a little more time than usual, and started with this sexy beast:


















This is Cyrus, a sort-of lesson horse who is a big goofball who is still learning how to move his giant body. This was the first time I've ever ridden him, but he was a blast. He felt huge compared to Isabel, and I guess in actuality he is- about 16 hands/1200 lbs. I think my legs are going to be sore tomorrow! It was so fun to ride a big moving, very forward horse where you don't have to work for every stride at the trot- he happily moved on out. Trying to do anything with finesse though- well, that was a different story. He was very confused about trying to ride school figures or do anything that involved not going round and round on the rail. It didn't help that the dressage saddle that fits him has a regular vs. short flap, so about the only part of my leg I could actually get on him was from mid-calf down. We did some serpentines, figure 8's, changes of direction across long and short diagonals- all that seemed confusing to him, but he was getting it by the end. I just had to remember he needed a lot more advance warning than Isabel to get his big body moving in a new direction 

It's super hot here today, so I did ride Isabel, but just briefly, after Cyrus. We did a few laps around the neighbor's hay field since the deer flies in the woods are virtually unbearable at this point. She felt so tiny! But I really appreciated how sensitive she is. I've taken for granted that she actually does move really nicely off of seat and leg, that was obvious after riding a big tank.

Enjoying a bit of grass after the ride:


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## SueC

Is Cyrus a draught cross? What a handsome individual. His ample forelock would make my horse envious! :rofl: I love horses like that - but then I love all sorts of horses... and have a hard time having favourites, they all seem to have their advantages! Big boofy horses like that are great fun, but rather like the Titanic to turn!  My mare was 14.2hh and turned on a postage stamp, so she had huge advantages for gymkhana events like bending and barrel races. Sunsmart is 15.2hh and a bit of a tank - although not that much bigger, you do notice it when turning! Of course, as a young horse, the tightest bends he regularly negotiated were the curves on the 600m sand track! :rofl:

It's fun trying out other horses. And it makes you appreciate the good points of your own horse!  I really enjoyed reading that post. If you do any more experiments like that, I'm looking forward to reading about them!

Do you have that thing where you, in some part of yourself, feel like you're cheating on your horse by riding another horse? Common in people besotted with their one horse, and I used to feel a bit guilty when I rode horses other than my mare, especially if she saw it. Haha...


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Is Cyrus a draught cross? What a handsome individual. His ample forelock would make my horse envious! :rofl:


Cyrus is a Gypsy Vanner- quite fashionable here these days. His mane is pretty impressive- though he has to be rebraided weekly or he'll end up in dreadlocks!



















He's a true "gentle giant" and will hopefully make a great therapy horse one day as he continues on with his training. His build and gait would make him wonderful for adult riders, but right now he gets very nervous with a rider and a leader, and even more nervous if you add a sidewalker/spotter. He just needs more time and experience being desensitized to that many people in his space at once. But he's now at the point where he's suitable for independent riders, so he gets used in lessons a couple of times a week.



SueC said:


> Do you have that thing where you, in some part of yourself, feel like you're cheating on your horse by riding another horse? Common in people besotted with their one horse, and I used to feel a bit guilty when I rode horses other than my mare, especially if she saw it. Haha...


Oh, absolutely! I teach lessons on Saturday mornings, so I'm in and out of Isabel's field grabbing other horses, and she definitely gives me dirty looks when I leave her behind 

But mostly it's just a practical kind of guilt, I wish I had more time to ride her to work on her fitness, so when I am able to ride, I hate to take that time for another horse. I've got access to a barn full of nice lesson horses and could really spend more time working on my own riding by getting on more horses more frequently, but it just never seems to work out that way.


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## egrogan

Isabel is spending the week as a camp pony. One of the regular lesson horses is still out with a stubborn abscess, so she jumped into the rotation. She really likes the attention, and according to the camp instructors, has been a "perfect angel" with her little 6 year old rider. She must enjoy having a little 35 pound person on her back instead of me!

Can you tell she's been pampered by 6-year-olds this week? 









I really love that she gets to do this kind of work occasionally. I don't think she'd like being a full time lesson horse, but she really does get a glow when she gets to "work" with little kids. She gets fussed over, groomed a couple of times a day, and ridden for about 45 minutes total. Today she's going to be teaching her little girl to canter, wish I could be there to see it!


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## SueC

How nice! 

...if you wanted to equal the low weight of a child on horseback, we could work out how many helium balloons you would need to attach to yourself while riding! ;-)


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## SueC

I have two more nice pumpkin recipes I've just tried out which would also suit you as a vegetarian:

*PUMPKIN AND SPINACH LASAGNA*

Oven-roast a 1.5kg Butternut Pumpkin, let it cool, scrape the flesh out of the shell, mix it in a bowl with thyme, sage, nutmeg and chicken stock powder.

Finely dice an onion and sautee it in olive oil. Add 2 x 440g cans diced Italian tomatoes, two freshly pressed garlic cloves and Italian herbs of your choice. Let it simmer around 10min.

Steam a whole silverbeet and shred with a knife.

Use a large lasagna dish. Put half the pumpkin mixture on the bottom and cover with pasta sheets. Put half the tomato mixture on the pasta, and spread on the shredded silverbeet. Crumble 200-250g of Greek Feta on top of the silverbeet and cover with pasta sheets. In the next layer, spread the other half of the pumpkin mixture and cover this with 500g of ricotta cheese. Cover with pasta sheets, spread the rest of the tomato mixture on it, and generously sprinkle with grated parmesan or pecorino.

Bake at 180degC for 35-40 minutes. Fan forced oven, medium shelf helps stop the parmesan from getting too dark. Delicious vegetarian lasagna and quite substantial due to the cheeses!  You could add things like pine nuts and cashews to the pumpkin layers as well.

With a salad, totally summer food as well.


*PUMPKIN PIZZA*

Make your own wholemeal pizza base and when it's ready for toppings, spread tomato puree and herbs on it, followed by sliced mushrooms, a generous amount of crumbled feta cheese, as much diced steamed pumpkin as you like (we made quite a mound!), then sprinkle on cashews or pine nuts, and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil. Bake & enjoy. Really nice flavours!


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## egrogan

Isabel was great all through the camp week- at the end-of-camp show for the campers, the instructors said she and her "twin" (another Morgan mare the same age who looks identical) took the line-up very seriously, setting themselves up perfectly square and posing for the parents to take pictures. They also did some "jumping" (i.e., walking and trotting over cross rails) and all those pictures show her trying so hard to take care of her little girl. Very cute.









But after that kind of riding all week, she was READY to go on the trails when I rode last night. Now, Isabel is not a horse that is typically going to expend energy if she doesn't have to, but she had a huge motor last night. I think after being stuck in the ring all week carting around little kids, she just needed to blow off speed. Her trot was huge, she lifted her back and engaged, and her canter was enthusiastic. It's such a nice feeling to be on a horse that is really _enjoying _the riding you're doing.

The bugs here have been awful. Poor girl has some pretty big welts from bites that she's been rubbing raw- so much so we had to take off her noseband because one was getting really irritated and bloody. I think she actually looks super cute in a "less-is-more" bridle. It got me thinking, I'm not sure I really even _need _a noseband with her. We don't show or anything, so maybe we'll try this for a bit and see how she goes. It shouldn't really be any different.

















(You can see one of the yucky sores up under her right ear)

Outside getting ready to have a nice long trot across that field and blow off steam:


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## SueC

Super cute!

...I don't usually ride with a noseband either. It doesn't serve any useful purpose for us, and I don't like the way a lot of Australian bridles run the noseband underneath the main bridle at the ears, and then what you get is a narrow strap stuck underneath a wide strap and creating an irritation for the horse. The wide strap of the main bridle is far more comfortable than a narrow one, and even worse, a narrow one stuck under the weight of the whole bridle.

Last time I put a noseband on my horse was when my husband got the camera out for recent riding photos. Not only did it interfere at the ears, but also it was jamming near the bit when I tried to thread it beneath the cheekpieces. So I just took the useless thing and sat it above the bridle both at the poll and near the nose - i.e. "incorrectly" - but there is this good saying that whatever causes the least irritation to a horse is actually the correct way to do it! ...and in our case, this means leaving the noseband off entirely.

I had a chat to our saddlery proprietor about this construction problem and she showed me some modern bridles specifically designed to avoid these issues. They run the noseband detachably off the main bridle, and they also tilt the bridle back a bit behind the ears, which is another prime discomfort spot for horses. Most standard bridles are too tight behind the ears, and I've been trying to find a slightly longer browband that isn't all bling without success for ages. It's nice to see they are making better bridles.

By the way, one of the suggested uses of nosebands is to reduce the risk of the lower jaw of the horse breaking in potential falls. Therefore, they may be helpful for showjumpers and racehorses.

Drop and Mexican nosebands etc are another story!


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## egrogan

Interesting, Sue. On my list today was to do a little research on _why _we use basic nosebands (not more specialized once like flashes or drops). I have to admit it's not something I've really ever thought about, it's just part of the bridle so on it goes.

re: browbands. I have had the same problem! Isabel has a fairly petite face and a cob sized bridle fits her well- except for her seemingly broad "forehead." A cob size browband really pinches her, and I too had a terrible time finding a non-blingy horse sized browband. I did eventually find a secondhand one on a Facebook page and it works ok. Though I do worry that with her fly bonnet on, there is some pinching behind her ears. She doesn't complain about it, but it's a little tighter than I'd like it to be.


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## egrogan

Here are a couple of interesting articles on the history and purpose of the noseband:
Noseband Special Part I: History of the Noseband

Noseband Special Part II: Purpose of the Noseband
Since Isabel is essentially at the same point in her training as a "young horse" in serious dressage schooling, I think this is probably the most applicable explanation for using a noseband from the second link:
"_By closing the mouth in an acceptable manner the young horse will more easily learn to take the bit and to chew which is only possible if the noseband is not too tight. When riding in a simple broken snaffle bit the rein aids are transported to the bars and the tongue. The horse which tries to evade the bit gets some pressure on the nose by the noseband and gives in, ideally by lowering the head. This means that the noseband, according to the type, takes over some pressure from the bit. The general rule is: the lower a noseband is positioned the more pressure is taken over. While the nose strap gives only some pressure on the sensitive nose of the horse, the chin strap supports the lower jaw.

A correctly fitted noseband not only helps to show the youngster the right acceptance of the bit, but also prevents that it establishes unpleasant reactions like gaping, crossing the jaws or even putting the tongue over the bit which can happen no matter how good the rider’s hands are."
_
I'm not a "mouth shutter" so I certainly don't have the noseband cranked tight or a flash on her. Though I will admit that it might be nice to have her mouth shut so the chin-high meadow grass isn't as tempting 

And by the way Sue, I had never heard the term "Mexican noseband" but was interested to read the history of what I know of as a "Figure-8." That's my fun fact for the day!


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## SueC

I think that italicised quote is talking about a drop noseband (Hanoverian noseband), because nosebands that run free above the level of the bit can't actually transmit pressure to the nose if the horse raises its head (unless they mean when the horse is gaping) - while drop nosebands can do that. Most of the harness racing horses around here, by the way, run without nosebands, both in training and races, and they're generally in snaffles, and I kind of think that poor hands, or unsuitable bits (and the snaffle is not comfortable for every horse), have the most to do with horses developing the bad habits they're talking about using a noseband to prevent. That's also more common to happen with riders than harness drivers... different rules of engagement.


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## egrogan

The treat man showed up to visit yesterday!


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## Zexious

^The treat man is the best man ;D

I so enjoy keeping up with your little mare <3


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## egrogan

Thanks, Zexious!


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, Ana loves her treat man. Ana will completely ignore me when treat man is around.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Yeah, Ana loves her treat man. Ana will completely ignore me when treat man is around.


Agreed! I dropped the reins from across the property, and she locked in on him and made a beeline to him.


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## egrogan

I had an unusually great indoor ride with Izzy tonight.

All afternoon we were flirting with foreboding skies and impending thunderstorms. I thought I could beat the storms and sneak in a quick loop around the trails, but no sooner had I fastened the last buckle on the bridle, the skies open and it started pouring:


















We were all dressed up with no place to go, but the ring was open so in we went. Isabel usually sulks and drags herself around in there, but she's only been ridden once this week, and had her feet done a couple of days ago, so she was full of spunk and ready to go. She offered a really nice trot the first time I asked, was super responsive to leg aids and rode nicely through a bunch of school figures, even cantered right off on the right lead each way.

We stopped and stared longingly out at all of Izzy's friends hanging out in the field:











The rain let up enough that we did cool out by riding around the property. 

Then lucky girl got a few minutes grazing her favorite part of the yard. I love her little wet muzzle here


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## egrogan

The past couple of weeks have been a story of heat and bugs. Here's Izzy's general feeling about it:









But Friday, we got a break in the weather, and our typical summer came back. It was sunny, low humidity, and a very pleasant 80*F. We took two very nice long rides over the past couple of days.

I figured out a way to get to a nice stretch of road with a really wide, grassy shoulder to ride on. 









It also gave us access to a large, hilly open pasture with very pretty views from the top- felt like being king of the world:









And a VERY nice change from the impenetrable wall of corn we typically ride around these days:









It was fun seeing some new scenery and trying a new route. Isabel is always game to go a different direction than usual, which I love about her. She is definitely focused and paying attention, and always a little slower on the way "out" and quicker on the way "home," but she generally takes new sights and sounds in stride.

I also really get a kick out of people driving by and making a big deal about seeing a horse, they'll slow down, smile really big, wave. I guess I like it because it makes me think about myself as a horseless kid, seeing someone riding down the road, I would have been begging my parents to pull the car over just so I could get a long look at a real-live horse. So I always make a point to wave back 

I had a really cool unexpected moment where I felt like I was getting to be decent at this whole riding thing- _finally _I'm becoming more capable of addressing unexpected or undesired behaviors with the right responsive, instinctively-the right thing to do has become so ingrained it kicked in automatically, without me having to consciously think through a list of solutions and then decide what to do. I just _did_. We rode passed a large, raised storm drain, and Izzy gawked at it as it's not something she's ever seen before. She wanted to go sideways, but from somewhere in my brain that I wasn't controlling, my outside leg went on, my hands came forward ever so slightly, I pushed her forward and didn't tense up myself, and she dropped her tension and basically just went, "oh, ok, no problem" and walked passed it without looking again (and walked passed it again today without even noticing). I know that sounds like such a small thing, but for it to all happen correctly in such an _automatic way _sort of surprised me. Unlike a lot of you, I haven't ridden my whole life, so the past couple of years have been great for building up the kind of "muscle memory" that you only get from having a lot of practice doing something. So anyway, it was a cool feeling.


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## egrogan

One more cute picture:


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## Bondre

Hi Egrogan! I've been dipping into your journal. Isabel looks a lovely horse, and her coat positively glows. I see you're still riding her without the noseband. 

I'm SO jealous of all the greenery where you live (though I guess it must rain a lot to look like that). My poor horses haven't been able to stuff their mouths with greens in months now.

I know just what you mean about having a cool moment when you find you automatically do the right thing without having to think. And once it starts happening, it rapidly snowballs and you find yourself riding instinctively all the time. I got back into horses two years ago after thirty years off, and at first I had to think things through a lot, until I realised that each of the aids control part of the horse's body in a particular way, and then it all fell into place and made sense. I remember thinking through the aids to a circle that I learnt as a kid - inside leg on the girth, outside leg behind the girth. I don't think I ever reasoned through the WHY of this as a kid, I just did it, but as an adult I realised the inside leg is holding the shoulder in place and the outside leg is giving bend in the body by displacing the hindquarters laterally. It might sound very obvious but once I realised that your hands control the head and neck and your legs control the shoulders and/or hindquarters, riding rapidly became much more instinctive. I do most of my riding on the the trail, and we've had lots of those gawky moments (above all with concrete irrigation structures and metal pipes); the outside leg and outside rein to keep her straight and forward always does the trick!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Hi Bondre! Thanks for commenting. I wasn't sure if anyone would understand what I was trying to say, but glad you got it.

And thanks for the kind words about Isabel. This summer has been good to her. 

Yes, we've had a very rainy spring and summer- and, above average snow last winter, so things are very green here. I feel bad complaining about having _too much_ rain because I know how many people are in drought, but it's actually been so wet my garden at home isn't doing very well, not enough sunny days and everything was kind of waterlogged at planting time.


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## Zexious

That last picture is adorbs--she seems to be smiling for the camera 

Your photos have done so much to brighten my day <3


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## egrogan

Gorgeous day to ride yesterday!










And SueC, this one is just for you: 








What in the WORLD is going on in this picture?? There is no way I rode two miles sitting in the saddle like this, so I am partially blaming it on Izzy standing a little funny on an incline. But yikes- if I am even a fraction of this crooked while actually riding, we've got some issues to deal with. The next couple of weeks are really hectic at work, but I think it's time to book in a lesson or two with one of my instructor friends and work on me for a little while.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> And SueC, this one is just for you:


:rofl:



> What in the WORLD is going on in this picture?? There is no way I rode two miles sitting in the saddle like this, so I am partially blaming it on Izzy standing a little funny on an incline. But yikes- if I am even a fraction of this crooked while actually riding, we've got some issues to deal with. The next couple of weeks are really hectic at work, but I think it's time to book in a lesson or two with one of my instructor friends and work on me for a little while.


The incline isn't helping, it exaggerates it. The saddle as a whole seems to have tilted. I'll have to send you my saddle fitter via a TARDIS or something. I was going crazy back in 2009 about that very issue - why couldn't I sit symmetrically on Sunsmart? Until the saddle fitter explained that many horses aren't symmetrically shaped, and she did her magic on the saddle...

Because I'm also asymmetrical physically and have things like mild scoliosis and a lumbar issue to contend with, things aren't 100% symmetrical now - but enormously improved - so my stirrups now look level in my riding photos. I'm just thinking that it's amazing that that huge difference was not made via adjusting technique, but by a simple change in the gear...

Great photos, much enjoyed them. I think most people would be too focused on your beautiful horse and your lighthouse smile to even notice your stirrups! ;-)


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> The saddle as a whole seems to have tilted...Until the saddle fitter explained that many horses aren't symmetrically shaped, and she did her magic on the saddle...


You're right, the saddle does look very uneven. So odd. I'm going to put in a call to the fitter this morning. It's probably been about a year since he was out, so it's time.


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## frlsgirl

oh, I have some horribly crooked photos, too...maybe we should start a "crooked" thread, and see how many people we can find with the same problem?


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## SueC

Hi Erin, I was wondering if you were getting really dusty looking for those old photos in the attic, that you were talking about unearthing?


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## egrogan

Haha-thanks for the nudge. I'll see if I can convince my lovely husband to dig through boxes with me soon!!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

I was out of town for about a week so was really missing Isabel! Got to take a quick ride last night but was rushing to stay ahead of storms:









While I was gone, a new potential therapy horse arrived at our barn. He's a 12 year cross of something sporty and something drafty- TBx or STBx is the guess, but he's a big boy. But so chill and laid back, and just a lovey kind of gelding. I rode him in a lesson with our head instructor this morning. This horse has a BIG trot, so in the grainy video below (which it was higher quality!), please excuse the fact that I look like I'm getting catapulted out of the saddle- if it looks like that, that's how it felt too


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## egrogan

Weird, I keep trying to edit my post and embed a video, but everything below it is getting cut off. I'm not sure if it will show up, one more try:


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## egrogan

And after cheating on Izzy with another horse, I took her out for a little hand grazing before I had to leave for work. She came across an apple, lucky girl:









This is her cute puckered up sour apple face:


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> And after cheating on Izzy with another horse, I took her out for a little hand grazing before I had to leave for work. She came across an apple, lucky girl:
> 
> 
> This is her cute puckered up sour apple face:


I feel the same way when I ride another horse; I had to wipe off the white hairs from Ophelia because I didn't want Ana to see them...as if she cares


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## egrogan

Riding plans thwarted today.

I went out to get Isabel in the field where she was turned out, and she was acting very agitated. The bugs were bad, but she was being much more insistent than usual about biting at them. As soon as I got her into better light, I could see that her entire right side was covered in bites/welts. She was also drenched in sweat.

Got her inside, temp/vitals were normal though her breath was quick and sort of shallow. I cold hosed her a bit and put some witch hazel on the worst of the welts. Of course it's tough to see the extent of them in the pictures, but they were much more prominent in person.


















Left her in her stall/in and out with a lot of hay and will check on her later. Poor thing looked so uncomfortable.

I've been so lucky, since I've owned her I've never had a reason to even have to check her temperature. She's always been so healthy and never worried me beyond some stiffness/arthritis. 

I'm sure she'll be fine, but it is just so strange that she reacted this way- it's the same field she's turned out in 3-4 days a week and she's never been bothered before.


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## egrogan

Bit of a weird day today.

First, when I got to the barn, the welts were gone, which was great. If I hadn't have seen her yesterday, I probably wouldn't have believed how bad she looked, because there was no sign of it today.

It was hot and humid, but we went out to ride anyway. In retrospect, maybe not the best decision. It was the first time we'd really been out on our full trail route in a couple of weeks, and she was frankly being a bit of a jerk. We rode out to a rather large, open field with lots of space to (theoretically) play around with transitions, lengthening and shortening strides, etc. To get there, we ride through a little opening in the woods, almost like an "in-gate" to an arena. Well, she was completely locked on to that spot in the woods that led home, and every time I asked her to trot, she would rush into this awful half trot/half canter thing and drop her shoulder to try to pull towards home. It honestly got really frustrating (never a good state of mind for riding!) so we ended up doing more trotting than anything else, basically going back and forth across the field until we could do it nicely in a straight line without lurching along like a fake Paso Fino. Not our finest ride, that's for sure.

_Who me, not listening?? Never...._









When we got back to the barn, she had a lot of trouble cooling out. She was panting heavily when we got back and stayed really hot even after sponging her down. Maybe even mildly colicy? She was agitated and biting/kicking at her sides for a bit. I walked her out for about an hour then cold hosed her chest, and she finally seemed to be breathing better and much more relaxed. Temp was a little higher than usual for her (101*F) but pulse was pretty normal. Gut sounds were good though, and she was enthusiastic about hay.

I let her move around freely in the indoor before leaving just to make sure she looked like she'd move ok, and she did. She had a nice roll- not a colicy roll but just a "I just got hosed down and I want to be covered in dirt" kind of roll- and then eventually got tired of being in the arena alone:

_Hellooooo....anyone out there....









Seriously...someone let me out of this prison or I'll do it myself!








_ 
So, I'm not really sure what's going on with her- probably nothing. The weather took a big swing from relatively pleasant and low-humidity to quite hot again (and will be all week), so I'll be asking the barn staff to really keep an eye on her this week and make sure she doesn't seem uncomfortable. 

I'm so spoiled, she's so straightforward health wise that I know I'm probably being a worrier for no reason now, but it's just really out of the ordinary for her to be acting off like this. Makes me wish she was in my backyard so I could keep a closer eye on her myself...


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## Zexious

I'm sorry to hear you're having some health concerns ): I think we all know what it's like to worry even when there may be nothing to worry about. Definitely keep us updated!


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## SueC

Nice photos again, sorry about the health concerns. Hot and humid and a horse in the high teens (is that right?), try some electrolytes maybe? Might help and won't hurt her. Best wishes for both of you.


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## egrogan

Thanks Zexious and SueC.

She's actually 21 this year Sue, so yes, not so surprising that it was tough on her. It's tough on me too 

The barn actually has been adding electrolytes to the water the past couple of weeks since it's been hot and muggy. 

I went to check on her this morning before work and she was looking fine. Bright eyed and had just cleaned up her breakfast when I got there. There was ample manure in her stall, so looked like she was fine in that department as well.

I cancelled my late afternoon ride tomorrow with my trail buddy since the forecast is calling for 91*F and high humidity. We'll just take it easy this week. The weather should break over the weekend.


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## SueC

I've always had trouble with heat and humidity, even at half the age I am now!  Awful stuff. That's why I am about as far towards the Antarctic as you can get in Western Australia! So I empathise, urgh!!!


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## Bondre

Glad to hear that your horse is better today. I was breath-taken to read that she is 21. Her face in the photos looks half that age.

It's been hot and humid here in Spain too, but thankfully this week it changed for the better. Such a relief! Hope you get cooler weather soon.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> The barn actually has been adding electrolytes to the water the past couple of weeks since it's been hot and muggy.


 Our vet gave us a big lecture about electrolytes, water, and salt. He said not to add salt directly to the water because it causes them to dehydrate even faster? Anyway, not a scientist, just thought it was interesting.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Our vet gave us a big lecture about electrolytes, water, and salt. He said not to add salt directly to the water because it causes them to dehydrate even faster? Anyway, not a scientist, just thought it was interesting.


Interesting- did he share any additional details about this? I use electrolytes a lot with my chickens too in this weather, I'd be curious to understand his perspective.


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> Glad to hear that your horse is better today. I was breath-taken to read that she is 21. Her face in the photos looks half that age.
> 
> It's been hot and humid here in Spain too, but thankfully this week it changed for the better. Such a relief! Hope you get cooler weather soon.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Aww, thanks Bondre. She is definitely a spunky 21 years old. And she sure does have a pretty face:









I rode early this morning, before work. I started in the arena just in case she seemed distressed again. After about 20 minutes warming up, she was just fine, so we went and rode around our neighbors hayfield for another 20 minutes. We had a really nice, calm yet forward trot (quite a difference from the last ride) and then a nice long canter across the field. 

After that, she was a little hyped up heading home, but she responds so well to calm, deep breathing- when I took exaggerated, deep breaths and lowered my hands, she matched me lowering her head. She was on her toes when we turned for home, but after some simple breathing exercise, she was walking on a loose rein by the time we crossed the field.

We have a lesson on Thursday morning, which I'm excited for. In the arena, she's been dropping her shoulder and falling in on her right canter lead, so I'm curious to see how much of that is my imbalance/leaning vs. lack of strength on her part. We'll see!

_Hand grazing in the shade to cool out from the ride:








_


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## Zexious

^Glad to hear she's a little bit more herself. Really looking forward to hearing about your lesson!

frlsgirl--I'd be interesting to hear what your vet said, too. I often gave my horse electrolytes, especially when he was boarded in Texas.


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## frlsgirl

Love the head shot; she could be a model!

Regarding adding electrolytes directly to water, it has to do with how the body processes it when combined with water; so if you add it to water then they also have to have a fresh water supply without any additives. I've tried this on myself; drank Propel fitness water (basically salt water) and it made me thirsty for regular water. 

I vaguely remember this from chemistry class. I think this has to do with how the sodium atoms combine with hydrogen atoms to form a molecule; sodium atoms need at least 2 or more hydrogen atoms to form a molecule; don't quote me on this because it's been a few years since I took chem in college


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Love the head shot; she could be a model!
> 
> Regarding adding electrolytes directly to water, it has to do with how the body processes it when combined with water; so if you add it to water then they also have to have a fresh water supply without any additives. I've tried this on myself; drank Propel fitness water (basically salt water) and it made me thirsty for regular water.
> 
> I vaguely remember this from chemistry class. I think this has to do with how the sodium atoms combine with hydrogen atoms to form a molecule; sodium atoms need at least 2 or more hydrogen atoms to form a molecule; don't quote me on this because it's been a few years since I took chem in college


Ahhh....yes, that makes sense. With the chickens, it definitely says on the package that they have to have a waterer with plain water when you put out a waterer with the electrolytes so they have access to both options free choice.

I never thought about that for the horses, but now that you mention it, it definitely sounds right.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Interesting- did he share any additional details about this? I use electrolytes a lot with my chickens too in this weather, I'd be curious to understand his perspective.


It's because that way, they may not be able to regulate their electolyte and fluid levels themselves by drinking exactly as much fresh water as they need to go with a particular dose of electrolytes (which will depend on their dehydration levels). So it's usual practice in racing to add electrolytes to the feed or put it straight over the tongue with a syringe, and then they can drink as much fresh water as they need to rehydrate. That way, they get the ratio of electrolytes to water right for their particular situation.

When a horse (or person, or other mammal) is electrolyte depleted, it isn't able to rehydrate just by drinking fresh water - it will need the missing electrolytes as well. The worst I was ever dehydrated was in a heatwave when I was 14. I would try to drink water and throw it straight back up again, and this went on for over a day. The GP had no idea what to do, he thought I had gastroenteritis starting. My brother was studying veterinary medicine and came home for the weekend, and he said, "Get that girl some electrolytes" and my dad went and got me the correct bodyweight dose from his bottle of racing electrolytes! It was, "Say aaah!" and the stuff wasn't unpleasant tasting, and within 10 minutes I was drinking water without throwing up. An hour later I was back to normal.

PS for Frlsgirl, no molecular building involved per se, and anyway, sodium and hydrogen are both cations (positive) and therefore don't combine with each other alone, need to have anions in the mix, so you can get sodium and hydrogen for example as sodium hydrogen carbonate, which is an ionic compound rather than a molecule anyway. ...it's just about having the correct osmolarity in a fluid.


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## egrogan

It was a really busy week at work last week, but I managed to get in several rides, primarily because it was so hot and humid I went in the mornings. Isabel was fine all week after her issues last weekend, so who knows what that was all about- probably just too much heat and humidity...

So I had my lesson with Izzy on Thursday morning. Our issues are twofold- her and me  what a pair we are! First, I definitely have real crookedness issues that do in fact make my legs look like they are a stirruphole different. My left leg is getting sucked up and that ankle is not as steady as it should be. I think some of that has to do with being defensive about my right hip, which sometimes gets a "stuck" feeling to it. I'm letting that right hip drift to the inside and losing my seat underneath me on that side. When my instructor finally pronounced that I was sitting straight, I felt like I was twisted up like a pretzel. 

Now, Izzy, she also has her issues. My instructor got on her to feel what was going on tracking right. She truly looks and feels like a different horse going left and right. To the left, she's balanced, smooth, consistent tempo. To the right, she's hollowed out, head counterbent, dropping all contact on the inside rein, and staggers along with tiny short strides. So then the question is- is it a vet issue, a chiro issue, a training issue? We did spend a lot of time warming up to see how much of it was pushing her beyond what her body would let her do. I think she has some real stiffness behind her shoulder on her right side that is physical. But I also think she has some "you won't make me" behavioral stuff too, since I've been babying her by worrying about hurting her by pushing her too much. My instructor was able to get her bending and going reasonably better after riding for a few minutes, and definitely felt resistance that was both physical and behavioral. She doesn't ride this way outside if we're tracking right around a field or something, so while I believe that it may be harder physically in the ring, I do think part of it is just that she hates being in there. The chiro is coming in 2 weeks, so we'll start there.

We got in some time outside Friday and Saturday. Friday evening, the weather wasn't too oppressive so we went out in afternoon. We stuck fairly close to home:
_Looking angelic:









One of my favorite barns in our town, on our neighbor's property. Sadly, it is going to be torn down in the next year to put in a senior health center:








_
_Looking back from the neighbor's at our barn:









_Saturday morning I went first thing. If horses could pout, this is what it would look like- she was not pleased that all her friends were being turned out for the day and she was being tacked up:









Still, it was a beautiful time to ride. We went on a route we haven't been on much lately, and she was really funny, snorting and blowing at everything. She finally got that out of her system and we had a pretty nice ride. 

_Gorgeous morning, no humidity and no bugs








_


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## egrogan

Just a quick visit today, and the treat man brought apples


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## egrogan

Izzy has had a busy weekend!

We went out with our trail buddy yesterday afternoon. It was a gorgeous day for a ride. 









I really like having someone to ride with, but my friend's mare is soooooo slow, and Isabel isn't exactly a racehorse but even her pokey walk is quicker than this mare's, so we do a lot of stopping and waiting (a lot of spots on the trails are narrow so circling often isn't an option). By the end of the ride, Izzy is pretty much over having to stop and wait. Here she is caught in one of her tantrum moments:








It's an annoying training problem, I know she should be able to stand there for 2 minutes or 2 hours if I tell her to, but I'm not completely sure what to do to fix it. Once she gets in this "I Don't Want To" zone, there's not much to do to stop her except really get in her mouth (and you can see in the picture), which I hate. Any advice?

When we got back to the barn, The Treat Man was waiting for us, enjoying the nice weather and catching up on some email outside the barn. They had a nice little chat:



















Today Izzy got to be a therapy horse with one of her favorite little riders (the same girl who rode her in the show a couple of months ago). Here she is with one of the program volunteers and her rider after finishing the lesson with a walk around the property:


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## SueC

Erin, about the sidedness: Have you ever done Yoga or Pilates? I found that excellent for addressing those sorts of issues in me and since I've lived on a farm and stopped going to class twice a week (class keeps you honest) my sidedness has definitely come back...

Horse sidedness: Most horses have favourite sides, the same way we are right-handed and left-handed, and I personally don't believe the reluctance to work the uncomfortable side is any more an issue of "You can't make me" than it is when they were trying to force left-handed children (sometimes by caning them) to adopt right-handed mode. I think people need to be understanding about that. Obviously persist in working with the uncomfortable side, but mindful not to sour the horse by pushing too far. Keep it happy, end on a positive note and repeat rather than prolong are good maxims for that and training matters in general. Extending time and demands gradually has always worked well for me.

Our personal sidedness really starts to hamper the horse in its uncomfortable zones as well, so really working on that isn't just great for our own bodies, but great for our riding and our horses as well. I always figure it starts with working on me.

Sylvia Loch, classical dressage guru, is really good with these kinds of issues (horse locomotion / rider effects) and I'm enjoying reading her books at the moment! 

Best wishes and happy riding. You do look such a fun combination - I think I need to stress that again, because it's so easy to get nitpicky about our riding when we're reading theory etc, and that can sometimes backfire by making us focus overly on our weaknesses rather than our strengths. It's great if we can celebrate our strengths and still work constructively on our areas in need of improvement - you know, not letting that dominate... I was born with excessive perfectionism so I know something of that kind of grappling, and the balancing act to get more Zen and relaxed, which for me has been the best thing to improve my riding.

I'm just thinking out loud here, hope some of that is of some use! Have a good week


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## egrogan

Sue, I never have done yoga or pilates. I'm not really an "exercise class" type of person and the yoga stuff is a little...hmmm...spiritual? for me. Maybe it's because a lot of the people I know who are into yoga are really annoying about it, insist on always having the proper clothes and gear and going to the best studios to be seen by others-it's more of a lifestyle to them and I think I've found that to be a turnoff. I played team sports all my life until college, and I've found individual exercise to be very difficult to enjoy- riding excepted! 

Totally understand re: the perfectionist tendencies. I have them in all parts of my life (professional and personal) and it's tiring! With riding though, the simple truth is that I _can't _get overly fixated on being a perfectionist because I don't have enough natural talent!

I think maybe some of the anxiety that comes through in my posts is that I have this intense fear I'm somehow going to hurt Isabel. Her back, as I know I've mentioned, isn't very strong, and I worry that my bouncing around up there ungracefully is causing her pain. I don't have that ability to look at a horse and see discomfort or mild unsoundness, so I just want to try to ride to the best of my abilities to keep her riding sound as long as possible, hopefully enjoying our little adventures along the way. I do sometimes wish that my first horse had been a big brute of a Quarter Horse that felt more indestructible underneath me so I could perfect my own riding with a horse that could stand up to it. The fact is that Izzy is pretty tiny, and on the older side when I got her, so I think my weight and lack of finesse is about the maximum she can take.

But yes, point taken, we are not competitors and most days are just out to enjoy a little stroll around town with a couple of trots and canters thrown in, so realistically, it's fairly unimportant that I have perfect equitation or she looks like a show pony in the ring.


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## egrogan

LUKE...I AM YOUR POOONNNNYYYYY....


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## frlsgirl

Erin,

Regarding the one sidedness; check out the free ST training resources; Ana could hardly turn left when I first started working with her; now she's moldable like pretzel dough.

Straightness Training | Valuable Tips About Horses & Horse Riding | By Marijke de Jong


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Sue, I never have done yoga or pilates. I'm not really an "exercise class" type of person and the yoga stuff is a little...hmmm...spiritual? for me. Maybe it's because a lot of the people I know who are into yoga are really annoying about it, insist on always having the proper clothes and gear and going to the best studios to be seen by others-it's more of a lifestyle to them and I think I've found that to be a turnoff. I played team sports all my life until college, and I've found individual exercise to be very difficult to enjoy- riding excepted!


I'm not an exercise class type person either. I had to do Pilates because my old lower back injury needed it (and would still benefit from it). The classes I saw at the local gym were uninspirational. I hate gyms personally - the other people's sweat all over equipment (in rotating through equipment type classes especially), the muzak, the atmosphere. Luck had it that a local dance teacher was also offering Pilates and Yoga in her very lovely studio. Totally different atmosphere from a gym, and great individual feedback, and the people in classes were really nice too, so I did enjoy that, even though when you really push in Pilates you also really suffer! :shock: But it's the best exercise I've found for balance, core strength and evenness, and its benefits carried very distinctly into my walking posture, horse-riding, etc etc as well as keeping my back in good order! (I will have to find a way of going again...)

I think Yoga can be taught without the overlay, just as an exercise, depending on the type of class. Our class was just poses and stretching. It was also very calming and meditative (and unlike Pilates didn't produce any burn ;-)). Time seemed to slow down.

Clothes for either class were just T-shirts and track pants; and a towel to put over the mats provided.

Actually, rollerblading is also excellent for stretching your back out and reducing sidedness. Or ice skating, if you have the opportunity - does it get cold enough where you are?


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## egrogan

We're all friends here, so I'm going to share a story about my ride last night. Let's just say that as I mounted up, my stomach wasn't feeling...quite right. I decided to warm up close to the barn in case I needed to do an emergency dismount, a la these other fine athletes: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/sports/athletes-who-need-bathroom-break-must-improvise.html?_r=0 Sure enough, it quickly became apparent we were going to need a rest stop. I did manage to get Izzy into a stall, even take her bridle off, before sprinting past the amused barn assistant to the bathroom. 

That taken care of, we took a quick ride around the neighbor's field. All the horses were being brought in for dinner during our ride, and Isabel was not particularly happy about having to go out while they were going in. We kept things pretty short and sweet.









And made sure that there were peppermints after:









This morning Izzy got a visit from the chiropractor. Though we have a regular appointment every 3 months or so, the timing of this one was good because over the past couple of weeks, she's been having a lot of stiffness/unwillingness to bend to the right. It seemed to be coming from a weird spot, almost like a block between her neck and withers. When the chiro got there, we lunged her w/t/c both directions, and there was no obvious lameness. She didn't appear sore at any of the points the chiro tested. 

As the chiro started the adjustment, she honed in on the hyoid apparatus as the source of a lot of the tension. I know embarrassingly little about horse anatomy, so I found this to be a fairly useful (and hopefully accurate!) overview of the hyoid: https://handshealinghorses.wordpress.com/tag/horse-hyoid-apparatus/. She also spent some time working on Izzy's withers and sternum. It's hard to tell right after the appointment how Izzy is doing, but she's always so good during the appointment and seems to really relax through most of it (she did not particularly appreciate the manipulation around her jaw/tongue though!!)

From here, Izzy will get a day off, then her feet done on Friday, and then we'll see if on Saturday, she feels like a new horse.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> By the end of the ride, Izzy is pretty much over having to stop and wait. Here she is caught in one of her tantrum moments:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's an annoying training problem, I know she should be able to stand there for 2 minutes or 2 hours if I tell her to, but I'm not completely sure what to do to fix it. Once she gets in this "I Don't Want To" zone, there's not much to do to stop her except really get in her mouth (and you can see in the picture), which I hate. Any advice?


Oh yes, Morgan mares can throw tantrums like no other horse I've ever ridden. The key is to figure out how far you can push her without reaching the breaking point. Can you ask her to do something that's fairly easy for her, insist that she do it, and then praise her? Otherwise, she wins and learns that tantrums work. 

I think I have a tantrum caught on camera, I'll see if I can upload it and share it with you.


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## frlsgirl

I pmd you a link to the video; it's my trainer riding her through a couple of tantrums.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I pmd you a link to the video; it's my trainer riding her through a couple of tantrums.



Ahh yes- I know that tail swish 

During one of these tantrums, Isabel will do just about anything else I ask her to do- turn on the forehand, backup, walk (even away from home), circles, all those things which are supposed to be "more work" than just standing. She doesn't like just standing around generally, and she likes it even less when she knows we're on our way home.


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## egrogan

I had a wonderful ride today, best I've had in a long time. I spent just 10 minutes warming up in the arena before heading out, and Izzy was moving much better than usual. I had also ridden another horse earlier in the morning, so I was also better warmed up! And look, riding balanced with legs even!









Our neighbor just did the second cutting of his hay fields- I'm actually surprised they bothered, it had hardly grown at all since the first cut and doesn't look very good. But I guess you take what you can get. Anyway, that changed our route a little bit since they cut a part of the field they don't typically cut, so we had a to do a few uphill climbs at the beginning of the ride. Izzy was happy to canter up and then spend a minute surveying the fields:









We went our usual corn field route, and they've mowed a really nice path around those too. It's so nice to no longer have those tall weeds as a distraction!









We've been having a problem recently where we get into a disagreement about speed- I ask for a trot, she wants to jump into a canter, and then we spend the whole ride fighting about it. That was part of the reason I warmed up in the ring, I wanted to remind her she can do up/down transitions. 

But I've also been thinking about something I saw in Bondre's journal recently- she's written a couple of times that her mare sometimes just wants needs the opportunity run and blow off steam. So I decided that maybe Izzy really just needed to have the chance to run as long as she wanted to. 

When we got to the largest of the fields (probably 3 acres or so?) I asked her to canter and then just let her go. I got up in a half seat, gave her her head, and we were off. She flicked her ears back a couple of times as if asking "are you sure about this," and with just a little encouragement, around the field she went with no interest in slowing down. But not crazy or out of control either. She seemed to really enjoy herself. She went around almost the whole perimeter of the field, but as soon as I asked her to come back to a trot, she was happy to. And from there, we walked home completely relaxed on a nice long rein. So much nicer than fighting with her the whole way!

She was pretty warm when we got back, so I gave her a bath. I brought her into the arena with me to cool down in some shade while I was cleaning up some equipment I had used earlier, and of course this was what she did:




(*Note- I would never leave a halter on a horse turned out unattended, but she was right next to me and we were only in there for a couple of minutes)


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## Bondre

Glad to hear you both enjoyed your ride. I think that it does help them to relax at the slower gaits if they know they get a chance to stretch out and run occasionally - at least, it works for Macarena, and it sounds like it was positive for Izzie too. She's obviously a very sprightly horse for her age if she's looking for the chance for a good canter! Important not to always do this in the same place of course, so it doesn't get to be a habit they expect and demand. 

Curiously enough, Flamenca (my oldie) gets much more excited after a canter instead of relaxing, so it doesn't work for them all. Or more precisely only when she canters in company with Macarena, as when I ride her on her own she is always anxious to stop and offers the minimum lol. This means I never have the opportunity to ride out one of her little strops, as I'm always on Macarena and my son is riding Flamenca. However, the plus side is that, with my guidance, my novice rider son is getting pretty good at dealing with an excited horse that's jogging and throwing its head around. (Proud mum here lol). It always amuses us both - 5 yo Macarena is chilling out after the canter while 18yo Flamenca is stropping. It seems like they've reversed their roles!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Looking pensive:









Sometimes you need to save up your luck in case you need it later:


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## egrogan

Nice weekend with Isabel.

Yesterday we went on a nice short hack. There was some sort of loud farm machinery along our regular route- I never got to a place where I could actually see it, but I suspect maybe some of the corn fields are starting to be harvested. So, I kept the ride a little shorter than usual so as not to come unexpectedly face-to-face with a large piece of equipment!

We stuck to a nicely mowed path between the road and the fields, and did lots of good walk-trot-walk transitions. She did try to fly into a canter once, and my new motto is not to fight that and just ride her forward a few strides, but then correct her without making it a big deal and insist she trot again. Seemed to work pretty well. She only tried to run into a canter once.










After all of my worry about the equipment - or maybe because of it?! - she did have one spook. We passed a small pond that had probably a dozen female Mallard ducks floating around in it. I think I saw them a split second before she did, and in that split second of course my brain said, "if they all fly up, she's going sideways," and then what did they do but come flying up in her face, and she did go sideways. But that's one thing I love about her, her "big" spooks are either two steps sideways or a quick moment of all 4 feet straight up off the ground like a cat, and then she seems embarrassed with herself and goes on with whatever she's doing. Does make me wonder, if I hadn't had the thought about spooking, would she have? She's stood perfectly still in the past when birds flew out of the grass catching us both by surprise. But I think I probably tensed unconsciously, and then when the ducks flew out, she figured she ought to be worried about it...

Today was dreary and threatening to rain all day. So, the Treat Man and I stopped by the barn and took her out for a quick handgraze while it wasn't raining. Spoiled horse, she convinced him to give her a nice grooming while she got to graze. It's so sweet that he likes to spend time with her- he's not a horsey person but he's learned a lot over the years


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## SueC

About your earlier post: I notice your girl rolls right over too! 

Your horse is looking well, and that's some really postcard scenery you are riding in!

I'm glad you enjoyed that gallop around the field. That ride sounded perfect - a bit of everything.

Treat Man doesn't seem to mind horse contact! My husband doesn't like to touch animals, except cats and donkeys. I don't know why he has such an apartheid about it. He hardly touches the dog and says it has "dog contagion" and he thinks the horses are dirty and have "horse contagion"! :rofl: So I said, "What about cat contagion? What about donkey contagion? What about wife contagion?" ...but there's not logic to this, of course. I've had scenarios where I've tried to pass him a rug over a fence, and he's seriously said, "Let me just go get my gloves first!" - at which I scoff, and just carry the rug through the gate the long way around. Yet when it's a donkey rug, he'll carry it around himself. And he grooms the donkeys and scratches their ears and is all over them (which is nice ) and then I say to him, "You do realise they're the same genus as horses?"

Despite his illogical peculiarities, I do have to commend my husband on how much he pitches in with horse-related stuff regardless. He picks up barrow loads of manure to compost, rugs and feeds for me when I'm on night shift (I suspect he wears gloves to do it ;-)), and he is all for spending a fortune on the large amounts of copra, cubes for soaking, bran, canola and fine-cut oaten chaff our 31 year old Romeo (who had lost many molars) eats twice a day. It's the reason the horse is still alive and in good condition. But it's more expensive than feeding a horse that's training for the Melbourne Cup! Now that's not logical either. And Brett says to me, "But he means something to you, and he had a rough start in life, and he's enjoying himself, and he's a nice fellow!"

Brett doesn't mind hanging out with Romeo, since the horse doesn't try to sniff him or nuzzle him (he senses the aversion and is a very Zen horse). They just talk. With Sunsmart (standoffish) too he has an arrangement. But our cuddly two chestnuts who want to put their heads under your arm and have you rub them and who'll rub you back - he'll run a mile! He says to me, "The one thing worse than an aggressive animal is an affectionate animal!" Yet when the donkeys do it, he coos to them and cuddles them. I can only conclude that his English upbringing has affected him somewhat. :rofl:

Or maybe he's afraid of horses because they are so much bigger than donkeys? ;-) I have suggested it to him, but he denies it very heatedly! :rofl:


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> But that's one thing I love about her, her "big" spooks are either two steps sideways or a quick moment of all 4 feet straight up off the ground like a cat, and then she seems embarrassed with herself and goes on with whatever she's doing.


ROFL; I can totally relate; Ana has done that multiple times. There was a red tent at the last schooling show at my barn, Ana was scared of it at first but had finally accepted it and was actually grazing right next to it. Suddenly, two girls walked up behind her and Ana jumped, all four feet in the air, like "Geez, you should know better than to sneak up behind a horse like that!!" And then she went back to grazing like nothing had happened.


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## egrogan

It was a very sad day at the barn today. There's usually no one there when I go on Sunday mornings, but today one of the other boarders was out. And she had a tear-stained face. She is putting her horse down this afternoon.

Sam is the gallant old man of the barn. He's in his late 20s, close to 30. Every now and then I'd jump on and give him some light exercise. He's taught scared kids how to groom and packed around plenty more for pony rides. He's truly one of the exemplary equine citizens and the world will miss him when he's gone.

She thinks he had some sort of a mini-stroke late yesterday, as his whole right side isn't moving correctly, particularly his right hind. One part of his body goes one direction, and the right hind gets all tangled up going the other way. Still, he was up and acting normal, just like any other day- a little slow and stiff, but still alert and interested in what was going on around him. But she decided this is the right moment so he didn't suffer or end up down and unable to get up.

After I got over the initial shock, I thought back to yesterday. Sam has a "best friend" that he's always with in the paddock. His best friend is a silly, goofy 8 year old gelding who is constantly trying to play with Sam and generally just acts like an annoying little kid pestering his grandpa. Yesterday though, we were watching them in the paddock and someone said, "check them out today, Sam is glued on him even tied than usual"- and in fact, Sam was violating all of the "horsey personal space" rules that good citizens respect, basically leaning right on his best friend for support. Looking back, had something already happened? Did they both just know something _was _going to happen? Of course we'll never know, but it's sort of sweet to think that his buddy took care of him like that.

Anyway, his owner was putting on a brave face and waiting for the vet. I just about lost it though when I watched her walk into the paddock, take off his cribbing strap, and groom him up for the last time. He's been spoiled with carrots and peppermints all morning until the vet gets there. While she was on the phone with the vet, I snuck into his paddock to give him some mints and scratches and tell him how much we'd miss him, and cried a little. Like the perfect old gentleman he is, he lipped the mints from my hand gently, looked at me with his deep, wise old eyes and let me blubber like a fool into his neck. I think it got to me not only because of the obvious loss of a really lovely horse, but also because he was the oldest guy at the barn, and as long as he was ok, all the others oldies, Isabel included, were ok too. In fact, the last trail ride I went on with his owner at the beginning of the summer, we talked a lot about the uncertainty of having an older horse, and that as hard as it is to think about, we have to think ahead to be prepared for making that tough decision when the time comes. I'm just so devastated for her that the time came so much sooner than anyone would have liked.

So, RIP Sam. The barn won't be the same without your beautiful brown eyes saying hello to everyone who walked by your paddock.

Here he is messing around with his best friend last weekend:


















And one with another friend- sort of shows off his really kind eye:









And some nice mutual grooming with yet another gelding buddy:









Sniffing noses with Izzy- they were stalled next to each other, and if I came in from a ride after dinner, she'd always have to go up to his door, sniff noses, and then squeal in his face.









He really was a social butterfly; all the pictures I have of him are with another horse close by  I'll really miss this old guy.


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## egrogan

Today was Fall Teeth Floating day. Isabel had actually skipped spring floating since her teeth were good at that time. I wasn't sure what to expect today as the chiro had hypothesized at her last visit that perhaps some of Izzy's issues with her hyoid apparatus had some connection to teeth? Being a dunce when it comes to anatomy and physiology, I didn't fully get the hypothesis, but her teeth were still in good shape today at the vet check so I don't think there was much of a connection between the two. She had a few sharp points on pre-molars, and they got manually filed. He also manually removed a little tartar buildup. But, happily she did not need any sedation- even a very small dose has been hard on her in the past. Overall, he said her teeth are starting to show her age, but she has no major issues, breaks, etc. that will interfere with her nutrition, which was great news.

I also requested that he bring his portable x-ray machine so we could get a look at what's going on in her hocks. Back in the spring, she was so resistant to forward motion and seemingly stiff and unhappy under saddle. At spring shot time, he did basic flexion tests and watched her trot a 20-meter circle on the lunge and figured that given her age, she probably had some mild arthritis in the hocks and might find some benefit from Cosequin ASU+ (oral supplement). He laughed as he told me that as a vet, he recognizes that the research on feed-through supplements is pretty nonconclusive, but as a husband to a woman with two older horses who swears by it, he recommends that his clients start there and see if there is any positive benefit. Truly, Isabel's willingness under saddle has improved vastly since we started it back in the spring. No idea if that's because of the warmer weather or because of the supplement. But heading into a cold winter, I wanted to know if his guess about mild arthritis was right, or if it was time to consider hock injections to address something more serious in order to keep her sound and comfortable into the winter.

So again, I'm no expert in what I'm looking at here, but I just got the radiographs emailed to me and his interpretation was, "The radiographs look excellent for an older horse. Very little evidence of arthritis in the tarsal-metatarsal and distal tarsal joints. You should be pleased." 

I thought you all might enjoy seeing the inner workings of the hocks of a 21 year old lightly ridden mare:




































I trust that the vet would raise alarms if needed, but feel free to share any thoughts you have looking at these! 

And just a couple of nice shots from our ride yesterday- I tried to appreciate it even more than usual as I contemplated that our friend Sam was spending his last few hours with his "mom."

_The bugs have finally died down enough to go sans bonnet on our rides, even in deep woods:








_
_She was thoroughly offended that she had to stand and pose for pictures when there was lush grass literally under her feet:_









_Her coat still looks nice and shiny, but it's starting to transition from a summer to a fall coat:_










Heading back to the field- you can just barely make out that there are two big turkeys in the left portion of the field, and she was very curious about them:


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## frlsgirl

Sorry about the loss of Sam 

Glad Izzys X-rays look good.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Sorry about the loss of Sam
> 
> Glad Izzys X-rays look good.


Thanks on both accounts!


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## egrogan

Whoever said "horses are a mirror of their riders" was a smart cookie.

I had a really stressful afternoon at work yesterday, but had a "date" with my trail buddy for an evening ride-I got to the barn all in a fluster, complained about work a little, and rushed through grooming/saddling to get riding.

As you would expect, Izzy was dancing around on her toes, head up, on high alert as soon as we hit the trail. It took me about a mile to just calm down and focus on riding, not everything that was distracting me.

As soon as I started paying attention to her and riding, she immediately calmed down, stretched into a nice contact, and changed her demeanor too.

This is obviously really basic stuff- Riding 101- but it's amazing how sometimes life gets in the way of a good ride.

It also reminded me that Izzy has very little interest in things she thinks are stupid. She hates when we just ride a loop around the paddock where horses are turned out at the barn- she seems to ask, if we're not going anywhere, what's the point? And yesterday when I sort of asked her to go on autopilot, she was not at all interested. When I checked back in mentally, started asking her to vary her speed at the walk, leg yield or bend, etc., then she also checked back in.

Our trail buddy is a somewhat pokey mare, so we generally stick to walking since we'd quickly be separated if we did more than that. Usually Isabel gets sort of resentful at being held back, but at the end of our ride yesterday, she seemed to really engage with light aids working on subtle changes at the walk- it ended up being a nice ride.


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## frlsgirl

I can totally relate, Ana hates hacking out with slow pokes. She does however really enjoy the loop around the property because it gives her a chance to see what's happening on the north end; but our pastures are rather spread out so there is a lot more to see.


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## egrogan

The weather here is absolutely perfect right now. New Englanders are infamous for whining constantly about the weather- we're either too cold (8 months of the year) or too hot (2 months of the year) but there are those rare moments when it's about 70*F, sunny, with crisp fall air. We happen to be in one of those moments right now, and I've been trying to ride every night.


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## egrogan

Another beautiful day to ride yesterday.

Isabel didn't seem as into the ride as me though. She has one form of evasion that is really frustrating: she does this sideways crabwalk thing while looking over her shoulder back in the direction of home, as if she believes this is going to get her out of having to ride away from home. She doesn't always do this, but it was particularly bad yesterday. She is well-behaved enough to understand that not going forward at all isn't an option. But she's also popping out her shoulder and drifting sideways to try to avoid the direction she knows we're going in while sneaking glances in the direction of home. If I was asking her for lateral work, it would almost be beautiful! 

I'm really not sure what to do when she gets like this. It's generally when we ride across our neighbor's field on the way to the woods where we enter our trail. I can feel almost immediately that she's twisting underneath me. Then I see her head cocked to the right, bulging out her left shoulder. Then she starts drifting left. No amount of leg keeps her straight. Even shortening the reins doesn't help much, she just gets tense and balled up and keeps going a step sideways for every step forward. We're usually walking because we've just gotten going, and her pace is glacial when she's doing this. I've tried to drive her on in a trot or canter, thinking that will help. But she's proved she can do a sidepass, even at the canter, in these moments (not when I _ask _her to do that, of course!)

All this stops when we get across the field and she sort of "gives in" to the fact that we're going out on the trail. When she's acting like this, she resists those first few steps into the woods, but then she's fine and starts enjoying the ride. I wish we had more options for trails to ride, as I guess some of this is just being a little stale about going the same way every time. Given the way our trail options are set up, we basically always have to ride across this field and through the woods to connect to a spot where we then have 4 or 5 different directions we can ride. And she doesn't resist when we get to that point in the trail, it's really just starting out. I'm not sure what else I could try to either a) prevent this kind of resistance entirely or b) get her mind back on me quicker, without having to travel sideways the entire length of the field.

Anyway, aside from that little hiccup, we did have a really nice ride yesterday. The fall colors continue to fill in:









Here she is on our way back across the field on the way home. You can see she's really relaxed and makes a straight path up the hill. It's funny to me to see just how _busy _her ears are. 




I think you can tell from the video that we have a long, gradual incline to ride up as we cross the field. And as we're riding out the other direction, she's doing this crabwalk sidepass thing _down _that little hill, which is way more work than just walking straight across the level top part of the field. I don't get it!!

After our ride, it was so nice out, I took her to the yard beside the barn and let her free graze for awhile while I brushed out her tail. I don't brush it all that often, and it had gotten a little snarly. So I went at it with a good metal comb until I could easily run my fingers through it. Felt like a good accomplishment! You can't see it all that well here because of the shadows, but it was looking much better:


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## frlsgirl

I just love her ears; they are so communicative! Ana also has certain trail preferences and uses different tactics to let me know where she wants to go; drifting sideways, walking very slowly, or walking very fast, planting her feet, and the occasional snort, keep our rides very interesting. 

Once I commit to going somewhere with Ana, I generally don't back down; now I might dismount and hand-walk her if she starts to act out of control, but I don't want her to win either. So I praise her a lot when she confronts something that she's afraid of or dislikes, that seems to help a lot.

Natasha says do the opposite of what your horse wants to do; so in your case if she tries to drift left, you could ask for a leg yield right or a circle right and then praise her so she knows she did good. 

I also have very limited trail options so I try to reverse our loop or do a double loop in an attempt to make it more interesting. I don't know if it works; Ana is just so happy to be out of the arena that she doesn't really seem bored with it.


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## Bondre

What a gorgeous shiny mane Isabel has! And her ears are very cute. 

I'm sorry you're having a few problems with her resisting going out on the trails. I honestly don't understand this business of so many barn sour horses around. When I started ridiing as a teenager I don't remember ever hearing of this problem, and my own horse certainly wasn't barn sour. Yet since I have got back into horses, I have come across this twice personally, I've read about it here a lot, and now Macarena is going sour on me too. 

She started just like Isabel, looking back and edging sideways at the start of our rides. As soon as we have gone far enough from home, she packs it in - resigns herself to her fate? - and she does fine. But recently, after a couple of scares with the dirt bikes, things have suddenly escalated alarmingly. And instead of a horse that went anywhere with me, I now have a horse that will go nowhere with me. :-(

I'm sure that isn't going to happen with Isabel, as she is an older, more sensible horse and with better training. But this sort of resistance is annoying - especially when it's hard to understand why it's happening, because for you your riding time might be the high point of the day. Why don't they feel the same about going out? Is it so awful going out on the trails that they would prefer to hang out at home and do nothing lol? 

I would second doing what frlsgirl has suggested: don't forget to reward them at some point on the ride for doing well. It's easy to get into a routine, and we humans are often so centred on our own (admittedly more complicated) agenda that we forget about that our horse also has opinions. Not necessarily opinions that we ought to give in to! But at least remember to take them into account.


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> What a gorgeous shiny mane Isabel has! And her ears are very cute.


Aww...you're making us blush 

Thanks frls and Bondre for the suggestions. It made me think about one thing I didn't mention that I know I'm doing wrong. The days I get the most resistance are the days that I've asked her to stop shortly after mounting up so I can snap a quick picture. These darn smartphone really are ruining our lives, aren't they?! I think me stopping lets the idea cross her mind that maybe I'm not actually committed to the ride. So, easy fix. My precious picture will just have to wait until we're on the way home :wink: And, I do like the idea of setting her mind to a task and then rewarding if I am still getting resistance.



Bondre said:


> As soon as we have gone far enough from home, she packs it in - resigns herself to her fate? - and she does fine ... But this sort of resistance is annoying - especially when it's hard to understand why it's happening, because for you your riding time might be the high point of the day. Why don't they feel the same about going out? Is it so awful going out on the trails that they would prefer to hang out at home and do nothing lol?


Yes, this is the perfect description of how I feel. I don't take it personally, if I was a horse that mostly got to stand around eating and dozing with my friends watching over me, I suppose I'd prefer that too!

BUT- this whole business of exploring trails was my "compromise" with her since about a year ago she made it totally clear that she was just over arena riding and school figures. That's fine with me. I need to do _some _of that kind of riding to work on my own skills, but if makes her sullen and depressed, then I'm perfectly happy to find trails and get better at that as well. And I do ultimately enjoy hacking out more than schooling in the ring. But if she hates the ring AND starts resisting on trails, we'll have a problem. Better or worse, I can only have one horse right now, and I have a horse to ride. So we're going to have to make it work.


In separate news, the saddle fitter FINALLY came out yesterday. It was a 2-month odyssey to find a time to get him to come. It was definitely a worthwhile visit. First, as SueC suggested many pages ago, while I have my own crookedness problems, the saddle itself was also uneven. Her right shoulder is less developed than the left, and the saddle was crooked. He adjusted some flocking and the fit was better.

Next, he also admonished me for leaving the girth too loose, saying it allowed the saddle to move side-to-side during the ride. I have mixed feelings about this advice. I see what he was saying, but I am also not convinced that girthing up to an inch of being able to breathe is the right thing. He put the girth up a full hole higher on each side than I do-he tightened it up harshly while I was mounted, and Isabel did NOT appreciate that, she almost ran me through the car next to us in the parking lot where we were standing. 

When I was going through my riding instructor training, I often got feedback from my mentor that I was girthing up too tight (I had an incident when I was an instructor-in-training where a saddle slipped and I had a kid come off, after that I overcompensated). So I have been so hyper conscious about tightening safely without cutting the horse in two. I'm going to have to think about this one some more.

Finally, I have ridden with a sheepskin half pad since I've had Isabel, as I'm so worried about hurting her back, which as you've probably seen in pictures is slightly swayed due to her age. While I know intellectually that a well-fitted saddle doesn't need a lot of padding up, emotionally I can't shake the feeling that I'll hurt her sans fleece pad. So I don't know about that either. Except for the fact that he fit the saddle to her back without the pad, so I suppose I really can't use it and still have a good fit...

All this stuff seems so easy when you're telling someone else what to do...but when it's your own horse, the overthinking kicks in...


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Next, he also admonished me for leaving the girth too loose, saying it allowed the saddle to move side-to-side during the ride. I have mixed feelings about this advice. I see what he was saying, but I am also not convinced that girthing up to an inch of being able to breathe is the right thing. He put the girth up a full hole higher on each side than I do-he tightened it up harshly while I was mounted, and Isabel did NOT appreciate that, she almost ran me through the car next to us in the parking lot where we were standing.
> 
> Finally, I have ridden with a sheepskin half pad since I've had Isabel, as I'm so worried about hurting her back, which as you've probably seen in pictures is slightly swayed due to her age. While I know intellectually that a well-fitted saddle doesn't need a lot of padding up, emotionally I can't shake the feeling that I'll hurt her sans fleece pad. So I don't know about that either. Except for the fact that he fit the saddle to her back without the pad, so I suppose I really can't use it and still have a good fit...
> 
> All this stuff seems so easy when you're telling someone else what to do...but when it's your own horse, the overthinking kicks in...


Oh man! I can TOTALLY relate; I keep Ana's girth just barely tight; my instructor always wants to put it up another hole or two; I don't want Ana to be uncomfortable, but I don't want the saddle sliding around either.

I also have a sheepskin halfpad for Ana that I was using religiously until she developed so much muscle that it simply didn't fit anymore; so now I got a fancy Dressage pad that has a layer of fleece over the wither area; I just want Ana to be comfortable without sacrificing safety....it's just so hard to find that fine line.


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## egrogan

Thanks frls! Too bad we live so far apart, I'd love to have these two mares out for a ride together, they are similar in so many ways 

If you don't mind sharing, what kind of dressage pad did you find with the wither fleece lining?


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> If you don't mind sharing, what kind of dressage pad did you find with the wither fleece lining?


 I got her the PRI pad in white:

Buy the Doubleback Square Cotton Dressage Pad, Quilted, by Pacific Rim, fleece lining, at Mary's

This is by far my favorite pad; Ana is so sensitive about her withers and this one leaves room for all those stray mane hairs.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I got her the PRI pad in white:
> 
> Buy the Doubleback Square Cotton Dressage Pad, Quilted, by Pacific Rim, fleece lining, at Mary's
> 
> This is by far my favorite pad; Ana is so sensitive about her withers and this one leaves room for all those stray mane hairs.


Thanks. I'm going to try our new setup for a few rides and see how she's reacting. But good to have this recommendation.


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## egrogan

_What, is my flymask on crooked or something?




























Nothing to see here...nope...








_


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## egrogan

I just love fall. It's the most perfect time of year where I live.









Went out for a nice long ride yesterday. Isabel is looking really fuzzy:









Corn fields were harvested, she was a little "looky" since the landscape was so different, but we had a nice ride. 


















Even riding away from the barn, I focused on setting course, really riding her out, and not giving her any question about what we were doing. She was good, just a small "I don't want to" moment crossing from the field to trail, but she got over it quickly.

After a 3 mile ride outside, I also rode in the ring for a bit just to continue to get a feel for how the saddle was fitting since the re-flocking. I was riding with a much tighter girth, and she seemed fine. Had some really nice canter transitions.

We also got a new saddle pad to ride in for hunting season: no one's going to miss us out there! It was also clearly visible to cars on the road, people slowed down or even stopped from much farther away than usual.


















It was a nice coincidence that I happened to ride with this new pad the first time riding in the adjusted saddle. So the sweat marks were pretty easy to see- looks fairly even, right? Maybe a little more weight on the right?










It's supposed to be another beautiful day today, heading out to ride soon.


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## frlsgirl

Wow, love the fall colors; not an expert on saddle fitting but Ana's saddle pad shows the same sweat mark pattern.


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## egrogan

A couple more pretty shots from a gorgeous ride today:



















She was even better today. We spent a lot of time in a nice, ground-covering trot without her rushing and getting unbalanced wanting to canter. When we did canter, it was up a long, gradual incline, a really good workout.


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## egrogan

Haven't been on the Forum for a few days. We very sadly had to put one of our dogs to sleep last week, then I was out of town for a few days at the end of the week. It's been a whirlwind.

Since we had a long holiday weekend, I did get to ride on a couple of beautiful days.

Sunday we had a bit of an unexpected challenge. I had planned to go on our "long route," but halfway through, we encountered something Isabel had never seen before. In the middle of the recently cut cornfields, there were 4 men with metal detectors methodically sweeping the field. She was extremely concerned about this, but not spooky. Instead, she simply planted all 4 feet where she stood, got wide-eyed, and was taking in the smells very intently. I let her stand there for a minute to take it all in, but she would not move at all once I asked her to walk on. I've never had her "plant" like that before, it was like she was hypnotized by them! Not sure what I should have done in that situation? Eventually, I did have to give her a fairly hard tug on the right rein to get her attention, and we went a different way. I wasn't feeling brave enough to cut through the field as planned, so we had a shorter ride than expected. 

Our "alternate route" when we couldn't go the way we wanted:


















Yesterday I was able to go out with our trail buddy. We made it a nice, long ride up and down several hills. A great workout and we were rewarded with beautiful fall views when we got to the top of the tallest one:


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## frlsgirl

I'm so sorry about the loss of your beloved dog, Erin! Mine are getting up there in age and I sometimes wonder how much longer I will have with them, and if one goes, will the other be ok. How are your other dogs handling the loss?

I had a bad spooking incident with Ana that I had posted on her journal; it's just so hard to say what you could have done differently because I'm in the same boat; I've had people tell me that I should take her to a de-spooking clinic, but you can't possibly de-spook them for every unknown object that they might encounter...so I guess it's more about slowly building a trusting relationship, and living and learning from each incident. One lady told me that I have poor horse sense for taking her into a bad situation, whereas others say that she needs more exposure like that. So you see, there is no "right" answer, you just have to figure out what works best for you and Isabel.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I'm so sorry about the loss of your beloved dog, Erin! Mine are getting up there in age and I sometimes wonder how much longer I will have with them, and if one goes, will the other be ok. How are your other dogs handling the loss?


Thanks, our other dog seems to be doing ok actually. It's been exactly a week, though seems like so much longer! The first couple of days, every time the front door opened, our other dog was eagerly wagging and looking for her friend. But now, I honestly think she's adjusting fine to being the center of attention  She has that kind of "me me me" personality. I do think we'll end up with another dog not too far into the future, but we're trying to decide if it's something we want to do before or after the winter. Winter is hard here, and we'll likely wait.

Had an interesting ride yesterday. We went out with two other mares from the barn. Isabel was surprisingly ok with being in any position on the ride. A few months ago, if she wasn't leading it was a fight. But she's been willing to follow or lead and stayed pretty happy with either position. 

We had some nice opportunities for trotting and cantering with the other mares, and she seemed to enjoy that too. The beautiful weather has them feeling good.

The ride was going great until the end. As you all know, I've been having problems with getting her to stand and wait when I tell her to, particularly on the way home. I always make her stand before we cross any road, and she did that reasonably well when I asked her even though the other two women didn't ask their horses to do so. But Isabel got a little anxious when those two rode away leaving her (understandable) so I (probably stupidly) asked her to whoa again _after _we had crossed the road, since I could tell she wasn't focused on me at all. That pretty much sent her into a little fit. She wouldn't stand, and I had to keep spinning her in a tight circle. I finally got a not-perfect-but-acceptable few seconds of standing, so let her walk out in the direction the other horses had gone (at this point she could no longer see them). She became frantic and took off down through a small ditch, cantering up the bank, and continued cantering across the paved parking lot we have to cross. Somewhere in the up and down through the ditch, I lost a stirrup but stayed in the saddle. Once she could see the other horses, she was ok, if a little jiggy. We still had about 0.5 mile to ride to get back to the barn, and the ride ended well, with her walking calmly on a loose rein.

The refusal to stand on command on the way home is a real problem. I have yet to find an acceptable correction for her except for hauling on her mouth. I think I've said before, when she gets like this, I can turn her back away from home and "make her work," turn on the forehand, go in little circles, turn her perpendicular to the path home and make her stand, whatever. She is compliant when asked to do all those things. But if I point her back towards home and ask her to stand again, same thing all over again. Just not sure what to do about it.

_Who me, not listen to directions?!









_


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## frlsgirl

Oh wow. Glad you were able to stay on!

These Morgan mares sure know how to throw a fit; Ana does the same thing when she categorically disagrees with me on something.

Some horse experts say to keep their legs moving so they suggest circling; whereas others say that the horse must learn to stand still, the latter have clearly never worked with a highly opinionated Morgan mare.

Whenever I have a strong disagreement with Ana, the kind where it's not clear who won, I immediately follow that with a very easy exercise so that I can sneakingly re-establish leadership without asking too much of her. Like this morning, we were working on halt/trot transitions and she started jigging, so I followed that with an easy stretchy trot circle.

Generally, I've found that it helps to ask for a very forward exercise immediately after a collecting exercise; it's kind of like shaking a bottle of soda, the carbonation needs to come out but in a controlled way. So when you asked her to halt, she was building up carbonation in the bottle, and when you let her canter, you loosened the cap and all the soda came shooting out 

That's why I don't always push Ana very hard, because I'm not sure that I want to deal with spilled soda


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## Bondre

Your home area is just stunning at this time of year, egrogan. I love the colours in your photos. Love Isabel's elegant plaited mane too. 

I can imagine your horse must have been quite a bundle of fun as a youngster! She obviously still has plenty of joie de vivre even in her advanced teens. I'm glad you stayed together during the improvised cross country section of the ride. It does sound as if you chose the wrong battle asking her to stand after the road crossing. I'm not saying this in a judgemental way in the least, btw, I make plenty of mistakes too and think afterwards "how stupid can you get!". Sometimes Macarena lets me get away with a mistake and other times she doesn't. Recently she is being less forgiving and I am having to tighten up my act.

I'm afraid I don't have any concrete advice for you, but in general I agree with frslgirl in that it's easier to aim for controlled movement rather than keeping them standing still when in a tense situation. With Macarena I definitely go for the controlled movement option, but she is a real fidget and standing still is one of her weakest points. And Isabel is undoubtedly much better trained so asking her to stand on the way home shouldn't be off limits. What would happen if you turn her around and ask her to back up in the direction of home every time she tries to move forwards when she is meant to be halted?


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## bsms

Those are beautiful pictures! It looks like a much nicer place to ride than where I live:










My wife would like to move someplace greener. I love the desert, but the pictures of your riding makes ME green - with envy!

I never got my Arabian mare to stand still on a trail. We could do figure 8s, or turn and go back, or go forward - but I doubt she ever just stood still for more than 15 seconds. This picture is the only one I have of her standing still on a trail - and a few seconds afterward, she stretched out and away we went.










At a road crossing, I could move her back and forth parallel to the road. I'm no great shakes as a rider, but I can't imagine how anyone could have gotten her to stop, stand still, and not get very agitated. Bandit is calmer, but he has about a 10 second fuse for standing still. If you ever figure out a solution, I'd LOVE to hear it!


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> I can imagine your horse must have been quite a bundle of fun as a youngster! She obviously still has plenty of joie de vivre even in her advanced teens.


Ha, I often wonder what she was like as a young one. If I'm doing my math correctly, I think I first met her when she was 16, and she was a fun ride then too. She previously lived in a home with 8 little kids, and I would love to see video or something of them all playing around with her! As far as I know, she was with them from the time she was about 5 until she was about 15, so they must have done a lot of the training work, or at least maintenance of the basics, with her.



Bondre said:


> I'm glad you stayed together during the improvised cross country section of the ride. It does sound as if you chose the wrong battle asking her to stand after the road crossing. I'm not saying this in a judgemental way in the least, btw, I make plenty of mistakes too and think afterwards "how stupid can you get!".


No offense taken- as she was charging down the bank I was telling myself it was a stupid choice! I think if the other horses had also stopped and she could have seen them, it may have been more productive- but as it all played out, not a good move.



Bondre said:


> I'm afraid I don't have any concrete advice for you, but in general I agree with frslgirl in that it's easier to aim for controlled movement rather than keeping them standing still when in a tense situation.


And that is definitely possible, she may be irritated, but I can circle, figure 8 whatever and she's not like a powder keg. I think the problem is that when I ask her to stand, she doesn't respond to anything but a lot of pulling on her mouth, and we all know how effective a tug-of-war with a horse is- she just leans on it and hauls ahead.



Bondre said:


> What would happen if you turn her around and ask her to back up in the direction of home every time she tries to move forwards when she is meant to be halted?


Good question- not sure what would happen. I would expect that she'd do it, and then when I turned her back facing home she'd want to charge off again or refuse to stand.

You all have made me think about *why *I care about her standing on the way home. Is it necessary? And I do think I have to be able to count on her for at least one big reason:

We had an incident many months ago where she was resisting a "whoa" when we came to a road crossing- it's almost like a blind crossing because there is a wooded path that leads right up to the road, so because of the trees it's hard to see cars until you're right in the road. I asked her to stand, she kept scooting forward, and her front legs were in the road when a car that I didn't see came zooming by. After that, it became a non-negotiable that she listens. And at that crossing, she _does _listen. We stop a few steps from the road, I peek out around the trees, and then we go on. I just never want to feel like we're going to be fighting about a halt and potentially walk into traffic.

The other reason may be more nit-picky. I don't like being on a horse that wants to rush home. There are a couple of points in our ride where we can turn for home, and she wants to speed up then. I started trying to ask her to whoa when she wanted to speed up, and that's where we start to get into the battle of wills. So maybe the whoa there is just not worth it, maybe the better options there is asking for slow walking in a different direction. I do try this a bit, and like I've described, she's compliant if irritated with what I ask, and as soon as I turn for home, she wants to speed up again. We could endlessly turn away from home and amble on a loose rein, but I think we'd both find that annoying. I will say, most rides do end with her doing a relaxed walk on a loose rein, so maybe I'm just being unreasonable.

I'll think more about this when I ride tomorrow (not going to make it out today).


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Those are beautiful pictures! It looks like a much nicer place to ride than where I live...
> My wife would like to move someplace greener. I love the desert, but the pictures of your riding makes ME green - with envy!


I don't know bsms, there is something about a desert landscape that has a beautiful simplicity to it. I've done a couple of cross-country road trips, and I found the landscape across west Texas, Arizona, and Nevada to be very intriguing. It certainly is different from what I see out my window- and I have to admit, at this time of year, I know New England really is the place I belong. 

Here are a few non-horsey shots of fall at our house:


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## frlsgirl

Oh that is so pretty Erin! We don't always get those pretty leaf colors out here in Oklahoma.

About the halt issue with Izzy, it might just be a Morgan thing; they are super smart and squirmy so they are always looking for a way to outdo their owners. We have a Morgan Dressage support group on Yahoo, where we talk about specific Morgan issues; there are also general Morgan FB groups that have been helpful. Morgans just have a way to making their owners feel incompetent or lost; ask me how I know


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## egrogan

SUCH a better ride today. It was cool with a crisp breeze, and at first Izzy seemed to see ghosts behind every tree. But she settled easily. We had lots of places to let her open up into a nice working trot or canter, and she was happy to go forward. I even asked for whoas at some of the "trouble spots" and she had no issues at all, standing nicely until asked to walk on.

She sometimes gets nervous when we encounter people walking or standing near where we're riding, but we had another small victory today when we came upon a man standing near his truck who _reallllyyy_ wanted to pet and say hi to her. Instead of shying away, she went right up to him and let him pet her nose. Friendly all of a sudden- must have been because he was telling her what a beautiful horse she was :wink:

So overall, the only thing I can think of is that when we ride with others, I tend to hold her back a lot because that's the appropriate pace for the group I ride with, and I think she just really needs to be able to move forward for parts of the ride. I do tend to have better rides by myself.

Anyway, here's the happy horse:









Walking home on a nice loose rein:









And sporting her fall fashion while cooling out after the ride today:


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## Bondre

I guess she's just a horse that likes to move, and she gets frustrated having to accomodate slower companions. I actually prefer riding on my own, in general, because my horse goes better on her own than in company too (or used to before we started on the current barn sour business :-( ). More responsive and listens better. It sounds as if Isabel is a solitary soul too.

Your photos are fabulous. That first one you posted of the fall colours is worthy of a calender or a coffee-table book. Absolutely stunning the way the sun lights up the yellow leaves of the tree from behind, and the contrast with the silver birch bark which looks blue in comparison. 

The photo of Isabel sporting her stripy rug is very striking. I guess it's a stable rug rather than an outdoor one, but you wouldn't lose her in the field if she's wearing that! Not even on a misty morning ;-)


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## egrogan

The weather changed dramatically here today- winter crept in for a couple of days. It was down to 35*F, which is way too cold for us this time of year! We even had a few flurries flying around. I am really not ready for that.

Anyway, my husband and I started the day with an invigorating hike in a pretty forest preserve close to our house. Since you're all enjoying fall foliage shots, thought I'd share a couple of those pictures with you:


















Then I went for a short ride. The cold and stiff breeze had Izzy on her toes. I decided to go on a route we haven't taken in a couple of months. It involves more road riding than I really like to do, as there's not a very wide shoulder. However, on Sundays it's usually quiet, and that was true today. I was surprised by Isabel's reaction on this trail- while it's been awhile, it's a trail we used to ride pretty frequently, but she was snorting and blowing with every step as though she had never seen it before. She wasn't out of control, just on alert should anything bound out of the forest at us. (It didn't!). I like this trail more than some of the others we ride on because it's nice and wide with a gentle incline, so plenty of opportunity to get her thinking when she gets locked in to forest monsters. She gave me some very nice leg yields side to side across the trail. She stretched out into a nice soft canter on the uphill, though slammed on the brakes once when she thought she saw something, which reminded me a) keep your leg on to avoid sudden trot transitions! and b) half seat is "half" seat, not "lean-up-her-neck" seat and almost be catapulted with an abrupt stop!! And, she halted like a champ today, and stood until asked to walk on.

Riding through the woods, everything looks like it belongs on a calendar for the month of October:









My husband met me at the barn, and Isabel was excited to see him. I asked him to take a few pictures, which proved very difficult because she wants to stand right.next.to.him whenever he's around. Every time he tried to back up to get a shot, she wanted to follow. Finally we just gave up, here is the last attempt with me laughing hysterically since she was just so obsessed with him:









And here is her favorite friend giving her some grazing time while I cleaned up my tack:









The background of this picture is reminding me that fall is going to quickly slip into winter, even if the weather rebounds from today's abnormally chilly temps...


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## frlsgirl

I love her ears; you can tell she's on high alert in the trail riding pic and then taking an "ear break" in the other picture where you are posing for the camera.


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## egrogan

I was traveling for work at the beginning of the week so hadn't seen Isabel in a few days. I went to ride yesterday afternoon and since the arena was free, I decided to spend a few minutes schooling in the ring since we haven't done that in awhile. I was so pleased with how she moved. She was very responsive to leg aids, bent nicely through the corners, and stayed pretty forward rather than dragging around like I was asking her to ride through hell. I did grab a crop which helps keep her listening in the ring. I had a few really nice canter transitions, which she is often resentful about doing in the ring.

Timing was good, as another instructor at the barn popped her head in the ring and asked if we wanted to go on a trail ride with her. So we rode in the ring for about 20 minutes and then spent about an hour on a nice hack out. 

I love the little black tips of her ears 









Riding out:

__
Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18
Show Content


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## frlsgirl

It's funny how they are suddenly more forward when you carry a crop. I tried discretely dropping my crop in the middle of our ride, but she must have seen it because she turned into a slug again.


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## egrogan

Got in what is likely my last evening ride of the year last night. With the clocks going back, I most likely won't be able to ride after work for the rest of the year, which is a bummer. It's a lot harder to adjust my schedule to ride in the early afternoon, though I am fortunate that my job does sometimes give me flexibility to do that. And, my trail buddy and I will be doing a before-work ride at least once a week, as long as the weather allows.

Izzy was lovely on our ride yesterday. She stopped like a champ wherever I asked her to. I tried to do more circling than stopping, to double back and let my friend's mare catch up with us. I think she liked being able to walk out at a normal speed, she was less fussy when I did ask her to whoa.



















_Looking for peppermints after the ride:


















_We kept our ride very low-key as the horses winter coats have really filled in, and it's tough to cool them out we're done. It was worth it not to have a sweaty horse to walk out though. She was able to go right in for dinner.


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## frlsgirl

Winter riding can be tough to schedule; I've been going at 5:00 in the mornings, so that I can still make it to work by 8:00. I'm sure there will be days where it's too cold that early in the morning and/or the roads are too snowy/icy, so I'm trying to squeeze in as many rides as possible.


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## egrogan

Yikes, 5am is not in the cards for me. I'm not really a morning person at all, but generally get up with the sun to do my chicken-related chores. We'll see whether this new plan works. I used to ride around 7am when I first got Isabel, and she's definitely ****y about being ridden before breakfast. We'll see how it goes!


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Yikes, 5am is not in the cards for me. I'm not really a morning person at all, but generally get up with the sun to do my chicken-related chores. We'll see whether this new plan works. I used to ride around 7am when I first got Isabel, and she's definitely ****y about being ridden before breakfast. We'll see how it goes!


I don't actually ride at 5am; I leave the house at 5am, arrive at 5:25am, get her, prep her and hit the saddle by 5:45am and then ride until 6:15am which gives me 15 minutes to untack, give her treats and take her back out to the pasture. I arrive at home at 6:55 which gives me 5 minutes for breakfast and 30 minutes to get showerd/dressed, etc and then I leave the house again at 7:30am and arrive at 8am.

They don't serve breakfast at the barn until 7:30ish so she's not missing out on anything because she's in her pasture roughly an hour before the feed truck heads her way. I have ridden her right as the feed truck went by the arena and she did not approve of that, lol.


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## egrogan

Izzy had an exciting day yesterday. The therapeutic riding program had a costume horse show and open barn for trick-or-treating with the horses. Izzy has been working in two therapeutic lessons for the past month or so, and she joined her little riders in the costume class. She was dressed as "Rainbow Dash," a My Little Pony.




























I also ordered a My Little Pony Costume, but sadly the post office did not cooperate and it didn't make it, so I had rainbow gloves but that was about it. 









Still, the trick-or-treating part was fun, she got lots of oohs and aaahs ("look mom, it's a real My Little Pony!") and it was a fun event to be part of.


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## egrogan

We went on our first before-work ride this morning. The weather cooperated perfectly - about 35*F and sunny, it was gorgeous.

Izzy was not particularly impressed about being given breakfast and then tacked up. She made ugly faces and pawed as each horse was led out past her and turned out for the day. Poor girl was seriously pouting!

Since it was a little chilly, I did some easy walk warm-up in the ring before we headed out. It was actually a pretty cool feeling as she warmed up and walked out of her morning stiffness. I could almost feel each part of her body "waking up" as she stretched and relaxed, even lifting her back by the end of the warm up.

The ride itself was beautiful, couldn't ask for a prettier day!


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## frlsgirl

That's great. I too have had these awkward moments when I walked up to get her right as she was about to dive into a fresh bale of hay; so once she's done with her alfalfa mush, I grab a bunch of hay in a bucket and let her munch on it while I'm grooming her; then I take it away for tacking up, that way her stomach has a few minutes to settle before we start our ride. 

You know what's even more awkward? Walking up to get them while they are sleeping


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> You know what's even more awkward? Walking up to get them while they are sleeping


Luckily I don't think I'll be there early enough for that! You're impressive


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Luckily I don't think I'll be there early enough for that! You're impressive


Really? Does Izzy never take naps? I've had to wake Ana from her mid-day nap before. She keeps a rigid eat/sleep/play schedule, lol.


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## egrogan

Ever have one of those days when your horse is so far from being your "partner" that they're actually working against you? Uggh, we had one of those days today.

Seriously. Don't let this cute fuzzy face fool you.









I don't know what was going on, but Izzy was just a big GRUMP today. I hadn't seen her since Tuesday since the week was extra hectic at work, and she was definitely stiff at the start of our ride. So maybe she was a little sore. But still, she was pulling every trick in the book to avoid riding away from the barn- but mostly, she was just crooked and crab walking sideways, trying to lug out her shoulder and pull toward home. I had to get really nasty and really growl at her to go forward, which she reluctantly did. When I asked her to trot, she insisted on lurching into a choppy canter, and then when she wanted to stop that I pushed her forward and we kept cantering until she _really _wanted to stop. After that, she was a little better, but geez! I don't think we need to have that much of a fight about it!

I'm guessing this was partially because of sitting a few days with no work. But I also think she's lost a bit of topline- obviously her back is weak and a bit swayed as it is, but I remember this happened about the same time last year too. They're in that period when the pasture is completely grazed down but they're not being fed supplemental hay during daily turnout yet, so I think she's lost a bit of weight overall. The BO is going to start giving her more hay overnight, so hopefully that helps. I'm not sure if she's just feeling a bit back sore if her saddle is fitting differently all of a sudden. The chiropractor comes for a regular appt in a couple of weeks, so we'll see what's going on with her back then.

Oh well, tomorrow's another day- hopefully we'll have a better ride then!


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## knightrider

I had to check in and enjoy your Isabel posts and your trail riding adventures. Your Isabel is gorgeous! It was fun to see how you have progressed in your confidence and experience. Did you already say and I missed it? How long have you had Isabel? How long have you been riding? 

Thank you for sharing your adventures. Now I have caught up with the other Isabels on the Forum, I feel like some exclusive club. But isn't it funny how all 3 of them are so completely different? But all 3 very much loved and valued.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Did you already say and I missed it? How long have you had Isabel?


I've had Isabel about 3.5 years now. 



knightrider said:


> How long have you been riding?


I've been back into riding as an adult for going on 6 years now. I rode on and off as a kid and in my early 20s, but never consistently enough to really improve in any meaningful way. Every time I "re-started" it always felt like I was starting over at the very beginning again. I first learned to ride as a young kid at a saddleseat show barn (parents knew nothing about horses, barn was close), then in my late teens/early 20s I did some very basic jumping, and now I've settled into very basic dressage and mostly just hacking out for fun.



knightrider said:


> Thank you for sharing your adventures. Now I have caught up with the other Isabels on the Forum, I feel like some exclusive club. But isn't it funny how all 3 of them are so completely different? But all 3 very much loved and valued.


I love keeping up with so many horses through the Journal section of the forum. I do feel like I've gotten to know some really interesting horses and their lovely riders! And from reading the journals, these three Isabels are definitely quite different but all entertaining!


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## egrogan

Could have been such a cute picture from our ride today- except for Miss Grumpy Ears' expression!










Oh well- had a much better ride overall today. Trot was still a bit rough and choppy, but the canter was really nice. And managed one really nice smooth trot on our way home.


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## Bondre

It looks like it's cold with you, egrogan. We are having the craziest autumnal weather here. Warm days and mild nights, despite having clear skies which normally would mean cold nights. I was wearing a t-shirt and was quite comfortable with the horses at dusk. 

I'm sorry that Isabel's being a bit difficult; I imagine our hour change is very confusing for them. Mine are suffering from the new schedule - or at least I am suffering from not having much time to spend with them. All of a sudden everything happens much later in the day, exercise time is greatly reduced for working owners, and the horses must feel all these changes.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, I'm going through something similar with Ana; she doesn't seem happy to see me when I arrive at her pasture; yesterday she saw me coming and actually walked away, but she's much more obedient under saddle. Strange, right? 

We also have a hay issue that we are working through; she gets hay twice a day; it's a mixture of timothy, bermuda and prairie grass. As it gets colder, I would like her to have a continuous flow of hay so that she doesn't loose her condition. So her pasture mate's owner found a hay dealer and is trying out the square bales of high quality bermuda. Since she's been on this bermuda she's been totally cray, cray; so....now we are trying to find different hay that keeps her warm in the winter without causing her energy level to rise through the roof.

I'm sure you guys have different hay at the east coast...what kind of hay is Izzy getting?


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> It looks like it's cold with you, egrogan. We are having the craziest autumnal weather here. Warm days and mild nights, despite having clear skies which normally would mean cold nights. I was wearing a t-shirt and was quite comfortable with the horses at dusk.


You know, it's actually pretty nice here for November, about 50*F (about 11*C), and while the sky looked pretty ominous in the pictures, it was a pretty pleasant day to ride. Temperatures overnight are approaching freezing, but there's only light frost in the mornings. All my chickens are molting and some are bare naked, so I hope this trend lasts a little while longer so they can get covered up again! 



Bondre said:


> I'm sorry that Isabel's being a bit difficult; I imagine our hour change is very confusing for them. Mine are suffering from the new schedule - or at least I am suffering from not having much time to spend with them. All of a sudden everything happens much later in the day, exercise time is greatly reduced for working owners, and the horses must feel all these changes.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Yep, I do think the change in routine gets things thrown off some. I'm not riding nearly as much and I just dread dragging myself to the barn when it's already dark. I hope I do ride more this winter than I did last winter.

And I know I've been complaining about Izzy on here lately, but I should say she's not _that_ bad. Just little annoyance to deal with. All in all she's a great girl and even her biggest temper tantrums would make you laugh if you saw them in person. I do just wish she seemed like she enjoyed hacking out a little more lately-but I suppose if I were a little arthritic and stiff, maybe I'd prefer just hanging out with my friends snacking and napping in the sun!


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> It looks like it's cold with you, egrogan. We are having the craziest autumnal weather here. Warm days and mild nights, despite having clear skies which normally would mean cold nights. I was wearing a t-shirt and was quite comfortable with the horses at dusk.


You know, it's actually pretty nice here for November, about 50*F (about 10*C), and while the sky looked pretty ominous in the pictures, it was a pretty pleasant day to ride. Temperatures overnight are approaching freezing, but there's only light frost in the mornings. All my chickens are molting and some are bare naked, so I hope this trend lasts a little while longer so they can get covered up again! 



Bondre said:


> I'm sorry that Isabel's being a bit difficult; I imagine our hour change is very confusing for them. Mine are suffering from the new schedule - or at least I am suffering from not having much time to spend with them. All of a sudden everything happens much later in the day, exercise time is greatly reduced for working owners, and the horses must feel all these changes.


Yep, I do think the change in routine gets things thrown off some. I'm not riding nearly as much and I just dread dragging myself to the barn when it's already dark. I hope I do ride more this winter than I did last winter.



frlsgirl said:


> Yeah, I'm going through something similar with Ana; she doesn't seem happy to see me when I arrive at her pasture; yesterday she saw me coming and actually walked away, but she's much more obedient under saddle. Strange, right?


Sorry to hear that! Izzy has never been a lovey kind of horse and is rarely one that comes to the gate to meet me or look for affection. I know I've been complaining about Izzy on here lately, but I should say she's not really all that bad. Just little annoyances to deal with. All in all she's a great girl and even her biggest temper tantrums would make you laugh if you saw them in person. I do just wish she seemed like she enjoyed hacking out a little more lately-but I suppose if I were a little arthritic and stiff, maybe I'd prefer just hanging out with my friends snacking and napping in the sun!




frlsgirl said:


> We also have a hay issue that we are working through; she gets hay twice a day; it's a mixture of timothy, bermuda and prairie grass. As it gets colder, I would like her to have a continuous flow of hay so that she doesn't loose her condition. So her pasture mate's owner found a hay dealer and is trying out the square bales of high quality bermuda. Since she's been on this bermuda she's been totally cray, cray; so....now we are trying to find different hay that keeps her warm in the winter without causing her energy level to rise through the roof.
> 
> I'm sure you guys have different hay at the east coast...what kind of hay is Izzy getting?


She gets an orchard mix from a local farmer. It was a rough growing year for hay here- first cut was really late, and many people only got one more cut after that. It was cool to start, then rainy, then really dry. 

It's been probably close to two years since the barn submitted samples for testing, but even the last time that was done, it wasn't the greatest hay. At that point, she started on a ration balancer, which she's still on. There's a period of 3-4 weeks where the pasture is grazed down too much, but there's not hay thrown out in the fields during the day. During that period last year, I did notice she lost condition, but she looked fine again once they had hay during the day and were on the winter feeding schedule. The joys of boarding, right? There's only so much you can do to control their feeding schedule if you can't be there every day, which I just realistically can't be because of work.

Actually, as I write that, it reminds me that she's been at her crabbiest being led to and from the field. There's lots of lush green grass all over the property (just not in their turnout areas) and she wants to dive for it when being led. She is NOT a horse who is disobedient or pushy when being led, but she really is wishing for that grass. Maybe one thing I can do this week is just go out and hand graze her a couple of times.


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## egrogan

(Ignore that double post a couple posts up, I never really know how to use the "multi quote" feature and guess I messed it up...)


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> Actually, as I write that, it reminds me that she's been at her crabbiest being led to and from the field. There's lots of lush green grass all over the property (just not in their turnout areas) and she wants to dive for it when being led. She is NOT a horse who is disobedient or pushy when being led, but she really is wishing for that grass. Maybe one thing I can do this week is just go out and hand graze her a couple of times.


Ana and I have a grazing agreement; whenever I bring her back to her pasture, she gets to graze for a minute or two on the lush green grass just east of her pasture; in return, she has to be obedient and stand quietly for a a couple of seconds before diving into grass heaven. She is very strict about this; I can take her out in the middle of the night and she will insist on grazing in the dark when I return her :icon_rolleyes:


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## frlsgirl

Saw this on Facebook and immediately thought of Izzy and Ana:


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## egrogan

^^That is amazing! Love it.

Had my early morning ride with my trail buddy today. I decided I'd groom and tack with Isabel loose in her stall with a haynet in front of her- that worked MUCH MUCH better than making her suffer on crossties in the aisle. She was in a much more cooperative mood. Glad we've found a compromise 

Our ride was nice. It was downright COLD this morning- 27*F when we headed out. I decked Izzy out in her fun cold weather quarter sheet- hunters and motorists alike can see us coming from miles away:









The fields were crunchy with frost. The footing was pretty hard too, and some of the bigger puddles had ice on them. I am not ready for winter to be here!









We enjoyed shuffling through the leaves on the trail- it must sound like a herd of elephants are coming through. Let's just say these mares aren't the daintiest of movers  









I had just enough time for some quick hand grazing before turning her out for the day.

All in all, it was a really nice morning. It's amazing how a nice morning ride clears your head and gets you ready for a good day at work.


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## knightrider

That mare and gelding's diary fits my Isabel as well!


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## egrogan

It's been a crazy week at work. I hadn't seen Izzy since Tuesday morning. I taught a new group of 4(!) kids Saturday morning at the therapeutic riding program. I used Izzy in the lesson for one of my independent riders. She was a little ****y with me during grooming and saddling (_seriously mom...I don't see you for a week and you show up and let an eight year old try to bridle me??_) but she was a champ during the lesson. It was really windy, so the doors to the indoor were rattling, and she gave them a looky-look once and then went about her business of helping her little girl with steering and halts. Trustworthy, babysitter horses are worth their weight in gold, aren't they!?

I had planned on riding yesterday, but I could see that after the lesson, she just was in no shape for me asking anything serious of her, so instead I gave her a good grooming and just let her hand graze, which she appreciated. She earned it 

Today was beautiful though, so I did make it for a nice long ride. She was a little resistant as we rode out away from the barn, but I could feel her back was extremely stiff and she was shuffling a little, maybe a little uncomfortable on the hind end. After about 15 minutes though, she was loosening up nicely (NOTE to myself: now that it's cooler weather, a real warm-up isn't optional. Hopping on and heading out is just setting us both up for frustration...)

After she felt looser and more comfortable, we trotted a bit, she was responsive and forward. After that, I dropped the stirrups for a mile or so and just played around with me seat and leg aides. She was on a completely loose rein and nicely leg yielding, serpentine-ing, and doing figure eights on the wider part of the trail. I have a tendency to want to "perch" and sit on the pommel, so I really focused hard on sitting back on my pockets, rotating my pelvis, and letting my leg go long. She was super responsive to being asked with the seat to slow down to baby steps or step out into a nice working walk. And the biggest victory, on the route home, where she almost always wants to step into a frantic rushy walk, she maintained a steady rhythm, and even whoa'ed off of only seat aides. We stopped to admire the pond briefly along the way:








Walked home on the buckle with a relaxed, happy horse.

That said- she is looking like a yak already with a crazy thick winter coat. This is her _before _our ride (ignore the silly safety stirrups-they're available for the taking at our barn since it's a therapeutic facility and I've never gotten around to getting "regular" stirrups...). 








Even with 2 miles of walking before we got to the barn, she was drenched. I walked her out for close to 45 minutes and finally put her up mostly dry, but honestly still wet in her "armpits." It was over 50*F, so I thought she'd be fine. But I hate putting up a wet horse...

It's been a couple of years since I've clipped her in the winter, and I'd really prefer not to have to. I guess we'll have to see how the next few weeks are. We've been really lucky and had a mild November so far. If that holds up, I may have to at least trace clip her, though I just hate to mess with her coat at all knowing January and February could easily give us highs in the teens and lows well below 0*F...I guess time will tell.


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## frlsgirl

I've not clipped Ana at all; she lives outside 24x7 so I want her to be cozy and warm. Of course that means I can't work her very hard, or take lots of walk breaks in between so that she doesn't have a chance to break a sweat. 

With trail riding though, that would be hard; does she sweat if you only walk?


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## egrogan

I got to sneak in a quick lunchtime ride. I didn't have a ton of time, but enough to make it worthwhile.

Don't let this sleepy pose during tacking up fool you:









Izzy was S-P-U-N-K-Y with a capital S today! Know that feeling when you get on and you instantly feel that their back is coiled like a spring about to pop? That was Izzy. So much for needing a slow, methodical warm-up- she was ready to go!

There's a nice spot though the woods where it's possible to let her gallop out if she wants to- and boy did she! 

_Channeling her inner Secretariat and getting ready to run through the woods off in the distance:_








The nice thing about that part of our trail is that she knows we turn off it to head home, so no matter how fast she gets going, she always pulls herself up nicely so we don't miss the turnoff for home 

She was still a bit worked up when we got back to the barn, so I popped into the indoor arena and worked did trot/canter a few times in both directions. Of course she was drenched when we were done, so we walked a good 10 minutes and then another 20 just handgrazing with no tack. The sun was nice and bright though, so she did dry out pretty easily.

_Wooly mammoth old lady drying off:









_


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I've not clipped Ana at all; she lives outside 24x7 so I want her to be cozy and warm. Of course that means I can't work her very hard, or take lots of walk breaks in between so that she doesn't have a chance to break a sweat.
> 
> With trail riding though, that would be hard; does she sweat if you only walk?


Right now, she does sweat even if we just stick to walking. I think once temperatures inevitably become a little more seasonal, she probably won't get too hot with just walking. For now though, I just have to build in a 30-40 minute buffer after riding to walk her out. A bit of a pain, but it's hard to complain about mild fall weather!!


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## egrogan

Weekend warrior status is no fun. 

I hadn't ridden since Tuesday morning...My trail buddy and I skipped our planned Thursday morning ride because it was 20*F at the barn (my personal cutoff for riding is 25*F, otherwise I just feel too miserable). It's dark here by 4:30pm, so unless I can sneak in a ride before meetings in the morning, then it's tough to ride at night (we do have an indoor where I board, but there are generally lessons until about 6:30pm, and I'll be really honest, by that time of night I'm just not really thinking about getting out to the barn and riding).

So anyway...got to ride this morning. It was crisp, but not too cold. Decked out in our very vibrant quarter sheet, cars slow way down for us. But I think she looks a little embarrassed wearing it 









She was a fire-breathing dragon out on the trail. She snorted at everything- sticks, leaves, birds, didn't matter. I don't think I've ever actually heard a continuous snort as long as she was able to do  She saw ghosts everywhere in the woods- though I do think it was possibly hunters (another good reason for the quarter sheet!)
_On high alert, nostrils puffing:









_I was able to let her have a good long gallop though, there's a nice straight stretch with good footing that's probably 0.2 to 0.3 of a mile, so it's not too crazy-but the second I gave her her head and kissed at her, she took off. At one point, some birds flew out of the bushes sideways at her, and I swear she turned into a banana- she shied off to the right, away from the bushes, putting her nose pretty much at my left knee- but she kept right on galloping away (in that moment, I started laughing to myself because I was actually thinking about the "one rein stop vs. pulley rein" thread on here, where there was some debate about whether horses can keep galloping with their nose cranked around to your foot. Yep, is the answer )

For all her shenanigans though, I've finally learned that no matter how "up" she is, if I just laugh it off, she'll get over it. Sometimes I sing to her (that probably keeps the hunters FAR away!!), sometimes I just do methodical deep breathing, but she always settles. And ends up walking home, happy as can be on a nice loose rein:









And there's home off in the distance:









I was using her for a kid's riding lesson this morning, so I took her in the ring when we got home just to make sure she'd released all her dragons and wasn't going to be silly. She was perfectly quiet, so much so I actually did a few no-stirrups canter laps in honor of "No Stirrup November."

I really do love this horse. Seems like there have been a lot of new threads and journals popping up recently about HF members getting new first horses, and it makes me feel happy all over again that I got so lucky with Isabel. I wish I had more time, and wish I could ride more, but to even be able to say that I own a horse as nice as this one is such a gift. I guess that's one big thing I'll be thankful for this holiday!


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## Tazzie

She sounds awfully fun!! I definitely think you got a good one with her


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## egrogan

I think someone must read Isabel my journal at night. Every time I write warm fuzzies about her, she ends up ****y and disagreeable the next time I ride 

Wanted a short ride today, so we spent a little time in the ring vs. out on the trails. I would really like to see her bending more willingly, particularly traveling to the right. The little girl that rode her yesterday was a bit heavy with her hands, so my goal was to ride with as little contact as I could get away with while still getting nice bend and forward movement at the trot. But she had other plans- traveled nicely to the left, but high headed and strung out on a 20-meter circle trotting to the right. She reminded me of the last time I took a lesson on her, she was super stiff and just never got comfortable. We ended on a relatively good note after doing some spiraling in and out on the circle. 

I didn't ask her to canter at all in the arena because she seemed so stiff- when she feels that way, I generally get a better canter by asking her out in the fields so she can move out without the confinement of the ring. She was being a real witch about it though, doing this little sideways stutter step canter and resisting the forward. I actually used the stick on her shoulder once while growling at her, and she did NOT approve of that, pinning her ears and tail swishing- I did get my point across though, she went forward and continued in the canter until I asked her to stop. The chiropractor actually comes tomorrow morning for a check-up, so I'll see if maybe she's got some soreness in her withers or pelvis that would be affecting her. Definitely could be.

In the course of our little disagreement, my phone popped out of my pocket. So I criss-crossed back and forth across the field looking for it, asking her to walk politely while I was distracted and looking at the ground, and she was willing to do that. We found the phone, thankfully!

_Phone safely recovered, Isabel looking a little sheepish









_And lucky for her, the treat man showed up just in time to rescue her from her evil mother and take her for some hand grazing while I put my stuff away:_









_They remind you every time you ride that it's a partnership with another living, thinking creature, not riding a machine! I guess that keeps it interesting.


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## egrogan

We had a good visit with the chiro this morning. Isabel had no sensitive accupuncture points, but some tightness in her right hyoid, withers, and right pelvis. She had minor adjustments in those areas, but otherwise, it was a pretty quick and straightforward visit. 

She's so funny, she sleeps through most of the visit with her bottom lip drooping, and will give a quick tail swish when the chiro hits a sensitive spot. After about a year of doing this every three months, I feel like I finally understand the signs she gives me about soreness, and can predict pretty well where the problem spots will be. 

If I didn't see the improvements with my own eyes, I'd be a skeptic- but she always does feel better after the visits. Today she pranced back out to the paddock like a spring chicken. 

I'll skip a day of riding and see if she feels less "sticky" under saddle on Wednesday.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> I feel like I finally understand the signs she gives me about soreness, and can predict pretty well where the problem spots will be.


That's great! I've only had the chiro out once and she couldn't find much wrong with Ana, but she's a lot younger than Izzy. 

I've palpated different spots on her that are common trigger points on horses, and she gives me zero response; so I'm either doing it wrong or she just isn't sore.

She did seem tight all over on Saturday but I had ridden her pretty hard on Friday so it was probably just an overall, post-workout soreness.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I've palpated different spots on her that are common trigger points on horses, and she gives me zero response; so I'm either doing it wrong or she just isn't sore.


For Isabel, her signs are often very obvious tail swishes when asked to do transitions (withers are uncomfortable), resistance traveling right (right pelvis sore), and excessive yawning after a ride (hyoid issues). With the withers, the chiro seems to be able to palpate and get a reaction, but I don't think I do it right, because I only see it under saddle, not when I try to "feel for it." 

If you're interested in this stuff, you might get a book or read an article on where the accupuncture pressure points are located in a horse. The chiro starts every session by running what is essentially a popsicle stick across all the pressure points. Last time, Isabel would pin her ears and swish her tail HARD at various points- and she required a lot of adjusting. This time, she showed no reaction at any of the pressure points, and had just minimal body work done.

I keep meaning to ask if she'd let me video her working on Izzy, though I suspect she might not like it


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> For Isabel, her signs are often very obvious tail swishes when asked to do transitions (withers are uncomfortable), resistance traveling right (right pelvis sore), and excessive yawning after a ride (hyoid issues). With the withers, the chiro seems to be able to palpate and get a reaction, but I don't think I do it right, because I only see it under saddle, not when I try to "feel for it."


Ana likes to throw her shoulder to the right, she does that all the time though, so I think it might just be a general imbalance. Up transitions are more tense than not but she's always been that way, unless of course we are trotting towards the feed truck. Ana sometimes yawns before or after the ride, I just thought she was tired...I will have to do some research.

I won't be able to ride the last two weeks of December so I might ask the chiro to come back out and work on her.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Ana sometimes yawns before or after the ride, I just thought she was tired...I will have to do some research.
> 
> I won't be able to ride the last two weeks of December so I might ask the chiro to come back out and work on her.


Yep, yawning occasionally is perfectly normal. But back in the summer, Isabel was doing it excessively. After every ride, as soon as I took the bridle off, she'd yawn and yawn, over and over again, for upwards of 5 minutes. It started to look like a person who's trying to clear their ears while flying, if you can picture that kind of uncomfortable looking yawn. It wasn't normal.

After explaining that weird behavior, she did some work around the hyoid apparatus. The woman in this video isn't my chiro, but this woman seems to take a similar approach (maybe a little magical, but the maneuvers are similar):





(The tongue thing is so weird but seems so oddly satisfying, Isabel always gives a big sigh afterwards!)


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## frlsgirl

Really cool and the tongue thing is weird; I didn't know their tongues are that long. Thanks for sharing.


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## egrogan

I feel like I've lost the past month, it's gone by in a blink. It's been extremely busy at work, and I had a week of travel tossed in the mix. I've hardly seen Isabel at all. On the one hand, that's why I board. But on the other hand, it feels awful.

Happily, I am now off for two weeks of vacation, and I intend to get in as much barn time as I can. With the weather so unseasonable in New England, trail rides are still realistic.

However, today was our first dusting of snow, and it was fun to see a little "holiday spirit."

_This snow is just in the way of the good stuff!










Peppermints?!!?









Mmmm...crunch crunch









_Izzy's coat looks good and she's in good spirits. But I don't like how her back looks. She's lost a ton of muscle back behind her withers. I've allowed the barn to use her for 1-2 lessons for small kids since I've been out so infrequently, and I don't know if this is the result of a saddle fit problem, lack of "correct" riding, or just general loss of conditioning. I'm not thrilled with how she looks overall though. I will be glad to be able to show her a little more TLC. I can't predict how long the weather will stay warm like this, but once it turns back to what's typical for our winters, riding time could become inconsistent, so not sure how successful I'll be at getting her back into shape. But that aside, the next two weeks should hold plenty of rides for us!


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## frlsgirl

Yeah Ana looks a little poor right now herself; I've started her on a vitamin E supplement which is supposed to help with muscle recovery; I also started her on ground work Saturday which will hopefully put some muscle back on her.


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## egrogan

Today I felt like The World's Worst Rider on The World's Least Athletic Horse. Granted, I've ridden probably a total of 5 hours all month, so I didn't expect a phenomenal ride. I don't know though, we just felt really out of sync.

Izzy is clearly stiff and has lost conditioning. She was really braced and tense. We started out in the ring just to loosen up, and after a couple of laps of trotting (head sky high and hollowed out) she was anticipating the canter with her ears pinned back, head high, and clamped on the bit. Yikes! What kind of feedback is that as a rider?! She clearly looked like she was anticipating pain. So we never cantered at all. We spent a few minutes doing big loopy serpentines at the trot, and then went outside.

It was oddly foggy for the middle of the day, and since our regular hacking out loop includes a few road crossings, I didn't feel comfortable doing that. Instead, we trotted all over our property, and then up and down the hills in our neighbor's field. She tripped majorly riding across a straight, flat area, so hard she was on her nose and ripped the reins right out of my hands when she stumbled so hard. Given that...No cantering. She did loosen up some and felt much better by the end of the ride. She just seemed really unhappy the whole ride though. Tried to dive for grass a few times (she knows better!) and then kept her ears pinned for the rest of the ride after not being allowed to do that. Her mind was on the barn the whole time. She just wasn't into it at all. I'm sure it's just because I've been so inconsistent with her this month, which is totally my fault. But still...Not a good ride.

She's still cute though, grumpy and all...


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## knightrider

She IS still cute. Sorry it was such a rotten ride.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> ..." she was anticipating the canter with her ears pinned back, head high, and clamped on the bit. Yikes! What kind of feedback is that as a rider?! "


Umm, that's Ana's normal way of going into canter; I promise you it can't be worse than Ana; it must be a unhappy Morgan mare thing; and in my case also a saddle fitting issue.



egrogan said:


> ..."Tried to dive for grass a few times (she knows better!) and then kept her ears pinned for the rest of the ride after not being allowed to do that. "


Trying not to chuckle, but yeah, typical unhappy Morgan mare behavior; if I don't let her graze on the way back to the paddock, she pins her ears and stomps her feet like a 2 year old toddler.


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## egrogan

Better ride today. I put the sheepskin pad back on for the first time since the saddle was reflocked over the summer. Saddle fit didn't think it was necessary then, but I think her back is different enough now it may help. 

We went on a long ambling walk around our immediate "neighborhood." Our trails are a soggy mess right now after all this rain and unseasonable whether, so we "rode the road" and our neighbor's fields a bit. She was a bit less ****y today, so I kept things pretty easy. She did great with the traffic- I didn't expect the road to be as busy as it was, but traffic (even really loud rattly construction trucks) really doesn't bother her. I'm thankful for that.

Road warriors:









In the summer there's barely a little trickle of water in this ditch:









The fields are such a weird color right now:


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## egrogan

Mud bath, anyone?


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## egrogan

We avoided the winter weather as long as we could, but this week, it finally caught up with us.

_(Izzy on the right with her friend Rhonda)_









Started the new year off great. I hadn't seen Izzy in a couple of days because of weather and actually having a couple of vacation days to spend with my husband. But even with most of the week off, she was really wonderful today!

I didn't expect there to be anyone at the barn and was planning to work in the indoor arena for awhile, but surprisingly it was actually scheduled with back-to-back lessons all day so I couldn't get in there.

Fortunately, the footing outside wasn't terrible, and we were able to head out to my neighbor's fields and ride in the snow over there. I wasn't totally sure how Izzy would do with the change in footing- I tried to ride in the snow once last year, and she just froze (no pun intended!) and acted like it was quicksand that would swallow her if she took another step. It wasn't too deep today, and she was perfectly willing. I could feel that it was definitely a workout for her to move through it smoothly (sort of like if you're riding in heavy sand) so we stuck to a walk. There were a few windswept spots that were basically clear, so we trotted in those areas. She was very willing though, responsive to the leg, even on a nice loose rein, and even when riding towards how. I can't wait to see how long she'll be comfortable riding out in the snow- will be interesting to see how deep she can handle. But I was thrilled to start the year off so well! Here's to many more great rides in 2016.

_(Heading to the outdoor mounting block before our ride)_


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## frlsgirl

That last picture is like a Thomas Kinkade painting! Speaking of painting; there is a new app that lets you turn Smartphone pics into paintings; it's pretty cool. I bet you can do that with this picture and get it printed out and framed.


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## egrogan

I went a whole week without seeing Izzy at all! I was traveling for work at the beginning of the week, and then playing catch-up at the end. 

The weather was warm enough to ride outside today, and I probably wouldn't have ridden otherwise- but I hate to "waste" a warm winter day. Since she hadn't really been touched in a week, I decided to take it easy. We can't really ride on our trails because the ground is icy, and the ring was being used for a big group lesson, but the neighbor's fields get a lot of direct sun, so the footing isn't as bad. It was still crusty with snow/ice, but not a skating rink and seemed safe enough to ride on.

She started off well enough. I was intending to take a long walk on a loose rein, not really asking her to do anything but stretch her legs because she'd had no meaningful work in a week. She agreed with that for the first 15 minutes or so, until I asked her to keep riding away from the barn at a place where we often turn around to go home. She did the awful sneaky snaky head to ditch what little rein contact I had and try to spin back around. Bondre- I was thinking of you and Macarena from here out  I managed to catch her before she had turned 180* and keep her going in the direction I wanted.

We went a few more minutes without incident, still on a loose rein and just picking our way through the crunching snow & ice. But then I think she decided that if I was being pretty lackadaisical about the ride, she had no interest in continuing on. She snaked her head again, snatched the bit, and took off cantering up a hill towards a road crossing. Let me just say, the last place you want to have an argument with a barn sour horse is on an icy hill cantering towards the road!! Seriously though, it was fine, the hill was tiny so it was no more than 10 strides cantering and I was able to get her to turn at the top of the hill _away _from the road (and barn across the street) and we essentially backtracked the way she didn't want to go with me being a bit more of an active pilot this time. We continued for another 20 minutes or so and did some walk/trot work on the loose rein until I was confident she was listening again. At that point, home we went. 

She got a good grooming and even managed to find some places where she could graze a little through the snow. 

She looks so sweet and innocent here  










And truthfully, she really is. I will give her a pass for her sassiness today because I think my nonchalant attitude contributed as much to our disagreement as her attitude did. This time of year is just really hard to get into a consistent routine. We've got at least a couple more months of on-again off-again riding so my goal is to get as much exercise as we can, knowing there will probably be some bad rides mixed in with the good.


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## Bondre

Haha, Macarena is getting famous in the journal section for all the wrong reasons ;-). Barn sour horses are such a headache, but it's very understandable when, as in your case and mine, you lack time to keep up a consistent riding schedule. It sounds as if you worked Isabel through her little strop perfectly. It's a nasty feeling when all of a sudden they stop listening and take affairs into their own hands, isn't it? Especially when you know of a specific danger, like the road in your case our the deep irrigation ditches in mine, that the horse is heading towards in blissful ignorance.

She has such a cute face. "ME, spinning and trying to race for home?? No way! You must have confused me with someone else. Don't you know I'm a LADY, and ladies don't misbehave" lol.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> But then I think she decided that if I was being pretty lackadaisical about the ride, she had no interest in continuing on. She snaked her head again, snatched the bit, and took off cantering up a hill towards a road crossing.


:rofl: I'm laughing with you, not at you because I can totally relate to that Morgan mare attitude; when Ana decides something is stupid, there is no changing her mind. Fortunately, she hasn't done a full bolt and spin, but there has been feet stomping and running backwards. You are one brave girl; I think I would sell Ana if she ever took off with me, but I'm a total chicken and control freak.


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## egrogan

Due to a pretty crazy work week and lots of traveling, I hadn't seen Isabel in about a week. It's been very cold and icy, so I wouldn't have been able to ride anyway, but I hate for her to go that long without a good grooming. Thankfully my barn takes care of blankets on/off and picks feet every day- I'm so thankful to have a nice place for her when I can't be there!

So anyway, got out to see her today. She's not a people-lover so I don't think she really cares one way or the other if she doesn't get much attention, but she was happy enough for some scratches and pets as we went inside.

Started off by letting her in the ring. She immediately went for a good roll:









Then considered playing a little basketball:


















Then admired herself in the mirror:









And then things got a bit crazy.

One of the other boarders came in with her gelding. I told her it would be fine to share the ring and let them blow off some steam together. Isabel wasn't really doing anything but standing in the corner, so it seemed like it wouldn't be a big deal.

At first, it wasn't. They ignored each other for a minute, but then Isabel started "flirting" which the gelding took as an invitation to play a rousing game of tag:





They went on like this for about 10 minutes, getting a bit rougher as they went on, and we couldn't break them up. The gelding was showing off his best reining/cutting moves- what a gorgeous sliding stop he has on him!!  - but they were being too aggressive. We eventually brought in a bucket of grain, which was more appealing than a flirty mare, and broke them up. 

They were both fine- sweaty and winded, but fine. Isabel has a good bite on her butt, but she doesn't seem to have made any serious contact when kicking out at the gelding. Now...if your kids are reading along, maybe end it here...I knew that she was egging him on with her "flirting," but the poor guy's entire face was covered in pee, as was her whole backside. Can you say _ewwwwww....._The almost 22 year old lady still drives the young ones crazy!
So lesson learned, even though these two know each other very well, share a fenceline, ride in the arena and trails together- free turnout in the indoor is not a good idea 

After I got her cleaned up, I threw a cooler on her to walk her out a little and dry off the sweat. She was able to find a few spots to graze outside through the snow and I recounted the story of her seducing a younger man to my lovely husband, who showed up at about this time:


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## Bondre

It looks as if Isabel and her gelding friend were quite engrossed in their game there! And yes, hard to put all the blame on the poor guy when Isabel seemed to be egging him on rather, while playing hard to get at the same time lol. And she is so spry and attractive, who would believe she's old enough to be his mother?

Your comment on the 22 yr old seductress rings so true with our livestock. When it's time for the male goats to do their job, which females do they prefer? The young, nubile ladies with slim waists? NO!! The all-time favourites are the old great-grandmother goats who have had more kids than they can remember and would rather hang out in the sun, chewing the cud, than have some stupid young lad pestering her. So we get the ridiculous situation with all the male goats feverishly courting (if you can call it courting when the guys pee in their beards :rofl:  ) a senior lady who is hiding under a manger in desperation, while a bunch of young, ignored females who are very much in season rub their necks on their male counterparts begging for attention....


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## egrogan

Bondre, must be fun to be around your place during breeding season- sounds like quite the scene!  Although I've got a bunch of old hens hanging around here, no rooster to drive anyone crazy, so they remain pretty tolerable.


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## egrogan

Woohoo! Finally got in a ride today. Isabel was no worse for wear after her little incident yesterday. She's got lots of missing patches of hair from where she was bitten, but only two seemed to break skin. One spot was along her barrel, and it was a little swollen but not warm and already scabbed over. The other was the deepest bite on her butt, and that one is still pretty raw and a little warm. I cleaned it again and put some more Neosporin on it- hopefully it will close up quickly. This picture is kind of an awkward angle and makes her back look awful, but you can see some of the bites on her rump/side:









And a closer up of the largest one:









Thankfully though, she wasn't stiff or sore at all, so no harm done.

We had a really nice ride today, particularly because it was finally warm and sunny today and the ice on the roof was melting and sliding off. This is usually the one thing that sends Izzy spooking out of her mind- but she didn't pay any attention to it at all today. For not having been ridden in a couple of weeks, she was very willing to trot and canter- though clearly stiff to the right, as I would expect. Thankfully there's no video, but if there was, you'd probably see her counterbent at a 45* angle trotting to the right- so uncomfortable! I miss having access to our trails, as it does her a world of good to bend and stretch her body over uneven ground, she tries so much harder than just going around the ring. 

We also rode in the ring with another gelding today, and she was perfectly behaved. Sometimes she'll try to motor right up another horse's behind when riding in the ring together, but today she kept a steady, responsive pace and circled nicely when asked to create more space. She was happy to go at the same gait as the other horse, or a slower one, which can also be a challenge. I was proud of her!

After our ride, my intention was to throw a cooler on her and take her for a walk across the street to our neighbor's fields. The parking lot is far too icy to ride across, but I was comfortable leading her across- and once we got to the road, there was no ice. The fields were just dusted with snow (somehow we avoided ANY precipitation yesterday while the rest of the east coast got slammed- no complaints from me!).

Unfortunately, I was reminded why I feel so much more in control from the saddle than the ground. A woman had just arrived with a truck & trailer for an appointment in our indoor arena. The horse was going a bit bonkers in the parked trailer, kicking the walls and calling out. That sent Izzy into a fit, throwing her head up, spinning in tiny circles around me, and calling back. We walked past the trailer and across the road, but as soon as we were clearly heading away from the barn, she started balking and snaking her head to try to bolt back. I was able to keep her under control, but I really didn't feel like I had any choice but to go back to the barn. I had a really short lead rope (maybe 6 feet) and a regular leather halter on her, so there wasn't much I could do. I was pretty embarrassed as we pranced back past the trailer a second time, with her head high and calling to the other horse. Oh well, nothing but pride was hurt...

On an unrelated note, you can probably see in the pictures how goopy her eyes are. I think it's probably partially related to dusty hay and having the barn closed up, but it's not unique to the winter. I've been meaning to do more research into Vitamin E supplements, which I've seen recommended on here before for goopy eyes and dry skin (both of which Izzy has). I don't understand though, her feed should be giving her 100% of her daily dose of Vitamin E, so supplementing seems like it shouldn't be necessary. I wish I had more nutrition knowledge...


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## egrogan

Stopped in for a quick visit in between meetings this morning.

Found Izzy out sharing the fence with her love interest, but she wasn't paying any attention to him today. Fickle woman!









Her bite was looking a little slimy today, but it was easy to clean up- just a little clear goo, no heat and no smell. I rinsed with betadine, and looks like good healing (white stuff at the bottom is just suds from the scrub). Added a little more Neosporin to it, and I think it's just a matter of scabbing over and eventually growing the hair back.









Her coat is looking so red right now- the color was pretty against the backdrop of a beautiful sunny day!


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## frlsgirl

Glad Izzy is ok; fortunately, Ana still thinks that most geldings have coodies and shows zero interest in them.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Glad Izzy is ok; fortunately, Ana still thinks that most geldings have coodies and shows zero interest in them.


I don't know anything about breeding, but what little I do know about how mares _should _cycle in and out of heat, I'd say Isabel defies the rules. She seems to be in heat so much more than other horses, and a new horse on the property- mare or gelding- sends her right back into heat whether it makes sense for that time of year or not. 

As I understand it, Isabel had one foal in her early teens. The story is a little fuzzy regarding whether or not it was a planned breeding or an oops backyard situation, so who knows. 

I guess she just really wants to be a mom again?! Unfortunately for her, not going to happen!


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## egrogan

Finally got out to see my pretty girl today. I went for a quick ride, but unfortunately the footing outside looked good, but ended up being pretty icy at its base, so we could only do a short walk through the fields before coming back to ride in the indoor for awhile. It felt good to get on, but as you'd expect from being ridden just a couple of times this month, Isabel was a bit stiff and a little reluctant. 

There's been enough melting that we spent a good bit of time afterwards hand grazing. Got this picture of her, which I love:


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## frlsgirl

It's hard enough to balance work and horses; and then weather hits and throws another curve ball into the mix; I don't know how people without an indoor keep their horses in shape. Our winter has been pretty mild so far; it actually got to 70 degrees yesterday BUT the warm up was accompanied by heavy winds which makes the horses spooky.


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## Bondre

frlsgirl said:


> It's hard enough to balance work and horses; .... I don't know how people without an indoor keep their horses in shape.


Answer, we don't. Or at least I don't. Our winter weather has been favourable for riding this year, ridiculously mild, but there just aren't enough daylight hours. My two are horribly unfit. I'm SO jealous of your photos of winter riding in the covered, spotlit, arena. 

Fortunately we are coming out of the winter darkness now... yay!!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Yes, my chickens are now staying up almost 30 minutes later than they were around Christmas-a sure sign the days are getting longer!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Izzy is going to see a new barefoot trimmer tomorrow. At the end of the summer, the farrier we'd been using for as long as I've had Izzy closed his business to go back to school and switch fields. I was happy for him- he's a young guy who I'm sure will be successful in his next job, and was tired of how backbreaking the work was- but it's been tough to find someone else who's good. 

The person the barn is using now has made some strange comments to other boarders (i.e., seeing a horse take three steps out of the paddock and declaring "that horse has navicular"- huh??) and has consistently kept Isabel with long toe and flares. I'm starting to see some white line separation and very ragged looking frogs with deep, deep grooves, and it's really concerning. She's always been a horse that people describe as having "feet to die for," and it's hard to see her looking so bad.

So we'll see how things go with this new guy. I also like that he's willing to have her on a 5-6 week trim schedule, rather than 7-8, which is too long for her but what the rest of the barn does. Fingers crossed!


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## egrogan

I had a truly wonderful appointment with the trimmer today. He was as much teacher as he was trimmer. He gave me an understandable explanation of coffin bone angles, hoof wall thickness, toe shaping, frog health, and central sulcus/collateral groove depth, all while pointing out various things that could be improved in each of Izzy's feet.

The good news is that while some corrections were needed, they were relatively straightforward. He didn't touch her heels at all, as he said they are the secondary priority after getting her toes in a better position and addressing the coffin bone angle. Her frogs have had some recently infection, so are a little "wimpy" and need to toughen up (not so easy since we're having an early spring thaw right now and it's muddy everywhere), and her heel bulbs are a little ouchy because of how her toe angle is affecting how she lands on the foot. But all these things can be fairly easily addressed, and she'll be on a 6 week trim schedule to keep thing moving in the right direction. He was very happy with the concavity of her soles.

It was also fascinating how he could point to rings on her feet and ask, what happened here, looks like about four months ago? Which coincides perfectly with the new trimmer starting to change her angles. And he assured me they were not laminitic rings, which was the secret terror in the back of my mind.

I tried to remember the advice on here about how to take good hoof photos, but I think I failed...you can see the biggest difference in photos 3 and 5 below

Here are a few BEFORE-see how her feet are almost square:



























And AFTER (unfortunately the light was not so great)- but have a much more rounded look:


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## carshon

I just wanted to say that the after looks great. We struggled with a farrier who had been doing my horses feet for 20 years. His Motto was always slap a shoe on it. Well hubbies horse became Navicular (proven with x-Rays) we he trimmed and shoed her according to how he felt it should be (underrun heels push her up on her toes) she got thrush so bad that she could not walk at all. He then told us to put her down or drug her and take her to a sale! I was done. Found a fantastic barefoot trimmer - who did just as your farrier did - explained everything. We had her do feet for all 4 of our horses and the difference was amazing! I then took a class and do my own trimming. She comes out every 6 weeks and checks them and makes corrections. Our Navicular mare is doing fantastic barefoot and with her boots- and my gelding has not had an abcess since we switched (we used to get 2 a year at least) Good for you for looking for a better solution!


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## egrogan

Thanks, carshon! I'm very pleased with how she's responding to the new trim already. She practically pranced back out to the paddock after her trim, and has continued moving more comfortable. I did some light lunging in the indoor the next day, and she was picking up her feet vs. dragging her toes. It's been quite cold and snowy so haven't ridden since- and unfortunately it's about to be well below my riding cutoff of 25*F for the rest of the week, so looks like I won't get to test out her "new feet" for another week or so. But I do hope things continue to go well as we move ahead with future trims! I'll read up on the hoof critique photo recommendations before next time so I can do a better job documenting the changes.


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## egrogan

The arctic cold has arrived. Supposed to be -15*F here overnight, although it is about 10* above 0 right now.

I picked up some extra hay today and filled Izzy's stall with it (two big hay bags stuffed and half a bale loose on the floor). The barn feeds a little less hay overnight than I'd prefer, and on a night like this, I can't stand the thought of her standing around without any.

I also dressed her up in her neck warmer- I probably only use it a couple of times a year, and she let me know her opinion of it:


























But it makes me feel better knowing she has it on! 

We eventually made up:









She is going to be super itchy tomorrow, she always wants her mane thoroughly brushed out after wearing it. Today was the first day I noticed her shedding this season- gives me hope that it will be warm sooner rather than later. It's going to be just as cold tomorrow and tomorrow night, but we go back up to 30-40*F for the rest of the week.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> I also dressed her up in her neck warmer- I probably only use it a couple of times a year, and she let me know her opinion of it:


The:rofl: The look of disapproval; you know it when you see it!


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## egrogan

The footing is still spotty here, so no spring riding yet. The snow is melted enough that we can walk around the property a little bit hand grazing, so we did that for awhile today.

_Does my nose look big here? :wink:









_Brought Isabel into the arena for awhile to see if she wanted to have a run or a roll, but she wasn't interested. She just stood dozing for awhile, but she happened to stand herself up pretty nicely so I got an ok confo shot:









So she's obviously in pasture condition, having no work for the past 6ish weeks. She'll also turn 22 years old in two weeks (March 2nd). She's got a saggy old lady belly, not a ton of muscle, etc. etc. But as you look at her in this picture, any advice for me on conditioning later this spring and riding this year? Hoping to get 200-300 trail miles this year, so our goals are pretty modest.

And just because she's cute:


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## egrogan

Managed to fit in a little ride today. It's been a month since we've ridden at all, so my ambitions were modest. But the spring sun was calling to me, so we got outside for half an hour or so.

Isabel is already shedding like mad, so got her nice and relaxed with some good brushing before we went out. She gave the saddle her most deadly mare glare, but she's all bark and no bite  She danced around a little when I tightened up the girth, but once I got on, she was her old self. I do love having a horse that can sit for weeks and then be completely sane when you hop on and go!

The ground is still icy in patches, so we just walked around the neighbors' fields, working on whoas, circles, figure 8s. She gave me a little crowhop when I asked her to ride away from home and she could see some of her pasturemates turned out across the street, but she continued to ride away from them until she was allowed to turn back.

We also got to work on her dislike of riding through puddles, since there was a lot of standing water in one part of our route. As I mentioned over on the trail riding mile tracker thread, some days she'll try to avoid puddles, but since they were on our way home, I was actually able to work on riding her through them since she was very motivated to head in that direction  When we got to the first really deep one, she stood in the middle of it and pawed and splashed for a minute until she was satisfied we weren't about to head over the abyss, and then we kept going with no arguments.

All in all, it was a nice first ride back. I should be able to get in another tomorrow, it's going to be over 50*F. Dare we say spring is here??

_My favorite set of ears 









Green(ish) grass is a pretty great reward in Izzy's mind...








_


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## egrogan

I was out of town for work all last week, so I missed Izzy's 22 birthday on March 3rd. I was sad to miss it, but the BO gave her some extra carrots for me. She also got a nice trim from our amazing new farrier yesterday, and her heels are looking so much better!

So today, we had a very eventful day!

We participated in our first clinic together. Every Sunday this month, our barn is holding a "Spring Prep" workshop for horse & rider. There are two clinicians: one an equine massage therapist, and one a natural horsemanship trainer. They're combining their knowledge sets to focus on stretching, massage, and basic groundwork to get us ready to get back into spring riding. I have zero experience with either equine massage or groundwork, so while I think some of it is going to be a little "magical/spiritual" for me, I feel like I will learn a lot.

The first thing we learned was how to fit a rope halter. I have never used one before, so that was interesting. I was so worried about having the knots over a super sensitive spot on her face and hurting her, but they helped me get it all adjusted properly, and I must say, she looked really cute wearing it.

The massage therapist started with carrot stretches. Now, I thought I knew how to do them, and had in fact discontinued using them because Izzy got so pushy/mouthy with treats. But I learned several new tips...namely, hold the carrot flat in the palm of your hand and anchor it between your thumb and pointer finger so they never really actually get to eat it, it just encourages their stretching as you move to different positions. Izzy got "oohs" and "aahs" when she showed off how far she could stretch- at one point, she was stretched all the way back to her rump. So much for being stiff and tight- secret's out now!! We also did some stretches down to her fetlock. I also got some good tips on my body positioning and how to use a wall strategically so you don't end up just spinning around in circles. The conclusion was that she is definitely asymmetrical, which is not a surprise to me- it's much harder for her to stretch back to the right. Next time, we'll be working on things like turn on the forehand, turn on the haunches, etc.

_Sttttrrrreeeettcchhhh....to get the carrot from the nice massage lady:









Listening about neck stretches









_There are two new horses at the barn, and Isabel is the kind of horse that goes into heat whenever a new horse arrives, and she was on full display today-she was particularly infatuated with a cute little pony gelding how was also in the clinic. Probably the best thing about participating is that she had to have the self control to stand still for long periods of time while the instructors were talking- and that is no small feat for her! But this little pony gelding will be important later, as I will tell you in a minute.

After the clinic ended, I thought that since she was all stretched out, might as well take a short ride. I jumped on and headed on our regular route across the street from the barn to our neighbor's fields. She was reluctant to cross the street because the pony gelding was being lunged in the arena (which you can see from the road) and gave me a little snort and head toss as we got away from the barn. I didn't think much of it though, and continued on. My intention was a simple 15 minute loop around the field just to stretch our legs. After her little snort, she was fine riding away from the barn- did a couple of really nice leg yields in each direction and moved forward well.

When we turned around to come home, everything went south. As soon as she could see the barn again, she was immediately jiggy. Usually, we ride home on a loose rein, but there was no chance for that. I tried making big zig zags to keep her forward but not let her make a beeline for home. This field has soft rolling little hills, and every time we went down a little incline, she would get faster-we started walking, and she stepped up into a trot. I made another loop of a serpentine and she took off cantering. What happens next is all probably within about 20-30 meters, but felt like it lasted forever in slow motion. She builds up a head of steam at the canter heading up a hill, and the few times this has happened before, I just point her up a hill and that ruins her enthusiasm for continuing to canter when I'm asking her to stop. Not this time.

So we're going sideways at a quick, choppy canter uphill, and I can tell that the only thing she cares about is heading straight across the road into that arena with her little pony hearthrob. I'm trying a one-rein stop, which is making her more off balance on the hill, but she is relentless and it's just not making any impression on her- she's still cantering towards the road crossing. I manage to pull her in a left hand circle with my one-rein stop (but not get her slowed down), and there are some thick shrubs in front of me that I thought would stop her. And they almost do, but at the last minute, she ducks hard right, throws her head up, and really snatches the reins. In that instant, I knew I wasn't stopping her, and survival instinct kicked in, so I bailed off to the right as I watched her go galloping across the road. Thank god there were no cars coming. I landed reasonably well too, which was also lucky, just a little sore on my right shoulder (and was wearing a helmet, which made the fact that I hit the back of my head on the ground a nonevent).

I bounced up quickly and started screaming "loose horse" as the next nightmare I imagined was her running straight through the open arena doors and getting tangled up with the pony, who was still being lunged in the indoor. For whatever reason, she didn't do that, and the people in the arena caught her easily.

So while it was scary, and my pride was more than a little hurt given this played out in front of all the people I had just been in the clinic with, nothing happened to either of us.

I got back on, rode in the indoor for about 5 minutes, and then went back out to the field to repeat our ill-fated route. Wouldn't you know, she rode it just like she has the other hundreds of times we've ridden there, and walked home on a loose rein. Ugggh....horses!!!!


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## frlsgirl

I was at the edge of my office chair, reading this! Glad everyone is ok! Ana is going through her cycle right now but only has eyes for really big geldings; she likes them tall, dark and handsome; dinky pony geldings need not apply, lol.


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## Bondre

Glad no-one was worse for wear after Isabel's passionate canter home! That must have been so scary, especially once you had to bale out and leave her to sort herself out - which she obviously did just fine. At least the road was clear. 

I'm glad the clinic was good. Did you do groundwork too? Or is the groundwork clinic next week? Having never done groundwork in the past, I am a recent convert as I am witnessing positive results with Macarena from doing sessions on lateral movements from the ground.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I was at the edge of my office chair, reading this! Glad everyone is ok! Ana is going through her cycle right now but only has eyes for really big geldings; she likes them tall, dark and handsome; dinky pony geldings need not apply, lol.


It's frustrating because Isabel makes a big display of going into heat whenever a new horse comes to the barn. But usually, under saddle she's pokey and slow, not a firecracker! She was unusually obsessed with the pony, but I think I made too big an assumption that after having an entire week of no one asking her to do any more than walk from her stall to the field and back in for dinner, she was going to cooperate with doing something that wasn't her idea.



bondre said:


> Glad no-one was worse for wear after Isabel's passionate canter home! That must have been so scary, especially once you had to bale out and leave her to sort herself out - which she obviously did just fine. At least the road was clear.
> 
> I'm glad the clinic was good. Did you do groundwork too? Or is the groundwork clinic next week? Having never done groundwork in the past, I am a recent convert as I am witnessing positive results with Macarena from doing sessions on lateral movements from the ground.


Yes, thank goodness for the road being clear! That could have ended badly.

So yesterday was the first day of a 4 day clinic (will be every Sunday this month). Concepts of groundwork and "natural horsemanship" were introduced with a couple of demonstrations of basic things (turn on the fore/haunches) but we will do more hands-on work with our own horses over the next 3 sessions. I too have never done any ground work (I suppose you can count expecting a horse to lead, tie, stand for grooming and mounting, lunge, etc. as "groundwork," but this will be more in the natural horsemanship tradition, which I have never done). 

I have to admit that during the overview, the clinician made the comment, _"you will find groundwork is every bit as important as riding," _and that sort of made me roll my eyes. But I quickly corrected myself, as I do want to have an open mind, and I know I won't learn if I start dismissing their perspective right from the beginning. Now, I have never started a young horse or had to retrain an older, resistant horse, so I of course come at this from a narrow window into working with horses. It's hard for me to see how my (usually :wink sane, well broke 22 year old riding horse needs "groundwork to be every bit as important as riding," but maybe I'm missing something. And even if it's not what Isabel needs right now, certainly I may learn strategies that will help with a future, less experienced, horse.

During the "stretching" portion of the bodywork session yesterday, the equine massage therapist was using carrots to ask for bend. I was a little wary of this, as I had done carrot stretches with Isabel in the past, but stopped because she got so rude and pushy about it. Well this morning, the chiropractor came out for her 3-month appointment, and Isabel's behavior was down right embarrassing. 

The chiro starts by working on her poll and neck, asking Isabel to manipulate her head side to side an up-and-down. Well Isabel clearly thought this was an extension of "throw your head as far around as you can for the carrot" and kept trying to do the stretches, getting more and more demanding by almost violently slinging her head back towards her barrel and then stomping her foot when that didn't get her a treat. She even got mouthy with the chiro, which she NEVER does. I felt like an embarrassed mom whose nicely behaved child acts up in class. Of course she got a stern "no" and we were able to continue the adjustment, but it was not a good start. 

Clearly we'll have to approach the stretching exercises much differently if they're part of the next clinic session, as I don't want this behavior to continue. I know the massage therapist did not intend for the stretches to be done that way, but I'll need to assess whether they work for Isabel or just lead to bad behavior.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> So yesterday was the first day of a 4 day clinic (will be every Sunday this month). Concepts of groundwork and "natural horsemanship" were introduced with a couple of demonstrations of basic things (turn on the fore/haunches) but we will do more hands-on work with our own horses over the next 3 sessions. I too have never done any ground work (I suppose you can count expecting a horse to lead, tie, stand for grooming and mounting, lunge, etc. as "groundwork," but this will be more in the natural horsemanship tradition, which I have never done).
> 
> I have to admit that during the overview, the clinician made the comment, _"you will find groundwork is every bit as important as riding," _and that sort of made me roll my eyes. But I quickly corrected myself, as I do want to have an open mind, and I know I won't learn if I start dismissing their perspective right from the beginning. Now, I have never started a young horse or had to retrain an older, resistant horse, so I of course come at this from a narrow window into working with horses. It's hard for me to see how my (usually :wink sane, well broke 22 year old riding horse needs "groundwork to be every bit as important as riding," but maybe I'm missing something. And even if it's not what Isabel needs right now, certainly I may learn strategies that will help with a future, less experienced, horse.
> 
> During the "stretching" portion of the bodywork session yesterday, the equine massage therapist was using carrots to ask for bend. I was a little wary of this, as I had done carrot stretches with Isabel in the past, but stopped because she got so rude and pushy about it. Well this morning, the chiropractor came out for her 3-month appointment, and Isabel's behavior was down right embarrassing.
> 
> The chiro starts by working on her poll and neck, asking Isabel to manipulate her head side to side an up-and-down. Well Isabel clearly thought this was an extension of "throw your head as far around as you can for the carrot" and kept trying to do the stretches, getting more and more demanding by almost violently slinging her head back towards her barrel and then stomping her foot when that didn't get her a treat. She even got mouthy with the chiro, which she NEVER does. I felt like an embarrassed mom whose nicely behaved child acts up in class. Of course she got a stern "no" and we were able to continue the adjustment, but it was not a good start.
> 
> Clearly we'll have to approach the stretching exercises much differently if they're part of the next clinic session, as I don't want this behavior to continue. I know the massage therapist did not intend for the stretches to be done that way, but I'll need to assess whether they work for Isabel or just lead to bad behavior.


I recently started doing more ground work with Ana and it does make a difference; it even makes a difference with the carrot stretches because the ground work helps to re-establish my leadership position so that she is more likely to act polite. I don't think it's necessary to get all fancy with groundwork; the best and most effective exercise is backing up; if she gets in my space, she has to back up. I also use the groundwork to make sure all the "buttons" work before I get in the saddle.

Can she back up when I need her to? Check!
Can she bend left and right with the saddle on? Check!
Does she respond to bit pressure? Check!

I made a little video of our ground work yesterday; I didn't catch the backing up part because we did that by the mounting block and it wasn't near the camera:

https://youtu.be/tHaxKfo26ds


PS: I have another Morgan horse owner friend at the east coast with an older Morgan mare; hers is acting totally cray cray right now as well, so maybe it's the weather, or the time of year?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I recently started doing more ground work with Ana and it does make a difference; it even makes a difference with the carrot stretches because the ground work helps to re-establish my leadership position so that she is more likely to act polite. I don't think it's necessary to get all fancy with groundwork; the best and most effective exercise is backing up; if she gets in my space, she has to back up. I also use the groundwork to make sure all the "buttons" work before I get in the saddle.
> 
> Can she back up when I need her to? Check!
> Can she bend left and right with the saddle on? Check!
> Does she respond to bit pressure? Check!
> 
> I made a little video of our ground work yesterday; I didn't catch the backing up part because we did that by the mounting block and it wasn't near the camera:
> 
> https://youtu.be/tHaxKfo26ds
> 
> 
> PS: I have another Morgan horse owner friend at the east coast with an older Morgan mare; hers is acting totally cray cray right now as well, so maybe it's the weather, or the time of year?


Thanks, I'm glad you shared this. Good to see how you're thinking about incorporating some different exercises to complement your riding. Ana is so polite with her neck stretches. That's what I worked on with Isabel a little yesterday, but she was not soft and fluid, more frantic (because of the treat). So, if we're setting little goals, maybe our first very simple goal is to accept that the stretch is just a stretch, and do it calmly and quietly 

And yes, the weather is definitely changing here in New England- finally warming up, most of the ice is melted, and the light is changing. I can't wait for the clocks to go ahead next weekend! I feel like life returns to normal when the days get longer.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was a much nicer ride. We started off in the indoor with some basic stretching from the ground- neck stretches (much more polite doing them with the bridle on), stretching the topline, and backing up over poles. 

Another boarder was having a lesson while we were in there, so we sort of rode through the stuff she was working on in the lesson, but kept it mostly at a walk. I figure that since she's just coming back into work, and had a chiro appointment the day before, we're just going to take it easy for awhile. We walked about 20 minutes, doing lots of stretching, bending, and change of direction.

After that, we went outside and rode all around the property- still a tiny bit of ice in some places, but it's supposed to be 70*F today so that should be gone soon! 









We trotted a little bit on the long, flat spots, and she was a little stiff feeling but willing. She offered to canter once coming up a hill, and I let her go for a few strides, but she transitioned down easily. After that, we walked for another 15 minutes or so, up and down some little hills.

We had an audience, the rest of the herd was very interested in what we were doing:










She was actually a bit sweaty after that, so I spent some time hand grazing her after untacking, which she always appreciates. 

Still looking winter-fuzzy, but she's shedding a ton:


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## egrogan

Session 2 of our Spring Prep clinic today. It was great! We spent two hours learning a variety of massage techniques, and it was all hands on with our horses. We worked from poll to tail and focused on identifying the key muscle groups in between.

It was such a fun session because it was so clear how the massage techniques affected the horses- there were 5 all together, and only a couple of them knew each other, but after about 20 minutes, they were all standing with a hind leg cocked and basically asleep with their heads down. This was particularly impressive because it was a warm, windy day, and one of the woman with a young Arab had been really worried about how he'd act when she got him off the trailer. Nothing phased him at all, he loved the session as much as all the rest of them.

As far as Isabel, this was a good test for how well she'd behave being asked to stand still around strange horses for a long period of time. There were a few moments at the beginning when she wanted to dance around, but as the massage continued, she became much more willing to stand for it  

She was much "touchier" on her right side, so we had to do longer practice on that side before she relaxed. By the end of the two hours, she was standing with the lead thrown over her neck and no one holding her, letting me work all over her back and down her hamstrings.

This is what a happy horse looks like after a two hour massage:


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## frlsgirl

How neat! I wish BO would do something like this at our barn! I wonder if we can just hire a horse massage therapist for the day to teach us a few things? Would they even be willing to give up all of their secrets and put themselves out of business?


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## Bondre

How are the clinics going? Have you been doing more groundwork as well as the massages? It sounds really great, your barn is a good place for offering this kind of activities.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> How are the clinics going? Have you been doing more groundwork as well as the massages? It sounds really great, your barn is a good place for offering this kind of activities.
> _Posted via Mobile Device_


Hi Bondre, thanks for asking! Just realized I neglected to update this after last Sunday.

So the last clinic was all about groundwork and "moving the feet." We did backing, back crossovers (turn on the haunches), and front crossovers (turn on the fore). I will be honest, I felt like I had two left feet and a whole lot of rope in my hands getting in the way  

I really don't have the "feel" for how all these maneuvers are supposed to work, and it looks so easy when a trained horse is demonstrating with the trainer. My biggest problem was timing corrections- the clinician indicated that if we are asking for the turn to be a sideways step, and a foot comes forward, then the first thing you worry about is correcting the forward by going backward, and try the sideways again. I'm a terrible dancer and that's how I felt trying to think about all the steps and pull off the choreography!

Work has been particularly nutty, with a lot of travel, the past two weeks, so to be honest, I haven't been able to get out to the barn since Sunday to practice. Good news is that this weekend is supposed to be beautiful and sunny, and since it's the Easter holiday (which we don't celebrate), I think the barn will be quiet and I'll be able to get in some quality time with Isabel. Hopefully riding though, it will be too nice to stay in!

There is one more clinic session, but it got moved from this Sunday to next because of the holiday. More groundwork in that one. Since we didn't master the basics, not sure how we'll fare as we move to the next step! :wink:

The barn is also holding a ridden centered riding clinic in mid-April, and I'm thinking about doing that too. It's been almost a year since I've had a lesson on Isabel, so I'm sure it will be humbling. But I find I learn much better with structured instruction than trying on my own.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> How neat! I wish BO would do something like this at our barn! I wonder if we can just hire a horse massage therapist for the day to teach us a few things? Would they even be willing to give up all of their secrets and put themselves out of business?


This seemed like a win-win for the massage therapist. She really only did some basic calming massage techniques and easy stretches with us, but if you needed significant body work done, there's still plenty of expertise she can offer. I think she actually did sign up one new client from the clinic!


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## egrogan

The weather cooperated this weekend and I got to spend some quality time with Izzy.

Saturday, I arrived to find a wooly mammoth shedding its coat. I spent literally an hour with the shedding blade and curry comb working on shedding her out.

30 minutes in, half a horse on the ground:
_









_This was the final result!
_









_After an hour, we were finally ready to ride:









Since I spent much more time than I expected grooming her, I didn't have a ton of time left to ride. We just did a couple of loops around the property to stretch our legs and called it a day.

Today I went earlier in the afternoon so I had a lot more time. And after our marathon grooming yesterday, I could really focus on working with her. I started by grooming again and going through all the massage that we had learned. She stood very nicely groundtied and didn't move unless asked. 

After we got tacked up, we went to the indoor and did a set of stretches- neck stretches, front legs, and then a brisk walk over poles that were set so she needed to stride right through them, without taking a step in between.









I also decided I wanted to ride with some music today. Have you ever listened to the soundtrack from the movie _Amelie_? I find it quite relaxing, but it has some tracks with a really good tempo that I always thought would be fun to keep a trot rhythm going. 





Isabel seemed to like the music too, she was nice and relaxed and while clearly out of shape, did pretty well with lots of changes of direction and some basic ground poles. She was very responsive to moving off the leg and sustaining a rhythm, and I made sure to give her lots of praise and "good girls" as I wanted her first time being ridden in a while to be a good experience. The trot work didn't go quite as well as I wanted, but I think mostly that it was just that she's so clearly out of shape. She felt much better to the left than than right. It's always amazing to me just how differently she goes in each direction-to the left is smooth and fluid, and to the right she feels like she's going to fall over and can't bend at all.

After 30 minutes or so, we went out to enjoy the beautiful weather. 









I had a curious moment when I realized that I was a bit more unsettled after my fall a couple of weeks ago than I had been admitting to myself. I realized I had been making a bunch of excuses for why I wasn't going to go ride our regular route...it was too wet...neighbors were out doing yard work...not enough time...And then it sort of clicked....ahhh...I was actually a bit nervous about coming off again. Part of it surely was just that falling sort of sucks and hurts, but I also realized that image of Isabel galloping blindly across the road and potentially into traffic was still bothering me. But anyway, I decided I'd just have to get over it and the first ride out there would probably be the worst, but I'd have it out of my system. Since we had finally worked enough in the arena to break a sweat, I decided it would be a good time since we was already a bit tired and certainly well warmed up.

I kept our soothing music running with my phone in my pocket, and we headed out to the beautiful day. She willingly trotted away from the barn across the neighbor's hay field, though admitted she went a bit more sideways than forward, which I know is an evasion for her. Sideways sends us down the hill to flat field, straight sends us to an old sand outdoor riding ring and the woods trails, which she will avoid if she gets the chance. So in the spirit of not picking a fight I wasn't 100% prepared to win, I went the way she wanted this time, as I wanted a positive experience. As we circled around the field, the footing actually _was _boggy, so we slowed to a walk. I just did one lap around the field, and as we came back to the hill where everything went to hell on our last ride, I could feel her mind get locked in on home.home.home- but I was able to just sit back, sit back, and tell her walk- and good girl did, she just walked right up the steep hill and never even tried to trot, let alone make a mad dash canter to the top. She of course got lots of praise and seemed proud of herself.


















And we walked home on a nice long rein:









We did an additional lap around the property and poor Isabel realized she was the only one working while all the other girls were sunbathing!


















I put her in the indoor while I cleaned up, and she had a good roll:









And a big shake:









And then had to be patient and wait for me to finish before we could go outside for some hand grazing:


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## frlsgirl

Oh I know that look! That "what's taking you so long I have things do do, you know" look.

I also love the picture of her shaking; that was great timing on your part!

And yeah, most of us have fallen off and struggled to get back in the saddle afterwards or have gotten in the saddle but just avoided certain situations; I'm still struggling with cantering and galloping ever since my accident in 1989 so I'm currently doing the Fearless Riding Success program; it uses NLP techniques to reprogram your brain.

Glad you are able to get out and enjoy your girl again


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## Bondre

I love that shaking photo too! The bright sunlight on her nose and shoulder brings out her lovely colour. I reckon you left enough horsehair after your grooming session to keep a whole flock of nesting sparrows well-supplied.

I know just what you mean about making excuses and putting off potentially contentious situations. I have done it several times over the past months with Macarena - but it wasn't until I at last squared my shoulders mentally and did whatever I had been putting off that I started to make progress. The key is in doing as you did - choosing a compromise (sideways rather than straight down the hill) and working on one thing at a time (listening going up the steep hill and walking home on a loose rein) rather than tackling two or three issues at once. 

Isabel has cute ears. Macarena's ears are long and reminiscent of a donkey (don't tell her I said that!), but Isabel's are small and neat. And very alert in all your photos.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## egrogan

Yes, that shaking picture is one of my favorites I've gotten of her- wish I could say it was because of my photography skills, but it just happened to be luck that I was there at the right moment to snap the shot


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## egrogan

It's a glorious spring day, and I was fortunate to be able to sneak in a lunchtime ride 

Started in the arena. Isabel felt good at the walk bending through serpentine lines, but when I asked her to step into the trot going to the right, she just felt so awful. Stiff, counterbent, falling off the track and barely going forward. To the left, not too many problems. To the right, she really felt like she was going to fall on her nose and so unwilling to go forward. I really need to get a video of this to see what in the world is so different.

I tried asking her to canter, even though she wasn't all that warmed up, just to try to re-establish "forward." It helped a little. She's definitely better to the left than right at the canter as well, but it's not such a stark contract. And her trot was a little better after cantering some.

But after that, it got the wheels turning, and I realized that I was basically holding her upright through the reins. After all this talk of contact across various journals and threads, I decided to try a little experiment. Someone had set up some markers for a 20 meter circle, so I put her on the circle and tried asking her to trot with no contact at all. I did my best impression of a western rider and held my reins on the buckle with one hand  At first, she clearly was lost. She seemed to have no concept of upward transition without contact (I definitely shorten my reins and do a little half halt to indicate "transition coming.") She's great with voice commands though, so I clucked a bit and asked her to trot on, and she seemed to get it. The trot though was pretty laughable. She was a mess without me holding her together! She could barely trot 3 or 4 strides in a row at first. But I just stayed patient and let her figure it out. I'd ask for the transition, and she'd sort of trip and stumble into it and quickly fall back down to a walk. But after a few really awkward circles like this, she seemed to get it! We trotted several circles with me barely holding the reins in one hand. And I realized that I was also a little uncoordinated without having the contact in my hands. At first I tried sticking my non-rein hand in my pocket to get it out of the way. Then I realized she was moving pretty smoothly on the circle, so I could almost treat it like a lunge lesson. I know I have a tendency to drop my inside hip and shoulder, especially to the right (that's my worse direction too), so I played around with the inside hand on my hip, straight out at shoulder height, stretched up over my head, and just resting on my thigh. It was fun to see how the change in my body position also translated down to her ability to move more forward and more smoothly- and you could definitely feel it! Even to the right, she felt a little better, though she did still have a tendency to fall into the circle, stepping over the markers, and I had to pick up the reins a bit to get her back where she should be.

We also did this at the canter, which was funny. Ever since the first time I rode her, I thought of her as a horse that *has to* have strong contact, particularly through the outside rein, to be able to balance and transition up to the canter, from either walk or trot. So even though she sort of got what I was asking doing this trot work with no contact, the canter was a different challenge. She sped up, she slowed down. She tripped. She walked faster. But she did not really make the connection between going into a canter and what was happening on the reins. But again, I just quietly persisted, and _finally_, she got it. And just like at the trot, at first, she couldn't sustain it more than a few strides. She seemed genuinely confused, she'd get unbalanced, and then just come to a dead stop and sort of look back at me like, "what in the world's going on up there??" We've also been working on turn on the forehand quite a bit, so when I would slide my leg back to ask for canter, she'd have this stutter step moment where I think she was considering whether that was the right answer. But eventually, she did put the pieces together, and cantered several consecutive 20 meter circles at a pretty nice, steady pace. It was actually really fun, even if it felt really, really weird! 

After we both worked up a sweat, we headed outside to walk the hay fields.

Here we are arriving at Izzy's least favorite place- 








Yes, it looks like just an overgrown flat spot on the way to the woods. It's the old sand outdoor ring that usually gets her blood boiling and acting crazy about trying to turn and bolt home. But today, cool as a cucumber 

After a good brushing, we spent a few minutes cooling out in the sunshine. She's never one to turn down some grass. 









ETA: This picture really highlights the hollow spot behind her shoulders/under her withers. Her back is really so weak


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## egrogan

We had our final groundwork clinic on Sunday. It was a miserable day outside- winds gusting to 40 mph, snow, and ice built up on the roof of the indoor. The indoor sounded like being in the middle of an airport runway- super loud, creaky, and lots of ice sliding off the roof. At one point, the wind blew the arena doors so hard that it sent part of the gate flying. Not exactly the kind of set up for relaxing massage and ground work 

Still, Isabel actually did great keeping calm. There was a younger mare there who had never been in the arena before with ice sliding off the roof, and she spooked hard a couple of times. I've mentioned a few times before how that's the one thing that also gets under Isabel's calm demeanor, but I was proud of her- she certainly threw up her head and looked as a big piece of ice slid down, but she didn't react any more than that.

We learned a few new, more advanced stretches, mainly involving the hamstring and hind end. They are definitely harder for Izzy than the foreleg stretches, but I got some good hands on practice with the massage therapist so I feel confident I understand how far to push her and where her limits are right now. 

We also worked on lightness with sidepassing, and we clearly have some work to do there. It took a lot of pressure on her barrel and neck to get her crossing over with both front and hind legs, so that's another clear area to work on. After the trainer demonstrating with her, I know she _can_ do it- now it's just a matter of encouraging her to do it with a much lighter touch. I do think that if we get better at this on the ground, it will improve how she moves under saddle too, so that's exciting. 

I'm glad that I did this clinic series- at times, I thought there was a little too much talking from the instructors and not enough hands on, but the times we got to practice were very valuable. I did learn some new things to work on, and she's responded really positively to the massage techniques and seems much more willing to work in the arena after building some positive associations with being in there. So all in all- definitely worth it!


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## egrogan

We got walloped with an April snowstorm yesterday, so I was snowbound and couldn't make it out to the barn.

In lieu of cute horse pictures, I thought you might enjoy some cute dogs romping through snow instead:

Not sure how I managed to get the "slow mo" filter on my phone on, but it makes their playing extra dramatic


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## Tazzie

Those are some awesome pictures!! And the video is awesome in slow motion!


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## Bondre

Cute dogs! Your black dog (Gus? Or Delia?) runs rings round his (her?) friend lol.


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> Cute dogs! Your black dog (Gus? Or Delia?) runs rings round his (her?) friend lol.


Yes, Gus is all full of puppy energy (he's about 1.5 years old) and Delia is 9, so she tolerates his antics to a point. He was so funny in the snow though- it's been a pretty mild winter, but he's certainly been in it before. For some reason though, yesterday he was like a little wind-up toy running around and around like a wild thing! He went on like that for easily 20 minutes.


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## frlsgirl

They are having so much fun! I love the first snowfall of the season because it's so funny to watch my dogs interact with the snow; I have two mini dachshunds, so they are a bit smaller than yours and would probably drown in that amount of snow! Yikes! Is it common to get snow in April in NH?


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## egrogan

Wow...it's been an eventful week...Lots to catch up on!

So backtrack to last Sunday. I went to the barn, found Isabel in a very strange, uncomfortable looking position, shifting her weight back and forth between her hind legs and overall seeming unhappy. She had been trimmed the day before, and had strange quivering in her L stifle, and she was trotting out short on it, so my mind immediately went to being off in the hind end. After some helpful advice here, I realized I was being too myopic in thinking "leg problem," and her actions were actually more colic-like. Went back to the barn late in the evening, she hadn't touched her dinner, but ate up when I got there and had pooped once. She was fine the next morning. I chalked that up to mild gas colic.

Of course, like horses do, she chose the night before I left for a week-long work trip to London to have the only colicy episode she's ever had in the ~5 years I've known her! I was a bit of a wreck leaving her like that, but the barn staff were looped in and ready to call the vet out if needed while I was gone- luckily, it didn't come to that.

London was great, I got to have a memorable ride through Wimbeldon Park the day before my conference started. Here's one shot from the ride, and the full thread is here.









So I got back today, the vet met me at the barn this afternoon to look her over and do spring shots/check-up. 

It was a bit of a sad visit, this is the first time Isabel has really "shown her age." There are a few things going on:

1. Hind end lameness: Of course, she wasn't looking short on the L hind today when we trotted out for the vet. He flexed her R hind and she trotted off lame on _that _leg! Flexed L, trotted fine. Re-flexed R, off again. His opinion is that it's her R hock, not stifle. But definitely it was the right, not left, today. Both stifles felt "symmetrical" on examination and showed no signs of soreness. He did hock x-rays last year, and can do them again if she is showing persistent soreness on it, but his advice was that she needs more light riding to keep the arthritis in check and if she is showing consistent soreness, we'll go back to x-rays and reconsider options.

2a. Weight- this is the first time since I've known her that I've seen her really need to gain weight. I think it took being away from her for a week to see that her hipbones are too visible, and she's even a little ribby, despite a big potbelly- *more on that in a minute*. Her teeth had been floated in the fall, and she didn't have any sharp hooks, but she is getting some "cupping" of her molars and starting to be less efficient in processing her forage. Vet recommended that it's time to move her over to a senior grain to give her a little help- she probably needs 20-30 lbs put back on. The BM was there while she got her check-up, and it will be easy to make the switch over to the senior, carb free option that several of the other horses get. So we'll get going with that.

2b. The biggest issue I wanted him to check out on this visit was testing for potential Cushing's. Her winter coat this year was wavy down her neck and back. She has lost a tremendous amount of muscle along her topline over the past couple of months, but has a big broody-looking belly. And she's seemed a little lethargic and "down" lately. Those things coupled with being a 22 year old Morgan, and I've been suspecting Cushings for a couple of months now. He drew blood today to send out to Cornell for the ACTH test, and I'll hear back next Monday with the results. But as soon as he walked in the barn and saw her, he said, "I can see why you wanted the PPID test done," so that made me a bit sad. It seems safe to assume she'll come back positive, and we'll start her on Prescend and retest in a couple of months. Assuming that's the case, we'll probably have caught it on the early side, and her feet are looking great without any laminitic episodes, so hopefully we can get her managed well and put some muscle back on. But I don't want to get ahead of myself-I'm still doing my research and will of course be able to make better decisions once we have the test results back. 

She had her regular vaccinations done, and was great standing for those. 

So all in all, like I said, I'm a little sad that she's really starting to look her age, but in his opinion she's still rideable and appropriate for the kind of light work I ask her to do. In fact, we're supposed to be riding in a "Centered Riding" clinic this Sunday, and he thought we should go ahead with it. 

She's just arriving at the age where she'll need a little bit of TLC and smart management to keep her as healthy and happy as possible.


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## Wallaby

I was just thinking about you guys and wondering whatever happened with that lameness-thing she was showing.
It's always rough when the horse you love starts showing her age. I mean, I suppose I got lucky with Lacey as she never superduper showed her age...but maybe I just got her after her age started showing? Anyway, either way, it's not fun.

I'm glad she's still cleared for the kind of riding you guys enjoy! That's great! And hopefully she'll come around really well on Prescend. 

Lots of hugs to you both!


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## Tazzie

That isn't fun when they start showing their age :sad: but I am glad you can continue working with her!

I'm glad you had fun on your trip though! I'll have to read your thread on it later!


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## egrogan

Wallaby said:


> I was just thinking about you guys and wondering whatever happened with that lameness-thing she was showing.
> It's always rough when the horse you love starts showing her age. I mean, I suppose I got lucky with Lacey as she never superduper showed her age...but maybe I just got her after her age started showing? Anyway, either way, it's not fun.
> 
> I'm glad she's still cleared for the kind of riding you guys enjoy! That's great! And hopefully she'll come around really well on Prescend.
> 
> Lots of hugs to you both!


Thanks, Wallaby! I did a lot of reading last night, and in some ways, I will be sort of relieved if we can confirm the Cushings- it will just explain so much! Maybe sort of like you feel about Fabs' diagnosis, actually...

For the past few months, I've noticed her weak back and dull attitude, and just excused it by thinking that a) I have been riding only inconsistently so she's out of shape and b) she is just kind of a "grumpy" horse- so while I feel bad for not acting sooner to help her feel better, I've been really encouraged to read that a lot of horses who start on the medication reverse these symptoms and start to feel a lot more excited about the world again.


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> That isn't fun when they start showing their age :sad: but I am glad you can continue working with her!
> 
> I'm glad you had fun on your trip though! I'll have to read your thread on it later!


Thanks, Tazzie! It is hard to admit she's getting up there in years. But I agree, I'm glad that we likely have a good strategy for helping her stay active and manage any symptoms she's having. I'm hoping that a week from now, we'll have a clear plan and will be getting started on her new medication.


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## frlsgirl

It sounds like you are a very observant and caring owner who stays ahead of any issues that might be creeping up! 

Also, I'm totally jelly that you get to go to a centered riding clinic! We don't really have those here in Oklahoma; it seems to be more of an East Coast thing.

I hope you will be able to go and come back with lots of new insights which you will of course share with us, right?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> It sounds like you are a very observant and caring owner who stays ahead of any issues that might be creeping up!
> 
> Also, I'm totally jelly that you get to go to a centered riding clinic! We don't really have those here in Oklahoma; it seems to be more of an East Coast thing.
> 
> I hope you will be able to go and come back with lots of new insights which you will of course share with us, right?


Yes, I am looking forward to the clinic. I'm heading out to the barn this morning to go for a quick ride just to make sure Isabel is up for it. If not, I should be able to borrow a school horse from the barn so I'll still be able to ride. I am really looking forward to it, though will admit I'm a little nervous to be "on display" in front of a crowd (albeit small, I'm sure). 

I realized when I was in England that my equitation is very far from perfect, but put me "out in the wild," and I'm such a more confident rider. Hacking out through fields and trails, I'm able to focus on what feels comfortable for me and the horse, whether or not it looks pretty. In the arena, I feel hyper-conscious of every part of my body that's positioned incorrectly, and the mistakes just start building on each other. But despite that, I like a challenge, and I very rarely make time for real instruction, so I think the clinic will be a great experience!


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## Zexious

I'll have to check out the thread about your trip; riding abroad is such a neat experience!

I'm sorry that Isabel is starting to show her age. That's something I can relate to--the time Gator has had off has aged him more than if I had been able to keep him in work, I think.
Enjoy and cherish the time you've got with her--she is a special horse with a special owner!


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## egrogan

Good advice, Zexious! I definitely do appreciate my grumpy old girl.


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## egrogan

Got in a nice ride today. I kept things really slow and easy, mostly walking. She felt a little off trotting- maybe I'm paranoid, maybe she was just stiff. Anyway, we stuck to walking. It was beautiful out so we headed outside to amble.










I was intending to just to go around the hayfields....








...but Izzy and I had a little disagreement when we reached the spot where we have the option to turn off to the woods trail. I was just going to ride past that spot, but she obviously expected I was going to ask her to take the turnoff. She started going all banana-shaped and evasive, so I decided that was probably not a good thing to just ignore. I straightened her out and pointed her towards the woods, at which point she threw her head up and started backing up fast. I just insistently squeezed her on, and she grudgingly took the trail. The footing still isn't great in there, a bit squishy and muddy, so we didn't go all that far. It was a pretty day to be in the woods though, given the way the light was filtering through:

















I think someone commented once that Izzy's ears are always alert in her pictures. Thought I'd throw this one in to show a dopey ear moment- not sure what she was doing here!! :wink:









You guys will laugh at me though, I had a reflexively defensive moment back at the barn- a little girl who was at the barn for camp walked by and said to her friend, "that horse is soooo skinny." The mama bear in me want to grab her and yell, "you shouldn't say things like that when you don't know what's going on with a horse who's not yours!!"  Of course I _didn't _actually say anything to her. And to be honest, she was one perceptive little kid with a good eye for horses, because Isabel _does _look really skinny right now. It's actually kind of funny, given that all the campers last year thought she was pregnant because she was so...ahem...fluffy...coming out of winter. I am working with the barn to switch her over from a ration balancer to a senior feed (at the advice of the vet) so we're starting that tomorrow.

She also got a brand new fly mask (she's really hard on flymasks and they rarely last more than one season). All the little campers agreed she was the most fashionable horse at the barn


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## Zexious

^I'm in agreement with the campers, she's very stylish ;D

I can see how a comment like that can be hurtful--sometimes I wonder where people (kids? people? adults? iduno) get their manners. If you're gonna say something snarky (or something that could be perceived as snarky) at least make sure the individual in question, or owner their of, can't hear you >.>


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## Tazzie

Sorry for the rude comments you got :sad:

But I love her fly mask!

My Izzie is hard on them too. We are just now trying the new Absorbine fly masks. I can say, she hasn't gotten it off yet... But it hasn't even been 2 weeks :lol: though, typically she does have them off in that time. So far, I like it!


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## egrogan

Thanks guys! They were just kids, I don't think they were being deliberately mean.

As far as flymasks go, I really like the ones that have the hole for the forelock (hers is long and thick and gets in her eyes if it doesn't have a place to go!). If I remember correctly, the Absorbine ones don't have the hole? I have become a flymask connoisseur over the past few years


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## Tazzie

No, that was my frustration too. But I liked the feature where it extends past her poll a little bit to help it stay on. I just pop her forelock out the ear holes. Bonus, makes her get to used to her forelock on her ears :lol:


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## frlsgirl

I don't own a fly mask; I just use fly spray.


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## Tazzie

We've tried fly spray, the swat stuff, and anything else you could try on the face. Flies destroy around her eyes. With a fly mask, they don't. We fly spray often too. Doesn't help when the horse is on 24/7 pasture.


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## frlsgirl

Tazzie said:


> We've tried fly spray, the swat stuff, and anything else you could try on the face. Flies destroy around her eyes. With a fly mask, they don't. We fly spray often too. Doesn't help when the horse is on 24/7 pasture.


Oh, I see, that makes sense. The flies must be much worse in Kentucky; it' not really that big of a problem here; or at least not for Ana.


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## Tazzie

They can be pretty bad here. And we have tried everything to get them to leave her eyes alone since she ditches her fly masks so often. Nothing works but those.


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## egrogan

You're lucky frls, I can't imagine not having the horses in fly masks here! The NH black flies are notorious, plus vicious deer and horse flies, as well as mosquitoes. Sometimes fly spray seems futile! And I have to buy the masks with ears because they get bit up so badly inside- and thus can't use Tazzie's forelock-through-ear hole trick!

For whatever reason, Isabel has always had weepy eyes (vet tried to explain to me once how the shape of her tear duct is unusual), so without the flymask on, her face would just be plastered with flies sitting on the corners of her eyes and down her cheeks. Which makes it infuriating that she makes it her daily goal to rub the mask off!! I just wish I could tell her, "you're only hurting yourself! Just leave it on!!"


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## Bondre

Sorry to hear that Izzy has lost over the winter. I hope the senior feed helps her to get that weight back on.

It was me that said about her hyper-alert ears. They remind me of Xena's ears (she was the barn sour green pony I had briefly back in 2014) - I didn't much like her, but I loved her ears. 

The unthinking honesty of kids is great, but can be hurtful - or awkward - at times. My older son had a knack for making too-audible comments when he was much younger, which could be very embarrassing. But he didn't do it out of malice, just out of a combination of spontaneity and ignorance of social niceties ("daddy, look at those dirty men!" when he saw his first subsaharan African at the age of seven  ).


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## egrogan

Thanks for the good wishes Bondre (can't "like" posts since I'm trying to stick it out with the new format). And now I do remember it was you who commented on her ears 

Interesting story about your son- I'm sure I would have been mortified, but also used it as a teachable moment- we can't expect kids to know what to do or how to act until we can guide them through an unusual experience.


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## egrogan

I just got some VERY surprising news- Izzy's Cushings test came back with her ACTH levels in normal ranges and unchanged from her blood work last year. In other words- Cushings negative. I pushed the vet on whether we should do any follow ups or additional testing, and he really didn't think so- he thinks she's just starting to show her age, but isn't sick.

On the one hand, I am of course relieved to hear that she doesn't have this disease. On the other- the symptoms all made so much sense that it seems hard to believe the result is negative. 

I'm heading out to the barn in a bit- gorgeous day and I'm hoping to ride. I've been out of town for a couple of days for work so haven't seen Izzy since she started on the senior feed. Hoping that will help putting some better condition on her soon!


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## Wallaby

Huh! Well, I suppose that's good!  
What kind of test did they do, if I may ask? I've heard that one is less accurate, or something like that...


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## egrogan

Wallaby said:


> Huh! Well, I suppose that's good!
> What kind of test did they do, if I may ask? I've heard that one is less accurate, or something like that...


 @Wallaby, my BM had the same exact reaction- "Huh...surprising, but good I guess."

Here are the testing options: https://ahdc.vet.cornell.edu/docs/equine_cushings_tests.pdf

Izzy had the "Endogenous ACTH" test performed. While all the tests have the possibility of false positives or negatives, this one is pretty common, but does require careful treatment of the blood sample (cooling, centrifuging, and cold shipment) for accurate readings. My vet has done hundreds of these things so I trust the sample was handled appropriately. 

Another common test is a dex suppression test, which requires blood draws twice, before and after administration of dex to test cortisol levels. I've read in some places this one is more accurate than the one we had, but other places say the opposite. One thing that sort of drives me nuts about where I live is that people are always trying to save you money, whether you want them to or not- so when I asked the vet about testing this way, he discouraged it so I wouldn't have to pay two farm calls. I guess part of me does wonder if I should have insisted if this would have given us less change of a false negative- I truly don't care about paying for the calls, but he seemed pretty adamant the other was just as good.

My husband tells me I need to stop playing "WebMD" and just trust the vet. But I just can't shake the fact that the symptoms so clearly match the way Izzy looks and acts. But again, I know my vet has treated hundreds of Cushings horses in his career, so if he says we don't need to treat, I suppose I should just be thankful. It's just so hard to know what to do when you've never experienced something first-hand. If all the medical advice on the internet was true, all of us should probably be dead right now!


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## egrogan

So in the spirit of not obsessing over Cushings, I got in lots of riding time this weekend!

Saturday, we went on our "regular" trail ride for the first time since last December. It felt GREAT to get out of the arena, and Isabel had a pep in her step too. She rides so different outside vs. in the arena. She was definitely very alert to her surroundings, and while she obviously knew the route we were taking, she still had her head up with one eye open for danger. We both got surprised by some ducks taking off from the pond we pass, but other than that, she wasn't over-the-top with her alertness. She was really cute, when we got to our two "canter spots," I could feel her start to coil up underneath me, and she kept flicking her ears back at me asking, "are we doing it? are we going? are we running?" but I really did just want her to walk since she's so out of shape. I could tell she was just waiting for the shift of weight that would tell her to go, but when I sat back instead, she listened. She was really sweaty just from walking, so I think it was the right call. We probably rode a couple of miles and then headed back to the barn. We were both tired when we got back!

We had a pretty wet winter, but surprisingly, there was almost no mud and the ground was actually already kind of hard- can't imagine what it will be like in July & August!
_









_I love watching the transformation of the corn fields from spring to summer to fall- right now, it's just a bunch of stubble. There was a huge manure pile in the middle of this field though, so they must be getting ready to fertilize. It was a really windy day, and the smell was strong- Isabel seemed very intrigued by it-her nostrils were as wide open as she could get them!









She was much politer about riding through the woods on the way home than she was earlier in the week:









Following the deer path across the hayfield to home:









********************************************************************
After I got back from riding and put Izzy up, I had the first part of the Centered Riding clinic. The instructor went through the 4 basic principles of the Centered Riding approach (Centered Riding Basics - Centered Riding, Inc.) and did some unmounted balance exercises with our group. The group was all therapeutic riding instructors and staff from the barn where I board Izzy (I am a certified therapeutic riding instructor though have taken a bit of a break from teaching because I'm very involved with the Board of Directors for the program and just sadly don't have time to do both).

We reconvened as a group this morning, and had another hour of unmounted exercises to get started. There were some great tension release exercises that relied heavily on visualizing how muscles and joints work together to hold or release tension. I'm a pretty tactile learner, so it was extremely helpful to see the demo, have a partner try the exercise on my body, and then get to try it with someone else. I think I have decent body awareness (although it has been a long, hard process to build it- as it doesn't come naturally to me!), and can pretty accurately identify where I'm tense or hold my body "short" rather than long and loose- my big problem is that I just don't know what to DO about that tension!

We split into 2 groups that rode for ~1.5 hours each (probably a little less). We worked on finding our seatbones, maintain our balance and alignment, and using a "power seat" to rate speed. We mostly worked at the walk with some trotting interspersed. I did learn that, unlike most riders who "jam" their heels down, I tend to want to be too much on my toes without enough weight through the feet towards the floor. I think I need to find a pair of kids' stirrup leather because I've bought the shortest ones I can find and they are already on the top hole. That might help some. 

I'm not quite sure what we were working on here, but Izzy and I both seem to be taking it very seriously!









She was definitely fatigued by the end of the ride, but I had 3 instructors watching us go and no one saw her looking visibly lame- just very sluggish. But it's good for me to have that external confirmation that she didn't seem off, because so much of the time I worry about whether by correcting her, I'm hurting her by asking her to do something she can't. For example, in the ring, she cuts every corner when we're tracking right, and I am always thinking, is that because it's hard for her to carry her weight through a turn when her inside hind hock hurts- or is she just being a smartass and getting away with it because she can? Probably a little of both, to be honest  Lucky for us, we can do most of our riding outside now- makes us both much happier!

The teaching tips and visualization strategies from the clinic will be really helpful for teaching lessons. But I was a little disappointed that I didn't see as much of a response in Isabel as I was hoping to- the same problems of crookedness and counterbending that we've been having for many, many months in the arena really didn't improve even though I do think I was holding my body in a better position. Of course, it's not realistic to fix months of problems in a 90 minute clinic ride, but I was hoping to see more of a change in her too.

Final verdict: I'm really glad we were part of this. I just dug my old copy of Sally Swift's Centered Riding out of the bottom of the bookshelf-so much of what was discussed made sense from somewhere far back in my riding memory. I think it was one of the first books I read about riding when I was a kid (would have come out in print when I was in elementary school), and as a horseless kid, so much of my knowledge was built through books. It was fun to have some hands-on to match. I like that these are a set of principles that apply to many styles of riding as a set of fundamentals. And for someone who generally uses more of the "analytical" and less of the "feeling" brain, it was good to be forced to visualize "centeredness" and have to try to build that body awareness on the horse.


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## frlsgirl

Thanks for the report; I was curious to find out if you saw any benefit in it; the biggest benefit with immediate effect has been the application of the spiral seat. Ana and I tend to get tangled up in each other and the spiral seat helps me stop that cycle. Sometimes I spend an entire ride just focusing on my spiral seat; I don't really use a lot of the other CR principles; I'm sure they are all helpful but I just haven't found the need to further explore and experiment.


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## egrogan

Dropped by for a quick afternoon visit. I wanted to see if she was sore or stiff after 2 days in a row of riding- she didn't seem to be, yay! She did a few turns on the haunches (in hand) without complaining and happily grazed while I gave her a really good grooming to continue to try to shed her out.

I was unhappy to see that she had two small girth rubs, one on each side! I don't know if it's from sweating with her coat still being too long? Or if the saddle is moving too much since her back has lost muscle? At any rate, they were tiny, and looked a little like if you rough up your knuckle on a rough surface, so not huge sores- but still, it makes me feel horribly guilty :sad:

Here's the pretty lady daintily sipping her water:








_(Immediately after this she put her head on me and dribbled grassy water all down the front of my sweatshirt- thanks Izzy!!)_


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## egrogan

I intended to go for a pretty long ride today, but Izzy had other plans. She has _finally _decided she's ready to shed out for real  

After about 30 minutes with the shedding blade, this is what we had:









She's still got more winter coat to come off, but I'm relieved she's finally giving it up. I can finally see evidence of a slicker summer coat hiding under all that stubborn winter hair. She's now fully transitioned over to the senior feed so you can't see her hipbones sticking out any more. Hopefully a more appropriate diet is going to get her back on track!

I didn't have a ton of time to ride because my husband was meeting me at the barn after a long jog, so had not been planning on so much time grooming. I was getting ready to mount up when he got there, so he snapped some cute pictures of us:



























(I was brushing flies off her neck, don't worry, that's not how I ride!! :wink









We rode the loop around the barn and the neighbor's property. It's a lot of gentle rolling hills, and I could feel her using her body pretty well up and down them, no lameness. She does not like when we ride through boggy ground, of which there's still a lot, and she tries to rush through that kind of footing. But she seemed happy to get out, was alert and interested. I'm happy to see her eyes looking bright again.

After we got back, I gave her a quick spray with the hose because she was pretty sweaty, and then her favorite friend took her for some hand grazing while I cleaned up all that hair we left in the aisle!


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## egrogan

The spring weather couldn't manage to hold out through the weekend, and yesterday turned up cool and rainy. Unfortunately for us, that meant no trail riding. Instead, we just spent a lazy Sunday in the barn.

We started with hair-a-palooza part 2. The shedding is happening fast and furious now, yay!









She is _really _dandruffy all over though, but particularly at the base of her mane and on her neck under her mane:









Currying also pulled up a lot of dry black scabs from her back and withers- not sure what that's all about? Maybe some rain rot from sweat getting trapped under the heavy coat? I've been trying to find an injectable Vitamin A supplement to give orally (recommended by @*Cherie* ), but I went to 2 feed stores yesterday with no luck. I also spent some time online looking but it is proving difficult to find.

Since we couldn't ride out, we did a little arena work. I think her bored ears tell you her opinion of that 









She warmed up as though she was surely going to die if she had to ride one more lap around the arena. When asked to stay on the rail and trot to the right, she would have you think that she was dead lame and could never be ridden again. 

BUT

As soon as I took her off the rail, asked her to trot weaving through the cones or over poles, or even just ride on the track between the cones and the poles, she was fine. Energetic, forward, ears up. I think she just gets bored to tears in the ring and hates doing it. So we made up lots of little games and patterns, doing big and small serpentines through the obstacles, changing directions, backing through the poles, etc. After that, she was eager to canter (though really heavy on the forehand, I'm sure just because she's still so out of shape and doesn't have much lift). 

We thought briefly about going outside, but it was raining too hard so we just looked out wistfully before calling it quits 










I don't have time to ride today (and it's supposed to be a cool, soggy week anyway) but I'm going to try to stop out to the barn at the end of the day and keep going with the grooming. I briefly contemplated just pulling out the clippers and taking care of it all at once, but I think I'm just going to stick with patience and elbow grease and keep going with the curry comb, that's what seems to be working the best at this point. Plus, this horse _loves_ a good grooming session- she stood on the crossties dosing for almost 2 hours yesterday while I worked on her coat. Every now and then she'd shift her body so I'd brush her in an itchy spot, but she just loves being brushed all over. Very cute


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## Drifting

This is where I got the Vit A, Jeffers


Vitamin A-D Injectable by AgriLabs, 100 mL | Jeffers Pet


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## egrogan

Drifting said:


> This is where I got the Vit A, Jeffers
> 
> 
> Vitamin A-D Injectable by AgriLabs, 100 mL | Jeffers Pet


Brilliant, thank you! Did you see good results with it?


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## Drifting

I only used one bottle, mostly to clear up a bad bought of it last june but it cleared it up quickly. I need to pick some up again


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## frlsgirl

So you might find this helpful:

I bought "Build your horse's topline" from Jane Savoie over the weekend. Apparently, her GP horse "Moshi" had some time off because Jane was healing from an injury. During that time, Moshi lost a lot of topline and when she tried to bring him back to work he appeared lame. She had the vet come out and run some tests on him and everything was negative so the vet and her agreed that the perceived lameness is due to a loss of topline; so she developed this program to bring him back into work slowly and methodically and he is now able to do all the GP movements again at the age of 18!

I just wanted to throw that out there because I've also had some on and off lameness with Ana which was mostly related to lack of topline.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> So you might find this helpful:
> 
> I bought "Build your horse's topline" from Jane Savoie over the weekend. Apparently, her GP horse "Moshi" had some time off because Jane was healing from an injury. During that time, Moshi lost a lot of topline and when she tried to bring him back to work he appeared lame. She had the vet come out and run some tests on him and everything was negative so the vet and her agreed that the perceived lameness is due to a loss of topline; so she developed this program to bring him back into work slowly and methodically and he is now able to do all the GP movements again at the age of 18!
> 
> I just wanted to throw that out there because I've also had some on and off lameness with Ana which was mostly related to lack of topline.


That makes sense, and I will check out that resource. I get her "Motivation from Moshi" emails and enjoy her writing.


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## Cherie

> Currying also pulled up a lot of dry black scabs from her back and withers- not sure what that's all about? Maybe some rain rot from sweat getting trapped under the heavy coat? I've been trying to find an injectable Vitamin A supplement to give orally (recommended by @*Cherie* ), but I went to 2 feed stores yesterday with no luck. I also spent some time online looking but it is proving difficult to find.


It is cheap and easy to get on line from Jeffers or from Valley Vet. The only feed stores that carry it are those in rural areas that cater to cattlemen. Cherie


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> That makes sense, and I will check out that resource. I get her "Motivation from Moshi" emails and enjoy her writing.


She has a 30% off sale right now; I think the discount code is either on her webpage or FB.


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## egrogan

Look what I found today...a horse with dapples!!! 










Her topline obviously still needs work, but I am hopeful the food change is going to be a positive. Her coat looks even nicer in person, soft and even shiny. 

Ordered the Vitamin A supplement from Jeffers today, thanks again for the recommendations.


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## Bondre

She looks SO unimpressed with the arena in that photo! I'm sure that for an intelligent mare like Izzy, going round in a circle must seem utterly pointless. Wasn't it the case that she was deemed unsuitable as a therapy horse? (or am I misremembering?) - maybe because she gets bored doing arena work. 

She's looking good after all your hard work grooming. That's a lot of hair on the ground. Ever thought of saving it as stuffing for an armchair lol. 

They are so cute when they relax into a grooming session. I often give my two a quick groom without tying them, and they gather round and give me nudges when I am grooming the other one, saying "hey, what about me?!" Yesterday I was combing Macarena's mane, which normally she dislikes, and she and Flamenca started a mutual grooming session while I combed. I managed to get all the tangles out while they were busy!


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> She looks SO unimpressed with the arena in that photo! I'm sure that for an intelligent mare like Izzy, going round in a circle must seem utterly pointless. Wasn't it the case that she was deemed unsuitable as a therapy horse? (or am I misremembering?) - maybe because she gets bored doing arena work.


Oh yes, she is absolutely bored in the arena and is very clear about how useless she thinks it is! She has no problem expressing her opinion :wink: And you're right, she was a therapy horse dropout. I think that was mostly because she really does want to be a 1 person horse- if I was in a position to get her out of a boarding situation and bring her home right now, I think she'd thrive, but we have some other financial priorities right now before we can do the work we'd need to do on our property to get her home this year.



Bondre said:


> She's looking good after all your hard work grooming. That's a lot of hair on the ground. Ever thought of saving it as stuffing for an armchair lol.


You're so right- I did think about whether there was anything I could do with it! Ultimately it got swept out to the manure pit, I'm sure some baby birds this year will be luxuriating in swanky nests all spring!




Bondre said:


> They are so cute when they relax into a grooming session. I often give my two a quick groom without tying them, and they gather round and give me nudges when I am grooming the other one, saying "hey, what about me?!" Yesterday I was combing Macarena's mane, which normally she dislikes, and she and Flamenca started a mutual grooming session while I combed. I managed to get all the tangles out while they were busy!


That is adorable. Izzy _loves _to have her mane brushed. She'll put her head down really low so I can reach it easily and just lean in to it.


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## frlsgirl

fftopic:
@egrogan - I noticed that you use photobucket to load your pictures; I'm trying to do that but there are 4 ways share the photo:

Email
Direct
HTML
IMG

Which one of them do you use? I would love to be able to insert pictures in between text like you always do.


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## Tazzie

@frlsgirl, you use the direct link. That way, it is the direct link to the picture.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> fftopic:
> @*egrogan* - I noticed that you use photobucket to load your pictures; I'm trying to do that but there are 4 ways share the photo:
> 
> Email
> Direct
> HTML
> IMG
> 
> Which one of them do you use? I would love to be able to insert pictures in between text like you always do.


Just click on the "Direct" link- when you click it, in Photobucket it will highlight the space where the link was and show it as "copied"

Come back to Horse Forum, click on the little photo icon (yellow mountain), and then just paste in the URL.


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## frlsgirl

Thanks @egrogan - I just posted some pictures in Ana's thread using your suggested method, when you have minute, would you mind hopping over there and let me know if you can see the pics? Thanks


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## egrogan

Izzy got to meet our new(ish) dog, Gus, today. Gus had a quick vet appt for spring shots, and since their office is close to the barn, we brought him out to meet her. She's been around a lot of dogs and doesn't pay much attention to them, but I had no idea what he'd do.

First greeting...Gus is looking a little scared (tucked tail). He's not a very confident guy so not super surprised:









The Treat Man trying to encourage Gus to take a closer look:









This is about as close as they got- to Isabel, the grass was _much _more exciting:









*************
In other news...I'm really not feeling good about Izzy's body condition. So much so, I actually didn't want to take full body pictures and post them here. Her flanks are looking drawn up and you can see her hipbones and back of her spine. 

I'm going to try upping the grain another half lb. For the new senior feed (she's fully transitioned to that now), at her ideal weight, she is right between needing 3lbs daily vs. 3.5 lbs daily (split into two feedings). I started her at the 3lbs but will go up to 3.5.

Also, I've noticed that her evening hay feeding isn't quite right. One night last week, I went out around dinner time and there was a volunteer helping with feeding, and she didn't put the hay in the nets, just loose on the ground. So if that's happening frequently, is she eating the hay within an hour and then standing all night with nothing? And today, one of her haynets was actually not in her stall at all-no idea where it went or why it was taken out, no one said anything to me. She's supposed to have 2 full overnight to keep her moving and eating. I was traveling for work at the end of the week, so not sure how long the 2nd one has been missing. It was there Wednesday night when I filled it after the volunteer didn't.

The pasture is crap this year. This is the thing that drives me nuts about my barn, no one is actively managing it and it's been steadily deteriorating since I've been there. It's completely eaten down and they don't rotate horses to give it a rest. It's never harrowed, never re-seeded, never "fed." At this rate, they're going to have to be throwing hay all summer...but the horses ignore the hay to try to graze, and I'm sure that's contributing to weight loss. When I looked at Izzy's pasture mate today, I could see her ribs and hips too. That's never happened before. 

This is the most serious I've been about thinking about moving her. It's just so hard to imagine actually doing that- she's been there for the 4 years I've owned her and almost 2 before that. She likes it there, she has good pasturemates, etc. But if she's not doing well, then what else can I do?


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## frlsgirl

@egrogan - Oh no! I hope you can figure something out. My barn is small so it's easier for them to keep track of the horses and who is out of what, but I still go in and check her supply and sometimes give her extra hay and Saturday I replaced her salt lick.

Didn't you guys have a really harsh winter? Maybe the grass is still trying to come in? Is it selfcare? Or are they supposed to feed/check on your horse a couple of times a day?


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## carshon

Some Sr horses go down hill pretty quickly when things are not quite right. I am experiencing that with my 23yr old paint mare this spring. I have almost doubled her grain since Feb and have most definitely doubled her hay (and she eats in a Hay CHix slow feeder net) She is just now starting to show a very slight gain in her weight. I know her teeth etc are fine - I had this happen with another older mare I had who was about 25 when she became harder to keep weight on. My advice is to keep adding grain or a weight builder supplement and get on the barn about the hay.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> @*egrogan* - Oh no! I hope you can figure something out. My barn is small so it's easier for them to keep track of the horses and who is out of what, but I still go in and check her supply and sometimes give her extra hay and Saturday I replaced her salt lick.
> 
> Didn't you guys have a really harsh winter? Maybe the grass is still trying to come in? Is it selfcare? Or are they supposed to feed/check on your horse a couple of times a day?


 @*frlsgirl* - One reason that I'm so frustrated right now is that it's absolutely NOT self-care. I pay $500 a month for board! It's a small barn as well, no more than 11 horses at a time, and the BM generally tries to stay at 10. Board includes feed (grain of our choice 2x daily, hay 3x daily, supplements fed if we provide them) and turnout. Our winter was actually pretty mild, but spring has been very cool and rainy. It's been slow to green up all over, but there is a definite problem with pasture maintenance.



carshon said:


> Some Sr horses go down hill pretty quickly when things are not quite right. I am experiencing that with my 23yr old paint mare this spring. I have almost doubled her grain since Feb and have most definitely doubled her hay (and she eats in a Hay CHix slow feeder net) She is just now starting to show a very slight gain in her weight. I know her teeth etc are fine - I had this happen with another older mare I had who was about 25 when she became harder to keep weight on. My advice is to keep adding grain or a weight builder supplement and get on the barn about the hay.


Thanks for sharing this @*carshon* , and good luck with your mare too! You could be right, and this is just age related. I started her on 1lb of soaked Triple Crown timothy/alfalfa cubes this weekend 2x daily and she seems to like them so far. I can do more if needed but didn't want to start off crazy- the Triple Crown nutritionist suggested doing 4-6 lbs daily, but that seems like a lot so we'll see if it's necessary. She is now at 3.5lb low-carb Senior feed (split over two feedings) which is the correct amount based on her ideal weight and exercise level. 

I went to the barn around 9pm last night to see what the situation was. She had eaten the cubes up, but still had hay in both of her haynets (the 2nd one reappeared ). 

Her coat has a shine to it and she's still got dapples showing through. It's just that you can see the slight outline of ribs and her hipbone, and her flank is definitely looking tucked up. What am I missing? Vet just checked her, including blood panels, so I keep coming back to feed...

I know changes won't just happen overnight with this new feeding approach, but I want to be proactive.


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## egrogan

Saw my cute girl today. She's still stubbornly holding on to winter hair in some places, but continues to look shinier every day. Her eyes are bright and alert and she seems happy with the world when I see her.

Grass is always a winning way to earn some good will 









But this is what I'm dealing with- even in bad lighting, you can see the ribbiness and hipbones, right?









Good news, she seems to think this weird soupy grass stuff is pretty tasty and is eating it up:









Stuffed her haynets full tonight because the barn volunteers seem to have shorted her again. GRRRRRR....Looks like for now, I'm going to have to adjust my schedule to get out there in the evenings as often as possible (except when I'm traveling). The barn is working on hiring new staff, so I'm hoping this is a temporary blip and we get back to normal ASAP.


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## Tazzie

Man, I do hope they return to normal. I can see what you mean. She isn't terrible, but ribbier than I like seeing. I'm glad you're being proactive about upping her intake, and going out when possible to stuff her hairnets. Hopefully she will look good as new in no time!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> and going out when possible to stuff her hairnets.


hehehe.. @Tazzie...I know this was an autocorrect moment, but it gave me this hysterical image of Izzy getting into the shower with little wisps of hay poking out of her mane from under a plastic shower cap


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## frlsgirl

I couldn't resist!


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I couldn't resist!


Oh thank you! I did a quick Google image search to see if I could find any silly pictures but couldn't


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## Tazzie

BAHAHAHA! No, not autocorrect :lol: extremely sleep deprived person on this side of the keyboard :lol:

That image is HILARIOUS though!

I'm seriously trying to stifle my laugh in my cubicle right now :lol:


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## frlsgirl

There are some funny auto-corrects on the Iphone though; I find this one particularly amusing:

canter depart = Canada parts


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## Zexious

I totally hear you about body condition, egrogan. 
Now that Gator is out of work it's an issue I face too--sometimes it takes some tinkering with their food... Or, indeed, finding a new location :c

Anymore thoughts on the subject?


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## frlsgirl

Zexious said:


> I totally hear you about body condition, egrogan.
> Now that Gator is out of work it's an issue I face too--sometimes it takes some tinkering with their food... Or, indeed, finding a new location :c
> 
> Anymore thoughts on the subject?


It looks like @egrogan recently started her on alfafa, so that should put some condition back on her; also as it gets warmer and green grass comes in, it should help; even if it's only a limited amount of grass. Ana is already starting to look plump after only 2 weeks of limited grass turnout.


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## Zexious

^Ah, my bad!
I thought there was still some deliberation about possibly moving... Allow me to insert foot in mouth, as per usual~


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> ^Ah, my bad!
> I thought there was still some deliberation about possibly moving... Allow me to insert foot in mouth, as per usual~


No, you're right, I've been thinking about whether moving needs to be seriously on the table. 

I never thought I'd be one of those people writing wishy washy excuses like, "I've been here for years and it's always been great, I'm sure it's just temporary" or "This isn't that big a deal, I'll just do more of the work myself." 

But now that I'm in this situation, I understand so much better how a barn that's been amazing for years can turn really quickly. The BM is a wonderful person and cares for all the horses as though they're her own. But for some reasons I don't feel comfortable going into publicly, she's been pulled in a too many different directions and lost some good staff members who have headed off to college, resulting in a perfect storm of having volunteer help involved in feeding. And who knows, maybe it wouldn't be that big of a deal if Isabel was younger and didn't have some underlying health changes going on. But the combination of both has put us where we are. And yes, as you mention @Zexious, she has been out of work throughout all of this a) because of my crazy work schedule and b) her loss of topline makes me a little nervous about doing the kind of riding that it will take to build fitness. A bit of a catch 22.

We do have a couple of other boarding options nearby, but it makes me nervous because I do travel frequently for work and just don't know that I can trust another place to do any better with her than the barn where we are now. Sort of "the devil you know," if that's the right phrase...The staff at the current barn know her, like her, and can obviously see that she's lost condition. It's not like they're denying it. When I ask for changes, they're willing to make them. It's just that monitoring of volunteer barn help is not where it seems to need to be. (oh god, am I just making more excuses?!)

On top of all that, my husband and I are thinking about our personal near-term plans. Do we want to invest in improvements to our current property to bring horses home? Do we want to go house shopping to find that? We think we'd like to make a decision about that within a year, so is moving an older horse twice in 12-14 months worth it? There are a lot of variables so I'm just not sure how to weigh them all.


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## Zexious

^I totally hear you, it's a lot to think about!
I feel like we're in fairly similar situations, at least in terms of where our horses are in life. I see Gator losing muscle mass, and see him dropping weight as a result. But is it worth the stress of a move? 
On top of that, I _know_ that I'm not in the condition to do the type of riding to put on muscle and build his top line; I'm not in a position to ride period.

But one thing you do have going for you, I think, is what a concerned and contentious owner you are. You are putting so much thought into this and really appear to be considering the pros and cons of all your options. Izzy is so lucky to have you as an owner!

I like, too, how you say your barn is willing to make changes and hear out your concerns. That's a luxury so many don't have!
How do you feel about some more high calorie options? Do you think the staff would be willing to feed something outside of their program if it was provided?


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## frlsgirl

Zexious said:


> ^Ah, my bad!
> I thought there was still some deliberation about possibly moving... Allow me to insert foot in mouth, as per usual~


I think she might still be considering that; but can't speak for her


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> ^
> I like, too, how you say your barn is willing to make changes and hear out your concerns. That's a luxury so many don't have!
> How do you feel about some more high calorie options? Do you think the staff would be willing to feed something outside of their program if it was provided?


Yes, they will feed whatever I want. Until about 3 weeks ago, she was on a ration balancer that I bought because none of the others ate it. But I switched her over to a low-carb senior feed, which she's been fully transitioned to for a couple of weeks now. Seems to be eating it fine. _(As an aside, I wish horses could talk to us- it must be so weird to all of a sudden be given 3x more food than you were getting before. Do they notice that and wonder if it's too good to be true? )_ 

I'm not doing any calorie supplements at this point but if I wanted to do something like Cool Calories in the future, a couple others are getting that now so would be easy to do. 

I've made a lot of changes to diet in the past few weeks and think I'm going to stop for now and give this a month or so to see how she does. Fingers crossed!


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## egrogan

I'm not really much of a selfie person but this was cute:


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## Zexious

^Absolutely adorable!!
I'll be looking forward to positive weight improvement <3<3 Fingers crossed


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## egrogan

Finally, a day where things seem back to normal.

Had most of the day blocked off to be at the barn, which felt luxurious! I had quite a few chores to take care of, and also enough time to ride.

I bought Isabel a new "Nibble Net" to replace the disappearing hay net, so got that all set up today. It's a little smaller than I thought, and only comfortably held about 1.5 flakes (the ones I happened to pull from a bale today were unusually thick and fluffy though) but her other one is much bigger, so they should work fine together overnight when they're both full. The Nibble Net does seem to be as sturdy and solid as advertised, so I was pleased with that.

I also bought her a liquid Vitamin A supplement, which I've been meaning to try for awhile now based on all the threads I've read here suggesting it can help clear up goopy eyes and dry, dandruffy skin. She took it orally like a champ, so I'll do one more dose a week from today and see if that seems to clear up some of the persistent issues she has.

I also bought myself new stirrup leathers a few weeks ago, but with everything that's been going on, I've ridden so little that I never took the time to swap them out. They're shorter and have holes every 0.5 inch vs. every inch, and I immediately liked them better. No more reaching for the stirrup with my toe because the leathers were on the last hole but still too long. I could feel the difference, especially cantering, within seconds. Much more secure lower leg!

I hadn't ridden Isabel in at least two weeks (maybe more?) and not since I started her on the alfalfa cubes, so I had no idea if she was going to take off like a rocket or be ok. I'd say she was somewhere in between. I fortunately had the indoor arena to myself for 15-20 minutes so I was able to just let her blow off some steam. I tend to be really worried and cautious about letting her warm up at the walk for a good long time before asking for anything else. But today, the second my foot hit the stirrup, her ears were pricked and she wanted to move out. We walked a couple of laps, going over poles and bending around cones, but she was so eager I let her go. She trotted like a freight train for a few laps and then realized she was tired :wink: So we walked, but as soon as we got to the "canter corner" (smart horses don't let you be predictable, do they?! You canter after you trot, duh!) she took off in a smooth, balanced canter that felt wonderful (and the stirrups at a correct length made me want to ride it all day). She even felt ok going to the right, and happily picked up the correct lead in that direction too.

As I had been tacking up, I met a new boarder who had just moved his horse to the barn this week. He was a very friendly older gentleman and the horse seems just as sweet, a "been there, done that" 23 year old Paint gelding who is on trial for the therapeutic riding program at the barn. His owner was asking where the trails were, and I had been planning on riding out there for a little bit anyway if Isabel wasn't on "alfalfa brain," so I told him I'd be happy to show him.

I'm never quite sure what to expect with her when she's up close and personal with horses she doesn't know well, particularly geldings (some of you may remember the "squirting and peeing incident" of early winter when she gave one of the young geldings at the barn a run for his money in the indoor...). But I have to say, she was a little lady today. She did arch her neck and prance a little more when the gelding came into the arena to warm up with his owner, but she kept her concentration with me and warmed up well enough that I wasn't worried about heading out to the trail.

We've only been out on our regular route once this spring, and the weather dropped about 20*F from yesterday with a stiff wind blowing the cold front through, so she had every excuse to be terribly behaved. But she was a perfect trail leader! We rode a couple of miles, across fields, through the woods, past scary farm equipment, a neighbor on a riding mower, big herons flying up from a stream in front of her...and she was really great the whole time. 

My riding partner had a bit of a different idea about following distance than me- he let his horse get right up on Izzy's butt, and when I would move her over a little left or right to give her some breathing room, he'd just follow with his gelding's nose right on her tail- but she even tolerated that...albeit with a lot of tail swishing and ear pinning (I didn't reprimand her for that because I agreed with her!). And, the guy would let his horse stop to eat and then trot up behind us to catch up, which also made her a little tense. But again, for the most part, she stayed walking as I was asking her to. I had to get a little strong with the bit on the way home because she was a bit prancy once we made the turn back. A couple of times I felt her really coil up and thought she might try to take off, but she kept it bottled up and remained walking as asked. If I was by myself, I probably would have turned away from home and asked her for a long trot, but I could hear the gelding breathing hard behind us as it was, so I didn't want to do that. And we agreed ahead of time we were going to walk only, so we did.

All in all, I am so proud that she has answered the question that prompted this journal- she HAS become a trail horse, and a pretty good one! She is a brave leader, even with horses she doesn't know at all. She can handle scary, unexpected things out in the open. She can ride through the woods or through wide open fields. She can handle horses being rude without blowing up. She's not the greatest about being calm heading home, but I can work on that. Now I just need to get her weight in a good place so that we can keep up these fun rides and get more miles in as the weather gets nicer!

I hosed her off and put her out with some hay when we got back. Here's a taste of how windy it was- it's hard to eat hay when the wind is gusting in your face


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## Zexious

^Sounds like she did great with that gelding on the trail!

"All in all, I am so proud that she has answered the question that prompted this journal- she HAS become a trail horse, and a pretty good one! She is a brave leader, even with horses she doesn't know at all. She can handle scary, unexpected things out in the open. She can ride through the woods or through wide open fields. She can handle horses being rude without blowing up. She's not the greatest about being calm heading home, but I can work on that. Now I just need to get her weight in a good place so that we can keep up these fun rides and get more miles in as the weather gets nicer!"

^That makes me so, incredibly happy to read. There is nothing I love more than seeing positive progression in others, when I haven't gotten a whole lot of it myself the past couple years. I live vicariously through you all, and this absolutely made my day! Blaze many new trails <3<3


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Zexious! That's really sweet of you. I just noticed it's been almost exactly two years since I started this journal. It's hard to comprehend how much my riding and confidence have improved right alongside this great little horse. How lucky am I that I got such a great first horse?! She's taught me so much!


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## Zexious

^That's the way it should be <3<3!! I'm so happy for you both!

I realized I forgot to comment on one part of your post that I had meant to--I'm surprised at your riding buddy's etiquette! Was he the new boarder?
I always thought it was common courtesy to keep a little distance xD


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## egrogan

Zexious said:


> I realized I forgot to comment on one part of your post that I had meant to--I'm surprised at your riding buddy's etiquette! Was he the new boarder?
> I always thought it was common courtesy to keep a little distance xD


Right?! I found it really strange too. Yes, this was the new boarder, who I had just met. This guy was a very sweet man, probably in his late 60s or early 70s, and from the stories he was telling, has been riding since his college days- and about 20 years on this horse he was riding today. He's done everything on this horse- long trail rides, overnight horse camping, mounted patrol...and I would think that all of those types of rides would require following the "rules of the road?" Or maybe the mounted patrol riding gives you the assumption that all horses are very well mannered and their riders have them under control so you don't have to worry about stuff like that?

I guess I would just be a bit cautious riding behind _any _horse I've never met before. His horse wasn't being overly strong or fighting to get up to her- seemed like he was just moving along where he was asked to be. 

I probably should have just said something, but at that point I figured I just needed to keep my attention on Izzy and make sure she listened to me.


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## Tazzie

Yikes to how that man rode on the trails! I'm super glad Izzy was so well behaved!!

And I am SOO glad she's turning into a sweet little trail mare! I could just hear the pride in your post over this! Yay for shorter stirrups! And giving you a better feeling of stability


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Tazzie.

And yes- shorter stirrups are magic


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## Bondre

It's great when you get back into the saddle after a few weeks without riding and they behave as if it's been a couple of days rather than weeks. Well done Izzy! And for not getting too irritated even with a rude trail partner invading her space constantly. I'm really surprised that the other rider let his gelding do that, as it's more of a beginners mistake, and also that the gelding took no notice of Izzy's signals - you don't need to be a genius to understand tail swishing!

Izzy looks like she's having a hard time with her hay in those photos. If she's not careful the wind whisks it all away!


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## frlsgirl

Yay - glad things are looking up and that Izzy was so tolerant - Ana would have left a couple of hoof prints on his chest.


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## egrogan

Just coming up for air from a scary night. My husband and I were about to sit down to dinner when both our phones started buzzing and I had a text from the BM that just said "CALL ME."

My husband had a VM that the vet was on the way and Izzy was choking. I left dinner on the counter and rushed out.

When I got there, she was standing in the aisle with a puddle of slobber in front of her, but looking calm. BM was massaging her throat but vet wasn't there yet. Thankfully, very little was coming out of her mouth, but her neck was rock hard and tight. Every few minutes, she would tense up like she was dry heaving and cough a little. But mostly, she was very relaxed and actually leaning in to the neck massage with one hind leg cocked.

I was here for about 15 minutes before the vet got here. About 5 minutes before he arrived, she put her head down and thick mucous started streaming out of her nose. That was pretty scary, but stopped as soon as it started. 

When he got here, he got her sedated quickly, and as is typical for her, she was instantly swaying in the breezing and really looked like she was going down. Vet was very encouraged that when her head hung, nothing was coming out of her nose or mouth at all- so he felt she was close to having resolved it on her own.

He tried to tube her with a couple different sized tubes, but had a lot of trouble getting her to swallow it. He said he felt something strange and rough at the back of the tube, and since she was no longer actively streaming food out, he didn't think it was worth punishing her trachea when she seemed to be doing ok. So he never actually pushed against any kind of blockage or did anything to actively move it.

It's been about an hour now, and she's in her stall (BM and I had to push and pull her there because she was so drunk). She's very sad that she's not allowed to eat anything and is trying to pick every strand of hay out of her shavings. She looks very sad and pathetic:









To add a little humor to a scary situation, BM said she had to move Izzy to the other side of the barn because she's also in heat, so while she was splattering food and saliva everywhere, she was also peeing and squealing at the new gelding and had to be moved away from his stall. I don't think there's an "eye roll" icon on here, but what a _mare_ she is!

I'll be here at the barn for a bit longer just to make sure she's ok, but the sedation seems to be wearing off and she's moving around without any food or saliva coming out of anywhere. She really wants to eat and keeps hanging her head out of her stall asking me why I'm torturing her by hiding her food across the aisle where she can't reach it 









All in all, it was pretty mild choke, and thank goodness the BM was here right as it happened and could get the vet right away so it didn't escalate. It's probably one that would have resolved on its own, but I'm glad the vet was involved. It's the first one I've gone through with my horse and it wasn't fun.

I'll be back out first thing tomorrow but of course, have a business trip about 2 hours away in the afternoon so will have to rely on the barn to keep an eye on her, take evening temp, etc. We'll keep her off the grain and hay cubes tomorrow.

Also, I spent a lot of time on my drive to the barn imagining this happened because the hay cubes hadn't been soaked properly- it just seemed like too big a coincidence that hte first time this horse ever choked was a week after she started those. But, she hadn't been given them tonight, just bolted her grain. So now her grain is getting soaked too. It's been one adventure after another with poor Izzy this month.


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## Bondre

Oh no, that's so scary. Poor Izzy! I've never seen a horse choking and I sure prefer never to see one. Flamenca is a real food bolter too, and I always soak her beet pulp and alfalfa.

I hope she's back to normal tomorrow. Does choking damage their trachea in any way so that it hurts them to eat for the next few days, or are they fine for eating anything? I mean fine in their own opinion here - I'm sure Izzy isn't worrying "what if i choke?" when she's eating - although obviously wise to have her on a mushy diet for a while. 



egrogan said:


> To add a little humor to a scary situation, BM said she had to move Izzy to the other side of the barn because she's also in heat, so while she was splattering food and saliva everywhere, she was also peeing and squealing at the new gelding and had to be moved away from his stall. I don't think there's an "eye roll" icon on here, but what a _mare_ she is!


:icon_rolleyes: :icon_rolleyes:


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## frlsgirl

Oh no - I hate getting those phone calls! Glad she seems to be all right. Keep us updated, ok?


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## evilamc

How scary!!!! Jax choked on his hay pellets once, I was just giving him a little handful dry as a snack....man what an experience. Luckily he resolved it on his own wthout the vet but ever since I've been so nervous! I actually bought him a special feeder to slow him down when I was boarding because they didn't want to soak his food....now I soak it since hes at home with me...no problems since! This is the feeder I got if you're itnerested....Just in case someone accidently doesn't soak well enough one day its nice to have a back up...

PRE-VENT Feeder, Large, Black | Jeffers Pet


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## egrogan

Thanks for the good wishes everyone. I got a text from the vet this morning checking on her and encouraging me to feed her some soupy breakfast. I really appreciate having such a great, caring vet! 

I got to the barn really early this morning (beat the barn staff in ) and I mixed her up a big pan of her grain and a few very well soaked alfalfa pellets so it was a big bowl of mush. She was bright eyed when I went in her stall and very happy to finally get some food  She ate enthusiastically, but it definitely took her a good amount of time to get through the pan. Doesn't look like she'll have any problem eating the grain soaked and because it's so wet, it slowed her down pretty well.

I held off on giving her hay this morning (though vet did say it should be fine) and she's out on a pasture with a little grass. The barn staff will check on her periodically during the day for coughing (I'm about to head out the door for all day meetings in Boston and won't get back until late tonight). Her temp was a cool 98.4* this morning so no worries there. She'll get a very soupy dinner tonight and assuming all is well, we'll start transitioning back to normal hay tomorrow. We'll keep soaking grain from now on.

All in all, I think she's going to be just fine- but I do hope I never have to see that stream of saliva and food flowing out of her nostrils again. That was the scariest part!!


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> Does choking damage their trachea in any way so that it hurts them to eat for the next few days, or are they fine for eating anything? I mean fine in their own opinion here - I'm sure Izzy isn't worrying "what if i choke?" when she's eating - although obviously wise to have her on a mushy diet for a while.


I did quite a bit of reading about choke last night, and turns out horse choke is different than human choke. "Choke" is a bit of a misnomer for horses as it's the esophagus that gets plugged up, not the trachea. So throughout, they are still breathing (I was sort of wondering about that during the whole episode but logic wasn't my top priority in the moment!) but the blockage means they can't eat or drink until it clears successfully. And in their efforts to clear it, they can force the food and saliva up and into the trachea, which is when you worry about aspiration. I guess this is one of those little horse anatomy/emergency factoids I probably should have known as a horse owner but never really had any excuse to learn the bit of info. Makes sense now though...

But yes, the esophagus can have some abrasion and the mushy diet is definitely recommended. Since Izzy's was so mild and she didn't end up really being tubed, vet wasn't as worried and said I could probably go ahead with hay. But I figured why not just be cautious, she'll be ok for a day without whne she can nibble grass.


Bondre said:


> :icon_rolleyes: :icon_rolleyes:


Good to know this exists for future needs!! :wink:


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## Bondre

^^^ thanks for explaining this, egrogan. The idea of a horse choking has always scared me most because I thought it interrupted their breathing, but if it's *just* the oesophagus it's not quite as dire as if it were the trachea.


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## Prairie

Glad Izzy is doing better and was looking for her breakfast. If for some reason you are unable to soak her food, try putting some fist size, smooth rocks in her feed pan to slow down her eating. We did this when hubby's gelding choked and it was well below zero so soaked grain turned into "grainsicles".


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## egrogan

Good point, @Prairie. This will definitely be more complicated in the winter, fortunately the barn does have hot water which will help.

Here's our patient eating her morning mush:









Mmmmmm....









I think I made it too wet this morning- she got irritated that she couldn't really grab onto anything and was pawing at the pan. Poor girl, I am being too overprotective 

Seriously though, she's totally fine. Back to the normal routine today. I was hoping to get in a ride this afternoon but now it looks like thuderstorms are rolling in so will have to wait for the weekend.


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## evilamc

Ha I have sloppy pics like that! I wet the horses food every time too...Every single time after eating, when I go to let Rodeo out he tries to give me a sloppy faced kiss..










Rodeo couldn't care less how wet I make it..Jax and Orianna get a little offended if I have it to soupy LOL!


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## Prairie

LOL, our TWH mare is a pig----she doesn't care how her grain is prepared as long as she gets it!


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## frlsgirl

Ana has been getting alfalfa mush every since she coliced back in 2014 - she still loves it and gobbles it right up. Funny story though, back when I was still riding her in the mornings before work, I would feed her after our ride and hang out with her for a little bit. Later that day, I was sitting at my desk and reached back to scratch my head only to discover that I had a clump of dried alfalfa mush stuck in my hair; I had been running around like that all day! It kind of made me feel like a mom who discovers baby puke on her blouse.


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## Zexious

Those sloppy pictures <3<3

I'm so glad to hear that Izzy is alright--those phone calls are the worst and can be so scary!
Keep us updated <3<3


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## egrogan

@*evilamc* , Rodeo wears his breakfast well with that white nose 

**************************************

Weather ended up holding out yesterday afternoon so I did ride after all. Isabel was feeling _very _full of herself. It was a bit drizzly, so I decided not to head out to the trail fearing we'd get caught in a downpour. The indoor arena was being used for a lesson, so I rode in the small outdoor ring. It sits right up against the road, and Izzy was really distracted. At one point, someone walked by with an umbrella, and suddenly the corner of the ring we were in when she saw it became the monster corner. Every time we rode through the corner, she snorted and shied. Silly girl- she has seen umbrellas and people walking before. There's a big event at the barn tomorrow, so a few port-a-johns had been dropped off near the outdoor ring, and she also decided those were going to eat her. So she pranced around on her toes looking for an excuse to be scared. She's not a spooky horse, but she sure acted like it yesterday. I'm sure it's the combination of not much exercise and plenty of food that had her on her toes. The outdoor ring is really small, basically like a rectangular round pen, so unfortunately all you can really do in there is ride large 20-meter circles. 

We did that until the lesson in the indoor finished up, and then I hopped inside for a few minutes. Izzy was like a shaken soda bottle, she had a lot of fizz that just needed somewhere to go. So when we had the indoor to ourselves, I just asked her to canter, and she cantered...and cantered...and cantered some more. Usually she's looking for an excuse to motor down, but we did several laps in each direction before she was asking to stop.

It was nice to see her feeling so good and looking to go. Now I just need to get us back on a more regular riding schedule to channel that energy and start building up some muscle.


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## Prairie

frlsgirl said:


> Ana has been getting alfalfa mush every since she coliced back in 2014 - she still loves it and gobbles it right up. Funny story though, back when I was still riding her in the mornings before work, I would feed her after our ride and hang out with her for a little bit. Later that day, I was sitting at my desk and reached back to scratch my head only to discover that I had a clump of dried alfalfa mush stuck in my hair; I had been running around like that all day! It kind of made me feel like a mom who discovers baby puke on her blouse.



I think all of can relate to this! Back when I was showing hunter/jumpers, my gelding sneezed all over me just as the final gate call was made so all I could do try to wipe the worst of it off my face:icon_rolleyes:


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## egrogan

We got in a proper ride this morning. Spring means apple blossoms and BUGS- so we're back in our cute fly bonnet:









Isabel is quickly earning herself a new nickname..._Fizzy Izzy. _She was so silly with the spooking on the trail today. She decided that birds in the bushes were terrifying. 

_There are BIRDS in there...birds I tell you...can't trust 'em:









_She decided to pull some fun spooks where she abruptly planted her front feet and had to get her nose within inches of whatever startled her. This was mostly just annoying, except when she did it while we were cantering and as she slammed to a stop, I flopped up on her neck. Guess my lower leg isn't as stable as I thought, because my right leg flew out of the stirrup-oops! 

Even though she was a bit snorty, we still got in a nice 2.5 mile ride at all three gaits. This is one of our favorite places for a canter.









And instead of dancing home, she walked nicely relaxed:









I never get tired of the pretty view across the neighbor's hay fields on our way home:









And there's a big event at the barn today, so we got to check out one of the food trucks that was setting up- too bad we were a little too early to grab a sandwich to go 








NOTE: This giant trailer, which appeared out of nowhere in a place it shouldn't have been next to the barn, did not warrant even a tiny snort in its direction. A little bird singing in a bush...that was what was worth brake-slamming spooking. Go figure!

And after the ride, can't pass up the delicious spring grass:


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## egrogan

Got in a couple of miles this morning before the rain came. Based on how amped up she got yesterday, I decided that we're not quite ready for lots of cantering in the open fields yet. So we stuck to trotting instead. She did great, I had to get her in her mouth a lot less as she was much more responsive to seat cues and a lot easier to transition back to a walk. I tried to ride up and down as many little hills and swales as we could find to continue working on fitness. We saved the cantering for the woods trail, where she's a lot easier to rate. Really good ride. She was puffing and blowing a little bit when we got back, but her ears were pricked the whole ride and she seemed to be enjoying herself. No silly spooking today, hopefully that's out of our system for the season!!

Admiring a pretty New England stone wall:









Showing off her orange outfit, and looking a bit tired after getting back to the barn:


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## Zexious

^Orange looks fabulous on her <3<3
Hurray for a great ride


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## frlsgirl

Yay, I loved reading that she's feeling better; and those pictures are beautiful - just screams "spring has sprung!"


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## Bondre

Izzy has got the spring in her tail! And is feeling great with her new, increased rations. I'm glad she's got the bounce back in her step and is enjoying life.


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## egrogan

We are back in the swing of things! Have ridden a little over 6 miles since Friday, and we're both feeling great and ready to get in some energetic rides. 








It's been as hot as all get out here, but today was at least overcast, so that helped.

I need to pull Izzy's mane tomorrow, but until I had time to do that, I just put it up in braids for her- it is so thick and heavy, when I grabbed her from the field Friday afternoon her whole neck underneath it was soaked with sweat.









This weekend, we've been all over the hayfields...









...and cornfields...









...on the snowmobile trails...









...and up and down our road...









I thought I found a new trail to try out, because I saw a big group of people walking their dogs on what looked to be a pretty well maintained path. I rode out to the area today, but unfortunately there was a really big "Private Property-No Trespassing" sign, so I didn't go on. Instead, we had to turn back and ride on the road back towards the barn. The shoulder is a nice, gently sloping grassy hill, and great place for a nice canter. Isabel was enthusiastic, but also happy to come back to a trot with just a voice command and a little shift of weight. She's been a pleasure to ride after those first couple of spooky spring rides.

The only downside of that nice spot to canter is that the road quickly turns into a blind series of curves, and I am not that brave. So instead, we have to double back to the corn fields by going down one very steep hill. I know her hocks are still a little sore, so I didn't feel great about asking her to tackle that hill so soon while just getting back into condition, but it's a very wide hill, so you can ride it like a series of switchbacks rather than go straight down. So that's what we did. She was awesome-every change of direction, she gave me a very tidy little turn on the forehand, and continued on her way. Here we are at the bottom, looking back up. I probably should have taken the picture at the top instead to show how steep it really is. 

















Isn't that tree a picture perfect specimen? It reminds me of every picture I ever drew as a kid when I needed a tree in it.

Since we've been out three days in a row, tomorrow I'll give her a little bit of a break- she needs a good bath and her mane tamed. I don't know if I can find my clippers, but her chin looks like a goat so we'll see what I can do


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## egrogan

While she didn't get a proper bath today, she did get a good hose down because it was hot and muggy. Like any good horse, she promptly found the muckiest, most manure filled spot in the field to roll.

*Anatomy of a post-bath roll.

*_Let's see...is this the spot? 









No, not quite enough manure...maybe over there?









No, no, THIS is the spot for sure!









Hey, who are you calling a beached whale?!!









Just for that, I'm rubbing my whole back in this muck!









Sure, I'll smile big for the camera.








Even you have to admit this is totally worth it...it feels so good!!








_


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## egrogan

Feeling so happy- I think I finally have my horse back! I hadn't seen Isabel since Monday (aren't four-day work weeks busier than a regular week?!), and when I pulled her out of the pasture, she was glowing like a new penny. Her coat looks great, her hipbones are no longer visible, and the ribs are there but not _too _there. The Treat Man had grabbed her a new bag of alfalfa cubes this morning, but I had him take them back to the feed store since I don't think she needs them right now  The fields are finally lush with good grass, and the hay delivery the barn got yesterday is gorgeous. It's like a giant sigh of relief...I'm just realizing I didn't get any good body shots of her today, will try to do that tomorrow.

I hadn't ridden since Monday, and her energy matched her coat. She was eager to go once we headed out. We did a lot of trotting, and after a couple of chances to canter up some hills, she was able to stay trotting as asked. It was warm and buggy, but we got in a great ride before turning around for a bath.

_Antennae ears









Perfect spot for some bending and figure-8s to prevent rushing home:









Pretty field full of wildflowers and clover:








_


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## egrogan

Weather turned ugly today so we only had a short ride through the drizzle before we had to dart back to the barn to avoid the skies opening. Learned something interesting today, I had never given much thought to the fact that cars on the road sound different when it's raining than when dry- but a car coming up behind us while we were heading out caught Izzy by surprise and caused her to dart forward for a couple of steps. Everything was fine, the car was going really slow and she stopped right away, but I hadn't even thought about that "swooosh" sound tires make on a wet road.

Anyway, despite the raindrops, it was a pretty day. Everywhere you look, it's just vibrant green:


















The grass is so tall, that we were both covered in grass seed since everything was wet:


















And here she is after the ride- no more jutting hipbones or sucked up flanks. Her back is what it is, but even it looks better than it did a few weeks ago.


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## frlsgirl

Oh I love this time of year where everything is green! She does look a bit better; I've been doing ab crunches with Ana to help her tuck those hips under, lift her back and engage those abs. We usually do a couple of crunches every day and then she gets a carrot. It's made a noticeable difference in her confo; anyway, you might ask your vet or chiro about it.


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## egrogan

@frlsgrl, the chiro has definitely recommended belly lifts for Isabel. It's interesting, over the years I've tried to do the ab crunches a couple of different ways (running something like a hoofpick or pen cap along her belly line or running something like that down both sides of her rump on either side of her tail), but she really just doesn't respond consistently to it. In the summer, I've noticed she'll do a crunch if you spray her around her tailhead with the hose, but that just feels mean!!

It's one of those things where I don't know if I'm not asking enough of her for her age, or if I'm having reasonable expectations given her physical limitations. If only they could talk to us!

She saw the chiro yesterday- she needed some attention in the usual spots, right pelvis and hyoid areas. Was a little sore along her left whither area though, which was unusual. I'll have to take a look at how the saddle is fitting. She's been such a weird shape all spring, hopefully it was just a temporary problem. She has the day off today but I'm hoping to grab a morning ride tomorrow.


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## frlsgirl

@egrogan - I had the same problem; couldn't quite figure out how to get Ana to crunch consistently until the chiro trained me and I adapted a little bit; he showed me using quarters and I use combs now. I just posted a before and after picture in my journal if you want to take a look at it.


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## egrogan

Ever have one of those days when you feel like you are just a terrible rider? That was my day today. For some reason I just felt totally out of sync with Isabel and constantly behind her stride. Not sure why we were so off. 

The last 10 minutes of the ride were good though, we did a lot of trotting outside and were able to do some very nice large circles and big loopy serpentines through the neighbor's fields. She was funny, at first she thought she could tank off towards home, and as we turned away from home she would slam down into an awkward slow jog- but after doing that once or twice, she got the message that we needed to maintain a steadier rhythm and gave a few very nice, evenly paced circles in both directions. It was a nice workout and a good way to end a ride that was just so-so.

It was a beautiful day to ride though- gorgeous blue skies and temps that dropped back to a very pleasant 70*F with no humidity.

_Pretty silhouette after our ride









Summer flowers


















No complaints about knee high grass!



























_


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## frlsgirl

Yes! I have days like that! I think it's a combination of things that contribute to this; Morgans are hard to post the trot on anyway, and then when they suck back it's impossible to catch up; bigger moving horses have that natural strong upswing that takes you with them so it's easier to stay in sync with them. Also, if your horse is changing shape a lot, i.e. losing condition or gaining condition, it affects the saddle balance, causing you either to tip forward or backwards. 

Can you tell I've thought about this a lot? lol.


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## egrogan

Thanks, always comforting to know other people have similar days- and understand what it's like to ride that "interesting" Morgan trot 

This was our first ride after Tuesday's chiro visit, so it's possible she really was just moving differently. And you're right, saddle balance could be an issue too. I have to admit, I have a terrible eye for saddle fit, but when looking at it before the ride, I did make a mental note that her fuzzy halfpad looked a little awkward under the front half of the saddle, so I probably should have adjusted that before getting on.

At any rate, tomorrow will probably be a better day!


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## egrogan

Managed a riding-filled weekend, hacking out about 8 miles.

Friday, I had a meeting cancel in the morning so snuck out for an early ride. The weather was picture-perfect, and we eagerly headed out. I was planning to take a route we hadn't done yet this year- it's a nice wooded trail, but involves a short but pretty steep, narrow climb in and back out, and so far this year, I just haven't felt Izzy was fit enough to handle the down climb. We were all set to head that way, but as we stopped at the end of the driveway to let traffic pass, a caravan of Public Works dumptrucks went by to fill potholes, right where we were planning to ride. Izzy stood like a statue as the huge trucks rattled by (and the town workers were very polite, they slowed way down and gave us a big wave), but it seemed like a terrible idea to try to ride through the trucks up the road while they were slinging asphalt around. So instead, we just went the normal farmer's field loop.









Yesterday, we were rushing to beat the rain. We headed for the route we couldn't do Friday. We rode it a lot last summer, but Isabel was on edge going that way the first time this year, snorting at trees, but somehow not seeing a huge turkey that was in the trail ahead of us- I guess sometimes there's a benefit to them getting distracted by a leaf if that means they miss something that could be scary!!  The horseflies in the woods were pretty bad, and she moved at a good pace. I love being in the woods when the sun is just filtering through the trees... 









Here's the hill on the way up- she huffed and puffed a little on the uphill, but made it, cantering part of the way. 









On the downhill, she went slow and really picked her way.








I was worried about her being able to shift her weight off the forehand and sit back on her hocks, but she did ok. When we headed back to the barn, crossing the big open hayfield, I asked her to trot out to see if she seemed sore or stiff, and was pleasantly surprised that she actually felt loose and engaged, not short and choppy like she did a couple of days ago. So I think it was hard work for her, but not punishing hard work. I just read this interesting article about how to have a sympathetic body position while riding down a steep hill - I wonder what others think about it. It is certainly counter to the "lean back down hill" adage I was taught when riding, but makes sense as described.

Another reason that I wanted to get back on this trail is that it is theoretically possible to use it to connect to a "rail trail" network that would give access to ~50miles of riding. _However, _it means riding the woods trail to the end and crossing a 2 lane state highway with traffic moving at about 60mph. I don't know if I'm brave enough for that. I rode to the end of the trail right up to the busy road, and Isabel was very unsettled by the fast moving traffic, which includes lots of big tractor trailers and trucks pulling boats, campers, etc.. More likely, *I *was nervous at the thought of crossing, and that made her nervous. The prospect of hooking in to a 50 mile trail is so tantalizing, but I just don't know if I have the stomach for that kind of road crossing. It's one thing to ride with traffic on the little country road the barn is located on, but this is something really different. I don't think I'd be comfortable doing it on my own, but the new boarder is keen to try. Not sure what I'll do...does this sound like a terrible idea?

My ride today was just so-so, to be honest, about half way through I was sort of wishing it was over. There's a big weather front moving through, the sky can't decide if it's going to be stormy or sunny:








Not sure what got into her today, but she was just not a pleasant ride. She went all bug-eyed at big rocks she's ridden by hundreds of times and was super tense. Sometimes I find it's best to let tension out with a good long canter to get her brain back, but today it was the kind of tension that I thought would just ramp up even more by going faster, so we just stuck to walking. She was super distracted by the bugs (admittedly, the deer flies were the worst they've been all year), and she kept tripping over tiny things on the trail because she was flinging her head around and stomping, not paying attention to where we were going. I was pretty happy when we got back to the barn...

Since the chiro identified some soreness in her withers, I've been trying to pay attention to that area after riding. I did a little massage after our ride yesterday and she did seem sensitive there, definitely flinching away from pressure at first. I'm not sure what's going on. The last time I had the saddle fitter out, he discouraged riding in the fleece half pad because he felt the saddle fit fine without it. When she lost so much weight, I put it back on her, but now that she's gaining again, could be time to take it off. I rode that way today and she seemed more comfortable after the ride, but at the same time we stayed on a flat track and mostly walked, so not really comparable to yesterday. I know it's nearly impossible to tell without being hands-on, but do you see anything in this picture? The seat looks a little tipped forward to my eye. And yes, this is her dozing in the sunshine before we rode on Friday morning...my little fire breathing dragon 









Here's a shot of me in the saddle if that helps- looks like my left stirrup (right side of pic) is longer than the other, which is so odd because when I'm riding it feels exactly the opposite. And please, don't be jealous of the very fashionable hi-viz ensemble...not everyone can be this stylish when riding 









I know the obvious answer is to have the fitter back out, but to be honest, he's the kind of person that makes me feel like a bumbling fool horse abuser because of my horrific, not-equitation-class-quality riding, and I'm not totally convinced he's always given her a great fit anyway. I am having trouble finding someone else in the area but continue looking.


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## frlsgirl

I'm totally jelly of your beautiful trails; we mostly just have fields around here. That article is interesting; I've always done the opposite; lean forward going up hill and leaning back going downhill.


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## bsms

This is how the US Cavalry taught going down a very steep hill:










These were Portuguese Cavalry, though:










There is an interesting discussion here:

The Ft. Riley Slide - Society of the Military Horse

I've tried both on modest slopes - VERY modest - but can't tell if one works better than the other. I don't ever plan to try slopes like that to find out, since I'm more likely to end up like this guy (and some pictures hurt just LOOKING at them):










Looking at that, I think I'll curl my 58 year old body into a fetal position and suck my thumb...


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## frlsgirl

@bsms - EEK; thank God the war is over; my pony and I would never make it in battle!


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> This is how the US Cavalry taught going down a very steep hill:


Yeah, I'm not diving off cliffs any time soon like your last photo. But this first one, the slightly forward seat does seem to echo that article's recommendation. I tried to reproduce this advice when riding over the weekend:



> To facilitate the horse's ability to utilize its natural ability of balance itself, a rider must be unlocked in their joints and position the torso in a balance over their base of support, i.e. their feet. This can only happen when the rider folds forward from their hip joint, bringing their upper body forward while at the same time, allowing their buttocks to slide back toward the cantle. Once in this position, the rider’s weight is borne on the inside thigh muscles (without tension), a little bit on the gluteus maximus muscles (buttocks), with some being supported by the stirrups under their feet.
> 
> In this position, the rider "floats" down the hill with their horse, allowing the horse's energy to move up through their joints which act as shock absorbers, and through the rest of their body without resistance.


I _so _wanted to float down the hill around my horse, but I feel like instead I ended up pinching with my knees while trying to "bear weigh on the inside thigh muscles"- will have to keep seeking out a comfortable position that works for both of us.
_______________

@*frlsgirl* - we are fortunate that we have a pretty route to ride. But the maximum I can really ride from the barn is 5 miles. Which keeps the thought of the scary road crossing to get to the rail trail on my mind....
_______________

I didn't get to ride yesterday, but stopped by the barn for some quick hand grazing and grooming. Isabel is not a "lovey" horse- she's generally indifferent to me being around. She knows who I am, but rarely will come up to greet me when she's in the field. So yesterday I was beaming like a little kid that she seemed very happy to see me when I went to get her.

_Hey...it's you...









Hellllooooo....









Why yes, I'd LOVE some of this luscious grass!









_I left her in her stall, all cleaned up and happily munching on dinner.









She continues to put the weight back on, but still has a dip behind her shoulder/withers. I guess it has to be saddle fit, right?


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## frlsgirl

Lol - she can't see you with that massive fly mask on and that's probably why she rarely comes up to greet you.

Since moving Ana to stall boarding she's been super happy to see me; probably because she is happy to be let out of her stall. When she's turned out, she doesn't always come up to me; it really depends; if she's been out for 5 hours and ready to come back in, then she might actually gallop up to me because she's eager to go back inside. If she's only been out for a little while and I call her name, she will look over her shoulder like "Are you talking to me?" and I'm like "no, the other Ana in the field!" 

The dip behind the shoulders and withers is either from not being worked back to front, or the saddle not fitting when she's being worked back to front; it's hard to get Morgans to work over their backs though; I'm still trying to figure it out.


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## egrogan

Checking back with my "weekend warrior" update. I was out of town for work most of the week, but got to ride last night and this morning.

Last night, as we headed out, we realized the first cutting of the neighbor's field was in progress. Isabel was curious about the farm equipment but not worried. 









Some of you might remember last summer that my trail buddy and I rode through the field while they were baling, and her horse had a melt-down, reared, threw her, and bolted home- that startled Isabel a bit but she kept her head and we hurried back to the barn to check on the horse once I knew my friend was ok. We had no incidents this year, but it did curtail our ride since I couldn't get across to the woods trail. Instead, we rode a few loops of the property and called it a day.

This morning was a picture perfect summer New England day, warm but no humidity, and surprisingly the bugs were not terrible. They had gotten a lot of the field done, so we had a path to get through by following the perimeter of the field so we didn't disturb any of the hay that was still waiting to be baled. 









I'd say it was our most rigorous ride so far this year, 3 miles mostly trotting. I've realized that I've been a little lazy lately, and if I ask Izzy to trot and she canters instead, I've kind of just gone along with it, letting her pick. Her canter _is _more comfortable than the trot  But still, bad habit. So today we worked on "trot means trot." She understandably wasn't convinced that was really the requirement at first, but she got the picture. She was great for most of the ride, but did keep trying to canter when we were trotting home. Even then though, it was a slow, half-hearted 4-5 strides and then she came back down to trotting. After turning and riding away from home a couple of times when she tried to rush, she was happy to just trot.

We had an interesting moment as we were trotting along one of the big corn fields. All of a sudden, two huge whitetail deer came bounding across the field from who knows where. I really wish I had my camera in hand at that moment, as I can't adequately describe just how _high _they were leaping. It was really beautiful to watch. And just as soon as they appeared, they had vaulted over a shrub line and took off along a creek. Isabel and I both agreed they were a bit more elegant than her choppy trot  I have to admit, I think I saw them a half second before she did, and wondered if she was going to spin the other way and do her own imitation of a fleeing deer. But she just stood still, took it all in, listened and snorted in the direction they disappeared, and that was it. Such a good girl. 

It was lunchtime when we got home, and she wasn't thrilled about standing for a picture...









...but she definitely enjoyed a big juicy apple after her bath:


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## frlsgirl

Apples are so messy; I mostly give Ana carrots because they are cleaner; plus we already use them for the stretches so it just works out better that way. I did give her an apple for her birthday and ended up with apple froth all over my pants.

I'm glad you had a good ride! The story with the baler reminds me of the time we encountered a boy on a scateboard/scooter looking thing; Ana stopped, pranced and snorted; I can only imagine what was going through her head: "Humans aren't supposed to move like that; just weird!"


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## egrogan

The old girl still has some spunk in her  DH got some fun shots of us schooling in the neighbor's field this morning (ignore some of the weird faces I'm making in the pictures).


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## tinyliny

what a nice, functional seat you have.


ETA: I had to come back and edit this post. after I wrote it and submitted it, it occurred to me how odd that would sound to anyone except a horsewoman. I do hope you understand that it's compliment on your riding, not your derierre.


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## egrogan

Ha, thanks @tinyliny! I take that as you meant it


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## frlsgirl

Love love love this picture! I want to canter like that with Ana; with both of us looking happy, ears forward and going somewhere. I agree with tinyliny; you've got good seat! :thumbsup:


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## Skyseternalangel

Look at you cantering in open fields!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOO!!!


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## egrogan

Awww...you guys are making me blush. Thanks for the nice feedback. Izzy has certainly been a great teacher- forgiving enough that I've been able to learn by making some stupid mistakes, but challenging enough that I've really need to learn to ride, not just sit there. We're not going to win any equitation classes (hellllooooo piano hands!) but I think we've gotten to a place where we have a style that works pretty well for our happy hacking lifestyle. And it is always humbling to read back to the beginning of this journal and realize how scared I was to even ride around that field at a walk on my own- the greatest thing she's taught me is confidence!
____________________

Got out to ride again this morning before it got too hot. Izzy was trimmed on Saturday, and I think I asked her for a little too much by taking a trail that was rocky and really hard ground since it hasn't rained much lately. Farrier was really pleased with her feet and she had no riding restrictions, but I probably should have given her another day or two before that kind of ground. She took a couple of ouchy steps on rocks but we made it through a couple of miles with no real ill effects. And she rode fine when we got back to the grass and more forgiving footing.










The flies were terrible in the woods so we cut the ride short to escape them!

Got back, hosed her down, and handgrazed a bit. It was a nice start to a Monday morning.


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## Tazzie

Yay for so many great rides! I hear ya on the fly front. They've been AWFUL!

And where did you get your fly mask?? I have never seen one like that!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> And where did you get your fly mask?? I have never seen one like that!


 @Tazzie, believe it or not, I pulled it out of the bargain bin at my local tack shop last winter and paid ~$10 for it- I think it was a color discontinued last year. But it's a Cashel Crusader with ears, they make really fun patterns every year. Here's a few current options on the Chicks Saddlery website: Saddles Tack Horse Supplies - ChickSaddlery.com Cashel Crusader Designer Print Fly Mask With Ears If you search "Cashel Crusader Print Design Fly Mask" you might find some other options.


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## Bondre

I love that picture of you cantering too! Kind of reminds me of a polo pony and rider - your compact posture and Izzy's high tail and small neat head - lovely! 

You say that you wouldn't win an equitation class ... but I think you ought to. Good equitation should be about moving in tune with your horse, and you really look to be nicely balanced together.


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## egrogan

Don't let this cute face fool you, someone was a real grump today!









Our ride actually started off great. We rode in the indoor for about 30 minutes to begin. Isabel has been a little strong in downward transitions lately, particularly canter-trot, so I wanted to work on that a bit. She was actually fantastic in the ring. There's a summer camp at the barn right now, so the indoor was set up with a pretty elaborate obstacle course, and Izzy was also wonderfully responsive to really aids to go over, around, and through a variety of things set up in there. The only thing that wasn't great was her right-lead canter. She felt really odd in that direction, with a very up-and-down motion that almost made me feel like I should be posting. It was strange, I can't say I've ever felt anything like that before. She definitely didn't feel that way to the left. And she wasn't head-bobbing or obviously lame trotting to the right. Not really sure what was going on, but will keep an eye on it and investigate more if it happens again.

The campers were getting ready for their ride, so we headed outside. That's when Ms. Grumpy Face emerged. The bugs were truly horrible, so I don't really blame her- in fact, I've got welts up and down both my arms from the bites. But she still was a touch dramatic with flinging her head up, down, and all around as the flies landed. At one point, she actually reached all the way around to her right stifle to bite at one- and wouldn't you know, I actually saw her clamp it between her teeth!!  Any time she tries to convince me she's stiff and inflexible, I'll just need to remember that maneuver.

We did a few big trotting serpentines across the neighbor's field but didn't even bother cutting through the woods trail- I can't imagine how bad the flies were in the woods if they were as bad as they were in the field. I had been hoping for a longer ride was so bummed about that, but we were both miserable at that point.


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## frlsgirl

I can relate - Ana sometimes does strange things at the canter; I usually film my rides so that I can review; one time she really rounded her back like she was going to buck, pinned her ears and did this awful hobble motion; in hindsight I'm thinking it's because the saddle slid onto her shoulder; she only did it on one side and not the other. Glad Ana isn't the only horse doing weird things like that.


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## egrogan

Just had my 4 year "anniversary" of buying Izzy last week  Hard to believe it's been that long already, it still feels like just yesterday.

Last week was nice, work was actually at a manageable pace and I wasn't on the road at all, so I got to ride 3 mornings before work. I didn't have any more of the weird canter stutter-step stuff I felt in the arena, so not sure what was going on there, but hopefully it was a one-time thing.

It was hot and muggy during the week, but today was really my absolutely ideal summer weather- about 70*F, no humidity, good strong breeze, bright blue skies. 

We rode through a giant field that seemed to be completely full of clover- made me wonder how many 4 leaf clovers might be down in there 









Tried not to blow away when the wind kicked up...









Practiced straightness using corn rows as our guide...









Isabel has become noticably more responsive to lighter leg and rein aids over the past month or so, which has been interesting because I can't think of anything I'm doing particularly differently. Maybe it's just doing a lot more riding outside, and having to go over and around things when there's a purpose. I will say, she's not the most graceful horses- she trips over every rock and root when we are walking through the woods, but I think that's because she gets so distracted by the flies. Interestingly, I trust her completely in the woods when we're in a strong canter, she is very focused and never trips. But walking, I feel like I am holding her together...

I am really excited, I took _all _of next week off, and it's supposed to be clear and sunny the whole week. Not sure if I will ride _every _day, but probably pretty close to it! Starting off with a trail ride with my old trail buddy- she's moving in August so we won't have too many more chances to ride together, but I haven't had anyone to ride with much this year, so will be nice to have a change of pace.


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## egrogan

Rode another 5K today with my friend, and her daughter joined us as well. Neither had ridden out yet this year, so they preferred to stick to just a walk. Isabel was an angel- I rode her on the buckle the whole way. She led the whole way but rated nicely off of my seat. We did some "slaloms" through shrubs and bushes if she got ahead of the others. She takes her job as leader very seriously and always pays careful attention to what she's doing.

Here she is at the end of our ride with her doppleganger, another Morgan mare the same age who is an absolute sweetheart. Izzy looks so tiny next to her here, in the field they don't seem like they're so different in size!


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## frlsgirl

Izzy says "Hey! You look like me!"


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## egrogan

Another ride with my trail buddy yesterday. We went on the challenging hill trail, and the horses did well, but the bugs were really brutal. It's getting hard to ride right now, they're so bad. I'll be taking today off, which is probably a good thing given it's supposed to be 93*F today. Yuck!


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## egrogan

Sadly, vacation has come to an end, so I'm back in front of the computer.

Izzy was a bit of a pill at the end of the week. It was a very British weekend here, drizzly and cool, just 60*F. Maybe it was the 30* swing in temperatures, but she was convinced she saw gremlins everywhere we rode, particularly in the woods. She was really uncharacteristically spooky, wide eyed and snorting hard at the trees.

_You don't even KNOW what's in there...I swear!









_We rode on woods trails a couple of days, so Saturday I took her back through the farmer's fields where there are lots of wide open spaces to make her move forward. up and down some nice hills. As @*phantomhorse13* likes to say, we went looking for her brain  After a mile or so of just trotting, she seemed to get it back.



















Yesterday I decided to just take her on a long walk from the ground. She was gloating at all her pasturemates from the outside of the fence, where she could get the good grass but they couldn't.

_Don't even think about it man, the grass is ALL MINE.









Ha, I told him it was mine 









Mmmm....wouldn't you love it if you could have this delicious grass...








Seriously, the.grass.is.mine. Don't even look at it!
_









We walked through the woods a bit, but it's really overgrown- riding vs. walking really gives you an advantage  But she was over the spookiness, our walk was uneventful.









She's such a goofy horse. I loved seeing her every day last week, it will be hard to go back to reality. But we are going to get a ride with our trail buddies tonight, that will be good.


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## frlsgirl

Weird about the spookiness because Ana was super spooky last Friday as well. Our mares must be communicating telepathically.


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## egrogan

I had a pretty frustrating weekend with Izzy. It's been extremely hot and humid here (like 90*f and 90% humidity, which is hard on us Northerners with no air conditioning!! ), and the flies are really intolerable, so I've not been riding much and just going to the barn to groom, hand graze, make sure she's ok. Saturday morning was a tiny bit cooler, so I decided we'd try a quick ride. Isabel was just not feeling it. We rode out across the neighbors field, and she just flat out stopped and refused to walk forward. Just planted her feet and wouldn't move. She wasn't pinning her ears, wringing her tail, or being nasty. At first I was a bit freaked out and worried she had some sort of serious pain/leg problem going on. But ultimately, I think she was just being really barn sour. Ugh. We haven't dealt with that in a couple of years now. Really frustrating. Once I resorted to giving her a big kick and growling at her to move forward, we got on with it. When we were no longer in sight of the barn, she was moving fine, clearly not injured or anything. It was a bad ride overall though, she was definitely stiff and I just felt out of balance with her the whole ride. So that was Saturday.

Yesterday, I went out, and was greeted with THIS:









Farrier isn't out again until the 1st weekend in August. I took some pictures and texted them to him this morning, but I'm mildly freaking out about what a huge chunk she took out of the foot. She chips up a little this time of year, but I've NEVER seen her take out a chunk this big. The ground is so hard everywhere, and with all the fly stomping, I'm guessing she caught it just right on a rock or something. Waiting to hear from him if he wants to come sooner or if this can wait. I have to admit I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as I should be about feet, which feels bad when something like this happens.


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## carshon

It is a good sized chip but unfortunately the flies cause things like this. Is you have someone with a rasp close by you can round off the edges so they do not snag on anything. That is what the farrier will do when he comes out.


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## Tazzie

Sorry you had such a crummy ride on Saturday  glad you worked through it though! The bugs have been awful here too! Eating us alive! Thankfully I live in the "south" now, so AC is a necessity :lol: growing up in Michigan we didn't have that luxury lol

As for the hoof, I'm not an expert, but I think she'll be ok. Maybe having the farrier out to take a bit off wouldn't hurt, but she may be fine as is. Though, again, I'm not an expert :lol: and I call my farrier whenever I see a chip like that. Fortunately it's always around the time she's due anyway. Hopefully you'll hear back soon!


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon and @Tazzie. The farrier took a look at the pictures and also said he didn't think he needed to come out sooner- though it was clear he would if it would make _me _feel better  He also told me he left a rasp for us last time he was out, and gave me some instructions for a quick touch up. At our next appointment, he's going to give us a hands on tutorial on touching up chips. Bottom line, I think we'll live to ride another day!


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## frlsgirl

Oh no! Ana's hooves tend to chip when it gets really dry and it always worries me. Ana has been really stubborn as well; when I walk her to the mounting block, she stops like she has to poop; she doesn't, she's just telling me that she doesn't feel like riding  It's miserably hot here as well so I totally get that horses don't want to work on this heat; I've been riding mostly in the evenings which helps a little bit with the heat.


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## Prairie

I'm sorry to tell you this, but judging from that one hoof, you need a different farrier. The heels are terribly under-run and the toes are too long, which means her hoof is out of balance and the breakover point is wrong. 


The bugs are horrible all over but something we've found helps are shoo flies.....https://www.bing.com/images/search?...b0f6f12fcdfcbfa45ec558d7a033ccfdo0&ajaxhist=0 


Not me or one of our horses. You can also get tassels for your bridle to help with face flies.


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## egrogan

Thanks for your feedback @Prairie. I wondered if folks would have general feedback on the shape of her foot. I don't have proper hoof critique photos so I think they are not actually as bad as that one picture makes them look, but given the chipping all around, I've been wondering if there's a balance problem. Our long-term farrier retired earlier this year, and this is the second person I've tried since. He's worlds better than the first replacement farrier, who I think did a lot of damage in the two months she worked on Izzy. The current person I'm working with has seen her three times now. So I'm trying to balance the time he needs to improve upon what was even to my very novice eye a bad job.


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## Prairie

Trying to find a good farrier is certainly frustrating! It took us over 18 months to find a good one after both the good ones in this area retired. This is the best site I've found for information on trimming.......Information. We use an ELPO certified farrier ourselves and she is fantastic, but unfortunately no ELPO farriers are listed for your New England.


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## egrogan

Not much exciting going on with Izzy and I. I have been traveling 2-3 days a week for work for the past few weeks, so it's been hard to maintain a good riding rhythm. 

But also, Izzy's feet are looking pretty horrific. We've got a few more gauges like the one I posted recently; 3 of the 4 feet are seriously chipped up. The ground is hopelessly dry, the bugs are awful, so the horses are keeping up a steady stomping. Still, I have never seen this happen to her feet- she's the horse that is always complimented on how strong and solid her hooves are. It's the first summer I've been using this new trimmer since my previous one retired, so that's worrying. He comes next week, so I think he gets a chance to diagnose and explain why they look like this, and address it, and then I'll have to reassess. Really frustrating though.

So I've been a weekend warrior and just kept up some short (30 minutes or so) rides in the arena where the ground is more forgiving. She's actually been doing great. Not sour, moving well. One of the instructors at the barn happened to walk by yesterday and complimented how good she looked. So at least we're getting a little exercise. I'm just ready to be able to get back out to the trails- hopefully next weekend.

Here's my girl after our ride and bath yesterday:


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## Bondre

Sorry to hear that Isabel's feet aren't faring well. I know seeing photos isn't the same as real life, but in the whole body pics you post here her feet always look neat and functional. Any chance you could post some close-ups of her hooves, just out of curiosity?


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## egrogan

Hi @*Bondre* ! I will post some foot pictures later this week when I get back to the barn. Will be good to see the before and after with the trimmer.


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## egrogan

Alright Horse Forum friends...I'm not a "freaking out" kind of person. But I'm freaking out right now.

I was gone for about a week because of work. As you know Isabel had a couple of deep gauges out of her feet, and some significant chipping. When I saw her today, she looked horrific. Maybe even "rescue horse" horrific.

I am attaching pictures below. I could not get sole shots because I was alone, and the angles all looked distorted and frankly, scary. But you can imagine what it would look like. Stretched white line, ragged edges, dead sole. Not good.

Pictures go from front right to front left to back right to back left.


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## egrogan

Head on


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## egrogan

Front Right





























(This foot has historically been described as "mildly clubby")


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## egrogan

Front left


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## egrogan

Back right (this one is probably the least f*ed up)


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## egrogan

Back left


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## egrogan

OK, so clearly this didn't happen in a week. Obviously I've missed some very important signs over some period of time. I've owned this horse 4 years and never seen anything like this with her. Never. Some chipping, sure. It's summer, it's dry, flies are bad. But not this.

Here are things that are different this summer:
1. Lost my previous farrier in JAnuary to retirement. Have had 2 since. One I used twice, even my uneducated eye saw angles were off. Have used the current one 4 times. 
2. Lots of diet changes, since April/May (have to check back through the journal to see when we started changing things around). Assuming rings are diet change...but...
3. Suspected Cushings this spring. Did blood tests, came back negative. But lots of classic symptoms. And now I'm worried these are laminitic, not diet, rings.

Farrier comes tomorrow. I need some neutral third party advice to help me with this.

And poor thing, to add insult to injury (or injury to injury?) looks like someone clobbered her with a set of back hooves all along her left flank:


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## Prairie

You need a different farrier, one who knows how to address flares, balance the hoof, and correct under run heels. Call your horse friends whose horses have good hooves and find our who their farriers are and get one booked ASAP.


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## evilamc

Prairie said:


> You need a different farrier, one who knows how to address flares, balance the hoof, and correct under run heels. Call your horse friends whose horses have good hooves and find our who their farriers are and get one booked ASAP.


I completely agree. You need a new farrier. The hoof that you think looks the "best" is quite under run and long toe 

Finding a good farrier sucks. You should repost those pics in the hoof section and you'll get a lot of good advice!


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## Bondre

They definitely need a trim but I can't see anything too awful that a decent trim wouldn't correct. The toes are too long which are dragging the heels forward, and the quarters are too long which is causing the side flares. It's hard to see the heels on the hinds because of the shadow but they do look to be quite underrun - much more so than the fores. And the underrun heels also make the quarters bulge out more which is why the massive chip has come off her left hind: there is a huge flare on the chipped (medial) side. 

The front view of the front hooves is interesting: there is a line of wear straight across the toe. Is this the remains of the farrier'a job or has Isabel worn it that way? If the latter, she is trying to establish breakover on those long toes. 

How long is it since her last trim? Maybe she just needs the trim cycle to be shortened for a few trims; and don't horses' hooves grow faster in summer? And maybe the new farrier isn't taking quite enough off when he trims so she quickly gets overgrown. When did you say he's coming out next?

I'm not sure about the rings; they are quite minor, but the rest of her hooves are so smooth that maybe they are significant. Maybe you'll have to start watching her grass intake in spring. I don't remember you saying anything about her having had hot hooves or any soreness though, nor has she had any abscesses which are a typical consequence of a laminitic attack - maybe two months later. Just thinking aloud here - it's something for you to discuss with your farrier, vet, and BO if you're concerned.

Try not to freak! You're on top of the situation and know there's a problem to be addressed so that's a big advantage. How many horses have hooves like Isabel our worse and their owners blithely assume they are fine, blissfully happy in their ignorance?


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone. I just feel so dumb-it's so obvious when you look at the pictures. I don't know why I couldn't see it happening in person.

Farrier actually comes today. I want to hear his reaction to assess what to do next. At least I can get some of the rough edges dealt with now and then figure out how to find someone else if he doesn't see these problems. You'll laugh, but he's quite well respected as a rehabber. That's why he's at the barn, he's taken a young gelding whose feet were crumbling for years and has him going barefoot with no chips or cracks right now! When I saw how great he was working out for that boarder, I went with him too based on the success he was having. Thought I was making a good decision...


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## bsms

I don't know if you have the option of riding on pavement. A few weeks with a lot of riding on asphalt can reveal a lot about how the horse is using the foot and where it needs trimming.


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, try not to freak about it too much; the angles look a little off but it could just be that she needs to be put on a different trim cycle. Certain times a year Ana's hooves grow like weeds and that can throw her hoof balance off as well even though she has an excellent farrier. 

It wouldn't hurt to look around for another farrier but it may just be that she needs to be trimmed more frequently.


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## egrogan

It's been a busy few days since the farrier came, with family and work travel.

So, the farrier visit. I let him know I was very concerned about the condition of the feet. He indicated that the trim schedule had obviously been too long for her- we should have gone 4 or 5 weeks, not 6. That certainly didn't help. He also spent a lot of time talking about his expectations for the new hoof growth vs. the old foot that is growing out, and how that was ultimately going to change the shape and "tightness" of the feet. He has a few little angled blocks of wood that show the angle he's trying to achieve, so he showed me his desired angles aligned to the newer growth at the top of the foot. I did ask him about the hinds being underrun, and he was pretty adamant that the angle was intentional. Not sure what to make of that, since the consensus was so clear here that it was a major fault. I am trying to educate myself on angles and concerns with underrun heels. In the course of doing that, I'm going to schedule a consultation with another farrier to come out and take a look. But I will say that he answered all my questions clearly and without defensiveness, and he had a clear plan for what he was trying to achieve.

Here are the post trim shots-sorry about the shadows, the lighting in the barn is just not good:









L front:









L hind:









R hind:









R front:









Hinds from head on:









This probably doesn't help at all because of the shadowing:










In other news, got in a nice ride on Sunday with my trail buddy. It had been a couple of weeks since Izzy and I were out of the arena, and it was nice to have some new scenery. She was in good spirits too.


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## frlsgirl

I found this article on hoof angles:

The Horse's Hoof: Hoof Angles


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## 230529

That's great! I had a very hot retired H/J TB mare who shined on the trail. She leveled out pretty quickly once we changed careers and slowed down a bit.


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## carshon

Not an expert but her hinds still look long in the toe and this could be because of under run heels. Can you do bottom shots when you are at the barn next?

I have always been told that the angles are determined by the horse and not a "set angle for every horse" her angles from the front look OK but the backs look off to me. This could cause tripping and dragging in the back and cause her back and hips to get out of whack


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## egrogan

Humidity was out of control today, but I was determined to get in a ride this morning. We were both drenched in sweat before we even left the barn, but Isabel was feeling great and really wanted to go. I was sort of letting her set her own pace given the weather conditions, but at every opportunity to trot or canter, she chose that instead of walking.

I have to be honest, watching the Olympics brings out the little kid in me. Approaching our favorite galloping hill, I can't help but close my eyes and imagine us out there with the cross country riders on their long gallop tracks.  With no one to cheer us on to Olympic glory, up the hill we went, quite pleased with ourselves:









She felt great on this stretch. It's a very gentle incline, and I can really feel her gather herself up and use her hind end to power up it. She politely pulls back to a canter and then a trot at the top. It's like she too enjoys the feeling of really going all out- but just for a minute.

Our trails are getting narrower by the day as the corn and foliage fills in- it's like riding through skinny tunnels:









This is one of my favorite barns in our town. 








It's so picturesque to me. You see it in a lot of my pictures, but usually from the other side. Today we went on our long loop and rode past their house and down their back trail. The house and barn are actually for sale, and my heart skipped a beat when it came on the market. But sadly, the owners really ruined what was once a beautiful old farmhouse with a lot of gaudy 1980's renovations- the house is priced pretty steeply, and to undo all that mess puts it out of my price range. And, it's clear at one time this house probably had hundreds of acres, but as it's being sold now, it's got barely 5 acres left and it's all on a steep slope. What a shame to have such a beautiful, well maintained barn and not be able to use it for much of anything. That might be why it's been sitting on the market for so long. Anyway, I digress...

I've decided I'm going to try Izzy in a flower hackamore and see how she reacts to that. I would like to be able to give her a reward of a little grazing out on the trails, but I hate a horse in a bit grazing. I'm not sure if the hackamore will suit her- she went terribly in a Dr. Cook's bitless when I tried it, and I've never had her in any kind of curb. So we'll see. There's nothing wrong about how she goes in her current set up (basic single jointed dee ring), but I figured I'd give it a try. Ordering it plus a new headstall today. I'm really excited about the headstall, Two Horse Tack has an option that is black with overlaid reflective orange, which will compliment the rest of our reflective orange nicely  It's this one, but I'll get it with orange instead of green:
https://www.twohorsetack.com/p-91-w...nd-made-with-reflective-day-glo-biothane.aspx
Even if the hackamore doesn't work out, I'll swap this for my leather bridle.


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## tinyliny

why can't she graze in the snaffle bit?
I trail ride in a loose ring snaffle, but I keep the rope halter on under the bridle. I ties the leadline to the saddle, with plenty of slack, like a mecate. when I want to allow grazing, I tye up the reins as if I were going to lunge the horse, then untie the leadline from the saddle (the bucking strap), and let him graze, holding the leadline with reins up out of the way. the bit is never an issue for him to graze to his heart's content.


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## tinyliny

I think the trim on the feet looks good. is this a different farrier? sorry if I missed this bit of info. I am not up to date on the whole journal.


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## egrogan

tinyliny said:


> why can't she graze in the snaffle bit?
> I trail ride in a loose ring snaffle, but I keep the rope halter on under the bridle. I ties the leadline to the saddle, with plenty of slack, like a mecate. when I want to allow grazing, I tye up the reins as if I were going to lunge the horse, then untie the leadline from the saddle (the bucking strap), and let him graze, holding the leadline with reins up out of the way. the bit is never an issue for him to graze to his heart's content.


I guess it's just one of those "old habits die hard" kind of things, but letting a horse graze in a bit is one of the first "no nos" I learned as a kid and I still don't like it. Every now and then Isabel will grab some grass (hard to avoid when it's so tall it's hitting you in the face!! ;-)) but then she'll make this weird gulping/gasping sound like she's having trouble swallowing it. I think maybe she gets some of the really long strands twisted around the bit until she can work them through. After experiencing a choke with her this year, I don't want anything getting caught in her throat!! At any rate, I don't know if the hack will work for her- I've read mixed reviews of people's horses either loving or hating it. But we'll give it a try. And if not, then she just doesn't get to snack while we ride- we never go far enough that she _needs _to eat while on the trail, so it's not a big deal one way or the other.



tinyliny said:


> I think the trim on the feet looks good. is this a different farrier? sorry if I missed this bit of info. I am not up to date on the whole journal.


Thanks. The last set of feet shots was after the last trim (about one week ago now). I think they look ok, but I can see where folks still think the toes are a little long. The right front toe is chipped up again already, but I can clearly see how the way she tries to get bugs off her belly and then stomps her foot down, toe first, is leading to that chipping.



carshon said:


> Not an expert but her hinds still look long in the toe and this could be because of under run heels. Can you do bottom shots when you are at the barn next?


I have tried a couple of times now, but the angles seem really distorted because I'm trying to take the pictures alone, holding the foot and the camera. 

I've been looking for someone else to come out for a second opinion, but guys, I'm having a terrible time finding someone. As was pointed out a few pages back, no one on the ELPO list is in NH, VT, or western MA. I've gone through a few lists of barefoot trimmers, but most are 2+ hours from our barn and aren't that interested in doing a trip for just one horse. The trimmer my barn currently uses for the lesson horses trimmed Isabel twice and even I could see the angles she gave her were bad, which is how I ended up using the current guy. I feel really stuck. It seems like my best option right now is to continue working with the current trimmer and educating myself so I can be a little more informed and be able to give more educated feedback while he's there working.


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## frlsgirl

Ohh, I love her braids; she looks very hip!


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## egrogan

The heat and humidity stayed with us through yesterday- my trail buddy ended up cancelling because she was wiped out from the heat. But I decided to go ahead anyway, as that weekend riding time is too precious to pass up for me!

We were really hot and sweaty just getting tacked up. Someone was a little less than enthusiastic about going out:









But once we got out on the trails, she was in good spirits again. Our trails are basically a set of connected loops, so there are several options at various forks in the trail. I've been trying to keep things a bit more interesting by riding loops in different directions, going left instead of right, etc. She definitely knows "the way" so well that when I ask her to go right instead of left, she looks back over her shoulder at me like, "umm- wrong choice- don't you mean _left?!"_ and I have to tell her, nope, I really did mean right. But even with the humidity, we still managed a couple of canters in our favorite places. 

We got torrential rain on Saturday night, and the trail was really wet and muddy on Sunday. In fact, our woods trail had a little trickle of stream running through it. Here is miss dainty, I-can't-get-my-feet-wet's reaction to encountering the stream. She was very offended that I insisted she walk through it!









Storm clouds stayed with us on Sunday, but more sun than rain on our ride:









We came across this interesting little guy sunning in the mud:


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## egrogan

Funny little moment at the barn...was hosing Izzy down in the washstall, and somehow I must have accidentally given her a signal to park out. Not really sure what I did, maybe touched her neck or shoulder a particular way? At any rate, she snapped right up square, hinds pushed back and fronts ahead. Silly girl! It's funny to find buttons on your horse that you didn't know they had!


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## bsms

I'm not sure which would scare Bandit more - going on a narrow path between two obviously predator-filled "forests", or wearing an ear bonnet!


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## Bondre

I suspect wearing an ear bonnet for Bandit might be like wearing breeches for you, bsms - a guy's gotta draw the line somewhere!


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## egrogan

Too funny @bsms & @Bondre!

The horses here ask for their bonnets- the flies are atrocious, they seem to know they help! And, no reason to question someone's toughness just because they're bonneted. Who's going to mess with Batman out on the trails!?


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## PoptartShop

Izzie is sooo adorable! Awww!!!


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## egrogan

Managed a morning ride today. Someone was a little amped up:










The heat finally broke yesterday, so I think she was just feeling good. The BM said she took off galloping across the field when they turned her out this morning. She felt that way when I climbed aboard as well! 

All of my Olympic cross-country day dreaming aside, as much as I love this horse, she is really just _not _an athlete  We've had some heavy rainstorms this week, so there are a lot of branches down on the trail. Not only does she make no effort to step over them- she just plows right through as though they're not there- she then acts startled when they "attack" her legs. I thought horses had an innate surefooteness?? Today, we came to a place on the trail where there was a small tree down across it, maybe a few inches thick and a foot or so off the ground. I'm no jumper, but I sort of braced myself assuming she was going to launch us over it. Nope...she just tripped her way over it and dragged it behind us for a minute when it got tangled in her tail. What in the world!?! All joking aside, do I need to teach her how to do little jumps? Shouldn't she have a more instinctual reaction to this kind of situation? I could set up some little cross rails and raised poles in the arena. I don't know the first thing about teaching a horse to jump, but I could take a couple of lessons. It seems like she needs some human intervention to get the picture.

_We'll start with some crossrails and then work our way up to THIS! :wink:









_


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## phantomhorse13

I have done basic crossrails and small jumps with all of our trail horses.. simply because you never know when you may need that skill on trail (though I can't imagine jumping that gate in any circumstance!).

Sultan was very much like your mare to start with - would just sort of fall over everything. I started him with trot poles and after what felt like a million repetitions he finally decided it was better to pick up his feet than fall all over. He will now begrudgingly hop a crossrail, though does sometimes still knock it down because he knows it will fall. Hopefully your girl will figure it out quickly!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I have done basic crossrails and small jumps with all of our trail horses.. simply because you never know when you may need that skill on trail (though I can't imagine jumping that gate in any circumstance!).
> 
> Sultan was very much like your mare to start with - would just sort of fall over everything. I started him with trot poles and after what felt like a million repetitions he finally decided it was better to pick up his feet than fall all over. He will now begrudgingly hop a crossrail, though does sometimes still knock it down because he knows it will fall. Hopefully your girl will figure it out quickly!


Good idea! It's been a long time since we did trot poles, but it is something we have done in the past when we spent a lot more time in the indoor. 

PS-I hope you know I was just kidding about jumping that gate!!


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## frlsgirl

Yeah I discovered that Ana can jump when we were trying to walk through a water obstacle and she decided to just jump it. If you can practice jumping at home, that would probably be better than just winging it on the trail like we did


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## egrogan

We had a lovely weekend for riding. The weather was gorgeous both days, so we rode the long loop each day. The flies are finally subsiding, and even though it was hot, there was a nice breeze. It made me wish that we had much longer trails, as I would have loved to have ridden for much longer!

The colors are so beautiful right now- all the yellow flowers are blooming, and everywhere you look, there's a bit of a golden tinge:


















Saturday, we rode out alone, and kept a quick pace throughout the ride. Isabel felt great on our gallop hill, she really enjoys herself there. Can't beat that feeling of the breeze and mane in your face! I think it's convinced me to get a GoPro- my husband loves Izzy, but can't imagine her galloping (he usually sees us ambling in at a walk after a ride)- so I would love to show him what it's like when the old girl revvs up her engine!

@*bsms* , Isabel asked to record a video for Bandit to show him that it's not so bad riding through the summer foliage 




You can tell that she's definitely aware of what's going on around us (it's funny, I don't think I notice how much her ears are moving while I'm riding, but she definitely is checking things out), but she isn't tense. I'm riding on the buckle here and holding the camera in the other hand (hence another reason for the GoPro!!).

She also kept her cool when our barn neighbors dragged an ancient old pull-cord lawn mower out of their barn and tried to start the rickety thing in the street as we were riding by. They're horse people too! I was a little frustrated because the part of the road we were riding on is where I feel most vulnerable- it's the bottom of a blind hill where people drive too fast- so I always keep Izzy really focused on me there. But, she just gave it a bit of a side eye and kept going as asked. Good girl!

Sunday was bittersweet, it was likely our last ride with my trail buddy; she moves out of state next week. We went on long ride, which was nice. I do enjoy riding by myself, but it's nice to have the option of having a friend to go out with every now and then. We may be able to fit in one more weekday ride before she leaves, but if we can't it was a nice ride to end on. The horses were calm and enjoying the view, no bugs, blue skies.


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## tinyliny

that's a lovely place to ride! our horses would consider that 'open' land. they ride through tight forests much of the time. one of the trails I have dubbed "Knee Knocker", and you can imagine why.


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## egrogan

tinyliny said:


> that's a lovely place to ride! our horses would consider that 'open' land. they ride through tight forests much of the time. one of the trails I have dubbed "Knee Knocker", and you can imagine why.


 @tinyliny- totally agree. We do have some woods trails where we ride, but they are newer growth forest and don't look much like the photos you've shared of your trails. There is one woods path where I'm comfortable with a good canter, but we mostly stick to a walk in the woods. On the other hand, it's quite a lot of fun to let the horses pick up speed around the corn fields- most of the fields on this particular property are planted in big oval shapes, so it's fun to daydream about being on a racehorse (you guys are probably getting tired of hearing of all my childhood horsey daydreams playing out now that I'm going on 40 with a horse of my own ). Although I have to say, the corn has gotten so big that it gives us a "knee knocker" feeling if we get too close. I'll have to try to get a picture of one edge of the field, something must have gone funny with the corn planter, there are a bunch of plants that are spaced out so that they look just like a slalom course on a ski slope- when you ride through, the huge ears of corn smack you in the knees!


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## tinyliny

corn fields like that are rare around here. I always think of the corn field scenes in the movie "Signs". Scary.


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## bsms

This is an aerial shot of the land near where I live:










This is Bandit's former owner on Mia in the area where Bandit grew up:










I doubt Bandit has ever seen a 20' tall tree, other than from the trailer when he was hauled down here via Flagstaff. A horse from Whidbey Island might be perturbed if they had to be ridden in open desert, kind of like when we were transferred to Edwards AFB. Entering the base thru many miles of nothingness, with my wife & daughter in the second car, I got a call from my daughter: 

"Better stop, Dad! Mom is crying so hard she can't see the road..."

A horse from the Pacific Northwest might feel a lot like my wife did driving on to Edwards AFB, CA!


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## PoptartShop

That is so beautiful! So jealous, I'd love to ride in a place like that. So open and beautiful. Thanks for sharing!!


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## frlsgirl

I recognize that slightly hasty pace from Ana; it's like they keep hearing "I'm late, I'm late, I'm really, really late!" from Alice in Wonderland


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## Bondre

I think yours is the archetypal edible landscape.  My boys coined that phrase when I first got Macarena and they started to consider how the world looks for a horse. Ironic that round here the landscape is largely inedible for many months of the year - likewise for Bandit - but your summer photos look very tasty! So funny that Izzy is walking happily through all this lush greenery and yet can't resist taking a chomp at the corn plant that's bent over in the path. "It's ASKING to be eaten mum, look how it's leaning towards me!"


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I recognize that slightly hasty pace from Ana; it's like they keep hearing "I'm late, I'm late, I'm really, really late!" from Alice in Wonderland


So true- that particular stretch sometimes means that we're turning for home, so she does pick it up a step there. She has a quick walk when she wants to, which I like.


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> I think yours is the archetypal edible landscape.  My boys coined that phrase when I first got Macarena and they started to consider how the world looks for a horse. Ironic that round here the landscape is largely inedible for many months of the year - likewise for Bandit - but your summer photos look very tasty! So funny that Izzy is walking happily through all this lush greenery and yet can't resist taking a chomp at the corn plant that's bent over in the path. "It's ASKING to be eaten mum, look how it's leaning towards me!"


I love that- it absolutely is like a big salad bowl wherever you look!

Right after I stopped the video and was fiddling with putting my camera back in my pocket, she couldn't resist the temptation any longer and started nibbling on the bushes on the side of the path. She has pulled at the corn leaves a few times but they must not taste good because she sort of spits them out- I imagine they must be a really rough, coarse texture.


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## egrogan

I decided to try out a hackamore on Izzy and see what she thought of it. I know a few of you have (mixed) experience with the Zilco Flower hack- that's the one I tried out last night. I have tried her in a Dr. Cook's bitless before, and that absolutely did NOT work for her. She basically just shot her head straight up, bulged her inside shoulder, and dragged me to the center of the ring. I never tried her outside on the trails in it since she clearly was not interested in two-way communication with that tool!

So last night, got the noseband adjusted as best I could. Her muzzle is so fine, I'm not sure if it's too loose. I had the top and chin straps tightened in the last hole. This is how it looked:

Does the fit seem ok?




























I didn't like the way the rein on that 2nd-to-bottom ring made the whole thing twist her towards her face, it seemed like it would surely poke/rub. So I did move the rein down to the bottom ring:


















Hmmm...her first impression seems like the verdict was "not so impressed":









Mounted up, asked her to walk. I slowly picked up the reins, with hands maybe just a couple of inches on either side of the buckle. The first moment she felt pressure, it was like a cartoon animal shooting straight up in the air with all four legs off the ground. She did a huge startle in place, and then just stopped. I guess the different feeling really took her by surprise!

I had her stand for a minute, and asked her to walk again keeping my hands right at the buckle. It was so interesting watching her react and explore it. At first, she was wagging her lips and opening her mouth like she was looking for the bit. After a few seconds of that, she stretched her neck down and seemed to want to keep a little contact on it. I tried to keep my hands light and loose and give her complete freedom with no feeling of contact, but she kept stretching and seemed to want to have that feel.

She rode fine following the rail track. She steered well with mild contact around poles, did 3- and 4-loop serpentines, managed a (wobbly) 20 meter circle. When I tried to ride off the track, she did want to try to drift in. It was hard to get her to move that inside shoulder back out by lifting my inside rein and giving her inside leg- I had to turn her in a 90* angle using outside rein to get her to move out instead of darting in to the middle. Will have to play around with how to work that out.

We did a few transition- walk/trot; trot/canter; walk/canter- she had no problem transitioning up or down. I was impressed. She did have trouble balancing on a circle on the right lead canter and wanted to fall in almost immediately, making it hard to keep the momentum and breaking gait down to a trot- pretty clear how much she's relying on me to balance her up normally. 

Almost all of the riding we did involved my hands either just alongside the buckle or ranging 2-3 inches on either side of it. I always had a feeling of contact in my hands though, which she seemed to create by keeping her head at a height where she could feel me on the other end. I ride with much shorter reins generally so that was interesting.

Overall, I think we were both a little tentative. She seemed to get comfortable as we warmed up. The first 10 minutes or so, we just walked, and she started by taking small, hesitant steps. I was unsure about just how much I could use my hands to direct her. But we seemed to figure it out with no blowups or worried moments.

She felt good enough in the arena that I decided to venture outside. I was planning to just ride around the barn/paddocks so that if she decided to get strong and take off, there wasn't far to go. We were just circling the outside ring when our new boarder rode up on her gelding. She wanted to know where the trail access point was, and it's sort of hard to explain (go through the first hay field, up the hill past the vegetable garden, down the hill on the other side of the sand ring, and look for the gap in the trees...), so I decided to just ride across the street to show her where to go. Isabel was great- rode across the street with no worries, across the neighbor's hay field, and woah'ed a couple of times when asked so we could stop and explain the trail system to the boarder. And a bonus- I had the opportunity to see how she'd do when asked to turn away from another horse and ride in the opposite direction. Now, it's much easier to ride away from another horse when you're heading back towards home at dinner time!  But still, she didn't protest at all, no pulling on the reins or trying to run home. That felt pretty good given that this bridle was completely new.

All in all, I'd call our test run a success! I'm not sure where to go from here though. I need someone on the ground who can give me some feedback on whether my hands are soft enough, as I have no experience riding in anything but a snaffle (lessons on a saddlebred in a double bridle when I was 8 don't count!). And of course- the big test will be what happens the first time she gets startled on the trail and wants to shoot out from under me, or gets anxious and wants to jig all the way home. I don't know how to prepare her for that. I figure that I can ride out most of her bolts, as she is the kind of horse who will canter strongly for a minute but then looks for an excuse to stop. But the nervous jigging will be the hardest to handle- the only thing I am able to do in that situation is really get in her mouth. So we will see when I feel confident enough to really take her on a regular ride in this gear.

The biggest thing I didn't like was that the placement of the metal, particularly that short shank part, makes it highly likely the metal on the shank part will rub on her face. Does anyone have that problem? Do you cover/wrap it? Or does it not actually bother them?


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## Bondre

Welcome to the band of Zilco users! I got mine after seeing a photo in Gottatrot's journal and I'm fairly pleased with it. I know what you mean about the metal rubbing on the horse's face. I noticed that with Macarena and although it doesn't seem to bother her, it's something I don't like about the design. However, I have set up mine differently so the shank part is angled backwards, which I think helps, and is presumably milder too. 



Another thing I don't like about it is that if your horse resists a turn and you need to use a lot of rein then the shank lifts away from the horse's face which makes the top part press into their face. However this only happens in exceptional circumstances when you need a strong direct rein. 

It will take a bit of getting used to for you both, as it is very different to riding with a snaffle. I learnt to ride English using contact as you have, and I have had to change my habits completely since I ride Macarena bitless. I ride with loose (but not slack) reins and just a touch of contact, and at faster gaits I use more contact. I'm working on trotting at a loose rein and we're getting there, but it's hard for me to resist gathering the reins! It is a whole different way of riding. And in your case, Izzy has to learn to interpret a different feel from the bridle too. But good on you for trying it! You never know if she'll like it unless you give it a go. 

As for the jogging home, that is something that drives me nuts! Macarena has learnt that a loose rein equals relaxation whereas contact equals speed, (still don't know exactly how I taught her that seeing as it's diametrically opposite to what I learnt as a youngster!) so when she starts jogging I give her a brief but firm touch on the reins then lower my hands and sit down deep. This normally does the trick but if she chooses to ignore me or breaks into a jog repeatedly I turn her in a tight circle every time she breaks gait and she soon remembers her manners. We are getting to the point when I don't need to pick up the contact at all and can just use my seat and voice to get her to walk if she starts jogging. That is on a normal day; if it's a stressed day then I need the reins ;-) The trick is to be very quick with the release as soon as you can tell she's thinking of walking, because if she puts in a few steps of walk and doesn't get a release then she'll just go back to jogging again.

It sounds as if Izzy did well for your first day with the Zilco. Keep at it and see how she adapts. The big advantage of bitless is being able to take teabreaks in your lovely edible landscape lol.


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> However, I have set up mine differently so the shank part is angled backwards, which I think helps, and is presumably milder too.


Thanks @Bondre. I'm having trouble seeing in this picture how your setup differs from the way I set things up. Could you explain a little more? I'm definitely open to adjusting if it will help with how it's sitting on her head.



bondre said:


> It will take a bit of getting used to for you both, as it is very different to riding with a snaffle. I learnt to ride English using contact as you have, and I have had to change my habits completely since I ride Macarena bitless. I ride with loose (but not slack) reins and just a touch of contact, and at faster gaits I use more contact. I'm working on trotting at a loose rein and we're getting there, but it's hard for me to resist gathering the reins! It is a whole different way of riding.


Yes, this will be the first new experience both of us have had in awhile. I am going to have to think a lot more about how I'm handling the reins, rather than just reacting semi-automatically.



bondre said:


> It sounds as if Izzy did well for your first day with the Zilco. Keep at it and see how she adapts. The big advantage of bitless is being able to take teabreaks in your lovely edible landscape lol.


Exactly! That was the motivation for trying it out. We'll see how it goes!


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## bsms

My problems were related to how I cue Bandit. If I did this:










It would pull away and twist around on the outside of his face. I also need him to frequently do a tight 180 turn. I don't think much about it, but I guess I cue for that (left turn) by bringing my left rein away and back, and that twisted the Zilco side out and around. My cues work fine with a sidepull, which is where I learned them. And Bandit was ridden (before me) in a sidepull/snaffle combo, where the sidepull was used for steering and the bit for stopping. Once he learned I did NOT want him to slam on the brakes as soon as I lifted the reins at the bit, the sidepull experience translated well into the cues I use.

It worked fine for stopping as long as he was willing to stop. Turning a horse in circles to slow and then stop him doesn't work where I ride. 










All stops have to be done in a straight line. And if he felt like ignoring the Zilco, he would. My daughter tried it with Trooper, but Trooper started ignoring it. He just didn't respect it because (I guess) he figured the rider wouldn't be able to back up any demands.

I think I tried it a half dozen times, mostly in the arena and a couple of trail rides. It was OK, and a year from now might be worth trying again...but not now. It doesn't happen very often, but Bandit sometimes decides to tell me where to go, and I need to be able to tell him that if I go to that hot place, he's going with me!

Oh - and my horses have no problem eating with a bit. They think it is normal:


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## Bondre

egrogan said:


> I'm having trouble seeing in this picture how your setup differs from the way I set things up. Could you explain a little more? I'm definitely open to adjusting if it will help with how it's sitting on her head.


For ease of explanation, I'll use the even numbers of a clock face for the six rings, with the 6 being the shank position. You have the headpiece in the 12 ring i.e. opposite the shank, the nose piece at 10 and the jaw piece at 2 (if you're looking at the left side). Whereas I have the headpiece at 2, the jaw piece at 4 and the nose piece at 10 (although it could be at 12 equally well I think).

I'm certainly not claiming my set-up is any better for riding, but the back-angled shacks do solve the problem of them rubbing the area round her mouth.

EDIT: I see you've posted at the same time, bsms. How do you have your Zilco attached?


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## bsms

I had it attached like in your picture. It might be worth trying with the shank angled back, since that might prevent it from pulling away from the face when I move the rein out and back.


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## frlsgirl

Ohhh, that looks interesting; I've never tried anything like this with Ana; mostly because we do Dressage and I don't want to confuse her with different tack. I have tried a neck ring on her though with mixed results. 

Maybe they make a smaller version that would fit Izzy better?


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> It worked fine for stopping as long as he was willing to stop. Turning a horse in circles to slow and then stop him doesn't work where I ride. All stops have to be done in a straight line. And if he felt like ignoring the Zilco, he would. My daughter tried it with Trooper, but Trooper started ignoring it. He just didn't respect it because (I guess) he figured the rider wouldn't be able to back up any demands.


I do worry about this. I don't want to have to turn every whoa into a circle, so we'll see how we do. She is responsive to leg and seat with turns/changes of direction- but I don't think she ever had any training in stopping completely off the seat on a slack rein (nor, to be honest, have I)- some of you may be thinking that we then have no business riding in a hackamore, and that may ultimately prove true. A solid whoa will be one of our bigger tests.



bsms said:


> Oh - and my horses have no problem eating with a bit. They think it is normal:


I'm realizing I'm just in a quirky minority here, but I just don't like a horse eating while bitted- I must have really gotten reamed out by an instructor as a kid because it just seems like such a huge no-no to me! Oh well! Your horses are all luckier than mine :wink:


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> For ease of explanation, I'll use the even numbers of a clock face for the six rings, with the 6 being the shank position. You have the headpiece in the 12 ring i.e. opposite the shank, the nose piece at 10 and the jaw piece at 2 (if you're looking at the left side). Whereas I have the headpiece at 2, the jaw piece at 4 and the nose piece at 10 (although it could be at 12 equally well I think).
> 
> I'm certainly not claiming my set-up is any better for riding, but the back-angled shacks do solve the problem of them rubbing the area round her mouth.
> 
> EDIT: I see you've posted at the same time, bsms. How do you have your Zilco attached?


Very helpful, thank you for the clear explanation. I will fiddle with the placement this week and see if I can't get it positioned better.

I also think the headstall I put it on might be a little thick and heavy for Izzy's head. I may see if it sits more neatly on my leather bridle, which lays flatter.


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> I'm realizing I'm just in a quirky minority here, but I just don't like a horse eating while bitted- I must have really gotten reamed out by an instructor as a kid because it just seems like such a huge no-no to me! Oh well! Your horses are all luckier than mine :wink:


You aren't a quirky minority :lol: I do NOT allow grazing with a bit. It was ingrained in me as a kid, and something I stick to. I try to stop her from grabbing tree leaves and such when I trail ride, but can't stop it all. I know they CAN eat with a bit, but we don't allow it. They are at work. Eating is reserved for THEIR time. Yes, work is fun for both of us, but I don't get to eat while I'm in the lab working on experiments. She can't eat while working or trail riding.


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## frlsgirl

I'm the same way; I strongly discourage it but sometimes you got to pick your battles, so in some cases I will let her eat with the bit on and then I grumble to myself when I try to rinse all the crud off her bit later.


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## egrogan

Ha, yes, trying to eat tree branches is really irritating!

Got to ride briefly before work this morning. Our barn's across-the-street neighbors are hosting a wedding this weekend, so there were tons of people there setting up big tents and tables. While I like exposing Izzy to new things and facing stuff that's "scary," I'm also a realist...seemed like asking for trouble trying to ride through their hayfield with that commotion going on! We stuck to the indoor instead, and worked on some ground poles.








She did pretty well, actually. We just stuck to a walk, but I set them up at varying heights and spacing. She _can _still pick up her feet. I guess confirming that is a good first step! Now to get her paying more attention and doing it on the trail...

I rode in our regular bit/bridle today, since I didn't have enough time to play around with the adjustment of the flower hack. I want to get her used to it with it fitting better, so will plan to try again this weekend.

We did take a quick lap around the main turnout field- if you look between her ears, you can just make out some of our resident wild turkeys in the field. 








Right after I snapped this, boss mare (the black mare off in the distance) proceeded to chase them across the field, and they all took off flying for the trees. Not the first time that's happened right in front of us, so Izzy didn't seem concerned!


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## egrogan

I had some time to readjust the flower noseband- @Bondre, thank you again for the excellent clockface explanation. I _think _I was able to set it as you described, and it laid much better on her head this time.



























I couldn't find any angles where it seemed to be digging metal into her face- so that was a plus! Still not sure if I have it tight enough, but will keep experimenting with that.

We spent about 20 minutes in the arena to get reacquainted with it. She seemed to explore the pressure/head positioning less than she did last time. On the other hand, I think I was a little sloppy handling the reins as I'm still not completely sure how I want to handle needing to take up contact. Again, it's still a bit of an experiment. She does so clearly lean on my hands to balance at the faster gaits, particularly on a circle. When I held the reins on either side of the buckle, still enough to feel her face but not with the usual contact, she felt a little disoriented (particularly to the right, her harder direction). She did have some moments where she wanted to drift in towards the middle, and I had to be really strong with my inside leg. I cheated and carried a dressage whip to reinforce my inside leg or give her a reminder on the shoulder. But to be honest, this can be a problem with a bit too, so not sure it was any worse.

We then headed outside. I didn't feel quite confident enough for the trails yet, and wanted to test it out in one of the big hayfields. I gave her a few different scenarios to respond to: trot towards home but then transition down to a walk; walk away from home and then trot; big loopy serpentines in the middle of the field vs. riding the perimeter; walk/halt/stand. All in all, she did well. She never felt out of control or like she was just going to tank off. I tried to get it in her head that halting was a good thing by letting her nibble grass after stopping. Oops! I quickly taught her that every time we whoa, she can dive for grass. That would be a very annoying habit to create- and potentially dangerous when we're trying to cross the road. So I switched things up and only let her nibble a couple more times, and not after every whoa.

Here she is "in the wild" with her new gear!








(Ha, just noticed the mouthfull of grass- need to be careful and not create a monster!) 










The one potential problem I see with this gear is that she is exploring whether she can throw her head up in the air and pull against my hands when she gets to an "I don't want to" spot. Her patented "I don't want to" move is to try to drag you to the right- she'll shoot her nose up, bulge her outside shoulder, and try to spin on her right foreleg to go where she wants. For example, we were close to the end of our ride, and walked past where we sometimes stop at the barn aisle to untack, but I wanted her to keep going. So she tried to drag me into the aisleway instead- I had to really pull aggressively with my left arm and shove her over with my right leg to turn her away. I'm clearly not going to win a pulling fight with a determined horse. There's one particular spot on the trail I'm thinking of where she's liable to try to fight going left to add an extra loop when we could turn right and head home- so that may be the first test of what happens when we're farther from home and she wants to argue.

I think tomorrow I'm going to try the short trail loop with this setup and see how things go. Wish me luck!


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## egrogan

Well, our first ride proved uneventful- we went about 3 miles on our regular loop. It was fine, although I think I may have been a little tense worrying about the "what ifs." She was very responsive to downward transitions, whether it was walk-whoa or down a gait. I did let her canter in a couple of places where I knew she's be asking to stop, so that worked to my advantage. She also really moderated her pace based on my seat & body- better than she ever has in the bitted bridle. That was pretty cool to experience. 

Less positively though, I felt like she was really crooked and a bit of a "drunken sailor." I really had a difficult time keeping her nose straight ahead, she wanted to keep looking over her shoulder in the direction of home. I also felt like she really hung on my hands a lot and did more pulling than I would have liked. And as I expected, she did have a little "I don't want to" tantrum at one particular turn, and we did get into a bit of a pulling contest- that's not good.

I'm not sure if I'm overthinking this, but I ended the ride feeling a bit mixed about whether or not this is the right setup for us. I think it will work well for 98% of our rides-when Izzy is being her normal cooperative self and what we're doing is pretty easy and predictable. It's that 2% of the time that makes me worry, when something unexpected happens (i.e., a buck is running towards you head on out of a corn field) and she needs to listen NOW but takes some persuading. Hopefully having more confidence building, uneventful rides in it, and continue to work on having respond more to my seat and continue to be responsive to downward transitions, will help me feel more comfortable with it.

Today was a good example of our typical ride.

Woods:









Corn:


















Field:


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## egrogan

And here we both are in all our hi vis glory


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## bsms

I think some horses LIKE bits. We rode our horses for 3 years bitless because YouTube taught us bits are cruel! But Trooper was reassured when we put him back into a bit. He felt more confident that he knew what was wanted - which was important to him. Mia...well, she needed all the help she could get, and riding her bitless was just digging that hole deeper and deeper.

I tried Bandit in a parachord sidepull. By the end of the trail ride, he had a bald spot on his nose. When he gets nervous, moving the bit a small amount reminds him I'm there and thinking.

That was really why my youngest stopped using the Flower with Trooper. It made it too hard for her to tell him, "Yes, I know and it isn't bothering me". And if I see something that I think might bother Bandit, I like to point his head at it and stop him for a moment. Then when he sees it, he knows I've already seen it and was pointing it out to him. When I ask him to move on, he accepts that I've seen it and don't care.

It is kind of like Mia with her eventual preference for a curb bit. People would tell me I was intimidating her...yeah, right! But she just relaxed with a curb bit in a way she did not in a snaffle or bitless. When a fundamentally spooky horse will go down the road like this, how could her curb bit be wrong:








​ 
I really like the idea of bitless and using a sidepull, but Bandit seems happier packing a simple snaffle. I also like the idea of curb bits, but Bandit seems happier in a snaffle than a curb. He also seems more relaxed in a snaffle than the bitless options I've tried with him.

I'm not saying it is wrong to experiment or even to try to work a horse into bitless. I just think we humans care more about it than most horses do.


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## Bondre

Lovely photos! That field in the your last between-the-ears pic looks perfect for cantering: slightly uphill and a natural finish point created by the trees.

I'm glad that Izzy went well in the Zilco. You just need to persevere and refine your communication, which will only happen through using it and trying out different cues to see which works best for you both. 

I think most of the problems people have with bitless riding are conceptual. It's helpful to remember that with a bit, horses are responding to a prearranged system of cues which the horse/rider pair have established as their communication system. They are not responding to the bit out of obligation - or at least that shouldn't be the case but when you see those top dressage riders you wonder :-( . 

And just as horses respond to light pressure on the bit, they can learn to respond to light pressure on their nose or poll, and they are no more likely to be disobedient than they would be with a bit. 

Of course, these are all generalisations, and bsms is right to say that most horses have preferences about what they wear on their faces. I tried Flamenca in a snake and she ignored it. I tried her in a sidepull and it wasn't a success either, but I think it could have worked given time to retrain her. However, seeing as she is my son's horse I thought it best to stay with the bit that she goes well in, which is an unjointed portuguese curb. I imagine that Izzy has been ridden in a snaffle for years, so it's normal that she will need a period of adjustment, and maybe she will never like the Zilco as much as the snaffle. That's a question of you continuing to observe and experiment. You're doing great!


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## frlsgirl

@egrogan ..."when she is her normal cooperative self"...lol. When Ana is cooperative, you can ride her with just a halter; when she's in one of her moods, no gear can make her go right; but with a regular snaffle bit, at least I have some control over her. So yeah, whenever trying new gear, you have to ride her several times to make sure it works even during serious mood swing episodes


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## frlsgirl

I thought of you Friday; I took Ana trail riding and she was really fidgety UNLESS I let her eat grass; well she didn't even eat it; she would build up a certain amount of grass in her mouth and then just carry it around like a pacifier:










So yeah, it's one of those "pick your battles" situations; I was in charge of taking pictures with my phone which is hard when your horse won't stand still unless you let her have what she wants.


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl- too funny about Ana carrying around her little special mouthful of grass. Izzy picked some sort of giant, shoulder high plant out of the ground, roots and all, and carried it with us for half our ride like a dog with a big stick. Silly horses!

@*bsms* and @*Bondre* - I think you are both right that this experiment is more psychological for me than something Izzy cares all that much about. Sure, at a basic level, it's a training opportunity to get her used to a new piece of equipment. For at least the past 5 years, she's been ridden in the same simple D-ring snaffle. Prior to that, probably something similar, or even just a halter messing around with kids in their backyard. But I don't think this is all that big a deal to her.

But for me, there definitely is less psychological safety without that bit. It's so strange- realistically, it's not like I could truly hold a horse back and prevent a determined bolt with that little bit. But it does _seem_ like so much more control than this. Truth be told, I've only ridden bitless one other time in my life- that was a couple of summers ago when I finished my certification as a therapeutic riding instructor. As part of the final certification workshop, I had to pass a basic riding test- just walk, trot, canter through a basic pattern in both directions. I got on my assigned horse, who was bitless, and had a mild panic attack (something that just never happens to me- I'm not a "performance anxiety" type of person). I totally psyched myself out and rode like a rank beginner. I actually posted on the wrong diagonal for half the test because I was so terrified I wasn't going to be able to half halt the horse bitless to successfully rate his pace and sit the trot, and my mind was so distracted it's like I forgot how to ride. It was a really bizarre experience- I think they only passed me for certification because I'm a good teacher and my sample teaching lesson went well. But boy was I embarrassed about that ride- and I do really think it would have been different had that horse not been bitless- because my head would have been on straight.

So anyway, this is indeed all a grand experiment. It's fun to try something new, but I think in reality, maybe this is more about me than about Isabel


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## Bondre

Bondre said:


> I tried Flamenca in a snake and she ignored it.


OMG, I just spotted this gem of autocorrect! I laughed so hard I cried :rofl: :rofl: 

I hope you realise I meant to write snaffle and that I haven't been torturing my poor horse putting reptiles on her head. But fortunately she's a phlegmatic sort and ignored the snake anyway ;-)


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## egrogan

Bondre said:


> OMG, I just spotted this gem of autocorrect! I laughed so hard I cried :rofl: :rofl:
> 
> I hope you realise I meant to write snaffle and that I haven't been torturing my poor horse putting reptiles on her head. But fortunately she's a phlegmatic sort and ignored the snake anyway ;-)


Too funny! I just assumed it was another way to describe an "S hackamore"


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## egrogan

Fit in a morning ride today. It was pretty uneventful- we mostly worked on transitions, walk/whoa, walk/trot, nothing too exciting. We did a lot of trotting in the hay field, working on (trying to) maintain a steady rhythm trotting both towards home and away from it. Had our first little spook in the flower bridle- she did a little surprise dart out from under me, throwing me a bit off balance towards the back of the saddle. I did a quite unflattering and inelegant rendition of "the chicken dance," flapping my arms a time or two while trying to shorten up the reins and grab her. But we survived, one more thing to check off the list while riding in this new bridle 

I hadn't seen Izzy since Sunday because of a crazy work week. She was a bit stiff when I got on, not surprising- though I was a little irritated because I found out later she had run out of her Cosequin. I'm not sure _when_, but I know she didn't get it yesterday. Don't want to mess around with that, it does seem to keep her more comfortable.

The fields are still golden:









Pretty girl:


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## egrogan

I love fall, and the past two days, there's been a little crispness in the air that lets you know it's coming. I don't like the dwindling daylight, but I do love the cooler weather. This is the beginning of my ideal riding time (though also means the crazy guys with guns are going to start creeping out into the fields too....)

Yesterday was our last "summer Friday" of the year at work, so I turned off the computer promptly at 3 and headed to the barn to take full advantage of it. We headed out on our normal trail loop. This was taken at about 4pm, the end-of-day light is definitely changing:









I was laughing thinking of the thread about spookiness and fly bonnets- the flies are almost gone at this point, so I rode without it- and Isabel was gawking at random things that she's seen consistently all summer, including a big boulder we ride past leaving the barn driveway. I wouldn't have correlated it with removing the fly bonnet, but that thread really made me think that's the cause! 

Today we rode the trails with a gelding from the barn...some of you may remember back in the winter, Isabel had a little "flirting" session that got way out of control and ended with her and this gelding covered in kick and bite marks because his owner and I thought they'd be ok turned out in the indoor together. Anyway, he's primarily a show/ring horse, but his owner is a strong and confident rider and wants to give him more mental breaks on the trails. It was fun to have someone with a forward thinking horse, we traveled at a decent pace most of the ride. I also enjoyed riding with a horse that could take the lead without me having to constantly hold Izzy back. And, he's a big, strong QH, but I have to say she held her own cantering alongside him and keeping up just fine. She gave him plenty of nasty mare glares when he came alongside her, but overall, they did fine together.

Grumpy mare ears from having to follow a young upstart:

__
Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18
Show Content










Oh, and the best news, rode the past two days in the new bridle and it's starting to feel much more normal. Even today, when the gelding would trot out ahead of us, she didn't get too strong to catch up, and she rated back down from a canter fine.











My trail buddy has officially moved out of state, but I may be able to ride out with a couple of other boarders occasionally. I'm fine on my own obviously, but it's good to remind Isabel that she doesn't always lead or set the pace, sometimes she has to follow politely.

And finally, Izzy doing her best angelic pose:


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## egrogan

Can I be on vacation permanently?

Today was another glorious fall day to ride. I have been pondering what to do about the crookedness that is developing since the bridle transition. I have read to expect less "precision" cuing- whatever that means for our unsophisticated riding- but I do think it's harder to ask for straightness. I don't need straightness to score well in a dressage test, but I do sometimes need it if we're trying to slip through a narrow gate or hug the shoulder of a road when a car is crossing. In the snaffle, just a little pinky wiggle would usually fix it, but not sure what the equivalent of the pinky wiggle is in the flower?? So we experimented a bit by riding big circles in the hayfield. We were a bit like drunken sailors the first pass or two (I could see our tracks in the grass since it's high enough now we make a noticeable path through it), but after we warmed up, Izzy was achieving very nice bend on our 60-ish meter circle to the left. The right one, predictably, went a bit more pear-shaped, but I managed to keep her nose tracking the circle to the inside vs. tipped outside. Then we rode some straight lines across the "diagonal" of the field. We finished up with a giant, 8 loop serpentine, changing the bend each time we crossed the middle of the field. I was really happy with her, she gave a very nice, stretchy, relaxed walk. Felt very nice!

As we were finishing up, the treat man went jogging past, so we met him at the barn:









Beautiful day, with another just like it expected tomorrow!


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## egrogan

You're here to take me for a ride AGAIN? That's FOUR. DAYS. IN. A. ROW.









No, seriously. I'm an old lady. I think I'll pass.









True, I do enjoy an extra long grooming session- don't forget to brush out my mane.









I guess you were right, it's pretty glorious out here again today.









But after asking to canter, canter, canter all through the fields...I'm pretty happy to stroll into home base.









It's so *exhausting *when your person is on vacation and wants to spend it with you!!


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## carshon

OMG! I love your last post. I am sure my horses think the same thing after a long weekend of riding! Ready for me to go back to work and back to 1 - 2 times a week. Just too funny!


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## egrogan

9 times out of 10, Isabel is the kind of horse that you can let sit for a week and then hop on and ride out with no worries. Then there's that 10th time...

She was just downright _awful _today. From the second we crossed the road, she was tense and barn sour. This was right before the neighbor came riding toward us on his riding mower.




She very much wanted to pull back towards home, so we had a fight all the way across this field to get to the woods trail. In the woods, she kept stopping and pretending to itch her nose on her knee, and then trying to pull the reins out of my hands and spin home. 

There were some people walking near where we enter the corn fields, and she snorted and pranced past them. The first opportunity I had to let her canter safely, I figured that would help blow off some of the nervous energy. She did have a good run, and pulled up when asked. But she immediately started prancing again. So I turned her down a maintained snow mobile trail which is also a decent straight shot for a canter, and a place where she knows to stop- when the trail hits a right angle with a deep drainage ditch...and today, she almost plowed right through down the steep embankment to the ditch. At that point, I sort of threw in the towel. We turned around to head home. No alert, interested ears today...just tense:








She was a little happier to walk instead of prance on the way home, so that was good. But about 1/2 mile from home, when we were in the woods, we could hear the boss mare calling from the field at home. That set her back to prancing her way back across the neighbor's hay field (where he was still riding the mower around and around in circles! :icon_rolleyes. We made it home fine, but it was not a fun ride. 

Because she was still so "up" when we got back, I actually brought her into the arena to school a little. Usually she drags herself around there as though it's death itself, but for a good 20 minutes, she did this choppy fast trot alternating with a bit out of control canter. _Finally_, she offered a calmer, more balanced trot on a loose rein, so we ended there.

They're good at reminding you're they're not machines whenever you start getting a little complacent! A huge weather front moved through today, and it went from being mid-80s and extremely humid to low-70s, no humidity, and very windy. So I'm sure that had her a little up. Also, one of the mares that's been at the barn almost 10 years left for her retirement home today, and the boss mare was a bit frantic that her friend was gone (hence the calling). So, sure, there are probably some excuses. But still, doesn't feel good to have a tense ride like that...


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## bsms

It happens. At least with Mia & Bandit. Even Cowboy and Trooper have their off days, although their off days look milder than some of Bandit's good days...

That is why I have to look at the long term trend. If the trend is my friend, that has to be enough. Because sometimes an individual ride will suck! Mine often end with a hot shower and Motrin.


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## Bondre

Sorry you has such an awful ride. For whatever reason, Isabel clearly didn't want to go out, and when you insisted that we ARE going out then she gave you a miserable time. It helps to remind yourself that her misbehaviour was nothing personal, just that she wanted to be in her field and she was letting you know that in no uncertain way. 

I guess some people might see a lack of respect in this kind of behaviour and say she needs more training (not saying you're one of them), but I prefer a horse that feels free to communicate about how they feel, not one that just knuckles down and does it because they've had their ability or their desire to communicate 'trained' out of them. Obviously you don't want them complaining about every twig they step on and every bush that looks odd, but when they have something important to say - like "I can't go out today mum, one of my friends has gone missing in the field" - then it's fair enough they make their point. And if we choose to ignore their message, then the ride will be complicated. I did this with Macarena once - ignored her explicit warnings - and had an interesting time getting us both home. 

This is starting to sound like bsms' and Reiningcatsanddogs' great posts on bsms' journal, about how much we want our horses to tell us things, and whether this communication should be considered as a bothersome hole in training or a plus.


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## Bondre

I think this post came over as a bit judgemental - not my intention at all  I just find very interesting the whole business of how much we should listen to our horses. When should we let them make decisions? And when should we not? There's no right answer but everyone has their own ideas on this and I find it a thought-provoking subject.


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## phantomhorse13

I second @bsms .. as frustrating as today's ride was, it doesn't take away from the overall great progress you are making with your mare. Sometimes there is an off day.. and you just do the best you can with what you are given. Sounds to me like you did exactly that.

Hopefully the next ride will be much less exciting!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the encouragement everyone!  It's just in my nature to be analytical and critique. But I know that every now and then, we'll throw in a clunker of a ride- those are the best learning opportunities, right?! 

I had a perfectly lovely visit with Izzy this morning. The chiro came for her regular 3-month visit, and since she is always at least 30 minutes late, Izzy enjoyed getting a 45 minute grooming session while we were waiting. Why I don't learn and just stop going to the barn as though she'll be on time, I don't know! But anyway, I went over Izzy head to toe and she was super shiny by the time I was done- I even picked through her tail for the first time in a couple of months, and it was silky smooth by the end. Her chiro visit was good, as usual a bit tight in her right pelvic area but not really sore anywhere else. She did have a rib out on the left side (my summary report is getting emailed to me so I can't remember which one) but I've been feeling for awhile now that saddle fit is a little off right now, as Izzy has grown a little...ahem...round through the belly. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I will have to keep an eye on that. She clearly felt great when she was done, when I turned her back out she went energetically trotting across the field to rejoin her friends, tail flagging.



Bondre said:


> I think this post came over as a bit judgemental - not my intention at all  I just find very interesting the whole business of how much we should listen to our horses. When should we let them make decisions? And when should we not? There's no right answer but everyone has their own ideas on this and I find it a thought-provoking subject.


Oh- I didn't take it that way at all, no worries! I too find these conversations interesting, and find myself thinking about these threads sometimes while I'm riding. 

I have a couple of thoughts about your questions, in light of my last ride. In retrospect, I definitely started the ride wanting a casual stroll vs. a more energetic ride. The reason I have that little video clip from my last post is because as we started our ride, the wind was blowing really beautiful patterns in the tall grass, and I was hoping to record it (unfortunately the cell phone camera isn't that great so you can't really tell how neat it looked). But, in retrospect, it was a bad idea. One commonality in many of my bad rides with Izzy is that I've stopped right at the beginning of the ride to snap a picture (stupid cell phone!! :wink. I definitely think she sees that as a moment of indecision on my part- _if my human isn't committed to going on, then I'm definitely going to decide for us, and of course we're going home._ So when I interrupt the decision she's made, she gets really irritated with me and fights it- so in that case, I do think it's important that I make the decision, not her. Though I do see why that would be confusing to her and need to just keep the silly phone zipped up in my pocket and focus on riding away from the barn!

Another moment on the last ride- I know some people will think this is anthropomorphizing, but I swear to you that she _pretended _to have to scratch her nose to try to snatch the reins and turn for home. She is not a horse that has a problem with an itchy face (e.g., the Gypsy Vanner gelding I ride every now and then at the barn has a massive, hairy face and needs itch breaks when he starts sweating under his bridle). But she tried it a couple of times- she would act like she was in distress and just _had _to reach down to scratch, so when I took pity on her, she'd give her nose one swipe across the knee and then quickly try to snatch the reins. To me- that is _thinking_. It didn't work- and I think it's important it doesn't- but she had plans in that little horsey brain of hers!!

But I don't want to give the impression I only think horses are thinking when they're being "disobedient." A lot of times on our rides, I give her the option of what speed to take. There are a few parts of our ride where she's been conditioned that we might move out and have a good canter. When we get to those spots, I usually ask her "what do you want to do?" and she answers- either she steps out faster and gets ready to launch into a canter (a beautiful walk-canter transition, no trouble with the correct lead ) or she just stretches her head down and continues walking. I'm happy to go along with either. And we seem to have an agreement that we will go to a certain point and then go back to walking. I think that's why I got irritated with her the other day, because she wasn't willing to stop at our "agreed upon" spot, she was super tense and kept trying to jump ahead.

Ultimately, I am not a brave enough rider to enjoy a horse that gets that coiled up feeling underneath you- and that's definitely how she felt this weekend. I love reading about gottatrot's or phantomhorse's rides so much because I know that I wouldn't be able to ride those kinds of horses. It sounds like so much fun, if you have the stomach for it. But I literally feel butterflies in my stomach when Isabel hits the verge of "out of control." I do all the techniques you're supposed to do- I sing, I talk to her, I exhale deeply, I take my knees and calves off the saddle so I'm not gripping and inadvertently asking to go faster when I don't mean it...but the butterflies in my stomach don't lie, I know she can still feel and feed off my nerves. And, I have the terrible habit of not trusting her enough to let her keep a long rein. I _know_, intellectually, that it's counterproductive to tighten the reins on her when she gets tense- @*Bondre* , I was even thinking of something you wrote awhile back, which was that you can teach a horse that a tighter rein actually means "go faster," when that's the exact opposite of what you want in that situation. But I am telling myself (sometimes, literally out loud!) "_don't shorten the reins, figure out another way to slow her down_" but those butterflies in my stomach won't let me trust that it will work. So that's why on Sunday, I decided to just point her for home, because I knew she would walk once she was assured we were going back. And once she stopped that tense prancing, I could trust her enough to lengthen the reins, which helped calm us both.

A year ago, I often went out on our trail loop totally focused on _me- _what would it take to safely execute the ride and get back to the barn still astride the horse? But now, I head out on our ride thinking about both of us- what messages is she sending me, how is she moving and how do I influence that, where can we test our limits and be braver than we were last time (e.g., galloping on the wide, grassy road shoulder, riding a trail that cuts close to a house with scary outdoor patio furniture, being a steady teacher for nervous younger horses). I can complete relate to what @*bsms* writes about wanting to have a horse to ride out in partnership. So that makes it even _less _fun when you have a day where your partner has tuned you out and is just focused on getting back home as quickly as possible.


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## bsms

*"but the butterflies in my stomach don't lie"*



egrogan said:


> ...One commonality in many of my bad rides with Izzy is that I've stopped right at the beginning of the ride to snap a picture (stupid cell phone!! :wink. I definitely think she sees that as a moment of indecision on my part- _if my human isn't committed to going on, then I'm definitely going to decide for us, and of course we're going home._ So when I interrupt the decision she's made, she gets really irritated with me and fights it...


That sounds like what Bandit did yesterday, and maybe it was the same thing. He was doing good. I was feeling uncommonly confident (for me), stopped to take a picture of my wife...and Bandit did NOT want to stand still. He doesn't like it, which helps to get him past things. He doesn't WANT to stand and look at the scary thing for 60 seconds.

But giving me 15 seconds to get a picture of my wife riding? Not too much to ask, it seemed to me. When I reached into my shirt pocket, he started turning and was ready to move on down the trail. So we had an argument. Which I won. But the picture opportunity was gone, and Bandit got ****y and we spent the next few minutes grumpy.

Oh well. I'll do things he wants sometimes, but I cannot afford to give him total control. Sometimes HE needs to do things for ME...and if he doesn't like it...too bad! It isn't ALL about me, but SOME of it is about me!

We had another unhappy moment when I asked him to canter up the paved road to the house. Three little dogs (combined weight maybe 25 lbs) started yapping in a neighbor's backyard, and the canter turned into a sideways canter/trot/hopping mix. We were already past, so I pulled him around none to gently and we went back past the neighbor's yard. Then turned around and cantered up the road another 100 yards to the little arena.

But yesterday was one of those days where I felt nervous until I mounted, and then felt very confident. I have a lot of days where I can get twisted up inside even when my horse is calm.

"*but the butterflies in my stomach don't lie*"​ 


egrogan said:


> ...Ultimately, I am not a brave enough rider to enjoy a horse that gets that coiled up feeling underneath you- and that's definitely how she felt this weekend. I love reading about gottatrot's or phantomhorse's rides so much because I know that I wouldn't be able to ride those kinds of horses. It sounds like so much fun, if you have the stomach for it. But I literally feel butterflies in my stomach when Isabel hits the verge of "out of control." I do all the techniques you're supposed to do- I sing, I talk to her, I exhale deeply, I take my knees and calves off the saddle so I'm not gripping and inadvertently asking to go faster when I don't mean it...but the butterflies in my stomach don't lie, I know she can still feel and feed off my nerves. And, I have the terrible habit of not trusting her enough to let her keep a long rein...


Been there, done that. I think I'm slowly gaining confidence in Bandit. I'm also realizing I can ride out his crow hops, can ride out his spins (which he hasn't even tried since April), and with some help from the sheepskin...it doesn't matter if he goes from a slow walk to a gallop - I'm going with him, automatically. In all seriousness, that sheepskin IS like butt velcro and has taught me a lot about moving with the horse AND giving me confidence that I will do so even if caught by surprise!

But there are days where I'm able to drawl, "*I'm Your Huckleberry*"






And there are days I cannot. That is why Bandit sometimes has a "Johnny Ringo Moment" - "_Why Johnny Ringo, you look like somebody just walked over your grave..._" - and realizes he may have picked the wrong day to tell me no...and other days when I back away. And that is why I have to focus on the journey, and not the individual ride.

BTW - I'm convinced that was Val Kilmer's greatest role:

"_I was just foolin' about..._"

"_I wasn't..._"​


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## bsms

Got to thinking about it, and thought I ought to add some more.

There is a balance, and I struggle to achieve it. With Mia, I was actually too pushy. I didn't understand how deep seated her fears were and just assumed I ought to be able to push her on. Looking back, the best thing I could have done with her is teach her that when things got scary, I would dismount and take care of her. If I could have taught her that - and I think I could have if I tried - then I would always need to dismount with her far more than a regular horse. But in return, I think she would have gained confidence in me.

With Bandit, at least now, after 15 months of riding, I sometimes ought to push him harder. He is not as sensitive as Mia, nor as timid - although Mia always tried to act very tough! Bandit is more likely to give me The Middle Hoof Salute. Mia almost never did. Bandit sometimes needs me to be tougher. Yet much of what I've been successful at with him is rooted in being willing to dismount.

I always feel like a failure when I dismount and lead my horse. I feel like an incompetent buffoon. But when I think about it, I don't know why I feel that way. Maybe it is because I spent 7 years with Mia hearing about my training holes, and others (particularly on the Internet) always have flawless horses. And I look at mine and me, and we are not flawless on either side!

When Bandit is just a little reluctant, pushing him harder may be good. When he is acting rebellious - telling me to go to heck - then pushing back can be right. But when we need to go past an area where my neighbors are spraying insecticide or herbicide, and he is genuinely uncomfortable, then why is it wrong to make the extra effort to turn his fear into confidence? Why is it wrong to teach a horse that humans care and will take care of you?

And when he externally is not putting a hoof wrong, but I can feel a lot of tension in his back, why is it wrong to teach him I care and want him to not just be ridden, but to *enjoy* the ride?

From gottatrot's journal, post 427:



Hondo said:


> ...
> 
> If something is requiring a lot of nerve to try, maybe try a little less?
> 
> ...


If either Bandit or Bob is having a problem on a given day, then why not follow Hondo's advice? If something is genuinely bothering one member of the team, then "_maybe try a little less?_" And when a little less is OK, and one has built a "little less" as a firm foundation, try more when both are ready? Why do we, as riders and horse people, seem to insist on placing guilt on either our horse or ourselves? Yet I do it all the time...:think:


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> Another moment on the last ride- I know some people will think this is anthropomorphizing, but I swear to you that she _pretended _to have to scratch her nose to try to snatch the reins and turn for home. She is not a horse that has a problem with an itchy face (e.g., the Gypsy Vanner gelding I ride every now and then at the barn has a massive, hairy face and needs itch breaks when he starts sweating under his bridle). But she tried it a couple of times- she would act like she was in distress and just _had _to reach down to scratch, so when I took pity on her, she'd give her nose one swipe across the knee and then quickly try to snatch the reins. To me- that is _thinking_. It didn't work- and I think it's important it doesn't- but she had plans in that little horsey brain of hers!!


Some great posts!!
What devious plans your mare had...Halla also will "ask" me very nicely if she can stretch out her neck very low and long to loosen the muscles. I let her, and then every once in awhile she'll ask as usual, then snatch the reins and run, sometimes throwing a little hop at the beginning for good measure. 


> *BSMS* - There is a balance, and I struggle to achieve it. With Mia, I was actually too pushy. I didn't understand how deep seated her fears were and just assumed I ought to be able to push her on. Looking back, the best thing I could have done with her is teach her that when things got scary, I would dismount and take care of her. If I could have taught her that - and I think I could have if I tried - then I would always need to dismount with her far more than a regular horse. But in return, I think she would have gained confidence in me.


I think a big part of being a horseman is always struggling to achieve that balance. It seems to me I will always face the challenge of figuring out what is the best approach for this horse at this time. 

My personal opinion is that if you had dismounted more initially with Mia, it may not have translated into needing to dismount more than on a regular horse, after a time. Starting with Amore, the first couple of years I had to jump off so regularly I got very swift at it. It didn't seem like there was a choice, and it wasn't a question of boldness since when I did try to be bold I ate dirt. Yet this was the right approach for her, and over time it was not more common to dismount off her than other horses. She grew more bold. But Halla does not get more bold if I get off. Instead, I end up with a horse that is more difficult and dangerous to control, since I can't give her the speed, release and direction she needs to grow more calm. 

There is another thread going on about a horse that bucks. Although I know very little about the situation, when the poster says the horse's behavior is worsening despite efforts to push the horse on and make the horse work harder if he bucks, then I have to believe that is the wrong approach. We do science experiments, and what makes the horse worse is wrong. There must be some other approach that will improve the horse, even if it is a slight improvement at first. 



> *BSMS* - If either Bandit or Bob is having a problem on a given day, then why not follow Hondo's advice? If something is genuinely bothering one member of the team, then "maybe try a little less?" And when a little less is OK, and one has built a "little less" as a firm foundation, try more when both are ready? Why do we, as riders and horse people, seem to insist on placing guilt on either our horse or ourselves? Yet I do it all the time...


Something I learned from some riders who are very excellent and bold is that we should all give ourselves permission to have a "bad seat day," as my friend calls it. You understand that while normally you might gallop and jump over this or that, or face a noisy truck rumbling by on your horse, today is a "bad seat day." So you don't. You go slow, or walk around the obstacle, or hop off the horse. What I really believe is that sometimes our subconscious can pick up on something that is wrong, although we can't put a finger on it. It might just be that we are too tired to give proper focus and attention to safety. Or we might sense an undetectable odor that means our horse is stressed. Whatever it is, it can be prudent to take it easy or not ride on a "bad seat day." 
Is it better to prove something - how tough you are or how brave, or is it better to escape injury and have a wonderful ride later in the week? And if we gives ourselves permission to have a "bad seat day," then our horses can have permission to have an off day sometimes as well.


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## phantomhorse13

bsms said:


> I always feel like a failure when I dismount and lead my horse. I feel like an incompetent buffoon. But when I think about it, I don't know why I feel that way. Maybe it is because I spent 7 years with Mia hearing about my training holes, and others (particularly on the Internet) always have flawless horses. And I look at mine and me, and we are not flawless on either side!


IMO, it's MUCH better/smarter/safer to dismount and have both parties intact at the end of the situation than to try to fake it to make it. There is a world of difference between a situation that perhaps makes you a tad uncomfortable and you push through it, versus one where you think 'holy shiitake!' When in doubt, get the heck off. I think anybody who is going to look down on you for that is either a liar, an idiot, or has never actually done much with a horse.



egrogan said:


> I know some people will think this is anthropomorphizing, but I swear to you that she _pretended _to have to scratch her nose to try to snatch the reins and turn for home. But she tried it a couple of times- she would act like she was in distress and just _had _to reach down to scratch, so when I took pity on her, she'd give her nose one swipe across the knee and then quickly try to snatch the reins. To me- that is _thinking_. It didn't work- and I think it's important it doesn't- but she had plans in that little horsey brain of hers!!
> 
> ...but the butterflies in my stomach don't lie


Our arabs do stuff like that all the time.. especially if bored. Normally ours are more likely to be looking for something to spook at as an excuse to scoot, but the concept is the same. I was always taught horses have the same intelligence as a 2 year old child - think of all the crazy things kids can do!

Love the butterflies comment and couldn't agree more. Listen to them, your gut is there to keep you safe.




gottatrot said:


> Something I learned from some riders who are very excellent and bold is that we should all give ourselves permission to have a "bad seat day," as my friend calls it. You understand that while normally you might gallop and jump over this or that, or face a noisy truck rumbling by on your horse, today is a "bad seat day." So you don't. You go slow, or walk around the obstacle, or hop off the horse. What I really believe is that sometimes our subconscious can pick up on something that is wrong, although we can't put a finger on it. It might just be that we are too tired to give proper focus and attention to safety. Or we might sense an undetectable odor that means our horse is stressed. Whatever it is, it can be prudent to take it easy or not ride on a "bad seat day."
> Is it better to prove something - how tough you are or how brave, or is it better to escape injury and have a wonderful ride later in the week? And if we gives ourselves permission to have a "bad seat day," then our horses can have permission to have an off day sometimes as well.


This!! I wish I could 'love' this post.

Again I think it goes back to listening to your gut, and so many people are taught that thinking should prevail over feeling. And while I think that is a very good strategy for some things, dealing with horses (or animals in general) is not one of them. When I was still working (I am a licensed vet tech), if I ever even got an inkling the animal I was working with needed a muzzle, I put one on. It was not uncommon for the animal in question to have not done anything aggressive yet.. but just something about their bearing I didn't like. And many times (though no, not every time), the animal would erupt at some point. Some might argue the muzzle 'made' that behavior happen or point out the poor animal who was just fine but still had to wear it.. but ya know what? Better safe than sorry!


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## Bondre

egrogan said:


> One commonality in many of my bad rides with Izzy is that I've stopped right at the beginning of the ride to snap a picture (stupid cell phone!! :wink. I definitely think she sees that as a moment of indecision on my part- _if my human isn't committed to going on, then I'm definitely going to decide for us, and of course we're going home._


Interesting idea and totally reasonable. This is just the sort of thing I love reading: when someone has a potential problem with their horse, but they think around the issue, try and understand it from their horse's point of view, and end up modifying their own behaviour lol. So Isabel is training you not to snap cute photos of her busy and attentive ears while riding ;-) - or at least not at the start of the outing. 



egrogan said:


> Another moment on the last ride- I know some people will think this is anthropomorphizing, but I swear to you that she _pretended _to have to scratch her nose to try to snatch the reins and turn for home.


Isabel isn't the only one who does this. Macarena often has to stop and itch her belly where a fly has bitten her - but only when we're riding away from home. And of course to scratch her belly she needs to turn her head and neck right round, so completing the turn and heading for home would be the logical continuation of the movement. She doesn't actually try to turn round any more now, but she still has to have itchy stops occasionally. I've always thought it's amusing that the flies only bite her on the outward leg of our rides.



egrogan said:


> Ultimately, I am not a brave enough rider to enjoy a horse that gets that coiled up feeling underneath you- and that's definitely how she felt this weekend... But I literally feel butterflies in my stomach when Isabel hits the verge of "out of control."


It's not a fun feeling for me either. Macarena has had her moments of coiling and although she does beautiful movements like that, I'd honestly rather she didn't. I'm like you, I'm happy with speed but I like my horse to be reasonably relaxed and predictable. And when they coil, I'm worrying in case it all culminates in an explosion that I can't cope with. It never has yet, but.... So I spend a lot of my riding time promoting relaxation. 



egrogan said:


> I was even thinking of something you wrote awhile back, which was that you can teach a horse that a tighter rein actually means "go faster,".... and once she stopped that tense prancing, I could trust her enough to lengthen the reins, which helped calm us both.


In my experience, a long rein always aids relaxation and a tight rein promotes tension. Perhaps a well-trained (English) horse learns to relax into contact, but Macarena is not (well)trained in that way and she doesn't find contact relaxing. Nor does Flamenca, and after two weeks working almost daily with Duna I can say that she doesn't either. Every day we work on relaxing and walking on a long rein (rather than jogging on a tight rein), as Duna didn't have a clue about this. The first time she understood what I wanted it was sooo cute. She stretched her neck out long and kept blowing through her nose out of pure pleasure. "Wow, freedom! (snort) this is so comfortable (snort) I can move my head wherever I want (snort) and no-one tugs on my mouth (snort)"



egrogan said:


> A year ago, I often went out on our trail loop totally focused on _me- _what would it take to safely execute the ride and get back to the barn still astride the horse? But now, I head out on our ride thinking about both of us- what messages is she sending me, how is she moving and how do I influence that, where can we test our limits and be braver than we were last time.


You guys have come such a long way together! That is a huge achievement. I bet when you started out with Isabel you had no inkling the relationship that you have developed over time and of the things that you can now do as a team.


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## Hondo

I just have to comment on how refreshing and encouraging it was to read about dismounting and the opinions on dismounting. I have been counseled to stay on the horse no matter what, it teaches the horse bad things to dismount plus it's safer on the horse.

Well, sometimes I just don't listen well. Just a few days ago I was riding Hondo ponying Rimmey when Hondo came to an abrupt halt, head erect and staring. I let him stare a bit, didn't see anything, and urged him on. He absolutely shook his head NO! almost violently while glancing back at me. I dismounted, led them both a ways until Hondo seemed settled, mounted and rode on.

Don't know what it was, but it was something. There are lions in the area. And I agree that Hondo learned from the dismount, but good stuff rather than bad. He learned, as he has previously, that his concerns will be recognized and addressed.

Rest of the ride went well as usual.


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## egrogan

I don't think any less of riders who dismount and lead their horse through a tricky situation, not sure why someone would be criticized for that. Oddly, *I* feel much _less _confident doing so than staying mounted, even on a tense horse. That said, I recognize that my horse, even when she's at her most tense, is still a compliant horse who wants to do the right thing- I may feel differently if my horse was different.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Oddly, *I* feel much _less _confident doing so than staying mounted, even on a tense horse. That said, I recognize that my horse, even when she's at her most tense, is still a compliant horse who wants to do the right thing- I may feel differently if my horse was different.


Again, I think that comes down to listening to your gut. If you feel more confident/comfortable staying on, then stay there.

For me, it seems to be more situation-dependent than necessarily horse-dependent. Example, when the flock of killer turkeys is on trail and in the bushes, Phin still tends to get very tense at all the noise and commotion. However, _I_ know what turkeys are and that they are not actually going to eat him, so stay on board and deal with the tension. On the other hand, when we were coming across some land and sudden rapid gunfire erupted from the other side of the barn, I wasn't sure what the heck was going on and Phin was convinced that we should be leaving in the opposite direction NOW, so I got down to investigate as I couldn't deal with a panicky horse _and_ an unknown situation. If Phin was truly going to bolt, I would rather be on the ground watching him go than on his back praying we both didn't die.

Wonder if I would have felt the same way 10 years ago? Interesting thought.. :think:


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## Bondre

egrogan said:


> I don't think any less of riders who dismount and lead their horse through a tricky situation, not sure why someone would be criticized for that.


I too have picked up an undercurrent of disapproval shown here towards those who dismount in response to a tricky situation - as if you were letting the horse win over you. In fact it was quite a relief for me when I found someone who defended the opposite point of view - Sue C in her journal http://www.horseforum.com/member-journals/trotters-arabians-donkeys-other-people-479466/page21/ post #206.

Subsequently I've realised that more people here are in the 'get off when necessary' camp than I first thought, and that indeed you aren't necessarily teaching your horse bad manners if you dismount because they are upset about something. That seeing you on the ground beside them is reassuring for your horse, and that if you dismount to help them through a sticky patch from time to time, they don't misbehave more often in an attempt to make you dismount. They're just not that calculating.


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## egrogan

Aww, was so nice to see the link to @SueC's journal. I really miss having her on this forum!


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## bsms

Don't know if this is right, but here is how Bandit & I have settled on doing it. I suspect it would work with Mia, but I also suspect both Cowboy & Trooper would want a more directive rider....

There are times he's not happy about things, but not really scared either. Yesterday was trash day for one of the companies in our area, and recycling day for the other - so every house had trash out. He weaved a little to keep what distance he could from them, but he never slowed down. I had my hand farther forward, so the reins had some slack but I could easily take it out if he went stupid.

There are times he is quite uncomfortable, but not totally resistant. On yesterday's ride, we took a road we don't often take and were passing the large community water storage tank. Its pump came on with a loud squeal. Bandit was startled, and reluctant to move forward. I switched to two hands (the better to say 'we are NOT turning around') and waited. He took a few steps forward, and stopped. I gave a little slack and waited. He took a few more and stopped. Meanwhile, the other two horses were also nervous. My youngest daughter was not ready to push Trooper, and Cowboy had picked up a stone in his hoof that my wife wanted to remove - and the hoof pick was in my back pocket (a hoof pick knife I carry for riding).

So I asked Bandit forward. He took two hesitant steps, then I asked him to turn around so we could go help the other horses. He was glad to turn around...but I think we were about to go by except for the other horses. Went back about a hundred yards, got the stone out, and in deference to my daughter, took another route. That was one of those "Maybe he will, maybe he won't" episodes. But I think he was about to move on with a little slack in the reins. We were actually past the spot where the sound came from, so going on meant less "risk" than turning back. Once Bandit was past, I'm sure the others would have followed. They accept his judgment on these things.

But sometimes, what is ahead seems too dangerous to him. If he won't move forward with slack reins in a minute, then he's very worried. I could probably wait for 5 minutes and go on, but it is easier to just back him 20 feet, dismount, rub his face and lead him by. Slowly, one step at a time if needed. If that takes 5 minutes, so be it. But it has been 6+ months since it took much effort for me to lead him past something from the ground.

Once past, mount up and continue. He visibly relaxes when we are past, and then he stands quite calmly while I mount.

It isn't automatic. And like anything else, it takes time and practice and a few wrong choices to learn how the individual horse will respond. I've stayed on and had Bandit explode, and I've dismounted when I didn't need to. If I am going to err, I prefer the latter. Dismounting when I don't need to seems to do no harm, while pushing him into an explosion sets us back in trust and obedience.

One thing to note, because this is how I got hurt on Mia: Do NOT dismount while the horse is genuinely afraid! Dismounting when the horse is scared witless is very dangerous. Get the horse away, and far enough away that the horse's mind is back with you, before dismounting. IMHO. I spent over 7 years with pain in my back when I tried to dismount Mia while she was still terrified.

But I also dismount on trail rides just because - to see something better, because I've been riding over an hour and I believe in dismounting once every hour or so for 5 minutes, because there is a barbed wire gate to deal with, etc. So my horse sees nothing unusual about my dismounting. Dismount, loosen the cinch, walk 5 minutes, tighten the cinch, mount up - and both the horse and I are refreshed!

When I decided to do this with Bandit, a lot of experienced riders told me it would turn him into a spook monster - that he would find a reward in my getting off, and learn to spook to make me get off! After all, horses HATE having riders on their backs, right? :evil:

This is why I've concluded that formal lessons can be harmful - and harmful to the instructor who teaches them as well. I think (ideally) lessons should be for the initial 6-10 rides, then no lessons until someone is ready to learn a specific discipline. Or wait a year, take a half dozen, then ride a year, etc.

No one CARES if the lesson horse is having fun. No one cares if the lesson horse is part of the team! In fact, when I took lessons and had a horse start working well with me, the instructor changed the horse so the horse couldn't help me too much. But darn it! Learning how to get a horse to WANT to help you ought to be a huge part of learning to ride!

Lesson horses have hard lives - at least those giving beginning lessons. A bad rider, doing circles in an arena, often bouncing and hard on the mouth, doing the same thing day after day...

"..._There is another thing to be considered with regard to the horse's character - it loves to exercise its powers, and it possesses a great spirit of emulation; it likes variety of scene and amusement...Horses don't like to be ennuye, and will rather stick at home than go out to be bored ; they like amusement, variety, and society : give them their share of these, but never in a pedantic way, and avoid getting into a groove of any kind_..." - On Seats and Saddles, by Francis Dwyer

I can easily see how a lesson horse would learn to take advantage of someone who dismounts if it "spooks" at the corner of the arena! If I did hundreds of laps around an arena, lesson after lesson, I'd want to liven up my day, too! 

But a lot of students and a lot of riding instructors, it seems to me, then extrapolate the lesson horse behavior on to ALL horses. Thus ALL horses want their riders to get off, and all horses seek to find a way to ignore their rider! And that is why I've concluded "The Power of We" is so useful in teaching a horse - because "*they like amusement, variety, and society : give them their share of these, but never in a pedantic way*". 

Horses don't like to have someone sitting on their backs, but they do love being part of a team working to do something that makes some sense to the horse! Jumping, cutting cattle, racing, checking up on the neighborhood, using their strength to achieve a mutual goal - when the horse thinks "_We are doing this_", it doesn't find a reward in the rider getting off, but in the rider getting back on!
_
'The horse is the sole master of his forces; even with all of our vigor, by himself, the rider is powerless to increase the horse's forces. Therefor, it is for the horse to employ his forces in his own way, for himself to determine the manner of that employment so as to best fulfill the demands of his riders. If the rider tries to do it all, the horse may permit him to do so, but the horse merely drifts, and limits his efforts to those which the rider demands. On the contrary, if the horse knows that he must rely on himself, he uses himself completely, with all of his energy.'" - 5 May 1922

-- Horse Training Outdoors and High School, Etienne Beudant (1931)_

When the horse sees his rider as a part of the team, and knows his team-mate cares about him, values him, takes care of him and needs his help, then dismounting once in a while to care for his fears merely shows the horse you have good judgment and you care about him. That is not wrong! It is right! It is proof you value the horse and will take care of him, and no horse objects to that. That is what being a leader means to a horse...



egrogan said:


> Aww, was so nice to see the link to @*SueC* 's journal. I really miss having her on this forum!


 @*SueC* was one of the first people I encountered who discussed riding as something horse and rider do together. [_Just reread that statement after posting...what does THAT say about the riding world?_] She was also the first person I remember who wrote about horses in a non-competitive way. Unfortunately, she got tired of the 'barn drama' that seems to go with an Internet forum...but horses lost an advocate for them on this forum when she left. I miss her posts too...although I understand her frustration! She also introduced me to the writings of Tom Roberts...


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## egrogan

_Oh hi...where have you been?









_I've been out of town all week, but stopped by the barn late yesterday to visit Izzy. Didn't have time to ride , but was able to brush her up nicely- it's crazy how quickly the summer coat is shedding out. She had a little layer of short, fine hair on her back, looked like it was snowing when I curried. Looking forward to some riding time this weekend.


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## frlsgirl

Awww - Izzy looks great as usual. Does she whinny at you in an accusatory "where have you been" tone? Hope you get some riding time this weekend.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Awww - Izzy looks great as usual. Does she whinny at you in an accusatory "where have you been" tone? Hope you get some riding time this weekend.


Izzy's not a very vocal horse. She will call back if a horse is calling to her, but I rarely hear her whinny. But she does make me feel good, she's the kind of horse that will lock eyes with you across the field and let you know she's very excited to see you


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## frlsgirl

Oh yes, those big brown Morgan eyes; love them!


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## egrogan

I woke up so excited to spend the whole morning at the barn. I leisurely groomed and tacked up. I was a little worried because archery hunting season started here this weekend. I couldn't shake the image of an errant arrow finding us through the corn fields. Now, you all know that I am not shy about sporting orange hi vis gear. But still, you just worry about someone not paying attention, or an arrow misfiring. I think I might get a couple of bells for the saddle- if the folks at the barn don't already think I'm nuts with how over cautious I am, they surely will if I do that. 

After my last ride, I made sure to head away from the barn with a sense of purpose. We trotted right across the hay field and did not dilly dally. She tried to duck out towards home once, but with a quick and simple correction, she kept going. Then we could settle in and enjoy the fall colors that are starting to come out:









Turns out there was no reason to worry, we did not see any hunters. We did, however, encounter a landscaper riding a huge deck mower at one of the small manufacturing facilities we ride by. Isabel really didn't even look at it, which was nice. But the man on it was so lovely, he stopped and idled the engine to give us a wide berth and waited until we were around the corner to start it back up. He really didn't have to do that, but it was a very nice gesture.

That got me thinking, I usually just post pictures of the pristine parts of our rides, but we do actually have to ride through some developed areas to get to the woods and fields. There are two light manufacturing plants, and then headquarters for a large medical manufacturing facility. We skirt the parking lots of these facilities to get to our fields. One of them has some kind of machine in a room that's right up against the parking lot that cycles through a huge _woooooshing_ sound every 30 seconds or so- that's always fun to get a horse used to the first time passing it!! 

You can see the plant down there in the distance:









And here we are riding across the parking lot behind the loading dock, with a bunch of trucks waiting to get loaded up:









I try not to ride through this area much on a weekday, as it's pretty busy and I figure, why put horses or people in an uncomfortable situation. But there aren't many people around in the evening or on weekends, except the occassional Fed Ex truck in the loading dock. That was a bit nerve wracking the first time a huge truck rumbled up, threw on its backup signal, and then started tossing boxes out. But now it's a non-event. This horse, I tell you...she's gotten to be pretty brave 

I'm so disappointed, I took this little short video clip on our woods trail because it was such pretty dappled light coming through teh trees, but the video quality looks awful on the computer. It looked really nice and clear on my phone though, must be something with how it gets processed on YouTube. Anyway, here we are heading home on a long rein:


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I think I might get a couple of bells for the saddle- if the folks at the barn don't already think I'm nuts with how over cautious I am, they surely will if I do that.
> 
> I'm so disappointed, I took this little short video clip on our woods trail because it was such pretty dappled light coming through the trees, but the video quality looks awful on the computer. It looked really nice and clear on my phone though, must be something with how it gets processed on YouTube.


I ride using bells and have for a while. I found they did a lot better with catching the attention of people when I rode on multi-use trails than hoofbeats or even shouting did. People ignore someone behind them shouting "hello" but they don't ignore that Santa may be coming! I have also found it works well on wildlife - and I would much rather the deer burst out of the trees 10 yards away versus right beside us.

I get a supply from the dollar store at christmas and just attach them to the breastcollar using key ring coils and a spring clip:











I found they make a louder noise attached to the breastcollar versus the saddle.


The trail in your video looked lovely. YouTube def does something in the processing, as I agree it always looks way better on the phone.


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## egrogan

Finally home after a week away for work. I went from steamy New Orleans back to crisp fall New Hampshire- quite a change! Though I do love both places 

Since I was gone so long, I offered Isabel to a couple of the instructors at our barn to use in a couple of kids' lessons during the week. She likes the attention, and doing walk/trot lessons with a little 40 pound human is worth it to her for all the grooming she gets before and after.

_Hello little human...you come bearing treats, correct?









_I got a cute text from one of the instructors that in one of her lessons, Isabel's little girl asked for a trot, and Izzy happily went around the ring in a perfect, show-off frame. She's such a good girl.

When I got back yesterday, it was another gorgeous fall day, so I was eager to get out on the trail. I think Izzy was too!









After a week of not doing much, I expected Izzy to be pretty go-go-go, and she was, but controllable. 

The breeze was blowing:









The skies were blue:









Also, the corn fields had been cut while I was gone, so I was expecting some snorting and blowing- but she didn't really seem to care, even when flocks of birds came flying out of the stubble as we went by.









Feeling good, she definitely did want to move out. Since we were able to cut across the fields, she got a little overly excited when we turned towards home, and tried to take off cantering in that direction. She was a little hard to pull up, so I quickly changed plans and made her keep cantering away from home, around the field again (it was actually a really _nice _canter, not frantic/out of control). That made her a little less eager to keep cantering, and I was able to bring her back to a walk. We completed the lap around the field on a loose rein and walked the rest of the way home with no issues.

This afternoon the vet's coming for fall teeth floating and to pull some blood to run the Cushing's test again. When she had her choke episode back at the end of the spring, he noticed there was a little "cupping" in some of the teeth, so we'll see what state they're in today. The Cushing's panel was negative last year, and we have baseline readings from that, so this is mostly a precaution (I think he thinks I'm being over-cautious, but is willing to go along).


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## egrogan

Vet visit was quick and uneventful yesterday. I did get admonished a bit because he thinks Izzy is, well, fat.  He put her at a 6.5 body condition score. She does have a huge belly. But we talked through her feeding plan. She gets 1.5 lbs of Poulin Low Carb Senior morning and evening, which is the absolute minimum to give her for her target weight (825 lbs) and still get the nutritional value. She was switched to this feed from a ration balancer in the spring when she dropped a ton of weight. He agreed it didn't make sense to put her back on the RB going into winter- we can reassess in the spring. So we discussed hay. Unfortunately I haven't weighed it in a long time, so I'm going on flakes, and she's getting 6 a day, with access to a very poor quality pasture for about 9-10 hours/day. His conclusion after looking her over more closely is that she's got a massive hay belly and really needs more exercise (don't we all...). He suggested potentially bringing the hay down to ~1.5% of body weight-but that makes me worry about her standing all night with nothing to eat (she gets 3 of those flakes overnight in slow feeders). She's not cresty, she's not carrying big fat deposit across her body- she's just got a gigantic belly. So now to find a way to eek out time to ride another 2-3 days a week in my work schedule....









He pulled blood to send to out, and I'll hear back from him Monday (he only works at the beginning of the week). 

Her teeth were in pretty good shape. He found some "cupping" on her molars but was able to do some hand filing to address it. Her teeth are wearing, to be sure, but she's not having any issues with eating at this point (obviously!), so we will just continue watching to be sure she's good.


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## frlsgirl

Yikes! No mare wants to hear the "F" word. It's so difficult to find just the right combo of nutrition and exercise especially for as adult ammies as we can't ride as often as we would like and have to rely on barn staff to feed our critters. Tell her she's still beautiful even with the extra pounds


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## carshon

Hay belly is just dense fiber build up so I would not worry too much about that.

I was just going back in the post and read about the Bells. I for one am anti-bell. Most wildlife will hide in the brush - birds included and bells do nothing more than make them hide more. It will not flush them out.

We have had some terrible experiences on the trails with riders with bells and how other horses reacted to them. Unless your horse is desensitized to the bells it can be very scary. Our vet was on a trail ride this spring and asked the person behind him to remove the bells as it was causing issues with other riders on the ride. If you ride a lot on your own I don't think it is much of an issue - but for me personally I ride at a lot of state parks and meet and pass other riders and many of us have had Bell issues.


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## Tazzie

But she carries it beautifully :lol: going into winter especially I'd be hesitant to switch much. Especially since she struggled a bit last year.

I do have to agree with Carshon on the bells. As someone married to a hunter, I'd be annoyed to find out people on the surrounding property were riding too close to the property line jingling bells everywhere.... the responsible hunters will see your bright orange get up and respect you. But if you're riding near other property you know have hunters, you very well could cost someone part of their dinner for the year (we survive mainly on venison.) There are bad seeds everywhere, so I get the worry. But all the hunters I know are extremely careful when shooting.


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## phantomhorse13

carshon said:


> We have had some terrible experiences on the trails with riders with bells and how other horses reacted to them ... If you ride a lot on your own I don't think it is much of an issue - but for me personally I ride at a lot of state parks and meet and pass other riders and many of us have had Bell issues.


If a horse is going to react to bells on another horse, what is it going to do when it hears gunshots?

I trained for years exclusively in state parks (with other riders) and never had anybody say anything. Did I just get lucky? What is it your horse does when hearing the bells?




Tazzie said:


> the responsible hunters will see your bright orange get up and respect you.


It's not the _responsible_ hunters I worry about (and both my husband and myself hunt). However, we get a lot of outside people who don't seem to have any common sense, as we have stories every year about someone shooting another orange-clad hunter (and often they are trespassing). So I am taking every precaution I can - to the point I don't even ride during the first week of rifle season or any of the Saturdays. It's just not worth the risk, bells or otherwise.


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## egrogan

So lo and behold, we encountered our first hunter on the trail yesterday. I had had a pretty stressful day at work, so we were taking it easy on our ride- I really just needed some decompression time. We were moseying along in our typical place, had turned off the cornfields to go down the snowmobile trail. All of a sudden, Izzy just froze in place, head up, nostrils flaring. Weird behavior for her. I asked to go forward, and she took a few steps, and then froze again. She has been on this trail a bunch of times but was clearly uncomfortable. I was not really in the mood for an argument, so we turned around. As we did, I saw what had made her so edgy- a pickup truck had pulled up and parked at the head of the snowmobile trail, and there was a burly guy in camo standing next to it.

He had just arrived and was getting all his gear out, so as we rode towards him, I yelled out a greeting and Izzy got pretty snorty. I was just thankful he didn't have any dogs with him! I asked if he wouldn't mind saying hello so Izzy realized he was a person. He was happy to. As we got closer, I kept talking to him, and that calmed Izzy right down. I explained to him that we almost never see people on the trail, so it's a weird experience for the horse. He was very nice, we chatted a bit about what season it is now (deer apparently), and I mentioned that we try to stay out of the way of hunters and don't want to put anyone in a bad situation- he understood. I was also decked out head to toe in orange, so I think people probably could see us coming pretty clearly :wink:



phantomhorse13 said:


> It's not the _responsible_ hunters I worry about (and both my husband and myself hunt). However, we get a lot of outside people who don't seem to have any common sense, as we have stories every year about someone shooting another orange-clad hunter (and often they are trespassing). So I am taking every precaution I can - to the point I don't even ride during the first week of rifle season or any of the Saturdays. It's just not worth the risk, bells or otherwise.


I have to agree with @phantomhorse13 on this one. I totally understand that there are a lot of people who feed their families through their hunting. But I hear enough stories in my town about the drunk fools who end up shooting a friend. And I just don't want to be that person. I think I will try to concentrate my riding in the middle of the day over the next few weeks (I was out at 4pm yesterday), and that should help.


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## bsms

Many years ago, I spent a fall working for the US Forest Service doing "compartment exams" - surveying and measuring trees to help determine timber sales, need for clear-cutting, etc. During deer hunting season, I could not have counted the times I heard the bullets fly past me - wearing orange all over. In Utah at least, a lot of hunters shoot at sound. So they would shoot, I'd start yelling, and they'd leave ASAP once they realized they were shooting at a human.

My SIL tells of a time he went hunting in upstate NY. He was still on farmland when a shot rang out. He heard a guy shouting, "I got a deer! I got a deer!" He took a look, then told the guy deer were not black & white, and then he went to tell the dairy farmer abut his dead cow.

I also once nearly hit a car that stopped - ON Interstate 80! On I-80, and 4 guys had stopped the car and started shooting at some deer well over 1/2 mile away. At least they were in the 'slow lane'...

I've worked deer check stations for Utah's DWR and met plenty of nice hunters, but hunters in Utah did a good job of souring me on hunting. I know some responsible hunters - and one tells a great story of a pack trip on a horse his BIL arranged for him to ride - but I've heard far more bullets during hunting season than I did during 6 months in Afghanistan.

FWIW, my horses get one flake in the evening. If it is very windy (like the last 3 days) or very wet, they get hay pellets in the evening. Then they get fed in the morning. At best, they get 3 flakes of hay a day, and no pasture. I've met people who feed their horses nothing except the hay pellets and have for years. The guy at the local feed store says a half-dozen of their customers do that, and while it seems weird to him, the horses he has seen all seem fine. One of the customers has kept 10+ horses like that for years.


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## carshon

Egrogan- I am glad your encounter went well with the hunter. We too stay out of the fields etc when hunting starts. We have had many dead horses and cows in my area of the years - hunters from Chicago come out and shoot anything that moves- and we have a lot of landowners that rent to big city hunters. Bow hunting starts here this weekend (deer) we are still in quail season as well. We all wear orange vests when we ride.

As for bells - my horses will startle in place and get very high headed snort and try to go the other direction very quickly. Most wild animals will take to cover when something strange approaches - and will flush out. I am really on the fence on if I believe that bells will make them run before my horse and I get there to flush them out. But I also ride almost exclusively in state parks in my area and surrounding states. The deer and turkeys there are so used to horses that we have ridden close enough to almost touch them! 

When riding in fields in my area it is usually not a time when they are out grazing so we are pretty safe. Fall is here and the fields surrounding my home are going down 1 by 1 - I am looking forward to some great rides around home.


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## Tazzie

Wow. You all ride in some crazy sketchy places. I've never heard anyone in our area being shot at or mistaken for a deer. Ever. Yes, right now is deer season, so no dogs :wink: that's for rabbit and fowl season. We ride on our barn owners property. If I see a truck parked, we stick to our "arena" (their field) to ride in. The owner lets just a handful of people hunt on the property. All are told if they shoot at my horse, I shoot at them. They know I'm crazy and will stand behind that statement, so never had an issue in the 5.5 years I've owned her. I don't know what the laws are for sure in state parks, but up here I don't think they allow hunting in them. I know they don't at the place we could haul and ride near our house. And we're not the only ones riding on the property we are on. Our friend allows some of his other friends out to ride there, and none of them do anything more than tack up and ride out.

Idk. Izzie's worn bells for fun (at Christmas), but I just refrain from riding in the woods during hunting season. I wouldn't worry about them shooting me because I know they wouldn't, but I don't want to risk someone a meal. Also, just as a personal tidbit. My husband is in his stand by 4:30 pm if he's hunting during the week :wink: earlier on the weekend. Midday would most likely be the safest time if you're worried about being shot at. I guess I'm lucky we don't have crazy, drunk, trigger happy hunters in our area shooting cows and people....

Not starting an argument, just expanding on my point of view :wink:


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## egrogan

@*Tazzie* , this _is _New Hampshire, you know, "live free or [and?] die"  (yes, that is my intentional poking fun at our state motto...)

And I should have also added, I know two people who have had a horse shot in their fenced pastures during hunting season. One with an arrow and survived, the other with a bullet and didn't. 

I appreciate your perspective and don't see it as argumentative. I do think we have a lot of young men here with way too much time on their hands and pretty bad judgement.

For now, if I'm heading to the woods and fields, I intend to stick to midday riding ... Otherwise I'll just stay in the hay field across the street where there aren't hunters.


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## Tazzie

YIKES! No thank you! And here I figured the ******** in Kentucky (stereotype :lol would be worse! Honestly though. In our area, boys (and girls!) go out with dad hunting, and learn how to properly hunt. They don't just shoot at anything that moves. I didn't grow up in a hunting family, so I've learned as I've been with my husband and lived in this area.

It's a shame people are so trigger happy (bow and gun) that they injure or kill animals aside from deer (cows, horses, etc.) Nick gets excited when he has one in his sights, but he's concentrating so hard there is no way he'd mistake another animal for a dear. He's not a shoot first, ask later kind of person. None of the guys I've met are. But they take their time, and only shoot if it's within a reasonable distance (they know their distance since all of the ones I know do target shooting to gauge their distance.)

I do think you're making a good call though, especially with such idiotic hunters up there! And glad you didn't take it as argumentative :lol:


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> So lo and behold, we encountered our first hunter on the trail yesterday.
> 
> I think I will try to concentrate my riding in the middle of the day over the next few weeks (I was out at 4pm yesterday), and that should help.


Glad the encounter went well. Good for both Izzy and for the hunter to be aware you may or may not be out there too! Going out during the middle of the day should help. I do not want to mess up someone's hunt and am sure you don't either.

Do you get Sundays free from hunting up there? Thank goodness PA still has not allowed hunting on Sundays (but groups are trying to pass legislation to change it all the time.. it may be one of the few issues that horse groups and mountain biking groups work together on around here).


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## phantomhorse13

carshon said:


> The deer and turkeys there are so used to horses that we have ridden close enough to almost touch them!


I have the same issue here.. I guess they smell/see the horse and not me, therefore aren't afraid. The deer aren't nearly as bad since standing still and looking at us isn't general scary.. it's the turkeys suddenly exploding into flight as we get right beside them that isn't fun (thus my using the term 'turkeybomb.') I have actually had late-takeoff turkeys wind up flying into me and landing on the saddle pommel on a couple occasions (which begs the question do I need a hunting permit if I catch a turkey that way?!). I have found the bells work to flush things sooner, maybe because its a 'not natural' sound so puts them on alert sooner? 




Tazzie said:


> Wow. You all ride in some crazy sketchy places ... The owner lets just a handful of people hunt on the property.


Right now, I ride exclusively on private land. The people the various owners allow to hunt (myself and my DH included) are not the issue.. it's people trespassing. One landowner went to the point of putting up trail cams around his place, because someone shot at his brown lab in his front yard!! [Thank goodness nobody was hurt, dog included.. though had he found the person who had done it, I suspect that person would not have fared well..] He had the game wardens out a multipe times arresting people for being where they shouldn't, despite all sorts of 'no trespassing' and 'no hunting' signs. 

When I used to ride in the public parks closer to the city, those were open to anybody with a valid permit:











That orange-clad figure you can see in the distance was _pointing his rifle at us_ when we first spotted him as we came around the corner.. and we are riding on the main, multiple-use trail. We had mistakenly assumed nobody would be hunting there in the middle of the day during the week. Wrong. After that we just stuck to riding there on Sundays.


@*Tazzie* perhaps I can come ride with you during hunting season! :mrgreen:


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## Tazzie

phantomhorse13 said:


> Right now, I ride exclusively on private land. The people the various owners allow to hunt (myself and my DH included) are not the issue.. it's people trespassing. One landowner went to the point of putting up trail cams around his place, because someone shot at his brown lab in his front yard!! [Thank goodness nobody was hurt, dog included.. though had he found the person who had done it, I suspect that person would not have fared well..] He had the game wardens out a multipe times arresting people for being where they shouldn't, despite all sorts of 'no trespassing' and 'no hunting' signs.
> 
> When I used to ride in the public parks closer to the city, those were open to anybody with a valid permit:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That orange-clad figure you can see in the distance was _pointing his rifle at us_ when we first spotted him as we came around the corner.. and we are riding on the main, multiple-use trail. We had mistakenly assumed nobody would be hunting there in the middle of the day during the week. Wrong. After that we just stuck to riding there on Sundays.
> 
> 
> @*Tazzie* perhaps I can come ride with you during hunting season! :mrgreen:


Fortunately we don't have issues with trespassers around where my mare is. The farm itself is hard enough to find if you don't know how to get out there! Plus, out that way the majority of people just hunt their own land. Our friend/barn owner doesn't personally hunt, but allows people to hunt since they ruin the crops (he grows corn and soybeans.) The other property my husband hunts is his stepmom's dad's land. And anyone dumb enough to trespass out there is in for a WORLD of hurt. Grandpa is SUPER picky on who he lets hunt out there. Like, we will have to ask for permission to bring Kaleb or Syd out hunting there. And no way to really get into it without them seeing them. Wide, empty fields until the woods, behind the house.

But wow. People are idiots. I know some people will use their scope to verify what they see in the distance, but bright orange would be the tip off it's not huntable... (yes, I've created a word :lol

By all means though, come on down! Though, hunting doesn't stop for Sundays here :wink: but the park near my house is absolutely no hunting allowed, and the people in charge of that area keep extremely close tabs on the property.


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## carshon

I need to move to PA! We allow hunting all days during hunting season. And the state parks will mark off some trails with tape saying do not pass this point Hunting in Session. We all wear orange vests when riding this time of year. 

And as others have said it is not the "local's we have issues with it is those from the big cities (Chicago- Iowa City-Madison) that come out "to the country" and think we all love people to hunt on our land. Not True!!!

I live in a small rural village (150 people) and my pasture is within the village (8 acres) and we have had hunters walking the fence line of our property. When asked what they were doing they just said trying to track deer. No one pays attention to the purple fence posts (no trespassing sign) they just walk around.

It can be scary here in the fall!


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## frlsgirl

@egrogan - I think you handled the situation with the hunter really well; I'm glad you were able to show Izzy that she doesn't need to be afraid.


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## egrogan

I had a bit of a crummy weekend, to be honest. Izzy was just pretty flat out bad on our rides Friday and Saturday. Not sure what got into her! And, I had a migraine most of the weekend, which left me a little less engaged than I probably should be while riding.

Friday we went on a trail we don't ride that often, but she's certainly been on it numerous times. She was snorting and blowing at everything- rocks, sticks, leaves, you name it, she acted frantic about it. Getting to this particular trail does involve riding on a road with almost no shoulder, so I have to be able to trust her listening to my leg when I ask her to stay over, and as we were riding home, she was so amped up I was seriously worried that she might try to bolt out into the road at an inopportune time. Luckily we were fine, but it was a really stressful ride.

Saturday we went on our regular corn field/woods trail loop (in the middle of the day, right at noon) and she was again just really spooky about everything. When we leave the woods trail, we take a short ride across a parking lot before circling the corn fields. Along the parking lot, she froze and was mesmerized by something back in the woods- it wasn't a curious/interested kind of staring though, it was head high, nostrils flaring, a little panicked kind of staring. At first, I let her stand and sniff and look. I think that was a mistake though. I pushed her on after giving her time to look, but when we crossed over to the fields, she kept trying to stare back in the direction of whatever she was distracted by. After a few steps of trying to straighten her out to ride through it, she started tossing her head and got a little light on the front end. It got to the point that, for me as her rider, it was feeling a little dangerous. I got her to walk a couple of steps forward, but then I did turn around and go back rather than fight through it. I don't know what had her so worried, but after we passed the spot where she froze in the parking lot, she lowered her head almost to the ground, and let out a series of very loud exhales, the deep, stress relieving kind. We did some schooling in the hay fields before going back to the barn, and she was fine for that.

Thinking about it a little more as I'm writing this, there were a lot of gunshots coming from around the property while we were riding. It's sort of hard to tell from the echoes where exactly the shooting was (I think it was actually in the opposite direction of where we were, behind our barn) but I know that makes me tense. I think it's possible that my tension about the hunters, combined with the tension I surely had from the migraine, contributed to such bad rides. 

I think this sort of sums up her feeling about our rides Friday and Saturday- she was just not that into it 









Also on Saturday, I heard from the vet with her Cushing's blood test- her ACTH rates came back a little elevated, and he suggested that we might start her on medication for that. After doing some more research, I have a few more questions for him before we definitely do so (I wrote about that here), but that also made the weekend a bummer. 

Yesterday was cool and drizzling, so we actually rode in the indoor, but we had a better day. I wanted to do some work on bending, moderating her pace, etc., so I put her back in her old bitted bridle. She felt pretty amazing in it, I have to say. She has never been a horse I would describe as "light" in the bridle, but yesterday she really was. She was very soft in the contact and responded to very light aids. At one point, we were trotting on a 20-meter circle, and one of the instructors from the barn came in to work another horse and exclaimed, "wow, she looks so good right now!" She was really using herself nicely and moving forward. Maybe we just needed a day to regroup, who knows. 

(PS- I checked and we do have Sunday hunting in NH.)

After we rode, I helped the BM with a visit from a Girl Scout troop. They were adorable 7 and 8 year olds. I was at the grooming station, teaching them about brushes and horse body language. I used Izzy for my station, and she was very nice. She loves the little people. She stood for about an hour while they brushed her and braided up her tail. Very cute.

Caught a couple of cute candid shots of her in the field before I rode yesterday. I love the mare with the star grazing next to Izzy in the first shot- she's the longest serving therapy horse at the barn, and I do have a secret dream of bringing her home with Izzy if/when we ever get our property set up for horses.


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## frlsgirl

Yikes, the annoyed mare ears - I'm very familiar with those as well  Curious to see what you decide regarding the possible cushing treatment.


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## egrogan

After another hectic week at work, I snuck out early yesterday afternoon to take advantage of the beautiful warm fall weather- it was about 70*F and nice warm sun.

We had none of the issues we encountered last time- no balking or refusing to go forward. She is acting a bit barn sour though. Sort of hard to explain, but even though we can ride a few different directions on our trails, there is only one access point to get to all of them. So regardless of which way we go around the fields/trails, all roads eventually lead home if that makes sense, because we have to take the same path through the woods to get home. Regardless of which loop we're on, once we are heading in the general direction of home, she starts gawking in that direction, which can be frustrating. I really do wish we had more options for where we can ride...

Anyway, here's some photo spam from yesterday. 

I have been using a new anatomical girth for the past month or so, but I think it's pulling the saddle forward on her shoulders. I know the shadows make it hard to tell much from this picture, but does the saddle seem too far forward here?









It was so hot, I had to braid up her mane to try to keep the sweating down!









The foliage is just so pretty everywhere you look!



















Hehe, caught with a mouthful on the way home!









We worked up a good sweat, and with her coat coming in, she was pretty sticky. So she got a full bath:









And got a little apple as a treat. This is her "apple eating face"- she always makes this face when eating them, don't know why! She looks like she's in pain!


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## gottatrot

Looks like a lovely ride in the fall foliage.

I tried an anatomical girth for Amore, and it didn't work for her.
She has a very forward, very small girth groove and it has been extremely difficult to find a saddle and girth that work for her. Although small, she is shaped like a light bulb.

In the end, I use an XW hoop tree dressage saddle and a very flat mohair girth. So the girth sits just behind her elbows but is flat enough to not interfere. That is the only way I can get a girth to go straight down from the billets. If it's not straight down, the saddle gets pulled onto her shoulders and neck.


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## phantomhorse13

From that photo it does look like the billets are shifted forward. Does the girth seat/move itself there on its own or will it allow you to move it back a couple inches? Is this still the ovation?

Have you tried the chapstick test? When your saddle in on and girthed up, take a stick of chapstick (or some other small rolly tube) and place it in the middle of the seat, allowing it to roll to find the natural balance point. That spot should be the deepest part of your seat. Here is a demo with Phin (I have been doing this a lot as I played with girths, only i use a can of blue kote because the chapstick won't roll over the seat cover):











I was taught that by our sadder fitter, and so far it's been pretty accurate in terms of if the girth would work or not.


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## egrogan

@gottatrot, I love the "shaped like a light bulb" image. Yes, I think Izzy's substantial belly is doing her no favors for having a good fit of saddle or girth.
@phantomhorse13- the "chaptstick test" is brilliant. I am going to try that tomorrow. I swear I started off with the saddle an inch or two further back (I do the thing where you put your hand under the flap, make sure it's not sitting in the point of the shoulder), but it does look like it's migrated forward in the walk from the barn out to the mounting block. I think it's her belly more than anything preventing the girth from sitting farther back where it looks like it would prefer to be.

Today I tried riding with a straight dressage girth. I'm honestly not sure it felt any better.


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## egrogan

*Going to see a new boarding barn tomorrow!*

I was planning on our "long loop" today and really looking forward to it. However, I was in for a very unpleasant surprise when we got through the woods to the corn fields and saw what had appeared overnight:









The way things work here, you are allowed to ride on open land that is not posted "no trespassing"- of course, it's always nicer to have permission from the land owner. But when we tried to find the owner of this property a couple of years ago, it was a nameless corporation with just a PO box number. There were no signs anywhere, so we went about our business, always respectful of the crops and staying off the track around if it was wet and muddy.

There seem to be a lot more hunters driving pickups in this year, so I would like to believe that I'm not the one who ruined things for everyone else- but I guess I'll never know. Regardless of the reason, we turned around and went home.

Without being able to ride here, I'm basically stuck in the indoor or riding around the turnout fields of our property. Next year, the barn's neighbor is selling his land to a developer who is turning it all into a retirement/assisted living community (hard to swallow that news when we got it 6 months ago), so I'll also lose all access to their hayfields and woods (which they've generously allowed us to ride on all these years).

Knowing that the neighbors' land is being developed, I had been casually looking around for new barns that I might check out next spring. I had been playing phone tag a bit with a BO that's actually a bit closer to my house, where a couple people I know board (including one of the vets from my vet's practice). I don't think it's as "fancy" a facility as where I am now, but people seem happy there.

I texted with the BO today as soon as I got home from my dismaying discovery, and she got back to me right away. She said she has two options- an inside stall and a shedrow "stall" that is generally open 24/7 but can be closed up in bad weather. I'm going tomorrow to meet her and take a look.

It's really nerve-wracking to think about actually moving Izzy. She's been at our current barn for 6 years now, and I've never had her anywhere else (we've never even stayed over somewhere else as we don't show and don't have a trailer). I am generally satisfied with the care she gets now. She's not a hard keeper, but she does get grain soaked and a couple of supplements added. She is blanketed during the winter. She has a good herd around her and all the horses get along great. So the thought of losing all those positives is scary. Also, I just think about how long it took me to get her acclimated to the areas we ride- and I can't tell if I'm excited or terrified at the prospect of having to do that all over again with a new trail system. And finally, she's 22- is it going to be hard on her to move her?

So all that said, I've got my list of questions to ask when I go to this new barn to check it out tomorrow. I am cautiously optimistic that it will be a good thing- and sounds like I could probably move her as soon as I wanted. That too is both scary and exciting. So I don't know, lots to think about...I am so bad with change!!


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## phantomhorse13

Oh NO to that sign!! With it being the time of year it is, I would be just about sure the issue is hunters and not you. But super frustrating to not be able to use the trails. Is it worth trying to track the owner down again while you make up your mind about barns? Obviously someone local is involved, as that sign appeared. Do you know what farmer uses the fields? That might be easier to find out and you can get info on the owner from there (or potentially permission from the farmer, since s/he is leasing the land).

The thought of moving barns is scary.. but not having trail access to me would be a pretty big deal-breaker. I hope you find a solution.


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## frlsgirl

I've moved poor Ana 3 times already; she's adjusted well each time. Hopefully the new barn will be a good solution for you.


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## egrogan

Thanks for understanding @*phantomhorse13* . It is definitely frustrating, though truth be told I knew I was going to need to eventually look for another option in the next year, when the neighbors' property goes under development. So this is just forcing a decision a little sooner.

So yesterday I did go check out the potential new boarding barn. I got a really great vibe from the BO/BM (she's one in the same). She spent an hour and half walking me around the property and answering all my questions. It was a drizzly, gloomy day, but all the horses were turned out and looked toasty in their blankets. They were a friendly bunch and came up to the fence to "talk" to the BO as she walked by their paddocks, which I took as a good sign. There are 25 horses total there, about twice the size of where I am now. The facility is not as picturesque as where I board now, but I got the sense that the professionalism of care there is better than my current barn. Like with anything, there are certainly pros and cons:

*Cons:
*1. I don't think the trail access at this place will be much better than my current barn. They have a 100 acre property with a short groomed trail system cut through the woods. Being creative with multiple loops, sounds like at maximum, I'll be able to do ~3-4 miles at a time, same as what I currently do.They are on quiet back roads, so there is some opportunity to ride on dirt roads for many miles, but the road have more houses than the roads I currently ride on, so makes me a little nervous about dogs running loose, ATVs, etc. BO is an eventer, so she has a gallop track on the property, which sounds fun and different  But still not the same as riding off with limitless trails.
2. The horses are turned out alone, not in a herd situation. Their paddocks all abut at least 2 other horses, so they are always in contact with others. But they don't go out together physically.
3. Because of the location of the barn, it may be a little harder to get to during bad winter weather.

*Pros:
*1. On-site BO/BM, who has about 40 years of professional horse experience, running breeding facilities, show barns, and her own boarding barn for the past 15 years.
2. BO does all feeding herself, no volunteers or part-time help (which has been a problem recently at my current barn).
3. Izzy would have a large 3 sided shed with 24/7 access to her own grass paddock. In bad weather, a front door can be added to the shed to allow it to be closed up. Right now, she is turned out about 10 hrs/day, and in a stall with a run the rest of the time. I think she would really like this 24/7 out arrangement, which is not currently an option where I am.
4. The feeding schedule is great- morning graining done around 5am, hay always in front of them, night check at 11. Right now where I am, they don't get fed/turned out until almost 8am, and the last check is around 7pm. I hate they go so long with no one there and no hay.
4a. Feeding options are totally at the discretion of the owner. She can stay with the grain she gets now, BO has no problem with soaking or adding supplements. She has no problem monitoring weight over the winter and will add alfalfa pellets (soaked) if and when needed.
5. Blanketing, fly masks, fly spray included
6. Can keep current vet, farrier, chiro if I want. One of my vet's partners in his practice boards her horse at this place, so it is possible I would use her since she's always there. I am not sure my farrier and chiro will be willing to come here, since they are coming from the other side of the state and this barn is about 30 min further for them where I am now. But there are multiple options for both farrier and chiro at the new barn and I could get in on barn days, rather than being the only one having to pay the whole farm call as I do now.
7. Large outdoor arena with great footing (no outdoor where I currently am), roundpen (doesn't exist where I currently am, though not really my thing so not sure this makes much difference), and somewhat small indoor with great footing (footing where I am now is terrible, though I don't use it much). The outdoor arena may be a benefit since there won't be miles and miles of trails.
8. I realize this sounds somewhat morbid, but we did discuss what would happen if Izzy had to be put down while there. Given her age, it's important to me to know there's a plan, and there is. There is a burial ground that includes some former boarders and some of the BOs own, and the neighbor has an excavator.
9. Boarders are all adults, and they are a mix of folks with horses in full training for the East Coast dressage circuit, and happy hackers like me. BO said all the right things about running a "no drama" barn, but I suppose it's hard to know how true that is until you're really there. I reached out to an acquaintance of mine who used to keep her horse where I am now, and has had him at this potential new barn for the past 3 years. I'm interested in her opinion on this as she's very low key.
10. Board would be $75/month cheaper which is nice.

BO is going to be back in touch by the end of next week to let me know if she definitely has an opening- a current boarder is deciding on whether she will get a 2nd horse or not, and that will determine if there is a space. Even if it doesn't work out for Nov, I'll get on a waiting list for this spring. I'm leaning towards making the move, but it does feel like a really big decision. What am I not thinking about that should be a consideration?


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## frlsgirl

Since BO does everything herself; what is her contingency plan for when she gets sick or goes on vacation?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Since BO does everything herself; what is her contingency plan for when she gets sick or goes on vacation?


Her mother and daughter also live on site and help when she's not there, which she said is rare since she has several horses in for full training all year. She does have working students in to help clean stalls/paddocks, just not feed (her mother would feed when she's gone). She said she typically doesn't go away for more than a week a year.

But good question.


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## frlsgirl

Ana was in one of those paddock with loafing shed set-ups; my only problem was that the poop really piled up in there and it seemed like they only cleaned it once or twice a year so Ana was standing in her own crap. Will they be cleaning the shed daily, weekly, monthly? Do they throw shavings or straw in there?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Ana was in one of those paddock with loafing shed set-ups; my only problem was that the poop really piled up in there and it seemed like they only cleaned it once or twice a year so Ana was standing in her own crap. Will they be cleaning the shed daily, weekly, monthly? Do they throw shavings or straw in there?


Daily cleaning, bedded with shavings.


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## phantomhorse13

Did you ask about their vaccination protocol? I don't know what/how much you normally do, but I would see how it meshes with their plan. Some barns insist all horses get the same protocol (esp if there are horses in and out for shows and training a lot). 

What type of tack room is there? Will you have a tack locker? Are you able to lock that space? 

If the BO is a trainer, does she also give lessons? Does she allow others to use the ring if she is teaching or training?


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## egrogan

We did discuss all these questions.



phantomhorse13 said:


> Did you ask about their vaccination protocol? I don't know what/how much you normally do, but I would see how it meshes with their plan. Some barns insist all horses get the same protocol (esp if there are horses in and out for shows and training a lot).


She does not require all horses to be on the same protocol. I would continue what I've been doing- the "core vaccinations for New England" (Tetanus, Eastern/Western Equine Encephalitis, West Nile, and Rabies).



phantomhorse13 said:


> What type of tack room is there? Will you have a tack locker? Are you able to lock that space?


There is a locked tack room. There are currently no individual lockers (though there was mention of that coming the future), but everyone has their own very neatly organized space for saddle, bridle, grooming, and bathing supplies. This is the same as my current set-up. Tack trunks are optional and can be locked. 

There's a separate storage area for blankets- though I was a little concerned about where wet blankets would hang to dry out if they were swapped on really nasty days for dry ones. That's a question I forgot to ask, particularly if Izzy was always outside and they couldn't hang in front of her stall in a barn.



phantomhorse13 said:


> If the BO is a trainer, does she also give lessons? Does she allow others to use the ring if she is teaching or training?


She does give lessons, and she does allow others to ride in the ring while she's in there. Her direct quote: "If you can't handle other people riding during your lesson, you don't belong on a horse"  She has a lesson board with all times posted outside the ring, so you can make a decision about whether to avoid or join in. She did note the exception would be if there is a clinic on site, then the clinician would get the ring.


I heard back from the person I know who is currently boarding there (she also lives down the road from the barn). She said:_
"There are a lot of people that go out on the trails. My favorite is a cute older lady with a little Morgan horse. The roads I grew up riding on. They are a little narrow, but they go 20-30 miles depending upon the loops you take. I'd be willing to drive them with you to show you around, but [my horse] isn't very good with cars so I tend to stay on the farm with him. I'll check out the woods trails with you too, I haven't had a buddy and I like having a trail buddy."_

Sounds promising!


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## frlsgirl

I might have missed this - is there a bathroom?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I might have missed this - is there a bathroom?


No- and this should have been on my con list. There's a port-a-john (and I am shuddering at the thought of going in there in freezing weather).

There is a viewing area with a kitchenette (sink included). There are also two hot/cold water wash stalls. But apparently the septic system would have been a huge expense.


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## frlsgirl

Yikes @egrogan - yeah that's a big "con" item for me too, but, if you're not planning on spending a lot of time out there, maybe it's worth it? Is there a gas station close by where you could stop on your way to go to the bathroom?


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## Bondre

I'm sorry to hear about your loss of trails near the barn. The new barn sounds very promising but it certainly is a big upheaval for you both. Still, you're obviously thinking everything through very thoroughly and I'm sure you'll make a good decision. If you decide to change, which is looking probable from the vibes you're giving here, then you may well be surprised by Izzy rising to the challenge of a new area with enthusiasm. She is an old pro on the trails by now.


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## gottatrot

LOL, I've never had my horses in a barn that had a bathroom. However, it doesn't get so cold here and there are lots of woods around. Several weeks ago I popped over a sand dune onto the beach and surprised a woman who had gone up there to hide behind a bush. Oops, she didn't account for a fast moving horse coming up over the dune behind her. She sure pulled her pants up quick!


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## egrogan

Alright, the moment of truth is here. Just got a text that there is a spot for Izzy at the new place. My gut says to take it. I'm having a tough time deciding, but I think it's right.


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## carshon

I say take it. Talk to the BO where you are at and ask if they know more about the trail situation. You have really enjoyed your trail time and to me that would be a BIG no for staying if access were cut off.


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## phantomhorse13

Listen to your gut. The place may not have an opening in 6 months when they start that development.


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## frlsgirl

Yes, if in doubt consult your gut 

And post pictures of the new place if you decide to make the move.


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone!! I confirmed the spot with the BO when I had some time at lunch, and felt really good  

I think this will be an exciting next chapter with Izzy! I still need to work out schedule issues, but am expecting to go the first week of November. I'm sure I'll have lots of questions between now and then!

Now the not so fun task of telling folks at my current barn...they've been so good to us, so it will be really hard. But it's really not about them, it's about the riding space, and they already know I'm worried about that...


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## carshon

I think they will understand. Not all riders that board are happy with arena work only. Time for a new adventure!


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## egrogan

I am so relieved! Talked to my current BO today, and she was extremely understanding. In fact, she said when we talk about the trails being cut off last week, she knew this was coming. I'm so glad there are no hurt feelings!


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## egrogan

Had a really nice ride with Izzy last night. I realized the other day that she doesn't seem to understand what being asked to sidepass means. I was trying to line her up to grab a branch to move out of our way, and she seemed really confused about "sideways"- she kept wanting to go forward or pivot away from the leg pressure. When I corrected her, she got really frustrated- pinning ears, wringing tail, tossing her head. It was very interesting, it's the first time I've worked with a horse where their "disrespect" is so clearly related to not understanding. She was trying everything she knew to try, but still getting corrected- it didn't make sense to her and it was frustrating.

I'm not sure how I haven't noticed this before now, but I guess it's just something I haven't really ever had to ask for before. So I set up some ground poles in the arena and set about trying to get her to understand what I asked for. I'm still confused about how she knows how to turn on the fore/turn on the haunches, but not just move sideways with pressure. Isn't sidepassing usually introducing to a horse early on? She definitely tries to turn on the haunches when I give her a light vibrating pressure along her barrel and open up the opposite leg/rein to ask her to step over. But I made a big deal when she thought to try a couple of steps of crossing over away from my leg. After we worked on that and moved on, she offered up such a lovely trot- particularly notable since we were working on this in the indoor, her least favorite place to work.

Right as we started our ride, a big fleet of trucks showed up at the across-the-street neighbor's property. They were there to drill a new well (right in the middle of the field where we ride ). It was quite a ruckus. But turned into a nice opportunity to face something "scary"- we rode out of the arena to cool out, and she kept wanting to dart out from under me every time the well-drill hit. So we did lots of big circles and loops until she was less on edge. I've realized something else about her recently- she does not like if I "leave her" when she is worried. What I mean is that, if I try to bring down her stress by doing things we think of as "human relaxation," like dropping my feet out of stirrups and really loosening up the reins/hold reins in one hand, that actually makes her _more _worried and tense. I wonder if she sees this as me "giving away" responsibility for both of us to her, and she then feels she has to stay on alert for both of us. Her tension is notably different (lessened) if I just stay fully settled in the saddle/stirrups and keep both hands on the reins in riding position.

All this commotion across the street just reaffirmed that I've made the right choice about moving. I'm so sad that the development is happening though. Took a few pretty shots as Izzy was handgrazing after our ride- that beautiful old barn in the background is going to be torn down and a senior rehab center built in its place.


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## frlsgirl

I agree; in my experience, horses want to know that you are there so if you can keep going quietly without throwing anything away and without holding on either, it's much easier for the horse to settle down. Natasha Althoff always says to make them do something difficult so that you are re-channeling that nervous energy into something productive.

Love the fall colors; everything is still looking pretty bland in Oklahoma.


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## egrogan

_Beautiful day for a ride, let's get to it!









_It was almost 75*F at lunch, a heat wave if you're a wooly mammoth. I was proud of Izzy, we rode in the neighbor's lower hay field, and even though you could hear the well drilling equipment in the woods behind the upper field, she really only glanced that way once. We kept things pretty easy as she was really breathing hard while trotting- her coat is too thick for sustained hard work in these temps.

To cool down a little, we took a short stroll down the road:


















I just never get sick of how beautiful it is this time of year:









When we got back to the barn, we stopped in the arena a little to work again on sidepassing. She really doesn't seem to get it at all (which makes me question if I am asking correctly? I actually went and watched a couple of videos to be sure I was asking the way I thought I should be asking, and this sums up what I was doing: 



) 
She did a lot of rocking forward and backward, thinking I was asking for "back"- but when we lined up so her nose was very close to the fence, she did seem to get the idea that she should go sideways- we actually took a few solid steps to the right side. To the left though, she just really couldn't or wouldn't do it. Perplexing.

We also did a few fun turn-on-the-fore activities, trying to get her to pivot around cones and buckets. She was able to do about 180* of a pivot around the bucket, but then wanted to step forward to finish the circle. So more fun things to work on.


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## carshon

When I worked with my gelding on side passing I worked from the ground first using a dressage whip. Tap tap tap to get him to disengage the hind quarter, then same for the shoulders. Once we could do it from the ground I worked with him from his back still using the tapping method - once we got that solid from the saddle I removed the dressage whip and used my legs to tap and used my inside rein to stop forward movement and outside rein to tilt nose the direction I wanted to go. I rewarded every teeny tiney step.

My gelding caught on pretty quickly and we could sidepass within a few training sessions. He never became really fast sidepassing (Ala Clinton Anderson) but was proficient enough to get us out of any issues on the trail.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon- that's solid advice. I do think you're right that I may need to go to the ground first since I think she really is confused.


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## frlsgirl

Yes we did something similar; Ana already sort of knew how to move away from the leg but didn't really know about moving side ways. So we trained with a Dressage whip from the ground except that we turned the whip around and used the handle part to apply pressure where the leg would be. You can also use your body language to let her know what you want; most of the time Ana reads my body language and and yields the quarters; to get an actual leg yield, the horse has to bend at the rib cage which is easier when you're sitting on your horse because you also have to control the outside shoulder from getting too far ahead; it should be straight stride, over stride, straight stride, over stride, and so on. I've seen people do this from the ground but I have never been organized enough to pull it off.


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## egrogan

Just put together the final detail for our move, so it's now official. I found someone who can trailer her for me (harder than I thought it would be- I was getting a little nervous!), so we'll be making the move the morning of Saturday, Nov 12th. Both barns are being amazing about board, each is willing to prorate it. I'm still sad that it's happening, but it's the right decision.

Have been taking little rides around the farm in the late afternoon. We're both a little bored  I guess I should be careful what I wish for though, I hope I don't end up with a fire-breathing dragon with the change of scenery!!

This week really feels like fall- cool and a brisk wind keeping temps in the 40*s. Looks cold here!!









Caught this funny shot of her playing hide-n-seek behind the boss mare when I went to grab her from the field the other day:


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## frlsgirl

That's good news! Moving can be so stressful so it helps to have all the details worked out ahead of time. Looks like she's already getting her winter fuzzies? Fall is making a late appearance in Oklahoma so Ana hasn't devoted much effort to growing her winter coat.


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## carshon

It is sad to have to move - and unfortunately with the development near your current barn more people may also decide to move. And being hospitable about you moving is a credit to your current BO- no one knows what the future holds so you may meet up again


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## egrogan

@*frlsgirl* - yes, she is definitely fully enveloped in her winter fuzzies. It seemed like it happened almost overnight. She's super fluffy already though.

It was downright cold here when I rode this morning- about 30*F. Izzy was feeling F-R-E-S-H. We warmed up in the indoor, and she snorted at every single thing we passed. It was like every stride was...trot, snort, snort, trot, trot, snort. She was being so silly. Then we went out to hack around the property, and she about flew out of her skin when we passed a plastic kiddie pool leaning up against the side of an outdoor shed. Where it has been leaning for the past month. And never eaten her any of the times we've passed it  After a lot more snorting and snuffing, we managed some semblance of a relaxed walk through the field. Although she did spend most of the time on high alert, as you can see here:









I had two observations today:
1. I'm going to have to get used to mounting from a mounting block again when we move. I currently board at a facility that's primarily used for therapeutic riding, so there are two large ramps for wheelchair mounting which put you at back-level with your horse. I always use those to get on. But I completely forgot it's not normal for every barn to have this set-up! So we practiced getting on with a block today. She stood stock still- good girl- but the saddle did definitely pull to the left. I will need to work on being more graceful. And probably lose a little weight, honestly.

2. One totally unexpected benefit of bitless bridles is that there is no warming up a frozen piece of metal for your horse's mouth during the winter


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## knightrider

Since your very first entry in your journal, I have followed your progress. Reading about riding around the well drilling, I was struck by how far you have come with her. You go Girl! Good job on you!


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## egrogan

Thanks @knightrider, that really means a lot! I'm lucky to have such a great horse to learn with


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## egrogan

Good morning everyone!









Not much going on with Izzy. I was at the barn early this morning to meet the vet to pull blood for her Coggins. Our move date is 10 days away, exciting.

I've spent a little time on the ground working on the sidepassing. She is finally catching on! When I line her up with her nose at the wall, she understands that a "tap tap" behind her shoulder means she should cross her front legs over away, same with towards her hip. She still has a tendency to want to go backwards away from pressure, rather than sideways, but we're working on it slowly and I'm trying to make a big deal when she goes sideways. We still can't do it when she's out away from the wall, but it's something to work on.

One potentially worrying thing I'm keeping my eye on. Isabel has been oddly but very clearly defensive about having her feet picked out. She has no heat in any of her feet or legs, no obvious abscesses brewing, nothing that I can see. But when I go to pick the hoofpick out of my grooming box, she shoots her head up and back, pins her ears tight, scrunches up her back, and generally just grimaces, like she's expecting something that really hurts to happen. I've seen this from her the past week. The barn staff do pick feet when they bring the horses in for the night, so I'm not sure if someone was rough with her? Or if there really is something going on in her feet that I just can't see? Anyway, like I said, I'll keep watching it. I'll also get her on the list for a trim with the barn's farrier as soon as I get there, and we'll explore whether there is a better trim for her, which I suspect there is.


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## carshon

Keep up with the tapping - it took my geling a bit to do it away from the fence. once we mastered the fence and away from the fence I used the tap from the saddle with the crop and then eventually my leg.

Is it possible they are rough with her legs. It is hard to hurt the bottom of the hoof unless you pick at the frog sulcus. But fall pastures can be very rich.


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## egrogan

Moving day is fast approaching- just three more days!

Went for a quiet ride yesterday on an unseasonably warm day. I got a little emotional riding around these fields for what may be the last time..I have a hectic end of the week, and weather won't be great, so not sure if we'll get out again...


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## carshon

Thinking of you and missing your posts. Moving will be hard. But think of the new adventures you will have! So glad you got to get out again before moving day


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## gottatrot

I am waiting in anticipation to hear about your move and the new trails. It can be very exciting to move to a new barn.


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, me too. Can't wait to see the pics of your new barn and surroundings. Have fun!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the nice notes everyone. I will certainly give you the update!

_Someone _does not seem to care about staying neat and tidy between now and the move:









I just got a nice text from the new BO confirming our time on Saturday morning and saying they were all set for Izzy to arrive. But in her text, she also said: "Just wanted to see if you have any worries about moving her close to winter." Hmmm...Weird? At first I thought to myself, "why would I be worried, it's not like she's coming up from Florida, she's lived in Vermont and New Hampshire for the past two decades." But then I had a momentary freak out wondering whether I _should _be worried about something??? I can't think of what. 

I do have a few lingering worries related to trailering, just since I've never actually had to move her with one. Do you all have opinions on these things:
1. She has a padded leather halter- is this safe for trailer tying, or do I need to go get a cheap nylon one with leather breakaway crown?
2. I wasn't planning on wraps or shipping boots, but am second guessing myself. I have no reason to believe she'll be restless in the trailer, and the whole ride should take no more than 30 minutes tops. But since I don't know how she'll behave, would you go with some leg protection? If so, just plain polos? Full on shipping boots? I don't want to look too high maintenance when we arrive, but also want to be safe.
3. Fly mask on? Her eyes are pretty sensitive to dust.
4. It will be a cool day, probably in the 30s. Was just going to throw a fleece cooler on her. Again, I don't know if she'll worry and get sweaty, but if so I don't think it would help to have a blanket on her. As long as I put the belly straps on the cooler, it should be safe enough, right?

Thanks for helping this trailering novice out with advice!!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Do you all have opinions on these things:
> 1. She has a padded leather halter- is this safe for trailer tying, or do I need to go get a cheap nylon one with leather breakaway crown?
> 2. I wasn't planning on wraps or shipping boots, but am second guessing myself. I have no reason to believe she'll be restless in the trailer, and the whole ride should take no more than 30 minutes tops. But since I don't know how she'll behave, would you go with some leg protection? If so, just plain polos? Full on shipping boots? I don't want to look too high maintenance when we arrive, but also want to be safe.
> 3. Fly mask on? Her eyes are pretty sensitive to dust.
> 4. It will be a cool day, probably in the 30s. Was just going to throw a fleece cooler on her. Again, I don't know if she'll worry and get sweaty, but if so I don't think it would help to have a blanket on her. As long as I put the belly straps on the cooler, it should be safe enough, right?


The only one of ours we tie in the trailer at all is Phin, and that is because he tries to turn around in the stall (and is small enough that I am afraid he might succeed!). I just use his plain old nylon halter to tie him with. The trailer tie I use has a very thin metal snap on the horse end, so I think it would break in the case of an accident before leather would.

We don't use any leg protection. *knock wood* so far we have never been sorry for that choice.

We always use fly masks. There are always bits of hay and sawdust floating around that I do not want getting into eyes.

Is she normally blanketed? If so, then I don't think a cooler is a bad idea. If she is used to being naked and your trailer is totally enclosed, I would not put anything on her as solid trailers tend to hold their body heat well.


I think you are going to worry a lot more during the 30 minute drive than she is! Can't wait for pics o the new place.


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## carshon

Agree with Phantom on all points. Our horses wear fly masks while in the trailer. Since she does not trailer a lot you may not be able to load her with the mask on. Go ahead and put it on once she is in the trailer. 

We generally drive an hour or slightly more each time we trailer and do not use leg protection. We have a slant load trailer but do tie all of our horses and use a "clip" or a trailer tie that will unsnap if the horse struggles.

Don't over think this. She will do just fine - the more nervous you are the more nervous she will be.

And I like that the new BO reached out to you. This is a good thing! Just try to relax


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## Tazzie

We haul with a fly mask. I normally only haul with leg protection after a bath to keep her legs clean, or if we're hauling more than 1-2 hours. I agree with Phantom on the blanketing points.

I always haul in a leather halter and hooked onto the trailer tie. All are designed to break if they need to be. She is in a slant load trailer.

Good luck on the move!! I can't wait to see pictures


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I think you are going to worry a lot more during the 30 minute drive than she is! Can't wait for pics o the new place.


Now what ever would give you that impression? :wink:

Seriously though, I would say it's just excited energy more than worry. I am just so excited to get there!

Thanks for all the tips. re: blankets; she does have a sheet right now when it's below freezing. Her coat is already thick, but she is used to the blanket. I think I'll just throw the thin cooler on her and leave it at that.


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## PoptartShop

Aww I'm glad you did get a nice ride in before the move. Beautiful shots!  Excited to see pictures of the place & area! Fly mask will work fine with the leather halter as well. 
Be safe hauling on the move!!!


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## frlsgirl

Yes on fly mask; no on blanket, shipping boots. Maybe on special halter. I recently invested in a fly mask for Ana because I was told that debris can fly into the trailer and injure their eyes; so you're not using it as fly mask; you're using it as eye protection. She might get warm in the trailer especially if she's stressed; shipping boots and wraps are more trouble then their worth.


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## egrogan

What an exciting day we've had!! I'm going to tell you all about it in pictures, I think that will be easiest.

So, we got to the barn at 8am to get ready for our ride. Izzy enjoyed one last hand graze with the treat man while I loaded all her stuff into our truck before the trailer arrived.









She loaded on the trailer like an old pro. She hesitated once... 









then put her front feet in but asked politely to take a minute to think about it...









...then she jumped right in...









The whole loading process took maybe 5 minutes. The woman who hauled for us was great, made everything stress free.









Our ride took about 40 minutes (I sent us down a wrong turn, oops). When we got there, we put Izzy in a round pen right in the middle of the property to check things out while we unloaded all her stuff and the BO showed us where to put everything. 

About 30 minutes after we got there, we moved her to her daytime turnout paddock. It's all the way at the back of the property, and a _huge_ space for just one horse. She immediately settled in, and I was grinning from ear to ear at how well the morning had gone.


















I left her looking happy while I went to run to the grocery store and home for lunch before coming back in the afternoon...


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## egrogan

...Got back after lunch. The BO said, "Well she's a social one, huh?" which of course I knew! She was very interested in all the horses around her. Her paddock is right across from the (gorgeous) outdoor arena (you can see it and its very fancy rubber footing behind the treat man).









I decided to take her out for a walk around to let her graze and look. Ready to explore!









The famous 6 toed barn cat joined us









We walked/handgrazed for 20 minutes or so, she did well. She was very interested in everything going on around her, as were the other horses. I am so pleased at what a low key, happy, inquisitive bunch of horses are all around. A testament to the BO!

So, after our walk, I returned her to the paddock. That's where things went downhill. It got busier around 1pm, with lots of boarders showing up to ride. Someone was schooling in the outdoor as we got back to the paddock, and then left the ring to ride the trail. Izzy was VERY alarmed that a horse was swallowed up by the woods:





She kept this up for a good 30 minutes:





Its sort of hard to tell, but she ended up DRENCHED in sweat. Absolutely wet and washy all over. She finally rolled a couple of times:










And wait...what's that...









Oh thank god, another horse came into the arena. So she calmed right down and decided to eat, finally:









I took advantage of this moment of having a quiet mind to bring her back in to the barn to towel her off and put her blanket on. There were a couple of other boarders and horses in there, and she settled right down, even cocked a hind leg at one point and stood quietly while another boarder loved on her a bit. So that was good.

BO had me leave her in the roundpen again so she'd be closer to other horses for the rest of the day. She was still a little worried:









Pretty nice trot though 









I felt like I was an awful parent leaving my reluctant kid at camp while I finally left for home around 3:30:









But...we survived day 1. We'll see what tomorrow holds!!


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## Tazzie

Yay! I'm glad the move went smoothly! I'm sure she will settle in


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## phantomhorse13

The new place looks lovely! I am sure she will settle in. 

Very exciting to have woods to disappear into.


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## egrogan

I arrived at the barn around 9am this morning and found a happy, relaxed horse:









BO said she settled in well last night. When she moved to her night paddock & shed, she trotted around a bit and continued calling for other horses, but she eventually got interested in her hay. She ate up all her hard feed last night and this morning, drank well, pooped pretty normally. She was comfortable enough to lay down to sleep. BO said she surprised her with the 11pm night check.  That's honestly one of my favorite things about the new barn- at the old one, the last night check was at 6 or 7pm, and then the horses went all night until 7am the next day. Luckily nothing bad ever happened, but not ideal.

I was glad to see she was looking so settled, as I really wanted to ride today. She was still a bit nervous when I brought her into the barn to groom and tack up. She went back to snorting and blowing and calling for the other horses. It seems like being out of sight of other horses is going to be the hardest thing for her to get comfortable with during the transition. It was never really a problem for her before, so I'm sure she'll get over it.

I had planned on using the indoor, but there was a crew there hanging new side doors, and I didn't think that was the best setup for her first time in there. Instead, I decided we'd use the outdoor, and thought she'd be good out there because there are horses all around it. She stood perfectly at the mounting block, and then we were off:








(That's her turnout paddock that we're riding towards).

She was very relaxed, enough that I was able to mostly ride her on the buckle to warm up. I kept it short because she was riding so nicely, maybe just 20 minutes of walk/trot. I _love_ having an outdoor that's not fenced so it's easy to just head out to the rest of the property. We decided to explore the grounds a little, which she was fine with:


















We even rode around the indoor, past where the 3 guys were working with saws and drills to hang the new doors. She gave them a bit of a sideways glance, but a little leg and a "walk on please" were all she needed to go past. 

I didn't ask her to do anything else "scary," like ride away from where she could see any horses, but that will come over the next few days. 

So far, so good!


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## Bondre

That sounds like a good beginning! Poor Isabel getting so scared over the vanishing horse. She gave herself a pretty good workout. 

I think she looks amazingly relaxed and confident considering that she's just moved barns. And the surroundings are lovely at the new place.


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## gottatrot

She seems like she's settling in very well! It seems very natural to care more about being near the herd in a brand new environment. She doesn't know the place, so all she knows is that she can watch the signals of the other horses to see if they are scared or worried.


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## egrogan

Don't you hate when the weekend ends?! I was so bummed to only have about 45 minutes to scoot to the barn and say hi to Izzy this morning.

Still looking like a happy horse this morning:











gottatrot said:


> She seems like she's settling in very well! It seems very natural to care more about being near the herd in a brand new environment. She doesn't know the place, so all she knows is that she can watch the signals of the other horses to see if they are scared or worried.


Exactly! All the other horses are so relaxed though, no one calls back to her or gets riled up by her antics- they just stare at her like "what's _your _problem?"

In fact, BO has decided to move her one paddock over from where she was this weekend. Since she was on the end, when her immediate neighbor was taken out to ride yesterday, BO said she was still really fussy and worked up about not being with any other horses. She thought it would be better to put her in between at least two neighbors so when one's out, she still has another. We'll see how she adapts to this single horse turnout setup- that's the one thing I don't love about this barn. I get the sense that most of the owners there care more than I do about scrapes and bite marks when horses have group turnout, so it's not something that's typically done (also, most seem to be shod all the way around, so I do understand keeping everyone separate when that's the case). However, her immediate neighbor had occasionally been out with other mares, so it may be an option down the road if she's really stressing about being alone. She was nice and dry under her blanket today, so she couldn't have been too worried for the rest of the day/evening yesterday.

She was much calmer when I brought her into the barn alone today. She only called out once and then stood quietly on the crossties for grooming.

We investigated the indoor for a few minutes, which was a non-event for her. Having been at a therapeutic riding barn so long, with so many props and a constantly changing setup has made her pretty desensitized to anything you're going to see in an indoor.

She admired herself in the mirror for awhile:









And checked out some of the new sights:









Then we headed down the driveway for a walk. 








I let her graze and sniff along the way. We walked all the way down to the road and left the property. She didn't freak out leaving the horses behind, which was great. I think next ride, probably on Wednesday or Thursday, we'll head out down the road a bit to explore.

Random question- what is this weird little stool? 








The top, padded part moves back and forth, left to right, but doesn't spin. I have no idea what it is, but it is sitting under my saddle rack, and there's another one under the saddle next to mine.


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## Drifting

I need one of those balls in the corner  

Looks like a nice place!


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## egrogan

Drifting said:


> I need one of those balls in the corner
> 
> Looks like a nice place!


Apparently about 6 months ago, one of the boarders got really into "horse soccer" and now there are occasional matches. I have yet to see it in action, but sounds fun 

If you want to start one at your barn, here's more info! Horse Soccer: It?s For Real | HORSE NATION


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## frlsgirl

The chair is a ballimo chair - it's supposed to help you teach balance. I'm glad the move went so well and that she's settling in well. I know that awful bad parent leaving kid at camp feeling; I hated leaving her at the venue overnight but she seemed fine with it.


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## egrogan

It was a gloomy morning, but I had time before work to get to the barn- I love that it's only 15 minutes away!

The rain stopped just as I got there, so we were able to go exploring a little.

Quick warm-up in the ring, first time with the flower hackamore on- just wanted to check that all the brakes still worked!









Then we headed for the woods:









Coming back towards the barn:









There are lots of nice straight stretches where it's going to be really fun to have a nice canter. We just walked around today, but once she's more familiar with the scenery, we'll step it up.

She did well back on the woods trail. When I felt her switch from curious to tense, we turned around. No reason to push her, I know she'll go a little farther every day if we approach it that way. 

Then we headed up to the front of the property to ride down the road a little. I thought of @bsms as it was garbage day and the cans were out 









I think at this point, she was a little confused about where we were...when I turned her back towards the barn, she kept trying to spin back around over her right shoulder, trying to drag me _away_ from the barn. I mean, maybe she just wanted to continue the ride  But I think she didn't realize we were heading for home! I guess it will take both of us some time to get our bearings.

As we were coming back up the driveway, a huge flock of turkeys joined us. I am fascinated by these big wild flocks, which are very plentiful in our area. We have a smaller flock that hangs out near our house, but this one was probably triple the size of our home flock. And I didn't even fit them all in to the picture:








I know people think they're ugly birds, but I find them beautiful. I love how much of their plumage you can see here.


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## carshon

So happy to see you on the trails again! My horse would have Wigged out at the turkeys flying about! Love the pics!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> So happy to see you on the trails again! My horse would have Wigged out at the turkeys flying about! Love the pics!


You and me both @*carshon* !!  It is so _quiet_ in the woods here. I love it. We only explored a tiny fraction of the trail today, and the roads will give us miles more. I have to ride about 0.6 miles on a paved road with a low shoulder to get to all the miles of dirt roads that I could want. We'll start working towards that now. It's supposed to be sunny and warm through the weekend, but then cool and s.n.o.w starting next week, so we'll see!

As far as the turkeys, they are so numerous around here, she's really used to them. This particular flock seems to hang out in her field around dusk (at least the first couple of evenings I was there) and she had a flock in her field at the old barn too.


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## frlsgirl

Glad it's going so well at the new barn; Ana always gets really clingy when I take her someplace; I guess horses are just like people, they need time to acclimate to new surroundings.


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## Tazzie

I'm so glad you got to hit the trails a bit today! They look like so much fun!


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like you will have plenty of places to explore!

It will be interesting to see if she will start to head for the barn once she is more familiar with the place, or if she will always have her own agenda. My mare used to have very definite opinions on where we should be going.. but it was generally not towards home. I never could figure out what her goal was.


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## egrogan

I am really loving this early morning, before work riding. It's such a wonderful way to start the day.

As I knew would happen, I think the honeymoon period has ended. She was much more difficult on our ride today. I mounted up and headed right for the woods, so maybe my fault for not starting with a warm up in the arena first. But, she was very jiggy and tense the whole way and really not happy about being asked to continue past the point we turned around yesterday. When I did finally turn around, she was dancing on her toes the whole way. I got a little confused about where the turn off for home was, and I could feel her coil up underneath me like she was reaching her boiling point. I tried to let her trot to get out some of that nervous energy, but there were lots of rocks and roots and she kept tripping since she was focused only on home. 

_Our turning around point for today:









_We only went a mile, and this is definitely not something new. It would be nice if she wasn't nervous, but I get it.

_Heading back to safety:








_
We did a little work in the arena when we got back, and then ended on a good note. 



phantomhorse13 said:


> It will be interesting to see if she will start to head for the barn once she is more familiar with the place, or if she will always have her own agenda. My mare used to have very definite opinions on where we should be going.. but it was generally not towards home. I never could figure out what her goal was.


I have never known Izzy not to want to head back to the barn...And she certainly knew where it was today! :wink: I would be fascinated to meet a horse who liked being out so much they didn't want to go back to the barn.

One good thing, her tension in the barn is gone. No more calling out or fidgeting nervously in the crossties. Here she is making goofy faces asking for a peppermint:









I left her dozing contentedly in the sun:


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## PoptartShop

So awesome you're back to the trails & settling in at the new place.  Looks beautiful & definitely a great start to the day with some nice quiet trails. 
She's soooo cute! Glad you guys are settling in just fine!


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## frlsgirl

Found this really lengthy video about the ballimo chair; sorry it's in German. If you scroll to the 57 minute mark he shows you how he uses it. His motto is "Are you still sitting or are you riding yet?" basically he's saying that you don't sit on a horse the way you would sit on a chair:


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## egrogan

Fascinating. I have never seen anything like those chairs- I also went on their website when you first gave the name of it and saw some of the ways people are using it. 

Wouldn't that be a funny first impression if I was sitting in the tack room on that thing and some of my fellow boarders walked in??


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## bsms

FWIW, Baucher's idea for teaching someone to ride started with a month of stretching exercises, to include mounting a stationary horse and doing stretching from the saddle. I don't think the horse was supposed to start moving during the first 30 days.

Sounds strange, but I suspect it would work - IF you could find someone willing to be trained that way. The US Cavalry also taught a variety of mandatory stretching exercises while riding. I sometimes put my saddle on a stand, sit in it, stretch my legs straight and then roll forward slightly. A few minutes of that in my western saddle stretches my inner thigh and changes how I sit and move in the saddle when I get on Bandit.


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## gottatrot

What is the footing in the outdoor arena...is it pea gravel? How do you like it?


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> FWIW, Baucher's idea for teaching someone to ride started with a month of stretching exercises, to include mounting a stationary horse and doing stretching from the saddle. I don't think the horse was supposed to start moving during the first 30 days.
> 
> Sounds strange, but I suspect it would work - IF you could find someone willing to be trained that way. The US Cavalry also taught a variety of mandatory stretching exercises while riding. I sometimes put my saddle on a stand, sit in it, stretch my legs straight and then roll forward slightly. A few minutes of that in my western saddle stretches my inner thigh and changes how I sit and move in the saddle when I get on Bandit.


I would personally be way too impatient to go along with that, as I imagine would most horse crazy little kids! However, we do have some therapeutic riders that we start unmounted to work on their range of motion, flexibility, etc. to be sure they can safely sit astride a horse. This isn't the greatest picture as it makes this air barrel look hugely wide, but something like this is a good way to help work on the flexibility necessary to sit on the horse if you have a rider that you worry about injuring by putting them right on.











gottatrot said:


> What is the footing in the outdoor arena...is it pea gravel? How do you like it?


Nope, it's actually recycled rubber tires. I can't say for sure what brand it is, but it looks very much like this: https://perfectrubbermulch.com/rubber-horse-arena-footing/ It is installed over sand and seem to be very comfortable and forgiving for the horses. I like it so far, though haven't done much but warm up in the arena.


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## egrogan

Hurray! We had our best ride yet today. It was hard not to be in a great mood, because it was 60*F and gloriously sunny. I was so surprised when I got to the barn around noon and I was the only person there riding- I thought it would be packed. More people did show up as I was leaving, but I have to say, I really enjoy having the place to myself, and it seems like if I get there before 1 or 2pm, I almost always will...

After talking to the BO yesterday, I learned that if we rode the length of the woods trail, it would dump us out in her backyard at the opposite end of the property from where we start. There are multiple loops and offshoots, but we stuck on what looked like the main path, and successfully rode it to the end point (we had been turning around and doubling back the past few days). The main path is only about 1.5 long, a little disappointing, but with some side loops and doubling back, we can make it a longer ride.

Isabel did great today, I was able to ride her on the buckle most of the way as she was nice and relaxed. That said, she seems to struggle a little with the big rocks that are under the leaves. I've written before that she's not very "surefooted" but I'm not sure if tripping as much as she does is normal. 










When we looped up to the main driveway by the BO's house, I decided to head out to the road for a short bit. I was hesitant to head on the roads as her feet are a little long right now and chipping up a bit, so wasn't sure that we wanted to ride on a hard surface (we are about a week off schedule with the farrier because of the move, but she's seeing the barn's farrier on Wednesday). Maybe the long feet are making the tripping worse? She was _fantastic _on the road. We passed a boat covered in blowing tarps, a chain link dog run, _a sauna shaped like a big barrel blowing smoke out of the chimney_ (seriously- I will need to get a picture of this at some point!), a kid who ran out of the house and dragged a garbage can down the driveway after opening and closing the mailbox (and told us excitedly about the sweet potatoes with marshmallows his dad was making for Thanksgiving ), and moving cars. The only thing she got nervous about and swerved to avoid was a for sale sign in someone's yard. That surprised me, as she's ridden a bunch of times past one of those tall for sale signs hanging suspended from a right angle post and never batted an eye when it blew in the wind- but for some reason, a small stationary one close to the ground was very suspicious.

Here's a much quieter portion of the road with no obstacles to navigate:









One weird thing though, she again tried to pull me away from the barn when we were riding up the driveway returning from the road. It's really strange- not sure what it's all about since she usually wants to ride towards other horses, not leave them. 

That's just a small quirk though, we'll figure it out. I just feel so lucky she's such a great horse to be handling all this transition like a champ. It's been exactly one week today and she feels just like her old steady self. Dare I say, I think she is actually happier than she was at the old barn? She comes to greet me enthusiastically at the gate when I get there, and she has a bright twinkle in her eye. She doesn't seem ****y or resentful about riding, and I've ridden her 5 out of the last 7 days, which would typically make her less than enthusiastic by now. 

I really think being outside this much is great for her. We'll have our first real test of how she's going to do with the 24/7 out set up tomorrow, as the temperatures are supposed to drop dramatically overnight, coupled with cold rain and biting winds. She has a shed overnight that will keep her dry and gives her a windbreak, and during the day she has a canopy to get under. But, she can get very chilled when she gets wet and have a hard time warming back up. I hate cold rain- when it's in the 30s but raining, I'd so much rather it just snow! I have no doubt BO will have a close eye on her and make sure they've got hay all day to stay warm.


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## egrogan

Izzy survived the downpours last night and was a little soggy this morning, but BO said she wasn't shivering or distressed. She spent most of the night in the shed but did come out periodically to "talk" to her neighbor geldings.

I'm a little disappointed about how wet she was under her new blanket though. Because she's such a weird shape, I have always struggled to find a blanket that doesn't let rain soak down her neck, chest, and shoulders. She is a relatively narrow horse, but her shoulders and barrel are surprisingly wide given her overall frame. If I buy something that fits snugly around her neck, it's way too tight across her shoulders. Some of the cuts that fit her better around her barrel and shoulders hang down off her like a nightgown and the neck slides way back towards her shoulders. I've also tried a few "high neck" options, but they haven't worked over her shoulders. So I was pretty pleased when I recently got a Schneider's "Storm Shield"- it seemed to fit her nicely all over, including neck and chest. You can see the fit pretty well here:









But after a night of heavy rain, she was wet all down her chest and back under the blanket to her shoulders. I gave her a little special attention this morning and toweled her dry before putting on her heavier weight to help her stay toasty with today's plummeting temps (will be down to the mid-20s this evening and stay close to freezing through tomorrow, though the sun returns tomorrow).









I know there are a million different opinions about the right approach to blanketing. I never really obsessed about it before. Since I've had her, she's always had a waterproof sheet that she wore until it got to be about 32*F, and then a heavyweight she wore most of the winter. But, I am not sure if that plan is going to work on wet, cold days with her new turnout situation, because she does seem to choose being out at least for portions of the night, even when wet. At the old barn, I think they would sometimes lock the in-and-outs if it was going to be rain/sleet overnight, but I don't think that was consistent so I'm not really sure how many mornings she was soaked through.

So anyway, I'm considering getting her a hood to go with the rain sheet for really nasty nights like we had last night. I can't always get out there to towel her off after weather like that, and while I know the BO would never let her stand around suffering or shaking, I also realistically don't expect her to spend 30 minutes toweling my horse when she's got 25 others to take care of. I think the hood could be a good solution on the worst rainy nights. A lot of the horses at the new barn are clipped, which I'm not used to, and so they've been bundled up, hoods included, pretty consistently even on days when I'd let Izzy go with nothing at all. Guess we'll just have to see how it goes. The BO does change and adjust blankets throughout the day, so it's not like I'll have to be out there multiple times if we do go with the hood when needed.


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## frlsgirl

I hear you on the blanket dilemma; Ana usually grows a thick winter coat from living outside but this is the first winter inside and she just has a little peach fuzz - certainly not enough to keep her warm when it gets below freezing. In your situation it does sound like you need rain protection as well as perhaps an actual winter blanket. The horses at our barn don't get turned out in the rain so I never have to worry about that but then I have a handful of Morgan explosion on my hand when I get to the barn; so I don't know what I would rather deal with; a wet and happy Morgan or a ticked off dry Morgan, lol.

That's interesting about Izzy wanting to go away from home instead of back to home; Ana did the same thing when we were at the previous barn; she would hastily leave the barn with ears forward and then when I tried to turn her around, she would put her ears back in a half-annoyed look and I had to almost kick her back to the barn; maybe Izzy is just trying to tell you that she feels comfortable and confident to do more exploring?










It sounds like overall you are really happy there though; I'm sure you'll figure out the logistical issues that come with moving barns/changing routines.


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## carshon

So happy for the Izzy updates! No help on blanketing as we go the woolly mammoth route at our house. All horses have a 15 X 15 run in shed but more often than not they are standing out in the weather at the end of their runs when it is feeding time.


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## gottatrot

Every horse is different when it comes to blankets, but I'll share a couple of experiences. I had the adjust a fit neck on one blanket, and I had the same issue. I could get it to fit better than other blankets, it seemed, but the rain came down inside the neck. For some reason I think that ability to adjust the neck creates a gap where the rain can come in. It wasn't a problem except for on the days when there was wind or driving rain, and then the moisture would get inside.

I have better luck with the Stormshield contour collar sheets. They do gap a little in the front of the chest, but that seems to not let water in. I bought one with a belly band on a whim once, and it turns out they last much longer for me. If the horses get it caught on something, it doesn't pull down and tear the surcingle strap off. That was an issue I'd have every year or two, the horses would manage to tear off a surcingle strap. 

I wasn't sure if the horses would like the belly bands or not, but it seems to keep them covered better on the really windy days. I swear, Amore is like "Get in here and wrap me up." 

StormShield® Contour Collar Classic Bellyband Turnout Sheet in Contour Collar Euro at Schneider Saddlery

I would think a hood might help with your situation, especially since you have someone to adjust blankets during the day. I've never had that luxury so always have to decide each day if the horses should have a blanket or not and how warm or wet it's going to be. I'll just let you know I've seen a couple horses that had thin manes from rubbing on their hoods. I'm not sure if that is a common issue or not.


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## egrogan

Thanks for sharing your blanket tips @*gottatrot* . I'm sort of frustrated because I got pretty bad customer service when I called Schneiders to try to figure out what style was most likely to fit before I ordered it. I started off by describing Izzy's funny shape and saying she was a Morgan, all by way of describing what she looks like so the customer service person could help. To which she answered condescendingly, "well we don't do it by _breed_, we sell blankets by _size._" And I just took a deep breath and said that of course I knew that, but was trying to figure out what cut would work on the body of a typical Morgan. So I don't know if the Dublin fit, which is what I ended up with, is really best for her, but we're going to keep it for now. The hood arrived today, and the weekend is supposed to be rainy, so we'll give it a go.

Today was farrier day. They were running a little late, so I got in an unexpected ride first thing this morning. I'm off from work the rest of the week, and today is supposed to be the best weather wise, so I was happy to get a ride in outside- looks like we may have to be in the indoor through the weekend if the wintry mix they're predicting materializes.

But today, it was bright and sunny out there! Here are her busy ears at work; we rode the trail "backwards" today (starting where we'd been ending) and she had to check it all out all over again...









When we got back to the barn, the farriers were just getting started on a couple of other boarders. It's a team of two sort of "old school" guys who come do the whole barn- out of 27 horses, about 20 are shod, so we'll see if they trim her as well as our former barefoot trimmer (the new barn is just too far for him to come to- he was traveling 90 minutes to the old barn and this new one adds 30 minutes to that trip). The guy we worked with did a little trimming on the fronts (addressing "high low" issues because her right front wants to be mildly clubby), but said the backs looked great and didn't need anything. They were very complimentary of how nicely she behaved and how strong her feet were overall. So we'll see how this all works out. It would be very convenient to be able to be part of the barn's rotation rather than having to arrange my own option- but of course it needs to work for her.

Here is her opinion of waiting in line behind a couple of geldings being shod:


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## carshon

I just love her cute face!


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## egrogan

Hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! The weather was better than expected yesterday morning, so we got out for a bit. It wasn't a pretty day, but it was dry. 

I have been trying to figure out how to ride the woods trail to one of the roads that would allow us to make a full loop off the property back to the barn. I thought I had a rough idea of where we could find a clearing, so we turned right instead of left early on the trail. This put Izzy on alert, as she's definitely already learned "The Right Way" to ride the loop. We did find the road, but unfortunately there was a single strand wire connected between two trees blocking the path. I'll have to ask the BO about this, but I assume it's to keep ATVs and such off her property, which I appreciate. Still, I'm fairly sure that I've seen another rider go back through the woods and appear up on the road, so there's got to be a solution.

With our path blocked, we had to turn around and go the way we came. This made Izzy _very _anxious. One thing that makes her very flustered is if I take us one way and then we have to turn around. I think I disappoint her by making a mistake :smile: The rest of the ride, she was a little nervous- especially when I asked her to explore a side trail and had to turn around again because a tree was down and blocking the path. She snorted to let me know I was really pushing my luck with two wrong turns in one day!

She was still a bit nervous when the uphill climb back to the barn, and launched into sort of a herky jerky trot/canter to launch us into the BOs back yard. BOs husband happened to be out back with some sort of leaf blowing equipment hooked up to his riding mower, but she was so locked in to the horses in the turnout paddocks she barely even looked in his direction.

We trotted across the yard and I used the momentum to turn away from the barn and out on to the road. She was alert but not worried anymore. She did a bit of a drunken sailor walk down the road, as she was really gawking at the houses and yards, which all happen to be on the right hand side. I tried to keep her to the left shoulder of the road, but she was going a bit crescent moon shaped, so finally I just relented and let her drift over to the right side so she could see everything from up close. She wasn't spooky or anything, just nosy :wink:

We continued farther down the road than we've gone so far...being good pedestrians as we went.









I wanted to try to investigate the connection between the woods and road from the roadside, but she was getting a little anxious again, so I figured we could do that another day when she had a more relaxed mind in case I need to ask her to bushwhack a little bit.

Love this pretty profile shot- it looks so "New England" in this picture with the stone wall and bleak early winter trees:










When we got back to the barn, another boarder that I'd met once before was there too. She saw Izzy's bridle and asked if we were endurance riders :smile: While flattered, I told her that we just went for long rambles to stretch our legs. I was thinking about something I read in @*gottatrot* 's longform essay she's shared with us. She wrote:


> _As I’d noticed before at my previous barns, most horse people were mostly interested in a) talking about horses, b) doing a little ground work or c) taking very short rides in the arena to “prepare for the show.” Not many people at the barns I’d been in went outside on actual trail rides very often_.


While everyone I've met at this barn so far is extremely nice, they seem not to know what to make of Izzy and I. Here I am with this tiny little horse (her barn nickname has quickly become "Little One"), and we ride in a dressage saddle but all this other gaudy "trail tack" and seemed to just disappear into the woods quietly after she was a wild thing the first day. Most of the boarders, as best I can tell, have really nice warmbloods or other draft crosses, and take a lot of dressage lessons with BO. Many show, but some seem to be too nervous to take their horses off property (that's not meant as a dig at all, I totally get it- just wonder why you'd put so much into perfecting arena riding if it wasn't to show it off?). Almost to a person, they've all told me how much they would like to take their horses back to the woods, but there are a host of reasons why they can't. I've mentioned that Izzy has played the role of babysitter before to introduce young or inexperienced horses to riding out, but they all just sort of laugh and say they don't know if that would work. I really don't mean that to come off as judgemental, and hope it doesn't...it just struck me as interesting that if they wanted to do something with their horses, they would be deterred. Maybe they were just being polite to me and pretending to be interested in the trails, who knows. Anyway, everyone is very nice and the horses there seem lovely and well behaved, so everyone must be doing something right! 

There is one much older woman, I think in her late 70s, who has a cute little Lippitt Morgan mare who's even tinier than Izzy. She apparently takes the same approach to riding I do (my husband chuckled and said it sounded about right that my riding ambitions were more similar to the 70 year old grandma's than the people my age), but I haven't been at the barn when she's there except for that first day when Izzy was going nuts in her new field. But, I would definitely enjoy having someone to go out with and show me the various trail options.

Oh, happily the hood seemed to fit pretty well. Depending on how much she's out grazing, I think there will still be a gap that lets water run down her chest, but I think her shoulders will be much more protected. It was drizzly overnight and this morning, so a good trial run. I'm planning to go see Izzy after lunch today and hope I find her much drier than after the last rainy night.


















It's all probably overkill to make her wear this much gear- but _*I *_sure slept better last night knowing she was bundled up!


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## egrogan

We had our most ambitious ride yet at the new barn yesterday. I decided it was finally time to ride to The Dirt Road. The Dirt Road is a narrow little road that curves through the forest, and is closed to traffic for about half the year because the towns don't maintain it over the winter. It's still open to traffic now, but probably not much longer. 

To get there, we have to ride about three quarters of a mile on paved road through a neighborhood. People in this town seem to be very fond of elaborate yard decor, so there was lots for Izzy to look at. But to her credit, all she did was look- nothing worried her. The houses have a variety of decorations and "sculptures," and no one even had their Christmas stuff up yet. We also passed a man out front with a table saw doing some woodwork, really loud dogs running and barking the length of a chain link fence, lots of boats parked in yards, and kids throwing a ball around. I've noticed that when she's taking it all in, she wants to get closer to the "scary" things rather than stay away, so as long as I let her walk to the side of the road with the interesting "stuff," she seems fine. We were passed by a lot of traffic, and I'm relieved that everyone was very polite about it and she's always fine with cars going by. We usually just stop and stand and wave to the drivers. People seem to get a kick out of seeing a horse.

When we got to The Dirt Road, she was quite relaxed, but since it is somewhat hilly, she did get a decent workout. There is a loud, bubbling creek along one side, and she was definitely interested in the sound it made. I forgot that we had never really ridden by fast moving water before- and we had to cross two little bridges with the loud water going under us. Again, she was totally fine and made no issue about continuing on. You can sort of see the creek to the right in this picture:









And this weird little "gnome cave" that someone maintains on the side of the road- she gave this a good long look but then decided it was no big deal:









The Dirt Road only really has a narrow shoulder on one side, so we had to stay on the same side of the road heading out and coming back to make sure we gave cars plenty of room to pass. Going out, her left shoulder was closest to the road, and it was no problem staying straight on the little narrow path. Coming back, with her right shoulder against the road, she was like a totally different horse. She is _so _crooked tracking right. She seemed like she truly couldn't manage staying on the shoulder, and I was actually tugging the outside rein with tons of inside leg to try to push her out there. But she kept tripping and drifting back up onto the road. She's bad tracking right in the arena too and wants to fall/drift in, but in the arena, it's just annoying. On the road, it could be really dangerous. Not sure how I'm going to deal with this problem.









While I'm loving the new barn, I have to admit I really miss the big wide open fields we used to ride on. There's really no great spot for a nice working trot, let along a good canter, where we've ridden so far at the new barn. I'm a little worried about letting her do too much on the road- even The Dirt Road is very hard packed dirt, so it doesn't feel that much different from paved road as far as the hardness. The woods trail is very rocky and full of sticks and branches down, and she's just not careful enough with her feet to really let her get going. I've heard that there's a power line trail in the opposite direction of where we went today, so that may be an option in the future if I can find it. I'm just longing for some nice grassy footing!

It may be all in my head, but after a few miles on the hard ground, I thought I felt her taking some tentative steps. She did have a little piece of gravel lodged up in one of her feet when we got back to the barn, but that didn't seem like a big deal. It may just be that she was a bit stiff yesterday because it was a colder day and she hadn't been ridden the day prior. Will just have to keep an eye on how she's holding up to it. Her chiro comes to see us in 2 weeks, and I think she'll appreciate being worked on.


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## frlsgirl

Better to be over-prepared than under-prepared 

Horses seem to be like dogs when it comes to figuring out trail paths; Ana also knew the different loops at the old barn and wanted to have say in which one we picked; our dogs are the same way; they know if we go straight from the drive way, it's going to be a long walk but if we go left or right it's just a short loop so they try to drag us across the street as soon as we exit the house.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> One thing that makes her very flustered is if I take us one way and then we have to turn around. I think I disappoint her by making a mistake :smile: The rest of the ride, she was a little nervous- especially when I asked her to explore a side trail and had to turn around again because a tree was down and blocking the path. She snorted to let me know I was really pushing my luck with two wrong turns in one day!


This part made me smile. She has a great personality! It sounds like you are having some great rides and she is being very bold already. 

I hope you will find a nice place to canter. I'm not sure if there are stretches of gravel roads, but that was a reason I used to put hoof boots on, because those were nice places to canter with the right hoof protection.


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## tinyliny

oh, I agree. X hates it when we turn around. except when he loves it. he LOVES it when it means we return to facing in the direction of home. he thinks "I won! we're going home!"


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> This part made me smile. She has a great personality! It sounds like you are having some great rides and she is being very bold already.





tinyliny said:


> oh, I agree. X hates it when we turn around. except when he loves it. he LOVES it when it means we return to facing in the direction of home. he thinks "I won! we're going home!"


If horses could roll their eyes, I feel like in these situations, she's looking back at me doing that, thinking, "if you just would listen to me dummy, we'd be home already and not lost!" The woods trail is downhill from the barn and turnout area, so the whole loop she's looking longingly up through the woods in the direction of the other horses, where she would clearly rather be. 



gottatrot said:


> I hope you will find a nice place to canter. I'm not sure if there are stretches of gravel roads, but that was a reason I used to put hoof boots on, because those were nice places to canter with the right hoof protection.


Yes, if I go a couple miles more up The Dirt Road, that end of it is gravel. I've never used hoof boots with Izzy. My only experience with them is with a former therapy horse at our old barn, and I remember struggling mightily trying to pop those things on and off. This was years ago though, my impression is that they are much better to work with now. I'm not sure how I would even get started with figuring out how to use them with Izzy, time to do some research...

*********************

So turns out my worries about Izzy feeling a little off the other day were not unfounded. I rode Monday morning, and she was still not feeling quite right behind. She got better as we went, but when we got back to the barn, BO was there and looked her over. BO has lots of experience doing rehab on eventers/dressage horses and I trust her opinions on lameness. She agreed she looked short on the left hind, and felt some muscle spasming around the hip plus a really tight hamstring. I had never felt that before, but it was amazing to feel how hard the left hamstring was compared to the right. Izzy leaned right in to the massage she got, and seemed to feel much better after. I explained how the chiro usually has to do the most adjustment around the R pelvis, and BO felt that since she's due for the chiro, maybe she's compensating by shifting more to her left, leading to the tightness there. We'll do a little massage and keep her moving until the chiro gets here in a couple of weeks. 

I took a couple of short video clips before I talked to the BO, as I wanted to be able to see what I thought I was feeling. While you can see she's a bit short on the L hind, the other thing you can see is HOLY HELL SHE IS FAT. It looks like foaling out twins is imminent any day now.




I'm so embarrassed. I knew BO's hay was a much better quality than the old barn, but I think I underestimated what that would mean! So now I have a dilemma- real winter is about to hit any day now, so do I really want to mess around with changing her feeding plan? Or do I let her go into winter knowing she's way too fat, but that winter will knock her back some? Last spring, she was way too thin, with visible ribs and a dull coat, and that's when we switched to senior feed (and soaked alfalfa cubes at that point, though she hasn't been on them since around May). Prior to that, she'd always done well with just a ration balancer and hay. If it wasn't for the time of year, we'd definitely be switching back to the RB right now. But I am hesitating because of the impending winter. What would you do?


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## carshon

I would personally cut back on her grain a little and talk to the BO about weight. She is an older mare that did not winter as well as you would have liked last year. Explain that to the BO and ask for suggestions or have her keep an eye out on her weight. 

for me personally - I prefer my oldsters a little too round than a little too thin. I have an 18 and 19 yr old now. One an easy keeper and the other not. I find it much easier to ride some extra weight off in the spring than to constantly adjust feed to keep the 18yr old at a decent weight.


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## egrogan

I think it might be problematic to cut back on this "grain" (it actually has no grain) because she's already getting the minimum recommended for her target weight (850 lbs)- she's eating 1.5 lbs morning and evening. She doesn't get any other vitamin/mineral supplements, so I'm relying on this to take care of those needs. 

That's why I think if we make a switch, it's back to a ration balancer. She used to be on this one, which was great until it wasn't... :-?

I will definitely talk to the BO though. I know she doesn't love the brand I'm using so will probably support a change for that reason alone.


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## phantomhorse13

I agree I would rather see an older horse a touch too heavy than too thin going into winter.. but _fat_ isn't good. I second @carshon 's suggestion of asking the BO to cut back slightly on her grain. Then it's simply a matter of monitoring her. Things like using a weight tape and taking pictures from the same angle weekly can help catch subtle changes before they become major issues.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> If horses could roll their eyes, I feel like in these situations, she's looking back at me doing that, thinking, "if you just would listen to me dummy, we'd be home already and not lost!"...
> 
> ...the other thing you can see is HOLY HELL SHE IS FAT. It looks like foaling out twins is imminent any day now....


Thanks for a good laugh at the start of my day! I used to try doing pattern work with Mia in the arena. I found I had to mix it up, as in almost no repetition. If we did 2 figure-8s, she'd stop, turn her head back and look at me. I swear I could hear her:

"_*Are you LOST? Do I need to buy you a map?* Are you re-living your experiences in England, when you would go around and around the round-about while your wife looked for which exit to take?_"

And Cowboy is rather rotund as well. We've decided the fat rolls on either side of the cinch keep the saddle from moving forward or back...:rofl: He'll probably stay fat until late spring, when we get better riding weather.


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## evilamc

I can't remember, does she have any type of metabolic issue? I use horsetech's highpoint ration balancer, is VERY low nsc and soy free. One little scoop of it morning and night on a hand full of wet down hay pellets is all they get!

https://horsetech.com/high-point-grass

Could be worth checking out? May have less calories but still provide the vitamins/minerals she needs.


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## frlsgirl

I agree with everyone on consulting the BO; she appears to be very knowledgeable and I bet you're not her first person to have this feed issue. Also, what @phantomhorse13 said. I'm constantly taking pictures of Ana (as you well know, lol) and try to do them from the same angle so that I can compare the "before" and "after" - there are apps you can download on your smartphone that let you do a side by side or top to bottom comparison; I like the Picture Lab app. It really helps me with keeping track of Ana's condition. She lost a lot of weight last winter but then completely filled out in the spring when we moved barns; I'm curious to see if she loses condition over the winter again now that she lives mostly inside.

Here is a pic lab example:


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> And Cowboy is rather rotund as well. We've decided the fat rolls on either side of the cinch keep the saddle from moving forward or back...:rofl: He'll probably stay fat until late spring, when we get better riding weather.


Yeah, there's "old lady chunky," which I'm used to on her. She has a pretty droopy belly and weaker back generally, but this is a new level of belly for her.



evilamc said:


> I can't remember, does she have any type of metabolic issue?


Technically, no. However, the last time I talked to the vet about PPID/Cushings blood test results (which were still in normal ranges), vet said "it's not a matter of _if _she'll have Cushings, but _when." _So, there's that...

I spoke with BO yesterday. She was immediately on board with the idea that Izzy "needs to lose some" and agrees with transitioning to a ration balancer. If it looks like she's not doing well with just the RB, BO can also add soaked timothy/alfalfa cubes, in addition to her (good) hay. The only real supplement Izzy gets now is her Cosequin and some raspberry leaves, so we're not trying to "hide" a lot of stuff in feed. 

I feel better about this. It's not the ideal time of year to change, but I think she'll be ok and this is a better plan for her. Just kicking myself for not seeing it sooner- it's so weird how sometimes you can't really "see" something everyday, it's only when you step back to look at pictures/video in comparison to another timepoint that you realize you're off track.

Anyway, thanks all for the helpful advice!


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## bsms

When Cowboy gets fat, his belly doesn't get big. He just has fat covering his ribs, etc....all over.

Izzy looks more like a hay belly, particularly if it developed after switching. Also: The Truth about Hay Bellies

I have no experience, really. I've been very lucky. Cowboy eats too much, but he's healthy as a horse (and I have NO idea why people say that...after living with horses, I'd be shaking in my boots if the doc told me I was healthy as a horse). Trooper, Bandit, Mia, Lilly - all very easy keepers.








​ 
We rely heavily on hay pellets, about half the size of your little finger. In the winter, I get them a version that has some corn mixed in for extra calories. Our hay quality is very variable and the pellets are the only consistent nutrition they get. Of course, we almost never get snow or bitter cold here. We do get a few freezing rains, but an extremely cold night here will drop just below 20 F, and that only happens 1-2 nights a year. The little pellets can be fed dry, making it very easy to feed. Our horses love 'em!


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## egrogan

This week was really hectic at work, so I haven't ridden much, unfortunately. But I had a riding date with my new elderly riding buddy. This woman is a real bada*s!! She's in her mid-80s, but still gets out to ride a few times a week. She's got an adorable little Lippitt Morgan mare, who ended up being a good partner for Izzy. Our old trail buddy was a very sweet little Appy mare, but she was really slow so we always had to deal with that. But these two today moved right out together. 

We took turns with who would lead vs. follow. Izzy was ok following at the walk, but got a little strong and hard to settle at the trot (wasn't I embarrassed when my 80-year-old partner suggested we sit the trot to rate the mares a little better and I was the one who preferred to continue posting!) 

We rode the woods, and then a little ways along the road. We had a weird experience where we could see a person up ahead near the road half crouched behind a tree, but not responding when we yelled ahead, so we decided to turn back because the situations felt off and the horses were definitely high headed and not liking it either. 

But otherwise, the horses did great as a pair, and man, this woman is a serious role model for what I hope I'm like in 50 years! She mounted right up gracefully and led us through all sorts of "get to know" you stuff in the arena before we went out-she sure surprised me when she called out, "let's canter a few laps" but off she went. We let the mares get some experience trotting side by side, playing leapfrog, etc., and they did well. Izzy still made ****y faces when Jasmine would trot up behind her, but never kicked or lashed out. She also still gives me grumpy ears when I make her ride in the back, but it's good for her!

Anyway, a couple of photos from our day:


















And just because she's cute


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## egrogan

Had a scary fall today. We hit the woods trail, and we were both feeling pretty good. Izzy was eager to canter, so I had let her go in a few places where there weren’t too many big branches or sticks. As we were going along, I was having that mental dialogue, “should I really be cantering here” since the footing was so-so and as I’ve said several times, she doesn’t take care of her feet that well. I’m not quite sure what happened, but she tripped hard, and all of a sudden I was up on her neck. For a split second, I thought I was going to be able to save my balance and get back in the saddle. I think if she had thrown her neck back up she may have helped me, but I think I made her worried hanging on her neck like I was, and she must have stopped underneath me. For what felt like an eternity, I realized I was falling. For some reason, I never got my arms out to break the fall – instead, I took the full brunt of my entire fall right on my face. That’s the first thing that hit the ground. Amazingly, given how rocky it is on this trail, I seemed to fall in some relatively soft, leaf covered mud. I have a nasty knot forming between my eyes, but I don’t think I broke my nose, and I am pretty sure I’ve avoided a concussion. My neck hurts like hell, and the top of my nose is throbbing. But there wasn’t even any blood. 


Somehow I knocked the wind out of myself, and I do remember rolling over on my back gasping and laying there for a bit. 



Thankfully, Izzy stopped with me and didn’t take off anywhere. I managed to squeak out a few “whoas” while I was laying on my back and she stood. At one point, I felt her whiskers and breath on my aching face checking out what happened  I managed to grab a rein while I was catching my breath, and she stood still. I checked her feet and legs, and she didn’t seem to have hurt herself. Luckily there are tons of stumps back there on the trail, so I managed to get back on and continue the ride. When we got back to the barn (we were about 3/4 of the way there so it was only a minute) I did take her back to the outdoor and asked her to trot & canter to make sure she was ok. She seemed fine, so I think it was just a hard trip that brought me down.


So lesson learned, no cantering back there. It may be safe for a more surefooted horse, but not for us. I’m thankful that all I have to deal with is an awkward red knot on my forehead- could have been so much worse!!


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## StephaniHren

egrogan said:


> Had a scary fall today.


Oof! Glad to hear that both of you are okay, definitely sounds a little nerve wracking!


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## gottatrot

Glad you are OK and didn't lose your horse either. 
Ugh, you are going to be sore! And bruised. It's hard to convince people sometimes that you are not in an abusive relationship when you have horses.
Those necks - I've learned they are too slim to ride upon. LOL. Hard trips are one of the most difficult things to ride. Sorry you landed on your face.

Footing is one of the hardest things to read. You have to know your horse's ability, current fitness level, current hoof trimming status or footwear, and more. Then add to that the nature of the soil and how much grip it gives, depth, unknown matter on top of it such as sticks hidden under leaves, hidden holes, bogs, ice, etc. Very tricky.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Ugh, you are going to be sore! And bruised. It's hard to convince people sometimes that you are not in an abusive relationship when you have horses.


Ha! This made me laugh out loud because it's so true. I woke up this morning with two black eyes to go along with my swollen forehead. My lovely husband, who is one of the gentlest souls I know, has already commented on how this is going to raise eyebrows! He was actually out of the country this weekend on a guy's weekend trip to celebrate a friend's birthday, so I told him he's got a pretty good alibi  And, everyone I work with has heard me talk enough about my horse that I don't think it's an issue. But still, it does make you realize how suspicious we get in our society- for good reason- when a woman who appears injured says "I had an accident." What a sad reality.



StephaniHren said:


> Oof! Glad to hear that both of you are okay, definitely sounds a little nerve wracking!


Thanks @StephaniHren! It definitely was nerve wracking...



gottatrot said:


> Glad you are OK and didn't lose your horse either.


While laying on the ground yesterday, after I went through that initial mental checklist to confirm that I could still feel all my body parts, they were moving correctly, and there was no blood, my next thought was that I needed to keep Isabel with me at all costs. The BO doesn't know me that well yet, and the last thing I wanted was for a riderless horse to show up back at the barn and BO to decide that I was a liability to her property- I could just imagine her banning solo trail riding or something like that, which would be a disaster! Thankfully Izzy stuck around.

I just looked at a couple of pictures from my ride yesterday- this "angelic" looking photo was from a few minutes before our incident...









It was really a beautiful sunny day yesterday, maybe the last one before the snow is here for good. 








It's snowing right now and is supposed to keep it up for the rest of the week.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Had a scary fall today.
> As we were going along, I was having that mental dialogue, “should I really be cantering here”


Yikes, very glad to hear that both you and Izzy are going to be ok!! I am sure your face is something to be seen - hopefully it doesn't hurt too badly. How is your neck? If that continues to bother you, _please_ go to the doctor. I have a friend who broke her neck diving into the pool at the start of a race during a swim meet (and no, she did not hit the bottom, it appeared to be a perfectly normal start dive), so that scared me into never blowing off neck pain.

I have learned along the way that if I ever mentally question the speed and/or footing, that slowing down is the safest bet. Call me a weenie - but hopefully I will be a still-mounted weenie!



gottatrot said:


> Footing is one of the hardest things to read. You have to know your horse's ability, current fitness level, current hoof trimming status or footwear, and more. Then add to that the nature of the soil and how much grip it gives, depth, unknown matter on top of it such as sticks hidden under leaves, hidden holes, bogs, ice, etc. Very tricky.


This. And sometimes shiitake just happens!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Yikes, very glad to hear that both you and Izzy are going to be ok!! I am sure your face is something to be seen - hopefully it doesn't hurt too badly. How is your neck? If that continues to bother you, _please_ go to the doctor. I have a friend who broke her neck diving into the pool at the start of a race during a swim meet (and no, she did not hit the bottom, it appeared to be a perfectly normal start dive), so that scared me into never blowing off neck pain.


Yes, I am not one to blow off potentially serious injuries. My neck is a little sore, but it feels like muscle soreness. I actually slept surprisingly comfortably last night- I'm a "stomach sleeper" and was worried I was going to be in a lot of pain, but I really wasn't. I will listen to my body, but I think it's more a strain than anything more serious.



phantomhorse13 said:


> I have learned along the way that if I ever mentally question the speed and/or footing, that slowing down is the safest bet. Call me a weenie - but hopefully I will be a still-mounted weenie!


I am a very risk-averse person when it comes to riding, so in the grand scheme of things, it's actually comical that I found myself in that situation because I take the "safe ride" 99.9% of the time. I'll be really honest with you guys, I think I was feeling emboldened because on my ride the day before yesterday, when I went out with an 80-something-year old rider, she seemed totally nonplussed by trotting across footing that thus far I had only walked over (because of the down branches and leaf-covered rocks). When I saw her willing to do that, I convinced myself I was being way too cautious.

This may very well be the first time in trail riding history that someone has become a dare devil rider after being shamed about being over-cautious by an 80-year-old!!! :redface:


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I think I was feeling emboldened because on my ride the day before yesterday, when I went out with an 80-something-year old rider, she seemed totally nonplussed by trotting across footing that thus far I had only walked over (because of the down branches and leaf-covered rocks). When I saw her willing to do that, I convinced myself I was being way too cautious.
> 
> This may very well be the first time in trail riding history that someone has become a dare devil rider after being shamed about being over-cautious by an 80-year-old!!! :redface:


Crazy old women - look out for them!! :rofl:

But in all seriousness, I think that situation can go back to some of the things @gottatrot pointed out, specifically how does that lady's horse handle that type of footing. There are parts of the trails here I use to condition regularly that I trot Sultan or George over without a thought, but I would not trot Phin across at this point (and maybe never will). It could be that older woman's horse is a sure-footed beast and she knows it!


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## carshon

So glad you are OK after your fall. Falling sucks!


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...This may very well be the first time in trail riding history that someone has become a dare devil rider after being shamed about being over-cautious by an 80-year-old!!! :redface:


Good thing my keyboard has a cover. Makes it easy to clean after I spew coffee on my laptop first thing in the morning!

Thanks for the advice on English saddles on my journal. The website you listed was fun to browse. If I ever win the lottery, I'll probably have 10 saddles/horse.

But I admit your fall has me thinking serious about finding someone to reflock my Aussie saddle. She never did it at a canter - cantering was FAR too exciting and Mia actually seem to balance better at speed - but she'd did the OMG Crouch from a trot many times. We'd be trotting along, I'd think everything was fine, she'd be acting fine, then she'd slam on the brakes, drop her front end with the front legs out to the side. My thighs would hit the poleys and then all of my lower body would stay solidly in the saddle.

When she would spin hard, I'd sometimes have 4" bruises on the inside thigh - but the poleys would snap my hips around and keep them aligned on her back no matter how hard she spun or how unexpected it was.

Bandit is far more sensible, but he stumbles at times. He did on our last ride in the arena, cantering in a section that looked fine to me. He may have put a foot down on a rock. My little arena has some and I'm sure it hurts to hit one. My western saddle has a 'slick fork', but it is still a LOT of stuff in front of a rider that makes it really hard to slide forward:








​ 
When he stumbles, I tend to get a good look at his mane (it is fine, BTW), but it would probably take a fall or a very hard buck to get me OVER all that stuff. Bandit did buck hard enough with a 6'3" friend to get him on the far side of that horn, but it may have been that he was simply too tall for a 16" saddle.

I point to my bifocals and grey hair to excuse my wimpyness, but the only reasons I want to come off a horse is because it is 'end of ride', I'm tired, or I'm hungry. *English saddles sometimes scare me*. I can't imagine little Cowboy ever losing his footing or stumbling. He's a pretty desert-wise fellow. Bandit has stumbled hard just in our little arena. In his defense, the arena has soft spots and pockets that can't be seen - just as our washes do. But when a horse almost goes on his knees, this old guy will take ANY help he can get!

I love the way an English saddle feels. I feel secure on one for anything except stumbles and dropped-shoulder spins. But your accident reminds me of why I switched to Australian saddles after getting hurt in a fall. Not that ANY saddle would have saved me from THAT fall, but Aussies saddle sure saved me many times during the years I used them.

Hope you get well soon. You might consider a cover story: "_This guy insulted me, so I decided it was time to clean out the bar room. Didn't realize he had 7 friends, all over 200 lbs..._" :wink:


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## frlsgirl

Oh my goodness! How scary! I'm glad you and Izzy are ok. Stumble related falls are the worst.


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## egrogan

@bsms, I don't have any experience riding in Australian or western saddles, so I can't compare. But...I think the saddle had less to do with what happened to me than how I was riding. I tend to ride in a half seat at the canter with Isabel because I like to stay off her back, and from seeing pictures of me riding the canter, I know I can get a little lazy with my upper body and allow myself to come too far forward. I paid the price for that positioning in this situation, I was definitely not as secure as I could have been to withstand the kind of trip that happened. So another lesson learned, along with being more careful about the footing! I hope this isn't what turns you off to English saddles though!



bsms said:


> Hope you get well soon. You might consider a cover story: "_This guy insulted me, so I decided it was time to clean out the bar room. Didn't realize he had 7 friends, all over 200 lbs..._" :wink:


Filing this away for when I need it. I have meetings in NYC this Friday, everyone on the subway is going to give me a wide berth!! :wink:

Thanks for the good wishes everyone. I had a break between meetings just now, and spent about 20 minutes with a package of frozen corn on my eyes. Oh sweet relief, it felt soooo good!


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...I had a break between meetings just now, and spent about 20 minutes with a package of frozen corn on my eyes. Oh sweet relief, it felt soooo good!


BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!! The mental picture is fantastic!

My wife has given me surprisingly little grief for thinking about getting an English saddle. I don't know if I will, though. I've shortened the stirrups on my western one to allow me to get off Bandit's back, but I dropped them 2 holes and rode him for 20 minutes today - and it felt good. That is also the length I used riding Mia. What I sacrifice in allowing him maximum performance, I may gain in feeling like I'm staying on no matter what he does.

No snow this close to the Mexican border, but the winds picked up the moment I got on Bandit, and we were getting 35 mph gusts (according to a nearby wx station) by the end of 20 minutes. He's my best behaved horse when the winds pick up, but neither of us were having fun...and why ride when neither of you is having fun?

Still...maybe any ride where I don't put frozen corn on my face afterward is a good ride? :rofl: Sorry. I'm still laughing. Not very nice of me, but I can't help it! I do wish you well, though...


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## Tazzie

How scary!! I'm so glad that you walked away with minimal damage! I'm also a huge chicken :lol: I'm getting a bit braver, but Izzie isn't exactly sure footed either. I'll remember not to canter down leaf strewn paths :lol:

In all seriousness though, I'm very glad you guys are ok and that Izzy stuck around with you!


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## egrogan

I didn't see Izzy at all last week, since work was just go-go-go all week. Next week will be the same, but the bonus is that I have the last two weeks of December off. I really can't wait!

My black eyes are fading pretty well, but I am pretty sure I broke my nose. It's not displaced at all, so I didn't really see any reason to go to the doctor, I don't think they could have done anything about it. When I was in high school, I was a very competitive softball player, and one year our coach was rushing to get our team revved up in the spring and decided it would be a good idea to give us ground ball fielding practice on the blacktop parking lot in front of our school- she nailed a ground ball towards me, and it took a weird hop at the last second and hit me right between the eyes, splitting my nose nearly straight down the middle (confirmed by some really amazing x-rays that made me _very _badass to my teammates). This sort of feels like that did- and in that situation, the doctors said they really couldn't do anything- except tell our coach to stop hit balls at us on pavement!

Yesterday I got out to see Izzy. She was very happy to have some attention after being alone all week (which in turn makes me feel incredibly guilty). She was looking a little rough around the edges when she came up to greet me:









She enjoyed a nice grooming, and then we went for a quick walk through the woods. It's been really cold here, and was about 25*F when we rode, so the ground was hard and frozen, particularly in the spots that had been muddy the week before. She didn't love the hard footing, and she was a little gawky in the woods since everything looks different with a dusting of snow on it. She made me laugh, there's a spot with a little trickle of water through it-it's probably 6 inches across, you can't even call it a stream because it's just a little wet spot. But it was crusted over with a little ice on top of it, and she was pretty sure she was going to die if she had to walk across it. I tried to tell her that she didn't actually have to walk across it, because she could just step over it, but she wouldn't listen to me  After trying to back up away from it, she took a couple of steps to crunch through the ice and we continued on. Moments like that I really wish you could reason with them!










(What do people say about whorls behind the ears? You can really see hers here!)









Her head looks gigantic here, but I thought she was looking pretty cute bundled up in her winter gear:









Hoping to get another similar ride today just to stretch her legs and enjoy the sunshine. Supposed to get a bigger snow storm tonight so we may not be outside for awhile after today.


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## egrogan

Got in another ride yesterday afternoon. Since I was a little rushed Saturday afternoon, I spent more time yesterday warming up in the ring before we headed to the woods. Izzy is still having some tightness down her hamstrings, so I do need to be more intentional about a warm-up on these really cold days (it was about 25*F again yesterday).










After maybe 20 minutes or so of lots of changes of direction/school figures at walk & trot, we headed out to the woods. She has been a little argumentative about one area we have to cross to get to the woods where it's turned into a hard frozen mud tire track from where BO goes back and forth to the manure pile. She's never liked muddy footing, and I'm not sure how much her protest is about the now-frozen mud putting strain on her joints vs. how much is just a little barn sourness about going out on her own.

For those of you who have used hoof boots- are they effective because of the literal protection of the feet, or do they help with how the concussion of hard ground transmits to the legs/joints? I have noticed now that the ground is really frozen solid, she is moving more tentatively. Not sore exactly, but just a little slower than usual for her. She's also due for the chiropractor (chiro was actually supposed to be here this morning, but we rescheduled because of the snow), so it could just be that she is not feeling her best right now but will be more comfortable after the chiro visit. Anyway, I have no experience with hoof boots, and I'm not fully sure whether they would be right for her given that I think her feet are strong and healthy and any discomfort is more likely higher up due to arthritis. It may just be that I have to limit how much we're riding outside when it's below freezing since there is much less soft grassy footing to ride on at this barn vs. the old barn. Anyway, would love thoughts on the hoof boots.

She was a little nervous in the woods yesterday. When we were warming up, I thought I heard ATVs back there, so could be the neighbor came through hunting and/or exercising his dogs. If that's the case, I'm glad we didn't meet up with them! Izzy actually did this weird thing back there...she's always been a "poop sniffer" on the trail and likes to take her time investigating any pile we find (even though most of them are hers!)- but yesterday, just poop sniffing was not enough. She actually had her nose fully to the ground for several strides sniffing seemingly nothing, just like a dog. I don't know how long she would have gone on like that if I let her, but I need her to pay attention to her feet and not get distracted pretending to be a bloodhound! Not sure what she had picked up on, as I'm pretty sure we're the only ones from the barn who have ridden back there for the past week. So maybe it was the neighbor going through. Anyway, just thought it was funny to see her do that 










Also got out on the road a little bit too- since it's hard pack dirt, it was really hard too.








With our ride yesterday, we hit 125 total trail miles for the year! Not terrible for weekend warriors like us 

Last night was Izzy's first night living fully outside in a big snowstorm. We have ~9 inches so far, and it's still coming down. BO has assured me she's very comfortable using the shed, so if she wanted to get out of the snow, she had the chance. But I still worry about whether I've made the right decision by not having a stall for her...


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## carshon

Boots can be slick in the winter. They do help concussive force from hard ground but you would need boots with spikes. They have issues as well as they can be "grabby" and cause the horses leg to stick. We tend to hobble around on the hard ground and it gets batter when there is snow on top


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Boots can be slick in the winter. They do help concussive force from hard ground but you would need boots with spikes. They have issues as well as they can be "grabby" and cause the horses leg to stick. We tend to hobble around on the hard ground and it gets batter when there is snow on top


Thanks @carshon, this is helpful. Definitely don't want to add anything slippery! 

I wish today was a weekend day as there's so much fluffy, powdery snow outside right now I'd love to get out for a ride, and see if the footing made a difference. Alas, back to the grind


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## frlsgirl

She's super cute. Love the snow pics; there is something special about riding out in the snow.


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## egrogan

I agree @frlsgirl! This morning before work, I had one of the most beautiful rides I've ever had! The snow was completely untouched out out on the trails, and it was like riding in a giant snow globe:









Couldn't have asked for more perfect footing. The snow was light, soft, fluffy...Isabel was so much happier with this footing vs. the hard frozen mud. She moved right out, and I was able to just let her go on the buckle the entire ride so she could pick her preferred path. She seemed to really enjoy the ride.























(Yes, she did have to sample the snow off the foliage along the way )

We surprised the turkeys at the end of the ride as we came back to the barn- you can sort of see them in the top center part of the picture. This was immediately after 5 of the them flew squawking across the pasture. Izzy didn't bat an eye!









What a great ride!


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## egrogan

Another fun thing happened this morning. I've never known who Isabel's dam was, but after some communication with the American Morgan Horse Registry, I found out today that her name was Tara's Victoria: Taras Victoria Morgan

When I bought Izzy, I was given some photos of her very fancy daddy, Apollo's Reflection: Apollos Reflection Morgan









(Looks like she's got some line-breeding going on back to a stallion called "Empyrean Apollo.")

I contacted her breeder a couple of years ago just to say she was still going strong in her 20s, and a great first horse. The person I spoke with said he didn't remember her so couldn't give me any additional information about her, but that's likely because they really emphasize their show string, and she was not part of that. But they were very kind and said they were glad to know she was in a happy home and liked to hear where the horses they've bred ended up.

I was looking through some old paperwork over the weekend, and realized I had an old document with her registration number on it. So, I was able to contact the registry with her number, and they got right back to me with her dam's name. It's so fun to fill in that little detail about her past. I don't know anything about pedigrees (do you @frlsgirl?) but I am excited to research this a little more and see what I can learn. I know the Tara Farm story, and I also know that where I live now, there's a bit of snobbery about certain UVM and government-bred lines, which do not appear to be part of Izzy's past. Given her breeding, I think she'd be considered more the "new type" than the "old type" Morgan.

I may start a separate thread about her pedigree, though not sure there are tons of Morgan people here. Obviously she'll never be bred, but it's still fun to learn more about her. It's sort of funny to think that there were a lot of hopes and expectations for this little mare of mine- I'm sure her life turned out very differently than her breeders expected when they made plans for her to arrive, but I'm happy to have her!


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## carshon

Loved your snow pics! I miss riding already! sub zero here so even my planned trip to the arena is on hold.


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## Bondre

I just caught up with your journal. Ouch! Sorry to hear about your fall. That sounds really painful, breaking your fall with your nose and forehead. I'm sure your hands would have been preferable lol. 

Those are lovely photos from your snowy ride. I find it hard to believe that you're whited out already while here nothing looks very wintry. Not that it ever really snows here, or very rarely. We miss out on all those gorgeous winter landscapes - but also on all the nasty mud that comes when the snow melts.

Wow! Izzy's sire is a very handsome fellow. It's lovely to know about your horse's parentage, and to have photos of her dam and sire. Maybe you're right and that she was 'planned' to have a more high-profile lifestyle, but I'm sure she's just as happy hacking and enjoying a quiet life with you.


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## frlsgirl

@egrogan - wow Izzy's baby daddy sure is a looker! I have only limited knowledge about the Morgan breed based on what I've learned from my own research into Ana's heritage; there appears to be two "types" of Morgans although some breeders will disagree with me on this and say that there is only one "type" - anywho; so there is the hearty more stocky (sport-horse) Morgan and there is the thinner (show) Morgan. Ana is a cross between the two types; her momma is a chunky laid back trail horse and her daddy is a bright-eyed, slim figured show horse.

Commonly seen bloodline prefixes in sport horse Morgans are Merriwold and Statesman; a commonly seen bloodline prefixes for the show Morgans is UVM. Of course Morgans were bred to be multi-talented superstars so I would assume many breeders are mixing the two types to get the best of both worlds. 

This is just my uneducated opinion formed based on my research and what I've observed over the past 3 years.


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## gottatrot

There were some interesting articles about the history of Morgans in the last two issues of Equus magazine. You might still be able to buy off the stand? Great breed of horses. 

The photos and video are beautiful! Looks so unreal to me.
Izzy's sire is so gorgeous. She has some nice bloodlines.


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## frlsgirl

Makes me wonder; we never look at human breeding pedigree; some of the ancestry research sites now offer at home DNA testing so that we can see where we came from. Pretty cool, ey?


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## egrogan

Just a quick lunchtime visit to see Izzy today. It was 10*F when I got there, up from the -6*F it was to start the morning. I do have to say though, the bright sunshine made it feel not that bad. BO said Izzy happily enjoyed her extra hay in the shed last night, and she was sprawled out sound asleep this morning in the deep shavings she put down. I'd say she fared just fine on the worst night of the year so far. She was very happy to have some company when I showed up:









I noticed the last time I was there she had ripped a big hole across the seam of her blanket, she must have been scratching her butt on something that felt good! We're supposed to get freezing rain turning to regular rain tomorrow (such weird weather!), and I didn't want her getting a soggy blanket since temps are going to swing wildly from about 50*F on Sunday down to 10*F that night. So my attempt at prevention was a ton of duct tape, we'll see if it stays on! She has a new warm blanket on the way, which should arrive next week.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> a ton of duct tape


Its not a horse blanket if it doesn't have duct tape on it somewhere!! :rofl:


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Its not a horse blanket if it doesn't have duct tape on it somewhere!! :rofl:


Ha! I have to give props to Weatherbeeta, she's had this blanket for 4 winters now and it's held up admirably! This is the first duct tape it's seen


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## frlsgirl

Ahhh, the many uses of duct tape; it really should be in every horse owner's toolbox


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## egrogan

Sigh...the ice is here...The forecasters actually got the weather right this time, it was weirdly warm all day yesterday, then dropped to single digits overnight. The BO has done her best to make the back of the property passable for turnout, but unless we get a good thaw, I think the ice will keep us in the arena for awhile. Even the driveway and dirt path around the barn proper are icy, so not even a good chance for a walk around outside.

Aside from that bummer, today was chiro day, and Izzy really needed it! She was tight in her usual spots (right SI region, atlas), but her back was also incredibly tight. At one point as she was working, chiro thought something was wrong with Izzy's eye since it was closed-but it was just that she seemed to be so thoroughly appreciating what was happening she had her eyes both closed and was just relaxing into it 

Despite the cold, it was a pretty, sunny day- and lucky girl, lunch was waiting for her when she was done with her appt.


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## frlsgirl

We got hit with ice here as well. Glad that Izzy is able to really relax and enjoy her chiro adjustments. Ana is still a bit suspicious of the chiro but is learning to relax a little more with each visit. Stay safe out there!


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## egrogan

I was excited to ride this afternoon to see how Izzy was feeling after the chiro. I was pleased that even in the "dreaded" arena, she was notably more forward and felt a lot lighter on her feet, marching right along.

It was a brilliantly sunny day, and warm, up above freezing, so I warmed up for 15-20 minutes in the indoor and then planned to see where I could safely ride outside. My elderly friend happened to be there too, already riding while I was tacking up, but she was excited to see that I was planning to go outside as she hadn't wanted to chance it alone. The outside footing was actually surprisingly pretty good, aside from the main driveway/path used by vehicles, as that was really icy. But we found a clear path to get from the indoor back to the outdoor ring, and had a really fun time. The snow was not the light, fluffy stuff I rode in last week, a lot heavier and more tiring, but the crust on top was very thin. We went bounding around trotting side-by-side, and it was a sweet moment. My friend's face lit up as her mare trotted along, and she started single "Jingle Bells" with a big grin on her face- she looked over at me and exclaimed, "This is really just FUN, isn't it?!"  Glad she was able to have that kind of ride. 

Since she had been riding for awhile before I got there, she bid us farewell, and Izzy and I continued moseying around outside. We rode through some of the untracked snow...









...then back past the barn to the other end of the property to see if it seemed safe to head into the woods.









The drifts on that side of the property were a lot deeper, and Izzy seemed to struggle a little to get through it, so I decided not to push it since it wasn't clear that the footing in the woods would be safe anyway. So we turned back and went for another lap on the cleared path around the barn. 








If we have a couple more sunny days and get some more melting, I might be able to get back to the woods by the weekend- we'll see.

I do have a question I hope someone can help me with. I have never had to deal with an abscess on Izzy, though have watched other horses at my old barn be treated for one. Today I noticed she has this indentation on her right front sole:








Apologies for the poor quality picture, I can take a better one tomorrow. But it almost looks like a little divot you'd get in a soft piece of wood if you pushed down hard with a screwdriver. She hasn't been sore or limping in the last few days, and the foot wasn't sensitive to touch. I almost wonder if it's the result of stepping on a sharp piece of ice given how uneven the footing has been since everything froze? Could that create something like this little crater? But it did look like what I've seen in pictures of "blown" abscesses, so not sure.


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## gottatrot

I'd say she stepped on something that chipped out a little piece of her sole. It doesn't look very deep, and appears to be well into the insensitive part that won't affect a horse or cause pain. Sometimes little pieces just come out on their own, because the sole doesn't shed as a single unit but comes out in little chunks. I wouldn't worry about it. If an abscess had blown out, you would have noticed her being lame and usually they appear much deeper.


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## frlsgirl

Merry early Christmas @egrogan

Ana gets these when we have a frequent change between wet/dry conditions; I think it's because it causes her hooves to contract and expand and that leads to funky indentations and such; it hasn't bothered her so I haven't said anything to farrier or vet. My previous vet let me text him pictures of different things I found on Ana and tell me via text if it's something she needed to be seen for; I know that's very rare to have such an awesome vet; saved me a lot of money in unnecessary vet calls.

Also so jealous of your lovely snow rides; we got a light dusting here one day but it was too icy to drive to the barn. I miss trail riding; every time I see your pictures I'm reminded of that. I need to somehow schedule a leisurely ride outside in the near future.


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## egrogan

Thanks @gottatrot and @frlsgirl. The little hole is still there, but doesn't seem to be changing or associated with any limping or unwillingness to walk normally. BO has gotten me hyper vigilant about checking feet- despite the diet change, Izzy is still gaining weight. She is even- gasp- a little cresty in the neck, and I had to let out the straps on her blanket to be as long as they'll go to buckle it around her belly. So, all soaked alfalfa cubes have been removed, and she's getting the barest minimum of the ration balancer, soaked. The hay seems to just be incredibly rich, and they've had it in front of them most of the day and night with the weather. Next step may be that we need to remove the RB too and see about a small handful of timothy cubes or something soaked for her supplements, and maybe a vitamin supplement if needed. If that doesn't work, not sure what to do- buy crappy hay? I've been thinking about taking a fecal sample to the vet, since I suppose a new environment has new parasites- but the cresty neck suggests that's not likely the problem. I'm feeling frustrated as this is not a problem I've ever had before...

Aside from that, we did ride yesterday. It was actually unseasonably warm with beautiful sunshine. There was a lot of activity in the barn (I think a lot of folks had the day off from work), and Izzy was pretty ****y about riding away from the barn and all the exciting horses coming and going from the indoor. 

We started our ride with grumpy ears:









But the footing was challenging enough she had to think about what she was doing. It wasn't slippery, but the snow was very deep and heavy, as it had been warming up all day. We stuck to a walk in case we encountered any icy patches or sticks/rocks under the snow we couldn't see. She got more focused as we went: 









When we got back to the barn, all the crossties were full, so we waited our turn outside and did some stretches:









Posing 









I like the strolls we've been taking around the property, but since the footing requires us to stick to a walk, it's not really enough of a workout to get her sweaty, so to speak. Given the weight issue I think I'm going to need to suck it up and do more serious work in the arena.


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## frlsgirl

Glad you are enjoying your casual strolls through the property - it's like chicken soup fore the soul. We have the opposite problem atm; too much arena work, not enough trail/fun rides. When I get there after work it's already dark and when I ride afternoons on weekends the horses are turned out in the fields so I have to wait for them to go back inside and by that time it's getting dark again.


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## egrogan

This time of year is so tough for riding @frlsgirl, between the unpredictable weather and the very limited daylight. I wish this country would do away with daylight savings time- I've yet to meet a soul who enjoys it- most especially people who work outside with animals...

Weather here has been up and down, resulting in lots of ice everywhere. Even on a gorgeous, unseasonably warm day like today (45*F!) the footing in shady areas is still not safe. Even the turnout paddocks are getting icy where the horses spend a lot of time walking or standing.









I've had a couple of arena rides this week, and Isabel so far hasn't soured to it yet. I've had the arena to myself so have been playing music, maybe that keeps it from feeling like sheer drudgery. We're mostly doing _lots _of trotting with frequent changes of direction to work on getting rid of her substantial belly. Not sure how effective it is yet, as I seem to be sweating a lot harder than her at the end of the ride! 


















Since it was _so _warm today though, after about 30 minutes inside, we were able to tiptoe our way around the icy patches to at least make it from the indoor to the woods trail. I had hoped to get out to the road, but it really just isn't safe because of the frozen muddy spots, and lack of a shoulder to get away from a car if needed. That's fine though, getting outside at all feels great this time of year. The footing in the woods was slushy and the snow has melted enough that it no longer provides cover over the rocks, so that made things a little slippery. But we just stuck to a walk again, and it was fine. We came to the little dribble of the "stream" (aka long puddle about 12" across) and Izzy acted like she was in grave danger. She snorted at it, she pawed at it, she backed away from it...but then she took a couple of sips from it, and finally I got that forward momentum back- which resulted in her sort of leaping over it (this horse is _NOT _a jumper!) but when we doubled back to go home, it was a non-event, so that felt positive. Even though it wasn't the most exciting ride, I'm still glad we got out to enjoy the sun and fresh air- it was so warm I had to ditch my sweatshirt at the barn, pretty rare for this time of year.









And of course, after a day like today, we're now preparing for a Nor'Easter that's supposed to hit Thursday- so not sure how much more riding I'll get this week. I am loving being on vacation though and being able to ride whenever I want. I could get used to this schedule!


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## phantomhorse13

Glad you are getting the saddle time while you can. Fingers crossed the storm isn't too bad!


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## egrogan

Cute horse, bad ride today.









The past two rides actually, I've had a problem: tracking right, whenever I pick up contact while at the trot, Izzy does a little hop/lurch into a couple of strides of canter. It's this weird tense anticipation that I'm going to ask for it, so she's going to offer it before I ask. I am quite sure I am not asking with my body, but the picking up of contact is enough that she's trying to pre-empt the ask. This is a confusing problem...

We've always had issues going to the right. She's stiff and tends to be counterbent even at the walk, even if I ride off the rail on the quarter line. She wants to fall/drift in going that way. So I pick up the contact to try to encourage some inside bend, and she gets very tense and bulges out her right shoulder even more. Wish I had a video but I'm almost always riding alone...

It really feels like riding a different horse to the left. She is relaxed and willing. She has not done this weird canter hop thing going left. 

So because I was really puzzled about this, and honestly more than a little frustrated, I figured I would try riding a couple of times around the arena at a nice working trot tracking left, and then cut across the diagonal to change to the right rein. Trotting left was uneventful, she had nice rhythm, decent contact where I could feel her at the end of my reins and she was responsive to inside leg to stay over on the wall. No complaints, we do that a couple of laps and then cross the diagonal. As soon as we ride to the corner to change direction, her nose is tipped to the outside and the reins are flapping against her neck because she's sucked back so much (I have not changed my hand position or lengthened the reins). With the reins flapping, I adjust the slack out of them, and immediately she does the bunny hopping canter departure. What in the world? I tried a 20-meter circle, same. The only success I could find was a 3-loop serpentine where we end up tracking right. She trotted one full lap after that without trying to canter, so I called it there. 

I'm not really sure what to do next. I didn't ask her to canter at all today (despite her multiple offers), but we had been cantering a little bit yesterday and earlier in the week. She was tense and almost defensive those days though, and I rode it in a halfseat yesterday because I felt like the defensiveness was about her back?

At this point I see two options: one is to just not ask for the canter for awhile, and just keep working at the trot and aiming simply for a steady rhythm and correct bend; or two, let her canter early on (maybe even just on the lunge?) and get it "out of her system" to try to break the anticipation of it and focus on other things.

Not quite sure what to do from here...


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## StephaniHren

egrogan said:


> The past two rides actually, I've had a problem: tracking right, whenever I pick up contact while at the trot, Izzy does a little hop/lurch into a couple of strides of canter.


Anticipation and canter transitions that I don't ask for get the same response, every time: I slam on the brakes (no "whoa", no warning). They want to race off with me? They can stop, wait, and then pick up the gait I originally asked for (the trot) from the halt. I don't want a horse that guesses what I want, I want a horse that _listens_ for what I want, no matter how much or how little contact I have. But it sounds like you have other problems that are contributing to this...



egrogan said:


> She wants to fall/drift in going that way. So I pick up the contact to try to encourage some inside bend, and she gets very tense and bulges out her right shoulder even more.


I know what you mean about falling/drifting in on the right track, my gelding does the same thing. He leans against my inside leg, especially at the canter. I usually counter it with pressure from my inside leg (even a bit of spur if he's not listening)—I physically push him off of my leg so that he can't collapse in on himself. Once he's correct I take the excess pressure off and expect him to hold himself up, and if he doesn't I might correct again or I might halt him and then sidepass him away from that leg if he's really disrespecting that aid. The source of the problem is that she's not moving away from pressure like she should be—when you put your leg on, she should yield to that pressure. The counterbending sounds like she's locking up through her neck and using it to push her shoulder out, but the shoulder's the bigger problem, imo. Get the shoulder fixed and then the neck bend will be easier to fix.



egrogan said:


> As soon as we ride to the corner to change direction, her nose is tipped to the outside and the reins are flapping against her neck because she's sucked back so much.


It's a reflex to tighten the reins to compensate for a horse that sucks back, but a horse that's sucking back is behind your leg and should be pushed forward so that their hind end has to engage (encouraging the neck to stretch). Tightening your reins teaches them that you'll bring the contact to them, when they should be the one seeking the contact in the first place.



egrogan said:


> I felt like the defensiveness was about her back?


Have you had her checked out to make sure that she's not sore? Saddle fit, chiropractic, etc.?



egrogan said:


> At this point I see two options


My suggestion would be to focus on body control for a while. You should have control over every part of your horse independently (hindquarters, barrel, shoulder, neck). A stronger sense of control over your horse will lead to you having more control over her bend at every gait, no matter what track you're on. Things like turns on the hindquarters/forehand (stationary and in motion), leg yielding, sidepassing, etc. Laterals are your friend, laterals are always everyone's friend.

If you do work on your cantering, I'd only ask for the canter when she's not anticipating, and I'd shut her down quickly when she tries to canter without your cue.


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## egrogan

Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed response @StephaniHren. Lots to think about in there. I totally agree with you that the shoulder is the heart of the problem- it has been for some time now. I actually read this article earlier in the week (Good Rein Bad Rein ? Master Dressage Lessons), which really resonated with me because I've always told instructors I've ridden with that I want to work on tracking right, since it's Izzy's "bad rein" as well as my bad direction since I tend to lean and drop my shoulder- but I found this article pretty convincing that the problem from your bad rein is likely still present on your good rein, it's just that you ignore it because you feel the horse is moving so much better.

Funny thing about doing leg yielding and turns on the fore/hind- she actually did that beautifully all week, better than she's done in ages. So that's something productive we can keep working on. In the arena, I try to do whatever I can to keep us from just going round and round on the rail, so lots of broken lines, shallow serpentines, leg yields from quarter line to the wall and back, changes across diagonals, etc. 

re: your question about whether her back is sore. She saw the chiro two weeks ago and she _was _sore through her back (from about L3-L5). She may have some lingering soreness there. She gained weight pretty rapidly when we moved barns, so it could very well be that her saddle isn't the best fit right now. All that said, she doesn't show a pain response or flinch away when I palpate her back after our rides, so I'm not sure. Since she's an older mare with a dip in her back, I don't want to ride her bareback, even padded up. Because of the weight gain not riding is counterproductive (and we have to go easy on lunging since she has hock arthritis- the joys of an older horse ) Long lining might be an option though, it's been a long time since we played around with that but she does know how.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions! I won't be able to ride today as we have a massive snowstorm coming later this morning, but hopefully things will be cleaned up by tomorrow so I can get out to see her.


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## egrogan

Sigh. Another bad ride today.

We did get a foot of light, fluffy snow last night, so I was really excited to get out to the barn and head to the woods trail. The horses didn't seem too bothered by the snow (note Izzy's reclining neighbor behind her) and the ice was covered so it was much easier to move around.









We warmed up uneventfully for about 20 minutes in the indoor before heading out. She has been getting increasingly barn sour the last couple of rides out. One of the trail heads requires us to ride the perimeter of several turnout paddocks, and she dawdles around the other horses. Since there is ice along the path, I can't risk moving out at a brisk pace, so we have to walk which allows her to gawk at the other horses as we go. When we passed the last horse, she squealed and crowhopped and tried to spin back to the barn- luckily in a foot of snow, they can't really get too naughty so I caught her before she could complete the spin and kept her moving towards the path. 









Once out of sight of the other horses, she's fine.









So we had another issue crossing the "stream" again today. She just simply would not. She first kept trying to spin away, and while I could shut that down, I couldn't prevent her from trying to back up. I tried turning her the other way and backing her across, but that didn't work either. So finally I decided it would be safer to get off and lead her across. While I was really frustrated, I tried to take some deep breaths and stay calm. I let her drink a little bit, and she seemed content with that, getting as close to the water as she had thus far (the footing leading up to it was slushy and sort of giving way underneath her feet, but still...)









Even after taking a pause and letting her drink, she actually stayed just as resistant to coming across with me standing on the other side and pulling her forward. Finally she lurched herself over in a big leap, still refusing to walk through it.









So now that we were on the other side, I began looking for a place to remount. There are tons of stumps and stone walls back there, but I was having trouble because my boot and stirrup were slippery from all the snow, and the stone walls that gave me enough height were really icy too. Just didn't feel safe. After walking for a few minutes I finally just lowered my left stirrup to make it as long as possible, and was able to line her up on the downhill side of a snowbank and scramble aboard. She stood for mounting, but was pretty agitated at this point, and wouldn't stand for me to readjust my stirrups so they were even. I could feel her wanting to lurch ahead at a pace faster than a walk, and wasn't thrilled about the idea of trying to ride sitting so unbalanced in the saddle, so I asked her to stop and hopped off again. I guess the positive is that she led ok, even though it's highly unusual for me to get off. It was hard work trudging through 12 inches of snow on foot, so she did keep getting ahead of me because she could just move through it so much more easily than me, but I could circle her around me and she wasn't rude or bargy about it, even when we were close enough to home she could see other horses.

Once we were back to the outdoor ring, I fixed my stirrups, she stood statue still for mounting at the mounting block, and we rode in the outdoor for a bit. I have to admit I took some frustration out on her by making her trot for quite awhile in the deep snow until she was listening and responsive, when really I should have just been annoyed with myself for not being more nimble in being able to mount (or for that matter, being able to push her forward through the stream). But I gathered my composure, cooled her out, and gave her a good grooming once we were done. 










Would have liked for it to have gone differently as I was so excited about being able to have a nice snowy ride, but it just didn't go that way today...hopefully will try again tomorrow!


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## gottatrot

Hmm...silly rider, can't you see that is a deep glacier crevasse? If a horse stepped in that dark crack they'd probably fall down a hundred feet. 
A cute and funny story to us who were there and not trying to get off and on in deep and slippery snow.

My friend was telling me today that she rode with someone whose horse was new to the beach. The new horse was worried and didn't want to cross the lines and color changes in the wet and dry sand. The rider thought this was not good, but my friend reassured her that all the horses go through this. They think the lines are drop offs or shelves or other major changes in terrain. Although you can make them cross eventually, it worries them quite a lot because they are convinced it might harm them. One horse I was riding with sidestepped thirty feet to avoid crossing a line in the sand. 

Unfortunately, once Halla learned the lines were not as they appeared, she became prone to stepping on solid objects as if they were only flat lines, including large logs, shells and sticks that can cause tripping and leg twisting.

My take on bad sides and good sides and horses that rush into gaits is that I've worked a lot on these issues and if it doesn't go away quickly and easily, it seems most often to stem from a body issue, not a training issue. An example is that Amore struggled with drifting and stiffness on one side. She had a club hoof on that side, and when I learned more about balancing it, the hoof became much more comfortable and she soon was picking up that lead easily and also stopped drifting out. Halla had serious crookedness with a big shoulder and uneven muscling. The more fit I've gotten her and now that she's not vitamin E deficient, the problem has improved dramatically. So I'd suspect a physical weakness or tightness that either you should work around at her age, or else see if just improving fitness can help.

In dressage they say that in order to become straight, a horse first must learn to bend. I'm learning also that in order to bend, a horse must learn to work straight. So even working on getting stronger and fitter on straighter lines, say out on the trail can help a horse bend more easily (due to improved strength and flexibility). My friend's horse Nala had difficulty doing smaller circles and transitions in the arena and now that she's stronger and fitter they are easy for her. 

Another comment is that I believe the lumbar spine is very important for cantering, so if Izzy is still sore there it might be an issue. A horse I knew that had a fused lumbar spine could not physically pick up one lead anymore. I think it's because they pick up the lead with a hind leg, which has to reach far under and flex the lumbar spine. If it can't flex that way or hurts, this can become difficult or impossible.
Anyway, just some thoughts.


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## Bondre

Gosh, I would bet you a considerable sum that Macarena wouldn't cross that stream no matter what. The blackness of the water does give the impression of a bottomless chasm. Don't be too hard on Izzy for not wanting to risk falling in there 

I know just what you mean about the stress of not being able to mount back up again in adverse conditions. My worst ride ever with Macarena was a similar situation - she was being difficult and I had to get off to cross an irrigation channel. And then I couldn't get back on again. I had to lead her the entire way home which was awful as she wasn't exactly walking calmly beside me. So I can understand how bad your ride felt to you. 

I like gottatrot's perspective on Izzy's bending problems. Given her age, I would tend to be understanding and try not to ask her what she seems unable to give. You've done all you can to loosen her up with the chiropractor, so maybe she either needs more time after her adjustment or she's at her comfortable limit now and the right rein is just difficult for her. Fortunately out on your rides this isn't really an issue anyway


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## egrogan

Different day, different horse! 

Although, it started off with a moment of dread. I brought Izzy into the crossties, and she was standing really oddly. Her front feet were almost touching, but her hinds were splayed out wide behind her. My heart sank, and I though she was really just completely lame and I was a total jerk for asking her to trot through the deep snow yesterday. Upon closer inspection though, I realized she just had snowballs built up in 3 out of 4 feet. After knocking the built up snow out, she looked relieved and went back to standing normally.

I skipped the indoor today and we headed right out. Izzy was very brave today. First, she rode past the BO's husband who was running the bucket loader working on the manure pit. She did want to stop and look things over for a minute, but she was calm about it. And then she moved right on.

We used the trailhead at the opposite end of the property today, so there was no opportunity for the whole barn sour act. That also meant that we approached the "stream" from the opposite direction. She walked right up to it, took a long drink, _and then stepped over it at first asking_. Phew!! She still didn't walk _through _it, but she crossed with no fuss, so that is good enough for me right now.

And yes, in hindsight I can definitely appreciate these perspectives 


gottatrot said:


> Hmm...silly rider, can't you see that is a deep glacier crevasse? If a horse stepped in that dark crack they'd probably fall down a hundred feet.





Bondre said:


> Gosh, I would bet you a considerable sum that Macarena wouldn't cross that stream no matter what. The blackness of the water does give the impression of a bottomless chasm. Don't be too hard on Izzy for not wanting to risk falling in there


And it was actually sort of funny seeing all our tracks in the snow from yesterday with our dismal failed mounting attempts- we did some serious off-roading trying to find a good spot!

I also thought it was neat to see all the tracks from the resident flock of wild turkeys:











Bondre said:


> I like gottatrot's perspective on Izzy's bending problems. Given her age, I would tend to be understanding and try not to ask her what she seems unable to give. You've done all you can to loosen her up with the chiropractor, so maybe she either needs more time after her adjustment or she's at her comfortable limit now and the right rein is just difficult for her. Fortunately out on your rides this isn't really an issue anyway


I of course don't want to ride a hurting horse, so for now I think this ^^ is the right perspective. We will inevitably have to ride inside at times this winter, but I'll let her tell me what she can do in there. 

After our ride today, I spent some considerable time massaging her in her tight spots. We ended with her lips wagging and eyes closed, so I think that's one way to keep her feeling comfortable. And getting the extra weight off of her will only help too.

Happy New Year to everyone! Here's to a great 2017.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> Although, it started off with a moment of dread. I brought Izzy into the crossties, and she was standing really oddly. Her front feet were almost touching, but her hinds were splayed out wide behind her. My heart sank, and I though she was really just completely lame and I was a total jerk for asking her to trot through the deep snow yesterday. Upon closer inspection though, I realized she just had snowballs built up in 3 out of 4 feet. After knocking the built up snow out, she looked relieved and went back to standing normally.


Looks like it was a beautiful ride! Funny about the snow balls.


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## egrogan

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night, so I knew I wasn't going to have it in me mentally or physically today to get in a good ride. Still, it was so gorgeous out (bright blue skies and nearly 40*F) that I felt I needed to do _something _with Izzy. Since the driveway and road were clear of ice, I thought it might be a little different to just go for a walk in hand. I felt a bit silly "taking my horse for a walk" but we both enjoyed the warm sunshine!










Izzy seemed very interested in everything we passed, even though we've ridden down the road several times. She checked everything out like it was new. We worried the flock of turkeys that were off in the woods alongside of the road- at first it sounded like a huge pack of little yippy dogs was charging towards us, and then I realized it was just the turkeys telling us off. She also gave a long, hard, high-headed look at a "lawn windmill" spinning in the breeze. She wasn't a huge fan, but decided it was safe for us to walk past.









When we headed back to the barn, she got a great surprise - in the areas where a path had been cleared, the sun was warm enough that it melted the snow enough for a little "grazing." Granted, she was basically just pulling at dry brown grass under some slush, but she did so with real enthusiasm, closing her eyes as the sun hit her face and seeming to really enjoy herself.









After we had explored all the bare patches, I spent some time doing massage with her again, and she enjoyed it. Pretty good day to be Isabel!

Sadly, tomorrow's my last day of vacation, but weather should be good enough to ride so that's the tentative plan.


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## egrogan

We had an arena day yesterday, everything was really icy outside.

My goal for the ride was to just keep everything really relaxed and not create the canter-transition tension. She warmed up well at the walk and trotted nicely to the left. When I asked for the trot to the right, immediate tension. I resisted the urge to pick up the slack she put in the reins, and instead tried to keep my body really loose but drive her forward. When we passed the first corner, she tried to hop up into the canter, and I just said no, and kept her trotting. It took a couple of laps like that to the right but then she started to relax. We did lots of walk/trot transitions and she seemed to stop anticipating the canter. Didn't bother to canter at all since the trotting seemed reasonably good. By the end of the ride, she did start to get a bit lethargic about it and lost the nice rhythm we had at the beginning, so that's not good. But I figured best to deal with one problem at a time. 

Looking pleased with herself after our ride:


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## frlsgirl

Izzy says "yeah, I'm awesome, what else is new?!?" 

Lol about the canter transition anticipation; Morgans are masters at anticipating everything! If I even sit the trot for one stride, the ears go back, the head comes up and all I have to do is barely touch her with my outside leg and off she goes. If I keep trotting she gets increasingly more ticked off.


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## EmberScarlet

Ah, the snowball menace! Same thing happened to me on Tuesday, and I thought something was seriously wrong, but it was just snow. xD


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## egrogan

Izzy had a hard fall on the ice yesterday :frown: 

I was leading her in to ride, and I stupidly led her across a patch of black ice that was dusted over with snow. It was the sort of situation where I realized a second too late that I had picked a bad place to walk, and just as I was trying to change paths, I heard her scramble behind me and go down. It happened in a split second. When I looked back, I saw her sitting like a dog and then lurch back up, slip, and lurch up again.

When I got her in the barn, she was shifting weight back and forth on her hind legs for a minute, and then stood quietly. BO and I took her into the indoor and walked her out- straight, circles, quick turns, backing. She looked fairly normal. I tacked her up and walked her around with BO watching, and while she felt stiff, it was also about 20*F so she was going to feel stiff anyway. I stuck her on the lunge and asked her to w/t/c both ways. She bucked into the canter transition in both directions, so that could be pain, or that could also just be the fact that she's been cooped up and was excited. When she was trotting to the right, and I asked her to transition down to walk and then to halt, she did have one moment where her right stifle sort of locked up under her for a second and she tripped before standing.

So I don't know. I've been worrying about her since yesterday. I'll go out today when it's a little "warmer" (only going to be a high of 15*F today) and walk her out, maybe stick her on the lunge again and see how she looks. BO thought if anything, she'd have SI pain vs. having done anything to legs/hocks, so we'll see. I just feel so awful it even happened in the first place...


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## StephaniHren

Don't beat yourself up too much, sometimes unfortunate things happen!
I'd just check for any heat/swelling anywhere while you're grooming her today and then put her on the lunge line and check her out. If she's looking alright, it's probably no harm, no foul.


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## egrogan

StephaniHren said:


> Don't beat yourself up too much, sometimes unfortunate things happen!
> I'd just check for any heat/swelling anywhere while you're grooming her today and then put her on the lunge line and check her out. If she's looking alright, it's probably no harm, no foul.


Thanks @*StephaniHren* , that's very sweet of you. Good news, seems like she came out of it no worse for the wear. BO said she was trotting around her paddock last night at dinner time, and she was fine today when she was moved to her daytime turnout. She had no hot or sore spots during grooming or tacking up.

I tried to set up my phone in a corner of the arena to record our ride today, but didn't realize only had enough storage space to record about 2minutes- most of which I spent walking to the other end of the arena, mounting up, and doing some big warm up circles. So a good video of our ride with have to wait for another day, but I grabbed a couple of screen shots that were salvageable.
_
Heellllloooo....









_I won't bore you all with the long blocks of nothing happening in between our brief appearance in the frame, but even in those fleeting glimpses, I saw that my leg was oddly far back and very busy- I think I'm guilty of "pedaling" every stride to get her moving forward- a chronic bad habit.









It was only 15*F for our ride, and she did feel stiff-stiff-stiff. But, I think she would have been really stiff regardless of yesterday, it was just super cold. When we started trotting, that little bit of air blowing on my face made my eyes water. Not a very fun ride. We didn't accomplish much except an easy stretch of the legs, but that felt fine given the weather. 

I did some good massage afterwards and she really leaned into it, especially right behind her ears. Her right hamstring was also quite tight. 

I'm just so relieved she seems to be ok!


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## tinyliny

I wonder if a quarter sheet might help her warm up a bit. something like this:


http://www.doversaddlery.com/exercise-rugs/c/4405/


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## gottatrot

Sounds so brutally cold! It probably helped Izzy to walk around even if she was sore from the fall. Good to stretch out sore muscles.


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## frlsgirl

Oh, no, poor Izzy; that had to hurt. Ana has only fallen once, but that was in the arena into soft dirt; never on ice. Glad she seems ok.


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## carshon

My mare took a hard fall coming out of her pen 2 days ago. Just like Izzy hit some black ice and down she went on her side very hard. She laid there for a moment as my daughter and I ran toward her. Then scrambled up and went out to the daytime lot with the other mares. A little sore but no real issues.

Ice is my biggest issue this year! So glad Izzy is OK. and You re riding. No riding for us and I really miss it!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> My mare took a hard fall coming out of her pen 2 days ago. Just like Izzy hit some black ice and down she went on her side very hard. She laid there for a moment as my daughter and I ran toward her. Then scrambled up and went out to the daytime lot with the other mares. A little sore but no real issues.
> 
> Ice is my biggest issue this year! So glad Izzy is OK. and You re riding. No riding for us and I really miss it!


Ouch! Poor mare  I really despise ice.

Did you and your daughter do anything specific to determine if your mare had hurt herself when she fell? I asked Izzy to tell me where she hurt but she wouldn't cooperate! :wink: I was sort of at a loss for what to do besides watch her move and see if she flinched in any potential sore sports when touched.


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## carshon

@egrogan - Once Tillie joined her herd mates in the dry lot we haltered all of them and went over her with a fine toothed comb. There were clumps of her hair on the mud hill from the frozen divets. We touched and poked and brushed her. She was more interested in getting to her lunch than what we were doing. When brought back into her stall (and run) that night we went over her again. She was mildly reactive to a hand pushed into her shoulder and had some hair loss on the outside of her hock but nothing. We gave her some Bute-less at supper and again at her 2 feedings the next day. She gets MSM daily in her feed so that would help with any swelling she may have had. Unfortunately my horses are all covered in their winter woolies so I could not tell if there was actual swelling. And we have not ridden since mid-Nov due to cold temps and ice under the snow. She is fine now and we sanded what ice we could find to help with any slippery spots. We are anxiously waiting for some temps above 0 so we can hopefully trailer to an indoor for ride soon!


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## egrogan

Poor Tillie- the scrapes and bumps are no fun. I'm glad she seems ok though. Like you, I've got a hairy beast right now so it's hard to see what's really under there but Izzy still seems to be ok too. 









Like a lot of the country, we're going to have bizarre weather this week. It's going to be about 0*F overnight here for the third night in a row tonight and then shoot up to almost 50*F for the end of the week. Hopefully that will give us a chance to start over again with clear ground and no more ice, at least for a bit. Then the next snow will be safe to get out in again. Fingers crossed!


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## frlsgirl

Yep same here in Oklahoma from single digits to 70s in 4 days; now the temperature dropped 40 degrees overnight. This can't be good for horses, or humans, or anyone.


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## carshon

I dream of riding soon! The temp shifts are nuts! We have had rain! Yes RAIN in Jan. No snow on the ground at all but everything is frozen puddles. So tired of ice!!!


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## PoptartShop

She's super cute. 
Yeah, it's about 60F here today, I'm shocked.


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## egrogan

Very warm here yesterday and today, close to 50*F. Raining and grey today unfortunately. I haven't seen Izzy since the first part of this week as work has been a bit overwhelming. She got her feet done yesterday, so I'm eager to see how they cleaned up. Am hoping for a pre-work ride tomorrow morning. It should be sunny tomorrow, but back to more seasonal temperatures. I just hope the rain ends early enough that we don't have ice all over again!


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## egrogan

I haven't ridden since Monday because of another busy work week (I wrote about our last couple of rides outside over on the trail thread), so I was itching for a ride today. We actually had a very nice arena ride today. My ambitions were pretty modest: a consistent, willing, forward trot. She was ready to go!









And happy to say that she gave me 20 good minutes, which I was pleased with given she'd been just sitting for a week. I've been watching a lot of GP freestyle dressage on TV lately, and it's got me turned on to riding with music. (As an aside, a friend of a friend is a retired teacher who recently started a business choreographing freestyle dressage tests. People from around the world send her videos of their horses riding each required movement, and then she pieces together music based on how the horse moves. It sounds like such a cool retirement job. I have some weird ideas about dressage and hip hop that I'd love to be able to play around with. But that's a different thread...) Anyway, Isabel seems to pay attention to the music, and I figure that picking stuff with an energetic, marching beat keeps my body active and I know it keeps me loose and breathing and *gasp* singing to her. 

When I felt her starting to get tired, I hopped off and did another 20 minutes or so on the lunge. I have not been cantering her under saddle because I just don't feel that she's strong enough right now, and she's still getting really tense over it so it feels very counterproductive. So I wanted to see how she was moving without me mounted. She gave me a really beautiful walk and trot in both directions- the best I've seen her move in quite awhile. She cantered very nicely to the left too. She gave a couple of happy bucks to start, but then balanced herself pretty nicely and went on about her business until I asked her to trot. To the right, she's very obviously weaker. She could canter about two 20-meter circles before breaking gait awkwardly. In those moments, you can see she gets kind of locked up in the right stifle. We didn't spend all our time on the 20-meter circle though as I didn't want to do too much of that, so we did some trotting in both directions using the long sides- I really wish I was videoing then as she looked really pretty doing it yet remained really responsive to voice commands for transitions  

I'm going to ask BO if we can do a few long lining lessons- she starts a lot of horses for dressage and it's a big part of her early work with them. I played around with it a few winters ago when I was also bored, but I was trying to learn from one of those "100 long lining exercises" type of books, and I felt very uncoordinated with all the gear in my hands. Isabel was good with the lines, but we didn't make much progress. I think it would help to have someone there to show me some pointers, and then we'll have something else to do on rainy/snowy days when we're stuck inside for the next few weeks (months?)

It was rainy pretty hard by the time we were done, so she looked quite pleased to be turned back out wearing her silly raincoat. 









Of course- note she's not _in _her shed. Her choice I guess- at least she found lunch!


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## frlsgirl

Izzy looks good in her gear; what size did you end up getting for both the neck cover and blanket? Ana and Izzy look to be about the same size. Longlining is something I've always wanted to learn. When I get bored with riding, I usually do liberty work on lunge work, just because I'm not coordinated enough to attempt longlining. I hear you on being too busy to ride; I'm trying to find a healthier balance between work, homelife and riding #thestruggleisreal


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Izzy looks good in her gear; what size did you end up getting for both the neck cover and blanket? Ana and Izzy look to be about the same size. Longlining is something I've always wanted to learn. When I get bored with riding, I usually do liberty work on lunge work, just because I'm not coordinated enough to attempt longlining. I hear you on being too busy to ride; I'm trying to find a healthier balance between work, homelife and riding #thestruggleisreal


It is real indeed @frlsgirl! When I get grumpy about it, I just remind myself that the job is the reason I can have a horse and take care of her the way I want, so that's something I guess...

She wears a size 70" in the Schneider's blankets. I got her both the lightweight/sheet and heavyweight StormShielf VTEK Dublin Turnout Blanket. The hood is a size Medium, which is confusingly the smallest size you can buy. It's designed to fit on both blankets and the attachment/detachment process is super easy, unlike other brands I've had. She's had the heavyweight blanket on a lot this winter, and I'm very pleased with the fit- no sign of rubs along her shoulders, which had been a problem in other brands. Since it's been so wet, she's also had the hood on a lot, and I have noticed some thinning of her mane. To be honest though, her mane is so thick it's almost a problem, so I actually don't mind it being a little thinner coming out of the winter.

We had really bad sleet/ice last night, with more ice on the way later today, so looks like indoor work is going to be our only option for the next few weeks. I won't be able to get there today because the roads are bad, but am hopeful to make it out tomorrow morning, depending on what happens weather-wise overnight.


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## egrogan

Sigh. Woke up to an inch+ of solid ice covering everything, so no barn today. I had even blocked off my morning work schedule so I could go early but not have to rush 

I don't envy BO having to move 25 horses around in these conditions. I know she stresses over making sure everyone is safe and comfortable.


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## frlsgirl

What a bummer @egrogan


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## PoptartShop

She looks so good in her raincoat!  Such a pretty girl.
Grrr, the weather always has to ruin everything doesn't it? Hopefully you can get to the barn asap & the weather stops being silly!


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## egrogan

Bit of a somber mood at the barn today...BO's dad, who lives on property with her mom, has been hospitalized all week and is coming home to begin hospice care today. I hadn't been there all week because of work, but it's the first time I've seen the routine just a bit "off"- BO could use positive thoughts coming her way. It's so apparent that she's a real rock that holds together both her actual family and her barn "family."

So Izzy sat for the week since I was again swamped at work. I didn't expect our ride to be great, but it was a real clunker. I need some eyes to give me some perspective: Is this a lame horse? An out of shape horse? A poorly ridden horse? A bored horse? She felt so lethargic under me I think I could have jumped off and crawled a 20-meter circle faster than she was going. 




I know I look like I'm launching myself out of the saddle posting and my legs are constantly moving-and that's definitely true. But that's because there is literally no impulsion offered. If I didn't do the posting myself, there would be nothing lifting me up. At least that's how it feels, curious how you all see it. 

The driveway and road were clear, so we left the arena and just took a walk to see if that would get her moving any more forward. 








It didn't really make much difference. Usually she's the kind of horse that picks up the pace when we make that turn to go home. She didn't at all. The ground was hard, for sure, but it was like there was just no desire to move. I guess I'm worried this is what the beginning of retirement looks like. 









Her eyes are bright, and she's still got her personality:









I don't know, just feeling a bit glum all around...


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## phantomhorse13

I don't see a lame horse. I do see a not-exactly-trim one though. I know you have been working on her weight since the barn change.. did you get it figured out? If she is heavier than in winters past that may make her more lethargic. [Or it may be just camera angle and actually not an issue at all - just commenting on what I thought I saw.]

Is Izzy one to get bored easily? Next time, try taking her over some poles on the ground or see if she will push the ball around the arena (think I saw one on the other side of the arena). Or pick up a cone and trot around with that and see what happens.

Hope your BO's dad improves. Sounds like a very sad situation.


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## gottatrot

Sorry about your barn owner's dad.

I agree with phantomhorse. What I would guess is a horse feeling sluggish from being a bit overweight. I don't see lameness, personally.

It reminds me of a few years ago when I let Amore get to about that weight. She was so low energy it was ridiculous. Once I got her weight down, her energy level picked back up.


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## StephaniHren

I don't think she looks lame, either. I think she looks lazy and out of shape. She's really behind your leg and giving you minimum effort, but part of it is probably that it's physically hard for her to give you a lot of lift when she's so pudgy. I'd say weight loss should be a priority, then building muscle should come next so that it's easier for her to give you good forward motion.

Gosh darn she's got a cute nose, though.


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## egrogan

Thanks @*phantomhorse13* , @*gottatrot* , & @*StephaniHren* ! 

You were all very diplomatic in your feedback, but as you can obviously see, the weight loss fight is not going well. She is now getting a literal handful of ration balancer for her Cosequin, and her hay is being rationed in a slow feeder net. The ground is covered in crusty snow, so there's no grazing at all. I'm not sure how we could really cut her food back any more- BO actually thinks the fact that she's getting so _few _calories might also be contributing to the sluggishness. I do "cheat" and give her a mint or carrot after a ride. But without sounding whiny, I really don't know how to get her to eat any less?

Last week was the second in a row that I couldn't ride at all during the week because of work, so the lack of exercise is my fault. Also, given the snow/ice, the horses are basically just standing in their paddocks (and she is out 24/7, can't imagine how much worse it would be if she was in a stall). I'm going to have to figure out how to get more rides in. 

@*phantomhorse13* , yes, she does definitely get bored easily. In fact, that's why we started hacking out a couple of years ago, because she was so disinterested when doing arena work. The old barn hosted a therapeutic riding program, so the ring was often set up with all kinds of obstacle courses, poles, cones, etc. 








I would always work those in (she got very good at steering off my seat from all that work!), but still, it was very clear that riding in there was a chore, and her whole demeanor would change when she got outside. For at least the next couple of weeks when the weather is going to stay right at freezing, we are cut off from the trails because it's a skating rink to get there and I'm sure in the woods too. We can get to the roads, but I want to be careful about riding her too long on the roads, as the dirt portions are basically like pavement and the shoulders are ice so safety is a bit questionable if we had to get out of the way of a car/truck quickly. So arena work it is. But to answer your question, yes, I could set up poles and cones to make it more interesting. And music too. I couldn't play music when I was using my phone to record, but I have been doing that more.

@*StephaniHren* , I am a sucker for her nose. My husband gets a kick out of it too so I have a zillion pictures of her like that to show him since he doesn't get out to the barn very often.


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## egrogan

Oh, one other thing about increased exercise...I was talking to BO about my frustration yesterday after my ride, and I did ask her about long lining lessons (obviously when things get less crazy for her). She enthusiastically said yes, so once we can get those scheduled that will give me something different to do with Izzy that should help. I don't want to bug BO about scheduling right now until her routine approaches something more normal, but I'm hopeful that we can start next month.


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## gottatrot

@egrogan, this is controversial and I'm probably the last to give advice with a newly foundered horse. 
But I will throw this out there...
Some people believe the best thing to do with a horse that gains weight easily is to make sure they have hay 24/7 and feed in a slow feeder to limit calories. This is a popular theory from Dr. Getty, and I've read a lot about it and also know people who practice it.

I've also read a lot about how important it is to keep horses from being obese, and that this is a big risk for IR and founder. 
I've read some articles about studies they've done on ponies and it has been noted that some can and will eat double their caloric needs even when allowed to eat 24/7 for a period of months. So I believe even though most horses will naturally regulate their intake if they always have access to food, there seems to be a disruption of this normal mechanism in some horses, and those horses will become obese if allowed free choice food, even when fed through a slow feeder net. I think one thing that does disrupt this is Cushing's disease, because these horses have high levels of Cortisol which induces abnormal hunger. We know this from humans, if they are given cortisol/steriods they will feel constantly hungry and gain a lot of weight. 

I've observed my mare, Amore eating from the smallest hole hay net and going through 10 lbs of hay in 2 hours. She only weighs about 750 lbs, and 2 percent of her body weight in roughage is only 15 lbs. She will continue to eat hay as long as there is hay to eat. So you can see that she can and will easily eat 20 or 30 lbs of hay if allowed, which is up to double her caloric intake. This is how she ended up obese at one barn I was at, they fed her as much hay as she would eat, and she ate more than a large TB. She had no grain at all. What I have to do with her is feed her the amount of hay she needs to keep at a good weight. As a Cushing's horse, she is a super easy keeper and if I give her more than 8 lbs of hay she gets overweight (she grazes daily outside, so meets the 15 lb roughage requirement through grazing). So that is what she gets, and maintains a good weight. 

There are several horses at my barn that are on the easy keeper free choice hay plan. All three are markedly obese. One has chronic laminitis which is worsening, and one of the others has had one episode with laminitis, which he has recovered from. I am more afraid of overfeeding my Cushing's horse than I am of having her go without hay for a few hours each night after she finishes her hay, because while that might possibly cause some issues, I am more worried about her body condition going above the 5+ which it always is.

So my question is (if you can't regulate her weight)...how much hay is she getting, and is it over her caloric and roughage needs? I.e. the average 1,000 lb-at-their-ideal-weight horse needs 20 lbs or less. Horses with slow metabolism from Cushing's might need a bit less.
As with humans, horses don't put on weight if they are at an energy deficit. Meaning, no overweight human or horse got that way by eating too few calories, to the point of feeling weak. But other things affecting the metabolism/endocrine/hormone balance might cause that lack of energy.


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## phantomhorse13

My first suggestion would be to find her poor-quality hay (think 3 years ago first cutting kind of quality), so she can have something to munch on all the time yet not get the calories.. but being at a boarding stable, that may not be an option. Is hay included in your boarding fee (I suspect so, but never know)? Does she eat out of a hay net now? Is it possible to double net the hay (which is a huge PITA for the staff, but would maybe slow her down some). Is she normally a good eater? Perhaps adding in some straw for bulk with her hay, as that would keep her chew time up without increasing her calories much?

I understand life getting in the way in terms of being able to get her exercised daily, especially in the winter.


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## Zexious

I so love your journal, egrogan. <3 You're one of my very favorites!

I don't know if this is a tactic you've already employed, or have already attempted (so many pages of journal, teehee! And so many good ones! It's hard to keep up with them all!) but have you considered one of those "muzzle" type grazing devices? I've never personally used one--and I think most of them attach to a halter so that could be a safety hazard depending on how she's stabled, but it's just a thought. 
I'm on the opposite end of the "weight battle;" Gator is just such a hard keeper, so I understand how frustrating it can be. It looks like you're receiving some good suggestions in this thread alone, hopefully it'll work itself out!

Life does definitely get in the way of riding everyday--and weather, too! But you're one of the most diligent riders I know, so kudos in that regard. 

More than that, you're also one of the most attentive owners I know. Izzy is lucky to have someone who is so willing to try new things to keep riding fresh and fun for both parties ;o;

Best of luck moving forward!
I'm excited to hear about your lessons, come next month


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## egrogan

@*Zexious* , you're making me blush. Thanks for the nice words and following along with Izzy's antics 

OK...so hay. The hay quality is markedly increased from old barn to new barn. Last year at the old barn, she actually lost weight over the winter, and the only thing I can attribute it to was really s****y hay. So when I moved to new barn in Nov, I was a bit paranoid about weight through the winter and said as much to BO. I think that got us started off with pouring way too much food into her in anticipation of winter, and I didn't factor in how much better quality BO's hay would be. We started off with free choice hay in two small hole nets 24/7 and she started gaining pretty quickly (she was still on ~3 lbs of the senior feed she had been on at old barn to counter the weight loss). Step one was transitioning from the senior feed to a ration balancer, and she was still gaining. So we have been playing around with proportions since she started getting cresty and had fat pads around her tail. The RB is now just a handful, and she's no longer on free choice hay. BO is the only person who touches feed at this barn, so I haven't been able to weigh the flakes myself, but her bales and flakes look like "average" size, so let's say a flake is no more than 5 lbs. At this point, Izzy is down to 4 flakes a day: 1 morning (5am), 1 lunch (noonish), 1 dinner (5ish); 1 overnight (around 9). And she still looks like a swollen tick. I don't think she's eating unusually fast. When I went out this morning, it was ~10am, and she still had some of the 5am hay in the haynet. I think it's just very good hay. I joked awhile ago with BO that I was going to have to buy some crappy hay and leave that for her, but like you said @*phantomhorse13* , maybe I actually _do _have to. I'm not sure how BO would feel about that but I can bring it up again. I don't have any experience with grazing muzzles, but right now there is about an inch of ice-covered snow out there, so there's no actual grass to even nibble. And the nets seem to work ok for her.

BO is getting ready to schedule spring shots & floating for March, so at that point we'll pull blood for another Cushings test and a full blood panel just to see what the heck we can find, if anything. She also wonders if something's going on with her metabolism. She really doesn't like the senior feed I'd been using for the past year, explaining she had another horse move to her barn on it and had similar issues with showing fast weight gain. She thinks the feed messes with their metabolism and has lasting effects even after a switch. I can't say I know enough about nutrition to understand if that's even possible, but I think she feels we're in a "balancing out" period right now with letting the new feeding approach kick in and start shrinking that belly.

******
So we had a better ride today. 









I tried to bring more energy to the ride and keep _my _mind engaged too; so, I tried not to do the same thing for more than two laps of the arena. We did lots of transitions (sticking to just w/t right now) and changes of directions. I put out the trot poles in the middle of the ring so we could incorporate them into figure 8s, circles, and serpentines. That did seem to perk her up a little. Did a little backing and turn on the fore to break things up after a lot of trotting. She was tired at the end!









I decided to take her for a walk in hand to cool after our ride. We didn't go far, but again, it's nice to do things that engage her mind and change up the scenery a little. The neighbors kids definitely caught her attention!









BO said let's talk next week about lessons, so hopefully it will really happen and that will be another option.


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## Zexious

^Look at that sweet little face! <3

Hay!
Keep us updated on your progress and on the new feeding regime. Isn't it crazy, how balancing feed and supplements and different types of hair has become an art?

So glad to hear your ride was more positive!
I have always enjoyed the use of poles when hacking. I was always too lazy to move them around, so just utilized them when others already had them set up. 

Horse walking should be a sport. Real talk!


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## StephaniHren

Alright, so I'm new to this whole horse ownership business, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Izzy is getting a lot of hay to me? Four flakes a day sounds like a lot—my horse (15.2ish APHA, probably ~1000 pounds) gets four flakes a day (two in the morning, two at night) plus two cups of Nutrena SafeChoice Special Care (so not much), and he's currently on stall rest and needs to gain some weight. I know quality of hay varies, but Izzy needs to lose weight, so shouldn't she be getting less?

I'm actually really interested in this stuff, I've just kind of been guessing/basing how much I feed on how he looks and how much everyone else feeds, so it's cool to hear more about feeding at other barns!

As far as exercise, does work getting in the way of her exercise happen often? I'm wondering if you have someone around at the barn (trainer or teenage barn rat) that you could pay (if it's fiscally reasonable) to give her a few extra days of exercise (whether it's lunging or long lining or riding). We have a couple of trainers at my barn that people usually pay to exercise their horses while they're on vacation or busy with work.

When it comes to boredom in the arena, my horse is definitely the same way. He'd much rather be riding outside than in the arena, but when winter hits we don't have many options, so I've found that the best way to keep him interested in arena work is to make it super unpredictable—lots of circles, serpentines, changes of direction, halts, gait changes, lateral work, etc (which it sounds like you did in your last ride!). I call it "free flow" riding, where I just sort of zone out and we do lots of weird things in succession so that he really has to focus and he doesn't have time to be lazy. It doesn't have to be fun like going outside is, but he does need to buckle down and do the work.

Bonus nose GIF of my doof:


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## egrogan

StephaniHren said:


> Alright, so I'm new to this whole horse ownership business, so someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Izzy is getting a lot of hay to me? Four flakes a day sounds like a lot—my horse (15.2ish APHA, probably ~1000 pounds) gets four flakes a day (two in the morning, two at night) plus two cups of Nutrena SafeChoice Special Care (so not much), and he's currently on stall rest and needs to gain some weight. I know quality of hay varies, but Izzy needs to lose weight, so shouldn't she be getting less?
> 
> I'm actually really interested in this stuff, I've just kind of been guessing/basing how much I feed on how he looks and how much everyone else feeds, so it's cool to hear more about feeding at other barns!


Ezhno's got a pretty cute nose himself! 

So as far as hay volume, this is definitely the least I've ever fed over the winter. It's been a mild winter, so comparing to last year isn't quite fair, but last winter she was getting 6 flakes plus 3lbs senior plus soaked alfalfa and still extremely ribby with protruding hipbones. But we had long stretches where the high temps would be in the single digits or teens, and go below zero overnight, so we tried to have hay in front of them all day every day. BO at the new barn likes that approach too during the winter, particularly overnight for the "outside" horses who are more exposed to the wind/snow/sleet. 

I'd be curious what other people in cold climates think, but free choice hay in the winter is pretty common where I live. But like with everything, it's a balance and there is no "rule" that applies to all horses!

Going for a quick before-work ride now.


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## gottatrot

Actually, seriously I look at the pictures and am not sure I see an overweight horse. What I'm hearing sounds a lot like Amore as she progressed toward needing medication with her Cushing's. We had one winter where she had a lower quality hay, and she actually got thin. And that's apparently because they can metabolize protein too fast with Cushing's, so I think the hay had too low protein for her. Once she was on a higher protein feed she tended once again to be heavier.

But I have learned to disregard her belly. I feel her spine, ribs, and look at her neck and hindquarters to see what her condition is. Cushing's horses can be deceptive because they develop a pot belly. They say this is because the abdomen is heavy and they lose the muscle tone to hold it up so it hangs down and sticks out. 
If your mare is developing Cushing's, she probably won't get rid of the belly without medication. I'm not saying she needs medication now, but it is also common for Cushing's horses to get low energy at times due to the endocrine imbalances. 

So I think in some of your recent pictures I don't see a thick neck. If she were as heavy as her belly suggests, I would think we'd see fat deposits over her eyes (looks like depressions instead), and her spine would probably be in a depression rather than flat with her back or raised. It doesn't sound like she is getting a ton of calories. With Amore I focus on a high protein/high quality diet with the Cushing's and it might not be right for this horse to go to a lower quality hay if that is what you suspect she may have.

I think you are doing a great job with all you are doing with her and for her.


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, apparently not all hay is the same and you can't always judge it by just looking at it. It does sound like you are working hard to find the right solution for Izzy and I'm sure she really appreciates that!


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## carshon

I have to agree with GottaTrot - I do not see a seriously overweight horse. I am the owner of 2 older horses and they have both had "body shape" changes in the last couple of years. I personally see a very fit old-ish horse - with a "tad" of extra padding. But not a seriously obese horse.

I will try to post pics today of our 20 yr old FoxTrotter mare. She rode well over 200 miles of trails last year- most were composed of up and down ravines creek corssings and bush whacking. She is gaited so we try to gait at every ride if we can. She always has a slight "pot bellied" look to her. We stressed and fretted and stressed some more about her weight until my vet finally had enough and said - how many skinny old people do you see with a slight tummy? Ummmm---yep quite a few. And his reply was - this is a Sr horse in moderate work. Her feed is monitored to the ounce - her exercise tracked with a riding app and her health taken as a top priority. She is a little pot bellied because muscle loses elasticity over time - nothing you are going to do to make her old muscles young again.

I love my vet- and after thinking about all of the Sr horses I have owned in my life I think most have gotten that pot bellied look as they moved past the 20yr mark. That does not mean we still don't watch what she eats but we are not expecting her to look like her 12 yr old pasture mate either.


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## egrogan

Since she has convinced so many of you that's she's cute as a button, I thought I'd share what Little Miss Sunshine thought of our morning ride today 








How's that for a sweet face?! I did feel sorry for her with her sad frozen whiskers though.

It was our first chilly morning in awhile, about 20*F. She felt stiff and sluggish again- more like she was moving in the video I posted than yesterday, when she was more eager. Yesterday she trotted fine over the ground poles, today she tripped through them at a trot and still occassionally knocked them walking. I give her a little slack because of the cold I guess. We did a long walking warmup and cooldown.



gottatrot said:


> Actually, seriously I look at the pictures and am not sure I see an overweight horse. What I'm hearing sounds a lot like Amore as she progressed toward needing medication with her Cushing's. We had one winter where she had a lower quality hay, and she actually got thin. And that's apparently because they can metabolize protein too fast with Cushing's, so I think the hay had too low protein for her. Once she was on a higher protein feed she tended once again to be heavier.
> 
> But I have learned to disregard her belly. I feel her spine, ribs, and look at her neck and hindquarters to see what her condition is. Cushing's horses can be deceptive because they develop a pot belly. They say this is because the abdomen is heavy and they lose the muscle tone to hold it up so it hangs down and sticks out.
> If your mare is developing Cushing's, she probably won't get rid of the belly without medication. I'm not saying she needs medication now, but it is also common for Cushing's horses to get low energy at times due to the endocrine imbalances.


YES, to all of this. She has the classic physical profile: slightly swayed back, potbelly yet ribs you can still feel, uneven coat and long hairs around her jaw (though her coat is less wooly this year than it was last year- we'll see how she sheds out), dullness/lack of energy. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to be prone to infection or laminitis. I've read everything I can find on Cushing's and for the past 10 months, I've just really been thinking it's time to start treating. In the fall, I actually went ahead and filled a prescription for the Pergolide before the bloodwork came back, as I was so convinced she was going to be positive (so was the vet, which is why he wrote the script). When the bloodwork came back negative, I strongly considered starting the medication anyway even though she was within seasonally "normal" ranges, but ultimately it felt stupid to make a choice counter to what the medical tests were telling us. The vet thought I was a bit nuts with all my waffling, but he was nice about it. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't _want_ her to have Cushing's- but at the same time, if this isn't a pre-Cushing's poster horse, I can't imagine what one looks like. In some ways, it would be good to move past the waiting stage and get on with management.

But thank you all for thinking through this with me, it's nice to have horse people to bounce questions off of. And @*carshon* , I will be sure to tell her you used the word "fit" in a sentence describing her. She's used to people asking when her foal's due, I'm sure her self-esteem will get a big boost :wink: (PS- would love to see pictures of your senior citizens!)


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## frlsgirl

:rofl: that face! She's still cute even when she's mad :mrgreen:


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## PoptartShop

LOL she looks so adorable.  Awwwwww. Tired girl!!


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## carshon

You asked for it @egrogan- here are pics of my oldsters. The appy is my hubbies horse Ya Ya she is 19- she is mostly retired as she has Navicular and the hilly terrain on our trail rides really bothers her



And Gracie (AKA Poopsie) my daughters 21 yr old Fox Trotter. Gracie always looks pot bellied - even on no pasture, grains low in NSC and just grass hay and a ration balancer. Uber fuzzy in the winter and drinks more water than any other horse I have ever ever owned! But she tests negative for Cushings and any other metabolic issue we could think of. This pic was last fall (late Sept) and Gracie had already logged about 225 trail miles by that time. Her back is a little weaker looking than when we got her and we worried and talked to our vet and he felt it is just age - we hope she is ridable well into her late 20's!


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## Wallaby

My Lacey got a bit of a potbelly when she wasn't getting enough protein as well. Looking back, I'm sure she was probably developing Cushings.
Anyway, I upped her protein and she started looking pretty normal again 


A thought/idea/realization I had while reading what GottaTrot posted is that if she does need more protein, it could explain her low energy level: protein = fuel for the long-haul. If her protein needs aren't being met, she's gonna run out of "fuel" faster and get tired more quickly.

Have you ever tried supplementing Lysine and other amino acids? Amino acids are integral to being able to access the protein in food and if she's low in one or the other, it could really effect her ability to use whatever protein she is getting in her diet. Something like Tri-Amino could do the trick and give you a chance to see if that might be the issue, without increasing her calories too much if you're worried about that.


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## frlsgirl

hmmm...all this discussion on protein and energy makes me think we should put Ana back on alfalfa mush.


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## egrogan

@carshon- great pictures of your horses! Thank you for sharing them. The appy reminds me of a POA, "Foxy," that a friend had when we were kids. I've been looking for years for a picture that I used to have taped to my bedroom wall-it's of me riding Foxy in killer black stonewashed jeans and huge poufy bangs- a true child of the early 90s. :wink: I can't find it anywhere though!

Thank you all for your thoughts on protein and energy. BO and I have also discussed the low energy being diet related. She'd like to not try any additional changes or supplements right now, and see where we can get on weight loss with the hay-based diet. If Izzy was home, I think I'd be able to experiment a bit more, but I feel that I'm a bit limited right now as BO is juggling a lot with her family health issues and I don't want to add one more thing. But, I suspect you're all right, and that we will continue to adjust to find the right balance for Izzy.

Not a lot of exciting updates. It's been relatively mild, ~32*F most days and the snow has stayed away, so I've been out to the barn a lot. Unfortunately, the last freezing rain/snow/ice cycle left pretty thick ice everywhere so we've been stuck in the indoor.

Our rides have been up and down. Over the weekend, I was happy to have a more energetic Izzy. I tried putting my phone to record in a different spot, but it ended up with us cut out of the frame for long blocks of time so I'm not going to bore you with the video. I pulled a couple of screen shots where you can see she's moving along decently. 


















Though from watching the video, I've noticed my leg is consistently way far back- I'm not sure the saddle is doing either of us any favors (aren't those words every husband loves to hear?? :smile. Makes me a little more sympathetic to why she wants to pop into a canter sometimes though when I want her to trot- I truly don't feel like my leg is as far back as it appears in the pictures, so I've been working on it. 

This morning though, we had a case of the winter blues. She was atrocious at the mounting block. Like, wouldn't stand for anything. She'd wait until I got to the top step and then start walking in a really tight circle around me. I'm embarrassed I took some of my frustration out on her a bit and yanked on her mouth a couple of times when she walked off. It was just so unlike her. So I unmounted and remounted a few times, and she was consistently bad about it, walking off at least twice before standing where she belonged. Looking back, I think it's one of those things where I just got lax about it over the past few weeks (since we've been riding primarily in the indoor), she'd move forward every now and then and I'd just move the block to where she was and let her walk off with just one foot in the stirrups. I guess she finally decided she didn't need to stand at all. Shows that even with the nicest mannered horses, they do still need a reminder of the "rules" every now and then, I guess. Anyway, hopefully with a few consistent days at the block we'll be back in business.

I think we were both irritated with each other, and the ride itself wasn't great today. She was sluggish again, even when I put out cones to weave and had the trot poles out. 









I just can't shake the feeling that something just isn't right with her. To the point above, maybe it is just that she's low energy from diet. I also don't like the shape of her feet right now, I think they are too long all around. In the past, when we briefly used a farrier that didn't work for her, she would trip a lot and generally not move well. She's not really tripping, but I think that's probably because we're riding inside vs. out right now. We've been through two cycles with the farrier at the new barn. She's one of a handful of horses that isn't shod, and they've decided her feet are "great" and only filed a little off the walls both times they've seen her. Unfortunately I was at my grandmother's funeral the last time they were out, so I couldn't be there to ask for a different approach. I think this is going to have to be one of those areas where I bring someone in rather than use BO's. I'm unfortunately too far away for my old trimmer to come to us now, but he's looking in his network to see if he can connect me with someone else.

The only other thing that's a bit off is her eyes. She's always had watery, goopy eyes, but they seem to be getting worse, which is unusual for this time of year. BO said she's noticed her squinting a lot more lately, almost looking painful. You can sort of see her squinty look and runny eye here- she looks like this a lot lately:









In the past, we've tried all manner of flushes and diagnostic stains and never come up with anything specific, so just made sure to keep a fly mask on her during the spring and summer to keep bugs and dust, etc. out as much as possible. BO recommended trying the Guardian Mask, which she said she's used with a lot of success on other horses, both with nagging problems like this and with specific eye trauma and vision loss. So we're giving that a try. And, turns out another one of the boarders is a veterinary opthamologist, but she winters down south so once she's back in about a month, I'll have her take a look and see if there's anything specific we can figure out and treat. Obviously if something gets worse before then, the regular vet will take a look.

_Does this thing make my nose look big?









Neighbor Jim to Izzy: "Is that you in there friend?"_









Gosh, typing this all out does really suggest diet's off though, doesn't it? Oy. It's tough boarding and having to rely on someone else.


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## frlsgirl

Oh no; hope you get Izzy figured out. When our horses are not feeling well it really seems to affect us as well; like we just want to make it better but we don't know what to do and that is so frustrating. But listen to your gut; you know your horse way better than anyone else.


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## egrogan

We got walloped with snow all last week, had a couple of days reprieve, and are getting hit with at least another foot today.

I managed to sneak out of work with an hour of daylight left on Friday to go see Izzy. Shedding is just starting here (Hurray! Spring _will _come!) so I felt bad she hadn't been groomed since Monday (I'd been basically snowed in since then). She was happy for the company and enjoyed her brushing.









Yesterday I got in a brief ride. It was about as you'd expect after she sat for a week- felt stiff and not very forward, and she was very distracted because another horse was in the ring with us and there was a big group of people in the viewing room, which she isn't used to. I had my first 'incident' at this barn with another boarder coming in to watch me ride and giving me some 'tips' on how I should be riding Izzy. I really very much prefer not to get into one of those conversations, so I just made some "yep" and "uh huh" noises while she 'instructed' me and went to ride at the other end of the arena :wink: The one downfall of this new barn so far is that there is a very chatty group of boarders on the weekends, and I get talked at for a solid 30 minutes before I can escape. Everyone is perfectly friendly and pleasant, but I like a quiet barn where I'm just focused on my horse- I spend all day talking to people, and the barn is my quiet time. Oh well, boarding has good and bad. I am hopeful that at some point I'll be able to transition to horses at home. Until then, I'm just glad everyone is friendly.

I went to the barn early this morning to give Izzy another good grooming before the snow got started. Will probably be stuck home through end of day tomorrow if we get the foot+ of expected snow. And, another storm is forecast for Wednesday/Thursday. But...horses are shedding...spring can't be _that_ far off!









Hehehe...difficult road conditions on the way home from the barn just now:


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## carshon

She looks soooo modern with her goggle mask on. I think Kanye West would love to have her walk for him in his show!


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## PoptartShop

How cute is she in that mask! Awwww.  And the snow on her little muzzle LOL so cute.


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## frlsgirl

Wow that's crazy about the snow - we got 88 degrees Saturday! The week before it got down into the 20s!


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## egrogan

Got the snow cleared and roads were good enough to get to the barn this morning before work. Yay! Got in a pretty good ride, actually. I'm feeling a little under the weather so wasn't sure how much energy I'd have, but Izzy seemed happy to have something to do. We did lots and lots of walk-trot transitions and she was nice and forward and responsive. She even broke out in a bit of a sweat, which was great. Feel the burn Izzy!! 










This weekend should be up in the mid-40s, it will feel like a heat wave. I'm sure it's going to be a sloppy mess when multiple feet of snow start melting, but we'll take it. 

Good news, I was able to connect with a new trimmer who comes highly recommended. He's willing to travel out to us, so I can't wait to get her feet in a better place. We're trying to work out scheduling now, which is a little tough given some upcoming work travel, but we'll figure it out. He actually has some other clients in our town, so we'll work towards getting on the same schedule since he'll be traveling about an hour to get to us.


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## frlsgirl

Yay so good news all around; except being under the weather; hopefully you will feel better as the temps rise.


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## PoptartShop

I'm happy you still got in a nice ride, despite not feeling so hot! I hope you feel better, especially since some nice weather is coming this weekend. 
Good to hear about the trimmer, too!


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## egrogan

Thanks ladies. My throat is a bit sore and scratchy, but my poor husband has been out sick from work all week with fever, congestion, sore throat, etc. So I feel lucky to have just a touch of it. Hoping it stays that way!


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## egrogan

I decided to go ride early this morning so I could beat the crowd that is sure to be there on the first really warm day of the year. It's supposed to be in the mid-40s later today, but even this morning it was still above freezing, which felt like a heat wave! I had the barn all to myself, which was nice.

Izzy was great. We did a solid 25 minutes of trot work, with lots of changes of directions and a few short walk breaks. She was sooo tired by the end, I was definitely holding her together but she tried really hard. She's gotten very snappy in the upward transition from walk to trot, which is very welcome. I can feel her back starting to engage a bit, so she's working, not just dragging herself around.









After our ride, I gave her an aggressive grooming with the curry as shedding is starting and it's very satisfying to get all that old hair to start migrating off her! It was encouraging because I curried with a lot of elbow grease all along her back, and she's not sore at all. I was concerned about saddle fit for awhile, but at least right now, she doesn't seem to be uncomfortable after being ridden in it.

Here she is being a goofball after I turned her back out. She's a good drinker, but she also loves eating the snow (don't worry, she has full, unfrozen water- she just seems to prefer the snow).


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## frlsgirl

Wow 25 minutes of trot work - that's a lot, even with breaks. We've done 5 minutes of solid trot work without a walk break, but we usually do a minute or two before we walk again. I always wonder if there is a standard such as "A training level horse should be able to do x number of minutes of trot and x number of minutes of cantering without a break" - I know at the H/J barn where Ana was for a couple of years, they would do training sessions where they timed the kids to see how long they could trot and canter without a break. But then again H/J probably have a lot different fitness requirements then a Dressage horse. If I remember correctly, they were aiming for 7 minutes of trot and canter without a break. My barrel racing friend trains by counting the laps around the arena, so she'll do a few laps of trot, canter and gallop. 

Anyway, glad to hear that she seems to be doing well!


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl-I bet Ana's trot work is a lot more physically demanding because she's using her body so much more than Izzy and you are asking more as far as how she's carrying herself. For us right now, I'm really just asking her to go forward and not drag herself along like a bad western pleasure jog, and she's doing better. She's too unbalanced and not strong enough to really do any canter work, so we only w/t in the arena. I know her fitness will improve a lot when we're back out on the trails, but it's very difficult to ride her for fitness in the arena because she's so resistant in there.










At any rate, I had today off, so we got another ride in this morning. Nothing very exciting in the arena, but we did manage to go for a walk outside to cool out. We just went up and down the road, but the fresh air and sunshine felt great. 









A lot of the snow has melted off, but it's melted down to the layer of the 2 inch thick ice, so we still can't get out to the trails yet. This is the worst of it though, and we're supposed to have a couple of 50*F days at the end of the week, so maybe over the weekend or next weekend, we'll actually be able to get into the woods- instead of just look at them. 









And she got switched to her lightweight blanket (yay!) and a nice apple to enjoy after we were finished:





Izzy's got a lot of appointments coming up. Things kick off this Friday with a visit from the equine dentist (unfortunately I'll have to miss it because of work). I managed to get scheduling worked out with the new trimmer, so he'll be out in just about a month (I'll have one more "trim" with the barn's farrier so she doesn't go 9 weeks in between trims), and shots are coming up in a couple of weeks. All those plans really do make it feel like spring is here.


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## frlsgirl

Wow she's really savoring that apple - totally cute. And yes, that makes sense @egrogan about trotting. Glad you got a day off to enjoy your horse!


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## egrogan

I was out of town most of last week for work- and actually, gone an extra day because on my flight home, the pilot had to "abort takeoff" halfway down the runway, just as we were about to lift off after accelerating, because of a warning light that came on. Aside from being a little disconcerting, it also made me miss my connection. So I didn't get home until Friday night instead of Thursday night, meaning I missed equine dentist day.

From the notes, sounds like she had a few hooks on molars that were filed, but she was well behaved and there was nothing unusual.

Yesterday, Izzy and I had an in-person visit from Horse Forum member @avna, who was visiting relatives and wanted to meet some horse people in the area. She braved the spring mud at the barn and we hung out there for a few hours. She hit it off with my elderly riding buddy who was proud to show off her sweet Lippitt mare. It was fun to meet someone from the Forum in person and hear all about their non-virtual real life! 

Today, it was much cooler than the record high temps we've had all week (hello mud!) but it was still a sunny day. We warmed up in the indoor, I thought Izzy did ok for not having been worked at all in a week. I tried to use a new (to me) video editor program to see if I could cut out some of the long periods of time when we're not in the frame- not sure if you can see anything here or if it's too disjointed where the cuts were made.





After that, we got outside!









We rode for about a mile, around the barn and up and down the road (until we saw a person walking several large dogs in the distance, so turned around...)

Some of our epic mud (this isn't a fraction as bad as what's in front of Izzy's paddock right now)









She gave me an admirable spook-in-place when the tarp on this boat started billowing in the wind









Access to the woods trail is still iced over...booo...









Someone brought carrots to share today, Izzy approved!


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## Avna

I just want to say what a wonderful welcome Egrogan gave me and how fun it was to meet her and meet New England horse people and of course, Jazz the Lippitt and her lovely owner. Would have posted before but it's been so busy and now I'm trying to go to bed since I have to get up at 4 a.m. to make my flight home to California! I will later though . . .


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## gottatrot

That's so great you two were able to meet!! :hug:


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## frlsgirl

How fun that you got to meet another HF member! Izzy is moving pretty well in the video so she must be feeling pretty good. Eeek about the mud; I know horse people in California have had a lot of trouble with mud slides and destroyed turnouts and arenas. Hopefully things will dry out for you soon. And yikes about the pilot aborting the flight. My husband is a pilot so I hear a lot of stories about this light not working and that light coming on in the middle of flight; sometimes it's literally just the light that's not working and not the mechanics behind it but better safe than sorry.


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## egrogan

I switched things up a bit yesterday and went to ride in the afternoon. We warmed up in the arena to start. I was feeling adventurous so I asked her to canter for the first time in a really long time. I asked her in a corner to try to help set her up, and while she picked it right up, she went straight for 3-4 strides and then fell in to the middle of the ring and fizzled out. I think I caught her by surprise! :wink: I let her walk a lap to regain her composure, and then asked again in a corner. This time, she stayed straight and we cantered the long side. It felt good! I think I will start asking for a few strides here and there as she's getting a little stronger with more riding outside.

So speaking of outside...we had a bit more adventure than I was expecting! The roads are clearing more every day, so I decided we'd go farther than we've been in several weeks. Here we are at the end of the dirt road that runs in front of the barn:









About a minute after I snapped this picture, we were down the road by that orange sign you seen in the distance. Right then, the school bus pulled up and stopped at the corner, basically where we had been standing when I took the picture. I guess I've found something that Isabel is scared of! As the bus stopped and that stop sign arm thingy popped out the side, she gave me a spin and bolt - on the pavement - like I've never seen her do before. It was scary for a minute hearing her feet scraping across the pavement, but she stayed upright, I stayed on, and I managed to get her stopped in the ditch on the other side of the road. This all happened in a few seconds, but once I had her stopped, my next problem was that the bus had let a group of kids off, and was now driving in our direction, followed by 5 cars that had been held up behind it. And then a UPS truck came rattling towards us from the other direction. That's the most traffic-intense situation I've ever been in on a horse. She was dancing on her toes, but basically dancing in place (there wasn't really anywhere to go given where we were standing- the only options were plunging into the woods or back into the road, so at least I had enough of her brain she didn't blindly do either of those). Once the bus and cars all went by, I hopped off. I usually think of myself as someone who would rather stay on, but not in this scenario. She was a bit bargy as we walked out of the ditch, but after a few steps she lowered her head, blew out a big exhale, and led fine. We walked about 1/4 mile, following one of the kids who was walking to his house:









Then we stopped to play in a puddle:









At that point, I think she was looking a little embarrassed about the whole thing:









So I got back on, we went back down the road away from the barn and towards the corner where all this happened, and then turned around and walked back to the barn on the buckle with feet out of stirrups.

Not exactly the ride I _wanted _to have, but as long as it ended safely, I guess it's one more experience that we survived. BO was schooling horses when I got back, so I told her about our adventure (everyone at the barn jokes about how quiet Izzy is) and her response was: "Guess you know what you need to be working on every afternoon around 3pm." And I think she's right, I do think it's worth riding back down there a few times to meet the bus and getting over this. I am 100% positive I'm going to have to do some silly breathing exercises to make sure that _I _stay calm the next time we do this, but we will!


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## carshon

Your Izzy is a superstar!!!!!! Buses are scary things and then kids and UPS trucks. I hope she got a carrot after that ride.


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## frlsgirl

Wow - what a nailbiter! Glad everyone is ok and it seemed like a good learning experience even though you hadn't exactly planned for it.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Your Izzy is a superstar!!!!!! Buses are scary things and then kids and UPS trucks. I hope she got a carrot after that ride.


 @carshon, yes, she did get a carrot 

I've been rehashing the situation in my head since it happened. What I concluded is that I was indecisive and that contributed to her getting worried. In the very few seconds I had to decide what to do, I thought through way too many options- and didn't pick the right one! :-? She doesn't like indecisive...

Anyway, I rode yesterday afternoon, it ended up being a beautiful spring day. The outdoor ring is "open" now that the slush is gone, and my elderly riding buddy (I'm going to call her Ida) was there and happy to ride together. She really likes to do what she calls "riding in pairs"- basically, riding in formation at the same gait, etc. around the ring. Our mares are pretty well matched and are fine being ridden close together. We rode in the ring for a bit and then around the property and up and down the road. It felt like a bonus ride, as the morning forecast had called for showers all day- instead we got 55*F and sunny!


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## egrogan

Izzy had her 23rd birthday this past Thursday. Unfortunately I was out of town for work, so I missed her actual birthday, but I got out there today to love on her and scratch all her favorite spots and give her a big, juicy apple 

We had a nice ride today too, which is great since it's been almost a week since our last ride. It was cold and blustery, so we started off inside. There were a couple of other horses in there being worked as well, so that was a good opportunity to work on paying attention to me vs. being distracted by other horses. She gave a nasty mare glare at one of the geldings when he passed us cantering left while we were trotting right, but otherwise, she did well.

Despite the cold day, I actually worked up a sweat in the ring, so we headed outside to cool down. The wind was whipping...









...but I'm so happy, the woods trail is finally accessible again! 








There is definitely still some ice back there, so we didn't go far since we were alone, but I'm just so glad we've got this option again.

In other news, not only did Izzy celebrate a birthday this week, but she's FAMOUS! We live near a fairly prominent folk artist in our region, who paints what I'd guess you call "primitive" pieces often featuring New England scenes and animals. I had no idea, but my lovely husband commissioned this amazing painting of Isabel:








So, we now have the original proudly hanging in our living room, but anyone can buy prints or postcards of Izzy through the artist's website  It was so sweet of my husband to do this, and total happy coincidence that the painting was finished on her birthday!


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## Avna

This may seem crazy but it looks just like her! He captured her expression perfectly.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> This may seem crazy but it looks just like her! He captured her expression perfectly.


 @Avna, I agree! I think it's because he accentuated her big, expressive eyes.

I have to say, my favorite part is the goofy whiskers going everywhere.


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## carshon

Happy 23rd Birthday Izzy~!


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## frlsgirl

That's really cool! Happy birthday Izzy - wow 23 already, she doesn't look a day over 16!


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## carshon

@egrogan where are you? I miss your posts.


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## egrogan

Hi @*carshon* ! Thanks for checking in  We're still here!

So I've had a brutal work travel month. I'm actually sitting in the airport now waiting on (another) delayed flight and so ready to get home. This week, I've been gone since Monday. I've been away for at least a couple of days every week for the past 4 weeks. That means I've basically only seen Izzy on the weekends. And, the weather for the past 10 days or so was bitter cold, i.e., 15-20*F, so too cold to ride. When I saw her Sunday, I think she was feeling really bored. I have been trying to give her really good groomings since she's still blanketed in a heavyweight but shedding like mad. Usually she's happy to go into the barn because she loves grooming. But Sunday, when I went to turn into the barn, she looked longingly down the driveway so we went on a really cold in-hand trail walk.

My lovely husband had to handle 18" of snow while I was in 70*, sunny Denver all week, so when I get home it sounds like it's going to be at least a couple of weeks for all that snow to melt again (as you can see, ground was completely clear this past weekend, even in the woods), so looks like spring is still aways off. Sigh.

Good news though, no traveling for a couple of weeks so Izzy can get some much-deserved attention.


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## egrogan

Not sure what happened to that picture showing up sideways ^^ Trying again:









And a couple of others from last weekend (Already feeling nostalgic about seeing grass! We have SO.MUCH.SNOW all over again!):


















Finally got home at 2am last night and trying to be productive today. Can't wait for some barn time tomorrow!


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## egrogan

It felt great to get back to the barn today.

Here is my hairy beast:








I think I spent close to an hour grooming. There is A LOT of hair coming off!

Since she hadn't been ridden in two weeks, I took it easy. Got on and mostly walked around. Oh, and I forgot to mention my injury:








Last Saturday night we were making dinner and I sliced my nail off with a chef's knife. I essentially sheared the nail off cleanly from the nail bed, and didn't cut into my finger at all. As the ER doc said- at least this confirms our knives are nice and sharp! I'll spare everyone the gory details, but suffice it to say it bled an awful lot. It actually doesn't hurt at all, but keeping it bandaged is a huge pain. I wasn't actually sure if I'd be able to ride, but it did work out fine. There's an artificial scab over the nail right now- the only thing that stopped the gushing blood- and supposedly it will fall off when it's ready. And then the hope is, eventually the nail grows back.

So anyway, we rode in the indoor because I wasn't sure how much I'd really be able to handle the reins and didn't want to be caught in a dicey situation on the road if I really needed the reins but was fumbling around or something.

After I was convinced I could ride basically normally, it was too nice not to go outside:








This is also a lovely shot illustrating the fact that Izzy has rubbed out half of her mane since she's had her blanket hood on all winter. I always complained her mane was too thick in the summer! Guess it won't be a big deal this year 

Yep, lots of snow again. It was about halfway up Izzy's leg, and she was pretty clear she didn't feel comfortable in it. 









So we stayed on the plowed path and the driveway and just ambled around the barn a bit, saying hi to the horses in turnout (this is one of her favorite geldings- actually a very fancy dressage horse- she has good taste )


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## gottatrot

Yikes, I bet your nail really hurts.

I always worry about the horses shedding out here when it's still just spring and rainy, but you still have snow and the horses are shedding out. I guess it's natural but I always feel like they're losing their hair too soon when it's still cold out.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Yikes, I bet your nail really hurts.


Surprisingly it actually doesn't really hurt much at this point- it's just really awkward to do anything requiring two hands (like typing!) It hurt in the moment, but there was so much blood my head went immediately into problem solving mode and sort of blocked that out.



gottatrot said:


> I always worry about the horses shedding out here when it's still just spring and rainy, but you still have snow and the horses are shedding out. I guess it's natural but I always feel like they're losing their hair too soon when it's still cold out.


The weather really can't make up it's mind here this year- the temps have been swinging wildly from 15*F to 45*F (that will happen in the middle of this week). 

It's been interesting to watch her shedding this year- since as you know it's a key marker of Cushing's, I was holding my breath to see what would happen. So far, so good- and much better than last year, when she had the characteristic patches on her back and neck that took forever to shed. She seems to be shedding normally so far this year, though her coat overall has seemed less thick as she has been more heavily blanketed this year now that she lives outside all the time. And, BO is just a more vigilant blanketer than I probably would be if Izzy was in my backyard. But that's ok.

The vet will be out in two weeks for spring shots, so we'll run our next Cushing's test then. I can't wait to get that done and have the info in hand.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was the kind of day where all the horses woke up early and had a morning meeting where they decided they were all going to be difficult with any human who dared try to work with them.

Izzy was super rude and pushy. I think she's decided the bandage on my finger is some kind of alluring treat wrapper that I'm waving in front of her nose and not letting her have. She kept trying to bite at it while I was haltering her, and while leading she kept trying to cross in front of me and nudging at my pockets. I actually had to snap the lead line hard at her to get her to back off. In the cross ties, she was dancing around and kept pawing impatiently. It was really annoying- and also what the other two horses getting tacked up at the same time were doing!

I decided to put her back in the flower hackamore to start getting used to it again in anticipation of being able to ride outside again someday, if the snow ever decides to melt. She definitely noticed the difference but went pretty well in it. Here she is also looking longingly outside- we both prefer it 









The arena was congested but I actually don't mind that as she gets a little more forward and engaged in there when there are other horses. She was perkiest when my riding buddy Ida and Jazz were in front of her:









After we got all warmed up, we did go outside and just walk around the barn on the plowed paths for awhile. 









There was someone walking a large dog around the property on a flexi-leash (who ever thought those things were a good idea??) and the dog was a bit out of control, so the guy kept fiddling with the leash, making that awful zipping sound it makes when you're retracting it. The horses were definitely on alert, but no one balked or refused to ride towards it. I think the distraction actually made Izzy forget for a minute that yesterday she told me she couldn't possibly walk through the deep snow drifts  We went to the back of the property by the treeline you can see behind the fence:









After our ride, Izzy was resting her left hind leg at a sort of awkward angle, and flinched a little when I massaged her back, so she may be a bit sore coming back into exercise after a couple of weeks off. I know walking through that thick snow is hard work. I'll keep an eye on it.


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## frlsgirl

Sorry about your finger. I sometimes wonder what goes on at the barn when I'm not there and what kind of schemes horses are discussing among themselves. Glad you got to go for a ride though considering that you didn't get to ride for quite a while.


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## carshon

Ouch about the finger. Glad you got a ride in (or two)


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## egrogan

This morning Izzy got a visit from a new (to us) barefoot trimmer. He was very complimentary of her feet- said they appeared strong and healthy. I need to get some pictures for the hoof experts here to take a look. She had been trimmed by the barn farrier earlier this month, so she didn't need much but a touch up- he said her quarters and heels needed just a little bit of attention, and rolled her toes (which the other farrier never seemed to do). I really liked him, he had a good rapport with her and was a friendly, younger guy. I think I'll be sticking with him going forward, which I imagine will make the BO raise her eyebrows a bit since everyone else uses her person.

I also had Izzy fitted for boots- but I'm still on the fence about whether it's really worth it. The trimmer was pretty straightforward with me and said for the kind of riding we do, even including a couple of miles on paved and gravel roads, her feet are strong and healthy enough to really not need them.If we were going to ride 50+ miles at a time, or go on a multi-day trail trip, maybe she would benefit more. That seemed reasonable. The only reason I was interested in having her fit for them is that I can feel her hesitating and shortening her stride on those harder surfaces, which I really have to ride on to get anywhere, so I'm not sure what to do. 

I feel like over the past year, I've acquired a ridiculous amount of gear for her, and the only bodily surface left to cover at this point is her feet :wink: Case in point, this is how I left her this morning:









Anyone have experience with the Renegade Vipers for light trails and road riding?


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## gottatrot

I have Vipers. I don't use them anymore because we only have sand and grass where we ride. When we rode on gravel I used them daily. They are great boots, and stay on very well if they fit right. My horses always liked wearing them and we would gallop around the gravel roads in them. They're easy to clean too.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> They are great boots, and stay on very well if they fit right. My horses always liked wearing them and we would gallop around the gravel roads in them. They're easy to clean too.


Super helpful, thanks for that. We do have a lot of gravel roads around, so boots be useful for that purpose. It's looking like the best road for riding is going to stay closed for traffic until early-to-mid May, depending on the weather, so it seems like a great opportunity to test out some boots.

Today, however, was grey and dreary, with sleet and freezing rain. We rode in the indoor. Izzy makes me laugh, when she hasn't been in there for awhile, she is drawn like a magnet to her reflection in the mirror. 








I can't help but think she really misses group turnout with other horses. She's always able to "chat" with others over the fence, but I wish she was in with others. 

We had a nice ride, she felt about the same as she has given our fits and starts with trying to build any fitness given my crazy work schedule. 








The barn was quiet though, we were the only ones there which was kind of cozy on a cold grey day. 

I spent probably twice as much time grooming as I did riding as the shedding continues. She slept on the cross-ties for most of it, but woke up for apple time


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## egrogan

Izzy was very opinionated today. It was dreary again with more freezing rain on the way and icy + muddy ground everywhere, so I figured we'd stay inside. Every time we passed the windows on the sliding doors, she gave me that wistful stare outside. So after about 20 min warming up inside, I relented and out we went.

Looks much happier, right??









We can't really get anywhere because of the ice, so we just went up and down the road. 









I turned into the barn driveway, and she stopped, looking down the road past the barn. When she wants to stop and look at stuff I generally let her, but this "stop and look" turned into "let's keep going" as she tried to pull me away from the barn to keep riding. Unfortunately I really did need to wrap up as I have stuff going on this afternoon, so I pulled her around back towards the barn. She tried to circle back away once more, and all I could do was laugh at her. I certainly can't complain about a horse that wants to keep going!! Temps go up to the 50s this week after we get one more batch of freezing rain tonight. Maybe this will finally be the week the ice and snow go away for good.


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## frlsgirl

That's so funny @egrogan - Ana would do the same thing at the other barn; always in a hurry to leave and never wanting to go back to the barn.


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## egrogan

Today was spring vet day. Someone didn't know that when she greeted me cheerfully at the gate :wink:









She stood like a champ and got the full slate of shots- rabies; Eastern Equine Encephalitis/West Nile Virus; and flu/rhino. Got her blood drawn for a CBC and the Cushings test. Cushings blood gets sent out to Cornell, so we won't hear for about a week. I will be nervously waiting for that one...vet remarked on her weak topline and how skinny she actually is, despite the bulging belly- ribs are easily felt though you'd never know it just by looking at her. All the classic signs are there- so we'll see what the test says.

She was very happy that there was some grass poking through, so I let her hand graze for a few minutes once everything was done. 








But...wait for it...we've got another 8-10 inches of SNOW coming this weekend! It seems like it will never end this year!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> we've got another 8-10 inches of SNOW coming this weekend! It seems like it will never end this year!


I couldn't 'like' your post because of this.. that is HORRIBLE.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I couldn't 'like' your post because of this.. that is HORRIBLE.


Indeed.

I get to go to sunny California most of next week though, so I guess that's something.


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## egrogan

Some days you feel like a horse's a*s. 









Today was one of those days for me. I had a "crisis of confidence" kind of ride. Those are never fun.

Izzy seemed completely fine after getting all those shots yesterday- not sore or sluggish at all. It was the warmest day we've had in a long time- near 50*f. The ground was clear, the snow comes back tomorrow, so I thought it would be fun to get to the woods trail just once before we're snowed in again. Izzy disagreed.

We rode up to the edge of the trail, and she just planted her feet and refused. No amount of leg and reaching way forward with the reins would make her go. Instead, it made her mad. She would pin her ears, shoot her head up, bulge her shoulder and try to spin. It was muddy and slippery, and for some reason it really freaked me out. I had to fight that urge to ball up in fetal position with the fear tingling through my body. After urging her to go forward and having her start to shoot backward, I asked her to just stand so I could regain my composure. I don't know how long we stood, probably just a few seconds, but it felt like ages. I asked to her go forward again, and she mostly did-well, really she crabwalked sideways, but into the woods at least and not flying backwards. It was readily apparent that the trail was just sucking mud in the spots it wasn't still wet snow, so I gave up and turned around. Every step was going to be a fight, and I just lost my courage. I truly don't know why. It was a bad feeling though.

We went back to the outdoor ring and messed around back there for a few minutes before calling it a day.









I guess we all have bad days, but I haven't felt "scared" to ride anywhere in a long, long time. I guess we're both out of practice and we'll get through it. But it's not a feeling I enjoy. We're getting anywhere from 7 to 22 inches of snow over the next two days, so we'll have some time to forget it and start fresh in a couple of weeks.

The mood lightened when I was untacking though, as I couldn't help but laugh at these two trading nasty mare glares the entire time Izzy was inside. Classic.


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## frlsgirl

Oh yes, I've had those rides with Ana; the puddle incident comes to mind; at least I won that one, but then she totally lost her shiitake during the H/J show and I dismounted and walked back because I thought I might die otherwise.

The puddle:






Ana's Freakout:






Hope these videos make you feel better about your ride with Izzy


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## egrogan

^^Well, at least you did get through the puddle. I hate the backing up unasked. It made my heart beat faster just to see Ana doing that in the videos!!

Whenever I have a bad ride like this, I always make myself nuts overanalyzing afterwards. I can't figure out what got me so unsettled. Of course no one likes to get bolted off with, but I do think I can mostly stick on whatever Izzy does- and lets be honest, Izzy's not going that far even if she does take off :wink: The best I can figure, I'm nervous about her going down with both of us. If I'm honest, I think I'm still a little affected by the time last fall she tripped so bad in the woods and I fell over her neck on my face. I think that shook my confidence that she'll stay upright in bad footing. And yesterday when she started pitching a fit and slipping around in the slick mud, I had that fear again that she was going to take us both down.

Probably just going out and riding with other people when the footing's better later this spring will get me over it.


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## carshon

@egrogan I think I may have said this before but I have a riding buddy who is in her early 70's. I LOVE her. When I was first riding my gelding Steve he was not very sure and I was not very sure. There were times that I cried while riding him. Literally tears streaming down my face - stomach knotted hands clenched. He used to buck going down hills (scary) buck going up hills (scary) spin around - Joyce would always tell me - get off, listen to your gut and live to ride another day. I have ridden literally all my life. Ridden all different kinds of horses but Steve starting out as a 3yr old shook me. I was always too full of pride to get off and she would encourage me to always listen to my gut (we rode a lot with Joyce and her steady eddie mount) 

So I will say to you - listen to your gut. You will get there. Live to ride another day. Steve and I covered a lot of trails - and he was always a challenge. I miss that PITA everyday - (he passes away last March at the age of 12) and I have had to start riding 2 new horses since then (Steve's first replacement Skye died in August of a broken leg in the pasture) and I have had those same moments of feeling overwhelmed and to be honest scared. And I have learned it is OK to get off and take a deep breath

Falling is hard - falling off and getting hurt makes it harder to get back on. Wait until you feel it. You and Izzy are a great match - take your time. Warmer weather and firmer ground will be here soon!


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## egrogan

@carshon- thanks for the post. My first reaction was, "NO- I don't want to be the person who needs the crutch of only riding with someone else!" I've been feeling proud that so much of what I've done with Izzy since I started this journal is stuff I've been able to do mostly on my own, so that people see _us _as the brave solo trail riders. And then I re-read your post and realized that wasn't what you meant at all! Sooo...I guess that reveals a good part of this is about my ego being a little bruised! :redface:

You're right- there are days when our rides are fun and we're both on the same page, and other days where for whatever reason, things just don't go well but it really should be no big deal. There are zero stakes for our rides. There will be another ride another day.

PS- I love the idea of having a horse named Steve. I think it makes me laugh because it's my dad's name- and he can be a PITA at times too!!


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> ^^Well, at least you did get through the puddle. I hate the backing up unasked. It made my heart beat faster just to see Ana doing that in the videos!!
> 
> Whenever I have a bad ride like this, I always make myself nuts overanalyzing afterwards. I can't figure out what got me so unsettled. Of course no one likes to get bolted off with, but I do think I can mostly stick on whatever Izzy does- and lets be honest, Izzy's not going that far even if she does take off :wink: The best I can figure, I'm nervous about her going down with both of us. If I'm honest, I think I'm still a little affected by the time last fall she tripped so bad in the woods and I fell over her neck on my face. I think that shook my confidence that she'll stay upright in bad footing. And yesterday when she started pitching a fit and slipping around in the slick mud, I had that fear again that she was going to take us both down.
> 
> Probably just going out and riding with other people when the footing's better later this spring will get me over it.


It is very unsettling; because it makes you question your ability and mental capacity for riding through uncertain situations. Sometimes it's better to push them through like with the puddle, I had a feeling I might win this one. But at the H/J show she actually started trotting backwards and that totally freaked me out because there were people, lawn chairs, and a bunch of other stuff behind us and I could just visualize her accidentally running into someone or something, rearing out of panic and flipping over. No thank you. It wasn't worth it for me to ride through it.

You know your horse and yourself better than anyone else - if in doubt, listen to your gut. It's better to live to ride another day then to die trying to ride through something questionable. 

Happy Trails :cowboy:


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## egrogan

We were snowed in again at the beginning of the weekend, but by yesterday, spring had arrived. Someone was sun drunk when I found her:









The sky was a gorgeous color blue and it was nearly 50*F. The snow was melting everywhere, but we had a great ride out on the road. 









She was enthusiastic and we did a fair bit of trotting. She still felt a little "sticky," but she was more willing than she has been. Could be the new trim? Or the fact that the ground was just a little less frozen and more forgiving?

I had a good chat with BO too. We are supposed to get the Cushing's results back this week, and I'm not really sure what to do if they are still negative. The CBC was all completely normal, and she came back with a very low count on her fecal. But this is the old lady body we have to work with coming into spring. I am confident the mane will grow back :wink: The rest of the changes she needs, I guess we'll see what happens:









BO has had two Morgans (geldings) who lived into their 30s- one she competed PSG on. Both of them did eventually develop Cushings, and she said she also struggled with their bodies changing dramatically when that happened. Her main competition horse was in full work and still struggling to keep on any muscle until he started the Prascend, and while he didn't ever fully regain his former shape, she said he was very comfortable and continued working through his 20s. So, if we have to go that direction, I am very confident that she will be great to work with on figuring out the right diet to match the medication dosage we select with the vet. 

But...getting ahead of myself with all this, as I don't have results yet. And if she's negative, then we'll continue to play with diet and BO and I talked about getting serious about some ridden and long-lining lessons so I can ride more correctly to maximize what muscle we can develop. I think it will be great to have her help, but I'm a little intimidated to ride with her- she is way too fancy for me  I've got another month of marathon travel before my schedule slows down and I can get in a consistent routine with lessons. In fact, this is how I'm starting my week:








I'm surrounded by the UConn women's polo team heading to California for national championships. They seem like a very sweet, fun loving bunch of girls. They explained that only teams within 600 miles ship their horses with them-otherwise, they have to borrow. So they will be riding ponies supplied by Stanford. I'll have to remember to check to see how they do!


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## frlsgirl

Certainly a lot on your plate right now. I hope you can get Izzy figured out. Also, what happened to spring?


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## egrogan

Izzy's Cushings test came back with ACTH levels within the normal range. In other words, she is still testing negative. I don't have the full bloodwork report yet, so I don't know exactly what her levels were, but will get a copy from the vet so I can continue to monitor any changes over time. It seems hard to believe, but there it is. So, we'll keep feeding her high quality hay and I will get serious about taking lessons to ensure she's being ridden as correctly as possible to help her body build as much muscle as she can. 

I took a red-eye home from LA on Wednesday night, so I'm still feeling a little groggy. I always have a hard time with the west coast to east coast time change, so am trying to get myself focused at work today. I haven't seen Izzy yet since I've been home, so no horsey pictures to share. Figured I'd share a few from my CA trip though, since what's a post without pictures?! :wink: I was at meetings in Bakersfield, CA, someplace I've never been. I found it fascinating that the landscape changed so dramatically in my two hour drive up there from LA. I learned that a lot of people from CA find it an ugly place, but the scenery was so vastly different from what I'm used to, I thought it was really beautiful.

Leaving LAX:









A detour through Santa Monica for lunch and a stroll on the beach:


















Up through Angeles National Forest- Pyramid Lake (elevation 4400 feet) and spring mountain wildflower blooms. So gorgeous!












































Coming out of the mountains, it all turns FLAT:

















Desert-turned-farmland:


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## carshon

I used to travel quite a bit and found the time changes exhausting. And I hate LAX! I used to go to NYC every 6 weeks and the east coasters there are late night folks and I am a tried and true Midwesterner who gets up at 5AM usually. Client dinners until 11 used to kick my hiney!

The pics are great - and now I want a donut!


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## egrogan

Finally, today was the day to get back to the barn. Despite no riding for the past week, Izzy was so great today. First, the snow is GONE. Yay!









The rest of the property is deep in mud, so the trail access is actually roped off right now to try to protect the ground. So, we worked here in the outdoor for a bit. BO watched her moving for a bit when I was riding last weekend, and thinks she's much weaker on her left side. She suggested doing lots of leg yielding from the quarter line to the rail to try to encourage her to step under and use that side. So we played around with that a bit. She did really well! Did some big trotting circles and tried to build some impulsion crossing these long diagonal lines. She wasn't as forward as I would have liked, but we'll work on it.

After some ring time, we headed out for a walk up and down the road. Just like last time, she didn't want to turn around to go home.









Another thing BO suggested was doing some turns-on-the-forehand to encourage her to take that step underneath herself. We did a few of these out on the road when she was fussing about turning home, and I was so pleased, the one we ended on truly was the most correct TOTF that I think she's ever managed. Often she'll walk through the half halt and dart forward or take more than a step over, but she really moved like clockwork in this one. Such a good feeling. She was so good with both that and the leg yields in the ring that I was tempted to ask BO if she had jumped on her last week while I was gone- she's hardly ever that "crisp" in her movements for me :wink:

She was soooo tired when we finally got back to the barn. Silly girl.











carshon said:


> I used to travel quite a bit and found the time changes exhausting. And I hate LAX! I used to go to NYC every 6 weeks and the east coasters there are late night folks and I am a tried and true Midwesterner who gets up at 5AM usually. Client dinners until 11 used to kick my hiney!
> 
> The pics are great - and now I want a donut!


Ha, the donuts were worth the stop!

Yeah, I travel a fair bit since I do some client/consulting work and present a lot at conferences. On average, I'd say I'm gone a couple of days a month, but the past six weeks I've been gone a couple of days a _week_. I've been to San Antonio, Denver, DC, Brooklyn, Bakersfield, and back to DC. I have one more trip to Philly coming up later this month, and then I'm DONE for awhile. I like traveling and seeing new places, but this stretch has been tough.


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## gottatrot

Great pictures, glad to hear Izzy is negative for Cushing's so far. She looks like she's shedding out really well. I know many horses are much worse so I can't complain, but Amore's shaggy coat comes off sloooowly.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Great pictures, glad to hear Izzy is negative for Cushing's so far. She looks like she's shedding out really well. I know many horses are much worse so I can't complain, but Amore's shaggy coat comes off sloooowly.


Thanks! Yes, I am starting to see some nice coat under there, particularly on her shoulders/withers. Her neck has some icky wavy, dandruffy hair still clinging so I've been working on that with the brushes and shedding blade. I'm going to have to cut her half-mane off too I think so that everything can grow back to one length. Actually, maybe I'll wait until the rubbed out section gets a little length to it and bring the rest back to meet it. That will probably look less weird!

I had such a wonderful day today at the barn. It put me in a really great mood. I met a woman who I've heard about since I've been there, but never actually met in person. She has a great trail gelding (Jimmy), a go-anywhere, face-anything sort of horse. Like me, she often rides out alone because of her work schedule, but she was happy to have some company. So we headed out together today. 

She showed me a road I hadn't been on before (it's right past where I had my infamous "school bus incident" a couple of months ago- and I hadn't been back that way since :wink and it was a good spot to ride. Pretty wide dirt shoulders, hardly any cars. It went through some houses, and all of them had very big, loud dogs, but all the dogs were fenced. We also passed some free ranging chickens (I'm such a sucker for pretty chickens!). Isabel was definitely alert to all the sights and sounds, but with another horse there and me yammering away to my new friend, she stayed nice and relaxed and took it all in stride.

Isabel and Jimmy got along splendidly. We were able to ride side-by-side most of the way since there was no traffic, but when we did go single-file, they didn't care who led or followed. Izzy did give one irritated mare tail flick when she determined Jimmy was too close to her space, but he got the message. Their speeds were well matched too.








I was most excited that Izzy seemed to be really feeling good. She wasn't slow and tentative, but she walked right out, even on the pavement. On the way home, she asked to trot up a hill, and even broke into a few canter strides. My feeling right now is that if she is asking to do more than walk, it's totally good with me as long as she feels sound and happy. She had even worked up a good sweat by the time we got home. Just what the doctor ordered to work on that big belly of hers!

I've already made another riding date with this new friend, and she's also a riding buddy for my elderly friend, Ida (who I haven't seen in a couple of weeks since my schedule's been so hectic). We'll give our friend Ida a call to join us next weekend, and the three of us will go out together. It's kind of nice to have other folks to go out with occasionally!


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## frlsgirl

Wow. Lots of great updated. How cool is it that you get to travel to neat places for work? Also, interesting about the test results. Horses are such confusing creatures; they can have all the symptoms of one specific condition and then test negative, or they can have hardly any symptoms and test positive for things. Just so confusing. Someone should write a book "How to not lose your mind as a responsible horse owner."

So glad to see you can finally enjoy your horse in some decent weather. Also, it's totally rare to find a trail buddy that actually jives well with both you and your horse especially if you ride a mare, so yay for that!


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## carshon

What a splendid post! Yeah for new riding friends!!!!!


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## egrogan

I've had two really nice pre-work rides this week. The warmer weather is so welcome, and the longer days mean I don't need to compress my life into a bleak 8 hours of daylight.

Shedding is still in full swing:









The woods are really muddy, and the trails need some cleanup because of down branches, but we've gotten back there a bit:


















Also been out on the roads a little. Even the shadiest side of the road is finally ice-free, so we're slowly working our way a little further from home. 









Izzy was positively _exhausted _when we got done with a 2 mile loop this morning- the indignity of be made to work before finishing your breakfast :wink:

















All my riding buddies seem busy this weekend celebrating Easter, so I think I'll mostly be on my own. So hard to get schedules to match up!


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## PoptartShop

Aww Izzy is so cute mid-yawn!  So glad you've had some good rides lately, I know what you mean, I'm not doing anything ,ajor for Easter so I'll definitely be at the barn LOL barely anyone will probably be there for me either. :lol: I know, isn't it great how it stays lighter later?!


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## egrogan

Spring came on with a vengeance this weekend. There's even enough grass to nibble that hay is b-o-r-i-n-g.









Yesterday I spent a couple of hours walking the woods trail and clearing out branches and down trees. It was hard work, and about 3/4 of the way through the trail, I was ready to be done with it. But, the payoff is that now there are no parts of the main trail blocked and impassable, and far fewer branches to trip a horse or get caught on tack or tails!

After two hours of that, I was ready for the reward- a nice ride. I suppose you can predict that means Isabel had other plans. She was _not_ happy to go out and dragged her feet the whole way. There were two big spots of water to cross, and I purposely took a picture of one of them when I was out there on foot doing the clearing because I wanted to have the picture to proudly say, _Izzy didn't want to at first, but we conquered the water_. Here is the menacing ocean she had to cross:









Well, unfortunately things did not work as planned. I did everything I know how to do to try to make a her cross it. I rode her at it aggressively the first time and looked well beyond it down the trail, hands well up her neck with plenty of rein and strong leg. She stopped and threw her head around to spin back. OK. We stopped, we turned to face it and just stood quietly contemplating it for awhile before trying again. Same thing, she spun as soon as she got to it. Tried again, this time I was ready with a really strong, short rein to prevent the spin and hit her with the crop on the shoulder she wanted to spin around. She plunged through a stand of saplings rather than go through it. I tried one more time and it just felt like I was not going to outmuscle her and I had her head cocked so far around I was worried about pulling her off balance and falling. I really didn't want to get off and lead her through, as we've done that before. Clearly it is not translating to riding through. So- she "won" that one. We went back home, worked in the ring unhappily, and ended there.

Today, I had plans to ride with my buddy Ida. Izzy seemed a little happier to have her friend Jazz to go out with. 









We headed back to the woods, and encountered the scary water again. We had Jazz leading, and Izzy hesitated once but then sort of scrambled/jumped through and over it. It wasn't pretty, but we got passed it. The second crossing, which is basically the same as the first, wasn't even cause to hesitate. So she _will _do it- now I just need her to be as motivated to do it with me as she is when she wants to follow another horse.

_Following Jazz through a muddy spot on the way to a water crossing:









_We continued on, and Ida showed me a few new offshoots of the trail that I hadn't been down before. We went to the beaver pond that I've heard so much about, and it was really beautiful. We were chit chatting so much I didn't get my camera out for a picture there. Next time! But, the nice thing about the way we went is that the trail is wide and the footing really good, so we could do some trotting and cantering. So much better than on the main trail, which is really rocky. I'm glad to have found it.

We looped up through a neighbor's driveway and back to the road. Ida gets a little nervous with cars passing, but Jazz seems rock solid to me. Still, she asked that we lead on the road, and I was glad to have Izzy return the favor!

It was unseasonably hot today, so Izzy was drenched when we got back. I sponged her down, and of course the first thing she did when I turned her back out was roll:


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## frlsgirl

Glad your second ride was a success; these stubborn Morgan mares; they seem so sweet and innocent until they decide to say "no" to something and then it's such a gamble and fight to convince them to do it your way. I've certainly been outsmarted by Ana on several occasions; I'm sure she just sits in her stall and has a good laugh about it afterwards.


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## egrogan

@frlsgrl- they definitely keep life interesting. I guess the flip side is that the day they _don't _have an opinion, it will be easy to tell something's wrong!


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## egrogan

We had a lunchtime chiro appt today. I was glad it was time for the appt, because the last couple of weeks, Izzy has been choosing to stand like this:


















Sort of hard to capture in a picture, but if you imagine standing so that the heel of your left foot is ahead of your right foot and touching the toes of your right boot, that's sort of what she's been doing. Almost like the legs are standing in a straight line instead of parallel to each other.

Turns out she was definitely uncomfortable in her right hip/pelvis and tight in her SI, just as she usually is. This is the worst I've seen her; when the chiro ran her little tester over her right hip, she about jumped out of her skin she flinched so hard. Poor girl was just sort of uncomfortable and off all over:









It's amazing to see the transformation in her demeanor by the time a session is done though, she was sighing deeply and basically asleep by the end of it. I forgot to take another picture of her in the barn before I turned her back out, but she seemed to be standing a lot more comfortably. Not quite the same surface in this picture and her head is down, but she looks much less uneven to me here:









Anyone else have experience with this kind of hind end discomfort? I wish I knew more about muscular-skeletal issues to help her stay more comfortable and _not_ get to the point she's so out of whack. The chiro showed me a couple of stretches, but didn't really give me any other suggestions for things I could do differently in between sessions (which are every 4 months right now). Any advice?


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## frlsgirl

Yep; Ana is always out in her back end. I'm guessing it's a Morgan thing; the short back and tendency to carry themselves parked out behind, with their back dropped and belly hanging is a recipe for discomfort. I've worked with chiros and an osteopath on this; they all have me do different stretches and over the last 2 years we've just developed a routine based on these exercises that each of them showed me. We do the basic carrot stretches, just one of each but do everything twice on her stiff side, plus 3 pelvic crunches plus a couple of sacrum press stretches. When she is in work, we also do shoulder stretches. I didn't feel comfortable doing most of these until I had the osteo and chiro actually show them to me and audit me/correct me while I'm doing them. 

The chiro/vet is coming Wednesday and I can't wait to see Ana's report card. Since she hasn't been ridden in nearly a month, she shouldn't be out anywhere.


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## evilamc

On the trail today, two BEAUTIFUL Morgans passed us! Made me think of you and @frlsgirl! They literally had manes for dayyyyyys all braided up! Wish I took pics for you. One woman was test riding the two of them to decide which to buy. I honestly don't think Ive ever seen such beautiful Morgans in person!


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## egrogan

@*frlsgirl* - hope Ana has a good appointment tomorrow! We do some carrot stretches and pelvic crunches, although I have to be really brief with the carrot stretches or else Izzy gets WAY too excited. Everyone who sees her suggests belly lifts, and I just sort of laugh when I explain that she literally has no "lift" reaction to being tickled on the belly. The vet who did spring shots was a new vet for us, and that's the first thing she said about her weak topline. I agreed that usually works for horses, but Izzy did not react. She said, here, let me show you. So she ran her hand all the way down the belly; nothing. She said, oh, you can use a hoof pick. I tried to explain I've done that and nothing happens but she of course didn't believe me. So I handed her one so she could "show me" and still, nothing. Duh. I know my horse! You would basically have to dig the hoof pick into her belly right in front of her teats hard enough to leave a mark to make her react. After this, she just sort of muttered maybe I could try other things. :wink: The chiro showed me a new SI "stretch" (maybe it's actually the same as the sacrum press you mentioned?) but she said it requires two people (one on each side), so that will probably be difficult. So I don't know what else to do.

@*evilamc* - cool experience! Morgans are really common here since we're right on the border with VT, where people really love a Morgan, but I know they're less common elsewhere. If you ride with this lady again, you know we'll be happy to ooh and ahh over a picture of a pretty horse :smile:


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## frlsgirl

Ana doesn't react or hardly reacts to the belly tickle either so the chiro has me do the pelvic crunches because that's essentially the same thing with the added benefit of involving the pelvis. That's how I knew something was wrong with Ana when she stopped reacting to the pelvic crunches. But yeah, I've tried to tickle her belly many times with little to no response; I kept thinking I was doing it wrong by maybe some horses just aren't as sensitive there as others.


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## egrogan

I cheated on Izzy yesterday...

















I wrote about it over on the trail thread.

On my way home now but will get in late so I won't see her until tomorrow. The trimmer is coming in the morning for a pedicure. I'll be happy to see her.


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## frlsgirl

Wow, what a way to "cheat" on your horse though


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## phantomhorse13

I suspect Izzy is happy when you cheat, because then when you ride her you realize just how lucky you are!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I suspect Izzy is happy when you cheat, because then when you ride her you realize just how lucky you are!


Absolutely! :smile: I actually have really been missing her as the past two weeks (two months really) have been crazy with both work and family travel. I finally got out to see her today, it was the first time I'd seen her since I was there for the farrier Monday. I hadn't ridden for two weeks though.

After going so long without seeing her, it was very clear that her weight is changing again. When I first saw her standing in her field, I was feeling good- she doesn't look like she's pregnant anymore, yay!









But...her topline. Sigh. She just looks awful. My heart actually sank when I first saw her from the side, it was so jarring. 









We finally got the crestiness and the swollen look to her belly taken care of, but now we have to rebalance again. I did have a good talk with the BO, and she had also obviously noticed, and wants to add back some of the senior feed (she's been getting only hay and ration balancer since the winter, I will look back here to remind myself when we cut out the senior but I think it January/Feb when she start building a crest). BO said she is eating all her hay, but much more interested in grass. 

I had a moment of panic thinking I shouldn't even ride her, but BO calmed me down and convinced me she's not _that _bad, and not being ridden is also part of what's going on here. She looked at my saddle and felt good about the fit, particularly with my half pad, so I continued with my plans to ride.

It had been a drizzly morning, but seemed to have stopped as I finished tacking up. Wouldn't you know it, I mounted up outside the barn and rode around to the back arena, and just as we completed our first walk lap around the outdoor, the skies opened again. So we beelined for the arena and rode in there. 

Despite my concerns about her, Izzy actually felt fabulous today. I'm not sure if it was two weeks of rest or the fact that she was showing off for a hunky gelding who was in there at the time, but she was alert and forward. There were lots of poles and cones set up, so that also made things more interesting. Her trot felt nice and balanced and forward in both directions, so I couldn't help myself but ask her to canter a couple of times in both directions. She cantered willingly, got her right lead with no problems, and felt strong doing it even when I sat vs. two-point. 

So. Much. Work.








(And an illustration of her awful rubbed-out-but-growing-back mane!)

Happy ears









If anyone has any thoughts on the topline issue, let me know. We've got hills on the trails, so that's good. Ground poles in the arena. BO recommends working her up to trotting intervals, trying to get to maintain a steady, forward pace around a 1/4 mile track that loops some of the turnout fields. Plus diet, obviously. Those are basically my plans, but I'm open to advice!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> If anyone has any thoughts on the topline issue, let me know. We've got hills on the trails, so that's good. Ground poles in the arena. BO recommends working her up to trotting intervals, trying to get to maintain a steady, forward pace around a 1/4 mile track that loops some of the turnout fields. Plus diet, obviously. Those are basically my plans, but I'm open to advice!


While hill work and poles were always the first suggestions, I have also been told that backing up can help with topline. 

Be sure to take pics of her standing in the same flat place (barn aisle? wash rack?) routinely so you can track her progress!


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## gottatrot

Although it's possibly only lack of muscling, I would consider minor lordosis. Supposedly I've heard that the genetics for it entered the Morgan breed due to some outcrossing with Saddlebreds. 

If it is lordosis, that's not such terrible news. I did a lot of reading on it when a Saddlebred came to my barn with severe lordosis and the rider was taking him out for long rides. I was worried the condition might cause pain, or pain under saddle. I found some very good articles describing how horses tolerate the condition very well, and most don't seem to have pain from it. The only issue might be with saddle fit if it progresses a bit more.



> Dr Gallagher recorded that the spine of a lordotic horse followed a smooth curved path. He noted that with horses, the smooth flow of the deformed vertebrae, fixed firmly in place by the strong vertebral attachments, appears to protect the spinal cord from harm and swaybacked horses from serious consequences. Gallagher said, “The comparatively extreme rigidity of the horses’ spines might protect them from the major disabilities and life-threatening conditions experienced by species with more flexible spines”.
> 
> The study also identified that swayback horses have not been routinely identified as experiencing pain, and some horses with this trait have performed well in their chosen disciplines. Dr Gallagher noted that performance horses were not impaired to any significant degree by lordosis, but did record that swaybacked racehorses aren’t among the fastest and suggested that horses with the condition may have slightly altered gaits.
> 
> In addition, Dr Gallagher noted that lordosis doesn’t have any particular effect on health or soundness. “One of the unique characteristics of lordosis in horses is that the spinal deviation does not have a disabling effect. Even the most severely affected individuals can be trained and ridden and can participate in horse shows.”


A Closer Look at Equine Lordosis | HORSE NATION


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> While hill work and poles were always the first suggestions, I have also been told that backing up can help with topline.
> 
> Be sure to take pics of her standing in the same flat place (barn aisle? wash rack?) routinely so you can track her progress!


Good idea. She is very resistant to backing under saddle- maybe it's hard for her. But we can add more of this.

re: pictures. Great idea. I think this is another thing that will make people at the barn think I'm nuts, but that's ok :wink:


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Although it's possibly only lack of muscling, I would consider minor lordosis. Supposedly I've heard that the genetics for it entered the Morgan breed due to some outcrossing with Saddlebreds.
> 
> If it is lordosis, that's not such terrible news. I did a lot of reading on it when a Saddlebred came to my barn with severe lordosis and the rider was taking him out for long rides. I was worried the condition might cause pain, or pain under saddle. I found some very good articles describing how horses tolerate the condition very well, and most don't seem to have pain from it. The only issue might be with saddle fit if it progresses a bit more.
> 
> A Closer Look at Equine Lordosis | HORSE NATION


Ever since I've had her, people have called her swayback. It's definitely possible. Her breeders definitely have the more modern, Saddlebredy lines (much moreso now than when she was bred in the 1990s, but yes, they breed show Morgans). 

BO did not explicitly say lordosis when we talked, but she did say something to the effect of this just being the body we have to work with at her age. Once the muscles weaken due to age, the "sling" kind of gives way, and there's only so much you can do to build it back. 

Of course, my primary concern is that I don't do anything to cause her pain. If that meant I couldn't ride her, totally fine. But I don't think we're there yet. 

I _do _think I'm going to have to develop a relationship with a saddle fitter I trust though. The guy I've used for a few years is not that person. The woman who comes to the barn occasionally is extremely high end, and I am frankly a little intimidated to ask her to come out for me as I think my horse probably cost about a third of what one of her saddles cost and I generally don't mix well with people from that part of the horse world. But if she's a person who can help Izzy, then I can suck it up- I just can't buy one of her saddles :wink:

PS- the horse in that article is pretty shocking to look at, isn't he? It's amazing horses with even that degree of sway can remain comfortable.


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## carshon

@egrogan Her back looks way worse because of how her head ties so high into her body. She could have a touch of lordosis and that cannot be reversed. I had a paint mare (Senorita) who had the exact same issues. She always had that "pregnant" barrel bodied look. Even when you could see the outline of her ribs. I rode her everywhere - but eventually had to stop riding in a western saddle due to bridging. Here is a pic of her at 21 yrs old. You cannot see how high her neck ties in and how steep her shoulder angle is here because of how her head it turned but this is classic -giraffe and many horses built like this get a sway backed look. My advice is not to become overly concerned with this - it is more of a conformation issue than a real health issue. Senorita was a happy strong trail horse and could be ridden anywhere if the saddle did not bridge. I lost her last year due to colic caused by cervical cancer - but would still be riding her today if she were still with us


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## gottatrot

By the way, the saddle the woman with the Saddlebred was riding in was a Bob Marshall Treeless western saddle. She said it solved the problem of bridging for her because it fitted the curve of her horse's back. After a long trail ride, she showed me how her horse had nice and even sweat patterns. Her horse looked quite happy and contented. Somehow I brought it up without sounding like "I think you are abusing this horse" and she educated me and I learned a lot.


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## frlsgirl

Awww, she's so cute. It took me a while to figure out how to fix Ana's hammock back. The chiro had me do pelvic crunches which helped a ton:


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## egrogan

@carshon & @frlsgirl- thanks for sharing your beauties with me! I am learning so much as we enter into "senior horse" territory. I really wish I knew Izzy when she was younger, but I continue to say she's been just the perfect first horse and taught me so much about things I didn't even realize I didn't know.


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## egrogan

I _finally _got out to see Izzy today. I hadn't been out for ten.whole.days. I think that might be the longest I've ever gone without being able to see her. I was feeling especially guilty because BO called me yesterday just to make sure I was ok since I hadn't been out it so long :frown:

Of course, Izzy was just fine in my absence. Her pasture has turned green and she's looking healthier. Her coat had a nice shine to it, even some dapples popping out. I spent almost an hour grooming because I was feeling guilty and she was telling me she enjoyed it. Oh, I got her a new halter because the other one, while the right size, was a little snug getting off and on over her bug-eye flymask. This new one is a tad big, but works great with the mask.








I greatly prefer a plain leather halter, but since she's now out all the time, it doesn't really work to have leather since it sits on a fencepost 24/7 and gets destroyed by the weather. 

While I probably could have stood there grooming her for the rest of the morning, I did also want to ride. Since it's been a couple of weeks, we didn't do much, just walked and trotted a bit. She was enthusiastic and was _right there_ the second I asked her to trot. While she was a little stiff and choppy, I was pleased to see how much she wanted to get to work. We spent a little time in the outdoor- as you can see, spring has finally come to New England:









And since that can get boring quickly, we hacked around the property. Unfortunately the sun went away when we started riding, but the clouds were pretty impressive:









And then we took a walk up and down the road:









It's amazing what a stress reliever the barn is. I've been really stressed out the past couple of weeks, and just a couple hours there this morning helped so much. One more reason to be thankful for my lovely Isabel :smile:


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## phantomhorse13

Glad that you finally made it out to the barn! Sounds like Izzy enjoyed the ride just as much as you did.


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## frlsgirl

Oh, I love the blue accent color on the halter; it really stands out on her bay fur. Glad you got some saddle time.


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## egrogan

Finally got back into my more normal weekend routine and rode both yesterday and today. I think Izzy is looking better condition-wise. The "shelf" look along her spine is much better, and overall she's shinier and brighter looking:


















I know no one's going to look at her and see stunning conformation, but I'm happy that she seems to be on the right track. I think the adjustment to her feed has helped, and I also think she's just naturally moving around more as she grazes around her paddocks. 

Her attitude is also a lot brighter and she's much more engaged. When my butt hit the saddle yesterday, she had that old familiar coiled feeling and was basically telling me _I muusttt trooottttt NOOOOWWWW or I'm going to EXPLOOOODE_! So we trotted a few quick laps around the outdoor to blow off steam and then came back to have a more "proper" warm up and go from there. The woods trail is a muddy flooded mess right now because it just won't stop raining and temps are in the 40s/50s, so we just stayed around the barn, trotted up and down the driveway, around the outdoor, etc. 









She actually worked up a productive sweat with all the trotting, so after I untacked I decided to hand walk her out on the road. A couple of the horses started calling to her, which got her all frantic and riled up- which sort of defeated the purpose of a cool-out walk! So we didn't go too far.









Today was another washout, so we had to ride inside. Nice to have an eager partner anyway


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## Avna

She's so adorable. If it wasn't for her old-horse belly you'd never know she was not a spring chicken.


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## frlsgirl

Agreed on eagerness - it makes riding so much more fun. With Ana I feel like she's either super forward and ready to go or she's just dragging herself around; there is no in between. Glad you're getting more saddle time even if it's just indoors.


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## PoptartShop

She is so beautiful. Glad you got a good ride in.  The barn really is the best stress-reliever ever. I feel the same way. It's like all my troubles go away.

So cute she is!!


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## egrogan

Today was our first summery day in New England- already in the mid-70*F range when I rode early this morning. As we love to say in New England- we complain just as much when we're too hot as we do when we're too cold :wink: Today was definitely too hot- and it's supposed to be 90* tomorrow! First day I rode without a t-shirt, so without a sweatshirt or jacket pocket, I forgot my phone in the barn.

Orange ears made their first seasonal appearance though, because the bugs came on with a vengeance too!









Izzy was blowing pretty hard from the heat, so we just stuck to a lot of walking all over and around the property. We practiced leg yielding from one side of the road or trail to the other. We went up and down the hills into and out of the woods trail, but it's basically washed out because of all the rain the past few weeks. We did some trot work in the outdoor arena and cantered once in both directions. But mostly just a lot of walking, which worked up enough of a sweat.

The outdoor washstall is back up and running- it had already been disassembled for the winter when we got to this barn in November, and to my knowledge Izzy has never been in one. I've read some stories of people's horses feeling a little freaked out by them...

_Decidedly not freaked out :wink:









_She didn't hesitate at all and stood nicely.









And then promptly rolled as soon as I turned her back out!!


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## egrogan

Ha, just realized I wrote that I rode "without a tshirt"- before anyone thinks I had a Lady Godiva moment, I meant to say "with" a t-shirt, as in, it was warm enough to ditch the coat and ride in short sleeves.


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## egrogan

I'm not a millenial, but I have to admit that even I have been influenced by the desire to have your online life seem happy and always fun, when of course real life is never _always _that way.

I've been having some struggles with Izzy lately and have been brooding on them in real life but not really documenting them here. I wrote a little bit in gottatrot's journal so it seemed silly not to have those reflections live in Izzy's journal too:



> thought a lot about this idea over the weekend. Recently, Isabel has been protesting very strongly about riding the woods trail. She'll get very tight and tense, throw her head up, stop and start backing, and try to spin to leave the trail. In the past, I probably would have doubled down and said, "NO. DO IT." But I don't know, she's ridden back there dozens of times and never protested before. So maybe she's "pulling one over on me," sure, could be because I've basically been "giving in" when she wants to turn around. But she rides with enthusiasm in other places, so it's been sort of mysterious why all of a sudden she's so hesitant. Even with other horses, she previously would have been really irritated about not being able to lead and want to go around others. Now she still sort of drags back even though she doesn't try to turn around and go home. I'm just struggling to find a reason why I would "make her" when she doesn't want to. It's very rocky and hilly back there, maybe it's just legitimately uncomfortable for her in a way it's not on flatter, more consistent footing. I really wish they could talk to us.





> BO this weekend told me she felt like Izzy is wearing her front feet unevenly and has a little puffiness around her fetlocks, and said to keep an eye on it. Could be compensating for something going on in her back or in her weaker hip/pelvis area. I truly don't have the "eye" to keep an eye on it, as what she was describing was barely perceptible to me. But after a couple of rides this weekend, I am sort of feeling like it's best to do the kind of riding she seems content to do, even if it's mostly just walking around the property and trotting/cantering a bit in softer footing (grass and arena).


I snapped a couple of quick pictures this morning, but it was sort of ironic because the shoer I had "broken up with," in the process insulting BO, was actually out this morning. So I took just a couple of quick shots before the barn filled up. The angles are a little funky though, not sure if this is useful at all:

Head on fronts- BO sees front R (left from this view) turning out a little, causing overcompensation/uneven wear on the outside of the front L (right from this view)








Edited: You can see in this picture she's standing with her hind legs in a line heel to toe (not parallel) again, like she was doing before she saw the chiro last time...Hmm...

Front R:








Front L:









I rode this morning, Izzy was in a slow-as-molasses mood. We did a long walking warmup in the outdoor, focusing on tidy corners, lots of changes of direction using the diagonals, changes through the circle, and 1/2 turns on the forehand. 

We checked out the woods trail, and she gave me some "I don't wanna" attitude about it but it was so buggy, I didn't want to either! So we turned back around in mutual agreement. 

I was very pleased that when I asked her to trot on a nice grassy flat strip (towards home) she gave me a nicely balanced trot- sometimes heading towards home, she'll freight train her way there in a jarring trot, but this was nice. 

Enjoying her favorite reward:


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## carshon

I would say that too me her toes look pretty long - could be the angle of the shots but I think her toes could come back quite a bit 

Glad that she was feeling good at the trot.


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## frlsgirl

One thing I've learned from dealing with a Morgan mare is that they are very smart and are not afraid to make their opinion known. It's not always easy to figure out the why. Seemingly simply things can quickly become rocket science. What has helped me the most is to step back and approach the situation from a right brain perspective. I too want to analyze and find possible scenarios and solutions but Ana always seems to have the last laugh. Sometimes I just leave her be for a day or two and then we try again. Other times, I leave her be and let the BO ride her and let her report to me if she finds anything out of order. Izzy could have a legitimate discomfort that needs addressed or she might just not see the point in going to this particular area, or she might be protecting you because she can sense some sort of disconnect between what you seem to want and what you are asking.


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## egrogan

Yeah, I think there could be some of both. I think the camera angles are kind of distorted. She was standing on a rubber mat, and I rested my phone on the concrete to try to make it level, but that gives the slight effect of looking "up" at the feet. So not sure. Her next trim is the first week of June.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> You can see in this picture she's standing with her hind legs in a line heel to toe (not parallel) again, like she was doing before she saw the chiro last time...Hmm...
> 
> We checked out the woods trail, and she gave me some "I don't wanna" attitude about it but it was so buggy, I didn't want to either! So we turned back around in mutual agreement.


Is her reluctance only on that woods trail.. or is it anywhere the footing is a bit sketchy? I know you said some places on the trail were nice but I think I remember you talking about some rocky sections, too. If could be that if her feet and/or body need adjusting, the sketchy footing could be making her uncomfortable as she has to pick up feet higher or move them differently than she would in the arena, etc.


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## egrogan

@phantomhorse13, it's mostly on the woods trail, and my hypothesis- though she won't confirm or deny- is that to get to the trail, there's a steep descent and I think it's probably uncomfortable to have to sit back on her hocks going down the steep decline. There are two entrances to the trail, and both have that steep grade. I say that because the driveway and road we ride on almost every ride are hardpack and overlayed with gravel and she rides on that ok. She's careful, but willing. So my pondering continues.

This weekend though, after a week of rain, the bugs were far too miserable to go back there anyway. We just haven't gotten a break from the rain this spring (alternative hypothesis: slightly thrushy frogs from constant wet making her more sensitive than usual?)

Mud, mud everywhere...


















But here's another riddle. Yesterday we rode on the roads because of the bug problem on the trail. 








When we got to the point where we usually turn around and backtrack home, she tried to turn and got cranky when I asked her to keep going. She settled down fine and kept going another mile or so, no big deal. But this is the weird part...as we were ending the ride and we were about 1/4 mile from the barn driveway, all of a sudden she tried to spin and pull me _away _from the barn. I sort of laughed and told her to stop being silly, pointed her back in the right direction so we were going home like she originally wanted. But then she pulled away from home again, so this time I let her to see where she would go. And she just moseyed back the way we had just come. I don't know how far she would have gone if I just let her, but I actually did need to wrap up so I turned her around and she reluctantly when back. I don't know about this one!









Oh, and I did switch back over to bitless today from the snaffle, just figuring why not change it up. 

Her right front foot does look a little oddly turned out in this picture, doesn't it. The ground is not level but it's still sitting at a different angle than the other 3 feet.


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## frlsgirl

Eeek, look at all that mud. We've had some issues with mud this year as well. Oddly, the bugs haven't been that bad yet. One year I was riding Ana out in the fields and a bug actually flew up her nostrils which sent her into a crazy head shake/snort/jump up and down in place fit. 

Funny how these Morgan mares have such strong opinions about things


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## egrogan

Saw Izzy a bunch this weekend! I rode solo on Friday evening, had a road hack day with my riding buddies Saturday, and rode with my 85-year-old buddy on Sunday.

Heading out Saturday:









Izzy held up to all the riding well. The Saturday ride was fun, it took us on a 3.5 mile loop around the neighborhood. Lots of things for the horses to take in- cars, motorcycles, tons of kids and dogs, chickens, tarps, trampolines, other horses. They were all very brave. I had to laugh though, at one point an older woman in a motorized wheelchair was heading in our direction, and my buddies both wondered what their horses would do at such an unusual sight. I volunteered to put Izzy out in front because she's been around people with all kinds of wheelchairs dozens of times after living at a therapy barn for 6 years- including being mounted with someone lifted directly from the chair to her back. So we headed to the front of the line, waved to the woman, and Izzy _froze_, head straight up and nostrils wide. She planted her feet in the middle of the road and the other two horses went around her and kept moving. Eventually we followed. Embarrassing!  That was probably the most concerned she got on the ride. There were moments when she led, and she walked right out nicely, and others where she was content to be in the back. My friends kindly agreed to keep the ride to a walk as I'm not comfortable asking her to trot on the pavement or gravelly road shoulders- I just think it makes her sore. She felt good physically, if a little tired by the end. Sort of made me sad that 3-4 miles used to be our typical ride at the old barn, and we'd walk, trot, canter and she'd barely be breathing hard at the end of it. Now I think it's pretty taxing for her, even just walking.

After 3 good rides in a row, this morning I went out to see her for some grooming time without riding. At the last minute, I had a work meeting cancelled so I had a little more time than I thought and decided to take her out for an unmounted walk. She's so tiny that when we're walking, we're basically eye to eye, and it was so neat to watch her taken in her surrounding. I forget she's such a serious, thoughtful horse- her eyes are really expressive. She spotted something up ahead which made her tense up a bit:









We realized it was a massive tom turkey strutting his stuff!


















After that excitement, we continued on a bit but stopped for a selfie 









And she was such a good girl she got a few nibbles of the good stuff as we headed back to the barn :wink:









And a good nap during her grooming before being turned back out...








I love that floppy old lady lip!


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## frlsgirl

I'm sure motorized chairs are scary for any horse; Ana still flips out over stationary chairs. She'll be totally fine one minute and then "OMG who put this chair here, it doesn't belong here!"

But this has happened to me many times, that I think Ana is going to be totally cool with something and then she flips out, and other times where I could swear that she will flip, she won't even bat an eyelash. It's very unnerving when that head shoots up, the nostrils and eyes get big, and the legs start shifting weight like she's preparing to jump out of her own skin, lol. Glad you survived your excursion. 

I bet if you work Izzy on a more regular schedule her cardio endurance will return; there is a sixty something year old woman who tried to swim across the ocean; she's way older than me and clearly in much better shape. I'm sure it's the same for horses.


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## egrogan

^^ Yeah, I guess it just goes to show that horses can be perfectly used to something in one setting, but when they see it elsewhere, it's like experiencing it for the first time.

And- good point on the cardio fitness building. I hope you're right! If it ever stops raining for a few days in a row we will have more options to ride a longer loop without so much time on the road so we can do more trotting.


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## egrogan

Trimmer was out this morning. He was very patient with my likely elementary questions in my effort to understand the interaction between any body soreness and uneven wearing in her feet. I didn't have time to get before and after foot pictures because I was rushing between meetings, but here are my notes:

Front angles 
- L front started 53*
- R front started 56*
Various people over the years have called this foot "clubby" though disagreed on whether it's a true club. Interestingly:
- Both feet ended about 52*, suggesting it's NOT a true club foot, but it's how she carries herself such that the end result is a different set of angles by the time the trim cycle has ended
- Further evidence of this, R front width about .5 cm smaller than L (11.2 cm vs. 11.7 cm)

Back angles

- Angles on both hinds are lower, which is actually unusual and unnatural- often observed in heavily worked dressage horses with hind end issues
- R hind ended at 49*
- L hind ended at 50*
- The slight difference is probably consistent with compensation on L hind for sore in R hind 









So we talked a little about some of the things the chiropractor has observed and tends to work on. The most consistent pattern I've observed over time is that her right pelvis/hip is always in need of attention. So maybe the compensation starts from there. I'm not sure how the R shoulder is involved, but there's also a question of the extent to which that's sore too, because it seems like how she moves on that right front is different than how she moves on the left front.

All fascinating stuff. I will try to get some pictures of her feet later this week to see if my notes correspond with what other eyes see. We also noted her frogs are thin and weak right now, and that sort of feels almost inevitable given the ridiculous extended wet periods we've had.

I did snap a couple of pictures when I went to get her though, since she's just cute :grin: Her summer coat is coming in really nicely now. And look, it's sunny today!


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## frlsgirl

Wow that's very detailed information; I've never gotten this much detail out of any of my farriers. The chiro and osteopath are certainly more detailed. It's good that you are keeping track of her history and are able to draw some helpful conclusions from your findings.


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## frlsgirl

Saw this and thought of Izzy since we were just talking about Izzy getting physically fit again so that you can go on longer trail rides:


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## egrogan

Hehe, very cute @frlsgirl! And, I can say with confidence Izzy's feet look better than that horse's feet- even to my eye :wink:


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## egrogan

I have a confession to make. I love this horse. I worry about this horse's well being all the time. But I've created every owner and trainer's worst nightmare: a spoiled horse. It came to head in an embarrassing way today.

I looked back through my journal, and it's not like I didn't see it happening. I just kept making excuses in my head for why she was doing it.

Over the past few months, she's been telling me "no" when she doesn't want to do something. She throws her head in the air, grabs the bridle, and pulls hard over her right shoulder to spin the way she wants to go. She started doing it over the winter when she didn't want to go down the hill into the woods. I took it as her way of saying it hurt her to go down the hill. Then she started doing it when she wanted to go one direction around the farm and I wanted her to go the other. Lately she's been doing it right after I mount and try to turn her left to go warm up in the outdoor ring and she doesn't want to. Or when she decides we've gone far enough down the road and it's time to turn around. Or when we work in the ring and then I want to go walk around the perimeter of the woods.

So today I had two moments that were the wakeup call I needed. First, mounting. Another boarder walked into the barn as I was right outside the door at the mounting block. I got on, and got dragged down the driveway. As I tried to pull her back the direction I wanted to go (left, not right), the boarder happened to walk back out. "How did you end up over there up against the electric fence?" she asked. How did I indeed? Good question. My horse put me here against my will!

That was embarrassing, but the next incident was dangerous. I rode out down the road with my elderly riding buddy, and we were leading. We got to the point where Izzy has decided we now turn around, and I was chattering away and not fully paying attention. Izzy grabbed the reins and spun back to the right, cutting off my riding buddy and brushing into her horse. Thank god there were no cars coming, and my buddy's horse didn't shy away or lose her balance. But that is beyond not ok. That could get someone hurt.

F**K. How did I let this happen??

So now I have some serious work to do. I've been totally babying her and telling myself that when she says "no," she must have a good, pain related reason. But looking at things objectively, I'm not asking her to do anything she can't physically do. I'm just making excuse for her. So we'll be spending time on standing after mounting, which is where a lot of these problems started. We'll be doing a lot of walking _forward and straight_ not crabwalking crookedly in places I know she "doesn't want to" go. I may even stay off the road for a few rides because being dragged into an oncoming car is terrifying and not fair to drivers.

This sucks guys. I'm really mad at myself for letting things escalate. What's going on between those two ears? She's thinking "oh, have I got your number lady..."


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## Avna

It takes no time at all for Brooke to think it's her turn to call the shots. She doesn't even need to practice. Morgan mare thing? When I get on she has to wait on a slack rein until I finish fussing, settle my seat, pick up the reins -- noope, you didn't say mother may I, now you have to wait until I count to ten -- every single time. I learned my lesson about that. 

I used to carry a crop so I could tap her when she decided she didn't want to go someplace. Now I don't have to, but that little tap on the butt made a big impression when I needed it to.


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## egrogan

@*Avna* , I thought of your "count to 10" on my ride today. Things went a lot better. Part of it was just turning my riding brain back on and not taking so much for granted. On another thread, someone (maybe you Avna?) gave the advice not to ask a horse to do something that sets them up to do the wrong thing. So our day today went something like this:

We didn't mount in our usual spot. We will eventually. But not today. So we walked out of the barn as usual, and I turned left to walk (unmounted) back towards the outdoor arena. This was not our usual routine. She immediately started dragging behind me all the way at the end of the reins. I had a dressage whip with me so I held the reins under her chin in my right hand, and the whip in the left hand. When she dragged so far she was a few steps behind me, I reached around my back with the whip and flicked her shoulder. That surprised her, and she stepped up. She tried to drag behind again, so I repeated. She proceeded to walk with her shoulder at my shoulder.

We mounted at the block in the outdoor arena. I got on. She stood without moving. Good girl. I fussed with my gloves. I talked to a boarder putting another horse away. She stood. She got bored and took a step forward. I asked her to step back. We stood. Then we walked.

We had a much more active warmup than usual. No dragging. Marching forward. We did a lot of bending, a lot of changing direction. She was getting confused when I asked for an upward transition- she kept wanting to go walk-canter (they were very nice honestly :wink I guess my "forward" vibe was pretty strong. So we puzzled through that and got walk-trot. Good girl.

It was a blazing hot day, 90*F and the arena is in direct sun with no shade. We were both hot. It was time to try the woods where there was shade.

We left the arena to head to the trail. You walk the length of the arena, then turn left down a dirt path the BO uses for her tractor to move manure to the manure pile. That left turn is where Izzy has been saying "heck no," I'm not going to the woods. Predictably, we got to the spot to turn left, and she threw up her head and dragged right. I didn't let go of the left rein, so she dragged us right, but she didn't get to spin. So we stopped. This was confusing to her. We stood for a few seconds to gather our composure. We walked forward. Forget about the left turn for a sec, let's just worry about walking forward. We did. Then we stopped for a minute. She was bored. So bored she cocked a hind leg and just waited. I decided to walk all the way around the arena and try again from the spot I wanted. We got to the left turn off. She snuck a peek over her right shoulder and tipped her ear that way, but I gave her a couple of prods with my right heel and growled a little at her. She went left. Good girl. We headed for the trail entrance. She didn't even try to balk at the entrance-another recent "nope, not going" spot lately.

So just like that, we were in the woods. Yay! The next test: we approached "the spot" where we've been turning around consistently because of mud and wet. Predictably, throw up head, drag over right shoulder. But this time, I was ready. I had a good hold on the left rein so she couldn't drag her nose to the right. This perplexed her. We stood for a minute just kind of stuck, her nose bent back towards my left foot, and not moving anywhere. With a lot of left leg urging, I disengaged that left hip, and *ta da* she was facing in the direction I wanted her to go. And when I said "walk on"- she walked on! Through the sucking, icky mud and down the bug infested trail!! And when I asked her to whoa, we repeated the whole scene because she tried to use the whoa to spin for home. But nope, we stayed on track. 

_In the woods, a small victory these days_! But ****ed if you don't see that devious tip of the nose and ear to the right- sure enough, she wanted to use this whoa break to redirect us home._









_We went much farther than we've been in ages, but to be honest, the bugs were miserable for both of us. So after trekking through more mud an muck, we turned around calmly and walked home on a loose rein.

There was one more "nope" spot to tackle. Walking back to the barn, one path we could take involves a fairly narrow walkway with a storage trailer on the left, and a very loud electric fence/charger on the right. The BO's tractor is usually parked at the end of it. Izzy has been very adamant that horses will clearly be eaten if they walk on this path. So we went through the whole thing I described above. We get to the path, she tried to pull the other way, she tries to go backwards, etc. So she tried, I held her in place, let her stand for a minute to think about it and then asked her to walk forward. She lurched forward in a walk/trot (which makes me think she actually might be scared in this place vs. just obstinate in others?) but we walked through the chute. Then turned around and walked back through it the other direction (she was fine). Then turned and walked through one more time in the scary direction. This time she went through on a loose rein. Good girl!! :grin:

So all in all, felt like a great day in the journey to getting back on track. I'm sure it will take more repetition, so I'll have to figure out how to fit in some weekday rides this week. But I am confident that if I ride with more purpose, she'll come around. We'll be fine.

I'll leave you with a happy after-bath roll


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## frlsgirl

I can totally relate. I love my pony as well and she will take full advantage of it if I let her. So we've been working on doing little things well, you know partnership stuff. For example, I usually take her to her favorite grazing spot after riding and she will drag me with ears pinned and then start eating. No more of that. She has to walk nicely, stand quietly for a few seconds with ears forward and then I drop the lead rope and she gets to graze. If she tries to pull, she has to wait until she can be polite. She's catching on quickly.

I think it's just an ammie problem; we are so busy all the time that we just want to enjoy our horses and not fight with them and then we are always in a hurry so we do things half a** and our horses catch on to that and take advantage of it.


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## egrogan

Very busy week at work but I managed to wrap things up a little early yesterday afternoon to take advantage of picture-perfect weather: 70*F, sunny, no humidity.

Izzy seemed a little sore in her back while grooming, and was very reluctant to pick up her right hind. When I got on, she felt very tight all through her back and hind end, so we kept things to the walk. About 20 minutes in, she did start to loosen up a little. When she was feeling a little better, we ventured out of the ring and walked all around the property. I had another "aha dumb human" moment when we rode through some of her "sticky" spots- since her evasion technique is to pull to the right, one strategy for avoiding that is to simply present her those "I don't want to" spots so that if she pulls right, she goes the way I want her to. Duh. That helped in a couple of spots though she really didn't try to seriously argue. 

I'm glad I got to ride but not feeling great about her potential body soreness. We'll see how she's feeling this weekend. If still like this, it could be time to have the vet out for a lameness exam. But we'll see.

We caught a good luck charm towards the end of our ride- check out the tip of her right ear :grin:


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## frlsgirl

Yeah, Ana is doing the body soreness thing right now as well. @evilamc suggested Magrestore; I used that last time she was body sore and it worked. Glad you're able to work through some of her attitude though. I would love to know what our horses really think about us especially these smart Morgan mares who always seem to be two steps ahead of us. I'm sure they are just sitting in their stalls at night chuckling over how they outsmarted us again.


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## egrogan

Happily Izzy was feeling _much _better today- she actually had a spring in her step and was happy to go. Interestingly, it was a cool, rainy night last night, so she had a light rain sheet on when I brought her in. I wonder if having her whole body warmed up made her more comfortable? She wasn't hot/sweaty under the blanket, but comfortably warm (it was still cool and drizzly for our ride).

We went out with my riding buddy, Ida. I got on out in front of the barn using the mounting block which has been problematic in the past, and zero problems with pulling away. In fact, she stood stock still until asked to walk :grin: She also led for about a mile on the road, and no balking or trying to pull back to home. She even very willingly trotted on the hard gravel road and seemed happy to cruise along that way. Couldn't be happier that she was feeling better _and _riding like her old, trustworthy self!

_An enthusiastic walk on the uphill on the way home









New blue ears









_


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## frlsgirl

Love the blue ears! Glad to hear that she had a spring in her step. I love those kind of rides.


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## egrogan

Rode on a heavy, muggy afternoon yesterday. Izzy was sweating before I even got on her and you could tell she was not thrilled about the humidity. Who is though? I hate the hot! 

As has been our recent luck, as soon as I was ready to mount up, a rainstorm got started. So we rode in the arena for a little bit before the shower passed.








(As an aside, I think she does look a little less tubby finally. Her mane isn't looking any better though!)

We headed outside, but the bugs were swarming instantly. Izzy's skin was rippling all over her body as she tried to shake the deerflies off. We dipped briefly down to the woods trail, but as I expected, it was misery- I'm talking about my whole arm being covered in flies and mosquitoes. Izzy was shaking her head wildly trying to get the bugs off and out of her nose. We were far over the line of "riding is supposed to be fun," so we had to turn back. We trotted a few laps around the outdoor arena and called it a day. It was dinner time anyway, so Izzy said she didn't mind :wink:

My pictures are pretty boring these days because all I see when I ride is bright, bright green bursting out of everywhere- I guess the only good thing about all this rain is that there will be no drought this year!


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## egrogan

Nice day today, but I think the irritated head shake caught in this picture sums up our ride: BUGS. Big, nasty, painful, biting bugs. It's miserable out there!


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## frlsgirl

yeah it's that time of year; have you tried rotating bug sprays? Sometimes riding at a different time of day works better but that's not always possible for a busy ammie like yourself.


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl- I had never thought of rotating bug sprays, but it's a good idea. I've been using the same one for awhile now, and it's one advertised as "natural, derived from plant sources," etc.- the kind of stuff that makes us feel good but probably doesn't work a fraction as well as the full-on chemical stuff :wink:

I have been out at a few different times of day but no luck with that. We are in the middle of really thick woods, which have been soaked for months, so it's a notably bad bug year this year. And since we haven't had any dry and the winter was rather mild overall, the ticks are looking at a record year.


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## carshon

We are fighting bugs here as well @egrogan and nasty little gnats. We do rotate fly sprays and love Eco Vet for the gnats. We also are using Dettol to keep the gnats away - smells horrible but the tiny little ******s hate it.

for the first time ever we even had deer flies landing on the ear bonnets trying to ge t at the horses ears! 

and your pics riding look a lot like mine. Lots of green, but it sure beats snow!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> for the first time ever we even had deer flies landing on the ear bonnets trying to ge t at the horses ears!


Oh yes, we have that too- and I get bit through my riding pants! I carry a dressage whip when we ride out so I can try to help get the bugs off her head and ears in places I can't reach.



carshon said:


> ...it sure beats snow...


I was actually joking with BO yesterday that I think I prefer the woods trails early December, when we have a good covering of light, powdery snow. No mud, no bugs, just soft white powder.


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## egrogan

Apparently BO rented out the arena today and didn't bother telling any of us...

















...That's ok, I think these ladies are going to need quite a bit more time to perfect their pas de neuf (?) :wink:

I wasn't feeling great this morning so was planning on a quick "groom and graze" kind of visit anyway. 

Izzy took a second to confirm there was no saddle out, and then settled in for a good brushing.









Even though she has perfectly good grass in her paddock, she still insists that the "other" grass is much, much more exciting.









Unfortunately the rain cut our grazing time short (mostly because I had left my windows down- I hate when that happens!) but she was really cute when I turned out, trotting right over to her shelter to hang out with her neighbor.









Really looking forward to the upcoming long weekend!


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## frlsgirl

What the heck are those? Turkeys? And Amen about the long weekend. It can't come soon enough. I love how Izzy had to check in with you, like "what are we doing today mom?"


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> What the heck are those? Turkeys? And Amen about the long weekend. It can't come soon enough. I love how Izzy had to check in with you, like "what are we doing today mom?"


Ha, yes, they are wild turkeys. They are everywhere here and I love watching them do their thing. There are a couple of mommas that often hang out with their babies in that back field behind the arena, but I haven't been able to get close enough to get a picture of the babies before they fly away. Izzy has gotten very desensitized to 20 turkeys of various sizes flying out of the tall grass up towards her face and into the trees :wink:


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## egrogan

Yesterday was the kind of day that even a New Englander can't complain about- 70*, perfect blue skies, no humidity. Luckily I had a meeting cancelled which allowed me enough time to get out and ride.

I tried the woods again, and we made it about half a mile. The bugs were still awful though, which was kind of funny because Izzy was so distracted by the deer _flies_ that she totally missed two _actual deer_ who ran across the trail in front of us! As you can see, she was very focused on getting home when we turned around!









One sort of weird thing going on with her, she has a very large lump that sprung up suddenly about a week ago to the right of her tail. I've been watching it, thinking maybe it was a tick bite, because she does sometimes get very big swellings from that. But, usually those are somewhat soft and warm, and this one is pretty hard but not hot. It doesn't seem to bother her, but it's pretty big, e.g., you can cup it in your palm. I had BO take a look, and she was stumped. I wondered if it was maybe a fatty tumor or something like that, but she didn't think something like that would appear so fast and then just stay the same size. Please excuse the lady parts below, but this is what it looks like:









BO suggested I text the vet pics, which I did, but I haven't heard back. Now I'm terrified I actually texted these pictures to the wrong number and I'm going to get a call from someone asking why I'm sending random people inappropriate photos!!  Vet takes lessons from BO every week, so if I don't hear back from her before the weekend BO will ask her to look at Izzy at the beginning of next week when she's there.

Oh, since we were talking about turkeys, I did manage to snap a picture of a momma and babies- they are just so cute how they follow her around wherever she tells them to go:


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## frlsgirl

Yikes. Could it be a wasp sting? Fatty tumors are soft and grow very slowly at least that's true for dogs because Sadie has them all over her body and you can literally squish the fat around with your hand. 

Hopefully you'll hear from the vet soon.


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## carshon

It looks like a hematoma that needs to absorb. My daughters mare is very bug sensitive and she gets large lumps like that after she has rubbed her bum 

Keep an eye on it - keep checking for heat and openings but I would bet it is just a hard hematoma for now.

Gracies take weeks to get soft enough to reabsorb. Our mare is grey so we can usually also see the dark smudge where she has rubbed a little. Never any hair loss but just lumps on her rump


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Yikes. Could it be a wasp sting? Fatty tumors are soft and grow very slowly at least that's true for dogs because Sadie has them all over her body and you can literally squish the fat around with your hand.
> 
> Hopefully you'll hear from the vet soon.


I wasn't able to find anything that looked like a stinger or the center of a tick bite, so not sure.

Thanks for the detail on the fatty tumor- I had a dog that had one once, but it was on his...ahem...man parts so it was very visible but I let the vet do the handling!




carshon said:


> It looks like a hematoma that needs to absorb. My daughters mare is very bug sensitive and she gets large lumps like that after she has rubbed her bum
> 
> Keep an eye on it - keep checking for heat and openings but I would bet it is just a hard hematoma for now.
> 
> Gracies take weeks to get soft enough to reabsorb. Our mare is grey so we can usually also see the dark smudge where she has rubbed a little. Never any hair loss but just lumps on her rump


So @*carshon* , are you saying that the bite got itchy, and then with rubbing to satisfy the itch, she gives herself the hematoma? I wondered about that, but we didn't see any hairs on the tail broken so BO thought it wasn't from rubbing. But it's far enough below the dock of her tail that maybe she wouldn't be breaking hairs on the post or shed or whatever she used.

Still nothing from the vet, which is a little annoying to be honest as the folks at this practice have always said to text with questions since they're on the road all the time. I will probably give a call if I don't hear anything today.


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## carshon

Yes, for our mare Gracie she will get these under her neck and on her rump. She may not even have a bite - just gnats or what not buzzing in that place. Under her neck and rump are not covered by her fly sheet so she tends to get hematomas there. We have the vet out in the past thinking pigeon fever but it is not prevalent where I live and he confirmed that no abcess (could not aspirate the hard lump) and that it should/would go down on its own.

BTW- Gracie is 20yrs old and becomes less bug tolerant every year. As I type right now she is hiding in her stall eating hay rather than be out in the pasture. Gnats are terrible today. She walked out of her stall and run today followed the other horses to the pasture and by the time I had pulled the hose to the water trough and was shutting the gate she was back in her stall waiting for me to bring her some hay! She just hates bugs - even more than she loves green grass!


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## egrogan

^^So interesting, thanks for the context. Not something I have experienced yet but good to have a guess of what might be going on!

PS- Sending Gracie soothing thoughts! :smile:


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## phantomhorse13

Yikes, I hope the vet gets back to you. The fact that it doesn't bother Izzy is a good thing.. but I bet its sure bothering you!

I had to laugh at your comment about the flies making her miss actual deer, as I had the same issue with Amish last night (he is the biggest weenie about bugs). If only they could apply such focus to what we want them doing!


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## frlsgirl

Maybe the vet is off the holiday weekend? Hopefully you will hear back soon.


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## egrogan

GRRRRRRR....I am SO IRRITATED with this whole Photobucket debacle. It makes me a little sick to my stomach that three years of journaling is wrecked like this (I know, I know, first world problems...). I was able to download all my pictures from Photobucket but I'm not sure I could ever spend the time it would take to go back through here and reload the correct pictures, though I suppose dates would help.

I think I've found another photo hosting site that will work ok but I'm going to hold out a couple of weeks before deleting my Photobucket account on the slim chance they realize what a mess they've made and care to do something about it.

*************************
OK, with that out of the way. @*frlsgirl* , I never heard anything back from the vet, which is decidedly weird. The good news though is that the lump, while still noticeable, has clearly begun to shrink. I'm optimistic that it's something like what @*carshon* described and will resolve itself with time. I poked and prodded at it yesterday and she didn't care at all.

We had a decent ride yesterday, but, yeah, bugs. She's miserable wherever we go outside. We tried the woods, the road, the outdoor but she was throwing her head everywhere and every part of her body was shaking trying to fend them off. I did find a bottle of the EcoVet spray @*carshon* recommended, but it had a weird note in the instruction not to use it on a horse sweating heavily, which she would be because it was 80*+ and near 90% humidity, so I applied it only lightly and I don't think enough to help. I may need to start riding her out in a quiet ride flymask, because she seems most bothered by them on her face, which is understandable. 

Here's a low-fi photo upload from my computer for now. Ugh, I hate tech companies!!!


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## egrogan

AND...the whole reason I came on here was not to complain about tech companies, but to celebrate that exactly 5 years ago today, I signed the bill of sale for my lovely lady. Time flies! :smile:


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## Tazzie

Awww, happy five year anniversary!! She's such a sweet lady 

And I hate tech companies too! I've about thrown my computer because of photobucket. I can't get it to let me on! So annoying!!


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## carshon

@egrogan Happy Anniversary! as for EcoVet we do put it on sweaty horses as well. This is a spray that you do not need to saturate your horse with. Other sprays say to wet and then brush into fur with a towel (that is how they claim it can work up to 7 days or whatevery)

Gracie would ride with a mesh tent around her if she could! We rode Friday and it was hot (85 degrees) and humid - and she tossed her head and swished her tail the entire time. She is a testy little mare and her quiet ride mask and nose guard just irritate her more when it is humid. So she *with my daughters consent seemed to think the best thing to do was to out run said bugs and gnats. So we rode almost 7 miles with Gracie (and daughter) walking sedately and then cantering off for no apparent reason other than she felt the spot 50 feet up the trail must have less bugs! Daughter swears it was all Gracie's doing - so we finished that 7 miles in a little over an hour 

Glad to hear the lump is going down.


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## carshon

@egrogan Happy Anniversary! as for EcoVet we do put it on sweaty horses as well. This is a spray that you do not need to saturate your horse with. Other sprays say to wet and then brush into fur with a towel (that is how they claim it can work up to 7 days or whatevery)

Gracie would ride with a mesh tent around her if she could! We rode Friday and it was hot (85 degrees) and humid - and she tossed her head and swished her tail the entire time. She is a testy little mare and her quiet ride mask and nose guard just irritate her more when it is humid. So she *with my daughters consent seemed to think the best thing to do was to out run said bugs and gnats. So we rode almost 7 miles with Gracie (and daughter) walking sedately and then cantering off for no apparent reason other than she felt the spot 50 feet up the trail must have less bugs! Daughter swears it was all Gracie's doing - so we finished that 7 miles in a little over an hour 

Glad to hear the lump is going down.


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## frlsgirl

Happy horse-aversery! 

Yeah the Photobucket thing is totally annoying. I was actually having trouble with it a few weeks ago so I started attaching pics directly to my posts so at least my most recent posts aren't lost. 

Glad the lump is shrinking. Maybe the vet will respond after the holiday.


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl, turns out the vet never got my text. My husband also didn't get a text with pictures from me that day, so I guess it was a problem with my phone. Gotta love cell and internet service in rural America! The lump is smaller still this morning, so looking good!

****************
At some point in the future, I think I'm going to look back fondly on this time of my riding and realize that an 85 year old lady has made me a braver rider :grin: We rode the woods trail today (EcoVet spray for Izzy plus straight-up chemical action Cutter for me worked wonders!) and had a good ride. 

Ida's horse had spooked pretty badly when they were out in the woods alone earlier this week; they almost stepped on a fawn a doe had hidden under some brush, and the fawn burst up under her horse's feet and ran off. She stayed on, but was understandably nervous to go out alone. She asked Izzy and I to lead, and I was so happy with Izzy, she never balked or tried her right-shoulder-spin-move at the trailhead where she's been problematic. Ida and I had fun singing silly show tunes and Christmas carols to let the deer know we were coming. 

After I had led for a bit, we switched places, which I think was a big deal for her to be out in front in case of another deer. It worked great though, as we hit a flooded spot on the trail and Izzy really _did not_ want to go- not fake "I don't want to," but eyes rolling back in her head I don't want to. Ida's horse, on the other hand, walked right across (it was only fetlock deep, but wide). I couldn't get Izzy to follow the first time, she flew backwards instead. Jazz circled back and then crossed again. This time, Izzy was halfway in, but at the last minute lurched sideways out of the water and into the shrubs. We stood for a minute to gain our composure, and then Ida & Jazz came back across for one last try. Ida went into full-on grandmother mode- she told me in her sternest voice "I want you to sit up straight, grab mane, and use that crop you're holding to tell her to GO." I guess I listened, because this time, Izzy did! It felt good to get across the water, as I do think I would have given up on my own.

After that, I think Ida forgot she had ever been nervous and channeled her inner off-road rider. We went off the trail, trotting up hills and through the underbrush. God bless Izzy, I love her dearly, but she is like a bull in a china shop- so ungraceful! She tripped over every stick and twig and managed to always pick the absolute worst path even if a clearer one was available. Despite that, I remain thankful for her level-headedness. At one point, she plowed through a sapling, and somehow it got stuck under not only my leg, but completely under the right flap of my saddle; it was probably a six foot tall sapling, and pretty much the entire length of it dragged under the saddle flap until it finally freed itself and bounced back up towards the sky. She startled a little but that certainly could have been a wreck! Through all Izzy's crashing through the brush and flailing around, Ida was having the time of her life, telling me story after story of the crazy stuff she used to do on hunter paces when she was younger. I really am a wimpy rider- I couldn't imagine doing a fraction of what she's done!

The horses were pretty hot after our bushwhacking adventure, so we cooled them out for a while in the outdoor ring and I got to hear more fun stories about Morgan breeders in the old days of Vermont. All in all, a fun ride, and I am glad she has someone to talk to about horses, it really seems to make her happy.

A few photos: 1. Darth Vader Izzy (she has stopped the head tossing with the mask on, thankfully!); 2. Heading out on a gorgeous day; and 3. Still on the trail, at least temporarily.


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## frlsgirl

Trail victory for both of you. I chucked when I read the part about the water crossing; reminded me of the day we traveled to this big, multi water obstacle trail adventure and Ana pretty much wanted to turn around as soon as she encountered the first ounce of mud and then we ended up jumping the rest of the water obstacles while all the other horses just walked through them. 

Morgan mares' theme song should be "I did it my way!"


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Morgan mares' theme song should be "I did it my way!"


Too cute, I agree!

Jazz is a Morgan too, and she's very agreeable. I think she's the perfect horse for an older rider, she's smart and sensible and when she does spook, it's a spook in place. She's also a very solid, old style Morgan so it's a broad back to stay balanced on during a spook, and not such a long way to the ground if you come off :wink: Though let's all help Ida doesn't come off any time soon! She's got a great seat, better than me, I think she's fine.

It's sort of funny, I think Ida and I are like two sides of a coin with the things that make us nervous riding, even though we both ride horses that really give you very little to be nervous about because they're both trustworthy even when they're having a moment. I get nervous in the woods when the footing gets dodgy and she gets nervous on the road around traffic or kids darting in and out on bikes. So far she's gotten me through the worrying moments in the woods, and I think I've helped her ride farther along the road than she would do on her own. Win-win :grin:


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## egrogan

*I am not horse shopping * I am not horse shopping * I am not horse shopping*

BUT

I can't help myself, when I saw this horse posted in a FB Morgan group, my heart skipped a beat. She has some awkward moments here, but you can still see she's a nice mover





And the description in her ad really ticks so many of my boxes- right temperament, right age, right size. 
"2010 Registered bay Morgan Mare for sale. Tess is a solidly built 14.2hh mare (for reference the rider in the video is 5’11”) . She has an amazing temperament and mind that makes her very safe, yet fun to ride. Tess has been used in beginner walk/trot lesson over the past couple of months and hasn’t once put a foot out of line. This girl is as solid as they come and also has an excellent work ethic. Tess is currently solid in her walk and trot, but could use a little more fine-tuning at the canter before she would be ready for first level. Her lateral movements are coming quite well and her gaits are extremely comfortable to ride. She has been out on trail rides and has been quite relaxed."

I messaged the seller and asked if she could send untacked confo pictures and more background about what the horse has done. Sounds like she recently had a foal, and I'm not sure what experience she has with hacking out. And, she's in Ontario, so that complicates things a bit. I tried to be very upfront with the seller that I really am not shopping until I decide what to do about retiring Izzy from riding- I would never want to be a "tire kicker." But I've never had such a strong, emotional gut reaction to a horse posted online before. I figured it wouldn't hurt to have a little conversation, right? :wink:

What do folks think about what you see in the video?


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## egrogan

OK, here are a few photos the seller sent me- like every horse, I see some clear faults, but overall, she looks like a very solid little mare (maybe _too _fluffy right now :wink with a very kind eye. And Morgan through and through. Anyone want to give a confo critique?





































*************
As for my current steed, lots of riding this week, out and about on the woods trail. I've had my riding buddy with me and it's been a huge help for tackling the water on the trails. Lots of repetition, and it's getting better! Izzy got a little ****y yesterday with balking going to the trailhead a second time (we were going to ride another loop) and we ended up scrapping the other loop and just achieving success at walking to the trailhead. I think I probably pushed the issue a little more than was productive, but we eventually got there without balking. 




























We got back to the barn just as the heavens opened with loud bangs of thunder- I think Izzy was laughing that she was standing in the dry barn while all her friends were out in their paddocks getting wet.


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## gottatrot

I think the little horse you're looking at is very cute. She would be nice for trail hacks and lower level riding. Her trot looks level and smooth. She has a very pretty head.

One issue you would end up dealing with is saddle fit. Her build is downhill and she has a long, sloping shoulder but forward girth groove. So her girth is going to want to end up right behind her shoulder, pulling the saddle forward. It might sit farther back if she were very slab sided, but it doesn't look like she is in the video, hence the saddle, rider and girth are far forward. Regardless of where you put the saddle it will end up there, so you will have to have forward billets, a straight flap and possibly an anatomical girth.

The other issue I see is that she is always going to have difficulty getting her hind end underneath herself. Anatomically with the thicker Morgan neck and back that slopes down toward the shoulder, she'll always tend to be a little more on the forehand. You can see it is a little difficult to pick up the canter for her, and that will improve some with more training and conditioning but it will always be a little harder for her. She may need extra conditioning to go up steep hills, and will probably prefer trotting over cantering. The high neck set helps, so you won't feel like you're going to topple over her shoulder.


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## Avna

I love her! Get this horse!

No, I'm not biased toward Morgans, why do you ask?
I would buy this horse for myself if she wasn't in Ontario.


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## Avna

Maybe you could buy her for me and ride her until I move to Massachusetts and then I'll take her off your hands. Heh.


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## Avna

gottatrot said:


> I think the little horse you're looking at is very cute. She would be nice for trail hacks and lower level riding. Her trot looks level and smooth. She has a very pretty head.
> 
> One issue you would end up dealing with is saddle fit. Her build is downhill and she has a long, sloping shoulder but forward girth groove. So her girth is going to want to end up right behind her shoulder, pulling the saddle forward. It might sit farther back if she were very slab sided, but it doesn't look like she is in the video, hence the saddle, rider and girth are far forward. Regardless of where you put the saddle it will end up there, so you will have to have forward billets, a straight flap and possibly an anatomical girth.
> 
> The other issue I see is that she is always going to have difficulty getting her hind end underneath herself. Anatomically with the thicker Morgan neck and back that slopes down toward the shoulder, she'll always tend to be a little more on the forehand. You can see it is a little difficult to pick up the canter for her, and that will improve some with more training and conditioning but it will always be a little harder for her. She may need extra conditioning to go up steep hills, and will probably prefer trotting over cantering. The high neck set helps, so you won't feel like you're going to topple over her shoulder.


She is built very similar to my Morgan mare, and I don't have any saddle fit issues (though my horse's shoulder is not so sloping -- but I hear you about collection. It is harder to get her off her forehand than an uphill-built horse. She also has a harder time reaching down into contact -- tends to bend behind her ears, not in front of her withers. But she is improving. Maybe she isn't a high level dressage prospect but I bet she'd be a great little trail horse and all around buddy.


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## Avna

Compare my Brooke and Tess:
they are the exact same height and very close in age as well.


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## frlsgirl

She looks super cute. So were you able to find out if she has trail experience? Also, is that what you would want to do with your next horse?


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I think the little horse you're looking at is very cute. She would be nice for trail hacks and lower level riding. Her trot looks level and smooth. She has a very pretty head.


Yes, her head is really pretty- I didn't think that would be something I particularly cared about, but I guess it's more about the look in her eye, which looks so soft.



gottatrot said:


> One issue you would end up dealing with is saddle fit. Her build is downhill and she has a long, sloping shoulder but forward girth groove. So her girth is going to want to end up right behind her shoulder, pulling the saddle forward...so you will have to have forward billets, a straight flap and possibly an anatomical girth...


I noticed that she looked somewhat downhill too. And I think I'm hypersensitive the shape/structure of the back given all the issues I've had with Izzy, so don't love that she already has that sort of sloping look to the back. In the least flattering picture, it looked somewhat long to me as well, but I think that's more camera angle than reality. 



Avna said:


> I love her! Get this horse!
> 
> No, I'm not biased toward Morgans, why do you ask?
> I would buy this horse for myself if she wasn't in Ontario.


Hahaha, I thought you would like her @*Avna* . Well...you never know, she may still be around by the time you're heading this way with your trailer! :wink:



frlsgirl said:


> She looks super cute. So were you able to find out if she has trail experience? Also, is that what you would want to do with your next horse?


It sounds like her trail experience is limited, and she hasn't been out alone yet. The seller said she has been on a few rides out with 2-3 other horses, wasn't spooky and was happy to w/t/c as asked, but I would assume that would be something I'd have to work on. I'm no trainer, but I actually do feel somewhat confident in my ability to get a horse riding out alone after going through it with Izzy. 

And good question @*frlsgirl* about what I really want to do with my next horse. I love Morgans for a lot of reasons, but the primary one being their reputation for being able to do a little of everything. 

I'd like to take some dressage lessons again, and I can't imagine my aspirations being beyond Intro level. I think @*gottatrot* 's right that there will be some limitations to how a horse like this moves, and I think I would need help improving the canter work. I definitely want to be able to hack out over more challenging terrain than I can tackle with Izzy. And have some aspirations of LD rides (25-30 miles) so like the thought of starting with a younger horse and building fitness together. So nothing uber-competitive, but definitely requiring a little more athleticism than Izzy has.

I had a nice exchange with the seller over the weekend and told her I was going to take the next month and really assess where Izzy is. I thanked her for being so responsive and promised to follow up one way or the other. This is a nice mare, so I think chances are she may not be available by the time I am more decisive- which would be a shame, but that's just sort of where I am right now.

So as for Izzy, we had a fairly wretched ride yesterday. I am going to call the vet today and set up a lameness exam, hopefully either this week or early next week depending on her schedule. Izzy just simply does not want to go _anywhere_. It's like barn sourness to the extreme. Wherever I point her, she whips her shoulders away to spin around and go back to the barn. I was trying to ride out with my riding buddy, and even another horse leaving her was not enough to want to make her ride out. BO's mother, who helps out around the barn and is one of Izzy's favorite people, offered to lead her out of the ring to the trailhead when she saw what was happening, and Izzy followed for a few steps and then when she understood what was happening, she threw her head up, spun, and ripped the reins away. This is just not my horse. I _can _force her to go, by grabbing onto the opposite rein from the direction she's trying to spin and holding really tight, while essentially booting her with my leg- but that just sucks and leaves me feeling terrible. I don't want to ride a horse, especially _this _horse, like that.

We did eventually get her to the trail and rode a loop, but when we got back to the barn, she absolutely didn't want to give me her right hind foot. So I guess it's time to start process of elimination to see what's going on.


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## phantomhorse13

My opinion echo's @gottatrot 's opinion: my first thought was eek on saddle fit, with that super forward girth groove and downhill build. I had a similar issue with Phin, though he is not nearly as downhill as that mare. Not an unsolvable issue, but def one to think about.

She is more extreme in her forward girth groove than @Avna 's mare:



















My other observation in watching the video is that she does not track up at the trot.. not even close. She does at the walk, however. So is that because of the person sitting heavily on her back trying to keep her trot controlled? Is it because of the fiddling with her mouth? Again, could be any number of things.. just an observation. I would love to see her move at liberty!

Overall she is super cute.. I would just want a few more details before going totally head over heels.


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## carshon

@egrogan I hope it is not a lameness issue with her - and I will make one comment. I owned a Morgan/Paint cross for 23 yrs. This was one of the smartest horses I have ever owned. Cherokee would limp (noticeably) when she did not like the person that was handling her. I lived with a BF for a short time while in College. Cherokee was an awesome trail horse that he wanted to ride occasionally - and each and every time he went to ride her she limped - she just hated him! She did it with my step Mom as well. 

Izzy may have your number and is testing you. These are smart willful horses (that just makes them more fun to ride) definitely rule out lameness but keep her sassy attitude in mind. You said you had ridden a lot the prior week and she may just be trying to get out of a repeat performance.

And I want to second everyone's comments on saddle fit on the other Morgan. Funnily enough we spoke with a lady yesterday who was riding a Morab - (we parked near each other at a state park) she has been battling girth gaul with her Morab and was out testing a new girth as she competes in some shorter endurance rides. We were talking about her geldings conformation (he was a LOOKER) and his girth groove was forward from where her saddle sits causing gauls. My TWH has some similar issues but is not getting as large of gauls as her gelding. I know you do not ride steep trails and I know nothing about dressage but wanted to share thoughts on saddle fit issues.


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## egrogan

@carshon- I think there's only one way to tell- all of you need to come visit New Hampshire and watch me ride and help me figure it out!! :wink:

BO is always so busy I don't feel like I can drag her out there with me for in-the-moment advice, but I really think her opinion would be helpful. Maybe I can get my lovely husband to take a video.

I had a meeting cancelled this morning so got a chance to go to the barn. I was intending to just groom and have a non-riding day, but it was a beautiful day and the barn was quiet, so I decided to jump on for a quick, easy ride. We did a lot of walking on a loose rein in the indoor. There were lots of poles and cones out so it was good engagement for her mind. She was stiff and sucked back some but that's not so unusual in the indoor. After about 20 minutes, I decided to head out to the back field where we're having all the issues. We did some walking and trotting on the side where we have no issues. Then I pointed her to the side where she has been balking/refusing, and she did the first time. I regrouped, changed the subject for a few minutes by working elsewhere, then came back to try again. She walked down the trail on first asking without any pulling or tug-of-war, just being much more active with my legs and really asking her to bend her barrel and move her shoulders. So, wasn't perfect, but felt productive and we ended on a very positive note. 

She was happy and relaxed when we came back to the barn, and look how well she stood while ground tying (I had walked into the indoor to put away a dressage stick, and then to the opposite end of the aisle to return a broom):









Oh, one other funny thing- BO had to put her in detention, aka a new paddock with a strong electric fence, because she had belly crawled out of her paddock under the bottom tape yesterday to get to grass. She's been in a field with the fence off since she got to this barn, and she's always been respectful of just the presence of the tape, on or not. But clearly everyone has their limits and sometimes the grass truly is just greener on the other side. So she'll stay in this "reminder" paddock for a few days and then probably go back to her old space.


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## frlsgirl

Reading your journal always makes me feel better because Ana can be so so difficult and I see so many similarities between Izzy and Ana, they are both so opinionated and clever. I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to ride your horse like "that" - where it feels like you are forcing them every step of the way. That's so funny that she got detention; that's totally something Ana would do. Hopefully you can get her figured out; or at least eliminate physical issues.


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## egrogan

Had a gloomy ride yesterday afternoon- I think the weather set the tone for how the ride went, we had more disagreeing and fighting about where to go. I have to admit, I was feeling pretty discouraged. I think BO could tell I had not had a good ride when I got back to the barn, so we talked for awhile about what was happening. I was trying to pinpoint exactly when things started to get so frustrating with the balking; I'm going to go back through here to read backwards. 

We poked and prodded Izzy along her back and hindend- she really doesn't react anywhere. BO thought she felt a little heat around her withers, so maybe there's something wrong with saddle fit again. That's something else to look into. I did get a rec for a different saddle fitter so I don't have to use that awful man again who made me feel so stupid last time. Vet will come out in mid-August for a lameness exam (she's now only doing horse barn calls on Wednesdays...). Feet get trimmed this Wednesday. So we'll just work through the check-list. I am hoping to have BO give me some on-the-ground advice, now that she knows what's going on.




















No riding for me today, as I'm leaving in a couple of hours to head up to the VT100 to meet up with @phantomhorse13 who has generously offered to have me join crew for one of her friends who's riding! While it's a a bummer that the horse _she _was supposed to ride isn't going today, I am no-so-secretly happy that I'll get to learn the ropes from her directly. I'm super excited to experience an event like this. I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures. :happydance:


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## bsms

Sorry to hear the problems. I hope to ride out on Bandit in a little while, maybe with Trooper. Bandit has spent the last 3 weeks healing and getting a little light riding very close to home, but I suspect he is getting "barn sour". His leg is healing nicely but I've got a hunch today will be more work than fun. Barefoot again, so if he acts up on pavement...I won't worry. As much.

Cowboy has had a swollen sheath for at least a week. He's only 13 hands, and I honestly don't look down low enough to check very often. He may have been kicked before we separated them, or he may have had ants biting him there - we've had huge problems with ants the last few weeks, including over $300 in damage to our air conditioning unit from where hundreds of ants fried themselves in the electronics, shorting it out, causing a power surge, etc. Killed our AC for a couple days when the temps were hitting 105.

The farrier was out yesterday. I asked him for advice on Cowboy. He said there was tenderness but no puss, no dripping, Cowboy could drop or not without problem. He said it was probably something that would clear up in a month left alone, or in 30 days if the vet handles it...and the vet charges us $200 just to look at our mailbox. It is more if he pulls into the drive, and more if he gets out of the truck. :-?

You do your best, and some days go really well. And then it seems like the bottom falls out and you've gone 6 months backwards. Or maybe it is just me.

Wish you well. And I'm envious of your trip to the VT100. Should be a great time. Sometimes it helps to just get away from things for a few days.


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## knightrider

How wonderful for you. That will be so cool!


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> How wonderful for you. That will be so cool!


 @*knightrider* , it really was. WOW. Where to even start!? I had an amazing experience and am totally sucked in to the sport.

First of all, at the risk of sounding a little bit like a gushing "fan girl," you all should know that @*phantomhorse13* is just an all around wonderful, welcoming person, and she was a bit of a celebrity around camp and at all the vet holds/pit stops- the person everyone went to when they had a question or needed help. I am so fortunate to have experienced my first event with her and her lovely family and group of friends. Not to mention in such a breathtakingly beautiful location. The ride was only an hour from my house, but I had never had a reason to head out on those particular backroads before, and it was gorgeous. 

phantomhorse and I crewed for her friend Patti, who was doing the 50 with a newer horse, Iggy. How couldn't you fall in love this handsome guy?









The 100 riders had started around 4am, but the 50 didn't start until 2pm, so we met around lunchtime and helped Patti get ready. There was a very nice gentleman from Canada set up next to our camp, so I had a nice chat with him and learned a bit more about his horse and how he sets up his ride schedule throughout the year. While he rode an Arab, he was also enthusiastic about Morgans and encouraged me to get my next one with an eye to doing these rides myself  When I saw him at holds throughout the day, he very sweetly remembered my name and told me he hoped I would be out there riding with them in the not-so-distant future. Here he is riding out at the start of the ride:









Here's the general scene at the start:









"Our" horse and rider are the ones closest to the sign here.









Despite the overcast skies you see at the start, the weather held. Though it was steamy at points during the day, we only got a few rain sprinkles once-and we were in the truck driving to a hold, so we got pretty lucky!

Throughout the day, phantomhorse was an awesome teacher. I learned so much about how to take care of a horse on a ride like this. I helped out with getting Iggy fed and watered during holds and pit crew stops; got to trot him out for a vet check; handled Patti's "card" at a hold (the official record of the ride and her vetting results); learned about lots of different types of equipment and why people prefer some to others, etc. Also learned a ton about keeping the rider hydrated, fed, and happy. When we weren't helping Patti and Iggy, we jumped in to help other riders who didn't have crew there. Unfortunately, one of phantomhorse's friends who we helped at a few holds had a pretty scary medical issue with her horse after rider optioning 3/4 of the way through, and we are still waiting to hear how her horse is doing. Sending lots of good vibes their way, as they need them.

Here's phantomhorse and Iggy:








He was a VERY good eater all day! :grin:

Patti finished up at about 2am. She seemed very happy with how the day had gone. And I was happy to be on a successful team!









I'm just realizing I never stopped and got any pictures of me during the day- funny, I guess I was just so engrossed in what was going on around me, I never thought about it. phantomhorse will have to confirm that I was really there :wink:

I'm still sort of living in the glow of being part of it. The community of riders and their friends/family was so amazing- I felt so welcomed and included. Everyone answered all of my (million and one) questions enthusiastically, and it was refreshing to see a sport where just about everyone really cared about and worked in such close partnership with their horses. There were new riders and some badas* teenagers riding out with "sponsors" - and that was all really encouraging to see. I guess I expected to be really intimidated and leave feeling impressed, but not like it's something I could aspire to do. But on the contrary, no one was intimidating, and they all were very much "real" people- great riders, great horseman, but real people with nice, well conditioned horses. I'm already daydreaming about my next horse and all the possibilities!

******
So lest anyone think I've forgotten about my _current _horse, no worries! Though I only slept a couple of hours, I was eager to get out to the barn on Sunday morning to see Izzy. 



bsms said:


> You do your best, and some days go really well. And then it seems like the bottom falls out and you've gone 6 months backwards. Or maybe it is just me...Sometimes it helps to just get away from things for a few days.


I totally understand what you're saying @*bsms* - it's definitely not just you! But I was determined to approach her without frustration on Sunday, trying to problem solve.

Sunday was hot and soupy, and Izzy was sweaty just walking in from the pasture, so I decided I was going to try to tackle things where we'd have a positive ride without getting her much hotter than she already was. I scratched the woods trails off the list as I didn't want to just jump on and start fighting right away. So instead I decided to mostly ride in the arena, and focused on lots of bending, keeping a steady, marching pace, etc. On another thread someone's written about a trail horse refusing to go forward, she got advice on "making sure the horse is marching forward at a nice walk" when you begin your ride. That is such helpful advice for me, as Izzy will definitely try to drunken sailor walk at the beginning of rides when she doesn't want to go. Insisting on a nice forward walk, even from the ground walking from the barn to the outdoor, helped. The nice thing about our outdoor is that it's a simple dressage arena with no fence or gates, so it's easy to go back and forth to the grass pasture outside the ring- the first couple of times I did that, she tried to pop out her shoulder and run sideways to resist leaving the ring, but I used the stick on her shoulder a couple of time and she gave that up. We had both a nice forward walk and trot, which was good. She was pretty stiff in the canter though, but I understand, we just haven't been doing it much. 

We ended the ride with a trip around the property, doing lots of circles/figure 8s so we were constantly moving both towards and away from the barn. I felt like it was pretty successful, in terms of her willingness and overall attitude.

After talking with phantomhorse this weekend, I'm going to add a blood panel for Lyme to our vet visit in August. The vet will probably think I'm nuts since I already had her run blood for a bunch of other stuff back in the spring, but we're going to check that off the list too. 

Farrier comes on Wednesday, and her toes are way too long, so I think that should help her move a little better in the short term too.

_Snack time after our ride








_
I think my husband is a little scared that I've crossed over some sort of horse-crazed line he didn't realize existed. He was happy to see me so happy at the end of the weekend, but I think he's realizing that he needs to start planning now for buying a truck and trailer- oh, and the house with the barn to bring Izzy and our next Morgan home. He's a great sport about it all though. :happydance:


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## phantomhorse13

@egrogan : It was FANTASTIC to meet you and you were a _tremendous_ help. I am glad you embraced the craziness and it didn't frighten you away. I also can't believe we didn't think to have anybody take our picture.. but just means you need to come back and do it again so we can get a pic!


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## evilamc

I'm so jealous you guys got to meet up!!!!!!!! Glad you had such a fun time!!


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## knightrider

@egrogan, what you described is exactly what I experienced on my first (and only so far) endurance ride. Everything you said. Everyone was so helpful and friendly. At McCulley Farm, where I did my ride, they have 10 and 15 miles ones which are just my speed. I really look forward to doing another 10 or 15 mile one. I hope you get to also. I am so pleased it was so fun for you!


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## gottatrot

That is so great you got to meet up with Phantom horse and crew for the ride! 
I wish we had her advice to help...my friends and I only did two rides before my horses pretty much aged out, but I hope to get back into it in the future. We did make many mistakes, however, so I think it's great to go and watch before trying it yourself. 
We put a sponge in a water trough to get it wet, which is a big no-no apparently (makes sense, don't want sweat and dirt in the drinking water) and got "yelled" at nicely. And the horses weren't prepared well for their vet exams so were a little squirrely.

However, it was still amazing and fun. To see so much beautiful scenery was great. And it was a little thrilling for me to see all the Arabs running around. Most trail rides I'd been to were mainly QHs, but endurance has a high percentage of spry little Arabs. Which is also why the vets didn't even blink when my horses wouldn't stand perfectly still for their exams.

All this to say...I hope you get into endurance too.

I hope you can get Izzy figured out. My gut feeling is that she just has some low grade type thing that is taking away her incentive to move and work hard for you.


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## Tazzie

I'm also jealous you guys got to meet up!! Come to Kentucky!!!!! Or Ohio would work too :lol: I'd haul up again!

I really think you'd have fun with endurance! It's always something that's fascinated me, but right now I'm hooked on our Dressage. It just looks like so much fun!! And who wouldn't love riding all day?!

I do hope you get Izzy figured out, poor girl. Doesn't make things fun when all of a sudden they are saying nope to something!


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## PoptartShop

Sounds like a blast. Awesome you guys got to meet.  I'm extra jealous. LOL.
Looks like so much fun.  Endurance is something I've always wanted to try.

I hope Izzy gets out of her funk soon, poor girl. :sad:


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## egrogan

Sounds like in no time at all, we'll have an HF endurance team out there on the trails. :riding: 
I can see the t-shirts now! 

Seriously though, I would love the chance to meet up and ride with so many of you in real life! It's really fun to hear about everyone's experience dabbling in various LD and endurance rides. So cool that there are so many options out there and so many avenues for trying it out. I do think the 10, 15, 25 mile "intro" type rides sound very doable with some reasonable conditioning.

Thanks for all the well-wishes for Izzy. We'll figure it out. I added an eye exam to the vet visit on August 2nd. As I was thinking back to when the balking got really bad, I realized it may coincide with when I started riding in the Quiet Ride mask vs. just an ear bonnet. And then I saw on that other "refusing to go forward" thread that a couple of people wondered about a change in vision. Izzy has always had sensitive eyes, and they have had some cloudiness build up over the past year, so we'll take a look at that too. I took the mask off the last time I rode to see if that made a difference- it didn't, but maybe it did initially and then reinforced the behavior- at this point, I'm not sure yet what is a "root cause" vs. habit.


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## egrogan

Izzy saw the farrier this morning, he was in and out uneventfully. It's been so awfully wet for the past few weeks she has some yucky thrushy spots on her front feet, which seemed to come from out of nowhere between when I saw her Sunday and today. I don't know how people in constantly wet climates do it! We're really not used to this much wet this late in the summer, and it's getting difficult to find a way to get her to a dry place since she's out 24/7 and never comes into a stall. 

****

I just found some _old _pictures of us- looking at the timestamp on them, I realized I started riding her in lessons back in summer/fall of 2010. I bought her in 2012, and had free leased her for about a year before that, but I guess I forgot that I was also taking lessons with her for that much time before the lease started. These pictures are all from 2010-2011, so she was 16-17 years old.

Look at us, we're kids here - and both a bit skinnier :wink:


















Pretty background, but the way she's standing makes her back look loooonnngg here









At this point, there was a fancy dressage trainer at our old boarding barn, and she was definitely trying to turn Izzy into a dressage horse. 









I actually really like the pretty walk she has here:


















This is probably the last time she had a clip- six years ago since she's been civilized (although eww, did anyone ever clean that paddock?!).









It's fun finding these, I love going back in time.


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## frlsgirl

So excited for you that you had a great experience with @phantomhorse13 and crew. 

I'm so jealous! Endurance looks like so much fun! She always posts the best pictures!

Sorry about your troubles with Izzy but strolling down memory lane via old pictures is always a great reminder of how far you've come together. 

Maybe the farrier can help? Ana is going better now that we pulled her shoes and I'm also making her be forward off of light aids right from the start. As you stated, requesting obedience/more forward right from the start does help.


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## egrogan

Very happy to say that we had an extremely positive ride this morning- the best we've had in forever!



frlsgirl said:


> ...I'm also making her be forward off of light aids right from the start. As you stated, requesting obedience/more forward right from the start does help.


I think this is making a world of difference- it's all about a nice marching walk right from the start. It's really important to me that I don't have to hold her up and balance her though, I want her to be able to take care of that. So we did a long warmup, a forward walk but on the buckle. She did a really good job of maintaining a consistent pace, something she will often resist. Whenever I felt her want to fall into that turtle crawl, she just needed a little leg and she marched on.








(_Sigh...her poor mane is a scraggly mess...and not improving)_

The best part, after 10-15 minutes in the outdoor, we headed out towards the trail- and she went where her nose was pointed with no fuss. None of that awful balking stuff at all, and I was not all up in her mouth to get her there. We went the whole way to the woods uneventfully, on the same loose rein, and did a 10-15 minute loop before the dive bombing deer flies were just too much. 









Then we came back up at a nice, balanced trot. BO has slowly been clearing out a gallop track around the perimeter of the property to use with her eventing horses, so we're starting to have some nice ground for long trots. We did a bit of that, and Izzy really felt like she was carrying herself rather than leaning on me- felt so good! 

I resisted the urge to point her back to the woods one more time- she had been so quiet the first time, it was tempting, but I figured we'll go again tomorrow rather than risk not ending on a good note.

I always want to figure out *why* things go right when they haven't been for awhile. She had her feet trimmed on Wednesday, and I'm happy with how her feet look right now, so that may be helping. I also think I rode with a lot more confidence and a lot less anticipation today. I put some music on my phone and had it in my pocket, and I know that keeps me breathing. I also stopped tensing up every time we got to a place that could be a potential "argument," and instead just made sure I had leg on clearly and was looking well into the distance towards where we were going, rather than down at her (a terrible habit I have). 

Another thing I noticed was the the whole time we were riding, her ears were up and happy, not annoyed or pinned like they have been recently. It's good to see her a little more interested again. I'm hoping to continue that positive feeling when we ride with my buddy Ida tomorrow.

_Extra carrots because I was so good??








_


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## egrogan

Well, I'm happy (and frankly, a little relieved) to report that we've managed to string together two good rides in a row!

I warmed up today just like I did yesterday- nice forward walk on a loose rein, trotted both directions in the ring, and then headed out to the trail. There was minimal fuss on our way to the trailhead, even though we had to ride through a flock of turkeys to herd them out of the way. 









The bugs descended on us instantly, and swarmed her head and neck for the first 3/4 miles or so. She was definitely not happy, and fidgeted at the walk, but I can understand this!

When we got to the 'water crossing,' she went back to her old balking. We were riding alone, so I didn't have the benefit of Jazzy and Ida to lead for us, but I really was determined to make it across. The water was not deep, rushing, or dangerous in any way. I know there have been a lot of other debates on HF recently about getting off to go through scary scenarios, but I truly believe this is not a frightening situation for Izzy- just one that makes her stubbornly refuse. So, I decided I was staying on and we were going across together. The first few (ok, four) times I tried to get across, she pulled all the tricks she's used before to turn around and go home. She rushed backwards, she lurched sideways through the underbrush. I truly didn't care about her crossing right at the point where I said she should- in my opinion, that was the best footing to go across, but I would have been perfectly happy if she had gone across even if we were off the trail and in the bushes, but she wouldn't do that either. Rather than run into a tree, I did have to turn her in a half circle a couple of times and get back on the trail facing towards home (it's pretty narrow). But each of the times I had to do that, I was able to basically turn on the forehand to get facing back towards the puddle. We did a lot of standing and waiting in between each try, and let's say that was not very fun given the deer flies. As I gathered my reins to urge her forward for the fifth time, that little voice in my head chimed in "she's not going to rear and she's not going to fall"- my two biggest unspoken fears when she starts throwing herself side to side or flying backwards. Not sure if it was coincidence or if I gave myself the confidence to just ride her forward more effectively that try, but finally her nose was crossing the puddle, her front feet were in, and we were through. If it hadn't taken so many tries, I would have said it's the nicest she's ever gone through that water, because she didn't half lunge/half jump through it, she just walked across.

The rest of our ride was great actually. For the remaining mile or so, we trotted and cantered, and she felt strong and eager. We haven't done anything but walk on that trail for months, so it was fun to move out a little- nice hills back there too, so a good work out.

When I hosed her off after the ride though, I felt pretty awful- I discovered she's got girth rubs on both sides in a weird spot- not quite armpit, but not quite leg. I'm not sure how she's getting rubbed there, but unfortunately I don't think it was from just today. Thankfully the skin isn't broken or bleeding, but it's still clearly rubbed. I have a couple of other girths I can try, but does anyone have any suggestions for protecting this weird area, or how to check before I get on to see if a new girth is likely to bother her in the same spot?


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...but I truly believe this is not a frightening situation for Izzy- just one that makes her stubbornly refuse. So, I decided I was staying on and we were going across together....


That is one of the toughest things for me to figure out. Is Bandit AFRAID? Or is he just not in the mood?

And if he isn't in the mood...what next? Sometimes I prefer to let him tell me he is not having fun, and trying something else instead. But there are times I want him to press ahead even if he DOESN'T feel like it - because _*I*_ want it, and SOMETIMES we need to do what _*I*_ want. Not just what he wants all the time!

I wish I knew the answer, but I figure it is something we have to figure out each of us on our own, knowing we sometimes will screw up.

Sounds like you ARE making progress. If the rides are on an upward trend, you are guessing better and better and responding in an appropriate fashion. If they are getting worse, adjust.

I remember people telling me to sing when I was nervous. What happened was...my horse decided my singing was a cue to get nervous! "_Bob's singing? That means he is scared! Now I need to find the scary thing and save us!_" 

I finally started singing when I wasn't nervous, just to mix it up. And since I'm not good at remembering lyrics...my horses hear a lot of "Duh, duh, duh...something or other...ooo, ooo". It is a good thing they are patient!

I would like to find a way to equip my saddle with a sound system, though! A western saddle is heavy enough anyways that attaching some Bose speakers and an amp shouldn't be too much problem.


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## egrogan

I know what you mean @*bsms* - I feel like I've been lurching back and forth between explanations for our bad rides the past couple of months- some days, I convince myself she's just old and sore, so she gets to pick where we go and the pace to get there. And then other days, I think no, she's just "got my number" and I just need to tell her I get to have an opinion about where we go, and then we can decide together how fast to go and when to head home. And still other days, I think I should just retire her completely and let her stand around and eat grass all day. My biggest struggle is that I completely agree with you about wanting to ride a horse that wants to go out with me. What fun is it to have to kick and pull them along? 

I'm really not usually an indecisive person, and I'm sure it's not helping for me to be so inconsistent with her. I just feel out of my element and what's best for her. I do think it will be good to have the vet visit next week- checking eyes, Lyme, and overall soundness should at least help with some answers to the "is she hurting" question.

As an aside, one of the other women I've ridden with a little has been having almost the same exact problems getting to the trailhead that I've been having. She has the big paint gelding Jimmy I've posted pictures of a couple of times- when you look in the dictionary for the definition of "trusty trail horse," Jimmy is it. I ran into her as she was leaving yesterday, and she said Jimmy absolutely refused to go to the woods two days ago- to the point that he started _bucking_, which I just can't even picture, he's so steady and solid. She said while he was bucking, all the other horses that are in turnout back by the woods were running frantically around their paddocks. BO thinks the wildlife has been particularly active this year- we know there are bears and coyotes and foxes back there, and tons of deer and the turkeys with lots of babies- but she said a few years ago, there was a big cat out there for awhile and is wondering if that's passing through again. I don't think Izzy is bothered by most wildlife, but admittedly we've never had a close predator encounter. I'm certainly not happy that someone else is having problems riding where they want, but it is at least a little reassuring that someone else with a steady eddie is having a similar problem.

As far as riding with a sound system- not sure what kind of cell phone you have or how your internet access is, but I can stream music while I'm riding so I just stick my phone in my pocket. And don't get me started on how bad my singing is- it's either Christmas carols or old sorority songs, and Izzy doesn't seem particularly impressed with either. :wink:


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## carshon

So glad you had 2 great rides. And Big Cats and Bears are not in my vocabulary! No such things where I live so I cannot even imagine.

My mare Tillie gets girth rubs periodically - since she is black there are times I may not even notice until it gets flaky and peely and then I feel horrible. Hers are in almost the same place as Izzy's - almost at the point of the elbow - and I find that it is mostly when we have been riding strenuous hills or dips and the saddle moves a little more (not loos just moves when her body moves more) I haven't found a girth that has stopped this (mohair, neoprene, felt - Tillie has 1 of each) I know you ride English but it could be that she was using her body more when balking at trail obstacles and it caused some rubbing. 

Just want to add - I love your journal and your thoughts and emotions on analyzing Izzy's moods and behavious is thought provoking. I also tend to try to "think of the why" - unfortunately for me I think I may overthink a tad.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon- it's great to have you along for the ride. :wink: I really appreciate you sharing your stories too! I am (_clearly_) an overthinker as well, so it's good to get so many different perspectives here.

Just let myself spend some time looking at horses on FB, and came across this young mare: listing | MorganShowcase The pictures and videos are all at kind of a weird angle, but curious what people think about her as a "happy hacker and maybe limited distance and maybe training level dressage" prospect? I like the look of her back, and I don't _think _she's quite as downhill as the last mare I fell in love with on Facebook. I like that she seems to move forward (if a little rushy?), but she looks a little lost about how to find her balance through her neck/head ridden on a fairly long rein in the videos. But, I like that she doesn't have that very exaggerated high legged action at the trot that lot of Morgans in my area seem to have. I do not have the eye yet to be able to clearly see shoulder and pastern angles and how that would influence movement and soundness. What do others see? 

She's actually only about half an hour away, and I know of her seller through the local horse networks (and my BO would have an opinion I'm sure). It would be pretty easy to go ride her, though again, I'm hesitant to be a "tire kicker" and I'm not _quite _ready to say I'm a serious buyer. They don't list a price in her ad (frustrating), so around here that often means either its 5 figures or they're having trouble moving her along.


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## carshon

@egrogan you may also think of looking at the Facebook group MorganSafenet

I really like this group and they have had some exceptional rescues come through


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Just let myself spend some time looking at horses on FB, and came across this young mare: listing | MorganShowcase The pictures and videos are all at kind of a weird angle, but curious what people think about her as a "happy hacker and maybe limited distance and maybe training level dressage" prospect?


As you said, all the pics are either moving or at odd angles, so I would be curious to see a standing, side-on conformation photo. She seems to have nice bone and certainly isn't a hard keeper. I agree she is a tad rushy under saddle, but if that is as excited as she gets on a loose rein, I like it!


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## gottatrot

phantomhorse13 said:


> As you said, all the pics are either moving or at odd angles, so I would be curious to see a standing, side-on conformation photo. She seems to have nice bone and certainly isn't a hard keeper. I agree she is a tad rushy under saddle, but if that is as excited as she gets on a loose rein, I like it!


To me, this one looks a lot more like a horse that could do a few things. She's pretty, and if she has a nice temperament, she could look even better when conditioned. She seems to have the mind to want to move forward but also is going on a loose rein. In the pictures her hooves look nice too. 

I'd try her out and see what you think.
It's sure nice to have a horse that is able to do more when another is heading toward retirement age.

Amore has all kinds of trouble with girths. In fact, years ago we had a going forward problem that turned out to be from girth rub. For her, what works are the very flat mohair girths. They work best if they are short enough to rest just below the saddle pad so they stay very flat. We use the ones from Montana Cincha that are shaped around the elbows.
Halla has flat sides so is more forgiving of girths.


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## egrogan

Thanks @gottatrot and @phantomhorse13. I've reached out to the seller to see about proper confo shots. I also talked to a friend of mine whose opinions on horses I really trust, who happens to live in the same town as the seller and knows a lot of the Morgan folks in the area. She said the seller's farm tends to be a little more into the "flashy" show Morgan type, but the horses there get a good start and are treated really well, so no reason not to go look. If I do go for a test ride, this friend is someone I'd bring with me, as I trust her opinion a lot. Stay tuned :smile:

PS- gottatrot, thanks for the girth rec. The kind you posted is one I haven't tried, so could be a good option to test out. I've been through fleece (the worst option), leather (not great), and neoprene (generally best received) in different shapes, but it's time to go back to the drawing board.


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## Zexious

I've heard good things about those types of girths, too.

Loving the updates, egrogan <3


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## egrogan

Well, seller replied to my message quickly. 

She sent me all the same pictures in the ad- clearly _not _confo pictures!

And, the asking price is $12K  So, definitely show horse prices, which is about double my budget. Needless to say, I will not be her next home.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> the asking price is $12K


Wow.. good luck to them with that. Even if I had that kind of money laying around, I wouldn't be spending it on a "prospect" - what the heck do they think a finished show horse would be worth?!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Wow.. good luck to them with that. Even if I had that kind of money laying around, I wouldn't be spending it on a "prospect" - what the heck do they think a finished show horse would be worth?!


Exactly! I guess I wasn't so surprised because I poked around the sales site a little and saw the seller's other horses are all listed for ~$10K, so I figured the one without the price listed was probably going to be more. I did write her back and thanked her for being so responsive, but explained the mare was nowhere near my budget. She wrote back with something about how she's a small breeder and the chance to own horses from her stud is very limited, not in a snarky way but clearly in a way that shows she's proud of what she's producing. I totally get it, and I'm sure she- like all good breeders- has a lot of money in each of these horses. But it's just not the world I can, or frankly want to, play in.


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## bsms

To date, my most expensive horse was $1200. Not that any of them would win any prizes for anything, although 2 are good trail horses and one is getting there...with some detours, occasional backsliding, etc. I worry about his legs (Bandit's), but the other two are getting older and holding up so far.

I'd still like to own another purebred Arabian mare someday. REALLY like. But the longer I'm with Bandit, the harder it would be to sell him...and I SOOOO don't need a fourth horse!


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## gottatrot

Too bad the mare is so much money.
If you look around you can find healthy, well built, sound horses for less than $2,000, so then it seems a waste to spend so much. Especially since you'll probably eventually be needing that extra ten grand for vet bills and tack over the horse's lifetime, even with the most wonderfully bred horse. 

My two mares have given me many thousands of dollars worth of pleasure, and one cost $700 and the other was free. Amore is very well bred and I could have sent in her registration papers for $500 if I'd wished to do breed shows. That Morgan might sell for $12,000 this year, and in two years after sitting around in someone's field or during a divorce, she might sell for $1,500 or less. Those are the kind of horses I look for. Same horse, different circumstances for sale. 

Amore was for sale due to divorce. Once upon a time, sons of Bask like Amore's sire were so valuable they were syndicated and their offspring sold around the world. Yet in a different market, and as an untrained twelve year old, my mare's owner was happy to sell her for $700.


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## egrogan

Yep, I hope I didn't give the impression that I equate a horse's quality with the amount the horse cost. Not at all!

Izzy was $2000, and that was way too much to pay for her. That said, she was being sold by a therapeutic riding program I volunteered for, and they offered me a discount on monthly board to be able to use her occasionally for a lesson or during summer camps. The discount on board more than made up for paying "too much" for her, and I sort of considered anything beyond that a donation back to the program. I am 100% sure no one else would have bought her at asking price without significant haggling, and that's ok.

That said, in my next horse, I want to find something with good conformation, a good mind, more athleticism than Izzy, and a solid start to training. I've learned from good breeders- both here on HF and in real life- that nothing is more frustrating after all they've investing to get a horse going solidly under saddle than buyers who want to get all of what I want, but for pennies. I figure having a budget from around $2500-$5000 should be more than adequate for the kind of horse I want, maybe even with shipping costs considered, without a breeder giving the horse away. And I can completely respect that people who care about show bloodlines and having that "ring look" will laugh at that budget, as that has nothing to do with my end goals.


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## egrogan

Last week was just nuts at work- the worst day being one where I had 5 straight hours of video conference calls- and I didn't see Izzy at all. Glad that kind of week is done!

This morning before heading to the barn, I decided to go to the New England Morgan Horse Show, which was about 45 minutes from my house. It's probably been a good 20 years since I last went to a formal horse show. The last one I was at as a teen rider on a borrowed lesson horse, left a pretty lastingly negative image in my mind. But I went with an open mind, figuring it would be a good chance to look at horses from some different stables and see if I saw anything that might fit the bill at the right "type" for a new partner.

I was super disappointed to realize that I got there just after all the dressage classes had finished. I was really hoping to see some more of the "sport" type Morgans, and figured the dressage classes were probably where they'd be (jumping happened at the beginning of the week, and today was the last day of the show). 

Instead, the kids English Pleasure and Hunt Seat classes were up. 

Now, before I post these pictures, I'm just going to say simply that the "old" vs. "new" school Morgan debate is raging on all corners of the internet, and while I have an opinion, I respect people who like something different than me. But even with that said, I forgot just how Saddlebredy so many Morgans have become, and it was sort of hard to see the big padded shoes and tight curb chains, particularly with kids riding. I think Saddlebreds are great horses- in fact, I learned to ride on them- but I prefer my Morgans as Morgans and Saddlebreds as Saddlebreds. OK, with that out of the way...

These kiddos were certainly ready to put their best foot forward in the ring! Their little costumes were just too much, and no horse put a foot wrong for their tiny pilots.



























I think this is the definition of _blinnngggg_ :wink:









This lead line pair was probably the closest I saw to a horse I'd like to have for myself- love that big smile on the little rider's face









The only adult rider class I saw was junior horse English pleasure. These horses were hotter than the kids' horses, definitely exciting, but they seemed to enjoy their jobs and not be freaked out by the environment. It's been years since I've seen horses go around the ring like these did:


















And just one driving class while I was there:









And some nice young riders in the 13-and-under equitation class, though I was disappointed to see that the rider that pinned 3 out of 13 was the only one that was yanking and spurring her horse in the lineup when he wouldn't stand still and the judges were at the other end. No pictures of them out of principle!

























It was a lot of fun seeing so many Morgans in one place, but I won't lie, it was a relief to get back to my kind of Morgan :grin:









We had a low key ride, both of my riding buddies were there but everyone was a little short on time so we just did some w/t/c stuff in the ring and walked the perimeter of the property together chit chatting. Will plan to ride again tomorrow morning, it's cool and breezy so fingers crossed the bugs may be a little less awful in the woods if we head in that direction.


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## bsms

I liked your post because it is very interesting and I'm glad you got back to Izzy. But for the most part...just about any picture you've posted of you & Izzy looks SOOOOO much better to me!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


>


I find the feet/shoes of this horse fascinating and somewhat mind boggling. This horse is in western tack, so I assume it was some type of western class.. how were the horses moving? Seeing those long toes and/or shoes makes me think they are trying to encourage big knee action, which is the opposite of how a western horse moves. 

Was this a "western" class where they took high steppers and just tossed a saddle with a horn on?


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I find the feet/shoes of this horse fascinating and somewhat mind boggling. This horse is in western tack, so I assume it was some type of western class.. how were the horses moving? Seeing those long toes and/or shoes makes me think they are trying to encourage big knee action, which is the opposite of how a western horse moves.
> 
> Was this a "western" class where they took high steppers and just tossed a saddle with a horn on?


Yes, the feet/shoes are definitely one of the first things you notice. I don't know how things work outside of youth classes, but in this case, yes, it seems like this horse had also done some other English classes earlier in the morning and had the tack switched up.

Not from this show, but here's a video of a Morgan Western Pleasure class
http://youtu.be/rh7Twe2MnVY?t=15s

The little bling girl won the under-11 English Pleasure class on that big black gelding, jumped off, threw the reins at a groom, and got whisked away in a golf cart to change her outfit and get back a few classes later riding the same big black gelding Western Pleasure (seeing little kids hand their horses off to a groom was another startling thing I had forgotten about horse shows- but thankfully, it seemed mostly uncommon).

Oh, the $12K mare's owners were major sponsors of the show and the classes yesterday morning. A couple of their horses were ridden by kids in the equitation class but did not place. So if the horses in that price range don't even place in these shows, as @phantomhorse13 said, what the heck does it cost for a winning show horse!?

The Lippitt Country Show- aka, the "old school" Morgans- is in a couple of weeks, and while it's a little farther away, I'm considering going to that one too as I think I'm more likely to find people with "my kind" of horse there. When I got to the showgrounds yesterday, I stopped into the show secretary's office and asked if they could recommend any barns/trainers at the show that I should visit to ask about sport horse/endurance prospects. They all looked at each other like I had asked them which barn the elephants were stabled in. No one had any suggestions. 

(_Disclaimer. _I know not all people who show or are really into their breeds are snotty, out-of-touch people. I'm sure most of the people I saw yesterday weren't either. It's just helpful to be able to see all the options out there and solidify what it is I'm looking for. It's a very fascinating experience.)


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## Tazzie

The Morgan western pleasure looks like how the Saddlebred western pleasure is. I will agree it's not what I think of when I think of western pleasure.

I've seen what you talked about with kids in the Arab world too. I've always hated it since I feel kids should take of their mount, and it creates entitled children. But, not much I can say. My kids will learn the horse comes before you, which my kids see every show when I strip my horse before I even take my helmet off.

I'm glad you got to see Izzy though, and she's definitely the nicer kind of Morgan!


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## bsms

I guess I found that version of WP less painful to watch the QH WP, but I can't enjoy either. 

The problem I have with most shows boils down to this: When I've watched my horses play, or watch wild horses cover rough ground, they move with an agility, athleticism, balance and power I've never seen ANY ridden horse match! Mia probably grew up in dry lot corrals and didn't have as good a balance, but even she often moved as well as any ridden horse I've seen. Since I like a horse who moves with agility, athleticism, balance and power, my ideal of riding would be to allow my horse to move with me the way he already can move without me.

I'll never come close to that, but that is me. More athletic riders with enough experience might come close.

But if a show is based on what almost every horse is capable of, just by allowing the horse to grow up with enough freedom and experience moving, then LOTS of horses can potentially do it! Any $1000 horse, given good experience when young, could be a potential winner. And in a show involving the top 10%, it would be very hard to judge which is better overall. 

So humans have created artificial ways of moving, and judge based on artificial ideas of how a horse moves. No sane person would want to canter down a trail like the horse in the video, and no sane person would want their horse to canter across a field looking like this world champion setting a record:








​ 
And of course, once you get outside the smooth, level arena, most people want their horse looking where it is going, so the whole vertical headset disappears. When I've asked why ANYONE would value it, I've been told it means the horse is in control. Presumably then, when I ride Bandit twisting between cactus, he is out of control. But if he was out of control, my legs and even face would be ripped to shreds by thousands of cactus spines.

Of course, using my "ideal" of riding, lots of farm kids would be competitive with a lot of highly educated equestrians, judging who was best would be almost impossible, there would be no $100,000 show horses, etc. And a poor person with good feel for their horse could beat someone who can hire a groom...

Using my standards, the show world creates and then perpetuates bad riding. Breeding horses to move badly makes it worse. But then, I once posted a picture of mustangs racing down a rocky mountainside, and was told, "_Hollow-backed, inverted, out of control...not desirable at all._" :confused_color:


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## egrogan

@Tazzie, I was certainly thinking of you when I added my disclaimer about people who love to show :wink: I wish you could mentor all the show kids coming up through the system!
@bsms, I take your point that what's bred for in the show ring is often in direct conflict with what a "using" horse is asked to do. Though I will take some issue with your characterization of Valegro and say the only reason I wouldn't want to ride him on a trail is because there's no way I'd be able stay on that kind of power!! Given the training program they use for horses like him, regular hacking out and turnout are part of their lives, and so they are certainly rewarded for the flashy ring movement but also have "real" lives too. I don't know, I think it's pretty great that an Olympic gold medalist can also happily hack out and stay sound.

It's funny how you describe your horses as you watching them moving in the field- I think you haven't ever been around an _unathletic, clutzy _horse, which is Isabel :redface: She does _not _look elegant and graceful in the field when she's running around. She's had a thick, bulging muscle under her neck from the day I met her, and it's partially from riding but partially because of how she carries herself, even with regular chiropractic work. I'm not smart enough to know how much of that is genetics, early training, my regular riding, or a combination of all things. I think for a horse like Izzy, if circumstances had allowed us to have taken proper dressage lessons regularly over the past few years, I do think it would have helped her move more fluidly, and be more balanced riding our woods trails, which would make for a more enjoyable and strength building ride for us. I'm going to ride in a clinic with BO on August 19th (if I don't chicken out) where the focus will be on rhythm & tempo- I think it could be really good for both of us. I totally agree with you that I don't want a trail horse going around in some weird frame where they can't see what's up ahead and plan for it. I guess I'll offer that somewhere along the scale is a horse who has a lot of freedom to move how she pleases, but ends up being a little awkward and unbalanced, which definitely does lead to unnecessary tripping and scrambling. If I were a better rider, I guess I'd be able to find a happier medium between that and a smooth, balanced horses nimbly navigating obstacles.

We did have a great ride this afternoon- bright blue skies, a gentle breeze to keep the bugs away, and temps cool enough I needed a long sleeve shirt! We did a nice long walking warmup in the ring:









Izzy's willingness was so much better today. She didn't hesitate when I asked her to go to the woods, and she led while Jazzy & Ida followed us into the woods. She didn't try the balking/pulling sideways at any of the spots along the trail when we had the option to turn for home, while on a loose rein. So proud of her. We switched spots and let Jazz lead through the water. Izzy did say no at the first attempt to cross, so we did a quick tight circle, but she walked right across with no special urging the second time. By far the best crossing in months. I was super proud of her and most importantly, felt like we both enjoyed the ride.

Poor girl has clover in her field though so she is particularly slobbery right now- it's sort of hard not to laugh at her :grin: 


















************
I've sort of gone down the rabbit hole of Morgan pedigrees this weekend as I try to figure all this stuff out for myself. I spent some time when I got home from the barn trying to do the "foundation" calculation correctly, Izzy is something like 97% foundation bred- apparently at least some Morgan people have adopted a calculation similar to how the Foundation QH people think about this stuff (more details here- the Saddlebred outcrosses in her pedigree are in generations 7 & 8, where you see the Saddlebred stallion Upwey Ben Don). However, she is heavily influenced by the government (specifically, UVM) breeding lines, which are summed up like this:


> Today descendants of the original Government line tend to look like smaller, prettier European Warmbloods, while their show bred relatives are similar to the National Show Horse — an Arab/Saddlebred cross.


That rings true to me. The full article I'm referring to is here for those who are interested in such things. 

What's so interesting to me though is that this little mare that I hit the trails with comes from all this flashy show horse stuff. Her breeders today- the first owners to ever win National Grand Championship Stallion, Mare, and Gelding honors- definitely are producing the show types. This is their big stallion (though not one of Izzy's relatives, and now is gelded)- considered "Morgan Horse of the Decade"




Pretty cool they get out of the ring with him too!
http://youtu.be/0rO_5VMXcOA?t=1m45s

But then here is an 11 year old mare who is a daughter of a mare that share's Izzy's sire- she's cute and solid looking, not too flashy (looks like she just sold last year)- so you _can _take something that's bred for all the pomp and circumstance of the ring at the highest level, but still produce a horse that looks rideable and solid. 









I don't real have any specific point here, just musing about how all of this history came together to produce my little mare- and thinking about what it means for finding my next partner.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> The Lippitt Country Show- aka, the "old school" Morgans- is in a couple of weeks, and while it's a little farther away, I'm considering going to that one too as I think I'm more likely to find people with "my kind" of horse there. When I got to the showgrounds yesterday, I stopped into the show secretary's office and asked if they could recommend any barns/trainers at the show that I should visit to ask about sport horse/endurance prospects. They all looked at each other like I had asked them which barn the elephants were stabled in. No one had any suggestions.
> 
> (_Disclaimer. _I know not all people who show or are really into their breeds are snotty, out-of-touch people. I'm sure most of the people I saw yesterday weren't either. It's just helpful to be able to see all the options out there and solidify what it is I'm looking for. It's a very fascinating experience.)


Oooh! Go to the Lippitt show puhleeze and take photos. I wish I could make it! It's only 3000 miles from me though. I sent for a DNA kit for Brooke last week. It would be a miracle if her parents were registered before the breeder left the herd to starve, but if they were, she'll be able to be as well. 

What you say about the Morgan show only solidifies my belief that Morgans are splitting wider and wider and that eventually they will be two completely separate breeds with a common registry. I've seen it all before.


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## Tazzie

Haha! Well, at least my kiddos will be taking care of their horses! I don't believe in just handing the reins off to someone. Ever. I hate it.

And I won't touch that Charlotte topic with a 10 foot pole. Considering that is my exact discipline, and I ride a happy horse in it, I know how riding it goes. And we actively trail ride too, so...

Anyway, that champion park stallion isn't even trotting squarely. They've created so much animation in the front they entirely forgot the hind end, so the diagonal pairs aren't even moving together. It's like a combination of a trot/rack/pace lol


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## frlsgirl

The Morgan show world is something else, huh? I visited Morgan Nationals in OKC in 2014 and was just so overwhelmed by all the glitz and glam. 

Glad you are enjoying your Izzy. 

I think Ana has Upwey Ben Don in her bloodline but her daddy is UVM so would that make her 50% government Morgan? People frequently assume that Ana is Arab.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Oooh! Go to the Lippitt show puhleeze and take photos. I wish I could make it! It's only 3000 miles from me though. I sent for a DNA kit for Brooke last week. It would be a miracle if her parents were registered before the breeder left the herd to starve, but if they were, she'll be able to be as well.
> 
> What you say about the Morgan show only solidifies my belief that Morgans are splitting wider and wider and that eventually they will be two completely separate breeds with a common registry. I've seen it all before.


If I make it up there, I will definitely be sure to share lots of pictures! Trying to figure out if my husband is just being nice or really doesn't mind if I spend basically a whole month of weekends doing horsey things :wink:

So neat about doing the DNA testing for Brooke. Do you send the kit directly to AMHA? Do the parents have to be registered, or will the DNA match give you a generation or two back as well, in the event the parents aren't? 

I can't completely remember the circumstances of when you got her (except that she was in a bad situation before your trainer (?) found her), but do you actually have the name of the breeder and the horses s/he had on the farm? Anyway, I can't wait to hear what you learn!


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## carshon

@egrogan I am with you. I love a beautiful saddlebred but give me an old style Morgan any day! I wish photobucket were not MIA because I would post a picture of my more Cherokee. Half Morgan Half paint. We all used to laugh and say they split her down the middle - large(ish) Morgan neck solid front end. Paint horse back end and booty. She would never win any conformation classes but she was hardy and a joy to ride.


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## egrogan

Yesterday I was able to fit in a rare after-work ride. 

As I tacked Izzy up, I had that magical feeling you get when you realize you have a special bond with a horse and they let you know how much they enjoy having you as their partner:








Oh...is that not what Izzy is communicating to me with this expression... :wink: 

While she was snoozy in the crossties getting ready, she was spunky when I got on. 

I headed right to the trail, skipping the warm up in the ring, and she was alert. She has a new paddock neighbor, who was agitated and galloping the fence line when we rode past, and I wondered if that would make Izzy refuse to leave the stable area. But she didn't spin out heading to the trailhead. She seemed a little anxious on the first quarter mile of the trail, but settled after that. And the best part, when we got to the water crossing, we had to do one circle but then she walked right across. This is the best she's been on her own without Jazz leading through there. 










Too much going on at work to get out there today, but the vet comes Wednesday morning. Izzy has been much better the past two weeks, but since she's going to be there, I'm still going to ask her to do the lameness exam, test for Lyme, and check her eyes. I'm fully prepared for that to all end up being fine, but at least I'll know.


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## carshon

I love that picture!!!!! Oh My! what a character she is -

My mare Tillie Mae has a really expressive face too - and she just cracks me up sometime. Your Izzy makes me laugh


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## egrogan

Just got back from a very productive visit with the vet this morning. I talked through everything that's been going on the past few weeks, and I was so grateful for how carefully she took it all in and took it seriously. So a few things:

1. Eyes look fine, nothing obvious suggests vision changes
2. She was not lame trotting out straight or trotting on the lunge
3. She flinched very obviously along her loins/rump on both sides, so potentially some muscular soreness
4. All vitals totally normal, including normal temp/no fever

After I described the sudden change in behavior and her reluctance to go forward, combined with that reaction along her body, vet definitely agreed it was a good idea to send blood for the multiplex Lyme test to Cornell. So we did that, and should hear back next week.

She also suggested doing a week of 1gram bute just to see if that makes her move more comfortably in our regular riding. She didn't think it made sense to do hock x-rays: she's had them once, we know it's there, but she didn't move like a horse with sore hocks so that is most likely not the primary factor here.

So all in all, I found this really helpful to check a few things off the physical list, and obviously will know more when the bloodwork results come back.

BO was also there and mentioned that she felt Izzy's trot looked much freer on the lunge than it does when she sees me riding. So, is it a saddle fit issue? Rider issue? Vet didn't feel Izzy was saying her back/withers hurt in a way you'd see with a really bad saddle fit. It absolutely could be my riding, so that will be the next thing to investigate. I'm going to schedule a lesson or two with BO starting next week, and we'll go from there. 

Hopefully we'll get her feeling better soon. I should also say though that she basically napped through the whole exam (to the point that vet was like, "horse, you need to have your eyelids open long enough for me to check your vision" :tongue and seemed like her usual chilled out self. I think we'll get it figured out!


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## carshon

What a positive post! SO glad you have a thorough vet - and that Izzy has you for an owner. You WILL get to the bottom of this!


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## PoptartShop

That is such good news.  You will figure it out! She is very lucky to have you.
Keep checking off the list!


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon and @PoptartShop.

In the spirit of, "it's not Izzy, it's me" I have my first lesson with the BO scheduled for next Friday afternoon. I'm kind of nervous as I know I'm one of the more mediocre riders at the barn and BO works with some pretty high end horses and riders. But I have to remember my goal is to make sure I'm not doing anything that's inadvertently interfering with Izzy or making it harder for her to move out, and I'm not trying to get to the Olympics!

Of course, we'll have Lyme results back before then and if they suggest she should be left alone for a period of time for treatment, we'll adjust accordingly.


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## frlsgirl

OMG, that face, lol. Glad everything seems to be fine. Hopefully the Lyme test will come back negative.


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## egrogan

Well, vet got the results back from Cornell much faster than we expected. And...she's positive for chronic Lyme. :sad:

Now, her numbers aren't outrageous- her numbers for the chronic test (OspF) were 1791; everything over 1250 is considered positive, but the numbers can go way up into the ten thousands. Her acute numbers were negative. Not totally clear how long she's had it, but the test results suggest at least longer than 5 months. 

While I of course don't want her to be sick, it does start to explain so many things. The sluggishness and unwillingness to go forward; the occasional puffiness we see in her front pasterns; the shortness that seems to rotate between legs; the drowsiness after riding; the big behavior change a few weeks ago. I'll never know how long she's had it, but is the hock arthritis we found a couple of years ago age related, Lyme related, or both? Are the sarcoids she's prone to because of her compromised immune system? Fortunately, even though she is symptomatic, her symptoms are not terrible compared to other stories I've been reading.

The vet was great when we talked, and again, since she just dealt with this in her horse last year, I feel really confident in her advice. BO also told me she's had to treat 8 horses over the years, including one of her own, so she's a pro at all this as well. 

Step 1, we will do a week of IV OxyTetracycline beginning Monday. Izzy's always been totally fine with needles, so we are hopeful she can tolerate it for the full week. First appt is Monday at 11:30, which I will be at, and then BO is a lifesaver and able to cover the rest of the week for me because I just can't arrange my work schedule to make that happen. And, we all had a good laugh that Izzy is such an easy horse they could probably just send a tech out and give her the IV in her pasture (don't worry, we're not really doing that :wink

Step 2, we'll do oral doxy for a month-ish, depending on how she's responding. It's an overwhelming number of pills, like 50 or 60 _a day_, but BO said it's not as bad as it sounds. I will be stocking up on applesauce at the grocery store! And again, BO said she prefers to just be the one to give the medication twice a day so we don't have to coordinate who gives what when. A lifesaver!!

And that's pretty much it. We won't know until we start if she immediately feels better (vet said her horse was back to his old self after the first day of the IV) or feels worse and then better, or doesn't really respond at all. 

Vet did say she thought light riding throughout the treatment made sense. And, she did tell me to ride her this weekend as well since we were seeing if the bute was helping. 

I rode her last night, and she didn't feel any different - still sluggish in the arena and a little perkier when we walked around the perimeter of the farm. She's super sensitive to any bugs though. At one point, she kept biting back around her girth area, so I actually hopped off worrying she was getting rubbed again or I had pinched her skin with the new girth I'm using, but no, there was just one persistent tiny barn fly that was making her nuts. You can see the head tossing in this video, every time anything got near her nose she was flipping her head all around:





Just leaving a couple of articles here that I read yesterday and want to be able to come back to as we go:
Interpreting results of multiplex:
https://aaep.org/sites/default/files/issues/proceedings-11proceedings-070.PDF
https://ahdc.vet.cornell.edu/docs/Lyme_Disease_Multiplex_Testing_for_Horses.pdf

Nutritional support:
https://stablemanagement.com/articles/give-nutritional-support-to-horses-with-lyme-disease
https://www.equinews.com/answer-exchange/equine-nutritionist-qa-feeding-a-horse-with-lyme-disease


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## phantomhorse13

I had a hard time 'liking' that post as I am certainly not happy Izzy has Lyme.. but hopefully it's a reason for all your concerns and she will respond to the treatment!


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## evilamc

Aw so sorry she tested positive  My last horse had it chronic too but not as lucky for me he became dangerous. 

I like your vets treatment plan! Hope Izzy likes all the applesauce! Do they not get the powdered Doxy anymore? The times I've used it they gave me it in a powder supplement instead of the pills?

Def check out her diet and get her on a good immune support supplement. There is SO much info out there on lyme now though so I'm sure you'll figure out a great plan of action! Now hopefully since you know whats wrong and you're able to treat it she'll get back to her normal self


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## egrogan

Thanks for the well wishes @phantomhorse13 and @evilamc! Dropped off a huge container of Probios and jars of applesauce today and am getting ready for "go time" tomorrow.

Izzy seemed to be feeling good today- not sure if having the bute in her system helped or if it's just because it was literally 25*F cooler today than it was on Friday. I'll take it though, it's nice to feel her with a spring in her step!

I kept our ride at an easy (but forward :wink walk and we rode the full woods loop. 








I know I keep complaining about flies, but the deer flies were atrocious. At one point there must have been at least 20 swarmed all over her neck, so many they were getting caught in her mane. Her neck was streaked with blood when we got back because I smashed so many of them that had landed. 

We took the route that leads to a really beautiful pond that I can never quite get good pictures of. You can kind of sort of see it in the distance but one of these days I'll have to jump off and get a better shot.


















But the best part of our ride- _she walked right through the water the very first time!!_ No circling, no crop needed, she just went through. Now, we had a little argument earlier in the ride at a fork in the trail. She wanted to double back to go home, but I wanted to ride the through loop. It was actually a convenient place to deal with her having a tantrum, as it was a nice wide open clearing, unlike the usual underbrush where she tries to spin around. It happened right after I took this picture (the other lesson might be to just keep both hands on the reins...)








So with so much space to maneuver, I just held a firm hold on the left rein so she couldn't spin back over her right shoulder towards home. When she couldn't get pointed towards home, she decided to go backwards, so while it's probably not the greatest choice, I just sort of let her back up and then asked her to stand until I was ready to ask her to walk forward again. We were getting pummeled with flies, so she tried that a couple of times and then I think decided it was better to be moving forward towards home, even if the long way, rather than have to stand in the fly cloud. Everything after that was uneventful though I think she would have taken off cantering for home if I had let her go because she was so irritated with the flies.










**************************************
OK, so in other news, in the midst of everything that happened with the vet last week, I have been communicating with a seller about another prospect: listing | MorganShowcase

I loved how this mare looked in her under tack picture, and was intrigued by the seller's mention of potential for endurance in the ad (I have reviewed dozens and dozens of ads for all kinds of Morgans in the past couple of months, and it is not something sellers usually think to mention...)

In her confo shot, her back looks a little longer than ideal to me, and she's on the finer vs. stouter side, so not sure about that. Also, a little taller than I was looking for. More of a "new school" than "old school" package...

Seller has indicated that she's a horse who needs to build trust in a person, and needs a confident rider. While on my ride with Izzy today, I was really thinking hard about whether I can honestly be the right person for a horse like that. I mean, when Izzy gets tantrum-y or jiggy on the trail, I know I do get a flutter of nerves even though I've gotten so much better at working through it methodically. So I'm not sure. I guess when I think back to getting Izzy, she was actually described to me in almost the same way- people always talked about her as a "one person horse," which is how this mare has also been described. The seller has been very communicative and I am trying to work out a time when I can go see the horse in person in the next couple of weeks. Since the seller seems to be pretty honest and upfront about what the horse needs, I'm committed to doing the same and I think it's truly an open ended conversation about whether or not it will work out. She actually has the horse listed as a sale or lease, and if the first meeting was positive, I'd likely ask her if a month or two lease might be best for everyone. The horse is about 2 hours from my house so not exactly ideal if she stays at her barn, but possible. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself...

Any thoughts on her from what you see here? I know it's only a couple of photos, but I figured since it's easy enough for me to go see her, I didn't want to bug the seller for a bunch of other info and I can take my own when I go.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I have been communicating with a seller about another prospect: listing | MorganShowcase
> 
> In her confo shot, her back looks a little longer than ideal to me,
> 
> Seller has indicated that she's a horse who needs to build trust in a person, and needs a confident rider.


I think she is cute. She is def long-backed, but that isn't an instant no for me.. if nothing else, you don't have to worry about the saddle or pad rubbing her loins! I agree she is more of the new-type morgan, but she still seems to stand on plenty of bone and is well balanced otherwise.

Did you ask the seller about what kind of 'confident rider' she needs? The ad says she is powerful and bold, so maybe its more a question of needing a rider to direct her enthusiasm vs one needing to reassure a nervous horse.


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## frlsgirl

Oh my goodness. I'm so sorry. It sounds like you are doing your research though and doing everything to keep her feeling well.


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## carshon

@egrogan - one comment I would make about the mare you are looking at. She may need pretty consistent riding to make her a more trustworthy mount. Not saying you cannot do this but that is where most owners of forward horses fail. I think Morgan's and potentially Arabians fall into the category of "one person" horse. I know my Morgan cross was bright and forward and not everyone could ride her. You had to be VERY confident and VERY precise in your cues or she would take advantage. That becomes instantly intimidating to a lot of riders. The 3/4 Arab that I grew up with was much the same way. Extremely forward and willing but had to have a job as they say or he entertained himself!

So glad Izzy has a treatment plan.


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## PoptartShop

I'm very sorry to hear about the Lyme. :sad: I know you are keeping her comfortable and doing all you can to help her though. Poor girly.


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## egrogan

Thanks for the good thoughts @*frlsgirl* , @*carshon* , and @PoptartShop!

I just got back from the barn, and of course Izzy was a model patient. :grin: She gave the vet a very friendly greeting and then proceeded to cock her hind leg and fall asleep while vet inserted a catheter into her neck and administered the biggest syringe of antibiotics I've ever seen. I meant to take a picture of it but was distracted watching it all push through- only took about 5 minutes or so, but apparently it's a drug you have to "go slow" with, or there's a risk it can bind to calcium in their blood and basically cause them to pass out. That's my random new fact for the day!

So, same time, same place tomorrow. Hopefully she's still bright and cheery when the vet shows up!









**************
(Am I a bad person for talking about another horse while Izzy is going through this? :think: No one tell her, ok??)



phantomhorse13 said:


> I think she is cute. She is def long-backed, but that isn't an instant no for me.. if nothing else, you don't have to worry about the saddle or pad rubbing her loins! I agree she is more of the new-type morgan, but she still seems to stand on plenty of bone and is well balanced otherwise. Did you ask the seller about what kind of 'confident rider' she needs? The ad says she is powerful and bold, so maybe its more a question of needing a rider to direct her enthusiasm vs one needing to reassure a nervous horse.


I haven't had the chance to ask in that way, but I like how you phrased it. In my initial email, I was really clear I had no interest in jumping (since eventing was mentioned in the ad), so if the horse really loves jumping I'm not the kind of home she needed. But seller wasn't concerned about that at all- she said while they've mostly done ring work, she has been ridden out a fair bit both alone and in groups, and really loves being out on the trails.

Reading between the lines, I think the home before this one sort of threw too much at her too soon, and she had a stressful start to life. Seller's also mentioned a few times that the horse is very willing to please. So I don't know if that means she is more of the nervous type because she's worried about doing something wrong and needs a lot of reassurance. I'm not sure if I'm the right person for that kind of horse, but again, I'm reading between the lines and that's not always smart.



carshon said:


> @*egrogan* - one comment I would make about the mare you are looking at. She may need pretty consistent riding to make her a more trustworthy mount. Not saying you cannot do this but that is where most owners of forward horses fail. I think Morgan's and potentially Arabians fall into the category of "one person" horse. I know my Morgan cross was bright and forward and not everyone could ride her. You had to be VERY confident and VERY precise in your cues or she would take advantage. That becomes instantly intimidating to a lot of riders. The 3/4 Arab that I grew up with was much the same way. Extremely forward and willing but had to have a job as they say or he entertained himself!


Thank you for being gentle with me @*carshon* , but I think you make a really good point that a bold, athletic horse is not necessarily a good match for a weekend warrior. Totally fair point! :grin: And, to your other point about being very firm and consistent in what you're asking, again, without some lessons together for awhile, I'm not sure a horse like you're describing would be a good match for me either. Not sure I'm a good enough rider.

One thing I haven't mentioned here related to my horse window shopping is that we're also currently house shopping so we can bring Izzy and another horse home (and probably a third critter of some kind, DH is pushing for a mule but I'm thinking goat- I know Izzy would not be ok being left if I take another horse out). I'm not a "count your chickens before they hatch" kind of gal, so since we are still working through some logistics, I haven't wanted to get too far ahead of myself. We may move as early as this fall, or it could be next spring- a couple of things have to settle out with my husband's job. But I'm fortunate in that my consulting work is fully virtual, so as long as I'm within 60-90 minutes of an airport and train station, I can live and work anywhere. Makes things a lot easier!

All that to say that I intend to be more than just a weekend warrior once I get the horses home. I have no illusions that I'll have hours and hours of free time once I add horse chores in to my day, but given the flexibility of my schedule, I do think that even with chores added in, I'll still be able to fit in more ride time than I can now when I get rid of the added time it takes me to get to and from the boarding barn.

But @*carshon* , I still take your point- am I up for a high-energy horse that needs a long ride every day? Not sure, but I lean towards no.

I can't really answer any of these questions about this specific horse until I meet her. I last emailed the seller over the weekend to try to set up a visit, but haven't heard back yet. I do think the seller is being careful about a good match, and it's one of those situations where she'd say it's a bad match before selling the horse into a bad situation, so that is a positive to me.

I've also been looking casually about horses in a couple of the local university breeding programs: UVM and Miner Institute (both have more updated sale lists on their FB pages but can't post those here...) Nothing that seems totally right to me at either place, but both are close enough for visits, and the only thing I am absolutely certain about in this search is that I need to be able to ride the horse at least a couple of times before committing.

And all that said, part of me thinks I may be going about this all the wrong way and I should just wait until word-of-mouth puts a good horse in front of me. Lots to think about!


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## Avna

If you need someone to go horse shopping with in late September/early October .... think of me.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> If you need someone to go horse shopping with in late September/early October .... think of me.


I would LOVE to take you up on that! Are you coming back out this fall?


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> I would LOVE to take you up on that! Are you coming back out this fall?


Yep. September 23 to October 10 -- based in Amherst MA until Oct. 6, then up to Lake Winnipasaukee in NH for a few days with friends. Would love to look at Morgans!


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## egrogan

Stopped by to see Izzy before work this morning, and she was doing great. BO said she's eaten up both meals since her shot yesterday, and all her vitals are normal. She was bright eyed and feeling good, standing at the gate to greet me when I got there.

I feel guilty riding her even though the vet said I should to get a sense of how she's feeling, so I decided a happy medium would be taking her for a good hand-walk. We went about a mile down the road and back. 









She walked out nicely and was interested in her surroundings.









She did a weird thing on our walk that I've never seen her do before- I gave her a lot of slack in her lead, and on the way home, she was very intently sniffing the ground, particularly her footprints. Makes sense, I guess sort of like horsey GPS tracking our way home. But then she walked several strides while rubbing her nose and lips on the ground. What's that all about? Weird horse!









Grumpy girl when I told her it was time to be done with grazing and go home:









If she's still feeling good tomorrow morning, I may try to get in a short, easy ride but we'll see.


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## gottatrot

Sorry to hear Izzy has Lyme but it's good you know what is going on now and can treat it. 
I think that latest Morgan is very nice and I like her a lot; if her temperament fits with what you need. 
That would be great if you could keep a couple horses at your own house!


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## egrogan

Because of work, I wasn't able to meet the vet for Izzy's treatment yesterday (sending another cosmic thank you to my BO for being so great) but I got an encouraging message from the vet in the afternoon. Izzy has continued to just nap through her treatments, and vet didn't get a pain/flinch reaction at all from palpating her back and loins. BO also let me know she was pretty energetic out in her field. I was really happy to hear it!

Since it seemed like signs were pointing to her feeling better, I decided I'd try a ride after work. I think all that good news gave me the unrealistic expectation that I was going to jump on and she was going to be raring to go. Unfortunately, that wasn't really the case. She was still sucked back and resistant in the ring, and mildly better out on the trail. In the moment, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed, but of course after thinking about it rationally, my expectations weren't realistic. On top of whatever body issues have been going on, there's clearly some behavioral/attitudinal issues that we'll have to reset even once her body's feeling better. I get that. I just hoped I'd get my happy horse back once we started treating her. And, yes, I know it's only been three days of treatment :wink: Still a lot of treatment left!










I won't be able to meet the vet today either because of work, but will be there tomorrow and Saturday for the last two IV rounds.

*****************
OK, so in other news, I've talked a lot more with the seller of the other mare, and learned a lot about her story. She was started late, had a couple of different trainers early on, but one tried to force her to be a saddleseat horse and sort of blew her mind asking too much too soon. Her current owner/trainer got her out of that situation and basically had to put her back together physically and emotionally. She's been with the current owner for going on two years and has regained her trust in people and is a much happier horse now. I saw some video, and she's got a pretty, ground covering trot. Seller says she really loves riding out of the ring and with that trot has stamina to go all day. I have the opportunity to go meet her and try her out this coming Monday.

BUT

I felt like yesterday with Izzy was a bit of a reality check. Izzy's treatments are time consuming, and while it's going well so far, we've got some work to do with the physical stuff as well as getting her to a happy place again with being ridden. It started to feel a little overwhelming thinking about trying to manage two horses right now. There's some uncertainty about how Izzy's treatment is going to make her feel- it seems like taking on a new horse where patience and building trust are going to be really important is a lot to add on top of focusing on Izzy. Also, my husband's got some great professional opportunities on the table, but that adds even more uncertainty as a couple of options could involve a move sooner rather than later. I'm not great with uncertainty, and yesterday I started feeling really anxious about it all.

The seller has been very honest and upfront throughout all of our communications- very refreshing- so I only felt it was fair to be the same with her. I told her about what was going on with Izzy, and that I didn't feel that I could make a decision about another horse while Izzy's treatment is ongoing. I really don't want to waste her time when she's already been so generous with it. So I sort of left the question in her court- would it make sense for me to ride the horse Monday, or should I reach back out in a month or so when Izzy's on the other side of this to see if the horse is still available and then go from there? This was all via email last night, so I haven't heard back yet. We'll see what happens. I hate feeling like I could be missing a good opportunity, but I also feel like I'm at my limit for what I can juggle (and my work situation is crazy as always, with several trips coming up in September) so I have to be honest with myself too. Sigh.


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## evilamc

LOL So funny she was sniffing her hoof prints, Jax is a chronic poop sniffer on trails..."Ok I think I smelt this horses poop further back so they must still be alive and making it down the trail".

Uncertainty is no fun at all. I think you did the right thing though leaving it to the seller. But if she does agree to let you try her out still go for it! If anything it will be fun to just hop on another horse. If you do really like her though maybe you and the seller can work something out that you don't bring her home till October? There are always options I'm sure! Hopefully Izzy continues to feel better though, its great the IV Tet is working so well so fast. Just take it easy with her for a while longer and let her get back physically and then you can weed out the behavior issues from pain issues.


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## carshon

@egrogan I find it refreshing that as an owner you are able to step back and asses the situation with a critical eye. Knowing your limitations time wise and emotionally are things not all people have. In my humble opinion if this owner feels a connection with you she will wait - some owners truly want what is best for their horse. Horses that are emotionally damaged can be a lot of work and tend to regress, especially in stressful situations. I only say this because it could be very intimidating for you. My rescue mare had her mind blown by a "cowboy" who though flipping her over and sitting on her neck would get the "meanness" out of her. Before he started flipping her over he used to back her up forcefully as a form of punishment. I only know this because he told me this when I called him after I purchased her from the kill pen. He said she was dangerous and a killer. With a lot of patience I found the mare to be VERY sensitive - she did not handle rough treatment well at all. But when faced with stressful situation she reverted to running backward and getting extremely light in the front end. Scary on the trail when we backed down a few ravines and she refused to go forward without rearing. I owned her for 10 years and she never got over this. It did not happen very often in the last few years - but it would come up when I least expected it. 

I am not reciting my story to scare you - I know you are an exceptional owner - but as other posters have posted recently a horse with prior issues that may have been going along well can revert back to prior behavior and it can knock your confidence down quickly.

best of luck to Izzy (and you)

and sorry to be Debbie Downer


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## egrogan

@*carshon* - not Debbie Downer at all. I've been thinking all of that, really asking myself whether I'm really ready to take on a horse that has "a past." I've gotten to the point with this mare where I think I've learned all I can about her through phone, email, and video, and there isn't any way to know if it feels right without meeting her in person. A lease is an option, so I had been thinking that could be a great opportunity- that's how I started out with Izzy, and it served us both very well. 

(Tangent: It's funny to think back to first working with Izzy...I had only been taking lessons again for about a year or so when I started free leasing her. The first morning I was "on my own" with her, I was fumbling around with her bridle, she threw her head up and lifted me off my feet, and then just as quickly threw her head down and I bashed into the ground, getting a massive bruise on my knee that I had for weeks. I put her back in her stall and left, worried over whether I'd ever feel comfortable bridling her alone again. My next lesson, I had to have my instructor do it because I was shaking. So to say I've come a long way is an understatement :wink

I do think I'm ready for a more challenging horse, and I have agonized about that. Izzy is an easy, agreeable horse, but I do think she's mellowed out a lot over the past couple of years as I've also gotten more confident. It's hard to say where my skill level and confidence is because I so rarely get to work with other horses (I did share all that with the seller, like I said, we've had a refreshingly honest conversation so far). I'm really hard on myself, worried about looking stupid in front of other people, and (as you can probably tell) can overthink things. That makes it hard to ask for help. But there are different degrees of "more challenging horse," and another direction could be a younger horse who's still learning but has a naturally "easy" personality rather than a horse that's worked through a lot of bad experiences and could, as you said, regress. I don't know how to tell without actually going through the experience.


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## frlsgirl

Lol on the GPS comment. Horses do weird things some times and I don't know if it necessarily points to an issue. It sounds like Izzy is doing fairly well. I hear you on agonizing over deciding to buy a second horse. It does sound like you've come a long way with Izzy and she feels comfortable to you now; kind of like an old slipper. That's how I feel about Ana; she can be quirky but she feels like home to me. Have you considered making yourself a list of all the things you want in a new horse and all the things you definitely don't want in a second horse? Then only shop the horses that fit your criteria so that you don't get side tracked by a pretty face


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Have you considered making yourself a list of all the things you want in a new horse and all the things you definitely don't want in a second horse? Then only shop the horses that fit your criteria so that you don't get side tracked by a pretty face


That's a good suggestion, I did write up an "in search of" ad back in June when I thought we were moving, but I never posted it because the moving timeline got so uncertain. I will have to pull it up when I'm back in front of my computer to remind myself what I said when there was no specific horse in front of me!


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## egrogan

Double post.


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## egrogan

Very good Izzy update today. Standing on the cross-ties, I felt like she was much more relaxed looking throughout her hind end. I don't think I'd realized how tense she was back there until seeing an alternative. She also wasn't standing with her legs in such a funky position, she was much more square/even looking.

I did decide to ride, and she felt much freer all around. We did a lot of walking around the property, and it felt like a small victory that she walked away from the barn, on the buckle, to the woods. No fighting about it. Yay! We walked for at least 30 minutes before I brought her in the ring and asked her to trot. She was still choppier strided than I'd like, but we did a few consecutive laps without her stumbling back to a walk, and that's progress. As usual, she was more forward trotting out of the ring on the grass.

Highlight of our ride :grin:





We had a different vet today since our regular one doesn't do farm calls at the end of the week. The IV was quick and uneventful, though the new vet did switch sides of her neck since the side we've been using was starting to feel a little hard. Tomorrow's the last IV day. Then, we move to THIS, which I will have to spend tomorrow night counting out and bagging into 2x daily doses.









Feeling great about our morning though...


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## gottatrot

Love the turkey herding! Glad to hear Izzy is already feeling better.


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## egrogan

Thanks @*gottatrot* , she's pretty fearless :wink: Actually, BO told me today that there have been multiple sightings of some kind of big cat around her neighborhood- of course there's lot of chit chat about whether bobcat or mountain lion, but still, something big has been prowling around. She laughed and said maybe Izzy _does _get a pass for not wanting to go in the woods the past few weeks if something like that's been out there! I guess we'll never know.

Phew, we finished the IV treatments today! Glad to have that behind us. I dropped off 56 bagged doses of the oral doxy for BO to start with her tomorrow- 40 pills per dose, twice a day for 28 days. Please send us good vibes that Izzy will eat these as enthusiastically as she eats everything else.

I rode her a little again today, starting in the indoor since it was threatening to rain in the morning. Had a good walk warmup, and she felt better again when we first started trotting. She got really crooked and wonky going right, not sure if she was getting tired, bored, or just still uncomfortable. Chiro comes a week from Monday, so that timing should work well given where we'll be in treatment. She did struggle to pick up the canter- I haven't asked her for it at all this week while treating, but it was sort of weird she didn't step into it. She just accelerated into a mega-unbalanced-go-as-fast-as-I-can-trot trot, even on her left lead, which she will usually pick up with just a little kiss. Will have to keep an eye on that.

We ended with a short walk around the turnout fields and down the hill into the woods. 








It had rained a lot last night so we had a good opportunity to practice walking through some deep puddles surrounded by slick mud- her least favorite thing. Wouldn't you know, she was pretty willing to step through it nicely when she was pointed towards home :wink:

Going to watch some of the Lippitt Country Show up in Vermont tomorrow- @*Avna* , there will be lots of pictures!


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## frlsgirl

It sounds like she's handling the treatment well since she is well enough to be ridden. 

Wow that's a lot of doxy. Will she continue to be rideable throughout treatment?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> It sounds like she's handling the treatment well since she is well enough to be ridden.
> 
> Wow that's a lot of doxy. Will she continue to be rideable throughout treatment?


The vet told me to keep riding her as she seems up to it, which so far she has. Since so many of her symptoms were apparent under saddle, that's the primary way we'll notice when she's feeling better. I felt super guilty about this, but BO says all the horses she's treated with Lyme have started feeling better with work, except 1 who was very clear he was not feeling up to it. So I guess we'll see, but since she's in such light work anyway, I'm hopeful she'll be fine!


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## egrogan

*Photo Spam Alert*

My lovely husband joined me for a roadtrip on a quintessential New England summer morning to watch the Lippitt Country Horse show in Turnbridge, VT. It was such a great day! Even he had fun, and he's not a horse person.

The only sort of bummer about the day was that class sizes were really small- most had only one or two horses, the largest class was only three. Still, I was giddy like a little kid being surrounded by all the gorgeous Morgans. 

The morning started with several in-hand classes.

Mares and weanling colts:


















Stallions:









There were a few different driving classes:




























Then the under saddle classes. This was my favorite horse of the day. He was a 6 year old gelding...totally cool and collected through several classes in a row and looked like a dream to ride. If there had been a for sale sign on him, not sure my husband could have held me back :wink:




























And then I have to admit I got a little star struck to see Denny Emmerson riding his gorgeous mare Roxie. He's our local horse celebrity, and seems like all my horsey friends know him, but I had never met him. I went up to introduce myself to him after his classes were done, and he was very gracious with his time. He gave me the names of a couple of farms to contact about horses for sale. @Avna, one recommendation was Townshend Morgans in Bolton, MA, so maybe something for you to look into as well (their web presence isn't great so might be a phone call or drop by kind of place).



















****************

Had a nice lunch in Royalton, VT (cute town I hadn't been to before) and then went to see Izzy. She looked bright and happy but unfortunately I do think she was feeling a little stiff under saddle again. She may just need time to adjust to the new antibiotic, or it may not work for her so we would consider trying something else. Will have to see after a couple of days. 

We took an easy walk on a mile loop through the woods (she didn't even pause at the water and walked right through) and then spent plenty of time hand grazing in the sunshine.



















******

Phew, so last update- tomorrow afternoon I am going to go meet the sale mare up in northern VT. I will of course update on how it goes. :wink:


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## egrogan

And one more picture which completely sums up summertime in Vermont :grin:


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## Avna

Oh, I wish I had been there!!

I have sent Brooke's DNA in to the UC Davis vet lab to see if her parents were registered. I am trying to not think about it at all. 

Can't wait to be in New England in the fall.

I found this, on the Townshend Morgan Horse Farm:

http://www.breedersguide.com/morgans/morgans_profiles/32.pdf


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Can't wait to be in New England in the fall.
> 
> I found this, on the Townshend Morgan Horse Farm:
> 
> http://www.breedersguide.com/morgans/morgans_profiles/32.pdf


Nice, thanks. I was looking back through the program from yesterday and the gelding I fell in love with had the prefix "Josama"- the Lippitt breeder's guide lists these folks as the breeders who use that prefix (again, no website):

Edwards, John & Sara
Josama Morgans (Josama)
Braintree, VT 05060
Email: 
[email protected]

I see a Massachusetts-Vermont road trip coming up this fall :grin: Your family is going to be mad you came all this way and spent it looking at horses.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Nice, thanks. I was looking back through the program from yesterday and the gelding I fell in love with had the prefix "Josama"- the Lippitt breeder's guide lists these folks as the breeders who use that prefix (again, no website):
> 
> Edwards, John & Sara
> Josama Morgans (Josama)
> Braintree, VT 05060
> Email:
> [email protected]
> 
> I see a Massachusetts-Vermont road trip coming up this fall :grin: Your family is going to be mad you came all this way and spent it looking at horses.


My family? Ha. If they aren't used to it by now . . .


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## frlsgirl

You got to meet Denny Emmerson?!? that is so cool!!!

Let us know how you like the sale mare.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> You got to meet Denny Emmerson?!? that is so cool!!!


YES! I wasn't going to introduce myself, but there were probably a total of 10 spectators and I told my husband it would be silly not to take advantage of the opportunity and I'd probably regret it later if I didn't talk to him. He was very nice.



frlsgirl said:


> Let us know how you like the sale mare


I had such a great experience yesterday meeting the sale mare, M. and her seller, A. 

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous about the whole thing. I went by myself, and wasn't sure I had prepared with the right questions or plan in my head (I did way too much reading online before I went, which I would not recommend!). I had seen some more video of M the day before, and gotten myself a little psyched out about what a big mover she was. I was already feeling self-conscious about riding in front of other people and was worried something awful would go wrong while I was on her. I also had myself totally freaked out about the prospect of riding in something besides a dressage saddle. Way to head into a test ride, right?!

But when I got there, A was very low key and made the whole process completely stress free. I think she's completely genuine in her desire to see M go to the right kind of home, and she thought a trail home would be perfect for her (she's gotten a lot of inquiries from show homes). Bonus- a couple of people from the barn were planning to head out to the trails around the time I got there, so I got a text while I was on my way that I could try her in the ring _and _ride her out. That was unexpected.

So when I got there, I got to look M over (her coat was practically glowing and she was dappled out all over- really beautiful), mess with her feet, tack her up in her stall. One of the women I went on the trail with rode her first, and then it was my turn.

Here are a couple of short videos- takeaway number one is that boy do I need some lessons again! My awful hands! My noisy lower leg! My hollowed out back! And that rocket-launch-posting :redface:










She _was _a big mover, compared to Izzy anyway, but not out of control. She still goes around very high headed given her saddleseat background and didn't really bend much. While I don't think I'm a good enough rider to get on any horse and make them look their best, her 'frame' didn't look all that different when they rode her either, though she did look more relaxed with a rider she knows. A said she does get uncertain when ridden by a new person for hte first time, so you can see that she's trying to figure out if I mean what I ask. I could have ridden her more assertively so she wasn't left guessing. After watching the video, I think if I had ridden her with more contact she might have been more comfortable.

A couple of stills



























She definitely doesn't know anything about moving laterally, and she seemed confused about coming off the rail for things like serpentines, figure 8s, etc. Basically, my usual walk warm up is just lots of loopy stuff and changes of direction, and I didn't feel very successful asking her to do that off seat and legs (could fully be pilot error, not her). 

After about 15 minutes in the ring, we headed out to the trails. We rode about an hour through woods and corn fields. She was really great. Her walk was _awesome_, nice and forward. She was happy in any position, including leading on part of the trail she'd never been on before. She moved out so nicely that every now and then I'd realize we'd gotten way ahead of the other two and ask her to stop and wait- she didn't mind standing at all, even though the bugs were driving her nuts. A deer jumped out of the corn in front of us and she just looked, didn't even startle. The other two horses tried to eat everything in sight, but she was super polite and never tried to grab the reins to lunge at grass or corn stalks. She was definitely interested in her surroundings, but never felt tense or worried, even without knowing me. I was totally comfortable letting her have her head and basically set the pace she wanted. We rode out for about an hour.

I couldn't resist one between-the-ears shot :grin:









A said the key to her is that she gets very attached to people, and she tries her heart out. She wants to do the right thing, but it takes her awhile to trust that people are there to help her figure things out and not hurt her. 

As I drove home and processed the afternoon, I realized I liked her way more than I thought I might when I had myself all psyched out about riding her. I conquered some personal fears by showing up, riding a horse I didn't know at all, and then taking her out on an hour long trail ride with people I'd never met. That felt great.

But..I don't think she's the right horse for me right now. There were a couple of physical things I didn't love. She's only 9, but already on joint supplements. And, she's shod all around and will likely always need at least fronts. I'm not some sort of fanatical barefoot person, but I do think part of the appeal of a Morgan is that you should have the option of barefoot when the situation calls for it. Obviously I'd have a PPE before buying any horse, but those things would worry me.

Most importantly, A was very upfront that M will need a lot of regular handling and patience transitioning away from "her people" to a new home, and I just worry that with all I have going on right now, that could be challenging. We're meeting a new realtor tonight and hope to have a new place purchased and ready to move in the next six months, so that would mean moving M to my current barn, and then home a few months later. And, I'm traveling quite a bit in September and October, so I definitely wouldn't be handling her daily. Also, she's stalled most of the time now, and hasn't lived out 24/7 for years. It may be fine, but again, it would be a big change. I just don't know if that's setting her up for success. She wasn't a nervous, twitchy type of horse, I don't want to give that impression. She seemed very kind. She was just very attentive and clearly drew her energy from her surroundings.

I feel pretty good about that decision, but what do you all think? Am I making a big mistake here and passing up a nice horse? A gave me the option of a 2 month lease if I wanted to have some "settling in time." I still think no, but I don't really have many people here to talk it out with...


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## bsms

I couldn't imagine giving advice, but I'll share a bit about Bandit...

He looked OK in the couple of pictures I had seen of him. I assumed a horse who had been used for relay races would use his body well (at least for going forward), would be unflappable about seeing strange things, and be capable of being ridden in a bit.

What showed up? He was much more slender than I expected, and being ridden by big guys fast had taught him to brace his back rigid. He weighed 790 lbs (vet's estimate) and braced his entire body at a trot. Had no jog at all. Also turned out he used his left front leg at a 40 degree angle, had feet too small for his age due to marginal farrier work, and he did this weird slapping thing with his front feet. Didn't just put them down, but slapped them down hard - a very bad idea for trail riding in a place covered by rocks! I nearly ended up on his neck the first time I took slack out of the reins. I asked his previous owner. They had ridden him in a bosal and used the snaffle bit only as emergency brakes - so when you just started to take the slack out, he believed he had to drop anchor and stop NOW! He had lived in a herd environment, yet he liked humans (good!) but wanted nothing to do with other horses.

The first ride out he was going calm - as calm as one can feel with an I-beam stuck up their backs - and then slammed on the brakes, spun 180, and tried to get away. From what? No idea! The other two horses seemed confused by him as well. The vet & dentist both said he looked like he was 7 years old, and he liked people...but other than that, I didn't see much that matched my expectations. *Guess one shouldn't get a horse sight unseen, eh?!!!! STUPID!*

We've worked our way thru most of those issues. He still tenses up his back at a trot, and then slowly relaxes it as we go along. 2.5 years later, be is just starting to sometimes give me a relaxed jog, but almost never at the start.

The horse I rode the other day isn't much like what arrived. He's turning into a good match for me. And ANY horse I got would probably take a while to adjust. The Sonoran Desert is pretty strange to most horses, and I have an unconventional approach to riding. His strength is his mind. Once allowed to think, he developed into a pretty level-headed horse. Cautious! But not stupid! Lots of riders would hate that cautious streak, though, which is probably why his previous owner didn't want him to think. His job was to run, not think!

So...yeah, you undoubtedly can get there. Joint supplements at 9 (Bandit's current age) would be a worry, but I'll always worry that Bandit has internal damage to his left front leg from using it at an angle for so many miles of hard riding.

But I'm a retired guy. I had the time. If I knew what was ahead, though, I might not have swapped him for Mia. He was more reactive and spookier in 2015 than Mia was in 2015. He took 9 months to get mixed with my other 2 horses - just didn't mix well with them at all! As a retired guy, I had the time. I'm not sure I really wanted to spend it that way, though! It would have been much harder if I had more going on in my life. And I still have mixed feelings on keeping/selling Bandit.

I'm not sure how anyone knows "This is the one!" I think it is always a gamble. And the more unsettled the rest of your life is, the harder it becomes to take the gamble. At least you won't be losing Izzy. When I go out to the corral and Mia isn't there...it still hurts. I want to believe I did the right thing, but 2.5 years later...I don't know. :-?


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## carshon

@egrogan she is quite lovely! and I love the forward movement in the videos. I applaud you for being analytical in how you are approaching this. Do I think that bringing her home and moving her again is the end of the world - no - but it may shake her a bit. And once you move to a place where will you ride? How will riding be in the winter months. I can't speak for anyone but myself - but we in my area (NW IL) very rarely ride past December. The fields are usually snowed in and you do not ride along the roads here. Personally I think it may be easier to find your next home and know where you will ride and how you will ride before bringing another horse home. You may find that like me, you are land locked and must trailer to do any riding. 

This mare is quite lovely and none of the things you mentioned would put me off, she could certainly transition out of shoes (fronts too) and to being in a pasture but I think knowing where you will live and ride is more important to have figured out before you purchase another horse.


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## egrogan

Thanks @bsms and @carshon for your thoughts. I haven't had any great epiphanies on what to do as I've thought about it more today. I told the seller I'd be in touch by the end of the week...

I'll respond to your comments more thoughtfully when I'm back in front of the computer later.


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## frlsgirl

She is cute. The thing with the lease, in a way it would be a good way for you to try her out to make sure it's a good fit, but if the mare has trouble adjusting, it probably wouldn't be fair to her. Ana gave me the cold shoulder when I test rode her. It took a few days of settling in before she realized that I was her new person. I hardly did anything with her for the first month since I didn't have any tack or a good place to ride and then we got hit with a blizzard; so in a way it worked out really well because it gave Ana a chance to adjust to her new surroundings and her new person. Ana was barely started in saddle seat so it was fairly easy to convert her but she also did not understand why you would want to be off the rail, and she was behind the bit and high headed at first. It might be worth while to talk to other Morgan mare owners; hoping @SaddleUp158 will read this and give you some insight as her mare had more show world exposure and can be a bit tense as a result. 

Also, about the posting trot position issues; I have the same problem when Ana is behind the leg and/or when I'm in a saddle that puts me in a chair seat, or when my stirrups are too short. It looks like you are just a bit out of sync with her as she's not truly forward and you are just not used to each other; but test rides/first rides are always a bit awkward anyway.

Just to illustrate how the horse's way of going affects your position:

Ana in front of the leg; you can see how easy and smoothly I can post her trot here:






Ana behind the leg; you can see what a struggle it is to post her trot here and how I end up doing weird things with my position; especially my legs:


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## SaddleUp158

Only you know if this mare is a good fit for you. I will say that she will adjust to turnout, you just have to go slowly, increase the amount of time she is out each time until she is out all day, or whatever your turnout situation is at your barn. We have transitioned several Morgan show horses to turnout. All have eventually adapted. 

Sounds like she is sensitive sensible mare. I would assume just normal consistent daily handling is what her owners are referring to. As for lack of understanding of lateral work, just start working with her like she doesn't know anything. As with anything, muscle memory(mental memory as well) takes a while, even longer if you are "undoing" muscle memory. The fact that she is brave on the trail is a good sign of her sensibility. Feel free to PM if if you have any questions. Morgans are very sensitive, but they are also very sensitive to their rider and have a lot of try in them when treated right.

I just went back and read more of this thread. If you know you won't be able to give her consistent riding you may want to look at a horse already fully trained in what you want to do. My mare and I have been learning dressage together and it is and has been quite a road. We are slowly getting there, but it is a slow process. Rewarding but humbling too!


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## gottatrot

I'd think mostly about if she fits the personality you want, and also seems sound/good conformation/with good movement.

I'd consider the temporary issues of moving, not spending enough time with her, etc as minor since those are all short-term and you're thinking about having her a long time.

For me, if she needs joint supplements already that would also be a big red flag. I'd want such a young horse to be completely sound, hoping to use her well into her 20s. The issue with joints is that they continue degenerating over time. So any problem now will be worse each year (even if only marginally) throughout life. I personally would want to start with no known physical issues, unless somehow she was just so amazing in every other way that I absolutely had to have her. If she doesn't seem spectacular to you, I'd pass on having long-term expensive joint problems.


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## phantomhorse13

Go with your gut.

I think you did fantastic to go meet her despite freaking yourself out ahead of time.. and then to do so well riding her, especially out on trail!

Your saying she isn't the right horse for you isn't a slight on the mare or A or you.. just a fact. If you find yourself worrying more about the what-ifs than being excited about the idea of her being yours, then she isn't the one. While I don't think meeting your next horse is going to be rainbows and sunbeams and love-at-first-sight, I think you will know it all the same - I did with Phin (even while bawling as we hauled him home because he wasn't Dream).

You have a lot of other stuff going on in your life right now. Maybe look at taking a lesson here or there as well as riding Izzy as things come together after the changes. You _will_ find the right horse when its time.


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## horseluvr2524

No comment on the prospect, other than that she is lovely, and that needing joint supplements to be sound at 9 years old is certainly a concern. If it's just preventative, that is different.

BTW, if you call that bad riding egrogan, I must be a train wreck! I'd probably die riding in front of you guys. Except for gottatrot, who I have ridden with, but she is too nice to say I'm terrible lol.


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## egrogan

Wow- you all have been so generous with your time in sharing your advice. I really, really appreciate it.

Let me start by saying I contacted the seller this morning to regretfully decline M. It was really hard to do, but I did feel relieved afterwards, which I think is telling. Basically, it came down to something @carshon said:


carshon said:


> Personally I think it may be easier to find your next home and know where you will ride and how you will ride before bringing another horse home...


Yesterday, DH and I went to see a couple of houses that were on the top of our list because their online listings seemed to have it all: the right size house, usable barns, and great acreage. But both of them were _huge_ disappointments. Each had 20 acres+, but what the listings didn't say was how much of it was swampy, or broken up on two sides of the road. One had a beautiful barn, but it was across the street from the house and had a cliff behind it with no pasture anywhere near it! All the acreage was behind the house and swamp/forest. We felt a little demoralized, to be honest. And that just made me realize the house search is going to take a little more time that I want it to, but that's ok. It's worth it to take our time to get the right property. Then I can refocus on the horse.



horseluvr2524 said:


> BTW, if you call that bad riding egrogan, I must be a train wreck! I'd probably die riding in front of you guys. Except for gottatrot, who I have ridden with, but she is too nice to say I'm terrible lol.





phantomhorse13 said:


> I think you did fantastic to go meet her despite freaking yourself out ahead of time.. and then to do so well riding her, especially out on trail!


I just have to thank you both for these kind words. I was feeling so down yesterday before I read your comments, and they were a real pick-me-up. I know I have work to do on my riding, but I also have learned a ton from this whole experience and will feel much more confident when I start searching again.



SaddleUp158 said:


> Feel free to PM if if you have any questions. Morgans are very sensitive, but they are also very sensitive to their rider and have a lot of try in them when treated right.


 @SaddleUp158- so glad to see you on this thread! I am a huge Morgan fan and am so excited to find my next Morgan, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I rode saddleseat horses as a kid, but these days am more of a "happy hacker" with aspirations for low level dressage and doing some limited distance rides. I am very confident I can find a Morgan for that. What @gottatrot says is definitely what's most important to me:


gottatrot said:


> I'd think mostly about if she fits the personality you want, and also seems sound/good conformation/with good movement.


I will say that I am generally more drawn to the "old type" of Morgan than the newer show type. But trying out M and liking her so much reinforced that every horse needs to be considered as an individual. I do think she would be able to do what I want despite being started as a show horse, but yes, it would take patience, time, and consistency.



frlsgirl said:


> The thing with the lease, in a way it would be a good way for you to try her out to make sure it's a good fit, but if the mare has trouble adjusting, it probably wouldn't be fair to her.


Yes, I was struggling with this. I just don't think I would be setting her up for success right now. And thanks for the riding tips- so interesting to see you and Ana in those two videos.

I asked A if I could keep in touch with her and check back once I'm settled in the new house later this year. I was very impressed with A's open, honest approach, and have since heard from others involved in Morgans in this area that she's the "real deal" and as genuine as she seems. I have no expectation that M will still be available when I'm ready, but since A does a lot of training and sales for a few Morgan farms in Vermont, she seems like a good connection to have and I am hopeful I handled things ok to preserve that relationship for the future.

And finally, I appreciate having this virtual community to turn to- I only wish I could meet all of you in person too! :grin:


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> Each had 20 acres+, but what the listings didn't say was how much of it was swampy, or broken up on two sides of the road. One had a beautiful barn, but it was across the street from the house and had a cliff behind it with no pasture anywhere near it! All the acreage was behind the house and swamp/forest.


(BTW, @horseluvr2524 is an excellent rider and horsewoman) 
I remember looking at properties around here before deciding to buy a house without acreage and keep boarding. That was so common to have the acreage split up by a road and half down in a swamp! So frustrating.


egrogan said:


> And finally, I appreciate having this virtual community to turn to- I only wish I could meet all of you in person too! :grin:


Me too!


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## knightrider

Me three!


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## Avna

@egrogan, since we are looking for the same kind of land in the same area, and have been for six months (albeit long-distance), I can tell you that Massachusetts has this cool website called the Massachusetts Interactive Property Map, where you can type in an address and see a great deal about that property -- the exact acreage, the amount of mapped wetlands, the topography, the owners of record, the assessed value, and much more. I know you are looking further north but maybe other states have something similar. Between that, google earth and topo view, and the realtor ad, you can get a pretty good idea of what's going on with the land. 

Finding good usable horse pasture property in New England is not trivial, I have found . . . we did find a realtor who actually understands what we are looking for, which has been invaluable.

By the way, I didn't stick my oar in, but I think you made the right call on the mare. Besides having to put her into the turmoil of moving house, her physical issues are a red flag. Feeling relieved and not regretful is a sign!


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## egrogan

Since I didn't have any more major life decisions to make this afternoon, I was able to get out to the barn after work to see Izzy.

She started the doxy on Sunday, so today was day 5. BO said Izzy thinks she's hit the lottery and is now getting extra special treats in her soaked ration balancer. She's scarfing down the pills whole and looking very pleased with herself :wink: BO would obviously crush them, hide them in applesauce, syringe them, whatever, but she was also pretty pleased that this horse just does whatever you ask her!

In my opinion though, she is not as perky as she was during the IV week, and BO agreed. She described it as "leveling out." I've read plenty of stories about horses feeling worse again for a couple of weeks when switching to doxy, so maybe that's it. She was not thrilled to warm up in the indoor, but she was a little perkier when we headed out to the gallop track around the turnout fields. We trotted around a bit and called it a day. 



















She isn't having any negative GI effects so far on the meds, and as you can tell, she isn't skipping any meals :wink:









Saturday I'm going to audit the clinic the BO is doing. I was originally going to ride, but I just don't think it makes sense. The clinic is all about rhythm and impulsion, and this girl ^^ doesn't have too much of either these days so why push it? I am hopeful after the adjustment period the doxy will do it's thing. And, cooler weather is coming, which she always prefers.


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## Avna

All I know is when my husband came back from Massachusetts with Lyme disease, his course of doxycycline completely flattened him. Different, but not hugely better than the Lyme itself (except once it was done he felt much better). Not surprised Izzy is feeling puny, as my mother in law would say.


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## egrogan

Soggy ride this morning on one very wet horse.









She was about the same today as yesterday. I thought she was a little sensitive in her back while I was towelling her off. Still really unenthusiastic and slow at the walk, though had some nice trot work. She struggled to get her left lead cantering which was really weird as that's her "easy" side. 









I think I will see the vet at the clinic Saturday (she's one of BO's students) so will run this all past her. Chiro comes Monday so will be interesting to hear her take. And feet get done on Tuesday. Lots of professional attention for one little horse :wink:


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## egrogan

I got to the barn yesterday morning and walked into the arena to find a seat for the clinic, and BO said- "you should be riding, she's feeling fine today!" She assured me we would find a way for Izzy to do what she could that wouldn't tax her too much, and also not hold anyone else up, so I figured why not!

The morning session was all about finding rhythm and tempo. BO had the metronome out and everyone had a chance to figure out how many strides their horse required for a full circumference of the arena at all three gaits (I just did w/t as I don't think Izzy could comfortably canter a full lap right now)- this was no small feat as we had 12 horses in the arena! BO said she thought that's the most she's ever had in there at once.









It was pretty fascinating to see how different each horse moved. We had some dressage folks, some western dressage folks, and a couple of hunt seat- QHs, Morgans, NSH, Arabs, a haffie/perch cross, and a big paint/warmblood cross. So lots of different ways of going to watch. 

After everyone did their own work and figured out the number of strides their horse should have for one lap around the ring in each gait, we went out in groups of 6 (other 6 stood in the middle- which was good for Izzy, lots of breaks) and used what we learned about our own horse's tempo to try to stay in a consistent order with consistent spacing, which would happen if each horse maintained their "best" tempo. Izzy wanted to race up to the horse in front of her and close the gap, so it was a) good to see her motivated to move a little more forward :wink: and b) and good exercise to me to try to use half halts to keep her doing her own thing and not so worried about what was going on ahead. We did this at w/t. After each group went, we had all 12 go, with 6 in one direction on the rail and 6 the other direction on the 2nd track. It was pretty cool to have that many horses in the arena once, and they all went beautifully. The pacing was generally successful, though there would be points when we'd get a pile up and have to give everyone a minute to work things out. Once that went well, then we started changing directions in pairs across the diagonal. Definitely a thinking exercise to have to pick your spot and timing to pull that off!

We all sort of forgot to take pictures during the day, so this is the only one I have of us (I'm in the red shirt)- clearly this was not one of our better spacing moments :wink: It's actually a decently forward walk for Izzy, and then there's my floppy wristed puppy paws...yeah...









We had a lunch break so I turned Izzy out for a bit, and she was very surprised when I came back to get her again. I can't think of the last time she's been ridden twice in one day. She very enthusiastically came trotting from the back of her field to meet me at the gate.









After lunch, we did a lot of pole work mostly on 10 and 20 meter circles to get them using their inside hind leg and lifting, all while thinking about forward tempo. Arcing poles on a 10 meter circle was really hard for Izzy, and that pretty much cooked her. The morning was 3 hours (though with lots of standing breaks) and the afternoon was supposed to be another 2.5. Izzy was pretty done after about an hour of the pole work, even though we were only walking rather than trotting or cantering the poles. She was a good sport, but there was a very clear moment when I just sort of felt her wilt underneath me and decided that was enough for one day. Of course BO was understanding. And, given it was an unusually humid day for us, several other riders decided to call it quits early too as horses and riders were starting to struggle a bit.

All in all though, it was a fun day and I'm glad I got to participate. I always leave days like that humbled by how much there is to learn, but I loved that even the clearly much better riders did not get annoyed with those of us that were not at their level.


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## frlsgirl

Awww. I'm glad you are finding a good balance between enjoying Izzy and letting her heal from Lymes. Pole work sounds like so much fun. 

About finding a house in the country, we had a similar experience. Nice houses with crappy horse facilities or crappy houses with decent horse facilities. It's difficult to find the right mix and still be within a reasonable driving distance from town, which is why we are building. It's been a really stressful process and no matter how hard you try it will never be perfect, but we will make it work for us. 

Hopefully something fitting will hit your housing market soon!


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> About finding a house in the country, we had a similar experience. Nice houses with crappy horse facilities or crappy houses with decent horse facilities. It's difficult to find the right mix and still be within a reasonable driving distance from town, which is why we are building. It's been a really stressful process and no matter how hard you try it will never be perfect, but we will make it work for us. Hopefully something fitting will hit your housing market soon!


Yep, this is so true! We know we don't want to build because we love historic houses so much, but I totally understand why people go that route. We met a new realtor yesterday and went to see a couple of houses about an hour from where we currently live. They were really different kinds of places- one a small, historic cape with a nice pasture over 30 acres but no proper barn, really a garage that someone had once added a couple of tie stalls to. The other a massive colonial that has been in dozens of magazines because of its gardens and grounds as well as historic interior. Even though it had 15 acres, it had mostly been taken over by acres and acres of flowers and shrubs, and who wants to be the person to thoughtlessly rip out some elderly couples' decades of love and attention? The first one was much more aligned with what we're looking for, though it has been a vacation house for decades so the kitchen is postage stamp size and we love cooking, so that would have to be changed. 

Before we met the realtor, we actually did "drive bys" of 4 or 5 other houses on our list (I honestly can't remember how many, they're starting to blend together at this point!) and I think the biggest lesson we learned was that just because there's acreage in a listing, it's usability is no guarantee. We did find a decent NH GIS mapping site like @*Avna* suggested, but it's so wooded here that it's hard to get a good overhead view of where there are pastures and fields carved out from the trees. A couple that looked disappointing from the street had looked promising from the satellite images.

We had a long talk on the way back and wondered if we should actually just "love the one we're with"- our current house is also a really cute antique cape (built in the 1790s) that we've spent the past 5 years renovating so that it's basically finished the way we want it. It has 5 acres but no barn. When we look at our budget, we're wondering if we'd just be better off putting up a run-in shed that horses can live in for the summer and boarding for the winter. A couple of people at my old barn used to do that. Even boarding two horses year round if the run-in set up didn't work would be cheaper in our budget than "upgrading" our mortgage to get what we want. So I don't know. We have a lot to think about but I feel a little less stressed out about finding something right now. We have the luxury of being able to wait, and if the perfect house did suddenly pop up, we could consider it. But we don't _have_ to go anywhere. I'm going to talk to BO about whether it would be feasible to add a second horse at her place and go from there. There's been some movement in and out this summer so I think there are at least a couple of spots available but am not sure what her waiting list looks like.

After spending most of the day in the car yesterday, I was eager to get to the barn. A fellow boarder had done some major trail clearing on Saturday, and opened up a new trail around the beaver pond. This massive tree used to go straight across the trail and have dozens of sharp, spiky branches sticking up in every direction, making it too dangerous to try to go over- so he cut them all off and cut off half the trunk so you can just go around instead of over.









Izzy was so funny, she definitely noticed places where downed trees had been moved or cleared, but she was like a different horse when we were on the new part of the trail. She gets a little over-eager to get home when we ride the loop she knows well, but on the new part, she was alert and interested and totally calm. She likes to explore I think. We stopped and admired the pond from a couple of different places. 









And, I rode out and doubled back instead of riding a loop, so that means she walked through the water crossing _twice _without freaking out! She did initially refuse a deep ditch on the new part of the trail, but I circled her around and said, no, we're going over, and she did, twice. 

Chiro is coming later this morning so will be interested to see how she reacts through her back and loins where she was sore for the vet a couple of weeks ago. I see some occasionally sensitive spots in her back but I do think she's more comfortable in her hind end since the treatment started.


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like a great weekend! I am so pleased that Izzy was feeling up for the clinic and I wouldn't worry about her running out of steam partway through the afternoon as I was tired just reading about it. The fact she came trotting up to you to catch her after lunch says it all to me. And then to happily go out and hack the next day - fingers crossed the Lyme treatment is doing its job.


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## carshon

Your posts make me happy! I am so glad Izzy is able to be ridden and that you have had some good rides. This barn really seems to agree with you and I really like how your BO looks after Izzy.

I cannot even imagine the house hunting - when my step Dad passed away my Mom decided to move back to IL from SD to be closer to family. As I am the only child still living in IL I was tasked with looking at houses for her in person after she did some on-line searching. I looked at 63 houses! Not a joke. They all started to melt together - I had a notebook with the MLS listing and all of the pros and cons for each house. All were nixed by my Mom for one reason or another. Mom came home for a visit and my older sister was here to and we went to look at a house that had NONE of the things my Mom had on her want list - but the minute she walked in she knew it was her house. I believe you will know it if you see it.


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## egrogan

Izzy's chiro visit was uneventful yesterday. The chiro also does a lot of Eastern medicine and left us with an herbal immune booster supplement, so we'll give it a go as we wind down the antibiotics.

We also brought our older dog to be worked on, and captured this sweet moment with my two girls. It's been a couple of years since they've seen each other.









Off to a farrier appointment in a few minutes and then I am done writing checks for this horse this month :wink:


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## egrogan

BO says we can definitely find a space for another horse if I find "the one." So I guess the search is real now, and not dependent on moving...


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> BO says we can definitely find a space for another horse if I find "the one." So I guess the search is real now, and not dependent on moving...


14.1 gelding in Vermont named Oliver . Sounds like he might be kind of forward and ring-sour but could be great . . .


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## egrogan

^^Looks promising!


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> ^^Looks promising!


I'm here to enable!


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## egrogan

It's been a busy but really good week. Let's see, to summarize:

1. Izzy is starting to show signs of really feeling better. Rode longer Friday night and yesterday than we have in awhile- multiple loops of the trail and back out on the road, which we had stopped doing when she started threatening the sideways bolting around cars. She's definitely not in shape, but her walk felt stronger, easier, and more forward out on the trail. Here she is going up one of our steadier inclines:













We trotted a little, but the footing is bad (lots of roots and rocks, and slick muddy spots) so I think because she's out of shape and the footing isn't good, she just sort of falls into a canter and then gets even more unbalanced. So for now, I guess we're mostly walking, but that's fine.

Was also really proud of her yesterday, we saw an ATV on the trail for the first time. BO's neighbor shares the trails, and is so polite around the horses- he pulled over, turned the thing off, and started talking to us (clearly not his first horse encounter :wink Izzy didn't really know what to make of this short, wheeled human and was a bit snorty and blowy. She wanted to go backwards a bit, so I hopped off just to walk her past. I think she would have eventually walked past with me on her, but he had been so nice to stop for us to work it out, I didn't want to take more of his time. She kept snorting after we were well away from him, but stood nicely for me to get back on and wasn't worried when we looped back by that spot. So all in all, not perfect, but I think an ok first encounter.

Hehe, caught mid-apple after our ride yesterday :grin:









2. Horse shopping is moving ahead. Going to see a 7-year-old Morgan mare in upstate NY next Friday; she may be bigger and fancier than what I need, but she has decent conformation and has a solid dressage start. Owner says she's been hacked out around the property a good bit, but no real trail work yet, so not sure about that. If she's got a calm mind, I am confident I can put on miles. If she's hotter and less comfortable out of the ring, probably more horse than I need. But we'll see. 

Also have a lead on a 10ish year old gelding close to me in VT, just waiting to get in touch with his owner who's had people in town all week. She's a friend of a friend, and buying from someone within a network like that is appealing to me.

3. BO connected me with someone local who does endurance and that person has offered to help with mentoring and taking me along for conditioning rides when new horse arrives. I'm really excited as it solves the problem of my current lack of trailer, and it's also far less intimidating to imagine really trying out endurance with someone to give me advice on the ground. I am hopefully going to crew for her on a 100 mile ride up in VT in October.


Phew, been a whirlwind of a week (with a work trip to NYC stuck in there in the middle of it) but I feel like things are really starting to come together!


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## frlsgirl

Wow it does sound like a lot of things are coming together. Isn't it funny how nothing seems to be working and then everything just kind of comes together in a matter of days. Glad Izzy is on the mend!


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## egrogan

A sure sign Izzy is feeling better: I could barely hold her back from running over the horse in front of her while trotting on the trail yesterday. I mean, in any other circumstance it would be super annoying, but since she was barely keeping up when behind other horses just a couple of weeks ago I'm so happy to see her old "I should be the one in charge" attitude back :grin:


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## carshon

So very very happy that Izzy is feeling better!


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## egrogan

Was able to ride between meetings this morning. I put Izzy back in the bitless for the first time since she started pulling evasive maneuvers getting to the trail.








She did really great!

She did a lot of exploration with where she wanted to hold her head, which was interesting to watch. She wasn't anxious about it, and she found a place she was comfortable. I asked her to stop and stand and pose for pictures a few times to make sure we had brakes (we did).








She was very responsive to leg too, which was nice. We did more off-roading than usual, going around trees and over branches, making circles and loops on and off the trail. 

She did balk and pull away from the water crossing (because I was expecting her to?) but she got over it and we crossed. We rode the trail out and back (vs. making it a loop) and she crossed without any hesitation on the way back.

We did a little more trotting but she is still doing that thing where she gets unbalanced and starts doing these really short, fast strides before dumping into a canter. I'm not really sure how to help with that besides just doing it more often. Maybe doing poles/cavalettis in the arena would be helpful for making her pay better attention to where her feet are? She does have a pretty nice, even trot when we're on grassy flat areas around the property-it seems to be a combination of bad footing plus going uphill that makes it harder to find balance.

******************************************************
In horse shopping news:
1. Mare in upstate NY got sold yesterday morning. Bummed I didn't get to see her but I had a gut feeling she wasn't quite right.
2. Gelding in VT is a rehab project and has some issues (aka, rearing) with being asked to transition from whoa/walk, and just temperamentally sounded like a bad fit. I was very appreciative that the woman rehabbing him was super honest about him and I was able to pass without any hard feelings.

I have reached out to a few others folks that were recommended to me, but nothing yet. I do find my mind drifting back to the first mare I test rode. There were a couple of things that weren't ideal...but her temperament was so nice and she did really well on the trail. It's probably too soon for me to start getting impatient but...I guess I'm getting impatient :wink:


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## phantomhorse13

Rearing - umm, no thanks!!

I am glad that Izzy seems to be returning to her old self. In terms of her hurried trotting thing, does she start out that way immediately or does she kind of crank herself up into it the longer she is trotting? If it's not right away, maybe try asking for a transition back down to walk before she gets all hurried. Then, see if you can stretch out the amount of strides she is doing before getting hurried each time.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Rearing - umm, no thanks!!
> 
> I am glad that Izzy seems to be returning to her old self. In terms of her hurried trotting thing, does she start out that way immediately or does she kind of crank herself up into it the longer she is trotting? If it's not right away, maybe try asking for a transition back down to walk before she gets all hurried. Then, see if you can stretch out the amount of strides she is doing before getting hurried each time.


Hmm...good question. I will pay more attention when I ride tomorrow, but I think when I give her a quick half-halt (of the "hey, something's about to happen" variety @bsms :wink she kind of jumps into 2-3 big, excited trot strides which would actually be ok to ride if she sustained it. But then it's almost like she gets so rushed it's like she's running in little baby steps on her tip toes. I'm not sure if I could catch her and come back to a walk after just those 2 nicer strides when her mind is that excited.

She doesn't do this on flat ground in the arena, on the grass, or when we're on the gallop track which is very soft footing (basically old composted shavings). I think it's because the footing on the trail is so rocky and uphill. So is it realistic to think she should be able to have a better quality trot on that kind of footing? I think so, right? 

**********

What do folks think of this handsome fella? Not sure how I feel about a gelding, but any reactions?


















Can't tell in either picture if there's something weird going on with that L front or it's just how he's standing? I like how compact he is.


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## carshon

He is a handsome gelding. The pic without the rider almost looks like he was going to lean back to back up.


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## egrogan

Good point @carshon- I can see that looking at the picture again. I should be able to get more pictures and video. He sounds like a total sweetheart. Is currently babysitting an anxious weanling :grin:


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## Avna

He looks really nice. Plus, liver chestnut, one of my 3 top favorite colors!


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## phantomhorse13

carshon said:


> He is a handsome gelding. The pic without the rider almost looks like he was going to lean back to back up.


I agree he looks like something is about to happen, so I am not sure its the best picture to judge from for every detail. But overall I like the look of him and he is very solidly built.



Avna said:


> liver chestnut, one of my 3 top favorite colors!


Do you think he is liver chestnut? I was thinking faded black/brown. The undertones of his coat in the first picture seem tan versus red, though who knows what time of day the pic was taken or who did what to it in photoshop!

It will be interesting to see additional photos.


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## bsms

FWIW, Bandit has three trot modes. On the trail, he takes shorter strides and is much less animated. That keeps his feet close to the ground and minimizes up-down movement - which protects his feet. In the arena, he is starting to give a trot with good "oomph". He does it sometimes on a paved road - if we are alone. His third mode is his racing mode - a fast trot with a very braced back. I'm guessing having a 230-ish rider plus a western saddle using an 800 lb horse for racing did that. He uses it instinctively if we go down a paved road with the other horses beside him, and used it yesterday to trot away from the garbage truck. 

His non-racing modes seem to relate totally to how his feet feel. The race mode is just a bad habit, but one based on hundreds of miles of riding, if not more. Replacing that with "fun trotting with friends" is going to take a long time. I think we focus on how their backs feel, but Bandit seems more concerned with how his FEET feel.

PS The horse looks good to me, but most horses with 4 legs and a head look good to me.


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## Avna

Not brown, or he'd have reddish highlights and blacker points. Smoky black maybe? Pretty color though.


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## egrogan

I am actually one of those people who thinks Morgans should be bay, so will admit that it sort of bugs me that he's not. But I'm trying not to be superficial. What's that saying, "a good horse is any color" (or, according to bsms..."has all 4 legs and head firmly attached" :grin

Here's another picture of him "stood up"









And one more:









He's only 5 and still learning, but has had a year of slow work put into him and has responded well. It's going to be a couple of weeks before I can get to see him as he's several hours away, but I have a good feeling after talking to the seller a bit. So I guess it's "hurry up and wait"- perfect given how incredibly patient I am :icon_rolleyes:


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## carshon

I think he is quite lovely - I do not ride dressage so I cannot/will not comment on his conformation for that discipline. But I have to say that I like his well balanced body - although his neck does tie in rather low and his shoulder is rather steep (in my world this usually means a choppier way of moving) but what a lovely head!


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## Avna

Agree that his shoulder is a little steep. I like his overall outline though. His neck is fine. Nice length through the hip, typey, and he's pretty too. 

A slight amount of googling makes me think he is a smoky black. Black with one cream gene. If he has amber eyes it's a sure bet (but some smokies don't). Here's a smoky black Morgan from Sweden named Goldget Kitty. Interesting to compare types, too. I'd say your prospect is far more like an old-fashioned Morgan; Kitty is more the "sport horse" Morgan which looks more like a warmblood than a real Morgan. In my humble opinion.


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## egrogan

Yes, smoky black.

I am going to meet him on 9/23. His babysitting duties will be done and I will be done with a busy time at work.

I do like that he's more "old school" than some of the others I've looked at. Even so, he's not too thick or heavy looking so I am hopeful he'll be able to put in some miles.


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## Avna

I wish I could go with you! I will be suspended in the air over North America on that day.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> I wish I could go with you! I will be suspended in the air over North America on that day.


Bummer! I would love another set of eyes.


----------



## Avna

egrogan said:


> Bummer! I would love another set of eyes.


If you could put it off for a couple days . . .


----------



## egrogan

Sadly it just wouldn't be possible with the distance, seller's schedule, my work schedule, etc.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Sadly it just wouldn't be possible with the distance, seller's schedule, my work schedule, etc.


Oh well.:sad:


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## frlsgirl

He's pretty! Can't wait to find out if he's a good fit!


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## Tazzie

Ohh, I like him! I can't wait to hear how you guys get along!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> Ohh, I like him! I can't wait to hear how you guys get along!


Me too! I'm counting down the days until I can visit. I am also in touch with a Morgan trainer that put a lot of miles on my friend Ida's lovely mare Jazz. He might have a mare available; we're going to talk Monday night. 

*****************
I spent yesterday volunteering at a competitive trail ride event in Vermont. It was a glorious Vermont day- started off only around 40*F and as the sun warmed up, it never got warmer than 70*F. Great day for a ride! 

The calm before the storm- crew supplies and plenty of water set up at the half-way hold:









Scenery straight out of a VT tourism brochure:









There are even covered bridges to ride through!









I signed up for "P&R"- checking pulse and respiration at the vet hold and as the various distances finished their rides back at the barns (there were 15 milers, 30 milers, 60 milers, and 100 milers). 

Horses and riders in at the hold:



























When I signed up, I was careful to read the fine print to be sure it was ok that I would need training- and the sign up clearly said in bold letters "we will teach you how to do it." I figured I'd be fine. But I have to say, I spent most of the day feeling sort of dumb. At first, the other volunteers seemed annoyed that I was going to need help. Then, when I had trouble finding the heart beat on my first couple of horses, they all said that the "borrowed" stethoscope I had been handed as a volunteer was no good, and everyone had bought their own high end medical supply version with them. Well...if I had _known_ that I needed my own equipment, I would have done that! So basically I just became a scribe for the experienced volunteers and trailed them around all day with the clipboard. I hate feeling stupid and have to admit I was pretty embarrassed most of the day when someone would call for a volunteer to get their P&R done, and even though I was wearing one of the little vests that signified the P&R crew, I had to tell them to wait until another volunteer was available. As the day went on, I did find a couple of volunteers who were patient with me and when they checked a horse with a strong heart beat, they let me hear through their (nice) stethoscopes so I knew at least I wasn't crazy. And, even they had a hard time picking up the heart beat on several horses and needed to call in someone else, so I guess it's not always straightforward. Just for the record as I'm feeling really self-conscious about all this...I _have_ checked heartrates before, and I do know _how _to do it! I think I just got stage fright.

I was a very successful fence post though and held lots of horses while their riders went to the bathroom :-?

Overall, I did learn a lot, and I think next time I may sign up to be a vet scribe as a couple of other volunteers told me that's where you really learn as you hear the vet think out loud about what they're seeing on each horse. I have to say though, I think I had more fun being attached to the crew of a specific horse and rider when @phantomhorse13 let me tag along with her. I think feeling like you're on a team with a rider is potentially more fun than "just" being part of the event. 

*******************
I've been on vacation since Friday and have gotten some saddle time in myself too. Izzy continues doing great. We're on our last week of doxy!

Friday we rode the extended loop around the beaver pond.









She was such a good girl we stopped for a little grazing time on the way back









Yesterday I didn't have as much time as it was late afternoon when I got back from VT. I had just enough time for quick ride before it started getting dark (gah, I hate the shorter days already!!) "point to point" straight from one trail head to the other- it's only about 1.5 miles when ridden straight through. Izzy was feeling good, so we actually did a lot of trotting. I wanted to see if we could get a better trot so I experimented a little. I asked her to trot a couple of strides before I knew she was going to _want to_ to trot, so she launched in with a couple of those nice big strides and then I just kept my legs on to encourage her to keep going forward rather than tippy-toeing. I also kept the reins fairly loose so she wouldn't have anything to lean on and try to tank off against. It actually seemed to work fairly well. We ended up trotting almost the whole way, except in the rockiest parts where it just doesn't seem safe to me. It was a good ride, she seemed to enjoy it too.










She also thoroughly enjoyed her apple when we got back.





Last night was only about 50*F and steady rain. I had to pull a blanket out since she gets pretty miserable in the cold rain. When I turned her out after our ride, BO had just done her shed and gave her extra shaving to snuggle down into. She went right in and seemed very pleased with herself. :grin:









Not sure I'll get to ride today as the rain is continuing, but I'm off tomorrow and Tuesday too!


----------



## frlsgirl

I've also been off since Friday; isn't it great to have so much extra time to spend with your pony? 

I'm sorry you had a bad volunteer experience; they certainly could have been more helpful to you! Even though you may only feel that you contributed as a fence post, I'm sure the riders were grateful to have someone to hold their horse for them. Most of the time at Dressage events, especially small ones like clinics, I can't find a soul to do anything for me; and Ana doesn't fit in the bathroom so I can' exactly take her with me. 

Woohoo to the last week of Doxy! Is it just me or does it seem like this treatment went by really fast?

Awww, she is really savoring that apple. I hardly ever give apples to Ana because I always feel like I need a bath afterwards; she slobbers all over the place.

Hoping the rain will stop so you can enjoy some more barn time with Izzy!


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## phantomhorse13

I am sorry you did not have a positive experience with GMHA. I find that very frustrating, not only for you personally but as a reflection on our entire sport - we can't be making volunteers feel badly and expect people to keep coming back or want to learn more. P&R is one of the hardest jobs there is IMO, so you def got tossed into the deep end. :think: 

You would have recognized that crew spot had you been crewing the VT100 - it's the first gate and go used. Please pencil Phin in for your wonderful crewing services there next year (july 21st)!! I agree with @frlsgrl that being a fencepost for riders is actually a really helpful thing to have from a rider standpoint.

Last week of doxy is a great thing and I am so pleased to read that Izzy is doing so well. I look forward to updates on the horse shopping adventures as well.


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## egrogan

@*phantomhorse13* - I wanted to be careful about how I described my experience as I don't want to give the impression that anyone was rude or mean (especially with all the nutty conversation going on via Facebook right now!! ) The other volunteers had a job to do, and expected one more set of hands to get it done...but I needed help to do it, making more work for them. I'd probably be a little annoyed too if the roles were reversed.

That's why I read all the "job descriptions" so carefully when I was signing up, because I wanted to do something where I was going to learn something new (i.e., not the refreshments stand) but I also didn't want to get in anyone's way or slow anyone down. It really did say right in the P&R volunteer description "we will teach you how to do it." 

And after the hold, when things were much less busy, I found a couple of people who were very friendly and willing to help me find a way I could be useful even though I wasn't as skilled as I wish I was. 

I think I also didn't anticipate how clubby it would be- I was the only new person and everyone else has clearly known each other forever, so it felt a little hard to break into conversations. So I don't know- that's why I think being part of a rider's crew helps give you that little sense of belonging when you don't really know anyone else.

Don't worry - I will be going back. Just a little more informed next time!

And you can absolutely sign me up for Phin next summer...assuming I don't have a horse ready for an LD then too :wink: No, seriously though, I think next summer will probably be too early for me to ride, particularly if I end up with this young gelding. But if anything, yesterday reinforced for me that I can't _wait _to be out there for the ride myself!!

******
Thanks @frlsgirl and phantomhorse for the well wishes for Izzy. I have all my fingers and toes crossed that she will still be feeling good when she comes off the Doxy. I know some of them start feeling bad again and I seriously hope she won't!


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## phantomhorse13

I am glad it's wasn't enough to keep you from going back. I have found the CTR crowd to be smaller, so could see how it would seem more cliquish - and some of those people have known one another for 20+ years. Just gotta "intrude" into the groups - which is of course way easier said than done, especially for someone on the shy end of things. 

But look, you are famous:

http://enduranceintrospection.com/wp/ho-hum-and-hiccups/

(No idea how to make that a clickable link from my phone). 

I sincerely hope you have your new horse ready for LDs by next summer.. but Vt100 doesn't have an LD, so you can be all mine!! ??


----------



## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I am glad it's wasn't enough to keep you from going back. I have found the CTR crowd to be smaller, so could see how it would seem more cliquish - and some of those people have known one another for 20+ years. Just gotta "intrude" into the groups - which is of course way easier said than done, especially for someone on the shy end of things.
> 
> But look, you are famous:
> 
> Ho-Hum and Hiccups | Endurance Introspection
> 
> (No idea how to make that a clickable link from my phone).
> 
> I sincerely hope you have your new horse ready for LDs by next summer.. but Vt100 doesn't have an LD, so you can be all mine!! ??


Thanks for sharing- what a fun read. I didn't realize Patti played such an educational role for the sport, but I am glad to have found her blog. 

I have you and Phin on my calendar for next July :grin:


----------



## egrogan

Last day of vacation, and we managed to beat the thunderstorms out to the trail.

Izzy was having one of her "low energy" days, and I have to admit I got a little frustrated with her. I spent the first half of my ride feeling sorry for myself, thinking that my riding is never going to improve on this old, bad moving horse, and that I'm going to embarrass myself when I go test ride some of the nice younger horses I've been looking at. But I snapped out of it and realized I was being ridiculous. I am lucky to have a wonderful "first horse" in Izzy, and if she suddenly became unrideable tomorrow, I'd want to be able to say I enjoyed our final ride together. The ride got better.

We did the longer trail out around the beaver pond and back. She had just grabbed a bite of grass right before this picture, hence her weird looking mouth.









We even got a little sunshine filtering through the woods by the end of the ride.









I spotted a bunch of broken glass bottles when we were riding out, so I stopped on the way back to clean that up so no one ended up with glass in a foot. She stood patiently while I hopped off to do that, even though we were almost home. I was impressed with her calmness. It took me a minute to find a stump tall and safe enough to use to get back on (it had rained last night so everything was really slick), and she stood well while I mounted. She really is a good girl.

I talked with a couple of different people this morning who have younger mares for sale, and am hopefully adding them to my list of test rides later this month. I'm in Texas for work next week so it will be a couple of weeks before I can make it happen, but I'm excited! BO keeps asking me if I'm _sure _it has to be a Morgan, because apparently when she started asking around about stuff for sale, she got flooded with Quarter Horses and Arabs. But yep, I'm sure. I know the right one is out there somewhere- just have to keep looking.


----------



## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I talked with a couple of different people this morning who have younger mares for sale, and am hopefully adding them to my list of test rides later this month. I'm in Texas for work next week so it will be a couple of weeks before I can make it happen, but I'm excited! BO keeps asking me if I'm _sure _it has to be a Morgan, because apparently when she started asking around about stuff for sale, she got flooded with Quarter Horses and Arabs.


Very exciting to have some possibilities to check out! If it's the horse meant for you, it will still be waiting when you return from Texas. If you have your heart set on a Morgan, then you will find one. And hey, if any of those leads your BO has are for young arab geldings that sound like they could be endurance horses, let me know. :wink:


----------



## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> And hey, if any of those leads your BO has are for young arab geldings that sound like they could be endurance horses, let me know. :wink:


I will definitely ask her when I see her later this week. She has a couple of friends who she said are turning out nice Arabs. Are you shopping-shopping or just always keeping an eye out?

Have been communicating with a woman in Pittsburgh who has a neat sounding gelding. I've got to decide what my geographic limits are on this search. I'm driving 6 hours to see the smoky black gelding. Pittsburgh is almost 10 hours. That starts to feel like a little much. But other than the two mares in VT, I'm sort of running into dead ends more locally. I do think I want to find this horse this fall...


----------



## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Are you shopping-shopping or just always keeping an eye out?
> 
> Have been communicating with a woman in Pittsburgh who has a neat sounding gelding.


Just keeping an eye out knowing Sultan and George will eventually need to retire from competing, so starting to look for something that would be DH's horse when that time comes. I figure if I happen upon a promising young horse now, that gives me a season or two to get him going. DH is quite competitive, so likely I would be doing all the slow legwork. :wink:

If you decide to venture to Pittsburgh, you are welcome to overnight here and break up the trip!


----------



## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Just keeping an eye out knowing Sultan and George will eventually need to retire from competing, so starting to look for something that would be DH's horse when that time comes. I figure if I happen upon a promising young horse now, that gives me a season or two to get him going. DH is quite competitive, so likely I would be doing all the slow legwork. :wink:
> 
> If you decide to venture to Pittsburgh, you are welcome to overnight here and break up the trip!


That's so nice of you @phantomhorse13! The two Arabs from BO's former student were mares, as that's what she asked about, so I will let you know if there are others.

Last week I found out about a mare that got my hopes up a little. She's not listed anywhere, but is with a trainer who thinks the owner may part with her. She's been in training to be a driving pony but doesn't like it, so she needs a new job. She's 9 years old; perfect size- about 14.2; half Lippitt, half UVM breeding; always sound, great legs; can go all day and be happy about it. Trainer gave me owner's contact info- I've left her two messages but no response yet. I figure I can leave one more message mid-next week before I start to become a creepy stalker. Trainer would be thrilled for her to move to endurance but not sure owner is feeling the same  Of course, I haven't even laid eyes on the horse yet so it's silly to get my hopes up...but on paper...that's what I'm looking for.

******************
Today was Izzy's last day of doxy! :loveshower: 
Chiro gave us some Chinese herbs for immune boosting, so she's getting those now. Regular vet said she'd schedule us an appointment in 6 weeks to pull blood again and doesn't need to see her before then unless she's acting off. Fingers crossed our transition goes smoothly!

We had a nice ride today around the beaver pond. Izzy was quite skeptical of some very noisy ducks out on the water:









We added in a lot more trotting today. She's gotten much better about not falling into the canter. When I feel her start to lean really heavily on my hands, I know she's about to do it, so I just let the reins out and she stays trotting and we regather our balance.

I wish I could adequately describe this awesome moment we had today, but it was one of those "you just had to feel it" sort of things- but I'll try. Around the pond, the trail is really narrow and twisty, and gets steep and rocky in some places. As we went up one of these rocky spots, she handled her balance _perfectly_, taking about 3 lovely, pushing-from-behind canter strides that made her feel like she was just skipping up the hill. Such a cool feeling. I think she even surprised herself :grin: Wish I had a video to see what it looked like! 

Sporting the droopy old lady lip proudly!


----------



## egrogan

Talked to the seller yesterday :grin: I have to be honest, I'm excited to meet this horse. Trainer is away at a show all week, and I'm out of town anyway, but I have the green light from seller to go for a test ride. Now I just need to schedule a date with trainer. Hopefully it will happen in the next couple of weeks.

It was a glorious fall day yesterday, I had a nice ride with my riding buddy. We were so busy chattering away about long distance rides and new horses, I didn't stop to grab any pictures!

The horses are definitely starting to grow in their longer coats. Izzy was sweaty when we got back so got hosed down. Which meant she absolutely had to roll when she got turned back out :wink:


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## carshon

I love the Izzy rolling pics. Our horses are getting the "fuzzies" as well.


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## egrogan

Going to try the horse next Thursday! :happydance:


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## Tazzie

How exciting!! Fingers crossed it goes well!


----------



## egrogan

I traded the heat and humidity of a week in Texas (98*F on Thursday!) for just slightly less heat and humidity here at home (85*F today??) Yuck. I _hate _this weather!

Poor Izzy was sweating when I pulled her out of the field yesterday. Her winter coat has continued to come in, which is not helpful when the daytime temps are this warm. 

She hadn't been ridden in a week, but we had a very nice ride through the woods loop yesterday. We took it easy because it was so muggy. We're going to be bumping up against hunting season soon, and I wonder if there weren't people out already yesterday because a couple of times she wanted to stop and stare off intently into the woods. Not looking forward to the season starting as BOs' neighbors are very active hunters and there are deer feeders just off our newly discovered trail in a few spots. Time to put the bells on the saddle...

And look...just a _hint _of fall color starting to creep in. It's supposed to be a good year for foliage.


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## frlsgirl

I love riding out in the fields and woods during fall; the colors are just so soothing. Yay on finally being done with meds for Izzy. I can't wait to check back to find out how the test ride went with the potential new mare.


----------



## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I love riding out in the fields and woods during fall; the colors are just so soothing. Yay on finally being done with meds for Izzy. I can't wait to check back to find out how the test ride went with the potential new mare.


Thanks @frlsgirl! I'm so excited too. I told my riding buddy about my plans to check out the mare this week and by the time I left the barn today everyone there knew I was shopping for a new horse. I don't mind if people know, but I am sooooo not a "put the horse in front of the cart" kind of person I don't want to get my hopes up until I at least see this horse in person!

Oh, @frlsgirl, you'll appreciate this- someone sent me the link to this mare and I was tickled at the thought of having an Ana half-sister! But, I'm still trying to figure out why you'd put a green 4 year old in foal and then try to sell her. Too bad. She's also way too far away so not realistic for me, but still quite a looker. Just like her sister!

******************

So I must have jinxed myself with my post this morning. We weren't even a quarter mile into our ride today when two young guys in full camo- including faces painted- came creeping sheepishly out of the woods on BO's property with huge bows full of arrows. They were definitely _not_ supposed to be on BO's land, but they were nice about it. As soon as I saw them- which seemed to be before either of the horses did- I shouted out hello to them, and they came up to talk to us. The horses were great, no spook or snort. The guys were nice about it, let the horses take a good look at them and sniff them (Izzy thought the arrow tip might be food :icon_rolleyes and continued past us. But still, geez. I actually had put the bells on my saddle before we rode, and I'm practically shouting when I ride with my buddy because she doesn't hear very well, so they knew we were there. But when I'm on my own and moving at a faster pace, I don't know, I just worry that when irresponsible people shoot first and look later, no amount of bells, orange tack, and high vis gear is going to be enough. So do I just have to stop riding back there already?? Bow season just opened two days ago!

That aside, we had a nice ride. Izzy is clearly feeling better- we led on the way out, but on the way back she despised following Jazz. She and I got in a little tug-of-war when we were trotting and she just would.not.stop running up on Jazz's butt. Luckily they get along fine and tolerate being in really close quarters together, but it's not ok. She just would not rate back regardless of what I did (sitting rather than posting, lots of half halts, and eventually just all out shouting STOP with the reins). Something to work on for sure. 

We had another nice trip around the pond today, and it was gorgeous although still really hot.


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## frlsgirl

Oh wow - I've had my eye on this mare as well; I just adore her registered name, can you just hear the ring announcer go "and here we have...ohh, la,la...Scandias Private Dancer"


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Oh wow - I've had my eye on this mare as well; I just adore her registered name, can you just hear the ring announcer go "and here we have...ohh, la,la...Scandias Private Dancer"


Right?! I'm sure there will be some funny ring moments in her future :grin:

I'm probably dating myself, but now I can't get this song out of my head!


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## egrogan

Someone had some serious body in their mane today :wink:









We had an oddly humid fall ride- leaves falling around us while we sweat and shook off bugs. It's not supposed to be 80*F in September!


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## Avna

Fluffy! 

My Brooke, on the other side of the continent, is already getting out of her satins and into her velvets for winter. Soon she'll just be muddy and furry, but I enjoy this cute fuzzy phase. 

Is New England planning on some hurricane action soon?


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## egrogan

I'm not sure if we'll see any hurricane effects from the latest one (is it Maria?)

It is supposed to go up to 90*F on Sunday, so maybe that's why?  It sounds simply awful to have weather that hot!


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## phantomhorse13

Glad you are getting out on Izzy.. and while her running up on the other horse is certainly naughty, it does make me smile to know she is enthused about being out again!

Can't wait for the full report on meeting the horse Thursday..


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## egrogan

Sadly the mare this morning was not the horse for me :icon_frown: I knew after the second lap around the ring that it just wasn't a good match. She was simply too much horse. Very strong, almost frantic, whenever she felt your leg. She was clamped on the bit and given that leg only seemed to mean "go," it was hard to try to maneuver without solely using the reins (no steering off seat and legs). As a rider who tends towards nervous anyway, that "go go go go go" was simply too much for me and it quickly devolved. 

The girl who rode her first said she's a horse who needs to know every other stride what you want her to do, she's not one you ask and then they continue doing what you've asked until you ask for something else. So I felt pretty defeated and a bit embarrassed about my riding in front of a well known, well respected member of the local horse community. 

I spent the hour drive home feeling demoralized and wondering if it's even realistic to have endurance as a future goal given my riding abilities. I have to think there's a happy medium between Izzy's preferred pace (standing still :wink and something _so _forward. But maybe I'm wrong about that. All in all, feeling a little bummed.

I took the day off as I wasn't sure how long the drive would be or how long I'd stay, so now I have a rare afternoon with no plans. Heading out to see Izzy and get some perspective...


----------



## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> The girl who rode her first said she's a horse who needs to know every other stride what you want her to do, she's not one you ask and then they continue doing what you've asked until you ask for something else. So I felt pretty defeated and a bit embarrassed about my riding in front of a well known, well respected member of the local horse community.


A horse like that would drive me bonkers. Forward is one thing, but having to micromanage every step? No thanks.

Try not to feel embarrassed, as you are honest and open about your abilities and what you are looking for. It would be different if you claimed to be short-listed for the Olympics and then had issue with a horse. 

Riding is supposed to be _fun_ (or at least mostly fun). The right horse is out there for you.


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## Tazzie

I fully believe the horse you are looking for is out there. That horse would also drive me insane. She sounds like she needs more saddle time to learn how to keep going on as asked. Helping along is one thing, but asking every other stride? No thanks.


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## evilamc

That doesn't sound like a fun ride  You'll find the right one! Sadly Jax was somewhat like that when I bought him...if you just put the slightest pressure on his sides he'd hop into a canter and didn't know any steering off the leg...heck he could barely even turn nicely. Its been a LOT of work getting him to where he is now, I don't blame you for not wanting to do it! Don't feel embarrassed either, its not your fault she wasn't trained better ya know? Like Dawn said, find a horse you can have FUN on, relax and enjoy the ride.

Im sure a lot more horses will start being posted for sale as it starts getting colder, just be patient  You have Izzy to enjoy still so no big rush at least right?


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## carshon

@egrogan- when you speak of your riding I think you are more advanced than you think. There is nothing wrong with trying out a horse and saying "this is not the one for me" it really has nothing to do with your ability to ride that horse. You did not fall off! It has to do with what you "want" in a horse and what you are "able" to commit to said horse. This poor horse sounds like she has never been ridden by a quiet rider and has yet to learn that shooting out from underneath her rider is not always the right answer.

So the search continues - more opportunities will come your way - and in the mean time Izzy is feeling better and the leaves are changing! Ride on and enjoy it!


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## gottatrot

I think there are a lot of steps in personalities between a horse that would rather not go forward and one that is needing advice every couple steps to keep from running into something. 

You're very smart to not just see a pretty horse and think you will change her into what you want. Most likely, a lot of that personality would still be there even with different training. 

It wasn't your riding ability that gave you difficulty; there's a learning curve every time you get on a horse where you figure out how they've been taught and they figure out how you cue a horse, because every horse perceives their training a little differently, even after being trained by the same trainer. 

The more mellow the horse, the more time you have to figure this out. The hotter types' brains and bodies are going full speed ahead, so you have much less time. This means it takes a lot longer to get to where you can communicate and work together. It would be the same for almost any rider.
Plus, a mellow and patient horse is forgiving of cues they don't understand rather than darting off in some direction or getting wound up. 

I'm sure you'll find a horse that is a much better fit for you.


----------



## egrogan

@phantomhorse13, @evilamc, @Tazzie, @carshon, & @gottatrot- I can't thank you all enough for your encouraging words. I needed to take yesterday to sort of wallow in my disappointment, but I'm through it now. I can see what you all are saying, that there are certain types of horses that are a better match for certain riding styles and abilities. Intellectually, I know that. Emotionally, it stung in the moment. But that's why I knew that the horse wasn't right for me. When I got back to the barn, I had a great talk with BO about the test ride and she was very glad I didn't let the emotional side rule and come home with that horse. She is a pragmatist by nature, but keeps telling me, "when you sit on the right horse, it's going to fit like a glove and you'll know that's the one." I think I buy that. And I had a fabulous ride with Izzy. Our trail buddy happened to be there when I got there and we had a very good time together. She was also very encouraging about not getting hung up on the bad ride and just continuing to look for the right horse.

Letting go of feeling embarrassed about riding poorly in front of well-respected-trainer is a little harder for me, to be honest, but I have decided that the best way to show him I'm not a doofus is to show up at one of next year's Vermont distance rides (which basically happen in his backyard) and ride well on a nice horse. So that's my plan :grin:

To that end...
As I was driving home, I got a message from my future endurance mentor about a Morgan gelding for sale about an hour south of us in western MA. She had ridden with his owner once and had nice things to say about the woman. It sounds like sort of a fire sale situation, as this woman is having some tough times financially and has her horses and all her tack posted for sale right now. I am going to check him out on Sunday (@avna, you're not here yet, right? If you are- PLEASE COME WITH ME!!). I'm a little worried the seller is trying to complete the sale ASAP- she pushed me to bring a trailer with me- and while I don't have a problem making a quick decision about fit, I absolutely can't buy a horse without having a vet check. So I'm thinking I'll take some cash as a deposit, and will get a MA vet recommendation from my vet today so that if I like the horse, I can be clear I'm serious and intend to move fast to get the vet check done. If I were to leave a deposit, do you all think it would also be reasonable to sign some sort of contract saying the deposit is contingent on the vet check and would be returned, or would I just have to be willing to lose the deposit if I don't like what a vet check says and end up passing?

So here is the gelding- he looks a little "fluffy" in some of his pictures but he apparently he hasn't been ridden in a couple of months. He is 12, ~15.0 hands, and she has his papers (which is important to me)...she describes him as "very sane minded, mainly used for trail riding and has gone to versatility clinics, ground work clinics, lunge lining and centered riding clinics." Promising on paper- we'll see how he rides!


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## Avna

Flying out on Saturday. I will be there on Sunday, if a bit groggy. I am SO coming with you.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Flying out on Saturday. I will be there on Sunday, if a bit groggy. I am SO coming with you.


OK, but I have to be there at 8am to meet the seller before she goes to work, so...5am CA time? If you really want to come, I will PM you the address.


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## Avna

Yow, I was thinking afternoon. PM the address anyway though.


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## carshon

@egrogan - I have to say that I really LOVE his build. he reminds me of the Morgan/Paint mare I had and her gaits were to die for! She had the best lope of any horse I have ever ridden. Good Luck! and @Avna - so kind of you to think of going too! What an early morning that would be!


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## egrogan

@*carshon* - I think there's a lot to like about him too! Being critical, to me, he looks heavy through his body in some pictures, but not so much in others- but I don't really see a cresty neck so that's encouraging. BO's feedback on him was that his legs looked too small for his body and his hocks seemed to want to drift and hang out behind him when he moved. He hasn't been ridden much for the past few months so I'm trying to picture whether his legs would look like they sat under his body better if he was a little more fit and his body was trimmer. 

Anyone else see concerns in his hind end? The only video I got from the seller was really poor quality- very blurry and out of focus- so you really couldn't see much about how he moves beyond what you can see in the still shots.


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## carshon

The pics are not the best and he is travelling at an arc in most of them. he does seem a little heavy in the front - my mare was the same - but not cresty - but she was extremely light on her feet. I cannot see his hocks very well but do not see anything too glaringly wrong. The pics seem to show someone trying to get their horse to camp out so he looks a little strung out and the pose is not overly flattering to his topline. Personally I would reserve judgment until you can take better pics or video yourself or have a chance to ride him.

Often a willing attitude will make up for some minor conformational issues.


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## Avna

He's overweight and out of shape, which is going to make him look worse than he is.


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## egrogan

^^Yep, that's pretty much what BO and I concluded. The pictures aren't good but even given the poor quality photos there's nothing so glaringly bad it's not worth going to see him. And I totally agree that attitude and 'rideability' is my top priority- I don't want a horse with obvious physical issues that mean I'll have no chance of him/her ever staying sound after riding 25 miles, but perfect conformation isn't the goal. I don't see anything truly horrible with this horse.


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## Avna

I like him. He is handsome, no glaringly obvious faults, and even though he's a bit tubby, he still has an elegant neck and throatlatch, good reach, nice shoulder, soft expression .... and the right color!


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## phantomhorse13

I actually really like the fact that even fluffy, he does NOT have a big crest (which would make me worry about IR, Cushings, etc). He does seem to be a bit front-end heavy.. but not enough it would be an immediate deal-breaker for me.

When you go see him, take note of what his front ankles/pasterns look like.. if you see a lot of windpuffs or other blemishes, that may be a sign that he is hard on his front end. 

I am back and forth about a deposit being refundable depending on PPE.. I guess it would depend on how much of his price was given. I can see from your viewpoint that you don't want to pay for a horse that doesn't pass a PPE.. but from the seller's standpoint, that money is her reimbursement for his time off the market where maybe she missed someone willing to just pay for the horse without a PPE.


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## egrogan

Had a lovely ride with Izzy and our trail buddies today. It was HOT, but the woods felt nice. We rode the long pond loop out, and then doubled back the way we came, which was our longest ride since Izzy's been feeling better- a little over 3 miles. That put us over 100 miles for the year! There were definitely moments this summer when I worried about whether I'd have to retire Izzy outright, and I am so grateful to be where we are again. I do love this girl.

She, on the other hand...being clear she still does _not _love having to follow.


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## frlsgirl

ohhh, I like him. He has a correctly developed neck which is a good sign that he was ridden correctly; his hind quarters a a bit parked out and he is a bit overweight, but those are all things that can be worked on.

So glad Izzy is back to her sassy, happy, healthy self!


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## egrogan

Enjoyed meeting the gelding this morning. He was at someone's house, and unfortunately there was really nowhere to ride. They had a tiny dry lot with bad footing, and I asked to be able to take him out on the road. Also, his feet were pretty bad- long toes, very overgrown bars, so that combined with the hard gravel road made it tough to see how he'll really ride. Even so, I did ride some. 

The positives- he was personality plus. Curious, kind eye, quiet. He rode away from the barn willingly, even though his pasture buddy was going nuts calling for him. We went aways down the road, and he hesitated once. I let him stop, look, think about it, and told him to keep going, which he did. That was a big plus. He rushed a little when we turned back towards home, but I asked him to come back to a walk, and he did. Definitely the kind of ride I'd be confident with, if that's how he gets when he's stressed out. Owner said it was.

The negatives though- I'm including some video below to see him moving. He paddles noticeably. His trot felt pretty choppy, and his hind end was somewhat weak. Thoughts on watching him move?

This first video isn't great, as that pen was pretty thick in some places and not level at all.





He was brave going through all this stuff though















BO didn't love him from the video, but her advice was to see if the owner would be willing to trailer him somewhere with an arena, or even up to our barn (it's about 45 minutes). She thought I should have a real chance to see how he moves in reasonable footing, particularly because it didn't feel fair to him to try to canter him on that road with his feet. So I'm not writing him off yet- but if his seller can't do that, I feel stuck as I'm just not sure how I'd get a better feel for how he moves. Personality wise, I'm sold.

Funnily, she actually really encouraged me to think again about the first mare I saw up in VT. I find that intriguing...Lots to think about.


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## egrogan

Oh, also. He definitely isn't fit, but he didn't look nearly as fat in person. The pictures didn't do him much justice. 

And, he was listed as "around 15.0" - yeah, no way on that. Totally fine for me, but others who are not as short as me may be disappointed


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## Avna

He looks a real sweetheart, Erin. It looks almost like he's paddling much more on his right front than his left. I wonder what a good trim and maybe shoes might do for him. I also agree there is something wobbly about his real movement. In the pen he looks like he is hitting rocks or his soles are sore. Wouldn't judge his trot on that basis!


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Oh, also. He definitely isn't fit, but he didn't look nearly as fat in person. The pictures didn't do him much justice.
> 
> And, he was listed as "around 15.0" - yeah, no way on that. Totally fine for me, but others who are not as short as me may be disappointed


If you are as tall as me, he's more like 14.2 than 15. Perfect size! (refer to signature...)


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## phantomhorse13

I agree with your BO that trying to evaluate him in that situation is impossible. While I give him kudos for being so willing.. I have no idea if I think he is sound or footsore or sore somewhere else to cause that kind of choppy gait. The fact you were comfortable enough on him to wish you could try his canter certainly gives him a thumbs up.

If what you rode and felt was truly his way of going, would you take him? If the owner would not be willing to haul him somewhere and you never got to try him again, would you be sorry?


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> It looks almost like he's paddling much more on his right front than his left. I wonder what a good trim and maybe shoes might do for him. I also agree there is something wobbly about his real movement. In the pen he looks like he is hitting rocks or his soles are sore. Wouldn't judge his trot on that basis!





phantomhorse13 said:


> I agree with your BO that trying to evaluate him in that situation is impossible. While I give him kudos for being so willing.. I have no idea if I think he is sound or footsore or sore somewhere else to cause that kind of choppy gait.


I made a cardinal mistake in horse shopping- I didn't have them ride first. It was an older couple, she didn't really look that excited about riding, and she saddled him and just sort of nodded like it was expected that next I'd just hop up and get going. If they had ridden him first, I would have seen it.

He definitely felt choppy while riding, but I had no idea he was paddling like he was. I felt the choppiness, but was chalking it up to being out of shape and those feet, and thinking BO is a master at figuring out how to get horses moving their best so thought some lessons would improve the chop. Then I saw the video and my heart sank a little. To be honest, I didn't feel the hind end weakness as much and only saw that after looking at the video and having BO point it out. But it was obvious there was something wonky in front.



phantomhorse13 said:


> If what you rode and felt was truly his way of going, would you take him?


I don't see how I could, if it's a structural/soundness issue. When everyone who's seen the video so far hasn't just shrugged it off to feet needing a trim, as sweet as he is, I need a sound horse and one who's likely going to stay sound. 



> If the owner would not be willing to haul him somewhere and you never got to try him again, would you be sorry?


I _would _feel sorry about that. His personality seemed exactly like what I wanted. You're right, I felt quite confident on him...like there would of course be challenges to work on and improvements to be made, but that I would be well within my comfort zone to make them. I did let my mind start riding down the trails on his back...

But, he has to be sound.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> But, he has to be sound.


Yes! That is what the PPE is for. Paddling is maybe a bit unsightly, but it doesn't necessarily mean unsoundness.

Sounds like you like him enough to try for the next step, which would be to have him hauled somewhere barefoot friendly to try him again. Though in a perfect world, he would also have his feet attended to beforehand. How long has it been since his last trim?

Are you friendly/comfortable with your farrier? Would s/he be willing to look at pictures you take of the horse's feet and how he goes (walking and trotting away from and towards the camera), if you can get the horse hauled somewhere for another ride?

Overdue feet can be a simple fix.. or a nightmare in disguise. I would definitely want a trusted farrier involved in the decision, as well as the PPE (esp if the PPE is done by a vet you don't know).


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## egrogan

Yep, my vet gave me a recommendation for a vet she trusts in the seller's area, and I spoke with that vet on Friday just in case it was a definite "yes" over the weekend and I had to move quickly. She has availability this week and next week for a PPE if I wanted one.

And yes, I could definitely text pictures and get advice from a couple of different farriers I trust. It's a little unclear how long since his last trim, but easily a few months. They were clearly embarrassed about this and said "he's very overdue"- supposedly the farrier was schedule last week and the truck broke down. So, there is a chance he could end up with a trim this week if they do get the farrier out. They mentioned it had been 3 years since his teeth were done though 

Sigh. I wish I had a crystal ball where I could look into the future and see how he moves after a few good trims and some proper riding...


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## gottatrot

Just be careful, make sure what the vet tells you about the reasons for his gait and hoof imbalances make good sense to you. At my barn there is a sweet, young horse that had no PPE done. He arrived with very bad hoof flares and after a month went lame. He's been at the barn for a year, had specialized shoeing the whole time under the vet's advice and is still lame most of the time. The vet says it is all musculoskeletal due to the hoof imbalances and the fact that he has never had a trim that allowed his body to be right. But still, it has not resolved.


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## egrogan

Yep, good advice. Thanks @gottatrot.


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## carshon

I think he looks pretty good in the videos and did not see as much hind end weakness as your BO may have seen. the paddling to me is not that big of an issue - my hubbies TWH mares paddles on both fronts and is ridden 10-15 miles each week up and down hills etc.

You looked quite nice on him - and I loved his kind eye.

The foot issue I would have to agree upon - he must see a farrier before any further riding or they must reimburse you for your farrier to see him if you are able to bring him for a test ride.

Overall I think you looked happy and relaxed on him - I understand the first mare was probably prettier and more refined but your description of her personality does not seem like a good fit for you.

Good luck!


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## egrogan

Spoke with the seller. She seemed a little surprised at the request but was open to the idea of bringing him to an arena near her house to try him in better footing. Also said the farrier _is _supposed to come this week. We have tentatively said Sunday. I heard a little hesitation in her voice so we'll see if she still says yes once she thinks about it more. As BO keeps telling me, 'if it's meant to be, it will work out...'


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## egrogan

Confirmed with seller to ride him again, post-trim, this coming Sunday.

Also hoping to schedule a time, ideally before Sunday, to see a couple of mares at Winfield Morgans in CT.


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## egrogan

It's been quite a week! Work was super busy, including a quick trip to Chicago, but it was actually a great week for work-related stuff so it's ending on a high note.

That meant no saddle time with Izzy until this morning though. Fall finally arrived, and we had a lovely if exciting ride, full of boats, hunters, and porcupines. I posted about it in the trail thread :grin: Don't worry, we made it home in one piece!









In other news, the gelding I liked, and was supposed to ride again on Sunday, got sold today to new owners who didn't care about a vet check or second ride. I'm a bit bummed because he had the personality I am hoping for. But there were the physical flags to think about. Oh well, sometimes being cautious means that you miss out to someone who isn't. That's ok.

The good news is that I have an exciting afternoon coming up tomorrow. I'm riding 3 or 4 mares down in CT, all basically bred and raised to be the kind of horse that can go from the trail to the ring and back again. I'm feeling optimistic. At the very least, how fun to get to test out so many horses in one day! Keep your fingers crossed that something ends up being the right fit!


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## frlsgirl

There will always be another horse @egrogan - and if you are shopping for Morgans, your part of the country has TONS of them; no reason why you shouldn't find one that's the PERFECT fit for you.

Have fun tomorrow when you try the mares! I never got to shop around; I bought the first horse I tried! That Morgan charm got me hooked!


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## phantomhorse13

Can't wait to hear how tomorrow goes - excellent experience for you even if you don't want to bring any of them home!


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## frlsgirl

phantomhorse13 said:


> Can't wait to hear how tomorrow goes - excellent experience for you even if you don't want to bring any of them home!


I have the opposite problem; I want to bring them all home. :cowboy:


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## Avna

If I wasn't going to be in Springfield helping my daughter try on wedding dresses I would be right there, "helping"! There are few things that take precedence over looking at horses but this, I'm afraid, is one of them.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I have the opposite problem; I want to bring them all home. :cowboy:


Well of course I've _wanted _all of them :wink: 



Avna said:


> If I wasn't going to be in Springfield helping my daughter try on wedding dresses I would be right there, "helping"! There are few things that take precedence over looking at horses but this, I'm afraid, is one of them.


I know you would! I wish you could come today because I think you'd probably have as much fun as me. I hope you have a great time with your daughter and she finds something she likes. Decisions, decisions...

************************
Off to get a quick ride with Izzy, which unfortunately for her I think will have to be in the indoor because it's rainy this morning.

And then on to my adventure! :grin:


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## phantomhorse13

Well?!


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## Avna

What she said.^


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## egrogan

Ha, you guys are too funny. I was exhausted when I got home last night and I had a lot of photos and video to go through! 

So...I am confident my horse is there :happydance: I just need to make a final decision.

I can't say enough good things about the ladies at Windfield Morgans. It was like a hit parade of nice mares that just kept coming. The whole process ran like clockwork, mares got cleaned up and tacked up, I got to look them over on the cross-ties, play with their feet, watch them get saddled and girthed up, etc. All stood politely for the whole process. Then they had one of their students ride them w/t/c, and she was a very nice rider who really showed them off to their best. Then I rode. Some of them literally hadn't been ridden in months- I think it's a real testament to the minds of these horses that they could be pulled in and ridden like that. Even though a few of them were...ahem...a bit "fluffy" and out of shape, they still were very willing and interested in what was going on around them. It was a cold and blustery day, about 45*F and breezy, so some of them had some spunk. It was nice to see them at their most "frisky" and see that even in that state of mind, they were very reasonable mares. Truly, I think I'd be lucky to have any of them. But the luxury I have is getting to pick "the one." :grin:

I saw 6, rode 5 (one had something bothering her mouth so couldn't carry a bit- we just lunged her and dentist will see her this week). I'm going back on Friday to ride 2 again so I can get them out on the trail system. 

I'll try to organize my thoughts below. Unfortunately we had a few tech issues and I didn't get as much video of each of them as I hoped, but I'll share some of what I have. Why is it so easy to confuse the "photo" and "video" button on an iPhone!? :redface: I did have to deal with the curse of the all purpose saddle again while riding them- I hate riding in that kind of saddle! I felt a bit perched and tipped forward on all of them given I'm so used to a dressage saddle. BO thought the saddle looked too far forward on a few of them so that may have all been a reason I felt like I was up on their neck. So watch the horses rather than me in the video, knowing there are some incorrect diagonals from getting off balance, some noisy lower legs, etc. I'll bring my saddle with me Friday. I know that's a crutch, but I truly am more comfortable that way. Makes me wonder if I thought I liked the gelding last weekend because I liked _him_, or I just felt comfortable riding him in his owner's nice dressage saddle?

Anyway...you want to hear about the horses!

I think this is my favorite. I loved her build/size, really nice trot, lots of trail experience. Ten years old. She weaned a foal about a month ago so is just coming back into work. 























Sadly we missed out on getting video of me on this one. Since she's just coming back into work after being out with the baby, she's only had a couple of rides. So they did lunge her to blow off a little steam first.









And just because he's adorable, this is her baby. He's for sale if anyone's looking for a nice weanling!









This is another strong contender. She is a little out of shape but has mostly been used as a trail guide horse. Of all the horses they brought out, they think she would like the distance riding job the most. She loves the trails and would trot all day if you let her. She was a bit fussy with her mouth in the ring, particularly at the walk, and a couple of times actually jerked the reins away which would be annoying if that were a habit (they said no...). They thought she'd just love the conditioning for rides. I was trying to look past her winter coat and her lack of fitness to see how much leaner she might be when she's doing more work. She's certainly a solid mare. She's 14, which is really a bit older than I'd like (trying to stay around 10ish).





And with me riding:





This is the one who wasn't ridden because of the mouth issue. Clearly out of shape. But a cute horse, 11 years old. A little pokey on the lunge, but really, she hasn't done much recently.





This one was absolutely adorable. Tiny, barely 14.0, and 12 years old. Apparently born early and never really caught up. If I'm remembering correctly, she's at least a half sister to the first mare above, if not full. She was just sold back to the farm when her girl went off to college. I was drawn to her because I love a pretty bay, and she reminded me of a mini Izzy. :wink: But that's not a good reason to like a horse. I have never felt big on a horse before, but I did with her. I was surprised in the video that I didn't look as dumb on her as I felt, but I think realistically she's probably too narrow and fine boned to carry me miles. And, she's got very dainty feet. I think she'll be great with another kid doing hunter/jumper.














And the last one was this girl. She was the least fit and the least thrilled about being ridden :grin: She had a ****y mare face that could break mirrors but was a good sport deep down. Her trot was a little shuffly but her canter was actually really comfortable. Her attempts at a tantrum are what have me laughing in the video. She gave a couple of half hearted bucks to their rider as well. Like I said, good heart, not such a fan of exercise!














So, have at it. Thoughts? Advice? What else should I be thinking about? Like I said, I'll have a chance to go back Friday and I want to make sure I am looking for the right things when I am there again.


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## Avna

Oh my gosh. When are you going back on Friday? I want to see them in person! 
I don't have time right now to focus carefully -- going back to look at that horse paradise property in Conway MA this morning -- but will when I can. How exciting!


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Oh my gosh. When are you going back on Friday? I want to see them in person!
> I don't have time right now to focus carefully -- going back to look at that horse paradise property in Conway MA this morning -- but will when I can. How exciting!


I was going to text you tomorrow when I have the time finalized. They are at a show today so will let me know when they are back at the barn and check the schedule. How late in the day could you go?

GOOD LUCK house hunting!


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## frlsgirl

oh boy, so hard to pick isn't it? I personally would avoid the one with the head tossing issue, but that's just me. I kind of like the one on the lunge. The thing with Morgan mares as you know, they are very opinionated and if they haven't done much and you suddenly put them on a regular riding schedule, you are going to get a lot of opinion about that. Are you ok with that? The upside is that they likely don't have the wear and tear of a regular riding horse. So it's just a matter of what can you deal with and what is a deal breaker for you.


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## phantomhorse13

Yay for having such a positive experience!! I agree with your BO that the saddles seem too far forward to me, so I could certainly see that throwing your balance slightly off.

I like the looks of the first (who appears to be sooty buckskin in those photos?). While the picture isn't an ideal confo shot, it gives you a pretty good gist. She seems fairly balanced and has good bone. Her neck may be a bit on the short side and she has a thicker throatlatch, but neither of those things worry me about a horse in terms of going down the trail. She isn't the best mover I have ever seen in terms of show ring movement and goes with a high head, but often those are the most comfortable to ride down the trail! She seems willing and forward.

The next one I think would be a good looking mare when she is fit, but I have to say the head flinging thing didn't impress me much. Certainly that is something that may improve with work.. but I would ask if she normally was ridden with contact or not when she was ridden regularly before. Being a trail guide horse means she has lots of trail miles (good), but may mean she has never been taught to accept contact, which will be work for you if you do want to lesson/show as well as trail ride.

The one that wasn't ridden is super cute.. but of course I am biased by greys! She is certainly not skinny, but she seems to be a decent mover. Depending upon what exactly her mouth issue is, I would be interested to see how she does under saddle.

The face on the little bay is also a cutey, but I agree that you look a bit tall for her. Dainty feet would also be a no-go for me.

****y-face mare would probably not be high on my list, as I would wonder if her tantrums and half-hearted bucking might become more than half-hearted when she wasn't obese. She does seem like she is solidly built.

Other things to look at/make note of would be feet/legs. Are they shod or barefoot? If barefoot, have they ever been shod? Normal shoes? How do they behave for the farrier? Do the feet have odd growth rings (which may be a sign of previous laminitic episodes)? I would also ask about overall health, specifically asking about previous injuries or colic episodes. Ask how they do with the vet (no needle-phobias for example). Did you watch them get caught or were they already in stalls? Since you will be taking them out on trail, you should be able to get a decent idea of reactivity on your ride, but I also like to "accidentally" drop things or wave them around or toss them just to see how the horse reacts while tacking and grooming. None of them seem to have missed any meals, but I would ask what their normal hay and/or grain ration is. Any supplements and if so, why?

I am so excited for you!! :cowboy:


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> The thing with Morgan mares as you know, they are very opinionated and if they haven't done much and you suddenly put them on a regular riding schedule, you are going to get a lot of opinion about that. Are you ok with that?


Yes, such a great point. And, I am ok with it because I feel like I have so much more support around me with this horse. It's been fascinating watching these videos of me riding all these different horses, seeing things that felt insecure while I was riding look a little better than I thought on the video, and things that I felt fine about while riding look surprisingly bad in the video. I can't wait to start taking regular lessons with my BO. I imagine lots of that in the immediate future with whichever horse I end up with- and certainly over the winter when it's harder to get out on trails. And I have a mentor in place as I start doing trail miles, which will be so valuable. So- will it all be easy? No way. But I think I can handle it!



phantomhorse13 said:


> I like the looks of the first (who appears to be sooty buckskin in those photos?). While the picture isn't an ideal confo shot, it gives you a pretty good gist. She seems fairly balanced and has good bone. Her neck may be a bit on the short side and she has a thicker throatlatch, but neither of those things worry me about a horse in terms of going down the trail. She isn't the best mover I have ever seen in terms of show ring movement and goes with a high head, but often those are the most comfortable to ride down the trail! She seems willing and forward.


Yes, she is a sooty buckskin. I have to be honest, I have some trepidation about this "colorful Morgan" thing- I feel like they should be bays :wink:- but I'm not going to pass on a nice horse because of the color. BO thought her neck looked short too. I don't think it's as short as it looks in the picture, maybe because of saddle placement. I _do_ think the others have necks that look short and _are _short, whereas I think hers may be a little more balanced in real life. 



phantomhorse13 said:


> The next one I think would be a good looking mare when she is fit, but I have to say the head flinging thing didn't impress me much.


Yep, this has been pretty universal feedback about her, both from you and @frlsgirl, and from BO too.


phantomhorse13 said:


> I would ask if she normally was ridden with contact or not when she was ridden regularly before.


I actually did ask that when I was riding, mostly because I wanted to be sure I wasn't doing something that was unintentionally ****ing her off if she was used to always having a draping rein. They said absolutely, she's used to contact. She does hunter/jumper lessons and local shows as well, so she's used to be ridden in the ring. She was a little fussy with their rider too, so I guess it wasn't just me. I don't know what to make of it, they seemed surprised too. 



phantomhorse13 said:


> The one that wasn't ridden is super cute.. but of course I am biased by greys! She is certainly not skinny, but she seems to be a decent mover. Depending upon what exactly her mouth issue is, I would be interested to see how she does under saddle.


She is cute! Actually, she's a dappled out palomino but has a lot of grey tones to her mane and tail. She is on my list for Friday if they get the dentist out to look at her this week. Here are a couple of other short clips of her, maybe you can see her a little better.









Thanks @phantomhorse13 for the other list of health/care related questions. We did talk a lot about feet-all but the little bay are barefoot right now since they're mostly out of work, but when in work they've all been shod with 'regular' shoes as both the ring and trails are rocky. I didn't notice any weird growth rings but it's not something I was consciously looking for so will be sure to take note of that. I just looked back at some pictures and didn't see anything obvious. But I will look more carefully.

They live out year round as a large herd on a 40ish acre hilly, somewhat rocky pasture, and since they were all born and raised there, that's how they've always lived. I like that. They all have nice bone and solid looking feet. 

They are basically just eating hay, what's left of the pasture, and water, and as you can tell, doing quite well on that diet! :wink: Didn't ask about supplements yet but good idea. I doubt anyone's getting much of anything, except maybe the first mare since she had a foal on her all spring.

And yes, I will do the "can I spook you" stuff around them next time.

Thanks everyone! I'm feeling excited.

********************
In Izzy news, she was feeling the "fall sillies" yesterday. We went out with Ida and Jazz, and on the way home when Jazz was leading, Izzy spooked at a bunch of geese taking off from the pond. The spook turned into a bunch of crowhopping behind Jazz (Jazz is a saint and just kept walking) but Izzy was so riled up we had to go to the lead. As we turned a corner, a squirrel ran in front of us and rustled some leaves, and Izzy started BUCKING over that. I mean...come on! A squirrel!? I was mildly impressed with myself for sitting that, as was my riding buddy :wink: 

She pranced all the way home so instead of turning for the barn when we left the trail, we turned away and went a mile or so down the road. She was still on high alert but managed to walk instead of prance. We were passed by a scary truck with a really rattly trailer, and she did well with that. Then we went by a house with a dog on one of those "zip line" type runs, and that made a ton of weird noise with a barking dog attached to it, but she had found her brain by then. So it all ended well, but goodness, I can do without the bucking!

My lovely husband told me to threaten her with a trade-in for the new horse, but she didn't seem particularly concerned :wink:


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## carshon

I am so happy for you that this trip had so many "contenders" and I have to be honest I loved them all! Not a buckskin fan but that mare seemed rather nice. The sooty palomino had me drooling because of all of the chrome - and the little bay *sigh who doesn't love a bay horse?

I have no comments on how any of them will do in the long distance riding - I love a Morgan for their heart so I think all would try their best. 

Good Luck with the second ride - can't wait to hear the results!


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## knightrider

My preferences are pretty much useless because I always buy a horse from my instinct. I've never gotten a vet check, but so far, I've never gotten it wrong. On the other hand, I've never used my instinct for someone else, so pay no attention to what I am saying. Why am I posting? I don't know, I just wanted to say I liked the second horse, the bay. Her head tossing can be fixed, I think. I liked the way I felt when I watched you riding her. You seemed right on her. Stupid reasons, right? I didn't like the stiff looking neck on the first one and the others . . . I don't know, I just liked the second one.

When I bought horses as a kid, sometimes I looked a long long time before the horse came along that screamed at me, "You MUST buy this one." There was no internet in those days--we looked at classified ads and went out and tried the horses. The first time I bought a horse from the internet was 2005 and all I had to go on was a photo. He was a yearling colt (as an adult, I usually bought a yearling colt and kept them until they died--which means I haven't bought a lot of horses), and as soon as I saw the picture, I knew he was THE ONE. (He was!) In February, my next door neighbor got a young colt, and as soon as he came off the trailer, my heart just sank because I felt he was meant to be mine. I'd never even ridden him, but I moved heaven and earth to get him. He started bucking and rearing for my neighbor, and he gladly sold him to me (last thing I needed was another horse). We went through a terrible time of his bucking and rearing with me and I wondered if this time, I was really and truly wrong. But I wasn't. He's probably the best horse I've ever owned. He's just amazing.
As I said, I haven't been wrong yet, but I've never tried to have an instinct for anyone else, so just chiming in to say I am thrilled with your search, and I hope with all my heart that whichever one you choose, it will be perfect for you!


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## frlsgirl

So ok, I like the dapple/palomino mare even more now that I saw the other video; aside from being drop dead gorgeous, she seems to have some solid bone structure on her and she seems really agreeable. Can't wait to hear how she rides.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> My preferences are pretty much useless because I always buy a horse from my instinct. I've never gotten a vet check, but so far, I've never gotten it wrong. On the other hand, I've never used my instinct for someone else, so pay no attention to what I am saying. Why am I posting? I don't know, I just wanted to say I liked the second horse, the bay. Her head tossing can be fixed, I think. I liked the way I felt when I watched you riding her. You seemed right on her. Stupid reasons, right? I didn't like the stiff looking neck on the first one and the others . . . I don't know, I just liked the second one.


Not stupid at all, thank you for weighing in. Here's what I'll say though- I would never trust my instinct on this. I'm probably overthinking, and I'm sure there's a happy medium, but I simply don't have an instinct to trust. I am so envious of those of you with a lifetime of horses behind you. Can I trust my instinct when, say, cooking? Absolutely, because I grew up in the kitchen with my mom and grandma and can close my eyes and see how the pieces fit together. It's infinitely frustrating to have such passion for horses and so little experience or instinct to draw on- I truly don't have "the eye," and I've worked to improve, truly. But I still need a lot of feedback from more knowledgeable people- and you all are part of it. :grin:

As far as the second horse, just got a message from the seller she was ridden yesterday and went smoothly. We'll see!



frlsgirl said:


> So ok, I like the dapple/palomino mare even more now that I saw the other video; aside from being drop dead gorgeous, she seems to have some solid bone structure on her and she seems really agreeable. Can't wait to hear how she rides.


No new news on what the dentist situation is. But she is a beautiful horse, no question. I'll let myself have a superficial moment here and say she doesn't really look Morgan to me- she looks like a little Haflinger. I know, I know, dumb comment. It's just how I felt looking at her...

I'm all set for a 10am appt this Friday. 

***************
Had a morning ride with Izzy yesterday. It was a sparkling fall morning- blindingly bright sun and beautiful blue skies. _Squinting into the sunshine!









_Our ride turned dicey quickly though. BO had just opened up an extension to the "gallop track" behind the turnout fields, which is awesome. We were trotting along happily when we spooked a few horses who aren't used to the track being open and having riders back there. Unfortunately, one of the horses we spooked was BO's older mare who is losing her sight. She freaked out, smashed a solid wooden fence post which cracked in half with a huge noise, and then got tangled in the electric tape. Thank god it pulled away as it's meant to, but I can't get the image of her with all four legs flailing through the tape out of my mind. Thankfully, she was FINE, just a little shaken. Not even any scratches. But I just felt awful that it happened. 

I was really shaken too. BO told me not to worry, just go on with the ride. She was right, there was nothing I could have done, but I was still a little shaky as we rode out. Of course Izzy was worried because I was worried, so she tried to turn back once, but that sort of snapped me out of it and we were able to keep going. I wouldn't say it was my favorite ride ever, but she actually trotted out fairly nicely up and down hills (a big deal because trotting downhill she generally falls onto her forehand and is cantering by the time we hit the bottom). We were both fine by the time we got back to the barn. She was happy to have her apple and call it a day.









I won't see her the next couple of days but she has a much needed trimmer appt Thursday morning.


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## egrogan

:happydance:​

Had a fabulous day today...and a deposit has been made!! I guess it's not *truly* official until we have the vet check next Thursday, but I just really fell in love with this horse today and as long as the vet check goes well, she's mine. ​




































She is eager and powerful, but completely reasonable. She rode happily in the ring, and rode the same out on the trails. She led, she followed, she rode side-by-side. We saw a group of riders off in the distance on the trails, and she didn't get strong or freaked out, she just kept trotting along nicely. She really is what I've been looking for.



















There are a million things I can see that I need to fix about my riding in these videos, and I will. She's going to make me such a better rider! But even my BO was excited about her after seeing these today, and she is not one to gush. We're going to be such a fun project!
​I'll have a lot more to say about her when it's truly official, but I'm trying to keep the enthusiasm under control until she is fully mine. But we're almost there!


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## frlsgirl

OMG I see why you like her so much; she seems just totally chill like "yeah, I'm trotting, and yeah I'm cantering and it's totally cool" just a Steady Eddy type but not in a wore down, elderly kind of way. Plus you look GREAT together! Keeping all toes and fingers crossed!


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## Avna

Oh, you do look great together! I'm so happy for you! She is a doll. Is that what you call sooty buckskin? How old is she? I want to meet her! 

Now you can come visit me and we can trail ride together!


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## Chevaux

Excellent!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone! She is a sooty buckskin, 10 years old. She's going to be a really cool horse.

Last week when I first saw her was one of the only times she'd been ridden in the past year because of the foal, so she was clearly distracted and more than a little excited. Yesterday, after being ridden a few times during the week, she was like a different horse. Still great energy, but more organized. Her trot was SO comfortable, and her canter was much more powerful than what I'm used to but in a big, fun way. She was super agreeable, all you had to do was ask and she was happy to do it.

That all carried through to the trails. We had to cross a main road with tractor trailers going 50+mph and she wasn't phased, not even by air breaks when they stopped to let us cross. The horse the seller was riding spooked a couple of times and she just looked over at him like "what's wrong with you?" She's been on these trails a lot, so of course things will be different when she's someplace she doesn't know, but I think she's going to be so much fun to put miles on. That trot....:grin:


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## phantomhorse13

WOOHOO!!

And don't worry about her coloring.. let her roll a few times and everyone will think she's bay. :mrgreen:

So so so pleased for you. Fingers and toes crossed the vet check goes well.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> And don't worry about her coloring.. let her roll a few times and everyone will think she's bay. :mrgreen:


_Excellent _idea! :grin:


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## frlsgirl

See I told you if you kept looking you would find the perfect Morgan: brains, beauty and mad skilz !


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> See I told you if you kept looking you would find the perfect Morgan: brains, beauty and mad skilz !


Yes, absolutely! It was definitely worth it to keep looking.


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## egrogan

Busy today. Our local tack shop has a huge 4-day annual anniversary sale, and this is the weekend. I'm not much of a shopper, but their deals are usually good enough to brave the crowds, and the only kind of shopping I find tolerable is stocking up on stuff you will always need at a nice discount. I got Izzy a free 30-day supply of her Cosequin (best deal of the day, because I got there at opening time and actually stood in line- not my style at all but it paid off!), some new brushes (you know, just in case I end up with an extra horse around that needs brushing), and a bunch of fun little freebies of the fly spray and horse shampoo I use. And tons of chicken supplies :grin:

From the sale, I went to the barn to see Izzy. Had a long talk making plans with BO in case a new horse shows up at the barn for me :wink: 

Then took Izzy on a nice ride. It still seems too green in the woods for this time of year, but today was the first day the woods looked different because leaves are starting to fall. If you look just to the left of her left ear, you can see a couple of turkeys that were running down the trail. We came over the crest of one hill at exactly the same time they came running over another. We all stopped to look at each other for a minute and then they kept running.









We did w/t/c on the trails today but when we doubled back for home, she got a little silly wanting to charge up the final hill so I got her stopped at the top, turned around and walked down, then turned around and walked back up it again.

She was really sweaty when we got to the barn, so we walked up and down the road to try to cool out. I didn't realize just how sweaty she was so I spent a good 30 minutes just trying to rub the sweat out of her coat after untacking. There were a bunch of other boarders there so had fun talking about the potential new horse.


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## Tazzie

Oh I'm so excited for you!! She's a real beauty and I really think you'll have a great time with her! Congratulations! I'm super excited to follow your journey with the two of them! Fingers crossed the vet check goes well!


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## carshon

Woo Hoo! This is the first post I looked for when I logged on....... I am so happy for you and I love her color. Fingers crossed for a great Vet Check.

What is her name?


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## frlsgirl

When will you know something?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> When will you know something?


Vet check is tomorrow morning! I am going to do x-rays and some bloodwork, so will be a couple of days. 



carshon said:


> What is her name?


I think I'll wait until things are official to share her registered name just to not jinx anything. Her barn name will need a refresh I think!

********************
I was in DC at the beginning of the week so snuck over to see Izzy quickly at lunch today. I found this bad horse when I got there!









I guess that's how she got herself out last time. After I got the fence fixed, she didn't seem particularly chastised :wink:









I didn't have much time so just a quick hand graze and brushed the mud off of her. Found a tick on her lady parts  Let's just say that little tick hook remover and lady parts don't work together very well! 

It's amazing how much fuzzier she is than she was just a couple of days ago. It still doesn't feel like fall here, but it's better than it was over the weekend.


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## phantomhorse13

Fingers and toes crossed!!!


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## carshon

anxiously waiting to hear about the vet check!


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## egrogan

You're not the only one who's been anxious @*carshon* :wink: I barely got any sleep last night and was awake super early. I had to get up and move around and my chickens were very confused when I let them out in the dark.

So...it's all good news to report!!! :happydance: 

The vet check went even better than I thought it would. First, her disposition does seem to be as lovely as I hoped. She stood so patiently through about two hours of poking and prodding by three random strangers from the vet's office (they came with quite an entourage- a vet, an intern, and an assistant). Her legs and feet looked great! She didn't react to hoof testers aside from a very mild reaction on her R front heel bulb, and she had a tiny bit of sensitivity on that R front when trotting out on hard gravel. Really minor though. And x-rays on that R foot were very clean. Virtually no reaction at all to flexions, not even a bobble in the first step or two. She's barefoot right now but has been shod in the past when doing a lot of riding on hard rocky ground. Vet said she had "some of the cleanest hock films I've seen" which made me all smiles! We also did x-rays on the front feet, those were clean too. 

Her eyesight looked good, vitals were all normal. She's obviously completely out of shape but her topline actually looks nice and after being lunged on a circle trot/canter in both directions for about 5 min, her heart rate did shoot up but recovered pretty easily. She was breathing pretty hard but she's had about 10 rides in the last year so I think she'll be fine with some slow work to get back into condition. Based on all that, I'm feeling great! I just didn't want to be heartbroken by lameness issues, so it was a huge relief to see those nice clean joints and bones!

We pulled blood for a CBC, coggins, and Lyme. Will get CBC back tomorrow, but Lyme will take until Tuesday to come back from Cornell. Coggins comes sometime in between, I can't remember. Also updated her flu/rhino since she needed that. She was skeptical about the needles at first but when someone stood at her head and covered her eye a bit, she was totally fine about it.

The one thing that did not go well was that she pretty much flipped out when the vet tried to open her mouth to look at her teeth. She pulled back hard, she was being held with a regular halter and lead and didn't get away but she wanted nothing to do with it. We tried a few times throughout the morning to get into her mouth-and bribed her with a LOT of peppermints- but she wasn't having it. It's weird because she was totally nonchalant about bridling and rode with a normal snaffle bit last week. I bridled and unbridled her and she didn't flinch at all. Owners seemed perplexed about it too. So that will clearly be something to work on. Vet offered to sedate her and go in to have a look, but I decided to just not push it as my vet will be out on 10/26 to do Izzy's teeth, so we'll just have her looked at then. I know she's overdue for the dentist but there was nothing obvious that could be felt from the outside of her face. Probably will need sedation I imagine; even if it's something we eventually work on, I don't want to give her a bad experience just as we're getting to know each other.

Of course we're "officially" waiting until bloodwork is back to say she's mine, but we made tentative plans to have her hauled up next Thursday! :grin: :grin: :grin: I'm SO excited!!


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## Avna

WOO HOO!! I can't be more thrilled for you. Cannot wait to meet her.


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## phantomhorse13

WOOHOO!!! 

So so so happy for you!!

Do we get to know her name now?!


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## egrogan

Let me make sure there's nothing scary lurking on the CBC tomorrow first. I'm so superstitious!


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## Avna

But do you have a name all picked out or do we get to pepper you with suggestions?


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## carshon

:loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower::loveshower:


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> But do you have a name all picked out or do we get to pepper you with suggestions?


She has a registered name which is very lofty. She will need a barn name. I like horses to have people names. I have a couple of thoughts in mind but I need to get to know her better before something sticks. I do have a couple of ideas but I am also open to suggestions :grin:


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## egrogan

I just let myself buy a new halter though.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> I just let myself buy a new halter though.


But of course.


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## Chevaux

egrogan said:


> I just let myself buy a new halter though.


What's a new halter without a new saddle pad?:grin:


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## Avna

Chevaux said:


> What's a new halter without a new saddle pad?:grin:


What's a new saddle pad without matching brow band?


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> What's a new halter without a new saddle pad?:grin:





Avna said:


> What's a new saddle pad without matching brow band?


Well really, she has a big head so she'll need a new bridle to go with that browband since she won't fit any of the cob size stuff I already have. And she'll need a blanket or two. And once she's back in shape, a saddle to go over that nice new saddle pad...

So much for all those times I told my husband the stuff I have squirreled away in my tack trunk would be just fine for my next horse since I'll always have Morgans :wink:

I would really like to have her in light blue and maroon, but it has been really hard to find stuff in those colors, which surprises me.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I would really like to have her in light blue and maroon, but it has been really hard to find stuff in those colors, which surprises me.


I am quite sure Nicole can make you tack in those colors! And I will start keeping an eye out for pads and other fun things. Did the saddle you have seen to fit well enough for now or are you also going to be saddle shopping?


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I am quite sure Nicole can make you tack in those colors! And I will start keeping an eye out for pads and other fun things. Did the saddle you have seen to fit well enough for now or are you also going to be saddle shopping?


That would be awesome!

I think my current dressage saddle is probably going to be ok for just hacking around this fall and taking some dressage lessons when we're stuck inside over the winter, but I want to have my BO take a look when she gets to the barn. As far as I could tell, the saddle sat on her fairly level, and didn't seem to shift side to side or back and forth-and we did ride up and down some fairly steep hills on our test ride. I'm definitely not a saddle fit expert, but the things that stood out to me that I will need to keep in mind were that she has seems to have flat withers and her shoulder blade sits back pretty far. 

I don't really want to buy something for her yet because I'm sure her shape's going to change as she gets back into work. I imagine I will be shopping this spring. I have a shimmable pad so hoping we can make it work for now. Of course, if I'm totally wrong and the saddle is going to hurt or restrict her even in the short term, I'll figure something out.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Well really, she has a big head so she'll need a new bridle to go with that browband since she won't fit any of the cob size stuff I already have. And she'll need a blanket or two. And once she's back in shape, a saddle to go over that nice new saddle pad...
> 
> So much for all those times I told my husband the stuff I have squirreled away in my tack trunk would be just fine for my next horse since I'll always have Morgans :wink:
> 
> I would really like to have her in light blue and maroon, but it has been really hard to find stuff in those colors, which surprises me.


I was thinking she would look very well in hunter green. I have a light blue saddle pad (because I couldn't find one in royal blue) and it looks dirty really fast.


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## carshon

horseloverz.com is having an awesome Eous sale and I just got 2 dressage pads for $10 and $13 - I found a gorgeous teal one on ebay in Aug for my daughters birthday


I think we own a dressage pad and matching ear bonnet in every color since she rides a grey horse and likes a lot of color. Our ear bonnets came from ebay and I paid about $3 each for them from a place in India - I bought one of every color they had and we love them.

**** I may be a tack hoarder.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> I was thinking she would look very well in hunter green.


I did consider that- certainly easier to find stuff in that color- but it's not my first choice.

Thanks @carshon, I'm not familiar with that website but I'll check it out!


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## Avna

Like this!


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## Tazzie

EEK!! I'm so excited for you!! How exciting! Oh I can't wait to see more pictures of her and hear your adventures!

And to hear what you name her! I'm sure a good name will present itself  dying to hear about her registered name!


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## phantomhorse13

Horseloverz has a store not far from here and its where I have gotten all my inexpensive training pads. So far they have held up much better than I would have expected for something under $20! I know I have at least a couple Eous dressage pads (one of which is maroon!).. will have to see if the other have tags or any sort of brand name on them.


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## gottatrot

Just logged on after my vacation and I'm very excited to hear your news! Your soon-to-be new mare looks great and with those good xrays and everything you can confidently do some serious riding with her. Sounds like she is just wonderful. So happy for you!


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## frlsgirl

Me too @gottatrot - just got back late last night and had to check in today to see if she's yours yet. So still waiting for the CBC but it looks promising? I'm so excited for you!


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## egrogan

Hi @*gottatrot* , welcome back! Just saw your journal too and sorry I didn't get any recommendations your way before your trip. Mackinac Island is definitely a fun place to visit and your drive sounds like quite an adventure.



frlsgirl said:


> Me too @*gottatrot* - just got back late last night and had to check in today to see if she's yours yet. So still waiting for the CBC but it looks promising? I'm so excited for you!


Yes, exactly @*frlsgirl* . Vet emailed me all the xray images around lunchtime Friday, and in her message said she'd call me with the CBC results by the end of the day. I never got a call from her though, and by the time I was out of meetings for the day, it was 5:30 and their office was closed when I called. BOOOO! I'll be calling them first thing tomorrow morning. For all intents and purposes though, yes, we're moving forward assuming it's really happening. Both BO and seller are good with her being hauled up this Thursday, so that is the plan!! :grin:

*************************************
It was a beautiful fall day yesterday, went out on a leisurely walk with Izzy. She hadn't been ridden in about a week and she did feel pretty stiff even though it's really warm out. We just kept it easy and strolled a couple of miles through the woods- it was a gorgeous day for that.


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## frlsgirl

Oh wow; beautiful fall day indeed. You guys get the best fall colors up there! Fingers and hooves crossed for the CBC test results!


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## egrogan

Alright friends, after getting A+ bloodwork results back this morning, I am so thrilled to formally introduce you to the lovely Windfield Effervescence!!








(Photo credit Windfield Morgans)

Her current barn name is "Effie," which I don't think will stick. My husband and I keep cracking ourselves up talking about my "Effing new horse." I'm not really sure what her new barn name will be, I'd like it to be a play on Effervescence, or bubbly things. But I also like short, one syllable human names. So the rough list right now seems to be:
-Fizz (not a person name, but gets at the bubbly theme)
-Evie (short for Evian, sparkling water?? And sort of similar to her current barn name)
-Tess (Picks up the "ess" sound in her name)
-Fern (Not related to her name at all- but I like the sound of it)
-Rose/Rosie (BOs favorite)

People have suggested Windy/Winnie/Wynn for a play on her prefix, but I don't really like any of those.

Here's her pedigree. 









Her damside is a very familiar family where I'm from; in fact, through that dam line, she's got half siblings and cousins to my BOs gelding that she took up through PSG. Her sire line is less familiar to me, but I believe it's a lot of Western Working/Brunk lines and I am trying to figure all that out. Any pedigree geeks know anything about her sire's family? 

Both her sire and dam are on the farm, I got to meet both of them. Her dam is a sweet-natured older mare. Sire (now gelded) is a jumper, and very distinctive as he's cremello- I'm not wild about the color but he's very athletic and I think he added a lot of size and substance as her momma is a bit smaller.
Whisper:








(Photo credit Windfield Morgans)

Bravado:








(Photo credit Windfield Morgans)

Here are a few more pictures from when I rode her a couple of weeks ago. I was on such pins and needles during the PPE I didn't even think to get new ones! 



























She arrives on Thursday :grin: And yes, there will be plenty of pictures!


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## Avna

My suggestions:

Bliss 

Phoebe (means 'bright')

Nixie (water sprite)


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## knightrider

So thrilled for you! She is gorgeous!


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## Tazzie

Woohoo!! Congrats on the pretty lady!

I'm useless on names but I'm sure the right one will come to you


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## egrogan

Thanks all! @Tazzie, I agree, I won't be able to pick a name until I spend some time with her and see "who" she really is.


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## phantomhorse13

WOOHOO!!

Not sure that I will be much help on names as I am a non-people namer, but I am sure you will find what speaks to you once she is there with you. Looking forward to lots of pics.


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## frlsgirl

I?m so excited for you. She is a beauty!

How are you going to introduce her to Izzy? Will they be sharing turnout?


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## Chevaux

Good show, egrogan. I'm so glad its worked out as the waiting was killing me (I must say that I prefer coming to threads like this late so that I can see the complete event from start to finish in five minutes and don't have to go through the agony of waiting like you had to). Best of luck with her and may you have many happy adventures together.


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## carshon

I love the name Effie - it reminds me of "The Hunger Games" 


I am so happy for you! How about Macie? I think it goes well with Izzy.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> How are you going to introduce her to Izzy? Will they be sharing turnout?


I'm not sure yet, though I would be lying if I didn't envision pictures of them lovingly nuzzling each other with me standing in between them smiling happily. :wink: Just kidding- who wants to be in the middle of two opinionated mares duking it out for the top spot?!

The one thing I don't love where I board is that all the horses have single turnout. I get why BO does it- with the number of boarders and show horses she has on the property, she doesn't want to deal with scrapes and scuffles. Even with that turnout setup, everyone always has multiple neighbors over the fence, so no one is alone. Izzy's turnout space actually is plenty big for at least two horses, so putting them in together is an option we've talked about briefly. I'm not sure how buddy sour either would get and not totally sure I want to find out! 

The first couple of days, BO turns new horses out in the round pen, which is right in the middle of the property. That way she will get to take in all the action- she'll see/hear lessons in the indoor and outdoor, get to watch at least half the horses in their own turnouts, BO going back and forth to the manure pile with the tractor, etc. After a couple of days, we'll figure out where her regular spot will be.



Chevaux said:


> Good show, egrogan. I'm so glad its worked out as the waiting was killing me (I must say that I prefer coming to threads like this late so that I can see the complete event from start to finish in five minutes and don't have to go through the agony of waiting like you had to). Best of luck with her and may you have many happy adventures together.


Welcome to the fun @*Chevaux* , and thanks for the well-wishes!



carshon said:


> I love the name Effie - it reminds me of "The Hunger Games"
> I am so happy for you! How about Macie? I think it goes well with Izzy.


I am so pop culture deficient, I will have to look up the Effie/Hunger Games reference as that one goes over my head. One of the VT mares I rode was named Macie so I don't think that name is going to work out for this girl, too much weird baggage! :wink:

Keep the suggestions coming though!


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## Dragoon

Congratulations!
I really like the name Eve or Elf. I just read about a horse called Elfin on Foxhunters' thread, and wanted to point it out to you. 
I do hope they can be turned out together! Speaking from experience, it is so satisfying to lead them out and back in together. The two I ride (mine and a boarder) are even stalled next to each other, so I talk to them both, pet them both, and have two sets of attentive ears watching me as I get their grain. When I am brushing one in the ties, the other gets their nose petted as well, so my time at the barn is maximized since it always includes both. Only riding is done separately. 

And I am working on getting one to pony. It was fine at the walk, but once I started trotting, the thoroughbred took off...track flashback I guess. I lunge them both together and when I ride in the outdoor, the other is usually in there loose and eating the grass at the far end. Being with both together really enhances the fun. I just remember to pet my pony first, lead him first, give him food first, and all is peaceful. The mare is happy to be below him, since that is her place out in the pasture. 
Your horses will decide who is number one and number two. Go with their natural order.


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## phantomhorse13

Dragoon said:


> I really like the name Eve


I love Eve!


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## LoriF

Wow! Beautiful mare. I bet you can hardly wait until she is home. I like the name Effie


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## Avna

There's Elfine ... although not sure she's an Elfine.


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## egrogan

So today is my last as a "one horse" person. I am feeling a little sentimental about it. I'm also a little foggy headed because I have a cold & fever :wink: I decided that even though I was feeling bad, I was determined to ride Izzy this morning one more time as an "only" horse with my full attention.

She's been so good about coming when called lately:










As you can see, it was a gorgeous fall day









For the first half of the ride, I was pretty much on autopilot since I wasn't feeling great. I gave her her head and let her pick the pace, heading towards the pond.









We went to check out the pond and the very loud geese. I wish my phone camera was better, what you can't really make out is a couple of dozen geese lazing around on a carpet of lily pads. She was not super thrilled about those noisy things, but we stood looking out at the water for a bit and had a conversation about the new arrival tomorrow :grin:









She was still on her tiptoes going home with the geese making so much noise. I heard some voices somewhere off in the woods as we were heading home, so changed plans quickly and picked a different trail spur. I really didn't want to run into hunters or ATVs, as we were having a fairly quiet, relaxing ride.

At that point, things got a little dicey. She was NOT impressed with turning away from home and being asked to double back the other direction. We had a little argument about that but she eventually moved off quietly in the direction I wanted. The way home I chose follows a steady incline; sometimes she likes to canter there. Well, today, she was like, "lady, if I'm in charge, time to high tail it home." And she just leaned into my hands and took off galloping up the hill. Then things got exciting. At first I sort of went with it, as usually when she gets to the top of a hill she'll pull herself up. But not this time, she hit another gear. I think I heard myself yelling "WTF IZZY?!?" I managed to steer her toward some underbrush and she did stop before continuing down a steep rocky hill at that pace. And I'm not embarrassed to admit that when she stopped throwing her head around and threatening to bolt off again, I jumped off to get my bearings and make sure I was still breathing. I walked her down the steep hill, which brought us back to the barn and the outdoor ring. I jumped back on in the outdoor, did a few laps where she trotted around very nicely, and then just started laughing at myself a bit. 

Here I was, feeling sappy and emotional and just wanting to have this magical "last" only-horse ride with Izzy, and as ever, she reminded me that I have to actually _ride_ and be clear about what I'm asking. I've written in this journal dozens of times that if I check out, she will fill in the gap. Always a teacher, that Izzy  I am so thankful for her!

After I got my head back on straight, we rode back down to the woods and the trail she had just sprinted up. She walked the whole way perfectly nicely, and I swear she looked back and me and was just like, "well if you had only _asked _me to do that last time, I would have!" Can horses be exasperated with us?!









So that's a wrap on my life as a one-horse person. New Horse arrives tomorrow around 11am. I'm excited!!


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## carshon

What a goof she is! and horses can be exasperated with us. It always makes me laugh when my horse gives me the ole side eye. And my daughters 20yr old Foxtrotter is the Queen of "over it" looks.


Happy New Horse Eve! I sure hope you feel better when your new horse comes tomorrow.


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## frlsgirl

That sounds like my experience last Sunday; I just wanted to have a relaxing trail ride and she was in full freak out mode; I ended up walking her for part of the trail ride.

Excited for your for tomorrow!


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## egrogan

Going to meet the trailer!!!! :grin: She's almost here!


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## carshon

pins and needles!


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## egrogan

SHE'S HERE!!!!! :happydance:










She stepped off the trailer after a 2.5 hour ride without a hair out of place. She's so _chill_- she is acting like she's lived here forever. We gave her about an hour in the round pen to just settle...she ate, drank, rolled, peed, and then just looked at me like, "cool, now what?"

So I took her for a walk around the property. I let her graze a little, then took her into the indoor, walked around there a couple of times (she admired herself in the mirror for a long while), and then brought her in to the barn to brush her for a bit. Then back out, walked around a little more, and brought her back to the round pen. 










She looks so Morgany here :wink:









I guess the halter's a little too big, huh?









She has the softest, kindest eye. But there's curiosity in there too. She's going to be one that is interested in new things but needs her mind kept busy.

I had time to hang out for a bit, so I brought Izzy in too and gave her a good grooming. Let her hand graze a little before turning her back out. Their first encounter:









We are going to try turning them out together tomorrow. If they can't handle it, we'll divide Izzy's current field in half, as it's plenty big for that, and just have them next to each other.

I'm still pinching myself that this is all happening. What an awesome day.


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## Avna

So happy for you! This is so exciting!


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## SwissMiss

Soooo happy for you! And she looks great in her new home


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## gottatrot

She is wonderful! Two beauties are definitely better than one. So happy for you.


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## carshon

The previous pictures did not do her justice - she is quite pretty. Dulce de leche colored almost - so Dulce could be a good name.


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## frlsgirl

Yay! Can't wait to read about your adventures with her!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> The previous pictures did not do her justice - she is quite pretty. Dulce de leche colored almost - so Dulce could be a good name.


I like Dulce, but we already have one of those at the barn.

It seems like "Fizz" is the name that's sticking. It has a nice ring to it and it represents all those dapples that look like a glass of champagne bubbling. So I think Fizz it is.

#IzAndFizz


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## Avna

Iz and Fizz it is!!


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## Tazzie

I'm so excited for you! And I LOVE the name!! Izzy and Fizzy <3 it's just tooooooo adorable!

I can't wait to watch your fun!


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## egrogan

My husband was working from home this morning so we grabbed some coffee early and went out to see the girls. They got turned out together this morning and they acted (mostly) like old friends. They ate from the same pile of hay and were happily grazing side by side. 

My two girls! :happydance:


















Fizz seems to have a fabulous, curious personality. She followed us all over the field with no halter and lead, she just really wanted to see what was going on.









She's also getting to know their neighbor, Mary. There was a little snorting and pawing with these two but all friendly.









Even though things seem good so far, it's clear Izzy is reserving the right to be a little skeptical. :wink: She does have fabulous side eye...


















Izzy getting her own scratching 









Didn't have time for riding today but looking forward to getting up in the saddle tomorrow!


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## Tazzie

Those pictures are just too perfect! I love them! Awww! I'm glad your hubby seems excited too  and that the girls settled right in like old friends. That has to make you feel better too!


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## gottatrot

A really nice thing about having two horses is that you can provide something horses would have naturally - a stable "family herd" that lasts for a period of time. With boarding and moving horses around, I've noticed it has been very comforting for Amore and Halla to always have each other as family wherever we go. Most likely your two horses will get very bonded and enjoy each others' company.


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## twixy79

I love this! We are getting our 2nd horse in 2 weeks so this is great to see!


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## egrogan

twixy79 said:


> I love this! We are getting our 2nd horse in 2 weeks so this is great to see!


Very exciting for you and Duke!  I can't remember, are you staying where you were boarding him or are you moving them home?


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## twixy79

egrogan said:


> Very exciting for you and Duke!  I can't remember, are you staying where you were boarding him or are you moving them home?


For right now they are going to stay in boarding. We have been house hunting for months but haven't found the perfect property yet. It's out there somewhere. Once we buy, we plan on moving them both home. Our acreage now is all thick woods, so it's not really suitable for horses. 

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


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## Avna

twixy79 said:


> For right now they are going to stay in boarding. We have been house hunting for months but haven't found the perfect property yet. It's out there somewhere. Once we buy, we plan on moving them both home. Our acreage now is all thick woods, so it's not really suitable for horses.
> 
> Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk


If you pm me your price range, area limits, and must haves, I will keep an eye out for you. I've gotten really good at skimming the listings and figuring out what they are really like.


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh Izzy's look is like "I'm keeping my eye on this one!" ROFL! Glad everyone is getting along so well. Can't wait to see riding pics. How will you divide up your riding? Ride both horses every time you go out but just for half the time? Or alternate?


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## laffysapphy

Congratulations! I just got my new girl on Thursday as well, how funny!


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## egrogan

Congrats @*laffysapphy* ! You should consider starting a journal, it's fun to keep track of your progress!

@*frlsgirl* - Right!? That look of Izzy's is priceless. As far as riding both, I've still got to figure out my routine, but my ideal is to ride both Sat & Sunday and ride Fizz 1-2 morning a week. Izzy has been ok as a weekend warrior, I just have to keep an eye on whether she gets too stiff with too many days off, which I sometimes feel.

****************
So today was Fizz's first ride here. She was pushy and rude about bridling, so that is something we need to work on. She was super fidgety and wanted to keep creeping around sniffing blankets hanging on stall doors, looking for grain on the edge of the stall openings, etc. I also had to fumble around getting her bridle set up for her, so that didn't help. So- we will work on that. I can't stand a horse that doesn't just stand quietly for bridling. Izzy was also really bad when I first got her.

Since she had been sort of dancy in the crossties, I figured I'd lunge first and just see where her head was. She lunges _beautifully. _So sensitive to body position and voice commands. Her transitions actually caught me by surprise because she was so "yes ma'am" about them. So that's a huge plus to work from that.

She was clearly in a good frame of mind so I saw no reason not to get on. We stayed in the indoor for about 20 minutes, just lots of school figures at walk/trot. She was breathing hard by the end of that, which was not a surprise given her time off. But mostly I was pleased that she was happy to move forward and not squirrely at all in a new place. She doesn't seem to understand anything about moving laterally, and she sort of throws her nose out and goes a bit high headed. But, her mouth is really light, and her 'whoa' was as instantaneous under saddle as it was on the lunge, another huge plus for me!









Things seemed good inside, so why not head outside? We rode out to the outdoor arena and did some more walk/trot out there. She was a little more excited out there looking around, and at one point when I asked her to trot wanted to break into a canter with a little hop, but settled easily. 









I was eager to see what she'd do just out and about, so we walked all around the barn property, around the turnout fields, up and down the driveway to the road, and along the perimeter towards the woods. She was alert and curious, looking all around, but never tensed up, never got wide eyed, never snorted or hassled. She just went happily forward.









I figured I couldn't ask for anything better than that our first day, so after being in the saddle for about 45 minutes or so, I ended on a really good note. She was much more polite about taking the bridle off, which was encouraging. Brushed her out and called it a day. Success!! :grin:

After I put her back out, I brought Izzy in and gave her a good brushing before heading out to the woods trail. We took the short, "point to point" route and had a much more sedate ride than last time when she tried to kill us :wink:

I had to share this picture, here she is at the notorious "water crossing" which is basically just a puddle right now that she happily goes through on a loose rein. I just think about how many fights we had at this spot all summer. I'm glad she's over it!!









Couldn't have asked for a nicer day to ride, and luckily tomorrow's supposed to be more of the same.


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## laffysapphy

@egrogan, I will! it looks like your trails up there are amazing, and I'm glad Fizz was so good under saddle!


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## gottatrot

Sounds like a great start with Fizz! I just love her color.


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## frlsgirl

yay for a great first ride. About the head thing, I wonder if it's a Morgan thing? Ana is good about bridling but insists on rubbing her head on something as soon as I take the bridle off. Even her previous owners said that's the only bad habit she has is that she has to rub her head on something. I tried different bridles thinking maybe it's the leather quality or how the leather fits around her ears, and nothing seems to be make a difference. She also likes to explore while I'm grooming her, but it's not so much a head thing as it is a curiosity thing and she just happens to use her head to explore so I often find myself ret-tying her to shorten up the rope.

Edit: Ana also didn't quite understand moving sideways when I first got her; she understood moving off the leg but when I asked her to leg yield she just sort of drifted side ways. 3 years later (actually, make that almost 4 years later) we are just now learning how to move laterally.


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## egrogan

I woke up this morning feeling feverish again, but optimistically hoped some fresh air would make me feel better so headed to the barn.

I decided to start by taking Fizz for a trail walk in-hand. We did a mile end to end, but by the time we got back, I was drenched with sweat and it was only 45*F out. So...the fresh air didn't seem to help much. :neutral:

Despite not feeling well though, the walk was really good for Fizz. She led very respectfully and was once again interested in everything without being worried about anything. She seemed to pay attention to her feet pretty well. The one thing she did not do well with was standing still- she's just so darn fidgety. No one's walked the trail in awhile to clean up branches, so I figured while I was back there I'd get rid of the ones that we'd been tripping over recently. So I'd ask her to stop for a second while I grabbed a branch to throw off the trail, and then look up and find her facing the opposite direction. Here's a rare moment of standing still...but just for a second!









My original plan had been to walk the trail, warm up in the ring, and then go back and ride it. But once I got back to the barn and stripped off most of the layers I was wearing because I was so overheated, I had to admit I didn't really feel up to it. I still did ride in the indoor for about 20 min, and then went out to ride the area around the barn. The BO has continued to work on clearing the gallop track and improving the footing, and it's turning into a really cool place to ride. Fizz is going to be so awesome about trotting for miles. She's super comfortable, and she just cruises. You put her in a trot and she's happy to just stay in her smooth, steady stride. 

I have a lot of physical things I need to work on to be able to ride her better, but so much of it is going to be mental too. I am going to need to build my trust into her and believe that she's going to keep that nice trot when asked without getting frantic and grabbing the bit and tanking off. She's so light in her mouth and willing to go forward, I am trying to program the little voice in my head to just stay out of her way. I'm learning that if you want her to walk, she doesn't really need anything in her mouth, she just needs you to sit back a little. BO is booked for lessons next week, but I am hoping to get on her schedule the following week as I want to make sure I'm not doing anything to mess up the good foundation I'm starting from.

I decided to see how she'd do with the road, so for the last 5 minutes we headed out there. There are a lot of homes on the road where the barn is, and being such a nice sunny day, lots of people were outside doing stuff around the house. She was a little nervous around a neighbor's tarp-covered boat, and she wasn't sure about a guy out chopping wood. That's the first time I saw her snort a little, but that's about as nervous as I got. I found that when I just put my leg on and encouraged her forward, she went. I asked her to go a little beyond where she was nervous and then turned around so we'd end on a good note. I think I'll hand walk her down the road before riding there again to start to get her used to all the activity. To increase our miles as she starts conditioning, we'll definitely have to spend some time on the roads.












frlsgirl said:


> Ana is good about bridling but insists on rubbing her head on something as soon as I take the bridle off. She also likes to explore while I'm grooming her, but it's not so much a head thing as it is a curiosity thing and she just happens to use her head to explore so I often find myself re-tying her to shorten up the rope.


Yes, she is definitely itchy around her face. She seems to want to rub on me whenever the halter or bridle is going on and off, which I am not a fan of. I smacked her a bit today when she tried and and she backed off. And, she stood in the cross-ties better than yesterday. You describe her to a t though- she is super curious and wants to explore everything. Every time BO walks by, she says: "She's a curious one, that one. Got to keep her mind busy!" And then she gives me a funny smile. She's never one to really tip her hand, but I think she's excited to start working with us to see what this horse can do.

Gah- she does have a big head, doesn't she?!









So after messing around with Fizz for an hour, I have to admit I was pretty wiped out and a little dizzy. My friend Ida came and I was supposed to ride Izzy with her and Jazz, but I begged out of the ride because I just felt awful. 

Before I left though, I brought Izzy in for a quick groom. She had a blanket on last night as it's dipping into the 30s overnight, and she was ready to get that thing off when I went out to get her. She took a celebratory roll just to be sure I'd spend enough time on her grooming :wink:









So far everyone is still friends in the field, though I did see Izzy send Fizz running when she was tired of her being within 20 feet of her. Nice to see the boss lady is still the boss!


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## frlsgirl

I hope you feel better soon. I know the excitement of having a new horse and running on adrenaline not even realizing that you don’t feel well enough to ride

I haven’t met a Morgan that stands perfectly still without the need to fidget. There have been days where Ana seemed unusually calm and I immediately realized that she is not feeling well or she’s tired and sleeping. 

About the anxiety/control thing, I worked really hard on that last year and actually did a online program. It’s this need to feel in control. I changed my self talk from “oh no she’s going too fast she’s going to run off with me” to “this is so much fun, I’m glad that she’s feeling well enough to run, I just love going fast” and then I make myself smile because that puts you in a different emotional state. It’s really the only thing that’s worked for me.


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## egrogan

Thanks @frlsgirl! I did feel better this morning- still sniffly but good enough to ride. We again warmed up in the arena. 

She was feeling really energetic. She seems to like the poles so we did a good bit of that and a lot of trotting before heading outside. 









Today was our first time riding out on the trails. She trotted enthusiastically from the barn to the trailhead, and remained willing to head away from the other horses alone. This was her first "test" I guess, as I wasn't sure what to expect about her being ok going solo. I don't really know how much she's been out on trails alone as I believe she was mostly ridden on a trail string in the past, or at least as a pair. As I'm coming to expect from her, she was alert and taking everything in, but not tense. 

Not hard to get pictures of her ears facing forward because they're pretty much locked in place! :wink:









One thing that we will definitely need to address is halting and standing. She was NOT pleased about being asked to stop and just stand. Immediate head tossing, tail swishing, pawing, and trying to back up. This girl just wants to GO somewhere- it's funny because she doesn't need to get places in a particular hurry- but she does want to be on the move.

One thing I'm not quite sure how to address, maybe someone has advice? If her tendency is to try to rush backwards to get out of standing, I need to get that stopped immediately as I think that can get dangerous quickly. But to stop her going backwards, you have to put leg on to go forward. So then she steps forward and is immediately hit with a "whoa," which seems confusing and more frustrating. So what to do about that tendency?












frlsgirl said:


> It’s this need to feel in control. I changed my self talk from “oh no she’s going too fast she’s going to run off with me” to “this is so much fun, I’m glad that she’s feeling well enough to run, I just love going fast” and then I make myself smile because that puts you in a different emotional state. It’s really the only thing that’s worked for me.


I totally get this and I can see your strategy really working with me. The weird thing is I enjoy driving really fast and tend to be an aggressive driver (I know it's a bad habit but years of driving on country roads do that to a person). I sometimes wonder why I feel differently in the saddle than in the car. So I'm going to have to borrow your phrase and put it on repeat next time I get anxious!


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## JoBlueQuarter

I love those pictures of two furry ears framing an awesome trail! *sigh* Makes me feel all relaxed as if I really was out riding, 'stead of being on HF while I should be doing homework...  Izz and Fizz look really good, and I know exactly what you mean about the adrenaline rush when you get a new horse, or any animal for that matter! It's an awesome feeling, IMO!


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## frlsgirl

This is all still new to her so she’s in “I got to keep my feet moving” mode. I would give her some time to get acclimated and then practice in a safe and familiar place; right now everything is foreign and exciting to her.


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## egrogan

^^Fair point! She seems to be doing everything I ask her so easily I forget she's been here less than a week :grin:


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## egrogan

Our string of gorgeous fall weather came to an end yesterday, the skies opened and it's supposed to be raining through the end of day tomorrow. 









No chance to get out on the trails, so I brought them both in for some grooming time. The ticks have gotten AWFUL all of a sudden, I'm pulling off at least one a day from both of them. I hate those things.

Izzy's favorite thing about fall is fresh, juicy apples :wink:





Lunged Fizz for a bit, but I'm too uncoordinated to manage the line, whip, _and _take a picture...but she did well. There was another horse in the indoor, which is the first time she's had that here. She wanted to speed up a little when he was closer, but she was able to refocus on me and we kept going. Should be starting lessons with BO next week.

Tomorrow they both get their teeth done, so they'll be out of commission the rest of the day. Hoping neither needs anything major done so I can ride Friday, when it's supposed to be nice again.


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## frlsgirl

OMG that face! Morgan mares are the best at making faces!


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> OMG that face! Morgan mares are the best at making faces!


She does crack me up. This past year, she has also decided that she can't possibly walk while chewing. So this face was in response to me rudely ignoring her opinion about that and trying to pull her toward the door to go back out. She was very clear that she was _not _ready until that apple was gone. Silly girl. 
:apple:


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> <snip>
> 
> One thing that we will definitely need to address is halting and standing. She was NOT pleased about being asked to stop and just stand. Immediate head tossing, tail swishing, pawing, and trying to back up. This girl just wants to GO somewhere- it's funny because she doesn't need to get places in a particular hurry- but she does want to be on the move.
> 
> One thing I'm not quite sure how to address, maybe someone has advice? If her tendency is to try to rush backwards to get out of standing, I need to get that stopped immediately as I think that can get dangerous quickly. But to stop her going backwards, you have to put leg on to go forward. So then she steps forward and is immediately hit with a "whoa," which seems confusing and more frustrating. So what to do about that tendency?
> </snip>


 It's just like learning to stand still while being groomed (must be a Morgan thing, Brooke is still a work in progress). Each foot that moves gets corrected. Back? Cue forward. Forward? Cue stop. Pawing? Cue a very slight forward. Going sideways? Sidepass the other way. Set a goal you believe you can reach (like count of three with all four feet still), then reward with moving her out. Repeat often but increase the time slowly. It takes a little while before you start seeing results I think partly because "negative" activity (doing nothing) is a sort of an abstract concept. But generally it is all about patiently and calmly countering every move she makes until she stands still, and then letting her go forward. 

Brooke used to always default to backing up when I wouldn't let her go forward, or she didn't want to go forward. It's a terrible and dangerous habit! You have no control of a horse who is backing up to evade your cue, and they can't see where they are going, either. The only thing that stopped it was a crop applied to her behind. She didn't need many lessons before she understood that was a forbidden direction to volunteer. Because I'm a novice trainer I didn't nip it in the bud when I should have.


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## egrogan

What a miserable day out today- cold, steady rain and about 45*F. The girls were both soggy when they came in for the vet appt. They looked like sad puppies!








(Before anyone worries about their well being, they have shelter and plenty of hay- they just choose to stand out in the field nibbling grass...)

Izzy got a pretty good review, given her age. She does have two teeth that are not loose yet, but starting to show signs of food getting trapped up above the gum line (I think this was called 'diestema?'), and may not make it through the year. She's got cupping in her molars too. All things considered, vet felt she was in decent shape. But we are going to move her to twice-yearly appointments going forward just to keep a closer eye on any problems that could be developing. 

I was a little nervous for Fizz, as I knew she was a year overdue but we weren't able to really inspect her mouth during the PPE because she was so touchy about it. After she drifted off into happy sleep, we got in there to look...








And the news was all really good, particularly for being a year overdue. She had a few sharp points forming, and a small ulcer from one in the back left of her mouth, but even that was minor. She does have some really odd thin grooves worn down the middle of her two front teeth- vet said it's something they're seeing more with horses fed from slow feeders, particularly if they have metal pieces on them, when horses are forced to grasp and pull more with those front teeth than they would naturally if they were grazing. I don't recall seeing any feeders like that in her pasture but I don't know much about their feeding set-up. Anyway, it doesn't seem to be causing problems, it was just odd. It may grow out in time.

We hung out in the barn for awhile once they were done to let the anesthesia wear off, and then they had to go back out into the rain. I have to admit I felt like a bad "mom" leaving them out in the rain after their morning ordeal, even though they are of course fine.

Weather should break tomorrow so looking forward to riding this weekend!


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## egrogan

Mother Nature has been smiling at us the past two days and it's been wonderful fall riding.

Yesterday I was able to scoot out of work while it was still light out and get there in time to ride Fizz outside. She hadn't been ridden in 3 days, and she was feeling good. We were fighting daylight, so did a quick warmup in the outdoor arena and then headed to the trail. After a lot of rain the previous few days, the footing was soft and slippery in spots with the leaves getting slick over rocks, but she handled it well. 









She's so level-headed, nothing seems to bother her. She met the resident flock of turkeys...








...And then we went out to the road for the second time. Right away, the across-the-street neighbor's son came running out of the house wearing his Halloween costume- a full size "Scream" mask and a black cape- and trailed by two barking dogs. She just looked at him and was like, "that's cool" and kept going. Such a good girl. We were passed by a car and she stayed steady as well. She is still dancing side-to-side and backwards when asked to stop and stand out of the arena, and being passed by the car was a good reminder of why we need to get that under control. Some of the roads are just too narrow to not move off to the side and stand, so we have to figure that out. Still, I was happy with her for doing well in a new place- we went about a mile further down the road than we have so far.

Went back early this morning to ride both of them. We've been having cold, damp mornings before the sun comes out to burn off the fog, and this one was no exception. 

Is it bad that the first thing I think when I see this picture is that I just spent $60 to have the **** blankets cleaned?! :wink: (Fizz is wearing one of Izzy's so it's a little small- she has her own coming Tuesday.)









I rode Fizz first, and since there was no hurry, I started in the indoor. She is much more rushy in there than she is outside. Inside, she seems to need to get everywhere in a hurry. Her trot gets really rushy and she just sort of powers ahead without ever having a moment where she can relax. I was trying so hard to ride that rushy trot from my core and just convince her it was ok to take a breather, and we had a few moments where that was successful - but many more where it wasn't. BO happened to poke her head in and watched for a minute, and agreed that project #1 is to just slow her down and get her to use her hind end much more rather than just powering ahead and letting her hocks kick out behind her. She told me to stop letting her tank around for laps at a time. If she's got that quick trot going, she is only going to trot for a few strides at this point, with lots of walk-trot transitions. It feels so tricky because I _don't _want to lose that desire to go forward so willingly. But do want to build her up by using her body correctly. I'm encouraged that when I ask her to trot outside, she goes forward happily but seems a lot easier to "talk to" and negotiate transitions. Still waiting for my first lesson date but I'm really excited to get started- I have so much to learn!

I'm glad that she seems to see the trails as a happy place to be- we had a nice couple of miles today, mostly walking but a little trotting in spots where the footing was good.









Next it was Izzy's turn. I haven't ridden her since last weekend, but have seen her a bunch this week and spent time either grooming or hand grazing her. I met up with Ida to ride. She started warming up her horse while I was getting Fizz back out, so I got to play fence post quickly before we headed out. Happily these two get along really well- though they look like they're scheming something here. Morgan mares! :grin:









We had a nice, relaxed ride. You can hear shots and dogs in the distance in the woods these days, so we mostly stick to a straight two-ish mile trail that we know is solidly on BO's property where people don't take the chance of hunting. It can be a little disconcerting hearing shots somewhere out there, to be honest. But I guess the reward is rides like this:









Tomorrow we have a crazy nor'easter coming, but it's going to be 60*F and rain rather than snow- but 20-40mph winds. Pretty miserable again! I'm hoping to at least ride in the indoor in the morning before the worst of it comes.


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## gottatrot

It sounds like Fizz is doing great. I'm sure you know this, but it's physically harder for horses to do a slow trot, so it might be that she's rushing because it's easier and she's out of shape. I think it's good advice to do shorter amounts of trot when she's rushing, because the transitions will also help her build up strength. She should be able to gradually do longer periods of slower work both mentally and physically that way.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> It sounds like Fizz is doing great. I'm sure you know this, but it's physically harder for horses to do a slow trot, so it might be that she's rushing because it's easier and she's out of shape. I think it's good advice to do shorter amounts of trot when she's rushing, because the transitions will also help her build up strength. She should be able to gradually do longer periods of slower work both mentally and physically that way.


Yes, I think this is spot on! She is definitely out of shape- she is breathing hard just from our mostly walking trail rides. So I suppose you could say building back her fitness is truly the #1 priority, since everything else stems from that. 

There's plenty for us to work on just at the walk. She doesn't bend very well, and seems confused when you put leg on to ask for bend or even stepping sideways. She seems to be able to do a turn on the forehand to the right, but not the left? Haven't been able to get her to turn on the haunches at all. So yes, definitely good stuff for working on over the winter on those days we're stuck inside. And then just lots more long walks with some trots mixed in outside to allow her to stretch out and move forward over ground that makes her think.


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## frlsgirl

I'm sure you've seen my recent video of doing the back lifting exercises with Ana; which is basically just a way to get throughness, bend in the ribcage so that she can use her body properly. It might be something good to try with Fizz? I had to break it down into bite size chunks for Ana; otherwise we get tangled up in each other and she tries to run away from the exercise. That's what's so tricky about those Morgans, harnessing that forward energy in a productive way; not shutting them down but using the energy. I've had Ana for nearly 4 years now and I'm just now figuring this out. 


But the good news for use and Fizz is that you have the most important ingredient "forward energy" - without forward, nothing else will work. That's why you hear trainers say "forward first." Glad your girls are getting along so well and that you're able to enjoy both of them.


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## egrogan

We had a little bit of luck this morning. I managed to get to the barn at precisely the right time to take advantage of the only dry hour of the day! So I quickly got Izzy in and saddled so I could be sure her ride time was outside.

It was sort of slow going since it was definitely muddy and slippery on the leaves, but we made it. We did have a little excitement- some sort of bird when flying under Izzy's belly and disappeared into the trees. It was so close and going so fast you could hear the "whoooshh" of its wings. Pretty wild. She scooted forward a few steps and then looked back like, what the heck?! 









She was understandably a little edgy, and I guess in addition to that, the woods just _do _look and sound different when it's drizzly. Every time we brushed a branch, it rained down on us. So I wouldn't say we had a _relaxing _ride, but I'm really glad I got her out and legs stretched before the skies opened.









_That- _torrential downpour-happened about when I got Fizz tacked and ready to go. I wasn't sure what she would think about the rain on the indoor roof, but it's not very loud as it's actually shingled instead of metal. Surprise, surprise, she didn't mind :grin:









So today I tried to focus on "calm." Not _slow_, but _calm. _I played around with different ways to use my body. She seemed to respond exceptionally well to a deepening of the seat. We were "lengthening" and "shortening" her walk with just seat. I will put that in quotes for now because I think really she was just speeding up or slowing down, but still, it's the concept, right? :grin: Some success with it at the trot too, at least for the transition to walk. We got so I would be thinking, we'll walk at A, and she'd stop right then. So, not exactly the right answer, but for right now, I like the idea of it. 

We did tons of changes of direction, which helped. Circles, particularly at the trot, still seem to speed her up rather than slow her down, so didn't do as much of that. I was trying to ride "broken lines" on the long sides, but leg still means go faster, with no concept of sideways, I don't know enough to teach that so I guess will be something we work on in lessons instead. 

Things were going pretty well after about 30ish minutes of several trots that felt calm and balanced, so I figured I'd ask for a canter. Oops. That was not a good choice, it just revved the engine back up and brought back the frantic pace. So I just did a long side in each direction and forgot about that. One good thing came out of it though, after that she did ask- politely- to stretch down with long reins. I'd tried that before and she didn't really seem to respond to it, she still kept her neck/poll pretty high and didn't really do anything with the extra rein. But this time, she took a nice deep sigh and did stretch down.

It's pretty cool though, this whole process of trying to figure out how to have a conversation. It's obviously really different for her, and obviously something I need to learn more about as well!

After we were done, I took my time with grooming and cleaning everything up as I felt bad putting her back into the gale. But eventually, it was time...Hehe, when I brought Fizz back out, this is what I saw :grin: "Where's Izzy?"









This is one of those weekends where I wish I had another day to do it all over again!


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## Tazzie

Sounds like super good rides!! Your girls are just awesome  sure, Izzy got a bit excited with the trail, and Fizz has a bit to learn, but still!! I do understand Fizz not wanting to stretch until the end. My trainer will work with Izzie (even riding her herself) trying to get her to stretch in the beginning and Izzie wants NONE of it. But at the end? She'll stretch for a good long while. I think there are some horses that just want to always stretch, and some who feel they need to earn it I guess? I'm guessing Fizz may end up in the latter group!


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## Avna

@egrogan, if she doesn't have any knowledge of lateral aids, start teaching her on the ground. Hold her head so she can't go forward, and apply pressure where your heel would ask for a sidepass. A thumb is probably enough. Release pressure when she makes even a tiny movement away from your thumb. Build on that. I had to teach Brookie too.


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> I do understand Fizz not wanting to stretch until the end. My trainer will work with Izzie (even riding her herself) trying to get her to stretch in the beginning and Izzie wants NONE of it. But at the end? She'll stretch for a good long while. I think there are some horses that just want to always stretch, and some who feel they need to earn it I guess? I'm guessing Fizz may end up in the latter group!


Fascinating! Fizz does seem to be an "all business" type horse. Not like she's scared or overly submissive, just like she's used to be asked to do what's in front of her and doing it right. So I can totally see her feeling like she's "earned" a stretch break by the end of a ride.



Avna said:


> @*egrogan* , if she doesn't have any knowledge of lateral aids, start teaching her on the ground. Hold her head so she can't go forward, and apply pressure where your heel would ask for a sidepass. A thumb is probably enough. Release pressure when she makes even a tiny movement away from your thumb. Build on that. I had to teach Brookie too.


Thanks for this advice- I can do that! Sounds like a great place to start. Will also be handy for while on cross-ties.


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## Tazzie

People preach all the time that a horse needs to show it can stretch regardless of when in the ride we ask. To show they are on the aids. But for whatever reason, Izzie will be in the aids and want none of the stretching. Apparently my trainer hadn't met a horse like Izzie before, and remarked how much easier she was to stretch at the end. She even warmed Izzie up for me and tried to get the stretch in the beginning. Was not happening. Didn't matter how she asked. I think we have "business" horses. They do their job, and they do it well, but if they don't feel they've earned it, they won't do it. Izzie will ask at the end to stretch, and I allow it. But she's never once asked in the beginning or middle, and we've never had an issue with rooting (unless I'm holding the reins in the awkward I can feel her mouth but no real contact; she wants contact or she wants free rein). I'm sure you'll uncover a lot of interesting quirks with her  she's just going to be a super fun girl!

And I agree with working on lateral work on the ground. Much easier to start teaching. We did that, and then asked for baby steps under saddle. Praising for ANY sideways movement.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Right away, the across-the-street neighbor's son came running out of the house wearing his Halloween costume- a full size "Scream" mask and a black cape- and trailed by two barking dogs.


OMG, Phin would have been in the next county. :eek_color: What a good girl to just go ho hum over it!!

Have you tried taking Fizz back into the indoor and working her a touch after your trail rides? I am curious if she is just jazzed up at the start of rides and going fast and just happens to be inside or if something about the indoor itself makes her nervous or anticipatory.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> OMG, Phin would have been in the next county. :eek_color: What a good girl to just go ho hum over it!!


I definitely am lucky she acted the way she did or I'd probably still be picking road gravel out of my arms and legs!! :wink:



> Have you tried taking Fizz back into the indoor and working her a touch after your trail rides? I am curious if she is just jazzed up at the start of rides and going fast and just happens to be inside or if something about the indoor itself makes her nervous or anticipatory.


Huh, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I haven't brought her back in after riding out. I can definitely try that and see how she does. I will say the rushing also happens in the outdoor dressage arena. It's not fenced at all but clearly "arena footing" and is conducive to doing "arena things." 

So far she seems to feel the best on the trails and paths around the turnout fields- her trot feels like it has the best rhythm when it's used for "going somewhere."


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## frlsgirl

I just really like how Fizz is put together. And the pic of Izzy peaking around the corner is adorable!

I had to chuckle when you said that she stopped when you were just asking for a transition to walk. Ana and I still talk past each other the same way.


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## egrogan

At some point during the monster storms this weekend, Izzy's Schneider's turnout sheet, which I've been singing the praises of, failed in the waterproofing department. With 25-40 mph wind and steady rain that didn't let up for hours, she needed something, and thankfully I did still have an old sheet out there so she wasn't wearing something soaked through. This particular blanket did come with a warranty, and after talking with the company today, I'm impressed that they are actually going to honor it without asking a bunch of questions. The only thing I had to do was send them pictures of the inside and outside- so that led to an impromptu between-meetings stop at the barn.

Since I was there, I peeked in on the girls. I found them happy as clams grazing close to each other.









Fizz came over for a drink and I was loving on her while she was up by the gate...









...which prompted Marezilla to come onto the scene and let everyone know exactly who should be getting the attention :wink:








She is so BOSSY. She clearly moves Fizz around when they're out in the field together, it's sort of funny to watch. I was actually a little worried with being turned out together, Izzy might get forced out of the shed, but turns out I was worried about the wrong one!!

Izzy was the worst of the two as far as being caked in mud, so I brought her in and quickly brushed her down, in the process confirming she wasn't wet under the substitute blanket. The sun was shining again, and she was dry, so all was well.

Planning on a before-work ride with Fizz tomorrow. I am still pinching myself I have these two wonderful girls. I feel so lucky :grin:


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## egrogan

Fizz gave us a bit of a mystery to solve this weekend. Yesterday when I got to the barn, BO said, "I'm not worried yet, and not telling this to worry you, but the last couple of days Fizz has been laying down a lot during the day, way more than I've seen her do up until now. And she's churned up her fence line pacing overnight." So- that _did _seem worrying! But she acted normal when I brought her in, groomed, rode in the indoor. Nothing was amiss. I didn't have a ton of time yesterday so I didn't hang out much after riding, but knew BO would be keeping an eye on her.

Another boarder texted me this picture later in the day and said, "so cute, she's nickering in her sleep."








Hmmm...so was she just feeling settled in and comfortable sleeping in the sunshine, or was something else going on?

So I got there today and BO told me Fizz had had a tough night. Because of the fenceline pacing, BO decided to try her in a new overnight paddock (Isabel and Fizz have been in separate paddocks at night all week because apparently Izzy will not allow Fizz in the shelter :icon_rolleyes. The pacing got even worse in the new paddock, and she was also calling out with nervous whinnies. BO could see Fizz in this paddock from her house, and she said that after watching her do this for two hours she couldn't stand it anymore and around 11pm she went up and moved horses around so Fizz wouldn't be on an end paddock anymore (god love her for caring about these horses so much). That was what both of the nighttime paddocks had in common- they were both on the end. When she got moved in between horses, she immediately ate a bunch of hay and then proceeded to lay down. So *fingers crossed* maybe we've figured out what she needs to settle at night.

In addition to her being a stressed overnight, something had gotten the horses riled up this morning too. While I was talking about all this with BO, the mare in the field next to Izzy and Fizz's daytime paddock shot off like a rocket and was galloping wildly around her field. All the horses on that side of the property were staring intently off into the woods, on their toes and ears pricked. We never did figure out what bothered them. One of the turkey flocks was moving through, and there are hunters crawling through every inch of the woods, so maybe they're pushing animals around that aren't usually close to the barn. Who knows. But even if Fizz got to relax eventually last night, she was still really tense when I brought her in from the field.

So we get into the barn, and she immediately started dancing in the cross-ties, swinging from side to side and going forward until she hit the end of the ties. Now at first, I kind of laughed and told her to knock it off. She can get bored with standing, but after being corrected a couple of times and moved back to the position she should be in, she usually stands fine for grooming and tacking. So I just went about my business grooming, but she was _not _settling at all; in fact, she was getting _worse _and every time she hit the end of the cross-ties was getting a more panicked look in her eye. One of the other boarders happened to walk in during this, showing the barn to her visiting non-horsey mom, and after taking one look at Fizz said, "Well...looks like she's a little nervous right now so we're just going to go back outside now and close the door in case she makes it out of those cross-ties..." and as they rushed back out the door I could hear the mom saying "Why couldn't we pet that pretty horse" and boarder friend saying "she was about to have a moment." I figured I could just get the tack on quickly, but as I put the saddle pad on she actually showed me the whites of her eyes and I thought maybe she really _was _going to have a moment! She had pooped twice at this point, which was also uncharacteristic. I just had a feeling that she needed off the cross ties and the chance to move a little, so I clipped the lead on her halter and started to lead her into the indoor. As I was about to walk her through the door, she set back hard and planted her feet. I managed to hold onto the lead, thankfully. I gave her a second, and then tried again. This time she came, if reluctantly.

Once in the indoor, she seemed to relax. There were lots of cavaletti set up in interesting patterns, so we went over poles, practicing "whoa" with front feet over poles and back behind, actually made some really good progress on turn-on-the-forehand and sidepassing (either she knows more than she's letting on or she's a super fast learner), and tried trotting in hand (she does not seem to understand this). It felt like we were in there forever, but it was probably just 10 minutes or so :wink:

Since she seemed in a better state of mind, I didn't see any reason not to ride. We went back to where all our stuff was, clipped on the cross-ties, and the dancing and frantic eyes started all over again. She just had this look like she was trapped and couldn't stand it. So I took her off the ties, turned her around so she was facing the other direction (which was facing into the indoor where we'd just been) and decided to see if she would stand for tacking up without being restricted. She did surprisingly well- I wouldn't say she can ground tie, but she seemed a whole lot more comfortable with just slight corrections from the halter and lead to stay still. I got her bridled- finally- it had probably been about an hour since I first started tacking up!

Not surprisingly, she was rushy when I got on, so I did some of the exercises we tried the other day. We had a few nice large circles at the walk, did some figure 8s and changes across the diagonal at the trot, and walked over the cavaletti. When she _finally _exhaled a nice deep sigh, I decided to call it quits there. She did ok back in the aisle to be untacked and brushed down- still a little anxious, but not nearly as bad as before and mostly stood still, with the cross-ties on.

So I don't know what to make of the weekend. Here she is when I turned her back out- she just seems to have an anxious look in her eye that I have not seen from her before.








I'm hoping she'll feel more comfortable tonight in her new space, and that will help her relax again. I probably won't get out to the barn tomorrow unfortunately, but it may be good for her to have a day off anyway.

Aside from all of _that_, I did ride Isabel both yesterday and today, and she was an angel. Because of the hunters, I'm not comfortable being in the woods, so we've just been poking around the path around the property and going up and down the road a little. My buddy Ida was there this afternoon so we went out and ambled around with her and Jazz. 








Now that I think about it, Isabel was actually spooky as we went by the part of the woods where all the horses had been spooking earlier in the morning. She was definitely gawking as we passed and did a couple of little spooks-in-place. After we passed "the spot" once though, we rode past it a couple more times and it was no big deal. So who knows what they saw out there- if anything!

#IzAndFizz









My old reliable, who convinced me to share my granola bar with her after our ride :grin:


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## Avna

Fizz's behavior resembles what Brooke did when the neighbor turned new calves into the adjoining field (even though she was raised with cows, go figure). Also when the horses smelled a patrolling mountain lion. They are not fond of coyotes either.


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## gottatrot

Fizz could have a mild case of ulcers from the stress of the move. From what I've seen, it's quite common. It seems to just take a few hours of not keeping enough food in the stomach, a little extra acid from the stress of a new environment, a little running around splashing that acid up into the sensitive mucosa of the upper stomach...
Next thing you know, you have a nervous horse that has some gut pain going on.

You could try the preventative dose of Ulcergard for 4-5 days, I think it's 1/4 tube. Or add a digestive supplement, or add calcium carbonate powder to the feed for a week or two (cheap on Amazon, 2.5 tablespoons/day).
https://www.amazon.com/Grade-Calcium-Carbonate-Ground-Limestone/dp/B00959XKGI?th=1

Just a couple suggestions, it's what I think of if a horse is a bit nervy after moving to a new situation, especially if they seem to have a calm character in general.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Fizz's behavior resembles what Brooke did when the neighbor turned new calves into the adjoining field (even though she was raised with cows, go figure). Also when the horses smelled a patrolling mountain lion. They are not fond of coyotes either.


No cows, so that's at least one thing to check off the list! :wink:

Coyotes are as much a fact of life here as our turkeys, and they definitely hang out around the pastures- sometimes they even drink from the horses' waterers. Not much you can do to keep them away. They do seem to be around the pastures and barn more than usual lately though- you can see from their scat that they're enjoying apple season.

Big cats...well, that's a debate around town. Some say yes, others say no way. But...that makes me think about when Isabel got all freaked out over the summer, before we found out she had Lyme, one hypothesis was a big cat slinking around....



gottatrot said:


> Fizz could have a mild case of ulcers from the stress of the move. From what I've seen, it's quite common. It seems to just take a few hours of not keeping enough food in the stomach, a little extra acid from the stress of a new environment, a little running around splashing that acid up into the sensitive mucosa of the upper stomach...
> Next thing you know, you have a nervous horse that has some gut pain going on.


Good idea- I should have thought of that! It's easy enough to treat for that and see if it helps.

It's so interesting getting to know a brand new horse. Makes you realize how much of what you do with a horse is based on what you know about how they "usually" act. We only have a couple of weeks to go on to determine what's normal behavior for Fizz- so have to play detective a bit to figure her out. I can't tell you how many times a day I wish that my animals could just talk to me!! Whatever's going on behind these eyes is still a little mysterious to me...


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## frlsgirl

Could also be a hormonal mare thing. Since everything is still so new it’s difficult to say what “normal” is for Fizz; only time will tell.


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## egrogan

So in the spirit of this journal being a place for highs and lows, today after my ride I felt decidedly like "the honeymoon period is over." My mind was running through all the threads I've seen over the years that started off..."my new horse was great for awhile and then it bucked me off and put me in traction for months" with responders saying "well that's because you ruined a perfectly nice horse by being a pushover."

OK, so that's all a bit extreme. Thankfully, I am not sitting in a hospital bed in traction. But I did have a moment where I wondered if I was about to get bucked off. That said...there was good before bad...

I brought Fizz in from her paddock, determined to start the day with a clean slate and not anticipate a repeat of Sunday. She stood much, much better in the barn aisle than she did over the weekend. I got her blanket off, brushed her out, and was getting her saddled before the dancing started. It did start though. BO was keeping a half eye on us as she was doing stalls, and she smiled and told me it was time to unclip her, back her up, and just growl at her a little. That did get her to knock it off. We had a nice w/t warmup in the indoor. I was feeling much better than Sunday overall, and was eager to head out on the ride I had _wanted _to do on Sunday before my plans were dashed.

Off to the road we headed. We went our farthest yet, and it was really positive. She was a little nervy leaving the barn as a couple of horses were for some reason calling out to her, but once we got out of earshot she settled. We headed a couple of miles down the road, past what I consider the "scary house" - even Isabel finds it scary - because they have elaborate outbuildings and an outdoor speaker system that is generally playing music around the clock. You have to pass the scary house to get to the Gnome Road, which is a dirt road shortcut that is only open to traffic for about half the year. It will be closing any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, depending on snow, and can potentially be a really nice place to ride for miles if the ice isn't too bad on the regular roads to get there (complicated, I know...such is the life of rural New Hampshire...). Anyway, Fizz definitely was interested in the scary house, but went past it much more confidently than Izzy did the first time we went past. When I turned her back towards home after we were a couple of houses past it (it was my goal for the day to pass it and then go back), she notably slowed and looked over her shoulder like, "why stop now, let's see what else is out there!"

_A couple miles from home and wanting to keep going!








_
We trotted quite a bit on the way home until I felt her hit a clear wall when she got tired. So interesting to just feel a horse get to that place underneath you. But since she had seemed to indicate she'd like to keep going, when we returned to the barn, instead of heading back to untack, I turned her away from the barn towards the woods trail. I thought we'd take the direct route from one end of the property to the other, coming out of the woods on the other side near the turnout paddocks, and adding about a mile more to our day.

This is where I made a mistake- I shouldn't have kept going.When I turned away from the barn, I felt her stride shorten considerably, but figured she was just tired. We were just walking so I didn't think it would be a big deal. The trailhead where we entered the woods has a steep downhill, which was rocky and slippery. Her stride shortened more. I squeezed her ahead, but suddenly we were backing up. This is when I had a sinking feeling, as it became instantly clear to me that she's learned the backing up as an evasion. I've mentioned she's done it a couple of times before while standing still, but this was clearly an "I'm not going on, and you're not going to make me." I growled and actually kicked her hard in the sides (not proud to say that, but I had no crop and it felt very much NOT OK for her to be doing that) and it seemed to make her more mad. She pinned her ears and simultaneously swished her tail hard, and I felt her collecting up underneath me and feeling a lot less tethered to the ground than I'd like. I was able to circle her around- there was actually enough room for that- but she started backing up again. At this point, again- not proud- I have to admit that I was feeling like that coiling up was about to turn into bucking, and I chickened out. I considered jumping off and making her handwalk down the hill where I wanted to go, but instead I let her "win" and we rode out of the woods back to the barn. She walked the whole way back to the barn humped up, taking itty bitty short strides with her ears pinned flat back. It just felt awful. I was mad at myself for being so wimpy and not "making" her go down the trail, but even more disappointed in myself for admitting that it scared me. It felt like a really bad end to what had otherwise been a pretty good ride. I had a ****ed off horse who "got her way" and now I don't know what to expect on the next ride. She's gotten more pushy two days in a row now, and that just can't be a good thing.

I do have a lesson with BO on Friday, and I will be very honest with her about all of this. I was planning to ride again between now and then, but am contemplating whether that's a good idea. Maybe I should wait until I have eyes on the ground to help me with this. 

I do wish I had stopped the ride before that moment in the woods. But I now know I have some clear, basic things to work on. I need to find the right balance of assertive and understanding with Fizz, but I also am not ok with the evasive backing up so need to deal with that immediately. As I've debriefed the ride in my mind, I have acknowledged that we've really only known each other a couple of weeks- but I don't want that to be an excuse. It feels like we're at an important moment where we need to get to a mutual understanding about working together. I am not normally a "horse must respect and obey" kind of person, but that's easy to say when you only work with one laid back horse you've known for a long time. I think I need to up my importance to Fizz as we continue on our adventure.


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## carshon

@egrogan - I can tell you from a place of experience - it is better to give in or get off when a horse has learned backing up as a form of refusal. I had a mare that would do what Fizz did - and she could run backward, she would also look for ditches or other scary places to back down because she knew it would get her what she wanted. I had to ride with a crop - and put an "Oh ****ze" strap on my saddle. And for my mare the key was to keep my body moving and don't let the horse feel me hesitate because then she always knew she had won. It took many many rides for me to get my horse over that and she would still do it on occasion - I rode that horse for may years. 

You will get over this hump- it's just a bonding leadership exercise!


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## Avna

@egrogan, please accept that there will be rocky spots like this for awhile. She is a fairly green horse, after all. She is experimenting, just as you are. Do carry a crop, as I used to, the swatter kind with a wrist strap that barrel racers use. Use it early -- the very first backward step she takes unasked. Don't tap, make it loud and rather horrible. You want to surprise her, and you want to "load" the effect. Set this up in a safer place than a steep muddy hill!

I let Brooke get into this habit some. She did not need years and years to get over it, she needed a few swats (she is extremely opposed to being swatted), and then a few months of reminder taps on occasion. She almost always did this when riding out alone.

Don't get into thinking you made a bad purchase, because it is obvious you didn't. Like @carshon said, this is all part of the process and you will be a stronger team on the other side of it.

Good luck, we're all rooting for you!


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## egrogan

Thank you @carshon and @Avna for the pep talk and examples of horses you've worked with. I stopped by the barn before work this morning to put warmer blankets on the girls (only in the 30s during the day today and down towards 20*F tonight) and got to talk to BO about yesterday. She is going to show me a few exercises Friday to help deal with both the backing and the threatening to buck. She's so positive and just said "no problem, it's just a work in progress, we'll figure her out." And I'm sure we will- I'm very thankful to have help with it! 

Didn't have time to do much except a quick brush and blanket swap. This picture doesn't adequately show how much mud Izzy had somehow caked over her whole ear and into her eye. It was like she dunked her entire head in a mud puddle just for fun. Silly girl!


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## Tazzie

I'm with the others in knowing you'll get through this. That and it wouldn't be a mare if they didn't test you once in a while!

I agree with carrying a crop and really getting after her at the first sign she's about to back or be naughty.

I think a lot of this is she's young and green, and you guys are new to one another. There was a clear honeymoon period, and perhaps you relaxed a bit since it felt so good. She's just seeing if you're REALLY the one in charge. And I have total faith you'll get through this and establish yourself as her leader. Obviously not saying beat her or anything, but a well timed smack when needed (and the growling you did when she was being a brat in the cross ties) will make it clear to her.

I'm so excited to hear about how your lesson goes! I'm sure your trainer will give you plenty of good things to work on!

And Izzy is just so darn cute!


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## knightrider

Just a few weeks ago, @gottatrot said, "There is no shame in getting off when you are in danger." I have a very difficult horse who used to rear and come over on me if I insisted on urging her forward. I found if when she started to get light in the front, if I got off and led her for a distance, when I climbed back on, she was fine. I do not think I was "teaching" her to act up because she just got better and better about going ahead. Nowdays I can whack her with a popper, and she will not rear or fight me. (Sometimes she still doesn't go forward). She hates standing still, so if the whack doesn't get her moving, I can make her stand there (or spin if she is too anxious to stand) but not let her go anywhere. Usually, after a bit of waiting, she decides she'd rather go the way I want than not go at all, and we ride on. In a really REALLY tough situation, which is rare, I might still dismount and lead her for a while. I have never found that dismounting and leading teaches the horse that he "won." And, in any case, it is more important to be out of danger.

I agree with the other posters that this is just a little bump in the road. You will look back and say, "Remember when . . . " as you confidently ride off on your Fizzy.


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## twixy79

This picture doesn't adequately show how much mud Izzy had somehow caked over her whole ear and into her eye. It was like she dunked her entire head in a mud puddle just for fun. Silly girl!
[IMG said:


> http://hoovesfeathersfur.com/gallery/image.php?twg_album=Izzy%2FSpicewoods&twg_show=2017-11-08+113623.JPG&twg_type=small[/IMG]



I went to go see Duke last night after work and he had been rolling in the stone dust they just put down in his pasture. His entire body was covered in a silvery, dusty sheen. I patted him down with my bare hands like I was beating an old rug and the dust just came flying off. He seemed to enjoy it, I will now call it horsey shiatsu. My new form of equine massage....

Duke has a (terrible) habit of rolling in mud as soon as we finish grooming him. As soon as I get his tail combed, and rid him of any twigs, leaf particles or burrs, he feels compelled to go pick up twice as many... Go figure.


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## egrogan

Thanks @*Tazzie* and @*knightrider* ! I appreciate the support and I agree that this is all part of the learning experience.

@*twixy79* - Duke sounds like such a character. I don't know about your part of Maine, but here in NH it's almost been like we got a second mud season this year because the fall was so wet and mild. Though today we woke up to a hard frost, and it's supposed to go down to 10*F overnight tomorrow. Not looking forward to that!


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## egrogan

Unfortunately we cancelled the lesson today. It's 25*F with 40mph wind gusts and real feel of below 0*F. Sure doesn't feel like November! Similar weather expected tomorrow but hopefully less windy- but will have to play it by ear as far as riding goes.


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## twixy79

egrogan said:


> Unfortunately we cancelled the lesson today. It's 25*F with 40mph wind gusts and real feel of below 0*F. Sure doesn't feel like November! Similar weather expected tomorrow but hopefully less windy- but will have to play it by ear as far as riding goes.


 @egrogan I feel your pain. It is freakin' freezing today. I am not too far, in Maine so I understand this bizarre weather we are having! I told my husband we need to go see Duke early because I want to go home, get under a blanket and turn up the heat....


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## frlsgirl

Oh @egrogan - I'm just now getting caught up on your thread.

Here is the good news: you've already pinpointed some behavioral issues - that's great because now you know what you need to work on. All you have to do now is set up controlled scenarios where the likely outcome will be in your favor. When the weather cooperates, set up something with your trainer where you can work on some of these issues. Don't make the mistake of only working on issues; be sure to also throw in something that's easy to get right and then praise her immensely. That way you can help build some confidence. Morgan mares, especially the bossy ones, are suckers for praise. That's how Ana and I finally solved the lateral work mystery. Now she can't wait to show me what all she can do by herself, whereas before she would run backwards with ears pinned and tail swishing. 

Please know that you are not ruining her; any horse would be lucky to have you as their owner.


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## egrogan

Got lots of barn time this weekend. It was chilly, but the awful wind didn't last.

Saturday, I started by riding Fizz. She was really obnoxious about standing for tightening the girth and mounting. When I finally got on, she humped up her back and took those little bitty-maybe I will buck strides for the first few laps around the ring. There was another horse in the arena with us (I think that may be the first time) and she just never really relaxed. It wasn't that she seemed distracted by the other horse, but she just seemed very tense overall. I rode for about 20 minutes, got a tiny indication of relaxation (slightly lowered head) and ended there. After that, I took her out to the woods trail for a hand walk. She is very responsive in a rope halter, and she did great on the walk. She led nicely, walked over and around things, stood well when asked. Her whole demeanor was different than it had been. 








As we headed back to the barn, we stopped in the outdoor ring and did a little groundwork. She can turn on the forehand and halt with just body language. She is starting to understand sidepassing, but that's a work in progress. She definitely doesn't seem to understanding trotting in hand. But I felt good about how we ended the day, even though the ride hadn't been good, it turned around and we ended with things she could do well.

My husband and I had afternoon plans so I didn't have quite enough time to ride Izzy too. Instead, I took her on a shorter walk in the woods.









I shouldn't have been surprised that she managed to find the one patch of grass that had managed to grow in the dense underbrush and leaf cover :wink: I think she resented me making fun of her.









_What...a girl's gotta eat when it's cold out!!









_Sunday morning I got there early and talked to BO a bit before I rode. She gave me some really good things to think about.
1. Saddle fit. The truth is I know my saddle isn't an ideal fit. I am hoping it will get us through the winter until I consider an endurance saddle this spring. I have a prolite pad and I adjusted some of the shims based on some advice from BO.
2. Training level. We've decided we're just going to think of her as much greener than I initially expected. She seems to operate like a younger horse- she needs things broken into smaller sessions. You can really tell when she's mentally turning off and it's not worth it to push her. Combined with that, she has such a busy mind, she just gets bored really easily. So it will be a balance of engaging her mind but not pushing her to shut down.
3. Structure. She came from living out in a herd on 40 acres, seeing people maybe once a day for feeding, to being in a smaller paddock and getting handled much more frequently. She hadn't been in much work when I got her, and she's getting more consistent work now. So she's adjusting to this new lifestyle.

So in this framework, I feel a lot more empowered to go to the barn for shorter visits, combine handwalks around the woods and neighborhood with riding out there, just spend time handling her and getting her used to what she's asked to do.

Since she seems to enjoy groundwork and find it engaging, I decided to do some of that before I rode Sunday. Not endlessly, just 15ish minutes in the indoor working around the ground poles that were set up. We practiced turning on the forehand inside a set of poles, continued to work on sidepassing across poles, backing up, halting, etc. She did really great with all that, and when I brought her back to the crossties to tack up, she didn't fidget at all. I put her in Izzy's bridle which is just a headstall and no noseband so I could leave the rope halter underneath. She responds so well in the rope halter, I thought it might help with the dancing around for tightening the girth and mounting. And...it did! When I moved to put the girth up a hole, she wanted to rush forward, so I gave her a "no" with the halter and then she stood. Walked to the mounting block, same thing, she took a step forward, I corrected her, and then she just stood. I got on and off a few times throughout the ride and she stood well. Rode in the ring for about 30 minutes and she was like a different horse from the day before. She was much more relaxed.We're still just walk/trotting because she rushes so much and isn't that strong behind yet, so it seems like cantering isn't worth it yet. 

I resisted the urge to ride her outside after that ring work- she had done great, but I learned my lesson about asking her for too much and just calling it quits on a good note. But I did take her out for a little handgrazing. 


















Her adorable lip spot :grin:









Then it was Izzy's turn. Mounted up in the outdoor, walked one lap around...









And then headed out for a nice ride in the woods. 








It sure is nice to have a horse that can go for a week and be totally reasonable the next time you get on! She felt great- forward and full of spunk. She even asked to canter in a couple of places, which was fun. 

So all in all...a good weekend, some progress with Fizz and some new things to think about. I'll be able to stop by the barn most mornings before work this week and plan to mix it up- some handwalking, some groundwork, and some riding. If anyone has favorite short groundwork activities, send them my way so that doesn't get boring. And I think I will start a new thread on that topic.


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## Tazzie

What an awesome post to read on a Monday morning! I'm so glad you've worked out a plan with miss Fizz! I do hope these insights help unlock that amazing horse! I think groundwork is an excellent thing to start your day off with her too!


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## phantomhorse13

I second the groundwork being a great way to start things off with Fizz. I did that with Phin when I first got him to help him focus on me. There are still some days we start out that way!


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## gottatrot

Your barn owner had some great advice. 
It sounds like you're on the right track with Fizz and soon you'll know what makes her tick. :grin:


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## egrogan

Thanks @*Tazzie* , @*phantomhorse13* , and @*gottatrot* ! I actually had a meeting cancelled around lunchtime yesterday so snuck out to see her. She was dozing in her shed, looking pretty happy. The first few days she didn't seem to want to go in it, and then Izzy basically refused to ler her go in, but it looks like she's decided it's a nice place to be. Which is good because we have sleet/snow in the forecast for next week!









I felt so much calmer about everything. I realized I had been feeling a ton of pressure - from who, I have no idea! - to be out ticking off the miles and having this "perfect" horse that just responded beautifully to everything I asked. I really don't know where that came from, but it is very liberating to just work with the horse in front of me that day, do groundwork if she needs it to get ready for riding...ride inside if she's feeling a little spicy...head for the roads when she's ready for adventure...

Since I didn't have a ton of time yesterday, we went for a walk in hand out in the neighborhood. We practiced some of our groundwork. She's got turn on the forehand down pat, and she does well with crossing her front feet over to start a sidepass. But I'm having trouble with her back end- she seems to go in every direction _except _away from the pressure sideways. I also spent some time leading her from the off side, and she thought that was weird but went along with it. Oh, and something really clicked for her as far as trotting in hand. I found a "sweet spot" where if I gave her just enough slack in the lead and held my arm out at just the right angle while really picking up the pace of my walk, she would trot along beautifully beside me until I slowed the pace of my steps. Seeing her "get it" was such a cool feeling!

I really wish I knew what she was thinking. She always has this incredibly intense look on her face and rarely seems to soften.









Showed this picture to my husband, and his response..."she _does_ have a huge head, doesn't she!"








It's not her prettiest feature, but she makes up for it in other ways.

I had a proud mama moment, we were back in the barn after the walk and I was grooming her, and another boarder had her farrier there. He took one look at Fizz and said- _That horse has really lovely feet; may I look at them?_ For some reason the way he said it made me laugh, but I told him of course and he picked up a front foot to look at it. Even though to me they look overgrown and unbalanced, he said not to worry about it, her feet are great. She does get trimmed by my guy this Thursday so hope he feels the same way!

Unfortunately we did have one bad moment right at the end of my visit. I think it was my fault as I unintentionally startled her coming up behind her with her blanket. She pulled back on the crossties, and the breakaway part of her halter detached and she got loose. So it sucked to have her get out of the crossties, but I suppose the good thing was that she realized she was free and did nothing but go sniff the stall she was close to, and I walked up to her and put the halter back on with no complaints. I think she surprised herself. After I got her haltered, I put her back in the crossties, she stood like nothing happened, I brought the blanket back up to her and put it on with no issues. It's clear she's definitely not a horse I would ever leave tied/cross-tied alone at this point, as she's shown a few times now that she can get worried when she feels "stuck." Adding it to the list of things to work on.


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## PoptartShop

Aww, I am glad you are figuring out what works best with her! She's so pretty.  I love that 'intense' look she has. So sophisticated! LOL, always on the lookout!
That's good, groundwork can really help a lot. As they say, it starts from the ground up!
Aw, she probably just got a little startled. I'm glad she was OK after that, she probably did scare herself a little bit. You will do fine with her, especially now that you know what to work on & I'm excited to hear all about it.


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## egrogan

_Really....a ride today??









Are you suuuurrre?









_I did manage to get sleeping beauty out of the sunshine, but not until she had a good roll around once haltered.

She stood very nicely in the barn for grooming. Did about 10 minutes of groundwork, and tacked up. Again, she stood beautifully. There were no other horses inside but she wasn't fidgety and not craning her neck to look outside at what other horses were doing. 

To mix things up, I decided to ride in the outdoor. We did some dancing at the mounting block again, and when I managed to get on, she pranced off in those tense, short steps. Lucky for me, BO was filling water tanks near the outdoor and she again graciously gave me an impromptu 15 min lesson. She talked me through a lot of circling and working towards lateral motion, coaching me through moments when my tension fed into Fizz's tension in that unfortunate feedback loop, particularly when she tried to object with the rushing backwards. Lesson 1- I need to actually have my butt in the saddle to use it to ask her to slow. Lesson 2- I need to fight my urge to hold her back and reward her with that 'give' on the reins when she's doing the right thing. After about 10 very tense moments, we were able to stand quietly at the edge of the ring, with no flying backwards or tail swishing, talking to BO. We praised her and made a big deal of how nicely she was standing, and she finally let out a big exhale. I rode a few more minutes on my own while BO went on to other chores, and after trotting the outdoor a couple of times without crazy choppy half trot half canter strides, we left the ring for the path around the turnouts. 

That seemed to instantly relax both of us. Her head came down from giraffe level, her stride lengthened, her back softened. She let out several sighs, and we trotted most of the way in balance. It felt wonderful.









We walked back to the barn on a loose rein and stopped again to talk to BO who had been watching us as we were out around the fields. She is very supportive but also direct in her feedback, which is such a gift as an instructor. I feel very lucky to not have to work through this alone!

Farrier tomorrow morning, lesson Friday.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> She is very supportive but also direct in her feedback, which is such a gift as an instructor. I feel very lucky to not have to work through this alone!


So very nice to have eyes on the ground! That can make such a difference, especially if they aren't just telling us what we want to hear.

I look forward to hearing about your Friday lesson.


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## egrogan

Apparently Izzy has been convincing her neighbor, a sweet OTTB named Mary, to share her hay with her. BO says Mary is a picky eater but seems to eat better when she can have her hay next to Izzy and they "share" under the fence.

Except Izzy didn't look like she was sharing that well this morning! :wink:

_You GAVE me the hay Mary...









Stomps off in a fit...









OK fine, I don't even want the hay, you have it!









_I returned the hay to its rightful owner when I took Izzy out 

Fizz is getting her own turnout for awhile because Izzy was picking on her.









The farrier visit went well. Izzy has had a little thrush I've been working on, which is hard since it's been such a wet fall- as you can clearly see in the pictures above, she has a fenceline route she walks and churns up the mud on a day like today, even though she has plenty of perfectly dry places to go. But the thrush has improved a bit since the last visit, so that's good. She's been growing out a lot of bad quality foot that I think got started around the time she likely got Lyme, and then you can see some serious ridges from where she was treated- but that's all on its way out and overall she's looking good.

Wasn't sure what to expect with Fizz as I haven't seen her with the farrier, but she was great. She stood very politely while he worked, and he raved about how nice her feet were. He got her looking a bit more balanced and was excited about her endurance prospects next year.

I didn't hang around once he was done as it is a raw, miserable day and I was eager to bundle the girls back up and get them out to their sheds and hay.


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## Chevaux

Egrogan, what are those birds in the back of Izzy’s pics?


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> Egrogan, what are those birds in the back of Izzy’s pics?


 @Chevaux- that's a big group of our wild turkey flock. Looks like a couple of groups of younger females have come together for the winter. There were a lot more out in the field than I usually see together- and they were very chatty!

Here's another "through the ears" view of them a couple of weeks ago:


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## Chevaux

That's neat. I hope they have the good sense to stay close to your place as I suspect they'll be safe there.


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## frlsgirl

Sharing things with other horses can be so awkward especially if yours is the one not sharing. Glad they were able to work it out


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## bsms

FWIW, Bandit tried backing up today. We were in an area he wasn't familiar with, he wasn't comfortable, so he started backing up. So I turned him in a tight 180. We went back a couple of strides to where there was more room, and I turned him 90 degrees - so going perpendicular to the way ahead. Then turned 180 toward the place he didn't want to go, and walked perpendicular again. By that time he was feeling unstuck, so we turned toward the area he didn't want to go - and he went.

For maybe 75 feet. As we got closer to where a little wash crosses the trail, I realized erosion had changed things since I was last there 6 months ago, and now it would mean a drop onto rocks. So we turned around and all three of us took another route.

2 years ago, it would have been a much bigger reaction from Bandit. Time, plenty of miles, and (IMHO) dismounting and TEACHING him something was OK has changed his behavior.

In fact, I had dismounted earlier. We came across some bicyclists on the trail ahead practicing jumping little mounds. Bandit & the other horses could see the bicyclists popping up just above the vegetation and then disappearing. From the way his back felt, there was no way I was going to ride Bandit all the way up. So I dismounted - and so did my son, and so did my daughter. Apparently Bandit wasn't the only one who didn't like flying bicyclists!

So we walked them forward. The bicyclists stopped to let us go by, but I asked them to ride some more and let the horses watch. They did, the horses watched, and then we led the horses on by. Mounted up 100 yards later...truth is, the horses STILL didn't LIKE the bicycles!

With time, I can now ask Bandit to go a lot of places he used to refuse. OK, it has been a couple of years and we haven't "arrived" yet. Probably never will. Bandit REALLY wants to live to an old age! That is OK by me. He has learned to tell me when he is just a little nervous, and when he is about to get overwhelmed. If I "wimp out" and give him some extra room, HE doesn't think he's won anything. From HIS perspective, I'm a responsible guy who won't ask him to take unnecessary chances. And when I do need him to do something, he increasingly - not always, but more now than before - says, "_If you say we must, then we must!_"

But it is trial and error, listening to the horse and sometimes making a mistake, then trying again. I find horses very forgiving of honest mistakes. And we do a lot of "_Two steps forward, three steps back, two steps forward._" Progress is a trend, not an irresistible force.


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## egrogan

Lots of horsey time this weekend!

*Friday.* I had my first lesson with BO. I absolutely loved it. Her teaching style really works for me- she's big on explaining the "why" of what we're trying to achieve with the horse, and is really skilled at breaking things down into bite sized pieces without just shouting orders drill-sargent style. We spent about an hour just taking things slowly. When I got on, Fizz was less tense and high headed than the previous day, so it was nice to start from that place. We talked about how you can tell a lot from the look in her eye about what kind of day she's having, and for the lesson her eye was nice and soft. She's incredibly stiff with little ability to bend in either direction, so we did a lot of circling, serpentining, and spiraling, using ground poles to help with visual cues. We also practiced "rollbacks" as a strategy to encourage softening but also for those days when she's just relentlessly tanking forward. We also did a fair amount of just stopping and standing while BO explained something to me, and praised her big when she would stand with her head down and exhale in relaxation. And perhaps the greatest personal insight I got- BO came over to move my leg to where she wanted me to ask for a sideways step away from pressure, and told me part of the reason Fizz is tense is because I am holding her in a vice grip with my legs... :redface: Given that my legs didn't feel any different then than they usually do, I guess I have to assume I'm always clamped down on her sides- so THAT sure isn't helping! I am supposed to warm up with feet out of the stirrups and doing ankle circles to relax myself.

Most of the lesson was just walking, but the first trot I asked for was fascinating. Instead of firing off in a rush, she was uncertain, but importantly, _waiting _and _listening _to figure out what came next. She's the kind of horse where you mostly have to think trot without putting on a lot of leg, so I got to experiment with that, how much I could ask her to slow with just my seat, and how much leg I could put on if she misinterpreted or I miscued and downshifted to walk without meaning to. It was such a great final exercise because it reminded me of how much I liked her trot when I test rode her and how I felt like I really could ride it all day out on the trails. But most importantly, it was a _relaxed _version of that trot where her head wasn't in the clouds, she was taking nice deep breaths, and she was very soft in my hands. Since she has so little bend, to change directions we'd do huge teardrop shaped half circles that would cover a quarter of the arena, but she could maintain a steady rhythm through the direction changes and keep going forward happily. After a bit of that, we ended on a totally loose rein, feet out of stirrups, and discussed the difference between "forward" and "rushing"- and I could feel the difference with this nice cool down walk, which was "forward" in the sense that it was loose, willing, and swingy, vs. her more typical "rushing" walk, which is tense. Very neat feeling.

I hope to get some recordings of lessons as we go along, but nothing to share from this first one. Just practicing carrot stretches at the end to try to increase flexibility...









*Saturday*. It was a chilly morning so I got there a little bit later than usual. Took Fizz for a handwalk/groundwork down into the woods and back, and then grabbed Izzy to ride first. The horses had once again been snorting and spooking in the general direction of the woods, so I suppose I _shouldn't _have been surprised when on our first lap at the woods end of the outdoor, Izzy took off crowhopping and bucking and when we stopped we were on the other side of the ring! Fortunately I was still in the saddle and she was a little sheepish, and we got that out of our systems. She snorted and blew the entire path from the ring to the woods, but once we got into the woods she was fine. 









Grabbed Fizz next. After our great lesson, I decided to warm up in the outdoor with the intention of going to the woods afterwards. The Fizz I got on for this ride was the tense, wound up version. BUT, it felt great to have a strategy for what to do. Even though she was dancing around with her head in my face, I forced myself to keep my feet out of the stirrups, relax, and work on our circling warm ups. Unlike Izzy, who I think gets more and more wound up with circling when she's tense, it really does seem to unlock something with Fizz. It does help engage her brain, as she starts to try to bend and step under with a hind leg. Like the night before, I made a big deal every time she softened or exhaled loudly, and after just a few minutes of the circling, we could move on to serpentines up and down the full length of the ring. We did a little repeat when I picked up my stirrups, but it went faster.

By that time, Ida had come outside with Jazz. We rode in the ring a bit together, and then decided to head out to the woods. Jazz glared at Fizz a couple of times but they seemed to do fine together. We took turns leading and following and also went side by side when wide enough, and it worked out pretty well. Fizz stayed relaxed and on a fairly long rein the whole time. She also maintained a walk even when Jazz trotted off away from her, and didn't worry at all when Jazz trotted up behind her. We didn't canter anywhere.

Leading









Following (around the turnout fields, passing Izzy up ahead)








We didn't go particularly far, but it felt super productive both because of what I was able to do on my own with helping her relax in the outdoor, as well as riding out with a horse she didn't know.

Saturday night we celebrated my husband's birthday with dinner and a concert, and I think I got food poisoning!  Let's just say I spent last night and this morning locked in the bathroom. I will spare you too much additional information.

*Sunday*. Given my tenuous stomach situation, I didn't think I was mentally or physically in a place to ride. But by mid-day, I was feeling better and secure in being away from a bathroom for extended periods of time. There was a stiff wind and temps were plummeting, but my lovely husband and I stopped by the barn for some grooming and handgrazing in between running errands. He hadn't been out since Fizz got here (a month ago now!) and he enjoyed seeing them.

Izzy has a real soft spot for him- hard not to when he always shows up to give her a spa day and feed her treats! :grin:









When we took them out grazing, Izzy was being a jerk when Fizz got too close, pinning her ears and giving her the evil eye, so I had to coach my husband through correcting her for that. Fizz and I stayed a safe distance away to maintain harmony...









_You stay on your side...









We'll stay on ours...
_









After a bit, we switched horses so I could put Izzy away. Her neighbor Mary was still freaking out about the wind and the woods, bucking and racing around her paddock in sight of where Fizz was now out grazing alone. I told my husband that if she did anything stupid, just let her go and don't get stepped on, but this is about as dangerous as she got with other horses flipping out close by :wink:









Thankfully my stomach seems to be settled and I'm hoping tonight I'll get some sleep. I am SO looking forward to the short work week- just two days to get through until the holiday!!


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## egrogan

@bsms, your backing up post reminded me of another thing I should probably have been able to feel but didn't until I had "eyes on the ground." Fizz _does _try to use backing as an evasion to standing, but I was getting so fixated on the "NO- STAND" piece of it I should have realized that giving her no release or opportunity to go forward meant she really had no choice but back. I also practiced giving her an "out" forward and then asking for whoa once we are no longer going backwards. Not sure if I'm explaining that well, but our whoa's are getting much clearer and less resentful.

One thing I'm learning is that I need to relearn my timing as far as cues and releases.


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## phantomhorse13

I hope you are feeling better! Sounds like a really fun weekend with the exception of that.

I really enjoyed hearing about what you are doing with Fizz in your lesson. I hope you will continue to share as I a considering it 'distance learning' for me with Phin!


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## egrogan

Thankfully I'm feeling much better @*phantomhorse13* !

I'm feeling such a sense of accomplishment with Fizz today :grin: I haven't ridden her in two days, but was able to stop by the barn this morning. I knew I didn't have time for a lot of groundwork first, so decided to see what I could accomplish without that. My goal was an indoor warmup and then a road ride since it was a warm and sunny morning.

She's not a very emotive horse, if that makes sense, in that she doesn't seem to be one that responds outwardly to snuggles or effusive praise. BUT, she does seem to be a horse that loves to have her forehead rubbed and told she's a good girl. She stood nicely in the crossties but was showing me some eyewhites when she heard horses whinnying outside (there's construction on the property so the back turnout fields are temporarily closed this week, meaning turnout has been swapped around for some horses). I asked her to take a step over to move her hind leg under, she did it nicely, and I gave her lots of forehead rubs. Lightbulb! That softened her eyes right up and she relaxed. She stood very well for brushing and saddling, but did get a little dancey when I went to bridle her. For now, I'm putting the rope halter on under her bridle, mainly because it gives me a way to ask her to stand or back up if she fidgets while bridling and mounting. I'll admit it does feel like a crutch so my intention is to be able to move away from that in the future. But right now, it's a little added control that she responds to well and doesn't require me using the reins/bit in those moments- which I'd rather not do. 

We went into the indoor, and did some simple leading/halting/turn on the forehand for just a couple of minutes. The construction noise was right outside, but she stayed focused on me. So much so, I actually was able to just loop the lead up over her neck and had her halting, walking, and turning just from my body moving. Very cool feeling. 

She did step away from me the first time I walked up the steps of the block to mount, so I had to reposition her once and then got on. I just watched a video of Tristan Tucker teaching a horse to line up and stand at the mounting block which was very inspiring. It's on Facebook so I can't post the link here, but if you have 20 minutes and want to see a neat demo, look up "TRT Method" on FB and watch the video posted today (11/21/17). I don't think we're quite ready yet, as she's not so good at the "sideways stuff" as Tristan calls it, but it's a great goal to have. Would be SO useful out in the woods!

We worked through our warm ups, about 5 minutes with my feet out of the stirrups doing our circling and serpentines, and then I moved on to asking for more bend and flexion with feet in stirrups. Lots of deep exhales and chewing. I guess I shouldn't say she's not an expressive horse, because I can feel her whole body change when she does those deep, nose clearing sighs. At that point, I asked her to trot. We had some good moments and others where she rushed, and I tried to use breathing and seat to ask her to come back to me- mild success there. Right handed turns lead to more rushing than left.









Overall though, we'd had the sort of positive inside ride I hoped for, so out we went down the road. I've really been wanting to go to the Gnome Road, which is a couple of miles on paved roads/shoulders, so I headed in that direction and figured we'd just ride as long as things felt good. She trotted out but gave me those short prancy steps instead of the nice, relaxed trot we'd just had in the ring. So we came back to a walk. A small pickup came towards us from the other direction, so I asked her to stand. Unfortunately as I waved the guy passed, she got fidgety and didn't seem concerned about swinging her hind end out towards the traffic. He was nice about it and stopped to ask if we were ok, but I let her go forward rather than using that as a moment to work on whoa. Right now, I don't really trust her in traffic so that will limit where we go because on narrow, one lane roads I have to fully believe she is going to stop and stand where I put her when I put her there.
(_Right up around that corner is where the road gets narrow and where we were passed by the truck_)








Despite that, the place we were headed had wide enough shoulders I felt that we could keep going. There are some steep uphills and downhills, and riding her on downhills is a totally different experience from Izzy. Fizz really seems to understand how to tuck her hind end under and dramatically shifts her weight backwards. I have been riding her downhill in a way I think I remember @*gottatrot* writing about ages ago- it's sort of a hover just out of the saddle where you really let your legs "walk" your weight with each step side to side with the horse's movement. She's not strong enough yet to maintain a steady speed, so she does speed up, but she's so _careful_. I felt this in the woods the other day too. 

The route we were on today took us past the "scary house"- and this time I snapped a couple of pictures, though they absolutely don't do justice to the sheer amount of stuff outside (for example, you can't see the large spinning windmill behind the house or the massive greenhouse structure)- and, the pictures don't allow you to hear the Top 40 radio that was being piped out over the outdoor loudspeaker as we rode by. :shock: 

















None of this fazed her though. For a horse that gets tense, she just does NOT seem spooky. I find that very confusing.

The funniest part of the ride was that when we reached our turn around point, I could feel her whole demeanor change when we pointed towards home. She really wanted to keep going. I know it's not ok, but for the first quarter mile or so heading home she was totally rubbernecking back in the direction we had been, wanting to head back out instead of home.

_Not wanting to go home!








_I had to get her refocused because she was sort of like a drunken sailor heading back, but I like the enthusiasm for adventure! We trotted a few of the hills home and she did well. 

Sorry for such a long post, but I am finding it really helpful to go over all of this after the fact as I think about what's working and what's popping up as a next thing to work on. 

She and Izzy are sharing a paddock again for the next couple of days, because the construction is happening right in front of Izzy's field. So far it's been relatively harmonious.


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## Tazzie

Don't apologize for the length! It's an interesting read  I don't see any issue leaving a halter on for better timed aids. I think it's a good idea. I love reading your adventures!


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## egrogan

What better way to spend a day off than at the barn? The weather didn't exactly cooperate- rain in the morning was supposed to be light and clear up by lunchtime, but instead it poured all morning and was still raining when I got there midday.

Isabel was looking a bit like a drowned rat so I brought her in first and toweled her off. My husband commented that she looks like she just got done with an intense gym workout :wink:








I did do a little in hand work with her in the indoor while I was trying to get her dried out, but the construction was happening alongside the arena so I declined riding in there.

By the time I was done with Izzy, the construction had moved beyond the indoor, but it had gotten a bit congested with lessons and other riders, so I thought I would see what happened if I got Fizz ready and then mounted up and headed right out towards where we went yesterday.



> @*bsms*
> But it is trial and error, listening to the horse and sometimes making a mistake, then trying again. I find horses very forgiving of honest mistakes. And we do a lot of "_Two steps forward, three steps back, two steps forward._" Progress is a trend, not an irresistible force.


So...yeah...not sticking to the routine was a bit of a mistake. She stood stock still for mounting at the outdoor block, which was awesome, but as we headed down the driveway she was on her toes and prancing. At the bottom of the driveaway, a giant dumptruck was turning in to the barn, so I tried to pull her over to the side to let him pass. She was agitated, but we had enough space for that. I'm sure I got nervous and must of clamped down on her and got her feeling trapped. She started throwing her head around and crowhopping. I did get her stopped, and was happy that I was able to count to 10 without her flinging herself around again. At that point, I decided to just hop off, let us both regain our composure, and walk back up the driveway to the barn.

I took her back to the mounting block, she stood like a champ again, and I got on. I stayed in the parking lot and did our circling/bending activities. The construction guys were packing up to leave at about this time, and she was nervous about that (was I nervous about that?) but we just kept circling as we watched them pull away.









Things were going well so I headed back down the driveway and out to the road. Her pace quickened when we got to the end of the driveaway, but I was able to sit deeper and she responded. She was a little prancy on the road so we didn't go far, but that was ok with me. It was more just the act of getting out there in one piece. 









She got lots of forehead rubs when we got back and she was very nicely behaved on the crossties for both tacking and untacking. Oh- the best part of the day was right at the beginning- when I went out to the field to get her, she came right up to me enthusiastically! First time for that. We're building the trust bank, slowly...


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## egrogan

We had a lovely Thanksgiving morning. I was able to get both girls out for a ride in the woods. It was such a peaceful morning- there was no one else at the barn, no hunters in the woods, no loud trucks or machinery anywhere, just...quiet.


















Fizz did AWESOME in the woods, and seemed to love being out there (it's been at least a couple of weeks since we've gone out). She was totally zen when we got back, to the point of falling asleep in the crossties. I've NEVER seen her do that.








We certainly didn't ride far enough for her to be physically tired, and she didn't seem like I had pushed her so far outside her comfort zone that she had checked out. I think she finally just _relaxed_ for a minute.


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## frlsgirl

Yay for a "Zen" Fizz! Glad she is settling in so well. And how lucky are you to be able to have the barn to yourself?!? I love those kind of days.


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## egrogan

All smiles after this weekend at the barn. Fizz has had a few really awesome days in a row, and Izzy is fuzzy and happy and loving getting extra time out hand grazing and generally being pampered. 

#IzAndFizz









Rode Fizz yesterday and today. Both days, she's been very relaxed on the cross-ties for tacking up. I've found a couple of massage spots she seems to like, and she'll really lower her head and close her eyes and lean into it. Look, you can just see she's even got one hind leg cocked and is just hanging out without being worried. 









We've gotten into a nice little on-the-ground warm up routine in the indoor, though we are still struggling with sidepassing. However, her ability to do a very snappy turn-on-the-forehand has helped immensely with the fidgeting at the mounting block. I think we've had a breakthrough with that. I lead her up parallel to the block, stopping with her shoulder just passed the block. Then we do a half turn to the left, and whoa. And...magic...SHE STANDS and I can get on :happydance:

In the saddle, we're spending lots of slow time just working on bending, lots of serpentines, spiraling circles, direction changes and work over ground poles. The past couple of days, when we trot, she's gently asking to stretch down, and while she still speeds up when we do anything but just go straight along the rail, she is responding to shifting my body to balance her back. I haven't been asking her to canter yet because she will still get so easily unbalanced trotting, but it's getting better, maybe enough to ask for a few short canters soon. 

This weekend, we were able to use the time in the indoor as just a warm up rather than the main ride, and then head out to the trails. We're sticking close to home because of hunters, but still managing to ride a loop that's about 3 miles if you backtrack and end where you start. Yesterday we went out alone and she was perfectly content with that. There are a few places where it's not too rocky for some sustained trotting, and while she's still figuring out how to find her footing, she seems to really like it. 









Today we went out with my trail buddy Ida and Jazz. We have ridden with them around the property together but hadn't been on the longer woods trail together yet. Fizz has a bigger stride than Jazz so she led, but we would circle or stop to let them catch up and she didn't do any of her nasty ear pinning, tail swishing, or backing up to protest. That in itself felt like HUGE progress! Then we swapped and had Jazz lead. Jazz's trot isn't quite as big as Fizz's, so it was a good opportunity to see how Fizz would react to having to rate behind a horse going slower than she naturally wants to go. First, I let Jazz trot ahead and just asked Fizz to keep walking. She had no problem with a horse trotting away from her, and I love that that's established and not something I have to fight with her about. Then I asked her to trot, and she did pin her ears a bit at being asked to trot slowly and not run up on Jazz. I'm thinking about whether I held her back more than I really needed to, causing her to react that way- it's such ingrained muscle memory in me from riding Isabel who's likely to try to barge through a horse in front of her if we're not going as fast as she wants and I need to hold her back. On the trail, Fizz seems to have that wonderful understanding of how to follow the path you want at the speed you want until you ask for something different (of course, aside from halting and not dancing around). I really, really need to reprogram my riding so I don't do anything to lose this training she has, as it's such a desirable quality. Of course I don't know yet how she'll react in a strange environment with strange horses, but knowing that she seems to expect to carry herself in a particular speed/gait until asked for something different feels like a great starting point.









All in all, a great weekend- and apparently I'm not the only one who enjoyed the warm, sunny weather :wink:


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## egrogan

I hadn't ridden since Sunday, and wondered how Fizz would be today after a couple of days off. 

I took some time with grooming, doing a little light massage on the spots that she seems to relax into (right now that seems to be around her neck, ears, and eyes). She was so relaxed she had her hind leg cocked which made it challenging to get the saddle on and sitting where it belonged :wink:

There was a lesson happening inside, so I decided to do our warm-up in the outdoor. The wind gust were crazy- we actually got physically blown sideways- but then would die down. I put three cones out in a triangle, sort of like a barrel pattern, and did our groundwork around those, asking her to circle tightly in each direction and focus on stepping _under _with the inside hind leg rather than knocking over the cone or stepping on me. The small circles are still hard for her but she's getting better. When I went to mount up, she danced away from the block the first time. I lined her back up and climbed back up the block, and she went to step away again, so I jumped down, snapped the lead back on her halter, and took off running like a crazy person. She rightfully thought this was pretty stupid, but trotted around a lap with me. We stopped at the block, repositioned, and I got on without her moving. She stood nicely until I asked her to walk on.

With the wind still gusting, we did our mounted warm up by continuing to weave in and out of the cones and circle around them in both directions. 










She was calm and relaxed, the best she's been in the outdoor so far. We did a little trot warm up along the rail and then headed out to the woods trail.



















There had been a lot of shooting that sounded close by before I got on, so I didn't want to stray too far from the main trail. We just rode a straight mile point to point, working in a lot of trotting. She’s still finding her balance over the uneven, rockier ground, but she seems to be getting a bit more surefooted every time we’re out there. And, she LIKES being out there. Her ears are up, her eyes are bright, and she is very eager as we walk towards the trailhead. We’re having FUN :grin:
She was good again in the aisle for untacking, staying soft and calm. We’re starting to work in carrot stretches right before I turn her back out after a ride, and today was the first day she didn’t try to back up or spin around to get them, she stayed straight and really stretched around. Progress, progress, progress!


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## carshon

I LOVE your posts! What an wonderful new horse for you!


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## egrogan

Aww, thanks @*carshon* . It's a funny feeling, but riding is almost feeling addictive again. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Izzy, but she _tolerates_ riding at best and some days it's really not fun trying to make her do it. She likes being mostly retired. 

I'm having a blast figuring out a new horse who needs a little figuring out. I'm sure we'll have many steps back, but with help from BO, I feel like I can do it!

So Izzy doesn't get left out, she got a nice grooming and handgraze before I rode Fizz:


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## phantomhorse13

Were your ears burning last night? I mentioned your hello to Patti and of course had to fill her in on Fizz. She said she hopes to see you on trail next season - that ride in MA in the fall has an LD..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Were your ears burning last night? I mentioned your hello to Patti and of course had to fill her in on Fizz. She said she hopes to see you on trail next season - that ride in MA in the fall has an LD..


Ha, I love it! Maybe @Avna and Brooke will want to do a fall LD next year too once they're all settled in to their new place :grin: I just joined AERC and it looks like there's going to be a Morgan Green Bean team or two. It should be a really fun year!

Yesterday I got a ride with my decidedly non-Green Bean Isabel. There is something really nice about a horse you can grab from the field, brush quickly in all their favorite itchy spots, and then head out. She was eager to go! 









I never get tired of her cute little ears









We did a couple of miles doubling back through the woods, then trotted around the turnout fields and stopped to say hi to Fizz.



























They're separated again because apparently Izzy was chasing her relentlessly at the beginning of the week and not letting her near the water. Sigh. Mean girl problems! :evil:

Do you all think the shadowy spots you can see in her eyes in this photo are concerning? 








I don't know how much is a trick of the light from a picture in a dark barn, but I have noticed recently that her eyes look a little cloudier than I remember. She did have a basic eye exam with fall shots, and nothing was out of the ordinary. I need to have the vet back out to send blood for a Lyme retest, so I will mention it then too.


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## carshon

Those are her pupils and they look OK to me. Glad you had a good ride. I am hoping for one last ride before we are due for a cold snap!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the reassurance @carshon. It just looked really odd to me! I am sitting at 148.5 miles for the year, so should get over 150 this weekend! I have a lot of work travel between now and the holidays so may be stuck in weekend warrior mode, but I'm off the last two weeks of the year so we'll see how much I can push up the mileage total. Knock on wood, still no snow in our long-range forecast and temps are supposed to be pretty reasonable!


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## Avna

I sure am hoping to be a Green ****** on the Little Morgan Mare team!


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## egrogan

The only bad thing about my lesson is that it's at the end of the work day on a Friday. In my company, as I'm sure in many others, that's the time of the week when everyone frantically gets on their email and reaches out to say they need stuff urgently for their 7am-on-Monday client meeting. So I was late getting in the car to drive over, watching email pile up along the way-along with my stress level- all the while chanting "this is not the right mindset for Fizz * this is not the right mindset for Fizz * this is not the right mindset for Fizz."

I brought Fizz in to tack up, and my friend Ida was in the barn when I got there...she loves to chat and has a hard time hearing, so you have to speak pretty loudly. So I was trying to talk with her while simultaneously get Fizz ready more quickly than I usually do, and I could just see Fizz's eyes getting bigger and bigger. She was dancing all around in the cross ties and kept backing up so she was hanging on the end of the ties- prime setup for pulling out of them again. I clipped the lead on, took her off the ties, and asked her to stand, which she did a little better. I tacked up more quickly than ideal, and headed in right on the dot of when my lesson started. That meant I didn't really have time for much groundwork, so when I walked to the mounting block, gah, she would.not.stand. It was disappointing because she's been doing so much better, but when I circled her around a couple of times she started pulling back hard and refusing to walk forward, so BO had to stand behind her and shoo her up to the steps. Sigh. 

But once I was on, things got better. We had a nice mounted walking warm up, and she was relaxed despite skittering around earlier. We started with turns-on-the forehand, and BO was impressed that her flexibility is increasing. She's still very stiff, and it's still hard for her- but she's trying. And it doesn't take a lot of repetition of that kind of work for the quality of her gaits when we're going straight to improve, which is so neat to see. She started off with her ears in the rafters, but after our warmups, she was moving in a much more relaxed position and even had a little bit of swing in her barrel. 

On our first trot, BO seemed genuinely surprised to see that the quality of the trot is noticeably better than it was in our last lesson (two weeks ago now, there were no lessons last Friday because of Thanksgiving). I got a nice compliment, she said "clearly you've been doing your homework"- which we have! We did lots of spiraling trot circles and praised her big when she tried to bend and engage her hind end. Right is harder for her than left.

I also got some very helpful feedback on my own position. I lean a lot to compensate for Fizz's lack of bending, and I am apparently worse with collapsing my right shoulder than left. I also have a tendency to throw away my reins when she needs support (e.g., taking a walk break), and when we were working on tight half circles to change direction, it took me awhile to understand what I was supposed to be doing to support her body with my legs. But I think I'm getting it. 

By the end of the lesson, we both got lots of "good girls" for a calm yet forward cool out walk. Fizz was tired, she had worked hard. But she seemed much happier at the end of the ride than she was when we started!









She definitely deserved her apple :grin:


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## egrogan

My lovely husband was kind enough to come to the barn with me this morning to grab some video with Fizz. I really wanted to have a "baseline" of where we're starting from. She's been here for a little more than a month and a half, we've had two lessons, and have just shy of 25 trail miles so far. So...this is where we are. Fair warning, a lot of this is probably pretty boring, but I'm leaving this as a record for myself to reference in the future :wink: Of course, there are a million things I see that I need to change- and I'm very open to feedback if you have it!

To start with, I wanted to see what was going on with mounting. Well...of course, she stepped right up to the block, and stood like a rock. I guess I shouldn't complain though, now we just need more of this and less of what she was doing the other night.





Then we just did our pretty normal warm up, circles, direction changes, etc. A little walk, a little trot (another embarassing moment, how much I look down for my diagonal- I still have trouble feeling it on her).





This is pretty horrendous to watch, but in the spirit of "baseline," I'm leaving it here. This is the second time I've cantered her since she's been here. The good news, she doesn't look quite as bad as I thought she would. She's actually going along decently smoothly. The bad news...well, everything about how I'm riding it, gah, especially that canter-trot transition :redface:





My friend Ida came in to ride in the midst of this, so we decided to head out to the woods. What a luxury having my own personal groom available to hold my steed while I ran to the bathroom before our trail ride :wink:









We had Jazz lead for a bit, and it just is challenging to stay behind a slow walker with a faster walker. Jazz moves out a little better at the trot, so that made it easier to follow.









It was a pretty full day for Fizz! And, we had ridden a couple of miles yesterday with another boarder and her gelding, so she's gotten quite a lot of exercise this weekend. She had worked up a good sweat so we cooled out in the grass, which she appreciated.









Rode Izzy today too so I could stretch her legs. Reliable as ever :grin:








She also got an extra carrot(s) while my husband was there visiting.


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## Chevaux

I think you’re doing a good job of self analysis, egrogan — you’re recognizing both ‘got it’ and ‘need to get it’ aspects of your riding. You are going to be very successful in your ventures.

I also think you’re in a very nice facility — everything always look clean, neat and organized and, more importantly, comfortable for your horses.


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## egrogan

Thank you @Chevaux. It is indeed a very wonderful place to be a horse! I'm so lucky the girls are there :grin:


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## phantomhorse13

I think posting the videos is a great idea, as you will soon look back on them and see how far you have gotten.


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## egrogan

Like everyone else, I'm really bummed about the posts that have been lost- especially my last one here. I've been holding off on posting anything else until this is resolved, but since who knows if that's going to happen, I'll just jump back in.

First off, really really good news: *Izzy is Lyme-free! *She had her 6-month retest and came back solidly negative. Her chronic values (OspF) were half what they were when we started treatment. I'm so relieved.

Here's the goofy girl and I today trying to take some selfies.









I was in Nashville for work this week. Was on a plane home Thursday night, was actually posting on HF a bit since my brain was so fried from work, but through a series of really annoying airline issues, I ended up missing my connecting flight home in DC and had to spend the night there. I got on the first flight home Friday morning, but that had a cascading effect on all my work meetings that day, so sadly I had to cancel my Friday evening lesson as I was just going flat out at work all day. All that to say, Fizz had not been ridden or really messed with at all since I was out there on Tuesday. 

She had gone a little feral during the course of the week :wink: She was very rude and pushy being led in from her paddock, so I pulled her blanket off and went right into the indoor for a little groundwork. It took her a minute to remember her manners, but she did. Phew. We even practiced our ground tying, and:

Got on to ride after that. We spent about 20 minutes in the indoor warming up- it was cold, only about 25*F, so we took it slow and easy to get those muscles going. I was itching to get out to the trail, so we headed that way. It turned out to be an eventful ride! 

On our way across the field to the trail, we rode past BO's mother's house at exactly the moment her automatic garage door opened- Fizz saw or heard it well before me, and shot sideways like a rocket then bolted forward. Fortunately with 8 inches of snow on the ground, she was slowed down some, and I managed to stay on. She only lurched forward for a few steps, and I was able to get her back walking. She was understandably a little nervous right afterwards, but it was great to discover that she is pretty easy to calm down even after a really big spook. So into the winter wonderland we went!









She decided to bring a little taste of Christmas home with us :wink:


















I was enjoying being out so decided we'd double back and finish where we started. She hesitated a little when I asked her to turn back and go the way we'd come. She gave me a little sideways glance like, "_you do understand we could just go up this hill right here and be back at the barn, right?_" and kind of drunken sailor walked for a few steps before she accepted we were heading back the other way. When we got to the little stream crossing, which she had walked through nicely on the way out, she decided to JUMP it. That was interesting, as I was certainly not prepared. It was one of those freeze-frame sort of moments, where I didn't really process what was happening until I found myself looking down (probably the wrong thing to do) and saw her tucking her front legs up neatly as she launched through the air. I'm pretty sure I landed with my thighs in front of the saddle before I scooted back where I belonged, but for the second time that ride, I found myself feeling thankful for staying on! :eek_color: I guess I will need BO to teach me how to properly pop over some small crossrails again so I don't embarrass myself if we have an occasion to do a little jump in the future!

As of today, I am on vacation the rest of the year! Looking forward to lots of barn time.


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## egrogan

Hmm....looks like not all the photos uploaded above. Here is Fizz showing off her budding ground-tying skills.




































There were a couple of horses neighing outside, hence her interested look in the last one- but still, she barely moved a foot (obviously she took a step forward with that front right). I was impressed with her.

Next thing to do is try to get this to transfer to places where things are a little busier and more distracting. I would love to recreate this in the barn aisle in the cross-tying space but I don't trust her with it yet.


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## gottatrot

Nice job staying in the saddle!
Fizz is sooo cute.


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## frlsgirl

Izzy is Lyme Free! Yay! That is great news! Love the snow pics; there is something so magical about riding horses in the snow.


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## egrogan

I got some new lunging equipment so I tried it out yesterday to see how Fizz would do with it. As I'm learning to ride her bigger (to me) canter and she continues to get in shape, I want her to be able to do a little cantering without worrying about balancing me too. I don't love lunging, as I always feel like I have two left feet and am not sure my body position is always right, but I think I can do an adequate job of using a few minutes of work on the line every now and then until we're both ready to work on the canter undersaddle. She did well with the surcingle and side reins- wasn't sure if she'd feel trapped in them so had them set very loose and just took things slow. She had her ears pinned at first but didn't have the frantic look in her eye so we worked through it. Her previous owners taught her voice commands really well, which I very much appreciate, so it's a little less likely that I will bungle things by having my body in the wrong spot since she's very responsive to w/t/c and tone of voice. Given the aforementioned "two left feet," I didn't get any video of her as I think we would have both ended up tangled in the line if I had tried that :wink:

I also got some quality time with Izzy. It was really cold, about 16*F, so I got her all bundled up to warm up those muscles as we moved.









We found a cool spot where some of the turkeys had recently been playing or preening









And then just took a leisurely walk around the farm. She took her time getting through the deeper snow but seemed happy to be out and about.


















Poor horses are all so desperate for grass-she was determined to find what was under the snow on the way back to her pasture. 


















She's so cute with her little snowy muzzle :grin:

We'll see what today brings!


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## ChasingDreams

Where did you buy that reflective blanket? Is it heavy? 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

ChasingDreams said:


> Where did you buy that reflective blanket? Is it heavy?


Hi @*ChasingDreams* . It's this Amigo competition sheet.

It's got a little weight to it, maybe the equivalent of a lightweight blanket (according to that link, it lists the fill as 50g). It's nice because it's waterproof, and of course it's a winner in the hi vis department! It absolutely slows cars down from a distance on the road.


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## carshon

I am so jealous that you have trails to ride in the winter! No riding here - our snow melted and our hay field just had lime put down so it is off limits. Keep posting pics - I can ride vicariously through you!


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## ChasingDreams

egrogan said:


> Hi @*ChasingDreams* . It's this Amigo competition sheet.
> 
> It's got a little weight to it, maybe the equivalent of a lightweight blanket (according to that link, it lists the fill as 50g). It's nice because it's waterproof, and of course it's a winner in the hi vis department! It absolutely slows cars down from a distance on the road.




I think I need to get one. Besides slowing cars and bikers, the trails I ride are open to hunters this time of year... I wear bright orange, but I imagine that this is MUCH more visible than anything I could wear.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> I am so jealous that you have trails to ride in the winter! No riding here - our snow melted and our hay field just had lime put down so it is off limits. Keep posting pics - I can ride vicariously through you!


I know, I feel so lucky! But, I am keeping an anxious eye on the weather. It's supposed to warm up tomorrow and stay above freezing the rest of the week, maybe with some rain heading into the weekend, but then plummeting back below freezing- a recipe for _ice _everywhere. The trails are only accessible when the ice stays away, since they're sort of in a valley behind the barn and to get to them it's steep downhill and uphill back home. 

I ended up spending most of today Christmas shopping and didn't get out to the barn to see the girls, but I am meeting my riding buddy tomorrow morning.

You all may enjoy this- Izzy is now a Christmas card :grin: The folk artist who made me my lovely painting of her for my birthday last year has included her in his animal-themed holiday card series. 








Shameless plug, any folk art lovers can get the holiday cards from his online shop here. Obviously it's what we're sending out this year!

@*ChasingDreams* , I've been happy with that sheet. I think I've had it for 3 years now? I don't use it every time I ride, but it's held up. And yes, it is definitely more visible than any of my brightest orange gear- I think a great choice for warning hunters you're there. If you do get it, one thing I learned is that your leg makes a "swooshing" sound as it brushes against it- so if you're riding off seat and legs, it's going to make some noise. I desensitized in an arena before riding out with it so my mare didn't think she was being attacked from both sides every time she took a step!


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## egrogan

It's been fun being at the barn during the middle of week days. A lot of folks are off so it's fun and festive there.

Yesterday I went out with my regular riding buddy Ida. It was a warm day, but the snow was still nice to ride in. We took a loop through the woods, Ida singing Christmas carols :wink:









Today I went out after lunch feeding and I think Fizz was in a food coma...








She was the best she's ever been for bridling. She did seem a little stiff when we did our groundwork warmup in the ring. She was sluggish stepping under with the right hind (hmm...the one she's resting in the picture above...) and a little stiff when trotting. She seemed to work out of it, but something to keep an eye on. I didn't feel any heat in the legs or feet when we were done riding, and she didn't seem uncomfortable in her back or anything like that.

We rode out with Izzy's new boyfriend- a seemingly agreeable gelding who arrived last week and is now her paddock neighbor- and his rider. His rider had a bad fall from her own horse outside a couple of years ago, so generally stays in the arena. She's ridden this horse before, and he is apparently a steady eddie trail type, so she asked if we could go out together today. She did great- she said she was a little tense but you'd never know it, they were great together. The footing wasn't ideal, as the snow has started melting and now has that icy crust on top, but she wanted to trot around a bit, which I thought was really cool for someone who hasn't been out in awhile!








This guy has the funniest little whinny when I bring Izzy in and out, I will have to try to get it on video as I've never heard a horse that sounds like him before.

The girls got some fancy Christmas mints from their "grandma." Izzy was enthusiastic, but Fizz was a little skeptical


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Fizz was a little skeptical


:rofl:

The first time I offered Dream a peppermint, she sniffed at it and then looked at me like I was trying to poison her. She eventually grabbed it from my hand and spit it on the ground when I kept offering it to her. Gotta love a mare!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> :rofl:
> 
> The first time I offered Dream a peppermint, she sniffed at it and then looked at me like I was trying to poison her. She eventually grabbed it from my hand and spit it on the ground when I kept offering it to her. Gotta love a mare!


Silly Dream! Fizz did eventually eat them. She just kept smacking her lips, bobbing her head up and down, and sticking out her tongue. Weirdo. I can't believe no one has ever given her mints before?! I guess I usually have carrots or apples, but I have to imagine at some point in her life she's had them!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> Silly Dream! Fizz did eventually eat them. She just kept smacking her lips, bobbing her head up and down, and sticking out her tongue. Weirdo. I can't believe no one has ever given her mints before?! I guess I usually have carrots or apples, but I have to imagine at some point in her life she's had them!


My Izzie REFUSES to eat mints. I've offered them numerous times (though I hate mints myself). At one point she refused, and the others enjoyed it. So she tried one herself, spit it on the ground, and then gave me the meanest mare glare I've ever seen.

I never tried again :lol:


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## egrogan

These stories are so funny! I've truly never met a horse before that didn't like mints.


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## Tazzie

She's an oddball, but I love her :lol: the only treats she cares for are sugar cubes (super rare occasion, and the only treat she's allowed when she has a bit in her mouth) and apple wafer biscuit things. She doesn't like real carrots or apples, though it's been a bit since we tried.

The mint situation happened last Christmas, so doubting her mind has changed on that haha! I despise mint, so it just further proves I bought myself in horse form :lol:


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## egrogan

Yesterday at the barn started off nicely. I was feeling like Izzy had been neglected this week since I've had limited daylight while there and have been trying to ride Fizz, leaving time to just "visit" Izzy. So I decided I'd start yesterday by giving her a long grooming and then taking her out for a nice handwalk. As we started our walk down the road (where we've walked and ridden a gazillion times), she did her best park horse impression, head up, eyes wide, nostrils flared. Not sure what she thought was down there!









But after about a quarter mile, she realized she was not in fact going to be eaten by wolves, and she chilled out. 









Her back isn't looking great these days, I have to figure out some sort of exercise for her this winter that she won't despise. She hates arena work so much, and lunging isn't good for her arthritis. When the snow and ice isn't awful, we can ride around the farm, and if the hills aren't too slippery we'll still walk through the woods. I can also take her on these walks, which we both like, but I don't think it's topline-building kind of exercise (we go about a mile, maybe a little more, just walking). So I don't know- she's never had a great topline, even looking back at pictures of her from 5 years ago, but it has noticeably changed as I've ridden her less. I thought semi-retirement was suiting her well, at least mentally, but physically, I'm not so sure. 

The barn was bustling again yesterday, and my friend Ida had been kind of miffed that I didn't want to ride with her and took Izzy out alone instead. So she had hung around waiting for me to get Fizz so we could ride together. I was feeling rushed, which as we all know is generally a recipe for disaster. Against my better judgement, I got Fizz brushed and tacked quickly, skipped our stretching/groundwork, got on and headed outside.

Now that I'm looking back, I can appreciate the humor in how a bunch of little things that could go wrong _did_ go wrong. I'll preface by saying no one got hurt, everyone stayed on their horse, but no one really had a good time :wink:

We mounted up, and I asked Fizz to go left, away from an icy spot in the parking lot, and she insisted on pulling right. I kept asking her to go the other way to avoid the ice, and she just threw her head up and plowed ahead. She was being so weirdly obstinate I looked down and realized that like a dumba*s, _I had my reins crossed under her chin, so while I was asking her to go left, I was actually using the crossed-under right rein_. Poor girl was like, what do you want me to do here lady!? So I got off, fixed that, and started again.

We rode around the turnout field, and I'm not exaggerating when I say there were probably 40-50 turkeys everywhere, making a ton of racket. I think a couple of the "teenage" flocks had joined up with the older folks, and it was like a sea of turkeys along the path in front of us. Two separate small groups took off running and then flying in two different directions, and Fizz and Jazz, to their credit, were saints. The problem was that one of the groups decided to fly up into some mature oak trees, and were flapping and bouncing from branch to branch up in the canopy directly over our heads. At that point, Ida says, "let's trot to get out from under them" and trots off, Fizz breaking into a canter after them. To be fair, it was a beautiful walk-canter transition, something we haven't done yet :grin: On the other hand, it was really not what I asked for. The good news is that it was actually a lovely canter to ride. The bad is that she was not interested in stopping- she didn't run away with me, she kept a very nice, slow tempo, but she just leaned against my hands and wouldn't stop until she was ready. So, certainly something to work on under different conditions!

After we got away from the turkey bombs, I had the brilliant idea to head out to the road, which is what I had wanted to do all along. Ida is very nervous on the road, and was particularly nervous because the shoulder was pretty icy, and it was sort of inconsiderate of me to suggest it. I did tell her that she could just stop back at the barn and not come with us, but she wanted to keep going. So, we tiptoed through the ice of the parking lot and driveway, got to the road, and ran headlong into a huge gaggle of screaming, wild kids just off the school bus. I think Fizz wanted to go up in a puff of smoke, but she held it together enough that we could simply circle back and head back up the icy driveway where we had come from. Jazz, a true saint, didn't bat an eye, even though I know Ida was nervous about the whole scene.

Along the driveway, there are three big warmbloods in their paddocks. They got excited when I walked past with Izzy earlier, taking off bucking and snorting when we went by, and they repeated as we rode by. BO's big gelding was bucking and farting, hit some ice, and wiped out completely, then got up bucking and rearing all over again. That was it for Fizz. She looked at him wide-eyed, arched her neck and started snorting and prancing. We were on a little island of dirt surrounded by ice, and close to the barn, so I just jumped off there- Ida went past us safely, thankfully. Poor Fizz had sort of gone into that "I can't take it" eye-rolling place she can go, and was kind of crowhopping and snorting along next to me the last few steps to the barn. Her snorting and blowing freaked out another horse standing on crossties in the barn getting tacked up, so he had to be whisked into a stall so we could go past. We made quite an entrance :wink:

I brought her into the indoor, walked around for a minute just to calm down, and got back on in there where it was quiet and there were no other horses. We walked and trotted around for a few more minutes, she finally let out a huge sigh and I felt her whole body just relax. I called it quits from there.

So- not the ride I was hoping for. But I am learning that even when she has a freak out moment (the spook at the garage door the other day, all the stressful things yesterday) she _can_ come back to me. I'll be honest, it does make me nervous about what will happen when we start leaving the farm to ride, but I've been nervous about that all along. I think what's most important is that I feel like I'm learning to trust her through this stuff. A month ago when we'd have dicey moments, I'd wonder if I could handle my own nerves well enough to handle her, but I'm gaining confidence to believe I can. I still have more room to grow there, because she is clearly the kind of horse that needs confidence from her person when something scares her- but I am beginning to trust that she's only going to get scared at things that are legitimately scary, and not going to blow up unpredictably over the little things. So that all feels good.

Supposed to have a lesson tonight, but I'm beginning to think my lesson time is cursed. According to the weather, we may have 8 inches of snow by then, or we may have 3. Not sure if I'll be able to get out to the barn but am really hoping so!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> After we got away from the turkey bombs...


So funny! I think your turkeys are worse than my elk.

My friend did that crossunder reins thing once when hopping on her horse. Unfortunately, the horse took off and she tried her best to steer her but didn't know she was pulling her the wrong way so she pulled her running into the woods instead of away. Thankfully the horse stopped when the brush got thick. It was kind of funny afterward.


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## phantomhorse13

I think you did a great job handling all the excitement of the ride. You and Fizz are learning to have faith in one another - something that will only increase with time. Very good thought to go into the indoor and ride until everyone was in their happy place again.

You wondered about topline exercises for Izzy that won't drive you both crazy.. why not add some transitions and gentle backing to your trail walk routine? Since those things are good for horses under saddle, I would think they would also be good for in hand work.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> So funny! I think your turkeys are worse than my elk.


The only saving grace is that the horses are very used to the turkeys because they basically live in their fields with them. Sometimes when the turks are in the "wrong" place, it makes the horses nervous. Earlier in the week I was walking Izzy towards the woods, and she was fine when they were in front of us on the path- then they darted into the woods and were traipsing through the underbrush, which she did not approve of!



phantomhorse13 said:


> You wondered about topline exercises for Izzy that won't drive you both crazy.. why not add some transitions and gentle backing to your trail walk routine? Since those things are good for horses under saddle, I would think they would also be good for in hand work.


Great idea, we can definitely do that! Well...Izzy may not think "work" is a great idea, but it will be good for her :wink:

*****************************
Borrowed my lovely husband's truck last night so I could get out to the barn in the snow (my little car doesn't have 4-wheel drive) and I'm so glad I was able to get there. We got ~4 inches of beautiful light, fluffy snow, and it was coming down pretty hard when I got there. I love that quiet "whooooshhh" sound snow makes when it's falling and there are no other sounds to muffle it. 

I went to see Izzy first, and found a snow-covered, frozen whiskered pony...









...happily standing about 20 paces away from her dry shed.









All the horses seemed to prefer the snow to their shelters yesterday:


















I got there pretty early since I didn't know how the roads would be, so I spent a long time with grooming and did a little massage with Fizz before our lesson. She was in a very agreeable mood and stood nicely on the cross-ties, really leaning in to the massage. She loves when you do slow, soft circles right on her temples- she couldn't stop yawning and licking and chewing. It's nice to see her starting to respond when she really likes something. BO commented last night that a little personality is finally starting to emerge, and I agree. I don't think she's ever going to be a "snuggly" kind of horse, but I'm not much of a snuggly person either so that's ok!

Our lesson was very illuminating, as usual! I explained to BO how she had been a little stiff this week during groundwork and trotting. We also talked about the confidence boosting of riding through some difficult situations, and she was proud of us :grin: 

We learned some little baby steps of lateral movement, which is new for both of us. With some practice, we got where we could stand facing diagonally into a corner, and I could get Fizz to move her hips in either direction, and then in a little fan going one way and then back the other way. I know that sounds small, but it's pretty huge as Fizz came to me pretty certain that leg on her barrel only meant "faster NOW." I also don't have the best timing with my aids so I'm learning too.

While I was riding, I was mindful of all the debates about the value of dressage training here on HF these days, but I have to say that after we did some of these "move your hips" and bending exercises, we would then straighten out, and ask her to trot off, and the feeling of that trot was totally different than anything else I have felt while riding her. I would use words like "light" and "lifted" though I know that would cause debate :wink: I know we're not going to be dressage masters, and BO and I are both clear that that's not the goal anyway. But I think working on flexibility, ability to bend better, maintain a steady rhythm and tempo- all those things are going to serve us well on the trail and hopefully "using her body correctly" is going to help her in the longer term. I find myself wishing again that I had a video of the lesson because the difference in her trot when we warmed up and after we had worked through our exercises was just like watching a different horse. I'm intrigued by the possibilities. 

Here's Fizz enjoying her post-ride peppermint. One tiny round disk got this much reaction :grin: 





Unfortunately our light, fluffy snow is currently being covered over with an expected 0.25 inches of ice today, so I won't make it out to the barn. There's a chance it's going to warm up enough to melt most of it before it snows again tomorrow night. Fingers and toes all crossed that we'll get rid of enough ice that we can still ride outside next week!


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## egrogan

I was iced/snowed in for three days over the weekend. Christmas Eve, we had about 0.5 inch of ice and spent the afternoon chipping it off the driveway.


















Christmas Day, we got about 5 inches of nice, fluffy snow.









I was feeling a little despondent assuming that the ice meant riding outside was going to be done for the rest of the year, but when I got to the barn yesterday, I was encouraged by how much the snow had improved the footing. BO confirmed that it was actually pretty nice and wasn't dumb to try to ride out. The temps were cold, around 20*F, but that's actually the highest temp we'll see all week as _this _is our forecast :eek_color:

















I got Izzy in first, gave her a nice grooming, and threw a fleece cooler on to take her for a handwalk. We did some turns on the forehand, some baby steps of sidepassing, and some halting/backing. I made the mistake of giving her a piece of carrot I had in my pocket early on, and she was relentless about begging for treats the rest of the walk. Not her most admirable quality, but she eventually got the message and cut it out.


















Fizz was up next. We did our usual warmup inside- a little basic groundwork, then some walk/trot doing lots of circling, spiraling, and changes of direction undersaddle. I tried to really make the most of the walk portion before doing anything else because it was just so cold. After about 30 minutes, we headed out for the trails. I had walked through the field to check out the footing when I went to get Izzy, and it was crunchy but didn't seem slick or dangerous.

Thankfully, we were able to head to the woods. 









She hesitated for a second about going down the steep hill, but with a little encouragement she plunged forward. We ride it like a switchback when there's a lot of snow and that seems to be the safest way.

The woods looked like a magical snow globe. It was so cold, the ice from the Christmas Eve storm hasn't melted off the trees, so the sun coming through the branches twinkled and sparkled. It also meant the trail was blocked in a lot of places because of so many bent saplings and very low branches, so we had to pick our way around obstacles that aren't usually there. 


















I was so proud of her, she stopped and waited several times as I tried to work out the best way to go through or around tricky places. The only "miscommunication" was a moment when she didn't give me enough clearance on the left side and slammed my knee into a decent sized tree trunk. I have to admit I spent the next quarter mile fighting waves of nausea after hitting such a sensitive spot so hard- but it passed. I had a pretty big goose egg on my kneecap last night, but surprisingly this morning there's just a small bump and it's not the 15 shades of purple I was expecting! :wink: 

Got a cute shot of her all dressed up in her Christmas present- a new wool quarter sheet. We brought a bunch of the snow home with us as we knocked it off the tree branches!


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## gottatrot

It looks so beautiful with all the snow!

Glad your knee is OK. :smile:


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## carshon

Love the snow shots! I think my husband would agree with you about the "light" feeling after exercises moving the hind quarters around. He and Belle have worked on this for the last couple of months and are doing quite well. She is "stickier" to one side but they are getting it - and 2 tracking at a gait for a few strides both directions. I guess I never really equated that exercise with dressage movement but I can see where it would be. So glad you have had such good rides and great lessons!


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## egrogan

My lesson got moved to yesterday afternoon since it was "warm" compared to what it's going to be Friday afternoon. At 15*F, the barn was totally empty!

I stopped by Izzy's field to give her a pet on the nose and a couple of carrots before going to grab Fizz.









While we were warming up, I was chatting with BO about some trouble I've been having with downward transitions with Fizz. So we started by focusing on walk-halt with just shifting my weight deep down through my feet and into my seat, no rein. That worked pretty well. It was a lot harder going trot-walk or trot-halt. One enduring bad habit of mine is pitching forward rather than being able to settle deeply in the saddle as the pace gets faster, which is the exact opposite of what we were working on. After many, many unsuccessful attempts, we did have a few nice moments where I could put my body together to shorten the trot up and then release the weight through my body to let her out to trot her normal speed, and then do it again to bring her back to a walk. Changing the pace within the gaits will help us as we're working on this too. 

At that point, BO asked the dreaded question, "so have you been working on her canter at all?" As I've mentioned before, her canter feels so big to me compared to Izzy, which I know sounds silly to folks like BO who ride truly huge movers. I was finally honest with her- and myself- that it made me nervous. She doesn't really let you get away with that though, and simply said, "well- let's see what it looks like." Fizz got some nice compliments about her canter departs, but her rider, not so much. The more we did, the more it seemed like I tensed up and clamped down on her. Obviously that made her nervous and she got faster and faster. When we took the right lead, she started crowhopping into every transition, which didn't help things. So, BO had to focus on me for a bit and just talk me through releasing my death grip, actually sitting in the saddle, and _riding_ instead of hanging on. There were a few moments when I wanted to scream at her "I really need to stop now!" but she kept talking me through it and I was able to ride a few decent 20m circles. I'm really not sure _why_ I got so nervous up there, I guess just need a lot more practice and experience with it, particularly with a stronger horse than I'm used to. But working in some cantering is clearly my homework, more for me right now than for Fizz. BO was actually pretty optimistic about how nice her canter can be.

I know I will feel better about it all when I trust that I have brakes in that downward transition, and the only sort of disconcerting thing about the lesson was that BO agreed with me that our brakes are not particularly trustworthy right now once Fizz gets excited. She has a tendency to just blow through your aids when she's not ready to stop. So we do need to spend time with those transition exercises we worked on. 

Both of us were tired after we were done! :wink:


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## carshon

You will get those canter transitions! Riding a new to you horse can be intimidating and the canter is always the most frightening speed. I have no suggestions as Miss Tillie is a rocket and I very rarely let her canter as she has a big stride and does not ever tire - and likes to race the horse she is riding with. Soooooo I also have work to do! You have a head start with lessons - my work will start this spring in the hay field.

Good job with Fizz so far. I really enjoy your posts.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon! I appreciate all your positive and encouraging feedback :grin:

Riding this horse is like a drug- after I get off and am thinking about our rides, it's like I _need_ more of riding. There's so much to work on. It's hard, it's scary, it's fun, it's exciting, all at once. I keep joking with BO that for the first time in my life, I am actually learning how to ride, and I love it!

High of 6*F today- thinking of maybe going out to the barn after lunch and just lunging for a few minutes to let her stretch her legs?


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## carshon

Brave Brave girl. It is about the same temp here. I went out at my lunch break and cleaned all 4 stalls and put the girls out into the dry lot with some hay. They were running around like fools. After about 40 min I had to come back in and make sure I still had fingers and toes. And now I am avoiding work projects by being on the forum.

Enjoy your barn time!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Brave Brave girl. It is about the same temp here. I went out at my lunch break and cleaned all 4 stalls and put the girls out into the dry lot with some hay. They were running around like fools. After about 40 min I had to come back in and make sure I still had fingers and toes. And now I am avoiding work projects by being on the forum.
> 
> Enjoy your barn time!


I chickened out- got bundled up intending to go, but had to stop at the grocery store on the way. Just getting in and out of the car I had to admit they weren't kidding about the -30*F windchill, so I didn't go. 

Farrier comes tomorrow morning at 8am, that will be interesting as it will still be below zero actual temps!

Stay warm out there with evening chores @*carshon* ! About to go lock the chickens up in the coop for the night- they seem to keep the coop 15-20*F warmer than the outside temps when it's all buttoned up, but it will still be a cold night for them.


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## egrogan

I really earned my New Englander badge today!

It was -7*F when I got to the barn for the farrier this morning. Poor girls had whiskers full of icicles…

#FizzAndIz









It was way too cold to do anything with them when he finished, so I put them back out and planned to go back to the barn when it was “warmer” in the afternoon- it got up to all of 10*F. But, the wind was much less severe than yesterday so it did feel better.

Still…at those temps, I wasn’t doing anything serious. I’ve been talking with BO about occasionally lunging Fizz as part of our workout plan, so I decided to hook all the equipment up and see how it went. It was only the second time I’ve lunged her in sidereins, so I set them up really loose to she didn’t have any anxiety about feeling trapped. She handled it well, though I’m not sure they were super effective given how loose they were.

We had a couple of nice moments…(sorry for the grainy still photo-from-video shots, I need to figure out a video editor…)



























And @*bsms* , I thought you’d appreciate how she’s really rounding up her back as we started our canter work (Kidding, kidding! Just some friendly teasing…I think we need a “tongue in cheek” icon :wink









She was really only silly like that for one circle when I first asked her to canter, and I really can’t blame her given how extreme the weather has been and how bored all the horses are as a result. 










That said, while I don’t want to draw too many conclusions about how useful lunging could be for us based on just today, I do think there are two pretty clear takeways that aren’t so different from what I know I have to work on coming out of lessons:
1. I really need to keep working on the timing of my responses, whether praise or corrections, and get much more consistent and accurate in how I respond to what she does
2. Downward transitions are a problem- no matter the gait, bringing her back down on the line seemed virtually impossible until it became her idea. I will try to get the video edited to show an example.

We only did this for 10ish minutes (BO had suggested 2 min walk, 2 min trot, and 1 min canter in each direction, and I basically stuck to that). I decided to sit in the saddle for a couple of minutes and practice the walk/halt transitions from our lesson, and we did that for about 10 min too.

She looks so Morgany here :grin:









Tomorrow is going to be downright balmy- all the way up to 17*F- and I am planning to get in one last ride through the woods to close out my 2017 mileage tracking.

Sending everyone warm thoughts tonight!


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## egrogan

Woohoo- double digit temps today! It went all the way to 10*F.

I was surprised there were actually several people at the barn. No one was riding, but itchy horses appreciated having blankets taken off for a good brushing, and there were lots of folks just handwalking in the indoor.

Izzy was up first. 









We did a little groundwork in the indoor, which she thought was pretty pointless as soon as she realized there was no food involved :wink:









When she was done, it was her favorite time-lunch!









Brought Fizz in and she did some groundwork too. I am still not successful at being able to move the haunches away from me- I tried using a dressage whip today because I've been finding if I try to move my body back towards her hip to put pressure on her and ask her to move away, she just starts spinning in a circle, which is not the point. But tapping her with the dressage whip on her flank and hip made no impact, she just stood where she was. :confused_color: I really can't figure out what I'm getting so wrong. 

More positively, turns on the forehand are getting really nice, she keeps her inside front foot planted and spins everything around it except for the final turn to complete a 360*. But we're getting there! I also messed around with trotting her in hand, picking up her feet/legs, opening her mouth, basically just touching her all over as she will have done during a vet check at a ride.










Happy New Year's to everyone from the three of us- thanks for following along with our adventures this year! Be sure to enjoy something FIZZY tonight! :winetime:


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## Avna

It sounds like she simply doesn't know how to respond to the cue to turn on the haunches. Any time a horse doesn't know a cue, usually the best thing is to just keep giving the cue, moderately, without variation of intensity, while preventing any other response than the right one, and then as soon as even a whisper of the correct response is given, quit, praise, do something else. 

Also, a gross approximation of the right response is the right response, at first. Remember that the first principle of training is "movement first". Wrong movement is much better than no movement. Reward trying and getting it wrong, because you always want a horse that will try, without fear of punishment. 

There are a number of youtube videos on teaching the turn on the haunches on the ground that might give you some good ideas.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> It sounds like she simply doesn't know how to respond to the cue to turn on the haunches.
> ...
> There are a number of youtube videos on teaching the turn on the haunches on the ground that might give you some good ideas.


Sigh...I think the problem may be that her human simply doesn't know how to cue for turn on the haunches :wink:

I've watched countless videos of enthusiastic little teen trainers with their green yearlings happily turning and sidepassing around an arena by just looking at the haunches, and I simply can't reproduce it. I think it's the sort of thing where I really need someone on the ground to step in and be very literal about showing me where to put my body and when.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I think it's the sort of thing where I really need someone on the ground to step in and be very literal about showing me where to put my body and when.


Will your instructor help you? Might be a good thing to work on briefly before or after the riding portion of your lesson.

Hope you get the "warm" snap they are calling for tomorrow!


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## egrogan

I hadn't been to the barn in nearly a week because it was just so miserably cold that I couldn't stand it! 

Fizz was like...WHAT...where have _you _been and more importantly, does this mean my winter vacation is over?!









I think her buddy Boo agreed she should stay put :grin: 









Boo hates when she leaves and calls and calls for her until she’s back- fortunately that doesn’t seem to bother her. 

Since she had been untouched for a week, I tried to be really intentional about how I worked with her and broke things up into smaller pieces so she didn't feel overwhelmed. 

First, I brought her in to the barn, took the blanket off, and just walked right into the indoor and did some basic groundwork for just a couple of minutes. She was nice and quiet, her eyes were soft, so then I went back to the cross-ties. 

I brushed her up quickly, as upon reflection, I think I've been spending way too much time fussing around with grooming, nagging her when she dances around on the cross-ties and trying to make sure she stands like a statue, etc. It's just too much for her when her mind is busy and it doesn't _really _matter if she takes a step forward when I didn't ask her to. So we groomed, and got tacked. 

I spent just 5 minutes lunging her w/t/c in both direction, and she went really nicely. She didn't have any bucking blowups on the line at the canter, and she was eagerly stretching down in the trot - walk transitions. Downward transitions generally were pretty good, which was also an improvement over the last time.

From there, I got on and did some basic w/t. I practiced our "braking" activity from one of our lessons and she was doing well with it. I rode inside for about 15 minutes to make sure there were no gremlins under the saddle, and we were both eager to go outside (she kept looking longingly out the windows on the side doors every time we went past).

It felt SO good to get outside. The snow was deep, but not slippery or icy, so we headed out to the woods trail.









And then headed out to the beaver pond...









I knew that the footing was challenging for her- some of the deepest drifts had her sinking down to her knees, and the “best” footing- when we were on a deer track or snowmobile track- was still deep. We kept it to a walk, except a couple of uphills where it was easier to trot and she was game to do so.

Only when I got back to the barn and hopped off did I realize just how physically demanding the ride had been. She was breathing SO HARD, she looked like she’d just come off the racetrack. She gave me a bit of a scare, as I was taking off her saddle, she was looking a little distressed with her breathing and then started nosing at her both sides of her belly. Her respiration rate had gone up to about 48 breaths/min, which seemed quick- I didn’t have a stethoscope for heart rate. NOTE TO SELF: I need to have her resting and “typical” exercise vitals written down somewhere. She seemed to have decent gut sounds. 

I took her into the indoor and just walked her out slowly for about 20 minutes as the respiration came down and she looked more comfortable. She walked very quietly with me, and had her head at about my waist height so I could rub her forehead, which she loves. I felt like a total jerk, as I had just gotten through reading a FB post from Denny Emmerson about how sympathetic riders take their unfit horses on slow, easy walks as they’re building fitness and don’t ask too much too soon. So, I definitely underestimated how challenging the deep snow would be, and combining that with not having been ridden at all in a week, I think I pushed it too much. Fortunately after she seemed more comfortable, I took her back to the barn aisle and she perked right up at the sight of a carrot. I told BO what had happened, so she kept on eye on her the rest of the day just to make sure she didn’t seem distressed, and *knock on wood* I haven’t heard anything. Lesson learned, with apologies to Fizz.


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## phantomhorse13

Glad you finally got some saddle time with Fizz. Snow is such a great workout! Sorry to hear about the scare at the end, though you did the best thing by walking her out. I don't think you should beat yourself up too much, as you were hardly beating her down the trail with a stick! But now you know she has what I call "fitness delusions of grandeur" and can remind her of that when she wants to trot up a hill in the snow.


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## egrogan

Thanks @phantomhorse13. Yes, "fitness delusions of grandeur" is apt. I think she's going to be a workaholic, so I have to figure out how to manage that tendency!

This morning I only had about an hour before work, and I wanted to make sure Izzy got a little pampering as she's been sort of neglected in the cold weather. 









I had just enough time to give her a really good grooming and then take each of them on a mile-ish handwalk through the neighborhood.

Their different personalities were so evident in each of our walks.

Izzy is like a giant border collie. She gets herself sooooo excited and worked up even on a walk we've taken a zillion times. First of all, she insists on having her nose to the ground following some sort of scent trail for most of the walk. Since today was garbage day, she had to smell everyone's trash as we passed by.









When she doesn't have her nose on the ground, she's got her head up and looks like a submarine telescope prancing along next to me...









...Or when she hears a rooster crowing...








Holding herself like this when she's excited- which is frequently- is how a horse that's not even really being ridden right now can still have a huge muscle under their neck!

I've always felt with Izzy that if she's getting ready to lose her shiitake, I'd much rather be on her back then on the ground with her. Her tendency on the ground- like when the rooster started crowing- is to prance her way right into your pocket where she'll be "safe." She's not a disrespectful horse, she's just...excitable.









Then there's Fizz. Fizz had never walked through this part of the neighborhood before, and she took it all in with interest, but her typical calmness. 









While Izzy right.there.next.to.me, Fizz was totally happy just being way out at the end of the lead exploring. 








She's so independent. I was happy that the garbage cans didn't really have any effect on her. One more "scary" thing we can check off the list as no big deal. 

And best news, she showed no ill effects of our ride yesterday. I was running short on time, hence while she was still dressed in her snowsuit :wink:


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> she's been sort of neglected in the cold weather.


Oh yes, Izzy is the poster child for neglected ponies!!  :rofl:


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## egrogan

^^She sure thought so! "Help me, I've been forgotten in this field alone forevvveerrrrrrr..."


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## egrogan

Sigh...more weather woes here.

Was supposed to have an early lesson with BO, and she texted me to say that all the paths and roads around the turnouts and barns are sheer ice. It's actually almost 50*F here, but that basically means it's melted all the snow down to leave only the first inch-thick layer of ice we got before we got any snow in early December. She had to keep all the barn horses inside because there is no safe way to walk them out to turnout. And it's not an option to put down sand, since we're getting an inch of rain today. Oh, and then the temps are dropping precipitously overnight to 30*F and the rain will turn to freezing rain, and it will be -1*F overnight tomorrow. So yeah, looks like we've got ice for the foreseeable future.

I just needed to complain for a minute. Gah. This has been such an awful winter, and it's only January.

Thinking summer thoughts!!!!


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## egrogan

Bizarro weather continued for us yesterday. We woke up to steady rain and 50*F, but by about 8am, it had dropped by nearly 30* and the rain turned to sleet. Fortunately for us, the sleet only lasted about 20 minutes, which was long enough to ice over our driveway and freeze the car doors shut, but things would have been much worse had it lasted longer. Around noon, I texted BO to see how the ice was over at her place, and she said it was actually totally fine. The sun was shining brightly, so even though it was only about 22*F, I was SO ready to see the girls.

I was greeted with a funny scene. Since my horses are out 24/7, obviously their halters and leads had been out with them through the rain and flash freeze. So they were frozen solid in some pretty weird shapes! :grin:








Not sure how well you can make it out in the picture, but the top of the halter was frozen in a spiky point and the lead rope was solid from where it had been coiled up. 

I had been worried all day about whether the horses had gotten soaked through their blankets given how hard it had been raining, which would have been miserable for them once the temps dropped. But thankfully Izzy was perfectly dry under hers. BO reminded me that she is not interested in leaving her shed when it's pouring, particularly when BO feeds them in there. Smart girl. Fizz was a little crunchy under hers- she apparently stood outside most of the storm, but I also wonder if some of it wasn't that she got a little sweaty when it was warmest. It didn't look like there were wet spots under the blanket. Regardless, she was not acting uncomfortable so I just curried it out really well.

Izzy got a nice grooming, but she was none too happy when she got ONE apple but not the other one sitting out for Fizz.

_What do you mean I don't get the other apple?!_









But she forgave me when she remembered there was now GRASS available, and happily got some time handgrazing.









I had planned on riding Fizz in the indoor, but was pleasantly surprised that the ground was much better at the barn than it had been at home, so decided to warm up inside and then head out on the road to ride. 

Look who ground tied really nicely in the barn as we groomed and tacked!








Since her halter was also crunchy and frozen, I decided to see how she'd do without the cross-ties, and it went really well. I wouldn't leave her like this without being close, but it was progress!










It was really windy out when we got outside, so she was a bit on her toes, but aside from a little spook in place at some blowing tarps (the people in the neighborhood around the barn have an ungodly number of tarps covering things in their yards!), things were going well.









Things went a little sideways when we were almost home and had to pass a yard with one of those decorative spinning windmills out front. The blades were spinning really hard in the wind, so she stopped and gawked. I got a couple of steps of forward, but then she planted her feet again. This was my first error, I don't mind them stopping to look at something weird at first, but I think by letting her stop again she got fixated on it and checked out from me. Of course, right at that moment, a car was coming towards us. That's when _my _mind goes to that panicky place- the combo of nervous horses and cars feel like disaster to me. So, I was able to disengage her hind end and get us moving again, albeit away from the windmill rather than towards it- but that still felt like a bit of a victory, since she had been planted in place. Unfortunately, it was a short lived victory because what I didn't anticipate is that she would be more freaked out at the spinning monster _behind _her where she couldn't see it, rather than in front of her. She spun suddenly to face it again, leaping around to put us right in the middle of a deep snowbank (car is still coming towards us). At that point, I decided I was jumping off and landed somewhat ungracefully in the bank. I tried leading her home and she kept spinning around to look at the windmill. Luckily, we were only a couple of houses away from the barn at that point, so I sort of half-led and half-dragged her into the barn's driveway. The person in the car was very gracious and had stopped in the road a good distance away from us, so I gave her a huge wave and thank you once we were finally standing still and she drove by.

After that episode, we just walked back and forth past the windmill a dozen times. I was still leading her from the ground, and at first she would not take any steps towards it. So we did lots of disengaging the hind end and walking away from it before walking towards it. 

_The windmill of death_









_I do NOT like this thing one bit_









Eventually she walked past it with her head down and barely glancing at it, so it ended up ok. But geez, talk about small things blowing up into big things unexpectedly! I do think if that car hadn't shown up when it did, we would have worked through it from the saddle. At least now I know that with her, it's probably best to keep moving past something scary rather than stopping and gawking at it.


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like you and Fizz are starting to figure one another out. 

I had to chuckle at the windmill of death, as I could see Phin reacting the same way! I think getting off and not dealing with the windmill _and_ the car was the safest thing - nobody wants to be a hood ornament and you never know when you will have a smart, kind driver vs a hurried or obnoxious one.

Hope your weather gives you more of a break. Are you expecting snow from the clipper coming mid-week?


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## egrogan

Thanks @phantomhorse13. I think so too!

Today I experimented a little with bits and learned she is NOT a fan of a baucher style. BO has been having me play around with different mouthpieces and cheekpieces as we work on the braking issue (of course, still practicing our stopping-from-the-seat exercises). She seemed downright resentful of how the baucher felt so I only rode inside for about 20 minutes as I could feel her getting ****ed off. We can check that one off! Anyone want to trade a 5" baucher for a d-ring french link?? :wink:
_
A rare moment of happy ears inside_









We left the indoor and I switched up bridles before heading out to the road. The day was clear and sunny, though with the flash freeze the road was very hard and sharp from where the mud had frozen. She was a little hesitant on the footing so we didn't go too far. We did go...guess where...

Back to the windmill!








And look, not even an eared tilted in its direction (pun intended :wink I was a little nervous as we rode towards it, so I sang her my best version of zip a dee do dah and that seemed to give her all the confidence she needed to make it a non-event this time around.



phantomhorse13 said:


> I had to chuckle at the windmill of death, as I could see Phin reacting the same way! I think getting off and not dealing with the windmill _and_ the car was the safest thing


Now you know what to try with Phin- some Disney tunes should do the trick!

When we were done, we practiced our ground tying again, and she was doing very well considering there was another horse in the aisle. I was picking out her last foot, and I was feeling pretty pleased with myself for how she was doing. She did take a step forward, and I thought she was just shifting weight to rebalance while I had her leg, until the other board said, "Uh, do you know she's eating all your carrots?!" :icon_rolleyes: GAH! So much for our new found manners. I couldn't help but laugh at her, as it was obviously my fault. Unfortunately that meant Izzy didn't get any...

But, I did take Izzy out for a nice long handwalk and we found some good grass spots to nibble, so I think I was forgiven.

She's such a ham, posing for the camera.











phantomhorse13 said:


> Hope your weather gives you more of a break. Are you expecting snow from the clipper coming mid-week?


Unclear. I'm supposed to go to NYC for work on Thursday, and was mildly freaking out when I checked the weather yesterday because the forecast was for a foot of snow from Wednesday into Thursday. Then I checked this morning, and it said flurries Tuesday night. I guess we'll know when we know!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Now you know what to try with Phin- some Disney tunes should do the trick!


Actually, my go-to is row-row-row your boat. That started when I broke racehorses for a living a million years ago and has stuck. Not sure why that one exactly, but it's quick and easy and you can change the words fairly easily and keep the tune (eg 'whoa whoa whoa you dope, why do you run away, jerk-y jerk-y jerk-y jerk-y, you make me want to scream' which was often heard on the training track :wink.

And I think I told you my 'C is for cookie' story.. that is always a good one, too!


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## egrogan

Fizz and I had a very exciting day yesterday. The saddle fitter was at the barn and spent about half the day with us figuring out something for Fizz. I knew Izzy's saddle was not a great fit, and Fizz has been getting progressively grumpier about girthing up, so I was thankful that the fitter's visit was this month instead of next month- well, she took one look at Fizz and one look at the saddle, and said that the tree shape in Izzy's saddle is just about the polar opposite of what Fizz was going to be most comfortable in   I had been somewhat hopeful that with some reflocking we might limp through the rest of the winter, but as we looked at different tree forms on her back, it was so obvious that really no amount of flocking was going to do the trick. So, we moved on to figuring out what _would _work (yes, the little kid inside me was sort of giddy at the prospect of getting to build a new saddle..That little kid doesn't have to worry about a checkbook :wink

I lost count of how many different saddles I rode in, some I liked more than others, but Fizz was very clear and direct about her preference, which happened to be the first one we tried. It is a "VSD" style- a kind of saddle that sort of spans the gap between a dressage saddle and a general purpose saddle. There's a fancy German phrase for it: multi purpose (Vielzweck) Jumping (Springen) and dressage (Dressage)...but I guess most fitters simply call it "very slightly dressage." The particular model that this fitter offers was actually designed for the UMass Equestrian program, which uses lots of Morgans, so she's had a lot of experience with it and they have used them with great results. It still has a pretty deep seat plus adjustable blocks, but is ever so slightly more forward in the flap than a true dressage saddle so it's a little easier to get up in a half seat. Most importantly, Fizz was so clear in her preference for it. Her walk was free and loose, and her trot had a lot more reach in this one compared to others. And, she tells you so much in how soft her eyes and ears are, and everyone who was watching could see the difference. The fitter has a couple of videos but I forgot to ask her to send them to me so hopefully I can get them today. It's always so fascinating to watch videos of yourself riding, and fitter and BO (who was watching) were able to explain to me that the reason I felt like I was "pitching forward" in our new saddle was because in other saddles with bigger blocks I use them to push/pivot off of when trotting, and without that there for "cheating" I have to actually sit up and ride! So it will take a little time to find my balance in the new saddle, but it's going to be worth it.

I've really been agonizing over what "style" saddle makes the most sense for us, and I feel really good about this selection. It's versatile enough to be comfortable for doing lots of miles, but we can still do our basic dressage lessons and go to schooling shows if we ever want to do that. Fizz is happy with it, and I was able to get the short flap option which makes me happy and comfortable. Now we hurry up and wait a couple of months for it to get here!

Fitter was really complimentary of Fizz too-she complimented Fizz on her "work ethic," saying that it was clear we had annoyed Fizz with all the tightening and untightening of girths and putting on and taking off of stirrup leathers- but despite the fact that she was irritated with it all, she kept doing what we asked her to and trotted around the ring willingly as we checked out different options. I appreciated the nice words.

_Saddle fitting is EXHAUSTING!








_


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## Tazzie

Hopefully your new saddle comes quickly! Saddle fitting really is the bane of my existence, so I feel your pain! What a good girl Fizz is though to handle all of that so well! And I agree Fizz! Saddle fitting IS exhausting!


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## phantomhorse13

Ugh, saddle fitting! I am with @Tazzie - it makes me want to shut myself in the closet and rock. However, sounds like Fizz was very clear on what she preferred, so very good you liked it to. Fingers and toes crossed it's that easy for you!


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## carshon

I love the pics of your very expressive mares!


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## Avna

Glad to hear your fitting went well! Brooke also decided she liked a VSD (ReactorPanel), and I will say I have been nothing but happy with mine. Great for trails and lower-level dressage. Mine has small repositionable under-flap thigh blocks. Helps my chair seat tendencies. Once you have the right saddle you'll never let go of it!


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Glad to hear your fitting went well! Brooke also decided she liked a VSD (ReactorPanel), and I will say I have been nothing but happy with mine. Great for trails and lower-level dressage. Mine has small repositionable under-flap thigh blocks. Helps my chair seat tendencies. Once you have the right saddle you'll never let go of it!


Glad to hear you've had a good experience with the style. It's not something I'd ever heard of until I started talking with this fitter about my riding plans. Mine will have a similar block set up to what you described in yours. I think my problem seems to be less going chair seat and more throwing my lower leg backward by pivoting against the larger blocks I have now. I'm sure there will be an adjustment period but it seems promising.

It sure seems like it's got potential to be a great solution- I hope it proves to be the case!


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## egrogan

Friday night we had a lesson, our first in a couple of weeks because of weather. It was also our first since the saddle fitter was out- while my saddle won't be ready for a couple months, she left us with a loaner from the same company, built on the same tree but a slightly different model. BO marveled at how much more relaxed Fizz looked, and how much nicer her walk and trot were. 

It's like she's holding her neck in a totally different way- so amazing how much difference the saddle makes! BO worked us pretty hard, doing progressively tighter serpentines at the trot and really focusing on bending through the turns without losing balance and speeding up. 









When I got there today, I encountered _this_- the groaning and sighing was just too much for me. 





I guess Fizz felt we had worked pretty hard last night!









We had a lovely ride in the indoor to warm up. She felt balanced and relaxed, so much so I asked for a little canter. She crowhopped into it the first time around, but I think it’s excitement. As long as you just push her forward she settles into it and doesn’t do anything nasty. We obviously have a lot of work to do at the canter, but getting to the point where the trot feels smooth and balanced is the first step.










After about 25 minutes, we headed out to the woods for the first time in ages. She spooked at some snow falling off a tree on our way from the barn to the trail, but her spooks are just little jumps sideways and then she stops and looks. 









The snow in the woods was surprisingly much deeper than I expected. There were only a couple of inches left up around the barn and in the turnouts, but the drifts in the woods still had her sinking a good way up her legs. Remembering her over-eagerness last time, I made sure we just kept a nice, consistent walk. Despite the depth, there were several places where streams from melting uphill had covered over the trail. She was very brave about crossing, because as she walked up to them the snow would give way under her feet and even I had a tough time guessing how deep the water was because they were just big black puddles with leaves on the bottom (just a few inches, no big deal). She hesitated at the first one, but we crossed three more after that and while she wasn’t thrilled about it, she did it.









After we got back to the barn, she was breathing hard but not anywhere near how she felt last time. I decided to take her for a handwalk down the road and back to catch her breath. I absolutely love this picture- _this _is the soft, content eye I want to see more of. Her eyes say so much about how she’s feeling. It makes me so happy to see her feel good after we've worked hard together.











She was very happy to go back out with no blanket- it was 40*F by the time we were done!









Izzy also got a very nice handwalk down the road. She was also very brave- we were passed by guys on ATVs and a bunch of pickups loaded up for trips to the dump. She took it all in like it was no big deal. It actually _was _kind of a big deal because the last time we saw ATVs (in the woods), I had to get off and walk her past, even though the guys riding them had been really sweet and actually stopped and turned them off. So I was happy she just kept walking while they went down the road.










Still doesn’t like the roosters crowing though! Very suspicious! :wink:


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## egrogan

This time of year, two nice sunny days in a row does wonders for the footing. Things had melted a ton out on the road so I was able to take Fizz out further from home than we've been on the roads in quite awhile. Bonus was that I showed up at the same time as someone I ride with occasionally, and she was eager to head out with her wonderful gelding Jimmy. So off we went.









Fizz did awesome. She definitely looks around and soaks up her surroundings, but she doesn't get worried. She does have such a big walk though, we had to stop and wait a bit for Jimmy to catch up with us several times. And, she doesn't like turning for home- she wanted to keep going! Unfortunately the nice road we were on headed into a deeper wooded area, and the footing was more questionable than what we'd been on, so we used that as our turning point.









I also got Izzy out and we rode around the property with my regular riding buddy Ida. I moved my stirrups over to Fizz's loaner saddle, so in an act of supreme laziness, I just rode Izzy without any. We were only walking, so no big deal right? :wink: It's like the world's most secure bareback pad!









She was pretty grumpy when I brought the tack out and made nasty faces at the saddle, but she seemed happy enough once we were out and riding. I think it's been at least a month since I've been on her.


















Unfortunately rain and sleet move back in tomorrow, so probably not much riding early in the week. But they're forecasting it to be 50*F (!) next weekend- hope that's true!!


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## carshon

Fizz has such a gorgeous face- and you are right about the soft eye. So glad you got to ride both your girls!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Fizz has such a gorgeous face- and you are right about the soft eye. So glad you got to ride both your girls!


Thanks @carshon. She is really growing on me the more we get to know each other - and her personality is starting to emerge. I think she's going to be a horse with a sense of humor. The forecast changed and we didn't get any ice last night, so I stopped by the barn for about an hour this morning. I brought Izzy in first, and when Fizz saw me go by she laid down flat out on her side like she was sleeping. BO said that as soon as I walked past her paddock, she got up again. Then when BO walked by, she laid down again and "pretended" to be sleeping. I think she imagined "playing dead" meant no work :grin: By the time I was done with Izzy and came back for her, she was up eating. 

She wasn't super thrilled to see me though and actually walked away from me for the first time I can remember, so maybe 4 days in a row of work is too much for her. Since I didn't have a ton of time, I had only been planning on lunging her for a few minutes anyway, so we just did that and a quick groom (as far as I can tell, she tolerates grooming but doesn't love it, so I just do what needs done and move on). 

She did some bucking again on the first canter transition, but didn't do it after that. Something to keep an eye on- is it just excitement or is something bothering her? She was just in a surcingle and pad, not a saddle, so I'm inclined to say excitement, but we will see.


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## egrogan

Lesson last night, and it was the first time I'd seen Fizz since Monday as work was a bit nutty this week. She's gotten so much better in the past month or so- when she first came, if she sat unhandled more than a few days she was dancing all over the cross ties and all coiled up when I got on. Now...she acts like it's no big deal and her manners are very nice.










Our lesson again focused on lots of bending and changes of direction at the trot. We also did a little bit of canter work. I'm not going to lie...it's not particularly pretty right now. It just feels so massive to me. We're in a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop right now- she launches me out of the saddle and I get unbalanced, then she falls on her forehand and leans on the reins tipping me forward, then I feel like I'm balancing on her mouth, and so on. When I can manage mind over matter and actually sit in the saddle and shift my weight back, we manage a few nice strides. I know we'll get through it, it's just going to take more practice. It just feels a little wild right now. But as I was thinking about it last night, part of the reason I think I get so tense and unstable in the saddle is because of prior experiences with big cantering horses doing that awful speed trot before being willing to transition...and of course she has the tendency to crowhop the first stride...so it's all tension from anticipation. But I have to keep reminding myself that first, she's so willing and ready to go into it, she's not going to try that kind of bone jarring trot and second, her crowhopping is just one stride and you just push her forward and she goes fine. Once I can sit up and help her balance and rate the speed more reasonably, it's going to be a nice canter. I wish we could hurry up and get through this "getting used to how it feels" phase :wink: 

It was hard work for her too, she let us know clearly when she was just mentally done and physically tired, and BO wisely called the lesson there rather than trying for one more set of 20 meter circles. You can see she looks a bit pooped out here, after the lesson getting an apple:





Today I met up with my riding buddy, but we were sort of marooned and stuck in the indoor. The ice everywhere is still treacherous. Since we were stuck inside, I focused on really trying to ride the best walk and trot I could get, and we had some nice moments. I opted not to canter because I feel like we're a little out of control and I don't want to worry about other horses in there just yet! 

The area right around the barn was relatively clear and getting better as the sun stayed out, so we did ride up and down the driveaway a little bit. Unfortunately the end of the driveway, where it meets the road, was a skating rink, and so was the path leading to the woods. So we were pretty stuck!


















After lunchtime, the sun had been strong enough that the bottom of the driveway was clear enough for me to tiptoe out to the road with Izzy for a short walk. She's like a big puppy dog- she basically walked herself most of the way. 









Every now and then I'd make sure she was paying attention and ask her to whoa, which she did. But she was perfectly happy just strolling along next to me.









Bit of an invasion of personal space here- but she's a little spoiled these days :grin:


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## egrogan

Sure enough, the sun and above-freezing temps overnight freed up the ice at the bottom of the driveway, and we got in a nice road ride. Actually, we went out twice. The first time, we did about 2.5 miles solo. Fizz did awesome alone. We went a slightly different way than we have before, but new scenery is exciting instead of nerve-inducing for her. We were passed by a big work van with noisy ladders on top, and she didn't even look at it, just kept walking along. My only complaint is that she gets really grouchy when it's time to turn around to go home. Same as last time, sucked back walk, rubber necking to look longingly over her shoulders back towards where we had been, and trying to drift down people's driveways. Pretty much anything other than straight ahead. I am reluctant to trot on paved roads with no hoof protection, but I think asking her to go forward briskly would probably be a solution. Absent doing that, I just have to ride her with really strong leg, and I try asking her to leg yield and change the bend frequently, just keeping her mind on me. I mean, yes, great she wants to be able to ride off into the sunset- but sometimes it's time to go home!


















We got back to the barn in time to meet my riding buddy Ida. Bonus was that our other buddy, Jimmy's rider, had showed up too. So, they warmed up quickly in the arena, and I tried out a new-to-us Myler mullen mouth bit that @evilamc graciously sent to us to try out. Fizz seemed pretty content with it in the ring, which was a better reaction than the last new bit I tried. Ida and Jimmy's rider wanted to take their horses out to the road too, so Fizz got to go back out with a group. I think this is the first time I've ridden her away from the barn, back to the barn, and then away again. No surprise, she was game to go back out. 

The horses were very brave when we were passed by a huge flatbed tow truck with a big SUV rattling along on top of the bed. They pranced a little when it went by, but we all survived. A huge flock of honking geese that appeared right after the tow truck proved to be a little too much excitement, so we decided to use that as our turn-around point. We only did about a mile, but it was an exciting one :wink: 








I've been encouraged so far that Fizz will happily ride side-by-side, in the lead, or in back. She's also fine if she gets out ahead with that big walk of hers and another horse comes trotting up behind her. It's a good start!

Fizz had earned her lunch, so I turned her back out and grabbed Izzy for some handwalking & grazing. I decided to walk Izzy back towards the woods to check out whether or not the woods trail was still iced over or looking better. Unfortunately for Izzy, we headed towards the trail just as a horse-eating monster walked down the road in the distance:








At first I told her to stop being silly and knock it off, but as I looked at her, I realized the poor thing was absolutely trembling all over. She may sometimes get "looky," but I can't recall ever seeing her shaking because she was scared. She snorted two huge snorts (right in my face) and tried to spin and bolt away. I held on to her, but she wanted nothing to do with the woods with people walking along the edge. Not sure why it got her spooked so bad. Fortunately the opportunity for some grass calmed her down...








...though she remained suspicious...








I guess we'll tackle it another day!


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## Chevaux

Have you ever thought, by way of a (hopefully) fun experiment, to just let Fizz go and see how long it would take take her to indicate she was ready to return home? Presumably at some point she would otherwise it’s a post in the Forum asking if anyone has heard from egrogan lately.


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> Have you ever thought, by way of a (hopefully) fun experiment, to just let Fizz go and see how long it would take take her to indicate she was ready to return home? Presumably at some point she would otherwise it’s a post in the Forum asking if anyone has heard fromegrogan recently.


Yes! When I got back with her today and described my problem, BO said “you’re just not riding her far enough” which I’m sure is true. It’s really just that the footing is so questionable right now. There isn’t much of a shoulder on the roads because of snowbanks and black ice, so I’m pretty conservative about only going to roads where there’s not much traffic. But spring is coming! And then yes, we will just head off down the road, and who knows where we’ll end up :wink:


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## egrogan

Had a short amount of time this morning before work got hectic, so stopped in for a quick indoor ride with Fizz. Just did some basic w/t/c work. Good news, no crowhopping into the canter at all this time! It was still rushed, particularly left, but I was proud of myself for doing it at all. Practice, practice, practice.

It's interesting, according to Endomondo, her max canter speed today was 8.3 mph; Sunday when we were trotting along happily but calmly out on the dirt road, it says our max speed was 9.0 mph. That doesn't seem like it can be right, does it? I mean, I think she has a nice, forward, ground covering trot, but the canter _feels _so much speedier. If these stats are accurate though, it puts things in a whole new perspective psychologically...hmmm...

Looking bright and happy after our ride (ignore the halter sitting too low on her nose, looks like the knot loosened a little...)


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> according to Endomondo, her max canter speed today was 8.3 mph; Sunday when we were trotting along happily but calmly out on the dirt road, it says our max speed was 9.0 mph. That doesn't seem like it can be right, does it?


I will be curious to see if that speed is repeated the next few times you canter, as I also tend to think it's not right. Though if it is, maybe she has a future as a WP horse. :wink:


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I will be curious to see if that speed is repeated the next few times you canter, as I also tend to think it's not right. Though if it is, maybe she has a future as a WP horse. :wink:


Ha, there is no chance she could ever be mistaken for a WP horse. This girl has a motor!! :gallop:

I think I have time to ride tomorrow so will check. I am very curious.


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## carshon

@egrogan that happens with Turbo Tillie too (sorry I could not help myself  At times our running walk is faster than our canter. Which of course never seems right - but after having my daughter film us I noticed that Tillie spends way too much energy going "up" at the canter (picture PePe LePue bouncing) and it feels like a rocket each time she pushes off with her back legs. Gaiting is much more natural for her and she can really cover some ground. I am sure if I cantered her more she would become more comfortable at the canter and it would smooth out and not waste as much energy "pushing up" instead of forward.


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## egrogan

:think: Hmmm...So now I'm really confused.

Rode in the indoor, did a fair bit of canter work. Fastest speed: 6.4 mph
Walked on hard, frozen mud for about a mile around the farm. Fastest speed: 7.1 mph
Huh?!?

Now, our canter was much nicer today (if I do say so myself :wink- more balanced, less frantic, and we mostly stayed on a 20 meter circle so we didn't pick up the same kind of speed she will pick up if we're using the whole arena. But the stats above don't make any sense! I will turn the app on again at my Friday lesson and see what happens. So strange.

We did have a nice ride though. I was actually able to enjoy the canter. It helped that I was feeling really chill and relaxed. Vivaldi makes great riding music!

We rode in the arena for about 30 minutes. It was a bright and sunny day so I really wanted to get her outside too, but it was only about 20*F so all the mud from last week had frozen into that awful sharp, hard footing that's miserable to get around on. We rode down to the road, but it was like concrete so we turned around.









Then we went to check out the woods trail.








What you can't really tell from the picture is that the spots that look like snow are actually basically the texture of a luge course- sheer, thick ice. We probably could have tiptoed down the hill, but I think the footing would have been worse once we actually got into the woods because there's even less sun. So we didn't go that way.

We settled for just walking around the turnout fields. 








Even under the grass, the ground was hard and sharp, so we just ambled along. Nice opportunity for stretching out walking along on the buckle! 









I've been planning to have my trimmer fit Fizz for Renegade Vipers this spring, and I think I'll just go ahead and do that next visit. We would have appreciated having them today.

I got her all brushed out, and look at my wild horse who couldn't manage to stand still on the cross-ties a few weeks ago:








...then she snacked while I had to jump on a quick conference call :wink:









Once my call ended, it was Izzy's turn to get brushed out and enjoy a snack. You've never seen a horse more excited about dead brown grass!


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## egrogan

Had a really great lesson tonight. I am learning so much every time I have one.

Tonight it was very windy so every time we rode by the arena doors at the beginning of the lesson, we could see horses flying across the field bucking. Fizz tried to scoot out from under me at the sight of that, and I of course clamped down on her. BO just said calmly, "don't answer her by riding the tension she's offering- ask _her _answer _you _by riding the horse you want to be riding." That just really clicked for me. We worked on turns on the forehand and small bending circles right next to the door until the horses outside the window were not distracting her and she was listening to me instead. The moment she offers to "give" her jaw and bend through her body is such a great feeling.

We also did some work over raised walk poles. This was new for both of us and she really thought hard about how to navigate them. And, sure enough, after we walked through them a few times, the "lift" she had in her walk was noticeably different.

Then we moved on to the canter. To get there, we started trotting on a 20 meter circle, and adding in four small circles inside the circle at each "corner" to reinforce the bend in each direction. It's so much harder for her to bend to the left. Once we had decent bend and balance at the trot, it was time to ask for canter- one full circle, coming back down to the trot and doing the 4 small bending circles, then back to canter, etc. Our transitions weren't the sharpest, and the small circles after the canter circle were rushy, but still...it felt like a real accomplishment to be riding so intentionally instead of just letting her tank around the arena.

I did almost eat dirt once though. There were some cones set up in one corner so they were sort of part of our circle. We were cantering on the right lead, and I guess I was not being clear enough with her, as I expected she'd just stay outside the cones, but at the last minute she dropped her inside shoulder and fell in towards the middle, _inside_ the cone. Let's just say I almost catapulted off over her shoulder when she did! All I can remember BO saying is "sit up sit up sit up" and I guess I did because even though I could see the ground looking closer than I wanted, I was able to peel myself off her neck and stay on. But still...independent seat at the canter? ummm....not yet....:hide: 

I was able to fish my stirrups back, take a second to get my wits about me again, and continue on with what we were doing. Maybe I'm a little less wussy than I thought I was :wink:










(P.S.- Endomondo says max speed was 3.64 mph. So...yeah...Maybe it just doesn't work in the indoor?)


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## knightrider

"don't answer her by riding the tension she's offering- ask her to answer you by riding the horse you want to be riding."

This is such a great quote that I copied it down on a piece of paper to discuss with my daughter's friend, who rides Chorro on trail rides. We have to ride on a road that is not very busy, but the vehicles go 60 mph. Chorro is super traffic wise, but the teenager gets nervous when big rigs, logging trucks, and noisy trailers come at us. This, possibly, has made Chorro nervous. (He could just be acting out because horses are horses and just suddenly start doing something . . . or stop doing something). She stops Chorro, makes him face the vehicle, nervously pats him, and says soothing things to him. I have told her repeatedly that it would be better if she ignored the scary vehicle and continued riding on calmly. But she just can't seem to do that. Now Chorro is starting to act nervous around big rigs when I'm on him as well. He never used to. Even though I'm very calm and very certain he will not act up, he still does. I think he might have learned it from her reactions. She rides him 2 to 3 times a week.

I am going to show her this quote and try very hard to get her to take it to heart. She's a very conscientious rider and wants very much to improve. Hopefully it will help. (Or Chorro may just "get over it" in time and everything be OK again).

Thanks for sharing that great idea.


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## egrogan

Isn't it great @knightrider? I think it applies in a lot of situations. I hope it will help your rider.

I understand about the big rigs though. The 2nd time I went to try Fizz, we took her out to the state park near her owner's farm. You had to ride about a quarter mile on their country road and then cross a 60mph two lane road where big rigs were speeding by. Her owner's horse actually spooked and slipped on the pavement, but Fizz just went along like it was no big deal. I was definitely nervous but I wanted her owner to think I was a good enough rider for Fizz :wink: Sometimes "fake it 'til you make it' is a good motto to live by as well!!


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## phantomhorse13

Love that quote!

And I bet the metal roof of the indoor is making your readings wrong. You will know for sure come spring when you can do more moving out on the trails.


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## egrogan

Feeling a bit of the winter blues. I was hoping to go out early this morning and do a longish road ride; forecast said it was supposed to start snowing around lunchtime, but it's started much earlier. Even though it's light, I don't want to mix horses and traffic and snow. So I guess I'll still go but just work in the arena instead. Which is fine, I'm fortunate to have that option. I just was looking forward to getting out!

Yesterday was really pretty, but deceptively cold and blustery. I took Izzy out on our mile walk to stretch her legs. 









She was obsessed with eating the powdery snow all along the way...









Since Fizz had worked really hard in the lesson the night before, and the arena was a little congested, I just bundled up and went for a walk around the farm.

We practiced our circle exercise out in the field, though just at a walk because the footing was still really hard.








I was pleased at the visual affirmation of having relatively round circles :wink:

We said hi to Izzy from across the field









And dozed in the sunshine while we waited for the aisle to clear out so we could go back inside









Spring will come...I keep telling myself that anyway!


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## egrogan

Just leaving myself a note here as we're wondering if we're seeing Fizz go through her first heat cycle since she's been here.

Tuesday and Wednesday when I rode, she uncharacteristically peed a couple of times in the indoor.

Yesterday when I was girthing her up, she kicked out and swished her tail angrily, which she hasn't done since we switched saddles. I thought maybe I had just gone up too fast.

Today poor girl was having a very bad day. She was _so _tense for our whole ride. Her back felt like a board and she had her head up in that braced position with her nose flung out and leaning hard on my hands. Her ears were pinned the whole ride. I never really could get her to relax, even with all the new suppling trot exercises I've learned. She just wasn't herself at all.

We'll see how she is the next few days- and again 21 days from now!


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## egrogan

I hadn't been to the barn since Sunday. I had time blocked off to go yesterday, but mother nature didn't cooperate. We got about 8 inches of snow, and frustratingly the last 30 minutes of the storm ended with freezing rain. So now there is once again a crust of ice over everything (and the footing under the snow is still ice). We can't get a break this year!










We had a trimmer appointment this morning. The girls were very literally coated in ice when I brought them in. I guess they chose to stand out in the freezing rain rather than use their shelters.

Poor Izzy looked extra pathetic- her blanket was frozen solid...


















...and her little ears were coated in icicles...









Fizz was rocking an icy forelock...









...and they both had frozen solid snowballs in their feet, something I haven't seen at all this year despite the ice we've had already.









I was able to chip the ice out of their feet before the farrier got there though, so I felt like at least I wasn't in the running for "worst client of the year" award. :wink:

He fit Fizz for boots. He was pretty strongly in favor of the Scoot boots, though he also fit her for Renegade Vipers. So, I need to make my decision about which I want and then he'll get them ordered for us. He made a pretty convincing case for the ease of use and durability of the Scoots, which seems pretty consistent with the reviews I've read so far. So I think I'm leaning that way.


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## QueenofFrance08

Do you mind sharing his thoughts on both? I got Renegade Vipers for my MFT mare because their customer service was the most helpful in telling me what size to get and they had a 20% off sale for Black Friday (our farrier only knows about shoes and barefoot) but my new Arabian gelding will need something once I get his feet trimmed correctly and I'm on the fence between both. (I haven't actually had time to use the Vipers, I got them in December and our rides have been too short and on snow to try them out yet).


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Do you mind sharing his thoughts on both? I got Renegade Vipers for my MFT mare because their customer service was the most helpful in telling me what size to get and they had a 20% off sale for Black Friday (our farrier only knows about shoes and barefoot) but my new Arabian gelding will need something once I get his feet trimmed correctly and I'm on the fence between both. (I haven't actually had time to use the Vipers, I got them in December and our rides have been too short and on snow to try them out yet).


Sure! He's been working with Vipers for years now and remains impressed with the quality and durability. There are two downsides in his opinion: 1. If/when the cables break, they are difficult to fix for the "average" user- "more work than a lot of my clients want to have to do" in his words. I'm not sure if I would qualify as that kind of client or not :wink: and 2. Need for them to be adjusted by the farrier. So they are ordered, and then you have to wait until the next time you see him to get them fit (again, I think for the "average" user, maybe more foot-savvy people are comfortable doing it themselves. I probably wouldn't be). Another potential problem, not so much for my horse, but for horses with more oval feet or higher heels is that the shape may not be ideal for them. All that said, he has several endurance clients who have used them for years and not been let down.

The Scoots are newer, and so far he said he's had ~5 clients (mostly endurance) who have used them for about a year now. Putting them on and adjusting is apparently much easier given the clip vs. cable system. Durability so far has been good. His words: "if I was booting my own horse, that's what I'd pick now based on what I've seen the past year."

They are basically the same price so I don't think he has a vested interest in either for that reason.

If there's anything factually incorrect above, I'd say that's probably my error in recounting what he told me rather than his lack of knowledge, so let's not judge his knowledgeability :wink:

The final thing he mentioned is that he's seeing a lot more of his endurance clients going to glue on boots, which stay on about a week. He was fairly down on those, not liking the heat they generate or the lack of breathability they offer the feet. Still, he says he has about a dozen clients doing 50s in those. Maybe @phantomhorse13 has an opinion based on her endurance network, though I believe her horses are shod.

I'm thinking of it all as a grand experiment. I'm inclined to want to stay barefoot and boot when needed, but am also not a barefoot fanatic. If they don't work or are a pain to use, I'm open to other options if Fizz needs additional protection, which I suspect she would if we get into doing more pavement miles. In the spring/summer, my ideal will be riding her 25-30 miles weekly, so a lot of that will require time on the roads.


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## QueenofFrance08

Hmm. I ordered mine myself from the website because of their 20% off deal and we tried them on Daisy and they were way too big. I found on their website how to adjust the cable and it was kind of a pain but not too bad. I like the quality of them, they seem really thick and comfortable for the horse. I have a pair of easy boots I use on my quarter horse and I'm not a huge fan of those. 

Maybe I'll give the Scoot boots a shot for Jake. I like the look of them a lot and they do seem easier. Apparently the moral of the story is get by with what you can during the year and then buy all your replacements on Black Friday!

I asked my Green Bean group what they use in the footwear category. 3/5 of the group has over 100 Endurance miles and one of the girls has over 600 and won the heavyweight category for our division last year so they're pretty smart about this stuff.

Forgot to mention, I'm not a barefoot freak either it's just quite hard to get farriers out on any sort of reasonable schedule where we are so I only worry about shoes because I'm not sure I can guarantee a reliable schedule. We're on our 3rd one in the past year, thankfully I think he's a keeper.


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## phantomhorse13

My horses are shod, and I will be honest when I say boots are simply too much hassle for me. In order to get the best results, you need to be willing to do some touch up trimming between farrier visits and even then if your horse doesn't have the right shaped feet in general, good luck. We use easyboot gloves as spare tires (at least they don't have that @#*&ing cable to deal with that the epics do). Personally, I have never had much luck with boots but I have several friends who use them for distance exclusively with great success (two using gloves, one using renegades).

I find your farrier's recommendation for the scoot boots to be pretty high praise if they are being used by distance riders. I will admit to not having even seen one of those boots. I have only touched a renegade once, when I helped the OD yard sale to set stuff up.


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## carshon

I am interested in the Scoot Boots. We use Easy Boot Epics now and have had really good luck with them. That being said though - Tillie has pancakes for feet and they tend to turn on her a little. We mostly ride barefoot but some of the parks in WI that we ride at are really rocky and boots and shoes are recommended.

Let me know which route you choose.


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## gottatrot

I found a really good link talking about the difference between Renegades, Scoot boots and other boots.

Download Selecting the Right Hoof Boot - Plus: Renegade vs Scoot Boot

I've used all the boots in the video except the Scoot boots. They look like a pretty good design to me. Renegades have worked the best for my horses. One thing I was wondering about the Scoot boots is if you have to adjust anything each time you put them on, such as the cables in front and how long that takes. With the velcro system on the Renegades, I am able to put on each boot in about fifteen seconds, so it doesn't seem inconvenient. 
When I used Epics it was always a longer, strength related process with the clips and cables you often had to adjust and also wedge the hoof into the boot.

The Scoot boots are forgiving of slight changes in size through the hoof cycle, and that is important. I've found that Renegades are also OK with slightly different sizes and shapes but I've had to add a little square of foam in the toe right against the hoof wall to fill in a gap for a couple horses that had a long toe and the front didn't snug up with the hoof wall. That made the fit work.

Some things I like about the Renegades: When we used to lose Easyboots they could fly dozens of feet into deep brush or over the side of a cliff. They were also black and could be nearly impossible to find. I spray painted mine a brighter color, but that wore off too. I only rarely had a Renegade come off, but when they did on my horses everything just stretched out and the boot pulled off, and then rode up the pastern so it was still actually on my horse's leg. The only time one came completely off, it was just sitting on the ground where the horse had stood on it. But the best thing was they were not damaged. When an Epic comes off the gaiter is usually destroyed, and those are extremely painstaking to replace.
The bright colors would help recover a lost Renegade, but I never have had to look for one.

Some real advantages of boots are that you can just take them off after riding and have the horse barefoot again. I'm not a die hard barefoot person, but had some horses with shoeing problems. Halla when green was a fearsome beast for the farrier, and ACE didn't work on her. I put shoes on her myself (rather a dangerous undertaking at first), but I discovered she interfered at the gallop sometimes and cut her legs. So we tried boots, and I found the sole protection on gravel was better than just shoes. But Halla's interference also meant she pulled Epics off a lot at the gallop. The Renegades could take an occasional overstep from a hind hoof and not get pulled off because the heel captivator has some give and stretch to it.

I have replaced the cables on Renegades and it's not fun but not horrible. The only reason I replaced them was because I damaged them with using the wrong pliers when adjusting things, but I never had them fray from riding. They would last about 500 miles of hard riding on gravel for me. I've never had the velcro wear out, but I did rinse the boots after muddy rides. I also always tucked the ends under the rubber band keepers. It's more likely to scrape your fingers up because it is a heavy duty, rough velcro. One thing I did was if I had the boot fitted right for the horse, I folded the extra velcro strap back and glued it to itself. That made it thicker and easier to grab to tighten, and also kept it under the rubber band keeper so the velcro did not wear or get dirty inside.

As far as adjusting the cable, I've only had to do that in the initial first several rides to get a better fit. I didn't even know you could adjust that part so rode for a year in my first set without adjusting them at all, and they still stayed on my horses galloping and jumping. I really like the traction you can get in hoof boots, and find it slightly better than barefoot except for on very dry, dusty roads with shallow gravel (they can skid out a little like a car does) and on very wet grass. In normal gravel, on wet asphalt, in mud, dryer grass, I always had great traction. The wet grass was only an issue if galloping.
Hope this helps give you more to consider with boots.


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## egrogan

Thanks for sharing so much info @gottatrot. I've watched a few videos since yesterday and found that one you posted helpful.

I am drawn to the simplicity of the Scoots, but I find myself wondering what happens if gravel/small stones get kicked up into them through the very large openings around the heels. Sort of like getting a rock up in your flip flop- will it just find its way out, or will it embed itself in the bottom of your foot first?!

Still, the numerous reviews about the velcro and the cables on the Vipers wearing out does seem like a con as I'm not really much of a handy or DIY type.

I'm leaning Scoots I think.


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## egrogan

Took the plunge and just confirmed ordering the Scoots! We will see how they work. :grin:


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## egrogan

Finally got a break in the weather- freezing rain missed us last night so the roads were fine this morning. The footing was still icy so I couldn't ride outside, but at least I got to ride at all!









Last weekend I got a different Myler to try Fizz in, but hadn't been able to try it yet. It's the MB36, which is a forward tilted low port. 









She really seemed to love it! I definitely don't think of bits as miracle tools, but she felt noticably different in this style. She was relaxed and I could really see her thinking about how she wanted to hold her body to meet the contact. She didn't try to walk through the halts, and was almost instant in the downward transitions. We'll see if we can keep that feeling as we continue using it, but the first ride was definitely a success!

_A very satisfying itch after the ride...









...and a big yawn...









_I brought Iz in for a good grooming- she's _juusssttt _starting to shed, got the first curry comb full of hair of the season.


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## phantomhorse13

Yay for finding a bit that seems to make Fizz happy!!

Shedding is always so exciting.. I am SO ready for spring.


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## egrogan

Just when it didn't seem like the weather could get worse...sigh. We woke up this morning to steady rain, just enough to expose the inch of solid ice covering the ground but not enough to clear the ice out. So the ground is an absolute skating rink. I almost slid right under my car when I stepped out of it at the barn!









There was no chance I was going to be able to walk Fizz in to the barn from her field, so unfortunately I had to skip my ride. But today is Fizz's birthday! She's turning 11 on the 11th. 

:happy-birthday8:
I brought her a special birthday treat, which she was happy to indulge in (of course she was standing out in the middle of the field in the rain).​


















Izzy was happily hanging out in her shed and I had saved a little piece of carrot for her too.









I'm bummed that I couldn't ride today but I do have my less tomorrow afternoon, rescheduled from Friday. Excited to ride in the new bit again and see how it goes and what BO sees from the ground.

I guess I will be spending the rest of the day laying on the couch watching some Olympic coverage. Nothing makes you feel like an athlete quite like lounging around with a cat on your lap while other people push their bodies to the limit...:wink:


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## egrogan

Had a so-so lesson tonight. We had a nice warm-up, and then we started working on baby steps of lateral work. Fizz is just so dang numb to any kind of request to work sideaways off the leg. BO was right there with us on the ground with the dressage whip backing up my ask, but she is soooo resistant to moving away from that pressure. Right is definitely harder for her than left, but it's not just a sidedness thing. I sort of feel like we got her to a point where mentally she just sort of had enough and was getting ****ed off, but we kept trying to work through it looking for any steps of sideways she would offer. 

It's sort of an unanswerable question- how much is because she _can't_? How much because she _won't_? How much because she just _doesn't get it_? She has started moving over promptly from requests on the ground, so I'm inclined to think it's somewhere between can't and won't. BO thought she had my number tonight and was more "won't." But we got to a point where she started going backwards and getting a little light in the front, and that's where I get to my own mental space between can't and won't- BO rightly commented that when Fizz offers that kind of behavior, I "disappear" with my legs and contact, so it's leading to more problems. Sigh. This felt really hard. 

We didn't drill it endlessly (though it felt that way in the saddle!) and moved on. I think we were both feeling a little fried and when it came time to canter, she bucked and crowhopped around the circle we were on, which of course causes me to shut down mentally. This is the first time I had to say out loud to BO, "I'm not in a place mentally where I can work through that right now" and I guess I must have sounded like I meant it because we did some more trot work to end on a good note rather than being pushed to go back to the canter-and usually BO finds a way to push you. I will say, we had some of the nicest trot work we've had to end things, but now I'm beating myself up for wimping out and not working through the canter stuff. BO did give me a gentle pep talk while we were trotting around that I have to figure out what I'll do to be able to get through those crowhopping spells so it doesn't escalate. We've noticed a pattern now that when we do something more physically demanding, this does keep coming back up. Once Fizz has done something a few times and we both get comfortable with it, then it goes away for a bit. And then we take another step forward and have to come back and work through it again.

This is after I got off, and I was at least happy that she didn't have that faraway, zoned out look in her eyes that she can get if she's really been stressed, so that made me feel a little better. I really don't want to put her in a position where we're overfacing her, but I trust BO to challenge us without hurting us. 









We made up with peppermints afterwards too. 









So now I'm just still mentally processing all that we tried to do, what worked, what didn't, what I need to do better, what she needs to do better, and thinking through how we make sure to move forward from this. This may sound a little scattered, but I wanted to try to capture it in the spirit of being able to look back later, after we've continued to improve.


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## gottatrot

Hang in there, I think it takes quite awhile to get horses moving well off the leg. Do you have any kind of obstacles you can play with between your lessons? It seems to me that some horses get it better when they figure out you are asking them to move that way because you are helping them avoid an obstacle. Rather than having them go sideways for no reason. Then they can connect the cue with what you want. On the beach it is easier for us to practice, we are heading straight toward a log, then I use my leg to ask for sideways movement, and the horse realizes I helped them avoid the log. For some reason they tend to make these decisions at the last second rather than planning ahead, so when you plan it for them it seems like they appreciate it. After a bit, I can have them zig-zagging and avoiding invisible obstacles (at least I think that's what they believe we are doing). In the arena, I've pointed a horse straight at a barrel or block, then used the leg to steer them away from hitting it. That has been the easiest way for me to get the horse understanding about moving away from the leg.


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## egrogan

Thanks @gottatrot. We do have the typical poles, cones, etc. in the arena that I could set up. Though we were working around cones last night and she plowed right through them rather than bend around them...

I think what we both really need is a nice long hack out to practice this stuff in "the real world." Not to sound like a broken record, but the ice is such a bummer. It's so bad at the end of the barn driveway near the road that yesterday a big delivery truck from the feed store came crawling around the corner off the road, and totally lost control on the ice, sliding down the driveway, taking out the BO's wooden fence and ending up in her garden! So we won't even be able to get out to the road any time soon. It's really miserable and we seem stuck in this thaw-freeze-precipitation cycle for the foreseeable future.


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## carshon

@egrogan your lesson sounds almost exactly like the one my hubby had 3 weeks ago. He and Belle have been working on lateral movement for a few months and they had gotten pretty good at 2 steps laterally at the gait - one side more sticky than the other. Trainer set up a course for him to work on (I will try to describe the best I can) start by gaiting ( I know Fizz is not gaited) around the arena go to center gait through cones. Take a right and gait over very low cavaletti poles (these are along the arena wall) turn right again and gait into a box made of pole. Stop. ask for turn on the haunches (right or left) once turned ask for turn the other direction. Stop and gait out of the box and through the cones again. In between the little course she had him gaiting and flat walking around the arena so as not too over whelm Belle.

Well after about 2nd time into the box Belle refused to go in. She stopped and stood there and the more hubby pressed the more resistant she got. Once she got into the box the more he asked the more she balked - ending up in backing out of the box and getting a little light in the front end.  Hubby has had a horse flip over on him so this was super stressful. Trainer jumped to help him and coached him on getting Belle past the sticky spot. It was really hard for my hubby - he was sweating and really working with his legs to make her move - all the while saying "maybe we should just come back to this" since this is not the first time Belle has tried to get away from doing "work" trainer said stick with it. Which he did. And after what seemed like hours he got her to move forward into where the box "used to be" there he praised her, gave her loose reins and dismounted. I was so proud of him sticking with it because in the past trainer allowed them to move onto something else.

You can do this! I know how scary it is - Fizz and Belle sound a lot alike. Belle was purchased at 4 by a newbie and scared the owner who did not ride her for the next 8 years. Then we purchase her and put her into lessons and she is old enough now to be a little set in her ways and had gotten away with some things with her previous owner. I think Fizz is like this - and for you and my hubby it is just finding the key to unlock that horse inside. The weather has been horrible here so they have not had a lesson since that incident - our trainer alternates lessons (side passing, turn on the haunches, lateral work one week and the next week more on hubby position controlling speed with the seat ) they do this so the horse does not burn out.

You have GOT this. The mental obstacles for both you and Fizz will be the hardest. You are doing a great job with her!


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## egrogan

@*carshon* - thanks for sharing that story! Though not happy to hear your husband is having some dicey moments with Belle. It's truly not fun when you're worried about whether you're both going to end up on the ground...I can attest to that.



carshon said:


> Then we purchased her and put her into lessons and she is old enough now to be a little set in her ways and had gotten away with some things with her previous owner. I think Fizz is like this - and for you and my hubby it is just finding the key to unlock that horse inside.


Fizz definitely wants to be asked to do a job. But BO's theory is that the "structure" she has in her life with us- lessons where we're teaching her stuff she doesn't know, being worked a few times a week, and most of all no longer living "wild" on 40 or so acres in a herd is what she has a hard time with. I sometimes feel guilty about taking her out of living in that situation, but it's not possible where we are now. She's of course cared for, but it's just a different environment.

After our experience last night, BO suggested coming back today but switching things up a bit- doing some lunging and then just getting outside for a walk, even if short. So that's what I did. We did about 15 minutes of lunging w/t/c- the point was to work on the trot-canter transition not being wild. I did a walk warmup in both directions, and got her into a nice balanced trot. Then I asked her to canter. The first two times, she leapt into it bucking, but from the ground, it's much easier to just push her forward, keep her going while easing her back into something that's not out of control, then go down to trot, then right back to canter, rinse, repeat. I don't like working them on a circle _too _long at the faster gaits, so we kept it short. But after that initial craziness, the transitions were calm and on cue in both directions, so that felt productive.

It was a beautiful sunny day outside, but the footing was shi**y. We tiptoed from the arena out to the back field to take our chances walking around. There was ice everywhere, including interspersed with the snow:









But we were careful and found a clear path to walk. The ground was hard and the snow crunchy, but it wasn't slick in most places. Bonus, the hill down into the woods was actually not a sheet of ice, so down we went:









When we got to the bottom, the drifts were deep and the consistency of that yucky, sharp crusty snow coming well up her leg. She was willing to go through it, but it didn't feel fair to her to ask her to go too far, so we pretty much just walked to the bottom of the hill and then turned around and came back up. 

The track around the turnout fields is covered in spread shavings to try to improve the traction, but it was only 20*F so that was frozen solid and hard to walk on. We pretty much managed about a quarter mile and had to throw in the towel. But we were both happier when we were done I think! 









And- she _did _leg yield when I asked her to so we could get to better footing. Baby steps :grin:


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## egrogan

We had a great lesson last night. We worked on lots of walk/trot transitions through spiraling circles. I think BO focused on me more than Fizz, which was good. Mostly I was working on half halting through my core when she would tend to speed up as the circles got smaller, and trying to get good walk transitions that way. Then we did some baby leg yield using staircase broken lines on the long sides. She mostly wants to just shuffle her shoulders sideways and "fake it" with a lot of neck bending, BUT the few strides where she truly stepped under herself and used her whole body felt amazing- I couldn't help but break out into a huge smile when I finally felt her get it! :grin:

My lesson was a little earlier in the day than usual as I had taken a vacation day, so it was still light enough when we were done to go cool out outside.

Leaving the barn, it looked like New England mud season was getting ready to settle in!









This time, the woods trail had melted a ton, but what was left was the icy base layer that just won't melt. 








So we didn't go down to the trail. We just rode around the fields where it wasn't icy.

She cracked me up when I got off at the barn door...for some reason this little decoration was a cause for _extreme _concern. I was running up her stirrups on her off side when suddenly she started snorting and blowing really hard. I looked around to see why, and she was locked in to the fake horse. We have passed this every single time we've ever gone into the barn, and she's never even glanced at it before. Silly girl :rofl:









She was looking very pretty though.









I'm meeting up with my riding buddy later this morning. We were going to go for a road ride, but it got down to 19*F last night so all that mud is again frozen solid and sharp. Not great footing since a lot of our roads are dirt. We'll see what we end up doing. And- 1-3" of snow tonight. Sigh.


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## egrogan

I'm so thrilled with Fizz today. We did the 3.5 mile neighborhood loop, far more road riding than she's done up to this point, taking in lots of new scenery. While we only walked and it wasn't super physically taxing, she got to take in lots of new sights and experiences and handled it all like a champ.









Some highlights:
-About 15 minutes into the ride, we passed a house with a bunch of kids sleigh riding down the hill. The dads were standing up by the road, and started yelling, "kids- horse! horse!" and they all came running towards us. Fizz looked but continued on without worrying.
-LOTS of puddles to splash through. She goes right through, doesn't try to slink around them like _someone _I know (ahem, Izzy...)
-Tons of traffic- more than I would have liked, to be honest. Next time I think I'll try to go a little earlier- noon on a Saturday has a lot of people out driving. But she was really great. It didn't matter if there were big trucks coming towards us, nervous station wagons creeping behind us, she just kept walking at a steady pace. At first I kept a lot of leg on to keep her hugging the side of the road, but she didn't really need it.
-For the last mile, we could not rid ourselves of the mailman. Since we were riding with traffic, he kept creeping up behind us, stopping, depositing the mail, closing the box, then move to the next. So we switched sides and went about our business, as did he. We'd get ahead of him, then he'd get ahead of us, and we just kept leapfrogging each other. But again, she just didn't care about the noise or the creeping. He went left at that turn, and we went right. But a few minutes later...there he was coming _towards _us from the other way! We couldn't get away from him!








-The ducks. I think I mentioned in a previous post that at the end of the road the barn's on, there is a house where they raise a bunch of hobby poultry. I'm glad we went by this at the end of the ride when she was sort of tired, because as we went passed, several dozen ducks, geese, and chickens went flapping and quacking away from the road back towards their barn. That made way more noise than you'd expect it to. I mean, not _this _bad...




...but still, noisy! There are probably 40-50 of them. I kept both hands on the wheel for that but maybe next time we go by I can get a video.

She did get tired on me around the time we hooked up with the mailman. I could feel her stride get a little choppier. As she got a little tired, she seemed to look for reasons to spook. Like...a squirrel...or...a snowbank :icon_rolleyes:

But I really couldn't be more proud of her. So much of this was new to her, and she handled it all so well. She wasn't hot or blowing when we got back. I'm excited for her boots to get here so we can start adding in some trotting, which I'm not comfortable doing without them on the pavement. And we'll start increasing the mileage from here. The neighborhood around the barn is like two big rectangles- this was the inner rectangle, and if we add the outer one, the loop will be 7 miles. So lots of room to do more distance.

Took her out for a nice hand graze when we got untacked.









Then I got Izzy out with my riding buddy Ida. Ida had ridden in the arena while Fizz and I were out on the road, so Izzy and I just did a cool-out ride around the farm with her and Jazz. It ended up being an easy mile, which was good for Iz to stretch her legs out. She was bright eyed and eager to do it.









We'll see how much snow we have by the morning- it's on the way, sounds like 3-5" but stopping by morning. If we're stuck back inside tomorrow we'll work on trot/canter transitions a bit.


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## phantomhorse13

Go Fizz!

I can't imagine having to play leap frog with the mailman.. forget being attacked by misc fluttering, squawking things.

Hope the weather stays snow for you guys as well. They aren't giving us storm totals here, which always makes me nervous..


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## gottatrot

Those creeper types drive me nuts! When I'm on a horse not used to traffic yet, I just want them to go around already and not lurk behind us making things worse. I've tried waving them around before and had them just sit there and wave, like we're in a parade and they're watching the horse. 

One barn owner decided to put turkeys in a pen attached to the indoor arena. It was good desensitizing, but the flapping and weird noises sure spooked a lot of horses for several days. 

We might even get snow here tomorrow, first time this winter (not supposed to stick on the ground though).

Your posts about Fizz and Izzy are good therapy for me right now.


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## egrogan

I just got home from a bit of a traumatic ride. It had snowed about 3" of nice, powdery snow last night, so I got up first thing and headed to the barn to take advantage of the good footing and head to the woods trail.

To get the most traumatic part out of the way front and center: we were about 2 minutes from home and Fizz fell with me when she hit a patch of ice we couldn't see. She just sort of crumpled underneath me as she went down, and I was able to roll off her side when she stopped sliding down the hill. We're both ok, I think. I have some bruises but she doesn't seem off at all. We're obviously watching her to see if she starts to look sore.

But it just hadn't been a good ride from basically the get go, despite being an absolutely beautiful day to ride. It started at our first water crossing. She was back to refusal to go through. I tried three or four times mounted, but she had reverted back to the backing up and get light in the front end. I felt that I had more tools to try to get through it this time, and in fact she did do a very nice job of disengaging her hind and and turning on the forehand. It's just that once we were facing the water again, she went backwards more. I took a little break to get my wits back about me, and you can see that the water just isn't _that _big a deal- it's a glorified puddle!









She just wasn't going through this day, so I hopped off to lead her through. She was still reluctant








but eventually went. There were two more spots like this ahead, so I stayed on the ground and led through them. Probably the most positive part of the ride was that I was able to re-mount from a tree stump, and she stood decently for me to get on safely.

After I got back on though, she was just _done_ with the ride. The footing was bad, she was slipping and sinking into drifts and really struggling to make it through the snow and the ice shelf underneath it. When we got to the final hill heading home, she squealed and let out a big crowhop- I actually lost my right stirrup but managed to get resettled. She was super jiggy and I was basically pleading with her (I think out loud :wink to just walk up the last hill and not bolt away with me.

So that's sort of where we found ourselves when she lost her footing. We were three-quarters of the way up the last hill home, and I was mentally waffling about whether I was going to hop off again before she took off. That's what made it so disorienting when all of a sudden I saw her head and neck disappearing underneath me as she came to a stop. It seemed like it was slow motion, but she went down almost like a horse dropping to their knees to roll. She scrambled a little with her front feet to regain her footing, but when she couldn't, she tucked her knees under and lowered us to the ground. She didn't go over on her side or anything like that, she just sort of stopped and then slid backwards a little down the hill. The patch of ice was huge, probably two horse-lengths but had been completely hidden under the snow.

I guess I was still in the saddle, but I must have hit the ice before I rolled off her because my knees are bruised and cut up a little, and so is my left elbow. But I rolled off her to the right, and then slipped and fell again myself (maybe that's how I bruised my knees?). I just remember her looking tremendously calm but confused laying there. She tried to get up a couple of times but it was just sheer ice straight uphill from her, so she couldn't. I was able to get in front of her, turn her head to the left, off the trail and towards the trees, where the footing was snow. Thankfully the space between the trees was wide right there, so she could dig in with her front feet and launch up and forward. She seemed to walk off fine, and since we really were just about home I walked her back to the barn. I was certainly shaking though  

BO was doing stalls when we got back, and she looked her over with me. We didn't see any cuts or immediate swelling, and she was walking fine. So, like I said, we'll see. I'll go back over later in the day to see if she's looking uncomfortable at all, and if so, we'll decide what to do. We opted not to bute or anything so that she has a chance to feel sore if she's going to be sore and not use anything she shouldn't.

I was trying to keep myself together and joked with BO that I've been worried about a horse falling with me for a really long time, so it's kind of a relief to have that over with! :wink: It's sort of a joke, but sort of true though. It was really, really scary, but I also feel really lucky that we both seem to be ok and it wasn't worse.


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## evilamc

Oh man! Im so sorry that happened!!!! I KNOW how scary that is...Maybe this will help you feel a little better:






This was my first time actually falling off of him. Last ride with @Tazzie, Jax got a little excited and accidently went wrong way, when I corrected him, it was so steep he slid and went down. We managed to get it on BOTH cameras...It happens to us all sadly  Like you said, at least its over with now!

I'm glad you're ok! Fizz may need to regain some confidence, just take it slow. Between falling off a bridge and then this incident Jax lost a LOT of confidence.


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## newtrailriders

Ugh I'm getting anxiety just reading about that ride! Glad you're both OK.


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## egrogan

^^Oh man @evilamc...funny-NOTfunny, huh?! Watching it from @Tazzie's camera, that's exactly how I think Fizz went, with her front legs buckling under her like that and dropping down on her belly. Lucky (??) for me though, it wasn't in a giant mud puddle! I don't envy you that. I was sopping wet from rolling around in the snow though.

And thanks, I'm glad it wasn't any worse. We will probably _both _need to regain our confidence next time we go up that hill.

PS- it's always handy when you can use a nice, sloping hill to get back on, isn't it!! :wink:


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## evilamc

egrogan said:


> ^^Oh man @evilamc...funny-NOTfunny, huh?! Watching it from @Tazzie's camera, that's exactly how I think Fizz went, with her front legs buckling under her like that and dropping down on her belly. Lucky (??) for me though, it wasn't in a giant mud puddle! I don't envy you that. I was sopping wet from rolling around in the snow though.
> 
> And thanks, I'm glad it wasn't any worse. We will probably _both _need to regain our confidence next time we go up that hill.
> 
> PS- it's always handy when you can use a nice, sloping hill to get back on, isn't it!! :wink:


Yes! I have Jax trained to line up to pretty much anything for me to get back on lol! I got pretty lucky having that ledge there, otherwise we would of been looking for a stump! I just really struggle mounting from the ground, so I avoid it. Clicker training just works wonders for him haha!

I don't know if the mud is really worse then being wet from the snow when its so cold out!! I was dirty but wasn't cold  We're both so lucky it wasn't worse and it was nice to finally have my first fall off Jax under my belt LOL! I technically came off once before but I don't count it. I KNEW my girth was super loose, but was ignoring it till at bottom of a hill.....yeah he went around a curve and I went the other way LOL! I got lucky and there was a bank only 2ft down so I didn't go down far!


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## phantomhorse13

So very glad neither of you were hurt!!


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## egrogan

Thank you @phantomhorse13, I think we are both going to ride another day.

I went out to check on her this afternoon and she was acting and moving normally. I got a couple of short videos of her walking, though the footing is a little mucky in the first.





I think I see her dragging a right hind toe in this one? And please excuse the...permissive....horse handling by my well-intentioned helper :wink:










Anyone seeing something I'm not?


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## Spanish Rider

*egrogan,* I didn't know you had a journal!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> *egrogan,* I didn't know you had a journal!


Hi @*Spanish Rider* ! :wave: Glad you found us. 

Yes, this journal has been going for quite awhile now. You can meet Izzy if you care to read towards the beginning, though sadly the great Photobucket scandal of 2017 wiped out so many of my favorite photos of Izzy that were posted along the way. :frown: It's really thanks to her that I started trail riding- I was pretty clueless when we began. Just crossing the street and riding in the field across from our old barn was an accomplishment. Here are a few of my old favorites of riding with her over the years, in no particular order:


































































































She'll be turning 24 in just a couple of weeks.


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## carshon

@egrogan I don't see too much toe dragging in the video - and want to add my condolences about your "folding" incident. I too have had the horse and ice experience and it is scary for both horse and rider. Glad you are OK - and thankful you had a good ride before that.


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## PoptartShop

OMG that is so scary, I am so sorry you had to go through that.  She may be dragging a little bit, but then again it's hard to tell with the ground/footing. 

So happy neither of you got hurt though. Thank goodness.


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## Spanish Rider

Beautiful horse and idyllic countryside! I miss maple trees and red barns, and I haven't seen fall foliage since 1992. 

I'll take a look-see at the beginning...


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## egrogan

Thanks for the well wishes @carshon & @PoptartShop!

I was off today- and apparently so was everyone else at the barn :wink: I went out this afternoon thinking I might set up some obstacles in the arena and do a little groundwork and lunging to see how Fizz was feeling. But the arena was packed with lessons just about to start when I got there (this is why I always try to get there early!!) so I needed a new plan. She seemed to be feeling fine when I groomed her up- no problems picking up all four legs, no reaction when I poked and prodded her back and hips. I decided we'd head out for a handwalk down the road to visit the ducks.

She walked along happily next to me and her stride seemed forward and consistent. I didn't notice any toe dragging, and certainly no head bobbing or favoring a particular leg.

The ducks took off down their hill while we were still some distance away, so not sure if I got a picture where you can see them- but if you look down in the left corner, that's about a third of the flock:








Most of them are white- are those geese? swans?- so they sort of blend in and you don't get the full impact of just how many there are! Fizz sure gave them all careful consideration- but this is about all she did, stand and stare intently.









We hung out there for a minute, and since she seemed to be moving fine, we worked a little harder on the way home. We weaved in and out of the potholes like they were cones. We stopped and did turns-on-the-forehand in both directions around them. We practiced walk/trot transitions by jogging between mailboxes and power poles (@Phantomhorse13- she is SO ready for the trot out at her first vetting :grin. 

Most excitingly, because there were so many huge puddles around, I used that as an opportunity to work on the water issues. The thing that confuses me is she leads through it no problem- she doesn't try to jump over it or skirt around it. If I walk through leading her, she walks straight through. But, I couldn't _send _her through without a lot of refusing. I tried to stand to the side and lunge her around me in a small walking circle. She wouldn't go forward through the puddle, but would dance sideways and try to walk over me, or throw her head up and try to go backwards. I got after her a couple of times with the end of the lead, and she snorted and flicked her tail and complained. But after a few attempts, I stood on a little island between two big puddles, and around me she went in a polite circle. Fizz asking- _what do you mean you want me to go through those big alligator holes?!_








That felt like a pretty good accomplishment! Not sure that will translate to under saddle of course, but it's a work in progress.


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## Tazzie

I'm so glad you and Fizz are ok! How scary!!

Silly Fizz though with the puddles. Izzie has the same issues with puddles :lol:


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## QueenofFrance08

We practiced our trot out this weekend too! Stitch had a cut on her leg and after a little freaking out we realized it was just a skin wound but I trotted her out and back to have DH make sure she was fine first!


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## egrogan

I'm feeling frustrated with myself after my ride today. It was the first time I've sat in the saddle since our fall, and I let my worries get the better of me. Fizz seemed fine, but I know I was tense and making her tense. We had the arena to ourselves, and when I relaxed she did as well. Her trot was nice, and we did a lot of simple walk/halt transitions so I was confident she was listening well. But-I just couldn't get myself to pull the trigger to ask her to canter. I know that's totally irrational- cantering had nothing to do with our fall. But I couldn't get my mind anywhere except for that crowhopping and if I'd be able to ride it out. This is getting to be a mental block sort of thing and I need to get myself through it. It's frustrating to KNOW what I need to do but freeze up whenever I get ready to do it.

Sadly I set up my phone to record some of the ride, but I basically just got ~10 minutes of video of the ceiling of the indoor, and occasionally the top half of my body and Fizz's ears :icon_rolleyes: Not very helpful for critique!









We had bizarre 70*F weather (and it's going to be 30*F by morning- so hard on the horses!) so Fizz was sweaty when we finished in the ring. The footing outside was gross and soupy, but I took her out to walk around the farm to cool down. No snow to be seen!








Potentially concerning- she was tripping _a lot_. Like, 3 or 4 very dramatic trips with the right front (and she tripped once like that in the ring too). This is very unusual for her. The chiro will be out in a couple of weeks so we'll see. It could have just been the icky footing, but of course it could be more than a coincidence that it happened the first ride after she fell.


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## Spanish Rider

*egrogan,*
You are not alone! I find that as I get older, falls are harder for me to work through mentally. It's like I have to start all over again: brushing, then getting my toe in the stirrup, today I'll just walk, tomorrow maybe a trot, etc. And canter is always the big sticking point. You just need to be patient with yourself. It will come, after some slow brain re-programming.


> I know that's totally irrational- cantering had nothing to do with our fall.


Same here. In fact, my worst accident was at a walk.


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## Tazzie

Hey, don't beat yourself up over it. ANY fall can be traumatic for a rider! And ANY can set you back. It's absolutely normal for those feelings to pop up. There were days the thought of cantering made me want to puke. On days Izzie is hot, I grab my grab strap since I STILL have moments I get nervous. I see absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to halt/walk/trot work. As for the canter work, would your instructor be up for putting miles on her at the canter to kind of help a bit? Not sure if it's an option (either financially or she can't), but figured it wouldn't hurt to check in about it.

I think it'd be wise to get her checked though. Sorry to hear she was tripping :/


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## carshon

I agree with the others. Give it time. The fall is still fresh in your mind and the canter had you concerned any way. just spend some time relaxing - walk/trot and some poles. Work on other things to get your mind engaged and your body will follow. Why rush to canter? It will come.


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## phantomhorse13

Another in the chorus of voices saying to give yourself a break about cantering. I am all about listening to your gut. 

Next lesson, perhaps have your instructor put Fizz on the line for the canter and see if that makes you more comfortable.


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## egrogan

*#IzandFizz Go To the Dentist

*We had a very pretty late season snow last night- it was still sticking to the trees this morning and made the world look like a snow globe.


















Today was dental check up day for Iz and Fizz. BO has an equine dentist who comes twice a year, and his reputation is that all horses are putty in his hands, even the ones that have historically required sedation. I missed out on his visit last year and had to do a traditional power float with our regular vet, so was glad to get them both in today.

Izzy went first and unfortunately she has some issues that will require further attention :frown: The diastema that the vet noted in November when she was floated has gotten much worse. The root of the tooth is involved now and as the dentist said, it's just asking for infection to move up through the tooth. We're lucky it's not happened yet actually. So his recommendation is to get her to a vet about an hour north of us who is a dental expert. His guess is that it will require extraction, which will then allow the area to start healing. I'll give the vet's office a call on Monday to start a conversation with her- I'm not quite sure how I'll get her up there so one of my first questions is whether she can be seen mobilely or if I do in fact need to bring her to the office. I didn't get any pictures but gosh, it was shocking to see how deep the hole has gotten. It just has to be so painful, yet she's so stoic. And doesn't appear to have any quidding or other issues with food, which is good. This was the level of enthusiasm about breakfast before her appt this morning :wink:








But still, I feel guilty knowing this has been going on for awhile now. I am eager to get it addressed.

While Izzy was getting checked out, Fizz was dozing in the sunshine.









I wasn't sure how she'd do with the check-up since she had such issues with the vet handling her mouth during the PPE; when I first got her in November I had her floated the first week she was there, but with sedation. The lovely thing about this dentist is that he brings them into a stall and just takes a minute to let them check him out and relax and his energy really does transform even nervous horses (I watched him with a couple of the bigger, busier Warmbloods before Izzy and horses few people besides BO handle were very chill). Fizz was much more interested in the hay leftover in the stall than she was the dentist. As he got started, she certainly didn't _love _the experience, but she pretty much stood still for him as he did some filing. She had a hook on a left molar, and a few other sharp edges on that side that he addressed. BO noted that going softly on the left rein is harder for her, and maybe this is partially why. Will be interesting to see if she feels any different afterwards.

She didn't seem distressed at all when I put her back out, which was great- I'd say Mr. Dentist lived up to his reputation!









Have a bunch of plans with my lovely husband this weekend so it's unlikely I'm going to ride much- we'll see about Sunday afternoon if the weather cooperates.


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## egrogan

Made it home from our weekend road trip in time to get to the barn this afternoon. 

It was a wet, dreary day with gross frozen slush everywhere. The kind of day I can't imagine my horses not having blankets to keep them cozy- because of course, they were both standing outside in the freezing drizzle when I went to get them!









I started with a little bit of lunging with Fizz, still playing around with how much work we can do on the trot/canter transitions from the ground. She seemed sort of uncomfortable all over today- just sort of stiff and braced. She tanked off into the canter transition just once, but twice going left she actually picked up the wrong lead, which I have never seen her do. I'm not sure if it's just me being a worrier, but I do think maybe she tweaked something when she fell. I got on her after about 15 min of lunging and was very surprised that her back still felt really tight and braced. When I asked her to trot, it almost felt like her right shoulder was disappearing away from me- strange feeling. Needless to say, I didn't ride her much longer and didn't ask her to do more than walk after feeling that trot. I'm traveling most of the next two weeks for work, so she's not going to be ridden all that much before the chiro comes on 3/12, which may be a good thing. I just think she feels a little out of whack under saddle. Her attitude isn't bad but she just doesn't feel right to me. I won't have a lesson this upcoming week because of travel and will play it by ear the next week.

Izzy was waiting for me at her gate when I went to get her. She was very cute when we got inside when she saw her daytime neighbor, who has a stall at night- first time I've ever seen her sniff noses through a stall and not squeal like a mean girl :wink: She must really like him after all!









As soon as I took her blanket off, I could guess why she had been so eager to see me...








The shedding is coming on in full force and she was itchy everywhere. I spent a long time currying her out and got a fair amount off- but there is A LOT more to come!









And as I was bringing Izzy back to her field I noticed Fizz had a couple of friends hanging out with her- around sunset about 40 turkeys march through the paddocks and see what food the horses may have left behind. It's a cool sight. These two must have been the scouts as they were the first to come through.


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## phantomhorse13

Sorry to hear of Izzy's dental issues. Hope it is resolved with as little stress on everyone as possible. Love seeing that she is shedding - come on spring.

I am amazed how close the turkeys are to Fizz! That will be super useful out on trail since you have so many birds around all the time.


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## carshon

I think you barn sounds so lovely! I remember the anxiety you felt when deciding to move and am so happy to read your updates about your new BO and the facilities


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## Spanish Rider

And your barn has screen doors?!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Sorry to hear of Izzy's dental issues. Hope it is resolved with as little stress on everyone as possible.


Thanks! I called the specialist dental vet today and talked with her receptionist about what was going on and why the equine dentist referred us. When she asked if I wanted to bring Izzy in, I explained Izzy's age and my lack of a trailer and wondered if it was possible for the vet to come to us instead of us going to the office- she didn't exactly say no, but she also didn't exactly say yes. She just said that she was leaving a detailed message to have the vet call me back directly. So we'll see what that means!



phantomhorse13 said:


> I am amazed how close the turkeys are to Fizz! That will be super useful out on trail since you have so many birds around all the time.


Yes, none of the horses pay them any attention. Right after this a bunch more literally came through and walked under Fizz's belly as they ambled on to wherever they were going and she just kept eating.



carshon said:


> I think you barn sounds so lovely! I remember the anxiety you felt when deciding to move and am so happy to read your updates about your new BO and the facilities





Spanish Rider said:


> And your barn has screen doors?!


Yes, it really is a great place. All the horses and the people are happy there. And I agree, the facilities are really nice. I think I've started taking for granted just how neat and tidy everything is. It makes me laugh to think back to the first time I toured the barn and met BO, she told me that most of her boarders never leave once they get there unless they are asked to leave- and the only time she asked someone to leave was when a woman who had three horses there consistently refused to sweep up after herself, and all the other boarders were ready to revolt. So, she asked the lady to (literally) clean up her act, and when she wouldn't, she had to go! :wave:

Those screen doors are great in the summer but maybe not ideal when it's -7*F and the wind is howling through them :wink: Fortunately there are also big thick wooden sliding doors that can block the wind on the really cold days!


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## egrogan

Phew, I am pretty exhausted after being in Dallas for an intense week of meetings. I am currently sitting in the Detroit airport hoping my flight home is getting out tonight. This is what it looked like outside a little earlier- and the snow hasn't slowed down. Everything is delayed but I am crossing my fingers and toes we still get out, even though we're already quite delayed...









Anyway, in the midst of meetings, I was able to get on the phone with the dental vet. I am so relieved, she WILL come to the barn to examine Izzy. She obviously can't say for sure what the outcome will be until she sees it, but she thought there could be a chance to resolve the pocket with antibiotic packs and some work to the surrounding area. She'll do xrays when she comes out to see what else is there. I was really upfront with her that the dentist thought the tooth could be compromised with a crack and she may need to do an extraction- that gets more complicated as an "in the field" procedure- she said not impossible, but they like to do an IV drip and monitor them afterwards, so we'll see if we get to that point. Her field assistant is out for a couple of weeks, so we're likely looking at about a month until our appointment unless something changes dramatically. I'm so happy that even though it will be expensive, she will come to us, at least for this first appointment.


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## Spanish Rider

*egrogan,*
Did you make it home, or are you still stranded in Detroit?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> *egrogan,*
> Did you make it home, or are you still stranded in Detroit?


I walked in the door at 3:30am :eek_color: I am SO tired! Work today is...interesting...

We are also in the midst of a messy Nor-Easter, heavy wet snow, sleet, and sideways rain. So, no lesson for me tonight. Haven't seen the girls in a week but will get out there tomorrow even though the weather won't be great then either.


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## carshon

Glad you made it home safe. And even better news that the dentist will come to you! Boo for the snow. Hope it melts fast.


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## gottatrot

Happy Birthday Izzy!!


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Happy Birthday Izzy!!


Thank you @gottatrot! Izzy has started her 24th circle around the sun :happy-birthday8:
We celebrated today with an hour long grooming session. Her shedding is in full swing. I alternated between the curry and the shedding blade, and I probably could have kept going but she was starting to get a little antsy. She got an apple _and _a carrot to celebrate.








We all got a good laugh, another boarder was there today with her non-horsey family, and her mother saw Izzy getting brush and exclaimed excitedly "ooohhh...is that one pregnant?!" Poor Izzy, that isn't the first time and certainly won't be the last someone asks that question. I can't wait for the opportunity to take her for quiet rides on the woods trail again soon so she can get a little more exercise!

The barn was pretty quiet while I was hanging out with Izzy, but it exploded with activity as soon as I brought Fizz in to ride. At first we were just sharing the ring with one of the younger boarders, who was lunging her horse around and doing some groundwork.








Fizz was still a little stiff and crooked-feeling today, but I didn't read too much into it because obviously I haven't even been to the barn, let alone ridden, in a week. I'm bummed, I guess the weather here was great while I was gone- the paddocks dried and the outdoor ring was in such good shape BO was doing lessons out there. Of course the day I got back, we got a wicked storm and now everything is covered in muddy slush again!

It wasn't long before the ring was full with SIX horses and riders. I suppose it's good practice to have to have that much situational awareness, but I didn't really feel like I could work on anything serious with that many people all doing their own thing. We did some bending on small and large circles, some beginner leg yields (getting better! :grin and a little bit of trotting and called it a day. Unfortunately the ground was too iffy today to go stroll around outside, but I think it will probably be ok for that tomorrow. Here's hoping anyway!

The hustle and bustle wasn't just confined to the arena, the aisleway was packed too. As I was grooming Fizz after our ride, she was making googly eyes at Mr. Handsome over there while he was getting clipped...


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## egrogan

I went to the barn early this morning, as early Sundays are good times for road rides. I interrupted sleeping beauty's rest, as I typically do when I get there right after they finish breakfast :wink:









I started with a warm up in the arena to see how she was feeling. But as soon as we finished our warm up and headed down the driveway, her head snapped up on high alert.









Sometimes she does this and we just need to get some momentum and she's fine. She doesn't love the across the street neighbor's house with their sauna, many flapping flags, yippy dogs, and kids unpredictably darting everywhere. Let's be honest, I don't love that house either! :wink: But usually when we pass that house, she settles fine and gets excited knowing we're going on an adventure. Today she didn't. She shied at a snow bank. She snorted and blew at some rocks. She tried to bolt away when the barn cat followed us along a stone wall. Jigging towards cars was too much for me so I actually hopped off and walked her home after only getting about 0.75 miles down the road.

I mounted back up at the barn, did a lap around the property, and headed towards the road again. This time she was so tense we just turned around at the end of the driveway without even getting to the road. I headed back to circle the property again and passed BO so stopped to chat about what was going on. I think we've seen enough big weather swings this winter to be able to say that for whatever reason, big changes in the weather really do seem to affect Fizz. Yesterday it was mid-40s and mostly sunny, today it was right around freezing and snowing- that's after it being 60* and sunny all last week. It's this same pattern, the weather shifts and the next ride, she has a very tense back, is overly worried and alert, shying at things she normally wouldn't even glance at. 

The outdoor arena was clear after all the melting it got yesterday, so BO suggested going out there and working on some easy stuff, circles, serpentines, things like that. We did that for awhile, all I was looking for was a little relaxation. After a few circles, _finally _she took a big deep breath, the feeling through her whole back changed, her ears were up and happy instead of pinned nervously, and she was willing to stretch down and march along calmly on the buckle. For today, that felt like a big win so we ended there.









We went out afterwards for a little handgrazing








And she was still really tense then too. 








She'd catch something off in the distance and worry, and then graze a little and repeat. I think we might go ahead and treat for ulcers- we never did do that when we considered it a couple of months ago because she seemed to be settling down, but it's an easy enough thing to do and maybe it will help. In addition to the inconsistent weather, I think she's also just bored and doesn't seem to be the kind of horse that does well without getting worked regularly. I was away all last week, and because of the footing, even the exercise she's been getting has been the boring kind, mostly in the ring or walking when we're outside. Unfortunately I'll be gone most of next week too so it will be the same kind of week for her (and we're supposed to get a foot of snow mid-week, joy...). The chiro does come on 3/12, and I guess there's a chance that after an adjustment she might feel better too.

As I was grooming Izzy later, I was talking to my friend Ida about how my confidence is feeling pretty low right now. And it sort of hit me- I think I just need some nice long rides on Izzy to build my confidence back a little. I want the footing to improve a little to be fair to Izzy and not ask her to work on muddy or hard ground that makes her arthritis uncomfortable, but somehow I've been so focused on "making progress" with Fizz that I sort of forget I have this other wonderful little horse that I can go anywhere and do anything with. Hoping we have some nice relaxing spring days ahead of us so I can get my head right again. And, once the days get longer I may also have some more riding buddies for going out after work. I think riding with company, which I haven't done much of lately, will really help.

Here's my other little horse being a goofball with a very juicy apple. Watch with sound for maximum juiciness :wink:


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## egrogan

I want to do a little happy dance right now, I had such a good ride with Fizz this morning!! I had my phone set up recording, but I can't figure out a good free video editor program to break it up into shorter segments so instead of a 30 minute block of video I'll include some still shots.

I've been playing around with different ways of warming up with Fizz to see if I can get her more comfortable through her back, so occasionally I do some lunging with side reins in w/t/c before I get on. Today she seemed very happy through the warmup, even the trot/canter transitions (no bucking or crowhopping, no wrong leads). 

Nice relaxed walk with happy ears set the tone for the rest of it:









When I got on, the difference in her back from yesterday to today was unmistakable. 








Since she was pretty well warmed up, I walked a couple of laps and then asked her to trot. She was going around very happily...SOOO...I took a deep breath and thought, this is as good as she feels at the trot, she's calm, she's relaxed, she's _ready to canter_. So I need to ask her to canter.

Now, I think maybe it was @*tinyliny* in another thread a couple of weeks ago who said that the horse isn't going to lie- if you are asking to canter but don't really mean it, they won't. And indeed, the first couple of times I thought I was asking, it wasn't exactly pretty









But knowing that it was my issue and not hers, I paused again, trotted a circle to get myself ready, and then away we went. Now, on the video it's far from beautiful, my back is sort of hollow and my elbows are flapping like I might fly away, and she gets a little on the forehand or leans on my right leg...but today wasn't about any of that, today was just about getting through an irrational mental block with some success. AND WE DID! :grin:


























We cantered a few circles, and I felt so relieved. I just stopped there and got off as it couldn't have gotten any better than it was.

I think she looked proud of herself...








...and she even put up with kisses on the nose :grin:









If anyone has advice on a decent video editor that's straightforward to use to break up a long segment into smaller clips, I'd love to try it so I can share a little more.

I'm heading to Kansas City for the rest of the week for work, so made sure Izzy got one last long grooming session before I left. She was very interested in the carrots she knew I had waiting!


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## tinyliny

keeeeeyuuuuuuute!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I suppose it's good practice to have to have that much situational awareness


I just wanted to say I LOVE this phrase and intend to steal it for future use. Its not a crazy crowd, its an opportunity to work on situational awareness!




egrogan said:


> I think we've seen enough big weather swings this winter to be able to say that for whatever reason, big changes in the weather really do seem to affect Fizz.


This is Phin, too - he's better than a barometer! Good for you for riding her through all her silliness and finding her calm place. I have found that sometimes Phin finds his calm place more quickly if I do some ground work to get him focused on me before I get on.. but other times it doesn't seem to make any difference, as he can be calm on the ground then lose his marbles once I climb on. I will be interested in hearing what works best for Fizz. 


And WOOHOO for the cantering!!!


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## Spanish Rider

Good for you! I just wanted to say I think you were quite clever to lunge Fizz and do some transitions so that when you did try to canter, she had all her kinks worked out and you could focus on yourself! Bravo!:clap:


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## Avna

Congratulations for working through a scary block! Lots of people can't do that.


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## Tazzie

Woohoo!! I'm so happy for you! It's a big step to take, and I'm proud you were able to do it!

Maybe @evilamc will have suggestions on a movie editor?

I've also been working with ways to help the back warm up better, and I'm not typically a "this gadget made the BIGGEST difference!" but, though we haven't done THAT much work with it yet... the Back on Track pad I got and have been using really seems to have helped Izzie loosen up her back much easier. It used to take all sorts of lateral work to get her to loosen up and supple, but I feel we've had to do half that amount since working with this. Not telling you to rush right out and buy one, but could be something you'd want to try later on down the road.

And I love all the pictures! <3


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## carshon

What an awesome post! Your thread is so inspirational. And going for the canter! Good on you!. Fizz is prettier every time you post your pics and Izzy what a face!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> I've also been working with ways to help the back warm up better, and I'm not typically a "this gadget made the BIGGEST difference!" but, though we haven't done THAT much work with it yet... the Back on Track pad I got and have been using really seems to have helped Izzie loosen up her back much easier. It used to take all sorts of lateral work to get her to loosen up and supple, but I feel we've had to do half that amount since working with this. Not telling you to rush right out and buy one, but could be something you'd want to try later on down the road.
> 
> And I love all the pictures! <3


Thanks for the kind words @Tazzie! I'm also so glad you wrote what you did about trying to figure out how to warm up the back. I'm also not really a "gadgets and gimmicks" kind of person and have to be honest I've been a little hesitant about the lunging and sidereins as I guess it just feels like it could be a shortcut or an excuse to not just get on and ride my horse. BO has been quietly and patiently suggesting I just do it for 10 minutes or so on days when it seems Fizz may be fussy or worried during tacking up, or on those big weather change days. 

I really like BO's style of lunging as she is much more active vs. standing firmly planted in the middle of a circle. She primarily does long lining vs. lunging, so moving around with the horse to change the size of the circle, etc. is normal for her. I've done this a few times now with Fizz- it isn't always as effective as it seems like it was yesterday, but I'm going to keep playing around with it. 

A couple of friends swear by the Back on Track products, I've never used them. BO told me that her young horse can also be really tight in the back at the beginning of rides, and he absolutely loves having a simple microwavable heating pad laid over his back while she's getting him ready. It sounds so simple- I think I'll try that too. The things we do for our horses!! 

Right now anyway, when my schedule is sort of inconsistent and she's not being ridden as much as she would probably prefer, some sort of groundwork before riding seems helpful both mentally and physically. Fortunately I don't have too much travel planned after this week so can get back into a routine.


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## egrogan

Aww @carshon, you are making me blush


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> Thanks for the kind words @Tazzie! I'm also so glad you wrote what you did about trying to figure out how to warm up the back. I'm also not really a "gadgets and gimmicks" kind of person and have to be honest I've been a little hesitant about the lunging and sidereins as I guess it just feels like it could be a shortcut or an excuse to not just get on and ride my horse. BO has been quietly and patiently suggesting I just do it for 10 minutes or so on days when it seems Fizz may be fussy or worried during tacking up, or on those big weather change days.
> 
> I really like BO's style of lunging as she is much more active vs. standing firmly planted in the middle of a circle. She primarily does long lining vs. lunging, so moving around with the horse to change the size of the circle, etc. is normal for her. I've done this a few times now with Fizz- it isn't always as effective as it seems like it was yesterday, but I'm going to keep playing around with it.
> 
> A couple of friends swear by the Back on Track products, I've never used them. BO told me that her young horse can also be really tight in the back at the beginning of rides, and he absolutely loves having a simple microwavable heating pad laid over his back while she's getting him ready. It sounds so simple- I think I'll try that too. The things we do for our horses!!
> 
> Right now anyway, when my schedule is sort of inconsistent and she's not being ridden as much as she would probably prefer, some sort of groundwork before riding seems helpful both mentally and physically. Fortunately I don't have too much travel planned after this week so can get back into a routine.


I do think you're on the right track!

I never was much into lunging before riding for the same reasons. Always just felt it was a shortcut. But lately I've been lunging before I ride. We aren't currently cantering under saddle (saddle slips a bit with her gigantic canter, and the ground is really not that safe if she tries to be a bronc with me up), so lunging lets her have her canter while keeping me safe. I just adjust the saddle and hop on.

A microwavable heating pad sounds heavenly though! I'd give it a shot really! A girl I show with is certified with the MagnaWave, and puts the MagnaWave thing on her horse's back while she's braiding and getting ready to tack up. Says it makes a world of difference in her stud :lol:

I hadn't known much about the Back on Track stuff, but a friend was like "it would help your horse SO much!" I feel it's been accurate currently for me though. I know some people it hasn't done squat for, which is why I don't go "everyone needs ALL the BoT stuff there is!!" I find it better to share how it's helped me, and let people decide if they want to try it or go a different way 

Also, lunging with side reins I've always been fine with, particularly when they aren't tight. Which yours never look tight. I like them for a reminder and to give them something to work into, but not so bad that they can't catch themselves if they fall out of balance.


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## Spanish Rider

> and he absolutely loves having a simple microwavable heating pad laid over his back while she's getting him ready


Oh, my gosh, this totally made me laugh! Reminds me of my skinny eldest son who, as a baby, always needed a hot water bottle to warm his cradle, otherwise the change in temp would wake him up. It is definitely a good idea!


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## gottatrot

Windows Movie Maker is a free download that I use. It lets you break up your video into as many clips as you want, and then delete parts. It's simple but I like it. I tried to link to it on here but my work computer won't let me open it, I think I got it through softonic as a download online.


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## egrogan

After spending last week in Kansas City for work, I was in desperate need of horse time when I finally got to the barn yesterday!

Izzy greeted me with hair flying off of her in all directions. She didn't seem to have an unusually heavy coat this winter, but the shedding is intense! She dozed through another hour long grooming session; the pictures don't really do justice to just how much hair there was.









BO walked by the end result and exclaimed "what animal did THAT come off of?" :wink:









I ended up spending almost 3 hours with Fizz. Not to get all sappy, but I feel like we really connected in a different way yesterday than we have thus far. I knew that after hanging out in her field for a week, she was going to be a little bit "up," so I decided to start with just a hand walk down the road. She was definitely on high alert and snorting and blowing, but with her if you do anything besides walk in a straight line, her brain reconnects. 








So we did serpentines and spirals and turns, and lots of deep breathing- she settled down.









After a couple of miles we were back at the barn. There were several inches of heavy, wet snow on the ground, so I thought that would be another good way to focus her mind. I took her to the woods where we had our fall a few weeks ago. I haven't been back to that spot since, and I thought I'd rather do it on foot than riding the first time. As I was afraid of, my heart rate and breathing must have changed enough that she hesitated and wouldn't go forward down the hill and tried her old running backwards trick.









But then something really cool happened. I just stopped and focused on my breathing. I didn't try to pull her forward or make her move. I just stood there quietly really focused on being totally zen. She was watching me the whole time. And then...she reached her nose out to sniff me. And then took a small step forward. And then another.








She walked forward with me enough that we went part of the way down the hill. We looked at the spot where we fell and then turned around to go back. 








I know it sounds silly, but it really felt like a moment of connection, like she took a baby step towards doing something because she chose to, not just because she is a horse that knows to follow the rules.

After that, we went for a short ride around the farm with our riding buddy. The snow was slippery so we just sort of strolled along chatting.









After I turned her back out, I spent a few minutes just rubbing her forehead (as far as I can tell, the only spot where she enjoys being pet) and she closed her eyes and rested her head on my chest, sighing deeply. It was a really nice afternoon with my mysterious little mare.

This morning both of them saw the chiro. Izzy took about 5 minutes, a little tight in her left poll but otherwise really nothing to address. Makes sense since she's had the winter off! As far as Fizz-I told the chiro about the fall and the tight back, and she did react pretty sharply to pressure all along her left side. The chiro rightly guessed that she's a more stoic type horse, so said that the fact that she reacted as noticeably as she did probably means she is sore. I am waiting for the report to get emailed so I can take a look at all the spots that were adjusted. She handled it all well though; as far as I know, she's never had that done before.

Tomorrow we're supposed to get ANOTHER foot of snow, and then Wednesday we have spring shots, so it will probably be Friday before I can ride again. We'll see how she's feeling then!


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## Avna

I love this moments of connection with a horse. Makes all the struggles worthwhile. 

I'm battening down the hatches here, I bet we get a foot or more too. Glad my horse is still in California! 

I keep meaning to ask -- have you ever tried studded boots or shoes for ice?


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> I'm battening down the hatches here, I bet we get a foot or more too. Glad my horse is still in California!


Is it bad I'm glad my horses are at a boarding barn and not in my back yard?!:hide: 



> I keep meaning to ask -- have you ever tried studded boots or shoes for ice?


I've never had either of mine shod, but probably 75% of the barn does use shoes and most of those have studs. There are really only a couple of other boarders that still ride outside in the winter, and they are shod and a little more willing to go through the woods at speed than I am when there is ice and snow on the ground, so I think they'd give the thumbs up to the studs.

I just realized over the weekend that I had a miscommunication with my trimmer- I thought he was ordering Fizz the Scoot Boots (which I believe do have a studded option) and he thought he was just sending me the measurements so I could order them directly. All that to say- I don't have any boots yet to give you an opinion!


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## carshon

Glad you had a great moment with Fizz. Makes your heart smile doesn't it?


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## egrogan

We got slammed with another Nor'Easter yesterday (and wait...there's _another_ one coming next week!) but fortunately it wound down pretty early yesterday evening and the roads were all fine today. Today was spring shot day #1, so the barn was quite hectic with the vet there to see everyone!

The girls both got their wellness exams, Coggins update, rabies, and flu/rhino. Izzy got blood pulled for Cushings, which we've been doing every 6 months for three years now. She just _looks _like a Cushings horse, but she's always been well within seasonally adjusted normal ranges, whether we test in fall or spring. I am hoping for the best again this time around. As far as overall wellness though, both had good heart rates and temps, their eyes looked good, good weights, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

The vet will be back in a couple of weeks to do the 3-way and a fecal, and then we'll be done for the routine work (Izzy then has the dental vet in early April). 

Just a couple of pictures...

As you can see- the snow was no joke!


















Also- this is the surest sign that spring is coming, if slowly. The sap in the maple trees is really running. If you were standing next to these buckets, you'd hear a little "ping" every couple of seconds as the sap drips in. I love walking the dogs this time of year because our road is lined with people who still do things the old fashioned way and it's a little symphony of sap as you go by.


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## Spanish Rider

Love pics of ponies in the snow! Yes, I prefer the old-fashioned tap and bucket system. My neighbor changed to the tubing system, as his sugar house is downhill, so he argues that it is more efficient and drains straight into the shack. I am not convinced.

Speaking of studded shoes, my mum found one in the garden last summer. It was draft horse size, and there hasn't been a draft horse on the property for at least a hundred years. So cool!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Speaking of studded shoes, my mum found one in the garden last summer. It was draft horse size, and there hasn't been a draft horse on the property for at least a hundred years. So cool!


So neat! I love old houses for the treasures they sometimes let go of. Our house was built in 1790, but it had been fully renovated by the people who owned it before us so we missed out on most of the hidden finds. A couple of years ago we did find an old pair of wooden skis from the early 1900s in the back corner an old storage room under the house.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> So neat! I love old houses for the treasures they sometimes let go of. Our house was built in 1790, but it had been fully renovated by the people who owned it before us so we missed out on most of the hidden finds. A couple of years ago we did find an old pair of wooden skis from the early 1900s in the back corner an old storage room under the house.


Our new-to-us 1790 house has a claw-foot cast iron bathtub in the attic! We can't figure out how it even got up there, much less why. I can see why it's still there though.


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## knightrider

When I took over my dad and mom's farm, I found my grandmother's original journal that she wrote when she was married in 1912. It was my grandparent's farm before my parents moved there. My mom didn't even know that journal existed. I found it in the back of an old dresser. My granddaddy was one of the first four forest service rangers hired when the forest service was started. They went by stagecoach to Idaho and they lived in a tent. My grandma was a city girl who had never even ridden a horse, so everything about living in raw open country was new to her . . . plus she was madly in love with her new husband. She didn't know how to cook outdoors. She tried to lead Granddaddy's horse (being afraid of horses) out to pasture one day, and it spooked and took off. Granddaddy spent 3 days looking for it and never found it. She was filled with remorse. It is the cutest, most delightful journal.


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## Spanish Rider

The original saltbox of the house was 1740s and never modernized. The later additions on the back of the house were where the kitchen and bathrooms with all the plumbing were added, so the front is all original with horse hair insulation and a shallow root cellar underneath that scared the bejeesus out of me when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the stables and all the old tack, cups and treasures, along with my grandfather's journals and love letters to my grandma, burnt down when I was a kid. The coolest thing we found when my grandmother died was a standing travelling trunk in the attic with my great-grandmother's wedding gown, great-grandfather's morning coat and top hat, and a piece of fruitcake wrapped in a paper napkin embossed with the date: 1896! What they say is true: fruitcake lasts FOREVER!

Enjoy your antique houses!


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## egrogan

Haven't been able to do much with the girls this weekend.

Friday my lesson was cancelled because BO had to be away, but I had the time blocked off so decided to go out anyway. Unfortunately I also had an awful migraine, so by the time I got there, I had to admit I really didn't feel well enough to ride. Instead, I took Fizz out for a road walk:









And I played in the indoor with Izzy a little- as you can see, she was highly suspicious of the cones near the rattling door.








But it was good to get her moving around a bit.

The mid-week Nor'Easter has been lingering around, and we've got a bit of an arctic freeze going on, which feels even worse with gusting winds. It was 5*F last night and didn't get above freezing today- more of the same tomorrow.

Today though I finally felt and better really wanted to ride. I was a mean mom and interrupted lunch time, which Fizz seemed less than thrilled about!









But I've sort of reached my limited with "being a good sport" about riding outside and didn't even bother, though I will say it was a gorgeous day out and would have made for nice riding without the 20mph wind gusts. 








BO had some trot poles out in the arena, and I lunged Fizz over those a little to warm up since she hasn't been ridden in a week. I wish I had been recording because she does have a really beautifully athletic trot. The poles are set up for the warmblood size horses, which are most of BO's lessons, but she just sailed over them in perfect stride, never touching any of them with plenty of lift. I had the arena to myself to warm up on the lunge, but after I got on, I was quickly joined by 3 other people. One person was taking up half the arena lunging, and the other three of us were walking/trotting on a 20 meter circle at the other end. Now, I completely respect that we all have to work together to share the space, but I would feel so self conscious if I was taking up half the ring lunging and saw three people riding smooshed into one end. I don't know, it just seemed a little inconsiderate to me, but whatever. I didn't say anything about it so I shouldn't complain here...

Oh, I also got Fizz's chiro paperwork via email. She definitely needed some attention.








I honestly couldn't feel much difference in how she moved under saddle post-adjustment, but it's been a week without riding, on an unusually cold day, so probably not the best way to determine whether it helped. I will say that after lots of bending exercises and circles-within-a-circle while we were riding, I did feel her loosen up and give me the nice upward feeling walk we were starting to get to in our lessons a month or so ago, so that's nice.

There was a traffic jam in the aisleway when I put Fizz out and brought Izzy in, so I decided to take Izzy out to the road for an in-hand walk. After a few minutes, she kept gawking back over her shoulder, and I realized she had spotted a couple who were also out for a walk. 








Since she couldn't seem to take her eyes off them, we turned around and walked toward them. As they got closer, she was so silly- she started snorting and squealing at them and doing little kicks up with her heels. I think they were scared of my fire-breathing dragon because they didn't even say hello back when we passed them!

She was so spunky, I decided to just jog ahead with her and she easily trotted along next to me, doing little silly squeals as we went. Once she realized we were going to keep trotting right past the barn though, she cut it out and was happy to walk nicely again :wink:

Took about another pound of hair off her today with the shedding blade and then sent her on her way.

No more travel- and hopefully, no more snow- this week, so I am eager to get back into my more regular routine and ride more than I have the past few weeks!


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## egrogan

And good news this morning, Izzy's ACTH results came back solidly in the normal range, so no Cushings at this time. Phew!


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## SueC

Oh my! You _have_ been writing! Gorgeous colour on your new horse and Izzy's looking well. Would you let me know approximately on what page your newbie is introduced so I can have a look without having to buy a snorkel? ;-)


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## egrogan

@SueC- it seems that horse shopping kicks off right about here (and involved a few that weren't right for me) and then Fizz and I met here! And she officially became mine here.

It was fun reading back through that odyssey. :wink:


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## SueC

Izzy and Fizzy - that's excellent! :dance-smiley05:

I'm only a couple of pages into the start of your journey with her, but she's a lovely-looking horse - good working build, beautiful, gorgeous colour - and appears to be a thinking sort of horse. That's exactly the kind of horse that I would look for. I'm very glad you didn't get the one with the straight shoulders and the low-set neck, and indeed you picked the best of the bunch for the purposes you have in mind, plus you really suit each other - and that's an excellent start. I'm sure you two are going to have loads of fun together. :charge:


And now hubby can ride with you occasionally on Izzy, no? ;-) (I can't remember if he can ride. If not, maybe he could skijour behind her! :rofl Last time my non-riding hubby was on a horse was at Halloween 2010, when he dressed as a Nazgul and I explained that you couldn't be a proper Nazgul without riding a (dark) horse. We had a great photo session as a result and I still laugh about it.

Am really enjoying the recount on Ms Fizzy, and finding out what Ms Izzy has been up to as well! Will be back.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> And now hubby can ride with you occasionally on Izzy, no? ;-) (I can't remember if he can ride. If not, maybe he could skijour behind her! :rofl Last time my non-riding hubby was on a horse was at Halloween 2010, when he dressed as a Nazgul and I explained that you couldn't be a proper Nazgul without riding a (dark) horse. We had a great photo session as a result and I still laugh about it.


He has ridden some, but it's been ten years or so now. When we went to Ireland after we got married, we did a 3-day horse trekking trip. He took some lessons leading up to that, and then we had that amazing experience together (we're all the way on the left).









He really likes being around the horses- especially Izzy, Fizz is a little more intimidating to him. But he loves grooming Izzy up and taking her out hand grazing. I think he will continue to enjoy doing that.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> yay for a great first ride. About the head thing, I wonder if it's a Morgan thing? Ana is good about bridling but insists on rubbing her head on something as soon as I take the bridle off. Even her previous owners said that's the only bad habit she has is that she has to rub her head on something. I tried different bridles thinking maybe it's the leather quality or how the leather fits around her ears, and nothing seems to be make a difference.


Just thinking - Morgans, like Arabians, have these broad foreheads, yet smallish heads. So in Australian sizing, they often end up with cob bridles, but the browband of that size is too short for them - it drags the main bridle forward onto the ends of the ear cartilage, which is a sensitive spot - stick your fingers behind your own ears at that junction to appreciate - and now imagine a narrow leather strap with pressure on. One of the books I used when educating my Arab mare to saddle pointed out that this is something to watch out for, and suggested that browbands on modern bridles are too tight for many horses' comfort, and to put extra-long ones on that keep the bridle well clear of the backs of the ears.

Sunsmart also has a really broad forehead but short head. He's in a cob size bridle (just) but even a full-size browband isn't comfortable for him. I've got him in extra-large there now, but have to say, have seriously considered making up an even larger one. Because uncomfortably tight browbands still fit over the horses' heads and the bridles are functional, this point is apparently often overlooked.

One way or the other, that sensitive area also gets sweaty when riding, and the deal I have with my horse is to wipe that area with a moist sponge and then towel it immediately after untacking. He especially loves the towelling and goes, "Ah, yes, more over here please, and a bit more here!"  And he also at some stage wants to hold both sponge and towel, which is so funny:


Bathtime - Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

If only they could talk!


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## SueC

Those fall colours really are glorious in the photos in my catch-up reading! Not something we get in this part of the world. Very striking.

Great to have supportive spouses. Your hubby seems to have a gift for finding your mares' itchy spots! 

This post here:

http://www.horseforum.com/member-jo...-today-*update-431322/page124/#post1970372354

Just love that dappled, variegated colour on Fizzy.

And the "More Apple!" clip! :dance-smiley05:


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## egrogan

Seems like work and life have ramped up a notch again, so it's been a pretty stressful time. Unfortunately because of scheduling conflicts Fizz and I haven't had a lesson in about a month. But I'm still getting out for visits and rides as I can.

My lovely husband came out with me yesterday and since the snow had melted a little, we were able to get both girls out for some grass and good groomings. 

Someone was excited her friend had come to visit!


















Taking blankets off is like stepping on one of those little puffball mushrooms- just an instant cloud of hair flying everywhere!





He also got a little video of me riding Fizz. We did some work trotting over the poles- she doesn't look as pretty going over them with (this) rider as she does when I lunge her over them, but the girl has those Morgan legs for sure! She was very careful about not wanting to touch them and really has lift going over. I think we've got something to work with- will be fun to get out in the woods and be able to practice going over logs instead of in the ring!
























(OK, getting a little out of control at this point- maybe we need to do fewer to start and work up to the full half circle...)










Talking about life at the end of the ride :wink:











SueC said:


> Just thinking - Morgans, like Arabians, have these broad foreheads, yet smallish heads. So in Australian sizing, they often end up with cob bridles, but the browband of that size is too short for them - it drags the main bridle forward onto the ends of the ear cartilage, which is a sensitive spot - stick your fingers behind your own ears at that junction to appreciate - and now imagine a narrow leather strap with pressure on. One of the books I used when educating my Arab mare to saddle pointed out that this is something to watch out for, and suggested that browbands on modern bridles are too tight for many horses' comfort, and to put extra-long ones on that keep the bridle well clear of the backs of the ears.


 @*SueC* - Sunsmart is such a looker! You're right about the browband issue. Izzy is definitely cob size in all bridle parts except the browband. I exchanged that out for something that I bought by measurement to fit her wide forehand. Fizz is borrowing Izzy's bridle right now, but I do think I need to get an even bigger browband for her because it does pinch around the ears (she's a pretty horse but she has a gigantic head for her body! ). She seems to be most itchy around her cheeks- especially since she started shedding in earnest last week- but it could just be overall pinchiness.


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## SueC

Thanks; obviously I like him, and of course here in Australia there is a lot of prejudice against that kind of horse in riding circles - who cares though, a good horse is a good horse. Sunsmart is by an American Standardbred stallion, which is interesting because that breed and the Morgan are closely related. And he's out of a French Trotter cross, a breed developed from Thoroughbreds and French Warmbloods and Carriage and Draft Horses. When I look at his backside I can definitely see the Draft Horse influence. Just look for the biggest backside, on the left...


Buffet Lunch II – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

If I ever need to plough potatoes with one of them, I know which one will be perfect.


Love the pics of Fizzy over caveletti, she's such a well put-together mare and I love her engagement. <3

I noticed in my catch-up reading that you often refer to her as having a large head.  To me it looks like she has a perfectly proportional head, but Izzy is on the petite side in that department and might be skewing your perceptions. And I wanted to show you what a large head looks like. ;-)


Patio Moment – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Horse Snoozing In Garden – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Morning Pleasantries I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

That's Romeo, our really ancient gelding, 33 last year. He has by far the biggest head in our menagerie. Now that's a big head! 

More than full size, but never needed a bigger browband than bridle.


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## Tazzie

I'm enjoying the talk about bridles and browbands here! My Izzie is in a Cob sized browband with it set to the smallest setting on some of the things, and wears a full sized browband :lol: like, a 17" or so browband!

And I love the riding pictures! I'm glad hubby came out to help you!


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## phantomhorse13

If you suspect the browband is a potential issue, why not take it off altogether for your next ride? 

Now before you faint from the horrors of not having a "properly secured bridle" that "may fall off" (all things I learned along the way), let me tell you I have ridden lots of lots of miles that way and have yet to have a bridle come off. All of Lani's horses go in just a bit and the headstall, which is not attached to the rope halter in any way. And even enthusiastic horses like Duroc who need a lot of contact at times have never had the headstall so much as move forward..


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## egrogan

Spring was in the air today, and my meetings ended on the early side, so I took advantage of the late afternoon sunshine and went out to grab a ride.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got there that Fizz had been turned out with Izzy. Izzy has the better turnout paddock by far, but since they (ahem, Izzy) weren't playing nice at the beginning of the winter, they have been separated. But, it was time to try again. I found Fizz buddied up with the neighboring gelding along the fenceline as Ms. MeanyPants came over to greet me at the gate. Fizz also wanted to come over to say hi, but Marezilla charged her--after which I charged _her_ off and told her no way. This was her response:









But she stood a respectful distance away while I haltered Fizz and brought her in. 

Our ride was nothing super challenging, we did a little w/t/c, started in the outdoor but she was very distracted by BO's mom running a shop vac in her driveway so I actually just brought her back inside as I wanted her to focus and didn't feel much like fighting over it (that sounds so lazy to type...). 

She was simply _exhausted_ after having to work while all the other horses got their dinner!


















I was going to switch up my bridle based on our conversation here, but as I was getting untacked BO came in and told me the vet was on the way to put down her old (34 year old) pony. He had been losing condition dramatically over the past few days, such a shame after doing well most of the winter up until the last couple of weeks. The appointment to put him down had been scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, but apparently his breathing became labored throughout the day and he was struggling. So I cleaned up my stuff quickly so I could clear out. She said I didn't need to rush, but I don't know, it just felt like a personal family thing (he had been her daughter's pony since he was 6 years old, and daughter was there too) and I didn't want to be in the way. I hope he passed peacefully with all of his family there to love on him. :frown_color:


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## phantomhorse13

Very sorry to hear about the BO's pony. Seems this has been a hard month for a lot of people..




egrogan said:


> Our ride was nothing super challenging, we did a little w/t/c,


I just wanted to draw your attention to this statement.. and your very casual inclusion of "canter" in there! While Fizz may have been distracted by the shop vac, you still did some canter work. Just wanted to point out how much progress you have made!!


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## egrogan

Thank you @phantomhorse13- you're right! :grin:


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## QueenofFrance08

I laughed out loud at "Marezilla". We have 2 of those! Our poor boys....


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## knightrider

The first thing my neighbor does when he gets a bridle is take off the browband. He doesn't use a throatlatch either--just that one single strap going around the head. As some of you know, he trades and swaps horses constantly, so he's probably ridden about 40 horses like that in the eleven years I've known him. Never has a problem. 

My Isabeau has a problem with her sensitive ears. She doesn't like when I gently put her ears forward into the headstall. For a while, a one ear bridle suited her, then it began to bother her, so I slipped off the one ear piece and rode her with just that strap like my neighbor does. That way, when she is going through an ear-shy phase, which she does about twice a year, I just unbuckle the bridle and put the strap over her head. She also hates halters that require putting ears through straps, so I have two halters that simply go over her head for her. Isabeau is VERY particular about what is going on her body and she doesn't hesitate to let me know that THAT WON'T DO! One reason why I turned down the opportunity to free-lease her.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I have no doubt that Isabeau is very firm and direct about her tack preferences! :wink:

I've gotten to the point where I don't use a noseband at all, and since I don't show, that isn't an issue (although people at the barn frequently ask me why "my horses don't need one"- and I don't really have an answer except I'm still not totally clear why any horse really _needs _one.) 

I was looking at the current set up more closely last night, and it's definitely the case that everything is sitting too tight around Fizz's ears, really digging into the back of them. I think the itchy face is a separate issue, compounded by a lot of shedding around her cheeks. I won't have time to get out there today, but tomorrow I can change things around a bit (assuming we don't get the sleet/freezing rain storm they're now predicting for the morning :evil


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I've gotten to the point where I don't use a noseband at all, and since I don't show, that isn't an issue (although people at the barn frequently ask me why "my horses don't need one"- and I don't really have an answer except I'm still not totally clear why any horse really _needs _one.)


I don't use one either, except for more formal occasions. The best use of a noseband, if this is true, is that it apparently reduces the risk of the horse breaking its lower jaw in a fall - more an issue with showjumping etc. The horse's lower jaw breaks very easily. My riding horse's sire broke his when a colt got out and they sparred across the fence, and had to be pinned and be on soft foods for a while. No noseband in that situation, but would have helped! ;-)


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## egrogan

Today was round #2 of spring shots, so I went out early this morning to ride quickly before the vet arrived. Found the girls hanging out closer together in the field than I've seen them so far, looking content enough.

#IzAndFizz- moving towards grudging acceptance?









Fizz got a total tack makeover today. I took off the browband completely. In exciting news, our new saddle arrived yesterday! This is the custom "VSD" (standing for something German but colloquially referred to as "very slightly dressage" here :wink. 

















It's not quite as deep a seat as I would have chosen if I was shopping only for myself, but as soon as I tried it out on Fizz, I remembered why I got it- she moves _so _differently. You can literally look down and see her shoulders moving more freely in it and her whole demeanor while moving is different. So, I will get used to it! The billets are shorter than I expected, and none of my girths fit, but luckily another boarder let me borrow a longer one so I would get to ride (I was feeling like a kid on Christmas whose parents forgot to buy batteries for all the new goodies! :wink. Since I need to go girth shopping now, I'm excited to spend some time on the endurance pages checking out recommendations for something that will be comfortable and non-rubbing. Advice welcome!

I met the fitter in town yesterday just to give her back the loaner saddle and pick this one up, so she still needs to come out to us next week to adjust it. BO watched me ride in it for a few minutes, and confirmed that the back was bouncing a little at the trot, so that needs to be addressed. Fitter wants me to walk around in it a couple more times to help everything settle and compress a bit before she really deals with the flocking, so I'll do that. 

Given that it was moving around on her back a bit, we stuck to the walk. But we did go outside to enjoy the spring air. Fizz was a little looky in the woods (thanks squirrel jumping from tree to tree over our heads!) but it's been a month since we've been out there, so we need to get reacclimated. A couple of people have talked about meeting up for an easy trail ride this weekend as all the horses are just coming back into work, so that could be fun. Need to do a little clearing first though, as the trail is pretty clogged up with trees and branches. It was a _tough _winter this year with way more ice than we usually have, so I'm not surprised.









After the ride, the vet visit was quick and uneventful- just a quick poke with a vaccine, we didn't even bother bringing horses in from the pasture unless they needed something else (mine didn't).


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## Avna

V is for vielzweck (viel -- many; zweck -- purpose)
S is for springen (jumping)
D is for dressage

So, multipurpose for jumping and dressage. Mine makes a great trail saddle, with the addition of dee rings and latigos. 

I like my mohair girths from Montana Cincha. I have two, one to wash and one to wear. They wash easy in a bucket of cold water with a spritz of dish soap. Have never had anything like a sore.


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## egrogan

That's the one, thanks @Avna!


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## egrogan

I have been on an absolutely wild ride the past week. Earlier this month, my husband found out he got a new job, so we're moving to Vermont! 

We listed our house for sale last Thursday morning, and our realtor was feeling really good about the listing- the market here is tight, it was priced right, and looked great. Well- while we had justified optimism, none of us anticipated what was about to happen. She did _25 showings _of the house between last Thursday and Sunday, and it went under contract Sunday night! :happydance:

We had spent the previous few weekends in Vermont looking at houses, and had narrowed things down to a couple we really liked. When we realized our house was going to sell so quickly, things got a little more real though, as we have to be out of here by the end of May. So, we made an offer on a dreamy property in Vermont at the beginning of the week, and found out last night the offer was accepted :happydance: x2 Most importantly- *the horses are coming home with us!* 

It's all still sort of a blur right now, I keep pinching myself that it's really happening. Of course, we still need to go through inspections and the formal closing in both places, so I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and jinx the cosmic good luck we seem to be having right now. But, things seem to be in good order on both sides. 

I'm not going to post pictures of the new house until it's actually ours, but I can't wait to share more details. The basics-The house there is another historical Cape house, it hasn't been lived in much the past few years and is outdated, so will certainly be a project. But that's ok, that's what my husband and I enjoy doing. While it needs cosmetic updates, the bones are strong, so we have the luxury of taking our time and deciding which ugly wallpaper gets torn down first :wink: 

It's got a 6 stall barn with water and electric; it's not an old barn, but it's only been used sporadically the last 10 years or so, so it's a bit dusty and the water isn't currently working. It's got 200 acres, over half in pasture. So no house pictures, but here's a sneak peak of the fields the girls will eventually have access to (that's my lovely husband snowshoeing through what will probably be the main turnout area):


















It's hard to tell, but the trees in front of that big pine are a small apple orchard- cidermaking anyone?! 









No fencing or sheds, so that will be one of our first priorities before we move the girls up. Miles of trails on the property, and it's a 5 mile ride through the woods and dirt roads to the Green Mountain Horse Association, a major regional venue- that means the whole town is pretty much horse crazy and I just lucked into a ton of new riding friends (for example, my realtor is also a Morgan person, and just bought a young mare to start on trails, and her daughter in law is an endurance rider with a Morgan). The VT 100 endurance ride and the other big GMHA rides will go right past my house! Isn't this nuts?! I just can't believe it's actually happening.

I think the rest of this post should be titled "An Ode to the Best Barn Owner in the World." 

The one thing I've been scared about throughout this process is telling BO we were leaving. Not because I thought she'd be mad or vindictive- no way- but mostly because I know she has a lengthy waiting list and I wanted to be respectful of that and not hog a space that she could give to someone who would be there longer.

I now realize it was silly to even worry. When I told her what was happening, the first thing she said was that the girls could stay put as long as I wanted them to, and that I should not try to rush things to move them faster, but should take the time to set up the property correctly. To say I almost cried with relief is an understatement.

She then proceeded to connect me with every horse person I could ever need to know in our new town (it's only about an hour north of where we live now, which is practically in your backyard by New England standards, and the horse community is small :wink. She's got me set up with multiple trail riding buddies, a new vet and a new chiropractor. She's scheming about how we can start a trailer-in trail riding club to take advantage of everything that's already on the property. And starting to think about how we'll prep the girls to transition to new feed. She's just been wonderful.

I'm not going to lie, I'm slightly terrified at the thought of not having her around for health problems or riding issues, but she keeps saying she's only a phone call away. One of her haul in lesson clients lives in our new town, so it's not a stretch to think I could still trailer Fizz down for lessons. And she's right, the horse community where we're going is vast yet tight knit, so I know I'm going to build a new network. But it's also a lot of responsibility!!

So all in all...I keep waiting to wake up from this dream. I'm just overjoyed, yet I know the next two months are going to fly by. It will be an adventure and I just can't wait!


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## Avna

CONGRATULATIONS!! 

Cannot wait to see it!


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## egrogan

@Avna, I really hope you and Brooke will come up whenever you want. I'm still likely to be trailerless (I'll be able to walk the horses to the vet :wink but we would love visitors!


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## Avna

You betcha I'm coming.


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## knightrider

How exciting! I think you will love keeping your horses on your own property. You'll be surprised how much you know and how caring for your own horses will fall into place. I am so happy for you!


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## mkmurphy81

Congratulations! That's so exciting! 

Take your time planning how you want things set up at your new barn. Low maintenance is good. Ease of use is good. For example, my barn is inside my pasture. Halters are unnecessary to bring my horses in at feeding time. If the weather gets bad, they can let themselves in the barn. A little planning now can save a lot of time later.


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## carshon

Congratulations! What exciting news. And your BO is awesome!!!!


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## SueC

Excellent, excellent, excellent, and fingers crossed for all the formalities! :loveshower:

Think of all the things you can do on that place!

Very very happy for you guys. 


Some related recent threads on setting up your own place:

http://www.horseforum.com/new-horses/help-me-design-my-new-property-788337/

http://www.horseforum.com/farm-forum/vertical-pastures-se-united-states-788575/


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## QueenofFrance08

OMG So exciting! I'm so jealous of 200 acres! We have 7 (and are buying 1.33 more in a few weeks) but I would kill to have that much land! That's so cool to already have met new horse people! We got super lucky with a horsey realtor when we bought our farm whose brother owns the local tack store and growing up worked in his parents riding stable. He's been more helpful then anyone could ever dream of! Don't worry about having your girls at home, the vet is always just a call away and it's way more worth it to get to wake up to them outside and get to see them whenever you want!


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## Spanish Rider

How incredibly wonderful! I am so happy for you! I hope you realize that you are living the dream that many of us won't be able to. I wish you and your husband all the best in your new adventure, and I am sure that you will do quite well with your girls at home once you get everything organized. Take your time and enjoy!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> I hope you realize that you are living the dream that many of us won't be able to


Believe me @*Spanish Rider* , I sure do! I am still not quite able to believe this is really happening. If you are still coming to the States for vacation, please consider coming to Vermont if you're already in NH. We will have a little apartment we'll likely put on Air BNB eventually, so maybe you can test it out for us :wink: It's a beautiful part of Vermont at any time of year.



QueenofFrance08 said:


> We have 7 (and are buying 1.33 more in a few weeks) but I would kill to have that much land! ... We got super lucky with a horsey realtor when we bought our farm whose brother owns the local tack store and growing up worked in his parents riding stable. He's been more helpful then anyone could ever dream of!


Congrats on expanding your property @*QueenofFrance08* ! And I agree, I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been able to find a property that's still intact with this many acres. Can you believe it, the seller's realtor actually said the acreage was a huge reason the property had been on the market without selling for several years, because people just "didn't want to deal with that much land." I can't believe that's the case- and, we looked at other horse properties for the same price (or even more) that had 10 or 20 acres, so I guess she was right that people were overlooking it for other types of properties. I suppose a lot of people find it intimidating to have that much to take care of. And I'm sure there will be times when I feel overwhelmed by it, but I think it's got endless possibilities for how it can be used. 


SueC said:


> Think of all the things you can do on that place!


Exactly @*SueC* - we spent last night over beers dreaming up a bunch of schemes. It's already being managed by a forester, so there's sustainable logging coming off it, and we'll have a beautiful woodstove to fire. Hay of course. And cider from the orchard. BO really wants me to get a trailer-in weekend riders club going, where people can set up portable corrals in one of the fields on go for multi-day rides. There are also dedicated easements to allow access to the trails for riders. It's a beautiful location, so I can totally see people wanting to set up a tent for a summer or fall wedding. All the space you could ever want for gardens of any kind, and there's an active farmer's market in town. My husband wants to do some experimental solar stuff eventually. Who knows what else?! It's fun to daydream!



mkmurphy81 said:


> Take your time planning how you want things set up at your new barn. Low maintenance is good. Ease of use is good. For example, my barn is inside my pasture. Halters are unnecessary to bring my horses in at feeding time. If the weather gets bad, they can let themselves in the barn. A little planning now can save a lot of time later.


Great advice @*mkmurphy81* . The barn is _not _in an ideal location, which is a downside. It's up close to the house, but the turnout is not really contiguous with the barn. So, while the barn will be there for bad weather or other needs, we will be putting sheds in the main turnout fields and the girls will continue to be out 24/7. We will also have to figure out fencing and locating frost free water spigots, so I am hopeful our local extension people can help with some advice.



carshon said:


> And your BO is awesome!!!!


 1000% YES!! 

Thanks for all the well wishes (and the vote of confidence @*knightrider* !), it's such an exciting time. And, if anyone finds themselves in Vermont in the future, please really do look me up, there's no point in having so much space if it's not something that can be shared with other people who appreciate it!


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## egrogan

#IzAndFizz are naked!! 








It was a balmy 50*F today and the girls were basking in the sunshine.









Word around the barn though was that this year's 3-way vaccine had been tough on a lot of horses. Shots happened Wednesday, and a lot of people had horses that were still dragging a little or just not feeling great. Some had pretty big localized swelling, Izzy included:









Because it was so nice out, I decided I'd still take her for a very easy walk around the property just to move a little bit. I've barely ridden her at all, probably just a couple of times, in the past couple of months, so it was literally just a stroll. 









Love that you can see her droopy old lady lip in her shadow :wink:









She was perky about the ride though- and especially about grazing at the end (why this grass was so much more exciting than the grass in her field, only she can say! :wink









Fizz was also feeling grumpy, though she had no visible swelling. 








We rode around the property with another boarder (the paint gelding next to Izzy and Fizz up above), but we split off from them after a few minutes so we could head to the woods. While Fizz was fine riding away from the other horse, when we got to the trailhead, I was so disappointed that she did the old running backwards thing again, which I thought we had gotten over. I simply could not get her to yield her hindquarters, she had her nose cocked around to my boot but was still going backwards into the trees. Once we were basically wedged between two trees, I felt like I didn't have much choice but to get off as she was _not _going forward. I led her down the trail into the woods, and then got back on from a stone wall- at which point she stood perfectly still icon_rolleyes. 









When we got back to the barn, I asked her to turn on the forehand before I dismounted, and she again went flying backwards with her nose at my stirrup. It was definitely frustrating. I walked forward, tried again in the other direction, and she did better that direction so I called it quits there. 








It was not the ride I hoped to have, but I'll chalk up the non-cooperative attitude towards the first true spring day and feeling the effects of the shots. It's supposed to be nice again tomorrow, so we'll treat it like a new day!


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## Avna

Are you going to tell us what town you are going to be near?


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## Spanish Rider

Well, the property does sound exciting, especially with all the trails and proximity to the GMHA. I checked out their website, and it looks like an incredible resource, not only for events but for connecting with other riders and potential clients for your AirBnB. Apple trees, YUM, but any sugar maples? How is all the paperwork going?



> If you are still coming to the States for vacation, please consider coming to Vermont if you're already in NH.


Well, I can't turn down that offer now, can I? I don't know if you read that I mentioned on the other thread that my eldest son has been accepted to WPI and will be starting classes there mid-August. It is all really exciting! He applied early action back in October and received the acceptance notification just before Christmas, with an amazing scholarship. It will still be a big stretch for our little euro-salaries, but worth it. I can't believe that he only had time to apply to one college, his top pick, and got in! So, yes, I will be between MA, NH and ME again this summer.


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## egrogan

Congrats to you and your son @Spanish Rider. So happy for him to have such a major decision out of the way. I know how stressful that is for high school students. 

Yes, plenty of sugar maples on the property too. Someone has lines run through one corner right now- the sellers weren't sure exactly who it was, just that "a bottle or two of syrup always shows up at the house in the spring," but they think it's probably written somewhere in their parents' files so we'll figure it out.


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## Avna

Spanish Rider said:


> Well, the property does sound exciting, especially with all the trails and proximity to the GMHA. I checked out their website, and it looks like an incredible resource, not only for events but for connecting with other riders and potential clients for your AirBnB. Apple trees, YUM, but any sugar maples? How is all the paperwork going?
> 
> 
> Well, I can't turn down that offer now, can I? I don't know if you read that I mentioned on the other thread that my eldest son has been accepted to WPI and will be starting classes there mid-August. It is all really exciting! He applied early action back in October and received the acceptance notification just before Christmas, with an amazing scholarship. It will still be a big stretch for our little euro-salaries, but worth it. I can't believe that he only had time to apply to one college, his top pick, and got in! So, yes, I will be between MA, NH and ME again this summer.


Sounds like a Horse Forum New England Meet Up is shaping . . . .


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## Spanish Rider

@Avna, where in Western Massachusetts are you? I went to Mount Holyoke, so I know some of that area.


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## Avna

Spanish Rider said:


> @Avna, where in Western Massachusetts are you? I went to Mount Holyoke, so I know some of that area.


I'm in Conway. Kind of equidistant between Greenfield and Northampton, but up in the hills.


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## egrogan

Beautiful blue skies today, but blustery wind kept it feeling cold out. Seems that _someone _still managed a satisfying roll and was carrying a mud puddle's worth of dirt around with her :wink:









(side note...her poor mane :frown: the blanket hood really did a number on it this winter)










I was not super popular because I showed up around lunchtime and took Fizz away from her ahy. She indignantly took some with her for the walk to the barn...









We had a pretty quick and uneventful ride. We did some turns-on-the-forehand before we got going, and she was much more polite about it today than yesterday. I rode around the fields a bit with my riding buddy Ida, and then she and Jazz led the way down to the woods trail where Fizz had balked yesterday. She went quietly with no hesitation following Jazz, so that was nice. I didn't end up having time to walk the trail to do any clearing before our ride, so we didn't make it more than 1/4 mile or so before turning back. We were so busy chatting away I forgot to take any pictures of our rides, oops!


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## phantomhorse13

OMG I am just catching up and am literally jumping up and down in excitement for you about that property - 200 acres!!!!!!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> OMG I am just catching up and am literally jumping up and down in excitement for you about that property - 200 acres!!!!!!


Thanks @phantomhorse13! I am pretty darn excited too. If you're doing VT this July, would love to have you guys come stay with us either before or after and bring the ponies! 

Inspections on the NH house happen today, so everyone please keep your fingers crossed this afternoon. And then in the VT house next Tuesday. Once we get through all that, I will let myself start to believe it's all really happening.

***********************************
The past few mornings while I've been doing chicken chores, the turkeys have been going wild in the woods all around us. This morning as I was heading out to grab some coffee, this is what I saw in my neighbor's yard:


















This guy (same one in the front above) was particularly impressive









Cue the Barry White- love is in the air!


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## SueC

A cider orchard! Very cool! Those old apple varieties aren't easy to get in Australia, and it takes so long to grow a properly yielding apple orchard from scratch. Nice piece of luck there! Hope you like cider!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> A cider orchard! Very cool! Those old apple varieties aren't easy to get in Australia, and it takes so long to grow a properly yielding apple orchard from scratch. Nice piece of luck there! Hope you like cider!


We do like cider- and it's going through an explosion of popularity here. I'm not sure exactly how many trees, nor which varieties, we'd have, but can't wait to find out more. In our area, there's something called "ice cider" which is fairly popular and unique:





It's very easy to grow blueberries and raspberries in our climate too, so at some point I'm sure we'll add those- if we don't find them growing wild somewhere on the property first.


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## egrogan

I know there's been wacky weather all over recently; our version last night was ridiculously intense windstorms. We live high up on a hill, and supposedly wind gusts were 50mph. There were points during the night I really felt like the house was going to pull apart around us. Thankfully this morning we had a lot of dead limbs all over the yard, but nothing hit the house, the cars, or the chickens' area. There is a huge pine tree down about 0.5 up the road from us completely blocking the road, and as of noon it was still in the way. Fortunately there are two ways out so we weren't stuck! 

This morning the fitter met us to address the flocking in our new saddle. It is fitting Fizz really nicely- though she did NOT appreciate how abruptly the fitter girthed her up :frown: 








I just bought her a mohair girth so I am hopeful that will be a good solution for her. But mostly, she just needs you to be sympathetic with her and go up slowly, particularly with a girth that has no elastic or even a little give to it. Can't say I blame her!

She felt good in our test ride though and fitter seems very pleased with how it's balanced on her. There was no bounce or rock at the trot with the additional wool added. The real test will be in our lesson tomorrow.

Izzy is still driving Fizz off the water in the field, so it's pretty clear that when they get home we're going to have to have multiple water sources out for them. When I brought Fizz back out this morning, the dragon was sunning in the back corner of the field...








...so Fizz opted to have her hay with as much water as she wanted while she got access to it!









She got to eat and drink in peace for awhile before the dragon woke up and came over say hi.
_








_


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## Spanish Rider

Such cute faces! I understand your feelings about girthing. I am sort of religious about gradually tightening girths, especially since I am no longer using a hunter saddle with elastic-ended girths. I once saw an older horse absolutely collapse because the girth was tightened too quickly, poor dear.:evil: I'm surprised that the fitter did that.


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## frlsgirl

Oh how exciting that you are going to have your own place where you can have your horses. 

I chuckled at your "dragon" reference. I have a similar concern with Ana as she rules her herd with an iron hoof at the boarding barn. She was so naughty last month that BO put her in solitary turnout for a few days. I don't what kind of horse I can get that Ana won't terrorize. We aren't in a hurry to bring Ana over here as we are still not settled; but reading about your "dragon" made me wonder how my "dragon" will treat my second horse.


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## frlsgirl

SueC said:


> Just thinking - Morgans, like Arabians, have these broad foreheads, yet smallish heads. So in Australian sizing, they often end up with cob bridles, but the browband of that size is too short for them - it drags the main bridle forward onto the ends of the ear cartilage, which is a sensitive spot - stick your fingers behind your own ears at that junction to appreciate - and now imagine a narrow leather strap with pressure on. One of the books I used when educating my Arab mare to saddle pointed out that this is something to watch out for, and suggested that browbands on modern bridles are too tight for many horses' comfort, and to put extra-long ones on that keep the bridle well clear of the backs of the ears.
> 
> Sunsmart also has a really broad forehead but short head. He's in a cob size bridle (just) but even a full-size browband isn't comfortable for him. I've got him in extra-large there now, but have to say, have seriously considered making up an even larger one. Because uncomfortably tight browbands still fit over the horses' heads and the bridles are functional, this point is apparently often overlooked.
> 
> One way or the other, that sensitive area also gets sweaty when riding, and the deal I have with my horse is to wipe that area with a moist sponge and then towel it immediately after untacking.


I actually take 2 bridles, cob size and full size and mix and match the pieces together so that everything fits well. I had recently bought her a cob size bridle with the special ear cut out space but it's still not comfortable enough for her; so I put her old bridle back together and will try that again with a new browband. She has started shaking her head during our rides and when I reach forward to scratch her ears so goes absolutely nuts like it's really itching or burning or something. I know they make the fancy sheepskin attachments that you can put on your bridle but I would think it would make it even more tight. I will have to do some more experimenting.


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## egrogan

Oh man, am I sore this morning! I had an awesome lesson with BO last night, but after not riding very seriously over the past month, I am hurting all over!

It was snowing hard when I got to the barn, and everyone is really over it.









But I got Fizz in and good news, she was not angry about girthing at all. I really think her strong reaction the day before was just the saddler being insensitive.

The lesson itself was really good. We work a lot on lengthening and shortening within a gait, and Fizz was doing great with being responsive to transitions, even to halt. We did spiraling circles and that really helps her start to step under herself better. Then, it was on to the trot poles. I am a little spatially challenged so BO gave us a helpful visual of the path we wanted to take to navigate through while maintaining the arc of the circle we were on.








I really wish I had a video of her because the transformation in how she moved was incredible. I am not exaggerating when I say I felt like there was a different horse's body underneath me; she became strong and balanced and you could really feel her engaging her abs in a totally different way. As she got tired, she started sucking back a little, so we didn't push too hard, but she got a great workout and I am thrilled to have felt the potential in how she can carry herself if I prepare her for it.








I got her all bundled back up and turned her out for her dinner, where the turkey flock was hanging out.









Then I had a hilarious experience with Izzy. I brought her into the barn to change out her lighter blanket for the heavyweight. Because it was dinner time, the inside horses were in their stalls, so when I opened the door, they all started nickering. The song "Bringing Sexy Back" happened to be playing on the radio, and with all the horses nickering, Izzy was sure all the attention was for her and went strutting down the aisle doing her best saddlebred impression. 















She's such a ham!









Oh, while I was warming up for the lesson, BO asked me if I had had any issues with Fizz on the trail recently. I told her about last weekend when Fizz refused to go on the trail and I had to dismount and walk her into the woods. BO proceeded to tell me there was _a bear_ back there over the past two weeks (spotted on the neighbor's trail cam) and a bunch of normally enthusiastic trail horses had been refusing to ride out. Always makes you feel better to have an excuse!


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## Spanish Rider

Hooray for potential! Thank you for the link to the song, as I did not know it. Gave me quite a visual.:rofl:

As I am new to your thread (I did read it at one time, but I get confused with Izzy/Fizz), I have a dumb question: do you ride both horses? or just dressage with one? Sorry, I should have been paying more attention.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> As I am new to your thread (I did read it at one time, but I get confused with Izzy/Fizz), I have a dumb question: do you ride both horses? or just dressage with one? Sorry, I should have been paying more attention.


Not a dumb question at all!

I've had Isabel about 6 years now. She had been a backyard family horse since she was ~5 years old, then was donated to a program to try being a therapy horse, but hated it. I met her while I was volunteering at that therapeutic riding program, and started riding her in my own weekly lessons with a dressage trainer who also volunteered there. Since she wasn't going to work out as a lesson horse, they offered her to me, and I took her on for pleasure riding/hacking out. We did that happily for several years (I was teaching therapeutic riding lessons weekly at the time, and I'd occasionally use her for brand new beginner kids, which she did enjoy). About two years ago now, the farmland across the street from the barn where we boarded got sold to developers, so we lost all our land for hacking that the previous owners had let us use. And, the developers basically bullied the barn into selling its land too (by siting a massive dementia care facility 100 feet from the property line- seniors dealing with dementia right next to horses behind electric fences sounds like a _brilliant _idea, right?!). So, we had to move from that barn, and that's how we ended up at the barn where we are now.

After switching barns, I continued hacking out with Izzy. She's road safe and happy to go out alone, so we'd go all over, sometimes ourselves and sometimes with a buddy. Before we switched barns, she had been diagnosed with age-related hock arthritis which makes her grumpy doing too much arena riding or school figures. So while in the past we occasionally took dressage lessons, she was really sour about having to do that, and we pretty much just stuck to easy walk/trot hacking out. Then, last summer, she started refusing to ride away from the barn by balking violently as soon as she knew we were heading for the trails. Totally uncharacteristic, as she'd always been happy to go anywhere. We found out she had Lyme disease with pretty high levels of the antigen that indicates chronic Lyme. So, who knows how long she'd had it, and what the relationship was with her arthritis/joint soreness. The good news is she responded really well to treatment, and her Lyme levels came down into normal ranges after a standard course of treatment. But it was pretty clear that she didn't miss going out on our long rides anymore. She is NOT the kind of horse who needs a job, and is perfectly happy to get fussed over and groomed and told she's beautiful, and doesn't really care much about riding. 

Last fall, I started looking for a second horse so Izzy could be semi-retired and I could pursue limited distance rides ("baby endurance"). Izzy _is _still rideable, but I've mostly given her the winter off because she doesn't enjoy arena rides and the footing has been so miserable this winter that our opportunities to ride outside were so limited. I imagine as the weather gets nicer, I'll still take her out for light hacks a couple times a week- that's the plan anyway! :wink:

Enter Fizz...I bought her last November in CT. She has an interesting history too. She was born and raised at a lovely Morgan farm in CT, where they breed a couple of foals a year and keep the babies until they're 4-5 so they know they get a solid start under saddle. Crazy story about her, not sure if I ever shared this link in the journal, but she had quite an incident as a 3-year-old filly: one cold January afternoon, she somehow managed to fall _through a covered well house and get trapped in the freezing well water. _Here's the story from the paper.

She was so lucky that a farm assistant happened to see all the mares standing weirdly in a circle in one spot in the pasture, went to check it out, and found Fizz wedged down in the well. The assistant grabbed Fizz by her mane and helped her hold her head above the water, getting half soaked herself, until the fire department arrived and pulled her out. The vet was also there quickly and they were able to get her warmed back up, finding only a few scratches on her legs. I'm not a religious person, but it seems pretty miraculous that she escaped unharmed.

So anyway, the next miraculous part of Fizz's story came a few years later. She had been sold to a middle aged couple with another horse from their breeders as a pair of trail horses. The owners apparently went through a nasty divorce, and during that period, Fizz and her barn mate were left to fend for themselves in a field with no food or water. Concerned people in the town knew the horses and where they had come from, so when it was clear they were half starved and no one was doing anything about it, the breeders were contacted and thankfully were able to convince this couple to let them buy the horses back. So Fizz returned to her original home, and they slowly got her back to health. When I went looking at horses at their farm, Fizz actually wasn't technically for sale, as they said they had promised her they would never let her be put in a situation like that again and weren't sure they wanted to let her leave the farm. :frown_color: Many of their horses have been their their whole lives, including happy retired broodmares who live out their days in the pasture.

She was there about two years, had a beautiful little bay filly from their stallion during that time and did some trail rides and IHE shows with some of their nice little teen riders. She was definitely out of shape and hadn't been in work for over a year when I saw her, but I don't know, there was just something about her that made her stand out from the other horses I tried there. They thought she'd _love _doing distance riding, as she's good on the trails and has a really nice trot, so after going down there to test ride a couple of times, everyone agreed it was a good match. So she came to NH from CT, and now she's my main riding horse. 

The dressage lessons have been about two things: 1. Helping me improve my own riding and 2. Helping her learn how to use her body more effectively and learn a little more finesse than she seems to have (although with her I'm never quite sure how much it's that she doesn't understand what you're asking vs. how much it's "stubborn mare syndrome" :wink.

Anyway- that's probably WAY more history about #IzAndFizz than you were interested in, but that's our story!
:cowboy:


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## knightrider

Fascinating story! Thanks for sharing!


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , thanks for bringing me up to date, and now I know why she is called Fizz! The well story is amazing, and I got a chuckle from some of the comments after the local newspaper article ("glad to hear the horse is in _stable_ condition").

I have also volunteered at therapeutic riding events, and I am very interested in doing more. However, I don't know what the certification entails in the US, but here you have to be a physical therapist first. I don't mind and would actually enjoy taking some courses, but I can't see myself going to college just to wind up working as a volunteer.

I like your dressage + trail riding plan. I am of the same mindset, and both activities complement each other. If I ever am able to buy a horse again, that would be my plan, too.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> I have also volunteered at therapeutic riding events, and I am very interested in doing more. However, I don't know what the certification entails in the US, but here you have to be a physical therapist first. I don't mind and would actually enjoy taking some courses, but I can't see myself going to college just to wind up working as a volunteer.


Here most certifications are done through the organization Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship (PATH, Intl). If you are certified as a therapeutic riding instructor (which is the cert I have) you don't have to be a physical therapist because as an instructor your role is actually to teach basic riding skills while accommodating the disability of the rider. To do hippotherapy- actual physical therapy with the horse as a therapeutic aid- you DO have to be a certified physical or occupational therapist. When I lived in North Carolina, I volunteered at a program that primarily did hippotherapy because their director was a physical therapist. So it just sort of depends on how a program is staffed and what they are able to focus on. 

***********
Had another good ride with Fizz yesterday. I think a lightbulb really clicked for us Friday. We rode in the arena to warm up, and I set my camera up in a corner to record. Captured a bit of the pole work:


















And then had our first canter in the new saddle. The balance point is definitely different so I'm still finding my position, but there were at least some moments where my butt is in the saddle:








But then there's _this_, oy :eek_color: 









She's been such a good girl this weekend though, she seems happy to be back into riding.









We waited around for another boarder who wanted to ride out a little, so we did a couple of miles outside with them, which was nice









The ground was finally soft yet solid enough (e.g., not frozen but no sucking mud) that we could actually trot some. It's funny to remember how much different it is to balance over uneven outdoor ground vs. in the arena. But Fizz loves being out, she was tired by the end of our ride but in good spirits. 









**************
I'm excited but a little nervous- I just got an invitation to go up to VT to a limited distance ride with my mentor and another new-to-endurance rider the last weekend of April. We definitely haven't been doing serious conditioning, and I don't want to be unfair to Fizz. But still, it's a 15 mile ride, and the chance to go with a mentor and someone else who's just getting started is really tempting. I'm thinking we should do it, but it's also slightly terrifying to commit to it! What to do?!


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## knightrider

I encourage you to go! A vet at a competitive trail ride told me that just about any horse that is ridden some can complete a 25 mile ride without hurting them. According to that vet, you don't have to condition your horse to complete, just ride some. . . and you certainly do! Complete is not a typo . . . not win, just complete without harming your horse.


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## frlsgirl

It sounds exciting; do it if you can! Fizz looks lovely.


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## egrogan

I talked to BO about the ride earlier today and was surprised at how enthusiastic her "YES, DO IT" response was! I have every confidence she would tell me if she thought it was a bad idea, but she said there couldn't be a better introduction to endurance than going on a ride at that distance with my mentor there to look out for us (BO is the person who connected me with mentor a few months ago when I was horse shopping). So...I think I am going to do it! :grin:

When I went out to get Fizz to ride this morning, I saw the girls had roped their boyfriend into standing guard so they could sunbathe...









They both just groaned when I walked up to them, neither had any intention of getting up.


















Poor Fizz though, she was getting ridden first so she had to peel herself off the ground. After a few rolls, she was up. We started warming up in the indoor, where the footing was being watered. Good desentization to ride around with the hose going, but she barely flicked an ear at it. From there, we headed out for a road ride to the gnome cave, which is about 3 miles round trip. It's the first time we've been out on the roads since mid-February given how awful the footing has been! She was more nervous than she typically is, snorting at the wind, but I just sat deep and sang "100 bottles of beer on the wall" to her...for a couple of miles :wink: She tried to do the annoying "I don't want to go so I'm backing up" thing once, but I just waited her out, which didn't really take long. She put on the brakes, backed up, I asked her to go forward, she backed up again, so we just stood there with her butt in some bushes for about a minute. Then I asked her to go forward again, she sighed, and went. That felt like a small victory in itself! The dirt roads were clear, but since it had been below freezing last night they were still concrete-hard. So we mostly walked, and trotted in a few places where the shoulder was a little softer. 









I was there too early to ride with any of my sometimes-riding buddies, but I made plans with one of them to meet next Sunday morning and do a longer ride, which will be nice.

Then I got Izzy out and took her for a nice walk down the road. Fizz had pooped in the road near a house, so Izzy and I walked down there to kick it off into the woods :wink: She has such a pretty face.


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## Spanish Rider

*egrogan,*
Thanks for the PATH info. I will have to check it out and see if it's accepted here. It sounds like it is something I could work towards during summers in the US.

As for the distance ride, I say go for it! Plus, it's the perfect situation: you'll be riding with another newbie, AND a mentor. I can't think of a better way to get into it. As for being ready or not, I recently went on a 2-hour, 10 mile trail ride with a bunch of teens, college students and my BO, who is early 30's. In other words, I doubled and even tripled the age of everyone on the ride, and I was afraid that my age or lack of training was going to make a difference. But, I did fine! I could have even done more, and was sorry that we didn't do any cantering. My ONLY complaint was that I was starting to get sore in my seat bone and groin, but that is typical of my bony butt and dermatitis, and I probably should have worn other breeches. Believe me, if I can do 10 miles with no problem, you can do 15!


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## frlsgirl

It's totally awkward when you walk in on your horse napping. That's why I don't ride Ana at lunch time because that's her nap time. You would think with you having two horses that at least one would be up and running around but nope


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> i'm excited but a little nervous- i just got an invitation to go up to vt to a limited distance ride with my mentor and another new-to-endurance rider the last weekend of april.. It's a 15 mile ride.. What to do?!


YES!! Do it!!!!


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## Tazzie

I'm so excited you're going to do the ride!! YAY!! I can't wait to hear ALL about it!! EEK!

And sounds like you're having good rides! You'll get there with the canter! I'm glad it's going well!


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## egrogan

So less fun update today. Izzy had her visit with the equine dentist this morning, and we got bad news- her problem is an infected tooth, with root involvement, so it is going to have to come out. :sad: The one directly behind it is loose too, so TBD on that one. Fortunately for us, the vet who came to see us is one of the best equine dentists in our region, and she lives only 4 miles away from our new house. We talked it over, and we decided that it will be the least stressful on Izzy to book the extraction for June, once we've moved the horses up to the new house in VT. That way, Izzy will just have the one long trailer ride to her new home, rather than going up there to the vet's office, back here to the NH barn, and then back up again. We'll watch for signs of a sinus infection like a hawk, because that's the risk of waiting. But vet felt like it was an ok trade off to make. I don't feel great knowing she'll go another two months like this, and have that pain in her mouth, but she is eating normally and not showing other outward signs of struggling with it so I guess that's something...

_Eyeing the torture equipment









Knocked out for the procedure _(side note: I really hate seeing them swaying around while sedated, it makes me so nervous!)









She had to stay in for 3 hours after the sedation, so during that time I brought Fizz in and measured her feet for her boots. I shared the measurements from the trimmer with a rep from Scoot Boots yesterday, but she asked me to also send pictures of the feet with a measuring tape across them to ensure we have the right size. 

Fizz was a little skeptical about providing moral support to the patient :wink:









I will check in with BO later just to make sure Izzy is feeling ok once she's been back outside for a bit.

I'll end with a little comic relief...

Interrupting sun bathing...




...I mean, do you think she will make it if she doesn't get these last few bites of grass???


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## QueenofFrance08

Go for the ride! I'm doing a 12 mile novice the first week of May that we've barely been able to get ready for due to the snow! We haven't gone more than 5 miles and that was all at a walk. I'm hoping the next few weeks get a little better and we can get some more work in but if not I figure they can just kick us out if we're too slow and I'll try again later in the summer!


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## frlsgirl

Dental problems are not fun but at least now you know what the problem is so you can get it fixed.


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## Tazzie

Ugh, sorry the tooth is going to have to come out :/ but that is a very good idea to wait until she's at your new house to do it. That's a long trailer ride for miss Izzy, so it'll be good she'll only have to do it once.

And oh my gosh the videos :rofl: made my morning!


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## egrogan

We are booked for the mud ride!










Hoping to go out with my mentor in the next week or so to let the horses meet each other. Her horse Flower is a superstar and we will be in great hands!

Heading up to VT this afternoon for house inspections. Cross all your fingers and toes for us! :grin:


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## carshon

Fingers toes and appendages crossed. How exciting! and sending healing vibes for Izzy!


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## Spanish Rider

Hooray! I see GMHA on the header - does that mean the ride is near the new property?!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> We do like cider- and it's going through an explosion of popularity here. I'm not sure exactly how many trees, nor which varieties, we'd have, but can't wait to find out more. In our area, there's something called "ice cider" which is fairly popular and unique:


Thanks for that clip, we really enjoyed watching that.  Lovely stonework on the house and those apple orchards... Will you be having a shot at making cider for your own consumption, fingers crossed, all the house etc inspections AOK?

Tell you what though, that alcohol concentration is about twice as high as what we usually drink; they up the sugar and therefore the alcohol by concentrating the juice... I think that would strip the lining off my stomach (sensitive stomach here) unless I had the right amount of bread and cheese at the same time... You've tried ice cider, right, how does it taste? I'm sure it's a good flavour...

All this talk of cider and apples...I'm now compelled to go down the garden and pick some of our ripening Sundowner eating apples for immediate consumption. (Granny Smiths, Jonathans and Cox' Orange Pippins have been and gone; just Sundowners and Lady Williams still ripening as we get further into autumn.) :apple:

I really hope the paperwork all works out! You're going to love living like this.




> It's very easy to grow blueberries and raspberries in our climate too, so at some point I'm sure we'll add those- if we don't find them growing wild somewhere on the property first.


Yes, great idea! That's going to be our project over here for this upcoming winter. Last winter we added mulberries, boysenberries and youngberries. Before that it was pome fruit, stone fruit, citrus, etc. Avocados are touch and go here because of winter frosts. I've got _one_ that looks like it's going to survive...

Having your own cherries is amazing. Cherries should grow well in your area too! It's all very exciting.


Cherry Harvest I – Red Moon Sanctuary, Redmond, Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Hooray! I see GMHA on the header - does that mean the ride is near the new property?!


Yes, it likely will be! I don't know the exact route for this ride- they said it will be almost exclusively on the dirt roads instead of on the trails because footing is still so awful, so not sure if we will go right past the house or not. But a lot of the longer rides do go literally through our front yard, apparently our front pasture has been a hold for the VT100 in the past :grin:



carshon said:


> Fingers toes and appendages crossed. How exciting! and sending healing vibes for Izzy!





SueC said:


> Will you be having a shot at making cider for your own consumption, fingers crossed, all the house etc inspections AOK?


Thank you, yes, inspections all went well and we are charging ahead! Like any old house, there are some things that will need attention quickly, and others that will need attention "soonish" but everything is manageable. The closing date is just a little over a month away, it's starting to feel real!! 



SueC said:


> Tell you what though, that alcohol concentration is about twice as high as what we usually drink; they up the sugar and therefore the alcohol by concentrating the juice... I think that would strip the lining off my stomach (sensitive stomach here) unless I had the right amount of bread and cheese at the same time... You've tried ice cider, right, how does it taste? I'm sure it's a good flavour...


Yes, the ciders are emerging as real competitors to craft beers, which are also booming here in New England (Vermont and Maine specifically). We love both, to be honest (not lushes, I swear :wink. The ice cider, at least the varieties I've tried, is actually a little sweeter than I like. I like a drier, more effervescent cider, which can almost be champagne-like. But, no doubt that the concentrated flavor of the ice cider is all apple, which is really neat. 

Jealous of your fresh apples- our food co-op still has local apples from last fall, but you can tell we're now getting what was way in the back of the storage house. They are still good, but not the same as fall fresh!

Cherries do grow here, but they are not as common as other fruits. We actually lived in Michigan before we moved to New Hampshire, and cherries (and apples) are huge in Michigan. Some of the best in the country come from there. I do miss them. We actually had a beautiful mulberry tree in our backyard in Michigan. It was only one tree, and we had to fight off the birds for the ripe berries, but we usually got at least one pie out of it every year. I do enjoy growing fruit more than anything else I think. Maybe with the exception of perennial herbs, I love watching a kitchen herb garden take hold and then start to thrive. I will be sad to leave the one I have now.


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## egrogan

Fizz and I had a great lesson with BO last night. It was an almost summer like day- up to 60*F- so it would have been silly not to ride in the outdoor. We mounted up in the indoor, and Fizz was very excited to get to go outside. Too excited actually, so we used that as a "teachable moment" and practiced our turns on the forehand next to the open arena doors. At first she just wanted to charge ahead outside, but she listened well and we got a few nice turns before riding outside.

It was a great set-up for a lesson because there was a lot of activity outside- other people riding, BO's mom gardening in her yard alongside the arena with her dog outside, etc. Fizz was at first very distracted, and we did some basic exercises to get her mind back on me- circle, baby leg yields, transitions, etc. Because Fizz feeds so much off of energy and activity around her, BO and I talked through how I need to have a plan to get her mind on me once we get to a ride with all it's excitement. It worked pretty well, I feel that I do have some strategies I can use. Of course, strategy number 1 is keeping _myself _calm and loose and not responding to Fizz's tension! Easier said than done though, right?! :wink:

Her trot was not as fluid and relaxed as it was when we rode in the outdoor mid-week, but it was actually probably good that happened in a lesson as it allowed BO to talk to me about my body position and how I can control my own tension when Fizz is a little tenser. We discovered that, regardless of gait, she is SO responsive to a slight firming up/lack of give through my elbows, probably because that also has the effect of helping me sit down deeper in the saddle.

She had us doing _lots _of canter circles, which provide more than ample opportunity to work on my own tension. But it was good for me to see that Fizz will still come back down easily from the canter, and that she's not going to go bolting off even when we're not in the indoor. BO gave me permission to not worry about how "pretty" the riding was- yes, we know that I have a ways to go with having a truly balanced seat on Fizz with her bigger canter, but it's just going to come with time. She teased me a little and said I need to stop avoiding cantering this much when I'm on my own, and I just need to practice, practice, practice. Of course, she's right. So that is my main homework this week. I may not have a perfect, balanced trot to canter from, but that's not an excuse. I just have to do it!

We were both tired after we finished!


















And Fizz is still in the midst of shedding out, so she was soaking with sweat by the end of the lesson. We went for a short walk in the woods- and survived a massive spook when a squirrel jumped from branch to branch right over our heads!- and she had a lovely, relaxed walk. She was very brave when we went down a different trail and saw a big tractor tire laying along the side. At first she shied away from it a little, but we circled it once and then she wanted to walk up to it and sniff it all over. I like that her reaction to "scary" things is to want to investigate, not get away fast.

She was still really wet when we got back to the barn so I untacked and handwalked her out for awhile. It was the first time this spring I could hear the peepers! I love when they come back. (Less helpfully, the blackflies were out too! :evil


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## Avna

I heard the peepers this morning! Went out to the pond and it was teeming with life. And ruffed grouse!


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## Spanish Rider

Regarding ciders, growing up in New England our ciders were thick, full of pulp, and brownish-red. My grandmother would always get a couple of gallon jugs from the local apple farms for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners: soft cider for the kids, and hard cider for the adults. We usually drank it at room temperature. After moving to Spain, I discovered a different interpretation of cider: the clear, pulpless, bubbly, champagne-like sidra, which is what I now serve, chilled, on Thanksgiving. They follow traditional recipes, with no sugar added, and the alcohol content is a mere 4%. I am now interested in trying ice cider - will have to check it out this summer. SOunds yummy, as I am not a grain person.

Regarding strategies for concentration, sometimes the simplest things work best. My favorites are singing and "tickling" the horse's mouth with the bit, with a back and forth motion from right to left (not sawing, mind you; just a tickle).

As for cantering alone, would you be doing this on the trail? When I canter on the trail, it is always heading away from home, never towards, and on a mild incline or through a softish field; both things help keep me in the saddle. Funny, but I have also been working on elbow position and more/firmer/constant contact this week. Coming from a hunter background, I am not accustomed to so much contact, but once my horse gets "locked in" where I want him and rounded, he just finds his groove and goes and goes, even when I relax and loosen the contact. It's a new concept for me. 

Now that you mention it, I miss squirrels! We don't have any here. Oh, and can I just say that something went terribly wrong with my childhood? I had never heard the word "peepers" for frogs before, and had always thought that that sound was just bugs!


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## Avna

Spanish Rider said:


> .......
> 
> Now that you mention it, I miss squirrels! We don't have any here. Oh, and can I just say that something went terribly wrong with my childhood? I had never heard the word "peepers" for frogs before, and had always thought that that sound was just bugs!


Spring Peepers are a specific frog species. Pseudacris crucifer. Their songs are the first frogsongs of spring, hence their name. I had not heard them before this year as I just moved to New England this February. In California their niche is filled by the California Tree Frog (which isn't always in trees). But spring isn't a dramatic event in California the way it is here in Massachusetts.


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## Spanish Rider

Yes, I grew up in Massachusetts. There is a waterway behind my house, and ponds at the end of the street where we would go ice skating in the winter, but all the skunk cabbages and leeches kept me away in the warmer weather. The sound in the video is very familiar to me, but somehow I never associated them with frogs, and I swear no one called them "peepers" in my day and age. In fact, I specifically remember doing a school project on the life cycle of frogs, and we went to the pond next to our elementary school at different dates to observe their metamorphical changes, but still not calling them "peepers". Funny.


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## Avna

I think I learned the name from my mother and grandmother, who are from Wisconsin.


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## SueC

Those lying-down Fizz films a bit back were so hilarious! :rofl:

I'm so glad your property inspections etc appear to be working out! :dance-smiley05:


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## egrogan

Hmm...now that you all are having this discussion, I don't think I heard that term until I moved to New Hampshire. I grew up in upstate NY and we definitely had summer frogs singing, but I don't think we called them peepers either. :confused_color: There's an NPR show called "A Way With Words" that's all about language and etymology, maybe I will send them our question!

******************
Fizz's new Scoot Boots arrived yesterday morning, and I was eager to figure them out. They were surprisingly easy to put on and take off. The last time I used boots was years ago on a therapy horse, and I think they were an early version of Easy Boots. Those things were NOT at all easy to get on, so I am relieved that there have been advancements! They seem to fit correctly- they couldn't be any smaller, but they're not _too _small. I don't have anyone local to check fit, but have been working virtually with a rep who has been very helpful. I sent her all these pictures and she gave them the thumbs up. Of course, Fizz will be the real judge of that!









































It was gloomy and the barn was pretty crowded, so I rode in the indoor for a short bit to test them out, and then went out around the farm with Ida and Jazz. We only did a couple of miles total, but tried them out on the rubber arena footing, on the grass, on the hard dirt road, and through some pretty deep mud in the woods. First- they stayed on. Second- they did collect some ephemera in them, but it seemed to gather in the "corners" and not really interfere at all. Third- and most importantly-Fizz didn't care one bit about having them on and rode perfectly normally. It's obviously too early to say how they'll be with more riding, but I have a good first impression.









Here is a classic mare glare if I've ever seen one- Fizz and I dared walk past her at lunchtime to get out of the field :icon_rolleyes: Everything seems to be steady state as far as her mouth- no smell and still eating fine.









This was from last night...Fizz was joined for dinner by some of her turkey friends. The big Tom was making so much noise shaking his feathers at the ladies, but unfortunately that got drowned out by the sound the fence charger was making. Won't be too long now before there are some fluffy little poults running around with their mamas!





Woke up to sleet and freezing rain, so that ruined my plans for a long road ride with another one of the boarders first thing this morning. Hopefully the roads will still be driveable a little later- I'd still like to ride in the indoor even if we can't get outside.

PS- @Avna, have Brooke and The-Pony-To-Be-Named gotten on the trailer yet? Seems like they will be starting their journey soon, right?


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Hmm...now that you all are having this discussion, I don't think I heard that term until I moved to New Hampshire. I grew up in upstate NY and we definitely had summer frogs singing, but I don't think we called them peepers either. :confused_color: There's an NPR show called "A Way With Words" that's all about language and etymology, maybe I will send them our question!
> 
> ******************
> Fizz's new Scoot Boots arrived yesterday morning, and I was eager to figure them out. They were surprisingly easy to put on and take off. The last time I used boots was years ago on a therapy horse, and I think they were an early version of Easy Boots. Those things were NOT at all easy to get on, so I am relieved that there have been advancements! They seem to fit correctly- they couldn't be any smaller, but they're not _too _small. I don't have anyone local to check fit, but have been working virtually with a rep who has been very helpful. I sent her all these pictures and she gave them the thumbs up. Of course, Fizz will be the real judge of that!
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> Here is a classic mare glare if I've ever seen one- Fizz and I dared walk past her at lunchtime to get out of the field :icon_rolleyes: Everything seems to be steady state as far as her mouth- no smell and still eating fine.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This was from last night...Fizz was joined for dinner by some of her turkey friends. The big Tom was making so much noise shaking his feathers at the ladies, but unfortunately that got drowned out by the sound the fence charger was making. Won't be too long now before there are some fluffy little poults running around with their mamas!
> http://youtu.be/NwLgapHMATA
> 
> Woke up to sleet and freezing rain, so that ruined my plans for a long road ride with another one of the boarders first thing this morning. Hopefully the roads will still be driveable a little later- I'd still like to ride in the indoor even if we can't get outside.
> 
> PS- @Avna, have Brooke and The-Pony-To-Be-Named gotten on the trailer yet? Seems like they will be starting their journey soon, right?


Leaving the 24th from California. Still lots to do to get ready ... 
Must be spring, I found two deer ticks crawling on me last night after my dog walk. We have no sleet yet. It's on the way.


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## egrogan

Gah, I can't believe you just used "the T-word"  NOOOOOOOO :evil:


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## Spanish Rider

Well, that is a handsome tom! And those Scoot Boots look real sharp. I have had no experience with those. How long has Fizz been barefoot? Do they get harder to put on as the hoof grows?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Well, that is a handsome tom! And those Scoot Boots look real sharp. I have had no experience with those. How long has Fizz been barefoot? Do they get harder to put on as the hoof grows?


As I understand it, the Scoots are newer to the states. I believe they are Australian, not sure how long they've been around there but my trimmer here has seen them being used for a year or so now. Supposedly a selling point to this brand is that they're not quite as sensitive to hoof growth during the cycle interfering with fit- we'll see if that ends up being true. She's about 3 weeks into this cycle, and we're going about 6 weeks right now. Fizz has been barefoot for about two years now I think? I believe they pulled her shoes when they bred her, and she would have had her foal about this time last year. 

************
Had the weirdest experience, weather was awful here to start the day but as the sleet stopped the roads were just wet, not icy. I headed out for the barn, and the roads there were completely dry! So then I was a bit bummed that we had cancelled our ride this morning. Still, I decided I'd warm up in the indoor but still hit the road.

Fizz warmed up nicely, we had a nice canter in both directions where I finally felt that I was getting myself together enough to actually _ride _(my new mantra, courtesy of BO..._"boobs and elbows, boobs and elbows" _seems to help me sit up and follow the motion rather than grip on like a vice ). 

With the boots on, we could finally stretch out and do some trotting on the dirt roads (which are hard as concrete still). Fizz was on high alert for squirrels throughout the ride, as she was fairly convinced they were going to come swarming out of the woods to eat us...








...Fortunately, they didn't, but she would have been ready if they did! :icon_rolleyes:

We had a few minor spooks, but otherwise she did well, until she got tired. When she got tired, she started sort of drunken-sailoring across the road and got pretty hollowed out and inverted. I am feeling a little worried about her fitness for the ride at the end of the month, but we'll keep getting out as much as we can.

So far I've learned a couple of things about her doing these road rides:
1. Downhills are still really tough for her. She seems to struggle with balance and they really wear her out. We do have a lot of up-and-down pretty much any direction we go in, so I guess it's just more practice.
2. Having a loose rein makes her really spooky. When we turned towards home, I thought I'd give her most of the rein to let her stretch and relax, and she in turn spooked at a mailbox and acted like she was dying. When I took the contact back and wrapped my legs around her, she (literally) breathed a sigh of relief and was fine. Message received, she needs a pilot! We found a happy medium where she could stretch down deeply but we could still feel each other through the reins.

I do wish we had had another horse with us because I would have liked to see if she had a little more endurance to keep going when she got tired if there had been another horse there. Also, she is very interested in the creek that runs along the road, and I'd love to see if she'll drink from it with my friend's horse there, who loves to play in it. I want another horse there though because in the woods she has the habit of flying backwards away from water, and this creek is too far from home for me to be willing to get off and walk back on foot!


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## carshon

@egrogan thanks for the Scoot Boot pic and video. I am seriously thinking of investing in some new boots and these are at the top of my list. And a word of encouragement on the "tired Fizz" When we first got Belle she was recovering from founder (foundered March 2016) we picked her up in May and went through some Abcess issues as a result of the founder. I have pics of us at a Poker Run in June - we rode almost 12 miles that day on a horse that had founder in all 4's a few months prior and only been ridden a few times after we got her in Mid May. She did get tired but seemed to get a second wind when the other horses kept going. We gave her a couple of days off after that ride but she was never sore - Fizz will be fine when she figures out who her "buddy" is on the ride and she wants to keep up with them.

So excited for your ride at the end of the month!


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon for sharing that story about taking Belle to that ride. I do think having other horses around is going to be great for Fizz and I. I'm glad we ride out alone so often, as I do think it's important for a horse to be ok with that. But I'm looking forward to the benefits of going out with a really seasoned endurance team as well!


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## frlsgirl

Wow I love the fancy boots. Glad to hear that they seem to be working. I've thought about getting trail boots for Ana as I keep her barefoot and have turned down many a trail rides due to being worried about her feet. I'm surprised they don't bother her at all? Like can she not even tell there is anything on her feet? I tried shipping boots on Ana once and that was a total fiasco


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## Avna

frlsgirl said:


> Wow I love the fancy boots. Glad to hear that they seem to be working. I've thought about getting trail boots for Ana as I keep her barefoot and have turned down many a trail rides due to being worried about her feet. I'm surprised they don't bother her at all? Like can she not even tell there is anything on her feet? I tried shipping boots on Ana once and that was a total fiasco


I use trail boots for my horse and she has never seemed to notice them at all. I have Renegades. Never turn down another trail ride!


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl- I was also surprised she didn't have any "what in the world???" moments with the boots. I watched some funny videos of horses wearing them for the first time and looking like cats who got their paws wet :wink: She was all good though. And yes, I have heard the Renegades are also great, I would have gotten those if we didn't try these out.

********************
Got in a nice- if chilly- morning ride. Fizz is shedding like mad and itchy everywhere! You can see the relief on her face after finding something good to scratch on!









We rode in the indoor to start as it was threatening to sleet/rain. I hadn't ridden since Sunday, and she was a little quick to start out, but that gave me a good opportunity to try the spiraling circles and direction changes within the circle that BO and I had worked on in lessons last week. They do bring her mind back and change her frame/balance in a really helpful way. After a few minutes of getting that exuberance out of her system, we cantered a bit. The right lead is much easier for her to step into, and it was really fun to ride the first few circles! The left lead is harder, and I think because my own balance isn't quite right, I am messing up her depart and we're having issues with her taking the right lead going left as well. So will have to work on that with BO in lessons this week.

The sun was peaking out by the time we had done all this, so I decided to go outside after all. We left the barn at a brisk trot, and trotted all around the property. We even cantered a bit around the turnout fields, which is the first time I have (intentionally :wink done that with her! Felt awesome. We went down the hill into the woods, but the white stuff is mostly ice and a bit slick...








So we came back up towards the fields and trotted around a bit more.

Saturday my mentor is going to come pick us up and we'll go ride trails with her and her mare Flower. Sort of a test run for _next _Saturday, when we head to the mud ride. I'm getting really excited!


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## egrogan

Good lesson last night. We worked on left lead canter and as I suspected, the timing of when I was asking was making her take the right incorrectly. She was a little feisty about it last night with a big depart and tail swish each time, and I have to really work hard to sit down instead of get pulled forward when she's more exuberant. She was a little sensitive along her right flank while I was grooming her, so I wonder if she's in heat or otherwise uncomfortable. BO really likes how she's moving in the new saddle- it's such a big difference to watch her back in this one vs. the old one- and she looks quite balanced at both trot and canter. 

She always gives herself such a huge release after we finish a ride- big deep yawns and rolling her eyes around. I wish I could understand what that's all about...


















She was a little sweaty so we cooled out with a nice quiet walk around the farm.









Our mentor is coming at 11 to pick us up and take us out for a longer trail ride. Really excited!!


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## Avna

And we are finally getting riding weather!


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## Avna

And we are finally getting riding weather!


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## frlsgirl

Rolling eyes, yawning and tail swishing; sounds like a typical Morgan mare to me 

Glad you had a great ride.


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## egrogan

Well, yesterday was an adventure and a half. 

My mentor (I'll just call her R here so it's easier) came to collect us right on time, and like @*Avna* said, it was an absolutely gorgeous day to ride. I was so happy with her when she unloaded. She was very curious about the new surroundings, and got a little high headed and wide eyed for a minute when she saw R's horses, but within a minute the grass was much more interesting. Horses sniffed over the fence, everyone seemed to approve of each other, and we headed to the barn with R and her horse Flower to get ready. Having a nice uneventful start like that was just what I needed to hop and and feel really confident to head out.

(_Could her nostrils get any wider here? :wink: Taking it all in...)









R and Flower getting ready to show us the way out









_The ride itself was amazing, with a little bit of everything, including lots of new stuff that Fizz and I haven't done together. In the first mile-ish, we crossed big open fields, rode the power lines for a bit, and went out the paved road- this took us to a really awesome trail system. It was definitely the most technically challenging trail we've done. Lots of steep uphill climbs and fairly rocky. We jumped right into a nice trot as soon as we hit the trails, and Fizz was eager to go. Even cantered up a few of the steeper hills :grin: We actually led a lot of the way as Flower was being uncharacteristically lazy. It was the first hot day we've had- probably 60*F- and both the girls were drenched in their still shaggy coats. 


















About 5 miles in, we came to the top of a large hill and had 50 mile views out to Mount Monadnock, which is the local landmark. It was a beautiful view.









_Caught mid-photo taking :wink: 









_Fizz was very suspicious of these very threatening rocks- this is the only thing on the ride she scittered away from. Otherwise, she was so brave being in a completely new place.
_









_When we paused for our photo up, and Fizz was panting really hard. We decided we didn't want to overdo it with her, so we toned it down and walked most of the way back. She stayed hot, but her breathing did come back to a better place. 

R took us back down to the road on a trail that required a stream crossing. I told her about some of the issues I've had with Fizz on BO's woods trail, so we made sure we had to cross at least once. I am happy to say that the stream was a non-event. Probably helps when you have a hot, thirsty horse. Fizz walked right in, played with the water with her lips, and even took some small drinks. 


















We let them hang out there for a couple of minutes cooling off, and then headed on home.









All in all, we did 7.54 miles.

I was feeling pretty proud when we got back to the barn. Got untacked and packed up uneventfully. When it was time to load, Fizz WOULD NOT. For 2 hours, R and I tried to get her on, and she just planted her feet and refused, except when she would go flying backwards. We tried every trick either of us could think of, including tons of tips and tricks I've filed away over the years from reading about trailer issues on here. We tried upping the pressure, we tried being quiet, and just made no progress. Since R and I had both pretty much reached our frustration point and were out of ideas, I sheepishly called BO and begged her to come over with her trailer. Like the saint she is, she agreed. I owe that woman so much! 

R sent me this picture, and it actually made me incredibly sad. I don't know how obvious it is to people who don't know Fizz, but she looks so totally checked out here. Her eyes just look dead to me. :sad: This was while we were just standing in the driveway for about 20 minutes waiting for BO to arrive. She is such a hard horse to understand, she has something in her brain that just turns off when she has too much pressure coming at her and I don't know how to get her through something difficult without pushing her too hard to the zoned out place.









So once BO got there, we were able to at least get her close to the trailer so we had something to work with. BO's husband had her head, and BO and R were behind Fizz encouraging her forward. After 2 more hours of having a butt rope behind Fizz and wiggling her forward an inch at a time, we got her on and home. She was sweaty and exhausted, but not hurt. She got so hot in the trailer that she was shivering like mad when I got her off, so we got her wrapped up in a cooler and I walked her all around the farm for at least an hour. She was ravishingly hungry so I just let her graze as much as she wanted. Took huge drinks of water as well. I was a little worried to leave her because she was looking so out of it, but there really wasn't anything else I could do, and it was 8pm by that time (we left to go ride at 11 am...).

So lots of mixed emotions right now; I got so much confidence in her ability to do a ride-but I have to be able to get her there!!

We were supposed to do the GMHA mud ride next weekend, but it’s hard to imagine we’ll make enough miracle progress this week to be confident she’ll load. I was absolutely mortified to have taken up R's whole afternoon with this mess, and I simply can't impose on her again like that next weekend. We were supposed to leave at 5am next Saturday, and the horses have to be on the property by 7am, so there's not time to mess around. And, what if we get her up there and then can't load her to come home? Then I'm really in trouble. I will talk more with BO today, but even if we practice this week, it just still seems like that's not enough time to be ready for Saturday. And, BO's trailer is a straight load with ramp, while R's is a slant step-up. Even if we make progress using BO's, can we really assume that will translate? I just don't see any way we're going to be able to to do the ride.

I felt pretty sorry for myself last night and had a good sob on the way home, but this morning I'm at least a little more able to put things in perspective. It's not the end of the world if we can't do the ride next weekend. There will be plenty of others. BO kept telling me this happens to everyone at some point in their horsey life, and it's just the next thing we need to work on, like we've worked on so many other things already. I know she's right, but for a worrier like me with limited confidence to go off the farm for events anyway, I'd be lying if I didn't say this had knocked the confidence back a peg. I guess the thing I have to keep in mind is that on the ride itself, Fizz was awesome. I do believe she can be an endurance horse. So now we just need to get through this and continue on our way...


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## gottatrot

Don't be discouraged! First, it sounds like you had a wonderful ride and that was great to hear about.

My two cents are that it's true, if you can't do the mud ride there will be many others. 
But...don't give up yet. It's quite possible you'll find some little key that will be the secret for loading Fizz. 

I've known at least three or four horses that had one bad day loading and then never had issues again. Some seem to feel that the fact you got them into the trailer in the end means you always will, and so will show a bit of reluctance, remember that you got them into the trailer in the end, and then just sigh and load up. 

It could also just simply be that she was hot and tired, so couldn't work with you. To me she looks very shut down in the picture, as you said. I would not feel bad or blame yourself for that, there was nothing else you could do and it certainly didn't harm your horse. It happens despite our best intentions sometimes.

I wouldn't think you would worry about or feel bad about using another horse person's time either. Most of us have been on the other end with the difficult horse, feeling embarrassed and like we're burdening everyone else. I'm often quite happy that it's someone else with the issues, and no one can predict when or where a horse will need training. I've had so many people apologize for a horse needing time for training, and I can never accept that because it is not something anyone can control. If she seems like she's making progress, I'd take the risk and try the mud ride if she seemed fine otherwise. Just my opinion. :smile:


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## Avna

Oh I feel your pain! Having a horse that's a trial to load is just the worst. Brooke's made me cry many times over that.


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## knightrider

I feel like crying with you. You had every reason to be disappointed, discouraged, and upset. Like the others said, we have all been there. I also, have had to call experts to come and help me load. And also have had horses that loaded just fine for years, suddenly NOT. I agree with everything other people have written. Horses are so unpredictable. Maybe that's one thing that makes all this horsey experience so interesting. One thing I noticed and learned over the years. Often when a horse that is fairly inexperienced with trailering is tired, they won't load to go home. I've had it happen to me a bunch of times.

I love reading the journal section. So many folks enduring heartaches, sometimes overcoming, sometimes it just doesn't work out. I hope for the best for you.


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## Avna

@egrogan, I pm'd you.


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## egrogan

Thank you all for taking the time to respond- and commiserate :wink: 


Avna said:


> Oh I feel your pain! Having a horse that's a trial to load is just the worst. Brooke's made me cry many times over that.





knightrider said:


> I feel like crying with you. You had every reason to be disappointed, discouraged, and upset.


These messages really did make me feel a lot better, so thank you!

And, @gottatrot, BO finally helped me see this is really the case. 


gottatrot said:


> I wouldn't think you would worry about or feel bad about using another horse person's time either. Most of us have been on the other end with the difficult horse, feeling embarrassed and like we're burdening everyone else.


I got a ton of encouraging messages from R yesterday too, telling me she thought Fizz was a really nice mare who was going to do great on rides, and reassuring me that we'd figure out the best strategy for her with the trailer. She said over and over that Fizz is worth working through it and was going to be a good partner. I agree!

I had a great talk with BO yesterday morning, and we sort of came to the conclusion that the ride had just left her really wiped out, and the trailer was one thing too many that day.


gottatrot said:


> It could also just simply be that she was hot and tired, so couldn't work with you.





knightrider said:


> One thing I noticed and learned over the years. Often when a horse that is fairly inexperienced with trailering is tired, they won't load to go home. I've had it happen to me a bunch of times.


***************
UPDATE

Went out to the barn in the morning yesterday, and BO said Fizz was a bit stiff and protecting her right hind a little when she moved. She had basically stood in one spot in the field, head down, most of the night but was a little more active when she got turned out with Izzy in the morning. She was sleeping in the sun when I got there:









She was pretty clearly still exhausted- mentally and physically. Given her stiffness, we kept things simple with handwalking. We went out to a loop of the woods trail that is mostly flat, and mosied along. I cleared some brush, and she "helped" by eating everything that looked tasty :wink:








_Who doesn't love that pine-fresh flavor?!









_We ended up at the beaver pond, and stayed there for a bit as there was appealing grass and it was a beautiful view to stop and take in. The beavers have been busy so far this spring!



























The walk really seemed to perk her up. Her eyes were shining again and she was interested in everything going on around her, rather than looking so checked out. I was thrilled to see her "wake up" a bit. We spent about an hour out walking.

After we got back from the walk, I brought Izzy in and saddled her up for an easy walking ride around the fields with her friend Jimmy. Now that she's mostly shed out, you can really see how much muscle/topline she lost over the winter, so we will begin a slow process of trying to build back up some strength for her.









We found Fizz back to sunbathing when we passed their field.









After I was done with Izzy, I pulled Fizz out one more time. BO and I have decided we're going to start reteaching loading by making sure Fizz gives really well to pressure from behind and always comes forward, rather than fighting it by trying to push through it backwards. So, I put her surcingle on, and ran a lunge line through the rings behind her like a butt rope. So, the line looped back behind her and ends of the line each came forward towards me standing at her head. I stood in front of her, pulled on the end of the lines so the lunge tightened behind her across her butt, and kept that steady until she took a step forward. It took her just a few seconds to figure out the game. I pulled gently, she stepped towards me, and got lots of forehead rubs and some peppermints. Once she knew what I was asking-and that there were more peppermints coming!- I really didn't even need to pull the lines, but just take a step backwards away from her and she would take a step forward towards me. So, we're going to play this game a few more times early in the week before we even think about adding the trailer into it. But, our tentative plan is that next time we try loading, we are going to start with the butt rope in place and see where that gets us.



gottatrot said:


> My two cents are that it's true, if you can't do the mud ride there will be many others.
> But...don't give up yet. It's quite possible you'll find some little key that will be the secret for loading Fizz.


Sadly, I am not going to do the ride. This butt rope strategy might work, and I hope it does, but I don't want to rush it. If I had my own trailer, and the horses at home- or, if we had two weeks to practice instead of one week- I would do the ride. But, I have to work around BO's schedule to use her trailer, and she is taking horses out for vet appt's a couple of times this week, during times when I would be able to take a work break and go out. And, I have a major work presentation in NYC on Thursday, so will be traveling that day and doing prep at the beginning of the week. I know this isn't an issue where I can sneak out to the barn for an hour and get through a task, and finding enough time this week to "take as long as it will take" is just going to be hard because of everything else going on. I am disappointed, but I am also not going to rush Fizz and want to take our time with it. I do believe we will get through it. And feel a bit more empowered now to really figure out a strategy that will work _for her_.


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## frlsgirl

Awww poor Fizz! She did look totally checked out in that one picture. She clearly wore herself out and just couldn’t deal with the trailer. I’m glad that the actual ride was good though. I had a similar occurrence with Ana a couple of years ago after a show. It was dark and Ana just refused to step into the dark demon trailer. BO ended up getting her in with a rope across her rump.


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## Tazzie

Ugh, I feel your pain. Izzie used to be like that after we got her (they basically picked her up and tossed her on the trailer; she was a little yearling). It took us a good long while to get her successfully loading, with one bad slip up about a year later. I made standing at the trailer/attempting to get into the trailer really easy, and made her shying away from it to leave the REALLY hard option (move your feet, work, etc). I also became the one in charge of dinner (her only meal), and she was only allowed to eat while in the trailer. It changed her tune in a hurry. We also made it the cookie hut. To this day I give her a treat every time she loads as a "thank you" for making my life easier. Now it's more of a "you better not be in the way cause imma jump you!" situation.

I support your decision to not do the ride though. It's SO stressful when they decide they aren't loading when they aren't at home.

I'm glad you had a good trial run though! And hopefully Fizz isn't too sore today!


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## egrogan

People say the horse community is mean and catty, but I am so appreciative of my little horse community- both in person and virtual- after all the support I've gotten over the past few days :grin: Thanks for taking the time to comment and share your stories!

Yesterday was another perfect spring day, and Fizz was walking sound and happy to see me again, so we headed out for a ride. I warmed up w/t/c in the outdoor, just to make sure she wasn't stiff or defensive under saddle, but she seemed good to go. Since we had just cleared the beaver pond trail the day before, that's where we headed. 



















I like this trail because it's fairly straight, wide, and flat, so we trotted out and back and a nice relaxed pace. I really like how willing she is to settle in to a comfortable gait and stay there until you ask for something different, even heading for home.

When we got back from the ride, I switched out her saddle for the surcingle, and we played the butt rope game again. This time we went out to the driveway and walked all around the trailer, and she didn't even glance in its direction. Now, the doors were closed/ramp up, but I wondered if she's balk even going near it. So far, so good...


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## QueenofFrance08

We tried to take 3 horses to an arena down the road to do a little cattle sorting last night. DH's mare Stitch and my Arabian Chico are awesome at loading and never have any issues but we wanted to take Jake our newer Arab with us. We tried and tried for an hour with every method we could think of and he wouldn't get in. We were already late so we gave up and put him back out in the pasture (which I hate doing) so I completely feel your pain. We're having a trailer practice night tonight....


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## carshon

My 2 cents FWIW - as someone else said Fizz was hot and tired and the trailer ride was more then she felt physically up to do doing. And as others have said - it happens to EVERYONE - I had to leave a horse at a strangers house once. We rode my green gelding Harley on his first ever big boy ride (an organized ride) there were more horses than he had ever seen and more energy around him. We rode 3 or 4 hours - had some scary things on the trail and some naughty things and we let him eat at the trailer with our other horse Cherokee - and when we went to load - he simply refused. We tried for hours and it was after dark and I was crying and a lady there had a friend who lived a mile up the road - and we walked him there - stuck him in a heifer pen (no cows) and left him. Went the next day and with little to no urging he got right in and came home. I think you have it figured out and as she gets in better condition the thought of balancing herself in the trailer for the ride home won't be so daunting to her.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> My 2 cents FWIW - as someone else said Fizz was hot and tired and the trailer ride was more then she felt physically up to do doing. And as others have said - it happens to EVERYONE - I had to leave a horse at a strangers house once...We tried for hours and it was after dark and I was crying and a lady there had a friend who lived a mile up the road - and we walked him there - stuck him in a heifer pen (no cows) and left him. Went the next day and with little to no urging he got right in and came home.


I don't like that this happened to you @carshon (or you @QueenofFrance08!!) but appreciate the stories. We were about 10 miles from home over the rail trails, and we were only half joking that it might have been faster for me to just ride on home...

I unexpectedly had a meeting cancelled right before lunch today, so I swung by the barn quickly to see the girls. I didn't have time to do much but give them a quick brush and let them have some of the "good" grass they can't reach through the fence. Can't wait for them to be in my backyard soon so I can do that any time I want!!










Fizz being a goofball playing with her water...


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## frlsgirl

Me too. I can't wait for Ana and horse #2 to be in my back yard. At least you are buying existing property and don't have to worry about building anything from scratch. Today is 4/29/18 and DH and neighbor are working on putting up the fencing (we have lived her since 11/08/17). I didn't realize what all was involved; digging holes, pulling old posts, cementing new posts...I keep looking out the window hoping to see something that at least resembles a fence but nothing so far.

I'm glad you are making some progress regarding the trailer. Horses are weird. One day they will do something like it's no big deal and the next they will just plant their feet and say "no!" Like others have said it happens to everybody sooner or later.


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl- I have to be honest (and I feel a little guilty about this) but we're going to pay for someone to fence the first field so we can get the horses shipped up in June. We'll do fencing ourselves as we expand to include other fields, but there is SO MUCH work to do in the house that if we had to do the fencing for the main field on our own it might be winter before the horses can come home 

*************
Had a fun weekend. Saturday, I volunteered at the GMHA Mud Ride. I got to be the timer, meaning I managed when riders could leave the start and checked them in as they finished the ride (oooh the power!! :rofl. There were about 25 riders, a nice mix of rookies and experienced riders, and I met a lot of new people who I hope to see again later in the year. While I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bummed about missing the chance to do the ride with Fizz, I'm _really_ glad I still went and volunteered. It was inspiring to see so many rookies complete the ride successfully, with even bigger smiles at the end than at the start. But even with so many new riders and new horses, the start was very calm and orderly. The hottest horse going out came back looking like he could head back out for another 15 miles, but he was just eager, not uncontrollable. The GMHA community seems very friendly and welcoming and I'm looking forward to getting more involved this year.

A few pictures of the start and finish- still a bunch of snow on the ground. The ride route actually had to be changed to roads-only, because the trails still had significant ice and weren't safe. It's almost May for crying out loud!!

This one is my favorite- that's my mentor R and Flower in the middle. Two out of three horses are Morgans. Can you guess which ones?! :wink:









Fan-girl picture of Denny Emerson on Roxie and Carrie Ramsey on Cordi :wink:



























Got home in the afternoon and had enough daylight to go take Fizz out for a quick spin. We don't have any snow left at the barn, but everything is sopping wet and there's standing water in places where there typically isn't. I couldn't wait to see how she'd do with water on our own- too bad for Fizz, she proved last weekend that she has no problems crossing _real _streams, so I wasn't going to argue about our fake-stream puddles!

We got to our first big puddle right at the beginning of the trail, and she did hesitate. She started to go backwards, but I closed my legs and asked her to instead yield her hindquarters to the side so we were standing parallel to it- and, SHE DID!! I did a little victory dance in the saddle and yielded hindquarters again so we were facing the puddle again. At that point, she asked to have her head so she could reach down and touch the puddle with her nose, and that was fine with me. Then she started flapping her lips playing in the water, and took a drink (yuck, maybe shouldn't have done that in the gross standing water...). After that, she walked right across, which meant she also had to face the big old tractor tire she's spooked at in the past. We circled around the tire, and walked back through the full length of the puddle. Looped back one more time to cross it width wise again, and then we carried on. 


















This may sound silly, but I think something good happened mentally _for me_ last week going through that great off-farm ride and then immediately through all that stress with the trailer loading. Somehow it made me feel more confident than ever with Fizz. Now I know that she can be stubborn as hell but she is NOT going to be mean, violent, or dangerous. I know she needs you quiet and low key even-or maybe especially- when working on something challenging. I know she can be brave and curious. That experience, combined with my recent lessons where she's gotten a little quick at the canter but slows down easily when I can control my own tension, seem to have left me sitting just a little differently in the saddle with her on our last couple of rides. It feels like this is the beginning of our partnership.

Yesterday I had plans to ride to the beaver pond with another boarder, but it poured rain all afternoon so we just rode together in the indoor instead. Rode w/t/c and then did a little work over the poles for the first time in awhile. She tries really hard, and her whole body changes so dramatically, after going through the poles a couple of times. Other boarder was watching us and commented, "are you sure you really want to do endurance with her instead of dressage?" I guess she was looking a little fancy :grin:

Got this cute picture of her after I jumped off, so asked other boarder if she'd take a picture of the two of us together.









Of course, as soon as I stood next to her, she wouldn't put her ears forward for the picture...








...so we improvised :wink:









Isn't it weird how dark she's shedding out? She looks almost black right now. So curious to see if she'll get that golden buckskin color again later in the summer.


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## egrogan

One more picture where you can really see her coat as it looks right now


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## SueC

That last photograph of you two...priceless...get it framed!


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh how cute she is; and I guess she still needs to have fuzzy winter ears if you guys are still dealing with snow. 

What you said, about something happening mentally that increased your confidence with Fizz, I was just reading a blog post about that, let me see if I can find it again, it's about the "bubble" meaning the relationship between a human and her horse and how the bubble needs time to establish through trials and tribulations. You are working on your bubble with Fizz!


_"A horse with a history and a personality. Maybe the horse is a scraggly PMU baby with a halter grown into his head. Or maybe he’s a well-trained, bomb-proof dream horse that you spent a fortune on. It’s all the same.
Add a human with a history and a personality. It might be their first horse ever or they might be a lifetime horseperson. It’s all the same.

Something happens to the human. It could be watching a video clip or glance into a pen, but intellect and emotions collide. Money changes hands; a horse trailer abduction follows. Horses are not the sort who fall in love at first sight, especially if it means leaving their herd. As much as we wish they’d love us the way we love them, they’re prey animals. They put survival first.

Now, it’s the two of you, beginning a relationship. You each have a past, not that it matters. It’s about the present, with hopes for a future. Let’s call the relationship a bubble. In the beginning, it breaks as easily as a gust of wind or a bump on the bit. It’s fragile when you’re figuring each other out".... Reference: https://annablakeblog.com/2018/03/23/reframing-competition-as-relationship/_


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## egrogan

Fizz had a long morning working on her patience today.

The trimmer came at 9am to do their feet. She was good though a little fussy with her hind legs being stretched forward to round off her toes. She has seemed a little sensitive in her SI area ever since our trailer loading incident, and I wonder if she didn't tweak something back there with all the pulling back she was doing. 

But poor Fizz, the trimmer finished up right as her body clip was about to begin!

_Half clipped but not the happiest camper...









_Since it's been getting up into the 80s here, and she has been shedding out so slowly, she's been a hot, sweaty mess just standing in the field. She needed a little help getting all that long shaggy hair off.

Funny enough, she actually _loved _having her head and face done, and leaned in to the clippers with satisfaction as they went over her cheeks and under her jaws- must have been really itchy there. But by the time we got to her legs, she was pretty crabby and kept yanking them away. With the farrier time counted, she'd been standing in the aisle for a couple of hours. And standing still is not easy for her.

_Classic Fizz self-soothing stress reliever...big dramatic yawns....


















_But in the end, she was looking pretty slick! And she will definitely appreciate having all that hair gone.









I've never had a horse get a full body clip before. Not sure I'd do it again unless it was really necessary. But this year, with how weirdly she shed out and the fact we went from cold winter to extreme summer temps overnight, I think it was the right call. Now to see what color she turns next! :wink:

PS- I take no credit for the nice clip. It was all another boarder with a pretty serious set of clippers!


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## phantomhorse13

Fizz is such a good looking girl. I can't wait to see the dapples come out in her coat as you can just see hints of them after the clip.

I agree with @SueC that you need to get the pic of you holding her ears forward framed.


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## gottatrot

She looks very nice clipped! I hate clipping and keep thinking some year I'll have to clip Amore because of the Cushing's, but it's been years since I clipped her and the memories come back of the hot clippers, hair in every crevice of my body and all over my face itching, itching...that's when I think she's shedding out fast enough! By the end of May I think she'll be in a fairly short coat. But if we had temperatures like you I'd be forced to clip also.


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## Spanish Rider

Wow, that boarder doing the clipping is worth her weight in gold! Excellent job. Now Fizz can show off her good-lookin' shiny rump.

Believe it or not, we're still in sweaters and jackets here, so no clipping this year!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I can't wait to see the dapples come out in her coat as you can just see hints of them after the clip.


I agree, can't wait for the dapples!



gottatrot said:


> She looks very nice clipped! I hate clipping and keep thinking some year I'll have to clip Amore because of the Cushing's, but it's been years since I clipped her and the memories come back of the hot clippers, hair in every crevice of my body and all over my face itching, itching...that's when I think she's shedding out fast enough! By the end of May I think she'll be in a fairly short coat. But if we had temperatures like you I'd be forced to clip also.


I made the mistake of leaving my cup of coffee on the floor near where the clipping was happening- that was a mistake 

These temps are really odd for us- it's like having August weather in May. 

I was actually worrying a little about Cushings with her given how she was shedding. She's young enough most people would say she's outside the typical age when you start to worry about it, but her coat had all these weird long light colored hairs that just kept hanging on. She seemed to stop shedding completely for a couple of weeks in April, and then it picked up again last week. But she was still far from being done shedding.


















The vet was actually out two days ago to give Fizz the last of 3 flu/rhino shots, and we talked about pulling blood to run the ACTH test but she felt that her overall health looked good, and you could see evidence of healthy coat under the fuzzy winter one, so didn't think it was necessary. Chalk it up to Fizz moving at the end of the fall, being on a different diet than she was at the old farm, etc. 

I did get thinking though, I wonder if she was feeling a little achy from that shot and that's what made her a little touchy about her legs? One more example of why I wish they could just talk to us and tell us what's going on!



Spanish Rider said:


> Wow, that boarder doing the clipping is worth her weight in gold! Excellent job. Now Fizz can show off her good-lookin' shiny rump.


I agree, I am very thankful she did it as I would not have even attempted it! 



> Believe it or not, we're still in sweaters and jackets here, so no clipping this year!


A little jealous, I am not built for this hot and humid weather. Somehow we skipped right over pleasant 60*F days, which is pretty much my ideal weather.


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## egrogan

Dapples are coming in!









It was an absolutely beautiful day to ride yesterday. 









I hadn't ridden in about a week, so Fizz was feeling pretty fresh! We warmed up with a ride around the property with Ida and Jazz, but Ida did not want to continue on to the woods when I went out with another boarder, A.









It was a little tough with A and her gelding in the woods because he has the slow, ambling walk of a paint gelding, and Fizz is, well, a Morgan mare. I have a better appreciation now for people who say it's hard to ride a gaited horse with a quarter horse! We went down the first big hill at what seemed like a normal walk to me, but I realized we were already at the bottom while they were still at the top. I asked Fizz to stop, and she got really fussy and started backing up instead of standing, so we had to work that out. She expressed her frustration by grabbing a big evergreen branch from a tree and carrying that with us for about a mile :icon_rolleyes:









We had just gotten to the beaver pond when A told me that the pastern strap on Fizz's left boot had come undone. I hopped off to fix it, only to find that she had actually torn the strap itself (I'm guessing she stepped on it while it was flapping). I was proud of her for not freaking out about having something flapping around her foot though, I wouldn't have known it was unattached unless A mentioned it. The boots are supposed to be usable without the pastern straps, so I left the boot itself on on but took the strap itself off so it wouldn't keep dangling. Bonus points to Fizz for standing reasonably well so I could remount from a hill near the pond.

We continued on, and a mile or so down the trail A said, "uh, I think the whole boot is gone now." We had gone through several really muddy spots, and sure enough, there was no boot to be seen on the left front foot :evil: We were almost home at that point, so I decided I'd take Izzy for a handwalk through the woods for a search-and-rescue operation later.

Sure enough, we found that the boot had been a victim of a mud hole!

















Granted, it was deep, sucking mud, but I was still disappointed that the boot came off because these supposedly can withstand mud and keep going. I'm glad it happened close to home though and not somewhere else, because at least I could recover it. I do have a spare and can ride with that when we're doing longer rides, but this doesn't inspire a lot of confidence...

Izzy very helpfully ate some grass while I danced around in the mud hole trying not to lose my own boots!









_What, do I have something stuck in my teeth?









_Izzy and I also went to the beaver pond- they both love the grass down there.









Fizz wasn't the only one who was feeling fresh. Izzy got very agitated when I would ask her to stop and wait for me to clear branches out of the way while we walked the trail, and got really rude, barging her shoulder into mine and trying to go faster. So we had a little impromptu ground work session, doing lots of circling and going backwards up the hill she was insisting on trying to trot up. It took a bit of repetition- particularly backing up when she would try to knock into me to go faster- but by the time we were close to the barn she was walking nicely on a loose lead again. She definitely needs more work now that the weather is warm!

Unfortunately it's pouring rain today so probably won't do much outside. Wish we could get a couple of nice days in a row, but that hasn't happened in awhile.


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## Spanish Rider

UGH! Boot stuck in the mud - so frustrating! At least you were able to find it. Perhaps those neon orange ones aren't such a bad idea after all.

May I just say that Fizz looks absolutely goergeous after her clipping! Love the dapples. I rode many a Morgan mare growing up, and they have a special place in my heart. Question: do you ever have a good canter with her before going out in the woods?


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## SueC

@egrogan, the only sort of boot my horse hasn't lost is a Renegade. Costly initially, but first set lasted 5 years, which was excellent. Onto set two now. The real waste of money was trying less expensive, conventional boots first.


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## frlsgirl

Oh man, I really wanted the boots to work! At least Fizz didn't freak out.


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## egrogan

Got a lucky break in the weather yesterday and managed to be ready to ride just as the rain showers stopped. Fellow boarder A also wanted to go out with her gelding after finishing a lesson, so I warmed Fizz up on our own in the indoor while we waited for A to be ready to go. Fizz was acting super tense and ****y, really braced with her nose flung out and up in a way I haven't seen in several weeks now. I tried various bending and circling exercises in the ring that have worked recently in helping her relax, but no luck. I wasn't sure I even wanted to go out to the woods at all given how tense she was feeling, but she relaxed at least a little when we headed outside and met up with A.

Still, this is pretty much what I was looking at the whole ride...









And when her head wasn't up in my face, she was chomping on the bit in irritation









Not a super relaxed ride, though we did follow instead of lead this time, and even though she was a bit agitated I was not really holding her back. It was sort of like she was just resigned to the fact that she had to follow dopey dope gelding :icon_rolleyes:









Uneventful water crossings throughout the ride though. I don't want to get complacent, but I feel like we have worked through that issue pretty successfully









The ride ended on a really weird note. I've been getting off in the same place after our rides lately, so I decided I would circle around the barn once and get off in a different spot just to change things up. So A and I are ambling around the barn on the buckle, feet out of stirrups, just cooling out. Fizz and I were in front of A at this point. All of a sudden, Fizz tripped _hard_ (over what, we have no idea- it was literally the flat parking lot!) and went down on her nose/knees. I launched up onto her neck. She scrambled to try to get back up, but I was too far gone and jumped off to the side, landing on my feet with the reins in my hands  We were both totally fine; I got back on, rode around the barn again, and called it a day. But now there's a running joke at the barn that Fizz has fallen out from under me as many times as I have fallen off her! I don't really know what happened though, if she was just not paying attention or what. I have noticed her tripping more on her front left foot lately (this also happened while I was out riding with my mentor, and I chalked it up to the first long ride with the boots on) but she's not visibly lame and her feet were just trimmed. Something to keep an eye on I guess.

Once I turned her out, I realized she's in heat (watching her stand at the fenceline winking and peeing at her neighbor clued me in :wink. She wasn't really showing any other obvious signs, but it makes sense that she was a little tense and braced if she was feeling bad from heat. Had been planning to go ride after work tonight, but I'll play it by ear based on how she's feeling. I really don't like riding them when they are obviously uncomfortable from being in heat.










*******************


SueC said:


> @*egrogan* , the only sort of boot my horse hasn't lost is a Renegade. Costly initially, but first set lasted 5 years, which was excellent. Onto set two now. The real waste of money was trying less expensive, conventional boots first.





frlsgirl said:


> Oh man, I really wanted the boots to work! At least Fizz didn't freak out.


The thing is, these Scoot Boots are just as expensive and highly recommended as the Renegades! Am hoping it was just a fluke, as I really wanted them to work too @frlsgirl! We'll be trying them again. At the least, I think they will be very helpful for training rides on the dirt roads, which can get quite hard outside of mud season.



Spanish Rider said:


> Question: do you ever have a good canter with her before going out in the woods?


It depends on the day. Sometimes we do some schooling work in the arena first and will do w/t/c. There's not a lot of wide open space here to let her have a nice canter outside of the ring (I miss the old hay fields Izzy and I had at our old boarding barn) so we're a bit limited in that respect. Counting down until we get to the new property though, because we'll have lots of open space again!


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## phantomhorse13

Glad to hear your previous life in the circus is coming in handy for unexpected dismounts!

I wonder if she just wasn't paying attention and tripped over her own feet or if being in heat may have anything to do with that. Some mares act distracted and/or may move stiffly as they react to follicles, etc. Maybe something to mark on your calendar and see if you find a pattern during her heats. Hoping it was just a one time freak thing though.


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## carshon

@egrogan I want to comment on the long hair that will not shed, I purchased Tillie in Aug of 2016 we had a fairly mild winter that year and she looked horrible in the spring - long guard hairs that hung around with a super shiny under coat. Her mane and tail were frizzy and a bleached out red. I just thought that was her. This spring Tillie has shed out beautifully - no long guard hairs sticking around and her mane and tail have lost a lot of the frizz and are soft to the touch. I think that a mineral deficiency probably caused the hair issues I was seeing last year - and a year of good feed and a balanced grain diet have helped tons. I just want to add - Tillie was not starved she was in a pasture with 20 other horses and had round bales in the winter - no grain and no minerals. 

Your girls look great - and I am glad that your unexpected dismount was uneventful.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> It was sort of like she was just resigned to the fact that she had to follow dopey dope gelding :icon_rolleyes:


Sounds like you had quite a gymnastic dismount. 
Halla would sometimes get so furious if we had to go out with certain geldings. She thought some were too "dopey dope" to be tolerated. They just wouldn't always pick up on her signals and body language, or notice that she was so much more important than they were.

I hope the boots will stay on better and work for you. We've had some luck if the fit isn't just perfect with doing a couple quick wraps around the hoof with vet wrap before putting boots on. It can help if one hoof is steeper than the boot front wall and doesn't sit flush. 
You can also try inserting some type of soft padding (even a small wad of vet wrap) in between the front of the boot toe and hoof wall to snug up the fit.


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## QueenofFrance08

Ugh sorry your boots aren't working! 

We gave the Renegades a true test this weekend on Chico at the 12 mile novice ride. Not too much mud but a lot of sand with trotting and cantering and they stayed on great! If you keep having problems with the Scoots it seems like people seem to sell them easily for close to purchase price on the book of faces and then you can give a different brand a shot...


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## egrogan

My ride last night didn't happen because of some work drama, so I opted for a pre-work ride this morning. I truly can't imagine more gorgeous weather. Not a cloud in a robin's egg blue sky. 

It's spring turkey hunting season here, and there was a bit of a conflict over the weekend with BO finding people illegally hunting on her trails (they already had turkeys bagged when she confronted them) so I pulled out all our orange gear and blasted Vivaldi from my phone as we headed out. 

Fizz and I went out on our own, and it was nice to be able to move at our own pace. Ears were up and she was enjoying herself.


















She definitely needs more schooling on moving in a balanced way downhill. She's like a slippery eel underneath me when we do the long, steeper descents. We're only walking now as I think it would be borderline dangerous trying to add any more speed than that. We went farther along the beaver pond trail than we've been before, which includes a narrow, rocky downhill portion. She ran me through some underbrush when she scooted to the side at the last minute to avoid some of the rocks, so I tried to focus on keeping myself as balanced and centered as I could to insist she went straight instead of weaving side-to-side. I'd love to hear any training advice on helping her figure out a steadier, straighter approach because she is struggling now.










Unfortunately the pond trail dead-ends, so we turned back when we hit the end. We trotted most of the way home, which is lots of uphill twists and turns, and that was the best workout either of us have had a in a couple of weeks :wink: It was a great ride all in all, hoping to repeat tomorrow morning.


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## carshon

Downhills are hard until she learns to use her hind end. We have always taught our horses this by over exaggerating our seat and leaning back. Seems to help them dig in with the back end free up the front end.


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## Spanish Rider

Addressing the trespassing issue, I don't know about NH laws, but in Maine the property owner is responsible for putting up signs, I think it was every 50 ft or so. Totally ridiculous. One year my aunt and uncle had signs put up, and the next time we went to the property they were all shot up. So now we have dozens of trees with bullets lodged in them, some close to our house. Lovely.

Has she always had problems with going downhill, or since the boots? How does she carry her head - high or low?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Addressing the trespassing issue, I don't know about NH laws, but in Maine the property owner is responsible for putting up signs, I think it was every 50 ft or so. Totally ridiculous. One year my aunt and uncle had signs put up, and the next time we went to the property they were all shot up. So now we have dozens of trees with bullets lodged in them, some close to our house. Lovely.


It's similar here, they might even need to be closer together than that. And last time she took the time to post, someone came around the next weekend and pulled them all down. Seriously. She has a 100acre property and she couldn't take the time to do it again.



Spanish Rider said:


> Has she always had problems with going downhill, or since the boots?


It's not just with the boots on (no boots on today for example). I don't know that I've ridden her enough on varied terrain to know if she's always had problems, but definitely since we've been back out in the woods this spring. I don't recall her feeling so unsteady in the fall but I'm truly not sure. 



Spanish Rider said:


> How does she carry her head - high or low?


Well- she is a Morgan :wink: Compared to a stock horse, I'd say she carries her head high. But in a normal, relaxed stride, I'd say she's not a high headed horse. Not sure if I can find a picture of her in motion under saddle on the trail.


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## knightrider

Recently, I started putting a book I wrote on the Horse Forum in "Horse Stories and Poems" which brought back a lot of memories about Morgans.

I just adore Morgans, and get such a kick out of your journal and @frlsgirl journal (so glad she's back!!!!). I haven't thought about Morgans and my experiences with Morgans for many years. I got this little unbroken 4 year old appaloosa many years ago, and was always certain she was a Morgan with some appie in her for the color.

I was in a circumstance where I had to break and train her way too fast, and now that I have been reading on the Horse Forum, I am guessing that I probably "shut her down" and messed her up by pushing her training so fast. You live and learn. I've never had to rush a horse's training before or since, and wouldn't have then, but I had no choice. That "overfacing" a horse and "shutting them down" is a really interesting concept to me. It suddenly explains a lot of her weird behaviors while we were starting her.

I had 3 Morgan studs all picked out to narrow down one to breed my appie to, when we got the call to adopt a newborn baby . . . and then along came his sister . . . so my pretty appie/Morgan(?) died a maiden mare.

My jousting partner had a half Morgan, half quarter horse, but his personality was ALL Morgan. That horse was full of himself, full of fire and zest and zip and never a mean bone in his body. My friend called him "The Pegasus in the Plain Brown Wrapper."

Here are some pictures of our "Morgans." Do you think they look like Morgans, or is it just my wishful thinking?


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## Spanish Rider

Oh, shoot. I can't find the message I was responding to, but it has nothing to do with this! Ack! Sorry! Sometimes HF loads random messages on me. I should start looking at the dates before responding...

Going back to the head high vs low, I did not mean conformationally, I meant when going downhill. Does she alter her head carriage, and which way?


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## Avna

All I can say is, when I work a horse through a difficult trail thing of any type, I want them to think about every step. So we go one step at a time. I never let my horse rush through something to get it over with, not on the trail. I talk the whole time with my voice, my body, and the reins -- easy does it, steady, steady, okay lets just stand here for a count of one, two, okay let's take a few more steps... having control of both ends really helps!

I'm very lucky that Brooke spent her youth in a steep rocky pasture, and knew how to negotiate hills before she ever was started. A lot of flatland horses have to learn under saddle, and that can't be easy.


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## SueC

Love those photos, @*knightrider* ! 

Is the guy who's being jumped over in a Ned Kelly costume??? (famous Australian bushranger)


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## egrogan

Another beautiful morning yesterday so I was able to arrange my schedule to take advantage of it.

Izzy eagerly came over when I walked out to their field, and was pretty clear about her opinion that she should get to come in for some attention. 








The black flies are awful and she had a whole swarm embedded on her chest, poor girl. I spent a good amount of time grooming to work through the last of the winter coat, and gave her good scratches over all the itchy bug bites. 

_Begging for carrots :grin:









_Fizz was up next. I forgot that the benefit of a clipped horse is that they barely need any grooming, so we were able to get ready quickly and head right out.

I tried to pay really careful attention to how she was navigating the downhills. What I realized is the spots where she felt like she was bobbing and weaving the most are places where there is pretty deep mud with lots of rocks. So I think it is partially an issue of bad footing. On hills with decent footing, I found that we were keeping a fairly straight path. She doesn't rush or try to break into a trot, so I don't feel that it's an issue with getting out of control. She does trip on rocks a lot, and I think that is because she's paying attention to everything all around her and not necessarily where her feet are- which is still obviously not a good thing. I guess it's just a work in progress.



























********** 
@*knightrider* - really cute little Appy. In my mind, all Morgans should look like little stocky bay things, so I'm not sure if I see it in your old mare or not. But she does have a very intelligent, interested look on her face, which to me is also classic Morgan!


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## knightrider

> Is the guy who's being jumped over in a Ned Kelly costume??? (famous Australian bushranger)


Nah, he's just dressed in a tunic, for under his armor. I do believe the man being jumped is "Frolf" in the story Knights in Shining Armor.


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## egrogan

We had a great lesson last night. It had been a couple of weeks since life is so crazy right now, so I was very glad to get back into it. BO asked what I wanted to work on, so we talked about the unbalanced issues going downhill and the tripping. So we decided to focus on really getting a good response to asking her to move one hind leg/hip or the other, which is not something I really have right now. She will pretend to leg yield away when asked, but really she just drops her outside shoulder and drags across with her front end. So, we did a lot of work asking her to just take a couple of steps under with each hind, me in the saddle and BO on the ground. Fizz was not thrilled, but we eventually got there. And then worked on doing that on a circle at walk and trot. I am sad I didn't have a video as she had a beautiful, engaged trot, not leaning on my hands at all and really carrying herself. At that point, BO said, "now I really want you to feel how different the canter is after all that- but am going to warn you that you've bottled up all this power and it may come out a little...explosively...when you ask for canter." :grin: And she was right, when I asked Fizz to canter she jumped in enthusiastically. But it wasn't wild or out of control. It was big, for sure, but in some ways it was almost easier to ride because there was so much horse right there with me, rather than the sort of disjointed up and down that I sometimes get. It was a really cool feeling. BO said that last night was the best she's ever seen her moving. That felt like a big compliment!

We headed out to the trails to cool out, and I really tried to focus on not letting her rush down the hills and think through the placement of each hind foot. She was tired but I could tell she was trying to respond. It seemed like a good start, at least I have a clearer sense of what I need to be doing to help her.









Even just watching her in the aisle while we were getting ready, I was feeling proud of how far she's come since I've had her. When she first got to the barn, she was nervous and antsy in the aisle, always dancing from side to side and craning her neck to see other horses behind her or outside. There were days when I wondered if I could get her standing still long enough to tack her up, and many that I had to stop tacking up mid-way and go do some groundwork in the arena to settle her mind. But these days, she's more relaxed in the barn, and I don't always tie her up. We still do groundwork, but not because she's freaking out.









I know that she (and Izzy for that matter) are going to go through an adjustment period with the move, and we may have to start over on building confidence and comfort. But I know what is possible now, and how to work through it. All feels really good!


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## SueC

It's actually really great that your two mares are already paddock buddies and have known each other a while. It will make the move far less stressful for them - and probably cement their relationship!  "Izzy and Fizzy vs The Big Wide World!"


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## knightrider

I believe you are thinking of getting a third horse to keep company for the one not going out? I should warn you that is a slippery slope. You may meet a new friend who is a good rider but has no horse, so the two of you start to have a lot of fun riding out together . . . and the third horse left back is not happy . . . so you get a 4th horse . . . but the friend knows another friend who loves to ride . . . and so . . . 

Also, although I have 4 horses, when leaving Chorro back, he still screams and paces even if he has two horses to keep him company. He's herd boss and he knows one of his herd is gone . . . even if it is one he hates . . . he knows its gone and he wants it back where it belongs.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> I believe you are thinking of getting a third horse to keep company for the one not going out? I should warn you that is a slippery slope. You may meet a new friend who is a good rider but has no horse, so the two of you start to have a lot of fun riding out together . . . and the third horse left back is not happy . . . so you get a 4th horse . . . but the friend knows another friend who loves to ride . . . and so . . .


:rofl:

I don't know @knightrider, I might need to ask to have this post deleted so my husband doesn't know what schemes I'm cooking up!!

Seriously though, I have been trying to limit my search right now to a true companion horse that is free or very low cost. I've been offered a couple of geldings, but Izzy has lived in a mixed herd before and turned into a little hussy with the boys around. In my ideal world, I will find a retired broodmare or an outgrown kids show mare who just needs a soft pasture to land in. And ideally it would be a Morgan, which makes things slightly more complicated. I thought I had found the perfect addition- a 24 year old Morgan mare who loved trails and whose owner was frantic about what to do with her because of some unexpected financial difficulties- but the owner (understandably) wanted her to go somewhere closer to where she currently lives. I've been talking with Fizz's breeders and they have a couple of mares in mind that they would consider retiring with us, so that sounds promising.

My husband keeps telling me not to think about how many horses could fit on the pasture (a lot!) but how many horses I can reasonably take care of and expect him to take care of when I'm traveling (not a lot! :wink. And that is perfectly good advice I think!


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## SueC

@knightrider: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

On a more serious note, if such a situation should arise, the retiree could always be ponied for some retirement fun. Or @egrogan's DH may get those donkeys... ;-)


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## egrogan

Yesterday was a fun adventure- my lovely husband and I went to see @Avna's new farm and meet her husband, her dogs, and her horses!! The day was unseasonably cold and drizzly, but the farm is beautiful and quintessentially New England. Not going to lie, her barn and pasture setup is to die for. And Brooke and Pippa...even a little wet, they were bright and curious- and _very _motivated by cookies! :wink: 



















Not sure what Brooke and my husband were discussing, but I'm guessing "more cookies" had something to do with it!








We had a wonderful visit and really enjoyed meeting everyone.

Today we really buckled down and have been packing, which is no fun. Even though the ultimate outcome is extremely exciting, it's still a real pain putting everything in boxes, knowing you're going to have to spend at least as much time taking it all right back _out _of the boxes in a couple of weeks. Oh well, we will get through it!

Yesterday's rain was nowhere to be seen (have been thinking about how nice @phantomhorse13 will have it for the VT ride today) so I couldn't resist at least a quick ride. I spent the early morning packing, and then met A at the barn for a quick ride to the pond with her. 

Fizz and I did a little ring work warming up, and practiced some of our hind leg yields from the ground and the saddle. We had a lovely canter to the R- maybe the nicest we've had without BO in a lesson, which felt really great! Out we went to the pond- and, I thought very carefully about how she was placing each foot going downhill, and that felt much better than normal as well. She took a very slow and steady approach, and we generally stayed straight, vs bouncing from side to side of the trail. Was proud of her. 

She enjoyed a quick nibble by the water...









...and then we turned back...









We did need to ask to retake the lead though as her walk is just too big to be behind our old man friend. She wasn't rushing, but she really couldn't help but creep up on him even when she was listening very politely.

The barn was really crowded when we got back from our ride, so I headed out to the pasture to brush the girls up and re-apply fly spray (black flies are awful). My lovely husband thinks horse noses are the funniest thing about them, so the carrots in my pocket helped me create a little ode to noses for him :grin:









Alright, break time's over...back to the boxes...


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## Spanish Rider

*egrogan,* so, it's really happening? You're really moving? I must have missed the final "sold" news, and I was afraid to ask. How exciting! Congratulations. Yes, the boxes are a pain, but at least you'll be able to leave your winter things in boxes until next October. 

So, when is the big moving day?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> *egrogan,* so, it's really happening? You're really moving? I must have missed the final "sold" news, and I was afraid to ask. How exciting! Congratulations. Yes, the boxes are a pain, but at least you'll be able to leave your winter things in boxes until next October.
> 
> So, when is the big moving day?


It’s really happening!

I took the week of 5/21 off from work, so we’ll do a lot of moving ourselves that week, with movers coming for the big furniture. Horses will come in mid-June.


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## egrogan

My endurance mentor R got me connected with a local trainer who has had success teaching difficult horses to load. She is available to work with us over the next couple of weeks, and will be able to trailer the girls home in mid-June. I'm very excited to have someone working with us and a chance to practice in the same trailer they will actually travel in. This is a pretty big relief as I've been feeling very stressed out about how to tackle this problem without having my own trailer.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Seriously though, I have been trying to limit my search right now to a true companion horse that is free or very low cost.


There was someone at the ride looking to rehome a teenage mare (pretty sure morgan but not positive as I was only partly hearing the convo). I am not sure if that is re-home like no cost or what, but if you are interested I can ask the friend who was listening and get you the details..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> There was someone at the ride looking to rehome a teenage mare (pretty sure morgan but not positive as I was only partly hearing the convo). I am not sure if that is re-home like no cost or what, but if you are interested I can ask the friend who was listening and get you the details..


Sure, I'd love more details. Still nothing concrete decided yet so I'm following leads as I get them.


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## SueC

Dear @egrogan, I've got a few more nose odes for your collection! 

This is Chasseur's nose:




This is Romeo's, he's the ancient horse who is allowed in the garden and therefore comes to the windows to get our attention:




This is Sparkle and her prize nose:








And these are the other donkey noses:



We think noses are funny too!


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## egrogan

Wow- what a whirlwind few days it's been. But....it's official, we bought the house on Friday! 

We spent the weekend going back and forth getting things moved. Friday was beautiful; unfortunately the rest of the weekend was cool and rainy, but nothing was going to dampen our spirits!

This was the first time I actually got to walk some of the pasture without SNOW! :grin:









The girls are going to love all this space. It's pretty clear the pasture hasn't been cared for in awhile, so it's not looking to be great quality, but we'll work on restoration as the year goes on.









The apple trees are just starting to bloom...can't wait to see what they end up producing.









The barn will need some TLC too but it's there in a pinch. 









There are six stalls. One's currently set up as a workshop type space. Two have dirt floors, but the other three have this old wood floor which would need to go before any horses are on it.









We lucked into a great local handyman and he's helping jumpstart some quick renovations to the back of the barn to convert an old woodshed into a coop and run for my chickens. 

Found some fun stuff as we were moving boxes. I had forgotten that when my parents downsized a few years ago, they dropped off six bins full of my old childhood Breyer horses- not sure what in the world to do with those!









And this cool poster was left behind by the old owners:









There's a ton of work to do inside and out, but we're ready to dive in. It's going to be worth it!! 

P.S.


phantomhorse13 said:


> There was someone at the ride looking to rehome a teenage mare (pretty sure morgan but not positive as I was only partly hearing the convo). I am not sure if that is re-home like no cost or what, but if you are interested I can ask the friend who was listening and get you the details...


This is reason number one million that I love Horse Forum- this lead was exactly what I needed. I got connected with this woman over the weekend and she did indeed have two horses that she's rehoming.
:loveshower: 
Horse #3 should be coming home in mid-June. We're going to be giving a home to Maggie, who is 22 and a semi-retired endurance mare. The younger mare actually could be Fizz's long-lost sister (not in looks, but in temperament/attitude) and it wouldn't be fair to take on another horse that needs confidence-building miles and riding every day. I'm very excited for Maggie to join the herd though, she may very well be _my _confidence building ride at an LD or two later this year as Fizz and I continue to get ready. While she's a little older, she's still very much rideable and loves being out on the trails, but is not quite as competitive as she was in her younger days.


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## SueC

Well, that's all fantastic news, @*egrogan* ! Love the photos of your new domain. How great is that? I'm sure it's actually going to feel like home really quickly, like next week! 

We bought an empty 12.5 hectare cow paddock back in 2010 plus 50 hectares of bushland conservation area; at one point in 2013 we lived in a caravan while getting one bedroom in the house we were building habitable:


Donkey and the Caravan - Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr

We used to wake up in the night when the donkeys were rubbing themselves on the caravan axle! :rofl:

These days it's not a bare cow paddock anymore:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/redmoonsanctuary

I've used a few bottles of hair dye in the interim! ;-)


Your new place really looks fabulous - so much potential to do all sorts of things too. And it's not a hardship to do a bit of renovating when there is so much character and history in the buildings! 

Wishing you lots of joy and satisfaction at your new home! :happydance:


May the road rise to meet you, 
may the wind be ever at your back. 
May the sun shine warm upon your face, 
and the rains fall soft upon your fields. 

May those who love us, love us;
And for those who don't love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if he doesn't turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles, 
So we will know them by their walking! ​


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## frlsgirl

I’m so happy for you @egrogan. I wish we would have bought existing house and barn instead of building. 

And yay for no more snow!


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## Avna

Wowzer you guys move FAST.

It took us four months to get ourselves out of our house. And it just about kilt us, too. 

Congrats on your new third horse! I will mention that Pippa the Pony went with us (Brookie & me and 2 new friends on horseback) trail riding -- loose! She did great! Like a dog, pretty much. The ladies I was with, who live 15 minutes down the road, had been to your place! They do GMHA rides a lot. You'd like them -- one has a Canadian and the other, a Dales Pony. 

If you are organizing a work party at any point, please count me in (my husband is worth more than me in that regard but I'm happy to do my bit)


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## gottatrot

Your new property looks beautiful!
It's great you're getting a third horse too, and she sounds perfect.

You've got to keep your Breyer horses, you should have space with all that acreage, right? LOL. I've never been able to part with mine, they are on display in my tack room in the house. 
Hopefully you'll have a great tack room in the barn, and maybe one in the house too. It's nice to have a warm place to clean tack and keep things less dusty.


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> You've got to keep your Breyer horses, you should have space with all that acreage, right?



:rofl:

And more than enough feed too! ;-)


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## Spanish Rider

:loveshower:This is so awesome! Love the pics - so happy for you!:loveshower:

Please post more photos so we can better appreciate the "before" and all your hard work before the "after".

Oooooooh! Work party, work party, work party!!! I just bought my tickets for this summer, so I will be in New England the months of July and August. While I cannot do heavy lifting anymore, my skill-set includes painting, sewing, cleaning and gardening. Count me in!

It must be such a great feeling to have found an experienced mare that meets your needs so well, while being able to provide loving care for a horse who needs a new home. It's a win-win! Looking forward to seeing photos of Maggie, too.

BTW, how is the loading training going?


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## Tazzie

So much wonderful news in one post!! AHH! I can't wait to see more pictures of your little slice of heaven, and to meet Maggie! How awesome!

If we were closer I'd definitely be volunteering to join a work party! Just a bit far :lol:


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## phantomhorse13

Could not be more pleased for you!! :loveshower:


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## carshon

Yeah! Wish I were closer for the work party! What an awesome barn and wonderful news on a third horse!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Your new place really looks fabulous - so much potential to do all sorts of things too. And it's not a hardship to do a bit of renovating when there is so much character and history in the buildings!


Yes, there are some really beautiful features...


















And some extremely tragic ones too! :wink:











frlsgirl said:


> I’m so happy for you @*egrogan* . I wish we would have bought existing house and barn instead of building.


Still feel that way after looking at my horrific kitchen!? :wink: Kidding, kidding. I know you all have been doing a ton of work for months and months on your property!



Spanish Rider said:


> Please post more photos so we can better appreciate the "before" and all your hard work before the "after".


I keep telling myself, there's really no place to go but up with most of the decor in the house!



Avna said:


> Wowzer you guys move FAST.


We certainly never expected our NH house would sell as fast as it did, so we don't have much choice! But at least we have a couple of weeks of cushion to clear out!



Avna said:


> Congrats on your new third horse! I will mention that Pippa the Pony went with us (Brookie & me and 2 new friends on horseback) trail riding -- loose! She did great! Like a dog, pretty much. The ladies I was with, who live 15 minutes down the road, had been to your place! They do GMHA rides a lot. You'd like them -- one has a Canadian and the other, a Dales Pony.


I love that story about Pippa! And, how funny, what a small world! You and your new riding buddies are welcome to come check out the trails any time. I found out from BO this morning that her mare that she just put to sleep last year was sired by a stallion who used to live here when it was still a horse farm (previous owners). Seems like lots of people have a connection to this place, it's really cool to be the next caretaker!



Tazzie said:


> AHH! I can't wait to see more pictures of your little slice of heaven, and to meet Maggie! How awesome!





Spanish Rider said:


> It must be such a great feeling to have found an experienced mare that meets your needs so well, while being able to provide loving care for a horse who needs a new home. It's a win-win! Looking forward to seeing photos of Maggie, too.


Hoping to bring my lovely husband to meet Maggie this coming Sunday or Monday. It's important that he feels comfortable with her too. But, assuming all goes well with him, I will post lots of pictures once it's official! 



gottatrot said:


> You've got to keep your Breyer horses, you should have space with all that acreage, right? LOL. I've never been able to part with mine, they are on display in my tack room in the house.
> Hopefully you'll have a great tack room in the barn, and maybe one in the house too. It's nice to have a warm place to clean tack and keep things less dusty.


My parents will get a kick out of this, I will be sure to tell them! It seems so silly, I thought I'd just put them all up on eBay or something, and then I started looking at them and I had all these memories...so how can I part with Greyspot, Hank, and the gang?! 

All of you are very sweet with your nice thoughts and offers of joining a work party. There is no shortage of wallpaper to strip and walls to paint, but it's sure going to be hard to be inside when there's so much exploring to do outside. So, I'll just reiterate that if any of you find yourselves passing through Central VT, _please _look me up! I'd love to show you around- no painting or other hard labor required!

***************


Spanish Rider said:


> How's the trailer training coming?


We actually have the trainer coming first thing tomorrow morning. I can't wait to see how it goes, but it's also a relief to have no time limits and nowhere to go, so we will take it slow and see what happens.

SO-I hadn't seen the girls for a full week, that might be the longest I've gone without being at the barn in months. Last week was just so crazy at work, as I've taken this whole week off for moving and doing various things at the house (waiting on the cable guy right now...)

But, I went to the barn early this morning as I really needed some horse time. 

Fizzle was deep into her morning beauty rest...








...And just as I was telling her how cute and adorable she was, THE DRAGON STRUCK FROM BEHIND ME...









I lost some real street cred as herd protector on that one, and apologized profusely to Fizz!









I took her for a nice handwalk down the road just to make sure she remembered how to lead and wasn't going to be feral tomorrow when the trainer showed up!

We did some public service, mowing down the overgrowth on the side of the road :wink:


















She wasn't quite sure what to make of hearing "the egg song" coming from a neighbor's coop- but she'll sure get used to it fast once everyone gets here!









Izzy can be a jerk, but you can't stay mad at this face for long. 









Took her in to get the last of her winter coat brushed off (hooray!) and let her handgraze a bit too. 

I didn't have a ton of time to hang out as I had to get on the road, but it was just the stress reliever I needed.


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## egrogan

Trailer training adventures today. I met the trainer, M, in person for the first time today and really liked her. She had a very calm, patient demeanor with the horses and they responded well to her.

Her loading strategy is the "lunge if you decide not to get on, rest and chow down once you're on" version of trailer training. It does give the horse choice- if you chose to go backwards or step off the side of the ramp or plant your feet, ok, you don't have to get on right then, but you do have to work on the circle. So isn't it better to just get on and dive into some hay?

Fizz was skeptical at first









And her first refusal was not surprising...though my heart sank a little at this point, as I thought "here we go again..."









After about 10 minutes we graduated to front feet on the ramp, but then she went backwards 









So we did some lunging, some steps on the ramp, some lunging, etc. After about 45 minutes total, up she went :happydance:









Then we spent another half hour or so getting off and on, putting up the butt bar, getting off, getting on, putting up butt bar AND the ramp, getting off, getting on, repeat repeat. Once she realized she had multiple hay bags to herself on there, she was pretty eager to get back on. :wink: 








Best of all, she stayed calm, relaxed, and eyes soft the whole time, even when she was lunged.

Since the morning session went pretty well, we decided to put her back out in the field for a break. I thought it might be a good idea to just pop Izzy on and off a couple of times to remind her what it was all about. 

What's that phrase? Expect the unexpected?

Izzy had been easy peasy when we moved from our old boarding barn- she walked right up the ramp with just the wave of an arm behind her when she hesitated slightly. Today, she had a different opinion about the whole thing!









So our "refresher" suddenly turned into an hour of "re-education." She was pretty terrible and needed far more lunging than Fizz did. She kept trying to jump off the side of the ramp and "hide" on the off side of the trailer. 








She was a sweaty mess an hour later when we finally got her on, and she was very nervous about the butt bar and ramp being up. She finally went off and on a few times, but was NOT happy about it. So much for my "old reliable" being the easy one!









She went back out to the field for a break of her own, and we brought Fizz over for Round 2 - and she walked right up the ramp, first try, no hesitation :grin: Very proud of her.









Put her back out, grabbed Izzy, and she also did walk up without hesitating and got lots of mints and praise once she was on there. So hopefully THAT is out of her system and when moving day (last week of June) gets here, she'll be ok. 

Always an adventure with horses, right?!


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## Tazzie

We did the lunge/work method when my Izzie had opinions about getting on. Only new trailers she'll hesitate with now, and it's typically only an "are you sure it's safe??" question. I'm glad you decided to work with both of them! That could have been a nightmare come moving day!! And SO glad they both did well after their break!!


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## Spanish Rider

I'm sure that whole process was exhausting, but you must be so happy to have had such great results!

Questions: did you try loading both together? is that the trailer you'll be using for the move?

As for the new property pics, I love that little outbuilding with the sliding door. I am assuming that, with such low windows, it is not the barn. And that is such a typical old New England kitchen - just like my grandmother's. With a good sanding, paint and new linoleum, it will be fab! Real wood cabinets are nothing to snigger at.


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## knightrider

It sure seems like the mares were talking to each other. Fizz told Izz how scary trailers are and made her lose her nerve.


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## gottatrot

I bet if they will load separately it will be super easy to get them to load together. They'll take comfort in having each other during the trip, and that will probably make things even easier the next time.

Fizz is getting even more beautiful under your good care.


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## phantomhorse13

So smart to work with Izzy, too! Hopefully one less surprise on moving day now.


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## egrogan

Have managed to get in a couple of short rides the past two days, which has been a nice break from packing boxes and trips between the two houses. But, the weather has been beautiful so it was hard to stay away from the barn :grin:









Yesterday I met up with my riding buddy Ida and we went out to the beaver pond. Fizz was a little barn sour riding away from the fields and into the woods, so had to deal with her wanting to bulge out her shoulder and drag back in the direction of the barn. A lot of leg and flexion kept us (mostly) on track. She marched down the hill quickly, and I realized we were pretty far out in front of Ida and Jazz, so I asked Fizz to stand and wait. After a few seconds, she grew impatient, and then did the same spin towards home maneuver she did when we stopped in the same place a few weeks ago to wait for A and her gelding. So, this is becoming a "thing" that I'm going to need to address- standing and waiting doesn't mean the ride is over and we spin for home. 

We got that worked out though and headed on our way. 









As we passed the pond, Ida asked to go into the lead. 









Wouldn't you know it, we had only gone a few steps when a deer went bolting across the trail in front of us. Jazz startled but mostly in place, and Fizz did a bit of a spin but didn't bolt. With my reins in my left hand and the phone in my right hand, this is the picture I apparently took mid-spin...









...but I managed to hold on to the phone! I guess my seat is a little stickier than I thought!  PSA friends: keep both hands on the wheel while riding around wildlife!

The horses stayed a little "up" after that, but we did continue on the loop we had originally planned to take. I was proud of Ida, she's been a little nervous about riding in the woods lately because of just this situation (Jazz was spooked by a deer a year ago when Ida was riding alone, and they did have a spin and bolt that rattled her), but she continued on in the lead and didn't seem very worried. I'm glad we were riding together when it happened.

Will be a couple of days until I'm able to ride again; I'm fidgety waiting for the movers to get here and will be unpacking all weekend. We'll be moving the chickens up tomorrow morning which will be interesting. Our plan is to grab them off the roosts around 4am and load them into dog crates to transfer them to their new digs. What could go wrong?! :wink:


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## bsms

FWIW, neither Mia before nor Bandit now has ever learned to stand patiently waiting for the other horses to catch up. I might get 10" of standing. Then a lot of fussing. So we do figure 8s while waiting. Or we play, "Let's go find Cowboy".

Mia, years ago, after waiting patiently for 5 seconds, giving her "_Are you FINALLY catching up?_" look". About a half-second later, she decided to start striding down the trail. Long strides. Princesses do NOT wait on commoners!








​


----------



## egrogan

We are all moved in to the new house! Well...that might be a bit of an overstatement. All of our _stuff_ is moved in to the new house, but where any particular item might be right now, I probably couldn't tell you :wink:

It was a long, rainy weekend, but everything actually went very smoothly. I had been very worried for weeks now about moving the chickens, but that actually went off without a hitch. Because chickens don't see well in the dark, and are very groggy while on their roosts overnight, the recommendation if you have to move a flock is that you grab them when it's still dark out as they're pretty placid then. So, we got up at 4:30am on Sunday and I moved them one-by-one from the roost into a few of those big metal dog crates. The mean alpha hen had to ride alone so she didn't bother anyone. 









But I couldn't believe how content they were on the drive up. They all just sat peacefully in the straw and looked out the windows. It was very cute. They are adjusting really well to their new home, and already loving ranging around their space.



























It felt like another big milestone to finally bring the dogs up. 










They are also loving all the wide open fields - I don't think our younger dog's tail has stopped wagging since we got here. 

Saturday morning we met with a guy who's going to help us get ~6 acres fenced for the horses, which was very exciting! Getting all the supplies ordered today and he'll be back in a couple of weeks. 

Yesterday morning, we went to meet Maggie :grin: My lovely husband led her around a little and she was very sweet for him, even when she was a little impatient that he was giving her conflicting signals about whether or not she could eat grass. 









She's a cute little horse and it will be good to have an extra horse around for people to ride when they visit...though now I need to go shopping for a Bob Marshall saddle, apparently that's the only thing her owner has found that fits her. Don't tell my husband this "free" horse is going to cost a saddle :wink: She'll be coming as an indefinite free lease, which is nice as her owner has had her for nearly 20 years and is obviously quite attached- she lives only 30 minutes away so there will be opportunities for her to visit if she wants. She's paying off student loans and has a young horse that needs her attention, so this really does feel like it's going to be a win-win situation for all of us. 

Yesterday I was unloading groceries and I heard the unmistakable "clip clop" of hooves coming down the road. I looked out and saw two lovely bay horses heading by. I had to stop myself from running outside like a little kid and asking if I could pet the pretty horses. inkunicorn: Don't worry, I resisted embarrassing myself (and spooking the horses).

A little while later, a flash of white ran past the front door and I looked outside to see a Jack Russell tearing around the yard. I went outside with a leash, thinking a dog was loose, but he went running up the street to a woman with a beautiful Haflinger all hitched to a fancy cart. They had stopped to talk to my husband, who was unloading stuff from his truck, and the dog belonged to them. Turns out they live a street over and she does a lot of training drives with her young mare on our road. She very kindly offered to find some time to introduce Isabel and Fizz to the cart so they don't get freaked out if we see them while we're out riding. 

I feel like I've landed in horsey paradise, I still can't quite believe it! This made us laugh on the way to see Maggie.









I am really missing Izzy and Fizz, but the next month is going to fly by, and then they'll be here. I will probably be limited to riding on the weekends for the next few weeks, as they are now a little over an hour away, but we'll make do.


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## bsms

Bandit would take one look at a bridge like that and offer to swim across...

He got jumpy yesterday, during the final 25 yards home. Why? The lady across the street had the back of her hatchback open.

"OMG, look at the size of that mouth! And you expect me to walk past it?"​
Well, he did. In the end. Sort of. Wasn't a pretty sight, though. *The final 25 yards home*! :shrug:

But a bridge like that? We'd have to swim for it.


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## mkmurphy81

bsms said:


> Bandit would take one look at a bridge like that and offer to swim across...
> 
> He got jumpy yesterday, during the final 25 yards home. Why? The lady across the street had the back of her hatchback open.
> 
> "OMG, look at the size of that mouth! And you expect me to walk past it?"​
> Well, he did. In the end. Sort of. Wasn't a pretty sight, though. *The final 25 yards home*! :shrug:
> 
> But a bridge like that? We'd have to swim for it.



I love the mental image. I was imagining the reactions of my four. Guess which one's the Arabian.

Susie: "Oh my hay! What is THAT?!"
Raisin: "What is what?" clip clop clip clop
Sunny: "Is there food over there?"
Feather: "Can I crib on it?"
Susie: "Guys? Are you okay? Hey, wait, don't leave me! AHHHH!!!" clumpclumpclump "Did you see that? It almost ate me!"


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , first of all, congratulations on moving in! Take your time with the "stuff". Seven years after our move, I still have some boxes under the stairs that have yet to be open. I really hate moving, and I don't plan on ever doing it again.

Your chickens must be so excited to have such an awesome coop! And the photo of your dogs is priceless. Maggie looks like a cutie-pie, and the free-lease is a new one on me, but sounds like it's to everyone's advantage. No one needs to know about tack prices...


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Bandit would take one look at a bridge like that and offer to swim across...But a bridge like that? We'd have to swim for it.


Well, you'd probably avoid the $2 fine that way :rofl:

I totally understand the edginess getting closer to home though. Fizz is at her worst on almost every ride when we go past the house across the street from the barn's driveway, even if we've been several miles and she should be glad to walk home on a loose rein. But that's the spot where she's had her hardest spooks on the road.



mkmurphy81 said:


> I love the mental image. I was imagining the reactions of my four. Guess which one's the Arabian.
> Susie: "Oh my hay! What is THAT?!"
> Raisin: "What is what?" clip clop clip clop
> Sunny: "Is there food over there?"
> Feather: "Can I crib on it?"
> Susie: "Guys? Are you okay? Hey, wait, don't leave me! AHHHH!!!" clumpclumpclump "Did you see that? It almost ate me!"


 Haha! Mine have never been through one that's fully enclosed so I don't know _what _they'll do! 

This is another iconic bridge closer to home. I bet @*phantomhorse13* has a picture riding through there.









Spanish Rider said:


> @*egrogan* , first of all, congratulations on moving in! Take your time with the "stuff". Seven years after our move, I still have some boxes under the stairs that have yet to be open. I really hate moving, and I don't plan on ever doing it again.


We lived in our last house for 6 years, but we've actually moved around quite a bit since we met in grad school, so we're pretty good about purging "stuff" - with the exception of kitchen stuff, we love to cook and have lots of fun pottery and things like that. So there are lots of those kinds of boxes all over the house right now!



> Your chickens must be so excited to have such an awesome coop! And the photo of your dogs is priceless. Maggie looks like a cutie-pie, and the free-lease is a new one on me, but sounds like it's to everyone's advantage.


Everyone seems to be settling in really well. I can't believe it, but the chickens are laying like normal. I really expected them to have a shock to their system, even go into an early molt, but they seem totally fine. Phew!

The dogs are a little drunk on freedom though- they have always been on-leash dogs and we're trying out little tastes of free ranging. I'm embarrassed to say they don't have good basic obedience training and recall is...spotty. I don't want to cause an accident with anyone's horses if the dogs are running loose, so I have some work to do before I would trust them to go very far off leash. But it sure is fun watching them go bounding across the fields through the tall grass like deer. They come inside exhausted!



> No one needs to know about tack prices...


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> This is another iconic bridge closer to home. I bet @*phantomhorse13* has a picture riding through there.


Actually, I have only been _through_ that specific bridge once, a year there was bad flooding and the river wasn't safe to cross. Normally we take the horses in the river as it's a great place for them to drink and get sponged.










A ride site a bit closer to me (Fair Hill, MD) also has a covered bridge, which we do routinely cross:










I have been through that with several horses, including Phin. @*bsms* if you want to experience it via helmetcam, I can link you to the videos!


@*egrogan* , I am so glad that the move has gone smoothly so far. I bet watching the chickens travel was really entertaining. was there any change to the pecking order upon arrival at the new place? enjoy figuring out where all the stuff gets to go (and then remembering those places :smile.


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## bsms

phantomhorse13 said:


> @*bsms* if you want to experience it via helmetcam, I can link you to the videos!


Please do. We don't have covered bridges here. Not in that sense. We have highway underpasses. This was pulled from the Internet, but I think it is one about 4 miles from here:








​ 
Going under I-10, maybe 10 miles from here:








​ 
Credit for the pictures goes here:

Arizona Trail Passage 7: Las Cienegas - Lakes Road to Gabe Zimmerman Trailhead - on 'The Beckoning'

I cannot imagine what it would take to get Bandit thru there. It is otherwise a very nice horse trail. But with vehicles rumbling overhead, the close confines, sand on concrete flooring...looks like a good way to get both of us killed. I'm pretty sure Bandit & I are BOTH too cautious to ever try it!

I'm sure there are horses who could, and I'm sure there are riders who could get their horses safely through. But not Bandit and I.


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## phantomhorse13

bsms said:


> Please do. We don't have covered bridges here. Not in that sense. We have highway underpasses.


That highway underpass is pretty darn scary! Fair Hill has tunnels, but they aren't nearly so long (see video below).

Here, you can see Phin experiencing Fair Hill's scary things for the first time, by himself no less. If you skip to 1:48 you will see the covered bridge crossing for the first time. He crosses it again (for the second time) at 3:23.






:cowboy:


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## bsms

Wow! All I can say is...WOW!

Well, OK, I can say a bit more.

IF Bandit decided any of those were necessary, he'd tackle them with a lot of determination. He's not a coward. Once he commits, he commits!

But I couldn't give him the confidence you give Phin. This is part of why I think I need to take him out solo. Right now, he does things because he's the leader of 'the herd' - whoever else is with us. And he does the thinking for them. And he has no intention of risking their lives. Or his, of course.

MAYBE if we did more solo riding, I could learn how to give him more confidence in US. Both of us would need to learn. I seriously suspect I have some PTSD from riding Mia. I'd have had to clean the saddle off a dozen times over the course of your video. I find it very hard sometimes to trust my horse not to just explode violently. I've sometimes felt like puking just going down a trail. I was shot at over Iraq a bunch of times without a flicker of concern. Odd, but riding horses often scares me in a way having people shoot at me never did!

But still...WOW! VERY impressive of you both!

PS - Downloaded the video off of You Tube for my daughter to watch later.


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## Avna

Where I used to ride in CA there was an underpass like that in one of the main parks. A bit wider and longer. It was so people could pass from the parking lot on the ocean side of Highway One to the parklands on the other. I rode Brooke through there every time I went, since the trailer staging area was on the ocean side. She was leery but when she saw other horses go through she had no problems.

There's a covered bridge here that I could ride through if I was in the village. Haven't gotten there yet. 
@bsms, Mia sounds like a great example of the kind of horse who puts new riders off horses forever. Kudos to you that she did not eliminate riding from your life.


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## bsms

If no horse was balking, and maybe they saw another horse go thru, Cowboy and Trooper MIGHT try those "obstacles" - with a confident rider. Something I need a lot of work on is projecting confidence to my horse.

Bandit? He'd refuse, unless he first saw a number of horses go through. Otherwise you would risk a bucking fit partway.

Mia? She got me hooked on riding because she was incredibly sweet. Every time you tacked her up, she was like, "_Oooohhh, what are WE doing together today? I like being with people!_" But if she panicked part way along an overpass, for example, she might have gone over the side without a thought.

Bandit had been pushed before. Hard. He'd go forward quietly until fear overwhelmed him, then explode. Mia would push herself to do what her human wanted, until she couldn't, and then explode. When Bandit explodes, he does so without ever (to date) forgetting where he is and where any obstacles are. If he was 5 feet from a ledge, he'd be willing to spook 4 feet. Not 6. Same situation, Mia would feel free to spook 10 feet.

The people who have her now consider her "bombproof". In the very open country where she lives now, she might be. But my stomach tied itself in knots watching Phin go across overpasses. It is an interesting question. Have they trained her to be "bombproof", or is her environment simply much less challenging than where we live? It is vastly less challenging than where @phantomhorse13 was riding Phin.

I think what impressed me was how good phantomhorse13 was at giving confidence to Phin. There are seasons to a person's life, and seasons in a person's riding. The last 3 years have had Bandit and I working on doing things together. Maybe we're entering a season where our goal needs to be expanding our confidence in each other. I need to learn how to give him confidence, and learn he can handle that confidence.

Mia was a difficult horse, @Avna, but she did something very important. She taught me horses are PEOPLE. Bandit's former owner was interested in racing Bandit. If I understood him correctly, he & his wife now mostly ride because Mia is a fun horse to be with. I've met a number of people around here - and they are on the Internet as well - who work horses using the "Get a Bigger Whip" philosophy. "Ask, Tell, Demand" - and maybe skip the ask & tell and just always DEMAND. I can't judge them. I probably would have gone down the same road - except Mia was too intense, too sweet, too giving, too friendly and too rebellious. I was very lucky she was my first horse.

I may also be very lucky Bandit is my second. And that we have a horse like Cowboy to prove how utterly sane a horse can be. @egrogan journal, and others, seem to show some of the same thing. Different horses will teach you different aspects, if you let them. The Never-ending Puzzle of Horses. Heck, I can't even settle on a stirrup length...:rofl:


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> s how good phantomhorse13 was at giving confidence to Phin.



I loved at the beginning of the video when @phantomhorse13 kept telling him "I know, that's why we don't do cross country" when he was giving the jumps the side eye :grin:


One thing that impressed me a ton about the woman who came to help us with trailer loading was her ability to stay totally calm and reassuring with the horses even when having to correct them and "make them work" if they said "no" to getting on the trailer. Her tone of voice and demeanor never changed. If they balked at the trailer, she just said to them (out loud), "that's totally ok, that's your choice. So let's see what you think about doing some more circles instead." She never got exasperated or frustrated. She was just consistently steady. And when they were clearly thinking that trying the trailer again wasn't going to be so bad, she kept exactly the same tone of voice and said, "that's such a great decision, let's see what it's like over there." She talked to them a lot, but not coddling baby talk, just sort of a conversation giving voice to what they were thinking. And when they finally got on, she smiled at them and praised them and told them how proud she was and how brave they had been to make that good decision. It sounds silly typing it all out, but in person it really seemed to work with them.


I know my lack of confidence gets translated instantly to elevated heart rate, fast breathing, all those semi-involuntary physical things that are so hard to change or control (at least for me!). Even just consciously smiling and talking about how I'm feeling when I'm having a tense moment- in the saddle or on the ground- has helped me get through some prickly situations in the past couple of weeks (like Fizz spooking at the deer). I definitely don't naturally have the calm, reassuring demeanor that phantomhorse had with Phin or the trainer had with my girls, but thanks to them I have a clear picture of what I aspire to! And I think I'm going to have _lots _of chances to practice as the horses get used to their new environment next month! I'm picturing lots of long in-hand walks and ground driving before I get in the saddle.


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## frlsgirl

Horses are such great teachers. I’ve had moments where I thought either myself or Ana or both of us were going to die and I just had to muddle through it. Moments where I just wanted to retreat and have someone else take care of the problem but there was nobody around to help me. It’s made me more confident in other areas of my life; I don’t have to freak out and run, I can do it! Of course there have also been moments where someone more experienced stepped in and helped me and I’m grateful for those experiences as well. 

Can’t wait to see pics of you with the ponies on the new property! How exciting!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> I definitely don't naturally have the calm, reassuring demeanor that phantomhorse had with Phin or the trainer had with my girls, but thanks to them I have a clear picture of what I aspire to! And I think I'm going to have _lots _of chances to practice as the horses get used to their new environment next month!


I can't imagine going over those cross country jumps. @phantomhorse13's dialogue in the video is funny. I've had to tell Amore, "That's your own poop you're spooking at!" 
I think the horses teach us very well. I'd take Halla through an underpass or covered bridge, because if she got inside and it turned out to be scarier than she thought, she'd do something normal like try to rush through or turn around. On Amore I'd follow a sane horse, or lead but I'd never try to ride her by herself. She just doesn't do the thing you expect.
I try to think of all the possibilities but then she comes up with something new.


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## Avna

I could be wrong, but I feel that having the courage of one's convictions is most of the battle. I always figure my horse is going to do what I ask, because I'm not asking her to do anything she's not capable of. I feel it helps to say things in a rather disparaging tone. So today I remember saying, "oh geez, those are just chickens" (my neighbors had just moved their portable henhouse), and "it's only a porcupine", and "just watch your feet and you'll be okay." 

Sometimes she is going to do what I asked, but maybe on another day. 

Here's the underpass I used to ride Brooke through:


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## egrogan

Took a break from unpacking yesterday and went to the barn. Nothing is more heartwarming when your horses see you come and rush to the gate to meet you :grin: They wanted lots of scratches and were very eager to get out and do something.

I brought Izzy in first as she had the most bug bites to deal with. Poor thing had lots of scabs under her chin and around her muzzle, so I got those dealt with and slathered her with Swat. Gave her a good brushing and then headed out for a nice walk down the road.









When we got back to the barn, I saw that another boarder I like to ride with had just gotten there, which was perfect timing for Fizz and I to go out for a ride with her and her horse Jimmy.
Fizz was great getting tacked up. While standing in the cross ties, I did some basic asking to move from side to side away from light pressure on her barrel, and she was very willing. She stood nicely and did not look worried at all about tacking. Felt great when I got on. We warmed up quickly, and then joined Jimmy and his rider to head out to the road.

We rode down to the duck farm and the horses barely even flicked an ear at the ducks when they went quacking and scurrying away from us. I was impressed; last time we rode past them, Fizz was definitely _very_ suspicious of what they were all about. 












We also stopped to talk to a woman down the road who had an adorable German Shepherd puppy. This was great because Fizz stopped and stood and didn't try to turn for home when she got tired of standing there. She did ask to be able to stretch down for some appealing looking grass, which was fine with me. I was very proud of her! It helps that Jimmy is such a big, calm presence. But I was happy with how she did.










We only rode a couple of miles, but she hasn't been ridden in almost two weeks so was tired when we got back!









It was a muggy, buggy day so I decided to see how'd she do with the wash stall. I've never had her in one, so I wasn't sure what to expect. She walked in pretty well and stood quietly while I walked a few feet away to turn on the hose. 










But when the water came on, she got startled and pulled back, breaking the cross ties. I think she surprised herself more than scared herself, but unfortunately after that she refused to walk back up into the "chute." I was kicking myself for even trying to do this, thinking that all the trailer loading training we had just done was flying out the window as she went backwards to avoid stepping back up on the mats. But I tried my best to stay calm and do some circling and ask her to come back up to where she had started. She refused a few times, we circled a few times, but fortunately she did willingly walk forward, back out, and walk forward again a couple of times. I am definitely convinced by people who say trailer loading problems are really leading problems. She certainly uses pulling back or going backwards when she doesn't want to go somewhere- whether the trailer, the wash stall, or even to stop hand grazing and go on wherever she's going from there. So, I have some homework to do!


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## egrogan

Day 2 of my "Weekend Warrior" riding month...

The mugginess cleared out Saturday night, and Sunday proved a perfect early summer day- about 65*F and bright sunshine. The bugs were still brutal though. I brought Izzy in for grooming and to put ointment on some of the places she'd rubbed, and found a big bite hiding in the roots of her mane. I stood there scratching that spot for several minutes, until my arm started cramping up! She seemed appreciative.





When I put Izzy back out, Fizz was doing her best interpretation of "dead horse" but I called her bluff and got her up. :wink:









We had a lovely ride in the woods with Ida and Jazz. We rode to the beaver pond- saw no random deer to spook the horses- and the bugs were not terrible because there was a nice breeze. Fizz got "sticky" a couple of times and wanted to turn for home, but we were able to push through it and stay pointing in the right direction. While Jazz was leading, I wanted to see what Fizz would do if we got "left behind" by another horse, so Ida would trot off some distance ahead and I would ask Fizz to continue walking. I was thrilled, Jazz trotting off didn't bother her in the slightest- she kept walking at the pace we had set and was not agitated at all. When I asked her to trot to catch up, she didn't race ahead, she just picked up a nice trot and stayed there until we caught up. Really happy with her.









I got Fizz a new fly bonnet when I happened to see one in "her" color, but I think it's safe to say the ears don't really fit right- her ears kind of look like a goal post 









As we were heading home, we had a stroke of good luck. There's a short trail that connects our main woods loop out to one of the neighborhood roads, but it's always had a thick, heavy rope knotted around two trees blocking access. It's not a gate that you could open and close, but a permanent block. For some reason, the rope was down, so we were able to walk out of the woods on to the road, and add a good 3/4 mile on the dirt road to the end of our ride. We had a nice side-by-side trot home down the road, which was a fun change of pace. I was mostly happy that Ida was enjoying herself so much - she's been worried riding on the roads lately and having such a good experience was a great thing. I will miss riding with her when the horses move.


On the homefront, we did a ton of unpacking, and the house is starting to feel a little homier. We're not fully unpacking as we will be doing a lot of cosmetic renovations this month- floors getting refinished and walls painted, stuff like that- but we have enough stuff out that we can be comfortable in our day-to-day life.


Chickens seem to be loving their new home.


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## carshon

So happy for 2 good rides! And we have fly bonnets like that as well! I ordered about 7 from ebay from a place in India. They were about $2 each. Well made and well worth the money but we have 1 (just 1) that must have been made by a blind person because my horse looks like she has horns when she wears it!

Your horses look fantastic!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> And we have fly bonnets like that as well! I ordered about 7 from ebay from a place in India. They were about $2 each. Well made and well worth the money but we have 1 (just 1) that must have been made by a blind person because *my horse looks like she has horns when she wears it*!


Ha! My husband's comment when he saw how it looked was: "She looks like the devil after going through some corporate rebranding" :rofl:

Her head really is bizarrely big. I have a draft sized browband on her and she barely fits in a horse sized flymask.


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## Spanish Rider

Gosh, when they do the "dead horse" thing, it really makes my heart race. The mare that I rode at the other barn would never, ever lie down during the day. But, one day when I got to the barn, I found her lying down on her side, eyes open and tongue out. I freaked! I called her, "Dama, Dama!!!" and no response. All frantic, I started yelling for the groom as I opened her stall door. As soon as I got the stall door open, she stood up, the groom came over and said, "That's not Dama, that's Dora." (Dora is Dama's daughter and looks exactly like her when they have their winter blankets on). Apparently, the kids that had had class the evening before put them in the wrong stalls. In my panic, I was completely oblivious to the fact that there was Dama, in the next stall, looking at me as if to say, "Why do you keep yelling my name? I'm right here!" 


How exciting that your are going to start work on the house. Please take pics and post some before and after photos. Here we don't have HGTV, and I need my fix!


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like an excellent weekend overall. I am sure you would rather have not had the wash rack incident happen, but the fact you worked through it says a lot.


Had to laugh at the fly bonnet ears, as I have the same issue with ours. My sister looked at a picture once and made a comment about "bat-horse" (ours are black), so that is always in my head now. I did attempt to fix one pair by shortening them, so we shall see if my attempt at sewing holds!


I second the request for before and after house pics.


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## Chevaux

I’m in on before and after pics, please. I can’t get enough of pictures documenting reno/rehab projects (and it doesn’t matter if they’re big or small)


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Ha! My husband's comment when he saw how it looked was: "She looks like the devil after going through some corporate rebranding" :rofl:


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


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## egrogan

I met my husband in town for dinner last night, and we were in two cars since he had come right from work. Imagine my surprise as I was driving home when I looked over at a hilly pasture and saw A LOOSE ZEBRA GRAZING HAPPILY IN THE FIELD.

Right. A zebra. In Vermont. Loose in a Pasture.








(Not my photo, but the exact sight I saw yesterday).

We live in a rural place, so there were no cars behind me. I stopped the car in the middle of the road gawking. Mostly I was just panicked about the fact that this was a loose equine along the road. I usually have a spare halter and lead in my trunk, and debated with myself whether I should try to go catch it. But that seemed insane. Surely if someone had a zebra in Vermont, they probably kept pretty close tabs on it, so likely knew it was out. Right?! In the end, I decided to leave it where it was, and continued home.

My husband had stopped for groceries so got home about 15 minutes after me. He swore he didn't see anything like what I was describing. Maybe I was nuts!

Fortunately a quick Google search confirmed that I wasn't hallucinating: Zeus is a well known local attraction. Turns out he hates water, so the stream that runs along the road is enough to keep him contained in his pasture.

So. That was most unexpected. But I guess we truly are in an equine paradise!


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## SueC

Great story and link! We were both laughing here! 

Brett would love to rent one for a week, just to freak out the horses! :rofl:


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## gottatrot

Wow, a zebra! 
I liked the article.
I once saw a pair of Zorses, they live in Christmas Valley, Oregon.
A man had a friend who bred zebras for circuses, and he decided to breed himself a pair of Zorses. Apparently they can pull a wagon.

We were just driving along, looking at the scenery when I saw these horses and I was like, "Pull over, pull over!" I thought I was seeing two brindle horses because they were brown with black stripes. Kind of funny looking critters.



















Online there are lots of interesting pics, here is a Clydesdale Zorse foal.


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## knightrider

Oh, that is so cool! 

Not far from my house is a lady who breeds donkeys. She must have over 100 donkeys in her pastures . . . and one zebra stallion. She breeds and sells zonkeys. They are very cute too. Everyone around here is used to seeing her zebra grazing with the donkeys. I didn't know their care was so specialized. That article was certainly interesting!

Everybody around here has donkeys, and I know that donkey training and care is different from horse care. I wonder how the zonkeys are to train?


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## QueenofFrance08

How have your Scoot boots been working? I'm debating getting those for Chico's hind feet (our next ride requires hoof protection) because I'm not having much luck finding Renegades in his size....


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## SueC

By the way, if anyone is interested in the nitty-gritty of why intermediates between horses, donkeys, zebras are mostly sterile, this is really fascinating:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebroid


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## frlsgirl

oh my gosh, a Zebra! I would have done a double take as well. I bet you will encounter more interesting creatures as you get settled in your new place. We've seen deer, turtles a beaver, skunks and coyotes and of course the neighbor's herd of mini horses and donkeys.


Funny about the dead horse impersonation; Ana prefers the "don't make eye contact and she will hopefully go a way"approach.


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## egrogan

Another beautiful early summer weekend here. We spent most of it out in our pasture getting ready for the run-in sheds to be delivered later this week. 

The grass is thigh high, so we had to start with mowing down a section. Lovely husband was a good sport using his little push lawn mower, but I think we all agree that a tractor is top on our list of priorities (****, that means the kitchen renovation has to wait a little longer...)









But he got the space clear, and then we spent a good bit of time figuring out how to orient them to take into account wind, rain, snow, and safe escape paths for Fizz if her dragon sister tries to go after her inside one of the structures :wink: 









It turns out they’ll have to go a little farther away from the house than I had been hoping, but I think they should work reasonably well (assuming the plumber agrees he can run a line out there, fingers crossed!). After we decided on a spot, we got some footing down to level off the areas where they'll sit.









Have been enjoying exploring the woods with the dogs. We found this beautiful stream the other day.









And I met a few people who were riding by while we were out working in the field. Sounds like the neighbors are always looking for people to ride with, so that will be nice. Also got to talk to our other neighbor (who I learned works at our vet’s office) while she was out for a drive the other night. 









We were out in the field all day Saturday, so I didn’t get down to see the girls until Sunday. They made me feel great again meeting me at the gate- hope they’re this happy to see me once they see me every day :wink:

Fizz and I had a date to ride with Ida and Jazz and Jimmy and his mom, so we got tacked up and headed right out. Fizz has been dragging a little riding away from home, but I’m not reading too much into it given she’s been worked with so sporadically. While I would like her to be a little more enthusiastic, at the same time I’ve been impressed that she’s been sitting for a week but perfectly fine with me just tacking up, getting on, and riding. No need for lots of refresher work or anything like that. Not sure I would have been able to do that when she first got here!









The bugs were pretty annoying, I caught a funny shot of her mid head-shake trying to get away from the cloud of blackflies that was following us…









She did try the whole “I'll turn around for home when we stop” thing multiple times. I got to the point where I told the others to just ride on when she started doing that so I could work it out with her. She doesn’t seem to care about the other horses disappearing, which is good, so it’s not like she would get agitated or freak out when they left. It just gave us a little more space to maneuver. So when she would turn towards home, I’d ride her forward a few steps, then stop, then do a turn on the forehand. She didn’t fight that, and we’d end up pointing in the direction I intended, so I’m struggling to understand what her motivation for doing it is. I also noticed it seemed to happen most often if we’d be approaching a left turn away from home. I’d have to do the turn on the forehand towards the right to get unstuck; if I asked for left, she’d continue moving forward with her right shoulder bulging and head cranked around to the left rather than stepping under with the left hind and making an actual turn to the left. Hmmm…

Despite the bugs, the day was beautiful, and we stopped for a little photo shoot at the beaver pond.

















Will be heading back down there later today for a farrier visit. Izzy has a gnarly crack running up her right front foot that sort of appeared out of nowhere last week. I am hoping it’s one of those that looks bad but is actually just going to disappear when the wall is trimmed back. They are both looking pretty long, it’s amazing how much foot they start growing when the grass is back!

She was her happy self yesterday though when I brought her in. She had her eye on the bag of carrots the whole time though :grin:









And still made sure Fizz knew who was boss when I brought her back out to the field…











QueenofFrance08 said:


> How have your Scoot boots been working? I'm debating getting those for Chico's hind feet (our next ride requires hoof protection) because I'm not having much luck finding Renegades in his size....


Hi @QueenofFrance08- to be honest, haven't ridden in them at all because we've primarily been riding through the woods, where the ground is pretty good. And, we've only been on short 2-3 mile rides, so not much need for protection. When they get home in a couple of weeks though, and we start getting serious about upping our mileage, it will be on the dirt roads so I will be using them much more. Will be sure to let you know!


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## SueC

:rofl: Wish we were your neighbours! We would have brought our scythe! Much easier! 



Scything the Windbreak - Strawbale House Build in Redmond Western Australia by Brett and Sue Coulstock, on Flickr


Best wishes from the medieval peasants with Internet access!

PS: Great photos!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Best wishes from the medieval peasants with Internet access!


:rofl: Too funny!

But in all seriousness, interesting to see it can be done. We were half joking we needed a scythe! And maybe we will track one down!!


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## Spanish Rider

I've been saying that I need a scythe, too! We've had so much rain this year, and I've never seen to much vegetation. We don't have grass, though. Just a lot of "pinchy plants", as my kids used to call them. They're great hiding spots for snakes, too.

Looking forward to seeing the sheds!


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## SueC

Scythes are very effective and fun! And great exercise - but not too hard to use, when you get into a rhythm, and of course you've got to keep that blade sharp - carry your grindstone...











Brett and I keep thinking how many more books and CDs we can buy if we use inexpensive, effective tools instead of more costly, motorised ones.

Was thinking of you on Saturday morning, @egrogan . We had a busy bee at the Volunteer Bushfire Brigade fire shed in Redmond, doing cleanup, mechanical repairs etc. I'm Ms Organisation, so was given the job of sorting out the paperwork and cleaning the office/map room. They gave me a broom; the place was covered in mouse droppings - not just the floor, the maps, the paperwork, the cupboard shelves, the map table, the woodwork trim. And I thought, "Well, this is a smallish office, nothing compared to the job @egrogan is dealing with at present, hope this will be in the past for her soon!"

I went to the community hall next door and equipped myself with disinfectant, gloves, a mop bucket, and three cleaning cloths - first pass, second pass, drying. I'd have liked to have had a dust mask because of _Cryptosporidium_ and other lovely bugs in rodent droppings. After moving all the stuff out of the office and using the broom and the brush/dustpan set on all surfaces, I started with the scrubbing. Got over a dozen buckets of dirty water out of that place in under two hours. Then I started on the maps, most of which were laminated. I was amazed some of them could be read. The wiping cloth was black after a single pass! :rofl:

Cleaned and dried the maps, wiped the paperwork, and oh what an improvement - now we don't have to be afraid of getting sick when breathing in that office or looking at maps!  Everything lovely and sorted, which is the best part. I don't enjoy cleaning, it's a necessary evil, but I do enjoy it more than the alternative!

Sending good vibes for your huge house cleanup... and especially that kitchen... kitchens are like CBDs and have such massive surface area all up...

One day, it'll all be clean and the mice will be under control...


Love those photos of your new place and surroundings. Thanks for sharing!


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## egrogan

We have learned that our cat- a happy, healthy 17 years old- has decided that with this move, he is formally retired. He seems to enjoy watching the mice get caught in the traps. I feel really awful about trapping them, to be honest. I wish we could come to an agreement where they could hide out in the basement if they need a place to overwinter but also stay out of the living areas. Right now they are in the kitchen cabinets, on the counters, everywhere. So they have to go. I have the smell of disinfectant burned into my brain because we are cleaning the cabinets every morning. It's really gross.

We are considering the options for more intensive pest control. Hate using chemicals with all our animals, particularly the chickens who will catch a mouse every now and then. I would be devastated if they got any pass-through poison. I think when we open the kitchen up for renovation, it will be easier to see where they are entering from and get those spaces blocked off. I just keep telling myself, it's not all going to happen overnight and it's a longer term journey.

Good-and much needed- farrier visit yesterday. Izzy was excited to come in for it!





It was a little hectic at the barn, so I managed to get a couple of before pictures but left without getting the afters! Anyway, this is Izzy's right front foot, you can see where she had a ton of growth and started flaring, and the crack seemed to be trying to relieve that flair. This foot tends to be a little clubby and the angle is always slightly different than her other front.









Both of the girls were super long- he trimmed so much off that the stuff left behind on the ground looked like he had taken off a shoe! Fizz especially was walking with so much more freedom right afterwards- hopefully this will help with the tripping.

No word from the shipping company on the sheds. Theoretically they should be here with the first one any time now. But, I'm half expecting them not to show up. BO said she had a horrible time dealing with them, they kept changing delivery dates on her at the last minute. They are a commercial shipper that the maker of the sheds uses, so while ordering was super easy, this part has not been. We will see!

I will leave you with some happy animals enjoying the sunshine!


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## egrogan

Uh oh. Shed seller sent shed shipper to my _old _address. Only way she would have had the old address was from the check I sent her for payment. All our communication was via Facebook (which made me totally nervous for this very reason) and I just checked and saw I sent her the correct shipping address 3 separate times. 

Shipper was _not _happy on the phone and may not have the permits to get it to VT...

Have I mentioned how much I am ready to be done moving!?


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## carshon

Oh No! this is the Shed Sellers fault and she should have to make it right for the shipper. What a fiasco! Hope your shed shows up soon.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Uh oh. Shed seller sent shed shipper to my _old _address. Only way she would have had the old address was from the check I sent her for payment. All our communication was via Facebook (which made me totally nervous for this very reason) and I just checked and saw I sent her the correct shipping address 3 separate times.
> 
> Shipper was _not _happy on the phone and may not have the permits to get it to VT...
> 
> Have I mentioned how much I am ready to be done moving!?


She sounds super-incompetent. 

You WILL be done moving. Maybe not this year, but eventually you'll be done. Just like I will.


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## egrogan

OK, in the end, everything worked out. But another _huge _detail was omitted- the shipper *only accepted CASH!* Right, like I have 100s just lying around the house...:icon_rolleyes: Apparently seller was supposed to clue me in to that as well, but the bank wasn't too far away. And, I paid what I was told I would pay and nothing more for the miscommunication on her end.

Now that _that _is behind us, I am left with two roomy sheds in the field. This is the view from my bedroom window! 










Will look an awful lot nicer when there are horses out there too!
:gallop:




Avna said:


> You WILL be done moving. Maybe not this year, but eventually you'll be done. Just like I will.


When that day comes, we will have a weekend of open house parties to celebrate our done-ness :wink:


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> OK, in the end, everything worked out. But another _huge _detail was omitted- the shipper *only accepted CASH!* Right, like I have 100s just lying around the house...:icon_rolleyes: Apparently seller was supposed to clue me in to that as well, but the bank wasn't too far away. And, I paid what I was told I would pay and nothing more for the miscommunication on her end.
> 
> Now that _that _is behind us, I am left with two roomy sheds in the field. This is the view from my bedroom window!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Will look an awful lot nicer when there are horses out there too!
> :gallop:
> 
> 
> 
> When that day comes, we will have a weekend of open house parties to celebrate our done-ness :wink:


Yes we will. I am waiting for my daughter's wedding end of July before I host my planned horsewarming party. August!!! You MUST come.


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## Tazzie

LOVE the sheds!! Oh it'll be SO nice looking out and seeing your babies there! What a peaceful place for them too!

And good luck with the unpacking and renovating! I'm sitting on my hands waiting for our perfect property to come along. We aren't ready right now, but I intend for our next move to be the LAST! I HATE moving!


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## evilamc

Ohhhh the sheds are BEAUTIFUL! Totally worth the wait! Glad it all worked out with the shipper too, what an ordeal.


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## frlsgirl

We thought about doing the shed thing. They look nice! Is the one in the back a double with a tack room?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> We thought about doing the shed thing. They look nice! Is the one in the back a double with a tack room?


Yep, it does have the storage area attached. I'm waffling on whether or not to actually use it as my tack room. There's no ventilation or insulation in there, so I can't decide if I'm comfortable leaving my saddles in there year-round. Any advice? 

It's just a blank slate right now- but decently sized. It would certainly have enough room for tack plus utility stuff like rakes, shovels, etc.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> Yep, it does have the storage area attached. I'm waffling on whether or not to actually use it as my tack room. There's no ventilation or insulation in there, so I can't decide if I'm comfortable leaving my saddles in there year-round. Any advice?
> 
> It's just a blank slate right now- but decently sized. It would certainly have enough room for tack plus utility stuff like rakes, shovels, etc.


looks like there is room for foamboard insulation and you can always add vents.


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## frlsgirl

Interesting. Maybe you can start by putting other stuff in it like rakes and other farm supplies until you know how it holds up? Does the main barn have a tack room?


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## egrogan

T-minus one week until the girls arrive!

The weekend was a bit stressful. Plumber who's running the line to the field was supposed to come Friday, but got tied up. So- maybe today? I am having nightmares about bringing water a cup at a time from the house to the field to fill a bucket for the horses. The person who is helping us with the fence keeps dropping new little bombs- i.e., we had understood he would be bringing all the wood posts, but turns out he expected _us _to order them...sigh...lots of frantic last minute phone calls and trips to get bits and pieces we didn't know we needed to get. Bad thunder storms coming through today, so he's not starting until tomorrow. And I'm in NYC for work starting tomorrow, so won't be around to answer questions...Just feeling stressed out.

With all the prep we were doing over the weekend, I only got down to the barn to see them on Sunday. I was in an admittedly bad mood from feeling overwhelmed. It was hot, humid, and buggy. Not surprisingly, it wasn't a very good ride.

Fizz was super irritated from the bugs, flinging her head around violently.









She kept trying to get her head down below her chest and then throwing it up almost clocking me in the face. At one point I actually jumped off to see if there was something caught up in the string girth that was poking her, but I found no debris or bugs. At least she stood well for me to get back on from a stump!

I was out riding with Ida and actually asked her to cut the ride short as it was just miserable riding a horse that felt like she was about to explode at any second.

Fizz saying..._I didn't like that ride very much mom!!_









Just trying to stay focused on the big goal- in a week, the horses will be in the field. We will still have issues to work out for sure, but I won't have to drive an hour to see them and the big infrastructure will be there. LET'S HOPE SO ANYWAY!!! :|


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## Tazzie

The bugs were definitely terrible this weekend!!

And oh man!! That is a lot of stress and worry! Fingers crossed everything goes smoothly and the girls arrive to a finished field!! Positive thoughts that it will all work out well!


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## carshon

The bugs have amped up again here too so I feel your pain. Hope things work out well this week.


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## Avna

The throwing head down to chest thing I think is a deerfly or horsefly biting them right on their neck at their chest. At least, that's where they bite Brooke when they drive her nuts while I'm riding; I can swat the ones I can see from the saddle. And I take a certain satisfaction in doing so.

If you don't get your water lines in before the horses arrive, just bring the horses to water morning and evening and they will be okay. Remember in the wild horses don't necessarily have water nearby, they often have to make a trip to water. Especially if they are on green graze they won't drink all that much.


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone! I guess I just needed a minute of venting/whining :wink:

It's hard doing the whole corporate 9-5 (or really, 7-7) thing while knowing there is a clock ticking on so much that needs to be taken care of for the animals. Extra hard when we are relying on other people to follow through on the work they said they'd do. 

And, I had a sick chicken (potential start of sour crop) this morning, so that also amped up the stress level. My animals always seem to get sick right as I'm leaving on a long business trip! Hopefully I've caught it early enough that I'll get her a bit of improvement over the next 24 hours before I leave.


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## phantomhorse13

SueC said:


> Scythes are very effective and fun! And great exercise


With heavy emphasis on the EXERCISE part. I used one to clear some stickerbushes in a section of trail and was soon thinking I would rather be poked by the stickers than swing that scythe one more time!




egrogan said:


> OK, in the end, everything worked out. But another _huge _detail was omitted- the shipper *only accepted CASH!*
> 
> When that day comes, we will have a weekend of open house parties to celebrate our done-ness


Wow, whoever you communicated with needs a swift kick. I hope you were very clear with the person who delivered the sheds that the multiple issues were not YOUR fault.

Open house parties sound fantastic.. especially if you both coordinate so I can invite myself to both. 




egrogan said:


> Yep, it does have the storage area attached. I'm waffling on whether or not to actually use it as my tack room. There's no ventilation or insulation in there, so I can't decide if I'm comfortable leaving my saddles in there year-round. Any advice?


In a perfect world, leather tack would prefer something climate controlled. I would be concerned about heat leading to drying out/cracking and dampness leading to mold. Maybe leave something you aren't too attached to and easy to clean (like an older leather halter or worn stirrup leathers) out there for a while and see how it goes?




egrogan said:


> I had a sick chicken (potential start of sour crop) this morning, so that also amped up the stress level.


Hope your girl is feeling better. [I had to google that as I know nothing about chickens.]


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## frlsgirl

Yeah I hear you regarding all the work that needs to be done on the farm while also holding down a full time job and trying to ride in between. If I hadn't switched my riding schedule to mornings, I would probably only end up going once a week. 

I can't even tell you how many miscommunications we've had with contractors about various things; we've been in our house since November and we just recently got our messed up cabinets fixed; we are still fighting with the builder over our warped front door. Dealing with contractors out here in the country is very different from dealing with contractors in the city; they are too laid back for their own good and they know they can be because there just isn't much competition. People from the city who would do a good job and are actually available don't want to commit to driving all this way. We've already listened to horror stories from the neighbors who hired this local contractor to build the barn and he would disappear and not come back and they actually had to call him every day and beg him to come to work. I'm so not looking forward to building the barn; I mean it will be nice to have my pony here but trying to find reliable workers is challenging. When DH put up the fence he was literally asking people on the street, in restaurants etc if they wanted to earn $20/hr to help him install fence. Only 1 guy showed up to help.


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## bsms

I've been way behind in reading this thread. I'd "like" it more if I could see the pictures everyone else is seeing...:evil:

Moving with horses is one of the things stopping us from moving. That, and after getting me to write a letter of resignation, my wife was talked into working MORE, not less! Moved a lot with the military, without horses, and it was always a huge pain. My youngest is thinking of joining the military, which means moving out. If she does, and if our son & DIL & 2 grandkids living with us move to California as they want...2 people and 5 bedrooms would not be a good fit.

But the sheer WORK in moving! It's intimidating, to say the least. This is the first time in our married life we've lived in a house over 3 years...almost 13 now. Planted trees, leveled ground, built sheds and put in our little arena, erosion control (important in southern Arizona - don't get much rain and when we do, we often get it in 30 minutes). The thought of starting over...:eek_color:


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## Avna

bsms said:


> I've been way behind in reading this thread. I'd "like" it more if I could see the pictures everyone else is seeing...:evil:
> 
> Moving with horses is one of the things stopping us from moving. That, and after getting me to write a letter of resignation, my wife was talked into working MORE, not less! Moved a lot with the military, without horses, and it was always a huge pain. My youngest is thinking of joining the military, which means moving out. If she does, and if our son & DIL & 2 grandkids living with us move to California as they want...2 people and 5 bedrooms would not be a good fit.
> 
> But the sheer WORK in moving! It's intimidating, to say the least. This is the first time in our married life we've lived in a house over 3 years...almost 13 now. Planted trees, leveled ground, built sheds and put in our little arena, erosion control (important in southern Arizona - don't get much rain and when we do, we often get it in 30 minutes). The thought of starting over...:eek_color:


For me the horses were the easiest part of moving. That's because it was the only part other people did! I cached my horse in a friend's pasture, a second friend found my pony for me and brought her to my horse, and a third friend moved the horses across the continent. We bought the place in large part because it already had a stable that was move-in ready. 

The rest of moving though, that just about killed me. I plan to leave this place feet first.


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## bsms

My wife and I have discussed moving to northern Arizona, or maybe even southern Utah. The winters would take some adapting to. The horses would need more shelter. But while I love the Sonoran Desert, it IS a tough environment! I just finished a 15 minute ride on Bandit. After 15 minutes, sweat was pouring off of me. It isn't the temperature so much as the intensity of the sun. The heat I can handle. It is the furnace-like sun hammering on me that is hard.

Of course, Bandit thought 15 minutes was fine. We were in the arena and he gets bored. Taking him out of the arena meant going on pavement, which gets HOT by mid-morning. I'm sure Bandit thought, "_We do 15 minutes of W/T/C and call it quits? I could get used to this!_"

Trying to find a place hundreds of miles away is also difficult. My wife has suggested we move 20-30 miles west of here. We would still be in the desert, but softer soil, fewer rocks, less cactus. She makes an interesting argument. And if we don't restart now, at 60, then we risk getting trapped in a very big house in our 70s. As daunting as selling one place, buying another and moving looks at 60, it will be REAL tough at 75!


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## Avna

@bsms, I agree with your wife! Do it now or you'll either never do it or else be forced to under circumstances not of your choosing.

I enjoy Flagstaff . . . but then, I like cold and absolutely hate heat.


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## egrogan

You all are too funny! I've moved so much in the past 15+ years. I like to joke that the cat I got in 2001 the month after I graduated from college has lived in more states than most Americans: LA, NY, PA, NC, MI, NH, and VT. He's still going strong at nearly 17.5 years old. I don't particularly _like _moving, but I think my lovely husband and are restless spirits at heart so I'm sure we will have more moves ahead of us. Neither of us are close to family, and we don't have kids, so we're not super rooted to one place. Though we do think New England suits us.

Anyway, I've been in NYC for work all week, but supposedly things are moving ahead at home. The small paddock/sacrifice area is fully fenced and I think they've started on one of the bigger pasture sections but not totally sure.

Since everything seems to be two steps forward, one back in this process though...I just got a long voicemail while I was in meetings from the trainer who is trailering us, and she is having a horse put down on Monday- of course, that is the day I took off from work so we could move them that day. I don't want to minimize how awful the day will be for her, it's just that I sort of expect at this point that no plan is actually going to work out the way I thought. 

It does sound like she's going to be available on Saturday though, so looks like I'll have to trade off my last planned weekend ride with friends in order to get the horses moved up. BO has someone moving their horses in at the beginning of next week to take our spot, so delaying isn't an option.

A week ago, I would have absolutely freaked. But at this point, I'm just like, "whatever, it will work out somehow I guess..."

We shall see!!


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## Spanish Rider

Ugh. Tried to post earlier. Twice. No luck.

The shed fiasco:
Someone dropped the ball big time. I hope you did not pay extra shipping, etc. If they insist, you should mention that you are a blogger with thousands of visits and they wouldn't want a bad review, would they?


Tack room:
New England weather is rough. Every barn I have ridden at in NE has had a heated tack room. I would put anything leather in the house in the middle of winter, and in the summer you have to be careful with mold because of all the humidity.


Move on Saturday?! You must be so excited! I hope that everythng goes well and according to plan, although I'm sure that you function well in fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants mode, too.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> The shed fiasco:
> Someone dropped the ball big time. I hope you did not pay extra shipping, etc. If they insist, you should mention that you are a blogger with thousands of visits and they wouldn't want a bad review, would they?


I thought I had added an update to the shed story but looks like it didn't save. Anyway, the delivery guy totally understood that it wasn't my fault, and I didn't have to pay any extra shipping (though I did give him a pretty big tip since I felt bad that he had also been majorly inconvenienced!). The shed seller had ignored a question I sent her but randomly about a week ago sent me a new message saying "hope you are enjoying the sheds" which I just ignored. Too many other things on my mind :wink:


I think you all are right as far as using the shed for tack year round. We're putting in a vent and we'll see if that helps for summer. While the barn has a stall that's been claimed as a "workshop" area, it too would have the same problem of being basically room temperature, though there is electricity in there so I could add a small electric panel heater. Probably not the top top priority for this year but making a more formal tack space in there is an option, would just mean bringing the horses up from the field to tack up vs. tacking them up near the field (where I envision a hitching/tie post).


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## Avna

I read some about heated tack rooms and leather saddles -- upshot, well saddles have been stored in unheated buildings in every sort of climate since the beginnings of leather saddles. Properly clean and lubricated leather (not soaked in oil nor dried out) can live happily in freezing conditions and last a lifetime. Just don't let them get moldy.


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## phantomhorse13

Avna said:


> I read some about heated tack rooms and leather saddles


I suspect this would depend on just what is meant by "heated" and how that heat happens. 

Our tack room is heated via radiant floor heat (so no hot air blowing around) and we keep the thermostat at 50. So it's hardly a sauna but sure is nicer than the temp outside. So far, we have had no issues with tack drying out (and I certainly don't clean and condition the saddles nearly as often as I should ).


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## Spanish Rider

In the older barns where I grew up, which obviously had not been heated, tack rooms are usually not on an outside wall, and are surrounded by stalls with toasty horses in them or a hay/feed room, and high off the ground (usually, the middle floor, with a hay loft upstairs and pigs/cows downstairs). I would just be afraid that a shed on wet/frozen ground, with no wind break, stalled animals, etc., would be less protected than in a traditional barn set-up.


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## SueC

phantomhorse13 said:


> With heavy emphasis on the EXERCISE part. I used one to clear some stickerbushes in a section of trail and was soon thinking I would rather be poked by the stickers than swing that scythe one more time!


If you're not scything grass, a specialist blade helps with that. The guy in the clip was using a really wide field blade, specifically for mowing grass or cereal crops. We have a medium-width all-purpose blade, because we don't mow on open, treeless fields, but amongst trees. There's also a really handy short blade for doing clearing work or cutting tough-stalked things, and working in really confined spaces. And you do have to sharpen every couple of minutes so it stays razor sharp and therefore cuts easily. (And tie up your dog when you scythe... awful injuries can happen to hapless animals.)

Hope Mia is well today! More jingles.


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## Spanish Rider

> And tie up your dog when you scythe


Sorry, but this made me laugh! This reminded me of boating at the lake in the summer when my kids were toddlers. Getting the old aluminum canoe in and out of the water next to the dock is a 2-person job, so I used to have to put my boys in their life jackets (which are essentially harnesses) and tie them to a tree together so they wouldn't wind up in the drink or being catapulted by a swinging canoe. Such abuse. :rofl:


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> so I used to have to put my boys in their life jackets (which are essentially harnesses) and tie them to a tree together so they wouldn't wind up in the drink or being catapulted by a swinging canoe.


























Such a funny image!

***********
Alright, we're all confirmed to load up around 8:30am tomorrow and head home! I had anxiety dreams last night about the horses escaping from the field, about my dogs escaping and running away, and about a neighbor's dog drowning in a non-existent pool at my house. So yeah, I'm a little worried about the settling in period, but we'll get through it. 

Cross all your fingers and toes that everyone loads up tomorrow as easily as possible!


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## Avna

May all go perfectly smoothly!


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## phantomhorse13

so excited for you!!!


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## SueC

A nice loading up "still life":









http://cdn6.bigcommerce.com/s-y1xcn...horse-box__55837.1489272285.1280.1280.jpg?c=2

But think of all the fun you'll get to have when you get the girls home! 








































Your horses will soon know where you live:








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Looking forward to your photos!


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## evilamc

SO EXCITING!!!!! Can't wait to see pictures of them at home!!!! GRATS!!!!!!


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## Chevaux

Are we there yet??? Are we there yet???


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> Are we there yet??? Are we there yet???


YES!!!! :grin:

Both loaded like old pros, rode perfectly, and dove right in to the pasture when they got to their new home!

Still working out the hose situation but will post more tonight.


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## Spanish Rider

Such great news! I was thinking of you ths morning and had posted something, someplace (?). It either got lost, or I posted on another thread (oops!).

So, so happy for you! Must be a weight off your shoulders. Tomorrow morning's cup of coffee, while looking out into the pasture and watching your horses graze, is going to be one in a million!


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## gottatrot

What a relief! The horses are home!


----------



## egrogan

#IzAndFizz are home!

Yesterday went really smoothly. Trainer M arrived right on time- just in time to see me getting a little teary-eyed saying good bye to BO.  We decided we'd load Izzy first. She walked halfway up the ramp and she paused, so we paused and let her think about it. With an encouraging handful of hay, she walked the rest of the way on. She fussed a little bit when I put up the butt bar, so M stayed in with her while I went to get Fizz. Fizz had had her eye on the trailer since it pulled in :wink: and she stopped and gawked a little bit as I walked her towards it. But once she saw Izzy was on there, she basically loaded herself right on! She didn't hesitate at all. M had arrived at 8:30, and we were pulling out by 9am!










The ride was about 1.5 hours. I was somewhat expecting them to both be a sweaty mess when we opened the doors, but they actually were cool as cucumbers. Fizz was quivering just a little bit, but Izzy was totally fine. We backed Fizz off first, then Izzy. Izzy strutted down the road to the pasture :grin:









They couldn’t decide if they wanted to eat all the grass or run around the field, so they did both.
































Izzy spent plenty of time herding Fizz around, but Fizz was a good sport about it and did her share of bucking and kicking up her heels.














They were both extremely inquisitive about what we were doing out in the field with them. Fizz wanted to help with all the chores…


















When it was time for dinner, they put themselves into the shed and waited patiently. They only get 1lb of a ration balancer with some supplements, so it didn’t take long to eat, but I had been expecting I’d need to tie them up- or at least Izzy! – so there wasn’t any fighting. But they were actually quite harmonious about it.









I slept surprisingly well last night (I half expected I'd be up every hour worried about them), but was up at 4:30 dying to check on them. Happily, they were still in the field where they belong!










Oh, how neat is this- in an old tree right along the fenceline, there’s a nest of baby woodpeckers. They are so loud but it’s so neat watching the parents come in to feed them!





It's such an amazing feeling seeing them out there! There is so much to do to get things set up, and figure out a routine, but I am just so happy that they are finally here. I think today I'll try to take each of them out for a walk down the road before rain/thunderstorms get going in the afternoon. And- my muck fork snapped in half yesterday so off to the store to get a new one. We'll see what else I come home with :wink:

***************
(PS- this picture thing is really irritating. I thought the SSL certificate install had completed on my photo hosting site but I don't see them when using Firefox. I do see the pictures throughout this thread on my phone though. I don't know. I am including a few them as attachments too so maybe people will see them.)


----------



## SueC

Now isn't that wonderful?  What a lovely sight! Glad this happened for you.

Beautiful scenery. What are those hills in the background? Any walking/riding trails on them? Nice views from up top?


----------



## Chevaux

Excellent!

Now, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a third horse to come yet?


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## gottatrot

Looks a lot like horse heaven to me.


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## frlsgirl

They look so happy; like they know they just hit the horsey jackpot. So they seemed totally cool with the sheds? Now that I'm seeing a close up, I like how the big one has a wall in between....hmmm, maybe we could do something like this to get Ana home sooner. Also, I'm wondering if you could install a dutch door system; it might help with feeding time and also if one ever needs to be on stall rest but then you also have a barn with proper stalls so you probably don't need that. I'm surprised you made it until 4:30am, lol. I think I would have camped outside.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Beautiful scenery. What are those hills in the background? Any walking/riding trails on them? Nice views from up top?





gottatrot said:


> Looks a lot like horse heaven to me.


Thank you @SueC and @gottatrot! Mount Ascutney is our local landmark. Lots of hiking but unfortunately no riding. And, hang gliding if you're so inclined! I haven't been up yet actually but it is supposed to be quite beautiful.



Chevaux said:


> Excellent!
> Now, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a third horse to come yet?


Yes, Maggie will arrive this weekend. She's another semi-retired Morgan mare (22 years old). She will mostly be a pasture companion but can still do trails and even limited distance competitive rides, which will be fun.

My decision to add a third horse was reaffirmed yesterday when I took the girls out for their first "walkabout"- just a little stroll in hand around the property. Izzy was borderline panicked about being left in the field when I took Fizz out, and she was drenched in sweat when we got back. Fizz didn't seem to mind being out or being left much until Izzy started calling to her frantically. 

We stayed close so the one left in the field could still see the other. Even when we went out on the road, you can still see through the trees. I was a little worried that the one left alone in the field was going to do something stupid like jump the fence or just bust through the (not-yet-electrified) rope, but it didn't come to that. My lovely husband wasn't home at the time so without someone to hang out in the field and "babysit," I kept it short. But it will be great to have Maggie so I don't have to worry about the one left home. 

_Poor Izzy just wanted to get back to her Fizz..._











frlsgirl said:


> So they seemed totally cool with the sheds? Now that I'm seeing a close up, I like how the big one has a wall in between....hmmm, maybe we could do something like this to get Ana home sooner. Also, I'm wondering if you could install a dutch door system...


I actually didn’t know that there would be a divider in the big shed until it was delivered, and at first I didn’t think I wanted to keep it there. But it is actually pretty convenient. 

They are actually handling the whole setup far better than I expected. Not that I expected they would have major problems, but Izzy’s whole “bossy dragon” demeanor seems to have faded fast once she realized that for better or worse, she and Fizz only had each other instead of a whole yard full of other horses :wink: They seem to be pretty flexible about who gets which side, and I’m not seeing any food aggression or food guarding.

I haven’t seen them in the same stall together yet, but this was pretty darn close, and I never thought Izzy would be ok with being that close!









_Buddies??_









Fizz also gives the shed high marks as a scratching post, for whatever that's worth! 









I definitely think you could do all sorts of things to make it more like a stall row- Dutch doors, even a simple rope stall guard. They are definitely an affordable option if you don’t want to build a traditional barn, or even if you just want something temporary until your barn is ready. This company is more expensive than the person I ultimately went with (and after the customer service I experienced, I guess I can see why!!), but it gives you a sense of the upper end of the pricing.

In an ideal world, we would have more time to do a better job excavating and leveling the sites they are sitting on, and getting a big load of hardpack for the base. For a variety of reasons, we weren’t able to do that before they were delivered, and I know at some point I’m going to want to go back and relevel and improve the footing. But for right now, it’s all working out fine.

_PS- could someone let me know if you see the pictures I posted here? I see them on my computer using Chrome and Safari on my phone, but not on Firefox on my computer..._


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## carshon

what lovely pics! and I LOVE the video of Izzy herding Fizz. It just made me laugh. the queen will rule no matter where she goes! So happy for you!


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## Avna

One of the things I really like about the improvement we made to our stable before we got the horses is giving each stall its own run. Because of this, I can feed each horse what they need without dominant horse (Brooke) going over and eating Pippa's and then going back to eat hers too. I can close a horse into a smaller space if I need to for any reason. For example I have your same problem if I take Brooke out -- Pippa gets very anxious. Not ready for another horse here (!!), but I can close Pip into her stall/run and she settles much faster than if she was at liberty to race along the pasture fence hollering. There is a gate between the two runs as well, so at night when I let them out to graze I just open everything up.


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## egrogan

Trying one last post to see if they can get this journal working again (I think this should be post 1714)...and if not, sounds like this new chapter may require a new journal!


Nap time this morning :grin:










BO used to tell me she could set her clock by Fizz napping, always between 11-noon!


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## egrogan

Double post.


But...maybe it's working?!


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## phantomhorse13

LOVE the nap photo!


Amazing how horses who maybe weren't the best of friends are bff when it's that or alone.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> _PS- could someone let me know if you see the pictures I posted here? I see them on my computer using Chrome and Safari on my phone, but not on Firefox on my computer..._


I can see them in this post, from Firefox on the laptop, which surprises me because they are http:// prefixed like some of our gallery photos, which "disappear" from view on Firefox one refresh after I've posted them, so I always include their hyperlinks under the pictures, in case people are using browsers that won't display these photos.

Pale Moon, a browser we have on our desktop computer, is an example of a browser which does display http:// photos on https:// sites. HF switched to https:// security recently, which has resulted in some of these dramas. So all the "disappeared" http:// photos on Firefox, I can see fine on Pale Moon.

We looked into upgrading our gallery to https:// but it's an extra $50/year so no thanks, I'll just use a different browser for now when I want to see http:// hosted photos - and include hyperlinks to them in my own posts so people on Firefox etc can click to see.

Always remember, technology was invented to make our lives easier! :rofl:









http://english-zone.com/funny-pix/g-images/any-key.jpg

It's all looking great, @egrogan, and you definitely need that extra horse. ;-) How are you guys holding up over the move? Good stress is still stress - have you got any time off work at all? In the US, can you take your vacations two days a week, for instance? Brett did that for a while when we were busy setting up. Is the mouse situation getting any better?

Mt Ascutney looks great, thanks for the link!  You going to have a shot at hang-gliding?

I can totally recommend hot air ballooning - took Brett to do that as a surprise treat for his 35th, man - how many years ago was that? :rofl: Time flies when you are having fun!









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_7208-1.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_7183-1.jpg









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_7182-1.jpg

Enjoy your journey!  Take regular breaks to smell the roses! ;-)


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## frlsgirl

Awww they look so cozy and comfy in there. I guess Izz and Fizz would give the sheds a “two hooves” up? 

I can see the pics just fine from my iPhone. 

Ana had the same experience with her herd. She had favorites and when they left she started to accept the other mares as “friends” so much so that when the owner comes to take Dusty out for a trail ride, Ana paces the fence line crying for her friend.


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## Spanish Rider

So much fun to check on this thread and always find horsie pics! And, yes, I can see them, which is not always true of photos from other posters.

It will be interesting to see how Maggie is accepted into the herd. And the nap pic is adorable!


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## Tazzie

I can see your pictures, and I LOVE them!! I love the one of Fizz napping, so adorable! They sure look nice and content there!


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone for confirming the photos are displaying. I appreciate whoever on the tech team figured out the glitches. I was talking to a moderator about just starting a new journal, and I realized I've grown pretty attached to _this _journal - so much history documented here in one place!

Back to reality- and work- yesterday, but it was great to shut down the computer at the end of the day and head out to the pasture to hang out with the horses. They were very excited because a horse and rider were passing by on the road. I had been curious to see what they would do when someone rode by- that happens a lot- and while they were definitely interested and went to the fence to check it out, they didn't go nuts.

Gave both of them a good grooming and then took Izzy out for a longer walk in hand. She got very worked up again when she couldn't see Fizz, but we did a little "move your feet" lunging, which seems to work ok with her to get her more focused rather than more wired (Fizz is the opposite...). I've always actually felt that with Izzy, unlike most horses, I'd rather be on her back when she's freaking out like this than on the ground, so maybe I'll see how she handles that later in the week. Still, after we got that little fit out of our systems, she really relaxed. Put her nose right down to the ground to check out the hoofprints from the other horse, mouthed at some grass, sighed a lot. It was great to see her demeanor change. Fizz was quiet back in the field though I could tell she was pacing the fenceline. 










I have late work meetings tonight so not sure how much I'll get to work with them, but if I have time will try taking Fizz out and seeing how Izzy handles being the one left home. I am dying to get Fizz out for a ride but don't trust Izzy alone in the field yet.



Spanish Rider said:


> It will be interesting to see how Maggie is accepted into the herd. And the nap pic is adorable!


Maggie is also said to be a bit of a "bossy pants," so we will see how they work it all out! My prediction is that Fizz clears out to stay out of trouble, Izzy makes a lot of nasty faces, but ultimately Maggie takes over as the boss. When Izzy lived in a bigger herd, she was a great lieutenant but I don't think she actually wants to be the leader. 



SueC said:


> How are you guys holding up over the move? Good stress is still stress - have you got any time off work at all? In the US, can you take your vacations two days a week, for instance? Brett did that for a while when we were busy setting up. Is the mouse situation getting any better?


Everything is coming together slowly. The past couple of weeks we've put most of our energy into getting things ready-enough outside so the horses could be here safely. We've sort of ignored the inside. We have to make some decisions about how we want to tackle renovations, and since we think we will try to do some work on the downstairs living space late summer/early fall, we've sort of pushed pause on unpacking because it doesn't make sense to take a bunch of stuff out of boxes only to box it back up. We're unpacked enough we don't feel like we're living in a hotel, but we're not exactly settled either. Mice seem to be on the retreat though!

There is no standard vacation policy in the US, unfortunately. I am lucky that I have generous vacation time provided by my employer, and I can take it whenever I want (lovely husband too, though since he just started a new job in the spring it's harder for him to get away right now). I took a full week off back in May when we were physically moving, and have been taking little half-days or 3-day-weekends over the past few weeks to get things done. I generally like to save up most of my vacation time to have the full two weeks between Christmas and New Year's off- that's the one thing about being a teacher I've had trouble giving up since I left the classroom :wink:



SueC said:


> I can see them in this post, from Firefox on the laptop, which surprises me because they are http:// prefixed like some of our gallery photos, which "disappear" from view...Pale Moon, a browser we have on our desktop computer, is an example of a browser which does display http:// photos on https:// sites.


That might be happening- I did shell out some money to add the SSL certificate to my hosting site, not sure why it wouldn't have converted the address though? Who knows the ways of The Internets! You know what's weird Sue, I can't see your pictures in your post (just little boxes) but when I quoted your post to reply, I could see them all embedded in the reply post. I will try leaving one below (should be a beautiful green field with a balloon over it) to see if it shows up in _this _reply.









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/landscape/photos/img_7208-1.jpg


EDIT: Looks like I _can _see your pictures now in both your original post and this reply @SueC!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> That might be happening- I did shell out some money to add the SSL certificate to my hosting site, not sure why it wouldn't have converted the address though? Who knows the ways of The Internets! You know what's weird Sue, I can't see your pictures in your post (just little boxes) but when I quoted your post to reply, I could see them all embedded in the reply post. I will try leaving one below (should be a beautiful green field with a balloon over it) to see if it shows up in _this _reply.


Make sure your link has https://. Alicia told me to make sure I had that in front of my pictures before posting them! I didn't see the picture of the balloon, but it just had http://


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Thank you everyone for confirming the photos are displaying. I appreciate whoever on the tech team figured out the glitches. I was talking to a moderator about just starting a new journal, and I realized I've grown pretty attached to _this _journal - so much history documented here in one place!



Know how you feel!  Insurance policy against online journal loss: Save all your web pages to your hard drive, as "full web page" so you save all the photos and formats too. Just in case the dreaded cyber-cookiemonster comes out to play.



Good to hear you had some time off!


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## SueC

Tazzie said:


> Make sure your link has https://. Alicia told me to make sure I had that in front of my pictures before posting them! I didn't see the picture of the balloon, but it just had http://



Did the hyperlink work when you clicked on it though? I know, we're being Scrooges, but this is my temporary fix! ;-)


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## Tazzie

SueC said:


> Did the hyperlink work when you clicked on it though? I know, we're being Scrooges, but this is my temporary fix! ;-)


Oh yeah, hyperlinks work fine  I just know she also paid for the SSL Certificate, and didn't want her feeling like she paid for nothing!


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## egrogan

All is still well as we settle into our little routine. The fence was finished on Tuesday, and the girls at first didn't realize I had opened the gate to give them access to one of the new sections. Silly girls! I had to grab Izzy by her fly mask and lead her to the gate before she realized she could go out there. And of course her velcro buddy followed her.

Question though- in my vision for how the fields would work, I guess I imagined this gate would swing all the way back flush with the fence so I could attach it rather than leave it hanging open like this when they have access to multiple sections. 










But my imagination did not account for the fact that it couldn't wrap around that post :wink: Hanging open like this seems dangerous to me, no? Anyone have suggestions on how I could secure it when it's open? I have two other connector gates like this, so I will have the same problem with those. 

Once they figured it out though, they were happy out there! It looks pretty lush below but in reality I don't think the grass is super; still I am limited their time on it for now.










Izzy is still getting really worked up when I take Fizz out. Brought Fizz for a nice walk out on the roads a couple of days ago...









_Your barn is bigger than my barn..._









...Izzy was drenched in sweat from running around like a nut while Fizz was gone. Her poor little butt cheeks were all sweated up like a racehorse! I actually ended up hosing her off because she was so drenched.Then I took her out for a walk and she was better. Fizz wasn't thrilled about being left behind but she didn't get as worried.










The past couple of days we've had torrential rain so haven't been able to do much with them. Izzy has been hiding out in the shed.









I find Fizz out standing in the rain though, she seems more interested in the grass than being dry. 









Hoping to ride this weekend. Maggie comes on Sunday, so on Saturday I will probably see if I can convince my husband to hang out with Izzy, or even bring her along with a halter, while I get Fizz out to stretch her legs a little. It's supposed to be near 90*F here starting this weekend and into early next week, and we are definitely not built to handle that kind of weather! I don't think anyone is going to want to get too worked up with that kind of heat and humidity.

I got some hay delivered earlier in the week so did some quick cleaning up in the barn to have a place to put it (we have to have a big part of the roof repaired ASAP before we can get anything up in the loft). The chickens got themselves into all kinds of trouble investigating. This one required rescuing:


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## evilamc

You can get a gate stop to attach to the gate to hold it in place when its swung open 

Something like this
Sure Latch Sure-Stop Gate Anchor

I bet they were soooo excited for another area to explore!


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## carshon

My gates do not swing back flush with the fence either but are fairly heavy so they do not move. Izzy will get used to being alone and once the other horse comes no more issues (fingers crossed) The pastures look great!


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## Chevaux

I agree it’s not the safest thing to leave a gate randomly swinging open for any length of time. I now of a tragedy involving a foal and swinging gate - particulars not to be discussed further as I don’t want to ruin the nice little high we’ve got going on this thread.

Another option to the gate anchor suggested but evilamc is to put a stand alone fence post in where the latch side of the gate can hit up against and then secured to it with a chain.


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## egrogan

evilamc said:


> You can get a gate stop to attach to the gate to hold it in place when its swung open
> 
> I bet they were soooo excited for another area to explore!


 Interesting, I haven't seen something like that before so will look into it. And yes, they really liked being out there. It's amazing how much they have already eaten down the shed paddock!



carshon said:


> My gates do not swing back flush with the fence either but are fairly heavy so they do not move. Izzy will get used to being alone and once the other horse comes no more issues (fingers crossed) The pastures look great!


 Unfortunately since we were so crunched for time, we had to go with the cheapo Tractor Supply option. It's definitely not solid and I watched it blow back and forth in a strong wing.

And- I am hoping you're right that Izzy will be better when she has another horse hanging out with her. Good news is that Fizz seems to be her normal, inquisitive self when we're out walking in a new area and she wants to keep going rather than turn around for home.



Chevaux said:


> I agree it’s not the safest thing to leave a gate randomly swinging open for any length of time. I now of a tragedy involving a foal and swinging gate - particulars not to be discussed further as I don’t want to ruin the nice little high we’ve got going on this thread.
> Another option to the gate anchor suggested but evilamc is to put a stand alone fence post in where the latch side of the gate can hit up against and then secured to it with a chain.


 Sounds awful @*Chevaux* - I don't need to let my mind wander too much to imagine what could have happened a scenario like that, but sorry to hear it.

I like the extra post idea too. That was the only solution I could think of before seeing @*evilamc* 's option. I was a little worried about having a random post sticking up in the field for someone to run into, but I guess they could figure that out. I think most of the time they are in that field, the gate to the shed paddock would be open, so it wouldn't be super common for the post to just be accessible in the field without something large and visible attached to it.

Have been playing around with some "liberty" stuff with them. Today Izzy let me "lead" her from the back of the paddock up into the shed, with no actual halter or lead rope. I have been grooming them loose in the sheds and they are doing great- standing politely and basically going through the whole process just like they would on cross ties. It's so interesting to play around with body language and see what they respond to. They are both really different in that respect.

Here's a horsey algebra problem for you:
Horse I is very responsive and always moves her feet for Person E.
Horse F is very responsive and always moves her feet for Horse I.
Horse F is more responsive to Horse I than to Person E.
_Which of these is most likely to be able to move Horse F out of the shed as soon as requested? 
_
Seriously though, it's so fascinating. All I have to do in the shed is look Izzy in the eye and point "out" with my index finger, and she takes off out of there. With Fizz, I can throw up my arms and hiss and spit and carry on, and she's just like, "huh?" But if Izzy walks towards the shed when she's in there and pins her ears back, she clears out. 

A rare moment tonight before dinner when they were actually happily sharing one side of the big shed:


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## gottatrot

We just use a short chain and hook it onto the gate, then to the field fence or put an eye bolt in the post and hook it onto that.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Question though- in my vision for how the fields would work, I guess I imagined this gate would swing all the way back flush with the fence so I could attach it rather than leave it hanging open like this when they have access to multiple sections.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But my imagination did not account for the fact that it couldn't wrap around that post :wink: Hanging open like this seems dangerous to me, no? Anyone have suggestions on how I could secure it when it's open? I have two other connector gates like this, so I will have the same problem with those.



I'm finding it a little hard to see details, but is that a fence at 90 degrees to the gate on the right-hand side? In which case I would just swing it the other way, and pack a couple of stout timber pickets and some insulators against those, so that the gate could go up fairly flush against that fence without becoming electrified. You could then secure the gate to one of the timber pickets. That way, there is no dead space behind the gate in which animals can potentially get trapped in a fight either. If the existing post is too narrow to permit the spacing off the electrics, I'd go for a bigger post, and recycle the narrower one elsewhere.

It's all looking a picture, @*egrogan* - those girls are looking so cute, and so _at home_!


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## egrogan

Took Fizz for a nice mile jog yesterday. She was great, except for the first and last 1/10th of a mile, when we could hear Izzy screaming for her and she was very distracted. I'm not much of a runner, but she actually had a really nice pace to jog alongside and seemed to enjoy exploring.









This was when we were almost home and we could hear Izzy. I think this is what people mean when they say Morgans can get "high headed." :wink:










But poor Izzy just didn't handle it well. We were only gone for about 20 minutes or so, and she was the worst she's been yet when we got back. I had loaded up the shed with the "good hay," thinking she'd be interested in that, but no luck. Drenched with sweat, thick white foam all along her butt, girth area, and chest...




I turned Fizz out in the big field when we got back so they were still separated but could see each other. Izzy paced the fence while Fizz just hung out grazing.


Blooper time! Here's evidence of how a bad camera angle can make a horse look atrocious. _Can anyone help me with saddle fit for my horse who is a little downhill?? _:rofl:










The chickens were loving the sun yesterday - sunbathing beauties:


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## Avna

Ah yes that old "my chickens died in the sun" thing they do.


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh; very familiar with the high headed Morgan look; their neck gets all pumped up, the eyes pop out of their head and the nostrils get big; I try to prevent that from happening when I'm riding cause it's usually the first sign of a freak out waiting to happen. Glad that Fizz was able to keep it together for you. Poor Izzy, you can see her kind of push the gate with her nose like "how do you open this darn thing?"

We haven't really thought about gate logistics yet. We did buy one gate so far to connect the perimeter fencing to the house but it hasn't been installed yet. These are things that we will have to solve on the fly. I'm gonna have BO come to our place before we finalize plans for barn and interior fencing to help us figure out logistics; you know all the stuff that as ammies just don't think about. 

Don't tell anyone....but I'm thinking about doing what you did; get another Morgan mare, board her with Ana for a month or so and then bring both home. It would just be too stressful to bring Ana home and then be like "oh by the way, you don't know it yet but this is your new best friend" - it's just too many changes all at once. With my health issues, I'm not sure it would be wise to get a big complicated horse, one that requires stalling, fancy shoes, and a lot of physical strength to ride. Morgans are just so easy and versatile and they really understand each other. Also considering Welsh cobs. But I might change my mind 20 more times so don't tell anyone, lol.


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## egrogan

Maggie is here!!


Everyone is acting quite nonchalant so far...


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## Avna

Exciting!!!


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## Chevaux

Ah, that's what the place was wanting. Now, one can't help but wonder how much better it might look with four horses.:smile:


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## knightrider

That's what I was saying too!


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## frlsgirl

Wow now you got 3 Morgan mares; that's awesome. It will be interesting to see how the herd dynamics evolve.


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## gottatrot

frlsgirl said:


> Wow now you got 3 Morgan mares; that's awesome. It will be interesting to see how the herd dynamics evolve.


Yes, looks like Izzy was keeping Fizz safely away from Maggie. That might be a thing for awhile.

When we put Hero out with Nala and Amore, Nala thought Hero should be kept away from Amore for awhile. Now they all mingle or do their own thing, but every now and then Nala still pushes Hero away.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Don't tell anyone....but I'm thinking about doing what you did; get another Morgan mare, board her with Ana for a month or so and then bring both home. It would just be too stressful to bring Ana home and then be like "oh by the way, you don't know it yet but this is your new best friend" - it's just too many changes all at once. With my health issues, I'm not sure it would be wise to get a big complicated horse, one that requires stalling, fancy shoes, and a lot of physical strength to ride. Morgans are just so easy and versatile and they really understand each other. Also considering Welsh cobs. But I might change my mind 20 more times so don't tell anyone, lol.



I am happy to be an enabler @frlsgirl! :grin: There are so many NICE Morgans for sale on all the FB pages right now. I bet as fall/winter get closer, if you're ready to buy at that time, you'll be able to find something that really fits what you're looking for. Have you thought about Connemaras at all? In addition to the sporty Welshes, Connemaras are super popular here. Our new hay guy is married to a woman who breeds a few every year and people rave about them for dressage and eventing.


It's funny because Izzy barely tolerated Fizz at the old barn, so I was worried their "getting to know each other" period hadn't really worked. But now that they're home, Izzy has decided that Fizz is the best thing that ever happened to her!


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> Ah, that's what the place was wanting. Now, one can't help but wonder how much better it might look with four horses.


Hahaha...you all are going to get me in trouble. I think three is just right. For now. 

Maggie is a very sweet little thing. She spent most of yesterday just seeming sort of confused about what had happened. I couldn't help but feel a little sad for her, she had lived at the same farm her whole life, in a herd that included her son and some long time friends. She's traveled a lot for shows and endurance rides, so it's not like she's never left, but she got plopped down in a new place with no real explanation. When I went out to do evening hay, she came right up to me and gently put her head down like she was expecting me to put the halter on and bring her back to the barn. :frown_color: She's never been out 24/7 (stalled at night) so I think everything was just sort of confusing for her.

She is certainly on the fluffy side! 











gottatrot said:


> Yes, looks like Izzy was keeping Fizz safely away from Maggie. That might be a thing for awhile.


 Yes, Izzy has been herding Fizz around for the past 24 hours, including blocking her in one side of the shed when they're not out in the field. Fizz doesn't seem to mind being told what to do though. 









And this just cracked me up...









Two months ago BO had to add a new water bucket to their field because Izzy wouldn't let Fizz within 10 feet of any water. And now they can drink at the same time, out of the same bucket?! :eek_color: Horse relationships are so complicated!



frlsgirl said:


> Wow now you got 3 Morgan mares; that's awesome. It will be interesting to see how the herd dynamics evolve.


So far Maggie is politely trying to figure out how to get an invitation "in" to the herd. She has mostly been following them around at a respectful distance.









There was one aggressive moment last night when Fizz went after Maggie at a full gallop (holy sh*t I have never seen Fizz get low to the ground and RUN at speed like that- it was gorgeous!). Izzy of course followed. So the three of them went flying around the small paddock, doing big circles around the sheds at top speed, with Fizz spinning around a couple of times throwing out warning kicks in Maggie's direction. Nothing made contact though, and after a couple of minutes of that they all gave it up and went their separate ways. Given the weather we're having- 90*F and 90% humidity- they were all drenched by the time they were done. 









I was actually most worried about Izzy running around like a nutcase, as she hasn't gone anywhere at a gallop in ages and I didn't want her hurting herself. Everyone was moving around fine this morning though.

I was thrilled to find them this morning all grazing together out in a far corner of the field. I opened up all three sections last night so they could have as much space as they wanted. 









This morning I actually had to call them in from the field to feed them their "grain" and supplements (they are just getting a handful of ration balancer with some supplements, though even a handful seems like it might be too much for Maggie so I may need to go get some hay cubes or something for her). Izzy and Fizz went right to their shed without getting worked up over Maggie, and I just grabbed Maggie by her fly mask and led her to her shed to eat. No drama. Phew!


















She does have a very sweet old lady face 









Late in the day yesterday, I put Izzy and Maggie out in the field and took Fizz out. Izzy called for her a couple of times, but seemed to settle after that. Took Fizz for another long walk in hand while my lovely husband was in the field working on getting some hooks and shelves up in the tack room for me. He said Izzy was annoyed but was not frantic. 

He put up a new blocker tie ring for me, which I'm really excited about. Fizz tested it out for us and I think it's going to be really good for her especially, since she's had issues with pulling back in the past.









Given how awful the heat is, I am not particularly eager to go out riding, but lovely husband and I both have Wednesday off so I am hoping to take Fizz out for an actual ride in the morning before it's too hot- and while someone is home in case she comes back to the barn without me!


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## carshon

What a great entrance for Maggie. Very little drama and she looks great in your field. Fingers crossed you get a short ride in on Wed


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## frlsgirl

Not too long ago Fizz was the "stranger" and now Maggie has taken on that role so Izzy is doing a good job "protecting" Fizz from "stranger danger"


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## SueC

Three cheers for Izzy, Fizz and Maggie. :dance-smiley05:

Three cheers for @egrogan and her DH too. It's all looking so neat already! 

Yes yes yes, I know that this is the outdoors, and that horse obsessed people will get their horses' areas to Cloud Nine state before they do this with their own nest, and that they'll sleep on the floor if they have to while they do it. Because horse obsession is like that. ;-)

But before we know it, @egrogan and her DH will have their own nest looking like Cloud Nine too! :cheers:

Let's all send them lots of good vibes to top up their personal batteries during this busy time!


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## egrogan

Aww, thanks @SueC, that's kind of you. We have definitely been prioritizing the animals, but have had some initial conversations with a contractor who is going to help us with renovations. It's just that we won't be able to get on his calendar until this winter, that's how far out work gets booked here, particularly in the summer months! But we've decided we're going to do some pretty major reconfiguration of the first floor space and move the kitchen entirely from where it is now. So, it will be a big project but since it's indoors, fine to tackle in the winter. And replenish the finances a little between now and then :wink:

*******
Had a frustrating time with Izzy last night. The herd bound issues are really rough right now. I took her down the road and she was worse than she's been yet. Drenched in sweat, calling frantically, pushing ahead of me...When I would make her stop trying to run me over she'd just start circling around me at a fast trot and even when given the opportunity to stop and stand, she wouldn't take it. She was just hellbent on getting back to the field. I failed pretty completely in getting her to pay any attention to me. 

The other two were pretty hot by the time we got back to the field. I'm not sure if they were running laps or just pacing the fenceline, but they were both covered in sweat too. Maggie stayed bothered most of the evening, pacing the front fence and calling out.

I know it takes time for them to adjust, but it's hard to see them get so worked up. I don't remember Izzy having such a hard time when we moved barns last time, but there were a lot more horses in both places so I guess she didn't have to take her job as herd leader so seriously. Just hoping they start to settle soon! Izzy has to go to the vet on Thursday to have her tooth extraction; can't decide if taking her away and bringing her back is going to make things better or even worse...

Anyway, there was relative peace again this morning.


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## Avna

@egrogan, I would surely be walking Izzy with a stud chain if she acted like that with me. Even one of those knotted noseband halters might work.

I also found that confining Pippa to her stall and run when I take Brooke out alone helps her calm down much faster. You might consider putting some kind of stall fronts or runs on your shelters so you have more options.


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## Chevaux

I have had success with this technique, egrogan, and you may want to give it a try — it’s essentially an elongating elliptical circle walk. Good results will be guaranteed in just a few short days (the provision being you do it every day at the start). You begin with the small circle at home base (all should be calm at this point) move in the direction you eventually want to go - pick up on tension/anxiety from the horse - return to the original circle - move off in the direction you want when calming achieved. With each repetition you should be gradually increasing the circumference. There can be some repetition involved depending how insecure the horse is feeling. The downside to this is you may not get to go for the long leisurely walk you wanted to get out of this but the upside for the horse is the reassurance through repetition and the resulting increase of her comfort zone that all is well (this has a secondary benefit, as well for any horses left behind as they get used to the continual coming and going).


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> @*egrogan* , I would surely be walking Izzy with a stud chain if she acted like that with me. Even one of those knotted noseband halters might work.
> 
> I also found that confining Pippa to her stall and run when I take Brooke out alone helps her calm down much faster. You might consider putting some kind of stall fronts or runs on your shelters so you have more options.


Hmm...I don't even think I own anything with a stud chain on it anymore. Because, well, these are horses that I could walk along the road with the lead looped up over their neck and not have to worry about it. But if she continues to escalate, I suppose I could get one. I was walking her in our regular rope halter.

I'd rather not add the stall front but yes, if I really need to it could be an option.



Chevaux said:


> I have had success with this technique, egrogan, and you may want to give it a try — it’s essentially an elongating elliptical circle walk. Good results will be guaranteed in just a few short days (the provision being you do it every day at the start). You begin with the small circle at home base (all should be calm at this point) move in the direction you eventually want to go - pick up on tension/anxiety from the horse - return to the original circle - move off in the direction you want when calming achieved. With each repetition you should be gradually increasing the circumference. There can be some repetition involved depending how insecure the horse is feeling. *The downside to this is you may not get to go for the long leisurely walk you wanted to get out of this but the upside for the horse is the reassurance through repetition and the resulting increase of her comfort zone that all is well (this has a secondary benefit, as well for any horses left behind as they get used to the continual coming and going).*


I really like this idea. I bolded the part above as I think that's sort of where my mind was going too- back up and work a little closer to home and build up going away. The only time Izzy actually relaxed and walked politely was when we were along the road near the pasture- it is separated by a stand of trees but she knew where we were. She gazed longingly in the direction of the two breaks in the trees where you can turn off the road and towards the pasture, but walked past the last of those turnoffs passed the pasture without complaining. There was a clear change in her demeanor from frantic to calm though on that stretch of road, vs. where we had been first. So I think I can try out this approach and see how far we can get outside of the comfort zone and start incorporating leaving the pasture for the road while she is calm. We have all the time in the world.

******


Maggie is a character. I've never had a horse who liked toys before, but I think I need to get her a jolly ball...She has been amusing herself by splashing the water out of the big muck buckets I'm using as water buckets, and then once they are light enough, picking them up by the handles and throwing them around the pasture. Not super smart on a day it's 95*F though! And- kind of annoying since I am lugging those buckets by hand from the hose about 100 feet away until my new hydrant is installed up by the field! I had just filled the buckets to the brim this morning- it takes about 4-5 trips from the hose to fill each one of them! Guess I will need to put some sort of weight in the bottom so she can't flip it.


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## Chevaux

egrogan said:


> .....
> 
> I really like this idea. I bolded the part above as I think that's sort of where my mind was going too- back up and work a little closer to home and build up going away. The only time Izzy actually relaxed and walked politely was when we were along the road near the pasture- it is separated by a stand of trees but she knew where we were. She gazed longingly in the direction of the two breaks in the trees where you can turn off the road and towards the pasture, but walked past the last of those turnoffs passed the pasture without complaining. There was a clear change in her demeanor from frantic to calm though on that stretch of road, vs. where we had been first. So I think I can try out this approach and see how far we can get outside of the comfort zone and start incorporating leaving the pasture for the road while she is calm. We have all the time in...


I’ll might add that you should find that at some point (this applies more for riding but will do just as well for leading) you start to circle back in a homeward/safe zone direction and the horse starts to relax before reaching the starting point. When that happens I turn in “my” direction again and keeping going until the horse becomes uncomfortable and repeat. If you were doing a gps recording of the trip , it would look pretty goofy with a bunch of semi overlapping circles going from point a to point b and then straight on for the home stretch but it’s worth it in the end because the horse becomes pretty solid about riding out for extended periods.


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## gottatrot

Something I find that really helps with separation anxiety is taking the horses out together for awhile. It's sort of a "bridge" to taking one out alone. If you walk them together, they can look around and get used to the scary new place and discover it is not as scary as they thought. Sometimes it takes longer to acclimate a horse if they are too upset to pay attention and learn the new surroundings. 

I take a multi-faceted approach. I'll work on taking each out of the field and bringing them a little ways alone. I'll also take them out together, and I'll tie one somewhere while doing stuff with the other, progressively making things more difficult until they are able to go out alone. Something I've learned is that the less upset you let them be, the faster they make progress. If a horse gets very upset, I don't take them as far until they can relax closer to their buddy.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Hmm...I don't even think I own anything with a stud chain on it anymore. Because, well, these are horses that I could walk along the road with the lead looped up over their neck and not have to worry about it. But if she continues to escalate, I suppose I could get one. I was walking her in our regular rope halter.


A simple method that's always worked for me in such situations is to simply thread the lead rope through the halter over the nose, like this:









http://photography.coulstock.id.au/gallery/horses/photos/img_3295.jpg
(direct link if you can't see the photo in your browser)

This was Sunsmart on his first beach outing in 2009. He hated water in any form other than in his drinking trough and had never seen so much of it before, and his ground manners from his harness days weren't the best - he'd never been taught to walk slowly or to stand quietly, for instance, as halter leading in harness racing circles is often just trainers rushing their horses from Point A to Point B to tie them up or put them in their stalls.

There's various ways to thread it so the rope is over the bridge of the nose; the most important thing is to make sure it doesn't result in the snaphook digging into the horse's face, so play with configurations or use a plain rope without snaphook.

It even worked on a really spooky young horse we had when I was 10 and weighed less than 40kg to the horse's 500kg. Never lost him like this. Here's an old photo.










Direct link if it doesn't show in your browser:
http://www.coulstock.id.au/photos/fun_in_snow_jan_1982_04.jpg


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> I’ll might add that you should find that at some point (this applies more for riding but will do just as well for leading) you start to circle back in a homeward/safe zone direction and the horse starts to relax before reaching the starting point. When that happens I turn in “my” direction again and keeping going until the horse becomes uncomfortable and repeat. If you were doing a gps recording of the trip , it would look pretty goofy with a bunch of semi overlapping circles going from point a to point b and then straight on for the home stretch but it’s worth it in the end because the horse becomes pretty solid about riding out for extended periods.


 @*Chevaux* , just wanted to share that I used this strategy and it really helped Izzy a ton over the past couple of days. The circling was very relaxing for her, and we went up and down the road a few times with minimal stress, sweating, or calling for the other horses. No, we didn't go as far as I would like, but we went a little further each time and kept things much more comfortable for her. 










Now all that said, I feel very guilty because this morning I had to take her out of the "comfort zone" with no room for negotiation because she had to go to the vet for her tooth extraction. A neighbor kindly helped us out with trailering, but given the size of her rig, had to park it up close to our house instead of along the road. Up by the house is about the point where Izzy starts to get very worked up, and loading was no exception. She did get on the trailer after just a few minutes, but she was drenched. When we unloaded at the vet's she was pretty agitated. I felt very bad leaving her there, but there was really nothing for me to do or reason to stay. They should be working on her right now, so cross your fingers for us that the extraction goes as planned and she is able to come home today after a couple of hours recovery, and not need an overnight stay :frown_color:

Things with Maggie are going well! The first couple of days, Izzy and Fizz simply ignored her. It was actually a little sad that when I would have Maggie out working with her and she called to them, they never called back. Such mean girls! :icon_rolleyes:


















But something changed yesterday, and Fizz decided she was very interested in Maggie and started investigating. Izzy didn't really like that, and would keep herding Fizz away whenever she got the chance. But Fizz was persistent and they spent more time close together in the field yesterday.


















This morning when I went out to feed, this is how I found them!!









And maybe the most exciting news, I took my first ride with Fizz yesterday! I did ask my lovely husband to hang out with us for moral support when I first got on. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but Fizz was fine. She was a little buddy sour at first and wanted to try to drift back towards the field, but I used @*Chevaux* 's circling activity with her too and it didn't take long for us to move away from the pasture and out to the road. We certainly didn't go far, no more than a mile, but it felt really great to get on!




































And she tied beautifully for untacking and grooming when we got back.


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## carshon

Happy Post! Love it!


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## Chevaux

I did double likes for this one!


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## knightrider

I love happy news!!!


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## Avna

Wonderful! The Morgan Mare Team work it out!


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## frlsgirl

Oh my gosh they are so adorable squeezing themselves together in the shed


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone!

And, Izzy came through the tooth extraction ok. Huge relief. She is coming home at 3 this afternoon :grin:


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## egrogan

Turns out Izzy had quite the day at the vet's yesterday. She had to have TWO molars removed. To get to the badly infected one, the vet actually had to take out the one next to it as well, which was loose any way :shock:

Here's what two infected old lady teeth look like once they're out...





(This is your warning in case you have a weak stomach!)























In a sign of just how unsettled she's been recently, the vet said she fought them hard when they tried to put in the IV line- so much so that she ended up with a small hematoma on the left side of her neck where they tried to put the line, and then had to abandon it to try again on the right side. In contrast, when she had to have 5 straight days of IV oxy tet during her Lyme treatment, we did it with her basically loose in the field. She has NEVER minded needles or shots and certainly never fought the vet during any kind of procedure she's had. 

They also told me to keep her inside last night since she would still be groggy from all the sedation. HA. She pranced like a show horse out to the trailer and couldn't get back to "her girls" fast enough. Not groggy at all!

She is actually allowed to eat normally, although I did soak her hay last night. 

_Sometimes when you are feeling bad, you don't mind having a friend to share with!
_









She is chewing a little funny but managing fine. She's not wild about the paste banamine that I have to give her, but she's happy to eat it when it's a dollop on the top of her feed! Same with the SMZ tabs she's getting, they're like candy when I toss them in her feed pan. :icon_rolleyes: She has never been a horse to turn her nose up to a feed pan...the day she does, I'll know she's really not ok.


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## evilamc

Poor Izzy! Glad shes got them out and can start feeling better. You're so lucky that she just eats all the meds so easily lol!!


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## carshon

Poor baby - but that pic is seriously too cute. From Dragon Mare to buddy.


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## phantomhorse13

So glad that things are progressing well. 

I am sure Izzy will be a lot more comfortable with those molars out. Ouch!


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## frlsgirl

Eek. Nobody likes the dentist. Glad she’s feeling better.


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## egrogan

Had a great day with Fizz yesterday. With absolutely perfect, cool weather and bright blue skies, I couldn't wait to head out for a real ride. 

She planted her feet a couple of times leading her out of the field, but I got her moving forward and went right to the circling method, which worked like a charm. After a few big loopy circles, we were away from the field, I mounted up, and off we went.



























We're not fit enough yet to ride any of the loops (there are a couple of different options between 4-6 miles), so we just went out straight and back about two miles. Around here, you're either going up a hill or down one, so it's a great workout :wink:. By the time we turned around, I could tell she was getting tired as she started to drunken sailor on me a bit. The downhills are much harder for her than going up, I guess because she's just not very strong in her hind end yet. Also, she tends to want to cock her head to the right and get a bit crooked going down the hill. I know I also tend to get a little crooked so I was trying to be extra cognizant of staying straight in the saddle. We'll have to keep working on the downhills. I can't imagine asking her to do anything but walk downhill at this point - I think we'd tumble tail over nose if we were trotting or cantering!

When we got home, my lovely husband happened to be in the driveway after having run some errands, so we went up to say hello and he snapped a couple of cute shots. 


















I used the Scoot Boots yesterday on her fronts. They stayed on perfectly, and had no rocks in them when we got home. Once we start doing a little more on our rides, I'll have to decide if I'm going to order another pair so she's booted in back too. Given how rocky it is, I think that might be necessary.


Izzy is doing well. Today is the last day of banamine, though she's got a ways to go with the SMZs. She is eating normally and doesn't act like she's uncomfortable. I never saw any bloody discharge, though the vet had prepared me for that potentially happening. Fingers crossed healing will continue to go well.

And Maggie is settling in really well now that everyone is getting along. I think last night was the first that she laid down to sleep, as she was covered in shavings this morning and I hadn't seen her like that yet.  Later today I'm going to see if Izzy's saddle has any chance of fitting her. I doubt it, as she is a pretty wide girl, but Izzy's saddle is actually surprisingly wide given how petite she looks.


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## frlsgirl

Love that picture; it would make a perfect fly mask commercial. Now that you have 3 Morgan mares, you'll have to edit the title of your journal again


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## Chevaux

frlsgirl said:


> ......Now that you have 3 Morgan mares, you'll have to edit the title of your journal again


So true. And, this would be probably as good a time as any to launch a name the new farm context. I’ll kick off with Morgana Farm.


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## QueenofFrance08

Glad to hear the Scoot Boots are working! Don't wish too much to be ready for trotting down hills! My mare LOVES trotting down hills and refuses to walk no matter how slippery/steep/rocky/etc! Drives me nuts!


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## Avna

Chevaux said:


> So true. And, this would be probably as good a time as any to launch a name the new farm context. I’ll kick off with Morgana Farm.


I like Three Mares Farm

but, I'd have to see it to name it . . . hint.


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## Spanish Rider

So glad to see everything is working out so well with all three "masquerading Morgan mares"!


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## Tazzie

Avna said:


> I like Three Mares Farm
> 
> but, I'd have to see it to name it . . . hint.


That'd be a long trip from Mercury :wink: :rofl:

I'm so excited to see everyone settling in! I hope you'll get more rides with them being there!!


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## egrogan

Could you all help me figure out if Izzy is having a bit of a laminitic episode? To my knowledge, my horses have never had white line separation, but within the past couple of days, I've seen Izzy's feet developing a fairly deep groove between the wall and the sole. The Internets seem to suggest this is white line separation. I'm confused about whether this is a mechanical problem or something related to all the stress and diet changes that she's been through in the past few weeks. 

So, this is the hind left foot. I'd say they all look like this though, and the "stretching" seems worst at the toe. 










To recap all that's happened in the past 3 weeks:
1. Introduced to new pasture. Pasture generally judged to be "poor quality" but does have grass on it. Old pasture was likely better quality, but grazed way, way down so more entertainment than real nutrition.
2. Switched hay from very good quality first cut at old barn to ok quality second cut from last year.
3. Transitioned ration balancer over a 10 day period from Cavalor Fiber Force to Poulin ETec Balancer. Although Izzy's been eating the Cavalor for years, I never really loved some of the ingredients (molasses, etc.) and it was super low in protein (11%) that wasn't supplemented otherwise. Also, I would have to drive over an hour to be able to get it as it's not available in our new area. I like that the Poulin has more protein (24%), but it is also a little higher in NSC values (ETec is 14% vs. Fiber Force 8%) . She used to eat this new food about 5 years ago at our old barn.
4. Stressful trip to the vet for tooth extraction.
5. Still getting SMZs during the healing process- 20 tablets per day, don't have the bottle in front of me to check actual dosage.
6. Added new horse to the herd.

So...she's had a lot thrown at her! BO preemptively told me before we left that I should expect to see some rings on their feet marking when the new pasture/hay/feed was introduced- she knew I would worry. But this is different than just seeing rings growing down.

Also, she did have a "maintenance trim" three weeks ago, right after we moved. The farrier had trimmed them two weeks before that, but stopped by to see them at our new house so we could get into his regular schedule for this area. He mentioned that both Izzy and Fizz had a ton of new growth in the two weeks between their first trim and the maintenance trim. But I don't think this looks like just a lot of new growth? 

I don't feel any pulse, bounding or otherwise, in any of her feet. Nothing is hot. She isn't uncomfortable or standing in a "founder stance." She is energetic in the pasture and cleaning up all her food. She does have a bit of diarrhea, which I assume is related to the antibiotics, so have added Probiotics to her feed twice daily.

So...do I need professional intervention? Vet? Farrier? Wait and see? Thanks in advance for your advice, I haven't seen something like this before.

Here she is standing tied while I groomed her up last night- she was a little annoyed with the flies so maybe standing a little under herself here after kicking wildly at her belly as they swarmed her. But nothing about how she's standing looks uncomfortable to me.


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## evilamc

If you aren't feeling a pulse or any heat I'm not sure I'd say founder. What I do see with her feet are very over grown bars, the heels look uneven and then long toe. That does not look like regular growth for 3 weeks but a foot that hasn't had a GOOD proper trim to get it to where it needs to be. Since her toes are long, its causing pressure which then causes the seperation. I'd talk to your farrier, point out the areas of concern.


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## carshon

going to agree with @evilamc the stretching at the toe is because her toe is too long, her bars need attention as well as her heels. The lines you see are the stretched laminae from her toe being too long and pulling the laminae forward.


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## egrogan

Thank you @*evilamc* and @*carshon* . While not ideal, you have helped alleviate my fears that I was killing her with poor feeding strategies. I have had a sneaking suspicion that the trim was out of whack, but have to admit that no matter how many times I have read through links provided by people like Loosie and others, I don't seem to have the spatial/mechanical thinking skills to be able to really process and understand what I've read about hoof angles and measurement.

For sure I could see that the bars seem to be too long- I'd say it's been at least two trim cycles like that now (Fizz looks the same). Fizz's have been flaking off on their own, so I thought maybe I just wasn't aware that bars will "self-shed" or something like that if not taken off with the hoof knife.

Sounds like I have a difficult conversation with my farrier coming up!


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## Chevaux

The other thing I noticed, in addition to what evilamc and Carson said, is a bit cracking by the tip of the frog. The suggests to me that the hoof is getting ready to sluff off old sole — if that is the case, once the old sole is gone and the wall trimmed the white line spacing that looks wide/deep now would greatly diminish if not disappear.


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## gottatrot

carshon said:


> ...the stretching at the toe is because her toe is too long, her bars need attention as well as her heels. The lines you see are the stretched laminae from her toe being too long and pulling the laminae forward.


Agree.
There are laminae on the outer hoof wall and on the inner hoof, that connect together. So you might see those lines from the hoof wall laminae on any hoof that is left to overgrow for too long. I’ve often seen them and trimmed off the excess wall, only to find a tight white line still. 
I'd agree the hoof looks like it needs more toe trimmed off.

However, this might not be your farrier's fault. Your horses have had a major environmental change in the past several weeks. I assume your new fields and situation probably has a different moisture content than where they were before. Often a change in environment like this can cause the hooves to slough out some retained sole, which can make the hoof wall suddenly long. My horses occasionally will have been just trimmed with the wall down to the sole, and then the weather changes dramatically and they can lose a whole lot of sole in several days. Suddenly their hoof walls will look very long and need trimming again. 

Most likely the hooves have not undergone any real change other than appearance, especially since you are still feeding cautiously and don't notice lameness or bounding pulses.


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## gottatrot

Also I wanted to point out that there is a difference between a groove between the sole and hoof wall, and a stretched area.

A groove is healthy and normal, because a normal sole is not flat. There is a slight ridge around the edge in the toe, and this means the outside of the ridge near the toe wall creates a groove. Farriers sometimes get rid of the groove, which is not ideal because the only way they can do this is by either removing some of the protective ridge by filing, or else by trimming the wall a little too short so it is shorter than the sole ridge.









The difference between an "OK" groove and a stretched line is the distance between the edge of the sole and the hoof wall.
See how this healthy, narrow groove ends right at the edge of the hoof wall. Ideally, after a trim you have a nice little groove left like this. This hoof does have a little flaring on the sides.









These unhealthy lines are stretched away from the hoof wall.

















But until the extra wall is trimmed down it can be difficult to see if the line is stretched or the wall is just grown forward, since the toe wall grows forward as it grows down. A stretched line will still appear stretched even after the toe is trimmed down, as in the two pictures above where the walls are flat with the sole but still stretched away.

This hoof has a deep groove, without stretching. The wall can be trimmed down a little more, but it is healthy.


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## egrogan

Thank you @Chevaux and @gottatrot. Gottatrot, those pictures are extremely helpful in illustrating the difference. Appreciate you taking the time to include them.


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## egrogan

My schedule made it possible for a lunchtime ride today, which was great because it was a beautiful, non-humid summer day!

First though, I had to wake sleeping beauty up from her mid-morning nap :wink:









Once I got on, it didn't take long for us to be swarmed by awful, awful deer flies. We weren't even riding on the woods, they were still miserable riding along the road. As bad as they were, I don't think I've ridden a horse who tolerates them as poorly as Fizz does. The curious, happy horse I'd ridden the past few times was gone, and she started to try to turn for home almost immediately. I tried trotting her to "outrun" them, but they were persistent and we couldn't shake them. We did lots of turns-on-the-forehand when she would try to spin towards home, but after doing that a few times I had her pointing away from home and she started running backwards down a steep hill. At that point, I decided I didn't have the guts to deal with that, so I hopped off and led her away from home. She led fine though was still very agitated, shaking her head and biting at her chest. Since neither of us were having fun, I called it a day and we turned around for home. 

We didn't walk far before we passed a field that has a couple of big trees across the entrance to keep 4-wheelers out. They also double as perfect mounting blocks! I got back on and used the fact that we were heading towards home to my advantage. 








We did a little leg yielding from one side of the road to the other, and back again. Since we were following a steady downhill toward home, I really concentrated on asking her to use her hind end more vs. just slapping her front feet down. She was still frustrated with the bugs, but she listened and tried to do what I was asking. When we got home, we rode past the turn-off from the road to the pasture. I wondered if she'd protest that, but she kept right on going, even though we could hear the other horses calling for her. Instead, we turned off at the back entrance to the pasture.

What good luck, I discovered the secret to getting Izzy and Maggie some exercise- all I have to do is ride Fizz where they can see her and they will take care of the exercise :grin:




(Excuse the shaky moment at the end, was reaching down trying to get some flies off her neck.)

Fizz is like that innocent but really cool new high school freshman that everyone falls in love with, maybe because of her cluelessness. She and Maggie seem to be buddying up, which Izzy clearly finds disgusting :icon_rolleyes:


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## frlsgirl

Awww glad Maggie was able to get accepted by the cool kid


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## Spanish Rider

OK, maybe I'm a bit nerdy, but I find this sort of herd dynamics really quite fascinating.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> OK, maybe I'm a bit nerdy, but I find this sort of herd dynamics really quite fascinating.


Well yes, we are all a bit nerdy :wink:

I may be a little obsessed because this is the first time I've had horses at home, but I find watching the three of them totally engaging. And I spend a lot of time watching them :grin:

I'm actually really surprised how it's all working out. Maggie's owner had said she was a "total alpha mare," but I really don't see her that way in our little herd. Totally possible she was in her old herd of course, but she is very deferential to the others. Izzy will still make nasty mare faces and fake kick in her direction, particularly when I put hay out, but I just put plenty of piles around and everyone finds a place where they can be happy. And, when I give them their pans of hard feed, I don't have to tie or lock anyone up, I just point at their shed and they go in and wait. I do feed them in order- Izzy, Fizz, Maggie- but Izzy is actually the slowest eater so the other two are done before she is and she doesn't have time to harass them. I hope we'll eventually get to a place where Izzy and Maggie can be a little calmer when they're left alone together, but it _is _getting better.


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## SueC

...that scenery!


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , I have a confession to make: I was in New Hampshire today.:hide: In Unity, to be exact. I know that that is relatively close to you, but I was travelling with my mother, boys and little niece to visit my mother's cousin. Of course, we got lost, so it took us nearly 3h to get there, then 2.5 h home. A lot of driving for one day!

Anyway, yes @SueC , it is beautiful country up there!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I may be a little obsessed because this is the first time I've had horses at home, but I find watching the three of them totally engaging. And I spend a lot of time watching them :grin:


Ooooh, I love to ride, but _that_ is the best bit, I think...just having them around and watching what they do! :happydance:

Glad everything is working out so well for you all. Hope you still have energy in your tank, and that you've got less mice now!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> @*egrogan* , I have a confession to make: I was in New Hampshire today.:hide: In Unity, to be exact. I know that that is relatively close to you, but I was travelling with my mother, boys and little niece to visit my mother's cousin. Of course, we got lost, so it took us nearly 3h to get there, then 2.5 h home. A lot of driving for one day!
> 
> Anyway, yes @*SueC* , it is beautiful country up there!


I don't know @*Spanish Rider* , I can't believe you came all the way from Europe to spend time with your family instead of a random person you met online! :rofl:

Maggie is clearly very offended by your decision!


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## Spanish Rider

Well, you can tell Maggie that had I known she was such a cutie and had such a soft-looking cuddly muzzle, I would have dropped everything to meet her!


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## knightrider

> Originally Posted by Spanish Rider View Post
> OK, maybe I'm a bit nerdy, but I find this sort of herd dynamics really quite fascinating.
> Well yes, we are all a bit nerdy
> 
> I may be a little obsessed because this is the first time I've had horses at home, but I find watching the three of them totally engaging. And I spend a lot of time watching them


I've had horses for 61 years and I STILL find watching the herd dynamics fascinating. I really love it . . . and mine are so interesting. I wrote this in Isabeau's journal, but when she first came into the herd, she fell wildly in love with our big gelding, Chorro, and he with her. They were inseparable for about a month. Isabeau's bff Windy was heartbroken and followed them around forlornly. Then, believe it or not, THEY BROKE UP! They hated each other! Isabeau went back to being bff with Windy and totally ignored Chorro. After about 3 years, Chorro asked Windy if she'd like to go with him, and she said she'd think about it. Now Isabeau and Acicate are kind of interested in each other, but more like brother and sister, where they tease each other good naturedly.


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## SueC

...that is such a great photograph! :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

Horses do this to me. You're going to get so many good photos like this now you're living in their paddock!

Excuse me for "repeating" that photograph, but it really needed some of these on the same page:









And perhaps a few of these as well:

:loveshower::loveshower::loveshower:







:charge::charge::charge:


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## frlsgirl

Awww what a sweet Morgan face! Herd dynamics are interesting; I was told that Ana was at the bottom of the pecking order at her previous owner's place and now she rules the pasture with an iron hoof.


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## QueenofFrance08

So are you going to need to change the name of your journal to "3 mares"????? Maggie can still be ridden right?


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> So are you going to need to change the name of your journal to "3 mares"????? Maggie can still be ridden right?


Ha, I guess so! I know we can't change the title ourselves, but I think one of the mods did change it a few weeks ago, maybe to make it shorter? I will have to figure out if they can change it again.

But your post reminded me, I didn't share my Sunday adventure of riding Maggie for the first time!

Now, I think we've all agreed she has just the sweetest old lady face...









Her owner had warned me that once you tack her up, she doesn't remember that she's 22 years old. Even though I knew that conceptually, I was still questioning the kimberwick that she came with as I was getting her ready. :shrug: I mean, she's so quiet and sweet to be around...









...that was until the saddle came out. Holy moly, she turned into a spicy little thing!
Apparently, tack means here we gooooooo :gallop:
Getting her to stand for mounting was a chore, but I eventually got her standing and climbed on. Waiting until being asked to walk on was apparently not part of her process either, and she did not like being asked to wait! So we worked on that. I did a few circles mounted around the yard where I got on, and she was pretty hyped up. After we accomplished one with relative calm, I hopped off and we just headed out to walk around in hand and try to bring the excitement level down a little!

So we walked up and down the road, and then I brought her up to the barn. You can just sort of make out that the chickens were peaking out at her all the way at the end behind the screen door.









Then we just hung out in the yard grazing while my lovely husband was doing some painting around the outside door. She really is a chunk, gotta work on that!  









All joking aside, she really is way too fat (can't feel her ribs at all, and she is cresty under all that mane) so she needs more exercise, even if it's just walking both in hand and under saddle. Izzy's saddle isn't a great fit, but I'm not investing in something else while she is still this fat because she is HOPEFULLY going to slim down into a better shape!

She remained pretty amped up so I didn't get back on her. Now that I know she gets so excited when the tack comes out, we'll just keep tacking up and getting off/on until it's boring, and go from there. I think the more she gets out of the field the less exciting it's going to be, so we'll have to start fitting that in (pending the bugs becoming less miserable).


PS- Our trial period officially ended on Sunday, and since her owner and I are both happy with how things are going, she is staying indefinitely on a free lease. :smile:


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## QueenofFrance08

She looks so cute with that saddle pad! I'm glad she's a permanent part of your family now! I love her blue bridle! Did she come with that?

I think a lot of endurance horses are allowed to not stand for mounting and take off right away. I have to admit I'm bad about it with my two although we are working on it.


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## carshon

My Morgan/Paint was like that - Cherokee was semi retired when she turned 23 but every once in a while I just yearned to ride my heart horse (the first horse I ever purchased with my own money! I was in eighth grade and paid $250 for her) her old lady grey face made everyone talk about how cruel I was to ride her BUT once she saw her hackamore and the bareback pad watch out! She was like that until I laid her to rest at 28 -


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## frlsgirl

We have an older Morgan and an ancient Hanno gelding at the barn; they look like aging barn ornaments but when you get on them they are ready to show you the ropes. 

Glad things are going well with the newbie!


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## egrogan

Phew!!!!! The past few days have been a whirlwind and I am operating on way too little sleep. On Monday morning, my computer completely imploded-about an hour before I was headed to the airport for an important multi-day work meeting. So much for using time on the plane to do all my meeting prep!!  Meetings went well and now I'm just hoping the weather cooperates so I make it home tonight.

My sleep deprivation started on Saturday night when I joined @phantomhorse13, her husband, and her friends Patti and Lani at the VT100. The lack of sleep was totally worth it :grin: I got to camp just as they were thinking about tacking up. I was happy to get to see my buddy Iggy again...I had crewed for him and Patti (with phantomhorse showing me the ropes) last year at this same ride. He seemed like he had really grown up, just hanging out in his pen and eating, even though his buddy was already out on trail for the 100 (they were doing the 75).

Tacking up was under control so I got the tutorial on all our crewing supplies from phatom's husband (I'll call him D here). Their truck was packed, like multi-layered packed, with supplies for three riders and ample snacks for us furnished by Patti. We had tons of buckets, sprayers, and sponges to work on getting Fluffy pulse doen and all kinds of food to keep in front of the horses for the holds. Everyone was more or less getting the same food (with a bit of good natured disagreement about alfalfa cubes) so our job was pretty straightforward.

Soon enough, everyone was mounted and ready to head out.



























At that point, D and I got to hurry up and wait for the first 12 mile loop to finish. I met Mia and Katie, their sweet dogs who tagged along with us all day. I met some folks who organize the ride who I only knew over email-before phantom decided she'd be riding, I had been planning to volunteer for the ride as a hold timer. I was also talking with an organizer about the history of one of the holds that happens at the house next door to mine...apparently it used to happen in one of our fields but one year the riders got attacked by angry ground bees, so they had to move the location!!!! It was nice to meet more local people though.

Soon enough, the first rider appeared at the stop and go...and it was Izzy's vet on her pretty new grey Arab mare. She had run into some trail marking problems so a crew went racing out to fix that. We had a pop up storm last week that took down a bunch of trees, so the loop had changed at the last minute, leading to the marking issues. I guess the riders worked around it though, because soon a steady stream of riders was coming through and D and I got ourselves ready at the hose to spray everyone down while our riders ran to the bathroom. They got in and out with no issues, but we decided we would take the trucks out because Patti was considering breaking off from the group to get Iggy going at a better pace for him. If she did that I would have gone off on my own with her stuff.

When we got to the first hole though, everyone came in together and was planning to stay that way. Since we were riding towards the back of the pack, we got a pretty ****ty parking spot far from the water and vetting. That led us to be caught pretty far away from all our stuff when the 100 riders-including Rich and Kathy-came in, leading to a bit of anxiety for the horses when their buddies showed up from out of nowhere. Iggy and Sarge stayed together while we took the other three to the far end of the field with our stuff. At one point I found myself on the end of the leads of three horses I didn't know, but they were all eating happily so we just went with it! :grin:

That hold went quickly because of the excitement of meeting up with the other riders, so we got them back out on trail and packed up to keep moving. We were almost too quick, as we got to the next hold with a lot of time to wait...

To be continued....


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## egrogan

I was excited for the next hold, as it was the one next to our house. My lovely husband had been watching riders and runners go by all day. I wasn't sure how the horses and dogs would do with that commotion, but he said they handled it well. I was going to have him come meet me at the hold, but since we didn't really know how long it would be before our riders came in, I decided it might not be the greatest idea given he chaos of riders arriving :grin:

Here's phantom and friends riding past our house!









This time, we set up next to Dana (Kathy and Rich's crew) so we all got stuff ready for the 5 horses together. We were ready and just hung out waiting...and waiting....and waiting. No riders were in, but crews were ready! We entertained ourselves by standing in the road and cheering on runners. They were going up a biggggg nasty hill, but there was a really fun runners' aid station at the top of it, so they almost all broke into big smiles when we cheered them on and told them about all the goodies waiting for them. I can't believe that I only got ONE picture of runners and riders on trail together the whole day...









I think this might be my favorite shot from the day. This little girl was 8 years old!!! She was rocking it!









Here's a sense of the hill the runners had to go up, and the riders hit as soon as they left the hold.








Fizz and I ride this hill a bit, when the bugs aren't too miserable. :wink:

Unfortunately at this hold, we couldn't get Fluffy to pulse down even with copious amounts of water.








I mostly tried to stay out of the way of everyone working on her, and entertained Iggy and Flo. They were happy to hang out and eat until it was time to go.

Our riders went out, and D and I left Lani and Fluffy waiting for the horse trailer to come back and get them to go to camp.

We were on to our next meet up...


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## egrogan

(PS, sorry for spelling mistakes, I am hating having to type on an iPad!)

At the next hold, parking was super tight and someone had inconveniently put the portapotty nowhere near the actual crew spots, so there was lots of joking about answering the call of nature IN nature. D and I helped Dana with Fuji and Sarge while we waited for our riders; there was no overlap this time. When phantom and Patti got there, things had cleared out considerably. BUT someone near us had done a big no-no and dumped all their uneaten grain out on the lawn, which made the organizers really upset, because it makes the landowner really upset. Flo happily volunteered to clean it up and got right to work eating as much as she could hold!

I had an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction while trotting Iggy out for his vetting...I had forgotten my belt and was almost separated from my jeans!! Oops! Luckily I was able to hold onto him with one hand and my pants with the other. The vet didn't like Iggys gut sounds though, so I got to work willing him to eat more. Here's what he thought of that!








He's such an expressive guy. And fortunately, he got cleared to go back out at his recheck.

The sun was setting around this time, so we got glo sticks and lights ready and sent phantom and Patti on their way. We had a couple of pit crew stops before the next actual hold, and I think D thought I was a little nuts because I couldn't sit in the car and wait without risking falling asleep. I usually go to bed super early, so once it was past 9pm I had to keep moving to stay awake.

The trails are marked with glo sticks at night, and my lovely husband saw this on his way out to do evening chores :grin:









Phantom and Patti moved through the pit crew stops quickly and we headed to the last hold-about 12 miles from the finish-to meet them for the last time. I was happy to find my mentor, R, there as the out timer with her friend K who had been a fellow boarder at our last barn. We had a great time catching up, and R saved the day when she prevented one of the crew guys from backing over a Pandora saddle that was sitting on the ground near his truck!!!

When phantom and Patti got in, it was clear Patti wasn't feeling great. D took Iggy for his trot out this time and I tried to get Patti eating. She got some food down, and then suddenly said, "oh no I'm about to throw up"  She was feeling just awful, and decided she wasn't going to go on. That meant we got phantom ready to finish with Flo alone, and left Patti and Iggy under the watchful eyes of the vet crew until the trailer got back to bring them to ride camp.









D and I got back to camp before Patti did, so focused on getting our stuff down to the finish to make sure Flo pulsed quickly. We were expecting phantom to finish around 2am, depending on how Flo was handling being out alone. At about ten minutes before we expected her, a group of runners finished and brought a message that there was a horse in trouble about half mile away. D stayed calm, but I could tell he was worried it was phantom. I was! The minutes ticked past, and a couple of riders came in but no one knew anything. We both decided that if she had seen a rider in trouble, she would have stopped to help, so we squirmed quietly and just waited. D had run back to the vet tent to send a team out on ATVs to find the horse but still...nothing. We were both so relieved to see Flo come in with phantom smiling just after 2!








She vetted through with no issues. They had finished! Woohoo!

I was feeling like a zombie so said my goodbyes around camp and headed home, crawling into bed around 3am. When I got up at 6 to go feed my horses, I think my brain was still in crewing mode. Maggie thought it was Christmas when I was holding up her half-finished feed pan to her mouth so she could lick every last piece out of it :grin: Pretty sure I was quite generous with the hay, but I truly don't remember! I fed the horses and chickens and crashed again. I usually have a terrible time napping but I slept on and off most of Sunday.

Monday I left on my work trip, leaving my lovely husband alone with the horses for the first time. I had given him a feeding lesson (they are super easy) and instructions on where poop goes, but still...I was a little nervous. So when he started our first call with "I couldn't find Izzy when I went out to feed" I almost had a heart attack! It had been storming when I left, so I was having terrible images of a tree falling down on the fence, or having left the gate unlatched, or her slipping and hurting herself in the field...but it turned out that she was just in Maggie's shed chowing down on the hay I left in there :grin: She never goes in there so he didn't even notice her there until she came out to say hi. It seems like all went well though and he actually liked spending time with them. 

Phew...so that's it! What an adventure the past few days. Can't wait to do it all again next year :grin:


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## phantomhorse13

I cannot thank you enough for all your help. Your being there was probably a make or break deal for all of us!!


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## QueenofFrance08

I'm so jealous I'm practically green (could be I've been eating too much Guacamole....)!!!!!!! I just google mapped it, 22.5 hours from my house.... That's totally doable right?!?!?! Except I need a horse that can at least do a 50 since there aren't any LD's there.... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


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## gottatrot

It was really fun to read about the ride from both sides of the story. That's so neat that it goes right by your house! I can't imagine how terrible that would have been if the crew truck had driven over the Pandora saddle. Wouldn't have been great either if you'd lost your pants! :smile::smile:


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## SueC

_Waaah!_ I need to find that TARDIS! Most of _y'all_ are on the other hemisphere from us! :-(

Nice to read about the adventures though!


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## Spanish Rider

> It was really fun to read about the ride from both sides of the story.


Ditto. Somehow, @phantom never mentions the logistics of parking and port-a-potty distances! and I had no idea that she finished at 2 am. Can't imagine...

So cool that you get to watch all these goings-on from your front doorstep on a regular basis. Crewing must be exhausting, but such a learning experience!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I cannot thank you enough for all your help. Your being there was probably a make or break deal for all of us!!


I had a great time-you all are a fun bunch and I've learned so much. It keeps me inspired to get Fizz on the path to doing rides in the future!



QueenofFrance08 said:


> I'm so jealous I'm practically green (could be I've been eating too much Guacamole....)!!!!!!! I just google mapped it, 22.5 hours from my house.... That's totally doable right?!?!?! Except I need a horse that can at least do a 50 since there aren't any LD's there.... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


You are more than welcome to make a vacation of it and stay at our place if you come early. We have plenty of space for trailers and portable pens! GMHA uses much of the same course and has plenty of 25s throughout the year. https://www.gmhainc.org/events/cate...mha-woodstock-vt/competitive-trail-endurance/



gottatrot said:


> It was really fun to read about the ride from both sides of the story. That's so neat that it goes right by your house! I can't imagine how terrible that would have been if the crew truck had driven over the Pandora saddle. Wouldn't have been great either if you'd lost your pants! :smile::smile:


The whole town gets sort of festive the week before in anticipation of all the runners and riders showing up. There are some grumpy people who complain about the traffic, but those are the people who complain about everything!

And yes, I will remember to wear a belt with those jeans in the future 



SueC said:


> _Waaah!_ I need to find that TARDIS! Most of _y'all_ are on the other hemisphere from us! :-(
> 
> Nice to read about the adventures though!


If you're ever on this side of the world....



Spanish Rider said:


> Ditto. Somehow, @phantom never mentions the logistics of parking and port-a-potty distances! and I had no idea that she finished at 2 am. Can't imagine...
> 
> So cool that you get to watch all these goings-on from your front doorstep on a regular basis. Crewing must be exhausting, but such a learning experience!


I'm glad I could give you insight into the more glamorous side of endurance riding :rofl:


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## QueenofFrance08

@egrogan I would LOVE that! I really want to do the 100 though (I saw someone post a picture of their belt buckle from it the other day and I really want one....) How about 5 years? I think Jake should be ready by then. And hopefully @phantomhorse13 will ride with me!


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## egrogan

Just got back from the best ride I've had with Fizz since our move. I am so proud of her!

Given weather and work, it's been a couple of weeks since she's been ridden. I wasn't sure what to expect. I decided I was going to bring my dressage whip along with me, since the last couple of rides were very discouraging, with Fizz trying to turn around for home repeatedly. I needed a little help in conveying the message that was the wrong decison.

First things first, she led away from the field with no issues, which is itself an improvement. I had put Maggie and Izzy out with a bunch of hay and that distracts them enough there was no frantic calling.

Mounted up and moved up the road, at which point she tried to spin around to the right as I sort of thought she might. I flicked her on that right shoulder a couple of times, and while that made her shoot forward at a trot, that was fine as we were heading away from home. We were trotting on away from home when I realized oh s**tttttt, I was not wearing my helmet!!! :evil: It had been so muggy while tacking up I was saving it for the very last minute. As much as I didn't want to, I had to turn around and go home, barely a tenth of a mile away.

We went back, got the helmet, and Maggie/Izzy noticed Fizz and nickered to her, but it didn't turn into a big deal. I grabbed a big handful of peppermints along with my helmet in case bribery was needed to ride away from home again  I was so happy with her though, she never planted her feet or refused to lead away! I handed out some peppermints, mounted up, and headed out for real this time.









We are still finding glo sticks from the race in our trees 









She tried to turn for home again, so again I flicked her on the shoulder. She surged forward trotting but I just encouraged her to keep going forward. I could see her tilt head right thinking about trying to spin again, but this time just had to give her a loud "EHHHH" and she stayed straight without needing a flick on the shoulder. She never tried it again after that.

We took the road to my absolute favorite view in our street. Just around that corner...








...the vistas are just so beautiful.



























Thunder had been rumbling throughout our ride, so we kept a pretty brisk pace (brisk for us anyway :wink. We trotted all the uphills and flat spots, but she's not strong enough to trot the downhills so we walked. To be honest, we are both out of riding shape and her trots uphill were also very heavy on the 
forehand and a little bone-shaking. This particular route wasn't a loop, so we turned around and had a lot of downhill to navigate. I know I tend to lean to my right so I tried to stay in the middle of the saddle, which meant I FELT sort of crooked but I think actually had my right seat bone underneath me better. Would have liked to have someone around to confirm though!

Time was on our side today. We got home and untacked before I ever felt a raindrop, despite all the thunder. But as soon as I walked into my house, the skies opened and it's been pouring ever since!


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## phantomhorse13

Woohoo for success! Sounds like Fizz quickly realized you meant business. Maybe going back for your helmet was a good thing (and certainly very important to be wearing it!). Soon enough everyone will realize that your leaving home isn't the end of the world.

Where you live is just stunning and a fantastic place to condition. If it wasn't quite so far, I would be inviting myself over often.


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## frlsgirl

Glad you had such a great time! Reminds me of Dressage camp 2016; I had the time of my life, so full of excitement and activity; I actually got kind of depressed when it was all over and I had to go back to my normal "boring" life.


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## egrogan

More rain yesterday, but today was beautiful so I took Fizz out early. We had planned to see if what she thought of riding alongside my lovely husband, who was out for his run. Let's just say I don't see any Man vs. Horse competitions in our future! :wink:








We got separated pretty much right away. A big work truck was coming down the road towards us, and since the road is sort of narrow, I pulled over the the shoulder to let it pass. Fizz decided to use that as an opportunity to spin for home :icon_rolleyes: So I needed a minute to deal with that, and by the time the truck passed and we were facing away from home again, he was nowhere to be seen. That was fine, as we had agreed ahead of time that if the speeds weren't working out together we'd just do our own thing.

Aside from that one incident though, Fizz was really good. We went a bit farther than last time, and she tried hard, especially trotting the uphills. I could tell she was tired, but when I asked her to turn down a side street we haven't been down yet on our way home, she did it without any argument. 

Heading _down_ a big hill...








And back up it heading for home.









She walked home nice and relaxed on the buckle 









Also got Maggie out for a nice walk. She was really good; she called for the other two just once but otherwise led pretty nicely.









Took Izzy out for the same walk and she was...not good. She is still just losing her mind the second she's out of sight of the other horses.

Since the weather has been so awful, my pastures were in desperate need of attention, so I had a date with the pitchfork and wheelbarrow this afternoon! I happened to catch nap time, which is always entertaining because Fizz is so dramatic about it. She started off under Maggie's watchful eye:








Not to be outdone, Izzy came over to supervise!








In no time, she had two grandmas watching over her so she could sleep.








She was snoring at this point :wink: I love her little white spot on her upper lip.


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## gottatrot

Those pictures of the three mares are too adorable.


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## carshon

I just love those pics!!!! and so happy for a couple of good rides on Fizz!


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## egrogan

Yeah, they are a cute little herd!

Last night when I went out to check them before bed, I had a strange experience. There was a pack of coyotes somewhere really close by and their howling was just awful. That made me a little edgy, and as I walked down the hill to the pasture, I saw a big white object just outside the fence. I had no idea what it could be, but it didn't seem to be moving and the horses didn't seem upset. I thought maybe some sort of large bird? Or, there has been a vacation group somewhere nearby all weekend (making obnoxious amounts of noise and doing "wheelies" in the street with ATVs and motorbikes) so I thought maybe they had the audacity to drive around the pastures and leave trash or something? Regardless, I had to check it out...









It turned out to be a very sweet memorial that must have been released from a funeral. It was a big white dove balloon that had several hand written messages-seemingly in kids' handwriting-saying goodbye to someone who had died (saddest one in little girl writing: "we miss you and hope you have a good life in heaven.") 

Fizz of course double checked to be sure it wasn't food :icon_rolleyes:









I can only imagine the scene with that descending from the sky to the pasture!

I've never found a memorial like that and it's sort of a weird thing to find in your yard. I feel really wrong throwing it away, but not quite sure what to do with it. I guess everyone can take a moment to think of "Jay" and his family today...

Maggie seems to be moving up in the world. All of a sudden, she gets to be the boss of Fizz around the food, and can definitely make her move. Fizz keeps trying nicely to share the same piles though, even though Maggie tells her to get lost.


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## phantomhorse13

Glad that balloon coming down in your pasture didn't cause any issues with the horses. I guess I am not very empathetic to that kind of thing, as Keith has had equipment break when random balloons have come down in a field and he didn't see them before hitting them with the equipment. Surely there is a better way to memorialize a loved one than littering! 

So glad your rides with Fizz continue to improve. I think its pretty funny your DH ditched you (and I only laugh because mine would do the same!).

So frustrating that Izzy is still so insecure about her new living arrangements. If you put her to work versus just trying to let her graze, does it many any difference?


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## frlsgirl

Those pics are adorable. I can’t believe she didn’t wake up when u got close to take a picture. She must be a hard sleeper! 

We sometimes find random things in our pasture; so far the most interesting find has been the neighbors drone. 

It wouldn’t hurt to do regular walk throughs in case something dangerous makes itself into their pasture.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Those pics are adorable. I can’t believe she didn’t wake up when u got close to take a picture. She must be a hard sleeper!
> 
> We sometimes find random things in our pasture; so far the most interesting find has been the neighbors drone.
> 
> It wouldn’t hurt to do regular walk throughs in case something dangerous makes itself into their pasture.


She does sleep super deeply during the day. At our old barn, BO told me she's one of the only horses she's ever had where she worried about daytime sleeping. But we decided Fizz just plays the nighttime sentry role really seriously, so she has to make up her sleep during the day. Maggie and Izzy are both covered in shavings in the mornings, so it seems that they do sleep st night, and return the favor for Fizz during the day. She DOES seem to get deep sleep during the day, so I guess it's not something to worry about?



phantomhorse13 said:


> Glad that balloon coming down in your pasture didn't cause any issues with the horses. I guess I am not very empathetic to that kind of thing, as Keith has had equipment break when random balloons have come down in a field and he didn't see them before hitting them with the equipment. Surely there is a better way to memorialize a loved one than littering!


I am not religious so try to be respectful of things other people take comfort in...mostly I think it was the kid handwriting that got to me...



phantomhorse13 said:


> So glad your rides with Fizz continue to improve. I think its pretty funny your DH ditched you (and I only laugh because mine would do the same!).
> 
> So frustrating that Izzy is still so insecure about her new living arrangements. If you put her to work versus just trying to let her graze, does it many any difference?


I wasn't so surprised he kept going-his runs are his 'recharge' times so I get it :wink: I was glad that even though the experiment was short, Fizz didn't seem bothered by the run, including him running up behind us.

I really don't know what's got Izzy so bothered. I have tried making her focus on doing something when she's all bent out of shape- yielding quarters, backing up hills, trotting in hand, lunging around me. She seems able to do all that...forever...and still not settling. The thing that's so frustrating is that we have been doing trail walks in hand frequently since she got her Lyme diagnosis...two, three miles at a time, and she would basically go along without really even needing a lead at all. So it's not like she's a chronic problem child.

I actually think riding her through it will be easier, as weird as that may sound. I didn't want to put a bridle-even bit less-on her too soon after the mouth surgery, so I'm going to clear that with the vet and then we'll do that.

I did want to try one more thing to try to do convince her I wasn't trying to kill her on our walks. I think I may have read about this here, but today I tried the "treat scavenger hunt" approach. My goal is basically to reinforce that it is ok if she goes a short distance away from the others without being able to see them, and she is shamelessly food motivated, so I thought it was worth a shot. I got a few bowls, threw in some chopped up carrots and a handful of the "good hay" and put them along the road where I wanted to walk her. I set up the first one so we got to it almost as soon as she could no longer see the other horses, and the other one some distance from there.








She caught on really fast, and like I hoped, she was more interested in looking for the next bowl rather than acting like she was being tortured.









Finally, looking calm and interested!


















I think we just need repetition at this point. I didn't spend any more than 20 minutes on our little walk and giving her a nice grooming when we got back. I just need to find the time to get her out most days so it's not a big deal anymore.


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## egrogan

It was muggy and buggy this morning, but the rest of the week is supposed to be a washout so I got Fizz out for a ride. After a slight mounting mishap-all operator error-we headed out. This route was both mentally and physically challenging...mentally because it took us down the road past the pasture where the other two were calling out to her, and physically because it's basically straight downhill for the first mile.

There was *NO* attempting to turn for home, even though we had a cloud of flies surrounding us. We had never gone this way before, so she had lots of new sights to take in-a bridge with a loud stream under it; mailboxes; farm equipment; crossing a paved road. She was really awesome through it all. She looked at all the new stuff, but the more we rode the more relaxed she got. Going on this route will allow us to connect up with a great trail system on a day when I have more time, so I'm very encouraged by how she did today!


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## carshon

Woo Hoo! Go Fizz.


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## twixy79

I can't wait for the day that I get to trail ride and not trail walk  It looks like your babies are mostly doing very well, except perhaps for Izzy's issues. 

Here's to hoping that this sucky weather passes quickly, and that we can have a nice, cooler, less humid August.


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## frlsgirl

Adda girl Fizz and I love the scavenger hunt idea with treats. Ana is also extremely food motivated so I’ll keep that idea in my back pocket in case something like this comes up in the future.


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## egrogan

twixy79 said:


> I can't wait for the day that I get to trail ride and not trail walk  It looks like your babies are mostly doing very well, except perhaps for Izzy's issues.
> 
> Here's to hoping that this sucky weather passes quickly, and that we can have a nice, cooler, less humid August.


Hope you get out there on the trails soon too @*twixy79* ! I do like trail walks in hand too- it gives you a different perspective on what catches your horse's attention.

It's pouring here right now, but the rain started later in the day than they expected, so I snuck out to see the girls at lunch time. I hate leaving them out in hard rain with soggy flymasks on, so I wanted to get those off before the storm started.

Apparently Izzy was a half step ahead of me...








Sort of defeats the purpose of having a flymask with ears! 









I haltered her up and we went out to find the bowl of peppermints. She's getting better each time- no jigging, no calling out, etc. Of course we're still within the comfort zone, but it's getting easier on everyone to take her out.









When we got back, Maggie- who can be a pill to catch when you have a halter in your hand- seemed to understand that the game was to leave the field and get to eat yummy stuff, so she practically threw her nose in the halter and asked to go out! It was starting to rain, but who am I to tell a hard-to-catch horse that she can't be haltered when she asks for it?!  I didn't want to get totally soaked, but I let her nibble around on the grass for a few minutes and she seemed pleased with herself. 

It will be soggy for the rest of the day today, but maybe another break tomorrow. One of our friends was here this morning helping us replace the roof on our barn- he didn't quite finish today but is hoping for a break tomorrow. I have been holding off on my big hay delivery because the roof was leaking too much to risk it, but fingers crossed we're clear to have the hay delivered next week.


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## knightrider

It seems to me that you have segued into horse property ownership beautifully. Repairing barn roof, ordering hay, fixing buddy problems. Good for you! I love reading about your progress.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> It seems to me that you have segued into horse property ownership beautifully. Repairing barn roof, ordering hay, fixing buddy problems. Good for you! I love reading about your progress.


That's very sweet of you @*knightrider* . I think like most newbies, even though I _thought_ I was prepared to handle the poop, I really wasn't! It's one thing to lend a hand doing a stall or two every now and then, but it's another to deal with it all day, every day. :hide:

Some days I'm out there loading up the wheelbarrow and can't help but notice that what I'm tossing in looks awfully similar to the alfalfa cubes I just soaked and fed an hour before...it would be much more efficient to skip the middle man and just spread the bag of cubes out across the pasture!! 

Luckily sweet faces like these make it worth the work!









*************
This weekend was rainy, hot, and humid. No one really felt like riding or doing much of anything. Sunday morning, I volunteered at the GMHA 25/25/50 CTR. Most of the riders did the two-day 50 (25 miles both Saturday and Sunday) but Saturday they actually had a delayed start because we had such torrential thunderstorms early Saturday morning. I was secretly pretty happy I had not signed up to volunteer that day! 

People were in better spirits early Sunday morning since the sun was out-but you could tell it was going to be a steamy day!









There were 26 riders and 3 drivers. A few riders ended up being over time, two eliminated for being so far over; one driver "rider" optioned because she didn't like her horse's respiration at the hold. It was so humid that lots of horses were having trouble pulsing down, even really experienced horse/rider combos. 





































Seems like this awful summer weather just isn't going to relent. It's looking like it will be close to 90*F here today, so no riding for me!


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## egrogan

@*gottatrot* - you wrote this on another thread, and it was like an instant AH HA moment for me...


gottatrot said:


> If the horse was just recently moved to your facility, he might have developed ulcers. I've seen it happen to horses several times during a move, and it can cause major behavioral issues.
> 
> Fortunately, when I moved to a new barn the owner believed me when I said my horse did not normally charge around biting other horses. When I walked her around the property she was dripping with sweat, screaming for other horses and dragging me. Ulcers are very painful, and if a horse goes into a new and scary environment, then is hit with a lot of pain, it can make them hysterical.
> 
> If the owner says this is new or worse behavior for the horse, she might want to try ulcer treatment. It can help significantly within just a few days. After a couple of weeks I was able to ride my mare out alone, as I used to.


Izzy has been losing weight in the last few weeks, to the point that she is looking ribby and point of hips are visible.


















I thought maybe it was related to her mouth surgery, which was almost exactly one month ago. At first she did seem to be chewing her hay oddly, but vet told me how to flush out the space left by the missing molars and that seems to work when she gets into a weird chewing pattern. Still, I have been wondering if the change to the teeth has meant she's not maximizing the nutritional value of either hay or pasture. I've added alfalfa cubes to her feed, she has 24/7 access to pasture (albeit a bit scrubby), and the hay is nice and new. The other two look good. 

I was getting ready to bring a fecal to the vet to be tested, because her condition doesn't make sense, particularly given how she usually holds condition. But @*gottatrot* 's post makes so much sense, when combined with the crazy behavioral changes that came on immediately after the move. And then when you layer over the other stressful trailer ride to/from the vet, and another horse joining the herd...seems like she's a classic ulcer candidate, right?!

Does omeprazole require a prescription?


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## carshon

It will usually require a prescription but something we use on our mare that has/had ulcers is Redmond Rock Daily Gold. Our mare was pacey and frantic when others left, and she had been on bute for an extended amount of time. We give this to her daily and the difference is amazing - even her cinchiness went away. It is a clay that we put on her feed. We have to dampen the feed for it to stick and she will eat it but it has been really good for us.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon, I will look into the Daily Gold. Fortunately Izzy will eat anything I put in her feed pan- pellet, paste, or powder :grin: I always wet their feed given Izzy's previous choke episode so that helps everything come together.


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## QueenofFrance08

You can order omeprazole from Abler Pharmacy online without a prescription. We've been using it on one of our horses and it has helped immensely!


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## gottatrot

I had no idea they did driving at CTRs! Very interesting.

It would make a lot of sense if Izzy had developed ulcers. Even if it wasn't from the initial move, it could have been stressful going to the vet and feed changes might have also made her gut more acidic. Did she have to go on empty for awhile before the surgery? 

Even without dental changes, Halla chewed strangely when she had ulcers - I think adding food to the stomach might hurt with ulcers, and it was almost like she was putting off swallowing. She also would "pretend eat" while standing near her hay, chewing without taking bites. 

My vet will give us compounded Omeprazole based on symptoms, which is very inexpensive. They say it's not as effective or reliable as the prescription paste. Her philosophy is that if we see some relief of symptoms, it's a cheap trial to know if it is ulcers. But if the ulcers don't clear up right away, she says she will prescribe the real stuff. The several horses I've been around that were treated just cleared up easily with the compounded Omeprazole.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I had no idea they did driving at CTRs! Very interesting.


Yep, driving is very popular around here, so there is often a driving option at the distance events here. Sunday I actually found myself sitting next to one of the big time driving trainers- he and his wife have been life-long Morgan breeders, but they also import and train a lot of Dutch and Eastern European horses and are out on the national combined driving circuit. When I was horse shopping last fall, I tried a Morgan mare at his farm who wasn't going to make it in his driving program, and had a terrible ride (I believe I may have written here about how I drove home in tears because I was so embarrassed ). He didn't remember me-or my riding- at all, phew! 

But we did have a fascinating conversation about all the "behind the barn" breeding that is happening in the Friesian world (and quietly influencing other European breeds) as well as how there is a newer group of Morgan breeders trying to breed gaited Morgans- something most breeders have spent decades trying to avoid! Anyway, I love having the chance to sit down and just listen to someone who has been around horses for decades talk about what they have seen.



gottatrot said:


> It would make a lot of sense if Izzy had developed ulcers. Even if it wasn't from the initial move, it could have been stressful going to the vet and feed changes might have also made her gut more acidic. Did she have to go on empty for awhile before the surgery?


Yep, she did have to skip a couple of meals when she went in. I'm just going to go ahead with a couple of weeks worth of Ulcerguard and see what happens! Should get here in by the end of the week.


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## egrogan

It's been steamy and buggy here all week so far, so not too much going on with the girls. Trying to keep them comfortable, lots of fly spray and feeding hay in the sheds because they don't want to leave them during the day. I'll see one of them out grazing peacefully, and then all of a sudden take off like they're possessed and go sprinting into a shed. I really hate this time of year!!

_Itchy, itchy everywhere..._









Farrier was here yesterday and Maggie's front shoes came off. Her feet looked ok with them off- her toe had been brought back a lot (trimmer said it was "snubbed" or "bullnosed") to fit the shoes, and she had pads on under them because her soles are a bit flat. But her heels didn't seem contracted and she does have nice healthy frogs on all 4 feet. She walked a little funny after they were gone (sort of like a cat with wet paws) but showed no signs of discomfort in the pasture. I think she's had fronts on basically her whole life, not sure how much "rest" time she's gotten out of them, so we'll see how it goes. Obviously I won't be taking her out and running her over the gravel roads, but since she's mostly hanging out in the pasture, I am hopeful she'll transition fine.

I put some extra hay out for them yesterday while the trimmer was there to keep them close to where he was working so I didn't have to spend a lot of time catching them when it was their turn. Fizz was so funny around the hay bag- she _wanted_ to have some, but she crept up to it in slow motion asking ever so politely to be able to get a bite. She did get a turn with it eventually.









Trimmer did address the overgrown bars with Fizz and Izzy, though I'm still not sure the toes are where they should be. Off to look at more images and explanations for correct angles. I feel so dense with understanding hoof shapes, it is one of those things that just doesn't stick with me.


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## Chevaux

If your mares could talk English, egrogan, they would thank you for being a thoughtful and considerate owner by supplying them with run in sheds (and designer ones to boot).


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> That's very sweet of you @*knightrider* . I think like most newbies, even though I _thought_ I was prepared to handle the poop, I really wasn't! It's one thing to lend a hand doing a stall or two every now and then, but it's another to deal with it all day, every day. :hide:
> 
> Some days I'm out there loading up the wheelbarrow and can't help but notice that what I'm tossing in looks awfully similar to the alfalfa cubes I just soaked and fed an hour before...it would be much more efficient to skip the middle man and just spread the bag of cubes out across the pasture!!


Ah, but think of all that loooovely compost you can make for your garden and your fruit trees! 













From this:










To this:



Magic! ;-)


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## SueC

gottatrot said:


> Even without dental changes, Halla chewed strangely when she had ulcers - I think adding food to the stomach might hurt with ulcers, and it was almost like she was putting off swallowing. She also would "pretend eat" while standing near her hay, chewing without taking bites.


Working the jaws, even with an empty mouth, stimulates saliva production, and the bicarbonate in horse saliva helps buffer stomach acids. So this might also be an instinctive behaviour to increase saliva production.


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> If your mares could talk English, egrogan, they would thank you for being a thoughtful and considerate owner by supplying them with run in sheds (and designer ones to boot).


Aww, thank you @*Chevaux* , that is very kind. I think they are relatively happy here, if we can just get things worked out with Izzy. She started the Ulcerguard yesterday. I also found her eating dirt- literally- in the pasture last night. So...mineral imbalance of some sort? She is getting a ration balancer fed by weight, with loose table salt, and I thought that should have taken care of the mineral needs. I talked to the vet last week, and she recommended sticking with the ration balancer but adding a little extra of a higher fat performance feed in addition to what I'm currently feeding. She assured me that even with the missing molars, her teeth were good enough to eat regular food and not need to go to a senior. I don't want to change a bunch of things all at once, so we're going to do the Ulcerguard for the two weeks, and then see where we are and start adding other things. Just want her looking good again!!

Had a so-so ride with Fizz yesterday. Hadn't been on her for a week because of the awful weather- but that finally broke yesterday, it was a sunny, low humidity afternoon. Can't believe everything is still this green in mid-August! 









She was a little unenthusiastic heading away from home, but when we turned around to come back we got into a really nice, comfortable trotting rhythm. Everything was feeling good at that point. We had gone ~3 miles, and were on the last big downhill home, when she sort of conked out on me. I think there may have been a couple of factors. One, I think her saddle is slipping back a little going up and down these big hills, so I am going to consider a breastcollar. Two, she was trimmed a couple of days ago, and the town just dumped a bunch of fresh gravel on the roads; she's booted in front but not behind, and I felt her take a couple of ouchy steps. So may need to go to boots all around.



By the time we got to the tough hill with all that gravel, she sort of gave up it seemed. She actually tried to turn to go back _up _the hill, away from home. When I didn't let her do that, she had a bit of a fit and "jumped" the ditch on the side of the road- and really, I mean half bunny hopped, half stumbled and tripped her way through the ditch and then lurched up the bank on the other side, landing us squarely in the middle of a stand of trees. :icon_rolleyes: 

At that point I hopped off and walked her down the big hill. On-the-ground selfie :wink:








Got back on and rode the last little bit home, and she felt fine. 










The other two seemed unphased that Fizz had been out. They were dozing in their sheds when we got back, I actually called to them so they knew where were there and didn't come darting out and spook Fizz! 










Today I am off to the Lippitt Country Show to meet up with @*Avna* and drool over some pretty Morgans! Just hoping the rain stays away...


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## egrogan

@avna and I had such a great day yesterday! The Lippitt show is such a fun little show- it's the opposite of a high stress, high pressure environment...no trainers at this show hanging on the rail hissing instructions at their riders! Lots of people bring a horse or two and it gets ridden by multiple members of the family in classes throughout the day. Young horses get experience- which makes for some occasional dicey moments in the ring, but everyone takes it in stride.

The say started with some driving classes, which was fun as @avna is just learning driving with Pippa so told me all about that process.

This cute little mare looks _just _like my riding buddy Ida's mare, and turns out they come from the same farm. Their sire (Randallane Genesis) died this year, but he really stamped his foals.


















I oohed and aahed when this horse came into the ring - to me, this is what a Morgan should look like. I checked the program to see who he was, and it turns out it is the same horse I was drooling over at this same show last year! 


















Obligatory fan girl picture of Denny Emerson and Roxie :wink:









I can't remember what thread it was on here, but awhile ago we were talking about the Morgan road trot. Well, we stayed for the trotting races (4 races: 1/2 mile or 1 mile under saddle or in harness) so here are some great examples!









Look mom, no feet on the ground!


















_Soooo _Vermont...a beautiful bay Morgan in front of an old sugar house featuring maple creamies!









And of course @avna and I forgot to take a picture together, but here is an almost-picture of her watching the start of the 1/2 mile under saddle race :wink:









This horse won the 1/2 mile under saddle race, and then got hitched up and came right back to win the 1 mile under harness trot race too! What a great example of how versatile Morgans are!


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## egrogan

When I got home, the rain had held off, so I got Izzy out for a walk. We played our scavenger hunt game, and even though both Maggie and Fizz were going nuts back in the field calling for her, she kept her composure.



















 She was actually pretty happy out grazing, so I picked some delicious ripe blackberries while she grazed around. And, shared some blackberries too...3 for me, 1 for you... 








When she got back (15 minutes later!) you'd think she had been gone forever the way the other two acted. :icon_rolleyes:




They ran around like this for several minutes afterwards. Silly girls!


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## frlsgirl

Such a happy herd


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## egrogan

Look what Izzy did today! :happydance:









Nothing fancy- just the surcingle, rope halter, and a couple of extra long lead ropes. But she was great out on our adventure! Walk, trot, turn left, turn right, whoa, back up, even a little turn on the haunches. She marched right along and never got worked up. We are admittedly both a little out of practice with long lining, so I got us twisted up a couple of times (operator error all the way!) but she just stood patiently while I rearranged things.










We went much farther down the road than we have so far and she had her ears up with interest the whole way. I can't say enough how proud I was of her!









_You're making me blush mom..._


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## phantomhorse13

Go Izzy! Now she can get some work and the other two can run laps and get fit!


That show looked like a great time. Maybe you will be in it next year..


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## gottatrot

Your horses looked so cute running around!

Thanks for sharing the pics and video of the show. That show looks like so much fun, such a variety of things to do and watch. The horses were just beautiful. I'd love to go to one.


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## carshon

Love your posts! The show pics were great. And the pic of Izzy - I love her face!!!


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## PoptartShop

Izzy is just so darn cute.  LOL her facial expression in the last picture. :lol: Too funny! & what cute colors, I love your tack.

OMG we have 2 other horses at my barn & whenever I take Promise out, the other two act like she was gone for WEEKS. :rofl: So funny! You can tell they love each other though, so cute!! Love the video.


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## egrogan

I was in Brooklyn for work most of last week, so left lovely husband home on pony duty. It was a busy work week, but I loved that my hotel had bees on the roof down the hall from my room! 








It amazed me how many people walked by without even a second glance. Also reminded me of this article about mysterious red bees in NYC that I read a couple of months ago.

I got home late Thursday night so didn't see the horses until Friday morning. As I was getting their breakfast ready, I noticed that Fizz was really dragging her right hind toe as she walked around the pasture. She was still doing it when I went out in the afternoon, so decided not to ride her and just see if maybe she had tweaked something. Nothing was warm, swollen, or obviously painful to her. It was just clear that more than half the time, she was dragging that toe :confused_color:

Saturday I turned everyone out in their own field since they are still having separation issues. Izzy thought it was pretty great to have the "pests" out of her hair and she chilled in the sheds...











Fizz and Maggie acted like they were dying and ran laps around their fields. No toe dragging that I could see with Fizz at any gait. Although, in the video below, when she takes off cantering, do I see her cross firing at times? Something about the hinds is a little odd. Lunged her lightly as well and she moved more normally.





It rained off and on all day Saturday, but I got Izzy out for some long lining during a break in the rain. We both got good exercise, going about two miles mostly walking but a little trotting in there. She did great when a loud pickup truck sped past us way too fast (really unusual for people to pass too quickly here).


















She's finished two weeks of the Ulcerguard and I haven't seen a discernible change for the better in her weight. Our next move is going to be adding some higher fat feed and Vitamin E. I've been doing a lot of reading about Cushings again as rapid weight loss has brought it back to the top of my mind. Our vet wanted me to try some higher fat food first, but we'll blood test again soon.

Sunday was the first beautiful, low humidity day we've had in ages, so I couldn't wait to ride. Fizz wasn't doing any toe dragging Sunday morning, so I planned to take her out for an easy ride to see how she was doing. We were just heading out when a bunch of bikers from some kind of race went past; the man behind us here kindly informed me that another big group was not far behind him, so Fizz and I hung out at the house where lovely husband was working in the garage to wait for the bikers to pass.









We took a route that we haven't ridden before, and Fizz's attitude was great. I'm not sure if it was just in my mind or what, but I felt that her stride was choppier and less forward than usual, but she was still willing. 









We spent a little time riding through our fields to get her off the gravelly roads a bit, and we tiptoed into the woods to see if it was passable. With the relentless rain, everything was quite boggy, so we didn't get far. Everything is sure green though!









I also got Maggie out for a ride. The couple of times I've gotten on her previously, she's been pretty wound up and when my butt hit the saddle, she felt like she might unleash bucking, which is not something I'm particularly fond of riding through  Given how tense she's felt, we've mostly just done a few laps around the yard and left it at that. So I decided to put the tack on and lunge her a little before I got on. I don't normally like lunging them to "get the crazy out," but I have to say, she felt totally different when I got on this time. 



















She's still transitioning from shoes to barefoot, so we avoided the worst gravel spots and stayed on the softer road, which meant we only went about a mile. It was good to get to know her a little better though. She came to me with a Pelham bit, and I have to say she has the most sensitive mouth of any horse I've ridden. She gets really fussy throwing her head around when you touch her mouth at all, and I'm wondering if this is going to be the right bit for her with what I'd like to do with her (easy hacking, not racing- I know owner had trouble with her getting really strong when out on big group rides, but I think that's going to be pretty unlikely). Not to say that she doesn't deserve to be ridden with soft hands regardless of what we're doing, but I may play around with a couple of other bits and see what she thinks.

Last night, Fizz was dragging the right hind toe again. Still nothing hot or puffy, but if it continues I'll schedule some time for our new vet, who also does chiropractics, to come take a look. One of the many moments in time when I wish these horses could just talk to us and tell us what's going on!!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> She did great when a loud pickup truck sped past us way too fast (really unusual for people to pass too quickly here).


Lucky lucky! Here it's the complete opposite. Which is why we move the cattle along the public road with our bicycles, rather than me on the horse. It's a 110 km/h road, and nobody slows down unless they think their car might get damaged. Nobody slows down for a horse because they all seem to think it's like a person on a motorbike.

Izzy's expression in that barn! :clap:

Got that bees article tabbed for later; that magazine is always good value!

Best wishes for various health concerns there - might Fizz have a slightly pinched nerve? I know I drag my hind leg a bit when I have a pinched nerve sometimes! ;-)

How's the rodent situation?


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Got that bees article tabbed for later; that magazine is always good value!


It's quite a story! And yes, I love that magazine, have subscribed for years.



> Best wishes for various health concerns there - might Fizz have a slightly pinched nerve? I know I drag my hind leg a bit when I have a pinched nerve sometimes! ;-)


It is certainly possible. She's always on the receiving end of herding or chasing as Izzy and Maggie have an ongoing conversation about who gets to claim Fizz as "theirs." It's hard to be so alluring :icon_rolleyes: Haven't seen her doing the toe dragging the past 24 hours though.



> How's the rodent situation?


 They seem to have gone elsewhere recently. We've got traps out but haven't seen anything in them most mornings. Fingers crossed!

Not much going on this week. They eat at night...









...and eat in the morning...











Definitely upping the hay they're fed already though, and you can feel that fall is coming.

Has been raining again but should be clear by the afternoon, so maybe will be able to get in a quick ride.


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## frlsgirl

Oh no! Ana is doing the same thing with her right hind but not to the degree that Fizz is doing. Sometimes that can actually stem from the stifle or the hip. In some cases chiropractic can fix that. You said you’ve had a lot of rain which sounds similar to our current conditions and a lot of horses at the barn are lame with hoof abscesses and ouchy soles so it could be that as well. 

I’m so happy for you that you have 3 lovely Morgan ladies to work with and it looks like an enjoyable experience.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Oh no! Ana is doing the same thing with her right hind but not to the degree that Fizz is doing. Sometimes that can actually stem from the stifle or the hip. In some cases chiropractic can fix that. You said you’ve had a lot of rain which sounds similar to our current conditions and a lot of horses at the barn are lame with hoof abscesses and ouchy soles so it could be that as well.
> 
> I’m so happy for you that you have 3 lovely Morgan ladies to work with and it looks like an enjoyable experience.


That's really nice of you, thanks! I saw that you put Ana in shoes- hoping that is going to help her! I haven't seen Fizz doing the toe dragging in a few days, which is good. I think it might be something higher up, and at the same time I think she is going to need some kind of protection on her hinds while riding too. Right now, I'm just booting in front, but she is pretty clear that she's tired of walking on the big gravel that they have recently put down on the roads.

I managed to get some orange straps for the Scoots, completing our ensemble :grin:









While I'm waiting for the hind boots, I am trying to ride in places where the footing is more forgiving. This weekend, we mostly just hacked around the fields, doing a little schooling, working on a comfortable rhythm, etc.

















Wouldn't you know it though, we were trotting along a flat, grassy part of the field, and _that's_ where we lost a boot! :evil: I have had good luck with these things mostly staying on, except for once in mud that almost pulled my own boot off. So not sure why it popped off. Luckily it wasn't in the tall grass and I saw it right away. The frustrations of being short though...I could _juuusssttt _barely lean down and reach it with my stick, but I couldn't get enough leverage to actually lift it up without having to get off...but once I gave up and hopped off, it was easy to get it back on and continue on our way. 









Today I actually was planning to go on a 5-6 mile ride down some roads that aren't very heavily graveled, but just as I was mounting up, a very nice lady pulled up near our house and told us a 50 mile bike ride with about 150 riders was 15 minutes away- coming down the very road we planned to ride on :eek_color: I'm glad I saw her when I did, but that obviously changed the route we took and shortened up the distance we could go while avoiding bad gravel. We went just a couple of miles and the race was in full swing when we got home.









For some reason Fizz has been having this problem where her tail hairs get knotted under her dock and are awful to comb out- so today I tried turning her out looking like a little hunter pony- she does have an impressive tail! I hope this will cut down on the tangles- we'll see how long the braid will stay in.









I had also been planning to ride Maggie and take Izzy out, but dashed those plans as well as they both need the softer roads too. I lunged Maggie in the yard to work up a little bit of a sweat, but was bummed to not ride her.

Why do all my horses seem to have a knack for doing this!? :icon_rolleyes:









*******
Yesterday I volunteered at GMHA during a competitive driving weekend. It was definitely a different vibe from endurance weekends, but it was fascinating to watch. There were so many different types of horses (and ponies) and different kinds of turnouts represented. Yesterday there seemed to be dressage and cones, and I think today is the marathon and the trickier obstacles. 



























This sassy little guy was by far my favorite of the day- look at those legs move!





And this is my neighbor and her young mare who go on training drives past our house pretty often- they clean up nice!! Rory looked beautiful moving out in her warmup for the cones.














I really hate when the weekend ends!


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## frlsgirl

Yeah thats why I was nervous to invest in boots knowing that I could possibly lose them somewhere and then they don't let you compete in them either and sometimes we end up going to shows with less than perfect footing. They do look cute though and I love the color coordination.

Oh my gosh the little pony driving, adorable.

Ana rubs her tail sometimes and then we get these crazy straggler hairs that stick out in every direction; I wish she had as much tail as Fizz - gorgeous. And nice braid job!


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## QueenofFrance08

I saw the cutest black and white paint at the ride this weekend in all red with red straps on her Scoot Boots! You guys are going to fit in so well when you start doing rides with your color coordination! Hope you don't have any more issues with them coming off!


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## mkmurphy81

I love seeing that the orange "horse hat" is still holding up well. You look so bright and coordinated out there.


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## egrogan

mkmurphy81 said:


> I love seeing that the orange "horse hat" is still holding up well. You look so bright and coordinated out there.


It is an essential accessory around here- they all wear it :grin: Whenever I post pictures on Facebook the first comment from my non-horsey friends is always about the “horse hat!” I remain so appreciative that you took on the challenge!


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## egrogan

I absolutely love the fall, and the first day of September always feels festive to me :grin:. However, I do have to say that I’m always a little sad to see our company’s “summer Friday’s” come to an end. Yesterday was our last. It happens to be the weekend of GMHA’s 3-day 100 mile ride, and yesterday the route went right past the house. The beauty of working from home is that even though I had _six straight hours_ of conference calls, I could drag my phone, computer, and lawn chair out front and wave to everyone as they rode by!

My two favorite endurance Morgan’s (my mentor and her riding buddy)


















I got my own ride in later that afternoon. Awhile ago, I bought this nice bareback pad, thinking I might use it with Maggie because she’s a tough one to fit a saddle to. Turns out that Izzy’s saddle is ok for her for the short jaunts we’re doing, so I haven’t used the pad at all. But I decided to give it a whirl on Fizz. It was actually super comfortable! I think I’ll love how fuzzy and warm it is in the winter.








It was a weird feeling riding with only the pad though-I didn’t know what to do with my legs!  Do you just let them hang long? Or hold them in place as though you had stirrups? It was a little awkward, so we pretty much just took a pony ride around the field :grin:

Today we got out for a proper ride this afternoon. Fizz felt pretty great, and I have to say even that short bareback ride did wonders for helping me stay straight and balanced in the actual saddle today. I felt much more centered and like Fizz was responding to my seat much better. The biggest difference was on the downhills, where she didn’t feel so heavy on the forehand. 









My lovely husband was outside working in the yard as we came home, and snapped a couple of pictures confirming that I was mostly in the middle of the saddle and not listing to the right like I usually am!



















Our apple trees are starting to have fruit, so lovely husband treated Fizz to a nice big one. Had to pull her bridle off so she could eat it, and rode her back to the paddock in just her halter :grin:
_Apple concentration face_









Have continued to tweak Izzy’s food, and I think she’s looking a little better. 








BUT-and it’s a big “but!”- I’m a little embarrassed to admit that it was only last week that I thought to have a fecal done. Her FEC came back at *1200*! :eek_color:. Fizz did too, actually. Maggie was around 80. Needless to say, everyone got dewormed and we’ll test again in a couple of weeks. Hopefully taking care of that will help continue to get her condition going in the right direction. I feel so dumb for not starting there though!

And poor Maggie got a nasty dragon mare bite on her side one night :sad: She is not a great patient, but so far it seems to be healing ok, though it is still really sensitive for her all along her side; no riding for her until it’s feeling better.


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## egrogan

Yesterday I spent the day at the last day of the GMHA 3-day 100 mile CTR as a vet scribe. It was my first time scribing and as promised, I learned a ton. The hands on examination at the end was a little overwhelming given how fast things moved, but everyone was patient and helpful. I have to say, one thing that really surprised me was that there is no check of the feet to see how they are holding up. I guess because the majority of people are shod all the way around, you wouldn't actually see the hoof. But still, just an observation, I had expected there would be at least some attention paid there. One mare unfortunately wasn't able to pulse down to get her completion, which was tough for her rider after making it through 3 hard days of riding. She looked totally serene and you'd have no idea she was having trouble. That one was a bummer to be a part of.

Today I had Fizz tacked up early to get a ride in, since it was already 75*F and 93% humidity at 9am. Yuck. Lovely husband and I were trying to go out together again, him running and me riding. We headed towards the extensive mixed use trail system that's just a couple of miles down the road from our house; neither of us had ever actually been on the trail portion before though, so knew there was a chance we might get lost (sneak preview: we did :wink. We didn't do much better staying together this time- the route we took today was all downhill right from the get-go, and Fizz and I are still walking downhills, so he got out ahead of us. Then we got held up at a stop sign waiting to cross the main road. _Then_ two huge dogs blasted out from the other side of a stone wall and spooked Fizz (and ME!) so it took us a few seconds to get straightened out. After all that, he was just a little orange speck off in the distance, and we eventually lost track of him. By the second mile though, Fizz and I had settled in to a nice trot with a little cantering up hill, and I thought we might have a chance of catching up. When we still didn't see him on the next mile, I figured we were just doing our own thing again. Fizz had really been motoring so I paused for a minute to let her catch her breath as we don't usually go that fast.









We turned onto the designated trail just fine, but it wasn't very long before we came to a three-way intersection I hadn't bargained on. I really had no idea which way to go, and Fizz was fidgety while I tried to read the map on the side of the trail, which seemed to be written in approximately 8-point font...So not very helpful while sitting up on a horse! 

:confused_color: Which way? :confused_color: Which way? :confused_color: Which way?

















At this point, she was hot and a little antsy, and picking the wrong way was easily going to add another 2-3 miles I wasn't sure I really wanted to do. Instead I opted to just turn around and double back home so I knew we'd get there. 

Unfortunately most of the way home was down all the hills we had already climbed, and that made for some unbalanced moments. Luckily the mean dogs were not by the road when we passed the second time! We got to the last, steep hill about 0.5 from home, and she refused to go down it. I hopped off to lead her down it, and she still would only walk 3 or 4 steps and then refuse to move again. I can't tell if it's her feet, stifles, something else? When she stopped, she'd be standing noticeably under herself and then drag her hind toes with each step. This is not the first time she's done this, so clearly something about it is painful. I really didn't feel anything that seemed off throughout the rest of our ride though, so I'm kind of at a loss. Our new hind boots are on their way, and can't wait to try those to see if that makes any difference. 

Given that, and since we were so close to home, I hand walked her the last long, hot, _uphill _quarter mile home. I popped her bridle off and just let her graze her way up the hill. We were both hot and tired when we got back- though obviously she got the first drink :wink: We had done about 5.5 miles, which is the longest we've gone since we've been in Vermont. 









I was super surprised to find out that we had beaten lovely husband home somehow. Turns out he _did _pick a direction at the 3-way intersection (I guess the trail map didn't make any more sense even when you weren't trying to read it from the back of a horse!) but he picked wrong! And he went on some kind of off-roading adventure through mud, prickers, and a big open field- he ended up doing about 9 miles total! Sort of glad we didn't find him. No word on how his pulse and respiration were at the end of it! 

After he got _his _drink of water, he came down to the field to put up some hooks for haynets- won't be too long now before the pasture isn't doing anything for them over night and they'll need extra hay. Fizz performed supervisory duties admirably.


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## egrogan

Lovely husband cracked me up with an early birthday present last night:









He told me, "I know you like animals better than people...plus I imagine you actually standing out in the pasture having that exact conversation with Isabel." :rofl: 

Too funny. And not wrong :wink:


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## QueenofFrance08

Wow a 3 day 100 mile ride! I would be so worried about what happened to that one person who rode all 100 miles and didn't finish. One of our rides has a 2-day 100 but you can also do 2 days of 50 each. Not that I'm anywhere near that level (nor do I have a horse that is) but I think I would much rather do 2 days of 50 than one 2 day ride. At least then if you don't finish the second day you still get credit for the first day. 

Izzy is looking much better!

Yay for Fizz and finally getting a long ride in! You guys will be doing rides like crazy next summer! I wish I had trails I could access from my house!


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## PoptartShop

LOL I need a pair of those socks! :lol: So true.
Animals really are better than people!

Beautiful pictures! Izzy looks good! Loving all the rides!


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## egrogan

We've got some mean girl issues going on. Izzy is just being relentless with Maggie. Poor Maggie had another big bite this morning- not just a little scrape but full on skin broken, bleeding, hot and swollen bite mark to the right of her tail. I don't know if I need to separate Izzy for awhile or what. Fortunately Maggie was a better patient this time than last time. She actually came right up to me and positioned herself just right so I could put some ointment on the bite. The one on her flank is healed up though the hair hasn't really started growing back yet. 

I've decided Fizz is just an eternal optimist though. She stays clear of Izzy, but she is still hopeful about being buddies with Maggie. I got a kick out of watching her at feeding time yesterday.

_Maybe if I stand over here, she won't notice me..._









_Eeek, mean ears, better back off...._









_But maybbbbeee if I'm subtle and polite about it, I can take just a little bite from right over here on the edge..._









_YAY! Now we are friends_


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## Dragoon

I was told a loooong time ago, I forget by who, that three of anything is a bad number. Be it dogs, horses or children. Two tend to pair up, making one an outsider....I have no direct experience with this theory, so I can't comment. I do have three birds, but my tiel detested the budgie when it was just the two of them for a couple of years. So I got the budgie a friend. Now the tiel has two little pests to dislike! (He has me for his buddy.)

Maybe its time to get that fancy goat you always wanted, or a mini, so you can learn driving!


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## egrogan

Dragoon said:


> I was told a loooong time ago, I forget by who, that three of anything is a bad number. Be it dogs, horses or children. Two tend to pair up, making one an outsider....I have no direct experience with this theory, so I can't comment. I do have three birds, but my tiel detested the budgie when it was just the two of them for a couple of years. So I got the budgie a friend. Now the tiel has two little pests to dislike! (He has me for his buddy.)
> 
> Maybe its time to get that fancy goat you always wanted, or a mini, so you can learn driving!


Ohhh.. @*Dragoon* ...I was told that _two_ is a problem, so get _three_!!! 

Everyone was acting fine this morning. The bites are happening overnight so I can't see what's causing Izzy to get so aggressive, unfortunately. I look out on them a lot during the day, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary.

I think we are at our animal limit for now, and while I am intrigued by goats, I very much don't have the right kind of fencing to keep them anywhere near where they should be.


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## carshon

We have 4 horses and the same thing happens - things will seemingly be fine and then someone comes in from the pasture missing some hair


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## PoptartShop

Awwww...I can relate. At my private barn I only have my horse, & my barnmate has two. 
One is 26 (gelding), the other one is a mare & she is 21. My girl is only...5! :lol:
But she thinks she is herd boss, well actually she knows it. But the gelding always watches over the girls, but they like to shoo him away too. :lol: Too funny.

I do see some bite marks from time to time, but most of the time it's just playing & they do all get along. I know when one of them is having a 'day' though..I'm like who is the culprit this time?! Lol.

Maybe Izzy is just in a mood? I know it sounds silly, but sometimes horses can just get in moods. :lol: Maybe it is just not her day & she is letting them know who's boss. Poor Maggie, hopefully she learns to stand up for herself!


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## egrogan

Great weekend, got everyone out for some adventuring!

Fizz got a couple of rides in. Her new hind boots arrived in time for the weekend, which I was happy about. They are a smidge big but not enough that they are turning or popping off; I ordered some shims which hopefully will help. On the flat, she strided right out with her normal big walk. That was an improvement. I still didn't feel improvement on the hills though. Now that I know it's likely not her feet being uncomfortable, I think that either leaves us with a) my riding; b) pain somewhere- stiffle? back? or c) not being trained how to go down them correctly with a rider? She grew up and lived most of her life in a hilly 40 acre pasture so it's not like hills are new to her. It's very frustrating though. She'll either completely refuse to attempt it, or she'll try to spin away back up the hill even if it means heading away from home. The thought of ever trotting her down a hill seems downright suicidal. She always seems enthusiastic to go _up, _and will do so at any gait with a good push from behind. 

_Hills, hills everywhere._



























I got off to walk her down a couple that were particularly steep. I guess the good thing is that she's getting rock solid standing for mounting wherever I need her to!








Vet comes the first week of October for regular fall checks, and she'll do chiropractic work if needed. She's an endurance rider familiar with where we ride, so looking forward to her advice.

Izzy hadn't been out for a couple of weeks, so she was a little bit nervous and on her toes at the beginning. Every now and then she reminds me she was bred to be a show Morgan! :icon_rolleyes:









She seemed to feel better trotting out, so I got in a bit of jogging myself as she blew off her nervous energy. Eventually she settled down though and we had a nice couple mile jaunt.









It's a chilly fall day today with steady rain expected all afternoon and evening, so broke out the first blanket of the season this morning. She gets chilled so easily in the cold rain.









Had a good time with Maggie too. I tried her in the baucher bit for the first time. I think I need to fiddle with how it's sitting in her mouth (too low?), but she was _much _happier and did much less head tossing than with the kimberwicke. She may still rather have a solid mouthpiece, but we'll keep experimenting. Seems like this was a step in the right direction though.










We went down the rode farther than she's been so far, and while she was very looky, she held it together. I wish I had more time to get on her more often, but not in the cards right now. 










It was reaffirming to ride her up and down the hills though- she gathers herself, shifts her weight back, and moves carefully and in a balanced way- like a horse should! Such a contrast to Fizz, who feels like she's going to somersault over at any moment because she's so unbalanced. 


Lovely husband made major progress in the barn over the weekend. The ceiling is awful rotting ceiling tiles that stink and rain down constant nasty ephemera from the decades of mice and chipmunks nesting up there. I really want to be able to have the horses up in the barn for the October vet visit, so we've been working on getting it cleaned out. Lots of progress but still a ways to go!








^^*That *is only a tiny fraction of all that has come out of the ceiling so far. We took two 50-lb bags of it to the dump this weekend. It's so nasty!! You can't even imagine the awful smell. But fortunately the beams are solid and it will start airing out now that the worst of it has been removed.


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## QueenofFrance08

We just purchased the garage and our riding arena that are at the front of our property and the garage has the same rotting ceiling/mouse/ick problem so I understand 100% (unfortunately)! 

Sorry about Fizz, glad Maggie is doing well! Does she still have a few intro/LD/similar CTR's in here for you to get a start on next year?


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## carshon

Work with Fizz on the hills. My mare Tillie would rush down the steep hills and it was scary! I have spent all summer working with her to het her to sit back on he hind end going down the hills. I over exaggerate my body position and lean way back and stick my legs out in front of me and we do half halts going down - she finally figured it out and has done so much better minding herself down hills and I feel much much safer! We ride trails so the downhills can be steepm rocky and windy. I don't get to ride much on the road here so maybe try half halts and a change in body position to help her out?


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## frlsgirl

Going down hills slowly is hard because they really have to sit behind. I do serpentines with Ana which is also good for them because they have to learn to balance side to side. 

Yay for progress on the barn and glad you’re getting to ride 3 Morgans now. You are becoming the Morgan mare whisperer!


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## Chevaux

Will you leave the ceiling open now, egrogan? There are certain advantages to that such as elimination of rodent villages.


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Sorry about Fizz, glad Maggie is doing well! Does she still have a few intro/LD/similar CTR's in here for you to get a start on next year?


 If Maggie was being ridden consistently, I'm sure she would. But I've only ridden her a handful of time and she is very much in pasture shape right now. Don't think it would be fair to her. 

There are a couple of intro/pleasure rides being held over the next few weeks, but my biggest issue is really that I don't have a trailer. After Fizz had her trailer meltdown this spring, I'm wary of asking someone to come get us as I don't want to ruin anyone else's weekend. It will definitely be next year before we can even consider one with all the money we're putting into the house, so I'm feeling a little stuck...literally! It's ~10 miles to ride from here to GMHA, so next year I am seriously considering doing that the day before a ride so I know we get there! :cowboy:



carshon said:


> Work with Fizz on the hills. My mare Tillie would rush down the steep hills and it was scary! I have spent all summer working with her to het her to sit back on he hind end going down the hills. I over exaggerate my body position and lean way back and stick my legs out in front of me and we do half halts going down - she finally figured it out and has done so much better minding herself down hills and I feel much much safer! We ride trails so the downhills can be steepm rocky and windy. I don't get to ride much on the road here so maybe try half halts and a change in body position to help her out?


 This is where I really need some eyes on the ground. I _think _I am doing all the things you are suggesting, but I never feel a change in her body. Now that I am thinking more about this, she was struggling on the hills at our last barn too, because I remember that in my last couple of lessons, BO asked me to think about what would be most useful to have help on before we left- and that unbalanced downhill issue was one of the things I asked her to work on. So she was helping me with getting Fizz to slow down, move one foot at a time, and "collect" (I use that loosely) and shift back so that she was doing more of the "sitting" that she would need to do to navigate the steeper hills. The problem I'm running into is that when I get her really slowing down and paying attention to where each foot is, if she feels like we are going to slow down enough to stop, that's when she'll try to lunge off the side of the road or whip around to go back up the hill. I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm finding it very confusing.



frlsgirl said:


> Going down hills slowly is hard because they really have to sit behind. I do serpentines with Ana which is also good for them because they have to learn to balance side to side.


Good idea! I try to do basic schooling stuff on the flat part of the roads, and I can do this in the fields too. She came to me very stiff and having trouble with even basic bending, and without our dressage lessons it's easy to forget to work on things like this.



> Yay for progress on the barn and glad you’re getting to ride 3 Morgans now. You are becoming the Morgan mare whisperer!


Ha! I don't know if I'd go that far, but I think we have all settled in to a decent routine. They do have so much personality, I love seeing them every day :grin:



Chevaux said:


> Will you leave the ceiling open now, egrogan? There are certain advantages to that such as elimination of rodent villages.


That's the plan @*Chevaux* . It's actually a nice looking wide plank that's now exposed, so we kind of like the way it looks. We'll have to figure out if the wiring needs more protection, but not like the ceiling was protecting it from being gnawed on by the residents- we have to rewire one of the light fixtures as it was no longer safe.



QueenofFrance08 said:


> We just purchased the garage and our riding arena that are at the front of our property and the garage has the same rotting ceiling/mouse/ick problem so I understand 100% (unfortunately)!


Good luck! It's not fun. My only advice is wear a good face mask and eye protection!


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## Chevaux

Quote: ....we’ll have to figure out if the wiring needs more protection....


FWIW, we used metal wrapped electrical wire when we did our new barn to, hopefully, eliminate rodent chew through; we also kept it exposed as much as possible (as opposed to putting it behind insulation) so we could do quick visual inspections of its condition. How high are your ceilings? Do you think there’s a chance of a horse nibble happening?


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## carshon

@egrogan When I say exaggerate - I mean REALLY exaggerate. Eyes on the ground really help but to give you a visual image when I started working with Tillie on the down hills I was almost literally lying prone on her back. I know nothing about her past but have made assumptions that Tillie was never really a trail horse but a horse that someone jumped on and then gaited as fast as they could - which usually required fairly flat ground. Hills were scary for her and she just rushed them. She was (and is) a little heavy in the hands when she is anxious - so when I started I over exaggerated my position to where my feet were literally more up on her neck and shoulder than down on her sides. We half halted and actually halted going down hills - I would ask her to get off of my hands and we would take another step or 2. My daughter laughed and laughed following us - because literally more than once I almost fell off! But - it did not take long for her to recognize my weight shift meant slow and steady down the hills - I still over exaggerate my upper body and leg position but not so much to the extreme. Serpentines will help. it is OK to let her stop - but not turn around just keep at it.


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## SueC

Hello @egrogan! Today we finally made falafels, and they turned out great - thanks for the recipe!  Hung together really well and were so crispy and delicious! We've loads of leftovers and shall be making these again soon. They're actually easy to do, done this way! :winetime:


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## egrogan

After a long and stressful week of work travel last week, I was a little grumpy about Monday morning arriving too soon. As I stumbled out of bed to the bathroom this morning, I glanced out the window to see if the girls were in from the field yet, and to my shock saw a horse grazing in the lawn near the house







It was still dark and foggy, so I couldn't tell whether it was Izzy or Fizz, but I took off outside, half dressed, to retrieve whoever it was. Turned out to be Fizz happily grazing. I have no idea how long she was out, but based on how the grass was trampled down and the 4 poop piles I found, she seemed to have stuck to the fenceline and grazed her way around about half the field.

Part PSA, part admission of guilt:
_Just because your horses totally respect electric fence, even if it isn't on, doesn't mean they will ALWAYS totally respect the fence if it isn't on!_
_ :hide:_

Something's been wrong with the charger for about a month now, and we've tried a bunch of things to fix it but replacing the AC adapter is one thing on a long list of things that we just haven't gotten to yet. Fizz and Izzy were in a non-hot fence at the last barn, and while I've seen Izzy belly crawl under a 2-strand fence to get to grass, I was feeling pretty good about our current fence. I truly have no idea what Fizz did to get out, as I can't see her being able to go under it given the placement of the bottom rope. I don't _think _she's athletic enough to jump out- she didn't have a mark on her, and I can't find any part of the fence that looked like it was stretched out or otherwise dragged on. I suppose she could have figured out how to shimmy through the middle, but that seems so unlikely to me given her typical level of coordination. So I'm stumped. Fortunately this time it ended well, but I'm more than a little freaked out about the next few days while we wait for the part we need to get here.

Speaking of checking things off the to-do list, we finally made enough progress in the barn this weekend to bring the horses up there to test out their stalls. The farrier is coming tomorrow, and we're supposed to get drenching rain from the hurricane all day, so I thought I'd really be pushing my luck to ask him to do a pasture trim like he did last time. Good motivation to get the stalls set up. 

I spent about 2 hours - and 8 full wheelbarrows- stripping out the ancient bedding and fossilized poop that whoever last occupied the stalls had left behind. It just makes me so mad when people are lazy. I mean, it's been _years_ since horses have been on the property, and it was for sale for nearly 2 years as a horse property. No one thought to clean out the barn?! #endrant









In addition to stripping the old bedding from the stalls, some of them still had old rotten wood floors that needed to come up. Fortunately they were _so _rotted that we could literally just lift the boards right up, so that went quickly.









We added some rubber mats in the aisle- not a perfect fit because the old cracked concrete floor really should be jackhammered up and repoured, but we're not there yet. The stall doors have also settled unevenly, so in some places they could swing over the mats and in others not; we just worked around it for now.
_Cat tested, cat approved..._









By lunchtime, we were ready for the horses to try it out!








Izzy was a big fan of the personal hay buffet








Fizz was enthralled by her window looking out into the woods








Maggie was pretty stressy about the whole experience.









I think maybe she got so upset because I brought her up last from the field, which made her very worried. She did a lot of pacing and talking the whole time they were in there, even though Fizz was right next to her and she could see Izzy across the aisle. And...she's the one who was stalled every night at her last home, go figure!

Lovely husband was around to help me bring them back out, and he did great with Maggie, who was very happy to go back to the "safety" of the field.


















I'll bring them all in for a little while again this afternoon just to get continue to get used to the idea of being in a different space. I don't think they'll be stalled often, but it's nice to have the option when we're getting bad ice storms, or on a day when the vet/farrier is coming for them. They are so used to their routine, changes are definitely very "exciting," so we need to practice so doing something different doesn't cause so much consternation.


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## QueenofFrance08

I hear you on your rant! Our house had been without horses for 2 years as well, advertised as a horse property, and all of the stalls and the run in shed were knee deep in fossilized poop. It took us days of masks and ice chippers and power washing to get it clean! Why would you ever leave your house like that when it was for sale?


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> I hear you on your rant! Our house had been without horses for 2 years as well, advertised as a horse property, and all of the stalls and the run in shed were knee deep in fossilized poop. It took us days of masks and ice chippers and power washing to get it clean! Why would you ever leave your house like that when it was for sale?



Oh my goodness, that is way worse than my situation!! YUCK!!! I truly don't know what people are thinking. It was so humid this weekend (thermometer read 75*F and 94% humidity) we didn't get the power washer out for the walls yet, but we'll do that at some point this fall when things have a chance of drying.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Hello @*egrogan* ! Today we finally made falafels, and they turned out great - thanks for the recipe!  Hung together really well and were so crispy and delicious! We've loads of leftovers and shall be making these again soon. They're actually easy to do, done this way! :winetime:


 @SueC, sorry I missed your post when I was traveling last week. I am so glad the recipe turned out well for you too. I'll never make falafel another way again.


For those who are curious, here is the recipe. While I was flying home, I happened upon a new recipe for tzatziki that I will try next time we make the falafel- apparently the key is to _grate _the cucumber, rather than dice, to avoid watery yogurt- and use red wine vinegar instead of lemon for your acid. This is making me hungry!


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## egrogan

Between work travel and relentless rain, it's been several days since Fizz has gotten ridden. This weekend, we finally got some fall-like weather, with lower humidity and temps near 40*F overnight and in the 50s during the day. Lovely husband joked about how frisky Fizz was going to be when I took her out to ride yesterday, but that turned out to be not a joke. She was really not pleased with being saddled up and asked to head out. Right from the get-go, she was rude while being brushed, pawing the ground angrily and swishing her tail all around. She danced around for saddling and mounting, and threatened to buck once I got on. We had barely gotten a mile down the road when she veered into a ditch and tried to brush me up against a tree. Just really nasty stuff. Feeling highly discouraged, I dismounted and walked towards home. Once I got my wits about me, I did remount using a big log that is a convenient mounting block, and at least rode the last 1/4 mile home. But I was really frustrated, wondering if she was just the wrong horse for me. I hate feeling like every ride is a fight and that she despises what I'm asking her to do. Of course, I've been inconsistent with her, and the vet is coming in a couple of weeks to look for pain or areas that need adjustment. But still, just not a good ride.

I tried to get my own mental energy to a better place today before I rode. She was not as nasty with grooming and tacking as she was yesterday, but she was doing some of the same stuff- pawing, dancing from side to side, etc. Whereas yesterday I corrected her loudly every time she did that stuff, today I just basically put her back in the position I wanted her in and kept going. I decided I was going to do some basic groundwork stuff before I got on because yesterday she clearly we were not speaking the same language. So I tucked her reins up and out of the way, and headed out down the road, circling, turning on the haunches, backing up, changing direction, etc. At first she was in her own world and would bump into me when I'd do anything but walk straight ahead, but after a couple times, I could see her demeanor change, her ear flick over to me, and she started paying attention again. We jogged a lot, especially down the hills (she did it without refusing). I guess we went about a mile away from home. After I felt like we were both in a cooperative headspace, I clambered on from an old stone wall and we took off at a comfortable, happily forward trot. None of the sucked back, tense, threatening to buck feeling from yesterday. This felt good! We saw my lovely husband down the road away from home, and headed right towards him without her doing any of that awful lurching and spinning towards home. It was like a totally different horse. A much better one!









Although she still showed her grumpiness off with her ears today.









_Lovely husband: _Don't you want to put your ears up and look cute for the camera Fizz?
_Fizz: NOPE!_








(PS- yes, I do notice how crooked I am in these pictures! And I'm sure that's not helping things.)

I also took Maggie out later in the day. Without shoes, we really don't go far on the roads so she doesn't get uncomfortable. I'm not riding her enough to invest in boots, and I just can't see a reason to keep her shod when most of the time, she's hanging out in the pasture. So we stayed on the softer part of the road and then did a loop around one of the fields. 










I feel like she's really started coming out of her shell the past few weeks. She's much more personable than when she first got here. When I'm doing stuff around the pasture, sometimes I'll get that feeling that someone's looking at me, and sure enough I'll turn around and she's just standing right there behind me waiting for some scratching. Found a good itchy spot this morning! :grin:









More travel for work, and lots more rain coming this week, so probably won't get to ride again until next weekend. :sad:


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## egrogan

Oh, @carshon, I meant to share that I did have a good downhill experience with Fizz by really exaggerating my leaning back. I think you can kind of tell in the picture with Maggie that the field we're looking over is pretty hilly. I rode Fizz back there too, and really leaned way back as we went down. She handled it great, no rushing, no refusing. Felt very solid. Now, maybe it made a difference it was grassy footing and not the road, but still- we're taking the small victories! :grin: Thanks again for really making the point that it had to be a big shift in weight while she's figuring it out!


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## carshon

@egrogan - I am glad it helped. I shared the same advice with a friend on Sunday as she was lamenting how fast her horse goes down hills and how scary and uncertain it feels - and we rode at a park with some steep hills so Tillie and I got to show by example what a rider looks like laying down on the back of their horse!


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## QueenofFrance08

I know easyboot has a bargain bin of different discontinued styles with boots that are around $35 if by chance Maggie might fit in them? Otherwise are you in the Hoof Boot Exchange/Endurance Tack Sale groups on the book of faces because they often have cheaper used boots. Probably not as nice as your Scoot Boots but would work to take miss Maggie out for fun around the house without spending a fortune!


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## PoptartShop

I second @QueenofFrance08- they do have a bargain bin & it changes all the time, so maybe they will have her size.  Or on valleyvet.com they have a good deal, 2 for $90. I like the older easyboots (the new ones are fine too, but I can't afford them right now).
My mare is a bit ouchy on rocky areas on trails. Otherwise she is fine. I know what you mean, if she's not ridden too much then you may not need them but they are good to have in case.

They are cheaper than shoes & really much better in your case, mine too because my horse is only outchy on the rocky roads. Ugh, raining here too, so sick of it! :sad: Fizz is adorable, what a sassy girl! :lol:


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## egrogan

@QueenofFrance08 & @PoptartShop- thanks for the EasyBoots tip! I had no idea the bargain bin existed but will definitely take a look. My trimmer has the measurement kits for just about every brand so I will ask him to size her next month and then keep an eye out. Unfortunately her feet aren't anywhere near the same size as Fizz's so I can't share the Scoots.


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## egrogan

Exhausting week last week with work stuff, but I made it and that is the craziest week I'll have for awhile now. Phew!

Yesterday lovely husband and I spent some time trail clearing. It's been extraordinarily wet all summer and into the fall, so we haven't been back in the woods much, but yesterday was finally bright and sunny and we were eager to see what we'd find down one of the less overgrown logging roads. It was simply gorgeous!









So we sawed and hacked and clipped our way through the overgrowth for awhile. 









Feeling somewhat pleased with ourselves, I decided to turn my mileage tracker app on for the walk back to the horse's field (where the road originates). We were sure we had gone at least a mile, maybe more...only to find out, we had gone *0.14 miles* :rofl: :redface: I guess it's going to take a little longer than we thought!

Horses were definitely surprised to see us come traipsing out of the woods with all our tools.









Fizz quickly went back to enjoying a nap in the sunshine.









It was already starting to get dark by the time we had put things away and did some other chores, but I had just enough time to jump on Fizz for a quick bareback ride around the field. 









After our bad rides last weekend, today I was desperately hoping for a good ride. Since I finally wasn't in any kind of rush, I just took things super slow with her. Did a little basic ground work, let her nibble some of the yummy grass, and mixed in a little massage with grooming/tacking. Her demeanor was much better than it has been, so I was optimistic that would translate to under saddle. I'm happy to say that it did! I got on and headed out, and as soon as I put my leg on she trotted right off. We kept up a good steady pace up the first big hill until she was asking for a breather. She was a little stiff in her back but once we warmed up a little she felt much better. And we had happy ears the whole ride.



















Happy to say the downhills were pretty strong too! I again focused on really shifting my weight back, and this time I felt her shift hers too to match. There were a couple of sections where she rushed a little, but for the most part, she actually seemed to slow down and really think about where her feet were. For the first time in awhile, I felt that we were a team again. There was one particular moment where some animal noise in the woods caught her attention and I felt her thinking about spooking sideways, and I just made sure she really felt my leg on her so she knew I was there with her; she flicked an ear back and exhaled deeply, no spook. Very cool feeling! :smile:

Fall check up with the vet is this Wednesday, and it will be good to rule out- or address- any pain. Feeling much better about things with her this weekend though!









Izzy's weight continues to have me concerned, so am eager to see how her bloodwork- particularly, the Cushings test- comes back. She had a small abscess on her R hind heel last week. While she never looked sore or lame, she's got a tiny hole there which seems to be healing ok. Her attitude is good as always. She greeted me with a serious case of bedhead this morning :smile: 










Just really want to get her looking better. I am feeding her so much right now- she would have looked like a balloon a year ago if I was dumping this much food into her- but she still just looks so darn skinny. I hate seeing her like this!


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## frlsgirl

Oh dear Izzy. Hope the blood work comes back all clear. Could it be that she’s simply burning more calories at your place vs the boarding barn?


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Oh dear Izzy. Hope the blood work comes back all clear. Could it be that she’s simply burning more calories at your place vs the boarding barn?


 I do think she moves around a lot more at home. I spread their hay out all over the field so they have to move around for it (vs. having it all dumped in one big pile they just stand at most of the day). And, having the three of them out there together means they are entertaining each other (aka, herding each other around :icon_rolleyes more than a horse in solo turnout would be able to with a neighbor over the fence. But still, I don't think that can explain the weight loss. We'll see what the vet thinks!

Let her out to mow the lawn near the house for awhile yesterday, which she appreciated.


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## PoptartShop

Wow, beautiful trails! A mile goes much quicker when you are on horseback rather than on foot doesn't it?! LOL! :lol: Yay for a ride on Fizz!  She is adorable. That is good that she is slowing down going downhill. Really good. Glad you had a good ride, I know last weekend was rough. The good days are always worth it <3

I hope the vet check goes well, & poor Izzy! :sad: Hopefully the bloodwork comes back OK & she starts gaining some weight! I know it's tough. Crossing my fingers all goes well.


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## egrogan

_Vet day for all of us?! No thanks!_









That was pretty much the reaction I got yesterday when I schlepped everyone up to the barn in the rain to wait for the vet. The rain has been absolutely miserable here for days on end. We are starting to have a real mud problem outside ("the sacrifice area has been sacrificed" declared lovely husband) and it's getting to be pretty unpleasant to be outside. I thought the girls would appreciate being in the barn, dry, and munching on hay all morning, but they clearly don't like being stalled.

Vet was a little late because she had a moose in her pasture and her horses wouldn't come in (how Vermont does that sound? :wink, but once she got there, she was very efficient. We pulled blood on all of them to send out to check Lyme titres. Everyone had their teeth looked at but all can wait for the spring to be done. 

For Izzy, we're also checking ACTH levels (Cushings), insulin, glucose, and the full CBC. Vet gave her a body condition score of 4, which didn't surprise me, but was still hard to hear :sad: She recommended a couple of tweaks to the diet to adjust the proportion of things (more timothy/alfalfa cubes, more senior, less ration balancer) and of course we'll see if the bloodwork will suggest other changes. 

Fizz got chiropractic work done after a lameness exam. She trotted out fine up and down the hill in front of our house, and had no reaction to hoof testers. So that was all encouraging. Not surprisingly, her SI and right pelvis needed some adjusting (which has always been adjusted as long as I've had her...probably not coincidence that *I *sit crookedly with more weight in my right stirrup :think Unusually though, she was sore around her withers, which is not a place she's ever been adjusted before. Does make me wonder about the saddle moving around on some of our steeper hills. She also had a spot behind her left ear that was very sore (can't remember the name and haven't received the electronic report yet) but she _loved_ having that area worked on. Vet gave me some stretches I can do with her (your standard pelvis tilts/belly lifts and neck stretches) plus a cool "wither rock" that she really seemed to like. The best thing though was that later in the day, after they were back out in the pasture, I saw her flat out galloping around the field, bucking and farting and snorting and just looking SO MUCH happier. I can't wait to see if this translates to how she moves under saddle (if it ever stops raining!)- and if not, then of course we will move on to saddle fitter. 

Should have Izzy's bloodwork results back by the end of the week, and possibly the Lyme results too.


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## frlsgirl

Glad that the chiropractic adjustment made such a difference. Ana can get tight behind her ears so I’ve had to make some adjustments to her bridle to give her ears more room. She also loves to have her ears massaged so we made that part of our regular routine 

Anxiously awaiting blood test results with you!

And the rain is about to hit here so our show on Sunday will probably get rained out. But we desperately need the rain. Everything is turning brown here.


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## Spanish Rider

Any word on that blood work?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Any word on that blood work?


Unfortunately not yet. Today is a holiday so the office is closed, but I will call tomorrow morning. 

It has been raining for dayyyyssss here, so miserable. We got a little break in the rain on Saturday, but the pasture is so over-saturated we had to use the nice weather to bring in some new footing materials to get rid of the bog around the sheds. Fortunately it did seem to help. I think Fizz is using "the beach," as we have dubbed it, (heavy duty barnyard sand over some crushed rock for drainage) as a new comfy bed overnight.









I didn't have time to fit in a ride, but I booted her up late in the afternoon to walk up and down the most problematic hill near our house to see if she'd be more willing to go down it post-chiro work. Generally, she was, though we had a little incident where she decided she'd rather go home and I decided we weren't ready to do that yet. The lack of consistent work isn't good for her, she gets really testy when she's sat for awhile and is then asked to do something. This weather has to break!!









Even in the gloom though, fall still manages to look beautiful.


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## PoptartShop

A moose in her pasture?!! Wow! That isn't something you hear every day. :lol: LOL, imagine that!

Awww, Izzy will be looking better soon with the new diet, & once you get the results back that should help point you in the right direction. Sounds like Fizz was feeling good after that adjustment!!! That is great! Glad you kept her going too, she was probably like 'eh, I'm done now...can we go back?'! Aw! 
So sick of the rain here, too. We had like 4 days of no rain, now it's raining again this morning. :icon_rolleyes: Just horrible, so muddy & messy. Yuck.

I really hope her bloodwork comes back okay though, but some answers would be nice!


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## QueenofFrance08

Love the "beach"! We need to look at hauling more sand in next year, everything at our house is a sloppy mess right now.

Her orange boots are so cute. I'm thinking about getting rid of our Renegades and switching to Scoot Boots because the velcro is causing us so many problems. I would love to find boots that would work for at least one of our horses so we don't have to shoe everyone who's competing next year but there's too much sand/mud/etc and DH has to get off Chico at least 3 times during a ride to re-velcro his boots back on. Plus Scoot Boots come in pink so....


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## Avna

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Love the "beach"! We need to look at hauling more sand in next year, everything at our house is a sloppy mess right now.
> 
> Her orange boots are so cute. I'm thinking about getting rid of our Renegades and switching to Scoot Boots because the velcro is causing us so many problems. I would love to find boots that would work for at least one of our horses so we don't have to shoe everyone who's competing next year but there's too much sand/mud/etc and DH has to get off Chico at least 3 times during a ride to re-velcro his boots back on. Plus Scoot Boots come in pink so....


It might have been Smilie who changed out the velcro on her Renegades for plain buckled straps. Can't remember but it worked for whoever it was.


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## Spanish Rider

@Queen , you are so funny with the pink! Should I tell you that I am pink's nemesis? I can honestly say that I own nothing that is pink. Not even lipstick.
@egrogan , the beach is awesome! Keep those photos coming, 'cause I haven't seen fall foliage since 1992.


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## QueenofFrance08

@Spanish Rider It's funny when I'm not at rides I never have anything pink. I don't even wear lipstick and my work clothes are all black or grey! When I got Daisy last year I was so excited to have a mare so I got her all of the pink tack with my Christmas money. After I fell off her I stopped riding her and set it all aside until I decided to start riding Stitch regularly this summer. DH took the lime green tack I had bought myself so pink it was! I didn't think it would look good on a redhead like Stitch but it seems to work and now it's our thing! I think Daisy's going to go in pink too once she gets ready assuming I'm the one riding her (dark bay so it looks great on her) and I think Lilo is either going to be purple or royal blue....


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> @egrogan , the beach is awesome! Keep those photos coming, 'cause I haven't seen fall foliage since 1992.


Thanks, the beach seems very popular. They have all been rolling!

The past two weeks have mostly looked like THIS, so we haven’t seen much foliage either!

#FizzOfGreenGables

















Finally things cleared out a bit tonight.



























Called the vet this afternoon but unfortunately she was with a patient and I didnt hear back before the end of the day. Hopefully tomorrow!
@QueenofFrance, I think the colors are so fun! I ended up with orange really by necessity, riding in the woods during hunting season. I accumulated a lot of orange for Izzy over the years and Fizz inherited a lot of it. I actually much prefer Fizz in baby blue, but it’s hard to find stuff that color (it’s different from the popular beta blue). I have one pad in the color I really like for her but can’t find much else:









Navy with orange is good too


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## Tazzie

Have you looked at the Lemieux saddle pads? They have one called corn blue. It looks a touch bluer than your baby blue, but could possibly look dashing on Fizz  and they are really nice quality!

http://www.dressageextensions.com/lemieux-luxury-suede-saddle-pad/p/26455/


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## QueenofFrance08

@egrogan Have you seen any of Deb (the greenbean director)'s ride photos with her tack? She has all baby blue and it looks great! I think her bridle and breast collar are Taylored Tack ($$$ but oh so pretty). She has a baby blue Hit Air vest too and everything looks great together.


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> Have you looked at the Lemieux saddle pads? They have one called corn blue. It looks a touch bluer than your baby blue, but could possibly look dashing on Fizz  and they are really nice quality!
> 
> http://www.dressageextensions.com/lemieux-luxury-suede-saddle-pad/p/26455/





QueenofFrance08 said:


> @*egrogan* Have you seen any of Deb (the greenbean director)'s ride photos with her tack? She has all baby blue and it looks great! I think her bridle and breast collar are Taylored Tack ($$$ but oh so pretty). She has a baby blue Hit Air vest too and everything looks great together.



You two are a bad influence. :tongue: I really should NOT be buying any tack right now- I have hay going in the loft as we speak and someone here taking measurements to start planning our kitchen renovations. Saving my pennies, but still fun to window shop!


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## PoptartShop

Aw, even in the groggy weather they look so cute! I'm sure they loved rolling. :lol: Fizz's face is adorable. Such a sweet face. Aw, I hope you find out from the vet finally today. I know you are dying to find out about the bloodwork results.
Fizz would look really good in baby blue! I second getting some new tack...I'm a bad influence too!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> You two are a bad influence. :tongue: I really should NOT be buying any tack right now- I have hay going in the loft as we speak and someone here taking measurements to start planning our kitchen renovations. Saving my pennies, but still fun to window shop!


What can I say? I like being a bad influence :rofl: but yay about kitchen renovations!


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## frlsgirl

Aww look at those sweet faces! Love the fall foliage too!

What you still haven’t heard from the vet?!? Maybe they had to ship the blood for away for testing?


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl- I am getting really frustrated. I've been playing phone tag with the vet for the past two days, but she doesn't text and the office has had an answering service picking up the phone because the office manager is on vacation this week. I came from a big vet practice where there were 4 equine vets who all made themselves very available via phone, text, or cell, so this is tough. She did leave me one message to say she had all the results back- but said nothing in the message about what the results _were_. GAHHHHHHH!! 

Will try to get in touch with her today between meetings at work.

I will leave you with more cute faces from the one sunny day this week.


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## egrogan

Lots of updates! Finally caught up with the vet yesterday. The news is actually mostly good. Izzy and Maggie are both negative on all Lyme values (woohoo) and Fizz is still elevated on OspF (chronic) but her values have come down from last testing so we're going in the right direction anyway. A friend has been using an herbal tincture with her Lyme-positive mare with good results, so I think I'm going to give that a try as I don't see any reason it would hurt to try it.

Izzy's CBC was good, with one slightly high reading for a nitrogen value, but it was one point above the "normal" range so no action needed. The big question- on the ACTH values, vet described her results to be "borderline" Cushings. I don't have the print out yet, and I wasn't writing numbers down while we talked, but she was slightly above the typical range; given that we're in a seasonal rise period, and she's not obviously symptomatic, vet's opinion is that we don't need to treat just yet. Also confirmed she's not IR. Vet thinks the weight loss is more related to the loss of the molars and not processing her hay as well as she used to, so we will continue to add calories through diet. Once I get a copy of the results, I do think I'll send them to Izzy's previous vet just to get a second opinion, but I guess I am comfortable with the recommendation not to start medication yet. The current vet used the TRH-stimulation blood test, which is a newer testing approach and little different than the resting ACTH test that we've done previously, so it's a little hard to compare to the baseline numbers we've collected over the years. I still don't like the weight loss, but since the diet stuff is totally in my control, then I at least feel like I am doing something.

Speaking of hay, we filled the loft last week, which was a relief. The hay guy we were working with when we first moved had not been returning our messages, but we were expecting another 325 bales from him to show up in September, which never happened. He finally called my husband a couple of weeks ago and said he _only had 80 for us!!!_ Needless to say, I flipped out, as we had about 30 in the loft at that point and we were certainly not going to get through the winter that way. His guys showed up and delivered what they had, but I was fortunate to find another local farm that still had plenty of both first and second cut. My next worry was how much we could actually fit in our loft, since we haven't been through a winter here yet. Fortunately we ended up with 550 total up there comfortably. Crisis averted!









I have been feeling so discouraged about how unenthusiastic Fizz has been about doing any kind of ridden work. Yesterday, it was finally bright and sunny, and I was determined to ride. But, it had been nearly two weeks because the weather has been so awful, so it seemed really important to keep things pretty easy and positive. She was pretty good tacking up, but a little anxious about the girth going up, so I let her graze a little while I went up slowly a hole at a time. Her attitude was good as I led her to the mounting block. Actually, more than good, she followed me like a puppy :grin:


















I took her out to one of our fields and we just did some easy schooling. Serpentines, circling, nothing stressful, mostly walk and a little trotting. 

















Since that went well, I called it quits after about 20 minutes and headed out to the road. The route I took led us back past the pasture and since the trees have lost a lot of leaves, you can really see the other mares in the field from the road. We headed down the hill, and Fizz balked at continuing on with Maggie calling to her. She went through all the predictable stuff, backing up and trying to spin around towards the other horses. Something felt different this time though, and I was able to stay much calmer than I ever have when she does this. I decided I was just going to wait her out. So she backed up a few steps, but then stopped. And I just sat. I asked her to walk forward again, but she went backwards. So we stopped, and I waited. She tried to turn back away from where I wanted to go, so we did a turn on the forehand to keep her pointing in the direction I wanted. We repeated this many times. As long as her nose was pointing _away _from home, I just sort of decided I was going to wait it out. I sat there like it was no big deal we weren't moving. I looked at Facebook. I took some foliage pictures. I sang her a song. Every couple of minutes I'd ask her to go forward. If she even shifted her weight forward, I made a big deal of it even if she didn't take any steps. If she went backwards, I'd just sit like a sack of potatoes and wait until she stopped. We probably stood in the middle of the road for 15 minutes (benefits of living on a quiet dirt road!!). FINALLY, I asked her to walk forward, she took a deep sigh, and _we were walking!_








I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but it felt like such a HUGE victory. I am determined to get to a place with her where she _wants _to work with me, and that I don't have to smack and kick and bully her to go forward. She wasn't being dangerous, she was just being stubborn. So now we've learned that I can wait her out, and I'm not going to make her uncomfortable or bully her into doing something. We'll take baby steps for awhile if we need to.

When we got home and untacked, her whole demeanor was soft and calm, and her jaw wasn't tight and clenched like it often is. Her eyes were bright, and dare I say she even seemed a little zen, which is not a word I would usually use with Fizz. It felt really great. 









And I swear she was much more personable later in the day when I was getting feed ready and putting blankets on. It seems like a real step forward. We'll see what our ride today brings. 

I woke up to another gorgeous fall morning today.









We had our first frost overnight.









The chickens were very offended by the cold grass. They are in the middle of molting right now, so truthfully, they're pretty offended about everything these days! :wink:


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## Spanish Rider

Wow, that is quite a hurdle you are overcoming with Fizz. Since you have been at the new property, have you found a riding buddy to go out with? I was wondering what her reaction would be.


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## Avna

Congratulations on your breakthrough! You are doing the right thing. It doesn't sound to me like Fizz has quite made the decision to rely upon you instead of other horses -- my guess is that she has never really had to do this before, given her history. I'm in a similar place with Pippa the Pony -- she doesn't know how to trust a person instead of another horse. I was lucky with Brooke in that 1) she was young and unformed when I got here and 2) I instinctively decided what I needed to do was just start riding her alone from the get-go. We worked through a lot of backing up and spinning around and spooking in the beginning, but because she was so very green I just figured it was part of the process. Which it is! Fizz is green too. 

My own experience with Brooke has been that building a relationship of trust with a horse takes a lot longer than most people want to accept. Many rides, lots of tiny moments of progress -- lots of trying different things and finding out what gets through to that individual horse. Fizz has to learn to find her comfort in you, and if she's never done that before it is just going to be a slow process. But it will come.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> Congratulations on your breakthrough! You are doing the right thing. It doesn't sound to me like Fizz has quite made the decision to rely upon you instead of other horses -- Fizz has to learn to find her comfort in you, and if she's never done that before it is just going to be a slow process. But it will come.


Thanks! This feels right to me. It's now been almost exactly one year since I've had Fizz, and I'm reminded of one of the first comments my old BO made after she'd been there about a week- she observed that Fizz was never going to be a "people horse"- she's super independent, not looking to connect with you- at best aloof, and at worst a little defensive. She's a tough one to figure out. I'm not sure what's left her that way. She spent all her early years at her breeder's farm, living in a big herd but getting handled daily and ridden regularly. There was about a year when she was basically abandoned in a field with one other horse and left to fend for herself (minimal food and water, no handling) and I would guess she is a horse pretty uniquely equipped to handle that sort of experience. But that was a few years ago now. Moments of connection with her are few and far between, so I think that's why I felt so enthusiastic when we got done on Saturday and I felt that she actually kind of wanted to hang out with me even though she could have chosen the other horses instead.

Our ride yesterday was a good one as well. She was again calm and easy about tacking up. The peanut gallery supervised while soaking up the sunshine.









We "lost our forward" again at the beginning of the ride, and dealt with a little bit of backing up and trying to turn for home, but it lasted much less time than the day before. Once we got moving again, we kept moving. The route we took included a couple of nice long uphills where I could kiss her into a canter and really move out, and she seemed to like that. She was careful and intentional on the downhills coming home, which included riding past our "problem spot" from the previous day without any hesitation at all. I felt really good about it. Plus, it was a breathtakingly gorgeous day, and that always helps with my own mood!



























After I got her untacked and turned out, I went into the house for a quick lunch and came back out to do some chores around the field. I was horrified to find her with this huge GASH across her forehead! I still can't figure out what she did. I don't think a kick there would have left just the scrape mark. I'm wondering if she had her head down grazing near one of the sheds and got startled (or chased) and quickly popped her head up, catching it on a corner or even the door handle to the tack room? :sad: Fortunately it's pretty surface level, there wasn't any blood, and it's not hot/swollen. She didn't mind me putting some cream on it and doesn't seem too painful to touch. It looks nasty though!









She actually avoided the other horses the rest of the afternoon - she chose to hang out in the field opposite where Izzy and Maggie were. Either one could have been the perpetrator, so who knows.




















Spanish Rider said:


> Wow, that is quite a hurdle you are overcoming with Fizz. Since you have been at the new property, have you found a riding buddy to go out with? I was wondering what her reaction would be.


 There are a couple of women who have stopped by and invited me to ride with them, but they are retired so it's rare my schedule matches up with them. Otherwise, even though it's a really horsey neighborhood, I actually rarely see people out working with their horses (must be a schedule thing). A woman a little closer to my age just bought a house down the road and may eventually be someone to go out with, but she had a bad wreck with her horse a year ago and is still a bit wary of being out of the arena yet. But she likes to take him for in hand walks, so we could still potentially tag along and at least have company

I'm not unhappy we do most of our riding ourselves (to the point @Avna made about working with Brooke and how that forces the horse to look to you, not to another horse, when they are worried) but it would be nice to have company sometimes when things are going south!! 

Here's a quick candid shot of Izzy yesterday. She's pretty fuzzy with her winter coat, but even with that she's not looking quite as ribby as she has been, though her hips still stick out and her flank has that sunken look.









She helped mow the lawn again later in the afternoon.









The sunshine was spectacular all day yesterday, but unfortunately we're back to more rain today. Sigh. :frown_color:


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## QueenofFrance08

So happy about how things went with Fizz! I will admit I'm not sure I could get any of my horses to leave the house by themselves since I don't usually ride alone and I'm not really thrilled about trying so I'm really impressed!


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## carshon

So happy to hear of 2 good rides with Fizz - my Morgan mare was quite aloof as well. She bonded well with me but she and I lived along (me by myself and her an only horse) for a few years and that really helped. 

The fall pics are stunning and I am so jealous that you can ride right outside your door!


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## QueenofFrance08

Stitch is really independent too. She's never the horse to come up to you in the pasture or follow you around (unless you have food). She'd rather be with the other horses than with people any day! Although she has changed over this summer and we have a pretty good bond now. She's still not a people person but I think she trusts me more. The more time you ride/spend with her the better it will get!


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## frlsgirl

Yay for progress with Fizz; good for you for sticking to your guns without actually using said guns. Sometimes it's just a matter of who can out stubborn the other. I've certainly locked horns with Ana before where she was like "I'm not going" and I was like "oh yes you are" - it's always best if you can set it up where they have the opportunity to make the right decision. 

Yikes about the gash; sometimes I envision them running around the barn and turnout with sharp objects trying to cut each other in the strangest places. Like they take bets on who can outdo the other. 

The blood results, borderline? How frustrating. I like yes or no answers lol. Hoping to have yes or no answers on Ana today.


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## PoptartShop

So happy about the progress with Fizz!!! Little victories are great. Nothing wrong with that at all. So happy she was calm & you had two great rides on her! I just know there will be more going forward like that. It sounds like she is coming out of her shell more. Soon she will think oh, this isn't so bad! Once she figures out you mean business, & are on her side, she will be a-okay with work!
Yay for hay, I'm glad you could find a local place to deliver because yeah, 80 wouldn't be enough. Nice to be stocked up for the winter. :smile:

The weather definitely helps with my mood too. Always makes for a good day!
Gosh, poor girly with that gash! They always seem to get themselves into trouble, don't they? They sure keep us on our toes. :icon_rolleyes: Always something! But I am glad it wasn't bloody or deep, whew!

Izzy is definitely looking better! Pretty girl! Can't believe you have frost already, it just started getting chilly here so I know that will be us soon too. Yikes! Happy fall! :lol:

& those blood test results are frustrating but at least you got some kind of direction, although 'borderline' doesn't really help anything. Ugh. Hopefully everything works itself out.


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## SueC

Hullo, @egrogan! :wave:


Falafels for lunch at our house today! ;-)


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## gottatrot

Amore was borderline Cushing's for several years before I started treating her. Some horses never get IR along with it, and although it is progressive, it can progress very slowly. It worked out very well for us to wait until Amore had symptoms, and then start low dose Prascend. It's also good for owners since the meds are expensive, and the horse will take them for the rest of their life. The pills are $2.25 each from my vet. We used a half pill for a couple years, and have been on one pill for several years now. Chances are she might not need more than that, since for her the Cushing's is seeming to progress very slowly (she's 27). They say that many treated horses die of other causes before having serious negative effects from the Cushing's.


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## egrogan

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of getting Fizz. It feels like time has flown. She's a strange little horse, and I don't know for sure if she and I are a good pair, but on balance I'm glad she's mine! She's also lovely husband's favorite, so I don't think she's going anywhere.










I was traveling most of last week for work, and even though I was exhausted at the end of the day yesterday, I couldn't resist taking advantage of beautiful fall weather and heading out for a quick ride (fully decked out for hunting season :wink

We took at route that was downhill right from the start, and she was good. Her back was a little stiff as we got going, but I got a great reaction from her from simply closing my fingers on the reins and asking her to think about shifting some weight back to sit more on her hind end. We made it down the hill to the next flat part with no issues and I was pretty over the moon with her. I wasn't planning to ride for too terribly long as the sun was setting and I wanted to get back, so I did a u-turn in the road and headed back the way we came. 

And that's when she decided to pitch a fit...So riddle me this...why would turning around for home, heading UPhill instead of down, cause her to go through her whole backing up/refusing to go forward repertoire :confused_color:

I'm trying to be consistent in my response to this backing up- basically, just waiting her out. 










But my problem yesterday was that she did all this right in front of someone's house, while they were sitting in the window watching her try to lurch into their yard. My only hypothesis is that they have a beautiful lush green lawn, and grass is starting to get scarce so she was pitching a fit wanting to get to the grass? At any rate, clearly not ok to make a beeline for someone's yard, so I had to get a little more active with her. When she tried to pull towards the lawn, we just did tight circles away from it so we stayed in the road.
:dance-smiley05:
After a few circles, she did go forward again, and we headed back home like nothing had happened. We had a long uphill climb, so mostly trotted and cantered as we went. In the distance, we saw lovely husband out walking the dogs, and everyone behaved as we trotted up to them to say hello.









Our ride ended ok, but she is so confusing to me right now. Just wish she could tell me what's going on in that little horsey brain!


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Amore was borderline Cushing's for several years before I started treating her. Some horses never get IR along with it, and although it is progressive, it can progress very slowly. It worked out very well for us to wait until Amore had symptoms, and then start low dose Prascend. It's also good for owners since the meds are expensive, and the horse will take them for the rest of their life. The pills are $2.25 each from my vet. We used a half pill for a couple years, and have been on one pill for several years now. Chances are she might not need more than that, since for her the Cushing's is seeming to progress very slowly (she's 27). They say that many treated horses die of other causes before having serious negative effects from the Cushing's.



Thanks for this @gottatrot- really helpful to hear! I was on the road most of last week so didn't get the chance to call the vet's office for the test results to do some research on interpretation of the numbers, but it is on my list for this week.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> And that's when she decided to pitch a fit...So riddle me this...why would turning around for home, heading UPhill instead of down, cause her to go through her whole backing up/refusing to go forward repertoire :confused_color:
> 
> I'm trying to be consistent in my response to this backing up- basically, just waiting her out.
> But my problem yesterday was that she did all this right in front of someone's house, while they were sitting in the window watching her try to lurch into their yard. My only hypothesis is that they have a beautiful lush green lawn, and grass is starting to get scarce so she was pitching a fit wanting to get to the grass? At any rate, clearly not ok to make a beeline for someone's yard, so I had to get a little more active with her. When she tried to pull towards the lawn, we just did tight circles away from it so we stayed in the road.
> :dance-smiley05:
> After a few circles, she did go forward again, and we headed back home like nothing had happened. We had a long uphill climb, so mostly trotted and cantered as we went...Our ride ended ok, but she is so confusing to me right now. Just wish she could tell me what's going on in that little horsey brain!


I think she has a rather big horsey brain, and lots going on in it! :rofl:

You seem to have yourself a horse capable of parallel processing... mental multi-tasking. This makes life very interesting for the horse, and the rider too! :rofl: They've always got something going on, ideas of their own etc. I love horses like that, but they are a lot of work at the start of your partnership, compared to the average Warmblood etc.

The good thing about them though is that later on, when you're past most of that (or at least more used to those possibilities and quirks inkunicorn, you end up with a depth to that partnership that you don't get with easy horses. And Fizz is young, so you're going to have the fruits of that for another 20 years potentially! 

Sunsmart was one I had to wait out when I started with him: Wait / repeat / wait / repeat..."We can be here for another year if you like, but we're still going back _this_ way _bwahahaha_..." and calm and lots of humour and sending him up and laughing at him, and then his brain would go "click" and he'd cooperate... praise praise praise... I'm almost nostalgic for that phase. :rofl: Since he knows the drill now, these days if I say, "Well, I'll just wait then!" and counteract the alternative idea he has, he's like, "OK, dammit, I'm going already!" :rofl:

You'll be fine! You'll work it out, and get there. 

And you're both looking great!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the encouragement @*SueC* . Yes, she does have a busy brain. I think my goal is to channel more of the mental energy she brings to a productive set of activities and help her stop feeling so vulnerable.

Yesterday was interesting. It was the first cold, blustery day we've had and the wind was really kicked up. I knew she might be a little "up" but planned to take her out on an easy, stretch-your-legs kind of ride. She was prancy and unsettled while tacking up, tied at the tie ring. Every time I approached with the saddle, she danced sideways away from it. That is not typical. I walked into the tack room to grab the girth, which I had forgotten, when I heard her start whinnying and kicking the side of the shed with her front feet. In the split second I moved to walk outside, through the window I saw her flying backwards until she was at the end of the rope, and then the snap connecting the rope to the halter broke and she was flung backwards. 

She looked pretty shocked. I walked up to her and just calmly attached a new lead rope and retied her. I figured trying to ride right then was probably not going to end well, so decided I'd lunge her first and see where we were. She started off fairly distracted and just flew into a quick, unbalanced trot, but after she burned off that nervous energy she did start listening and we transitioned up and down through the gaits. She couldn't seem to pick up her right lead canter though, which was strange for her. Took her probably 4 transitions to get on the right lead.

I had been planning to ride a little ways through our woods trail, so turned that into an in hand walk instead. She seemed to perk up with going someplace new. Also seemed to help that she could nibble some of the chest high weeds as we went along. A lot of the path was narrow deer track so she had to walk behind me, and she was totally calm and respectful of space.









We completed our loop and headed back to the field. I tied her on the tie ring again, and she was fine. Switched the bareback pad out for the saddle and she didn't bat an eye. We walked towards the mounting area and I just let her graze for a few minutes, hoping to reestablish that the saddle isn't worth freaking out over!









When we returned to the tie ring for the third time, I brushed her out, did a little massage around her neck and poll as I imagine that pulling back didn't feel very good (got a BIG yawning and chewing reaction when I massaged around her ears), picked her feet, and just left her standing looking relaxed.









So, once again, I am left wondering "what the heck led to _that _reaction?" and I truly don't know the answer. 

Later in the day, lovely husband hung a couple of bucket rings so we could plug in heated buckets in the shed. So luxurious! Izzy was right there to supervise and make sure they were installed correctly :rofl:


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## carshon

Fizz strikes me as a horse that you have to be one step a head of. My Morgan/paint was exactly like that. You had to always be on your game when riding her. I think what that translates to is that she is always going to test you. I owned my mare for over 20 years and she was always like that - and when I first got her (in 8th grade) it was nothing for me to ride 5-10 hours a day in the summer and Cherokee never ever became a horse that you could just get on and chill and be a passenger. In my thinking Fizz was testing you - I don't think the location meant anything to her - just that she was happy and perked up going in one direction and you changed your mind and she had not so she pitched a fit. If it had been her idea to turn around no fit would have happened.

As for the wind and pulling back - I would not put too much stock in it. probably just a startle reaction.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Fizz strikes me as a horse that you have to be one step a head of. My Morgan/paint was exactly like that. You had to always be on your game when riding her. I think what that translates to is that she is always going to test you..


I totally agree! I was remembering yesterday that often at our old barn, I could see in her eyes that she needed to focus her mind on something before I could pop her into cross-ties and ask her to stand still, so we'd go into the indoor and walk over poles/through cones, or do a little quick lunging, before I asked her to stand still and let me groom/tack. But I would just have to look at her and know her energy was in that kind of place. She's definitely not a horse you can rush with, or go on auto-pilot while riding. 

Maybe I'm being too conservative though. Some days I opt not to ride because I'm still riled up about something that happened at work and know I have bad energy myself, or know I'd be rushing. It's a catch 22 because I think she gets happier with more work, but if I feel like I'm setting up the work to go badly, I tend to skip it. Hmmm....


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## carshon

@egrogan I personally like a "thinking" horse. Translate that as you will I guess but I tend to become a lazy rider (posture wise, attention wise, safety wise) on a horse that does not require a person to "ride" Tillie is also a little more sensitive - skittish - silly and unfocused unless you "ride" her. I posted in "confession time" about my ride yesterday. I have only ridden Tillie by myself a few times since I have owned her (2 years) - but since my daughter went to college in August that is usually my only option. Tillie is reactive and can spin and whip around lightning fast. I have been battling hip and back issues for the last 12 months and am always worried that I will not be able to sit these acrobatics. Yesterday I had my doubts even before I left home. The weather had been really breezy on Saturday and the horses were all "up" in the pasture - yesterday was forecast to be 50F with a slight breeze. I wanted to ride but was second guessing the slight breeze. I went anyway. Tillie fine at the trailer because there was a horse tied to the trailer next to us - but when I asked her to ride away from the horses by us she whinnied and carried on and walked super fast. I was about ready to call it quits -but I am stubborn and decided to sing to her and refocus both of our attention. We flushed up about 6 deer and she spun away from them so we were facing the direction we had come from. That unnerved me but my back did not spasm so it actually made me a little more confident. So I urged her on and just kept refocusing her energy - we did serpentines on the trail, I sang to her, we did a circle around a tree. When it was flat I asked her to gait - we eventually got to some steeper hills and she had to focus and it helped immensely. Tillie needed something to take her mind off of being alone. And we ended up riding a little over 8 miles and had a great ride.

Sorry for the book - but I think that Fizz needs a task and one that makes her think and reminds her that you are the leader. The roads may be boring to her and she is looking for things to be disagreeable about. A suggestion I have is to find things to do - circle a tree, a mailbox, cross the ditch and then back to the road. make her think and let her think. She has an active brain and when not given a task will be naughty.

You have come so far and your partnership will just get better when you learn to let her help you relax and you can help her relax. Having a task while you are riding will help you both!


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## PoptartShop

Awww, happy 1-year to you & Fizz!  Fizz is young, & it sounds like she likes to test/she has opinions about things & isn't afraid to show it, or sometimes wants to do what SHE wants to do. She does keep you on your toes & keeps you thinking, but that is not necessarily a bad thing at all.  I agree, keep reminding her that you are the alpha. My mare is only 5 & I have to remind her that I am the alpha mare, not her! :lol: 

You are doing very well, & it's very good that when you came back you continued to work on things (like tying her up, leading her near the mounting area). She will get it. 

Promise is the same way, I have to always be on my a-game with her. & my oh my, hard for her to sit still sometimes! :lol: I understand not wanting to ride if you have bad/negative energy from your workday etc. I feel like that sometimes as well, but then I try to re-focus & let it all go. Easier said than done, but keep trying! You guys are doing so well.


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## PoptartShop

Accidental double-post, my first one didn't show up at first...


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## frlsgirl

Sometimes when they act out of character like that I wonder if it’s related to something going on in the herd but then it can quickly escalate if they then have a frightening experience. Ana went crazy when I took her out for her vet visit because of construction going on. She did not want to leave her herd. Maybe something was happening in your herd that day that caused her to be upset?


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## Spanish Rider

Love that interaction between your husband and Izzy. So sweet. I'll be interested to see those heated buckets - we don't have those here.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Love that interaction between your husband and Izzy. So sweet. I'll be interested to see those heated buckets - we don't have those here.


Yes, he is very good with them. He's gotten to know them a lot better since they've been home and keeps up with the chores really well when I'm traveling for work (a lot lately...).

These are the buckets we have in the shed- they are nice because the heating element is contained underneath and it functions just like a regular flat back bucket would, just plugged in.









It's an icky, blustery day today- started off with a snow squall but has progressed into sleet and freezing rain. I was hoping to go ride but it's not looking like it will be in the cards.

New England horses don't mind the snow, but I did bundle everyone up as I can't stand seeing wet, cold horses.

















Now they're cozy in the sheds munching on hay- looks like they'll stay that way the rest of the day as the icy mix is supposed to continue through the night. 

















Maggie says YUCK- it's only October!!









She has not been doing great with the hard, frozen mud in the sacrifice area- it's making her a little foot sore. Conformationally, she has pretty flat feet, which is why she's generally been shod. I think I remember her owner saying she did pull fronts in the winter, but I'm not sure. At any rate, she's been barefoot here since around August, doing well, and has been growing new foot and starting to develop a little bit of a toe callous. But yesterday, I went out to do morning chores and she was really limping on her right front, which had a little heat in it. It was the first day we'd had that sharp, frozen footing, and I figured it was either that or an abscess brewing. I locked them out in the pasture for the rest of the day, where the footing was soft, and in the afternoon she looked sound and you wouldn't have known she was limping earlier. But as soon as she hit that hard surface again when they came in to eat, she was favoring it some. Today it wasn't as noticable. I held off on soaking the foot as I'm thinking it's related to the ground- let's hope it's not an abscess! 

The best option I can think of is booting her on the front during this transitional season time until we have snow on the ground consistently. She looks totally fine standing in the sheds, weight bearing normally and happily eating, so I'm thinking boots might do the trick. I was kicking myself because I realized I completely forgot to ask the farrier to measure for her Easyboot sizing when he was here earlier in the week! I need to investigate whether they have virtual sizing help if I send in some pictures.


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## egrogan

Unfortunately we got iced out of our Saturday ride, but Sunday was mild enough that the worst of it melted off (and everything turned to mud, which is a different story...)- the sun even came out a little in the afternoon, so out we went.

I decided to take on Mitchell's hill- aka, the hill of despair- because that route leads to really great public trails and I really wanted something different than the roads. Predictably (?) we got a little ways down and Fizz froze and wouldn't move. I could get a little lateral motion, but forward was a no-go. I sat there and waited her out, with occassional asks to go forward, for about 20 minutes. I've got to admit though, I failed as a "wait-it-out-er" as I got really bored and really wanted to get on with actually riding. I knew if I turned around and pointed towards home, she'd go. But I also knew that if we went that way, we were going to go that way at a speed I picked and keep right on going past the turn-offs to home. I figured I'd just have to be a strong enough rider to keep her moving forward no matter what she did to protest passing by home with the other horses calling to her. 

So, off we went at a nice trot- and kept trotting right past home, past the house, and on. I could see her tip an ear to the right, which is usually a precursor to trying to blow out her left shoulder and spin for home to the right, but managed a little tug on the left rein and really strong right leg and just kept her moving. The flat road gave way to a nice uphill, and I asked her to canter- she moved right out and finally seemed to let go of thoughts of going home and really enjoy herself. I have to admit, I think having a strong canter up a hill, feeling the cold wind whipping your face enough to make your eyes tear up, was really good for both of us (max speed 17.1 mph, woohoo!). We got to the top of that hill and were both ready for a breather (I haven't worked my abs like that in awhile!! ). We walked the short flat stretch and hit another hill, so off we went at a nice canter again. Felt great.









Next time I asked her to walk, she was chilled out and went forward happily on the buckle.









We admired the view from the lookout, and then turned for home.









She gave me the loveliest, most balanced little relaxed trot she's done in a really long time, particularly heading for home. Told her what a good girl she was.

And then I got greedy. 

I really wanted to go down that **** hill. So I asked her to keep walking right past the entrance to home. And she did. Reluctantly. Her nice open, forward walk shortened to a crawl, and I was legging her on every stride, but she kept going. We were about 3/4 of the way down this half-mile hill, and I shifted my weight back a little, which she chose to interpret as whoa. ****. We were stuck. She wouldn't move at all. No lateral movement, no backwards moving, nada. She'd sniff my foot in the stirrup every now and then, but we were glued to the ground. 









This.was.so.frustrating. We stood stock still in the road for 30 minutes. We both yawned. I asked her to walk, she wouldn't. We both looked around at the birds. I asked her to walk, she wouldn't. I pulled the tangles out of her mane. I asked her to walk, she wouldn't. I did nothing. We just stood. I got bored again, so I was able to get a few steps towards the side of the road where I broke of the end of a branch that was thinner than a pencil, and gave her a little swat on the shoulder with it.

She acted like she had been shot. She hopped around from side to side, threw her head around, humped up her back a little. But- SHE WALKED FORWARD. She was offended as hell, but WE WALKED DOWN THE HILL. We got to the bottom, turned around, and went home. 

I am so confused about what to do with her. Waiting it out worked, until it didn't. Swatting her with a crop works sometimes, but not always. I do believe she likes riding trails more than arena work, but is she just never going to be able to be ridden successfully without near daily work, which I simply can't do with my job? A ride that had been fun and exhilarating left me feeling upset all over again. I really don't know what to do next.

I got a new breast collar for her, and I did like how it kept the saddle more stable on those hills. I've never had a horse with a breast collar before, so wondering if anyone has any feedback on fit? I think I left the strap that connects to the girth a little too long? Any other advice on how to adjust it?


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## carshon

The breast collar strap between her legs is a little long. You want it to be about a fingers width away from her body. This is so that brush and branches do not get stuck between her and the breast collar. On some horses the saddle will slide back and this will tighten but it looks like you may need to get creative and add a couple of extra holes to it.

Fizz reminds me so much of my Morgan/Paint - you just have to be smarter than her and one step ahead. As I am sure you are aware - this is all just a test. She is getting her way - and short of bringing along a lunge line and making her work when she decides to stop you are doing all of the right things. BUT (and I am sorry that there is a butt) this is going to escalate the more she gets her way. So I would suggest bumper spurs and a crop - and each and every time she says no or twitches an ear I would change the subject. Head toward the hill and the public trails but keep after her and don't let her stop. Do a lot of serpentines and turn around at a brisk pace so she cannot anticipate what you are going to do. Smart horses are harder to ride and a lot of them can anticipate what the rider wants - get ahead of her thought process and don't let her guess what you are going to ask for.

No one likes to use a crop- especially when riding solo on the rode - but she is going to need that reminder that you are the navigator.


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## gottatrot

With the short horses the only way I've been able to make some breast collars fit is by removing those little pieces that attach to the upper rings on the saddle. I use scissor clips to attach the rings on the breast collar directly to those upper rings. It makes the part that goes over the neck very close to the saddle, but that means you can use it as a grab strap if necessary, LOL.
I love the matching gear!

I admire those who say they wait out the horses that get stuck, like @Foxhunter and @SueC. I do not have the patience whatsoever. If a horse gets stuck, I try to move their feet, and if I can't, I use a crop. If they don't listen to the crop (and some horses would rather just let you whack on them), I get off.
Hero is one that will try to camp out and think rather than keep moving. He is getting better because now I ask him to move forward twice, and if he doesn't I get off and make him trot forward from the ground, then I walk him for a half block or block, get back on. If he stops again, I do it again. We're not to where he never stalls out yet, but it's getting better. 

Most of the time I have a limited time to ride, and I feel like even if I lead the horse where I wanted to go, they at least got the exposure to the route. But I need the horse to exercise too, and if I spend my whole ride standing there it defeats the purpose of that. So at least if I walk them, they're getting some exercise. I don't lunge them, because to me the reason the horse is stopping is because of the psychology that they don't feel comfortable farther from the barn and friends. So staying in that spot is less helpful than pushing out the perimeter of their comfort zone, whether riding or walking.


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## SueC

Gotta tell you, @*gottatrot* , when I wait a horse out, it rarely goes over 30 seconds these days; 5 minutes if really bad, because I niggle when waiting. I think I would die of boredom if I had to wait even 10 minutes. My waiting-it-out is more like the concept of take-up time in the classroom - request / instruct, turn away so they can have privacy to comply in rather than making it confrontational in the full glare. With a horse, I then repeat if necessary, become more emphatic, but not crossing its personal panic/tantrum line, just enough pressure, not too much - alternating with short "think times" - like when loading a horse on a float (or a donkey, works for them too ;-)).

A short wait-out might happen at a track intersection if the horse is keen to get home but you like to go the scenic route home instead of the direct one. Request, point, wait. Request again if necessary. Rattling a little twig with leaves on the end near the horse is often persuasive for some reason, and easy to obtain on the trail (except if where you ride you only have cacti, then you have to bring your own I suppose). No direct contact with horse needed, but if it hesitates further, after the next short "think break" I might start tickling its ribs with it. I don't hit the horse, not with a crop or with a twig, I just get a little annoying. I'm not very naturally patient, and thankfully, neither is Sunsmart - he hates waiting too - which is in my favour.

One thing I regularly do (like @gottatrot) is get off my horse if there is some imagined or real bogeyman or a path the horse thinks is dodgy, and lead the horse off the ground, where I can annoy them more for one thing, but also, to be serious for a moment, because if I'm leading the horse off the ground, it feels more protected from any bogeyman because I'm right beside it, and usually between it and where it thinks the bogeyman is (or where the bogeyman _actually_ is, what would I know, I'm just a monkey...) - and then feels confident to go forward, so we can pass the bogeyman a couple of times on foot, then I get back on and we pass it again as horse and rider, rather than horse and babysitter. It's a really fast way to get horses past things they don't like, for me, and have them be OK with it ridden after a couple of times. Less stress and hassle for both than prolonged waiting out, or arguments... everything stays nice and civilised...

For Sunsmart it was jumping over _Scary Brook_, when we first moved to this property. It's a seasonal, tiny stream about a foot wide in the narrow bits, and two feet where it turns into the _Mississippi_. ;-) It's so tiny I can skip over it on one leg myself, but we had to have a few jumping-in-hand sessions over it first, repeated by jumping in horse-rider combination, and then it was "old hat". ...Sunsmart and water. We have a seasonal stream crossing in the forest off property which requires him to tolerate water up to his carpal joints, and I wasn't getting off for that one because I didn't want wet boots and legs... so I came at it from the other side, where the temptations of home were in my favour. Still took a bit of time until he stopped making a song and dance about it. He really hates water... :rofl:

@*egrogan* , I loved the way you wrote up that ride, and read it out to DH, who was laughing too at how you described Fizz's antics!  I know it's annoying stuff at the time, but hey, it makes such great journal comedy afterwards! And you'll get there, you really will - Fizz might be brainy and clever, but you can match that!  You may be playing chess with her for a while, but each time you successfully get through a situation like that with her ending up doing what you'd like her to do, it's becoming easier next time - whether or not you ride her daily. In time, you may develop a perverse enjoyment of another opportunity to play chess with her! :rofl:


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## Avna

Brooke had her feet-planting days (actually more like backing up days) and still will on occasion, but only for something major like a wide stretch of muddy water. 

What worked for Brooke was nagging, not waiting. I just thumped her sides with my stirrups -- not hard, not fast, just a regular thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. It's annoying without being panicking. If she went backward, she got swatted on the butt, which she HATES. But only for going backward, not for not going forward. I don't try to force her to go forward because if she is afraid to go forward, and knows she'll get swatted if she goes backward, she'll go up -- that's all that's left to her. 

I did try all sorts of things that didn't work before I hit on the above method. 

And, there have been times when I've said, heck you are right Brookie, I don't want to go through that either. Let's turn around.


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## PoptartShop

Aw, they look so cute in their blankets! Omg Maggie's face is adorable. :lol: That was definitely her expression! Love the pictures.

I would keep asking her to go, until she gets annoyed enough/tired of it & finally decides to move in the direction you want (forward).

I don't have the patience to just wait it out. Not sure if that will help anything, long term she may think 'oh, she's just gonna let me stand here so let me stand here for as long as I like'. Sometimes I will wait a minute or so, to let the horse think, but if they are doing it just to be stubborn, nope...they have to MOVE.

If you want to get off & walk her past it, that's fine too. But she needs to learn she has to move when you ask when you're in the saddle too.

Glad you did have a nice ride up to that point, though. Crazy how it snowed! No snow here yet, we usually don't get any for another 1-2mos!


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## egrogan

Thanks for the suggestions on the breast collar. I do have a couple more holes available to shorten it so that should be a quick fix. I was so excited yesterday, I submitted a Facebook picture of us all decked out in orange to the Scoot Boot representative that we bought the boots from, and we won her "photo of the week" contest since orange is timely for Halloween and hunting season. I am getting a free pair of gaiters :grin: 

I also appreciated all your suggestions about how to respond to Fizz's refusals. I hope I don't sound contrarian, but I really have tried all the things you've all suggested- a firm swat with a crop, getting off and making her jog forward with me, annoying her with a "thump thump thump" of the leg when standing. Each of those things has worked...until it didn't. I try not to fly from one strategy to another willy nilly and try to stick with an approach if it's getting traction, but when things don't work for a sustained period it does feel like I have to try something else. I think @carshon is right, it really is a constant negotiation with her about what's "required." I guess that's what's bumming me out. I really don't think it's sustainable to try to ride a horse even at LD distances (25 miles) who hates being asked to go forward. I've checked tack, done body work, upped feed. So I'm just feeling a bit low right now. Of course, my lack of consistency is not to be ignored, I'm not blaming her. Just haven't found yet what makes her happy, which of course I want. 

I'm also thinking about what @frlsgirl said a few days ago- if something in the herd is out of whack, that could be affecting her. She's clearly the low girl on the totem poll, and Izzy and Maggie are really fussy with each other right now as they figure out who is ultimately going to be the boss. I wonder how much that uncertainty in the herd makes her anxious when she's around them AND when she's not. Wish she'd tell me :wink:

We're about to be deluged with 3-4 inches of RAIN over the next several days, so not looking like we'll get much riding in this weekend (maybe Sunday)- _if _the horses don't wash away on an ark before then!

Happy Halloween all!


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## QueenofFrance08

@egrogan I would suggest trailering out with your mentor/friends before you think she doesn't want to be forward at a ride. I don't ride Stitch at home except for in our arena for the most part. Partially due to our lack of trails and my dislike of riding down gravel roads where all of the neighbors dogs chase you, partially because Stitch is a different horse if you do (Chico as well). The last time I took her out on the roads around the house (with Chico and DH) she bolted, spun a 180, refused to walk down the road, walked at a snails pace, spun around several times, spooks, etc. NONE of those things are my horse, except when she is near home/buddies/herd. If I take her to the local state park on her own she calls once or twice then gets down to business. As soon as we get to a ride where there's other horses, game on. Chico is EXACTLY the same, refuses/spins/plants his feet/spooks at nothing if you try to take him away from the house. Put him on a trail at the park and he's raring to go. I know you don't have a trailer currently but I highly recommend you see if you can try her out away from home, with some other horses or maybe without before you give up on her! I know I should probably work with mine to make them go out from the house but I don't like riding the gravel roads with loose dogs either and I would much rather load them up and drive 20 minutes to the park so I guess they get away with it. I'm not saying it's right I'm just saying, you're not alone!


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## egrogan

I love that QueenofFrance08, thanks! You're right that I am limited on the trailer front but it's good to think ahead to different experiences that might be positive.


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## QueenofFrance08

The last time we were out from home Stitch was spinning and acting so stupid she pulled her shoe off. Only shoe she's ever lost *knock on wood* and it was on a perfectly smooth gravel road. That's how poorly she acts if I try to get her to leave the house. I should mention this was late August, not years ago. She'll go down the driveway just fine (that's usually how far we ride in the winter) or through the neighbors fields but once you're out on the road it's a complete hissy fit. 

I should mention she's completely fine on roads that we have to ride down during rides, it's not the type of place I'm making her go, it's the proximity to home. We did 7 miles of gravel roads each day through neighborhoods at the ride where we did back to back 25's and she never had one issue. She couldn't even do 4 miles on the roads at home that day. 

So don't give up! She can very well be a great endurance horse someday even if she gets pouty at home!


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## SueC

Yes, that's excellent advice by @QueenofFrance08! And I second that all horses I've worked with are (even) more goey when trailered away from home. That's really worth trying sometime!

Also, Sunsmart is a forward sort of horse, but not when I do "boring" loops around our farm, which he's familiar with. Then he might walk around like an octogenarian at times - and at other times decides he'd like to move again. But, if I take him out in the forest off-property (which I ride to), he immediately wants to trot out, and will sustain it under his own steam.


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## egrogan

Well, the weather has been anything but inspiring the past few days, so mostly have been trying to stay dry and not get sucked into the mud.

This was Friday at about 9am-and it really only got worse from there. 









It just simply won't stop raining. The ground squishes like a wet sponge under your feet when you walk on it. There are "streams" and "ponds" appearing all around the neighborhood because the ground is so oversaturated. Our basement is flooded. The pasture is muddy. Ick. I really, really hate horses standing in mud, but we are getting to the point where we are starting to lose some of the dry ground to mud and I'm not sure if any remediation solution is going to bring it back around their sheds and in their other favorite standing-around spots. We just can't seem to string together two dry days in a row to give it a chance to recover... :frown::frown: 

I'm actually really looking forward to it snowing and just covering the ground!

This afternoon was grey but actually not precipitating, so I did get Fizz out for a short ride. Didn't bother to put boots on as I doubted I'd come home with them, and the roads are soft anyway. We actually had a pretty good ride. I went through the fields and woods, and she was pretty bold about going through very wet, sucking mud and lots of standing water. We went part way down the hill of despair, and I switched things up a little by turning _towards _home but going right past the pasture and onto the woods trail. We couldn't make it very far as it was so wet and muddy, so we turned around and doubled back past the pasture and back out onto the road/hill of despair, and this time turned _away _from home and rode a short loop through the apple orchard. Her ears were up the whole time and she was focused on all these new routes we were taking, not protesting. Only rode for about 30 minutes as everything was soggy and BLEGH IT IS GETTING DARK AT 4:30pm NOW THANKS STUPID DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!!! (phew, needed to get _that _out of my system!! ). But it really was a good ride.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> Only rode for about 30 minutes as everything was soggy and BLEGH IT IS GETTING DARK AT 4:30pm NOW THANKS STUPID DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!!!


Thank you for whining, sometimes I feel like I'm the only one! I was lunging Hero in the dark tonight. 

Your foggy photo looks like Oregon! The horse sheds were getting a bit puddly so this week they added about six inches of sand inside each one.


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## QueenofFrance08

I keep hoping the ground will freeze before everyone gets thrush from standing in muck! 

Third the upset about daylight savings time. At least we put up lights in our outdoor arena but.... boring....


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## PoptartShop

I know the mud/rain sucks. Ugh, my mare had a bad case of scratches 2mos ago, took forever for it to heal because of all the off/on rain. :icon_rolleyes: But I hope the mud dries up soon so your horses can get some relief. It won't be forever, although I know it feels like it.

That is GREAT you had such a nice ride on Fizz! See, things are looking up! :smile: Very very good to hear. I'm glad she was more focused & not so worried about being stubborn this time.

As for DST...I HATE IT TOO! When I get off work, it'll be pitch black by the time I get to the barn. Ugh! So annoying. Makes me wanna sleep at like 7pm LOL.


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## carshon

Can I just say I commiserate? I am so tired of rain and mud and for us in the upper Midwest temps well below the normal average. My horses are slogging around in mud and I would normally have shut my pastures off for most of the day this time of year (we have already had a hard frost) but my "dry lot" is a big muddy gunky mess. and the gravel I had planned on putting down before winter is not going to happen because I cannot put it over mud. So - pastures are being torn up, horses are muddy and its dark early. 


Fall used to be my favorite time of year to ride. What happened to Fall?


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Can I just say I commiserate? I am so tired of rain and mud and for us in the upper Midwest temps well below the normal average. My horses are slogging around in mud and I would normally have shut my pastures off for most of the day this time of year (we have already had a hard frost) but my "dry lot" is a big muddy gunky mess. and the gravel I had planned on putting down before winter is not going to happen because I cannot put it over mud. So - pastures are being torn up, horses are muddy and its dark early.



^^^

Are you sure you're not standing outside my pasture right now writing a first-hand account of what you're looking at?! 

I am sorry you're dealing with all that, though heartened to hear I'm not the only one. I have been feeling like a failure at having horses at home lately. I just can't ask my lovely husband to give up yet another weekend moving gravel and sand. 

Next spring we will get another pasture fenced, which will take some pressure off the 5 acres we've been using. But we'll probably have to hire in someone with better equipment to help with some of the most problematic areas in the sacrifice area as I don't think we're going to invest in getting more sheds put in.

Fizz looking like she was going to blow away a little while ago when the wind kicked up before the sleet/rain started again:








Now they're all just standing around the sheds again.


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## phantomhorse13

I know I am late chiming in here, as I was way behind and finally am getting caught up.


In regards to Fizz being less than enthused, I certainly think finding company to ride with would make a huge difference, but I understand how often that is easier said than done. Remember how sticky Iggy was to start with? And do you remember me doing what I intentionally don't let any of the other do.. namely, point for home and GO, then turn away and ride normally, then turn for home and GO? I would be curious to see if a similar approach helps Fizz find that trail riding is a lot of fun.


I feel you on the rain and the dark.. I am so sick of mud and mold and mushrooms. I normally love fall, but this year I find myself wishing for winter, so at least the ground would freeze..


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## SueC

Just on Daylight Saving - which by the way is such a false label, it's actually Daylight Shifting, it saves nothing - we hate it too, and are happy to live in an Australian state that doesn't implement it, but they keep trying to foist it on the public, who has said "no" is every poll and formal vote. So a while back, they imposed a three-year trial on us of doing DS, with a vote afterwards - they were expecting everyone to vote yes by then, but still the vast majority voted no. Public opinion has been clear on it for a long time, but the politicians won't leave it alone - they're always carrying on about wanting to be "in step" with NSW and Victoria, who do DS permanently and have most of the Australian population - "Oh, we'll lose so much business if we're three hours behind them instead of two!" Pffffft. Bunch of lemmings.

It doesn't matter how many times we say no... We think one day, they're just going to impose it on us anyway. Grrrrr. Commiserations to all of you who have to live with it...


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## knightrider

"It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." I guess I'm the only one who loves the switch to Eastern Standard Time. I can't wait for it! I ride every morning at 6:30. I am so happy to be riding in daylight the last couple of days! Now I can ride longer and don't have to go on the road in the dark.


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## egrogan

Thanks for reminding me of Iggy, @*phantomhorse13* . They are all individuals, that's for sure! I think getting Fizz moving is the key right now, regardless of whether it's towards or away from home. And also agree that moving towards home might be the key to moving away from home for awhile. I will have to tell her she is aspiring to be as cool a horse as Iggy and she better step it up a notch :grin:

@*SueC* - I had no idea that this daylight "savings" madness was done anywhere outside the US. It seems like one more thing on the list of things that makes the rest of the world just roll their eyes at us! I wish they'd make it a referendum here as it would surely go away!

@*knightrider* , I think you and my lovely husband might be the only two people who enjoy this time change. :wink: He is a runner and he was giddy to be able to go out running at 5am this morning again. I have a deep respect for "morning people" like the two of you, it is not my strength!


The chickens were tucked into the coop at 4:45pm this afternoon, and I had to fill waterers in the dark with a headlamp for the first time. I did not enjoy that.


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> "It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good." I guess I'm the only one who loves the switch to Eastern Standard Time. I can't wait for it! I ride every morning at 6:30. I am so happy to be riding in daylight the last couple of days! Now I can ride longer and don't have to go on the road in the dark.


I'm really happy that there is _someone_ whose riding opportunities are actually improved by this DS stuff! It's good to know. Funny thing though, here in Australia, the DS makes everyone get up an hour earlier in summer, and so gives extra daylight in the evenings. So the earlybirds in Australia complain about it especially, because it interferes with their early-morning cycling, yoga, dog walking, whatever... And the night owls tend to like it. For me there was also a problem trying to have dinner at a reasonable time rather than just before going to bed - because it's so hot in summer, you can't actually do outdoors stuff until it cools off a bit, so DS here means your evening chores get delayed by an hour because of heat...


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## PoptartShop

Awww, Fizz looks so comfortable, but you can tell she's like...make this bad weather go away! :lol: Ugh & doing barn chores in the dark is a struggle, I had to do some last night & I wasn't happy! :icon_rolleyes:
@knightrider I wish I had time to ride in the AM, that must be nice!


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## Spanish Rider

> I had no idea that this daylight "savings" madness was done anywhere outside the US


Europe, too, and it's a hot mess. Some enlightened persons thought it would be intelligent for nearly all of Europe to be on the same time. So, that means that Spain, which is on the Atlantic Ocean, and Poland, which is on the border with Ukraine, are in the same time zone. That is more than 2000 miles away, which would be equivalent to most of the US being in the same time zone, from the east coast to the Rockies! INSANE!! This means that today the sun rose in Warsaw at 6:30, while in Madrid it rose at 8:15! Meanwhile, Morocco is just south of us, but 2 hours behind. WHAAAT?! The worst is the summer, when it is still light out here at 10 pm. Good luck trying to put your kiddos to bed before! (or your chickens)


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## egrogan

Yesterday the weather channel warned us blustery winter weather was moving in, so at lunch I brought the girls up to the barn to brush the mud out and get them blanketed.










Noon









5pm

















By 9pm, we had 3-4 inches out there!

















So, I guess now it’s winter...so much for beautiful fall in New England!

Luckily the storm broke up pretty early in the evening, and roads were clear by this morning. Good thing, as today I had plans to go to Equine Affaire with @Avna. We had fun walking through the barns and breed demos, but after a couple of hours both of us were ready to escape the commerce-crazed shoppers in the vendor halls!
@Tazzie, I gained a new appreciation for just how awesome your Izzie is to put up with all that madness, with so many people touching and crowding around the demo horses. There was a grey Arab in the breed hall and I was thinkng of you :grin:

Of course we went and checked out all the Morgans! This little filly was just a yearling (she had the daintiest little feet) but she was hamming it up for the crowds and loved getting her picture taken









We took our turn posing with her

















We watched some snippets of the Jan Ebling dressage clinic and Warwick Schiller reining clinic, but it was so hard to hear and pay attention to what was happening in the ring with the constant buzz all around us. The Canadian horse demo was neat though, particularly because some of @Avna’s riding friends were part of it.









I’m glad we went but if I go again in the future, will probably avoid the Saturday crowd and skip the shopping halls to focus on more actual horse stuff.


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## Avna

I would never have gone without @egrogan as moral support ... there were many things to buy, is all I can say. And many people to buy them. Many many many. All I got was a fleece vest that had MORGANS embroidered on it and an under-helmet warm beanie hat. Passed up the 30-person check-out line at Smart-Pak, and the twenty different special halters to magically fix your horse, and the horse shaped chocolates, the blinged-out dressage bridles from Austria, the shopping bags made from recycled feed sacks, the horse jewelry, the horse portraits, the videos, the supplements, the blankets, the EVERYTHING. 

Just a little too mammoth, but hey, we did it!


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## frlsgirl

First snow at your new place; how exciting! Hopefully you will get enough snow coverage so that you can make hoof prints! We are supposed to get snow tomorrow morning. Can’t wait!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> @Tazzie, I gained a new appreciation for just how awesome your Izzie is to put up with all that madness, with so many people touching and crowding around the demo horses. There was a grey Arab in the breed hall and I was thinkng of you :grin:


Haha! I love it! It is hard to describe though. Moving your horse from one place to the next is really not easy when all of a sudden a crowd is swarming your horse! But it's why these breeds are VERY picky on who goes! I'm so glad you had fun! Little insider secret: don't ever go on the weekend! Thursday is your lightest day, then Friday (we had like no one in the morning on Friday). Sunday is your heaviest since a lot of people mark stuff on sale so they don't have to lug it home. We got our shopping done Friday and didn't go again the rest of the weekend because of the crowds! Now just come on down to the Ohio one this coming year... both of our horses will be there :wink:

And ugh, snow! We hadn't had that came and stuck around, but I am not ready for it!


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## PoptartShop

Oh wow, snow already?!! I guess winter was like, 'move out of my way, fall!' :lol: The horses are so cute in the snow though!

Ooooh, the Equine Affair looks like a blast! So glad you two had a good time. Aww, that Morgan is beautiful! I'm sure she was loving all the attention. Yeah, going a on a weekend is probably not the best, but at least you had fun despite the crowds.  Looks awesome!


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## egrogan

I agree @*Avna* , I am glad I can say "been there, done that." @*Tazzie* & @*PoptartShop* - definitely learned my lesson about going on a weekend. Unfortunately, work is an inconvenient fact of life :wink: I actually really wanted to go on Thursday, my friend/mentor was one of the four Morgan demo horses (she was showing Morgan versatility in endurance) but unfortunately I had to miss it. We looked for her in the breed barn, but she wasn't at her stall- a happy coincidence though, @*Avna* and I were lost trying to get back to our car and we walked right past her grazing her horse! So it was nice to spend a minute catching up.



frlsgirl said:


> Hopefully you will get enough snow coverage so that you can make hoof prints! We are supposed to get snow tomorrow morning. Can’t wait!


It was such a beautiful morning I couldn't resist a ride before work today. The sun was brilliant, but it was chilly, just below freezing. Hadn't ridden in a week so I wasn't sure how "good" Fizz would be feeling. But we had a really awesome ride. We only went a couple of miles, but she was such a good girl. I don't know if I was just riding better today or what, but when I really paid attention to her, it was pretty easy to anticipate when she was thinking of balking or ducking out- her ears are so communicative. A firm leg on her side or tightening my fingers on the opposite rein was all it took to keep her moving straight ahead. We did a big loop through our orchard and fields. It's too wet to go into the woods at any of the access points, and I didn't feel like fighting over soupy, frozen mud, so we kept it easy and pleasant. She was _great_ going up and down hills, and was so responsive to my asks to steady/balance on the downhills. One of the fields has a 2 foot drop off where she has to step down a rocky ledge back down onto the road, and she handled it like a seasoned trail horse. Couldn't have been more proud of her and I really enjoyed myself on the ride :happydance:



























We did have a little trouble with our boots on the ride. We came home on the road (just about 1/4 mile) and she was oddly tripping a lot. The boots were making a weird slapping noise so I wasn't sure what was going on. When I got back and untacked, I noticed there was a big gap in the front. Pulled them off, and it turned out they were full of snow which was making them gap like that. I didn't anticipate that being a problem so am going to reach out to the Scoot lady for advice. I probably could have gone without them as we weren't really on hard footing long, so I'll have to see if the recommendation with snow is to just leave them off.


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## PoptartShop

Yeah, it's hard for me to get off work for stuff like that too. Ugh!
Aw! That looks like a beautiful ride, with the sunshine & the snow on the ground. Sounds like you had an amazing ride on Fizz, that is great. Happy to hear it went well, love the progress you two are making. It sounds like you are both starting to understand each other more & are more in tune with each other. That makes a huge difference. Your rides will continue to improve, no doubt. 

Aw man about the boots, maybe they aren't meant for that although you'd think they could handle some snow.


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## gottatrot

Looks like a beautiful ride!


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## SueC

It's really great that you had a 100% enjoyable ride! :happydance:


This will happen more often as you two get to be better dancing partners with time. (As you know, it's the same in marriage. It's not like you ever stop working on things. And after the honeymoon, things can be a bit rough until you come to a real-life understanding, with the hormonally driven/fairytale implanted rose-tinted spectacles off... but then things get better, and more solid, and you have more great days! )


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## egrogan

The calendar says November, but it sure feels like winter.

It was 5*F/-15*C overnight last night, and we are hunkered down for about 1ft/0.3m of snow tonight. It's amazing how the sky just _looks _like snow is coming - there's something about the light before a big storm gets here.

Anyway, I loaded the girls up with hay yesterday as it was cold and blustery all day long. Maggie isn't a huge fan of being blanketed but I just couldn't handle her being out exposed, as the wind was blowing 25mph, making the windchill well below zero.









To get back at me for blanketing, she very (un)helpfully stood in the shed in the way while I tried to bed it more deeply with shavings. Sometimes I just wanted to remind them that I'm doing all this work for them!!! (kidding, kidding)









Once all the chores were done, we snuggled up for the night with a book- will be doing the same thing tonight once the snow starts! Hopefully a little baking too- I am in the mood for some banana bread with some blueberries we still have in the freezer. Seems a good night for it.









I'm looking forward to some snowy rides this weekend though.


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## frlsgirl

I love that blanket. What size/make/style is it? I need to get Ana a properly fitting winter blanket. 

Yikes on all the snow in November! Makes you wonder what the rest of winter is going to be like. 

I also get the urge to bake and do domestic stuff when it gets cold outside. Hope the banana bread turns out yummy.


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl, the blanket is a Schneider's ArmorFlex Warrior VTEK. I think the cut of them works well for the shape of a Morgan (they have a couple of other styles of blankets on their website that they also recommend specifically for Morgans). Actually, all three of mine can wear this style even though they are so differently shaped- Izzy is a 70, Maggie can fit in a 70 but would probably be a little happier if there was a 71, and Fizz is a 72. I _love_ how the neck covers attach- it's with 4 little caribiner clips instead of velcro tabs. Soooo much easier when your hands are freezing! And the construction seems pretty indestructible, no rips or tears anywhere.

***BUT***

There's a big BUT- I have been so disappointed in how awful the waterproofing has held up. The blankets have a satisfaction guarantee, so when Izzy's failed last year after having it less than a year, I worked with the company to send it back. They sent me a free replacement with minimal fuss...but sadly, that waterproofing also promptly failed, soaking her through. Fizz's was also not great last winter/spring, soaking her in patches. So I got them professionally re-waterproofed this summer, and Izzy's seems to be doing ok, but now Fizz's didn't hold up at all during the first sleet/rain storm we had a couple of weeks ago. She was also soaked through. I didn't even bother contacting the company as I don't want them to send me another blanket that doesn't work. I don't know if this is a coincidence, but it seems to be the lightweight turnout sheets that failed, whereas the medium/heavy weights have held up ok (Maggie's wearing Izzy's medium weight in that pic). 

To replace these now wind-breaker only blankets, I actually went with Amigo's. I like how they fit, but the neck cover attachment is not as convenient. It's too bad, as people really rave about Schneider's. If it happened with one blanket, I'd be willing to accept I got a lemon. But with _three_?? I can't put a blanket on that's going to make my horse wetter and colder.

Banana bread is in the oven...feed room is loaded up with extra hay and shavings...and it's not even snowing yet! We'll be ready when it starts :grin:


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## gottatrot

That's interesting (and disappointing) about the Schneider's blankets failing. I've gone with them for years and haven't had one yet that didn't work well and last. This spring I bought a Tough 1 sheet for Amore, and the waterproofing failed on it after a week. I was thinking I should have stuck with Schneiders, but they don't have any in her size with a velcro adjustable collar, and they always sag open around the neck. It makes me wonder if there were some bad batches of fabric that these companies are using. Very frustrating to spend so much for a waterproof product and have it fail right away.


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## SueC

I found that the horses that roll the most here wear out the waterproofing earlier (we have sand holes with sharp grains). Especially horses like Sunsmart, who roll repeatedly onto their backs and change from side to side when rolling! Good quality blankets, like Ascots or Weatherbeetas locally, last around two seasons on him, and then I clean the blanket and re-waterproof it myself with a spraycan product designed to waterproof tents and outdoors gear. I've tried different types; the one I am sticking with because it's very good and lasting and cost-effective (and single application) is this one:

https://www.bcf.com.au/p/atsko-silicone-waterguard-300g/166167.html

A 300g can does around 3 blankets for me. I spray the cleaned, dry blankets in still weather, hanging over a fence - and don't breathe the fumes. I particularly soak the part that goes horizontally over the back of the horse, where the water will sit rather than run.

On horses that roll less and don't roll over their back, like Romeo, the original waterproofing is lasting me around 4-6 years.


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## egrogan

Snow arrived as forecast- didn't bring a ruler out with me but we've got to have 7-8 inches, and it's still coming down. Fortunately it is very light and fluffy instead of heavy and wet. I'm tethered to the computer all day for work but can't wait to get out for a jaunt through the fields. Looks like it will be a great night for snowshoeing after dinner too!


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## Avna

We've gotten at least 8" already here 80+ miles south of you. Plough has been by twice already. Still snowing. Very powdery!


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## PoptartShop

Snowed here yesterday too, but only like 2in. It's almost gone now, back up to the high 40's & sunny today...I'm not complaining!

At least the horses look super cute in it, though! :smile: So adorable!


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## phantomhorse13

Seeing as we got over a foot here (and nasty wet snow at that), I expected to hear you were buried.. Hopefully you got lucky!


As for blankets, I have a couple older Schneiders that I love, but now will hesitate to buy more in the future. I had horrible luck with 3 different Tough-1 no-fill turnout sheets not being waterproof from the start. While the company did offer to replace them, the fact that all 3 were bad had me asking for a refund and going with a different brand. Such a PITA!


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## Acadianartist

Great thread! Can't believe it took me this long to find it. We also got a bunch of snow today, and I'm dying to take Rusty out in it tomorrow! I need to re-waterproof some of my blankets, though I must say, they have all held up so far.


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## Spanish Rider

Hooray for snow! Yes, I can say that because I haven't been to NE in the winter since 2008. Believe it or not, fter a time you do start to mis the white stuff. My son in Worcester got about 5 inches - his first snowstorm!

Such as great pic of your dog! I love the wall color, too. I wanted to ask you about your stove. I really like the look of it, and I am trying to help my mum get a new pellet stove. Is it a Vermont Castings? Or, perhaps it is gas since you have it so close to the wall/floor?


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## egrogan

I can't believe there's so much snow before Thanksgiving up and down the East Coast! Crazy that Maryland already got accumulation, @*PoptartShop* ! Sorry you got the wet nasty stuff @*phantomhorse13* - we lucked out this time, it was nice and powdery here. Hi @*Acadianartist* ! I'm sure your snow puts us all to shame already :wink:
@Spanish Rider- I can't find a maker's mark on the stove. It is actually a propane stove, honestly not something I would have chosen myself. It was here when we moved in. As much as I strongly prefer wood-burning, I have to grudgingly admit that it is really convenient! We turn it on (that sounds _soooooo _silly to me! :grin about an hour before bed, and turn it off when we go to sleep. It heats the room up plenty for us to be comfortable. More snowy pics for you below...

************
I got through my chores as quickly as I could this morning so I could head out to ride. 










We generally stuck to the fields as the roads are already getting a little narrow with the plowed snow along the sides. 










From the field, we did see and hear the town plow truck coming our way. Fizz tensed up and gawked a little, but she handled it fine and we continued on our snowy way.








If anyone's interested, I've found the secret to generating impulsion in your horse- all you need is about a foot of snow and a bunch of rolling hills :rofl: Her trot was so big and energetic I almost got bounced out of the saddle the first few strides, but once I got in sync with the rhythm, it felt great to go bounding through the snow.

We turned off down a trail into the woods, and I had an _oh sh*t _moment when I felt some low branches tugging at my wool hat. I guess when I was tacking up, I had the sensation of having something on my head so it never registered with me that I was wearing just a winter hat instead of my helmet!









I'm really not one to ride without a helmet, so I cut things a little shorter than I was planning and headed for home- uneventfully, thank goodness! Our friends were waiting for us when we got there.









When I got off, Fizz let loose with one of those very satisfying-looking full body shakes. I love that you can see her cute white lip spot in this picture :grin:









It had warmed up nicely, to almost 40*F, so I got the blanket off Izzy and gave her and Maggie a good grooming. While I was brushing them out, my lovely husband appeared in the distance, snowshoeing his way towards us. That sent all three horses on high alert, snorting and blowing in his direction, which was very comical.

You can just see him making his way towards us in the back right corner of the field here, to the left of the big evergreen


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> I had the sensation of having something on my head so it never registered with me that I was wearing just a winter hat instead of my helmet!


I have done that too...as long as you have something on your head, you think it's your helmet.
The horses are so cute on high alert!


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## SueC

If you'd fallen without a helmet and landed in that snow, it would have cushioned the impact a little! :rofl: I've fallen head-first into snow before. Cold, but soft...

I can't believe how much snow you are having when only recently everything was still green grass! And -15degC, brrrrrrr! I hope you have a nice electric blanket for yourselves (note - in the US you might call it a mattress warmer - it sits between the mattress and the bottom sheet - but Aussies call that an electric blanket). The banana bread sounds just the thing for the weather, as well as for general ambience and fragrancing your house with something completely natural! 

I'm amazed that the kerosene stove looks so much like a wood burner when on. I've never seen one like that! They have fake gas fires here that look a bit like wood fires. We've got a small wood-burning heater/stove/oven/backup water heater to the solar. You know what I think of when I see your climate though? Masonry heaters...



















These things use very little fuel and radiate gently and constantly for many many hours - very efficient. An aunt of mine in Europe had one, and it was great.

How they work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masonry_heater

Amazing photos of masonry heaters around the world here:

https://www.pinterest.com.au/rickholladay/kachelofen/

Stay nice and warm this winter, and happy Thanksgiving!


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## egrogan

@SueC- those masonry fireplaces are beautiful! We are going to convert another gas fireplace back to wood burning when we update the kitchen this spring, so I am stockpiling ideas for what to do. We do have an electric blanket (this one is a plug-in blanket that goes under the duvet) but haven't had to use it yet this year. We keep our house pretty chilly (55*F overnight in the winter) but with nice thick flannel sheets, we're fine!

*************
Another fun jaunt through the snow today. Lovely husband was working on grounding our plug-in water bucket (fingers crossed it's horse-approved!) so I roped him in to snapping a couple of pictures of us heading out.









As usual, Fizz let us know in no uncertain terms that photo shoots are b-o-r-i-n-g and she was ready to get going!


















I had been planning to head down the road (not many cars go by on Sundays), but unfortunately temps were back down below freezing so the roads were slick. She actually almost went down to her knees once, so we quickly went to plan B. We looped through the orchard field...









...and then followed a deer path up the ridge behind our house. 











It's nearly impossible to ride back there during the summer because it's so overgrown, but I was greeted with a beautiful view today.









We have to be careful about going too far into the woods because of hunting, so we stuck fairly close to the house. I was so proud of how she handled the really wet spots we came across. She tried to balk at this a couple of times, but third time was the charm and she went through it quietly on the way out and again on the way back.









All in all, we had two great days of riding this weekend. And- I'm only working two days next week because of the holiday, and we're staying home, so hopefully more good rides are ahead.


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## Spanish Rider

> We have to be careful about going too far into the woods because of hunting,


Wait a minute! With 120-odd acres? Are they hunting on your property?


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## SueC

Great photos!  ...looks like Fizz is rather partial to the old ear scratch... she's looking very snuggly there!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Wait a minute! With 120-odd acres? Are they hunting on your property?



Haha, yep. We have had a few neighbors ask permission, and when the volunteer firefighters who live down the road ask, you say yes :wink: That said, we were out snowshoeing the other day and we saw lots of footprints in field where the neighbors who asked weren't planning to be, so yes, we think someone else is out there. Who knows if they were given permission by prior owners. With so much road frontage and access from other properties, we can't possibly post the whole acreage, so right now technically anyone who is out there would be in the right, whether they asked permission or not.




SueC said:


> Great photos!  ...looks like Fizz is rather partial to the old ear scratch... she's looking very snuggly there!


She is!! The vet showed me a simple massage technique for behind the ear that she absolutely loves, so that is a regular part of our grooming. The bonus is that she now thinks all sorts of ear handling feels pretty good!


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## QueenofFrance08

What beautiful snow! We have a dusting here but it was below 20 degrees and super windy this weekend so riding halfway down the driveway and back was as far as we got! There's 40's in our forecast for the weekend so I can't wait to get out on my days off!

@Spanish Rider we have a St. Croix pellet stove that also burns corn/cherry pits/wheat/rye. The prior owner put it in because her father farmed and she got corn for free. Since we don't we use pellets in it because they're cheaper with the occasional bag of corn (when it gets really cold, the corn burns a little hotter). They make just plain pellet stoves as well. We love ours, great quality, never an issue (except when a screw accidentally got in the hopper)! I highly recommend looking into those! Ours heats our 1800 square foot house with the occasional assistance of a wall furnace and a tower heater in the bedroom that we use just before bed!


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## PoptartShop

Ah, so much snow!! Happy you got to take Fizz out though. Sounds like you had yet another nice ride on her.
Love the picture of her in mid-shake, so cute. :lol: I'm sure she felt great trotting in the snow! I'm sure Izzie & Maggie enjoyed a nice groom.  Awww! They are so darn cute, & LOL about them snorting to your hubby. :rofl: I'm sure that was very entertaining.


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## Spanish Rider

Forgot to say that you look really good in red, and I really liked the black and white pics. Although I've been working with him since February, I still don't have any photos of myself on Ermitaño. You are very fortunate to have your own personal photographer!


Ugh! The whole hunting on other people's properties really gets me teed off. Not only do we have hunters, but the ice fishers, too. Yes, the lake is public property, but the lake front access is NOT. And, not only do they fish off our lake front, but they also make fire rings with our rocks, so every summer I have to replace the rocks to protect the shoreline. Oh, and did I mention that lakefront property taxes is TWENTY times higher?

And I live in a small town, too, so I get the whole volunteer fire dept thing. But, geez, they COULD send you a simple text saying "Hey, we were thinking about hunting tomorrow." GGGRrrrrrr. Of course, here it's even worse: hunting season during olive harvest. There is like 0 visibilty in an olive grove! End of rant.

@Queen, my dad (chemical engineer) was the pellet stove guru (got one when they first came out), but the thing is this horrid 1980's angular design with shiny brass plates on the front. EEEWWW. So, my mum has been looking to upgrade to something that looks like an old-time wood-burner. She's nearly 80, so the pellets are much more manageable for her. I will look at the St Croix.


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## carshon

I am going to chime in on pellet/corn burners. We have a Countryside Pellet/Corn burner it is almost 20 years old and still going strong. My Mom used one when she lived in SD and their winters were brutal. We have a small home (about 1600 sq/feet) with no heat in our upstairs and it keeps our house pretty warm. When the wind is blowing we turn our furnace on.

We got snow too but no nearly as much and the ground was slipper underneath so no riding for us. 

And as for hunters. In IL if you paint the tops of your fence posts purple that is as good as a no trespassing sign.


We get a lot of illegal hunters out here - most people come from town and park on a side road and head for the nearest timber they see - even if they don't know the owner. There have been a few scary moments in the past. And hunters are extremely territorial. So if an unknown gets caught things heat up quickly.

I think its mostly because we are in the heart of farming country and there are not a lot of stretches of timber and most farmers have gotten smart and lease out timber land to hunters for profit so trespassers are not welcome!


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## knightrider

> She is!! The vet showed me a simple massage technique for behind the ear that she absolutely loves, so that is a regular part of our grooming. The bonus is that she now thinks all sorts of ear handling feels pretty good!


 @egrogan, can you post a photo and description of the ear massage? I would like to learn what you do. Thank you.


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## egrogan

Today the forecast called for "1-3 inches of snow." Which manifest as _this _


















The snow is already almost covering over the bottom strand of my fence- and it's not even December yet! Yikes.









It's amazing how the horses have plowed their own paths through the field. 









They are still pawing down to a little grass when they're bored, and make it easy for me to figure out where their hay piles should go, as they have their preferred spots all mapped out.





Tomorrow night an "arctic blast" comes in for the rest of the week- highs on Thursday are supposed to be 14*F/-10*C with overnight down to 4*F/-16*F. _And it's not even December yet!_


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> @*egrogan* , can you post a photo and description of the ear massage? I would like to learn what you do. Thank you.



Hmm...interesting question. I can try to get a picture, though it's so basic your question is making me overthink what I do. I need to look up an anatomical diagram of the horse's head so I can use the right terms for where I place my hand. Thanks for asking, I will come back with more details when I have lovely husband available to take a picture!


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## knightrider

Brrrrrr. I do like riding in snow and miss it a bit, but right now I am glad I live in Florida. On Friday, two Horse Forum friends and I are camping at the beach for 4 days. I think I'd rather enjoy my horse on the beach at 77 degrees than ride in snow. It looks really cold!!!


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## Avna

knightrider said:


> Brrrrrr. I do like riding in snow and miss it a bit, but right now I am glad I live in Florida. On Friday, two Horse Forum friends and I are camping at the beach for 4 days. I think I'd rather enjoy my horse on the beach at 77 degrees than ride in snow. It looks really cold!!!


It IS really cold! Zero degrees this morning. But incredibly beautiful. Full moon last night on snow blanketed field and silvery snow-encrusted trees ... not getting that in Florida!


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> It IS really cold! Zero degrees this morning. But incredibly beautiful. Full moon last night on snow blanketed field and silvery snow-encrusted trees ... not getting that in Florida!


 @*knightrider* , please send us plenty of pictures so we can pretend to be warmed by the sun. Like @*Avna* , we had record low temps last night, which will last through tomorrow. Everyone got bundled up last night, and it was -1*F when I went out to feed this morning. 










At night check yesterday, I loaded the girls up with more hay than they could possibly eat to last them through night. I bought about 50 bales of really nice second cut hay for just these kinds of days, so I pulled a couple of bales of of that out last night. Right after I put about half a bale's worth out in the field for them, a huge arctic gust of 25mph wind kicked up, and I watched helplessly as my beautiful soft, sweet, greener-than-green fancy hay blew like tumbleweeds across the moonlight pasture out into the woods :dance-smiley05:I guess the deer also had a nice midnight snack last night!

Despite that minor setback, they were still obviously quite content this morning. It's the first morning I can remember that they didn't meet me at the gate looking for breakfast- sure enough, the haynets were still partially full, and there was even a little loose hay left. 

Frosty noses all around this morning though!









Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today! I wish you all warm houses and full bellies. It's been quite a year, and I have so much to be thankful for- including these amazing creatures living in my back yard. They have certainly changed my life for the better.


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## egrogan

After bitter cold the past several days, today it was finally up above 20*F/-7*F, thank goodness!

We took advantage of a black Friday special to add a new piece of equipment that has already made chores much easier :wink:









There's about 1.5 feet of snow on the ground, but I couldn't resist at least sitting in the saddle and traipsing around the fields. Fizz was very eager to get out and do something too. You can see our path down the orchard hill in the distance...









...and then we strolled through the woods for a few minutes.









Our friends were all riled up when we came out of the woods back around the field. 




 I'll spare you the shaky footage I caught a second after this, when Maggie and Izzy took off galloping back up the field and Fizz kicked up her heels to follow them. I know I probably shouldn't have let her take off like that, but to be honest she seemed to be having a great time, and so was I, as she cantered powerfully along the fenceline snorting at the other two on the side of the fence. When we reached the end of the fence, I brought her back to a walk and had her keep going past the gate and back out to the road just so she didn't get the idea that we rush home and stop, but hey, sometimes you just want to have a fun run through the snow! :gallop: 

Though our ride was short, we both got a good workout in the snow!









Maggie's little burst of excitement left her a hot, sweaty mess. :icon_rolleyes: She had a good roll and tried to play it cool, but ultimately she needed to be toweled off and deal with the indignity of having a fleece cooler on for awhile to dry out.









Dapply butt :grin:


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## frlsgirl

Playing in the snow looks like so much fun! We rode in 60+ degrees today but don’t worry the next round of winter weather is headed our way now. 

PS: is it just me or do Morgans prefer colder weather over the heat ?


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## egrogan

@*frlsgirl* , I definitely think Morgans thrive in the cold and shrink in the heat (me too, so it works out well! :grin. That said, it was nearly 40*F/4*C today, so everyone got naked!

Izzy hasn't been unblanketed for nearly a week now since it's been so brutally cold, so I wasn't sure how well she'd held her weight through this cold snap. Happily though, I actually think she's looking better, and it's not just fluffy winter coat. Her ribs can be felt when you rub your hand down her side, but they aren't nearly as visible, even up close, and she's not as angular around her hips. I guess the hay buffet agreed with her :wink: 










The weather was not particularly inspiring today even though it was warm. It was very foggy and damp all day- when I went out to feed, you could barely see more than 10 steps in front of you. Decided not to ride as I don't like to mess around on the roads when the visibility is bad. What little shoulder there is on these roads is buried under plowed snow, so if someone comes around a corner too fast on these narrow roads, you don't really have anywhere to go.


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## SueC

Your winter photos look like Christmas postcards!

A little thought I had...










That looks great... and is there any way of hitching it up to a horse so you can have little horse-powered sledding sessions? :Angel:


PS: Like here... looks quite simple to set up actually...


http://curlyhorsecountry.com/stories_sledjoring.htm


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Your winter photos look like Christmas postcards!
> 
> A little thought I had...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That looks great... and is there any way of hitching it up to a horse so you can have little horse-powered sledding sessions? :Angel:



I have definitely thought about it! Izzy was trained to drive when she was young. I don't think she's pulled anything in a couple of decades, but she's certainly fine with long lines and she doesn't kick. We may give it a try when we have more fresh snow inkunicorn:


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## SueC

...you could even sled your DH along with you on riding outings...






I think @Knave does a fair bit of this, but I think she ties the rope to the horn or something. I'm sure she could give us some hints on how to do this without the rider having to hold the rope - even with an English saddle...

You can get breastplates with long-lines on each side to hold onto for skijouring. I think I'd prefer a setup where the rope would be easily unhitched in case of funny business, and I'm sure there are ways.  I think around the waist like they do at the end has potential...


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## egrogan

Lovely husband is sitting at the table next to me and just raised his eyebrows when I suggested we needed to try this. I think between now and the Christmas holiday, when we'll have plenty of time, I can convince him. I'm imagining me going first with Izzy in long lines, me holding them while sitting in the sled. If she doesn't freak out, then I could lead her while he gets a turn. Will have to continue thinking on the options.


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## Knave

I do pull a lot of sleds in the winter, but to be honest I don’t know how I’d do it with an English saddle... The person on the end of a rope gets pretty heavy, and wrapping ropes around a person is always a bad idea.  

I didn’t know this was your journal!! I am glad to be subscribed.


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## egrogan

Welcome @Knave! :grin: Thanks for the sledding tips.


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## Knave

Oh, I missed the not holding the rope part. If that’s the sledder you are talking about, tie the rope to the sled. 

Here is the video I made!


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## egrogan

Sledding is on hold for the time being, as our expected 5-8 inches of snow last night turned into well over another foot of heavy, wet stuff. It was up to my knees this morning when I schlepped out to the field to feed.





































I'm nervously watching the sagging electrobraid fence. It's covered with heavy, icy snow. I went around and cleaned off the saggiest lines but it's still not sitting very tight. If anyone wanted to stage a breakout, it would be easy. The bottom strand is completely buried and it's not on a shut-off switch. So...let's just keep our fingers crossed everyone is content where they are. Or bundled up too tightly in their blankets to find a way over :wink:

Seriously though, this is _a lot _of snow. The water tub is basically "ground level" right now, it's buried so deeply.









I left them with plenty of hay bagged and hung in their sheds, but they were all milling around outside impatiently until I relented and put out loose hay for them out in the open. I guess they just prefer being outside, no matter what it's doing!









I can't deny that it's pretty out there, but I'm nervous that there's this much snow and it's not even December yet. This is expected in February, but not yet.


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## PoptartShop

OMG, so much snow! :O Wow! Winter certainly came early for you!
Fingers crossed the horses don't get into trouble & decide to make an escape. I think they would know better! :lol:
That really is a lot of snow. Funny how the horses seem to prefer being outside though, we would much rather be inside! LOL. It is pretty, but that really is a ton of snow...& it's not winter yet, exactly! Geeze!

They are so cute in the snow though, all bundled up.


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## SueC

Those are postcard scenes, @*egrogan* - love the one with Maggie (I think? I don't think Izzy has a blaze) with her face in that snow on the gate.  But I can see why you'd worry, all this so early - will you get snowed in this winter? Happened a couple of times to a friend in north Michigan, where that is apparently quite normal... She always prepared for it, enough food for animals and people, ways to get out of the house etc. I was reading in a series called _Down to Earth_ about this incredibly snowy winter in the UK in the 1970s, when these smallholders' outbuildings could no longer be seen as they were all buried in snow. They had to tunnel their way down to the pig sty, where the pigs were comfortable in their straw and building - the building itself didn't fill with snow, they just had to find an entry point...

Is the road clear? Can you get out by car?

Love the sledding clip, @*Knave* - looks so much fun. The saddle horn definitely has some advantages beyond roping cattle, I think.  I meant the English saddle rider not having to hold the rope, which would be really bad for your shoulders and back. You could tie longlines to a breastplate, but then you'd potentially have trailing lines that the horse could get wrapped up in, if you didn't have a quick-release mechanism on the rope. I see what you mean about it being a bad idea to put the rope around the rider's waist (which would be quick-release of the whole rope shebang) - I saw afterwards that the lady in the clip had it around the saddle horn, and then going around her - also quick-release...


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## carshon

I hear ya @egraogan. We got hit with a blizzard on Sunday - 13.5 inches of snow and it had rained before the snow. So you will be walking through a drift and sink down into MUD! The horses hate it and I hate it! We expect snow to come and go in November not get slammed with single digit temps and a foot of snow. They are calling for rain this weekend as temps get into the mid 30's and the potential for flooding is pretty big. Then it will freeze again.

What a mess! 

But your pics are gorgeous (as usual) and your girls seem quite content


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## egrogan

@carshon- that sounds so awful, yuck. Our forecast also threatened some rain/ice, but we're learning that our elevation is just high enough that even when the forecast for our town/zip code calls for mixed precipitation, we'll probably have just snow. Even though the amount of snow was overwhelming, I'm very thankful it's not sitting on top of mud and ice. Really sorry that's what you're dealing with. Stay safe out there!


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## phantomhorse13

Guess you need to look for a sleigh for Izzy to pull!

Maybe since February's weather has come in November.. we will get lovely fall weather in February?! I agree your pics belong on postcards or calendars, but I am also happy it's not the view out my window.

Something has to make up for all this crazy..


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## gottatrot

I'm sorry, guys...the extra cold weather inland has been pulling in the warm air off the ocean. We've had a very mild and warm November.


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## egrogan

Sorry to be behind on responding- it's been a challenging week here. We got a massive snow dump Monday, probably about 1.5 feet of snow. As it was coming down, I don't think we fully grasped how heavy and wet it really was. Even though the leaves have been off the trees for quite awhile now, the weight of the snow on the trees was substantial enough that it caused major problems with power lines. 



















I'm really sad, my favorite apple tree did not weather the storm very well- it basically snapped in half, and I'm not sure how much we'll be able to salvage of what's still standing. (Can't bring myself to take a picture of that :sad

Monday night, the power went out. The power company kept pushing back their estimates of when they thought it would be restored- on Wednesday night, we got a text that they expected it was going to be SATURDAY before it came back on! :shock:

Fortunately, we have a full-house generator (installed by the people we bought the house from, given their elderly parents lived here alone), and it is _awesome_. It powers the full load of the house, including keeping the electric fence and water pump out in the field on. Still, we "only" have 200 gallons of propane to power the generator, which theoretically is about 4 days of continuous use. That made us super nervous- and of course, the oil company was overwhelmed with requests and told us it would be next Tuesday before they could get here to refill. We were heading towards mild panic about what we'd do. As you can imagine, I did quite a happy dance yesterday afternoon when the generator wound down and the power was back on :happydance:

There is just so much snow outside. It's well over the horses knees, and while they've worn some paths through their main areas around the sheds/water, they're pretty unwilling to venture out into the pasture. They handled the close quarters ok the first couple of days- I just stuffed them with hay and hung nets everywhere to keep them occupied. 









But by yesterday afternoon, they were starting to annoy each other. Even though I have no less than 7 piles of loose hay and 5 hay nets out any time I feed, Maggie insists on following poor Fizz to whatever spot she chooses and chasing her away. At one point Fizz had nowhere to go and was forced to run/lurch through a snow drift that was up to her hocks and just stood there in the middle of the field, marooned, pleading with me with her big soft eyes to get her out. I chased Maggie far enough away that Fizz could at least get back on solid ground, poor thing. 

A few big tree limbs came down on the back corner of the pasture fence, but we were lucky that the fence sagged but didn't snap. Lovely husband was able to get the branches cleared off with a hand saw, and once we had them pushed back, the fence actually tightened back up well enough that I didn't have to do any heroic repairs and the horses can still use the pasture without going over or through it (not that they're particularly willing to go anywhere through the snow). The bottom strand of the fence is still totally buried in the snow, but the fence is still carrying some charge. I have to say, I've never been so happy to accidentally shock myself by touching it, which reassured me it was still live :wink:

Lovely husband also pulled out the big equipment to clear a path to the poop pile for me. I knew I hadn't made the best selection of location for year round use, but since winter came so much earlier than we expected, building a winter containment structure closer to the entrance to the field isn't something we got done. Next year...









I don't know what's going to happen from here. It's one thing for conditions to be like this in February, knowing spring is just around the corner. But it's not even December yet! Technically not even winter! The horses can't just stand in one spot for the next five months with nothing to do- I think we'll all go nuts if that happens. Maybe we'll get a little warming that knocks the snow depth back a bit, but I'm very nervous about just how bad this winter is going to get.

On a more humorous note, this is what a traffic jam on snowy roads looks like in our neighborhood :grin:









The first time we saw our house was last April- and this is what it looked like in April...It's going to be a looonnngggg winter if it's like this again this year...


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## carshon

@egrogan Yikes! that is some serious snow fall. We had 13 inches of snow on Sunday but thankfully the last couple of days have been in the 20's and some of the snow has compacted itself so the drifts are not so high. We are expecting temps in the high 30's this weekend with rain! and of course with rain they say will be flooding because all of the ditches are full of snow! I really want a generator and am going to have to rethink that - our lights flickered a lot on Sunday and I worry more about the horses and cows water troughs than staying warm.

Glad that the lights are on and everyone is safe. And believe me - the horses will find their way in the snow. My 2 oldest are 21 and 20 and pout and hang out at their stalls when I open the gates but both have now ventured out - try moving some of your hay piles further and further out. The exercise through the drifts will be good for them and will save making a mud hole where the hay piles usually are.


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## PoptartShop

Wow, that is a heck of a lot of snow. :O *jaw drops* Like, wow! Exactly...it's not even December just yet...usually I don't see that much until like Jan/Feb! Just. Insane.

What a scare. Thank goodness the power came back on for you guys just in time. I would've been freaking out if I was going to possibly be without power for that long! Good thing you have a generator though.

Sorry to hear that about your apple tree. :sad: Ugh. Hopefully you can salvage it somehow, although I know it doesn't sound too good. The horses will be OK though, I know it is hard to not be working them as much because of it, but it'll work out. Like @carshon stated, it's good exercise for them, being in the snow!  Yay for hubby clearing the poop path! :lol: Aww, poor Fizz. Hopefully she will defend herself & Maggie will leave her alone. She's probably just bored & wants to pick on her.


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## SueC

Wow - that's serious snow, @*egrogan* . :shock:

About that apple tree - even if the top is a total wipeout (and it may not be!), old apple trees with healthy roots can often be re-grafted and be very productive quicker than a young replacement tree would be, because the roots are already established and huge! Don't give up on your tree just yet. 










...and if this is what you need to do, then you can actually grow multiple compatible varieties on the one tree as well, if you want to. 

https://www.instructables.com/id/Grafting-a-Multi-variety-Apple-Tree/

What variety was the graft of your tree? Is any part of it still well-connected?


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## egrogan

We got a bit of a reprieve yesterday- the sun was at least weakly visible and temps were up in the mid-30*s, so that felt nice. It's logistically complicated to ride (the way the snowplows have packed the sides of the road, I can't really get in and out of the fields and have no shoulder if riding on the road) but I could at least take Fizz out for a handwalk.

She was pretty excited, the plow had exposed one tiny strip of grass, and she attacked it with enthusiasm!









I thought those without snow might appreciate just how well horses can use their lips to find that delicious grass underneath :wink:














When we got back Maggie and Izzy came charging down to the gate to reclaim Fizz, and Maggie in particular got all hot and bothered to the point she was dripping with sweat. I had to spend quite a bit of time towelling her off as the sun was setting and it was getting chilly. 





They cracked me up while they waited for me to get things organized to feed them dinner- total band album cover right here :rofl:









We've had a steady freezing drizzle all night/morning, but everyone's nice and dry under their new blankets (I finally gave up on Schneider's and went to Horseware Amigo's). Their tails are frozen solid, but they are happily standing outside in the rain eating hay. It will be a good day to be cozy inside and get some Christmas decorations up.


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## frlsgirl

Yay a break from snow although I would take snow over freezing drizzle any day. Are you able to go to work or are you trapped in on the farm til next spring?

Awww, look at them trotting through the deep snow! I bet it's good exercise for them, similar to running through sand.

How are your run in sheds holding up under all this dampness?


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## Knave

She is so pretty! You really take some great pictures too. 

We finally got enough snow for everything to be blanketed, and my littlest girl was loving taking out a tube last night and playing. I guess I will have to break Cash to pulling... he is struggling still with ropes though, but it will be good for me to start working more on it before next spring when he’ll have to be able to use a rope.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Yay a break from snow although I would take snow over freezing drizzle any day. Are you able to go to work or are you trapped in on the farm til next spring?
> 
> Awww, look at them trotting through the deep snow! I bet it's good exercise for them, similar to running through sand.
> 
> How are your run in sheds holding up under all this dampness?


I'm lucky in that I work virtually, so as long as there is internet, I'm at work :wink: I haven't been on the road at all lately and won't have to travel again until mid-January, so that's pretty lucky.

The sheds are doing ok. The water table is very high and I never did manage to get rubber mats installed in them, so new shavings don't stay fluffy and dry for more than a day or so, but I think that's probably as much because of the horses coming in with snowy feet/legs/bellies as it is the ground being damp. The snow has built up so much outside the shed there's now a pronounced step down into the shed, and Izzy takes it sort of gingerly, but they are holding up. 

My tiny little attached tack room area is holding 8 bales of hay, 3 bags of shavings, and two big cans of feed, so we just use the nice days to bring a bunch of supplies down there from the barn to stay stocked!



Knave said:


> She is so pretty! You really take some great pictures too.
> 
> We finally got enough snow for everything to be blanketed, and my littlest girl was loving taking out a tube last night and playing. I guess I will have to break Cash to pulling... he is struggling still with ropes though, but it will be good for me to start working more on it before next spring when he’ll have to be able to use a rope.


 Thanks, Knave. She is really photogenic, especially now since it's "dapple season." When I bought her I really wanted a bay, but I made an exception because I loved how she rode :wink:

Hope you all have fun with your tubing! Our icy drizzle has turned into a torrential downpour of rain here. No outside fun for us, I am dragging my heels about going out to feed Izzy her lunch and throw more hay, but they are guilting me into it because I can see them out the window, all standing in the rain at the gate looking longingly at the house...
I think I'll bring everyone apples to apologize:apple:


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## knightrider

I read with a great deal of interest about grafting. I have this memory of my granddaddy telling me that orange trees have to be grafted. Checking on the internet, I see that they grow fine from seeds, although it takes 15 years to get fruit, and only 5 years if you graft your orange tree. On our farm in Melbourne (Florida), we had at least 4 citrus trees grafted onto other species, that my granddaddy did back in about 194? (before I was born). Now I am curious if my granddaddy did that because he was a scientist and wanted to see if he could or if he had to do it that way.

According to @SueC article, orange trees have to be grafted onto orange trees, but clearly 4 of our citrus trees in Melbourne are not. My granddaddy was a wizard at growing things, so he might have just done it to see if he could, and clearly HE could. Too bad he is long gone and I cannot ask him, and I could not find any information about grafting orange trees to other species.

And I loved this part! In the list of things you will need to graft:


> A first aid kit. Or at least some bandaids. Just in case you cut yourself, which you probably will, eventually.


 Ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!


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## egrogan

I have been too sad about the tree to respond to the article, but I think there is some hope for grafting onto it. It's main trunk is still standing, but the other half - a large section that branched off to the right- has been ripped completely off the trunk and left behind a massive wound in the main trunk. I can't get close enough to it because of a massive snowbank to see more closely, but I'm worried that the main trunk is fairly rotten, and if I can't treat this "wound" that I will lose the whole thing :sad:


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## egrogan

I sucked it up and went out to feed lunch. It was wetttttttttt


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## SueC

This is such a great photo! 


What music do these guys play? ;-)


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## egrogan

@SueC- funny you should ask. Lovely husband is the music aficionado in our family, and he seems to have a knack for capturing our animals in funny, album-ready poses. He's also a lot wittier than me- this is what he posted on Facebook yesterday, and it appears the answer is that they are Punk Rockers :rofl:


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## SueC

That commentary is wonderful! :rofl:


I see there are firm senses of humour installed in your house too!  And sort of alternative universes! :tardis:


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## PoptartShop

Finally a break from all that snow. Hopefully no more for awhile...crossing my fingers. Omg, Fizz is so cute. I'm sure she was happy to get out & walk for a bit with you. Sure she was happy to finally see some grass! :lol: Love the videos. They're like, FIZZ IS MINE!!

So cute them running around in the snow.


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## egrogan

Christmas came early for Fizz :grin: The trainer who helped us with our trailer loading issue last summer just announced she's hosting a 4-day Harmony Horsemanship clinic at her farm in May, and I decided to sign Fizz and I up for it! I'm not really a "follower" of any of the celebrity trainers (and not even sure if Lindsey Partridge qualifies as a "celebrity"), but I have been feeling a little down since I didn't meet my goal of Fizz and I making it to an endurance ride this year, and I thought this opportunity could be a great way to start get a fresh start this spring. I hesitated to sign up, thinking all my usual anxious thoughts...but I could push them all aside because the set-up of the clinic is pretty ideal...

-What if Fizz won't trailer? _Well, the trainer that re-taught her to load and brought her from NH to VT is coming to pick us up and give us a ride. So she'll be good._

_-_What if I ride like a dope after not having lessons in nearly a year and not being able to ride much all winter? _Most other people in Vermont don't ride all that much over the winter, and who cares how I look as long as I'm not hurting Fizz!_

-What if she's anxious and hard to handle in a new place? _THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF GOING TO THIS CLINIC! There will be two very helpful, sympathetic trainers there the whole time to help with just these kinds of problems. And hopefully to give us strategies for going to more new places in the future.
_
So, I'm really excited to have this to look forward to. I think it will be a great "first outing" away from home for both of us, and my main goal will to be walk away confident in taking her to a ride later in the spring.


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## phantomhorse13

Fantastic!!


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## Knave

That’s awesome!!


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## knightrider

> -What if I ride like a dope after not having lessons in nearly a year and not being able to ride much all winter? Most other people in Vermont don't ride all that much over the winter, and who cares how I look as long as I'm not hurting Fizz!


You go, girl! And besides, you WON'T ride like a dope! You'll be FINE!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone, that's very nice of you! I am looking forward to it. Now, to hurry up and wait for May to get here :wink:


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## Tazzie

I'm so glad you signed up!! I don't think you have anything to worry about though! I used to hope Izzie would behave for a lesson so we could make progress and my trainer would think I'm great. But then I started realizing what was the point? If she's good there and nasty at home, I need help with the nasty. So it was a relief when Izzie would act up in a lesson and my trainer could help me work through it. So think of it that way. It'd be new tools in your toolbox for if/when things don't go as planned!

Ps, I don't think you ride like a dope at all! I think you're a fine rider


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## Avna

If you want Brooke & me to be your Green Bean Partners next year, we will. We can do this!

I haven't been on Brooke for 6 weeks, what with one thing and another. And it is 18 degrees, the snowy trails have turned to ice (especially where the deer hunters drove their trucks on them), and I don't have a vehicle that can haul my trailer up this hill in winter. So do not feel like the lone ranger. It is frustrating.


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## PoptartShop

I think that is a GREAT idea!!!! How fun! Glad you decided to sign up!!   That is so exciting. & props to you for not letting those anxious thoughts get to you!!


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## QueenofFrance08

That's awesome! You guys are going to have so much fun! I had the exact same thoughts on our way to our first ride. I was worried everyone would notice how bad of a rider I am (I haven't had lessons since I was 14 years old so that should make you feel better!) and we would fail miserably. I realized when I got there that no one cares, and no one pays attention. Not to mention, no matter how bad you think you are you will see someone much worse or with much worse ideas (*cough the guy on the Green Bean facebook group recommending if you ride a Quarter Horse to gallop on the flat and walk everywhere else and slow to a slow lope while passing people on the trail*). You two are going to do great and have a ton of fun!


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## QueenofFrance08

Eeeep double post!


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## egrogan

Thanks @*Tazzie*, @QueenofFrance08 & @*PoptartShop* ! I really wish we were all closer and could get together to ride in person! But, still, I really appreciate the virtual encouragement, it means a lot!



Avna said:


> If you want Brooke & me to be your Green Bean Partners next year, we will. We can do this!


 YES YES YES! This makes me really happy. GMHA has a pleasure ride Memorial Day weekend, and then the spring CTR/Endurance ride in June 8/9. I really want to make those this year. Would be a ton of fun to go out with you & Brooke!

Like @*Avna* , we had a chilly, blustery morning here today- but it was beautiful despite the cold. This is pretty much the glamour of having your horses at home- they hang out in the cozy sheds eating while you toil away outside chipping their frozen poop out of the ice with a shovel


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## carshon

Chiming in late - but Merry Christmas to you and Fizz! I love clinics - but I haven't participated in many. What a great way to start of your new riding year.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon! I've only done two ridden clinics, both were led by BO at her barn last year. It was really fun and I'm looking forward to this new experience as well.


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## Avna

I'm not always coming up there, you have to haul down south to my neck of the woods too, you know.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> I'm not always coming up there, you have to haul down south to my neck of the woods too, you know.



I better start riding Fizz in your direction now, we should make it by spring...
:cowboy:


In all seriousness, I do hope we have a trailer by this time next year, but our kitchen renovation costs are the big wildcard that will dictate the rest of our budget next year.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> I better start riding Fizz in your direction now, we should make it by spring...
> :cowboy:
> 
> 
> In all seriousness, I do hope we have a trailer by this time next year, but our kitchen renovation costs are the big wildcard that will dictate the rest of our budget next year.


If you have a truck you can always rent or borrow a trailer. The truck is the important part.


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## egrogan




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## phantomhorse13

The frozen whiskers make me shiver.. but look at that blue sky!


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## egrogan

Fortunately today it was nearly 32*F/0*C, and those blue skies stuck around. I couldn't resist trying to go out for a ride. Logistics were complicated though. We can't get in to any of the fields because the snow plow pile is knee-to-waist high, and it's frozen solid. I guess if I were a jumper, maybe I could go over it. But I'm most definitely not! The roads weren't too treacherous, at least not right in front of my house where they were heavily sanded. I wasn't sure how far we'd make it, but decided to give it a try.

My mounting block is buried in one of the fields I can't get to, but Fizz was awesome with standing nicely for me to mount from the top of one of the snowbanks. You can see how tall they are here:









Lovely husband happened to be heading out to do errands as we rode by the house...



























He stopped to give a couple of peppermints (Peppermint eating face)








(Buddies screaming for you back in the pasture face)









Unfortunately past our house, the road was icier than I thought. She was a little hesitant but walked on when asked. We went down the first big hill, and her hind legs kept slipping out from under her whenever she hit a patch of ice.









We didn't make it a mile before it was obvious that we were just going to be sliding all over and have trouble getting any traction- even going up a gentle hill, when she would try to push from behind, we were slipping every stride. So, I called it a day and hopped off, walking home next to her. She was in good spirits though, I think she was happy to do something out of the pasture, even if it was just a quick walk up and down the road.


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## frlsgirl

Awww I guess even ponies get cabin fever or “pasture” fever. How are you guys holding up being trapped on the farm? Ever since we moved to the country I feel like I’m living on a deserted island. Everything is so far away that i think twice about “is it really worth a trip to town?” At least we can leave whenever we want to as the weather has been very cooperative. 

And then my husband goes out of town a lot and I wonder if anyone would ever find me if I fall down the stairs. Maybe I should start wearing a helmet around the house...


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## PoptartShop

Omg those frozen whiskers! :lol: Too cute! 

Aw, I'm happy you and Fizz got out, even if it was a short ride down the road. It was best to hop off and just walk back, so that was a smart move! I'm sure she loved the nice peppermints.  Love the pictures. What a good girl!


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> And then my husband goes out of town a lot and I wonder if anyone would ever find me if I fall down the stairs. Maybe I should start wearing a helmet around the house...


HAHAHA. As someone who works from home, I think about this all the time! My husband travels a lot too. I mean, most of my days are packed with video conference calls, and people definitely expect to talk to me. But, if something happened to me, how long would it take for people to realize something was wrong, and not just assume that I got held up in another meeting or something? Would someone on my team call someone else? Who? What would they do, try to find the phone number for the police department in my tiny town? Would my dogs have eaten me by then!?!


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## carshon

Your post made me laugh @egrogan. I work from home too - but my hubby is here most days. I do get up very early in the A.M. to feed the horses and cows. Chores take about 30-45 minutes in the morning. In general my hubby and son are still asleep when I go outside and my son leaves for work when I am still doing chores. So the joke here is that I could fall down and die of hypothermia before my husband even woke up! Scary but true! And I too have conf calls throughout the day but my parent company is in CA so 2 hours ahead of me - by the time I did not login and answer emails or missed calls it would be much later in the day and I would be a goner!

Oh the joys of working from home! My hubby works weekends and is gone from the house by 4 am and home at 5pm so I guess I could technically die of hypothermia on the weekend as well.


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## egrogan

My fellow Northerners will understand why this post- _A Barn Krampus Christmas Carol- _had me cracking up this morning. Some choice excerpts:


> For some, it’s the most wonderful time of the year…. with the kids jingle-belling and everyone telling you be of good cheer, but I swear to God if one of those freaks walks into the barn on Christmas morning while I’m chipping frozen horse excrement out of the solid igloo-cornerstone-worthy block of ice that was once a water bucket and tells me to “be of good cheer” I will show them the true meaning of Christmas.


 _Maggie pitching in to help me yesterday with said frozen horse excrement:_












> _I’m dreaming of a warm Christmas_
> _ Just like the ones without the snow_
> _ When the horse eyes glisten, their adrenaline risen_
> _ They chuck their riders in the snow_
> 
> _I’m dreaming of a warm Christmas_
> _ Just like those jerks in Aiken say they know_
> _ Where the grass only thickens, and the horses listen_
> _ To riders when they’re screaming “WHOA”_
> 
> _I’m dreaming of a warm Christmas_
> _ With every frozen turd I spike_
> _ May your mounts hop on the van without a fight_
> _ It’s warm in Cabom and you cannot miss that flight_
> _..._
> _I’m dreaming of a southern equatorial Christmas_
> _ With every iced bucket I smash_
> _ I hope Santa brings me lots of cash_
> _ Because horses break banks and spirits super fast_
> 
> _May your feed, hay and vet bills all be light_
> _ May your Christmas be anything but white._


:rofl:

They do sure look peaceful munching away on their hay while the snow swirls gently around them though...I guess that's why we do this!


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## PoptartShop

LOL, that's too funny! :lol: Haha, it looks like Maggie is eating the shovel in the picture.

So cute in the snow. I must say, as much as I can't stand snow...the horses do look pretty cute in it. Must be nice all snuggled up in their blankets munching on hay! Spoiled happy horses! <3


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## phantomhorse13

At least the ponies seem content with the world! I surely agree with all those lyrics you quoted..

I am still not sure which I like less.. the snow or the mud. Are you getting another storm this weekend too? We are due MORE rain this weekend, then temps are dropping.. so the end result will be ice. I hope your storm at least spares you that mess! Never thought I would be wishing for snow.


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## QueenofFrance08

I love your lyrics! Frozen poop.... The worst. We bought one of those barn scraper tools, biggest help ever! Although we are trying to clean off cement so it might not work as well in your situation...

I guess I can't complain, it's 39 degrees right now and that's the high for the next 2 days. Our fall finally came, in December....


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> Haha, it looks like Maggie is eating the shovel in the picture.


 She was! She kept mouthing it and trying to pull it out of the snow. I was encouraging her to get right to work! Izzy, on the other hand, ambled up to it and used it as a butt scratcher. She never has intentions of working :wink:




phantomhorse13 said:


> I am still not sure which I like less.. the snow or the mud. Are you getting another storm this weekend too?


 That one's easy for me; I will gladly take snow over mud without even having to think about pros and cons. I am blissfully ignoring the mud mess I know I will have to deal with in the spring because everything froze before we could scrape the worst of it out. Doesn't look too stormy here this weekend (*knock on wood*) maybe a little freezing ick Sunday night, maybe it will be a couple of inches of snow instead. We'll see. I definitely don't envy you that rain, hope you catch a break one of these days!




QueenofFrance08 said:


> I love your lyrics!


I can't take credit for them, it comes straight from the _COTH_ post, but I really thought they were funny. Enjoy your heat wave and get some ride time in for me! :grin:


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## frlsgirl

The pic of Maggie is so cute! Morgans are so curious; always getting into something. 

The neck cover on Fizz I assume...does it attach to the blanket? How does it stay on? After Ana tore up her slinky I’m looking at other options.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> The pic of Maggie is so cute! Morgans are so curious; always getting into something.
> 
> The neck cover on Fizz I assume...does it attach to the blanket? How does it stay on? After Ana tore up her slinky I’m looking at other options.


Hi @*frlsgirl* ! Yes, I like blankets that have the detachable neck options- I try to use the necks/hoods sparingly, but since the girls live outside 24/7 I like to have them when it's raining/sleeting/heavy snow. It helps keep the wetness from running down under the blanket through the shoulders/chest, and gives them a little more protection when it's really miserable. BO at our old barn tended to keep them on all the horses almost all winter, and last year that rubbed out about three quarters of both Fizz and Izzy's manes :frown_color: It seems to be harder on Izzy's mane, it gets sort of matted down if the hood is on much more than 24 hours, so like I said, I try to use them only when they really need them. So, if the slinky is for protecting Ana's mane, not sure this would help, unfortunately.

I have found they stay on really well- they attach through buckles around the neck of the blanket and then velcro in the front. In my opinion, the Schneider's blankets have the best attachment- they use little carabeners that clip onto rings along the neck. Unfortunately I've had really bad luck with the blankets maintaining their waterproofing. Out of 4 blankets I bought last year, only Izzy's heavyweight is still reliably waterproof. I took a picture of how the hood clips to the blanket- this is taken standing at her shoulder, with the hood folded back so you can see how the clips attach (I think they discontinued her blanket- maybe we weren't the only ones with waterproofing issues!! But it's basically this blanket with this hood. Seeing there's a new version of the blanket _almost _makes me want to give them another chance, but I can't afford to waste more money with them.).









I haven't found another brand that uses the carabener clips like Schneiders- the other kinds I've used (Weatherbeeta and Horsewear Amigo Bravo) use heavy duty velcro tabs and hooks. It attaches in the same way, through rings around the neck of the blanket. I find the velcro really annoying to use- it gets stuck on my gloves, the mane gets caught in it, etc. I'd much prefer the other option. Here's a picture of Fizz's (this blanket with this hood)


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## frlsgirl

Interesting! Thank you for the pics and explanation. Ana doesn’t have much mane left to rub out lol.


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## SueC

frlsgirl said:


> And then my husband goes out of town a lot and I wonder if anyone would ever find me if I fall down the stairs. Maybe I should start wearing a helmet around the house...


This is an excellent idea, ladies!  It will also be helpful in the case of a meteor strike. :Angel:

Now this, @*egrogan* :










:loveshower: :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:


We don't get that here. It just looks like this where we live:









And one more, because donkeys are soooo adorable...




Merry Christmas! Stay warm! :hug:


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## egrogan

Goodness @*SueC* , somehow I missed this amazing donkey nose ^^. Thank you for sharing, it left me with a big smile. Which is a good thing, because the last few days have been challenging days of horsekeeping...

We've had about 1-2 feet of snowpack on the ground for over a month now, but Friday night, temperatures soared to 50*F/10*C, which got everything started melting. That would have been annoying but manageable-unfortunately the high temps came with steady rain for about 36 hours- almost 2 inches/5 cm total rainfall. As you can imagine, that unleashed extreme flooding. Our basement is a lake- seriously, the kitty litter pan actually floated away to another part of the basement. 

Worse though, the horses' sheds got completely flooded out. The snowpack had built up high enough that the horses have to take a big step down to the floor of the sheds; well of course, that just meant a waterfall flowing from across the paddock straight down into the sheds. 

This was taken Friday night, when it was still raining and the water was about 10in/25cm deep in Izzy's shed. 










I tried futilely to scoop it out with buckets, but it was halfway up my calf and I was making zero progress (and realized that my muck boots have a big crack in them- my soggy left foot was a very unpleasant surprise in the middle of all that!! :evil. Feeling a little frantic, I drove 2 hours roundtrip to a Home Depot that rented tools and equipment, planning to rent a little electric pump that theoretically attached to a garden hose to pump the water out. But I took one look at the sad little thing when I got there and knew that the shavings and debris would clog it up in seconds, so that was a wasted car ride. While I was doing that, lovely husband had gotten home from work, and it stopped raining for awhile. He gave me the best early Christmas present he could have possibly given me and stood out there for three hours in the dark, hand-bailing out the water bucket-brigade style until there was no longer a pool in the sheds. There was still a little standing water, and it was supposed to rain more overnight into Saturday morning, so we locked the poor horses out of there and made them stand out in the rain all night so they wouldn't make things even worse by trying to be in the sheds. To say they were miserable in the morning was a bit of an understatement. And their feet are definitely looking worse for the wear- soft frogs and thrush already setting in :frown_color:


Saturday we were supposed to meet up with friends down in Massachusetts for a holiday lunch, but the additional rain overnight meant the sheds had started to fill up again and had to be bucketed out before temperatures dropped back below freezing in the afternoon. The thought of having a literal ice block in the place of solid ground was untenable, so we skipped the lunch and kept working on it. Fortunately for us, by mid-morning, the fog cleared, the wind picked up, and the sun came out. Temps were falling, but not so badly that we couldn't get the rest of the water out before it froze. Finally, we hit solid ground again, I dumped in copious amounts of Stall Dry, and it actually worked its magic spectacularly well, soaking up the worst of the moisture and turning pretty darn dry again quickly.

Izzy couldn't wait to check it out- home sweet home :grin:








Notice how far below the frame she's standing- and if you look up at the picture above, you see the waterline was up above the frame in that same corner. It was SO. MUCH. WATER.

Things out in the pasture still aren't great. The river of water running across the paddock into the sheds flash froze solid, and I watched Maggie helplessly as she nearly went down on her nose this morning when she hit the ice. But I did the best I could to cover the ice flow with shavings to give them a little traction, and they can mostly get around carefully, certainly to the water and the sheds and the main spots I throw out hay. 

Obviously we have a lot of work to do on grading and drainage this spring, and it was pretty demoralizing in the moment. I'm not the kind of person who cries a lot, but I shed some tears of frustration feeling like maybe I wasn't cut out to have horses at home. I'm dreading a repeat this spring when things start thawing out for real. As lovely husband not-so-helpfully reminded me, it's all mud under the ice so it's going to be even worse during the real melt...

But putting those thoughts aside for now, we were all relieved for sunshine and dry weather this morning!









I think the best thing for us now will be more snow, but it doesn't look like we're supposed to get any accumulation again until the end of the week- and then it's supposed to rain over the top of that again. Here's hoping the forecast changes between now and then!! :|


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## SueC

Dear @*egrogan* , this is not a very good Christmas lead-up, but at least you're all alive and well, if soggy. :hug: And here I was cursing because I am spending Christmas Eve looking for an earth fault in the fence... something that's urgent business when you have cattle on the place, or they will soon start bulldozing through fences, which of course means 1) lots of fence repairs, and 2) lots of damage to orchards, tree lines and other fenced-off areas cattle have no business being in. 

They've already wreaked havoc on the young acacias I have behind two (normally) hot wires near the gate... and sooner or later, this _always_ happens. And it won't usually be obvious stuff like a tree across the fence... For some reason an insulator will be invisibly cracked, for instance, and then you're checking out _all_ your insulators (with the fence turned off in sections), and heaven help you if you miss the culprit the first time around... then you go seriously batty and stop sleeping at night while you have waking nightmares about the cattle and your nice young orchard trees etc... Other fence fault reasons that have happened is a large slug bridging the gap between the hot wire and the metal post, across the insulator, but at least with those you can hear the zapping... I've got a silent fault that's so large that my fence tester can't even tell me which direction it's in...

...oh yeah, and our house pump is suddenly acting up. I'm hoping it's just a clogged filter, but if it's a pump fault that needs fixing, we may have to wash ourselves out of buckets over Christmas - everyone like that is shut until January 2...

:music019:

These are _normal aspects of being a smallholder and keeping stock - happens to everyone_. We too have drainage work to do, around our shed, which we were supposed to do this winter, but I broke my foot etc, so we just wore gumboots at the end of winter to be able to get into the shed with dry feet... :shock:

It's good to hear you're sorted for now, but it sounds like you're going to need a little pump of your own to deal with possible recurrences (even after your drainage is perfect - you may still get flooding anyway sometimes) ; hiring and driving soon add up cost-wise. We've got a little Honda fire pump for under $500 for actual fire-fighting, getting greywater out of the tank and onto thirsty plants in summer, getting water out of the farm dam etc. It's a petrol-powered unit, and copes fine with reasonably dirty water, but we do generally put a little cage around the inlet (coarse will do, fine clogs too much - you can make one out of a plastic milk bottle drilled with 5mm holes, for instance) to stop the big stuff clogging up the hoses. Petrol-powered pumps have the disadvantage of needing servicing regularly, but have the advantage of being independent of the electrical supply actually working - and you can't electrocute yourself using them in wet conditions either...

Oh, and soggy hooves and thrush are an all-winter problem here, which we keep at bay very effectively with applications of traditional Stockholm tar, twice a week usually. You don't need much, just rub into the sole and frog well with a paintbrush. It's a natural antimicrobial and a water barrier - the active ingredients actually penetrate and protect the horn. They're also used in a human skincare range for eczema sufferers, so not nasty chemicals etc.

Hope that's a little helpful. Have a dry Christmas, you, DH, and four-legs! Here's a photo of our Aussie Christmas tree. And another donkey nose to cheer you up - Mary Lou is very proud of her fine nose. :Angel:


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## frlsgirl

Oh my goodness @egrogan !

How frustrating! Glad you got a break from Armageddon like conditions for a day. 

I hope you and the ponies have a dry uneventful Christmas!


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## egrogan

Thank you Mary Lou, @*SueC* , and @*frlsgirl* for you Christmas cheer. SueC, loved your post, thanks for putting things in perspective. I hope you get the fence figured out- when ours went out over the summer, I only had 5 acres to walk looking for the problem, I don't envy you your task! And I will have to do some research into the pump you described, sounds like it would be very useful. Never heard of Stockholm Tar but will be researching that as well. The rain certainly didn't do their feet any favors, but after standing in deep snow for the better part of two months, they were already having trouble before the rain with ragged frogs and poor Izzy has a couple of deeper cracks creeping up her heel bulbs. I've been treating with Thrushbuster (the "purple stuff") which is basically povidone iodine with genetian violet, but I'm open to something else that may be more of a protective barrier (at least what I'm picturing something called a tar acting like...). I wonder how other people whose horses live out on snow year round handle it. @*Knave* , maybe yours do? Can't recall if your horses are shod with pads or barefoot. Do you have winter thrush problems?

Looking forward to a couple of days of cooking punctuated by eating. Though neither lovely husband nor I are close with our families, we do have some traditions that we've carried with us involving holiday food. Today we're doing the Italian American menu (my side)- strombolis for lunch and an abbreviated Feast of the Seven Fishes (including homemade linguini) for dinner tonight. It's hard to do all seven fishes for just two people and one cat :wink: Tomorrow we'll do full southern bbq- smoked pork shoulder, baked beans, cornbread, pickles, slaw, honey roasted sweet potatoes, homemade rolls. And then we'll spend the next couple of weeks eating all this! 

Hope everyone who is celebrating enjoys the holiday.


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## Knave

I have only had thrush in a horse once. It was because I put him in a smaller corral to try and diet him. It was super soggy and there wasn’t a lot of moving around. I eventually cleaned it up with borax, but I felt very bad for him.

We don’t usually have much problem, I think because it is often very cold. Usually if it is wet it is frozen and things don’t usually get soggy. Our horses spend winter barefoot, and I try to keep a good roll on them to keep from breaking up.

I wish I had something of value to add. I’m sorry about all of the sog. @SueC I am sorry about the fence. We never have large ones, and sometimes even then I cannot find the stupid weed or whatever is making the issue.


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## egrogan

Thanks @Knave! Aside from this recent thaw, it's been bitterly cold and the ground they stand on is hard packed snow, which has made the condition of their feet surprising. Obviously there is some body heat that makes the part of the ground they stand on melt ever so slightly so I was wondering if that was enough that their feet are just sort of always damp. They do stand in the sheds for at least awhile over night, and in normal conditions the sheds are a dry spot with lots of shavings. But the thrush was still getting started even before the rain, so I'm confused about what I'm doing wrong...


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## Knave

I’m sorry. I doubt you are doing anything wrong. I wish I had some advice.


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## Spanish Rider

Egrogan, sorry you've been having a frustrating time with drainage problems. To make you feel better, at least it's just water! 

On Friday night, I came home to find the municipal property between our front wall and the sidewalk all flooded. In the dark, I started to dig a trench to drain the water away from our wall, as I was afraid that the foundation of the wall would crack from the pressure.

When the emergency crew from the water company came an hour later, they informed me that it was not water, but sewage. Yes, I had noticed a smell, but I thought that the water pouring into the storm drain was churning something up. I never thought that I was ankle-deep in waste water. So, like I said, at least yours was just water!


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## egrogan

Eeeekkkkkk @Spanish_Rider :shock: That sounds like a positively nasty surprise! Hope they take care of it for you. Maybe time to treat yourself to new boots in a post-holiday sale?? :wink:


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## carshon

We have the same issues here egrogan and my sheds tended to flood every sprint. We had to build up a HUGE mound in the sheds as daily cleaning slowly erode away the nice base layer we had originally put down. You may find that you have to put 2 - 3 times more aglime base in your sheds than you thought because it gets packed down and cleaned out slowly. Your sheds could also be jacked up and put on a mound so the water runs away from them.


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## egrogan

@carshon, that sounds like exactly what I was planning on doing. We can't get any trucks back there now, unfortunately, so we'll be in sort of reactive mode for the rest of the winter and through the spring thaw. But I have big plans once we're through that! Freezing rain followed by rain followed by temps dropping below freezing again expected this Friday into Saturday, so I'm guessing we'll be spending this weekend bucket-brigading as well. I watched Izzy slip and fall on ice this morning so I'm a bit of a wreck. I am going to wait to see what happens with the weekend whether, but may end up roping off about half the sacrifice area because it's a skating rink and they won't seem to stay off it, even though they clearly know it's ice. I've watched Izzy go up to it, paw it, put her nose down to it, and then take tiny careful steps to cross the worst area, so she knows it's dangerous footing. She had almost made it across the worst part this morning when her hind legs went out from under her and she sat down like a dog before spinning her wheels to get upright again. Have I mentioned I hate ice!?

I'm trying not to let the weather ruin my holiday mood. Both lovely husband and I took vacation through this week and don't have to work again until next Wednesday, which is nice. We have some road trips planned, some inside renovation projects, and tons of left overs to eat. Yesterday he helped me tidy up the paddock, which involved chipping poop piles from the ice with a metal shovel- far better than any present wrapped under the tree! The horses are so curious about him, probably because he always seems to have a piece of peppermint or carrot for them in his pockets :grin:



















We had a really nice Christmas, and I hope everyone else did as well.


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## carshon

Well I tried to reply twice to this thread and got 404 server errors both times. So third times the charm.

We are getting a lot of rain now and then expecting below freezing temps. My go to when a skating rink is created is to sprinkle sidewalk salt that is safe for dogs out on the ice. I am not trying to melt the ice - just trying to create divits or ripples in it to give the horses more traction. This is my go to when we get a lot of freeze and thaw cycles.


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## egrogan

I was in a bit of a funk when I went out to do chores this morning because the weather forecast is bleak: freezing rain, ice, rain, warming temps, more melting. Fingers crossed the weatherman was right when he _promised _us it was not going to be "snow thawing rain" like we got last weekend and the sheds will stay dry (they were this morning). 

The horses made me laugh when they got themselves all in a tizzy after some imaginary ghost out in the field sent them bucking and running and snorting around me. Please ignore the poop, I was just getting started cleaning up from last night :wink: And also, Izzy does go sliding across the ice at one point, but she was fine, got up and kept running and bucking so no worse for the slip...





Wheeeeeeeeeeee....


















Fizz may be the wrong color, but is there any question she's a Morgan with that trot!?


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## Zexious

Brrrr! I can practically feel the chill coming through my computer screen!

The photos of your girls playing in the snow really brightened my day--horses are good for that 
Wishing you the happiest New Year, and sending love from Texas! <3


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## egrogan

Aww, you too @Zexious- hope you have a wonderful New Year!

It's definitely a raw day here, but they're all standing _next to _the sheds instead of _in_ them, getting iced over, so I guess they can't be too uncomfortable.


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## SueC

That's a fun clip of the horses running in the snow, although you might like to take some extra B-vitamins if you're worried about them slipping. ;-) They'll learn where the slippery spots are, and don't usually break their legs when they do fall over, which is a good thing, and running around like that reduces their colic risk by a ton. Our horses here have group running sessions like this too (no snow, obviously), and it's part of a fitness routine active horses instinctively do when allowed to range. It keeps them in good shape, and also it warms them up from the inside in winter. I love watching your horses enjoy their surroundings / people - they have it so much better than horses cooped up in barns for the majority of their 24-hour cycle. They have choices about how to spend their days, and 24/7 complete access to a social group and exercise area. In terms of domestic horses in Western countries, that makes them the lucky ones.


Here's some paddock mayhem we filmed when we first started free-ranging horses at our place. These had all come from a situation where they were locked in stables at night and in sand lots in the daytime, alone or in pairs. The large bay with the white socks is our now-ancient Romeo, who was 26 back then... the chocolate horse is Sunsmart, the grey my late Arabian mare, the other bay a horse we had as a favour, that went back to his owner after a while because he kept wrecking things, attacking my mare, etc.






And you're not doing anything wrong with the feet, this is just a situation that can happen in winter, which you can manage with Stockholm tar etc. In nature, horses move a ton through abrasive terrain, which exfoliates their feet much better than when they are in domestic situations (unless you're a barefoot endurance rider ;-)), so the old, more bug-infested layers of horn are generally sloughed off pretty quickly and fresh stuff replaces it rapidly. Crucially too, wild horses generally evolved in more arid climates than where they are now kept when domesticated. Waterlogged horn is prone to damage and rotting, so you provide dry areas for horses to stand in (like their shelters) and work with an antimicrobial water barrier if that's not enough.  You're doing wonderfully with your horses, no need to feel bad about what you're providing. We all have teething problems with infrastructure. 

I looked up the Feast of Seven Fishes - very interesting. I think we had a Feast of Five Fishes last night - in the one dish, so cheating - Spaghetti Marinara (Mariner's Spaghetti, which Italians take to mean seafood, but Americans for some reason take as a general tomato sauce ), and I counted anchovies, plus prawns, nondescript white fish, mussels and calamari in the seafood mix. And stromboli turns out to be a more rolled version of calzone... like a calzone strudel, really... isn't food fascinating (and yummy!)! 
@Spanish Rider , mg: - hope all is resolved now.


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## Knave

I just had to laugh about “teething problems.” Here is something to give you guys a laugh. Cashman is teething. I found this out a couple different times going to bridle him. So I decided to take a look at his mouth after he dropped this second bottom tooth. If this isn’t the most hillbilly set of teeth you’ve ever seen... lol


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## gottatrot

What beautiful movers those girls are!!
@Knave, ha ha about Cash's teeth.


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## SueC

Do horses have a tooth fairy? :Angel:


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## Avna

SueC said:


> Do horses have a tooth fairy? :Angel:


The tooth fairy gave up on horses after she realized there was no way to get them to sleep in their beds, plus they always pooped on their pillows.

80 miles south of @egrogan there's no snow at all. Yesterday we had freezing rain and my gravel road and driveway was a thin sheet of invisibly clear ice with pebbles embedded in it. I had to put my "farm crampons" on my boots just to get to the barn. I saw something this New England neophyte had never witnessed before: a rim of icicles on the horse blankets. Did they care? Not so you would notice. Then it warmed up (for some definitions of warm). This morning it is a balmy 35 degrees! That would be 1.5 centigrade. I will take off the blankets after horse-breakfast and let the horses get nice and dirty. Supposed to snow again in a couple days. Weather is something else in New England! 

I too have a shelter/pasture set up and my horses can be guaranteed to be standing peacefully dozing in a sleet storm at the bottom of the pasture while their nice clean bedded stalls stand empty.


----------



## Zexious

[ Ps, @Knave , that gives me anxiety on so many levels xD Hillbilly teeth is right! ]


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## frlsgirl

Was that Izzy biting Fizz in the behind? Like "slow down, I'm about to fall and bust my [email protected]@ on the ice again!" I'm glad they are still finding some joy in all this yucky mess. Hang in there @egrogan spring is coming.


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## evilamc

Ohhhh man just saw your post about the flooding!!!! I had that problem last winter so bad. I ended up buying this plastic pool hand pump? It has bigger openings so it was able to suck up the mixed in stuff pretty well too. It was a lot of work pumping but easier then shoveling with buckets.

This is one I got
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Corsan-Plastic-Transfer-Pump/50359088

My barn has dirt floors and it flooded sooooooo bad. Every time I was mucking I was taking away some of the dirt too.









So I filled both stalls with about 4" of gravel









Then bought stall liners. The liners let the pee/water drain though them and down into the gravel









I've had them a year now and just absolutely love them. Makes mucking so much easier and I haven't had any more flooding! I did put a bunch of gravel in aisleway and in front of barn to build it up there too...I actually need another load or two now buttttttt with the weather its impossible to get my dump truck to the barn. Same problem you're having! When Spring comes though I highly recommend building up your stalls and the liners! I don't even use bedding on top of them, they say to but I don't bother.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> And stromboli turns out to be a more rolled version of calzone... like a calzone strudel, really... isn't food fascinating (and yummy!)!


 Loved your paddock running video @*SueC* . Mine would sure love to see some grass right about now. You're right about the stromboli, that's exactly what it's like. My family always made it with various salamis and cheeses stuffed inside, but I don't particularly like meat so ours are usually things like broccoli, onions, olives, herbs, and cheese. And our feast of the "seven" fishes was just about what you described- more of an accompaniment to pasta than stand alone fish dishes. That's one meal that's really too hard to do properly with just two people. Both cookbooks I got lovely husband are for baking, and we are hoping to do bagels soon (they require about two days for all the rising and fermentation). We've done some indulgent pancakes that have about every dairy product you can imagine- eggs, buttermilk, heavy cream, and butter. Very tasty but you can't eat many! Otherwise we're still eating leftovers from the Christmas feast...

I did some research on the stockholm tar which also led me to something called Red Horse Field Paste, a British product that was developed to be used with broodies who are turned out on soggy pasture and not brought in daily. While I can and do clean and check feet daily I liked the idea that this product is antiseptic and something that will stay put even when on wet ground. Just hoping it's not going to interfere with good traction on snow and ice, which we obviously need! I found a US retailer so ordered a tub and am going to give it a go.



gottatrot said:


> What beautiful movers those girls are!!


 Aww, thanks. You're making us all blush :redface: Can't wait to be able to ride again (someday, when it's ice free again)!


@*Knave* , you'll have to help me out, I have no idea what I'm looking at in Cash's mouth!? I have never been around young horses before and I guess to be honest, never stopped to consider what it looks like when horses get their adult teeth in!



frlsgirl said:


> Was that Izzy biting Fizz in the behind? Like "slow down, I'm about to fall and bust my [email protected]@ on the ice again!" I'm glad they are still finding some joy in all this yucky mess. Hang in there @*egrogan* spring is coming.


 Hahaha, yes, funny you noticed that. Izzy is super possessive of Fizz and if Fizz gets it in her mind to go somewhere that Izzy doesn't approve of, she will herd her around and bite her butt!



evilamc said:


> Ohhhh man just saw your post about the flooding!!!! I had that problem last winter so bad. I ended up buying this plastic pool hand pump? It has bigger openings so it was able to suck up the mixed in stuff pretty well too. It was a lot of work pumping but easier then shoveling with buckets.
> 
> This is one I got
> https://www.lowes.com/pd/Corsan-Plastic-Transfer-Pump/50359088


 Thanks @*evilamc* , will check out that pump. We survived more freezing rain relatively ok this weekend, just a little squishy in Izzy's shed but no puddles. Unfortunately there's more rain possible tomorrow night. Then there's finally some snow in the longer range forecast. It seems crazy to wish for more snow, but it's far preferable to this freezing/melting wet stuff. 


@*Avna* - the weirdest thing is that you can go just 8 minutes down the road into town, and there's no snow there at all, our friend's pasture is totally clear and her horses are still happily grazing. We haven't had grazing for two months! We just happen to be at some perfect confluence of elevation and storm paths that we get the absolute worst of any weather that comes through. Lucky us! :wink:


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## Knave

Well, he’s just a baby despite his massive stature. I wonder how big he will end up being... 

Anyways, he just a couple days before lost the two very front bottom teeth, and you can see the big adult teeth coming in. On the top it is just a mess. I can see the two adult front teeth, but it is like he has another miniature tooth in the front of the adult tooth as well. It seems too narrow to be the old baby tooth. That is why I called him a hillbilly. They really are a bit ugly of teeth in any case.


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## Zexious

Oh my gosh, I totally missed the posts about the flooding... ):
I'll edit my "happy" new year wishes to "dry" new year wishes!


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## PoptartShop

They are so cute, I love the pictures and the video of them playing and running.  Cute movers! Looks like they are having a blast lol.

Omg those teeth! :lol: That is too funny! 

Hope you are enjoying your vacation. I know the weather hasn't been so good over there. Ugh, so much snow and ice. :sad: And the flooding, gosh! Not fun.

Spring better get here fast for you!


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## egrogan

Here is the latest installment of _The Rodent Chronicles..._

We were out running errands both Saturday and Sunday morning. Saturday morning we came home to find all of our Christmas cards had been knocked off a side table we have in our dining room, and all the apples in a bowl on the table had little chew marks across them. We figured the mice had really gotten bold! Sunday, we came home to find that our little compost bowl that we keep on top of the kitchen counter (heavy duty tupperware) had been chewed through to get to the apple cores and left over popcorn kernels inside.

















Given that it looked like someone had a used a hacksaw blade to get into it, we started wondering just what kind of mice we were dealing with! 

So yesterday afternoon I was outside doing chores, and I got these texts :rofl:









It's so funny, I've been passing a little red squirrel running busily around our back yard every morning when I go out to let the chickens out, but I never thought he was working out a way into the house to join us! It seems like we've blocked his hole for now, as we haven't seen signs of him inside today, but I'm guessing it's just a matter of time before he finds an alternate route now that he knows where the good stuff is. Not much we can do until the spring when we can deal with the foundation to properly block the holes. 

Happy New Year to everyone on Horse Forum from our horses, chickens, cat, dogs, and apparently..._squirrels!_


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## Knave

That is the greatest thing that I have ever heard! I laughed so hard my littlest had to come over and read your post. She laughed too. 

We had a mouse, chipmunk, and vole problem two years ago. Big problem! Like seriously when I was outside two different times I looked down to have them simply standing on my foot. When little girl was gone for 11 days, she came back and we saddled the pony and the whole saddle blanket was soaked. Really, the whole thing. 

I decided I’d rather have a cat problem. I looked around for kittens. I found several. Now I haven’t seen a rodent or signs of one in over a year. One of the cats is so brilliant I have seen him go down holes looking for squirrels!!! They drive me crazy sometimes, but they are not nearly as destructive as the rodents. 

I have seven cats. That is a lot of cats. I probably would have been fine with four.


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## carshon

OMG! @egrogan I am sorry to say but I laughed out loud when I saw your post!!! I hope you get him figured out and blocked out. Maybe put apples outside for him.


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## egrogan

Oh not to worry, we’ve been laughing about it all day! :grin:


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## SueC

@*egrogan* , you're having a real run of it at the moment. The last incident is rather amusing... :rofl:

Here's something to make you feel better. I know you're dealing with cold and snow and flooding and horses slipping on your private ice rink and a rodent plague and now a giant man-eating squirrel, but...

...if you ever think, "Oh, what I'd give to be in tropical Queensland right now, reclining languidly with my lovely DH on a double lilo floating near the palm-fringed shore of a warm tropical sea, with a boutique beer each in our hands and some assorted nibblies, while someone else really competent and trustworthy is house-sitting our place..."


:music019::music019::music019: 

...let me just tell you about the White-Tailed Rat, which inhabits Queensland. It is the size of a rabbit and renowned for chewing though evaporated milk tins and even steel garbage cans. People are advised against trying to catch and handle them, for obvious reasons. Here's a little more on them:

Giant white-tailed rat Facts

A lovely photo here:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/2936/3558/1600/White_tailed_rat.jpg

They also love chewing through IT:

https://diginomica.com/2017/02/21/iot-enters-lair-giant-white-tailed-rat/

:wave: Happy New Year!


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## SueC

PS: Tried to append this, but exceeded emoji allowance again, sigh.






























:chicken: :chicken: :chicken: :chicken1: :chicken2: :chicken: :chicken: :chicken1: :chicken2: :chicken2:


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## frlsgirl

Oh my goodness! You have your hands full with all these critters. Wishing you a uneventful new year.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I'm really torn on whether or not to add new cat(s) :wink: We currently have an 18 year old "retired" cat who has been with me since the month after I graduated college. I've known him longer than my husband! He used to be an awesome mouser/hunter, but he has pretty bad arthritis now and has earned his long naps in the sun. I tried to take in an abandoned kitten years ago and he nearly killed it, so never got more cats. Maybe he's mellowed now, but I think he's probably happiest not having other cats inside with us while he's still here. We could consider barn cats- the voles and chipmunks are out of hand in my barn, even with the chickens, but they just seem to share their food with them! Ever since I lost my best red hen, who was the perfect flock leader, the rest of the ladies seem more like lovers than fighters when it comes to rodents...:chicken: Anyway, I've gotten pretty attached to a couple of barn kitties over the years, only to have them taken by coyotes, and I don't know if I can stomach that. Plus, don't want to attract coyotes to where the chickens are. So, we may just be stuck with the rodents for the winter...

@SueC, you can keep your giant rats but I wouldn't mind if you sent us some sunshine! :rofl:


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## frlsgirl

I wish we could have more critters at our place. Even though we are technically in the country now, it’s considered a equestrian community complete with HOA and lots of rules. We can only have equines, cats and dogs with the max of 5 of any one kind. I guess the rules are good because you wouldn’t want your neighbor to paint his house pink and let his property get overrun with too many wild animals. 

We do have to option to file a formal request to amend the covenants if we wanted a donkey for example. Apparently donkeys are not considered part of the equine group, I didn’t know that. The guy who wrote the covenants is a bit annoyed with the mini donkey who lives on the mini horse farm across from our community as he makes enough noise to cover a 3 mile radius. He’s so cute though...


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## Knave

@egrogan I also have a very old cat. We got her before we were married! She has been with us for almost 16 years, and she was not a kitten when we got her. She also would have killed a kitten in her day, but in this day she is old and does not seem overly preoccupied with the comings and goings.

She was my boss’s cat at an Arabian ranch. She hated her. Skittles was terrible. She was nasty mean to all of them, but whenever I went to pick up my boss I played with her. She asked if I would take her and I said yes.

The first night she bit my husband’s face in his sleep. He threw her across the room and into a wall. Their relationship stayed along those lines. We had to warn company when they arrived because she would attack them from behind the couch. 

We worried when we had babies, but she was kind and tolerant of them until they became about two. She then thought they needed discipline apparently, and she would knock them down as they toddled around. 

In the background however she was a spectacular hunter. We lived in some terrible places, and in one she piled mice up at our bedroom door every night. Eventually she always cleaned out the mice. Even my husband owed her respect for what she did for us.

Then, when she got old, she couldn’t attack everyone anymore. She decided that if offended she would pee in the person’s dirty clothes. We tiptoe around the crazy old bat. I love her to death, and she is the queen. 

We have allowed a new house cat this last year. He is awesome. He is tolerant of all of us. Lol. She doesn’t mind though. She mostly maintains her position on my bed.


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## PoptartShop

OMG, too funny your post. :rofl: I burst out laughing at work, oops! LOL!

Crazy squirrel! I hope he leaves the house alone! Hopefully he learns his lesson!


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## egrogan

Aww @Knave, sounds like Skittles and Newton are cut from the same cloth! I like having a feisty kitty around.


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## Knave

He looks so good still! Handsome!!!


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## egrogan

More fun in the snow today! I love seeing Izzy so feisty- she'll be 25 in March but she still kicks up her heels to play (literally!). I can't think of the last time I saw her _rearing!_





























Fizz was more than happy to play along

















After all that, it was most definitely nap time...









On the rodent front, looks like I've got an owl helping me out near the barn! I found this captured in the snow yesterday morning- how neat is the perfect imprint of the wings. If at first you don't succeed, try try again!


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## phantomhorse13

Finally getting caught up.. so sorry to read about the flooding. hopefully momma nature had enough of that joke for the season. Love seeing all the girls enjoying the snow.


The squirrel, however.. a .22 would fix that problem right up..


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## egrogan

Awww, I don’t want Secret Squirrel to _die_, I just want him to stay outside :wink:


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## phantomhorse13

red squirrels are notoriously destructive.. and now that it's learned that inside = easy food, you are going to have a hard time keeping it out..


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## Zexious

Seeing your mares so happy and playful has made my morning! <3


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## QueenofFrance08

I wish my horses played as much as yours do!


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## PoptartShop

They are so playful, and happy! I love it. Love the action shots. :lol: 

That darn squirrel...


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## SueC

QueenofFrance08 said:


> I wish my horses played as much as yours do!



Yours do serious miles, @QueenofFrance08 - which lets off much of their steam, I'm sure! 

@egrogan, creatures like Izzy are my role models for how to age! :rofl:


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## egrogan

@QueenofFrance08, I’d say @SueC is totally right, your guys are getting far more exercise than mine! Today I finally couldn’t stand it-I am off this week, and was determined to ride despite the footing. We’ve had fresh snow the last couple of days, and the roads had been plowed. So I geared Fizz up with the bareback pad and our hi vis stuff to try the road. 









Even with the mounting block peeking out from a snowbank, I forgot how hard it is for inflexible people like me to get on with no stirrups...pretty sure this is how I looked getting on :rofl:




Lovely Fizz stood like a statue while I flopped and bumped around trying to get on, never moving a foot. I was very appreciative! Unfortunately the road was like a skating rink under the sand, so my riding was limited to the front yard where there was enough snow that it was safe. I think it’s been at least a couple of months since I’ve ridden, so we didn’t do much...just some spirally circles and stretching. 


















We both wanted a little more exercise than that, so I decided to hop off and I could still hand walk her even though it was slippery. So we headed off down the hill of despair, with Iz and Maggie screaming their heads off when we passed them. Fizz gave me a couple “I don’t want to” stops, but I had come prepared with peppermint sticks and that was motivating









We slipped and slid our way down past Mitchell’s field before we turned around and walked back UP the big hill








Not gonna lie, I was a little winded when we got to the top and needed to stop and catch my breath. At first Fizz was impatient, pawing at the ground when she had to stop and stand. But then she turned and looked at me, stuck her nose in my face, and we had a very long session of “let me blow my breath in your nose.” She seemed satisfied that I wasn’t going to keel over and stood quietly with me until I was ready to keep going :wink: 









The weather got nastier by the time we were home, turning into “freezing fog,” which made the trees look like this


















It’s supposed to keep getting warmer tonight which means we could get _rain_ instead of snow-really hoping that DOESN’T happen so we don’t have a repeat of sheds flooding!


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## egrogan

Finally got lucky with a storm...all snow and no rain! It looked like a giant snow globe outside this morning.


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## QueenofFrance08

Don't feel bad! I can't get on Stitch bareback to save my life and she's 14.1. Not that I'm brave enough to try that this time of year anyway.... No open trails/ice/snow/no riding = crazy mare. She's turning into a fat pasture puff who is a naughty firecracker if you try to get on! I'm waiting for March, putting shoes on her, and then going to try to run 5 miles with her 3 times a week before work. I need to say that "outloud" so I have to do it. 

So glad you didn't get rain! We've been going from 40 degrees (Monday) to 4 degrees (today) so everything is solid ice. We spent an hour last night in 40 mph wind gusts trying to dump out bags of sand to give us and the horses any traction! Poor Lilo slipped and fell trying to eat dinner but thankfully she seems ok. BRING ON SUMMER!


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## PoptartShop

So so so much snow, more now?! Ahhh! But that's good it wasn't rain. That would've been even worse. The last thing you need is more flooding.

LOL I struggle to get on my horse without a darn mounting block, let alone bareback, that would be even harder! :lol: Good for you for getting on though, and hand-walking her was good too. That's good she stayed still as you got on. What a good girl. That's so cute she did that and ended up being patient with you. Aww!!

Wow, the trees look cool! And I love the pictures - the horses look relaxed and happy in the snow. Stay warm!!


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## frlsgirl

Yeah don’t feel bad about struggling to mount bareback. I can’t get on Ana with a saddle unless I use the WB sized mounting block. 

I’m sure u are tired of the snow but it still makes for great pics.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> I’m sure u are tired of the snow but it still makes for great pics.


I actually don’t mind the snow at all, but we’re being “Polar Vortexed” so it is _brutally_ cold here-about -3*F/-19*C overnight and highs around 10*F/-12*C. The wind has made it even worse and piled drifts up everywhere and making it hard to move around. 

I think everyone’s a little bored, which makes them _very_ interested in everything I’m doing when I’m out with them...I have a lot of supervision for chores :wink:


















I’ve just kept a lot of hay in front of them and they’re doing fine...



























...although we have lots of frozen noses!


















And random moments of running around like a crazy lady









I’m supposed to be leaving for NC on a work trip tonight, but connecting through DC, where the airport is almost completely shut down because of snow right now, so we’ll see what happens. I feel a bit bad leaving lovely husband to do all the chores this time of year, when everything is just so much harder and more time consuming, but he seems game, thankfully!


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## PoptartShop

Awww yay more snowy horse pictures!!!!!!  They are so darn cute. They look happy and I know they are enjoying all that hay. Spoiled horses!

Did you end up going on the trip? And good for him for picking up the slack while you are away!


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> Awww yay more snowy horse pictures!!!!!!  They are so darn cute. They look happy and I know they are enjoying all that hay. Spoiled horses!
> 
> Did you end up going on the trip? And good for him for picking up the slack while you are away!


I did, but DC was almost completely shut down so I got rerouted through Charlotte, which was fine because I am in NC for work anyway. It’s a balmy 45*F/7*C and all these southerners are freezing and wrapped in parkas :wink: I say that with love as I used to live here and understand that how it feels outside is relative. Everyone was horrified when I told them it was -3*F at my house on Saturday-and that I was outside in that feeding horses!


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## frlsgirl

Have you noticed a difference in your relationship with Fizz and Izzy since bringing them home? 

Taking care of them yourself is supposed to make a significant difference in their willingness to cooperate with you. I’ve noticed that when Ana and I aren’t clicking, all I have to do is forgo riding for caring (grooming, massage, hand grazing, refilling hay, water etc) and then the next time I ride, it seems to be going better. 

Your mares have certainly accepted you as their primary care taker; you must be doing something right


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> Have you noticed a difference in your relationship with Fizz and Izzy since bringing them home?
> 
> Taking care of them yourself is supposed to make a significant difference in their willingness to cooperate with you. I’ve noticed that when Ana and I aren’t clicking, all I have to do is forgo riding for caring (grooming, massage, hand grazing, refilling hay, water etc) and then the next time I ride, it seems to be going better.
> 
> Your mares have certainly accepted you as their primary care taker; you must be doing something right


It's a fascinating question that I think about a lot @frlsgirl. I'm really not sure how I would answer. I certainly feel like I've gotten to know them....really _know_ them...by having them here. Their personalities and preferences are so clear, and I can look at them from across the field and tell if something's weird or wrong just by how they're standing or holding themselves, or if they are somewhere they wouldn't normally be at a particular time of day.

Now _this _part


> Taking care of them yourself is supposed to make a significant difference in their willingness to cooperate with you.


 makes me wonder. When they are in their field, I can do anything I want or need to them with them completely loose- feed, tack, blanket, groom, pick feet, even treat painful injuries (poor Maggie had a frozen ice ball on the long hair at the back of her pastern over the weekend, which got stuck on her heel bulb and pulled off, leaving a big bloody gash- and even though it was clearly hurting, she stood stock still to let me clean it up). However, what I wonder is whether that's really "willingness to cooperate" vs. "tolerance of an annoyance because my food and my herd are here." I wonder that because they are all so clearly herdbound- even when it seems like they can't stand each other, take one out of the pasture, and the other two go nuts while the one being led away frets. Doesn't really matter what combo are left behind and which goes out. Fizz obviously goes out alone most often, but I have certainly had issues with her being reluctant to leave home. In an ideal world, they'd all get haltered or tacked up and go on some sort of adventure several times a week, but the reality is, especially this time of year, they might go several weeks without even being haltered, and certainly without leaving the pasture. I clean feet nearly every day and groom them as I'm playing musical blankets, so they get a lot of personal interaction, but they have a home base and they don't leave it all that often. At our last boarding barn, while Izzy and Fizz lived outside 24/7, they had a "night pen" and a "daytime turnout" - so twice a day, they'd get haltered up and moved from their overnight area down to the other end of the farm to their daytime pasture. That meant they had daily reminders of leading politely, getting haltered, etc. It wasn't _an event_ like it is now.

I was thinking about this more this morning, as the farrier was coming and everyone needed to get marched up to the barn for his visit. Usually this is a 1/4 mile walk down the road from the pasture to the barn, but the road was pretty icy so I decided to take the shorter path through the backyard behind the house. I usually take Izzy first on her own, and then lead Maggie and Fizz together because either of them will get so worked up if left in the field alone. But coming up through the yard, I didn't have enough space to lead two horses together, so they each had to come alone. And predictably, they really got worked up in the field each time a horse left. Fizz was the last one I brought up and she was frantic running around the field during the time she was alone. All that said- they all led very politely with just a simple reminder to pay attention to me, rather than joining in on the whinnying back and forth from the barn to the field. They do have good manners and nice temperaments, and I think they would with most people. They're very easy horses to be around, even when they are uncomfortable, and I'm thankful for that.

So I guess I don't really know what to say about how they view me and our relationship. I like to think that they trust me and like to see me coming (they hang out with me quite a bit when I'm out in the field...and they also know I often bring their favorite peppermints :wink. But they would most definitely chose comfort and company from each other rather than me. I am very curious to see what happens with Fizz as we start doing more distance miles- I'm hoping that we'll be able to complete some 25 mile rides in the early summer, so we'll be logging some decently long rides getting ready for that.

Here's Izzy on her way back to the field from the barn after the farrier- she was not thrilled with being left behind but we all survived inkunicorn:I don't usually choose red, but I like how it looks on her with the snow in the background (but it's a tad too small on her I think).


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## egrogan

SNOWMAGGEDON​ 
Haha, it's a lot of snow so far but not quite the disaster the weather forecasters make things out to be. We had a foot of snow overnight, but it is light and fluffy so shouldn't be _too _awful to clean up once it stops later this afternoon. Just worried about how cold it's going to get- the snow is freezing around their heads/ears, and I am really worried about frostbite on their ears when temps go down to -9*F and winds are 20 mph.

But for right now, they are mainly focused on eating

Mini-sized Izzy :lol:


























Abominable Fizz


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## Knave

That is a lot of snow!


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## SueC

I love those snow photos, but don't envy you the associated work, or the worry about the horses' ears. :shock:

It's been a long time since any of our horses played in the snow. Here's a blast from the past, Europe, 1981, yours truly leading Mingo, a WB/German Trotter cross. The chestnut mare in the photos is Dame du Buisson, a French Trotter mare and Sunsmart's great-grandmother.











































































These horses were in barns at night, and had daytime turnout in good weather. When it wasn't snowing, they had pasture. This was pretty thick and fun snow, less than 100km from the European Alps in mid-winter. But it's nowhere near the snow loads I see in your photographs!


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## egrogan

I love your photos @SueC- particularly the first one of you peeking around Mingo, how adorable. And the French Trotter mare looks right at home in the snow- I love those perfect evergreen trees drooping under the snow behind her bucks and rolls.

Today was a hard day, even for us (we're fairly resilient :wink. It was just SO MUCH snow. The horses actually seemed just fine; they're going to stay out I've decided. It's stopped snowing and while it's cold, the wind so far isn't as bad as they predicted. I don't have any way to heat water in the barn, and I think they'd get themselves all worked up in the stalls anyway. They were a nice temp under their blankets- warm to the touch but not sweaty warm. They'll get plenty of "the good hay" tonight and they'll be ok. I keep glancing out the window at them and they're all standing outside rather than in the sheds now anyway.

Lovely husband was able to get the tractor to start with no problems and he was able to get me a good path through the field so I can get back and forth from the pile, so that's a relief. No way to push or pull a wheelbarrow through 18 inches of snow!









The girls found that the perfect excuse to have a good run around (might want to mute so you don't have to hear the tractor droning on)
























@SueC, we'll sending you cooling thoughts, and you send us warm ones :grin:


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## SueC

Sounds like a deal!  Warm thoughts your way.

I just love that clip, and the way horses just love an excuse to run - sometimes, I swear they play "scaredy" for fun. I've seen it when fencing, and using a drill - horses will run up snorting at the noise, but with happy expressions, and they'll investigate what you've got there, and sniff it, and ask for a demo - and then do more dramatic snorts, and jump around, and gallop a lap or two, leaping and kicking up their heels, before coming back again. :rofl: :runpony:

I think that's a good sign horses are healthy and happy.

One sciency thing to keep in mind with horses in snow is that they have far lower surface area to volume ratios than we humans do, and therefore find it much easier to keep warm - especially when well fed and able to run around/play, as yours are. ;-)

I bet you've been outdoors more this winter than last winter, because now you've got horses at home to look after! This will also help to keep you warm - and make the inside of your house seem warmer than it would otherwise... how's the heating going for you in your first winter in your new place?

I was reading a series called _Down To Earth_, written by a Londoner whose family decided to up and become smallholders when her husband's business went broke. For a while they were doing up small places and selling to buy bigger ones - and at one point, moving into a new doer-upper in mid-winter, the author woke up to find snow piled on their bed quilt! Fun series. 

I've got a handy recipe for coming back in from the snow / being exhausted in winter. It's chickenless chicken soup, which we also call "resurrection soup" - we eat this a lot if we get cold hiking in winter, and it was a number one entree after plastering all day when building... You just boil soup pasta in chicken stock (which is generally chickenless these days), and when it's done, add a few slices of cheddar cheese and a generous dash of parsley, and let the cheese melt before turning off the heat. Ready in ten minutes and totally amazing, even though simple. But maybe that's just because I'm a dairy fan! 

Have fun! :charge:


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## knightrider

When I lived in Maryland and we had some really deep snow, I took a fairly large cardboard box, punched two holes in the bottom of the carton, and tied it to my sled. Then I could shovel my horse pens and empty it in the manure pit. We didn't have a tractor, and there was no way a wheelbarrow was going to go through 30 inches of snow. The cardboard worked to hold the manure because it was damp and frozen and that made it very stiff. Each cardboard carton lasted only one snowstorm. Once it started to melt, the cardboard was wrecked.


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## SueC

That's clever, @knightrider!  And then it makes excellent compost material end-of-use, not that I've ever composted in a climate which freezes in winter, so not dealt with that, but people clearly do - unless the hot compost can stay hot, I suppose it takes a winter holiday before getting going again in spring!


----------



## frlsgirl

Wow that’s some serious snow - when is groundhogs day again and does he cover the Vermont area lol


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## Avna

Mine SO didn't want to go in the barn tonight, so I just gave them each a run and an open stall and their heavy blankets. We don't have as much snow as you, maybe 16 or 18 inches. But the wind was whistling around the house so much that at 9 pm, when it was below zero, I went out to look at them. They were out staring into the forest bug eyed and nutty. I had to halter them, tie them in their stalls, close the doors, unhalter them. They were both beside themselves. I think that even though they weren't shivering they were cold enough to feel crazy, too crazy to go inside and warm up. 

Really glorious out tonight with the moon on the snow. Just cold enough to freeze your marrow. Eclipse tonight too!


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## SueC

Y'all / all y'all are going to have to enlighten me about Groundhog Day. I've seen the movie, but it seems to have wider significance in this context...


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## knightrider

On Feb 2, groundhogs, also called woodchucks, whistle-pigs, or land beavers, come out of hibernation in their holes to see if they cast a shadow. If they do have a shadow, it means 6 more weeks of winter. If they don't, it means something else--nobody is quite sure. Some people say fewer than six weeks; other people say longer than six weeks.

So, people watch for the groundhogs to come out. In Pennsylvania, they have made such a big deal out of it, that they have a groundhog named Punxsutawny Phil, and they film him coming out and either seeing his shadow . . . or not. However, with all the camera lights, he seems to always see his shadow . . . or at least they say he does. I think they poke him out with a stick to make a photo op.

Legend & Lore | Punxsutawney Groundhog club


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## PoptartShop

Wow, more and more snow. :O
I'm sure they are loving pigging out in it though. They are too cute!!!


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## carshon

I use a plastic wheelbarrow top in the deep snow. It glides along like a sled but has high sides so you can put more manure in it. Our blizzard only dropped about 6 inches of show but we had 4 foot high drifts because of the high winds. Frigid temps now and they are calling for snow, then freezing rain/ice and then rain tomorrow. Ugghhh!


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## egrogan

@SueC- that soup sounds like it would do an amazing job of warming a cold person from the inside out. We have the day off today (Federal holiday) so plenty of time for cooking- we decided to make the falafel pita sandwiches since we have the time. Haven't made them in ages.
@knightrider & @carshon- love your makeshift poop mover ideas. Was able to fight through the snow drifts to clean the sheds out this morning, fortunately. It's a workout though! I tried to use the sled to get shavings down from the garage to the sheds, but unfortunately it kept toppling over because the path I've made walking back and forth is too narrow for the sled to follow behind me. If I try to put it up on the surface of the snow next to me, it runs itself over the cliff into the path, dumping everything out. Sigh. Lovely husband ended up carrying a couple of bags down for me, much appreciated.
@frlsgirl- if you have any way of touching base with the groundhog, put in a good word for us please :wink: Glad you got some nice time with Ana and it's always fun to have the barn to yourself without any other boarders around!
@Avna- I am sure you were frozen chasing them around out there last night trying to get them in. Hope they did ok. The worst part is that today isn't warming up at all, no relief until tomorrow.
@PoptartShop- they have pretty much been eating around the clock. I put out a crazy amount of hay but they are powering through it. Fortunately they all feel cozy under their blankets and are doing fine out there. 










(Izzy is hiding in her shed)

It got down to -10*F/-23*F actual temp last night, not sure about wind chill but the winds were howling around 15mph. It's basically stuck at that temp most of today with no warming up. Happy to report all ears are just fine today. Everyone did have icy eye lashes. 









Izzy is definitely looking irritable and not really wanting to come out of the shed, except to pop out like a dragon from a cave and chase Fizz around if she dares come near the shed to grab hay. I wish I could reason with them and ask them to turn down the herd dynamics at times like this. She can just be so mean to Fizz, for no good reason (at least from a person's perspective :wink. I've checked Izzy a bunch of times to make sure she's ok, and she seems warm and is eating, drinking, pooping (no worries there!), all that good stuff. I think she's just over the extreme weather. They all had really awful ice balls in their feet, looking like they were wearing stacks, so I chipped that out as best I could and I think that made it a little easier to get around.

More than anything else, I feel SO LUCKY to have electric waterers out there for them. They are drinking a ton and I have no idea what I would do if I didn't have those buckets.


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## phantomhorse13

Glad that the girls (of all species) are handling this weather. Loved seeing the playing in the snow videos.


Perhaps since we had an early winter, we will also get an early spring?! Yeah I know.. but I can hope!!


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## QueenofFrance08

I hear you! We don't have the snow but EVERYTHING has been covered in ice for 2 weeks now. I can barely get out to feed and poop stays where it is because it can not be chopped with any tool to be removed. The horses are all blanketed and hiding in the barn. BRING ON SPRING!

On a side note I ordered Stitch her first pair of Scoot Boots last night with pink mud straps! Can't wait to try them.... someday..... maybe.....


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## egrogan

I like how you’re thinking @phantomhorse13 & @QueenofFrance08! Spring, spring, spring. It’s going to feel like spring on Thursday when it goes up to 40*F and rains-I can’t even imagine the flooding we’re going to have with that on top of two feet of snow! :icon_rolleyes: oh well, one weather drama at a time...

Can’t wait to hear what you think about the Scoots.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, Izzy sounds like me. So over this weather, just wanna stay inside. :lol: 
The electric waterers are awesome, and such life-savers. So glad you have them.
@phantomhorse13 I HOPE that will be the case...I REALLY hope so!

We need spring!


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## frlsgirl

I’ve seen those heated buckets at Atwood’s and wondered if they were worth the money - good to know they are working well for you! 

Yeah lead mares can quite mean and seem unreasonable at times but as long as nobody gets seriously hurt I would just let them work it out. After being locked in her stall most of Saturday, you would think Ana would cheerfully greet her pasture mates - no! First order of business: show everyone who’s in charge by chasing them away.


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## SueC

@knightrider, thank you for that information and link on groundhogs!  I wonder how Phil feels about being a mascot - I wonder was he reared in captivity after being orphaned, or some such thing... he's not biting, by the looks of it.

What surprised me the most is the German connection - having spent my first 11 years in Germany and Italy - and never coming across this lore about hedgehogs, although there were plenty of hedgehogs, and plenty of occasions where people I knew helped them overwinter in nests in their cellars (the ones who would be wandering around skinny after snowfall and didn't have much of a chance if left outdoors). It might well be that the Munich region didn't have that folklore - Germany is really regional in its customs. One mythical critter I did hear about in childhood was the "Eierlegende Wollmilchsau" (I wonder if @frlsgirl heard of that one where she was, further north?) - which roughly translates to the egg-laying wooly dairy sow - an agricultural construct.

Traditions can be lots of fun though. One we had was lantern-making in winter - when the days got really short and you came to school in the dark, teachers made pretty lanterns with primary children, with stained glass type pictures done in special foils, and pattern cuts in opaque materials. The early morning after everyone had finished theirs, tealight candles were handed out, and the class went for a walk in the snow and semi-dark with the lanterns making pretty spots of light everywhere. This was lovely.
@egrogan, I love the photos of your "frosted" and well looked after horses!  Falafels and pita sound like just the thing for winter, enjoy!


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## frlsgirl

That’s a new one for me @SueC but I’ve heard of the SpitzGedackelter Schaeferhund; a more complex way of describing a mutt.


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

For non-German speakers, that's a "Spitz-dachshunded Shepherd". I think the "dachshunded" bit sounds particularly intriguing.

In Australia, we use the word "bitzer" or "Heinz" / "Heinz Hound" / "Heinz 57" to denote the famous Heinz 57 varieties food advertising slogan.

_Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenstern_ (the gaps are not mine, the forum software apparently doesn't support such long words) is also funny. It means the star on the hat of the captain who captains the steamship belonging to the Danube steamship company. Because there is no theoretical length limit to German compound nouns, I like to try to extend that word with people when I'm in a situation where I'm teaching them German... with an advanced biology group, we got right down to the electrons in the DNA molecules in the bacteria in the dirt in the scratches in the star on the hat of that captain...


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## egrogan

12*F never felt so good!:happydance:


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## Avna

It was ten degrees above zero this morning! Yay! 

There will be Melting soon. Ugh.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> It was ten degrees above zero this morning! Yay!
> 
> There will be Melting soon. Ugh.



Don't worry @Avna, I've already moved from celebration to extreme fretting over the melting. Sleet/freezing rain starts this afternoon around 4pm, and then it's going to rain all night with temps up to 45*F/7*C through tomorrow, then go back down below freezing around dinner time tomorrow. So the only question is will we get the water bailed out of the sheds before it freezes into a solid ice block? I have to admit, I'm feeling a little demoralized. Trying not to, but it's getting hard. Everything is just so _extreme_ this year...


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## SueC

Extreme day here today as well: Howling winds most of the day, with gusts in excess of 75km/h (46miles/h). We've had a wild and weird 12 months in Redmond. Driest autumn for decades, extreme wildfires, stinging frosts, very cold nights at the start of summer. Wishing you good luck with the flooding/bailing situation. If I had a space-time portal, I'd lend you our pump.


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## egrogan

Thanks @SueC. My problem is that I got complacent- I looked at the pumps both you and @evilamc suggested after my last flood, but figured that now that we're in the depths of winter, I had plenty of time before I would even need to think about flooding again this spring. Was sure wrong about that- no thanks to our idiot President saying earlier this week that our part of the country "could sure use some of that global warming" right now because of the cold. :icon_rolleyes: We'll make due, it just really makes things miserable to have these constant swings back and forth from one extreme to the next. Your extremes are certainly not any more pleasant to deal with, don't envy you those summer emergencies.


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## egrogan

Today ended up as miserable as expected. 24 hours of rain over 2 feet of snow. Ponies were quite soggy though I have to say, the blankets really came through for us and they are remarkably all still dry underneath.

Poor Fizzy hates her face being wet, which is as good an excuse as any to have a good roll in a snowbank.




Sheds are flooded, and just for giggles the chicken run flooded too for the first time we've been here. Got that cleaned up a while ago, paused for dinner and am just waiting for the rain to stop before heading out to bail out the sheds as there doesn't seem to be much point in working on it until rain stops. Oh, and we're supposed to get three inches of snow tonight. Fun times.

Could be worse though, we're not directly on any streams or creeks, and there's lots of ice jams causing even worse flooding in towns all around the state.


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## egrogan

Here's a little comic relief :grin:

This is my buddy Dom (she's a Dominique hen). 








She's the most curious and personable of my current flock- very chatty and outgoing. Yesterday, in the midst of the flooding, she decided it would be a great day to lay her first egg after taking several months off for molting.









This morning she was adventurous and followed me out of the barn into the snow. I was out dumping some straw that had gotten soaked yesterday, and as soon as I snapped that above picture of her in the snow, she launched herself off the ground and landed on my shoulder like a parrot :rofl: We had quite the photo shoot of her little fluffy butt. She rode around with me for a little while as I finished chores, and once satisfied, flew back down and ran back into the barn with the rest of the girls.





























The vet was scheduled to come this morning to give the horses the last of their Lyme vaccination series. It was way too icy for me to get them up to the barn, so she kindly agreed to do the shots out in the field. They were so funny, I went out to make sure they were all ready to go when she got there so we wouldn't waste her time; I put their halters on and then walked back out to the driveway to meet her, leaving them in the field. They were so offended that I haltered them and then nothing happened. "_What do you mean we're all dressed up with no place to go?!" _They all stood lined up at the gate waiting for us to come back, which meant it took less than 3 minutes to give them all their shot (and a peppermint). Thank goodness for easy horses!!


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## carshon

OMG! The Dom pics made me smile! And rain! Ugghhh...... bitter cold temps for us last night and into this morning. Not going to get above zero today and I won't talk about wind chills and an inch of snow for this afternoon and then 4-8 on Sunday night. I am ready for some warmer weather but not the flooding that will come our way when all of this snow melts.

Thanks for the smile this morning!


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## PoptartShop

OMG the video of Fizz rolling in the snow is just too darn cute!!! I had to watch it like 3x. :lol: Aw.
Gosh, so much rain and snow. Will it ever stop?! 

Dom is so cute, that is so adorable that she got on your shoulder like that! Too cute! Too funny about the horses! They probably thought they were going somewhere lol!


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## SueC

That's priceless, @egrogan! :clap: Would you like to borrow my strap-on pirate leg?


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> That's priceless, @egrogan! :clap: Would you like to borrow my strap-on pirate leg?


Haha, with that accessory and all our ice, I’d probably soon need a second!


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## Knave

Zeus thinks you may need help breaking ice, and he’s your guy:


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## egrogan

@Knave, he's hired! When can he start?! :rofl:


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## Knave

Lol. He can start anytime and be there until March, but then he has a job here he need to be back for.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Lol. He can start anytime and be there until March, but then he has a job here he need to be back for.


Perfect, that will be just in time for him to avoid Vermont's 5th season..."mud season" :rofl:

************
This morning we did a big restocking of supplies down in the shed, moving a bunch of hay and shavings to get ready for the "polar vortex" hitting mid-week. Izzy and Maggie were out in the pasture eating breakfast but Fizz was hanging out fitfully at the gate, staring longingly off into the distance. I finally got the message that she was really itching to go somewhere for a little while. It's too icy even for jumping on bareback, but I haltered her up and let her decide where we were headed. It was nice because the old ladies didn't even realize she was gone, so there was no stress with them screaming for her. We headed up towards the house and looked around up there...









Then backtracked and went down the hill of despair...


















She didn't really seem to have any agenda other than just getting out for a bit of a walk, so it was all very mellow. We were slipping and sliding on the ice so after a bit she let out a big exhale and seemed to be ready to head back. We turned around and went home via the back of the pasture. 

By that time, the old ladies had realized she was out since they heard us coming up the road, so they came to collect her at the back gate









Izzy: _Sneaky...very sneaky of you two to go out without us knowing about it..._


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## QueenofFrance08

Ok question for you.... Is there any tool or something you use to get the straps on your Scoot Boot fastened? My poor (freezing) hands couldn't handle it yesterday.

Stitch says she feels your horses pain it's -19 real feel here today and going to get worse.


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Ok question for you.... Is there any tool or something you use to get the straps on your Scoot Boot fastened? My poor (freezing) hands couldn't handle it yesterday.
> 
> Stitch says she feels your horses pain it's -19 real feel here today and going to get worse.


Yes! You can use a hoof pick:
https://youtu.be/Pbb0mejays0

The toe straps are much easier in warmer weather but even in the early fall cool temps I used this strategy.

Stay safe up there-not sure how you all are making it through this brutal weather  Our low this week will be -10*F and that is plenty miserable!


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## QueenofFrance08

THANKS!!!!!! 

Wednesday is going to be the worst, the high is -20. Of course the high on Saturday says 34 degrees. As in positive. Welcome to Minnesota where our weather swings 50+ degrees over 4 days. GRRRR


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## PoptartShop

Awww, that's so nice you got to take Fizz out for a little walk.  I'm sure she enjoyed that. Ugh, sucks about the ice though! Why oh why won't it go away!

LOL Izzie's facial expression is like, HOW DARE YOU! :lol: So adorable.


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> THANKS!!!!!!
> 
> Wednesday is going to be the worst, the high is -20. Of course the high on Saturday says 34 degrees. As in positive. Welcome to Minnesota where our weather swings 50+ degrees over 4 days. GRRRR



Don't get me started...long range forecast says next Monday-Tuesday will be 38*F and RAININNNGGGG...and then go back down to temps in the teens mid-week. Not sure if I've mentioned here how much I love when it rains over snow and then flash freezes!? :angrily_smileys:


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## carshon

@egrogan and @QueenofFrance08 same weather here in NW IL. start of wind chill advisories this morning when it was -14 when I did chores at 5:45AM. The wind has steadily been picking up and we are not expected to get much above zero for a high today with wind chills getting higher and higher until we hit -55F wind chills early Wed morning! and then they are saying 35 F on Sunday with a chance of heavy rain!!

Ugghhhh!


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## egrogan

I spent my polar vortex week in NYC for work, which left lovely husband here to get the horses through it. He took great care of them, particularly when he had to deal with another foot of snow in addition to the -10*F temps. When I got home last night, he was telling me how he had it easy because one of his coworkers has an older horse with laminitis right now, requiring them to do all this plowing in their paddocks to keep the footing right for the horse. And I started laughing at him, pointing out that he really has become a horse person if he can carry on in depth conversations with his coworkers about laminitis treatment! He also told me Maggie has become super respectful around him- she used to get pushy when he'd go out to feed and now he just has to give her an "EHHH" and she backs right off and waits until she is told she can eat. It's been pretty cool to watch that unfold.

It was still below zero this morning, but I was happy to be home and get back to my routine. There's something so nice about starting the morning outside saying hello to all the girls during feeding. It was absolutely beautiful as the sun came up









Later in the morning I was scrolling through Facebook and happened to see this photo of Fizz's sire pop up, which was pretty neat. 








Sounds like they'll be showing at the facility down the road from me again this spring so I will try to get over to see him and the woman who sold me Fizz. I'm dying to hear how Fizz's filly Orchid is growing up; she's coming 3 this spring so I'm curious.


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## SueC

Fizz has a daughter? If you get photos, please post!  And doesn't Fizz's sire look fabulous! Does she like to jump too?


PS: It's so weird saying "Please post!" on a horse forum. Anyone else think that? ...hopefully nobody is so media addicted that they are reading this while doing a sitting trot! :rofl:


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## frlsgirl

Sometimes it’s just as exciting to watch husbands develop as it is to watch our horses. 

How exciting to find a action pic of Fizz’s dad!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Fizz has a daughter? If you get photos, please post!  And doesn't Fizz's sire look fabulous! Does she like to jump too?


Yes, Fizz had one foal when she returned to her breeder after being semi-abandoned in a field by her previous owners who went through a nasty divorce. I got my dates wrong, Orchid is actually coming 2, not 3 (foaled April 2017). She had just been weaned when I met Fizz in early October 2017. I thought I had a picture of her as a little fuzzy foal, but I can't seem to find it. She's a bay filly, which I think might have been disappointing as Fizz is that nice buckskin color and Orchid's sire is a flashy looking dappled Palomino, Equinox Ray of Light:









I joked with the breeders that Orchid was what I really wanted- a compact, well-put together bay. Who knows, maybe some day :wink: I was texting with the breeder a couple of months ago and asked for pictures, but never followed up.

Technically, Fizz wasn't for sale, but it was one of those things where I rode 4 or 5 horses that were listed on their sales page, and at the end of those rides they said...."well, we do have one more mare who has recently weaned a foal and has only been back under saddle for a couple of weeks...We might be willing to sell her if you like her." She was a bit tense and unsure when they got on to ride her, which you would think would have been a turnoff for a nervousy rider like me. But I don't know, there was just something about her that drew me in. Here she is with one of their riders













Before she foaled, they been hacking her around a little bit with their trail string as a guide horse, and yes, she had done some jumping too, just local shows and nothing serious. I think she'd probably do more if I wanted to, but I'm a chicken! :chicken2:



> PS: It's so weird saying "Please post!" on a horse forum. Anyone else think that? ...hopefully nobody is so media addicted that they are reading this while doing a sitting trot! :rofl:


 Too funny. I actually had to read it twice, I didn't get it the first time around.  To oblige, here is a posting trot photo with Fizz during my 2nd test ride a few days after that video ^^ was taken.











frlsgirl said:


> Sometimes it’s just as exciting to watch husbands develop as it is to watch our horses.
> How exciting to find a action pic of Fizz’s dad!


I agree, he has really come to enjoy being around them! And yes, I was pretty excited to find that picture of Bravado. I met him on one of my trips to test ride Fizz, but it was just over the fence, certainly not polished up for the show ring. He cleans up nice!


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## SueC

I can really see why you ended up buying that mare, she's really beautiful. Her colour, her build, her movement, her bearing, her expressions - and if something went "click" between your minds/hearts as well, then you can't not! How cool that she likes to jump as well. :chicken: or not, your comfort zone will expand over time, and you get a lot more time with a horse than a dog - decades usually. You never know, in five years you might be an effervescent thrillseeker! And your horse will already have the name to go with that! ;-)

I remember being nervous about jumping as a child when I started riding. But they made me jump, and it was like, "Oh, I actually survived that, let's do it again!" and a lot of euphoria because I wasn't dead! :rofl:


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## egrogan

Yesterday temperatures finally went above 20*F/-7*C, so everybody got naked!! Woohooo!!









They were so happy to have blankets off after having them on for a week straight. Fizz was rolling around in the snow within 30 seconds of having the blanket gone.








_What, do I have snow on my face?_









Izzy giving Fizz her best mare glare over a pile of hay:









They all got a good brushing and I even got the shedding blade out as Izzy had a ton of hair just blowing off of her. Even Maggie loved the shedding blade, and I've yet to find a way of grooming her that she doesn't hate.

Today wasn't quite as nice a day, but it was warmer still and I was so determined to try to ride. Unfortunately the roads still have big patches of ice all over, so I knew I wasn't going to be able to go far. I just really wanted to ride! So, we got tacked up, and I was able to scramble on from a snowbank. 


















We headed away from home and Fizz was a little "boingy" under me, which didn't seem like a super combination with ice all around. She did well on the first little downhill section, shifting her weight back and moving carefully, and after that I just turned around and came back. It was a whopping 0.5 miles







Still, felt nice to sit in the saddle!

She did pretty well getting tacked and untacked alone in the barn (so far we have always done that down in the sheds), even though I don't think I've really had her up in the barn without the other horses. Speaking of the other horses, of course they were screaming their heads off for her the whole time we were out. As we walked back down to the pasture, we could see Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum running like crazies along the fence line. :icon_rolleyes:









Per usual, there were some theatrics when Fizz rejoined the herd.


















Maggie got really worked up though and was positively dripping wet- she looked like someone had hosed her down. I don't know if you can fully appreciate just how wet she is, but she was soaked all over and steaming.








Not good when temps are barely at the freezing mark. I threw a cooler on her, which she didn't appreciate as much as she should have.









#CoolerFail




Had to towel her dry the best I could, and she'll be fine. But was just laughing with my lovely husband that the horse we got to _help _with the flipping out when Fizz is being ridden is actually proving to be worse than the other one!


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## egrogan

When you've been saddled for the first time in weeks, the rest of the afternoon calls for serious nap time :rofl:


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## QueenofFrance08

We had naked horses for the first time in a week too! They weren't as excited as your crew though!

Glad you got a ride in! We have ice everywhere as well so we just attempted bareback riding in the arena, made complicated by the foot of snow in there!


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## knightrider

> But was just laughing with my lovely husband that the horse we got to help with the flipping out when Fizz is being ridden is actually proving to be worse than the other one!


Is this turning out to be a problem? Can you give her back since she is not doing her "job"? Do you want to give her back?

Do you think with time, the two that are left each ride will do better? My 4 have been together for about 4 years now, and they seem to do better when two are left than they used to. They seem to be bonding FINALLY a little more. It has helped to take two "enemies" camping together or to leave two "enemies" together for 5 days while the other two are camping. Herd dynamics are so fascinating.


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## carshon

I think Izzy looks great! Obviously the weather has not harmed her. And the napping Fizz makes me laugh. And as far as the sweaty horse thing. Tillie rolled so much yesterday she was wet from just rolling - and when I went to towel dry her she promptly ran away as fast as she could!


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Is this turning out to be a problem? Can you give her back since she is not doing her "job"? Do you want to give her back?
> 
> Do you think with time, the two that are left each ride will do better? My 4 have been together for about 4 years now, and they seem to do better when two are left than they used to. They seem to be bonding FINALLY a little more. It has helped to take two "enemies" camping together or to leave two "enemies" together for 5 days while the other two are camping. Herd dynamics are so fascinating.


That's an interesting question. She's here on a free lease so yes, technically she can go back. I don't have any itch to send her back at this point though, I like having her here. I think it's sort of a "lead mare" thing that makes her upset when she doesn't have her herd intact. 

It will be interesting to see what happens when Fizz goes off to the May clinic for a few days. Assuming all goes well with that off site trip, my plan is to get Fizz out for more overnight events this summer, so I would hate to leave Izzy here totally alone when Fizz is on the road. I would imagine that Izzy and Maggie will settle once Fizz is off-property gone but like you said, the dynamics are fascinating!


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## PoptartShop

Wow, Fizz's sire is super handsome! :O So cool how you came upon that! And that is pretty great, when my BF talks to people about horses I'm like...I never thought I'd see the day! :lol: We corrupt them, don't we? LOL jk.

Aw, I didn't know Fizz had a foal either!
I'm sure the horses were happy to be nakey for once and being able to roll around freely. I love her face, she always makes the cutest expressions.

I don't blame you for wanting to ride, even for a little bit! I'm sure Fizz enjoyed it as well.
LOL, I love how the herd gets when Fizz comes back. :rofl: They are too adorable.


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## egrogan

More challenging days here lately. We just can not get a break with the weather. We had rain and warming two days ago, so the sheds flooded, as did the chicken run. We cleaned up as best we could late into the night trying to get the standing water out before it froze again. Temps were below freezing yesterday, but at least partly sunny so the horses were out moving around. Izzy is even shedding a bit!



















Last night we had hours of freezing rain that laid down about 1/4 inch of ice on top of the snow.









It took me an hour this morning just to walk down to the field and feed because the ice was so treacherous. I fell several times. 










And, it's so icy I wasn't even able to move poop down to the pile or clean out the wet shavings from the sheds- no way we're going to be able to get down through the field to the pile until it snows again next week, so I now have a temporary pile going next to the shed. We are in the heart of what we call "the spring uglies" because the poop buried under the snow is resurfacing but still frozen solid so you can't move it.

The horses are freaking me out a little because they aren't drinking well all of a sudden. I didn't have to fill up their water yesterday at night check _or _this morning, which is very unusual. They are usually very good drinkers and they get salt added to their feed twice a day. They are moving around the paddock despite the ice, and I just cleaned the tub out two days ago, so this is concerning me. I carried a bucket of fresh water to them where they were eating hay this morning but no one was interested. Izzy especially has been a little fussy with her feed the last couple of days, and she's having soft poop and very smelly gas, so am trying to keep more of an eye on her. We've gotten to some bales of hay that are pretty tough and stemmy, so maybe that's not agreeing with her? I'm guessing the extreme temp fluctuations are just hard on everyone, but I'm feeling a little worried about them.









More rain and ice tonight into tomorrow, then temps fall from 40*F to 9*F overnight Friday- anything that melts will be even icier. We won't have more snow until next Monday or Tuesday, which will help tremendously- until it thaws again I guess. Feeling a little down about it all but we have to keep pushing through.


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## phantomhorse13

Wow that sounds miserable beyond words. Perhaps it’s time to invest in some yak traxs or similar ice cleat clamp-on thing for your boots. 

I hear you with the drinking less meaning more worry. I actually fed mine soaked beet pulp for a few feedings during the worst of the cold and wind, but not sure how feasible that is for you with having to transport it. 

Be safe!!


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## Knave

That sounds terrible. I am sorry.


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## egrogan

Thanks ladies. I apologize for sounding whiny, I know I'm not the only one dealing with bad weather. I just truly have never experienced a winter like this. Everyone around here is having a really rough time of things. Saw a friend of a friend on FB this morning describing an awful situation where one of her geldings fell in the paddock and she could barely get him back up on his feet. It's just miserable. @*phantomhorse13* , agreed, I do need to get some ice cleats. We've of course had flash freezes or ice storms in the past, but it's never been this sort of extended period of melting and freezing. Snow, I know how to deal with. Ice is not supposed to be something you acclimate to in Vermont- that's why we don't live in the mid-Atlantic! :wink:

Going out in a little while to put out more hay and check on the water situation. I do soak their feed (timothy/alfalfa cubes get a heavy soak in hot water so they are loose, then poured over ration balancer pellets with Probiotics and salt), but that's getting _cups _of water into them, not _gallons_. I guess I've been spoiled with not having to stress about them drinking enough, it's never been a problem for them before.

Thanks for the moral support though, it's appreciated.


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## phantomhorse13

I bought some ice cleats about 5 years ago now, after the last bad winter we had.. and haven’t needed them since. May the same thing happen to you!!


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## PoptartShop

You really have had such a terrible winter... :sad: I'm so sorry.  I know it's depressing, let alone annoying and frustrating of course.
This means you will have an AMAZING spring though, right??????! I hope *crosses fingers*
I hope the horses start drinking more, I know that is a worry. Soaking their feed is good though, I do the same.


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## carshon

I can commiserate on the freezing rain. 2 days of it and then a raining and drizzling today with a flash freeze tonight. I think the water intake is a combination of a couple of things. 1. Evaporation - warm water evaporates very quickly in very cold temps - so you were losing some water to evaporation

2. When the temps warm up the horses are eating their hay a little less ravenously - we have seen the same here with our horses (and cows) where I was watering every 2 days - I am watering every 3rd day.

Keep up the good work! Horse keeping at home is 50% manual labor and 50% worrying if everyone is OK.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> I can commiserate on the freezing rain. 2 days of it and then a raining and drizzling today with a flash freeze tonight.


Ugh, so sorry to hear that. It's just no fun. It warmed up to about 33*F which made the ice just crunchy enough I could walk to and through the field fairly normally. But this is what the fence still looks like:









It's weirdly foggy and misty, I guess it's the warming.










Izzy says: _Can someone please make the rain and ice stop?!_











carshon said:


> I think the water intake is a combination of a couple of things. 1. Evaporation - warm water evaporates very quickly in very cold temps - so you were losing some water to evaporation
> 
> 2. When the temps warm up the horses are eating their hay a little less ravenously - we have seen the same here with our horses (and cows) where I was watering every 2 days - I am watering every 3rd day.





PoptartShop said:


> I hope the horses start drinking more, I know that is a worry. Soaking their feed is good though, I do the same.


That makes SO much sense @carshon, particularly the evaporation (yay, science!). Thanks for those thoughts. Some good news, I just added nearly 10 gallons back to the tub- not as much as I'd like to see, but it's a start.

This is the weird thing Izzy has been doing the past week or so- she gets really irritated with her food in the pan (the way she's been fed for years), paws the ground, and then tips it out all over. She started doing that in her shed and then she would refuse to eat it out of the shavings, so I started feeding her out in the open and she still dumps it all out but eats it. She does really like to eat snow while she's eating hay, and she's clearly doing that with the feed too (taking big bites of snow with the pellets). But I don't know what to make of it, if anything?











> Keep up the good work! Horse keeping at home is 50% manual labor and 50% worrying if everyone is OK.


Love this. No matter how many times you hear this as a boarder, I don't think you fully appreciate it until you're thrown in to it.


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## Avna

I am right there with ya. 

I feed the girls soaked beet twice a day with their regular pellets, with salt in it. I hate the ice. We have almost no snow left. Just ice and horse turds.


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## SueC

And I'm complaining about the heat and UV! Your winter looks so pretty in the photos, but is so much work... I'm sorry you're having a tough time with a ridiculously Arctic winter. I'm sure next winter, things will be a bit better because you know what you are in for, and your flooding situation will have been remedied by then. That part has got to, well, create a major vacuum, to put it politely... and that polybraid, heck, is it even conducting in that state? :shock:

Best wishes for you and DH and for having nice hygge moments between all this work. Here's some nice hygge photos from around the web.


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## egrogan

Love all the coziness, @SueC. It has been an educational winter to say the least. Dealing with the footing in and around the sheds is #1 on the list this spring, as soon as we can get heavier equipment back there. I do think that will make a huge difference, and in the scheme of things, not be too difficult- certainly not a fraction as difficult as dealing with them in the current state! We are getting another huge snow storm Tuesday (about 15 inches) and it can't come soon enough! We need to cover over all this ridiculous ice and pretend it's not there for awhile :hide: 

No, I don't think the fence was live for quite awhile, but the horses aren't in a testing mood and it made it a lot easier to dump the buckets of stall water out without worrying about electrifying yourself as well.

Yesterday there was finally no precipitation, but the blue skies came with 40mph winds and windchills below 0*F. The horses looked fairly miserable all day, particularly Izzy. She hates windy days and barely left the sheds.


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## frlsgirl

I’ve heard that dunking hay in water can be a sign of ulcers so maybe dumping feed in snow is similar to that? But then again we have horses at the barn who always dunk their hay in water but tested negative for ulcers. Ana was separating her hay today, throwing several chunks out through the bottom of her stall door. I have no idea why.


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## SueC

When they're grazing, they are selective, @frlsgirl. Yet we expect them to eat _all_ their hay... She's probably getting rid of the mushy cabbage equivalents. ;-)


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## egrogan

@frlsgirl, I was wondering about an ulcer connection. Never heard that about hay, interesting! It has certainly been a stressful time simply because of the weather rollercoaster. Add to that their close quarters and the fact that Maggie hoovers her food and then stalks around scowling at Izzy who takes longer to eat- Izzy might be experiencing some ulcers. I did some Ulcer Guard with her when we moved but more as a precaution, so not really sure if it did anything one way or the other. She's eaten normally the past couple of days, seems back to drinking well (I'm seeing her drinking, not just looking at water levels). I realized that part of the issue with drinking was that when her shed flooded, the horses basically avoided it for a couple of days, and the water bucket in there went untouched and subsequently turned a little slimy. Ick. I scrubbed that out well a couple of days ago and almost immediately, they drained it. I felt bad about that


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## egrogan

I was out of town for work most of the week, so I missed the latest big storm as well as Fizz's 12th birthday. Fortunately lovely husband celebrated her with plenty of peppermints and scratches!!
:happy-birthday8:
Today we had pretty weather, and it was nice and warm, near 32*F/0*C. The roads are still too icy to ride, but going out for a handwalk was the next best thing. I took Fizz for about 2 miles, and she was just awesome. She is clearly liking getting out and moving around- interested in her surroundings and eager to keep going. Only a couple of half-hearted "sticky" moments and she easily kept moving forward if I just turned her nose to the side and got her to move her front feet. She walked along happily on a loose lead the whole way.


















Did lots of basic stuff, leading from both sides, serpentines, turns on the forehand, even just stopping and standing- Fizz finding standing around doing nothing utterly pointless and usually gets very antsy, but she was great today. Particularly helpful when your two-legged partner is fairly out of shape and huffing and puffing up the steep hills, in need of a break at the top  

While our patience seems to be improving, our selfie skills are clearly not!! :rofl:









What's better than finishing off a good workout with a little slurp of murky puddle water? :think:









When we got back, Maggie was all lathered up again, I guess she just ran laps the whole time we were out.









I decided to walk her up to the house to get a towel to dry her off, and she was just beside herself jumping around at the end of the lead and giraffing whenever I asked her to tone it down.









This was pretty much how she walked the whole way up to the house:dance-smiley05:









While I told her I understood that in her opinion, the other horses were very likely to be eaten by wolves in the 15 minutes she was gone, we were just going to have to take that chance and focus on what we were doing...We had a little discussion about how to lead, as she kept wanting to sprint out in front of me or barge into me with her shoulder, so every time she did that she just got to do a little ring-around-the-rosie until she completed a circle without touching me, and then got asked to walk ahead nicely again. After a few circles, she got the message and walked reasonably on the end of a loose lead. Even stopped for a minute and got a hind leg cocked while I counted to 10.








In her defense, she's probably only had a halter on three times in as many months, just to go back and forth from the barn for the farrier or vet, so I get that she's used to being on her own terms. But still, she more than knows how to lead politely so I'm glad we got that under control rather quickly.

Izzy was fine throughout all of this. After all the excitement, it was nap time. I left Izzy and Maggie dozing in the sheds. Not sure how well you can tell, but they are standing in identical position, eyes shut and left hind leg resting. Very cute.


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## SueC

You know, it's so nice sitting here nice and warm on a soft surface with a hazelnut macaroon and some milk, seeing all this lovely snowy scenery vicariously.  I think I'm getting soft. (Maybe mellow? :Angel What happened to _carpe diem_? Is that possibly for people under 40? :rofl:

Happy birthday, Ms Fizz! :winetime: :apple:

So nice to have a useful and snuggly DH to be able to cover in one's absence.

I  all the photos. People's horse journals are like a living book that keeps evolving, and you get to say "hello" when you find a living book you like! How cool is that? 

The tongue and scrunchy upper lip photos are my favourites here, but the competition is always huge!  Have an excellent Sunday, and stay warm!


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## egrogan

Another nice brisk walk under brilliant blue skies today. It was a little chillier than yesterday (25*F/-4*C) but the sun was so strong it made it feel much warmer, plus we moved out at a nice marching walk. We went to my favorite spot, an overlook that gives you gorgeous 100 mile views across the valley.


















Today, we didn't have the road to ourselves. We were passed by cars a couple of times. The first time, Fizz didn't spook, but froze and her eyes got very big as we heard it crunching through the crusty slush and ice. It's actually pretty remarkable how different a car sounds on this kind of road. But, the next car was no big deal, we just kept marching right along as it went by.









On the way home, something really caught her attention but I couldn't figure out what at first.








Then, over the rise in the hill, we saw an intrepid teenage girl out for a jog, heading our way from a side street. I shouted out hello and asked her to say hi so Fizz would know she was human. She was happy to and kept chugging along. She was out ahead of us, which held Fizz's attention. It was sort of nice desensitization since the road was so hilly, we kept seeing her appear and disappear with each rise and dip in the road. But she was moving much faster than us and we eventually lost sight of her. Back to just the two of us :grin:









When we got home, Maggie was agitated but not drenched like she was yesterday. I was pleased she was so much better so quickly. I haltered her up again and took her for a short walk out on the road. She did great walking, never jumped into my space at all this time. Hopefully our little reminder lesson from yesterday will stick.

I turned Maggie out, and lovely Izzy came up and pretty much put her nose in the halter asking to go too (I think she just understood that going for a walk was the key to peppermints :wink How could I say no? Maggie may have grudgingly accepted Fizz going out, but Izzy suddenly disappearing was too much, so she started her sprinting around again. I kept Izzy on the road along the pasture so I could talk to Maggie while we walked, and Izzy kept an eye on her lurking just on the other side of the trees. 









She's just so cute, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for this horse :loveshower:









And of course, there was a joyful reunion at the back gate when Izzy returned approximately 95 seconds after she left :icon_rolleyes:


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## egrogan

Had yesterday off because of the "holiday" so I was happy for a bonus day to hang out with the horses. We had several strong snow squalls throughout the day.









But in between them, I got some chores done- with assistance :wink:









I wanted to take Fizz out again, but didn't want her to get too wet with snow so kept her blanketed. The last two days had gone so well, I decided that we'd try the bigger test, going out the back gate and turning left to go down the hill of despair. She was a little cranky with me to start because I took her away from her lunch, and as soon as we were out on the road, she slammed on the brakes and threw her head up, not wanting to go forward. But, with a little cajoling and turns-on-the forehand, we got unstuck and continued on our way. It would have been better had she not refused, but at least she got going again quickly. After that one hiccup at the beginning of our walk, she moved right out and got going again easily after I asked her to whoa and stand for a minute. Progress?


















It was definitely icier on this walk and I was worried about having an encounter with the town plow truck- as you can see, there's not really any room to get out of the way on the road!- so we kept this walk short, probably only a mile or so.









When we got home, there was no drama or sweaty horses. Maggie and Izzy were waiting for us at the gate but they were calm, which was definite progress!

Unfortunately back to the reality of work today, so probably won't get to do much beyond chores with the girls until the weekend, but glad for such a good few days with them.


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## Avna

I think you should rename that hill. 

Suggestions: 

The Slope of Good Hope
Little Ray of Sunshine Hill
Cheerful Mountain


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## frlsgirl

That is progress indeed! Anytime you can get an opinionated, born to be stubborn Morgan mare to cooperate with you, it’s a win!


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## PoptartShop

I come back from vacation, and I see you still have SO much snow!  Aw man!

That is still progress with Fizz. It's good you didn't just throw in the towel after she threw a little tantrum.
It's good that the other two were calm when you guys got back. That is a first! :lol:


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> I think you should rename that hill.
> 
> Suggestions:
> 
> The Slope of Good Hope
> Little Ray of Sunshine Hill
> Cheerful Mountain


Ha, fair. If you come ride a GMHA ride this summer, you will get to ride it as it is on a lot of the routes. We can rechristen it with something more optimistic. :grin:


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## frlsgirl

Fizz is so cute though, it’s hard to be mad at her


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## egrogan

We had a bit of a wintry mix overnight, and Fizz was sporting some rockin' bangs this morning :rofl:


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## egrogan

Ugh I'm absolutely mortified, just got done with the farrier appointment from hell. The concrete floor in my barn was not installed correctly, so with frost heaves, the floor is so uneven that I can't get any of the stall doors open wider than a crack. Usually, I bring all three up to the barn so they're all ready to go when farrier gets here, but with the stall issue, I had to bring them up one at a time. I brought Izzy first, and she acted liked she had never stood for the farrier before. We couldn't get all of her feet done without her flipping out and nearly falling. We ended up taking her back down to the road near the pasture and finishing her there. Brought Maggie out to the road, got two feet done and she was screaming the whole time (also so soaked through she looked like she'd just been hosed down) so he ended up suggesting we just go back to the pasture to finish, and do Fizz there too (so sweated through she had thick white foam between her little butt cheeks). Now, he's sort of a laid back, hippy sort of guy and isn't easily flustered, so he was nice about it. But it was just completely embarassing. I can't describe what a failure I feel like. This herd bound issue is just totally out of hand and in the midst of it there was nothing I could do about it.


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## carshon

Don't feel like a failure herd dynamics are hard. I know it is embarrassing as we all want our horses to act perfectly - and as a farrier I am sure he has seen so much worse.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @*carshon* . I appreciate that, but it's just so jarring to see them get out of control like that. I've held Izzy for trims for _years _and never seen her freak out like that- I was seriously worried she was going to kick out at him or fall on him. And it wasn't just an act, she was drenched with sweat and eyes rolling. There has to be a way that I can step into this extreme worry about being apart so it doesn't escalate to this point. And then to go back to the field and see Fizz and Maggie dripping wet and unable to stand still for the 15 minutes it takes to trim...it's just not ok. 

Yes, he was nice about it and said he's seen much worse and understands we can't rationalize with horses, but still. Just a bad experience all around.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww, it's okay. They are probably so connected to each other right now and because of all the snow, you can't really do much. That is out of your control. Not your fault. I would try taking them away from each other gradually, further each time. Even if you just lead one away, etc. Like I said, I know it's tough because of the darn weather! 

At least he did end up getting them done, and I'm sure he didn't care at all. Trust me, farriers have seen much worse I'm sure!
It can be super frustrating when they act like that when they are away from their friends for even a few minutes. I get it completely. They get so worked up and of course that's the last thing you wanted when the farrier was there. 

I am sorry it didn't go as planned. :sad: But hey, you DID manage to get all of their feet done - one way or another!


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## frlsgirl

If it makes you feel any better, we have horses at the boarding facility that can’t be separated or they go insane. Whenever my friend takes out her mare to ride she has to take the gelding with her or he will scream his head off and spin in his stall until he’s soaked. Fortunately, there is a hitching post next to the arena so that’s where all the “screamers” go when their buddies are out being worked. You would think that at a boarding place with plenty of other friends that this wouldn’t happen but some horses are just attached at the hip


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## egrogan

Tough week here weather-wise. Last weekend we got round after round of sleet and snow, accompanied by 40mph winds. I don't think the horses left the sheds for three days solid. Couldn't put any loose hay out for them as it would literally just blow right away, except on one side of the shed where the building protected it a little from the wind. They were pretty sick of each other. This is the first time I've seen them get really nasty with each other.









Izzy especially seemed to have a rough go of it through those few days. She was very anxious and really fussy with her food; she'd paw the ground violently while eating, lunge at Fizz in the next stall, and then leave half of it behind and pace in and out of the shed nervously. Started her on some Ulcer Guard as I think the up-and-down of the weather has just been really tough on her especially. 

Finally in the middle of the week, the weather turned and the sun came out again. We had a couple of days of gorgeous weather, and I could finally get those blankets off!









Last night was the first in months that Maggie went without a blanket overnight. It was sort of borderline temp wise, but she ran away from me when she saw me coming with it when I checked on them before bed, so I figured she got to make the decision :grin: It's been nice having them naked for a couple of days to really get a good look at them. Maggie has definitely put on weight over the winter- the free choice hay has plumped her up. She's approaching "too fat" though, I don't like the way her crest filled back in to where it was last fall. She barely gets any hard feed at all, just 1/4 lb of ration balancer twice a day, but during the really cold weather I also poured in a little warm soaked alfalfa cubes. Those are cut out now. We're getting down to just the less-than-high-quality first cut hay and I'm leaving a little less out now so I guess that might help some. Some exercise would be the best recipe for her but still too icy on the roads to get out.

With the bright sun and warmer temps, we had some flooding again so had to strip the sheds out and start from scratch. Izzy clearly enjoyed a good night's sleep in the fresh shavings last night









Looking at her without a blanket on, she seems to have thrived through the winter, a relief given she was losing weight going into it. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice she looked this morning with no blanket and some of the winter coat off:










You making fun of my hair?!









The pace of shedding is definitely picking up. They are all super itchy and are looking for scratches whenever they see us coming. Spent a couple of hours today just going over all of them with the shedding block and brushing the tangles out of their manes from having neck covers on for so many days in a row.

















The forecast for the next couple of weeks is more of this up and down stuff, snow some days, then up above freezing, then down below 0, and back again. Bracing for more ice and flooding but trying to stay optimistic that shedding means better weather is just around the corner. Just no one mention mud or it might send me over the edge


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## phantomhorse13

shedding surely means spring..
and the groundhog said it was coming early..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> shedding surely means spring..
> and the groundhog said it was coming early..



Yes, look!! :clap:










Today we celebrated Izzy's 25th birthday. That feels like a big one. She got spoiled with all her favorite things- carrots, apples, and mints. So grateful to have such a lovely little horse who has taught me so much and got me hooked on Morgans. Can't imagine not having them around.


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## Knave

Oh yay!!! That is awesome.

I too am wishing for spring. Mine aren’t shedding yet, but we had that nice couple mornings... now we are a snow covered mess again.


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## phantomhorse13

Happy Birthday Izzy!


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## QueenofFrance08

Happy birthday Izzy!


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## carshon

Happy Birthday Izzy! She looks great and her dapples are showing through!


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## PoptartShop

Awww, YAY finally some shedding! :lol: That definitely means spring is coming...right?! So we hope...my girl hasn't started to shed yet. I am dying for her to! We got snow here yesterday...I am so over it!

Glad you did get some nice weather for a few days though. You've had snow for like months now it seems! I'm sure taking the blankets off felt awesome! 
Happy birthday to Izzy!!! She looks lovely! <3 Such a spoiled girl!


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## SueC

:happy-birthday8: Izzy!

I felt _ancient_ when I turned 25. Like an early midlife crisis! :rofl: I feel much younger now that I'm well into my 40s. inkunicorn:

Your horses probably have cabin fever. All that weather is so claustrophobic!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Your horses probably have cabin fever. All that weather is so claustrophobic!


 @SueC, I think we've all moved into "comedy of the absurd" territory! :dance-smiley05:

The continuous freezing and melting cycle has really done a number on the barn door (where my chickens live) and the tack/feedroom door on the horses' shed. The bottoms of the door are cycling through snow build up, sitting in pools of icy water, and being frozen in solid with ice. It's gotten to the point where we have to bring a sledgehammer to free the bottom of the doors from their tracks in order to break up the ice and get them mobile again. On the shed, it's also somehow bent the bottom hinge on the feedroom door, so it won't shut all the way right now.

So anyway, last night we went out to do night check/last feeding, _and the metal door handle on the feedroom literally broke off in lovely husband's hand _while he was trying to pry the door open from the ice, and sent him flying backwards about 5 feet. Granted, this is not a high quality piece of hardware we're talking about, but still...how does a metal handle just break in half!?


















We got super lucky that it broke off with the interior part of the handle mechanism in the "unlocked" position, so after some choice words and a furious march back up to the house for tools, we were able to pry it open with a crowbar. With the ice, we got it shut tightly enough that the horses wouldn't be able to get in it on their own over night (I was having nightmares about eating through two barrels of feed in there and everyone foundering), and I used the crowbar to open it again this morning. I express-ordered a new handle which should get here tomorrow, but today the ice melted enough that the door was just swinging open so I screwed in a couple of basic metal hook-and-eye latches to keep it closed. Maggie supervised while I was kneeling on the ice fixing it 









I am taking solace in the fact that we have less than a week now until the time changes, and the horses are shedding, and happy, and spring is on its way...


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## SueC

mg: @egrogan, your winter is like something out of Grimm's fairytales. :shock: You're really going to enjoy spring this year... after the flooding has stopped...

Write that smallholders' adventure book now!


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## frlsgirl

Awww happy belated birthday Izzy!


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## Avna

Happy 25th Izzy!


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## carshon

Sometime @egrogan I feel that you and I are living in parallel lives. I have been dealing with frozen doors for about 6 weeks now. I had to hand trench out a place for my doors to slide from the back of my main shed (where the grain is) to the hay room and then on Tillie's shed. Then we had an inch of rain last week and it froze in the trenches I made and lifted the doors up so the rollers are not touching the track any longer. And I broke the handle to the hay room door and have been using a crow bar to pry it open 3 x a day. We are expecting more snow on Thursday and then up to an inch of rain on Friday. We have had record breaking low temps the last 2 days and are finally expected to get above zero today. I have personally had enough of this winter!


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## egrogan

Oh goodness @carshon! While I wouldn't wish this series of unfortunate events on anyone, I do have to admit it gives me some comfort to know I'm not crazy :grin: I keep telling my lovely husband it's not just us, but he doesn't have much of a frame of reference as he knows fewer farm people. We've had a couple of little tiffs recently as he's been feeling like taking care of the horses is making me miserable, which is the polar opposite of what we had intended by bringing them home. While it's tough going right now and of course I do get snippy and frustrated when it seems like nothing is working correctly, I still see the joy in the horses running and playing in the snow; knowing I can change their blankets three times a day to have them in the right weight if I want to; adjusting their feed as needed if they look a little thin or a little heavy, and on and on. It's not all fun, that's true. But still, the balance of good to bad is in the right direction.


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## Knave

Blame his frustration and yours on cabin fever. It will all look better once the seasons finally change. This winter seems to have hit everyone hard. The moisture is such a blessing, but it doesn’t make us long for spring any less. It will make a beautiful spring though, and it will feel cheerful. 

My friend was in an article recently. She was talking about the seasons and how each seems to come right when you are ready. I think that is so true! Each season for me is met with gratefulness and left the same.


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## frlsgirl

Miserable conditions just tend to make people more snippy. Your snow pics are beautiful but actually living in it is probably not as idyllic as it looks. Hang in there spring is coming.


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## egrogan

@*Knave* and @*frlsgirl* , I think you're right. This winter probably wouldn't have felt as bad if it hadn't started in November!! 

I just saw this posted on Facebook and had to laugh as it felt pretty accurate (swap out "horse shows" for "trail rides") :grin:


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## Knave

Lol! That is so perfect! Towards the end of this month we will have to be working again with horses, and if the ground is still bad and fresh horses I am going to be so irritated with horses! Lol. “Why are my horses so young? Why are they so bad? Why am I doing everything wrong?”

Then will come April work and it will be busy. So, the horses will be less fresh, but early snowy mornings will still feel like “Why do I own these particular horses? I need broke horses? Why are all of our horses so young right now? Seriously, you have to be good!”

Then will come May where everything will start to come together, and summertime will be just a lot of fun riding. Fall will be full of work, where mostly the horses are pretty good and at the end someone will be saying, “You know, the horses are getting pretty good. We could probably use another colt.”

Hopefully this year my answer will be, “Then you get a colt! I’m ready for the eventual broke horses!!!”


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## egrogan

@Knave, my favorite is "_WHO BOUGHT THESE HORSES?" _as I think that may have been a direct quote from my husband recently- particularly when it comes to Miss Bossypants Maggie :wink:


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## phantomhorse13

Wow love that chart!! I have found myself thinking (or muttering) all of those things, especially lately. Sure look forward to loving the horses again soon. Come on spring!!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @Knave, my favorite is "_WHO BOUGHT THESE HORSES?" _as I think that may have been a direct quote from my husband recently- particularly when it comes to Miss Bossypants Maggie :wink:


Dear @egrogan, we are so lucky in our lovely husbands, in so many ways, and I never forget that horses weren't Brett's idea, and I'm amazed by the amount of support I get with them regardless. 

And likewise, I'd never have sat through the whole of Classic Dr Who were it not for my choice of spouse, and I've actually ended up enjoying and valuing that. :tardis:

PS: While horses weren't his idea, donkeys are now an equal idea! onkey:


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## QueenofFrance08

I have definitely been repeating "We have too many horses!" this winter!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Dear @*egrogan* , we are so lucky in our lovely husbands, in so many ways, and I never forget that horses weren't Brett's idea, and I'm amazed by the amount of support I get with them regardless.


Couldn't agree more!

Lovely husband was off work yesterday and helped me with some chores in the afternoon. He ran the tractor/snowblower through the pasture to try to clear a path back to the poop pile- it had been completely covered up with wind and snow over the past week, so I've finally had to resort to creating a small muck pile next to the sheds as I just couldn't muscle a wheelbarrow back through the drifts across the pasture. We don't usually keep the gates shut but I had the girls locked in the left field so he could take the tractor on a straight shot through the other side. 

They were very offended but still managed to line up in an orderly fashion and beg to come in for dinner :wink:


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## PoptartShop

Awww, so cute how they line up!!


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## egrogan

The whole town has been buzzing the past couple of days because it's almost that magical time...sugaring season! Only Vermonters could get excited about melting, flooding days and below freezing nights, because that's what it takes to get the sap flowing. It's not _quite _ready yet, but next week it might get things started as we're supposed to have days up in the 40s during the day and back below freezing overnight. We have a small (15 acre) sugarbush on our property, but aren't really prepared to do anything with it ourselves just yet. But, we're surrounded by a very large landholder (he has thousands of acres on all sides of us) and his lines run through our stand right now, which is ok with us- in a few weeks, we should have a few gallons of very nice syrup show up at the door :grin:

Here's a quintessential scene of sap collection at a farm down the road from our house









And a neat old picture of another farm in our town sugaring the old school, horsepowered way back in the 1940s:









Girls are pretty content and spending long stretches of the day soaking up that bright spring sunshine. We're supposed to get another snow blast this weekend- they're now saying 5-8 inches Sunday- but hopefully that's the end. We are bracing for a few weeks of wet and flooding, but we can grin and bare it knowing we are nearing the end. Hard to feel like spring is coming when it's still so wintery out though- there were huge icicles built up yesterday:









Izzy's response was to try to eat them!









They are clearly getting irritated with each other because of the close quarters though. Last night it was snowy and blustery so I had to feed them close to the sheds to keep the hay from blowing away, and you could just "hear" the conversation Maggie and Fizz were having with their ears while they ate dinner...

_Don't you look at me while I'm eating FIZZZZZZZZ....No, don't YOU look at me while I'M eating MAGGIE... :rofl:_









A different kind of ear conversation this morning- some turkeys must have been rustling through the woods (I saw a bunch of tracks later in the day) and the girls were very alert during breakfast

















Eventually Fizz decided her grandmas were going to take care of things and she was going to focus on eating!


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## frlsgirl

Wow Fizz got some serious Fuzz!

Yes very familiar with those ear conversation; Ana likes to throw in a little side eye with it, too 

Sugaring....hmmm must be a Vermont thing; so can you eat the tree sap? Or does it have to be processed first? What if the horses get a hold of the sap; will it make them sick?


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## Avna

@frisgirl -- anywhere there are maple trees and the proper Spring conditions there are people tapping the trees and making maple syrup. There are sap lines all over the place here too, in western Massachusetts, but my grandparents made syrup in Wisconsin, on their dairy farm. Our property came with sugar bush and a proper sugarhouse with a giant boiler. But I doubt we will sugar ourselves. Our inclinations lie elsewhere. 

The maple sap is like sweetened water -- that's what the boiler is for, to reduce the sap to syrup. But funny you should mention it -- my horses started stripping tree bark last week, despite all their free choice hay. I had to move them out of that pasture. Then they went to chewing fence posts. I blame my borrowed pony, I never saw Brooke chew fence before in her life. But maybe they find that bark sweet ...


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## Knave

There is chew stop @Avna, and there are other things too to stop that on the fence. I think @JCnGrace was the one who told me about soap on trees! I don’t think that would probably be nice in your sap though. Lol

My mother had a horse she was winning a lot on when I was little. Tuffy was his name and he was a great all around competitor. Anyways, after a big show season winter started and he was on time off due to weather. The way the fence laid you could not see that he had taken to chewing one of the boards from where he was fed or caught or the house. He went to eating that board and got a sliver in his stomach I guess. It killed the poor guy. 

I have seen lots of other horses chew boards without such a terrible end result, but I always worry just because of that. I’m sure it was a rarity.


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## egrogan

@*frlsgirl* , like @*Avna* said, it's primarily a New England and upper midwest (and northeastern Canadian) thing because of the right conditions for sugar maples. When I lived in Michigan, there was a lot of maple syrup there too but New Englanders are pretty snooty about ours being the best. :wink: If you PM me your address here or on FB, I'd love to send you a bottle to try! Sap is boiled for syrup (it takes something like 40-70 gallons of sap boiled down to make a 1 gallon bottle of syrup, depending on the sugar content of the trees). In the last couple of years, I've noticed there's some sort of health food trend to promote something called "maple water"- which is basically just unboiled sap. What is maple water? I think they're trying to capitalize on the popularity of coconut water. Red maple leaves are super toxic for horses. I've never read anything specifically about sap, but I don't think it would be- it's basically supercharged sugar water.

@*Knave* , that's an awful story about the wood eating horse :sad: Fizz actually ate wood pretty badly at the boarding barn we were at- BO had to rebuild half a door and a frame because she ate it. She's not a cribber, but I think she wood eats when stressed or anxious. There are some chew marks around our sheds here but nothing at all like in her last living environment. There, she was kept solo in a paddock surrounded by other horses, but still alone, and I think that was rough on her.

It's an absolutely beautiful day here- nothing but sunshine and temps up above freezing. The road looks like more mud than ice, so I think I'm going to try to venture out on Fizz for a short ride. Even if we only make it a short way and hit ice, I'll just hop off and lead her for awhile. Feels too nice to pass up! Wish us luck for clear roads :grin:


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## phantomhorse13

How smart of people to market maple water.. profit without the processing/hassle!


I hope you get a ride in today and that momma nature takes the storm out to sea tomorrow and spares you any more snow.


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## Knave

@egrogan it was a sad story. I think I remember it so well because although I was small it was a part of a longer story. The morning the horse was dead they were scheduled to leave for vacation. After debate they decided to continue on with their trip, but it didn’t leave them time to bury the horse. 

Dad hooked him behind a truck or tractor and pulled him out into the brush, but he had to go down the road to do so. When they left she saw the bloody drag mark down the road and was devastated. 

They went on vacation and when they came back the old neighbors (a depression era couple, very nice but with that mentality) said that they followed that trail and cut the horse’s hindquarters off and fed him to their cats and dogs. My poor mother was mortified.

I think dad laughed and I remembered thinking it was no different for the horse, but my mother wasn’t happy. 


I hope your ride is lovely!


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## JCnGrace

Knave said:


> There is chew stop @Avna, and there are other things too to stop that on the fence. I think @JCnGrace was the one who told me about soap on trees! I don’t think that would probably be nice in your sap though. Lol
> 
> My mother had a horse she was winning a lot on when I was little. Tuffy was his name and he was a great all around competitor. Anyways, after a big show season winter started and he was on time off due to weather. The way the fence laid you could not see that he had taken to chewing one of the boards from where he was fed or caught or the house. He went to eating that board and got a sliver in his stomach I guess. It killed the poor guy.
> 
> I have seen lots of other horses chew boards without such a terrible end result, but I always worry just because of that. I’m sure it was a rarity.


Wasn't me @Knave so I can't take the credit. Mine are pretty good about not chewing on the trees so I haven't researched how to make them stop. They do like to rub on them though but mostly scrub cedars they stand over and sway back and forth to scratch their bellies. LOL


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone, we did get that ride in! The road was icy on the sides but deep, deep mud in the middle, so we took it slow. Fizz really impressed me with how calm she was up in the barn getting tacked up (just looked at my mileage tracker and realized it's been over a month since she last had a saddle on). She was a little snorty when I was ready to get on though, so I decided to handwalk her a little ways down the road first. Fizz's opinion about being ridden, at least at first:









That meant I missed my chance for a leg up from lovely husband, who was going out to run errands, so I had to find a snowbank to get on. Fizz tried so hard, giving me a beautiful turn on the forehand to get aligned with the side where I could scramble up, but I couldn't quite get her to understand what I wanted when I asked her to step over so she was close enough I wasn't going to have to vault on. She kept wanting to step forward or climb up the snowbank to where I was standing. It was sort of comical, but on our 5th or 6th try it finally worked. Here's an unsuccessful attempt where you can see the gap was just too wide (at least for someone short and inflexible like me!)









Once I was on though, we had a really good ride. Even the "I don't want to keep going" moments worked out pretty well. Turning away from home to go down the road that had less ice than our usual route, she protested a little bit, but my strategy was just to get movement in whichever direction she could go- except backwards. That meant lots of turns-on-forehand. I was actually tickled, at one point the only movement I could get was sidepassing, but it was absolutely beautiful- I could see the shadow of her front legs crossing underneath me and feel her stepping her hind over. This is particularly notable because I swear we worked for _hours_ on this in our dressage lessons, and she just _wouldn't_ do it, even with my trainer on the ground reinforcing what I was asking. But for whatever reason, she was feeling it today!


















We rode past some sugaring equipment the neighbor set up last week- a big tank and pump that keeps it flowing down the hill to the sugar house for boiling.









Fizz was a little too enthusiastic when we turned for home, wanting to break into a canter, so we discussed that. We compromised on a trot because the hill was steep, but I am not ok with her rushing home.

She was again nice and relaxed in the barn. Stuck a haynet out for her and went to work on her coat, which is shedding a lot. I think she probably stood there for an hour while I pulled piles of hair off her.









We woke up to a whiteout this morning- we're hoping this is our last big snow storm. They're predicting 8 inches followed by rain/sleet overnight. Fabulous. Horses were ignoring the sheds and standing out in the snow when I went to feed. Silly girls.


















***********************
@Knave, hard to like that story about Tuffy :sad: I understand the pragmatism but it's tough when it's an animal you love. When I first got chickens, and one would die, I'd bring them back into the woods and lay them out where something could have a meal. But when I lost my favorite pet chicken, Red, I felt like I needed to bury her because she really was a pet. I get way too attached to animals though.


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## Knave

@egrogan, you would be surprised the number of chicken I have buried and had funerals for with little girls.  Even now, with older girls, if something dies we have our way I guess, and we go bury it and have a funeral.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww, what a good girl Fizz!!  I'm sure she was happy to be worked again, and it sounds like you two are really starting to mesh a lot more. What a nice ride. Still sucks you have so much snow though, ugh! But I'm sure you are so used to it now LOL. So cute seeing them eat!

Such a good girl! Glad you got her to relax. She was probably rushing to get back to her hay. :lol: That is pretty cool about the sugaring.  Mmm, fresh syrup will be delicious!


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## csimkunas6

Why does it take me so long to find all the awesome journals!?

Makes me miss the mountains of New Hampshire! New England is so gorgeous! I loved growing up in NH! Looks like so much fun! How I miss maple candy, oh my gosh how amazing it was! Ill have to go online and order some now, havent thought about maple candy in so long!


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## egrogan

csimkunas6 said:


> Why does it take me so long to find all the awesome journals!? Makes me miss the mountains of New Hampshire! New England is so gorgeous! I loved growing up in NH! Looks like so much fun! How I miss maple candy, oh my gosh how amazing it was! Ill have to go online and order some now, havent thought about maple candy in so long!


:wave: Hi @csimkunas6! We lived in NH for 7 years (southwest corner, down near Keene) and moved to central VT this summer. New England is definitely where I feel most at home.

Speaking of lovely New England...we did get a pretty big storm yesterday but got super lucky that we were spared the sleet & rain that was originally predicted. It's pretty warm today so I'm sure there's going to be some flooding when I go out to feed as things are melting. But, I am hoping that was the last big snow storm, and while we're going to have a few weeks of melting followed by mud once the snowpack is gone, at least that will be the last slog and then we can move on to redoing the footing in the sacrifice area and sheds. Of course, it'll still get worse before it gets better, but we'll deal with it!

Since I am optimistically choosing to believe that was the last big snowstorm, I thought I'd post some pictures of just how much snow we really had this winter.

Facing the barn- good thing we don't need any more hay delivered as I'm not sure a big truck could fit right now, the snowbanks have narrowed the driveway so much!








Side of barn- chickens live in the little run at the far right of the picture. Miraculously, wrapping the run with heavy painter's plastic has kept it completely snow free all winter and they have tons of fresh straw and dustbathing spots to play in. They've had the best winter of all of us!



























House- piles are now halfway up the windows



















Itchy Fizz this morning









It always looks so pretty the morning after a big snowstorm! I guess that's what keeps us going :grin:


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## csimkunas6

How awesome! I lived in New Hampton, was right next to Plymouth, pretty much nothing but woods and lakes  
Your home is absolutely gorgeous! Such a New England style home! I love it! About 10years ago when my dad lived in Hampton Beach, we went and visited with friends from where I lived, really hadnt changed a bit! We thought hard about moving there!

Looks like you all had quite a bit of snow this year! Hope spring is around the corner but doesnt get too muddy for you!


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## SueC

Knave said:


> @egrogan, you would be surprised the number of chicken I have buried and had funerals for with little girls.  Even now, with older girls, if something dies we have our way I guess, and we go bury it and have a funeral.


And when we were kids, we used to hold funerals for butterflies found dying when the frosts began. With pretty fabric scraps lining empty matchboxes, and much ceremony, and even music. Anyone else here who did stuff like that?
@egrogan, your views out of the windows must be all-white in the bottom half in some of them! :shock: I am glad to see you're getting some riding started, and hope your flooding doesn't get too awful. Would love to lend you our pump... next year, you'll have fixed the problem. Think of next year... inkunicorn:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> And when we were kids, we used to hold funerals for butterflies found dying when the frosts began. With pretty fabric scraps lining empty matchboxes, and much ceremony, and even music. Anyone else here who did stuff like that?
> 
> @*egrogan* , your views out of the windows must be all-white in the bottom half in some of them!


Aww, the butterfly funeral is a sweet image. That's not something we did as kids, but it's very sweet.

And yes, the walls are closing in on us inside the house! This is the window behind our dining room table this morning









It's a funny conversation starter, since my job is virtual and I spend a lot of time on video conference calls- I'm sitting at the dining room table working these days since we haven't made much renovation progress this winter (have been occupied with other challenges :wink and I don't have a proper office. Most of my colleagues work in the southern US, and are marveling at the snow growing higher and higher behind me every day!


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## frlsgirl

If I could find the shocked face emoticon, I would certainly post it here. That is some serious snow.


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## SueC

That's a great photo! It looks very cosy - but also very cold...

How hard is it to keep a house warm in weather like that, @egrogan? Are they built for the cold like European houses? Double glazing, lots of insulation? Do they have boilers for central heating? Or do you have to wear thermals in the house and can you see your breath on the air like in the rental we had before we built our house?


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


>


:eek_color:

And that is why I only go to New England in the summer!! You are a much hardier soul than I..


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## Avna

Spring is on the way! I saw a flock of blue jays this morning whilst chipping horse poop out of ice. It's gonna be FIFTY today here. Pussy willows are in full force and tree twigs are turning red and yellow. 

One thing about a long cold winter, you sure appreciate the coming of spring. In California, February through May is the only time there is both rain and sunlight, so it was the only really pretty time of year. But all the seasons there are vague and gradual. Here they are like avalanches. 

@SueC, houses vary. New ones will be built to code which includes all the things you mention. My house was built in 1790, and the people we bought it from were ... not what I would have wished in the retrofit department. Massachusetts has an awesome state program for insulation retrofitting -- we contracted with them for about $16K worth of retrofitting, but will have to pay only about $4K of that. We need even more than that though. We have, like most people in New England, both a boiler and a wood stove. Eventually we will transition to a less fossil-fuel-intensive heating system than a boiler, but we just moved last year and have many many things on our to-do list, just like @egrogan & her husband. She's in a colder spot and her house is in worse shape -- but she's so much younger than us!


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## egrogan

Lucky me, I was in North Carolina most of this week for work- it was 75*F/24*C, with soft sunshine and not a drop of humidity. It gave me the tiniest vitamin D recharge! Poor lovely husband was here with the horses during warming weather and soggy melting, but fortunately the rain held off during my trip so he didn't have to perform any heroics beyond keeping them fed. It did rain this morning and I was feeling despondent because the feed room has started taking on water, but around noon the rain cleared and now it is a brilliant sunny day, blue skies and everything- 50*F/10*C! We'll keep up with the flooding as best we can, but at least it's not going to flash freeze overnight tonight so we'll have some weekend time to clean things up.

The ground is soggy everywhere but the snow is hanging on. Girls are happy sunning themselves though:









It's always a Kodak moment until Izzy decides to interrupt the tranquility and harass Fizz :icon_rolleyes:









@*SueC* , like @*Avna* said, our house is like many old New England farmhouses in that it's been expanded many times over the years with little thought to efficiency. We have an oil-based furnace which is undersized for the house, so this winter we've actually kept several parts of the house completely closed off to try to save on wasting heat in rooms that aren't really fit to be in right now. We have two woodburning fireplaces that need chimney repair so haven't used them at all. And one propane-fueled "woodstove" in our bedroom which has been the saving grace because of the aforementioned problem of the undersized furnace that barely does anything for our bedroom (it was added on at some point in the last 50 years, stuck on all the way at the end of the house). There is some old, gross fiberglass insulation in the walls and attic, but as we move through renovations we'll update that, and look at adding some "mini-split" heating/cooling units outside of the core section of the house to make things more efficient. Such a long list of things to do, but we did make some progress last week by tearing down some old "acoustic tile" ceilings in our upstairs bedrooms and replacing it with a solid ceiling. The floors have awful carpet so we'll work on that coming up over the next couple of weeks, along with pulling down old water-stained wallpaper. Our goal is to move our bedroom up there and set up an office for me so I can get all of my work clutter off the dining room table. And, we have some help coming for the kitchen when our designer friend comes back north with her pony after spending the winter down south so she could keep driving her without the bad weather. Feels like some progress is on the horizon!

Here's my dining room snowbank as of right now :wink: I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, even if it is 50*F out right now!


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## egrogan

PS- @SueC, yes, thermals on in the house all winter  To be fair though, we keep the thermostat set at 56*F/13*F overnight and 61*F/16*C during the day.


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## SueC

That rug pattern in your new avatar photo looks very cheerful, @egrogan!

Your house is one of those houses that's going to be just wonderful when you've finished doing what you're going to do. The bones of it are lovely, and really worth working on. Friends of ours, now nudging their 70s, bought an old heritage house in Albany, and have spent the last dozen years slowly doing work on it, and they do all of the work themselves. It's totally gorgeous, and all the work is worth it, even if it takes a lot of time. There's such character in these old houses. They are houses from before they started building houses like breakfast cereal packets...

I'm a real sucker for the UK Grand Designs show, when they start making homes out of old water towers and old cow stables and barns etc, or they renovate something ancient that was falling apart, and honour the history of that building!


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , your photos remind me of how my sister and I used to make forts in the snow drifts up behind the garage when we were kids. In the Blizzard of '78 the drifts reached our rooflines, and the neighbors called my dad on his HAM radio setup to see if we were still alive, because the front of our house had disappeared behind a drift! Of course, that was probably way before you were born…

@csimkunas6 , I have a cousin that lives in New Hampton. Beautiful area.


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## csimkunas6

@Spanish Rider....what a small world! It sure is! So glad I was able to grow up there!


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## frlsgirl

Glad you got to escape the snow for at least a little while. 

And yes very familiar with ruined Kodak moments due to mareish mood swings 

I keep telling myself my next horse will be an agreeable, easy peasy gelding.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> That rug pattern in your new avatar photo looks very cheerful, @*egrogan* !


Thank you, I found it at a Christmas sale at the local tack shop, knowing Maggie would need a light sheet when spring got here. She'd really prefer no blanket at this point, but the nights are still getting well below freezing with a stiff wind, so it at least makes me feel better to know she has a little buffer from the gusts.









I love hearing the New Hampshire stories @*Spanish Rider* & @*csimkunas6* ! It is a beautiful part of the world. People here have been saying this winter feels as tough as old time winters, though the iciness in the middle of January was unwelcome and new.

Nothing much exciting to report...working a lot...puttering around the house...enjoying the extra daylight and sun setting closer to 7pm. Did some "spring cleaning" in the fields this weekend trying to attack the poop that is emerging from the melting snow. It's going to be quite an undertaking, and I had to admit I need some help. So, realtor friends of ours who are also horse people recommended a young guy who does some farming nearby...their description of him was "good Wisconsin stock- strong like an ox" :shock: Lovely husband had a good chat on the phone with him. His only question was whether we had a good wheelbarrow and strong shovel. I think he'll be a great help! It's still a little too frozen out there to be a good use of his time, but he'll be coming in the next couple of weeks after we've had some steadier thawing. Meanwhile, I did the best I could to make some progress near the sheds this weekend...under the "supervision" of napping old ladies...








They are really loving the sun and time without blankets. So far Izzy is farthest along in her shedding.









Wish I was able to get some ride time over the weekend, but the roads were so incredibly muddy it was unsafe, not really because of the footing for Fizz, but because the roads are so rutted up that while you're driving, if you get sucked into a rut, you just sort of have to let the car go with it until you can extract yourself- sort of like driving on a bumper car track. I didn't want to be on the non-existent shoulder trying to dodge cars that aren't really in control to begin with!

Still, every time I get frustrated, I find myself standing in a perfectly quiet, beautiful moment like this one tonight, and am happy to be where I am.


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## SueC

That's a gorgeous photograph, @egrogan!

And think of all the compost you can make with all that excavated manure...and how that can help your spring garden...

PS: Lame old joke about someone collecting horse manure from a farm. The farmer's little daughter asks, "What are you going to use it for?" The people with the trailer say, "We're going to put it on our strawberries." The little girl says, "That's funny - we put cream on our strawberries!"


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## PoptartShop

What a cute blanket on Maggie, I love the design! 
Ugh, isn't it so nice to have more sunlight?! They are so cute, nice to see them naked without their blankets. It sucks you didn't get to ride, but better to be safe than sorry with all that mud.
Great picture too with the night sky. Just have to take it all in. :smile:


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## egrogan

Spring came in beautifully, with several gorgeous moonlight nights and decent melting of the snow...









Lots of shedding...









And Fizz is going through her chameleon period- where she will turn nearly black before she becomes golden again.



















Just had to chase Maggie around the pasture to get her dressed for this afternoon- we are expecting 5-11 inches of snow between this evening and end of day Friday. I guess spring still has to fight its way in!

Their feet are looking a bit worse for the wear with all this melting and freezing- yucky soft frogs and just overall things feeling soft. Our big project this weekend is getting the stall doors in the barn adjusted so they can open despite the way the concrete floor has moved with the melt/thaw patterns. I normally don't love keeping them stalled, but I'm really looking forward to getting them inside for a little bit a few times a week to give their feet a break and get some topical stuff on them.


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## PoptartShop

Ah, just when you think spring is coming...bam...more snow. Sigh.  Well, at least they are enjoying being naked for now! That is a lot of shedding! :lol: Yeah, I am sure their feet could use a little break. Melting, snow again, then freezing, then melting, blah. I know it's been a rough winter for you guys. Hopefully after this snowfall, that will be IT for snow!


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## SueC

All this talk of nudity, when they have fur coats! :rofl:

This is a famous sign north of the Stirling Ranges, within cooee of our place!


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## egrogan

The great northern snow moo enduring a late winter storm in her native habitat:


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## Knave

It stormed here too. First rain and then snow. I know moisture is a good thing, but I am definitely ready for sunshine. I had a couple days and it was lovely. It’s coming!


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## egrogan

Finally, no ice! I couldn't wait to get out for a ride. First, I had to get sleepy beauty ready to go.









Last we, we got the stall doors raised a couple of inches, so they now open despite the uneven floor. It's been weeks since we could get the doors open wide enough to safely bring a horse in and out, but it was nice to have a space to tack up.









Fizz was very enthusiastic to go out today. 









After a pep talk from lovely husband, she had no stickiness, no refusing, just ready for a change of scenery. 


















It was so nice to just be able to ride her forward without the stop-and-go nonsense, and she was also very responsive to leg and did some nice bending and leg yielding. And, she did a good job of shifting back on the downhills rather than tumbling down them. We went a couple of miles, mostly walking with a little trotting on the uphills. 

I got a new saddle pad that I'm not sure I'm loving. I think the sheepskin is actually too thick and it is making the saddle sit funny; I felt really crooked the entire ride, like my right leg was at least a stirrup hole longer than the left. I didn't think to take a picture of the saddle front and back, but in this picture it almost looks like it was sitting too far forward on her shoulder? I don't recall it looking like that when we left and didn't really feel it slide, but even though she's standing a little under herself here with her neck turned, I don't like how it's sitting. 









This is an old picture comparing to how it usually looks with a thin quilted pad. I want a contoured pad for when we start doing longer rides, but I may go back to this old setup for now until I can find something that sits better.









We were both definitely sweaty and tired when we got back- we are clearly out of shape- but it was a great ride and I was happy she seemed to enjoy herself as much as I did.


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## frlsgirl

We are going through something similar in Oklahoma with the mud. Lots of soggy frogs. When it gets really bad, they put the horses up in their stalls but then they go nuts and want back outside so the choice is: happy horses with soggy frogs or angry horses with perfect feet. 

The saddle does look like it’s sitting too far forward with the new pad. Her body shape might have changed over the winter, too so that could affect the way the saddle fits.


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## egrogan

frlsgirl said:


> We are going through something similar in Oklahoma with the mud. Lots of soggy frogs. When it gets really bad, they put the horses up in their stalls but then they go nuts and want back outside so the choice is: happy horses with soggy frogs or angry horses with perfect feet.
> 
> The saddle does look like it’s sitting too far forward with the new pad. Her body shape might have changed over the winter, too so that could affect the way the saddle fits.


I think happy horses are the way to go, but I'm hoping a compromise will be a couple of hours in a couple of times a week to get them through this time of year. We don't even have mud yet 

Thanks for confirming the saddle looks wrong. I may have to abandon the pad, as much as I love it (I had been lusting after it for over a year and finally found a good deal on a FB tack group). I will have the fitter out as we start getting back into a regular riding routine; she wanted to come out next week, but that just feels way too soon since we've ridden something like 4 times since New Years, and I can't see adjusting the saddle to fit her current body shape.


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## egrogan

Thought you all would appreciate this little snapshot of mud season...Fizz and I heading home yesterday (barefoot); my up-the-road neighbor heading home today after a drive (shod)


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## PoptartShop

So happy you got to ride finally.  I'm glad Fizz was a good girl! She is so cute. 
The saddle pad may be a bit too thick. You could probably sell it for a decent amount though. Ugh, mud season...


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## egrogan

Woke up this morning thinking about @SueC's beautiful Romeo and gave my girls lots of extra scratches and pets this morning. The itchy spots are particularly itchy this time of year and I finally found a spot that Maggie loves, just below her withers on her left shoulder.








Still so much snow on the ground, seems like we will never see grass again. It's been above freezing during the day but around 15*F/-9*C over night so there is some thawing but then it makes everything hard and icy over night. There was a puddle around the main gate earlier this week which froze solid overnight, freezing the hinge in place so that I can only open it enough to shimmy myself in. Can't get the hay cart through so I am sledding bales down one at a time and hoisting them over the stuck gate. Supposed to be up to 50*F/10*C today so that should loosen everything up. The Weather Channel says our area won't be out of frost danger until May 20th


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## egrogan

all my posts are showing up in duplicate...


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## PoptartShop

It was doing that to me yesterday...definitely some forum issues lately!

Awww, Maggie looks like she was enjoying the scratches!   So adorable. Especially when you get that spot!
I know you are dying to see some grass already. I really hope the weather channel is wrong. :sad:


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## frlsgirl

Ditto on the itchy horses; my barn mates horse laid down after their lesson yesterday with his saddle and everything on just to scratch himself. 

When I arrived at the barn yesterday, Ana was hooves up in the pasture just itching away. 

Wishing you warmer temps and drier conditions so that you can go ride your ponies.


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## SueC

Love the Maggie photo! 

A couple of years ago, I tried out my itchy spot theory on a camel in an animal park nearby. Its itchy spot was in the bend of its neck, which it craned this way and that when I was scratching away!  It didn't want me to leave. :rofl: I think most animals have them. I know my husband has them too - mostly on his back and when I scratch his shoulder blades, he makes oooh-aaaah noises and says, "Now I know why the animals all like you so much!" :Angel:


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## egrogan

Phew, has been a whirlwind week. I was in North Carolina all week for work- it was beautiful, sunny, 70*F/21*C, and I got my first whiff of the smell of cut grass this spring. It was hard to come home to dreary, dirty snow, mud, and "poop soup" in the pasture as things _slowly _melt. We are finally just starting to be able to see some bare ground as snow melts.









Chickens have finally found some solid ground and are happy to venture out a little bit...(the rattling is me shaking a cup of scratch to get them to come home)





Friday afternoon we had a farrier appointment, so rounded all the girls up and brought them to the barn for their trims and some much needed grooming. While lovely husband kept them fed and happy, he didn't have the time to spent on grooming, so they looked like feral little beasts. I probably spent an hour with each one pulling matted hair off them.

_The pile of hair formerly known as Fizz..._


















_Feral looking Maggie_









I was looking forward to a relaxing Friday night since I was so exhausted from being on the road all week. I had just gotten the horses back out to the field and fed, and the chickens settled in for the night, when I looked out the window and saw the horses acting agitated. My view was somewhat blocked by the sheds, but I saw Maggie and Izzy running around and Fizz off to the side kicking out at something. I thought maybe there was a dog or coyote out in the field harassing them, so went out to see what was going on. I got down there only to find Fizz with her hind leg hung up in the top strand of the electric fence, getting shocked over and over because the electrobraid was wrapped tight around her leg just above her fetlock. Long story short, with help from my husband, we were able to get her free. I posted about it here. Luckily, while she is a little swollen and a little stiff up around her hip, she seems like she's doing pretty well this morning. Walking around, weight bearing, happy attitude, all that. 








It was the right hind leg that was stuck, this is the comparison of yesterday afternoon and this morning (she's standing a little weird this morning because the sheds are still soupy so she was avoiding the mud while eating breakfast). I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn't found her so quickly. It didn't even break the skin.









We've also gotten started on some projects around the house. This room is going to be our new bedroom- it's up on the second floor and has a beautiful view right out to the horse's pasture (which, as I have just discussed, is obviously important for keeping tabs on them! :rofl It was not a difficult decision to remove the water-stained, cow-eagle-heart-wheat wallpaper, but it is proving to be a difficult process to get it down!!


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## SueC

mg: that wallpaper! :rofl: I wonder when I see things like this who thought this was beautiful and needed putting up in their house. Once when checking out a rental I thought that about the carpet in the lounge. Imagine psychedelic swirls of purple and orange. Yechh. It gave me motion sickness!

You could do some art projects with all that hair. What about some horse-hair sofa cushions? Perhaps a felted saddle pad? :Angel:


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## egrogan

Haha, @SueC! Yes, there are lots of special touches throughout this house :rofl: I just noticed the wallpaper also has thistles on it, somehow I missed those earlier in the sea of cows and eagles!









This hallway has more "classic" 1950s floral grandma wallpaper, but that will go too. As well as that extraordinary PINK tub! Oh my.









There are also other unexpected treats throughout the house; for example, this corner of the bedroom, where it appears someone must have just taken a knife or screwdriver and carved up the floor just for fun. What in the world would have caused this damage?! 









We just keep taking lots of deep breaths and thinking about how much of a transformation it will be by the time we're done!


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## SueC

Maybe a large rat on vacation from Australia was sharpening its teeth in that corner? 

Is that the only bathtub in the house? And if yes, is it fair to infer that the males of the house never bathed?

It's a good thing you have photos. They will look great in your "before and after" photo album!


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## egrogan

Fortunately, there are other bathing options. We keep laughing, there are actually 4 toilets in the house, but currently only one of them works. Like I said, deep breaths...


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## SueC

Did they keep putting in new ones instead of fixing the old ones? :Angel: Or perhaps this is the main house of a large cherry orchard?


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## Chevaux

I’m liking the look of your floors - I really like wood floors. Are they original to the house? Are there plans to eventually refinish/stain them? 

Just as an FYI, a friend of mine moved into a house where the wood floors in certain rooms were beyond surviving another sanding and refinishing process so she just painted them (as well as the old fashioned high sideboards - same colour) and that looked really good.


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> I’m liking the look of your floors - I really like wood floors. Are they original to the house? Are there plans to eventually refinish/stain them?
> 
> Just as an FYI, a friend of mine moved into a house where the wood floors in certain rooms were beyond surviving another sanding and refinishing process so she just painted them (as well as the old fashioned high sideboards - same colour) and that looked really good.


Thanks @Chevaux! In some parts of the house, I think we do have the original pine floors- in other parts, we don't. Sadly there are a couple of rooms where the previous owners essentially built a plywood "platform," covered in awful carpet, over what was probably the original floors. It would be really costly to tear all that up and address what's underneath, so we may have to leave it (with carpet removed) for now. I like the look of painted wood floors and since that's already been done in a lot of rooms (like the blue floors in the pictures), we will repaint them and address the scarring and blemishes. We may get creative and do some sort of pattern in the room that is going to be my office. 

The floors downstairs are in rough shape but I do think they will take to another round of refinishing/staining. I hate being the first one to paint nicely finished, original floors! :hide: So, the rooms that aren't currently painted, we'll try to improve the floors rather than paint over them. In our last house, which was built in 1795, we had gorgeous wide plank pine all throughout the upstairs- someone explained that colonial settlers of that area would hide the nicest pine upstairs, which was the family's "private space" that could not be inspected by the king's tax collectors. Pine was protected because it was owned by the king for ship's masts, so if you were found to have wood that belonged to the king in your house, you were fined. There was even an event called "The Pine Tree Riot" where settlers refused to play along:


> Eastern White Pine played an interesting role in American history. Because it grows so tall, it has historically been used for the masts of ships. When an act ordering American colonists to reserve their tallest White Pines for the masts of British naval vessels was enforced in New Hampshire, it outraged colonists. Though forbidden to cut “any pine tree of the growth of 12 inches of diameter,” it became unfashionable to have floor boards in one's home that were less than 12 inches wide. In 1772 a sawmill owner in Weare, New Hampshire was arrested and fined when white pine logs with the king’s broad arrow mark were found at his mill. He and a group of about 40 townspeople rioted, attacking the sheriff and his deputy and literally running them out of town in what became known as the Pine Tree Riot. This act of rebellion against British authority was an inspiration for the Boston Tea Party that took place the following year.



More about the Riot here for history buffs- :grin: New Hampshire Public Television-Pine Tree Riot


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## PoptartShop

I'm sure it was amazing for you to finally see some grass when you were in NC. Fresh cut grass at that! :lol: Ugh. Even though the snow is melting slowly, at least it's finally melting, right? Sigh. It takes forever it seems!

OMG, the chickens are so darn cute waddling about! LOL that is just adorable. That video made my Monday so much better. How cute!! And wow, so much hair! My barn looks the same, hair everywhere from all the shedding. Whew!

Oh man, what a scare with miss Fizz! :sad: Poor baby, I'm glad she is feeling better, and that you went out there as fast as you did. LOL at the wallpaper! :lol: & only one toilet works? Well, less toilets to clean, right?! :rofl: That is an upside...


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## egrogan

Thanks @PoptartShop, I think the chickens are funny too with their little cackling and awkward chicken flying :rofl:

Unfortunately the clear ground disappeared today with another round of sleet and snow. I think it was worse than the forecasters predicted, they had called for rain. I guess it doesn't really matter, supposed to warm up again later in the week so it will all melt. Ponies all stood outside in the sleet all day, looking sad and soggy, but they were perfectly dry under their blankets and felt toasty warm. Hopefully will get blankets off in between storms to keep brushing out their coats, the hair is flying off them!

"The spring uglies"


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## egrogan

I'm looking out the window right now at a white out, adding to the snow on the ground this morning. Chickens were _not _amused!









In good news, Fizz's leg is looking nearly normal today- no swelling that I can feel. She handled the walk up to the barn fine, walking across slush, snow, and mud and moved fine walking up and down the concrete aisle. Fingers crossed we are going to come out of this ok!









On the other hand, I brought Izzy up from the field to the barn last today, and it ended up like _this:_
















What's that you ask, did I get a new paint horse? No no, that is how Izzy looks after a 30 minute fight to walk the 1/4 mile from the field to the barn. The buddy sourness is just totally out of control with her. She could.not.control.herself on the walk from the field because the other horses were already in the barn. She was screaming to them, slamming into me, nearly throwing herself on the ground. I tried to be really zen about it all, and thought about that thread @tinyliny started about the "do do" not "don't don't"- of course slamming into me got a "DON'T" but as long as she was in her own space, I focused on what I wanted- just simple walking with relative poise in a straight line. That was hard to achieve, so she essentially went round and round and round in circles around me until she could manage to walk. Drenched doesn't even begin to describe how she ended up. When she gets spun up like that, I admit I really don't know how else to redirect her. I was looking for _any _little moment of cooperation and willingness to work with me, but I really couldn't find it for what seemed like forever. Finally, she stopped the frantic trotting, reached down with her nose and walked. We had to zig zag our way back to the barn to stay walking, and not walking on top of me, but eventually we made it. She immediately rolled in her stall, and after a couple of hours with a cooler on, she was mostly dried out. It was just miserable though, I hate seeing her get like this. This is a horse that has been turned in and out by children and grandmothers. She is 25 years old. But she's nearly unmanageable when she has lost her mind about where the others are and I'm not sure how else I can deal with her.


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## tinyliny

Do you usually bring her in first, or last or ? I assume you bring in other horses, too.


And, believe me, I find it hard to think about "DO do this" when my mind is saying "Don't you dare do that!!".


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## egrogan

tinyliny said:


> Do you usually bring her in first, or last or ? I assume you bring in other horses, too.
> 
> And, believe me, I find it hard to think about "DO do this" when my mind is saying "Don't you dare do that!!".


I have three mares. Part of the issue, I think, is that I don't bring them in that often, so there's no routine. That makes it an _ohmygodareyoubringingustobeeatenbyapackofhungrywolves_ kind of experience. They are all buddy sour, but Isabel seems to handle it the worst. The last few times I've brought them in, I've brought her in last and out first. It doesn't seem to matter which order though, and as soon as I take one in the other two are running the fence frantically waiting for me to come back, and then getting more frantic when the next one goes. For awhile I would take one in alone and then bring the other two together just to minimize the time it took (frankly, making it easier for me) but then that felt like I was just feeding in to the problem of not being able to lead them one at a time like normal horses. It's all quite frustrating, though probably not super unexpected given they have had a lot of "unstructured time" all winter.

In good news, the leg is still looking normal today, and cool and tight.


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## knightrider

I am sure that if I brought my horses in separately, they would do the same thing, especially two of them.

I bring all of mine up together. I put their food in their stalls, make sure the stall doors are wide open, then open the gate, and they go hurrying into their stalls to eat. After everyone has eaten, I open their stall doors and shoo them back out to the pasture. As you said, this is a twice daily routine, so they know the drill, makes it easier. I like to watch them as they walk to make sure they are all walking sound.


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## PoptartShop

I'm glad Fizz's leg is looking better. Ugh about the snow! Noooo!

Awww, oh Izzy! She definitely worked herself up! Since there are only 3 of them & they are such a close, tight herd, they are bound to be buddy sour. It can be extremely frustrating to deal with, the tick-tock walking/trotting, getting themselves all worked up, etc. I would try to make it a routine, or bring them in all at once if you can. Or at least try to make it so they are all already up there, then you can bring them in 1 by 1 (but they are all already there if that makes sense). If you don't want them rushing in at once.


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## Spanish Rider

Wow, that is a bit extreme, and I commend you on your patience. But, I would not repeat that process in the same way again, just for your own safety's sake. I mean, you alone + crazed horse + ice/snow/mud is just not the safest environment for training her out of this. A couple of suggestions:

1) For now, I would consider walking Izzy up to the barn a 2-person task. One leading, one behind with a dressage or lunging whip to get her moving forward and focused. We have a couple of nervous horses who will not go out the barn door unless someone is walking behind, and these are horses that are worked in the same fashion, in the same place, and by the same people nearly every day for more than 5 years. But, a horse on its toes is a horse on its toes. I would also try baiting with a carrot in my hand to get her focus on you, not the others.

2) If you led 2 horses, or you and DH each led a horse, how would the third react? 

3) Is there any way to change the fencing setup? (I am sure you did not want to hear this.)

Anyway, just suggestions. No one knows your horse better than you do.


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## egrogan

Thank @Spanish Rider. Unfortunately it's typically just me to bring them up on my own (e.g., our farrier appt is on a Friday afternoon); lovely husband could help me with a "practice session" on a weekend though. We've done that a couple of times in the past, and it works fine. In that scenario, I'd take Izzy and Fizz and he'd take Maggie. They're all fine as pairs if I lead two together. I don't feel comfortable leading 3 at once- there's the possibility of road traffic, and frankly, the barn door just isn't really wide enough for three of them plus me to walk in safely. 

I guess I should let go of the idea that leading two as a pair is a "crutch"- it makes it much less stressful for everyone, it gets the job done. But I can't get it out of my mind that there may be a real, emergency reason where they just have to be able to deal with going off alone. Fizz is fine, and that's probably _most_ important, as she's the one I intend to take out to rides on her own. But with the other two, if they truly _can't _be separated, that just feels like a disaster in the making.

What did you have in mind re: fencing setup?


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## Spanish Rider

If I remember correctly, the paddock they are in is quite a ways away from the barn, right? I don't know if it is visible by the horses in the paddock, or if the paddock is visible from the barn. Is it? I was wondering if Izzy reacts that way because she can hear them but not see them, or see and hear them but not reach them (each can be a problem).

So, as far as fencing goes, there is no fenced "corridor" to/towards the barn where they could walk up together, right? I wonder how people like @knightrider , who has several horses to move, have their barn, fences and paddocks set up.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> If I remember correctly, the paddock they are in is quite a ways away from the barn, right? I don't know if it is visible by the horses in the paddock, or if the paddock is visible from the barn. Is it? I was wondering if Izzy reacts that way because she can hear them but not see them, or see and hear them but not reach them (each can be a problem).
> 
> So, as far as fencing goes, there is no fenced "corridor" to/towards the barn where they could walk up together, right? I wonder how people like @*knightrider* , who has several horses to move, have their barn, fences and paddocks set up.


Ohhhh....I see what you're asking. No, you're right, there's no way to connect the turnout pasture to the barn. In between is our septic system and our house. In the summer, there is a very skinny passage between the barn and the house that I can lead a single horse down if I lead them through my backyard (which I do when lovely husband isn't home ) and it makes the walk marginally shorter, but not by much.

You're right though, one of the issues is being able to hear everyone screaming back and forth from the barn- Fizz and Maggie are on the side whose windows don't look in the direction of the field, so they can't see Izzy if she's outside freaking out on the walk up, but they can hear her and call back.

Pretty much every option to get them to the barn involves walking along the road. It's a very, very quiet lightly traveled dirt road, but cars do go by at inopportune times. For example, when Izzy was doing her best impression of a merry go round in the icy fog, the mailman passed us twice. That was embarrassing.

One of our plans for the summer (fingers crossed) is to fence a big pasture that is more or less across the street from the barn to use in summer rotation. It won't be year round because we can't get water run out there. But it would be a walk across the street vs. up the street. That opens up some more options.


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## knightrider

Yikes, that's difficult. @Spanish Rider is right. When we set up our place, we built corridors that connect to the barn. BUT--one pasture does not have a corridor. After living here 12 years, I just open the gate and they charge through the side yard to the barn on their own.

If I need to get them up for the farrier or some afternoon event and they are out grazing, I get one of the friendly leaders and the others happily follow. I always only get one and the others come along. Is it possible to try that? Leading one and letting the other two follow?


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I'm not wild about the idea of having two loose on the road. I'm honestly not sure what they'd do. In the pasture, two loose certainly do follow one haltered, nose to hip. But on the road, gah, so much could go wrong! 

Last night as I was feeding I realized I left something I needed up in the house, so I decided to halter Fizz up and take her with me. Her boredom definitely works to my advantage, as she is often hanging out at the gate looking down the road. She was happy to go with me- the other two called to her halfheartedly but seemed to get over it pretty quickly as we didn't hear them once we were walking away. 









The sun was strong and bright yesterday, so one of the far pastures had actually melted quite a bit, enough to expose bare ground finally- I decided to take her down there first and offer some hand "grazing." She was skeptical that it was worth the effort...

















To be fair, it was still mostly brown, but we hung out there for a few minutes. Then we went up to the barn so I could throw her in a stall while I ran into the house to get what I needed. She didn't love being in the stall alone and called out- one of them down in the field called back, but she survived. I retrieved the brush I needed, and when I got back out my lovely husband had just gotten home from work.









I got him to take a quick video of her walking to see if she seemed to be moving ok on the leg. So here she is walking on the gravely driveway- looked pretty comfortable to me but curious if others see anything here. 









He's not really an equine photographer so didn't really get the idea of "video us going away from and towards the camera" but oh well :rofl:





It's supposed to get up to 65*F tomorrow, so definitely aiming to get out to ride, finally! Our favorite tack store is also having a huge spring sale this weekend so will probably end up there as well.


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## Spanish Rider

OK, now I have a better idea of your setup. I did not realize that there was a ROAD road in between. For some reason, I thought it was a private drive/road. But, at least you have been there long enough to start to see the problems with this and that to later be able to make smart decisions with your time and money when you start making changes and fencing other areas.

OK, so next option: drugs? :rofl:


Oh, Oh! What about that farrier trick of putting a piece of duct tape on her muzzle as a distraction?!


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## gottatrot

You both look pretty sound to me. :smile:


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> You both look pretty sound to me. :smile:


Hahaha :rofl:

And both sporting some winter fluff on our behinds, time to get riding!!


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## PoptartShop

That's good you got Fizz out! She's so pretty!  Nice to see some sunshine & less snow.
I think she looks fine walking too!


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## frlsgirl

You are both marching nicely


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## egrogan

Haven't updated on the girls in awhile; we are sort of down in the dumps with the mess of the spring melt, and I've been out of town a lot for work. So...let's see...

Two weekends ago now, Maggie's mom came to visit. She was very sweet and while she was crying the whole time, said she was so happy that Maggie's in a place where she has horsey friends and is doing well. We spent about an hour chit chatting while she groomed Maggie and we talked about how training of her filly is going. I loved seeing Maggie so relaxed and happy while her mom was there, and I tried to find excuses to duck out of the barn to give them a little extra time together. She has an offer to come visit whenever she wants!









After she left, I took Fizz out to ride. It was the first ride in awhile and she was a little amped, particularly after standing in the barn all morning. She balked a little ways down the road, so I gave her a swat with the dressage whip and she had a tantrum, ended up jumping off the road into an icy ditch. I bailed off. We kept going though, just with me walking for about a mile before I got back on. 









She was good for re-mounting, but I do have to wonder if her back is still sore from the fence incident as she was calm and relaxed while walking but incredibly tense while I was in the saddle- vet (who is a chiro) comes next week for shots, etc., so we'll adjust her if needed.









Speaking of the fence incident, as vet predicted, she does have some hair loss in a circle around her cannon bone where the rope was wrapped. The hair has just pulled off neatly with no bleeding or sores, and it looks really strange when it comes off. I found a similar mark on the opposite hind leg as well, so I guess at some point in the incident, she was hung up with both legs :sad: I wonder if the hair will grow back or if it will be a permanent scar?









I keep laughing at how she is shedding out-it's maybe not the clearest in the picture, but she actually has three distinct coats going right now. A few whispy strands left of the very long, blonde/white winter coat; the smoky black fuzz that she gets in transition; and then her sleek golden buckskin color under that. It's the most dramatic around her chest.









The pasture is a mucky mess these days, as the snow is almost nearly melted, but apparently all flowing directly into the pasture. I knew it was on an incline and a lower-lying part of the property but I think I underestimated how long all the melt would run straight through it. Given the mud, I've been trying to get the horses into the barn for a few hours when I can to give their feet a break. Izzy _loves _the barn- she's a girl who just needs a big pile of hay and a comfy place to nap :rofl:









The past couple of weeks, I've just taken to leading Izzy and Fizz together and Maggie on her own, and while Maggie gets a little agitated alone, this is working out pretty well and Izzy has had no repeats of her crazy behavior from a few weeks ago. Fizz though despises being stalled. She stallwalks endlessly- the stall floors are dirt, and after one afternoon in there she had created a massive crater so I had to drag in a few mats. That helps with the floor, but she never relaxes, even with Maggie visible next to her, Izzy visible across the aisle, and piles of hay and hay nets. It's really difficult to watch. 

Yesterday I decided I would lunge her before riding, particularly since I'd had them in the barn for a couple of hours at that point and she was already anxious. I took her down the road to one of the big fields and we were just getting started. She was too close to me on the circle, just walking, so I flicked her with my stick and told her to move out on the circle, and she responded with an "f-you" buck and kick out...which just happened to connect with *my knee!!!! *So, yeah...definitely too close! I think I was more stunned than anything and let loose with my own string of "f-you's" but I managed to keep ahold of the rope so she didn't bolt away. I think my reaction chastened her as she came and stood stock still next to me while I was hunched over trying to decide if I was dying or not. I think I got really lucky. It does definitely hurt, but more in a "stiff" kind of way than anything else. It isn't even bruised or swollen, and I can walk around on it fine so I think I'll live another day. Fortunately lovely husband was working on something close by, so he retrieved her and walked her back to the barn so I could collect myself. 








I went back to the house for a few minutes and iced my knee (and my pride) and then went to get her back out. I wasn't sure that my knee was going to stand being in the saddle, so I took her for a really long walk from the ground (about 3 miles). It actually was a great experience, we did a lot of groundwork along the way- getting her to match her pace to mine, turns on the forehand _and haunches_ (usually haunches are really hard for us), walking politely out of my space, halting just from body language/no pressure on the lead, all that stuff. When she did something particularly challenging, I rewarded her with some nibbles of grass.









This was the softest and most relaxed I had seen her in awhile, even though she was taking in the smells in a place we hadn't been to in awhile.









We scared up some turkeys in a field that took off flying up to a tree, but even though she spooked at first, we were able to get back to a nice relaxed walk right afterwards, so that was a good way to end what had been a challenging day!









Plus, it was nice to see the sun after almost a solid week of rain! The peepers in the pond agreed.





I'm really at a loss about what's going to happen with Fizz and I. I'm fond of the analogy that a horse-human relationship is like a bank account- as you have good experiences together, you "make a deposit" towards building the relationship, and bad moments "withdraw" from that relationship. I've felt like getting her back into work this spring- asking her to leave her pasture mates, do things that I ask her even when they aren't her decision- has just been withdrawal after withdrawal. Since she is a more aloof and maybe "naturally" anxious horse (I wonder if there's such a thing as a naturally anxious horse?), I know my crazy work schedule and inconsistency working with her doesn't help matters. So I am having a serious internal conversation about whether this partnership can work. That said, I'm excited- two weeks from now we're heading off to a 4-day clinic, and the theme is "create a 'yes' horse"- that sounds sorely like what I need help with! We will see if we can get there together!


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## carshon

I am going to chime in and say - yes, there is a naturally anxious horse. Or maybe a horse that is more easily set off. It seems that I tend to gravitate to these "Type A" horses My Tillie is never truly relaxed when a human is around (or so it seems) When I first mount she is fast to move off and turkey walks for quite some time before she seems to "come down" this happens whether we are riding with friends or alone. Tillie normally runs out of her stall every morning to the field and then runs around the little sacrifice field looking for something that could be out of place. She is naturally lean and always on the alert.

You had a lot of changes last year - and your work schedule has been hectic this spring. Give yourself some credit for doing all of the things you have done this winter with all of your horses. You purchased a new home, moved horses home, added not 1 but 2 new horses to your herd and are dealing with bad weather. Go to your clinic - soak in the knowledge and just enjoy your horse for who and what she is. Letting go of goals and pre conceived ideas is part of the process of bonding and building. You got this!


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## QueenofFrance08

I'm just here to remind you once again you are not alone! Taking horses away from the barn/their buddies is CRAZY hard! My little perfect angel on the trails is a raging monster when I try to take her away from her home. We've started to do better going out with a buddy but I could barely make it to the neighbors driveway last weekend trying to ride out from home on our own. Don't feel bad and don't worry too much about it! Our relationship is 1000 times different on trails at parks then it is trying to ride away from home. Some of the most experienced riders I know commented on my post last week saying they struggle with it too! You guys will figure this out and we will too! It just takes time!!!!


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## PoptartShop

It's not easy to do what you are doing with Fizz! You are challenging her. Which is good. She may take longer to adjust than others (they are all different), but you will have the good days & the bad days regardless - don't let it get to you. They are a super tight herd, plus a small herd.
The clinic sounds like fun, you will have a good time.  Take everything in & have FUN! Some horses are just more aware/apprehensive than others. No matter what, you always end on a good note. Which is super important. I think you guys will be just fine!  It's been a rough winter & you've been pretty limited because of the weather, so don't sweat it.

I love her coat colors! :lol:


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## Knave

Springtime is always hard when horses have had time off. It gets better. Don’t let yourself get too discouraged. We’ve all been there.


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## SueC

Sending good vibes for speedy knee recovery! I'll let you into a secret. Sparkle actually took aim at me when I was trimming her rear hooves last week. She's always been a bit funny about her feet, compared to the rest of the donkeys, but lately has been getting more, rather than less, ornery. And after all the long list of things we've done over the years to try to get her to settle when trimming, this little beast taking calculated aim at me lit a fuse in me, and I booted her backside around our garden for a couple of minutes while turning the air blue with curses and expletives. She didn't actually connect, but the side of my nail bed tore and bled because of the violence with which she took her leg off me before kicking (and I'd not even _done_ anything to that hoof yet, so it's not like I accidentally hurt her, she was just being a little shiitake!), and I just thought, "Right, I've had enough, you've got this coming, you little toe-rag!" :evil:

So, life isn't always wine and roses, sometimes it's a pool of steaming excrement, and mostly it's in-between. Interestingly, Sparkle was completely normal to me the next day, even though I'd chased her out into the paddock after that episode with yet more inappropriate language delivered with volcanic vehemence, and boy had she run! Not wary or anything next day, but very sweet to me actually. Maybe even she thought she deserved what she got. :runpony:

I'm not suggesting anyone goes booting their animals around as a standard training technique, I'm just relating a pool of steaming excrement moment. We all have them. I hope you and Fizz have loads of fun on your 4-day outing!  :charge:


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## egrogan

I really appreciate all the encouraging posts from the Horse Forum family! It's a great place to come when you're feeling a little down, so thank you for all the great messages. :loveshower:
I'm not giving up on Fizz yet, and I do think the clinic will be really fun. And, I love having the horses home and doing non-riding things with them too. A nice handwalk on a sunny day...Changing Izzy's blanket four times in one day if I feel like it to keep her comfortable...looking out my bedroom window at them standing there, first thing in the morning. I feel so lucky for all of that. AND...I really enjoy riding, want to get better at it, and am determined to experience an endurance ride from the saddle. There have been many times when I simply haven't taken Fizz out to ride because I don't fully trust her to keep us safe, and am not a good enough rider that I can always be the one to keep us safe. It _is _frustrating that we live a 15-minute ride from what Denny Emmerson has called "one of the greatest equestrian trail systems in the world" and have ridden on it exactly once. So that needs to change. Like I said, I'm not giving up, there is plenty that I can still do. After the clinic, I'll be trying to find an endurance rider who would be willing to come out and ride with me to give me some on-trail lessons (any recommendations @*phantomhorse13* ??) and I'm hoping some of the retired ladies who live around here will be out riding again soon so I can at least have other riders to go out with. There are still things to try. But for better or worse, I _am _the kind of person who needs to feel like things are improving, even if it's slow. That's what it takes to feel optimistic, for me. And, to be totally honest, I think I get a little seasonal affective disorder in the dreary, rainy days of spring, so that's not helping. I despise the grey skies, heavy, humid air, and mud everywhere. That is NOT inspiring to me! Still, I try to find the little things, like the view we had out the window after dinner last night:


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## phantomhorse13

First off, let me second what everyone else has said about looking at all the things you have accomplished this winter - give yourself some credit! I know you had challenges with Izzie back when you first got her, so you just need to remind yourself that growing pains are normal.


Are you a member of the ECTRA group on the book of faces? Seems to me they have the highest number of New Englanders, so the most likely to have someone near you. I so wish we were closer!!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> I know you had challenges with Izzie back when you first got her, so you just need to remind yourself that growing pains are normal.


 Umm...I had challenges with Izzy two weeks ago :hide: :rofl:
No, you're right, I actually re-read the beginning of this journal recently as I found myself pining for the days of my "relaxing" rides with Izzy before she got Lyme, and then I remembered it wasn't always so relaxing!



> Are you a member of the ECTRA group on the book of faces? Seems to me they have the highest number of New Englanders, so the most likely to have someone near you. I so wish we were closer!!


I wish you were closer too!!! I am not on that group but will check it out. Was also thinking about reaching out to Kat W, as I know she trains horses but not sure if she trains people too. I like how she rides.


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## egrogan

Loved this article from _Yankee _magazine about the UVM horse farm and since there are lots of Morgan lovers here, figured I'd post it: https://newengland.com/yankee-magaz...40zvJi5smnVKlsUGLV7Dwkdt7dOEvOjkM8-OPA-kNhJWI

I'm a bad Vermonter, I still haven't actually been there to visit! But grateful to the breeding tradition there, which is in Fizz's pedigree, being the basis for her dam: https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/windfield+effervescence and is also there for Maggie through the bottom of her dam's side: https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/junesons+image


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## frlsgirl

Ana basically turns into a feral creature in the winter months; a wild untamed spirit. Then spring comes and I start working her more consistently and suddenly my well trained Dressage mount re-emerges. Then she goes into season and I wonder if “winter-Ana” is coming back and just as I begin to doubt our relationship, my sweet little Dressage mare comes back. This basically goes on until fall. After she sheds her last follicle, she is super to work with, sweet, mostly compliant. Then winter comes and the whole cycle repeats. 

Don’t give up on her yet. You are just coming out of winter when horses look like a hot mess between the shedding and the mud plus they are a little fresh and stiff from the reduced workload over winter. 

The snow will melt, the pasture will dry and as you work with her on a more regular basis, you and her will begin to make lots of deposits


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## egrogan

Had a very good day with the ponies today. The saddle fitter came to visit Fizz and so that meant everyone came up to the barn and got a chance to dry out. Their feet are holding up ok given the condition of the field- they don't seem to be getting any worse, so I'm going to keep up the strategy of giving them dry time when I can. The next two weeks are looking gloomy, wet, and raw, so we will have to continue to endure the mud a little while longer. The sacrifice area has been really and truly sacrificed at this point, but I have resisted my urge to let them out onto the spongy pasture. We have plans made for getting the winter muck scraped out and the footing dealt with just as soon as we can, and we are also getting ready to fence another field in a few weeks which will give them some relief. 

So anyway, back to saddle fitting. The fitter added a lot of new wool to build up the middle where the fluff had migrated out towards either end. Fizz, not surprisingly, has no topline after her winter vacation, so I'll add another shim to my Prolite pad for the next little while as we get back to riding and build condition. After the fitter got it nicely balanced and my pad shimmed, I took a short ride up and down the road, and the difference was instantly apparent- I felt so much more stable and level on her back. It was also nice to have eyes on the ground to watch Fizz move; fitter felt she was moving very evenly front to back and not showing any discomfort in her back/SI that might have been a result of the fence accident. The vet/chiro will be out next week to take a look and, hopefully, confirm that's the case.

I was so thrilled with how well Fizz did with having to stand patiently in the barn during the appointment. It was a 90 minute process with the fitter (she's a chatter :wink, but Fizz dozed on the cross ties and never put a foot wrong. Even being stalled all day, while she certainly did pace a little bit, she was nowhere near as frantic and upset as she has been- more often than not, when I checked on them, she was relaxed and munching on hay. Or blowing bubbles in her water bucket :rofl: 

Turned everyone back out for dinner, and I didn't even have a chance to get the halter off Fizz before she dove to the ground for a long roll in the mud. So much for two hours of grooming to get all the dried mud out of her coat...she had it all right back on in 60 seconds...










Enjoying the late evening sunshine before storms return.


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## Knave

Lol. I gave the horses a bath because it was a hot day yesterday. Bones rolled, tied up short, twice...


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Lol. I gave the horses a bath because it was a hot day yesterday. Bones rolled, tied up short, twice...



Is there any other possible outcome after a bath? Not here! :rofl: I do appreciate how satisfying it looks for them though.


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## egrogan

An honest question: if I’m a horse, why would I poop in my own hay?

When the girls are stalled, I try to keep the stalls clean and picked throughout the day, because the whole point is getting foot spa care and keeping them free of muck and gunk. So, the stalls are clean. Today, the last time I picked was probably about an hour before I turned back out.

Just went to do a last sweep and clean, and found Fizz had left THREE piles IN HER HAY. For her, I leave loose hay on the ground plus a net to keep her occupied. She ate from that pile all day. She knew where it was. She pooped in the opposite corner most of the day. Why bomb it??


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## phantomhorse13

George and Sultan will pee on any hay on the ground.. even managed to push the old water tank I once tried to use as a feeding station away from the fence so they could straddle it and pee!! 

Haynets for all here now..


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## SueC

Maybe it's how they say, "I don't like the broccoli on my plate!" ;-)

When grazing, they're quite selective. With hay, they're sort of expected to eat everything. Plus, most of them get such abundant amounts that they perhaps feel they can "play" with it. Sort of like sticking broccoli "trees" in your mashed potato, and making lakes and rivers in it with gravy... Didn't any of you love doing this, when you were more carefree? inkunicorn:

Or perhaps it's a way of saying, "This is mine!" The unfortunate disadvantage with that method of claiming ownership is that the horse returns to the hay later and says, "_Phoooeee!_" :shock:

Or perhaps it's to reduce the backsplash or sound or other objectionable thing related to toileting. Have to say, love our compost toilets in that regard - no more backsplash, hip hip hooray. I get quite a shock these days when I visit toilets which have water at the bottom...


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> George and Sultan will pee on any hay on the ground.. even managed to push the old water tank I once tried to use as a feeding station away from the fence so they could straddle it and pee!!
> 
> Haynets for all here now..



Well that's....creative...










Good theories @SueC!


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## PoptartShop

LOL I never understood that. :rofl: Like...are you trying to add some flavor to it? Yuck! Haynets definitely help eliminate that haha. Like come on Fizz, why THAT spot?!!


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## frlsgirl

Hmmm that’s strange, seems like something a gelding would do...either that or it’s perfectly normal and my horse is a neat freak. She always poops towards the back of the stall. Generally her poop will be on the right back and pee on the left. The BM always comments that Ana’s stall is the easiest to clean because she’s so meticulous lol


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## Knave

I had a mare like that too. She left what in all appearances was a stud pile. The poop only went in the pile, and the pee was off in its area too.


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## SueC

I hope you bred a few foals from that one, @Knave!  Those genes need to be promoted. It's so handy when horses do that!


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## Knave

I didn’t @SueC! I gave her away as a broodmare to a guy breeding cutting horses. She was an amazing mare, hotter than hot, but super talented. One day when husband and I were first together I went down a bad canyon. When I say bad, it was bad! I was lost and I kept using her extreme athleticism to jump over herself the other direction, like a cat she was. 

Anyways, long in her past she had a bot fly that a vet cut out of her back. He never sewed the muscle back together, just the skin. It scarred closed, but that day what I asked her to do caused that weak spot to split down her ribs. You could feel the hole in her side. The vet knew her, and he said he’d never be able to get it fixed with the way she moved, but she could be bred.

Sadly, I looked up the guy I gave her to (I didn’t know the man, but I knew his brother). He said she she was never able to catch. She had pigeon fever the year before I gave her to him, and I guess it likely sterilized her. Her name was Runt. He said he had to put her down.


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## SueC

Ah yes. It was that mare, how sad. :-(


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## egrogan

That's a sad story @*Knave* , not sure I'd heard that one before :sad:

****************************************
This upcoming week is the first one in what feels like forever that I _don't _have to travel for work, so the weekend felt a little more relaxed. Got to spend lots of time with the horses, which was appreciated. Yesterday, I brought them all up to the barn for dry-out time, and we all had a good experience with lovely husband helping by leading Fizz on her own so I could double up Maggie and Izzy. He and Fizz have really hit it off- it's great to see how relaxed she is when he's around. It makes it so much more mellow for everyone when they come up as a team. 

Izzy just loves being in the barn; she has a nice long munch on her hay, and then heads off for sweet dreams napping, reemerging with cute bedhead. 








And I was so proud of Maggie, yesterday evening I turned back out on my own, so she had to wait in the barn while I took Fizz and Iz down to the pasture. She was not happy about being left, but she walked so nicely back on her own that when she asked me very politely if she could have a bite of grass, I couldn't say no! Even though it's still rather pathetic as far as grass goes...but she seemed to enjoy it (and to be clear, given how fat she is coming out of winter, she definitely doesn't _need _grass!).









This morning I was cleaning stalls and had to laugh when I walked into Fizz's and was greeted with this little sweetheart. I told her I didn't think Fizz was interested in sharing, and sent her on her way. :chicken:









Today I got Fizz out for a ride. It was windy and threatening to storm, and predictably, she was a little "up."


















I had lovely husband walk along the road with us for a little ways in case she got too sassy. About 0.5 mile in, she did start throwing her head around and hopping towards the ditch. I am just at a real low with my confidence, and that's exactly the kind of behavior that makes me want to curl up in a little ball, and that obviously doesn't help anything. So I had him pony ride us another 10 or so strides, and hopped off to work from the ground for awhile. I guess the flip side is that the groundwork seems to be getting pretty good- she follows my speed so attentively, and we've gotten really strong at turns on the forehand/haunches. We tackled some water today, which was made much easier by fresh green grass sprouting up through the middle of it! :wink:









Such a skeptical creature, this one...









She was doing so well, I decided I'd get back on and ride home. So, I hopped back on from a big log that's a perfect mounting block. She stood well and walked home without any incidents. That felt like a good way to end things.









Lovely husband was waiting for us when we got back, and she talked things out with him while I got her untacked.


















Earlier today, I messaged the trainer who's hosting the upcoming clinic, explaining to her what's been going on and how I'm feeling, and her response was: "Sounds like the clinic is coming at the perfect time for you and Fizz. You're going to love it!" I appreciated the optimism, that's what I needed to hear. I am hopeful she's right.


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## PoptartShop

What a nice weekend! I'm sure it was nice to relax for once & enjoy horsey time. 

LOL I love the bed head. :lol: 

Omg, too funny she was in Fizz's stall. How cute! Glad you got to ride Fizz. I understand it's not easy when they act that way, all tense throwing their head up etc. but good for you for not giving up!  If you had to hop off & do some stuff from the ground, that's perfectly fine. You got back on & ended on a good note which is what matters. It's good she is doing well with the groundwork though.  Bit by bit, day by day! It will get better.

So cute! I love that. It's nice to have someone around who is also calming for the horses. I'm glad Maggie did well also! LOL, I can't wait until you have some grass again!! Hurry up spring!


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## egrogan

Ever find yourself out doing chores and just get that _feeling _that someone is right behind you? :grin:








_Inquiring noses want to know...why is the nighttime snack taking so long to procure??_

Today was spring vet exam day. Overall, everyone got a good bill of health- eyes were all good, teeth were all in great shape and no one need any floating. 

-Fizz was not sore or out anywhere from the fence incident, and vet confirmed the hair loss on her leg is the extent of the injury and will likely grow back. 

-Vet was thrilled with how good Izzy looks- great weight and the most slicked up of all three of them. 

-Fizz was judged to be a little pudgy, but that will easily come off with work. 

-She wasn't super impressed with their feet, confirming what I thought I had been seeing as far as toes too long. She actually had used my trimmer in the past, and eventually moved on since she didn't like how long he was leaving her horses' toes. She suggested trying to get him to fix it before firing him outright, but said it may come to that. It's frustrating, but at the same time, it's good to have someone else's opinion on the situation. 

-Everyone got spring shots, blood pulled to recheck Lyme titres, and Maggie and Izzy have blood going off for Cushing's numbers.









So then there's Miss Maggie Moose. She came out of the winter fatter than she went in, with a worryingly cresty neck, and I knew she was too heavy. But, vet put her close to an 8 on the body scale  :hide:  

That was a bit of a wake up call. It's so tough because they haven't touched grass since October, and she's getting 1/4 lb twice daily of a ration balancer with so-so quality hay. That's it. It's hard to cut back when there's so little to cut in the first place. Somewhat counter intuitively, vet suggested upping the ration balancer to close to a lb twice daily, with the thought that it will help her feel fuller and get more concentrated nutrition so her body isn't as likely to be "seeking" nutrition by eating more hay than she needs. She'll clearly need a grazing muzzle when they do eventually get turned out on grass. But when they're just on hay, and mostly hay in nets, it's hard to see how a grazing muzzle could work. I've never had to manage an obese horse before, so this feels a little daunting. But obviously it's something that we need to tackle head on.


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## phantomhorse13

Muzzles are miserable, but not as miserable a laminitis!


Perhaps when the ground finally is more agreeable, you can take Maggie and Izzy out on walks. Or maybe DH is interested in hacking out now and again?


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Muzzles are miserable, but not as miserable a laminitis!
> 
> Perhaps when the ground finally is more agreeable, you can take Maggie and Izzy out on walks. Or maybe DH is interested in hacking out now and again?


Totally agree! I am going to be in the shape of my life with all this horse-walking!!! :clap:

Izzy does well with ground driving, and I am going to connect with Maggie's mom later today to see if she has any experience in lines. I don't think lovely husband is interested in riding, but I keep telling him that because our younger dog is a failed running partner for him (the dog literally just lays down and plays dead :icon_rolleyes, he needs to move on to running with a horse. He could be a killer ride & tie partner if he'd spend a little time in the saddle though!


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## gottatrot

That is one of the most difficult things about horsekeeping...the fact that horses that get along well and could easily be out 24/7 together can often not tolerate the same amount of feed. I've thought that I could keep Hero and Amore out together all the time, but Hero needs a lot of hay and Amore needs only about 5 lbs above what she gets from grazing. So I'd either have a thin Hero if I didn't give them much hay, or a super fat Amore if I gave them enough to keep Hero at a good weight. It sounds very tough when you don't have grass...with grass it is easier because we can separate the horses into corrals at night so they can all eat the appropriate amount of hay. Then during the day they can all graze together, and those that are still fat can wear grazing muzzles.


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## egrogan

@gottatrot, nice to know others have figured out how to manage these different needs :grin:. Even though the rain showers are still continuing off and on, the main pasture has firmed up pretty nicely, and I'm thinking that next week I can start giving them some turnout time. At which point Maggie will go out with a muzzle, or stay on the dry lot side of the fence with the other two out. I think that will be a little easier than trying to regulate her hay with them all turned out together in the sacrifice area. 

They've been spending some time in the barn this week, so their feet get a break from the mud, and they get hayed as needed with nets. It's been cold and miserable here- between 35-40*F, sleet, drizzle, just nasty weather. They sure like getting back outside though!










Fizz is still shedding out her "transitional" dark coat, and continuing to go through some interesting color stages.


















Everyone seems to be ok after all their vaccines yesterday, no swelling or anything (though Maggie is a touch slow, she might be feeling a little off today). Poor vet called me at 8pm last night after she got back to the office and realized two vials of blood had broken, so she had to come back this morning and draw blood from Maggie and Izzy again. Luckily it was quick!


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## SueC

That's a lovely new avatar photo!


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## PoptartShop

Glad the spring exam went well. As for Maggie, don't sweat it too much. A grazing muzzle isn't the end of the world, and she probably won't need it forever.  It is very true though, every horse is different when it comes to nutrition. What works for one may not work for another. Too much grass for one, but just enough for another. LOL. Ah, that sucks about the vials breaking, but at least she was able to come back this morning so it's over with. 

Love the pictures! Especially the rolling one! :lol: Isn't it so cool when they shed? My horse is much much lighter in the summertime, so right now since she's shedding she's like dark and light in certain spots. LOL, so ready for the smooth summer coat.


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> Ah, that sucks about the vials breaking, but at least she was able to come back this morning so it's over with.


Yes, gave the vet some eggs to say thanks for coming back out!

Another drizzly Irish morning here today...no spring in sight.


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## egrogan

My new "body by horsewalking" fitness plan got off to a good start yesterday, when the rain finally stopped. 

First up was Maggie. She hasn't really been away from the herd aside from a few short rides last year, so she was...alert...








She does have really nice ground manners though, so even though she was not thrilled about the whole thing, she listens really well. She called out a lot, particularly once we had turned for home, but it was good to see her moving. I was very proud of her, at one point a huge doe burst out of the woods to our right and sprinted across the road right in front of us, and while she certainly looked, she kept it together. All in all, we went ~2 miles, with a few bursts of trotting thrown in. 










When I turned Maggie back out, Fizz came up to me and practically stuck her head in the halter, so it was clear she wanted a change of scenery. I decided to see what kind of shape our woods trail was in- hadn't been back there since before it snowed. As I expected, it was really wet and boggy, and there were lots more trees down. Since it was pretty hard to navigate, I just let Fizz have the whole length of the lead rope so we could both pick our way through the muck, and that worked out really well. 










Since we didn't go very far that way, I decided to head for the road, tackling the hill of despair for the first time in quite a while. Fizz was _amazing_- she marched right along on a loose lead rope and never even paused in some of her typical "stopping spots." She was so engaged with what we were doing I just decided to keep going.









Since it was the first warmish day we've had in forever, there were a lot of neighbors out, and I got some funny comments. Some predictable ("next time you need to make that horse do more work than you're doing!") and some funny ("ooohhh...is that one real wild so you can't ride him yet??") and some nice ("well THAT's a fancy horse..."). We would stop and talk to neighbors as we passed, and I let her nibble some grass while I was talking, but even that didn't make her plant her feet and refuse to keep going away from home once I was ready. Her attitude was just totally different than it has been.









On our way to Brown's Schoolhouse, I realized the mini donks that live along the way were out in their field right up against the road. I think I saw them before she did, but once she saw them, she made it clear she had not seen donkeys before and did not like what she saw. The snorts coming out of her sounded like a blowhorn. While at first she planted her feet to stare, with a little bit of turning-on-the forehand and then moving out at a brisk trot, we went by them. We turned around shortly later, and went passed them again, which also got a lot of animated snorting. I was sort of glad to have done that for the first time from the ground rather than from the saddle!









By the time we got home, I realized we'd gone nearly 4 miles, and she had never stalled out anywhere except to contemplate the donkeys. I was pretty exhausted myself. On the last big uphill right before home, I needed to stop and catch my breath, and she stood politely to wait with me even though I know she was ready to be home. All in all, it was a great day with her, gave me hope that her curiosity is still in there and we have more adventures ahead of us!


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## SueC

These are beautiful photos, @egrogan!  And no snow or fog, for a change! You must be looking forward to sunny weather by now. By the way, did your sheds end up flooding much during the snow melt?

How great that both Maggie and Fizz had positive outings with you!  It's certainly a great way to get fit, while working to break down your mares' herd-boundness and showing Fizz the surroundings. Don't worry about silly comments by people; they're just comments made by unthinking, ignorant people. I've had the same whenever people see me walking a horse in hand, or off my horse to stretch my legs a bit when on a ride: _What's the matter, too scared to ride? Fell off and can't get on again without a ladder? Horse bit old, is he?_ ...some people just say stupid things. Brett wants to wear a badge that says, "Misanthrope".. :rofl:

I love Fizz's dapples! 

I've just added a clip of how Sunsmart and my late Arabian mare, and Romeo, reacted when we got our first batch of donkeys in 2012. It's hilarious....


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> By the way, did your sheds end up flooding much during the snow melt?


Unfortunately, the sheds didn't fair particularly well in the melt (which we knew would happen). Right now, one is usable and approximately half of another is not a sucking mudpit- and the rest are just totally flooded with pools of water on top of deep mud. They need to be raised and have the footing improved. In fact, that's the case for most of the paddock. At this point, I'd say the consistency is approximating damp modeling clay. It's nasty, but there is really just nothing we can do but wait for things to dry enough for our friend with the right heavy equipment to be able to get back there without getting stuck himself. We have another week of rain forecast (except today), so who knows how much longer we'll be waiting. It's not a good situation, hence horses spending more time in the barn than I'd like because their feet just need a break.



> I've just added a clip of how Sunsmart and my late Arabian mare, and Romeo, reacted when we got our first batch of donkeys in 2012. It's hilarious....


 Haha, loved it. And actually, I was able to think of you and your donkey parades when Fizz was worried and that helped me just laugh at her and tell her she'd be fine, horses around the world have donkey friends on their walks! onkey:

*******************************
Yesterday Fizz and I took a nice hack around our fields to see how soggy everything was. 









There are still many sections where the water is just sitting on the surface because there's nowhere for it to go, but overall things were a little better than I expected. Lovely husband needs to mow back the prickery bushes that are starting to pop up in one of the fields and then we'll be putting up new fence to give the horses another 6ish acre turnout, which can't happen soon enough. It's still a little too wet in that field for the tractor though, so I'm not sure, maybe a couple more weeks depending on how bad the rain is this week?

Everything is still grey and brown here, we are begging for spring.


















It was a good ride. At one point we went past the barn, where Maggie was calling for her, and I knew she was going to try to make a turn for home rather than pass it. This also coincided with going through a particularly bad section of standing water. But I was able to take a quick look around and realize that there was really nothing around that was going to be dangerous if we had to have a discussion- we weren't in the road or near a steep ditch or on a narrow trail in the woods. We were just in the middle of the field. So, if she needed to dance around a little left, right, forward, backward- we had the space for that. She tried her typical maneuver, planting her feet and refusing. When I urged her on, she started backing up. That was fine but hard work for her as that had her backing up a hill, so she gave that up pretty fast. I could get her to yield her haunches, so movement was good, even if not in the "right" direction at first. But for a few tries, when we got pointed in the direction I wanted to go, away from the barn, she'd stop again. It really just took a few attempts though, and since I was generally able to keep her head pointed where I wanted, she gave me a big sigh and headed off through the water to the next field. Gave her lots of praise and told her what a good girl she was. Felt great to ride that out successfully, and we arrived home both in good spirits.

I also took Maggie out walking through the fields for a bit. She was still not thrilled about being taken away from the others, but she survived.

Unfortunately Fizz's stallwalking was particularly bad the rest of the afternoon. Taking Maggie out probably made things worse, but even just having Izzy in the aisle in cross ties was very anxiety producing for her. She'd grab a bite of hay from the net, pace an anxious circle, take another bite, pace, and on and on for probably a couple of hours. She almost never stopped and just stood still. I really hate watching her when she gets like that.


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## Tazzie

Ok, I know it's probably not the "correct" way to help solve the stall walking issue, but it's one that worked for Diego (who was frantic and wouldn't stop to eat). I finally got so fed up I tied him so he couldn't walk. I didn't leave him unattended, but I made him stop and think. First time he still swung his butt around a bit (he ties super well and doesn't test the lead), but then he heaved a sigh. I released him, and he stood eating quietly. We've had to do this off and on for various things, but it's helped him realize he is in fact. He had a very traumatic experience in a stall where someone hung blackout curtains to keep him from screaming, and it freaked him out severely. It was just an idea that may or may not help.

But I love following your adventures! I do so hope you don't give up on Fizz. I do think she's a wonderful partner, and I think once the weather is nicer you guys will have a lot of fun adventures!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> Ok, I know it's probably not the "correct" way to help solve the stall walking issue, but it's one that worked for Diego (who was frantic and wouldn't stop to eat). I finally got so fed up I tied him so he couldn't walk. I didn't leave him unattended, but I made him stop and think. First time he still swung his butt around a bit (he ties super well and doesn't test the lead), but then he heaved a sigh. I released him, and he stood eating quietly. We've had to do this off and on for various things, but it's helped him realize he is in fact. He had a very traumatic experience in a stall where someone hung blackout curtains to keep him from screaming, and it freaked him out severely. It was just an idea that may or may not help.


Oohh....poor Diego. Thanks for sharing that advice. I don't fully trust Fizz hard tying (I know, I know...huge training gap) but there is a tie ring in the stall where I could loop a short lead to see if that would help at all. My old BO really felt she had "claustrophobia" type issues, as anything where she's very confined or restricted seems to amp up her anxiety (and BO is not the type to make excuses for horses). 

We're heading to the clinic this week, and this issue of "confinement anxiety" is something I shared with the clinician as one of the biggest things I'd like to try to work on. The trainer who's hosting the clinic is coming to pick Fizz up on Wednesday morning, and I'm interested to hear her take as she'll be trailering her and getting her settled in without me there. The clinic doesn't start until Thursday morning, so Fizz will essentially be boarding for a day before and a day after it's over since the trainer has been kind enough to trailer us there and back. It will be fascinating to get her take on Fizz's behavior without me physically there and influencing her!  I'm really looking forward to the whole experience though. Lovely husband and I keep joking that we have to get ready to "send our baby off to camp"- and all the emotions that come with it!


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## carshon

So excited to hear about the clinic. You have more rides in than I do this year. We had a nice weekend but I had to mow so I did not get to ride at all. We are expecting more heavy rain this week on top of the 5 inches we had last week so riding is not in my future it would seem.

Happy that your ride with Fizz was confidence boosting. The clinic should help a lot with those issues. Can't wait for updates!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> Oohh....poor Diego. Thanks for sharing that advice. I don't fully trust Fizz hard tying (I know, I know...huge training gap) but there is a tie ring in the stall where I could loop a short lead to see if that would help at all. My old BO really felt she had "claustrophobia" type issues, as anything where she's very confined or restricted seems to amp up her anxiety (and BO is not the type to make excuses for horses).


Izzie doesn't tie well either thanks to someone teaching her she can break halters, so I get it. We've made sure Diego doesn't learn that trick, and he's honestly good. But it shocked me when I did it and he took a deep breath and was just like "I'm ok, it's all ok". It really grounded him. I'm not saying it's the best method, but it's one that did work on him. But I get it. Izzie has some claustrophobia issues too, though not to that extreme. What does Fizz do when you're in the stall with her? I know it'd be long and laborious, but what about hanging with her in the stall for a bit, with short breaks where she's on her own.


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## QueenofFrance08

Love the donkey story. We have a few mules competing in MN and some of the horses are just terrified of them. There's a draft mule who did a few rides last year and a few of the horses would run the other direction if they saw her!!!


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## PoptartShop

Finally no rain or snow!  I would be very proud of Maggie too, for her not being out much lately & listening so well, that is great. Even seeing a doe! She's so cute. Love that face. Fizz's colors are so neat right now! I think it's good that you took her out & she behaved as you talked to the neighbors. Gotta love all the commentary! :lol: I am very happy you had a positive day with both of them, especially Fizz, because I know you were feeling a bit discouraged lately. At least the most she did was snort, LOL!

What a great day!  It's nice to not be in the saddle sometimes. Doing stuff on the ground is very beneficial.

I know you are dying for spring. Glad you had a good ride on her too, after having such a nice handwalking session the other day. Happy to hear you pushed through it & you didn't let her win. Good girl Fizz!!!!
You will have an amazing time at the clinic, that will be such a good experience!!


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## egrogan

Tazzie said:


> What does Fizz do when you're in the stall with her? I know it'd be long and laborious, but what about hanging with her in the stall for a bit, with short breaks where she's on her own.


 Hmmm....that's a really interesting question. I'm not sure I've actually spent much time in there with her other than haltering/unhaltering or picking out poop. If I go in to do that, I'd say usually she comes up to see if I have peppermints, and if I don't, she goes back to the hay. I can definitely try what you suggest though and see. 

I've also thought about putting up a stall guard so I could leave the door open and she potentially wouldn't feel as enclosed. I'm pretty sure she'd bust through it, but I don't think she'd do anything but end up surprising herself standing out in the aisle or, at worst, eating grass by the barn door.  The stall doors are on hinges, not sliders, so it's sort of awkward and dangerous to leave them open though, since then they're then protruding out into the aisle.


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## SueC

Sitting on the side of a nice fragrant pile of hay while your horse is eating, letting it sniff you, and occasionally giving it a nice scratch is one of the great pleasures of life. The sound of a horse eating hay is very calming and meditative!


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## Tazzie

egrogan said:


> Hmmm....that's a really interesting question. I'm not sure I've actually spent much time in there with her other than haltering/unhaltering or picking out poop. If I go in to do that, I'd say usually she comes up to see if I have peppermints, and if I don't, she goes back to the hay. I can definitely try what you suggest though and see.
> 
> I've also thought about putting up a stall guard so I could leave the door open and she potentially wouldn't feel as enclosed. I'm pretty sure she'd bust through it, but I don't think she'd do anything but end up surprising herself standing out in the aisle or, at worst, eating grass by the barn door.  The stall doors are on hinges, not sliders, so it's sort of awkward and dangerous to leave them open though, since then they're then protruding out into the aisle.


Stall guards helped Diego a lot too since it allowed him to see what was going on. They are actually sturdier than they appear. Diego has put his full weight on one and it didn't budge (he wasn't caught, he was being nosey lol)

But I hope something helps her! It's never fun watching them be miserable doing stuff


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## egrogan

One thing I love about working from home is catching random glimpses of cute horses out the window. It was beautiful and sunny all day, and they all took turns lounging around soaking it up. This is a poor quality pic because I took it with my cell phone camera from up in the house, but you can just make out Fizz flat out in the front of the pasture, Izzy dozing behind her in the shed, and Maggie...eating :icon_rolleyes: 










Yesterday also reminded me that if New Englanders aren't complaining about sleet, ice, snow, rain, or mud, we're complaining about BUGS! :rofl: We can always find something to be grumpy about. I guess we're just wired that way.


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## egrogan

Fizz left for horse camp this morning and arrived safely at the farm:loveshower:
For all you parents who have sent your human kids off to camp or college, I don't know how you do it. I was up at 5am this morning to make sure I had all her bags and supplies packed properly and wouldn't forget anything she needed!









I couldn't be happier with how she loaded on the trailer- she actually just walked right on like it was no big deal at all. 









Izzy called out from the field once she was on, so she got a little restless and we didn't waste time chatting, we just got her locked up and sent on her way.









Trainer, M, said that she was a little sweaty coming off the trailer when they arrived, but not terrible. She's settled right in and is very curious about her new neighbors. 









I feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve, it's going to be a struggle to get through work today while I hurry up and wait for tomorrow to get here. I'm so excited!

Meanwhile, Izzy and Maggie haven't stopped racing around the paddock calling for her since she left two hours ago. Lovely husband declared that this could be a great thing for Maggie's weight loss program


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## phantomhorse13

Aren't horses amazing? I hate you close up but OMG YOU'RE GONE!!


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Aren't horses amazing? I hate you close up but OMG YOU'RE GONE!!


 EXACTLY! This morning while I was waiting for the trailer to get here, I was out grooming Fizz loose in the paddock after they had breakfast, and Izzy annoyingly kept coming up to her and nosing her in the flank to get her to move so she could get the grooming :icon_rolleyes:


Fizz left a little before 11am, Maggie and Iz haven't let up yet. I went out awhile ago to throw them so more hay, thinking it would distract them, but NOPE! Every now and then I can hear pathetic neighing while I'm sitting at my desk.


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## carshon

How exciting - the clinic is almost here. As someone who just introduced a new horse to the herd we are experiencing much the same thing. They want to chase her around but as soon as I took her where they could not see her they raised the roof with all of the calling out and running around!

Have fun! The other 2 will settle down.


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## egrogan

Ohhh.. @carshon...you have a new horse?!?! Did I miss an introduction?? Please share more! :grin:

You know Izzy is upset when she is so beside herself she can barely eat her dinner. Poor thing would take one bite from her pan in the shed, wheel around and trot to the gate neighing, come back for another bite, run back to the gate, and on and on. She did eventually finish her food, but they've barely touched any hay all day. For some reason this scenario has also thrown Izzy into raging heat and in the midst of all the running around and screaming, she's also peeing all over everything in her path :icon_rolleyes:

_Yes mom, I CAN walk and chew and the same time!!!_


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## egrogan

Back from the clinic. The clinician, Lindsey Partridge, has a program she calls Harmony Horsemanship. She has a lot of stuff online so if anyone is interested, you can check it out. Short version: it was amazing, I learned so much about myself and Fizz, realized we have a lot of "basics" to work on but see a manageable path that is within my skill level, and feel really optimistic about the future with Fizz.

I've got a lot of thoughts and reflections swirling around so will try to summarize here in a long version for those who are interested. :smile: Harmony Horsemanship combines a lot of ideas that will be familiar here, but is generally focused on Positive Reinforcement, with Negative Reinforcement or Positive Punishment added when needed (e.g., removing an irritating "bump bump bump" or adding a gentle circling of a rope that touches the horse if they refuse to go forward). The whole idea is "to create a yes horse" by breaking things down into very basic steps when the horse is learning something new, and rewarding liberally when she figures out the steps. When the horse realizes you're asking for an attempt to try and always let them know when they got the right answer, they really start looking to you when things are confusing or tough because they are confident you are there to help them figure it out, not to berate them for trying the wrong thing. The mantra was: _I ask...You try...I reward_. All made a lot of sense, and watching very different types of horses learn new things using these same techniques, it was very clear that it can work. In fact, Fizz was probably the "slowest" learner of the bunch, and even she would eventually get things figured out. (Side note: the one thing that probably made me most emotional this weekend was hearing the clinician jokingly tell Fizz she was pretty but not very smart :hide: Tells you something about me I think!!)

I couldn't help but think about years of HF conversations when we got to a section of the course titled "Ask, Tell, ... " In this course, the answer following ... was never "DEMAND." Rather, it was "figure out _why _your horse is saying no, and respond accordingly." We talked through the 4 most common reasons why a horse would say "no," and then strategies for each scenario:
1. They are _scared_...so, _wait _and let them give you a signal they are ready for their next try, like an ear flick or a sigh, and then ask again
2. They _don't understand_...so, _clarify _by figuring out what you can do to make your message more clear
3. They _don't want to_...so, _motivate _them, which could include both annoying and rewarding, either by using rhythmic pressure to ask or figuring out something surprising to change the conversation and giving them a chance to try again
4. They _physically can't_...so, _adjust_ the scenario so it's something they actually can do with enough space or enough comfort in their body to be successful

I'll say I went into the weekend thinking that the thing that made Fizz a "no horse" was that she would generally have a tantrum when she was in #3, "I don't want to"- and she does have some of that. But, it was illuminating to me that she actually has more of #2, "I don't understand" than I expected. I guess _I _didn't understand what she was telling me! This was really clarified on the last day, which I will get to.

DAY 1
Day 1 introduced using passive leadership for respect and safety, plus the "calm connection" exercises. The passive leadership exercises are all about understanding basic horse body language, drive lines, quadrants of pressure and how these things relate to how you interact with the horse, asking the question, "is your horse leading you, or are you leading your horse? And, do you even know?" This is stuff I've generally never been good at even though I've heard these concepts before. I don't have great body awareness and it was hard for me to "get it" through a lecture, and even through watching demonstrations with other horses, but once I had someone literally walk around with me and explain the concepts while I moved around a horse, it made more sense. In fact, I'd go home in the evenings and practice with Izzy and Maggie loose in the field, and since they are both so much more reactive than Fizz, they were probably the best teachers of this concept, because they gave perfectly clear feedback when I "got it" and also when I messed it up!

We also covered "calm connection" exercises, and I won't bore you with all 8 of them in a lot of detail, but in summary, it was using various exercises to work on driving and drawing the horse, with some options for movement for horses that are a little "up" and need to move their feet as well as some that are stationary for horses that are in a calmer place. All are done with the goal of getting relaxation and understanding, so you might do them for several minutes until you get to relaxation, or you might do them once and then move on because the horse is there with you. All very flexible depending on how the horse responds. The exercises, which can be done from the ground or in the saddle, are:
1. Square
2. S pattern
3. Boomerang
4. 360* with a twist
5. Spiral
6. Move with me and yield

If you're really interested, she's got videos of them all posted. Here is a little video she posted of my group working on calm connection exercises from the ground during day 1:




You get a quick glimpse of Fizz and I in the back corner :wink: That little paint filly was Fizz's neighbor for the weekend, and she was a sassy little thing. Two years old and just getting started - her teenage owner did a great job with her all weekend.

Fizz found relaxation pretty quickly day 1!




































I loved how well she adjusted to the new barn environment overall. I think she likes the "busy-ness" of a barn with a lot of activity, it's good for her busy mind. Gives me confidence about taking her out to an event, I think lots of horses and people around are actually a good thing for her and calm her rather than overwhelm her. Her pen was right next to the entrance to the arena, so she was always right in the middle of the action and seemed to thrive on that!


















Off to work meetings now, so to be continued...


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## egrogan

DAY 2
Day 2 was also a groundwork day. We started by reviewing the "energy scale" which felt a lot like what we know of as the temperament ratings you might see in a sale ad:
"Yellow" horses are scored 1-3
"Green" horses are 4-6
"Red" horses are 7-9
"Black" horses are 10.
You want to know where the horse is when they are green, which is their general temperament when they are in a thinking/open to learning state. All horses have the ability to get to green, even if they "live" in the other zones. As you might guess, 1-3 are your steddy eddy beginner bombproofers; 7-9 are high energy, not scared, but on the precipice of moving to fear and panic if pushed; 10s are truly in freak out, dangerous to self and others mode. When you look at your greens, 4s are pretty low energy but open to new learning, which makes good beginner horses, where your 6s are sensitive and ready to respond to the slightest cue. I'll post some videos where people are saying "she's a 4" or "he's a 6," and it comes from this concept. What I learned: in the ring and on the ground, Fizz is a 4 and looks lazy and low energy. Interestingly, in the saddle, she's more of a 6ish. I think much of my lack of confidence comes from this inconsistency and some unpredictability- if she's a 4, that's cool, I can relax and be confident, but if _she's_ a 6, then it makes _me _anxious and we reinforce each other's anxiety.

We also learned a few cool cranial sacral release moves and got to see how very different horses responded to them. Fizz particularly responded to the "wither rock" exercise, which makes sense as a frequent problem (well documented in this journal :wink is getting "stuck" and refusing to go forward. I also realized that when she's anxious, part of her internalizing is that she holds her breath (she showed me this on the cross ties tacking up the next day) so there's another move where you place your hand along their back and on their belly, and let your fingers expand every time they exhale, slowly opening your fingers more to encourage them to breath deeper vs. shallower. It's neat to see that body awareness grow.

We spent the day working from the ground on what were called the "8 ABCs"- basically, a set of ground exercises to isolate and move body parts (the 8 moves are: up, down, forward, back, sideways, shoulders, haunches, and neutral (e.g., don't move)). Here is Fizz learning how to move her shoulders with Lindsey:




I found this section very cool because I was so unsuccessful at getting to even basic movement of the haunches when I was working on this a lot while we were still at the boarding barn. It certainly wasn't perfect, but she was doing it. Such a great feeling.

These exercises were also tied to the "create a yes horse" concept, which is the intentional positive reinforcement part of the course- we used lots of treats but also lots of scratches, both paired with the word "YES" enthusiastically delivered to reinforce the right behavior and start to move away from always physically treating. And a note on treats, I don't mind using them and didn't go in feeling like it was always the greatest thing given potential to get pushy and rude about it, but I am much more open to it now as Lindsey was super clear that if a horse gets rude, you just address that behavior and teaching them that being mouthy or pocket sniffing just isn't allowed. She also highlighted times when using treats is of maximum utility:
1. Something new
2. Something particularly challenging
3. Something done exceptionally well
4. Something of high value to you (e.g., mounting from a stump)
It's not a bribe and it's not something to beg the horse to come back to green from red or black. Again, common sense stuff, but it does make sense to me.

My enthusiasm waned a little bit in the afternoon when Lindsey used Fizz as a demo horse for combining two movements- sideways and forward. The basic idea was to ask the horse to walk forward, tip their head to the outside so they would cross over their front feet and then follow through by swinging their haunches out away from the wall, ending perpendicular to it. A couple of other horses in our group demo'd it before Fizz, but they were much more responsive and figured out how to combine the moves very quickly (e.g., less than a minute). Fair warning, it took Fizz 27 minutes to kind of sort of figure it out- here's an edited down clip (to 14 minute) of her working through figuring it out. This is where Lindsey told her she pretty but wasn't that bright :wink:




In all seriousness though, this was the last activity of the day and I admit I left feeling frustrated. I think it was because it felt like Fizz wasn't even trying or showing any curiosity in figuring things out. Seeing her plant her feet and pull back and rush backwards was frustrating, though I guess a little affirming in that she did it with Lindsey too. In the moment, I interpreted her reactions as "I don't want to" ... but by the end of the weekend, I think I left in a place where I understood what she was showing was NOT just "stubbornness" but actually her frustration and anxiety when she doesn't understand something. 

To be continued, with Day 3...


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## carshon

Love this!!!!


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## egrogan

Day 3
On Saturday, we got in the saddle for a bit- yay! I wasn't sure how Fizz would be for tacking up in a strange place, but I used some of the exercises and "yes horse" strategies from the day before, and she stood very nicely in her pen with the lead looped through the panel and no "confinement anxiety." Very pleased with that!









We started by learning the mounted version of all the calm connection exercises. Fizz was much livelier under saddle, and I have to wonder how much of that was me being a little edgier, with my typical stage fright from riding in front of people and some anxiety around learning the new maneuvers with 5 other horses in the ring??



















Not surprisingly, some of the sideways/yielding exercises were hard for her, and getting good crossover steps either front or back is challenging. But she got a lot of praise when she was trying, which she did.

I had decided that one thing I really wanted to be able to do at least once over the weekend was ride her out to the road, away from the barn, when I caught her in a moment of "green," calm and relaxed and ready to try something new. Since she was good during the ridden session, I decided to try right after that. She was a little apprehensive heading down the driveway away from the other horses, and a little "up" when we got on the other side of trees and she could no longer see the farm. Still, we rode- at the walk- away from the barn, practiced some of our calming exercises until she was calmER, and then turned back. 

















Once we got back closer to the barn, she first got really jiggy and nervously trotted down the driveway. I asked her to stop that, so she did the whole stalling out/not moving routine, and the host trainer, M, noticed we were having trouble and came out to help. In that sense, I was glad that the ride had gotten a little dicey, as I had someone there to help. We got unstuck but every time we rode toward the barn she got super bracy and fast, so we did one of the circling exercises to try to find relaxation again. It took a few minutes, and a lot of circles with her popping her shoulder out trying to pull me back to the barn, before things calmed back down to a reasonable walk and a halt that didn't involve running through the bit. It wasn't comfortable, but again, having someone to talk me through it was really great. While that was all happening, I got talking to M about the root causes of my lack of confidence, and she invited me to leave Fizz at the barn this week and participate in a clinic next weekend which builds on the current clinic but focuses a lot more on the human's confidence and body awareness, which I think is what we both probably need. So, obviously it's a little more money laid out, but since she was already there, and I don't have to worry about transportation, I decided to go for it. And, M will do a couple of short training rides with her during the week just to work on the barn sour stuff and I'll try to get down there for at least one lesson.

And- I got scolded a little for putting Fizz in that situation and not setting her up for success. :hide: M keeps telling me I want to take her to college when she's still in high school. I had to admit she's not wrong :wink:

In the afternoon, we learned some basics of liberty work. The basic premise was that we'd release our horse into an open space, spend a little time observing their behavior- energy level, magnets that drew them, places they avoided- and then select from a set of "games" to try to draw their attention to us and get them to come in and connect. From there, still with the horse loose, we'd pick three of the ABC activities we practiced the day before and do them. This part was actually sort of easy for us, as I spend so much time working with all three of my girls in the pasture loose- blanketing, grooming, basic first aid stuff, etc. Fizz explored the paddock briefly and then came right to me without me actually doing any of the "games." 













Other folks had horses that took off like a rocket when the halter came off and were really upset, while others had horses that were super ready for free time and wanted to roll and sniff poop and do their own thing. So it was fun to watch them use some of the more active games to get their horses to come in to them- which all of them eventually did without taking too much time.

When I got home that night, I decided to try some of the games out with Maggie and Izzy in the pasture. They are so much more reactive than Fizz that they were very in tune to energy and "draw" from me and picked up on what I was asking right away. I had some fun moments with each of them, and did some of the "yes horse" activities too, and once they saw treats involved they were super interested to see what I was going to do next. I left them both standing at the gate asking me to come back when I finished feeding them, which was really neat to see as they obviously hadn't spent any time doing any special practice or preparation.



















And on to Day 4...


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## Knave

I am so glad you had fun at the clinic, and that Fizz was mostly good!

Don’t be discouraged if she’s considered a little dumb. Dumb is a good thing in my opinion with horses! It might take them longer to learn it, but it is more of a solid thing when they do. They aren’t fluid in thought as much, so everything doesn’t cause them to change their opinion.

I had a horse who took forever to learn things. Seriously, I was probably more than a year or two behind everyone else. That horse, when he learned, was the most solid type you could imagine. He was handy too, extremely light bodied and mouthed, and my little family loved him most. It was a chore learning to teach him, but he taught me more about horsemanship than any other horse I had ridden before or since.

So, don’t get discouraged about her. She is the best kind in the end.


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## egrogan

DAY 4
Day 4 was our choice: ground work or ridden. I decided to ride again. The focus was on building confidence in our horses to deal with new situations. This session introduced a few strategies: 
1. Use the calm connection exercises we'd already learned
2. "Boomerang" by using circling to get the horse close to the scary object, retreat to give them a breather, decrease the size of the circle to get closer, etc.
3. Touch it- actually let the horse go up to the thing and step on it, touch with their nose, etc.
4. Go all around it _without _letting the horse look at or touch the scary thing, teaching them that sometimes things will be scary and it's not up to them to confront it, they have to trust you to keep them safe.

It was a miserable, cold morning with steady rain, so since her pen was uncovered, we got tacked up in the barn. I have to admit, I was worried about this as I asked her to stand on crossties in a pretty cramped space, with two horses in stalls behind her where she couldn't really see them. However, we again used some of the "yes horse" strategies and she stood stock still the whole time, even when I walked across the barn to grab tack. Again, such a cool feeling to see the strategies working!









In this session, we had some fun and got to walk across a wooden bridge and a narrow pedestal. Fizz has never done those kinds of obstacles before and she was very brave. She walked over the bridge in both directions no big deal. The pedestal was harder, I think because it was tall and narrow, so we had to do some negotiation to get over it, but with coaching we were successful and did it a bunch of times. 

And, in the afternoon, we each got the opportunity to pick one thing to work on with Lindsey in a solo mini-lesson of 10-15 minutes. Since it was so nasty out, I didn't want to ask this lovely pregnant lady to go out in the rain and work on riding away from the barn, so I decided to focus on getting a calm, relaxed downward transition.

We started by simply asking her to give to pressure and be willing to release her head down, which involved some work from the ground and some backing up to encourage her to keep her nose down while backing. I wasn't totally sure about this as "nose down" isn't exactly what I care about, but more just being able to ask lightly for a woah and not having her shoot her head up and try to plow through the bit. I was also really apprehensive about adding rein back to a halt as I think someone in her past did that to her as punishment, and when I first got her she'd do that as an evasion on the trail when she didn't want to stop her feet moving- and I hate that flying backwards when it's not safe. But, I was willing to go along with it and understand that this is an early step of getting to something else down the line. It's a little ugly as we work on the building blocks, but it gets softer as we go. And, we had an interesting conversation about "don't understand" vs. "don't want to," which helped me reframe a lot of my interpretation of why she does what she does.




I had been hoping to also do at least trot-walk transitions, but Lindsey's take was that we simply weren't ready for that, and working through walk/halt needed more time. 

It was hard to leave her there last night, knowing she'll be there all week, but I left feeling really positive and optimistic- which is the best possible outcome!! :clap:

Also, I can't end without a little photo spam of the adorable foal that was born last week. She's a sweet little buckskin Morgan-Lusitano cross that was endlessly entertaining and certainly got tons of attention all week! Could she be any cuter??


























^Her little coat!!!!! :loveshower:


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## egrogan

Woke up to this version of "spring" in Vermont :icon_rolleyes:
















Trainer M got Fizz out yesterday for a short ride and she did well. I am hoping to get down there tomorrow morning to ride her.


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## Knave

Ick! My littlest girl said it was forecasted to snow this week and I said I was going to throw something at her face.  

I understand your pain. Sometimes I wish I lived in a place that had real seasons, not half the year or more in winter. It gets frustrating sometimes. Oh, how it makes us enjoy the weather change though...

I am sure that in Vermont it makes for really green and beautiful summers!


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## egrogan

Hahaha, @Knave, too funny about your daughter. Everyone here seems to agree this is the worst spring in memory, even for the old timers. I heard on the news that today's temp is the coldest mid-May temp recorded in Vermont for 100 years. Something is truly out of whack. We do typically have four real seasons, but the last two years spring has been almost non-existent, and last year we didn't get a true fall, it just went from steamy and humid into winter. I desperately hope this isn't the "new normal."


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## QueenofFrance08

I have a hard time liking your post since that's what my world looked like last week! Hopefully like ours it goes away fast!


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## carshon

I am so impressed with the training you received and the video of the trainer riding Miss Fizz. What a nice gift to see her being ridden and being so soft. I am sure it was hard to leave her but I think the rewards will out weigh the concern.

Keep posting your updates! I really find this interesting.


And snow? OMG! it is colder than normal here too and a lot of rain. We are forecast to go from low 40's in the AM to 50's this week and then on Thursday it is supposed to be mid 80'S!


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## gottatrot

Enjoying your posts about the clinic. Good stuff!


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## frlsgirl

Thank you for sharing a such detailed write up about the clinic. That’s interesting with the difference colors and ratings. I think the handlers story also influences the horse and how it experiences life with you. It’s interesting to observe barn mates with their horses; the ones that are very dramatic, compared to the ones that are very low key. 

And OMG the foal is adorable!


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## Tazzie

Ok, so I have a question :lol:

In the video where the trainer was working on the forward and sideways exercise... will you explain this to me more? Perhaps I'm missing the point, but to me it looked like she wanted Fizz to move into her and the swinging rope, so moving into "pressure". Which is opposite of a lot of typical training techniques (typically you have them move away from pressure). I'm genuinely curious about it, and have sat on it all night since a friend sees it as a good exercise and I'm left confused :hide:


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## PoptartShop

Very interesting about the clinic, it sounds like you had a lovely time.  Omg, the foal is so adorable! And yucky about the snow...why oh why. 

I wanna know the answer to @Tazzie 's question as well, as I always have the horse move away from pressure as well. I've never seen it done like that before. Interested in the response!


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## egrogan

Woohoo journal working again. Phew! (and thanks tech team)

@Tazzie, I need to think about how to answer your question a little more, but the gist is that we were trying to break things down rather than ask all the pieces to come together all at once- the biggest step being that Fizz was soooooo lethargic that she was not even willing to go forward through most of the activity. Swinging the rope through the "9:00 drive line" (e.g., crossing her left girth area) was, at least I think, intended to just keep her thinking forward. Sideways couldn't come until forward did. I edited this video down quite a bit because it was really a half hour of standing their watching her stalled out with little momentum, so it may not fully paint the picture. Also, I realized while I was watching that the angle where I was standing made it hard to see when she did try to cross over her legs, so that doesn't help.



I will see if I can find a video of her doing this with a more responsive horse- wish I had video of the two horses before Fizz, they just walked snappily down the wall, light tilt of the nose to the wall and and ask to step over, and that was pretty much it. No rope circling with them as they marched right along.


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## frlsgirl

egrogan said:


> DAY 2
> 
> My enthusiasm waned a little bit in the afternoon when Lindsey used Fizz as a demo horse for combining two movements- sideways and forward. The basic idea was to ask the horse to walk forward, tip their head to the outside so they would cross over their front feet and then follow through by swinging their haunches out away from the wall, ending perpendicular to it. A couple of other horses in our group demo'd it before Fizz, but they were much more responsive and figured out how to combine the moves very quickly (e.g., less than a minute). Fair warning, it took Fizz 27 minutes to kind of sort of figure it out- here's an edited down clip (to 14 minute) of her working through figuring it out. This is where Lindsey told her she pretty but wasn't that bright :wink:
> https://youtu.be/sTaCpExTzD0
> In all seriousness though, this was the last activity of the day and I admit I left feeling frustrated. I think it was because it felt like Fizz wasn't even trying or showing any curiosity in figuring things out. Seeing her plant her feet and pull back and rush backwards was frustrating, though I guess a little affirming in that she did it with Lindsey too. In the moment, I interpreted her reactions as "I don't want to" ... but by the end of the weekend, I think I left in a place where I understood what she was showing was NOT just "stubbornness" but actually her frustration and anxiety when she doesn't understand something.
> 
> To be continued, with Day 3...


Fizz is like "hey lady, no cookie, me no work, got it?" 

Seriously though, Fizz did take a half step sideways towards her and the trainer missed that she even said that she missed that; otherwise it wouldn't have taken so long. It just seems like Fizz is off in her own little world and can't really pay attention because she's so busy auditing everything around her. It's very typical mare behavior, it doesn't mean that she's not smart. She's just trying to multi task; mostly watching her surroundings and occasionally trying to figure out what the human wants.


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## gottatrot

Agree with @frlsgirl. I could not conclude anything about a horse's intelligence from that video (I finally had time to watch it). 

Fizz was very calm, which was good since to me the woman's cues were very vague and if I were a horse I would have thought the woman just wanted me to keep standing and then following her, which seemed a very boring exercise. Many horses would have been frustrated, and I wondered if the woman had often been run over when she stood in front of the horse and then raised the rope. But for a horse of Fizz's persuasion, it appeared as though she was giving the trainer the benefit of the doubt (she's swinging a rope for some reason, but wants me to ignore it, perhaps this is desensitization training). To me it appeared not that Fizz was dull, but that the trainer wasn't reading Fizz's energy level, and if she wanted Fizz to move she needed to let her know that with more persuasive body language. Hers appeared meant to not startle an unhandled two year old. 

Perhaps the baby steps of the exercise would be necessary for a high energy horse. For Fizz, perhaps some forward momentum, with direction on the halter/lead to show her that she was supposed to move her front end tightly toward the wall, and more body language such as a raised hand to show her to swing her hind end out.

The backward movement was good, because Fizz was understanding she was supposed to move. Now she just needed to figure out what direction.


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## Tazzie

I would definitely be interested in seeing a more responsive horse do that. I sat there going "I think Izzie would fail this horribly too since she's taught to move away from pressure..." I really don't think Fizz is dumb either. And it could very well be the angle it was shot at. I am still genuinely curious since it isn't something I've seen prior (I just hope you don't think I'm sitting here going "this is a terrible exercise!" because I'm not!)


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## egrogan

Haha @Tazzie, no offense taken at all. I think it's pretty clear that this is not an exercise we will be using frequently since neither Fizz nor I seem to understand it very well :wink: I couldn't find a video of this technique that wasn't behind a paywall, but Lindsey did ask me to send her the video of Fizz as it sounded like she was going to put together a mash up of Fizz and a couple of other "easier" horses for her YouTube channel. I'll keep an eye out to see if it posts eventually. I can also ask trainer M if she has video from another horse, she might.

M seems to be enjoying having Fizz there. She took her on a group trail ride the other day and had another good ride with her. She was very complimentary, saying Fizz is the kind of sensible, good tempered Morgan so many people are looking for but can't seem to find (she's been involved in Morgans for years). That was nice to hear, and is more reinforcement that if I can get my head on straight again (which I think I can!) we're going to have a lot of fun out on the trails. That's a lot of what we'll focus on in the clinic this weekend.





I went down yesterday to ride her, and we did the "boomerang" exercise to ride away from the barn alone. She was a little jiggy every time we'd turn back towards the barn, so we just worked at going out and coming back to where she was comfortable enough to walk in a relaxed way, rinse and repeat. She ended totally relaxed and riding off seat and legs, even when other horses were calling to her. 










I think summer camp is agreeing with her- she is so dappled out! :grin: (Though clearly we need to get riding to get that pudge off!)








I won't see her until the clinic starts Saturday morning, and then she's coming home on Sunday evening. I am really missing having her out in the pasture and look forward to getting her home.


PS- thank you @frlsgirl and @gottatrot for noting that Fizz is not dumb  I do think there was just some sort of missed communication going on here. @gottatrot, to your point about energy, I think Lindsey might say that she actually tries to match the level of energy the horse is giving, and that would be why she was so quiet vs. very animated. I obviously can't speak for her, but that was sort of the message I got throughout the weekend. I do think, though, that she would also say that you _start_ where the horse is, and if you're looking for more or less, you are making adjustments through repetitions to bring them to where you'd like to see them, which isn't really happening here.


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> @gottatrot, to your point about energy, I think Lindsey might say that she actually tries to match the level of energy the horse is giving, and that would be why she was so quiet vs. very animated. I obviously can't speak for her, but that was sort of the message I got throughout the weekend. I do think, though, that she would also say that you _start_ where the horse is, and if you're looking for more or less, you are making adjustments through repetitions to bring them to where you'd like to see them, which isn't really happening here.


That's very interesting, I'll want to hear more about what you are learning from her. I've thought our energy is useful at the level where we want the horse to end up (calm if they are nervous, energetic if they are dull), so I'll be interested to find out more about her philosophies. I'm definitely aware that there is no "one way" to go about things, and the more ways and options we have, the better.


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## egrogan

Back from Day 1 of the clinic. Last weekend was about creating a calm connection with our horses; this weekend was about managing anxiety, stress, and fear in the rider. It was a fairly different group of people than last weekend, probably not surprisingly. We did spend a fair bit of time this morning sharing our stories and reasons for being there. Some people had had fairly serious wrecks landing them in the intensive care unit, and others were carrying more generalized anxiety from their lives to the barn. I shared my story about Fizz’s fall on the ice, my general control freak nature, and the challenges of always riding alone and how that can spiral downhill.

I’d summarize the main point of this weekend as using “mindfulness” or “mind/body awareness” as tools for defusing anxiety. The rational thinking statistician in me admittedly has a hard time with this sort of thing, and I have to admit that I’ve had some bad experiences with “mindfulness” workshops for educators in the recent past. It can feel so fake and pseudo “spiritual” to me that I get turned off. However, I have to say this really wasn’t like that. The clinician _is_ a therapist, but I didn’t feel like she was trying to use cheezy techniques on us. Instead, she just posed a lot of questions to us about how connected we were to our bodies, how we could recognize tension and respond to it, when we felt those proverbial butterflies in your stomach, when your jaw clenched, etc.

Connected to that, we spent a lot of time on the human energy scale to match the horse energy scale from last weekend. The concepts were very similar: yellow is more lethargic and checked out; green is calm and open to learning; red can be toying with a healthy push out of the comfort zone but move pretty quickly into OMG I’M FREAKING OUT AND THEREFORE THESE TOOLS DON’T WORK. I did ask about Fizz’s forward/sideways experience last weekend (specifically, the level of energy involved)- the explanation was that with Fizz being sort of zoned out (a 3 out of 10), Lindsey’s intention was for her demeanor staying around a 4/5 out of 10. With a very lethargic horse, you’re trying to invite them into green with you- if you ramped your energy way up, it’s almost like a startle to your senses in a way that immediately puts you on alert (thus taking away your openness to thinking/learning), whereas a more measured request to yes, wake up, but do it in a calm, relaxed way is a better choice. 

Our afternoon was all mounted, and our goal was to try activities in the arena that would take us from our green into a dance with high green/low red at number 6/7 on the 10 point scale. We all had a person on the ground who was there to check in with us about how we felt in terms of energy, and what energy level we got from our horse. We were intended to push ourselves to do something or some set of things that would take us from the calm, easygoing level 4 into something a little more “up” and then figure out what strategies we could use to stay in the activity but manage our bodies back to that calm level 4. I picked maneuvering around other horses moving at varying speeds. I generally feel anxious in a crowded arena having to ride trot/canter and not knowing what other horses will do, so that’s what we did. Fizz definitely woke up when we started that, which was good, because it revealed my natural tendency to want to grab onto her and hold. Intellectually I know that doesn’t help…but my body doesn’t cooperate :hide:

I got some good coaching on more intentional breathing (exhaling, exhaling, exhaling) and doing a “body check” from the saddle- literally moving from feet to calves to knees to thighs to stomach to wrists to elbows to shoulders to neck to jaw- and consciously identifying whether or not there was tension there. Fizz was so tuned in that I simply had to start at releasing tension in my feet and getting heavier there, and she’d stop almost immediately. That was kind of wild. Shows you how much tension I’m carrying around! There was another cool exercise done, which some of the riders who had had serious accidents worked through successfully when mounting, which was called “The Five Senses”- again, focused on breathing and connecting in with your body, and asks you to identify 5 things you see, 4 things you hear, 3 things you feel, 2 things you smell, and 1 thing you taste, and say each thing out loud. 

In the course of our mounted time, Fizz and I got to do some neat obstacles- never had been through a tarp curtain before but she never even looked at it as we walked and trotted through it :grin:









One thing that struck me on my drive home is that the word “nervous” was never used, and I want to ask about why. I think I’d tend to define myself more as a “nervous” vs. “anxious” rider, and while I guess that doesn’t really make any difference whatsoever in terms of what my body is doing while on the horse, it struck me as interesting and I want to ask about it.

Our homework tonight is to pick a song that we want to ride to tomorrow, something that makes us feel happy and upbeat. I’m still thinking through it, but leaning towards this one.




 I actually didn’t know the name of this song until I had to write it down to add to the group play list (I’ve just been listening to this album a lot lately), but when I saw it was called “Tired of Fighting,” that nearly made me cry. It just sort of hit me that I have been so in my own head for the past many months that I’ve got myself tied up in knots and am not having much fun riding. Most of it is being tired of fighting with myself, but that also manifests into these little fights with Fizz. So, I think it is a symbolically as well as musically good pick for tomorrow!

Here’s to a good day 2 and more happy rides!


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## gottatrot

That is great! 
I like how she's having you practice going just a little out of your comfort zone rather than trying to make you do something that makes you very uncomfortable. It seems like this is similar to horses with separation anxiety, I've seen that if they can work through things in small stages, they do much better than if we just force them away from their safety net cold turkey. 

It seems like this way your body can learn to deal with a little anxiety but not be overwhelmed, so you can learn to get where you want in smaller steps. Plus you're practicing the right physical and mental responses.


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## Spanish Rider

Wow, I must say that I am a bit envious. I wish I had had the opportunity to go to a clinic like this during my recovery. In fact, there are still a few issues I am working through now.

Nervous vs. anxiety. Yes, I have often contemplated the difference. In my case, though, I do tend to see how my problem is more anxiety. I suppose it is because I am not nervous to canter (for example) on a new horse, because I enjoy cantering. However, my brain seems to irrationally anticipate potential problems (what if he does this/that), making me anxious. So, I think "nervous" would be a general state, whereas "anxious" would be in anticipation of a negative outcome. And then, your "rational-thinking statistician" self should analyze the frequency of positive vs negative outcomes and realize that your anxious reaction is, in fact, irrational. Well, that's what I try to tell myself anyway!


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## bsms

Ya go a couple weeks without reading a journal, and then when you do, it is almost intimidating to see how much you've missed!

When I have more time, I'll work my way thru the posts and videos. Read a number of them but haven't watched any videos yet. I'm trying to work with Bandit going out alone, but this is the coldest & wettest spring we've had in the 15 years I've lived here (and yes, those are relative terms!). Combine that with my wife traveling some with friends, and going out alone into the desert with Bandit, knowing 911 would be my only resource to call, and knowing no one will know to look for me if things go bad...and it has been a hard spring for riding. BTW - You couldn't pay me to ride on ice or real mud!

Yesterday reminded me of how vastly more SANE Bandit is than Mia. And I've been riding Bandit, not Mia, for 4 years now. But sometimes it is like having a flashback, and Bandit is being sane while my stomach ties itself in knots.

In my defense, Bandit out alone sometimes ties himself in knots too. When he gets nervous, he gets bouncy and snakey, twisting and turning and I feel like I'm trying to ride an eel. Then that "Oh ____" feeling kicks in! Paved roads remain a problem. I've taken to walking Bandit the 0.3 miles to the dirt road. Bandit isn't likely to lose his footing on dirt. On pavement? Not so certain! And going down with a horse on top of me, particularly on paved road, scares me.

In terms of releasing tension in MY body, what works best is slouching. It is darn near impossible to achieve a good slouch while tensing. If I concentrate on achieving a good slouch, my body relaxes more than if I try to relax individual parts of my body. I'm glad I have a horn at times like those. One hand on the horn & one on the reins with my legs deep around my horse and at least I feel I can stay on and still make inputs regardless of what he is doing. As long as he doesn't fall or spin us into cactus.

For us, I think it comes down to slowly building confidence in each other. SLOWLY expanding each other's comfort zone - him learning I have enough good judgment to keep us both safe in scary spots, and me learning to trust him not to overreact.

Which is tough because once in a while, he DOES overreact! He never loses his mind, unlike Mia. But he sometimes gets very emotional, and that brings back memories I'd rather not have.

Wish I could offer advice, but all I can really do is say I know how it feels to have a good ride going and then get tense, or to go out and start to mount up and have things twist inside you. Of course, I have two horses who really are rock solid on the trail, and I choose to ride the third horse...

In Bandit's defense, there have been a number of times I've tensed up and he is like, "_Dude, relax! I've got it!_" And then I'm going, "_Slouch! Slouch! Achieve Slouchdom!_"


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## egrogan

I'm going to come back to respond to people's posts, but wanted to finish my update, as yesterday was pretty incredible. In the morning, we started with some exercises to identify what we carry around with us causing anxiety. I was able to share about my internal script which is constantly telling me I'm never going to be good enough...my riding isn't good enough to ride in front of other people, or not good enough to not mess up my horse, or not good enough to even have the horses at home vs. boarding. I don't usually share in front of strangers like that, so it was a bit cathartic.

The afternoon activity was mounted, we each got 15 minutes in the ring to do an exercise that was really designed to let go of control. Some people rode brideless; for some people, just getting on and trotting was huge; and then a few of us (me included) were on the lunge with no reins so we could really get coached through working on softening our bodies without micromanaging the horse. I went towards the end of the day, and I found my tension growing and growing as I watched other people riding. All of that script from up above^^ was on a repeating loop through my head. But the sort of neat thing was that we were asked to stand up in front of the group before our ride and share where our energy scale rating was. Since my energy was dancing up there near red, I could just turn to the group and say that I was scared, but that I was going to trust Fizz and trainer M and Asa, the instructor, and just see what happened. I pretty desperately wanted to get on and just have fun, w/t/c around like it wasn't a big deal, and just enjoy the ride in a supportive environment.
Fizz was right there with me as I was baring my soul :loveshower:









When I first got on, I wasn't allowed to ride until I got my energy back to green. So, we did the "body song" and then the "five senses" exercises, and they really did help. From there, we did an easy warmup just so I could shake out some of the tension before we got going.

And then we were off, no hands...




































There were still some scary moments 









But I was pleased watching the videos to see that I wasn't curled up in a fetal position the whole time I was cantering, which is often what I feel like I am doing!









It was scary to just be out there in front of everyone and just trust myself and Fizz that we would be fine, but we were!



























I have some video of my ride that I need to cut down a bit and I will post. I am still on a bit of a high from the weekend and it will be fun to watch the video!

Fizz came home last night. She trailered great, even in the middle of a thunderstorm, so I also got a lot of confidence just from her handling traveling so well. 

_Reunited and it feels so good..._









Here's an explanation of the horse and human energy scale...from the horse's mouth rather than mine







It is an hour long video so that may or may not be something you're interested in investing your time in.


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## carshon

Congratulations! In the one picture your smile says it all! I think we are all self conscious about how we look riding a horse, bike, walking along a busy street. But you did it!!


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## Spanish Rider

@egrogan , YOU AIRPLANED!!!

"Airplaning" is what we used to call cantering with arms out when I was a kid. I haven't done it since I was in my early 20's.

But _you_? You're a rockstar! YOU AIRPLANED!!!


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## PoptartShop

Look at you go!   That is fantastic!!!! You look so happy too, the smile on your face says it all. Yay for you and Fizz!!! Don't ever doubt yourself.
So happy for you!!!!!


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> In my defense, Bandit out alone sometimes ties himself in knots too. When he gets nervous, he gets bouncy and snakey, twisting and turning and I feel like I'm trying to ride an eel. Then that "Oh ____" feeling kicks in! Paved roads remain a problem. I've taken to walking Bandit the 0.3 miles to the dirt road. Bandit isn't likely to lose his footing on dirt. On pavement? Not so certain! And going down with a horse on top of me, particularly on paved road, scares me....
> 
> For us, I think it comes down to slowly building confidence in each other. SLOWLY expanding each other's comfort zone - him learning I have enough good judgment to keep us both safe in scary spots, and me learning to trust him not to overreact.
> 
> Which is tough because once in a while, he DOES overreact! He never loses his mind, unlike Mia. But he sometimes gets very emotional, and that brings back memories I'd rather not have.


I totally relate to all you've shared here. It's the unpredictability of a horse that looks like a school horse sometimes and other times is jumping into ditches with reckless abandon. Add in physical challenges- cactus for you, ice for us (or in summer, barbed wire hiding under grass on the side of the road) and it makes your body react with tension.



> In Bandit's defense, there have been a number of times I've tensed up and he is like, "_Dude, relax! I've got it!_" And then I'm going, "_Slouch! Slouch! Achieve Slouchdom!_"


Isn't it amazing how relieved they get when you finally relax?! I love that audible sigh they give- nothing like direct, clear feedback! I don't find slouching works great for me as it seems to make me curl up and tip forward rather than down, but I have found that thinking "heavy feet" pulls everything deep down in the saddle and makes me stop perching forward.



gottatrot said:


> That is great!
> I like how she's having you practice going just a little out of your comfort zone rather than trying to make you do something that makes you very uncomfortable. It seems like this is similar to horses with separation anxiety, I've seen that if they can work through things in small stages, they do much better than if we just force them away from their safety net cold turkey.
> 
> It seems like this way your body can learn to deal with a little anxiety but not be overwhelmed, so you can learn to get where you want in smaller steps. Plus you're practicing the right physical and mental responses.


Yes, exactly. They call it "boomeranging" which is sort of like approach/retreat- you go towards the worrying thing, you double back to bring the anxiety down, then when you're back to calm relaxation, go closer, then back, etc. Also works to get farther _away from_ for one of my biggest problems, which is the buddy sour issue at our house- when there's a horse screaming like a crazy thing in the pasture and Fizz is too focused on that, I have to start the boomerang away to get her thinking again and focusing on me rather than the screaming.



Spanish Rider said:


> @*egrogan* , YOU AIRPLANED!!!
> 
> "Airplaning" is what we used to call cantering with arms out when I was a kid. I haven't done it since I was in my early 20's.
> 
> But _you_? You're a rockstar! YOU AIRPLANED!!!


Haha, that's great. Thanks for the encouragement (and thanks @*carshon* and @*PoptartShop* for your nice words too!). Spanish Rider, by the way, I did ask on Sunday if there was an intentional decision not to use the word "nervous" but to use "anxiety" instead, but actually, the answer was no. They sort of hang out together. 

***************

Yesterday afternoon the rain finally stopped for a bit, so even though it was muggy and buggy I thought it would be a good idea to get on and ride while the positive vibes were still fresh. It would be easy to focus on all the things that didn't go as well as I wanted them to, but I'm trying to reframe that and instead focus on the things that were better than they would have been before last week. First of all, she is pretty easy to redirect when she's thinking about getting nervous- we did a few calm connections exercises when she started to tense up alone in the barn, and that worked pretty well. She is now standing like a rockstar for mounting- the positive reinforcement work at the mounting block certainly succeeded in that respect. I had _no _planting of feet and refusing to move forward. We went down the road a little bit, and I think we probably could have gone a little farther than we did, but I was looking for an easy win so I just sort of left it at that.









It did not help that the black flies were out in swarms and someone was acting like they were dying when they touched her nose :icon_rolleyes:









So, it was a short ride, but it was a ride! Heading to NYC for a few days for work right now, but I am looking forward to the long weekend.


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## egrogan

Finally found good enough WiFi to post the videos.

Quick warm-up





Hands-free!


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## egrogan

Back from NYC, and _finally _got to turn the horses out on the pasture this morning for a couple of hours. It's still a little squishy, but honestly, I am feeling really bad about keeping them penned up in such a small space for so long, and I've sort of accepted that the pasture is just a bit trashed since I didn't manage it well last year. I won't keep them out more than a couple of hours for the next couple of weeks since they've not had anything green in literally 7 months, but they are itchy to stretch their legs. I guess the benefit of a not-great pasture is that it's pretty weedy and not rocket fuel grass anyway. We should be able to get to fencing a new ~6 acre pasture on the other side of the house in the next couple of weeks, and that one should be a nice space for them with decent grass this summer. Also thinking it could give me a nice place to ride when there aren't horses on it, as it's relatively level.

On the topic of grass sensitivity, I did get spring bloodwork results back at the end of last week, and all the news was great. All three of them are now testing negative for chronic Lyme (first time that's been the case for Fizz since I've had her treated) and all three also show they got a protective boost from doing the Lyme vaccine over the winter. Izzy and Maggie were both Cushing's negative and clear of any metabolic concerns, though their insulin results were in the high end of the normal range, so I'm still being careful with them (we didn't test Fizz for metabolic stuff). Given Maggie's chubby, cresty look, she went out with her new grazing muzzle this morning- let's just say she was NOT impressed! 








About 30 minutes after I turned them out, I looked out the window and saw her trying to rub it off on the corner of one of the sheds :icon_rolleyes: She's a smart horse so I hope she figures it out. I tried to introduce it to her a little bit at the end of last week, following the instructions to put some treats in the bottom to show them they can eat from it, and walking her around hand grazing a bit on longer blades of grass so she'd get the idea that they stick up through the bottom. I don't want her to get super stressed out or angry about it so hoping she'll get it.

Even the chickens were feeling adventurous this morning- they don't often come down to the horse's space, but this morning they came clucking and boking along. Fizz was very curious and herded them around, like I've seen her do with wild turkeys in her field.



















More rain coming tonight so hopefully it won't be too boggy to let them back out for a bit tomorrow morning.


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## carshon

I too have a chubster in a grazing muzzle. Let me know how yours works out. Ours is a Best Friend muzzle and it is heavy and clunky and I feel that it impedes her breathing just a little.


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## egrogan

@carshon, I will definitely let you know. Maggie's is the Green Guard- our vet seemed to think this brand was promising as far as preventing rubs. We'll see if it works for her. When I went to close them back in, they were actually all up in the sheds. Not sure if that's because the black flies are miserable, or because Maggie gave up on pasture and the other two followed her back in. It's sort of dirty inside the muzzle but I don't know if that's because she was trying to get it off or because she was actually eating. On the plus side, it _was _still on.


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## PoptartShop

I'm sure the herd was happy to be stretching their legs.  Yes, it's definitely a good thing it isn't crazy green & lush, since that'd probably be a bit of a shock for them, but it's awesome seeing some green over there instead of snow for once. :lol:

Ugh about the rain though. Sigh! Can't ever just be nice & sunny huh?!
So happy to hear the results came back from the bloodwork. That is great news. I think she will get used to the muzzle in no time. Fingers crossed!!


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## egrogan

Hmmm...day 2 of grazing muzzle. The other two went skipping happily out to the field; Maggie turned the opposite direction and is currently standing in the shed sulking. Do I just wait it out?


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## SueC

Does she know how to nibble grass through the holes in the bottom? If not, feed her stalks of grass etc through it until she gets the idea. But yes, some of them sulk about it, but eventually should get down to eating in them...


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Does she know how to nibble grass through the holes in the bottom? If not, feed her stalks of grass etc through it until she gets the idea. But yes, some of them sulk about it, but eventually should get down to eating in them...



Sue, I did show her that but can try again.


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## SueC

They also sulk less if you put half a carrot in the bottom when you put the muzzle on for the day... :apple:

What animals like Maggie and our two overweight donkeys really need is a nice treadmill for grinding flour, or for generating electricity.... :Angel:


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## egrogan

Sigh, Sue. I did that too, I gave her two of her favorite peppermint nibbles in the bottom, which she ate and then went to sulk :sad:


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## SueC

Now you have to harden your heart. inkunicorn:

This is not easy, but your heart can be informed by medical facts. ;-)

If you're _really_ sorry for her, you could groom her and scratch some itchy spots...


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Now you have to harden your heart. inkunicorn:
> 
> This is not easy, but your heart can be informed by medical facts. ;-)
> 
> If you're _really_ sorry for her, you could groom her and scratch some itchy spots...



I will stay strong :wink:


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## carshon

Belle sulks too and now runs away from me. This morning I had to let the others out into the field and leave her up by herself until she settled down enough to submit to her grazing muzzle being on. With her previously foundered I am trying to be extra diligent with her grazing muzzle. 3 inches of rain in the last 2 days with more to come in the next 5 days. Everything here is saturated and there is really no dry ground to put the horses on so she gets to be in the pasture for a few hours


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## egrogan

Poor Belle and Maggie. Loosing weight is hard :wink:

That rain sounds miserable @*carshon* . We seem to be in a pattern of clear mornings where things finally start drying out but then afternoons/overnights where everything is soaked again. I'm embarrassed to say we still haven't been able to get the tractor to the field to drag post-winter. We're hoping Sunday or Monday we can get back there, but it's getting ridiculous.


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## PoptartShop

Just wait it out...I know it's hard. It can take some time to get used to it. But you are doing the right thing. Stay strong!


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## egrogan

Yesterday our office shut down early to allow every to start the long weekend, so I got to work with all three horses. It was wonderful!

I started with Izzy, working on the ground. I wanted to try the calm connection exercises with her to see if we could head away from the field alone without her having the massive panic that she had last time I brought her in alone. I haltered her up, and off we went. I can't believe what a difference it made. She never called out to the other horses or jumped on top of me trying to spin around to go back. It certainly helps that she's very food motivated, and once she knew treats were involved (beet pulp pellets...how exciting :wink she was totally tuned in.

















I would say hanging out by the barn alone was a pretty good thing for her this time!









I repeated with Maggie next. She wasn't quite as serene as Izzy, but I also took her a little farther away from the field. And, Izzy was calling to her while she was working, so she got a little distracted. It's interesting to see their different responses- Izzy was very good about the "connection" part (drawing in to me when asked) but Maggie wasn't. She'd go through the motions of doing what I asked her (e.g., yielding shoulders) but was too distracted to "check back in" after an exercise. So now I have something specific to work on with her. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures with her.

Next up was Fizz. I brought her to the barn, and she again was pretty agitated tacking up and didn't want to stand still, even using the exercises. I let her sort it out a bit on her own and dance around, and was soon able to get the saddle on. I headed down to ride around the pasture and do some of the connection exercises in the saddle at the back of the field. I know I was tense; as soon as I reminded myself to start breathing again, she also took huge deep breaths and felt much better.









We took a short ride along the road, away from the field, and ended up back at the barn to untack. I was happy she willingly finished the ride heading away from her buddies and going back to the barn. That felt good.

















I think we were picking up a radio signal from Canada with those ears :rofl:

Day 3 of the grazing muzzle for Maggie has not been going any better. She is still sulking in the sheds while the other two are out grazing.









We are finally getting a break in the weather today so we are tackling field clean up. I have never been so excited to clear out poop! :wink:


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## egrogan

Felt like I got a little mojo back today :happydance: I couldn't have asked for nicer weather, and no plans but pony time!

I started with Fizz. She was a bit of a pill with tacking up- I had moved all my gear back down to the shed in the field and was using the tie ring there, and the bugs were annoying. Her emotional support human lent a hand :wink:









I don't typically lunge her before I ride, but I knew I wanted to jump on and trot her right off, so wanted her to be warmed up. I also had her back in boots for the first time in quite awhile, so wanted her thinking about her feet. She moved out nicely, and after a few minutes (and a little refocusing with connection activities) I hopped on, highly visible for all the tourists who materialized overnight...









As planned, I asked her to trot straight away, and she did, albeit a bit like a drunken sailor. I asked her for some of the baby leg yielding we've been practicing, and that helped stop the crookedness. I was able to settle in and just enjoy a nice trot. We cantered a little up one of the steeper hills, and paused at the top to say hello to some visitors from Maine who were picnicking at one of my absolute favorite overlooks in Vermont.


















She was moving so nicely, we even tried trotting some of the less steep downhills, which has historically been problematic. But, she handled it quite well. When we got close to home, we detoured through the orchard field and had to do a little bushwacking through all the growth that has suddenly sprung up. We took a souvenir along with us, apparently! 










I gave her some well-deserved hand grazing, and then exchanged her for Maggie. Since I had lunging gear out already, I decided I'd give Maggie a few turns around the circle. It was nice getting her moving- she actually has a decently balanced stride despite the fact that she's not at all in shape. Obviously she's on uneven ground here, but I thought she looked pretty nice for having done nothing in ages. 





































None of my saddles will fit her, but I may get on her bareback tomorrow and see how that goes, just around the fields and such since her feet aren't suited to the gravely roads and I don't have boots that fit her.


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## egrogan

Gorgeous again yesterday, third straight day in a row. There was lots of dozing in the sunshine...










Look who finally decided she could eat with the grazing muzzle on!








She is certainly not happy about it, but at least she stopped pouting in the sheds and hung out in the field a bit. Later in the day, I did get on her bareback. She was less than enthusiastic about it, but this was the first time she's been sat on since October or November, so all in all, she was pretty good. I was surprised that she actually stood very nicely for me to mount, no small feat for me with a bareback pad and no stirrups. However, she and I are not the greatest match as she really hates having any contact on her mouth, and I'm not super trusting of a horse with no contact, so she was definitely irritated with me (totally my fault, not hers). I hopped off and switched the reins on to her halter, but she didn't like that much better. She humped up her back a couple of times, but it just made me laugh as she is so dang wide it was like being seated on a comfy sofa and having two moving guys pick you up and move you a few feet to the side while still on the couch. We walked around the house for a minute and when she stopped flinging her head around I told her she was a good girl and got off. I think next time I'll see how she feels about Izzy's old flower hackamore- could be a good compromise.









After that, it was Fizz's turn. She felt like riding a sawhorse after Maggie- she seemed so narrow all of a sudden! :grin: There was a lot of road traffic in the afternoon, so we stuck to our fields instead. That was still a good workout as it's all hills- we practiced a lot of our new sidepassing skills going up and down the hills. She has gotten so much better at it over the past few weeks, which still feels miraculous to me as all those dressage lessons we took last year, she always refused to take even a single step sideways. 








We had a nice canter up that hill we're looking across^^, and when we got to the top, we found lovely husband out with the mower taming the front yard.








I ended the weekend sunburned all over my arms (oops) and swollen all up and down my legs from the evil blackflies (I'm horribly allergic) but it was a small price to pay for three beautiful days in a row!


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## carshon

Yeah for nice weather!!! So glad you got to ride!


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## frlsgirl

Poor Maggie looks so pathetic in her grazing muzzle!

It’s so nice to see so much green grass and dry ground on your property after the harsh winter you guys endured. 

I have to say that Ana is a much different horse now that we have successfully separated her from her pack. Its difficult when they all live together in a herd; they just don’t want to listen to you as they are too occupied with managing the herd. So kudos to you for implementing some of the strategies you learned at camp !


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## PoptartShop

FINALLY some nice weather for you!!   

You are doing so well with all 3 of them! I am so glad Izzy was well-behaved even away from her buddies. I'm happy to see Maggie was out venturing the fields with the grazing muzzle on, it is definitely taking some time, but she will be okay! That's definitely a good start. And yay for her standing still when you mounted. She is a good girl. The hackamore will probably be better for her, see how that goes. Lots of hillwork is good for miss Fizz! :smile: Looks like you had such a great long weekend!
I love their fly bonnets too, so cute!


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## Knave

I’m jealous! I guess I had a nice week or two while you were still cabin fever bound... now you have nice days and big leaves on your trees, and I am cabin fever bound again with cold days and lots of rain. Lol

It seems like you are doing very well with your horses!


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## egrogan

@Knave, our nice weather was short lived. Today we have had a steady, raw rain and it's only 42*F/6*C.

Why oh why do they insist on standing outside in the rain when they have dry sheds?! 









Well...not all of them...


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## Knave

That seems to be where we’ve hung the last couple weeks. Thirties and forties, and lots of rain... Rain is a good thing for us, and it is rather uncommon for us to have a lot of rain like we’ve had. Usually May is in the upper sixties and often the seventies, and moisture has tapered off.

I do love the rain. It is beautiful and quiet and it makes me feel comforted. I don’t know why I feel so ready for the weather to break. I think a big part of it is that I don’t feel like I’ve done the riding I should. The ground is soppy, and Cash is hot. I can’t take him out and work him hard, because it is slick. I guess I feel like I’m not getting anything accomplished with him.

I know I shouldn’t feel that way because I did all my spring work on him, and he improved. This cold winter though the ground was like yours, and I didn’t get to work with him much. I kept telling myself that come now I would really be getting somewhere, but it feels like winter all over again. Lol.

So, I am reminding myself that rain is good, and that summer will eventually come and he will eventually be getting ridden again. Then I have the others to worry about too, but their time will come as well. I need to remember to appreciate the down time.


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## egrogan

Unfortunately we have had way too much rain and it's really negatively affecting farmers. I've seen an increase in the number of FB posts from people who are out of hay but have no usable pasture right now and are not sure how to get through until first cutting, which is nuts! It's nearly June. According to NOAA, those anecdotes are born out, we are having one of the wettest springs on record:


> It was the 18th wettest April since 1895 for the Northeast with 4.62 inches (117.35 mm) of precipitation, 126 percent of normal. This April ranked among the 20 wettest on record for seven of the nine wetter-than-normal states: Vermont, sixth wettest; Connecticut, seventh wettest; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, 9th wettest; New Hampshire, 10th wettest; Maine, 12th wettest; and New York, 18th wettest. Precipitation for all the states ranged from 83 percent of normal in Maryland to 163 percent of normal in Connecticut. Eleven major climate sites had their greatest number of April days with measurable precipitation. Of those sites, Islip, New York, had the most with 22 days. Islip also had three days with a trace of rain, leaving only five April days without any precipitation.



Rain always makes me feel really anxious. I wish I could see it as beautiful. I really dislike the sensation of being wet (not a fan of swimming or water sports either). I am constantly fretting about the "outside animals"- the horses are muddy and I worry about their feet; the chickens don't get as much time outside and pick on each other. Everything is flooded and chores are so much harder to get through. I am rotating between three raincoats and they are all soaked through! I'd take snowy days over rainy days, always.

It's funny you mention feeling like you're not riding enough, as I was feeling a little bad about that too. I looked back at my mileage tracker from last year- by this date last year, I had ridden 63 miles (peanuts to many of you, I know) and this year I've only ridden 13 so far. Last year we didn't have nearly as much ice in both the winter and the spring, nor the torrential downpours all spring. I definitely agree with you, I'm ready to get out of this season and on to summer. Then fall is just right around the corner


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## PoptartShop

OMG! My horse does the SAME THING. Yesterday, there was a storm/rain, & she just stood out there...I mean, it was POURING!! She has a nice run-in, but decided she'd rather stand out in the rain...like why??????????????! :lol: Glad my horse isn't the only one! So weird they are haha.


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## egrogan

Feeling very sad this morning. We think our older dog Delia had a stroke this morning after coming in from their morning walk. She lost all coordination and control of her bowels, and was left with a strange head tilt and drooling everywhere. She's thrown up a couple of times since. The worst part was seeing her look afraid. I had to leave for a work trip, which lovely husband was supposed to join me on for combo work/vacation- obviously he didn't come and they are waiting at the vet now to be seen while I am at the airport. I feel really helpless and just tremendously sad. We both agreed on how he'll make a decision if it's clear that she's in pain or suffering and can't be stabilized, but it still feels really bad to be gone while this is happening. I'm tearing up all over again just writing this but know you all will understand.


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## frlsgirl

Oh no @egrogan 

Sending you positive thoughts.


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## egrogan

She’s gone


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## Tazzie

I'm so sorry about Delia  *hugs* though I know they won't ever be enough :sad:


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## carshon

I am so sorry Erin- what a terrible way to start a work trip. Sending my sincerest condolences.


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## egrogan

My husband called me from the vet to say he had to make the call as the plane was boarding, and I just got off and am heading home. I said goodbye to her before I left but I feel awful he had to do this alone and I felt that I really just needed to go home. I am so so sad.


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## Knave

I am very sorry.


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## PoptartShop

Oh no, I am so very sorry about Delia. I am glad you were to come home, because going on a work trip with this going on would be horrible, no way. I am so sorry for your loss. :sad:


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## frlsgirl

I’m so sorry for your loss  and so unexpected. Hugs!


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## Chevaux

My sympathies to you and your husband, egrogan. These times are always so trying and sad. Take some comfort in knowing she had a good home and life with your family.


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## gottatrot

I'm very sorry for your loss.


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## Avna

I am so so sorry. May peace be on her soul.


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone for your very kind messages. I am feeling so disoriented. We were supposed to be on a fun trip right now, with a wonderful farm sitter holding down the fort at home. Instead, we're home ourselves sans a critical part of the family. It just really hurts.


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## phantomhorse13

So very very sorry about Delia. There are too many good ones running around up there now. They are never with us long enough.. :sad:
:hug:


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## QueenofFrance08

I'm sooooo sorry for your loss!


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## knightrider

So sorry about Delia. We were praying for @phantomhorse13's dog and yours and now they are both gone. I hope they are romping together in heaven, united by our prayers.


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## egrogan

I love the thought of them all comparing notes on their crazy horsey experiences.


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## PoptartShop

It is never long enough. :sad: Again I am so sorry. She was such a cutie. I'm sure she is up there tearing it up & romping around. <3


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## phantomhorse13

knightrider said:


> We were praying for @*phantomhorse13* 's dog and yours and now they are both gone. I hope they are romping together in heaven, united by our prayers.


This is such a lovely thought - I am now sitting and dripping on my keyboard.. :hug:


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## egrogan

We've had an interesting 24 hours here. Last night, we decided to treat ourselves to a night out since we didn't get to have our vacation. It was finally a nice, sunny day, so I left the sliding front door to the barn open when we went to dinner, hoping to let things air out a little since everything was feeling so damp. We got home after dark, and when I went to shut the chickens in for the night, I found their can of scratch dumped over in the barn. I figured a raccoon had been opportunistic and helped himself to a nice snack. I went on with chores/night check, and swung through the barn one more time to be sure nothing was hiding in any stalls. There was something moving around in the woods next to the barn that sounded big enough, and when I pointed my headlamp in that direction I saw eyes staring back at me, but again, figured our raccoon friend was hanging out. I shut the sliding door tight and headed to bed.

My husband woke me up this morning after he had been out with the dog to tell me that "something had pulled the barn door off its hinges during the night," which sounded nearly impossible as that door is a super solid, old school wooden door on a slider track that I can barely move :eek_color: But sure enough, I got out there and the door was off its track with a huge gash where our "raccoon" had wrenched it open. The can of scratch and chicken food was dumped again, but for the mess that was made inside the barn, there really wasn't much food actually eaten- but the sunflower seeds in the scratch bucket seemed to have been painstakingly removed while the cracked corn was left behind.









The more we talked about it, the more we concluded that the neighborhood bear had finally come to visit us. My neighbor has been asking me since we moved in if I've seen it, because she sees it all the time near her barn, and I haven't. I still can't _prove _this was done by a bear, but I don't really want to meet the raccoon that can do that ^^ to solid wood!

We decided not to mess around and swung by the farm store to get a few things to hot wire the door. As soon as the word "bear" was mentioned, I swear every male employee in the store wanted to come talk to us about how to handle it :icon_rolleyes:. I did appreciate the young guy who actually helped us come up with a plan...as enthusiastic as he was about "zapping that bast**d," he did give us some useful advice on picking out a powerful charger and high tensile wire that was easy to rig up. It's hard to see here, but basically we hot wired the full door and ran it in a "<" over to that little bracket under the window on the left, hopefully cutting off the point of entry. We shall see what happens tonight!









In the midst of rigging this up, we let the chickens out to get some free ranging time. To my horror, while I was working on cleaning up inside the barn and my husband was at the front door, we heard the chickens go nuts in the woods to the left of the barn. They couldn't have been more than 15 feet from my husband, and he ran over there just in time to see a fox swooping in on them and grabbing one of the chickens. He screamed and ran towards it, chickens and feathers flew everywhere, and he was pretty sure he saw the fox take off empty handed. In a few minutes, we seemed to have them all rounded up...but only counted 9. We have 10. The one missing matched the pile of feathers left behind in the woods. I was just dejected. I know a lot of people won't understand being attached to "just chickens," but these ladies are pets more than anything to me. I've had this particular flock for years and it's been years since I've lost one to a predator. I just couldn't believe that with both of us standing RIGHT THERE, it was possible for one to get picked off :sad: I walked through the woods for about an hour, calling for her and shaking the cup of scratch that usually gets them to come running, but nothing. My husband was adamant the fox left without one, so there was a chance she was just hiding out somewhere, but the trail of feathers seemed to go in the direction the fox went, and it seemed pretty hopeless. After about an hour, I just sat down and cried a bit more, and then pulled myself back together. What a week. We finished the wire job, and I went on to do chores with the horses. I came back up to the house, now about 4 hours after the fox, and just sat down on a bench in our mudroom, feeling sad but trying to compose myself.

AND

YOU KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING....




....RIGHT?




BOK BOK BOK BOK BOK BOK BOK

I couldn't believe it was possible, but I looked out the door, and against all odds, there was my little Dottie, looking impossibly tiny and vulnerable but amazingly all in one piece- and chatting up a storm.








I managed to get her herded back into the run with the other chickens, and felt an incredible sense of relief. I can't think of much better than ending the day with 10 little chickens getting ready to roost!


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## bsms

Sorry to hear about Delia. It is a part of owning a dog but it tears you up inside. Our Border Collie is starting to act old at 11, which seems too young. He plays hard but then gets stiff afterward. They give so much and ask so little, really! FWIW, I don't believe it is the end:


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## frlsgirl

Oh my goodness what a day! You are getting the full wilderness experience out there. Have you considered setting up game cams? Or wireless video surveillance?


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## SueC

I'm sorry about your dog, @egrogan. :hug:

Great cartoon, @bsms!


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## egrogan

I love that cartoon @*bsms* . Thank you. And thanks for the condolences @*SueC* .

@*frlsgirl* - we did think about a camera but didn't have time to go find one. Nothing seems to have happened last night- we heard nothing and nothing around the door was disturbed. We'll probably leave it wired up for a week or so and reassess. At some point we'll have to be able to get in and out of the barn that way! 

Chickens are all looking well this morning. I gave them all a good check-over to make sure there were no puncture wounds under their wings or around their vents (common places where they are injured if something grabs them) but everyone seemed ok.


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## Knave

I am so glad your chicken survived!


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## gottatrot

That was a great story about the bear and the chicken! I was already getting so sad before I read to the end that Dottie made it against all odds!!


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## SueC

Beaming you good thoughts, @egrogan. Bereavement is always tough - I don't think it gets any easier. :hug:


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## egrogan

Thanks @Knave, @gottatrot and @SueC. Another twist last night. Our old 18 year old kitty, Newton, was pacing around and howling, waking us up around 2am. He has had urinary tract blockages in the past, and was showing all the classic signs, including going in and out of the litter box but not being able to urinate. So we packed him into the cat carrier and drove 45 minutes to the emergency vet hospital. The poor on-call vet was a little cranky to be talking to us at 3am, but was all business. After doing his bloodwork, she grimly informed us that his kidney values were twice what they should be and he was anemic (both things we are already aware of) and that he might “die on the table” when she sedated him and inserted the catheter to drain his bladder. But there was no other option-for male cats, a complete urinary blockage is death anyway, and painfully. We asked her to go ahead with it.

We are cautiously optimistic. We got a call on our way home that the drain was in successfully and the blockage cleared. I check back with them mid morning to see if he’ll be strong enough to come home today. Please keep the good thoughts coming, we really need them!


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## carshon

@egrogan What a week! I am so sorry that your adventures are the heart wrenching kind and not the fun exciting ones. Keeping Dottie and your kitty in my thoughts.


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## egrogan

Very positive update from the vet. He came through the procedure well, and they successfully got his bladder drained. He's alert and comfortable. They'll keep the catheter in until tomorrow morning, make sure he can urinate on his own, and then he comes home!


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## frlsgirl

Oh dear. Sending positive kitty thoughts from Sadie and Loui.


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## knightrider

Hope your kitty fully recovers.
I love chickens too. They are so smart and have such personalities.


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## phantomhorse13

Jeez when it rains it pours!


Hope the bear proofing is successful; certainly seems like it should be.


Hooray for Dottie surviving. Bet she had a story to tell the rest of the flock!


Fingers and toes crossed that Newton stays unblocked and is able to come home asap. Good catch to get him in right away.


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## egrogan

Thanks @knightrider and @phantomhorse13. It's been a pretty exhausting few days! 

Another bump- although fortunately not life threatening! Poor Fizz has developed scratches on both her hinds. Sunday afternoon I was tacking her up to (finally) ride since it was a rare day with no rain, and I nearly got cow-kicked when I picked up her right hind leg. I feel really bad because I got after her for that, and then got the foot picked up, only to see she had a penny sized sore right on the hairline, and a few other smaller raw areas. Same on the left hind. I abandoned riding plans as there was no way I was putting boots on over those sores. Cleaned her up with some betadine spray and slathered with Desitin (fortunately had a tube in my vet kit!). Yesterday was clear and sunny (bummer, it would have been a perfect riding day) and today is the same until around dinner time, so it's good she's getting a break from the constant wet/muddy conditions we've had since...well...October, really! She looks a little short on her right hind to me but the skin looked better already yesterday so I hope I caught it early. Will give it another good treatment this afternoon before it starts raining, which is supposed to do straight through the end of Thursday :icon_rolleyes: I'm certainly feeling discouraged about ever getting in enough conditioning to even attempt a ride this season. Right now, I am planning for a 25 in August, but seriously, we've ridden 13 miles total all year. Best case, she'll be feeling good enough to ride again this weekend. But if it's not healing up, I'm not going to push it. Is there any reasonable way to think I can make an August ride in a way that's fair to her?

In better news, just talked to the vet about Newton. Catheter is out but he has to stay for observation today to be sure he is urinating on his own. Hoping to pick him up this evening before the vet's office closes, assuming he is looking good.


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## egrogan

And since I hate feeling so doom and gloom, adding a few shots of Izzy looking very Morgany, and sharing a nice moment with her best friend yesterday


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## egrogan

And some funny shots of the chickens sunbathing Sunday afternoon before the fox incident. They are so goofy looking when they do this! @knightrider, they do have such personalities- I could watch them hanging out "chickening" for hours!


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## Chevaux

I like pics of happy chickens


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## egrogan

Sigh. Poor kitty was still blocked; x-rays done and he has massive bladder stones blocking everything up. I know this is crazy, but we told the vet to go ahead with surgery and remove them. It was that or euthanasia, and you really could make a case for either- he's nearly 19 with kidney disease. And yet...we decided we'd give him this chance and this is where we draw the line. Vet said he felt the prognosis for coming through surgery was actually quite good. We'll know more tonight. I hope we didn't make the wrong call for him.


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## carshon

I am so sorry that he is still blocked. Fingers crossed surgery goes well and he feels better. I clean a vets office and some of the older cats surprise the vets with how well they do. just like humans each is different. Keep us posted. (sending healing thoughts for your kitty)


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## phantomhorse13

massive vibes for Newton!!


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## SueC

Fingers tightly crossed...


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## egrogan

Thank you, thank you Horse Forum friends.

Good news this morning- the surgery was successful, he handled it wonderfully, and is getting picked up at 5pm. A few minutes ago, I spoke with the tech who assisted the vet, and she said "he is just the best cat, so much personality and so happy this morning." He is finally urinating on his own again, and eating and drinking enthusiastically. I don't know if we'll have three weeks, three months, or three years left with him, but I'm glad we get to have him home feeling good again. Hopefully it won't be long before he's back to sunning his pouch on the porch again!


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## gottatrot

Great news about your kitty! If it makes you feel any better, my Dalmatian was blocked up with bladder stones when he was 12 and starting to get arthritic. We went ahead and did surgery (just like your cat, otherwise he would have died), and ended up with three more good years before he passed away, and no more bladder stones. I'm not sure how they do the incisions on a cat, but they cut right down the urethra on my dog and when he got home the urine just ran straight out of him. I thought perhaps they had damaged the sphincter, but after several days he was continent again and went back to normal. Just in case something like that happens with your cat, it may not be permanent.


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## Spanish Rider

So happy for you, @egrogan! And hooray for Dottie the Super Chicken!


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## egrogan

@*gottatrot* , good to know about your dog's experience, thanks! Newton got home last night and immediately headed for the food bowl - that's my cat :wink: He was very snuggly with us but you could also tell he was feeling sensitive as he walked around. 










Still, he ate, drank, walked around the house to assess the state of all his favorite places, and seemed to have no trouble with going to the bathroom. @*gottatrot* , he did have some incidents where he would just start urinating as though he had no control over it happening (including once during the night where he was sleeping on me and wet the bed!! ) but for the most part, he visited the litter box as normal and had no trouble going. I'm sure it's going to be a few days of adjustment and healing until he's back to normal, litter trained behavior. He's also on medication that ensures he urinates, so I'm guessing that makes things a little strange for him. He goes back to the vet to have stitches out next Saturday, but otherwise we just have to keep an eye on his bathrooming and the incision site (his incision is a little slit in his abdomen- they actually flushed the largest stone back through the urethra into the bladder so they could surgically remove it, since it was too large to remove from the urethra. Sounds horribly painful, my poor husband was visibly cringing while the vet was describing the procedure ). So far, so good!


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## PoptartShop

I am so glad Newton is okay & the surgery went smoothly. You have been through quite a lot lately. Ouch, that does sound painful. Whew. Wishing him a speedy recovery!!  
The chickens are so cute. They look so content just enjoying the sunshine. Izzy is beautiful, love the photos. So cute of the two eating the hay together with their fly masks on. 

Scratches are a pain in the you-know-what. Hopefully she feels better soon. If it doesn't work, I swear by Krudzapper. It really works fast & it's good for a lot of things. It lasts awhile too. But the betadine should help. 

My mare gets scratches on her pasterns, so I use the Equiderma paste for pastern dermatitis & it works wonders, but gosh I feel bad when she gets it, I know it's uncomfortable. Poor miss Fizz. :sad: Hopefully she is improving. Between scratches & rain rot, I'm not sure what is more stressful! :icon_rolleyes: Can't stand it! :lol:


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## knightrider

So glad your kitty is on the mend, and I hope the scratches go away quickly also.

Yesterday I was reading a devotional about animals, and the daily devotional was about chickens. I love chickens. So I thought I would quote a little of it to give you a smile.

"Chickens Doing the Work of the Lord"

"Like many gardeners, I sometimes struggle to keep pests from decimating my garden. To that end, I bought 3 chicks and, once they were old enough to fend for themselves, turned them loose in my yard.

"Chickens really are a one-stop shop for many good things. I haven't mentioned fathers, meat, or manure, and I don't have the space to tell you how smart and companionable chickens are as backyard pets."


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## Chevaux

If I might suggest, egrogan (I realize I’m coming in a couple of days behind so this may be a non issue now), use a large plastic garbage bag with an equally sized towel on top of it for the bed and other areas where Newton sleeps to catch leakage problems until he healls up - it minimizes cleanup effort dramatically.

P.S. I have a Newton also - he’s orange and white.


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## egrogan

@chevaux, thanks for the suggestion- that is exactly what we ended up doing, and he's been happily sleeping on the couch for the past few days. It seems that the leakage has subsided and I think I will give him the chance to sleep in our bedroom again tonight. Fingers crossed, all seems to be on the right track! I've never known someone else with a Newton- do you have pictures of your guy you can share? :grin:

@knightrider, I've slowly been letting the chickens out to free range again, and thought you might like this little clip of them getting called back in with a cup of scratch- gets them every time. Running chickens are so awkwardly funny :chicken:




I've been at GMHA all day volunteering at the endurance ride today-I'm still bummed I wasn't out there riding myself, but had a fun day and the weather was gorgeous.


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## egrogan

It was an absolutely gorgeous weekend here. Look whoooo came out to supervise while I did chores Saturday night! I don't think I've ever been so close to a wild owl.









As nice as it was, I'm still waiting out Fizz's scratches to ride. I've started her back on Vitamin E, which I haven't been feeding for a few months. She just seems to have a bunch of weird skin stuff going on. There's the scratches. She's got a couple of bug bites at the base of her tail that she's itched into big open sores and is starting to rub out the top of her tail scratching it. She also has some weird looking welts along her body, I think they track where I sprayed fly spray (I was using the EcoVet fly spray, which I used on them last year), so I've switched types since I'm pretty sure she's having a reaction to it. 








I'm not sure what else to do in addition to the VitE. Any suggestions?

I did ride Maggie briefly on Saturday. Started off pretty good. She stood nicely for tacking and mounting, which was an improvement from last time.

















But when I asked her to ride past the others, she started legit bucking and rearing. I had a neck strap on her, and that helped me stay on. But I was riding in a bareback pad, and as you can imagine I wasn't having much fun. So we didn't go much farther after I got a few steps of actual walking forward, away from the others. 

I'm really desperate to find a riding buddy. I think for awhile I just really need someone to ride out with and help me get out of my head and just ride. Has anyone ever had luck posting for a riding buddy on FB? Not having a trailer is a real drag, but maybe I could find someone who would be willing to come to my house since we have access to such great trails? Or even someone within riding distance I don't know about. 

Later Saturday, Izzy helped lovely husband by mowing the lawn in front of the field...








...Fizz found that profoundly unfair :wink:









And yesterday I volunteered as the in/out timer at the GMHA endurance ride. It was a truly gorgeous day, and a very well attended ride. There were ~40 riders across the three distances- 10 mile intro/25 mile LD/50 mile endurance. I think being the timer is my favorite volunteer job, as you get to chat with everyone while they're waiting to get sent out, and it's so nice to be the person to welcome them back in to the hold or the finish. Since it's been such a miserable spring here, a lot of people were taking things pretty easy as they get back in shape. There were lots of young, green horses doing their first rides. Lots of horses that Northeast riders had picked up in Florida over the winter, and it's a pretty big shock for a Florida horse to take on Vermont hills for the first time! :wink: I love that in endurance you can meet the "legends" of the sport alongside people just like you, and everyone is very accessible and generous with their time and advice. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sad that I wasn't out there riding. I have so much doubt about whether or not I'm ever going to get it together to get out myself. But the next ride is in August, and provided I can find a trailer ride there, I think that's attainable. Some scenes from the start of the 25:


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## Spanish Rider

Have you met any neighbors yet? Local organizers of the GMHA? Anyone from the clinic you went to? I'm just surprised that you haven't found a riding buddy when it seems to be such a horsey area, although it is understandable since you are so far out and your winters are so long.


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## knightrider

@egrogan, I loved the chicken video. Thank you. I imagine there is a pecking order in returning to the roost? I noticed that some chickens passed other ones on the way in. My horses often stop at the gate and let the leader proceed first, then they go into their stalls in their dominance order. Are the chickens like that too? I only had one or two chickens when I had them. They were cuddly friendly loving pets.

I have often thought about advertising for a riding buddy, but have never done it. I should think facebook would be more reliable than Craigslist, but I don't know. I once saw an ad on Craigslist that a woman put up looking for horses to ride. When I called her, she was strange, bossy, and difficult, so I didn't pursue it. She was kind of rude to me and said she didn't need to ride my horses, that she had horses and a trailer of her own. When I suggested she meet me and my friends for a ride, she said it wasn't convenient. It killed any interest I might have had to ride with that woman.

If you do find a riding buddy, I look forward to hearing about your adventures. I have far better luck getting children to ride with me than adults. Adults tend to have ideas of their own and at times will start requesting . . . and then insisting . . . that we do things their way. That's when I tell them that I don't need a riding buddy after all.

Getting children who have never ridden, then teaching them to ride, and then keeping them for riding buddies works really well for me. The teaching to ride part is tedious, but they learn fairly quickly and then you can have years of fun. I've kept some of them until college or marriage.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Have you met any neighbors yet? Local organizers of the GMHA? Anyone from the clinic you went to? I'm just surprised that you haven't found a riding buddy when it seems to be such a horsey area, although it is understandable since you are so far out and your winters are so long.


 @Spanish Rider, I think part of the "problem" is that the trail system is so rich here that almost everyone with horses at home has great trails in their back yard, so people often just do their own thing. I have met one trail riding neighbor, but she's retired and seems to be out riding during the workday when I really can't join her. I could probably be a little more persistent in seeing if she'd be willing to be flexible about going out at different times occasionally. The other neighbor I've met had a very bad fall a year ago and is only arena riding for now, even though she used to be an avid trail rider. As far as other endurance riders from GMHA, I guess part of my "not good enough" complex is that I worry because I'm a somewhat slow and conservative rider I'm going to mess up training rides for people who are more competitive and going at a faster pace- but I guess I can just be upfront about that and if people don't want that kind of ride they can just say so.



knightrider said:


> @*egrogan* , I loved the chicken video. Thank you. I imagine there is a pecking order in returning to the roost? I noticed that some chickens passed other ones on the way in. My horses often stop at the gate and let the leader proceed first, then they go into their stalls in their dominance order. Are the chickens like that too? I only had one or two chickens when I had them. They were cuddly friendly loving pets.


They definitely do have a pecking order, but it primarily comes out when getting on the roost at night, not so much during the day. I have one head hen ("Robin") who bosses the others around but when they are outside, they tend to break off into smaller groups and do their own thing. They don't tend to defer to Robin when coming back into the run, it's more of a free-for-all. The single file line in the video was sort of unusual and made me laugh. They've been sticking a little tighter together and closer to home since the fox attack, and that's just fine with me!



> I have often thought about advertising for a riding buddy, but have never done it. I should think facebook would be more reliable than Craigslist, but I don't know. I once saw an ad on Craigslist that a woman put up looking for horses to ride. When I called her, she was strange, bossy, and difficult, so I didn't pursue it. She was kind of rude to me and said she didn't need to ride my horses, that she had horses and a trailer of her own. When I suggested she meet me and my friends for a ride, she said it wasn't convenient. It killed any interest I might have had to ride with that woman.


Geez. What is wrong with people sometimes?!



> I have far better luck getting children to ride with me than adults. Adults tend to have ideas of their own and at times will start requesting . . . and then insisting . . . that we do things their way. That's when I tell them that I don't need a riding buddy after all.


I recently met a 4H girl who is done with school for the summer after this week, and she's going to start coming over a couple of hours a week to help with chores for a little pocket money. She's ridden before and I've thought about whether I might have her ride occasionally. But after Maggie's tantrum this weekend I don't think I'd have her on Maggie. She's slight enough she could potentially ride Izzy, who I think would be easy enough to put a kid on even though it's been quite awhile since anyone has sat on her. Not sure how much of a freakout Maggie would have with the other two horses out ridden and her left alone in the pasture, but even if we just rode laps around the field, that might be incentive for my new helper to want to keep coming back, and maybe slowly help with the herd bound problem.


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## carshon

I strongly urge you to post on FB and find a local state park and see if they have a riding club that sponsors that park. I just recently reconnected with a lady I knew 30 years ago. She had gotten out of horses and we lost contact. We met up when I joined Old Cowgirls group on FB (I know you are not as old as I am(48)) but that particular group has a members list by state and she found me there and contacted me. We have ridden together a couple of times now.

I rode alone a lot after my daughter went to college last fall - but it is always better to ride with someone else. It takes your mind off of micromanaging your horse or getting into your own head. Please use FB as a tool and try to find a riding friend. I have a few now and all of them are older than I am - with the oldest being 75 and she can ride longer than I can without being sore!


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## bsms

I think I'd like riding alone on Bandit...except at 61 my mind keeps playing the "What if?" game! It has probably been over a year since Bandit has done anything worse than a couple of quick crow hops, but I keep thinking, "What if...." Makes it hard to have fun out alone. Particularly since it would be hard to hit the ground anywhere that doesn't have rocks and cactus already occupying the space.


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## Spanish Rider

Well, I would talk to both those neighbors. The older retired woman might also be more 'conservative' and the woman who had the accident could do well with some moral support (been there!). Like @bsms says, your mind tends to play the "What if?" game when alone…
@knightrider , you are such a generous person! I so wish I could find someone like you near me.


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## egrogan

Started by posting on the Northeast AERC FB page and will see if anything materializes. And hope to catch up with the riding neighbor soon (other neighbor has been clear she isn't ready or interested in riding outside of an arena now, or maybe ever...)


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## Spanish Rider

I understand _exactly_ where she is right now.


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## PoptartShop

Gosh, those chickens are just too darn cute. :lol: Love it! & what a cute owl!

Good for you for staying on when you rode Maggie though. I know that wasn't easy especially just in a bareback pad. :sad: Hopefully the next ride goes better, although I know that's not something you want to have happen again.

Just saw your post, that doesn't sound like a bad idea, maybe having the other girl ride one of the other horses. Maybe that will help with the buddy sour issues. After all...it's hard to do that on your own! 

As for riding buddies, I have nobody to ride with ever. :sad: I'm at a private barn now. It's peaceful & quiet, & the owner has a few horses, but she doesn't really ride much. I'm always riding alone.

I would try FB as well. There's some trail groups in my area that always ride together. I have yet to ride with any of them, since last time I rode in a group I had to practically babysit like 4 of the people. :lol: But there HAS to be people that are just like you and I that just want to go for a ride with someone to get out of our heads a bit! But I would also like a riding buddy. I'm a trail person & sometimes when I'm on trails alone I wish I had someone to talk to or something. Blah. It's nice to ride with other people, the right people. Although I do like riding alone (I guess because I'm used to it?).


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## egrogan

Got a response to my post on the AERC FB page so hoping that will yield a riding date. Also, I reached out to trainer M, who hosted the clinics, and we are working out a few dates in July when she's going to bring a horse up to my place so we can do lessons out on trail. She's been wanting to ride the trails in our area, and I've been wanting someone to give me lessons, so, win-win!

Here's Miss Fizz doing her best wind-swept super model impression this morning. Unfortunately we got a drenching rain last night; I was hoping for a few more dry days as her pasterns are looking a whole lot better, but hopefully we won't see a setback.


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## Chevaux

egrogan said:


> ... I've never known someone else with a Newton- do you have pictures of your guy you can share?...


Alas, I do not (although I now intend to rectify that before the week is out). He’s a domestic short hair, dominant orange with a little white on his underside and paws - pretty standard issue. Newton has quite a laid back personality with accompanying stunned look and my story to that is that the people who dumped him at our place (and dumping of cats is a whole other discussion for me) were stoners and he had been involuntarily partaking of product thus contributing to his more philosophical approach on life.


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## Spanish Rider

So great about the trainer! That sounds ideal, and hopefully the FB thing pans out.

And now, thinking selfishly, what _is _that FB thing? Maybe I should take a look at it, too.


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## egrogan

@Chevaux, sounds like your Newton had quite an interesting path on his way to you! :wink: My Newton was born in the Louisiana swamps and ended up the only one left from his litter that hadn't been adopted yet. I found him at a cat adoption day when he was about 8 months old, and he's been with me since August of 2001. He's got a big personality. In his younger years, he was a real jerk- his favorite thing to do was lay on the back of the couch and wait for someone to sit down so he could attack their head. He's mellowed a lot as he's gotten older, to the point I'd almost call him cuddly now. 


@Spanish Rider, the FB page is "AERC: American Endurance Ride Conference" and there's also a set of regional pages (so the relevant one for me is "AERC Northeast Region Members," that's where I found some potential riding buddies). There are some international folks who post on the main AERC page, so it couldn't hurt to post there and I wouldn't be surprised if you get some leads. I don't recall if I've seen any riders from Spain, but I believe we have seen some post from England and Germany, and there are also a few from Australia.


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## QueenofFrance08

Yay! I hope you find more riding buddies soon! Keep going to rides and volunteering and look for people there as well! If they have a potluck or dinner that you can stay for that would be a great time to ask around. I spent the weekend camping an hour away from home with 4 other friends I've met from rides. One even rode Jake for me for 13 miles!


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## phantomhorse13

I saw your post on the Northeast facebook page and am glad it maybe gave you some leads. You might also want to post on the ECTRA page if you haven't already.


To anybody joining the main AERC page.. please take what goes on there with a grain of salt. Many, many people that post there are not even AERC members and I cringe to read some of the nastiness. I promise people don't behave like that at actual rides!!


I am sorry to hear Fizz is having such skin issues. I have all of ours on garlic and flax this time of year to help with the bug bite issues. While its not the magic bullet some supplement manufacturers claim, it has helped a lot. I get garlic granules from Sam's Club in a big container and get a bag of whole flax seed from the local feed store and grind it myself, as that is much cheaper than supps with pics of horses on the container..


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## Spanish Rider

Thanks! I "liked" your post. I did not realize it was an endurance page. I was just thinking of looking for someone with an extra horse who might need a riding buddy, but I am not an endurance rider for sure!

Funny, but another woman I follow (woman in Hazelton, PA, who owns Killian and Kricket the mini) also posted. I follow her bc sometimes she posts pics/videos of her mini doing neb treatments, and my little niece loves seeing Kricket doing nebs just like her!(she has CF)


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## PoptartShop

That sounds great!  That was quick! Glad you are getting somewhere with it. Ugh about the rain, but hopefully it won't set her back at all. She looks great!


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## phantomhorse13

Spanish Rider said:


> Funny, but another woman I follow (woman in Hazelton, PA, who owns Killian and Kricket the mini) also posted.


That lady just recently moved there from California. She is now about 30 minutes from me so I hope to be able to meet the famous mini in person! We need to import someone from Cali for @egrogan now..


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## Avna

I wish I was free to trailer up for a ride with you! Right now I do not want to leave Pippa and her bum leg alone for that long; I've slowly increased my Brooke-away time to hour-long trail rides from my barn, which Pippa seems to be tolerating okay. I am going to continue to increase that time away gradually. But both our dreams of endurance rides appear to be thwarted this year. 

I think by this fall -- which hopefully will be a mild and extended one -- it will be possible for me to do trailer trips. Hang in there! And so will I.


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## egrogan

*Catching up*

I had a long week, spending ~24 hours at a mid-week work meeting in San Francisco which was bookended by late night/red eye flights to and from Boston (so added 3+ hours of driving each way...). While I was finishing up my meeting, I got a cute snapshot of lovely husband looking after Fizz in a rain storm










I was pretty exhausted Friday but we had lovely weather yesterday so that woke me up a bit. In very good news, Fizz's scratches were nearly gone- she still has a little rough scaly patch right along the hairline on her left hind, but she wasn't sensitive at all. I decided I'd go for an easy ride around the fields to see how she was feeling. 









Lovely husband had gone out to the field with me earlier to trim back some small trees and branches that were blocking the path that connected two of the big fields; it's nice to be able to ride straight from one field to the other without having to go back out on the road. I didn't want to put boots on Fizz to give her more healing time if needed, so was trying to minimize time on the road. She was enthusiastic to head out and walked happily across the first field without taking any short or ouchy steps. I was excited to go through our newly-cleared path, but as we approached, she froze and snorted and blew at these _HORSE EATING FERNS..._








Our new path was right between that birch tree (right) and the other tree on the left. I hadn't counted on the tall ferns being a visual block, but she was very nervous about it. I was fortunately able to dig into my clinic bag of tricks to do an activity called "touch it"- which is basically just horsey common sense that when you have a horse that is worried or apprehensive about an object (in our case, a field of objects!) you just keep their nose pointed where you're going and encourage them on with a rhythmic bump-bump-bump from your legs. Whenever they take a step onto/through the thing that worried them, they get lots of praise and a treat. After a minute of avoidance (trying to back up or swing sideways), she walked with trepidation into the first row of the ferns and sort of froze. I told her how brave she was and asked her to keep going. Another short minute of thinking about it (and more snorting and blowing), she let out a deep sigh and we marched through the rest of them and on up the hill. I gave her lots of praise and congratulated her for being a real trail horse :cowboy:
We continued on with the ride and walked home on a nice loose rein. She definitely picked up the pace when pointed towards home, but wasn't rushing or doing anything silly so I just let her go. Let her graze a little on the nice grass outside the fence, and she was a happy girl. Unfortunately it's raining buckets today, but tomorrow is supposed to be sunny so I'm planning on a "real" ride after work. Oh, great news- I was able to get connected with another endurance rider who lives really close to me and also has Morgans- she likes doing lots of slow, walking training miles, so we have a plan to meet up Saturday morning to go ride (weather permitting). Hopefully our horses will get along well and we can make this a regular thing. She also works full time and is interested in weekend riding dates. Sounds perfect on paper and hoping it works out that way!

The horses have been very mellow and cute with each other lately. I think they're realizing the benefit of many tails in the battle against the horseflies (that seems to be where we currently are in the annoying-bugs-of-summer lifecycle). I found them all crammed into the sheds like this most of yesterday:








While they were hanging out in the sheds, I was standing outside with Izzy, giving her a good grooming, and she in turn reached over to Fizz and started grooming _her _gently on her neck. I never see them do mutual grooming, so it was a nice moment.

In other news, Newton has been recovering well. He went to the vet to have his stitches out yesterday and is healing really well. His behavior is pretty much back to normal. The only not-great thing is that he lost a lot of weight- he weighed 16-17 lbs when he went in and is down to 12 lbs post-surgery. We're obviously keeping a close eye on that. He is eating a little less than normal, but today was the last day he had to take antibiotics and I'm hoping that will help with his appetite. We go back for follow-up bloodwork in a month, assuming nothing changes. With the stitches out, he's allowed to go outside again. He's always been an indoor-outdoor cat, but the past few years as he's aged he really just wanted to go outside and lounge around in the sun on the porch or steps, which is fine by me.









Speaking of lounging around in the sun, here's a funny shot for the Dottie fans- she was soaking up the rays yesterday too:









One thing I've never understood about chicken sunbathing is why they so often pile up on top of each other in a heap- but it seems to be a key part of the process 









This is Dom, my favorite (shhh...don't tell the others). Her most favorite thing in the world is a fresh hay bale. I have no idea why, but she can sense that hay has been brought out when she's not even anywhere near it. I couldn't find her when I went to put them back up in their run, but knowing the hay cart was out and loaded up, I knew _exactly _where to find her!!


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## PoptartShop

So glad Fizz's scratches are pretty much gone.  Yay! It does take time, skin issues are such a pain. Yay for such a great ride. LOL at the snorting haha. So funny when they do that. But talking to her probably encouraged her.  What a good girl!

I am so glad Newton is doing well with his recovery. I hope the antibiotics help. I'm sure he's enjoying relaxing outside for a change! LOL the chickens are sooo cute sunbathing!! :lol: Dom is so cute in the hay!


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## carshon

Love - Love Love! the pics! and so glad you found a riding partner. It truly does make a difference.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> so glad you found a riding partner. It truly does make a difference.



I got a cute message from her this morning...she said, "I know we were going to get in touch closer to the weekend, and it's only Monday. But I'm already excited thinking about my weekend riding plans and wanted to confirm a time with you."


I really hope this works out!


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## egrogan

The weather was glorious yesterday, and in a happy coincidence, I had almost no meetings scheduled. So, in the late afternoon, we headed out for a couple of miles on the road. I put her front boots on but left the hinds off, as there is still one spot on the right hind that's got a little crusty stuff on it. I thought the boots would be more likely to rub than the road. While there are some gravely sections that I worried about a little bit, I picked a route that was pretty clear of the big, sharp gravel and primarily just dirt. 










Having not been ridden the past couple of weeks, the hills were a good workout right off the bat, but she did great! I thought this picture did a good job of showing just how hilly everything is. We were standing in a "flat" spot, but there's nothing flat around us...
















We had one small spook...at this flat rock in the middle of the road, aka _obvious horse eating portal to the netherworld_. We rode an "out and back" route, so she shied at it on the way out, and this was passing it on the way home. You can tell from her body language that she was giving it the side eye the second time around
















Look closely in the top left corner, in the blue sky above her ear- that's just one of the swarm of deer flies that harassed us the whole way. Hate those things!









We got back and untacked, and I gave her feet a careful exam. The scabby spot on the right hind had cracked a little, but it didn't appear sore. I slathered it back up with desitin while she had her dinner. Lovely husband had a loud saw running up in the house, working on removing some old flooring, and that sent her into high alert- silly girl!









Rain forecast is iffy for later today, but there's a chance we can get out again this afternoon.


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## egrogan

I had the kind of ride yesterday that really makes you want to hug your horse for taking such good care of you. Fizzy and I went out the "hill of despair" route- my riding buddy has proven to be quite communicative, so we've been messaging back and forth about the route she'd like to take when we meet up this weekend. It includes going down the hill, so I figured I needed to tackle it at least once before then to make sure we weren't going to embarrass ourselves by not even to make it even a 1/4 mile into our ride! Was very proud of Fizz, she was a bit of a drunken sailor as we went down the hill, BUT, she did it. No stalling out and planting her feet or trying to spin for home. I think it's just hard for her to do that much sustained, steep downhill right at the beginning of the ride because she's just not that strong right now. The flies were pretty miserable but she persevered. We rode out to cross the paved road and then turned back to come home.








That was when things got interesting. The hill of despair is a very narrow, basically one lane road with steep ditches on both sides and no shoulder. There's really nowhere to go to get out of the way of a car. We were fairly close to home, trotting up the last very steep stretch of hill, when I heard a really loud truck coming fast behind us. I turned around and my heart sank to see the "red pickup guy" racing towards us. This guy often sprays us with gravel when we're out walking the dogs, and is always going far too fast around the corners on our dirt road. Luckily, he did see us (given the amount of hi vis orange we wear I'm not sure how you couldn't! :wink and he didn't try to brush passed us. There was really nowhere for me to go though, and I was nervous. I think I was so nervous I must have given Fizz a pretty tight "hug" with my legs, and she took off cantering nicely up the hill. Given the circumstances, I just went with it, and she stayed between my legs and hands beautifully, balanced along the edge of the ditch but not putting a foot wrong. In what felt like an eternity (but I'm sure was just a few seconds!) we got to a spot where the road was at least wide enough that he could safely pass us, and he sped away. I took a very deep breath and pulled Fizz up to regroup, giving her a huge hug and the rest of the peppermints in my pocket! She really got us out of a jam there, and that felt like a great step forward in building trust in our partnership. 

We got going again, continuing to trot up the hill home. And when we got to the turnoff to the back of the field, she actually didn't want to end the ride, which cracked me up...




We continued up the road a bit farther and turned off at the front of the field instead.

I hand grazed her for a few minutes and then brought her back in. She was very silly playing around at the water bucket, but did drink. Endurance horse in the making?! *fingers crossed*





Our streak of sunny weather is coming to an end this morning, and we're supposed to have torrential downpours the next few days, so not sure I'll get to ride again before the weekend. But, I'm grateful that we had two sunny days in a row, and that I could fit in two after-work rides. Very proud of my Fizz this week!


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## Spanish Rider

So many great, happy things happening in your latest posts!

Hooray for Newton! His weight is still very healthy, so no worries. Towards the end, my Luna got down to three-ish pounds, although she was always very tiny (I have a thing for runts).



> I got a cute message from her this morning...she said, "I know we were going to get in touch closer to the weekend, and it's only Monday. But I'm already excited thinking about my weekend riding plans and wanted to confirm a time with you."


Absolute best sign ever. Can't wait to hear all the details.

Great to see you getting so much riding in.

About driving to Logan, do you prefer driving? My cousins in NH take the bus from Concord, and we take the Logan Express from Framingham, which is right down 495 (I am assuming you come in on Rt 2, correct?). There is a gated parking lot there, and I am sure it is cheaper than parking in Logan. Plus, the buses zoom right in and out - much faster than driving yourself. Very safe, too - my son takes it by himself. Buses leave every 30 min during the week, every hour on the weekend. Logan Express bus service


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## egrogan

@*Spanish Rider* , I am really excited to meet my riding buddy. We've settled on Sunday. Tacked and ready to ride at 8:30am. She's got a nice route all mapped out for us before traffic gets too bad :grin:

As far as taking the Dartmouth coach to Logan- I have to be honest, this is my worst "American" habit. I really dislike not being able to be on my own schedule with my own car when I'm traveling. Because my work trips can change often (e.g., meetings ending early or late) I need to be flexible about when I come home. And, I am usually coming home on the last flight of the night since I try to minimize my number of overnights as much as I can to spare lovely husband from doing too many rounds of chores while I'm gone. So- I just don't like the idea of having to book things around the bus. Fortunately I generally fly from Hartford, CT, which is a super easy drive with easy parking and quick security, so I don't generally have to fight traffic. It's just better to go from Boston when going to the west coast or Europe, so I suck it up! :wink:

Thanks for the good wishes for Newton. This is how he is spending his days- just as a retired old cat should...









Had another encounter with the bear yesterday. I was going out to feed the chickens, and heard something rustling around in the woods behind the barn. I figured it was a deer, but as I peered around the corner, I saw dark black fur about 20 feet away from me  He saw me too, and ambled away through the woods in the other direction, coming out onto the road on the other side of our house. I walked around the front of the barn in time to see him cross the road and walk through one of our fields into the woods again. I really don't like knowing he's hanging around. Lovely husband helped me string more electric wire all the way around the barn, fully enclosing the chicken run (up to now, we'd just had across the front door that he broke into a couple of weeks ago). I hope he doesn't test it, but if he does the charger is 8 joules and should give him a bit of a sting!

I ran into my neighbor at the vet's office earlier in the week and we were trading bear stories. She told me last weekend, she was driving her carriage up the road by my horse's pasture, when all of a sudden her mare got all weird and snorty. She looked up, and the bear was _standing up on his hind legs in the middle of the road _just beyond my pasture.   My neighbor is a quiet, mild mannered 50-something lady, so it was particularly funny when she told me, "I saw that bear on his legs and I yelled to my mare, 'that's a big f*cking bear!!!'" :rofl: Fortunately it was not particularly thrilled about seeing them either, so it crossed the road and disappeared into the woods without bothering them. I'm happy I haven't seen it while riding yet as I'm not sure how I'd handle that.

No riding today; started off with clouds of mist rolling across the pasture and that has evolved into a steady rain. At least we got a few decent days this week, can't complain too much.


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## Spanish Rider

Your floorboards! Love that patina. I was actually reading a colonial-Massachusetts novel recently (_Flight of the Sparrow_, based on a true story of Indian attacks and abductions at the start of King Phillip's War), and they mention how women scrubbed the floors with sand! I can't imagine what their hands looked like.


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## PoptartShop

What a good girl!!!!  The hills are really good for her. Love that fly bonnet too. That is awesome she took care of you like that. Best feeling ever. The trust is definitely there.  So happy you've been having such great rides lately!! & how exciting about the riding buddy. This weekend will be so much fun!  I definitely can see a future of endurance for her! Go Fizz!!!!! And you!!! Omg about the bear stories! Whew! Hopefully the electric steers him away! :lol: 

Glad Newton is doing well also! He looks so peaceful.


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## egrogan

I have had just the loveliest riding weekend, and am over the moon proud of Fizz. She did so many new- and not easy- things this weekend, and handled it all beautifully.

Yesterday I was just mounting up, when in a happy coincidence, my retired up-the-road neighbor and a friend happened to come riding by. They invited me along with them, which was very nice! Fizz had never met these two horses, but she was happy to ride along with them.









They were clear they were out for an amble- both geldings are in their mid-20s- and that was fine with me, though Fizz's walk was quite a lot faster than theirs naturally, without asking her to move out at all. So we spent a lot of our ride out in front, or doing serpentines across the road to slow down a little. I hated to ask her to stop and wait as stopping and then getting stuck is exactly what we DON'T need any practice with!









We rode out to the overlook, and it was like a Vermont tourism commercial out there:









We let the horses have a few bites of that beautiful grass, and then turned around to come back towards home. I decided I'd ride Fizz back to their house with them, which is in the opposite direction of where we started, back past our pasture and down the hill of despair. I knew that would certainly be a challenge, but figured trying it with two other horses would be as good a time as any. That was the only part of the ride when we were behind the other horses :wink:









Love that spotty butt!









She did think about spinning for home a couple of times and we had to extract ourselves from the branches over the ditch, but she wasn't that committed to it (and the other two horses were pretty oblivious to her antics). We got to the end of the road where they turned for home and then we had to turn around and ride back _up _the hill of despair on our own to go home. I knew this could potentially be a dicey moment- I've never asked her to ride away from other horses and get left alone before. She did whinny a few times and get a little tight and tense under me, which was slightly unnerving going down the first hill away from them. But I just kept myself breathing really deeply and telling her how brave she was, and she came right back to me (a well-time cookie helped too :wink. So we had a nice canter up the hill before walking home on a nice long rein. Success!









This morning was my scheduled date with my new riding buddy, M. Her horse is an 8-year old Morgan gelding (Coalie) who has done tons of trails, but all solo, so this was his first time riding with another horse. Fizz had never met him either- after this weekend, she's going to think that handsome geldings just magically appear from out of the woods every time I tack her up :rofl: He was a little amped up when M got on him, as Izzy and Maggie were putting on their typical show in the pasture as we rode down the hill of despair. But Fizz didn't complain at all about going that way, even with Coalie a little worried and calling out behind her. That in itself made me so proud of her; a couple of months ago I think she would have spun and dragged me home without thinking twice. But once we got to the bottom of the hill, everything was good.








Unfortunately despite his initial display of enthusiasm, Coalie's walk wasn't much more forward than the old guys yesterday, and I found myself having to either hold Fizz back, ask her to stop, or do lots of circles- all of which got her pretty (understandably) annoyed. I really don't want to have to constantly get her out of the rhythm of her nice, naturally forward walk, so that was a little disappointing. But, M wasn't worried about us getting a little far ahead of her and would trot to catch up periodically, which both of the horses seemed fine with. Just made it hard to have much of a conversation where I wasn't yelling or twisted around in the saddle to talk to her. 

Fizz got a little worried when we passed the donkeys, snorting and shying away from them. I had been hoping we could ride behind our new friends to pass them, but he was too far behind us to help and when Fizz got upset he got a little nervous too. So, I just hopped off and hand walked her, and got back on a little ways beyond them from a ditch. We'll have to continue working on that spot. 

Right after I got back on, we turned down a road I hadn't ridden on before, which I was glad to find because it now allows me to do a nice ~4 mile loop connecting back up with the road that we live on. It does involve about 1/4 mile on a paved road that gets busy, so not something I'll do if I'm not out early on a weekend- but, still a nice option at the right time of day.









We turned up our road to head home, which is a sustained, mile long uphill climb. We rode past a few other neighbors with horses turned out, and I wasn't sure how Fizz would react to that- but as was the theme of the weekend, she did amazing with that and kept right on going up the hill. By this point, I had stopped trying to get her to slow down and we were well out in front, and she was happy to move out.









Lovely husband was outside when we got home, and snapped a picture- this is pretty much how I imagine we looked throughout the ride








So, all in all, I can't say enough good things about how Fizz did. I'd still love to find a friend with a more forward-moving horse, but it will be nice to continue to meet up with M on Sunday mornings to go out together. We already have plans for next Sunday and she's going to show me some of the snowmobile trails. 

And you know what, I was reminded what's nice about riding alone too :wink: I'm just so happy with Fizz and feel like we're finding our groove again. I was also reminded how much I should appreciate her great walk, and it made me feel optimistic about endurance in our future.


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## SueC

That's wonderful, @egrogan!  What luck to happen upon riders on the Saturday as well! Having a fast-walk horse and trying to ride with other horses with a "normal" walk has been a permanent feature of my riding life since I first got on the French Trotter mare as a child. My Arabian was the same, and so is Sunsmart, and so was Romeo and Chip and any other trotter breed I rode. And with all of them, it wasn't just the walk - it was the same at the trot. About the only riding buddy I ever had whose horse moved out the same was an OTTB called Rikki-Tikki, and even he got eyes on stalks if Sunsmart went into his real racing trot, as he'd not hitherto met a faster trotter than himself. That made Rikki-Tikki amp up and gallop like a war horse. :rofl:










Actually walking at the same speed - miraculous! :rofl:

It's not such a bad handicap to have, since it's such an enjoyable riding trait. With Sunsmart, I joined an organised trail ride once, with 10 horses in it. I had to practice on "slow walk" and when they trotted at glacial pace occasionally, in the end I rode him away from the group, backtracking on our trail, and trotting him properly and cantering him etc, and then I'd catch up with the group again. Meeting Rikki-Tikki and his rider was _wonderful_...


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## gottatrot

Sounds like some great rides with Fizz! Beautiful scenery too.

I'm with @SueC, very sympathetic about having the fast walker. I spent many a ride on Halla or Amore just turning circles until we were rather dizzy, trying not to get too far ahead of the other horses. The good news is it is excellent dressage practice, and soon your horse can be quite balanced in both directions doing very small circles.


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## carshon

Be careful what you wish for! Just kidding! Tillie has always been a forward horse. Even when riding with other gaited horses. Like you - I just gave in because the frustration of trying to curb her natural walk was tiresome and I did not want to create a cranky horse. Over time Tillie has slowed her walk a little or has even started stopping and waiting for the horses behind her to catch up. My daughters new mare (Sawyer) actually walks faster than Tillie and that has proven to be a little frustrating for her as well. She is working to keep up and not liking that one bit!

I am so glad that you were able to ride not once- but twice! I am sure with time Coalie may walk a little faster and Fizz a little slower


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## PoptartShop

How nice you got to ride with the neighbor & a friend, then your riding buddy!  What a nice weekend.

I am glad you had a great time. I know it's hard to adjust the speed. :lol: But that is good for Fizz. The more she goes out with others, the better. Soon she will be just fine being behind another horse that may be 'slower'. It's good to keep her in the front sometimes too though, as the 'leader'. Switching it up is helpful though. In time, it will get better. I hope you guys ride together more often!  It'll be fun!!!


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## Avna

Brooke can walk really fast. She will do almost a running walk. And she likes to trot. Just saying .... :smile:


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## Knave

It is funny, because where I live one is required to keep up with the fastest walker or trotter. So, if you are slow to walk, you spend your time trotting to catch up. Slow to trot, you lope along. It is prized to have the fast walker or trotter, and although I’m sure none of us could touch @SueC ‘s racers, we often had trotting races. I’ve had a couple who could win, and some who simply couldn’t, and it’s been rare I am the one on a fast walker.

Little girl’s Pete can out trot anyone, but he is not a pacer, so it is miserable. We joked he was the road horse, but it is definitely not something I enjoyed riding. Those long legs are made to move. The one who can out-walk everyone is Beamer, and it is always fun to ride him and out-walk everyone. 

There is a woman who comes to ride with us, and she rides a chocolate palomino. He can cover country! When he is next to Beamer they irritate each other. It is an insult for either of them to be outdone, and they share the same personality. So, they get next to each other and start irritating one another, and they become half miserable to ride. lol. 

She comes from a city, and everyone refuses to ride with her because he walks too fast. She spends much of her time trying to slow him down. It is funny the cultural difference.


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## egrogan

Haha, thanks for all the commiseration around having a fast walker. I don't think she's actually _that _fast- yesterday when we went out, I had her walk and trot at a comfortable pace on a fairly long rein, and our average speed for our first mile was only ~5mph, which is just barely what we'd need to do to make time on a competitive trail type ride around here. So she's not dawdling, but also not rushing. I think a lot of Morgans (though, apparently not all, after our experience this weekend :wink just have that "going somewhere" kind of walk naturally. @*Knave* , your post made me think about my riding buddy, Ida, from our old boarding barn, who loves to go places quickly on her nice little Lippitt Morgan mare- I actually reached out to her yesterday to tell her how much I missed our rides! At 87 years old, she's still getting out there multiple times a week working her horse. #LifeGoals

@*Avna* , I so wish I had a truck & trailer so I could come meet you. But alas, given all the renovations, it's going to have to wait until next year. Of course, whenever you feel ready to leave Pippa for part of the day, you're more than welcome to come up here and see some new scenery. If any of the GMHA rides or members days temp you, just let me know!

I did get Fizz out for a quick solo ride at lunchtime yesterday. My only goal was to just ask her to move forward without holding her back. The deer flies were atrocious- we were literally getting pelted in the face with them like rain drops! Yuck! But that was good motivation to just trot along and try to escape them. Even with just a couple of weeks of more consistent riding, I can feel her getting stronger, particularly on the downhills. I still prefer to have her walk down hill as she feels very unbalanced trotting, but yesterday I could have her walking down even the steepest hills on a long rein without feeling like I was holding her together; just being strong and balanced in my seat and core was enough, and she maintained a steady pace and seemed very comfortable with the downhill. I think the downhill trots will come soon.

We did have one stall out moment, but it was totally my fault because I asked her to stop for a minute so I could stop to take some pictures, near a place where we often turn around to go home.  When I asked her to keep going after stopping there, I swear she was looking at me out of the corner of her eye saying, "make up your mind lady- YOU asked ME to stop here, so don't get offended that I don't want to keep going" :rofl:

At least the pictures were pretty...

















The old ladies are doing well. I worked with Maggie on the lunge line for awhile on Sunday, and she was quite sweaty when we finished, so needed a bath. You know how that goes!


















With all the geldings around this weekend, Izzy has decided she's in heat again :icon_rolleyes: She gets so uncomfortable in her own skin with all those hormones raging. The other night, I caught her having a good head scratch on the hay net. Silly girl.


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## PoptartShop

LOL love the pictures of Maggie rolling! :rofl: You can never bathe them without them rolling afterwards...it's impossible haha. Izzy is so cute using the haynet as a scratching post. :lol: Fizz will definitely get even stronger, the hill work is really good for her!  The fact that she's staying balanced at the walk downhill is great. What a good girl!!!


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## egrogan

Some exciting news...I've found a trailer ride to a competitive trail event (25 miler) on August 3rd at GMHA- sooooo, I guess we're finally going to participate in a formal ride! I'm really excited, while also a little nervous of course. But I think it's going to be a ton of fun. I have a couple of friends who are also riding in it, though one is a much more serious competitor and going for completion of a 2-day 50, so I don't imagine I'll ride with her that day. The other has a fairly green horse so thinking maybe we'll be able to buddy up. And, @*Avna* is considering coming up as a volunteer/crew, which would be amazing! Given that it's a little over a month away, I'll have to make some changes to my riding schedule and be a little more disciplined, but I think that will be good for us both.

Not wanting to waste a sunny day, we headed out before work this morning. Truth be told, Fizz was not so much fun to ride the first couple of miles away from home. She was a sloth, wet noodling back and forth across the road and just dragging her feet in a pathetic walk. I found myself getting frustrated with her but in those moments, really pushed myself to refocus on finding one thing she was doing well so I could give her some praise and keep us both motivated. It was a challenge at times :wink:- we would be trotting along, and I'd ask her to transition back to a walk, only to do dressage-test-worthy trot to halt transitions :icon_rolleyes: Then of course we'd get stalled out and I'd have to get unstuck. But it all worked out ok, we did get restarted again and continued on our way. We did about 5 miles, and rode a little farther away from home down this particular road than we have in the past. The good news is that she always gets peppier when we go somewhere new, and that happened today as well. 









I am very proud of how traffic safe she is though- we got passed by a big rattly truck, a loud farm tractor, and a real-life Vermont traffic jam (aka, two cars in the right "lane," one car in the left "lane," and us in the middle as we all navigated a tight curve in the road- fortunately we all took turns and everyone survived). 

We turned around at about 2.5 miles to backtrack home, and lo and behold, she magically had a spring in her step and a beautiful, forward walk. Happily trotted along when asked and was also happy to be asked to come back to a walk (not halt!). There were a few difficult, steep downhill sections going home but I could really feel her balance herself under me and carry herself along. Getting better at that!

We passed the donkey's house on this route, but they weren't out today- they are usually in the corner of that pasture to the left.









Took a loop through one of our fields on the way home- can you guess which direction her friends were in?? :rofl:








Lately she will give them a deep, enthusiastic whinny when she's close to home, and they whinny back, but she doesn't panic or try to rush in that direction. It's sort of like she wants to say, "hey everyone, just letting you know I'm almost home." I can handle that!

All in all, we went ~5 miles in an hour and fifteen minutes. We'll have to get faster, and sustain it over more miles. But, even though the whole ride was mostly walking with some bursts of trotting, the last two miles home were much faster than the first two (doing about 14 minute miles compared to 17 minute miles on the way out). Something to build on.

It was good we went the way we did, because when we got home, we saw that the town guys were out tearing up the road in front of the house and putting down new surface dirt- if we had gone the way we usually do, we would have had to navigate all this machinery- guess it would have been a good test of just how "traffic safe" she really is! :wink:









We averted near disaster when we entered the paddock- she took a nice, long drink, and then out of nowhere, she started dropping to roll while still saddled!  She dropped so fast she was down on her belly like a dog, about to roll onto her side, but fortunately I was able to pull her back up to her feet with the lead rope. I certainly understood she was hot and sweaty, but I've never seen her try to do that before. I do NOT want to have to go saddle shopping any time soon! Anyway, I got her untacked quickly and let her loose on the lawn to graze a little while I sponged her down.









And when I turned her back out, she did get that roll. Sweet satisfaction!!









I booted her on all 4s today for the first time in awhile, hoping her hind pasterns and heel bulbs would do ok- the road we went on has a lot of big, sharp gravel on it so she really needed the protection. Unfortunately that right heel bulb (the one that had the most healing to do from the scratches) did get a few small rubs. Not raw, bloody rubs, but enough that the hair was missing in a couple of patches. I think it's because the boots are slightly too big, so I'm going to have to get a smaller pair. The farrier comes tomorrow for trims (which everyone desperately needs- SO much new growth, long toes, crazy bars, some flaring- just overall very much in need of attention) and he has demo boots on his truck so we'll try out the size down to confirm they're good and I'll get them ordered.


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## egrogan

Had a nice weekend, though it felt particularly long. My lovely husband went out of town for the weekend to an outdoor music festival with some friends, and it was amazing how having him gone made my routine feel all discombobulated. I am grateful that we are a good team and you really feel that when part of the team is away.

The weather was unsettled with lots of storms moving through, but I was lucky to get in some riding time. Yesterday I decided I wanted to ask Fizz to pick up the pace a bit and see how she did with that. We did a familiar route but kept the pace and almost all trotting, with some canters and walks interspersed. Even trotted some of the friendlier downhills. That was interesting.  At times I felt that I was going to bounce right over her neck. Just something to keep practicing. She is now moving nicely and carrying herself all on her own even on the steep sections, so I think we're ready to work on it.

We did have one funny moment- had a nice canter up a fun hill. As we crested over the top-BAM 💥 spook sideways. That pile of dirt is NOT supposed to be there :icon_rolleyes: 








I sensed the possibility that we may turn quickly and canter back down that same steep hill (no thanks!) so I jumped off and from the ground, asked her to approach it by doing a series of circles towards and away as we worked up to it. My trusty partner realized it was just a pile of dirt, not a horse eating portal. I re-mounted using said pile of dirt and she was ho hum about it. After that, it was uneventful.

















The bugs were particularly miserable yesterday, and the three amigos packed into the sheds together for maximum fly-swatting.









Today we went out with M and Coalie, dodging thunderstorms. She had a new (to me) loop planned for us that would take us on roads and woods trails. I was eager to try it out. Fizz was a little sticky at the beginning, planting her feet going down the hill of despair (sigh) so I got off and hand walked her down it, remounting at the bottom. I am frustrated about the stalling out- it's the one thing she does that I really just don't understand. When I get her going again, she goes. So I don't get the stopping. At any rate, we got through that, and I grabbed a little branch off a maple tree and used that as a swatter when she felt like stalling out again. We did need to do some circling and halting to wait for Coalie to catch up with us, so of course that doesn't help. Her walk is significantly faster than his, but their trots are actually very well matched, and M was up for trotting quite a bit so that was nice.









Our route took us through a large private farm, which was simply gorgeous to ride through. We had to pass cows in the distance, and I wasn't sure how Fizz would do with that. She definitely wanted to look around in the new places, but she mostly kept going. A few times she thought about trying to pull me back the way we came, and it was funny to see her reaction when she realized we were on a loop and had re-entered familiar territory heading home rather than backtracking. All in all, we went 6.5 miles, our longest ride this year.

Caught a funny shot of she and Izzy enthusiastically coming in for dinner tonight









The weather is supposed to be nice and summery this week, and I'm looking forward to another ride on July 4th with M and her sister who will be visiting from out of town with her eventing mare. Hopefully I'll get at least one additional ride in between now and then.


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## egrogan

Fit in a quick ride after work last night. I sort of guessed it wasn't going to be a great ride as I was in a bit of a rush and annoyed with the last email chain I was dealing with before I left the computer. I don't think any horses do well when being rushed through their routine, but I think Fizz is particularly sensitive to that kind of energy. Still, weather was good, and I felt like I should take advantage of the chance to get at least a short ride in. I decided to just hack around the fields and use some of the flatter spots to do a little schooling with her since I've been feeling like she's very rigid at the trot lately.

She was ok at first, but the flies were just relentless and I could feel her poor sides rippling constantly trying to shake them off (I had doused her in spray beforehand but nothing seems to work). It wasn't long before she felt like she was crawling out of her skin and flinging her head all over. So much for softening and schooling some big 20-meter circles in the field. 









Still, there were a couple of really nice moments- the fields are quite hilly, and when we went down a very steep section, I could absolutely feel the change in her body when she tucked her little butt under and sat back on her hind legs to navigate it totally on her own, on a nice long rein. She also bravely walked through the tall fern section that connects two of the fields, where she had been worried the last time we went through. Didn't hesitate even a second. She was less enthusiastic going through a really boggy, mud sucking section not long after, but we got through it.









By the time we hit the road to head home after a couple of miles, she was DONE. I didn't really blame her though, the bugs just really made the whole experience pretty miserable.








We'll put that ride behind us and look forward to the next one being better!


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## Avna

It's the deer flies. They drive Brooke crazy too. At the moment it's pretty doable here with a whole-face riding mask and neck cover. They still land on her ears but can't bite her. Spray does *nothing* at all to repel deer flies. Also? No walking! We had a great ride a day ago through some deer fly habitat (AKA Western Massachusetts) because whenever they found us we just trotted or cantered until we left them behind. It was brisk! I blessed my Renegades all four around, because Brooke could trot and canter on rocky ground and gravel without a pause.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...I sensed the possibility that we may turn quickly and canter back down that same steep hill (no thanks!) so I jumped off and from the ground, asked her to approach it by doing a series of circles towards and away as we worked up to it. My trusty partner realized it was just a pile of dirt, not a horse eating portal. I re-mounted using said pile of dirt and she was ho hum about it. After that, it was uneventful...


That sounds SOOO much better than making a big deal of it! Bandit and I have moments like that too. Not as many as before, but he plans to live a LOOONNNNGGGGG time!

Mostly just wanted to say what a beautiful place you live in! I'm glad to skip most of the bugs. The few we have here are annoying enough. But that countryside is absolutely gorgeous! I love Arizona but I sometimes feel like I'm riding through a post-nuclear war world.










VS


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## Avna

Yes, it is in my view some of the prettiest country short of Eden. The deer flies are there to remind us that we live in a fallen world.


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## egrogan

@bsms, I truly do love New England. I think it's the part of this country that best suits me (I've lived in the Midwest, the southeast, the mid-Atlantic, and New England, so I don't have the full picture of the west coast, southwest, or upper plains...but from what I know, I feel more "at home" here than I suspect I would elsewhere). I feel very lucky to be in this part of Vermont, I sometimes have to pinch myself. It's like living in the middle of a state park. This was sunset yesterday:










That said, there's something magical to me about the desert and I love seeing all your pictures. In fact, I have a big birthday coming up this September and my husband and I are celebrating with a southwestern roadtrip- flying into Albuquerque and out of Phoenix, with a couple of weeks of driving and sightseeing (and eating...lots of eating :wink in between. He's never been in the desert at all, and I've only driven through that part of the country once before, but it was very quick and I didn't really take the time to appreciate the scenery. I am hoping to find a place to ride at one of our stops, even if it's touristy. Seems like a great way to experience it.




Avna said:


> The deer flies are there to remind us that we live in a fallen world.


 I can't stop laughing at this. 

This was also last night- pure annoyance in the form of floppy ears


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## egrogan

Summer has settled in for us- nearly 90*F/32*C today, so I was happy to meet M and her sister S early this morning to go for a ride, before the heat and humidity got too bad (it was only ~80*F/27*C when we left). They hacked over to us from M's house, which is about 2.5 miles, so I got Fizz tacked and ready and let her graze around a little while we waited for them. I wasn't sure what Fizz would think of seeing and hearing horses coming up the road to meet her, particularly because she had not met S's horse before (Coalie is becoming familiar by now). She and I both heard them clop-clopping up the dirt road before we saw them, and she was very interested but very reasonable. I hopped on and called out to let them now I was riding down to meet them. Introductions were docile and everyone was happy to continue on together. 

We rode out to the overlook, where M and S had never been before, and I was happy to be able to introduce them to my favorite spot!


















S's horse, Schultz, was a big, good-natured Perch x TB whose walk matched quite nicely with Fizz's. We even followed him for a bit!









We tried not to get too far ahead of Coalie, but even when we did, he really never got worried or upset about it. Every now and then, M will have him trot to catch back up, or ask the whole group to trot along; for some reason he keeps up much better at the trot than the walk. All the horses were very brave when a pair of mountain bikers came down a hill behind us. The bikers were great and called out to ask us if it was ok to pass. M wasn't sure about Coalie as he had never seen a bike, so we all decided to stop and turn to face them as they went by. The horses didn't care in the slightest. Happy to have had a good first experience with people who were very respectful about it.

We turned around at the overlook and doubled back to my house; M and S were going to continue on to loop home, and I kept riding with them past the house and pasture, down the hill of despair. Maggie and Izzy were talking to us all as we went back, and that's the one thing that does get Coalie a little upset (otherwise nothing phases him), so M hopped off to handwalk him past. I was pleasantly surprised that Fizz didn't stall out at all on the hill; she got a little noodly, but she kept moving. It was actually the best ride down that hill we've had that I can remember. I was glad we weren't arguing when we got to the bottom, because a neighbor was out very loudly weedwhacking the entrance to Mitchell's Field, which will be a hold for the VT100 in a couple of weeks. He was so in the zone that he never saw us coming towards him, and couldn't hear us calling out to him with his ear protection on. So we just walked on by- _we _actually scared _him _when he finally looked up and saw the third of three horses passing him! :rofl: He apologized profusely but it was no big deal- Coalie shied away slightly, but Fizz and Schultz didn't even really look. 

I stuck with them for a mile or so, until we got out to the paved road that they would cross to loop towards home, and then turned Fizz around to ride back _up _the hill solo. M was a little worried for me that Fizz was going to get upset, but I was confident she'd be ok peeling off from the group. And sure enough, she was nearly perfect- she didn't even call out at all. Would she have been that good if she didn't know we were going home? Not sure, but at this point, I'm happy to have good experiences showing her she can do it where it's "easy," and hopefully that will help in other future situations. We picked up a nice trot up that long hill all the way home, passing a couple of women out walking with huge off-leash dogs. The dogs were really loud but stuck with their people, so Fizz gave them a hard stare but kept trotting along. So many challenges today, but she did great with all of them!

She was very sweaty, breathing a little hard, and needed a good cool-out when we got home. We walked around and did some circles in the shady part of the lawn for a few minutes, and then I untacked her and sponged her down while she grazed. I think that was her favorite part! :wink:









Another great ride with her, feeling really good about how brave she is with so many new situations, and that she rides so well in a group. Onward!


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like a fantastic ride.. more pennies in the jar as Patti would say!


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## Knave

I am happy for you.  I was thinking of how discouraged we both were getting over the long winter. It seems to me that you are kicking summer’s butt.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Knave and @phantomhorse13. We do seem to be in a good groove right now :grin:


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## egrogan

Yesterday started with a trip to the vet for a check-up with Newton. He was due for some post-op bloodwork and a recheck of his thyroid to see if he needs to continue with his medication. I had a bad feeling going into the appointment since his weight loss has continued pretty dramatically. You can feel every bone in his little body and he looks gaunt :sad: So I just wasn’t sure what to expect. We got there and put him on the scale, and he was down to 10.3 lbs (he had been 12.7 after surgery, and around 17 beforehand). The vet said obviously that wasn’t great, but otherwise, he looked really good given everything he’d been through. The incision had healed beautifully, his vitals were good, eyes and ears clear, etc. They pulled and ran blood- thyroid function is well within normal range. His kidney values were off the charts, which we knew, but his anemia had improved a little since the surgery. All in all, it wasn’t a bad visit, despite my bad feeling- we know he has kidney disease, we know that leads to weight loss, and we know he won’t last forever. We decided to switch him to a kidney health diet, which is much higher fat than he was eating (actually, not really eating-I think that was probably part of the weight loss problem) and we mixed in it as soon as he got home, much to his delight. I haven’t seen him eat as enthusiastically as he did yesterday since the surgery, so that seems good. Vet said she always thinks about the “three As” with older animals- Appetite, Attitude, and Activity. As long as you feel good about 2 out of 3, they’re probably doing ok. Once that changes, you need to start thinking about whether it’s time. So, for right now, we’ve got 2.5 As and we’ll keep going.









Yesterday was also the hottest, most humid day yet this summer. Thunderstorms were forecast all morning, but they kept get bumped back later and later in the day, so I was happy that when we got home from the vet, it was clear enough for me to ride. I had also gotten Fizz’s new hind boots in the mail and was eager to get them on. I rode to the overlook, but past it down a steep hill that follows. I’ve tried Fizz on that hill before and had an even worse fight there than on the hill of despair. It is gravelly, long, and steep, so it’s definitely a challenge. But, I thought she should be strong enough now that she could navigate it successfully. She took it really slow, and managed to bounce us into the ditch once, but we got back on track and made it down to the bottom. We walked on a little farther as I didn’t want to just turn around right there. After we got beyond the old farm at the bottom of the hill, we did turn around and head back up the hill home. It _is _daunting!









_Half-way there!_








_Climbing stops right after that house..._









Once we got to the top, she was really hot and sweaty, and definitely lacking her usual peppy walk. She was breathing really hard and really dragging underneath me. She made me really nervous because she seemed like she just didn’t want to keep going- something she never does when we’re heading towards home. Overall, she just didn’t feel right. We were still about 1.5 miles from home, and there was nowhere between where we were and the house to get water for her. But, we were next to a nice, shady field, so I decided I’d hop off and let her graze for a couple of minutes in the shade to see if that helped. She was enthustiastic about the grass, so that seemed a good sign. 








If you squint, you can probably just see (straight up from her right ear) a beautiful red-tailed hawk we were sharing the field with while we hung out









We didn’t stop for long, maybe 5-10 minutes, but her breathing got better and she looked a little perkier. I had been prepared to just hand walk her home, but she looked ok, so I hopped back on. The ride home was uneventful. I got her tack off quickly, offered her a drink (she didn’t want it, which I didn’t love) and got her sponged down with cool water while she grazed some more. I don’t know if I did the right thing or overreacted, but she just didn’t feel right to me after climbing that hill so I felt that I needed to do something.

Later that afternoon, that expected thunderstorm did blow in. Maggie stood in the shed doing her best Marilyn Monroe impression as the wind picked up :rofl:









And Izzy stood guard over Fizz, not letting her leave the shed. Poor Fizz tolerates so much ridiculous bossiness from Izzy…









I got the horses fed just before the storm. Fizz ate all her dinner and acted normal in the afternoon, but she scared me again at night check. I went out around 9:30pm to give them a little hay, and she was just standing in the back of the shed alone, facing the corner and looking a little distant, while the other two were happily eating. I checked her temp and vitals, and everything was normal. I still hadn’t seen her drink, so wasn’t sure if she was dehydrated, but the couple of ways I checked seemed fine. She wasn’t in distress, just again acting a little weird. I haltered her up and walked her around a little, and then offered her some of the nice grass on the lawn, which she was eager to eat for a bit. When I put her back in the paddock with the others, she did go to the hay, so I guess she was feeling ok.

This morning checked her temp again, all was still fine, and she cleaned up her breakfast as usual. Her attitude seemed brighter. So, I felt ok about heading out for a ride with M and Coalie. M took us on yet another new (to us) loop, this time mostly on snowmobile trails through the woods. They were a little rocky and muddy in spots, but we had a blast going up and down the hilly path, shaded by the forest. 


























We were out early enough that the bugs weren’t bad. Fizz is so great in new places, she gets so engaged with all the new scenery and really enjoys just going…We had zero stall outs today (including riding by the donkeys on the way home) and we did stop and wait for Coalie to catch up quite a few times- every time, I chose where to ask her to halt and gave her a treat to “thank her” and then she was perfectly willing to walk on as soon as asked. The one thing that bothered her was crossing a wood-plank snowmobile bridge over a particularly muddy spot- I think she was distracted by a big puddle on the other side of the bridge, and she sort of spooked herself when she stepped on it and her boots made loud hoofbeats as she walked. Even though she was a little snorty, she crossed it in the lead on the first try :grin: I was glad she was so willing all morning, which reaffirms something just wasn’t right with her yesterday – but whatever it was, by today, she was ok. She pooped a couple of times on the trail, drank well when we got home. All normal stuff. 

As usual, after I washed her down, she needed a good roll. She earned it this weekend!


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## Spanish Rider

Love it! You may say 'Marilyn Monroe', but that photo immediately made me think of the BeeGees. Must be the hair color...


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Love it! You may say 'Marilyn Monroe', but that photo immediately made me think of the BeeGees. Must be the hair color...



:rofl: :rofl:
You're totally right! I think it's because I was also getting blown around by the wind out there when I took the picture, and it made me think of that iconic Marilyn picture. But looking at it alongside your comment- yes, you are right.:clap:


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## carshon

Love these posts! And love that you have someone to ride with!


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## PoptartShop

If something doesn't feel right, always trust it. Especially when it comes to horses. You know Fizz better than anyone! You did the right thing. Maybe she was a bit dehydrated or exhausted from the heat, it sounds like. Glad she was feeling better though. I'm so glad you are enjoying yourself with all these rides & your new riding buddy! It's fantastic, and so good for you and Fizz! I'm also glad to hear Newton got a good report. The 3 A's is a good way to look at things. 2.5 is not bad at all.


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## egrogan

@PoptartShop, I finally feel like Fizz is coming out of her shell and starting to ask for attention. The other night while I was doing night check, I suddenly felt some light snuffling on my back and hair, and turned around and there she was, coming to say hello. She's just never been the kind of horse to want to connect like that, so I was thrilled. I gave her lots of scratches in her favorite itchy spots, which she enjoyed :grin:









Got in a short ride yesterday. Unfortunately, with work, the best time for me to ride on a weekday is generally around 4:30pm, and right now that is the absolute _worst_ time for deerflies. We could barely make it down the road without being swarmed. When we got home, poor Fizz had a bunch of crushed bloody flies on her nose from rubbing it on her legs. Even trotting along, she'd suddenly have the overwhelming urge to stop and scratch her sensitive little nose.









I'm not really sure what I can do about my schedule to ride at a better time, but it seems like during the week we can only make it a couple of miles before it's just too miserable to keep going.









Our whole town is exploding with hay right now. Last year was such a terrible year, it's a relief to everyone that this year has been pretty ideal so far (*knock on wood* that it continues). Everywhere you go, you see fields ready for baling, trucks overflowing, wagons pulled by tractors. It's a real reminder that there are still some things we are fully dependent on nature for, and to celebrate when it works out. It smells SO GOOD everywhere you go!



















Yesterday we got our year's worth delivered. We had optimistically hoped to fit about 700 bales in our barn, but we weren't really sure just what it would hold. By the end of the day, they had ~500 stacked in there and we had to call it quits. We're fortunate that they'll store the rest for us and bring it out later in the year. What a relief to know we're not going to have to make a mid-winter panic buy like we did last year.









We were out after dinner last night getting the barn swept out and chickens in for the night when we heard the sound of a horse galloping towards us down the road. A minute later, my neighbor S came flying by with her mare. They are so spectacular. I was a bit far from the road so the picture isn't great, but I am in awe that she lets her go full out on the road like this.








If you look close, you'll see her little Jack Russel along for the ride sitting in front of her in the cart :grin:


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## Spanish Rider

New hay! That chicken of yours will be in 7th heaven,


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## PoptartShop

I agree! She is definitely coming out of her shell.  Took her a bit, but that's okay! So cute how outgoing she is becoming. I think because you guys are spending a lot of time together it's really making a difference. I'm so glad. She's so cute. Ugh about the deerflies, what a PITA! At least you got to ride though, even if it wasn't for too long. The bugs are unbearable this time of year. So much hay!! Yay!  Wow, cool picture of your neighbor! :lol: So cute how the dog is just sitting there too enjoying themselves!


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> New hay! That chicken of yours will be in 7th heaven,


Yes, she is loving it!! :chicken2:
*****************
I had such a fun weekend with very cooperative weather! All in all, rode 15 miles. 

Saturday morning, lovely husband and I went out for a ride/run together. Last time he tried to run while I rode, the experiment pretty much tanked because he was in front of us almost immediately and got annoyed with having to keep circling back to wait for us since we had to do so much downhill walking. This time, I asked him to give us a 15 minute head start. Fizz and I headed out, and she was the best she's ever been going down the hill of despair. As soon as we hit the bottom near Mitchell's field, she was ready to move out, so we started off at a good trot and then cantered a bit as we got warmed up on the uphills. We were about 1.5 miles in before lovely husband came running up behind us. Fizz was confused at first but seemed to like the company. 










We continued trotting right along and stuck together well since there were not many downhills. We had a mock race where he tried to sprint away from us and she cantered past him. We turned off the road onto the snowmobile trails, which are very nicely maintained and good for trotting. She did well passing some hikers with off-leash dogs, but that put us a bit behind since we waited for them to catch the dogs before going past.









When we got back out into the sun and the paved road (~ 3 miles in), I realized I had been a little too exuberant with asking her to do as much trotting as she had. She was a little grumpy and hot as the day grew more humid and the deerflies started swarming. It was totally my fault, we haven't done that much continuous trotting without more walk breaks, and I knew I had asked her to do too much. So we told lovely husband to go on ahead and not worry about waiting for us, and moseyed our way home. Once she had a chance to catch her breath and cool off, her attitude improved and she was asking to trot again, but for about a mile I was worried I was going to have to carry her home myself. :wink: Lesson learned! That said, it does reinforce that we are not ready yet to do the 25 mile ride the first weekend in August. Instead, we're going to do the pleasure ride with M and her sister, which is ~8 miles at our own pace. That will be totally doable for us. We'll keep working towards a competitive 25 at the end of August.









Yesterday M and I met up for our now-weekly Sunday ride. We headed off the same way lovely husband and I went Saturday, but hooked up with a different trail that made the ride a bit longer; it ended up being ~8.5 miles. I did have to strategically hold Fizz back at times (so I guess the Saturday ride didn't do any lasting harm) but instead of asking her to stop as often I did a lot more backtracking to get behind Coalie and then ride side-by-side until she got out ahead of him again. I think the side effect of trying to slow her down is that she starts using that time to look around and gets herself startled by things that would never bother her otherwise. At one point, we rode past a ramshackle old camp that was partially collapsed but had a brand new flag flying over the top of the pile of wood and junk. The road we were on was a narrow jeep road, but right at the moment she was getting a little balky about the flag, a big pickup was coming up behind us; I opted to hop off rather than have her give me a last minute spook into the path of the truck. I took the opportunity while dismounted to practice my "peeing on the trail" routine, and since we had passed the scary blowing flag, Fizz was more than happy to graze on the roadside ferns while I took care of my pitstop. We can check off that part of preparation to be an endurance horse!







A little ways up the road, some blowing tape on a wire fence sent her levitating sideways into the middle of the road unexpectedly, so I was glad I had gotten off at the first flag when there was a truck in the road! 

Fortunately once we turned off the road onto the snowmobile trail, the breeze picked up, the flies went away, and our ride was very pleasant. The horses were careful navigating some steep downhill rocky sections of the trail, and crossed through water without any hesitation. We let them stop at a trickling stream to see if they'd drink, but they just wanted to play around in it so we rode on.

The snowmobile trail connects up with a beautiful private cattle farm where riders have permission to use the farm roads. 









We had heard the cows out yesterday when we rode through the same spot, but they were far enough off the road that we didn't actually see them, just hear them mooing. Today though, the herd was right up on the road. 








As far as I know, Fizz has never seen cows- definitely not with me. She was not thrilled with them, and got even less thrilled when we realized one mama cow was quite distressed because her tiny calf had slipped out under the fence and was separated from her on the other side, which happened to be along a pretty busy paved road. The two of them were frantically pacing the fenceline trying to get back together. When the cow saw us coming by, she came running over to us bawling; I guess she thought we could help her?! Fizz was not super interested in that invitation







I had dismounted by now and she needed to do a couple of circles but then managed to calm down, even though she stayed on high alert. Meanwhile, M took Coalie, who thinks cows were put on this planet to be his friends, to try to approach the calf, but that just scared the calf and pushed him out into the road. A big group of motorcyclists came by right about that time, and we tried to flag them down to help, but they just kept riding and didn't stop. Unfortunately we seemed to be making the situation worse instead of better, so we decided to continue on and see if we could get the farmer that lived down the road to help (though not their cows). We rode to their house but no one seemed to be there. We really didn't know what else to do at that point, so rode home. This was all complicated by having basically no reliable cell signal by the cow's field. When we got home, we were able to make a call to the guy who owns the cows. After a couple of messages back and forth, we learned that the calf had just been born Friday morning, and Friday night some kind of predator had gone through the herd scattering a bunch of cows. That mama cow and the calf had been missing all weekend, so the farmer was relieved they'd been spotted together, even though they were still not quite home safe. He was heading over the there yesterday afternoon hoping to get them all rounded up, though I didn't hear back from him to know if he got the baby back with the herd. Fingers crossed! Anyway, that made for a bit of an exciting ride. 

Fizz was definitely a bit amped up and spooky after all that cow business. Once I re-mounted, she was shying away from shadows the sun was making on the road (oh, and a pig- which she has also never seen- that jumped out of the bushes at her when we went to the farmhouse looking for some help!), but we had a few good uphill spots where she could blow off some nervous energy with a nice trot. All in all I was proud of how she dealt with all that! It's also nice to reaffirm that even spooky Fizz is manageable and will stay connected to me even when she's uncertain.

When we got home, I finally managed to catch a cute moment of mutual grooming with Izzy and Fizz- they are all so itchy from the bugs but I like to think they also love each other a little too


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## carshon

I am so happy you are getting to ride! And the adventures!


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## Spanish Rider

Look at what a long post since you've been doing so much riding!

I am envious of you and your husband finding a way to spend time together while riding. My husband plays golf, but I don't think they would appreciate me cantering around the golf course. 🙂

Enjoy your riding time!


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## Knave

That was really nice of you to try and get the calf where he belonged, and it was nice that you called the owner. You should feel good because you saved the baby! What a nice mama too!


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## egrogan

@Knave, what could we have done to get closer to the calf? Even if we had been able to get up to it, we couldn't quite figure out how we would have pushed it back through the fence to its mom. I still feel really bad that we weren't able to do any more when we saw them and just hope they were still in roughly the same place when their owner got to them...


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## Knave

You were in a tough spot. Reading a baby calf is difficult. You have to get way around them or you end up just chasing them, and if you can’t rope you can’t get them to turn at that point and they can run extremely fast if they are scared without much brain because they are so young. Without a rope you are most likely facing a losing battle.

You can run them down until they are tired and lay down in the worst case scenario, but you really did best by calling the owner who most likely has a rope. 

The only thing I think you could have done successfully, and might have been what the owner ended up doing, is have taken the cow out to the calf. Then, she calms him down if you stay back, and you can push them back together slowly to not split them up. However, messing with someone else’s cows is always a way to get into big trouble, and the best idea is to get ahold of the owner or a hired man. Everyone appreciates the call, and mostly no one will appreciate help. It is a touchy thing.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Knave. I don't think we could have pulled off any of those maneuvers! And definitely wouldn't have wanted to mess with anyone's animals and made them upset.


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## egrogan

@greentree, the Miracle Balm arrived today, quite literally just in time. The UPS guy dropped it off right before I went down to the field to feed dinner, so I grabbed it on my way out to the horses. I was saying my hellos to the girls when I saw Fizz sporting THIS awful looking problem 








Pulled the balm out of the package and applied all around it- fingers crossed it lives up to its name! 









I'm thinking it's a particularly nasty reaction to a tick bite, though I could not find one on it nor an obvious center. It was hot and squishy and I didn't feel any splinters or thorns in there, so I'm hoping it looks dramatic now but the swelling goes down quickly. Poor girl was looking quite miserable.


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## greentree

Yikes, poor girl! I hope it helps! She smells good now, right? LOL, praying for her!


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## phantomhorse13

Yikes, that bump sure looks miserable. Hope the balm works!


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## egrogan

greentree said:


> Yikes, poor girl! I hope it helps! She smells good now, right? LOL, praying for her!


Yes, it smells amazing!!


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## egrogan

Well....ta da...the balm was indeed miraculous! About 5 hours after I first put it on, swelling was way down, just a little bump:









There wasn't any swelling this morning. It was odd though, the skin all around the spot was peeling, like sunburn. Sorry this one is harder to see because someone couldn't bare to get her nose out of breakfast!









The burn-like appearance made me nervous that we may have unnoticed poison parsnip in the pasture, but I walked it pretty well this morning and couldn't find any. Not sure what to make of it, but am glad the balm seemed to help with the swelling at least. Of course the researcher in me wants to know the "counterfactual"- would the swelling have just gone away in the absence of the balm? I guess we'll never know! :wink:

I had a rare morning without any meetings for work, so I decided I'd go for a "quick" ride first thing. Fizz hadn't been ridden since Sunday; I was out of town for work Mon/Tues, and then it was rainy yesterday. She's gotten to the point where after a couple of days of not doing anything, she's asking to stick her nose in the halter and go do something, which makes me happy. We went out to do a new route that I thought would be ~5 miles on the road and snowmobile trails, but ended up being 7+ miles by the time we got back! It was extremely humid, though the actual temp wasn't terrible- the deerflies on the other hand were possibly the worst I've ever seen. I swallowed not one, but two, of those awful creatures  (made me realize how much I talk to Fizz when we're riding!)









She was very brave today going past the flag that had spooked her last weekend- barely gave it a glance.









The VT100 is this weekend, and the hold down the road from our house is all set up; we went by it on our way home...
_"When I grow up, I want to be an endurance horse..." :grin:_








I was supposed to be crewing for @*phantomhorse13* 's friend Patti, but she decided a couple of days ago that she's not going to make the trip out because the weather is supposed to be oppressive- temps in the 90s with max humidity. Her horse hasn't done much heat conditioning this year, and she thought the odds of finishing were low and didn't want to put either of them through it. It's a bummer not to see her and Iggy, but I think she made the right call. I hope everyone who is going to ride is ready for it. We'll be putting out lots of water tanks and the big hose in front of our house since we're on the route. My lovely husband is still planning to be a pace runner; his runner is in his 60s but aiming to complete the 100- as of now, they'll be meeting up ~10pm (if all goes according to plan- fingers crossed) and stay together for ~11 miles before the next pacer picks up the runner.


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## phantomhorse13

While part of me is still super bummed about not being up there for the ride this weekend, part of me is not sorry to miss the heat. Please sit on your porch and cheer the horses going by for me!!


You and I will both be out there next year! :cowboy:


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> While part of me is still super bummed about not being up there for the ride this weekend, part of me is not sorry to miss the heat. Please sit on your porch and cheer the horses going by for me!!



I definitely will be!


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## Knave

You two are making progress by the boat load all of the sudden! Wow!!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> You two are making progress by the boat load all of the sudden! Wow!!


 That's really nice of you to say @Knave, thanks. We are definitely having more good days than bad together at this point, which makes me very happy. Sort of like the discussion over on @gottatrot's journal, in our own way I feel like Fizz and I are really getting to know how to do this together!

I was also laughing when we left home this morning, thinking about how much the buddy sour problem has improved. Maggie or Izzy will still often nicker once to Fizz when she leaves or comes back, but it's not the frantic panic it used to be. In fact, now they are both waiting for her to leave so they can take over the hay bag I put out for her while we're tacking up- she can't clear out fast enough :rofl: It's much less stressful to leave since everyone can handle it now!

For our next test, my neighbor M has offered to trailer Fizz and Coalie to a couple of spots around town to ride out and back from the trailer. We're still thinking we'll be doing a pleasure ride the first weekend of August so plan to do a practice trailer ride before then. That will be the next frontier!


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## Knave

That sounds awesome!!! I can see that you are verging that with Fizz and I with Cash! I am so happy that you are so far all of the sudden.


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## PoptartShop

Ouch! :sad: I'm glad the swelling went down. It could've been anything, really. I also wonder if the balm helped, or it just went away on its own. Who knows?!

I am so glad Fizz was good despite not being rode in a few days. What a good girl. I am loving the fact that she's really coming into herself & she is so willing! 

I know it's hit or miss with the weather lately. I haven't been able to ride since Monday because it's either too hot/humid or it's storming. Ugh! Loving all of your progress!!


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## carshon

I am so happy that you are riding. Oppressive heat and humidity here as well. Heat advisory out until Saturday night. It is funny how the horses "learn" that she will come back. We found that here as well when 3 of us leave and 1 has to stay home. Used to come home to a tired lathered up horse - and now - eh - welcome back did you bring me a treat?


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## gottatrot

Yes, we're all too analytical. Before I even read the rest of what you wrote, I was also wondering if the balm helped the lump or not. :smile:

So glad to hear you and Fizz are becoming a great team. I was laughing about swallowing bugs because you are talking to your horse. Never wonder about yourself, that is a mark of a great horse person. 

I was curious about what pace your husband is having to set for the runner for ten miles. I'm always wondering how fast people are running. That's because my pace is quite average, with many people in front of and behind me so I wonder about everyone else. :smile:


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I was curious about what pace your husband is having to set for the runner for ten miles. I'm always wondering how fast people are running. That's because my pace is quite average, with many people in front of and behind me so I wonder about everyone else. :smile:


 When he runs by himself, he does ~8 min miles, sometimes a little faster. He tries to run 6-8 miles, 4 or 5 times a week.

When he signed up to pace, they asked people to select one category to match with a runner: slow, medium, or fast. But, they gave no indication of what those categories actually meant! He picked "slow" since he was worried about messing someone up if he couldn't carry "marathon pace" over 10-11 miles, since that's a little farther than he typically goes. He's talked to his runner a few times this week, and their plan is to target 12 minute miles. By the time they meet up, his runner will have already run 70 miles, so by that point they'll be doing as much walking as running- maybe even mostly walking. So, it might turn out to be a hot, humid evening woods hike more than a run. All assuming his runner makes it to 70 miles, fingers crossed!


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## SueC

Just a little note to say I hope you are well, @egrogan! ...I'm limiting online time at present as ultra busy so not able to read everything I want to. But, we had falafels for lunch and I thought of you! They're a real staple at our place now, and you're the person who pointed out I should use _uncooked_ chickpeas, and ever since they've been bomb-proof!  Thank you for contributing to our culinary enjoyment yet again. The pumpkin risotto also gets repeated. And I've had your Brussels Sprouts recipe on the kitchen bench for ages, as the plants were looking great, but they didn't head up properly - we had loose sprouts sort of like plant-equivalent armpit fluff, not nice tight sprouts. Probably the weather; I need to raise seedlings far earlier, so they hit the middle of winter for heading...

It's been nice to see you're riding in company a bit these days! :cowboy: :cowboy: :cowboy:

Now you just need your DH tagging along behind you all in a donkey cart...


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## phantomhorse13

Thank you for all the updates on the Vermont riders and runners. Did your husband get to pace his runner?


@*gottatrot* : what pace the runners do in that race is all over the place.. the winners will move along way faster than I could ever go and make it look easy all day. the one year I was crewing riders fast enough to see the winning human cross the finish line (they always finish before the horses because they have no holds): the guy ran across the line looking a bit dusty but otherwise normal. he got his medal, his picture taken, hugged some people, and then _jogged back out on trail _to find the second place runner and harass him. because running 100 miles wasn't enough!!

then you have the other end of the spectrum: the runners who are barely staggering forward at all but somehow find the will to keep on going. one year, I was coming into the finish (which is single track trail the last 1/2 mile or so into camp) and I could see the light of a runner weaving all over in front of me and going way more side to side than forward. I tried calling out and didn't get any response. Crept closer and kept yelling hello. I was literally beside him - still hollering hello every breath - when he staggered into Dream's shoulder, startled, looked up at me and said, "are you real??" I cannot imagine pushing myself to that point. [I did answer that I was real, and he then asked me would I take him to the finish and I said I would be honored. Dream walked that last 1/8 of a mile matching him step for step, with this man bumping into her shoulder every stride he took. She kept him on track until he fell into the arms of his waiting family/friends at the finish. I found out later it was his first 100 mile run. I still get goosebumps just thinking about it.]


a friend I first met on here years ago (drawing a blank on what name she used here) who has since become an endurance rider just _ran_ it for the first time yesterday and completed. Simply amazing!!


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## Knave

Wow! I did not even know this type of thing existed. I truly doubt I would have the willpower to run 100 miles. I could ride it, but actually running in would no doubt kill me. What a neat story about the guy. I am half shocked to hear that the people outdo the horses. I never had considered such a thing. Even with the holds that surprises me!


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## Knave

I just remembered that I heard a thing once. True or not, this is what I heard. Every animal seems to have a superpower right? Each is better at one thing than the others, giving it an edge. I mean, a cat is crazy athletic and can jump super high and walk almost soundlessly right? A horse has his massive strength, and that type of thing.

For a human, besides his wit, his super power is running endurance. This is what I heard or read anyways. Humans are built to outlast in a long lasting race. I don’t know if it’s true, but I remembered it.


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## egrogan

Hi @SueC! Glad the recipes are still delivering. They remain a real favorite here too!

*********
As expected, it was an exciting weekend here! I'm glad @phantomhorse13 shared her Dream/runner story as I have often shared her experience when people ask me how people run 100 miles- I think the answer is, many of them do it very deliriously! @Knave, I wonder what proportion of humans are gifted with extraordinary endurance :think: Not me, that's for sure!

We started off Saturday morning by heading to Silver Hill to pick up lovely husband's pacer bib. He had never been to ride camp before, so it was fun to show him around. Once he was there, he totally understood why I've been saying it's such a festive, upbeat event. 









The runners and 100/75 mile riders were already out on course, but there were plenty of volunteers and other people around, including all the 50 mile riders waiting until their start later in the afternoon. 










Most of the horses were in as much shade as people could find or create, since camp is a giant open field.


















I am sad to say that lovely husband's runner did not finish. He pulled up around the halfway point. He wasn't feeling terrible, if a little crampy, but he was just going too slow and was going to start missing aid stations as they closed later in the evening. Lovely husband got an update around lunchtime that spirits were good but the pace was slow; by dinner time, he was out. :sad: They texted a little today and he expects to be back to try again.

Our house is ~63 miles into the race route, and we didn't start seeing runners go by until around noon (they started at 4am). What's so amazing is that people of all ages and body types were out there chugging along. Some people had very natural, efficient looking strides, and others looked like they were struggling but were still out with the lead group. If anyone's curious, this is the race results page, which gives a nice breakdown of pace and time to complete.









We set up a bunch of water and other goodies in the front yard, since the weather was just as oppressive as promised- between 85-90*F and 85% humidity all day. We were happy that both runners and riders alike seemed relieved to come to the water- it had been many miles of tough uphills between the last aid station and our house, so there were lots of people doing full-on head dunks into the tubs, or even asking to get sprayed down with the hose. Lovely husband and I sat outside most of the day and had a great time chatting with people who went by. We were joking that it was like Halloween for us- no one ever comes to our house trick-or-treating, but this was the same kind of "ooohh....I wonder who will come by next and how they'll look when they get here...." kind of fun anticipation!

The horses didn't start coming by until nearly 4pm, which felt super late. The vet hold they were headed to (which was hold #3 of 5) is <1 mile down the road from us, and it had opened at noon. @phantomhorse13 might be able to say more about how early people typically get there, but it seemed late from what I remember the last couple of years I crewed. The first riders to pass us were doing the 75, and then there was a fairly long break until the first 100 milers came through.



























People were trying to be positive, but you could tell they were starting to get worn out and horses were really hot. Nearly everyone commented that they felt like they were going really slow. After the lead groups passed, everyone else started coming in clumps between 5-7pm (the 50 milers were also coming through this hold, but they hadn't started until 2pm so were a bit behind the 100s/75s). A few people got off their horses and hosed them down while letting them graze around a little before going to the hold. I hope it helped to have a little water and a chance to recover a bit before they had to pulse down- the only thing that they had to get through first was the hill of despair  From what I heard, nearly all the riders made it through hold #3, with the exception of a couple of rider options and maybe one vet pull. Unfortunately, things started to fall apart for people after that. Out of 30 who started the 100, 16 completed. I think it was 3 out of 4 75s that finished and something like 20/23 50s, if I'm remembering correctly. While I was sad I didn't get to see Patti and Iggy (and phantomhorse!) this weekend, I think she made a good decision to skip it this time around.

Once we knew lovely husband's runner was out of the race, we decided we were going to go out to get some dinner. It was sweltering inside the house (no air conditioning here) and we figured if we didn't have to start up the oven, we wouldn't. We were doing one last top-up of the water buckets before we headed out, and the strangest thing happened. A runner in a little group that stopped to cool off dipped his towel in a bucket, and then looked up at me and said “hey, I know you!” Turns out it was a colleague I had worked with for years at the company I left back in the winter (he managed the tech dept and I managed the research dept, so we worked together a lot on building data infrastructure). It was such a funny, disorienting experience to run into someone you know but hadn't talked to in awhile on a dirt road in the middle of Vermont halfway through an ultramarathon! :rofl: I'm happy to say that he did go on and complete the 100 miles, finishing up this morning after running for 28 hours. 

Runners were still going by when I went to bed, so I took one last photo of the race and drifted off to sleep


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## egrogan

(Had to break into two posts since I included too many pictures)

This morning M and I met earlier than usual to ride since today was as hot and humid as yesterday. We decided to keep the ride short and see how the horses did since there was a lot of steep up and downhill on the route we took (which followed the road the riders took past our house last night). 









(I don't know why she's standing so weirdly here but despite that thought the inquisitive look on her face was cute)









We appreciated a lot of shade today!



























We only went about 4 miles, but Fizz was drenched in sweat when we got home. I got her untacked, sponged her down (how convenient to have a yard full of buckets and sponges! :wink and let her graze a little. As I was trying to turn her back out, she decided she absolutely must roll in the grass, continuing to grab mouthfuls while rolling. She was simply exhausted by the time this ordeal was over! I reminded her not to complain, since she had watched horses go by all afternoon yesterday who had to ride at least 50, if not 100 miles
:cowboy:


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## gottatrot

Oh Fizz is so cute!

Thanks for all the information on the runners, it is fascinating. I loved @PhantomHorse's story. 
I've read some books and watched some shows on ultra running. It's very impressive. I might try it if I was single and not into horses. It just takes so much time to train. Whenever I train for more than an hour and a half I feel myself slipping into a coma, but in a half marathon race it's OK since there is a lot to think about. 

I read a great book called Finding Gobi about a man who had a little dog follow him during a desert ultra run across the Gobi desert, and he went back afterward to find and adopt her.


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## Avna

Sorry/not sorry I missed crewing, it was so enormously hot and humid! 

Wanted to say, @Knave, that yes, human beings are the best endurance runners on the planet. We can run down a horse (eventually). Dogs can only outrun us if it's really really cold, because we are so much better at cooling ourselves than they are. Why the longest dog races are in the Arctic.


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## QueenofFrance08

@egrogan Thank you so much for your story/pictures! That ride is for sure on my bucket list!


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## phantomhorse13

Thank you for the wonderful race report. I am sorry your husband's runner didn't finish, but I suspect this year's completion rate will be terrible compared to normal years for the runners. You are not wrong in thinking that everyone was slow - the winner of the 50 rode the same horse last year and was an hour faster. There was some joking that OD and Vermont switched weather, so they switched results as well (OD had the highest completion rates I have ever seen and Vermont's were the worst, so that statement was pretty accurate). Ten to fifteen degrees and 10 to 20% additional humidity makes a huge difference!!


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## egrogan

@*gottatrot* , thanks for the book recommendation! I bet lovely husband would really like that one. Since Delia died, we've been in such a "should we or shouldn't we" dilemma about getting another dog. We've never had a puppy before, and have been toying with the idea of getting one since we'd really like a "farm manager" type English Shepherd, and one that could ride with me occasionally. But then we also think about how unstable Gus is and how we don't want that kind of "role model" for a pup. And then also think about how many adult dogs need homes (including, apparently, dogs in the middle of the desert :wink. So who knows what we're going to do. 

@*QueenofFrance08* - I hope you do make it out to Vermont. It's an experience! I know it's quite a trip for you, but if you do put it on your calendar it goes without saying you have a place to stay before/after if you want it!

@*Avna* and @*phantomhorse13* - it's 65*F and raining here right now. Go figure! It's such a shame really, the one day of the year so far the weather was absolutely atypical was the worst possible day for it.

*******************
Fizz and I went out for a quick ride this morning before work, while it was still dry out. It's much cooler, though still quite humid and maybe even buggier than it's been so far. No exaggeration, at one point I looked down and Fizz's head/neck was swarmed with at least 20 deerflies. Apparently she doesn't mind ropes swinging over her head because I was swinging the end of the lead rope I carry around like a lasso trying to beat them back. @*Knave* , maybe she wants to be a working horse after all! :wink: 

As soon as I got on, she was forward and eager to go, which is not always how she is the day after riding in company with Coalie. Her reaction to Coalie is so interesting to me- she doesn't seem to particularly care about him one way or the other, since they almost never ride side-by-side and he generally slows her down. But the next time we ride solo, I often feel like I have to coax and cajole her along for at least the first part of the ride. So I guess she likes some company, regardless of her opinion of the quality of the company?! 

At any rate, I was happy she was so willing today. The first mile or so was mostly downhill, and we are still generally walking downhills. But after that, we mostly trotted our way home. We did 3.5 miles in 45 minutes, average speed 4.4 mph. A little better than our typical pace. She was foot perfect on the short stretch of paved road we had to navigate, particularly because I know I was holding my breath during that section- drivers here are respectful and trustworthy, but that road has a 40mph speed limit and it can be hard to see coming up/down hills. Fortunately we didn't see any traffic today. 









The only dicey moment was when we startled a momma quail in a woodsy section on the side of the road and she ran/squawked/flopped around to scare us away from babies she must have had nearby. Fizz definitely jigged a little and glared in her direction, but we passed her quickly and all was well. Getting away from the flies was more motivating than the angry quail I guess! :grin:


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## PoptartShop

Wow, that looks like a blast!  More power to them, going out in that heat, running! So cool that you saw an old colleague!! Small world isn't it?! That is pretty cool. :lol: Cool pictures of the horses too! Really cool how there were a lot of different people doing it, not just super fit runners!

Fizz is just adorable! Love her matching boots & fly bonnet.  I know that bath had to feel good, then of course a roll afterwards. Every time. Never fails. :rofl: So cute!


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## carshon

The pictures are spectacular! Deer Flies - ughhh!


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## Knave

Deer flies.... ick! When I was a kid there was a pond on the ranch. Over pumping of water has dried the pond, but also the deer flies. I miss the pond and not those dang bugs! The horseflies disappeared too with the lost water.


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## egrogan

Yesterday the vet came to do Lyme booster vaccines, but was running a little late from another appointment so I took that opportunity to deal with the rubbed out manes. So I took out the scissors and started hacking, I mean trimming, to address the fact that both Izzy and Fizz only had half a mane left after wearing neck covers all winter and then itching their necks from bugs all summer. While a little rough, I think they look better than they did before. 



































Vaccines were quick and painless, glad to have that out of the way. Vet said it's generally not one that makes them feel blase afterwards, so no need to wait on riding or anything like that.

After work, it was too nice not to ride, so out we went. We headed back the way I went with M last weekend, but pushed a little farther. She was a bit noodly on the way out, but perked up when we went down a road we’ve never been on before. The bugs were absolutely horrific, and I really felt bad for her because she was so uncomfortable. She tensed up a little watching some turkeys cross a field, but was brave and stayed steady. On the way home, we stopped to talk to a woman who lives down the road, who I hadn’t met before (I was laughing thinking she lives three houses away, but also almost 2 miles away). Fizz got a little impatient standing there talking, so once we stopped chatting, we took off for home at a strong trot- no more wiggly drunker sailor for her :wink: It was a great ride- almost 5 miles, a little over an hour, and average speed 4.3mph- but actually, closer to 5mph average until when we stopped to talk to the neighbor, so that all seemed really positive.


























In the evening, M came over to drop off her trailer so we could do some practice loading. We’re still planning on doing the pleasure ride next Sunday but want to be sure that Fizz is good to go. It’s so nice of her to let us borrow it. She’ll leave it here through tomorrow night and bring it back next week if we need to keep working.

I was excited to get started this morning. All in all- it was a mixed bag. I’d say more good than bad, but not totally smooth sailing. I started by trying to send her on, with me standing up at the top left corner of the ramp and asking her to go forward. We spent about 30 minutes putting front feet halfway up the ramp, and then dancing around a bit without getting all 4 feet on. Mostly she’d want to go backwards, but there was also some jumping off the ramp to the left. Once she swung that big old head over me, there was really not much I could do to keep her straight since she had so much leverage from being above me. Even though I know I wasn’t supposed to change my strategy, it got to the point where I felt like I was going to get smooshed with her coming down over me, and I couldn’t effectively block her. She leads much better than she “sends,” so I took a deep breath, got her positioned straight, and asked her to walk on. The first couple of times she still stopped and wanted to back up, but I swatted her shoulder with the end of the lead, and all of a sudden, she was on with me!! Woohoo! I gave her some cookies, counted really slowly to 30 sec and then asked her to back off. Then we took a breath, tried again. Still a little resistance, but much, much less. Walked on again. Backed off. Third time, she started backing before I asked, so we couldn’t end there. She of course thought about doing that a few more times, so we would get halfway up and she’d go flying back. But we got through that, got back on, had a good long stand with relaxation, and THAT’s where we ended. I didn’t have anyone here with me so I didn’t mess around with the butt bar at all- will do that when lovely husband is home and can help me. I’m glad we have a few days to practice, but I’m confident we’re going to be ok. Her resistance is more "I don't want to" than "I'm scared," and we'll just keep plowing ahead to deal with it.


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## phantomhorse13

I think you did a great job on their manes.

The trailer loading session sounds very productive to me - you need to give yourself more credit.


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## egrogan

Thanks @phantomhorse13. After I thought about it, I remembered that it was the first time I had ever gotten a horse on a trailer by myself, so that felt good. 

Totally different day today! :grin: I talked with trainer M (not to be confused with riding buddy M) last night; she's the one who originally worked on Fizz's loading problem and hosted the spring clinic. Her suggestion was that I needed a long whip to help with the attempts to backing up, to have an arm extension for "tap tap tapping" if she was trying to evade backwards. Luckily, the tack store down the road was open late because there's a big dressage show in town, so I did get a whip last night, but turns out I didn’t need it. After breakfast this morning, we got started on day 2 of practice. Walked up to trailer, 20 seconds of dancing side to side from the ramp, and then she followed me right on. Back off, repeat. Stood for about a minute, got a cocked hind leg. Cookies. Repeat. All in all, spent about 15 minutes and we went off and on a few times. Unfortunately I was alone so still no help with butt bar and door, but we’ll do that this weekend when lovely husband is home. But everything is definitely going in the right direction. I suspect we would have solved this problem ages ago if I had my own trailer and we just did this every day for awhile, but this is the next best thing for now.


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## Dragoon

Good for you! You are inspiring with how you always consider your horses' feelings!

Cookies before whips should be a motto...


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## egrogan

That's very kind of you @*Dragoon* , it means a lot. 

I _do _think there is a place in communicating with a horse for whips. To communicate or literally extend your arm when you can't reach something, I think a whip makes sense there. My trainer M will use a whip with a stubborn horse to annoy them into acting. I know the concept of "nagging" a horse is a no no in a lot of horse training philosophies, but I've seen how she uses it as a tool. Sort of like the soft, repetitive tap tap tapping a kid bouncing a pencil on a desk out of annoyance. With a horse like Fizz, who isn't scared and isn't confused, just saying "I don't want to," the tapping with the end of a lunge whip on the top of her rump reminds her that one way or another, you're going to eventually walk forward, and I'm here to remind you of it and have this long arm to keep poking you until you move. Trainer M has the patience of a saint but horses don't usually need that because she gets her point across with her body language and demeanor. 

But a scared or truly confused horse that's trying to figure something out, no, I don't agree with whips for that. And I don't have the right temperament or personality to be a bully, so I would never be the kind that can use a whip to "dominate," I just don't have that in me and I don't think it's something you can fake. It was the same when I was a teacher, some other teachers could scare kids into behaving but I needed to figure out how to get them to want to be on my side and work with me as I couldn't pull off "mean." And I've seen with Fizz, if someone picks up a whip with the intention of "acting tough," her eyes just get blank and she mentally tunes you out. The one time I let someone really go after her with a whip was a couple of years ago when we'd been trying to get her on a trailer for 3 hours and none of the other techniques were working. I still regret that I let that happen to her. And, surprise surprise, when we finally got her on the trailer another hour later, it wasn't with a whip.


_Edited to add..._On the cookie front - who doesn't love cookies? :wink: In all seriousness though, I try to not be a blind follower of any particular trainer or clinician, but the clinic I went to back in the spring really made an impression on me, stressing the idea that if you want your horse to want to choose to be with you, there has to be something in it for them. Cookies are a good start, but it doesn't always have to be food. Nice scratches in favorite spots, etc. can work too. It's been amazing how much using treats as a "thank you" when any of my horses do something I ask really works. They come to me in the pasture, they want to check me out to see what I'm doing and what I might ask them to do. None of them are obnoxious or pushy (well, Fizz is when it comes to wanting her itchy face rubbed, but that has nothing to do with cookies!) and they don't get bent out of shape when there is no cookie, which there often isn't. But for something challenging, having a little something in my pocket (an alfalfa cube, a piece of carrot, a small peppermint, a piece of sugar free horse treat) seems to be that last little thing that keeps us going in the right direction. The other piece that feels important to me is that it's never used as a bribe, it's always a thank you for trying, even if there needs to be another try to do it right. Just my 0.02 ​


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## Dragoon

Thanks, and I agree with your thoughts on whips and cookies. I don't happen to use either, but I agree that they are just tools to be used thoughtfully, and to help the animal learn. Should be. 

I commented only because of a recent experience. 
My 11 year old lesson kid brought her own pony to their first horse show last weekend My gelding and I went along as moral support, lol. Parents rented a trailer for the day. Dang if her pony would not load! She tried, then I tried. 20 minutes. She got mad and wanted to yank him. I said no, lets try cookies. Smart old pony went on and stood munching cookies but backed out if you touched the butt bar. We were late. 
I finally went in the barn and found a dusty old crop left over from the riding school days. I walked out and showed it to him. Rubbed his shoulder with it. I said "Do you know what this is?" He looked at me, then walked away up the ramp and stood waiting for the bar to go up.
I still feel bad.


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## Knave

Why do you feel bad @Dragoon? I think it was very polite you gave him the choice.


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## egrogan

I wondered the same as @Knave.


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## Avna

:wink: @Dragoon feels bad because she should have tried that first.


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## knightrider

> It was the same when I was a teacher, some other teachers could scare kids into behaving but I needed to figure out how to get them to want to be on my side and work with me as I couldn't pull off "mean."


I had to smile at this because this was me exactly. When I first started teaching, everyone told me I had to be firm and stern "Don't crack a smile until after Christmas." Wanting to be a great teacher, I took their advice. It was awful, horrible, dreadful. The more things went wrong, the firmer and sterner I got. The kids were miserable; I was miserable.

It took me about 4 or 5 years to figure out that that was very terrible advice for me. I discovered what worked for me was to show the kids that I was on their side and in their corner. I started having them over to my house, teaching them to ride my horses, spending time with them after school, getting to know their families. In essence, showing them that I cared. Then I had them eating out of my hand and my discipline problems were vastly improved. I had to "find my feet."

"Students don't care what you know until they know that you care."


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## Dragoon

Haha, you're very funny.

I feel bad that he knew the stick was for hitting, that he had probably been hit before, and that he assumed that I too, would have hit him. 
I would NOT have. 
My plan was to hit my boot, or anything nearby to make a popping sound, or at last resort, tap him annoyingly on the bum. Yes, really. 
I have no intentions of ever hurting such a dear old pony, he's about 24, an ex-lesson horse purchased for a hot tempered kid who doesn't seem to consider he has feelings. He's the reason I agreed to give her lessons. He came to our barn with every rib showing, feet and teeth way overdue, and being treated very roughly by this kid who wants to jump, but clearly had no idea how to do it. He was refusing near constantly, and I could see the girl would be wanting a better pony soon! I asked the vet to tell me his age, they think he is 20, but he moves so stiffly when warming up I was suspicious. Vet said 24. Same age as my fat pampered gelding. I wondered what would happen to such an old pony in poor condition if he lost this home....
Happy to say that two months later, he's a different animal. The kind but non-horsey parents have followed through on all my suggestions.They bought two bags of ration balancer that I feed daily. He's on grass 24/7, and is shinier and no ribs. Feet up to date, teeth soon. No riding when near 90. 
Kid has come around. I stress padding up his back, wrapping his legs and giving him a proper warm up. And the concept of rewarding the horse. And the concept of rewarding TRiES. Pony is a saint. I don't know if she believes me when I said my gelding or the TB mare would hurt her badly if she treated them the way she treats hers. Mouse would kill her. I got a fractured pelvis and a year later a concussion, just for making newbie mistakes. My pony doesn't tolerate bad riding. Gosh, I love him!
She did well at the show, her guy was stellar. She has figured out if she does what I say, pony jumps, and very well! 
Twice this week, I have seen her hug her horse, and smile! They both look happier! We are practicing cross-rails and starting Western games. Her pony frets and tap- dances if she goes around the corner, so he knows that's his human. Progress...

I talk too much, but yeah, I was not going to whip this guy. But that look at me, the whip, and the resigned way he walked up the ramp made me feel sad. I finally figured out that he wasn't afraid of the trailer, he was just demonstrating he didn't want to go. And I demonstrated he had to. A conversation, with props!


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## Avna

Dragoon said:


> Haha, you're very funny.
> 
> I feel bad that he knew the stick was for hitting, that he had probably been hit before, and that he assumed that I too, would have hit him.
> I would NOT have.
> My plan was to hit my boot, or anything nearby to make a popping sound, or at last resort, tap him annoyingly on the bum. Yes, really.
> I have no intentions of ever hurting such a dear old pony, he's about 24, an ex-lesson horse purchased for a hot tempered kid who doesn't seem to consider he has feelings. He's the reason I agreed to give her lessons. He came to our barn with every rib showing, feet and teeth way overdue, and being treated very roughly by this kid who wants to jump, but clearly had no idea how to do it. He was refusing near constantly, and I could see the girl would be wanting a better pony soon! I asked the vet to tell me his age, they think he is 20, but he moves so stiffly when warming up I was suspicious. Vet said 24. Same age as my fat pampered gelding. I wondered what would happen to such an old pony in poor condition if he lost this home....
> Happy to say that two months later, he's a different animal. The kind but non-horsey parents have followed through on all my suggestions.They bought two bags of ration balancer that I feed daily. He's on grass 24/7, and is shinier and no ribs. Feet up to date, teeth soon. No riding when near 90.
> Kid has come around. I stress padding up his back, wrapping his legs and giving him a proper warm up. And the concept of rewarding the horse. And the concept of rewarding TRiES. Pony is a saint. I don't know if she believes me when I said my gelding or the TB mare would hurt her badly if she treated them the way she treats hers. Mouse would kill her. I got a fractured pelvis and a year later a concussion, just for making newbie mistakes. My pony doesn't tolerate bad riding. Gosh, I love him!
> She did well at the show, her guy was stellar. She has figured out if she does what I say, pony jumps, and very well!
> Twice this week, I have seen her hug her horse, and smile! They both look happier! We are practicing cross-rails and starting Western games. Her pony frets and tap- dances if she goes around the corner, so he knows that's his human. Progress...
> 
> I talk too much, but yeah, I was not going to whip this guy. But that look at me, the whip, and the resigned way he walked up the ramp made me feel sad. I finally figured out that he wasn't afraid of the trailer, he was just demonstrating he didn't want to go. And I demonstrated he had to. A conversation, with props!


Aw. That's a sweet story. 

I have two horses. One fairly often really needs to be "reminded". She is a dominant mare who will immediately move into Queen position if I don't watch myself. For example right now I am working on re-installing the idea that she has to move her big butt when I am cleaning her stall and she's standing on a pile of poop. I was being nice and squeezing around her instead of moving her. Nope, doesn't work with her. If I tap her, then poke her, then whack her with the manure fork, she will slowly ooze out of the way, just far enough and no more. 

The other one, I am always soothing and reassuring that I truly mean her no harm. If I threatened her with a whip she would panic. I tiptoe around her in the stall so she will not abandon her food and skitter out of the stall in order to get away from me. 

I guess my point is, horses vary. Being able to see who each horse is and what they need, is an art that will take me a few lifetimes.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I wish I had met you as a mentor when I started teaching. I had a hard time "finding my feet" and what seemed to work for most people didn't seem to work for me.
@Dragoon, sounds like a sweet pony, and a great transformation in his little rider. I have a feeling that lesson will stick with her beyond the stable. I like @Avna's point that horses are individuals and, as individual, may need a different approach than what we're used to. To me, Fizz is an "internalizer"- when she gets worried about something, you can literally hear her gulp like a nervous person. She has a way of going into this "blank stare" sort of place when she's confused or worried. So I have a few little ways of "checking in" to make sure she's not zoned out and she's actually there with me, not drifted off somewhere else.

*************************************
Today we went on our longest ride yet with M and Coalie. In all, we did 8.25 miles. We did the farm loop backwards today. Fizz rode past the pigs with no issues this time, and the cow herd wasn't around today so we didn't have to confront them. 


















After leaving the farm, we took the woods trail extension to add a couple of extra miles. At this point (~5 miles in), Fizz started to get really fussy. I think she was getting hot, and Coalie was getting slower at this point so she was getting irritated with me holding her back. The woods connected us back to the road, so I had to keep circling around to get back behind Coalie or else we would have been miles ahead by the time we got home.








M was joking that Fizz was walking so fast her feet sounded like we were getting ready to take off. MarchMarchMarchMarchMarch. She was ready to get home!

Also, the bugs were quite miserable, and that wasn't helping.









You may notice above that her fly bonnet was gone- in the midst of her speedwalk towards home, she was throwing her head around all over because of the bugs, and I happened to look down just as her right ear popped out of the bonnet, which she had shaken forward- and it was taking her headstall off over the ear with it!   Fortunately she held onto the bit and didn't happen to drop her head down right then, as I think she probably would have dropped the whole bridle off! I think she would have been as surprised as me, and I still had the halter on her so I likely could have reached down to grab her, but who knows if she would have gotten the idea to take off. Glad I didn't have to find out! I pulled the bonnet off and got the bridle back securely over her ears. M wondered if a bug had actually gotten up inside there (a literal "bee in her bonnet?!") because after I got it off her, she visibly relaxed. She still wanted to get home, but she wasn't as frantic about it. Who knows!

Did I mention the bugs were quite miserable today? Without the bonnet on, there was still a lot of headshaking on our way home









But for the most part, the last couple of miles were uneventful and we enjoyed our longest ride yet.


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## Avna

Brooke wears a riding fly mask with ears (Cashel) and a neck guard. And I carry a fly whisk. She has a adorable crocheted ear cover like yours (but royal blue and scarlet), which she will have off in a few minutes if the deerflies are out. The mask system works fairly well. The flies will hit her nose, and a few square inches behind her ears which I can reach with the whisk. 

But it is a challenge all right.


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## PoptartShop

What a nice long ride!  She reminds me of my mare with the flies, haha. She is SO sensitive! Other horses swish their tails a few times, barely shake their heads...her? OMG A FLY? OMG OMG OMG MOM! Swish swish! Lemme shake my head a gazillion times! :rofl: So funny.

I use a fly bonnet a lot when I ride too, & it pretty much stops her from shaking her head lol but maybe a fly or bee did end up in the fly bonnet somehow for Fizz?! It could have! :lol: Plus her being anxious to get going probably wasn't helping either, so she was reacting more than usual.


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## egrogan

I had an absolutely fabulous weekend. Saturday, I volunteered as the timer at the GMHA 2-day 50 CTR. It was another good crowd, 34 riders and drivers went out, with about half doing the 50. A couple friends were among that group so it was very fun to cheer them on.






























































At the hold we were discussing how it's getting hard to find volunteers, when all of a sudden, a few surprise helpers showed up! :rofl: Turned out they just came for a drink of water and didn't want to stick around for the work.









After I got home, I took Fizz out for a ride. We went on another new route, and on the way out, she was dragging a bit, making me worried that maybe her back was sore. But lo and behold, once we turned around (it was an out-and-back rather than loop), she trotted right along and even offered to canter up the hills. I think her back was just fine!









To be continued with our exciting Sunday adventure!


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## egrogan

Sunday, M and I went to GMHA to do the pleasure ride. All the trailer practice with Fizz paid off, as she walked right on and we were on our way right on time. It took us about 30 minutes to get there, and poor Fizz was shaking and sweaty when we unloaded. Does anyone have advice for making the actual drive time less stressful? Is it just going to be more practice? She was genuinely worried when we unloaded, but we just went for a nice, calm walk around the grounds before heading to our designated stall. The trembling stopped as soon as we got her unloaded, and she was cool and dry after hanging out in the stall with a haynet for a few minutes. So, she is able to recover after getting upset- but I would love to help her not get so upset. M said she was really rocking and swaying the whole trailer ride- Coalie stands still so she said it was a little disconcerting to have that much sway pulling on the truck.










It also helped that her emotional support human was there to hang out with her while I went to the rider briefing. 


















The briefing was quick and straightforward. Given all the excitement, we decided to do the short loop (7.5 miles) vs. the longer one (14 miles). I think the horses could have done the distance physically, but it was already quite an adventure so we thought best to keep things modest. Unlike Fizz, who gets much more comfortable around other horses (though not "stuck on"), Coalie has a bit of a melt down when he sees horses, particularly if they don't stick around. So the trailering was the toughest part for Fizz, and all the new horses was the toughest for Coalie. He called a little while we were mounting up and heading out, but he kept it together and we were on our way!


















The toughest part of the ride was about a mile in- we had been told the trail we were on would not overlap with the CTR riders, but because we had waited to go out last of the pleasure riders, unfortunately while we were getting started, the CTR folks were just starting to come back using the same trail (if we had been told that, we definitely would have gone out sooner, so that was a bit of a bummer). We encountered the front riders along the edge of a big, open field, and Coalie lost it a bit. M hopped off, which was absolutely the right decision, and he spun and bucked a little, circling around her. The CTR folks were so kind, they offered to stop to let M get back on, but she explained it would actually be better for them to just ride on so he wasn't fixated on the other horses. Fizz was great through all of this and we just stood and waited for them to pass. M continued walking him on until we got to the woods trail, which was right up ahead of us. He's much happier in the woods than out in the open, so she got back on and he was doing well. Unfortunately, the woods trail was a short section that dumped us out on the road- where two more riders were coming towards us at a strong trot. So back off she jumped, and he was still worried but much, much better that time. Got back on, continued. Just as we were about to turn off the CTR route to follow our pleasure route, a huge group (6 riders) came flying down a field towards the intersection. She had gotten off again, and he danced around her a bit, but the riders again very nicely waited for us to pass (we felt bad about interrupting their momentum). M walked him for a little ways until he was no longer snorting, and then she got back on for good :grin: Fizz had done really well through all of this, including stopping and standing and waiting for M to mount up.









Fizz's mini-meltdown came about 3 miles in, when we had to go down an incredibly steep hay field directly into a steep, rocky woods downhill. She felt like a lit firecracker under me as we started down the hill, and while I don't think she would ever bolt (?) I did think she was going to jig the whole way down. She's gotten so, so much stronger and more balanced on the downs, but the way she was moving in that moment was horribly unbalanced and I really didn't trust her to stay upright if she started fighting me, so I hopped off. I'm not sure how long that stretch was, maybe about 0.5 miles, but she was still dancing at the bottom of it and uncharacteristically would not stand for me to get back on. It took me three tries to re-mount, and finally I was just able to shove her into a spot near a big rock where she was distracted by tree leaves and I could scramble up. She was really tense and jiggy for the next half mile, but eventually something just changed, she exhaled deeply, and we were ok again. 

I was glad she was calmed down enough to take advantage of a good water spot which popped up right around that time. She drank really well!









It was a beautiful spot, there was an old stone trough still fed by a spring from the top of the mountain, which Coalie had a great time playing around in.









The rest of our ride was pretty uneventful. The horses were brave passing lots of big haying equipment out in fields, dog walkers, 4-wheelers, etc. and never gave a second look at any of it. Oh, and Fizz had to walk past a whole shed full of cows and kept it together- she gave them some stern side-eye and a few snorts, but she kept moving! The last couple of miles were up-and-down steep woods trails, and they were asking us to trot, even though they were breathing a little harder after every additional climb :wink:









It took us a couple of hours to do the 7.5 miles, so we were quite slow, but I have to say both of us felt plenty proud of our horses for handling such a stimulating day, doing something neither of them had ever done before! Yet again, I gained an incredible sense of appreciation for what endurance riders really do- right now, I can't imagine asking Fizz to move at a strong trot for the majority of the trail we were on, let alone for 25 or 50 miles. We have a ways to go if we're going to get there, but I loved being out there and can't wait to keep trying. 

Gave Fizz a nice cool-out and walk around the grounds while we waited to get back on the trailer to go home (M trailered them each separately since her truck is older and she didn't really trust it to take 2 horses at once).








When M got back for us, she loaded up without the slightest hesitation (thank god!), which was great because while we were walking to the trailer, we ran in to my mentor R, who was the person I was with during the epic trailer disaster last year- she told Fizz what a good girl she was when she heard how nicely she'd trailered there. 

Poor Fizz was trembling and shaking again when we opened the trailer at home. The only not-so-great thing was that I think I got a little greedy, asking her to stand on the trailer too long with the ramp and butt bar down before unloading. Unfortunately she backed off fast before I was ready, and I know I need to stop that because it is too dangerous a habit to develop. We loaded her right back up (which she did) and asked her to stand before asking her to back off calmly. So it ended well, just wish it hadn't happened that way. But all in all, I can't complain at all about how willing she was- now just to work on the nervousness.

Right now, our plan is to do one of the Distance Days ride at the end of August- there's a 15 mile Conditioning Ride, so we'd get the experience of going through the CTR vetting process, and there's also a pleasure ride option again. So we'll see how the rest of the month goes. If we did the conditioning ride, we'd have to bring the horses the night before and they'd be stalled overnight, which might be tough for Fizz. But, plenty of time to decide on that.


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## QueenofFrance08

So happy you had fun this weekend! Fizz looks great!


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## knightrider

Yay! You are on your way to making your dream come true. You've worked so hard at it with so many set-backs. I am so happy for you and proud of Fizz.


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## egrogan

Last night I took my "whackadoodle" Gus out with me while I did chores. Gus is profoundly untrustworthy around horses or open spaces, so he was tethered to the fence charger, yet seemed to enjoy napping in the grass. Mostly I wanted the horses to get used to the idea of having a dog around more often- *fingers crossed* we may be getting a working English Shepherd puppy before the end of the year, and s/he will definitely be intended as an all around farm dog.










This morning I got Fizz out for the first time since the pleasure ride. She was in good spirits, even though the bugs were much worse than I was expecting. We headed out to do a nice loop through Newhall farm (which I thought was ~4 miles, but ended up being almost 7 ). Her back was soft and swinging right from the start, which was a nice change from the tension she had had last week. We trotted right along for long stretches of the first few miles, and I was feeling great about how forward she was. When the loop took us through the cattle farm, we found the cows in a new field, fairly close to the road. I guess they don't look that close from this picture, but they seemed closer in real life- and they had really big horns!! 








Not going to lie, I got some butterflies in my stomach wondering what she was going to do riding past them out in the open like that, but she was brave enough for both of us this time, keeping an eye on them but not even hesitating to pass them. Once I realized she was good, I was good, and we just continued on like it was no big deal!










All was well until we were ~5 miles in. Something was moving in the woods, just out of sight- I think turkeys probably, but Fizz reacted like it was the bear :icon_rolleyes: Unfortunately it sent her snorting sideways, pretty well spooked. I was able to ride her past it at first, but then I had an idiotic moment where I know I was asking her to go forward with my legs but holding her back with my hands, and who could blame her for continuing to hop around. I did a bit of a flying dismount, and unfortunately landed on my knee instead of my feet, giving myself quite a goose egg there. I think I actually worried her more jumping off than she would have been if I had just let her pass it even it was a little animated. Oh well, live and learn, right? That one was my fault, not hers. I walked her for a short stretch and then got back on, and we continued on our way. No more issues for the rest of the ride, and she trotted right out as asked without any more concerns. 

The next couple of days are supposed to be pretty stormy, so I'm glad I fit in the ride today- and the weekend is supposed to cool way down with no humidity, so will be great for riding. Oh, and Saturday I'm going to watch the Lippitt Show with @*Avna* and her trainer, which will be lots of fun!


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## carshon

I love your updates. Fizz is coming right along. We have a nervous trailer loader (and rider) my daughters new horse Sawyer - paws in the trailer and moves around - we have made this a little better by offering treats as soon as she loads and stands to be tied (I have a 3 horse slant load) and when we go to unload she is asked to stand when we untie and turn around to unload - when she stands she gets a treat and we ask her to stop before she steps off of the trailer (she gets a small treat their too. And I mean small. She really likes corn mixed with dried molasses (we feed it to our calves) and she gets a mini handful at each stop. She now stops and looks for her reward. We have progressed to the point where she does not get it each time but we praise her a lot. She still paws in the trailer at times (stop lights and some straight aways) but it has gotten a lot better. Sometimes its like cleaning up grafitti - each good experience erases a little of the mark - eventually it is all covered up - the memory is there but the new outshines the old.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @carshon! It makes me feel a little better that other horses can get worried like this, so it's not necessarily just some bad experience or something that's happened to her. Is it a buckskin mare thing?! :think: We have done tons of praising and nice treats while she's standing in there quietly. I think we've made a lot of progress on the loading stress, now it seems that the next thing to work on is how worried she is to be in there moving. M and I are going to change up our rides a little so that we meet up halfway between our houses and end the ride at her house so we can trailer Fizz home from there a few times. That way, it will be a quick trip (probably just 10-15 minutes) and maybe as she does that a couple of times, she'll start to get more used to it. I'm eternally grateful to M for being so generous with her time and willing to help us out. She refuses to let me pay for any mileage/gas money/buy her dinner so I'm trying to figure out what stores and restaurants she likes so I can give her a nice gift card after the next ride we go to. Hopefully that way she can't say no!


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## Avna

There are many nervous haulers out there. Brooke will probably never haul very calmly by herself. She will only do well if she has her pony with her. Alone, she is bored and anxious at best. Fizz may indeed do a lot better with another horse in there. Not that this is a practical idea for you as a longterm strategy.


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## phantomhorse13

So glad to read all these wonderful updates!! You and Fizz are doing great!

I agree with the idea of Fizz needing to practice trailering more. Also, perhaps offer her something super yummy only in the trailer while moving - maybe hang a bag with a flake of alfalfa hay in it? Or if the trailer has a manger, a feedpan with wet down alfalfa cubes, etc. That is not only yummy, it can help soothe her stomach as well.


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## PoptartShop

Loving these updates. Fizz is doing fantastic!  What a good girl, and so brave! 
Regarding the trailer, it can take time. My horse still takes a few minutes to take everything in/sniff everything before she gets on. My BF's horse? She gets right on, no questions asked. :lol: They are all different. Food is definitely a big help though with trailer training. She will relax in time, just keep at it.


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## gottatrot

It sounds like you're having a very horsie summer!! The best. 

I actually did not know that CTRs included driving and not just riders under saddle. That is very neat. I'm rather jealous you live so close to some serious endurance rides. Your pictures are great.

We never used to give horses hay when trailering them but I think it's great if they can have a hay bag. We stopped yesterday to check on a truck tire, and when I looked in the window at Hero in the trailer he glanced up at me from munching on his hay like I was interrupting his eating. Seems like a good way to keep horses occupied, like giving a kid a movie to watch in the car. Hero walks in to the trailer and starts eating before I even get him tied.


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## egrogan

I appreciate all the trailering advice, and it's always nice when advice is pretty consistent. It will probably be next weekend before we do some short "around the block" trips, but that's the game plan.



gottatrot said:


> I actually did not know that CTRs included driving and not just riders under saddle. That is very neat. I'm rather jealous you live so close to some serious endurance rides. Your pictures are great.


 Yes, I think the northeast region is a little unique in how many rides include drives. There is a really active driving community here- some stick to the more formal combined driving events (driven dressage, marathon courses, and cones) and others do those competitions and also the distance drives. There are some modifications to the CTR routes as not all the trails can accommodate carriages, so they tend to stay on the roads. But they do complete the same distance. Any time you find yourself in New England, let me know!! :wink:

This afternoon I had time to get Fizz out for a quick ride after work. It was looking beautiful out, the humidity had really dropped and there was a very nice breeze, so I couldn't resist. We went out for a loop that starts with a gentle, steady downhill for the first mile or so. We mostly walked that mile- she was a little fussy about the bugs, and the steady downhill isn't her favorite. We also pass three houses with horses so she gets a little nosy. But I was thinking back to the spring when we were just getting back into riding again, and how I'd barely make it a 1/2 mile down that road without her stalling out completely or trying to spin in a ditch to pull towards home. Progress!

The only bad thing about this loop is that there is a short stretch on a busier paved road, and I don't mind that so much when it's early in the morning, but in the late afternoon there is some traffic. We stood and waited at the bottom of the hill for the road to clear, and then headed out. It's really a short stretch- a tenth of a mile maybe- but it feels like an eternity when you're holding your breath hoping nothing fast comes over the hill. Fortunately we didn't see any traffic, and continued uneventfully. After crossing the pavement, it's a nice 1.5 miles of flat or gentle uphill, a great place to pick up a trot and keep it, which we did. She moved right along until we crossed over the pavement again to the home stretch.









At that point, our nice, sunny day was disappearing fast behind some menacing clouds.









A little less than a mile from home, the skies opened into a torrential downpour. Fizz looked so sad, she really hated getting pelted in the face with the rain. She carried her head really low and kept going- until all of a sudden her ears were practically up in my mouth. The only thing I could figure is that we must have crossed paths with the bear (for real this time, not the pretend bear from last ride). She had this reaction right where I've seen the bear in the road while in my car, and my neighbor has seen it while driving her horse. Fizz wanted to get home badly because of the rain, but at the same time kept sucking back and glancing side to side into the woods. Fortunately we were so close to home I could just keep pushing her forward (or, sideways-forward) and even though that stretch of road also felt like it took forever, we made it back to cover under the sheds as the rain started pelting down even harder. I haven't been caught in the kind of rain that's hard enough you can't see through it, but that's how it was for the few minutes it took to get home. I was totally soaked through. And then as quick as it had started, it stopped, leaving behind one very soggy Fizz!


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## egrogan

I have to laugh, our summers here are so short, we try to pack so much outdoor fun into the couple of months that we do have, the weekends can be exhausting! :rofl: This weekend was an ultimate horsey weekend. I'll share some photo spam but will have to break it into a few posts...

On Saturday, I met @Avna and her instructor at the Lippitt Country Show. It is a "country show" in the truest sense, very low-key and family oriented- french fries, fresh squeezed lemonade, egg toss contests, all that sort of fun. I think this is the third year now that I've gone, and I was a little sad that this seemed to be the smallest number of horses I remember seeing. Most classes had just two or three horses in them, and only a fraction were Lippitt Morgans as they've started opening many classes up to all registered Morgans. Still, it was fun to watch. Denny Emmerson is a big supporter of the show, and I enjoyed getting to talk to him for a few minutes in between classes. My trainer M was the judge of the trail/obstacle course, so I chatted with her for awhile too.


















The highlight of the show is always the trotting races- there are 1/2 mile and 1 mile under harness and under saddle. To me, these horses are the poster children for Morgans- the road trots are just spectacular!

These two stallions were father and son- son, on the right, ended up winning the race but the sire was a real fan favorite. The two of them were talking to each other all the way around the track.




























To me, this is the epitome of a Morgan, I loved her (UVM Tizrah)


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## egrogan

On my way home from the Morgan show, I had to drive past GMHA, where the Festival of Eventing was in full swing. This is probably the biggest competition at GMHA, it's a CCI 2* competition with various levels, so attracts a huge entry list. When I happened to be driving by, the Open Intermediate class was jumping, which included Buck Davidson and Anna Loschiavo, names I only knew from TV. Kind of neat to be able to stand ringside and watch them out there. I think this is the closest I've been to jumps this big, and man, they were BIG. I can't believe they get even bigger for the Grand Prix riders 




































This was Buck Davidson on one of the 5 horses he rode in the class!


















Sunday afternoon lovely husband and I went back to watch the last round of cross-country, and again, you can get right up on the course to watch, which I think is so neat. I just can't contemplate the bravery and skill horses and riders need to do this- and this wasn't even the biggest, most challenging course!











































































We ran into a local vet who lives down the road from us and also is the treatment vet for a lot of endurance rides- he was telling us about a few bad falls that had happened earlier in the day, including an awful rotational fall wreck that happened during warmups. Tragically, I just read that the rider in that fall died from her injuries last night. It's sobering to think about something that seems so fun and exciting can have such consequences. I feel terrible for all her friends and family that were there to support her. We didn't know that yesterday when we were there, but it does put a damper on things.


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## egrogan

And finally, coming back to the world of mere mortals, Sunday morning M and I did ~8 miles exploring a lot of woods trails I'd never ridden and M hadn't been on for many years. It was a gorgeous day and the horses were really game for going someplace new. Coalie is much better in the woods than on the roads, so we had him leading a good bit of the way, which was nice for him. At first he had wanted to hang back behind Fizz and didn't want to pass her, but M prompted him along and I think he found his confidence and settled in well to lead. With him in front, we did a bit more trotting and cantering than usual, which felt great. His walk is still molasses slow, but he moves along a lot better when we transition up, so Fizz was able to stay at a comfortable pace following.

_Amazing...happy ears while following!_









We did have a couple of dicey moments- once when Coalie backed up fast into Fizz when he didn't want to be in front, and once when Fizz was in front and uncharacteristically saw something up ahead, stopped dead, and spun back faster than I could stop her, brushing past Coalie and M in the process. Everyone was fine both times but I think we both learned our lesson and need to give the lead horse more following distance. They get along so well together in close quarters we've gotten a little lazy about that.










As we were heading down the home stretch, lovely husband happened to be heading out on a run, so we had a nice reunion- Fizz was very happy to see him! 

















So that's the conclusion of the horsiest weekend I think I've ever had. I feel so lucky to live where I live! Now I just have to get my mind transitioned back to work...:Angel:


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## carshon

Your husbands smile to see you and Fizz made me smile. what an awesome weekend!


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## gottatrot

Great pictures! Sounds like a super fun time. 

That mare is gorgeous. You're making me want a Morgan too.


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## phantomhorse13

Sounds like a great weekend. Thank you for sharing all those pictures of gorgeous horses.


I second @carshon 's comment that the smile on your DH's face says it all!


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## egrogan

Fizz wishes everyone a good morning on a somewhat gloomy day. And says yes, she and lovely husband are good buddies and really like each other :loveshower:








@gottatrot, I am still drooling over that mare- her trot is just spectacular. If you ever want a UVM Morgan, they are certainly plentiful here- I guess you'll just need to come on a shopping trip to New England :wink:


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## PoptartShop

Looks like an amazing weekend. I love the pictures.  
Great shots! I love the picture of your DH & Fizz! How cute is that?!

Hi Fizz! :wave:


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## egrogan

Maggie might just be the most photogenic horse I’ve met. She was just waiting for breakfast this morning when I snapped this- she looked so pretty standing in the early morning sunshine.









It was such a beautiful morning, I was happy I had time to ride before work. Got Fizz tacked up and ready to go, and she hesitated a minute as I led her out of the paddock. Turned around to see what was going on, and found THIS









It was right then and there I decided it’s time for me to quit my job and head out to pursue success as an FEI groom :rofl: I’ve got what it takes, right?!

Kidding, kidding- all better…though I'm still not sure how I did that ^^ in the first place!









We had a nice ride, 6 miles in about an hour and fifteen minutes (average speed 4.5 mph). Copying this from the “Just a Trail Horse” thread, as this is how our ride got started…


> We were trotting along up a hill, minding our own business, when over the crest of the hill comes three motorcyclists on fancy road bikes. The lead guy nicely slows down and asks if we'll be ok if they go by. I said of course, so they revved up and went...followed over the crest of the hill by 10 more...and 10 more after that. It was some kind of road tour and this endless line of them went by as we trotted on our way. They were very respectful and kept things pretty slow, waving and saying hello as I thanked them. This road is a country dirt road which is wide enough for only one car at a time, so we were in pretty close quarters. But my horse just trotted along like it was no big deal as the bike chain snaked past us. Gotta love a good trail horse!


We continued along, and while she didn’t spook at the motorcycles, she did levitate sideways at a random rock- I just laughed and thanked her, as her spook changed my diagonal, which was overdue :wink: 

We scooted from the road over to one of the trails M showed me on Sunday- it’s a lot of climbing but the footing is very nice forest path, and Fizz definitely remembered we had gone for a nice run through there with Coalie as she was ready to spring into action. I let her have a nice canter through one section where the branches weren't too low. Oddly, she seemed to get a little nervous back there- twice, she let out a deep-from-the-belly whinny, which is very unusual for her. I do think a lot of riders use that trail, so maybe we followed someone else who had ridden there recently- we never saw anyone though, so I'm not sure who she thought she was talking to. We did manage to flush out every quail in the forest, so that kept things exciting :icon_rolleyes:








The trail we followed parallels the road for about a mile and then dumps back out to the road, and she settled when we were back out in the open. We followed a pretty field to loop back towards home, and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine the rest of the way back.









She was tired when we got home, so as we circled the pasture I pulled off her bridle and let her graze a little on the really good grass along the fenceline, which she appreciated.









No better way to start the day than with a nice ride!


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## PoptartShop

Maggie is so pretty!  

What a nice way to start the day, with a nice ride on Fizz!  So glad she didn't mind the motorcycles. But that random rock...soooo scary! :rofl: LOL.

So awesome you've been getting her out so much, I can tell she's really enjoying it. Such a good girl!


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## carshon

You have come so far with Fizz. Cantering and then grazing with np bridle. Great job! So jealous you have trails near home to ride on!


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## carshon

You have come so far with Fizz. Cantering and then grazing with np bridle. Great job! So jealous you have trails near home to ride on!


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## SueC

I'm having a little time to catch up, and much enjoyed your Fizz ride!  It's nice to see how much progress you two are making. Are you now feeling happier about your horse and your own skills than you were half a year or so ago, when I remember you were questioning if the two of you were a good combination? ...because you clearly are, now, aren't you? 

Hope you and DH are enjoying your summer and all the berries!


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## phantomhorse13

OMG, just reading about all those motorcycles had my blood pressure rising.. Phin would have been in the next county! Good girl Fizz!!


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone for all the nice notes of encouragement. I appreciate all of you taking the time to follow along!

********************************
Summer is pretty determined to stick around according to the weather we’ve had this weekend. HUMID, dripping wet, Louisiana kind of humid all weekend. Everything just has a wet layer on the top of it and we’re getting afternoon thunderstorms every day. Of course that means the flies are swarming, taking advantage of all the wetness to stay strong.

Friday I had a frustrating day at work, but was done just in time that I could go for a quick, short ride. Off we went to the overlook, trotting and cantering most of our way there. 










I kept telling Fizz not to dawdle if she wanted to avoid the bugs and she seemed pretty motivated. So much so we actually were able to do some trotting downhill. I don't know what clicked for me, but I seemed to figure out that if I let my feet come out in front of me a little I could change my balance point and how I used my knees while posting- hard to explain, but it seemed to work to keep me balanced better, and then she balanced better and was willing to try it out. That was exciting! And she's so much stronger on the downhills now that even when we're walking, she maintains the same steady, rhythmic walking pace she has going up the hill, staying nice and forward instead of choppy. 

We came home through one of our fields (weirdly, the flies swarm worse on the road than in the open field).









Fizz was making a beeline back to the pasture as it was dinner time. Tangled in some tall grass, I saw a bunch of tree limbs laying across our path and was telling her to take it easy and pay attention- and sure enough, she got tripped up by the branches because she was too focused on home and not where she was walking. She went down to her nose, and I pitched forward, staring at the ground while hanging over her shoulder. She managed to push herself back upright quickly, and I happily stayed in the saddle too. She cut up the front of her leg a little when she tripped but otherwise, no harm done. 

Yesterday was too stormy to get a good window to ride, but today we went for a longer ride with M and Coalie (7.5 miles). We decided we’d meet in the middle, about a mile from each of our houses, and then head on a new-to-us loop, ending at M’s house and trailering Fizz home from there.

After heavy thunderstorms last night, today started off thick and foggy.








We had been planning on a lot of time in the woods, but with the flies swarming again, we kept it fairly limited, using one snowmobile trail to cross from M’s road to the road we wanted to be on. There’s one spot where you have to duck around a downed tree that’s neck high for the horses- enough people have used the trail that there’s a reasonable path beaten through the high grass, but it still requires you to duck under some shrub branches to make it work. I went through first, and unfortunately someone had left a bunch of beer bottles along this narrow little path that we had to use. There were also a bunch of branches laying across it, so threading the needle around the tree, under the shrubs, and over the branches, while avoiding the glass bottles, was a little tricky. Fizz pushed through it, but behind us I heard Coalie thrashing around. In trying to pick their way around the bottles, Coalie had gotten his feet tangled up in the branches, and I turned around to look just in time to see him jumping around with the branches stuck in his hoof boot and tail, and then a boot go flying while he kicked out at the tree that was now eating him. Fortunately he’s such a level headed guy that as soon as he was free from the branches, he calmed right down. M walked back to get the boot, and put it back on with no problem. After she had gotten back on and we were a bit down the road, we realized we should have moved the bottles and the branches- guess you can only think about one thing at a time when things are getting exciting!

We continued on our way, passing a lot of horses turned out in their fields as we made our way down a long, sloping hill. A pair of offleash dogs came running out of a barn towards us, and the owner had absolutely no recall (why is it always the ones with no recall who are allowed to run free?!? :icon_rolleyes Fizz surprised me with how well she did with the loose dogs, even though the bigger of the dogs (a big white German shepherd) kept wanting to get behind her, which she understandably does not like. Even though the owner was begging them with treats and yelling for them to “come,” they followed us down a bit of the road and eventually got bored and went home. Way to go owner!

The only thing I didn’t really like about this route was that we had to be on a major road (50mph speed limit) for a short way. It was only 0.2 of a mile, but there really wasn’t enough shoulder to comfortably stay mounted, so we jumped off and walked them to our turn off, which is literally called “Agony Hill,” so you can imagine what that part of the ride is like :wink:








As we turned up Agony Hill, I was overcome by awful blurry vision, which felt like waves shimmering in front of my left eye. It was the strangest feeling, I’ve never had anything like that happen. At first it was just weird and uncomfortable, but then I started feeling a little dizzy. M had remounted and I was trying to get back on Fizz- we were conveniently right next to a big logging site so there were tons of huge trees and stumps to use- but I was so dizzy I couldn’t get her to stand long enough to figure out how to get on. We still had a couple of miles to go at this point, and they were straight up hill. There was no way I could walk on foot feeling that dizzy but I was having serious doubts about whether or not I could get back on safely either with waves across my left eye. I walked from the ground a little ways further, I’m truly not sure how far it was but I think M was starting to get worried about me and half-told, half-asked if I could use a big rock in someone’s driveway and get back in the saddle. I don’t think Fizz stood particularly well, but somehow I scrambled back on and didn’t feel any better or worse in the saddle than I did walking, so we just kept going. After about half mile, we turned off the dirt road onto a steep, rocky woods trail. At this point, I told M she needed to go ahead of us and I was just going to let Fizz follow Coalie (and I quietly told Fizz she needed to make this work for both of us as I was really dizzy and not much help). Maybe it was getting out of the sun and into the woods where it was a little cooler, but finally the dizziness stopped, and not too long after, my vision wasn’t blurry anymore. I looked around and found myself in what looked like a beautiful rain forest:








We made it back to M’s house without any more drama, and I had a big glass of water and a banana, which helped. I do often get migraines that mostly affect my left eye, but this was not my typical migraine, which is more shooting, stabbing pain (ever feel like your eye is being knifed out from the inside out? That’s my kind of migraine ) I think what might have happened is that I just didn’t drink enough water before I left this morning, as I was worried about drinking too much and having to pee. Maybe I just got dehydrated, and with the intense humidity, was affected weirdly. I sure hope it doesn’t happen again though, it was a scary feeling!

After my quick snack, we got the horses untacked, and Fizz got to graze around a bit and cool off. We loaded her up in the trailer, with just one hesitation when Coalie started screaming for her. Riding in the truck with M, I could definitely feel how much Fizzy throws herself around while the trailer is moving. You could feel her fling backwards like someone was stepping on the brakes, even though M wasn’t. It’s only a 10 minute drive from M’s house to mine if you’re going slowly in a trailer (we’re just 2ish miles apart, but it’s two twisty, uphill miles on dirt roads), and poor Fizz was lathered up on all sides when we opened the doors. But, she wasn’t trembling this time like she had last ride. And, she stood nicely and waited to be asked to back out, even with the butt bar down and Isabel calling to her from her field. So, we’ll consider that an improvement over last time! I think more short trips like this one will keep things going in the right direction for her.


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## egrogan

The best solution to horrible bugs is having a best friend (yes, everyone got a good grooming right after this, they had been rolling in mud after thunderstorms...)


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## egrogan

Very good weekend for riding. I had been out of town most of the week for work, so unfortunately had to wait until Friday to ride. It was a little late by the time I could sneak away from the computer Friday afternoon, but I was determined to get at least some saddle time. Knowing I didn't have time for a long ride, I decided instead that I'd go to the overlook and practice getting off/getting on since Fizz has been less than great about standing for mounting on the trail the last few weeks. She's progressively gotten more fidgety and started to walk off before I have both feet in the stirrups, so that needed some work. She was definitely a bit frustrated with me getting off and on "for no reason" but we went ~3 miles and I got off and on 3-4 times, and then when we got home we did it a few times more standing at the mounting block. She still needs work but it was good to be intentional about it so it doesn't become a problem.

This weekend there was a 45 mile bike race happening, and the course follows a lot of the VT100 course through my town, so we had to plan our rides around that. The official race was Sunday morning, with "preview rides" Saturday mid-day. M and Coalie came here early Saturday morning and we headed out on a new-to-us route on the roads to the next town over. We found a "lollipop" route which was about 9 miles- we rode to the overlook and passed it, then did a 3 mile circular loop and back up the overlook road. We couldn't have ordered up a nicer day- it was 55*F and no humidity when we left- and best of all, no bugs! I even left the fly bonnet off. 










The colors along the ride were so pretty- everything in the fields was bright yellow from goldenrod, but there are also just a few hints of yellow creeping into the trees. With the cooler temps, we know fall is coming!


















We leapfrogged along the way, taking turns leading and following. Coalie sometimes resists passing Fizz into the lead, and Fizz would prefer to walk a million miles an hour without regard for where Coalie is, so it's good for us to get them in their least preferred position for a bit each ride. Can you tell which is Fizz's preference :icon_rolleyes:
















We rode past a few beautiful old farms, including a couple that are on the National Historic Register. I know there are some history buffs on HF, here is an amazing first-person memoir that our neighboring historical society has digitized and made available to read about what it was like for the family who came to this farm to make a go of it in rural Vermont during the depression, after losing everything when the husband's fancy job in NYC disappeared. I've been making my way through the chapters this weekend.

The weather today was also beautiful, so we headed out solo this afternoon.









To avoid the bike race, I rode towards M's house which is a somewhat challenging direction to go because it's ~2 miles of (gentle) downhill right out of the driveway. It's not as tough as the hill of despair, but it's tough in a different way because it becomes 2 miles of downhill dressage schooling in trying to achieve straightness and impulsion. We were about halfway down when we had to contend with a bunch of obstacles. First we rode up to a flatbed truck unloading a big bulldozer on the road- we had just enough room to stay on the road past them, and Fizz didn't look twice at the blinking lights and the noisy "back up" signals. Around the next bend in the road, a beautiful old Model T came clanking and bumping towards us. The older couple driving it was very nice and slowed down to pass us, and Fizz was fine with that too. Next up, we went by the first house with horses, and there was someone outside working in the yard- their dog was loose and came running into the road barking, totally ignoring the commands to come home. Fizz was good too, and stood still while the husband came out to retrieve the dog. Then after _that_, we were on a steeper section with bad gravely footing when a second Model T came towards us, blowing smoke and making lots of rattling sounds. We stopped again for that, and Fizz was getting a little tense, surely because I was by this point. We crossed the main road and did a short loop around the town garage, where we came across a couple camping out in an RV on the side of the road, with another barking dog. To complete our loop and cross the main road heading back home, we had another steep downhill section, and poor Fizz was pretty unhappy by this time. I think she was probably reacting to my nervous reaction to all these obstacles, and started throwing her head and cow kicking a little. I didn't want any kind of arguments crossing the pavement, so I hopped off and used a stone wall on the other side of the busier road to get back on. She stood ok but did walk off without asking. While that wasn't ideal, I decided it was a "pick your battles" sort of moment and asking her for more standing around wasn't what she needed- it was time to blow off a little bottled up nervous energy, so what had been a gradual downhill on our way out was now a gradual uphill on the way home. We trotted off and kept that up for most of the mile and a half home- mileage tracker said that our average speed home was 6.2 mph, but she didn't feel out of control or anything, she actually felt happy and balanced. Just needed to be able to go forward and she felt much better. 










We looped through our fields when we got home, and the apple trees are looking great this year. We stopped to share one...









...and then we said hello to lovely husband, who was out mowing











After a little time grazing on the nice grass, Fizz showed off some horsey yoga to her buddies, starting with downward facing dog and then going into full enthusiastic rolling :grin:
















Looks like all told, we rode ~15 miles this weekend. Next weekend, we're going back to GMHA for Distance Days. Our plan right now is to bring the horses over Saturday night, stable them there (that's a whole separate anxiety-enducing situation I'm not going to dwell on just yet) and then ride the long pleasure ride option Sunday morning (we think that's ~12-15 miles). There's a 15 mile intro CTR option, but the truth is we're not going to be able to complete it in time, and I don't want to set Fizz up for a problem by having to ask her to go faster than I know she's ready for. When I looked back at my mileage tracker, I realized that we've now ridden ~170 miles for the year, but almost all of those miles (156 out of 169 miles) have come since June 15th. As some endurance riders are fond of saying, "speed kills" and I think right now I need to finish out this riding season continuing with the plan of building up stamina and endurance by being consistent with all these good walking miles, and head into next year with a plan for getting faster. It feels fun right now and I don't want to start pushing Fizz and making it "work" for either of us. So that's the plan!


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## PoptartShop

Omg, the video of Izzy & Fizz is too cute! <3 BFFs for life! Taking her out with all of that stuff going on unexpectedly was good for her too. What a good girl with the dog & all the noise. I'm glad you decided to get off at one point though, because staying on if you were anxious wouldn't do you guys any good. As for the mounting block work, I have to do the same with my horse. Sometimes she thinks 'ok I can walk off' before I even put my foot in the other stirrup, so I'm like ok, we need to work on this. :lol: As annoying as it can be, getting on & off as many times as you have to really does the trick haha. Definitely something to keep working on.

What a great weekend! Weather was beautiful here too, was nice not to have to put the fly bonnet on for a change!  This weekend will be a good time too! You will have so much fun!


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## SueC

...clearly, all's right in the world when you're seeing that!  

And do you know, that bonnet is growing on me and I'm finding it rather fetching! It's sort of like she's wearing a French beret; those sorts of vibes! inkunicorn:

(...more felafels yesterday... each batch barely lasts 24h... is the life span longer at your place?)


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## egrogan

*A three-day 20: Part 1*

This past weekend was very adventurous! It was "Distance Days" at GMHA, featuring their 3-day 100 mile ride (phantomhorse or QueenOfFrance, I think this is called a "pioneer ride" because it extends across multiple days? :think. Friday is a 40 mile route, Saturday is 35, and Sunday is 25. Each day had pleasure ride options as well, and M and I planned for the Sunday 10-mile pleasure option.

Friday the route comes past our house like the VT100, though they are riding it in the opposite direction but still stopping at the hold at Mitchell's, down the street from us. Around 10am, riders started flying by, with my friend/former mentor R in the lead group with her lovely Morgan Flower. I waved and cheered for them, and then it was quite a break until the next groups went by. 

I had been out of town for work most of the week, and was itching to ride myself. Fortunately my day was relatively meeting free so I was able to take a short lunchtime ride, just as the last of the riders had passed. We only went ~2.5 miles up to the overlook, but this was mostly a "brain ride" for Fizz; after sitting all week and watching about 20 horses go running past her field that morning, she was a little bit of a handful. :wink:

This is what it looks like to follow a big endurance race!









After spooking at a nice man clearing brush from the woods at the overlook, we collected our thoughts by admiring the lovely view before turning for home,









Saturday morning, M and I planned an early ride, since we were taking the horses over to spend the night at GMHA. We met in the middle of our houses, and Fizz was a bit of a pill riding down the long hill we had to take to get to the meet-up spot. Lovely husband had just crossed paths with the bear on his morning run, along the same route we were taking, so I guess I cut her a little slack for not being thrilled about riding in that spot. 

It took us about 20 minutes to get to the meet-up spot, and she was better once we joined up with M and Coalie. Coalie, on the other hand, had his own issues to deal with. We had to cross through M's neighbor's yard to hit the snowmobile trail we were taking, and she had a feeling he was about to have an outburst. She hopped off him and he proceeded to rear and spin and buck while she held on to the end of the reins  Fizz just stood looking at him throughout all of this, giving him a "what's your problem!?" kind of look, but she actually (for once) just stood still and waited for me to ask her to go once Coalie was ready. He's a weird horse in that he'll do this every now and then, and it's like he just needs a couple of minutes to get "it" out of his system, and then he's totally normal again. M has the gift of remaining quiet and patient with him and just lets him spin around until he's ready. Then she just gets back on and the rest of the ride is like nothing ever happened. Horses! Here she is telling him to "stand" while she gets back on. From here, we rode through this beautiful trail for ~6.5 miles.









Saturday around dinner time, we brought the horses over to GMHA. Fizz walked on the trailer as asked, but unfortunately we had another unrequested backing-off experience. M's feedback was that I hesitated a little and didn't get her on fully, which she took as an opportunity to rush back. In trying to hold on to her, I caught my arms on the chest bar and really gave myself a pair of matching nasty bruises. But after that, we just got her back on, and she stood fine for us to close up the doors. I rode over in the truck with M and again, you could feel her swaying the whole ride. It's about 20-25 minutes over there and when we unloaded her, the poor thing was completely drenched in nervous sweat and shaking all over. She looked like someone had dumped a bucket over her back- the sweat was pouring down her legs and dripping off her belly. I feel so awful that she is so unhappy on the ride :sad: The pictures don't really show just how wet she was, but the remarkable thing about her is that with a few minutes to "walk it off," she's totally fine.








We walked all over the grounds to check things out, and being dinner time, there was a lot of activity. Competitive horses being walked out, trucks and trailers coming and going, dogs around- she didn't bat an eye and happily walked on a loose lead. So I guess that's a positive, despite how stressful the actual moving part of the trip is.









The part of this weekend that was really stressing _me _out was having her stalled overnight. I was pleasantly surprised to find ourselves assigned to a _massive _stall in the historic Upwey Barn (for my Morgan friends, there's so much amazing Morgan history in this barn- your horse very likely has stallions like Upwey Ben Don in their pedigree, and this is where they came from!). 









(Someone wanted grass more than a photo shoot...)








Fizz was such a bad stallwalker when I had her in our barn this spring I couldn't imagine what a nervous mess she was going to be stalled all night. But this beautiful stall had a big, open window out the back, where she could look across the parking lot at two horses sticking their heads out of their stalls in the opposite barn, and a big open Dutch door so she could look across the way at Coalie's cute face, as well as a couple of other horses stalled there. Relief!!

















Coalie!









We left them happily munching copious amounts of hay. Lovely husband and I headed to the tavern down the street for dinner, and went back around 9 for nightcheck. They were perfectly content in the stalls with no signs of being stressy. Filled up their waters, replenished the hay nets, and got to bed early to get ready for an exciting morning...

To be continued :wink:


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## egrogan

*A three-day 20: Part 2*

Sunday morning I was at the barn by 7 to free Fizz from jail. I was so happy when I got there that she was covered in shavings and had clearly enjoyed the hay buffet. She had no signs of nervous sweat or stall walking. The woman whose horse was across from us had been camping in her trailer behind the barn and said she had checked everyone a couple of times overnight and there no problems. Phew! That is a major source of anxiety I can feel a little better about now!!

After feeding her breakfast, I took her out for a quick walk to stretch her legs. I tied her up by the horses who had been so interesting from her stall window, and got her all brushed up.








The horse on the left has been a Top 10 VT100 horse; he's in his 20s now and mostly doing the pleasure rides. Their owners were really nice, we had a nice long talk about English Shepherds and how lovely they are (that's what Delia was; she is still incredibly missed around here!). 

We picked a 10 mile pleasure loop that followed a lot of the trail from the first day. We wanted to figure how to ride home from GMHA, so this was a chance to do it on marked trail.

Coalie was a little overwhelmed by all the activity in the parking lot as we walked from our barn to the start, and he did some dancing and spinning and half rearing around M. I was laughing because last year, I remember as a volunteer hearing another volunteer watching a pleasure ride horse going through a similar start, and she looked at someone else and joked, "those pleasure horses sure don't look like a pleasure to ride..." and I'm sure people thought that about us too :wink: But you know what, I definitely see the incredible value in being able to bring a young horse to such a lively competitive event but not have the pressure of competing. These two are learning so much!

I got on but M wanted to walk a little ways onto the trail to get Coalie out of the commotion.








Fizz was a little unhappy to start out so slowly while Coalie danced along, and used that as an opportunity to spook at all the cross-country fences that dotted the fields we crossed to get to the woods. She especially did not like the ditches (which we walked _next to_, not over)- who would have guessed?! I don't think any of the obstacles would have normally bothered her, but stopping and standing is tough for her so I think it was her outlet to deal with that anxiety. Fortunately though, M got on in a few minutes and we were really on our way.









The trails we took for the first 4 miles were breathtakingly beautiful, like nothing I've ever been on before. They were narrow and steep, winding up and down through the woods, and the horses really had to dig in and focus to tackle them. They trotted up willingly, breathing hard but eager to go- and then they bravely sat back and navigated the rocky, steep downhill parts. I remember at one point just having a huge smile on my face and telling Fizz "you might just be a real trail horse after today!" :grin: It was really exhilarating.









We came out of the woods into a picturesque birch grove that was one of M's favorite places to ride with her now-retired horse Riley. She asked if we could stop to take a few pictures there, so we did.









Fizz, of course, did not love standing around for the photo session, so the only shot M managed to get of us was me giving Fizz a thank-you cookie for standing still (mostly) nicely :rofl:









The horses made us happy drinking really well at each water stop we came to. Fizz has a funny way of sticking her head into the tank up to her eyeballs and sucking in really deep drinks. I've never seen another horse drink like her- I will have to try to get a video of it at some point. While we were stopped for water, I actually hopped off to fix our saddle as my pad was really sliding; and used it as an excuse to take my own "rest stop" before we crossed the paved road and headed back into woods trails. The horses again enjoyed moving out, trotting and cantering up the steeper sections and walking carefully down the declines. After ~5 miles, we joined back up with the roads again.









Fun fact, this farm (Jenne Farm) is the most photographed farm in America. If you ever come to Vermont, come see it and get your picture! :grin:


















The rest of our ride was on the roads, and Fizz did get a little grumpy for the 1.5 mile section on the other side of Jenne Farm that is relentless downhill walking. That was probably the toughest part, but there was water waiting at the bottom, and then we had mostly flat or uphill the rest of the way, and that went better for her.

All told, we did 10.25 miles Sunday. Combined with Friday and Saturday, that put our total at just about 20 miles for the weekend. Of course, most people were there to ride 100 miles over the weekend. But I couldn't be happier to have ended the weekend the way we did. I'm pretty over the moon with Fizz and all that she's accomplished this summer. Never would have dreamed it if you had asked me back in March how things would go this year! :loveshower:


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## knightrider

So so happy for you!


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## gottatrot

That is great! You are doing such wonderful things with Fizz! I'm so glad you ended up getting her. Also I love the pictures.


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## Knave

I think that is awesome! Congratulations!!

Boy Coalie is seriously black, probably the blackest horse I’ve seen I think. Our Beamer goes down to his eyes as well when he drinks. Everyone says it’s to get the bit below the water line and keep from sucking air. With him it does prove to be true by taking off the bridle he doesn’t do that. It’s cute I think.


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## carshon

What a fantastic post! Fizz looks so fit and healthy. And I love your smile in the pic above. Yeah for you both. You have come so far!!


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## carshon

What a fantastic post! Fizz looks so fit and healthy. And I love your smile in the pic above. Yeah for you both. You have come so far!!


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## QueenofFrance08

So pretty there! I have to come ride some time! Glad you had a great time!


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## egrogan

You all are too kind! Your encouragement means a lot. Feeling so proud of Fizz!! :grin:



Knave said:


> Boy Coalie is seriously black, probably the blackest horse I’ve seen I think. Our Beamer goes down to his eyes as well when he drinks. Everyone says it’s to get the bit below the water line and keep from sucking air. With him it does prove to be true by taking off the bridle he doesn’t do that. It’s cute I think.


 Yes, he is a really striking horse! He was kept with his mother until he was 7 (he's 8 now) as he is a "carbon copy" of her (pun intended :rofl. His breeder wanted them as a driving team, but according to M, he was basically bullied into harness and freaked out once he was hooked to the cart, and the driving training was a disaster. He became very aggressive to be handled at all and then got dumped because he wasn't working out. Sad that when his prettiness wasn't enough, they had no more use for him :sad: He was given to M for free and lots of people told her to move him along, but she ended up being the right person at the right time for him.

Interesting about Beamer's drinking! Now that you mention that, I think I first noticed the eyeball-level drinking with Fizz when she started drinking from troughs out on trail. I took her bridle off before she had her drink at home after our ride today, and she did a normal amount of muzzle dipping. Maybe it is something with the way the bit affects drinking- how funny. 

**********
Did a quick lunchtime ride today, just the 2.5 miles out to the overlook and back. Poor Fizz had to endure the watchful eyes of the peanut gallery while we got ready :icon_rolleyes:









These hills are definitely the reason she's looking to be in good shape!


















The view at the overlook never disappoints though!









We kept a good pace up, trotting and cantering most of the way. I think we're at a point in conditioning where we can do some short, faster stuff while still going on good long walks. 

All summer, lovely husband has been working on brushhogging our open pastures, which were relatively neglected before we moved in. He's beaten back a ton of swampy scrubby stuff, and this weekend he was able to clear out a boggy part connecting two fields, which will hopefully help it dry out. We rode through the new connector on the way home, it was nice to be able to get off the road and go up and down the fields instead.


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## carshon

I am nominating your husband for non-horsey husband of the year! What a beautiful view


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## phantomhorse13

So glad to read this ride report!! You and Fizz are doing great. I hope you really take a good look at just how far you have come.

Had to chuckle over the most-photographed farm.. as I am almost positive I have several very similar ear/head shots with that view. Who knew?!

CTR multi-day rides are not considered Pioneers, just fyi. Generally the term is reserved for events where you ride an endurance distance 3 days in a row, with at least one day being a 55. Could be if we get some changes passed by the membership that this will change in the future..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Had to chuckle over the most-photographed farm.. as I am almost positive I have several very similar ear/head shots with that view. Who knew?!


You should post one!! :grin:




> CTR multi-day rides are not considered Pioneers, just fyi. Generally the term is reserved for events where you ride an endurance distance 3 days in a row, with at least one day being a 55. Could be if we get some changes passed by the membership that this will change in the future..


Thanks for clarifying that- I always wondered what it meant. But...155 miles or more in three days?!!?  Wow!


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## Knave

I am curious. How long in a day are the longest endurance rides? 

It reminds me of a story my grandfather tells about a horse called Dolly. His father took and rode Dolly to a ranch one day, which is probably around 40 miles as the crow flies and the direction he took, but 60 miles to drive. The next morning he drove a bull home with Dolly in that day. It doesn’t seem like a big feat when you consider endurance rides, but pushing the bull alone probably required a lot of back and forth and good sense, and there is a big mountain range to cross for that 40 miles. 

It makes me smile when he tells me that story, which I’ve heard a million times, but I always enjoy listening to him.


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## egrogan

@*Knave* , for endurance rides, you have 12 hours for 50 miles and 24 hours for 100 miles. As I understand it, that's the actual time you are completing the course, not counting the mandatory holds when you have your vet checks, etc. But @*phantomhorse13* should correct me if I'm wrong!! I think there have been some recent changes about how to account for hold time. 

If you really want to get nerdy, here's an older article from the American Endurance Conference Magazine about time to completion:
https://aerc.org/static/upload/MPH_Article1.asp

To me, the time is the most intimidating part of all of this, not the (lower) distances. You really need to be moving an average of 5-6mph to complete even the short rides on time.


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> @*Knave* , for endurance rides, you have 12 hours for 50 miles and 24 hours for 100 miles. As I understand it, that's the actual time you are completing the course, not counting the mandatory holds when you have your vet checks, etc. But @*phantomhorse13* should correct me if I'm wrong!! I think there have been some recent changes about how to account for hold time.
> 
> If you really want to get nerdy, here's an older article from the American Endurance Conference Magazine about time to completion:
> https://aerc.org/static/upload/MPH_Article1.asp
> 
> To me, the time is the most intimidating part of all of this, not the (lower) distances. You really need to be moving an average of 5-6mph to complete even the short rides on time.


I don't think it's that bad. It's just a lot of trotting. I have just barely barely started doing this but Brooke trots around 6 mph (when going away from the barn) and about 8 mph (there is a certain feeling of going to the races) going home. On the flat it feels like she can easily trot two or three miles without getting much out of breath, and she's a fat pig compared with Fizz. 

Not that we have many stretches of flat that long around here. But I am sure getting more comfortable with trotting, including down hills. 

I am still struggling with tracking apps -- do you use endomondo?


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## egrogan

Yeah, it's all the downhills. We mostly have to walk them, just not strong or balanced enough to trot them consistently, though getting better. And they're steep and I'm a wuss :hide: When we trot Fizz is actually usually closer to 8-9mph.


I like Endomondo. I have also used ViewRanger, I think I switched because I got tired of converting from kms to miles in my head.


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## phantomhorse13

You are correct that you get 12 hours for a 50 and 24 hours for a 100. However, that _includes_ all vetting and hold times, so actual ride time is shorter depending on how much hold time there is. There is a motion bumping around the BoD about removing hold times from ride time, but so far there doesn't seem to be much support for it (it got sent back to the Competitions Committee after the mid-year board meeting).

What is normal for a hold time does seem to vary by region. Here in the Northeast, most 50 mile rides have 2 holds which are roughly 45 minutes each. A 100 miler will generally have 5 holds. Those times tend to vary, but often are shorter as the ride gets into the evening. For example, this years OD had holds of 45 min, 45 min, 45 min, 30 min, 20 min. The southeast is similar in my experience, but they like 50 minutes because it makes the math easier on the timer. However, out west having a shorter first hold (like 20 minutes) and then an hour "lunch" is more common in 50s. The only 100 I have done out west (Tevis) had only 2 hour-long holds, but then had multiple other pulse and go stops along the trail. @QueenofFrance08 what is normal in your region?

LD rules are what have changed this season. Initially, the rule was 6 hours for 25 miles, including the hold time(s). [Most LDs only have one hold of 45-60 minutes, but there are a few around that have two.] However, unlike endurance distances, the LDer doesn't finish until their horse meets 60 bpm pulse at the final vetting (whereas endurance distances cross a finish line, where their ride time ends). Having pulse be the finish meant LDers had to not only ride the whole 25 miles including the vetting and hold, but also have enough time to pulse down at the end - ALL within that 6 hour period. That made for some creative riding at the end, if you were pushing being overtime. Yet hurrying to finish defeated the point, because your horse had to pulse down. Therefore, a rule change was made allowing LDers to have 6 hours to finish the course (aka cross the finish line), then they get up to 30 minutes after that to make pulse (which is how the endurance distances work - you have to meet pulse criteria by 30 minutes after crossing the finish line or else you are DQd). Their recorded ride time doesn't stop until they make pulse, but that is hardly a big deal to people who only want to finish the ride successfully and are not racing).

@Knave : I have ridden 40 miles in a day and never have I wished to have a bull along during my journey. :rofl:


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## PoptartShop

So happy to see all these fantastic positive updates.  You & Fizz make such a great team! I love all the pictures. Amazing!!!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Yeah, it's all the downhills. We mostly have to walk them, just not strong or balanced enough to trot them consistently, though getting better. And they're steep and I'm a wuss


How are you doing with being able to mount out on trail if necessary? 

I ask because to start with, Phin was a disaster downhill. I started getting off and jogging him in hand down hills as I wanted him to find his balance without my added weight. I would jog a few steps and then walks few steps. As he got better at carrying himself without falling on his forehand and rushing, I started increasing the amount I jogged at a time. Then I started doing it under saddle for a few steps on the less steep hills, etc.


Nothing is worse than feeling out of control flailing down a hill!!


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## egrogan

Ooh, love that idea phantomhorse. Mounting on trail is fine. I can definitely do what you're suggesting!

@PoptartShop- Thanks!!


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## egrogan

For the past week, lovely husband and I took a roadtrip across New Mexico and Arizona. Neither of us had really been to that part of the country for any significant time, so we left plenty of time open for exploring and stopping at things that seemed interesting, interspersed with a few planned stays and activities. 

To borrow from the trail riding thread...
I really wanted to be able to experience the desert on horseback. My husband hadn't been on a horse in close to 15 years, so I sought out a touristy spot that promised to have horses suitable for beginners. Being New Englanders, we were worried about the heat, but our two-hour ride left at 9am so we hoped for the best and lathered up in sunscreen beforehand to avoid frying ourselves. I was so pleased that when we arrived, it was clear the horses were happy and fit (I suppose you never really know with the tourist trail places; you can only tell so much from websites and online reviews). When they brought the first horse out, it was a little QH gelding that I can't imagine was more than 14 hands- and handed him to my 6' tall husband! Last time he rode with me, he was put on a 17+ hand Irish Draught gelding







But this little gelding- creatively named "Bay"- took up plenty of leg and they were very comfortable and balanced together.









I was put on a similar bay QH gelding, who had a mysterious "split" in his left ear...and subsequently, was named...wait for it..."Split." 

















Our horses were able to be “ridden” rather than following nose-to-tail like robots, so that made it a good ride. Our guide was friendly, but mostly left us to enjoy the scenery without a lot of small talk, which was much appreciated. 









There was water in the saddle bag and a nice breeze, making it very pleasant. Our ride was primarily walking with some short stretches of trotting; with all the beautiful photo opps and scenery to take in, covering the 4 miles at a nice walk was perfect. Trails took us up and downhill, through deep, sandy dry streambeds, and over flat grassy sections. It was a really special ride, and I was so glad he went with me!













































That wouldn't be the last time we saw horses though- they were dotting the landscape throughout our drive.









My favorite photos from our day at the Grand Canyon?? Possibly these two beauties who were just lounging around along the route to the park. 



















To be continued...


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## egrogan

Both states were breathtaking, but we felt a particular affinity for New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Our home-base there was a beautiful working lavender farm, where we had a cozy room with a patio looking out over the lavender and a green chile field roasting fresh picked chiles just beyond it. I can't describe how intoxicating the smells were! The working farm gave us fun moments watching the antics of the resident guinea hens and peacocks, delicious meals made from their own produce, and dreamy strolls around the gardens in the evening. Really the stuff tourism commercials are made of!













































We took advantage of many state and federal parks, hiking to petroglyphs high up on a mesa and archeological digs at a pueblo, and also enjoyed a vibrant arts festival and very memorable folk art museum in Sante Fe. 




































Driving to and from the "attractions" was just as beautiful as the destinations themselves...




































And on to Arizona...


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## egrogan

When we got to Arizona, we were surrounded by cacti, just like @bsms always tells us about! I have to admit, the image I had created in my mind was shaped heavily by bsms' description of his rides, and I definitely gained a new appreciation of what his rides are like just from hiking around ourselves!

On September 11th, we were on a long driving day, and on a bit of a whim, we headed well out of our way to see Saguaro National Park- since it was nearly 100*F and we got there in the middle of the afternoon, we had the park nearly to ourselves. That was a very spiritual experience, to be in such a moving place on such a significant day.


































From there, we stayed at a delightful AirbNb in downtown Phoenix- the apartment was a little carriage shed behind a turn-of-the-century craftsman house, which the owner had lovingly restored, including with a backyard chicken coop surrounded by desert-appropriate landscaping to give them shade and cover. The apartment had a nice kitchen, so while we had enjoyed sampling tacos for lunch every day along our route, it was also nice to be able to cook some simple meals (and share our leftovers with the chickies!)

We couldn't miss the Grand Canyon while there, and it didn't disappoint. Some "must do" tourist attractions end up being a big letdown, but certainly not this. Of course, pictures can't capture its power and vastness, so we tried to drink it all in while standing along the rim.




































What a trip- I will end the photos there, knowing that we will be back! Hopefully, at a time of year when it's a little cooler...


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## gottatrot

Sounds like a great trip! How fun you two could ride horses together in that environment. That is also the time when my husband rides with me, when we are traveling. The horse your husband is on looks pretty sturdy and able to carry a larger rider.

The pictures are amazing and show how beautiful the desert is. I don't think I could deal with the heat all the time, but I like to visit. We've been to all the southern states but haven't yet seen those giant cacti. 

We also saw the Grand Canyon for the first time a couple of years ago. Just incredible. It always makes me laugh if you read reviews on Trip Advisor, at places like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone there are people who say "overrated," like it's some bad movie someone made rather than one of the great wonders of the world. 

Travel is the best! The only hard part is leaving the pets...


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## bsms

Wish I'd known you were visiting Saguaro National Park. We live 25 miles away. Even now I can drive to the entrance and only hit one stoplight. I grew up 7 miles west of the east park. Used to ride my bicycle there regularly. It was free for bicyclists back then and I rode around the loop many times. There is a place you can picnic just off of the loop, and the trail that climbs out of there is where this picture was taken:








My favorite description came from a book written in the 60s. The author said walking between all the saguaros was like intruding in a 200 year long cocktail party, where the guests had many arms and barely noticed the very brief intrusions of the little people at their ankles.

In this picture, Bandit is pointed at the Rincon Mountains in the east section of Saguaro National Park. The peaks are over 8'000 feet and are pine forests. I've never climbed all the way up.








It isn't a friendly land. It isn't inviting. It is brutal and harsh. And I love it. We want to move further north for a variety of reasons, probably to an area a couple of hours drive from the Grand Canyon. But I think the Sonoran Desert, harsh as it is, will always be my spiritual home. When we first came out here in 1969, I felt like I had arrived home. I've traveled much of the world without ever feeling that deep of a connection elsewhere. And I cannot explain why. It just is.


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## Knave

Oh it is too bad you didn’t know! It would have been fun to visit each other I think.

The pictures are absolutely beautiful and it sounds like such a fun trip. I never have ridden tourist horses. I considered it in Mexico, but the horses looked very put upon and like they might simply die right there, so I didn’t figure I’d burden them more.

I’ve rarely traveled. Most of my life has been lived on the same street working the same ranch and farms with the same people. I do love it. It will always be my home. However, I can imagine the feeling you had @bsms.

This is funny, but my pastor visits Uganda each year for a conference, and he shows slides with photos at church when he returns. There are villages he visits during his stay. The pictures feel like a memory to me. It feels like he is showing me my home and I feel homesick for it. I try to wrap my mind around the feeling each year. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, but my brain tries to tell me it is a memory and I need to return. Like I am missing something and I forgot it and it is very important.

It is stupid really, but I think I know the feeling.


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## gottatrot

That is interesting. I wonder if everyone has a "home" place, even if they've never been there yet. The place they feel the most in tune with.
I believe for me it is the OR coast, but when there are too many people it throws it out of whack. The home feeling lessens.
But sometimes I wonder if there is somewhere else out there too...it's one reason to keep traveling.


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Wish I'd known you were visiting Saguaro National Park. We live 25 miles away. Even now I can drive to the entrance and only hit one stoplight. I grew up 7 miles west of the east park. Used to ride my bicycle there regularly. It was free for bicyclists back then and I rode around the loop many times. There is a place you can picnic just off of the loop, and the trail that climbs out of there is where this picture was taken:


Oh I wish I knew this, I would have loved to have met you and your herd! It was sort of spontaneous to stop there- we were driving from El Paso to Phoenix, and it had been a long day of driving. I was behind the wheel and my husband was looking for day trips outside of Phoenix, and we realized we were close to the exit for the park, so decided to take the detour. It was a great decision!

Knowing this is where you live makes perfect sense after seeing your pictures and now having this frame of reference. There was a tourist trail riding place just down the road from the park- my husband and I were wondering if it would be possible to bring a horse from where we live to your part of the world and trust it to be able to learn how to navigate carefully through the cacti. I have such an appreciation for your daily rides having been out there- no wonder you trust your horses so much! Definitely requires team work.



> My favorite description came from a book written in the 60s. The author said walking between all the saguaros was like intruding in a 200 year long cocktail party, where the guests had many arms and barely noticed the very brief intrusions of the little people at their ankles.


I read this to my husband last night and he broke out into a huge smile and just said- "YES, that's perfect." We were discussing how sad it would be if you worked at the park or spent a long period of time there and watched one of the old ones die- it would have to feel like losing a friend.



> It isn't a friendly land. It isn't inviting. It is brutal and harsh. And I love it. We want to move further north for a variety of reasons, probably to an area a couple of hours drive from the Grand Canyon. But I think the Sonoran Desert, harsh as it is, will always be my spiritual home. When we first came out here in 1969, I felt like I had arrived home. I've traveled much of the world without ever feeling that deep of a connection elsewhere. And I cannot explain why. It just is.


 I know this will sound weird, but the fact that it was such a harsh landscape actually made it feel very much like where we live in VT- just obviously at the other end of the temperature extremes. But you definitely got the sense that not everyone would be happy living there, and if you were, you'd have to be pretty willing to be self-sufficient and draw a lot of energy and fulfillment from being a part of nature but realizing how much more powerful than you it is. It was definitely a place that made an impact on both of us.

I think @*gottatrot* and @*Knave* are right that there are places that just feel "right" to individual people and give you a sense of connection you don't have in other places. I do feel like the New England landscape and rhythm of our seasons is the place I belong, which is a nice feeling to have. Interesting, @*Knave* , I definitely didn't have that feeling in the place I grew up- I lived in the same house until I went to college (just 30 minutes away) but once I got to college it was like something woke up and ignited this wandering spirit that I've had ever since. I've lived in some places I liked but knew were temporary, some I didn't like and couldn't wait to leave, but the last 7 or so years that we've been in the Connecticut River Valley (VT and NH), I feel like I'm where I belong.



Knave said:


> The pictures are absolutely beautiful and it sounds like such a fun trip. I never have ridden tourist horses. I considered it in Mexico, but the horses looked very put upon and like they might simply die right there, so I didn’t figure I’d burden them more.


I've actually enjoyed riding in a bunch of random places when I've been traveling for work or vacation, but I am wary of ending up with a place that treats the horses badly. I try to do some research ahead of time and look for reviews from people who seem like they have horses or at least ride, and so far I haven't ended up at a place where I felt like I had to walk away.

Also, @*Knave* - I thought of you and your farm a bunch of times on our trip! We drove past vast irrigated hay fields with large storage barns full of those huge square bales that you've posted pictures of stacked up so precisely in your barn. I made my husband take a picture of a load of them flying past us on the highway :smile:











gottatrot said:


> The pictures are amazing and show how beautiful the desert is. I don't think I could deal with the heat all the time, but I like to visit. We've been to all the southern states but haven't yet seen those giant cacti.


I would definitely recommend it!



> We also saw the Grand Canyon for the first time a couple of years ago. Just incredible. It always makes me laugh if you read reviews on Trip Advisor, at places like the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone there are people who say "overrated," like it's some bad movie someone made rather than one of the great wonders of the world.


It's so funny you say that, we actually had a blast reading some of the ridiculous reviews since we spent a lot of time in the car. I would like to think this was a joke, but the one that made me laugh hardest was..."It's just a big hole." :rofl: There were also tons of reviews complaining about the lack of WiFi in the park :icon_rolleyes: 

We also read some silly ones for the Phoenix Botanical Garden- the best one there said, "you can learn as little or as much as you'd like depending on how you feel that day..." From that point on, we tried to quantify how little learning a person could do attending a museum or other attraction.



> Travel is the best! The only hard part is leaving the pets...


Meal prepping for leaving the horses with a farmsitter for 9 days:









I left a ridiculous set of instructions for all the animals but our farmsitter was a good sport about it. I sent her this article right before we left:
https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/building-character-through-farm-sitting
Fortunately she took it as the joke I intended it to be!

But I have to say, I can't recall another vacation that involved more time with animals. The farm we stayed at had a friendly cat and all the very tame fowl, and the AirBnB had cats, dogs, and chickens. We managed to get some animal snuggles without seeming weird :wink:


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## egrogan

Since I'm stuck on a plane to Indianapolis for work right now, I'll post some more pictures I didn't get to earlier.

One silly thing we did was go to the International UFO Museum in Roswell

















While we didn't find any aliens, we did find some of the best tacos we had from a truck in a random parking lot behind some downtown buildings!

Here is some of the beautiful scenery and vegetation we saw just driving around, these are mostly in New Mexico:




































This was fascinating- Petroglyph National Monument, on the mesa just outside Albuqurque. We never did really get used to the vastness, just being able to see for miles and miles in all directions.




































We saw a lot of incredible places, but because we stayed in such homey places, we actually spent quite a bit of time just lounging around and relaxing (we're not usually very good at that) and eating and drinking tons of good stuff. At the farm, everything was full of lavender, which was lovely!








One of the best cocktails I've ever had- lavender spritz








(PS- I'd highly recommend this book! It was written by the youngest rider to win the Mongol Derby. An enjoyable, quick read.)


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## Knave

You never know, you could have passed our hay at some point!  

It looks like so much fun. I’m glad you get to have a wandering spirit. Mine is very much a tree, but I dream of seeing places sometimes.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> You never know, you could have passed our hay at some point!


That’s a fun thought!!



> It looks like so much fun. I’m glad you get to have a wandering spirit. Mine is very much a tree, but I dream of seeing places sometimes.


If you ever find yourself in Vermont, I’d love to give you the tour!


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## gottatrot

I've been to see the petroglyphs too. That was a fun place to walk around.


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## knightrider

From Knave:


> This is funny, but my pastor visits Uganda each year for a conference, and he shows slides with photos at church when he returns. There are villages he visits during his stay. The pictures feel like a memory to me. It feels like he is showing me my home and I feel homesick for it. I try to wrap my mind around the feeling each year. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, but my brain tries to tell me it is a memory and I need to return. Like I am missing something and I forgot it and it is very important.


Not saying I exactly believe in past lives, but it certainly is something interesting to think about. Perhaps (if there are such things), you lived there in a past life?

I have dreams at times about a place, I think it is in New England, a certain house and land where stuff happens in different dreams. I've read that wherever that place is, people might see something they think is a ghost that looks like me. If I ever see that place, I know I'd recognize it.


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## Knave

@knightrider I have to say I don’t believe in past lives, but I can definitely see why someone would! If I did that would be mine. I wonder if it is someplace I will see, and if it will be important to me. 

I have a house in my dreams too! I move into it often. It’s a big house. I am sure I would recognize it if I saw it too. Sometimes when I have dejavu I wonder if I dreamed it.


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## PoptartShop

Lovely photos!  That looks amazing, I'm glad you enjoyed yourselves. It is nice to relax once in awhile, though we rarely get to, when we finally do...it's great!
LOL, the UFO museum looks fun! :lol: Haha, love all the meal prep too for the horses! If only I could meal prep for myself. :icon_rolleyes:


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## egrogan

I am finally home after vacation and work travel, and it feels great to be in one place for awhile again. I got home late Wednesday and Thursday was hectic, so Friday was the first day I had time to ride. 

Fizz seemed to be pretty content with her vacation- she was a bit of a drunken sailor leaving home and not particularly enthusiastic about being out. We went on a short route down the hill of despair, across the paved road, and down a little side street before turning around and doubling back. Not surprisingly, she was much snappier once we turned for home - had a nice trot and canter back up the hill of despair and she was definitely a bit winded once we got back. Foliage is starting to look really pretty.









It was so nice to be back in the saddle. Fizz had to remind me of some of the rules...
1. When she stops and stands nicely at a stop sign before crossing the road...








...cookies are expected









2. When there are perfectly good apples just sitting on the ground, someone should clean them up...








:rofl:

Yesterday I was excited to have more time for a longer ride, but Fizz was absolutely atrocious. She lurched from one side of the road to the other for the first mile away from home, creeping forward resentfully. She was totally disregarding leg and seat and acting like walking straight was something she had no idea how to do. We went down the long, steep Cavendish hill, and she pulled a move she hasn't tried in months- jumping off the road and into the ditch and then grabbing the bit and flinging her whole body around to try to go home. I was making no progress in the saddle and hopped off, making her jog down that long hill, which seemed to surprise her enough that she started paying attention again when I got back on. She was still not forward, dragging along, until ~3 miles in she went back to another old move and planted her feet, refusing to keep going. I kept bumping with my legs and she responded by backing up until we were in a ditch again. I managed to get her out of the ditch and past the spot where she refused, and considered that "good enough" given the kind of day it had been. Once we turned for home, she was jigging and pretty much ignoring any requests to deviate from the now magically straight beeline she was making for home. The jigging got much worse going down another steep hill heading towards home, so I hopped off then too and did some groundwork as we walked home. It was a pretty miserable ride.

Looking tired after arguing for 5 miles...









This morning we got back to our regular schedule of riding with M and Coalie. I didn't really know what to expect after yesterday, but was thrilled that right from the beginning, it was a much more normal ride. She tried only halfheartedly to do the noodly walk when we could still hear Izzy and Maggie calling to us, but gave it up pretty quickly. From then on, she was relaxed and back to her perky, willing self. It was another glorious day so we did about 6.5 miles on part of a popular endurance trail, through the woods and the big cattle farm. She did get genuinely worried when we had to ride past a group of big black cows hanging out on the fenceline, but she calmed right down as soon as we left them behind us and walked most of the way on the homeward part of the loop on the buckle with her whole body nice and relaxed. This included going calmly down the same hill she jigged so badly on yesterday. It was nice catching up with M, I had been missing having someone to ride with. Hopefully yesterday was just an aberration and we got that out of our system!


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## egrogan

Yesterday was pedicure day. The girls were so funny, I got everyone all haltered up and they eagerly went to stand at the gate. Lately I've been letting Izzy and Fizz take turns out on the nicer lawn to graze since their pasture is dying back as the weather changes, and I've been taking Maggie out on hand walks which she's enjoying a lot. So, I think everyone thought they were getting ready to do something more fun than the farrier :wink:









Obviously you can tell from the picture that Maggie's weight is still problematic. I have really failed this summer to get the weight off her. She never stopped the "pouting" phase with the muzzle- when she has it on, she just stands and refuses to move at all. She is still bucking when ridden in the bareback pad, and I am just not a good enough rider for that so she's not ridden at all. I have started taking her for handwalks, 20-30 minutes a few times a week, which is actually pretty decent exercise because we have such good hills. I've only been doing that since I've been home so hoping that more regular exercise will help as we head into the winter. And I've started her on remission. Her diet is about as basic as I can get her to- 1/2 lb of ration balancer, probiotics, salt, Vit E, remission and decent but not great hay. Pasture is just busy time at this point in the year. 










Had an honest talk with the farrier though. He brought her toes back to a place where they're looking better to me, but it's clear that she has had a couple of low grade metabolic episodes over the summer. Though he said there is nothing urgently worrying, it is something to take seriously. So we have to keep the exercise regimen going. 








(This picture was pre-trim and I do like the angles on her feet better now)

Next year I imagine setting up a paddock paradise system for her since she isn't one who's going to move herself around even with plenty of space to wander. Aside from that though, I'm struggling. She's a heavier built horse naturally, but this is a problem with straight up fat, not her frame.


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## carshon

We have had the same issue with Belle pouting with her grazing muzzle. We switched brands and it worked better for me. Went with a Best Friends muzzle - the only issue I have now is she is losing too much weight going into winter. Fall is worse for Belle than spring for laminitic episodes - she was tender footed about a month ago when the nights got so cool so now she wears her muzzle for 6 hours in the morning then gets put in a dry lot with hay until they come in for supper at 6. Try playing around with different muzzles - the hole size made a difference for us - and I started by dropping carrots and bits of grass into the muzzle so Belle realized she could eat with it on. I think at first she thought she couldn't eat with it on.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon. I will give that one a try and see if she does any better. I did all the tricks with carrots, grass, (low sugar) treats and I feel confident she knows she can eat from it. I've seen her drink with it. She just hates it! Mine are out 24/7, and since I'm here during the day, I peek out on them pretty frequently (I can see the pasture from my office window)- she spends nearly all day just standing around in the dry lot. I've been afraid to leave it on her overnight for fear of her getting hung up without me noticing, so I guess that's when she eats grass. But nights will start going down below 40*F any day now, so I suppose I will have to put something on her overnight too? My problem is that if I shut her into the dry lot, I need to shut them all in as that's the only place where shelters and water are available.


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## egrogan

Can horses be afraid of the dark? :think:

I know it's a silly question, but Fizz has been acting really weird the last few nights and I can't figure out what's bothering her. I go out to do night check and throw some hay between 8-9pm, and it's pitch black by that time. Maggie is always standing at the gate waiting for me, and sometimes Izzy is with her or out in the pasture, where Fizz is. Fizz will be standing all the way at the back of the pasture, fixated on the woods. Maggie and Izzy dive right into the hay, but Fizz doesn't come up to join them. If I walk out to where she is and put a hand on her shoulder, it snaps her out of her fixation, and she turns and gallops back to the top of the field with the others. But then once she sees they're there, she turns around and runs back to the far end of the pasture and goes back to staring at the woods, leaving her buddies and the food behind. Weird behavior.

I guess the most obvious explanation is that wildlife is on the move now- we have bears, moose, dear, coyotes, and all the smaller stuff moving around. But that stuff is all out there at other points in the year too. There's a camp cottage about 1/2 mile down the road through those woods, and about a month ago someone new bought it and has been doing a lot of work to fix it up- but they're only there on the weekends, so it's not like there's a lot of noise coming from the camp every night.

Fizz was born and raised living out on a big acreage, and she's lived in this same pasture for over a year now. It's just such weird behavior that popped up suddenly. I think what makes it seem so weird is that she'll actively leave the other horses and food- can't figure that out. Maybe it's just bothering me because it's making _me _afraid of the dark :wink:









Any explanations or ways to help snap her out of it?


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## carshon

I think you are right about it being the animals on the move. Mine were really jumpy a couple of nights ago and we do not have near the variety of animals you have


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## Knave

I don’t know. Maybe there is something out there right now that will move on. My horses, especially Beamer, will stare out like that (I don’t know about at night) at things I cannot see. Sometimes it’s a coyote, and once there was a herd of these big white birds! Beamer stared out most of the time for the two days they were visiting. It was pretty far away too, I could only barely see them.


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## egrogan

@Knave, it is a bit disconcerting when they see something you don't! Birds...interesting...maybe some turkeys have decided to start roosting in the trees back there. They pass through a lot but I've never seen them in the trees there. Who knows!

The other day I was out in the yard and the chickens were free ranging around. I needed to run in the house for something, but just had this weird feeling so I dawdled for a minute or two. Chickens were all happily sunning themselves in the grass and didn't seem alert. As I walked to the door, I turned around and about 20 yards away was a huge coyote staring right at me. I screamed like a crazy person and he turned and ran- but it was one of those weird "sixth sense" kind of moments that I'm sure our ancestors had in ways that we no longer do.


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## Knave

I imagine that it is a very uncomfortable feeling! I can be surprised by something, but not like you can with all those trees, and not at my house. I can see far around me at my house. Even in the mountains you can see far here. Sometimes something can be hiding in the brush to surprise your horse and give you both a big spook, but it really doesn’t feel like I imagine it must there.


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## PoptartShop

Horses can definitely hear/smell things that we can't, & maybe she is fixated on something out there. I wouldn't worry too much, it should pass eventually. 

Sometimes Promise will look in the distance even in the daytime, & I see nothing, I'm always like 'what are you looking at? I don't see anything, what do YOU see?' LOL, wish they could tell us! :lol:


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## egrogan

Alright, will you confirm these are indeed marks from horse bites on her flank and rump (e.g., Izzy herding Fizz around), rather than the marauding pride of angry pumas I imagined Fizz fighting off in the night to save her herd? :grin:

















She was a little better last night. And, turns out the new neighbors _are _down at the camp, at least they were yesterday. Lovely husband and I went out to dinner and the neighbors were sitting outside with a big bonfire going. Not sure if they've been here all week as I don't drive that way every day. So it's possible she's been hearing noise from them after all.

I got a chance to ride yesterday, and it was a gorgeous fall day. Cool, sunny, and great foliage. I have been sick with a brutal cold all week and I wasn't feeling great, but didn't want to pass up the chance for a mid-week ride. I had planned on just a short 2.5ish mile ride to the overlook and back. But lately when we've gotten to the overlook, she's been giving me a lot of trouble and trying to spin around for home there. I didn't want to turn around there after that issue, so we kept going beyond.









She was squirrely going down the very steep hill right past the overlook, so I did get off and walk her down. She was good for mounting at the bottom and we trotted on our way for a bit before turning around. Had a good canter back _up _that steep hill, and paused to enjoy some tasty, lush grass and catch our breath at the top.



























From there we headed home without incident. I don't know what it is about this one spot where she keeps putting up a fight. I think M and I are going that way this weekend so will be interesting to see if she rides through there more easily with another horse around.


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## Knave

Conformation granted. I’m pretty sure the puma would have left much more damage and some torn down fence in his wake.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Conformation granted. I’m pretty sure the puma would have left much more damage and some torn down fence in his wake.













It would sure make for a dramatic story though!


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## PoptartShop

Gosh, isn't it nice to be able to ride and not sweat your butt off with that humidity? I can't wait for fall weather!  So jealous, lol. Glad you had a good ride & didn't turn around when she wanted to. Hope you are feeling better, too! & those are definitely horse marks haha! But I can definitely picture her trying to fight off a puma. Has she still been standing guard at night? :lol:


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## egrogan

Friday I took a half day and got some horse time. I volunteered at the GMHA fall foliage ride, holding horses at the lunch stop so their riders could get some food, a bathroom break, and a minute to catch their breath. I’d been warned by other riding friends over the years that the foliage ride is a little…_different…_than riding on a distance/endurance weekend. Let’s just say from what I heard, trail etiquette was definitely a problem for some people on the ride. All the usual nightmare stuff you hear about big groups of riders galloping by, people not controlling their horses, etc. Though I have to say, our VT hills seemed to eat up any silliness that might have been happening out on trail, because the horses I held at the lunch stop were all quiet and more than happy to graze around while they rested. Definitely a different vibe than on an endurance weekend, but there were close to 150 riders that came for the weekend and it’s always a good thing to have that many people, mostly from out-of-state, come to town and enjoy it. They certainly had a quintessential Vermont weekend for it!
















Wanting my own foliage ride, later in the day I headed out with Fizz. It’s sort of comical now because we got through it, but without exaggeration we had one of the worst rides I’ve ever had on her. The first mile, she fought me the entire way. I was kicking her forward every.single.stride as she drunk walked grudgingly down the hill of despair. When we got to the road crossing, she tried to bolt across the apple field to go home, but fortunately I one-rein stopped her while we were on flat ground. 










We continued on our planned route, but when we got to the donkeys, all hell broke loose. She has been really good about them all summer, but for whatever reason this day they came running from the back of the pasture to the fence at the road, those long ears wagging in the breeze, and she just about came undone. I hopped off as she spun and snorted with her eyes bugging out. Poor thing was genuinely scared but came back to me after a bit while we did some simple calming groundwork in the road. After she was breathing again and remembered I was there, we continued on. onkey:onkey:

I found a big log to mount from and as I was about to get on, a school bus came flying around a curve in this dirt road, seemingly going 40mph or faster, with a bunch of kids hanging out the windows screaming “WE LOVE YOUR HORSE!” I almost yelled back that they could have her :wink: At this point it was starting to feel like the ride was cursed, so all I could do was laugh to myself and keep going. I got back on, and at this point I had changed the route I planned to take as I was not up for the 7ish mile ride I had initially intended- we turned back on a loop towards home, but would have to cross a busy paved road around 4pm on a Friday afternoon with tourists everywhere. I dismounted at the paved road and walked her the ¼ mile to connect to our road, remounting from a big stone wall in front of a house. Relieved to be heading home, she picked up a nice trot and didn’t flinch when we passed a backhoe and well truck digging a new well in someone’s back yard (after the donkeys, what could possibly be scary??) When we were almost at the top of our hill, I looked around and was able to admire the scenery again, which had been the whole point of the ride! I asked her to stand for a second while I snapped a shot of Mt. Ascutney…









…and a second later she was ignoring my “whoa” and plowing over the edge of the road, which looked like it was solidly covered with brush, but the brush was actually concealing a sheer 3ft drop off. So there we found ourselves with her front feet a good 2ft lower than her hind end, which was now sticking up in the air higher than the rest of her body, leaving me precariously perched in the saddle. I was sure she was going to fall trying to scramble back to level, but she actually just stood perfectly still. I flung myself over the side but there was no solid ground to land on so I just sort of crumpled in the ditch. Instead of rolling away from her, gravity rolled me _under _her, which was exactly where I didn’t want to be. I was extremely lucky that she continued to just stand stock still for as long as it took me to grab onto the girth and pull myself out from under her belly and regain my own footing. I was able to back her up the ditch to the road and get all 4 feet on level ground again. We walked a few strides up the road to make sure she hadn’t hurt anything while standing so oddly, but she looked fine. I used a hillside to get on yet again and in a minute we were home. Though her behavior was far from angelic, this is how she looked as we headed up the last hill before home:










I guess if I can find the good in it, she stood wonderfully for all the dismounting and remounting :icon_rolleyes: I was more than happy for that ride to be over.


This morning we met M and Coalie. Right from the beginning, both the horses were acting weird. Fizz again was pokey and not wanting to move forward, and Coalie was also resistant. They were both being so uncharacteristically unwilling it just felt like something external must be wrong. We got off and checked everyone’s feet and tack to make sure nothing was wrong, and there wasn’t anything we could find. Coalie, who usually wants to be velcro’ed on to Fizz if M would let him, wouldn’t get anywhere near her. I guess she was giving off an “F-you” vibe to everyone! When M made him trot up next to us he had the funniest look on his face- a sort of side-eye, “wasn’t me, don’t take it out on me!” look as he tried to stay as far away from her as he could. You can barely even see him here, he's so far away :dance-smiley05:









We had planned to do an 8.5 mile loop but an hour later and only 2.5 miles from home, we both admitted it was miserable crawling along like we were, and would take us all day if we tried to get 8 miles out of them. If only horses could talk!! No idea what was making them both so crabby. When we turned around to come home they were still sort of dragging along, so it’s not like they perked up happily once they knew where we were going. We ended up doing close to 5 miles, but nothing that should have made them exhausted.









The only good thing about the ride today (aside from the gorgeous weather) was that we did the really steep Cavendish hill past the overlook where I’ve had such problems lately, and we actually managed to ride down that pretty well. She didn’t pitch the same fit she did in the middle of the week, and by leapfrogging with Coalie on the way down we made it without any real incidents.



















Next week is a new week I guess! Hopefully Fizz wakes up on the right side of the shed on Monday.


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## knightrider

Awww, I can't "like" that post. I'm sorry you've had two rotten rides, especially when the weather was so perfect. I'll be looking for the next ride or two and hope hope hope it is all great. You've come so far with Fizz.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Awww, I can't "like" that post. I'm sorry you've had two rotten rides, especially when the weather was so perfect. I'll be looking for the next ride or two and hope hope hope it is all great. You've come so far with Fizz.


It’s ok! As M-ever the optimist-said, “Even horses have bad days.” I’m sure we’ll get the funk out of our system too. I’ve been sick with a nasty cold all week and not feeling 100%, so I’m guessing that has something to do with it.


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## Knave

I “liked” it because you wrote it well and you lived through it all. I’m sorry your rides were not great. I bet it’s just the change in season. Is it suddenly cold there like it is here? We even had snow today. Ick


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## carshon

They are fickle creatures aren't they. i find fall to be the toughest time of year to ride. Not that I have had much riding this fall (darn rain!) The horses are in eat everything in sight mode by instinct and seem to resent being removed from food and made to work off some of the fat they are trying so hard to gain.

Glad you found the good in your ride. it's a new week and each ride is a new ride!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Is it suddenly cold there like it is here? We even had snow today. Ick





carshon said:


> i find fall to be the toughest time of year to ride. Not that I have had much riding this fall (darn rain!) The horses are in eat everything in sight mode by instinct and seem to resent being removed from food and made to work off some of the fat they are trying so hard to gain.


Yes, this weekend it turned chilly and very fall-like here (thankfully no snow yet!). We were joking that most people have horses who seem wound up like tops the first cool morning, and yet ours were slow as molasses- maybe they were in "fat preservation mode" like carshon suggested :rofl:

I didn't really have time to ride during the day, but the rest of the week is supposed to be cold and rainy, so I fit in a shorter ride before work. I did a few things differently today. First, I left the hind boots off Fizz. They fit a little big, even with shims, for a couple of weeks after a fresh trim, and I wondered if they were flopping around enough to be bothering her and making her so pokey. They weren't popping off or twisting, but the last couple of rides she felt a little weird behind and her back was really tight. Also, I decided I'd hand walk her the first downhill stretch as a warm-up. I'm guilty of walking her from the field out to the road where I have my mounting block and getting on without much more of a warm-up. Given her tight back the last couple of rides, I wondered if she was just a little stiff from the cooler weather and needing more movement before I got on. I'm not sure if both of those things helped (I failed the cardinal rule of research, only change one variable at a time ), but when I mounted up she felt a lot more comfortable in both her back and hind end, and didn't do the drunk walk at all. 

I also played some music while riding to keep _me _from tensing up at our "trouble spots," since we were going past the apple orchard where she tried to bolt and the killer donkeys. I usually don't ride with music as I try to stay very aware of traffic, but it was early and I thought the benefit was worth it. I really focused on the rhythm of the music, breathing, and making sure I was sitting deep and not tensing my legs, trying not to block her going forward with grippy knees. She relaxed right with me, stretching down nicely in a good walk and trot. The donks were out grazing when we passed, and while she did sneak some nervous looks at them, she kept going in that relaxed walk- on the way home, we trotted right past them with no concern. I was so happy with her demeanor the whole ride. Even when she got tense and a little jiggy passing some barking dogs who ran out at us, she came back to the calm walk in a reasonable amount of time. 










As we were riding, I was trying to pay close attention to her body language in response to mine. I noticed just how active her ears are- they flick back and forth to me constantly. How do others respond to "questioning ears"- do you always answer? How? When she was moving along at a comfortable, relaxed pace I'd respond verbally with "yes" or "good girl." If she was looking nervous about something or trying to skitter away from something on the side of the road, I'd just put a little leg on to ask her to keep going straight. But I found it fascinating that when I really paid attention, she had an ear on me nearly every other stride- that's a lot of communication! I will have to continue watching that and figuring out how and when to respond.

We came home up through the pasture. Since it got down into the 30s and we had some frost last night, I locked the girls in the dry lot for the day. I'm feeling a little paranoid about fall laminitis, particularly for Maggie. I've had the grazing muzzle on her most of the day (after she has a little time with hay in the morning), and we've been walking a mile a day up and down our big hills.









I'm going to try her out on SpeediBeet and hay only (vs adding a ration balancer too), and see if that helps some more with the weight. In good news, our hay was recently tested and came back at between 8-10% NSC, so I'm feeling better knowing she can reasonably eat the hay without being pushed into the danger zone. I think the exercise is going to help more than anything and am just kicking myself that I wasn't more diligent about that throughout the summer.


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## QueenofFrance08

Does Maggie's grazing muzzle need a halter? I'm trying to find one that doesn't because I hate leaving halters on in the pasture but everything I can find seems to be an attachment to one. I've finally accepted that fatty Stitch needs one but given her recent fondness for causing injury to herself I want to limit her chance as much as possible!


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## carshon

@QueenofFrance08 sorry to bust in on the thread but our mare wears a Best Friend grazing muzzle and it does not require a halter - it has a plastic break away buckle in case the horse gets caught. Our mare has tried rubbing it off on the ground - rubbing it off on her herd mates and it has stayed on It is a little heavier than some but Belle is not easy on equipment and does not wear it 24/7

Now back to your regularly scheduled journal


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Does Maggie's grazing muzzle need a halter?


Yes, the Green Guard does need a halter. I also hate having a halter on when turned out. The one I'm using is a padded nylon halter with a thin breakaway leather strip as part of the cheekpiece. I think you can see it here:









Speaking of Maggie and grazing muzzles...she gave me a scare earlier this week. On Tuesday, I noticed her looking uncomfortable behind, shifting her weight from hind foot to hind foot and walking very stiffly behind. She had some heat in those feet as well, but no pulse. I got on the phone with the vet in the evening, and described what was going on. She recommended putting the grazing muzzle on overnight but talked me out of panicking. The next morning, her feet were cool again and she was standing much more comfortably- she was feeling good enough to trot around making nasty faces at Fizz over hay. Still no pulse.

I had to be out of town for work yesterday, so had the vet scheduled to come take a look today. She was still looking more comfortable and no heat/pulse in the feet, so I was cautiously optimistic. Vet got no reaction from hoof testers, and no resistance to moving in small circles in a mini-lameness exam. She _was _a little stiff, e.g., arthritic stiff, and her right stifle caught briefly when vet picked up the right hind, so there may be some other reasons for her short-striding-it's turned cold this week and this may be some age-related arthritis catching up with her. 

All told, I'm not sure if I made a big deal out of nothing, or if I got lucky and caught something "small" before it became something "big," but regardless, I am happy she's ok. We're good to keep up with our handwalking (she _does _need to lose weight), and she's ok to continue eating hay and her ration balancer. I _will _be keeping the grazing muzzle on basically 24/7, which she's not thrilled about, but she seems to have adapted to it well and is managing to pick at hay through it. She ended up being more offended by the Best Friend model than the Green Guard, so she's going to stay in that for now.

I brought the other girls up to the barn for moral support during the vet visit (and in hopes of not causing pulses to show up because of stress), so everyone got a little spa treatment while they were inside. I haven't been able to ride all week because it's been raining, so it was nice to just spend some time with them all. They're all getting so fuzzy!









Put Izzy in a blanket for the first time because we're supposed to have chilly rain this afternoon and overnight. My blankets literally just came back from cleaning, so I was joking with my husband that this was the cleanest they are going to be for the next 6 months.

















(She's not turned out in a halter; I had just brought her out from the barn while going back to get Maggie...)


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## egrogan

(Edited: I guess the breakaway part of the halter is on the crownpiece, not cheekpiece. Just noticed that in the photo :grin


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## Tazzie

How is she with ground driving? I know it's not as common, but I had a friend that ground drove her horse all over the farm when she was starting him. I know it's not as widely used after they are broke, but it could give her a bit more work too. If she's safe about it, could maybe even trot while ground driving her


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## egrogan

I asked her owner about ground driving way back when, and while she isn't aware of her having much experience with it, she thought it would go fine with her. To be honest, it's been my own time limitations not trying it. I can handwalk her a mile up and down hills without any special tack in 15 minutes. But I take the point she probably needs more than that...


I've actually done a fair bit of ground driving with Izzy in the past and agree it is good exercise and mental engagement for them.


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## Tazzie

I'd say it wouldn't hurt to try it, as time allows of course! We plan to take Diego back to that over the winter to fill in all the holes he has. I think it could help her lose a bit of weight.


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## PoptartShop

Sorry to hear you didn't have the best rides last week, but you got through them & didn't give up. They definitely have their days. Ain't that the truth. :lol:
I don't always have good rides, sometimes my rides just about make me wanna cry, but then the next one is always better. Just gotta keep keeping on!

Glad Maggie turned out to be OK, it'll definitely be an adjustment for her to have it on 24/7, I know leaving a halter on isn't the best, but she's a good girl who hopefully won't get into any trouble. Also, the good thing is that it will help her & she's getting used to it.  Could definitely be the weather plus the arthritis making her stiff too.


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## egrogan

> My blankets literally just came back from cleaning, so I was joking with my husband that this was the cleanest they are going to be for the next 6 months.


 As expected, less than 24 hours later...:icon_rolleyes:


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## egrogan

As we count down the weekends we have left until winter gets here, we're trying to spend as much time outside as we can. Friday night, I went out apple picking in our orchard. It hasn't had any love or attention in the last several years, yet this season the apples are bountiful. I picked what I could reach from the ground (and in a carefree moment, actually climbed a couple of trees to reach a few particularly appealing apples). I barely scratched the surface of what's ripe out there, but from walking around the base of the trees it was clear that the deer, coyotes, and bears are enjoying them as well. This spring we'll get out there and try to start making progress on pruning and removing dead spots. Don't want to lose too many of these lovely old trees!


















Our reward was a delicious apple gallette for dessert this week. Will probably make some applesauce too, and enjoy just eating them for as long as they last.









Maggie seems to be doing well- she looks less swollen and bloated to me. It's been a week now with her in the grazing muzzle ~20 hours/day, and I do think it's helping. She's not shifting weight on her hind feet at all, she's moving around easily, and just generally has a happier expression. We've been enjoying the foliage on our daily walks- well, at least one of us enjoys the walks- ha!



























Great rides with Fizz on Saturday and Sunday- we did ~7 miles each day. Saturday, we went out on our own, and you couldn't have dialed up prettier, more "Vermonty" weather. We did a nice loop through the cattle farm. Fizz was in good spirits, and tackled the first set of cows bravely. This is the first time I can remember staying in the saddle to pass cows. They were spread out across a big, open field, except for one mama-baby pair a couple of horse lengths away from us at the fence along the road. She did a little sideways jump and snorted at them, but she didn't plant her feet at all and kept moving past them. So proud! We enjoyed the scenery for a bit, but I knew there was one more spot in the middle of the farm where we might have to pass more cows- and sure enough, there was a group of bulls (I think? Huge horns on these guys!) right up along the fence. No pictures of the cows, as I needed "both hands on the wheel" passing them, but in the picture below, they are about 1/4 mile down this road, smack dab in the middle of Fizz's (very alert) ears. Given her reaction from this far away, I chose to dismount and walk her past this group of them. 









She was a little sticky when we were right up on them, but overall I was very proud of how she handled it, particularly because once we got around that corner and back into the woods, she stood wonderfully for me to get back on, like we had never seen them at all. From there we enjoyed a short stretch of woods trail to connect back up with the road home.









Lovely husband was out mowing pasture when we got home, and got a few shots of us. She looks like such a Morgan here- those ears up and on a mission.


















Done for the day!









Sunday we went out with M and Coalie-it was not nearly as nice a day, but it wasn't raining so we were able to fit in an adventurous morning ride before it started storming later. There are miles and miles of horse and snowmobile trails just down the road, so we went exploring a bit to see if we could find a connector between a couple of the roads we frequently ride. These trails are also used by the VT100 and GMHA rides, so there are actually a lot of markers- the only trouble is that while it's easy to know you're following a horse trail, it's not so obvious where the trail will dump you out- it could be 2 miles from home, or 12! The other really nice thing is that because there are horse and motor user groups on the trails frequently, they stay well maintained and passable, and the footing is good enough for long stretches of trotting and cantering in a lot of spots (though they can also be quite rocky, and especially this time of year when covered with damp leaves, slippery enough you want to walk through steeper sections). We ended up doing ~4 miles in the woods, and had to laugh at ourselves when we realized that we had somehow done a perfect loop and ended up back where we started, even though our intention had been to do about 4 miles and end up on a dirt road that would bring us home :think: We joked that we probably couldn't do that again if we tried, but at least we knew where we were and how to get home! 



























Being in the woods is nice because Coalie really perks up there, and enjoys taking the lead in ways he doesn't on the road. I think the footing is softer in the woods, and that's a little more forgiving on his feet. Even though he's sound and booted for our rides, he has had laminitis in the past and M is more conservative with him when the roads get concrete-hard. I like having an opportunity for Fizz to practice following, and it's great for her to have to wait for me to ask her to trot or canter even when he takes off in front of us. She was really good and very responsive. No cows on Sunday, but we did pass the donkeys in their field twice, and she barely even glanced in their direction.

Unfortunately it's going to be gloomy and rainy to start the week, and that will probably knock a lot of the leaves down. But, I'm grateful to have had such a beautiful weekend and so much horse time!


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## Knave

It is so beautiful! I love the fallen leaves.


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## egrogan

Maggie and I had a glorious evening for our walk last night. We watched the sun setting along the way.

(Couldn't resist making this one my avatar- she is so photogenic!)


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## PoptartShop

So glad Maggie is doing better, the muzzle must not be so bad after all!  
Beautiful photos, love your new avatar, too. She is super photogenic, I think all of your horses are!
That apple gallette looks AMAZING. I want some! :lol: So happy Fizz has been doing well with the rides too. Such cute pictures of you guys!


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## egrogan

I'm pleased with how Maggie's weight is continuing to improve. The walks have been nice, I feel a connection with her I didn't before. Although last night, I was noticing how long her toes are again already - this is just about 3 weeks into a trim cycle. Our trimmer can't come more often so I may need to make the call to switch to someone local.










My other problem though is that Maggie has destroyed her grazing muzzle. This particular kind (GreenGuard) is made from very hard molded plastic, and this is what she's done to it over the past few weeks, wearing it ~20 hours/day. 








^^That picture is of the grazing surface, which sits parallel to the ground when the muzzle is on.









Of course this can't be good for her teeth, long term- I did have the vet look at her teeth when she was out last week, and there was no damage.

I called the company to tell them what happened, and they were great- they asked for a couple of pictures and then express shipped a warranty replacement, which got here yesterday. Put it on, and then already this morning, she's started scraping it away. 









Sadly I don't think this brand is going to work for her, she's just too aggressive in her eating. I do appreciate that the company tried to make it right. I sent them more pictures this morning, because they said they've never heard of this happening and most of their clients use the same muzzle for years. I can't imagine Maggie is the only horse who thinks she's hungry enough to try to eat through the muzzle, but maybe I underestimate just how determined she is!

We still have the Best Friends muzzle hanging around, but she hated the design of that one with just the tiny hole in the middle of the grazing surface. I need to do a little research to see if there's another brand that is the "basket style" but made in a fabric material- thinking she can't scrape her teeth on that when even when she's aggressively trying to eat. 

I've also considered whether I can back off of having it on her for so many hours a day, but that seems risky for the next month (and in the spring). I like the direction her weight is going, but she has more to lose, and it's obvious the muzzle is making a big difference. What to do, what to do...:think:


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## carshon

Yes, please be careful and watch her teeth closely. I had a friend with a Morgan (oddly enough) gelding that ended up losing both his front teeth because of gum issues due to years of wearing a grazing muzzle and grazing aggressively. That being said Hawk was 28 when it happened and ended up having other health issues that only made not having front teeth worse. 

Belle is not wearing her muzzle as much now - we are expecting our first hard frost tonight and I may try and curb the muzzle even more


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## gottatrot

For Maggie...is she also getting hay? 

For Amore, the easiest way for me to control her weight is by letting her be on pasture 24/7 and control her hay intake. At some points in the year she gets only 0.5 lbs of hay. Since we have grass all the time, I don't worry about her not having food, but since she has to work harder to graze it helps her if I don't feed much hay. 

I was going to try a grazing muzzle for her at one point, but thought I would have to keep it on all the time or she would just double her eating rate the rest of the time. She is an extremely aggressive eater and I don't use a slow feeder for her either since it made her very upset.

If there was a way to separate your horses when the hay was fed, so Maggie was on a field with just grass while the others ate their hay, it could help you not have to use a grazing muzzle. 

If I remember right, your field is not necessarily near your shelters, so this might not work, but wanted to throw the idea out there. Since the other horses need hay, it could work to feed hay only for a few hrs while separating the horses by a fence line, and then put them together for the other hours.


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## bsms

Just wanted to send good wishes for the feeding issues. I sometimes think I'm lucky to have horses on a dry lot corral. Not sure THEY feel lucky, but it makes controlling their food easy.

Also wanted to say how beautiful a place you live!

AND that I like seeing someone who can enjoy a horse's friendship on a lead line. I think horses gain comfort and encouragement from our sometimes doing things with them that don't involve riding. I used to wonder why someone would own horses they don't ride. Now I have two who are rarely ridden, and yet I enjoy just being with them. Bandit isn't even being ridden much - every time I have TIME, the WX sucks. Wind today, rain a couple of weeks ago. But...I don't think my horses really mind. They enjoy someone coming out and giving them treats for a few minutes and just being fussed over a little. I like people who like HORSES and not just RIDING!


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## Avna

I have a fabric grazing muzzle I've never used that you can try out if you want.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Belle is not wearing her muzzle as much now - we are expecting our first hard frost tonight and I may try and curb the muzzle even more


We are still right in the "danger zone" for fall grass. Nights are going to 35-39*F, and days are brilliant sunshine up around 60*F. The grass is very short and the pasture looks tired, but they're still spending most of the night browsing around so I just worry about taking chances. While I'm not wishing away this glorious weather, I do think in the next couple of weeks I will be able to back off muzzle use as we get more hard frosts.



gottatrot said:


> For Maggie...is she also getting hay? For Amore, the easiest way for me to control her weight is by letting her be on pasture 24/7 and control her hay intake...She is an extremely aggressive eater and I don't use a slow feeder for her either since it made her very upset....If there was a way to separate your horses when the hay was fed, so Maggie was on a field with just grass while the others ate their hay, it could help you not have to use a grazing muzzle...Since the other horses need hay, it could work to feed hay only for a few hrs while separating the horses by a fence line, and then put them together for the other hours.


 @*gottatrot* , pulled out some pieces of your post that stood out to me. Maggie does get hay, but you're right that they all have the same access to the hay so I can't monitor how much any individual horse is getting. Given the temp fluctuations right now I'm not comfortable with Maggie being mostly on the grass (and it's mostly "busy grass" right now too). But, with having the muzzle on her, I've realized just how much hay she was eating, and how much I was overfeeding. I would NEVER see hay left out in the morning previously, but now in the morning there is some left, and no one appears to be starving. Like Amore, Maggie seems to be a very aggressive eater, but slow feed nets don't seem to frustrate her. Obviously she can't eat out of a net with the muzzle on, but since she eats from them ok, once we are back in the grass safe-zone (or, when everything is buried in snow!) and she can go without the muzzle, I'm going to be shifting most of my hay feeding to nets- right now I probably do half and half, loose on the ground and in nets. The loose on the ground gets hoovered up and/or wasted.

We're making some physical adjustments to the turnout space this week, that I think will make feeding hay a little easier. We've had mud problems around the sheds since this time last year, and tomorrow we finally have someone coming to raise the sheds, level the dry lot, and improve the footing all around the sheds. I've hesitated to make too many nets available around the sheds on rainy days, because it compounds the mud problem. But with better footing, I can concentrate the hay there and keep it netted, which I think will make it last longer and waste less. Right now I don't have any way to separate them for extended periods of time where everyone would have access to shelter and water, but am hopeful that even with the current approach to feeding hay, the nets will slow Maggie down!



bsms said:


> Just wanted to send good wishes for the feeding issues. I sometimes think I'm lucky to have horses on a dry lot corral. Not sure THEY feel lucky, but it makes controlling their food easy. Also wanted to say how beautiful a place you live!
> AND that I like seeing someone who can enjoy a horse's friendship on a lead line.


Thanks @*bsms* . The dry lot does simplify some things like this, but you have to deal with your own version of plotting and planning to get them what they need. 

I do enjoy my walks with Maggie, and I know she is enjoying the ability to get out and move around. Our Friday evening walk was quite exciting. We crossed one of our open fields and came out onto the road through a small stand of trees. As we turned left to walk down the road and cross to another field, we saw a horse and cart emerging from the field we were heading to...followed by an identical Fjord with his own cart following right behind. My neighbor gives driving lessons and was out with some students, and she likes to use one of our fields as a turnaround since it's flat and level. We all stopped and said hello (from a safe 1/4 mile away)- we weren't quite sure how passing would go, but we gave it a try. Maggie was very interested in the other horses but walked by them calmly. She did a lot of CTR/endurance with her owner, so I'm sure she's been out on trail around carts before. She got a little upset when they disappeared around a bend in the road, so we did a little groundwork, and then headed back home.



Avna said:


> I have a fabric grazing muzzle I've never used that you can try out if you want.


Thanks! Next time I see you maybe I'll grab it from you. The GreenGuard company did suggest that I could lower the muzzle even more so it hangs a little differently, and that actually seems to have helped some. The scrapes inside it haven't gotten any worse, so maybe that did the trick. But I appreciate the offer.


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## egrogan

It was a fabulous weekend for riding, and we took full advantage. I hadn't been able to ride all week because of work craziness, so Friday I took Fizz for a short walk up to the overlook and back. Even though it was a cloudy afternoon, the trip to the overlook was worth it for the views.


























When we got home, Fizz asked very politely if she might help herself to an apple- how could I say no? :grin:









Saturday M and I had an ambitious plan- we headed out to a long 13-mile loop that we'd been wanting to do all summer. We had been going back and forth about whether or not we'd do the pleasure ride at GMHA this weekend, since it was the fall endurance weekend over there. But, we had a few scheduling issues and making arrangements for trailering was getting complicated, so we decided to just create our own pleasure ride using a lot of the trail we would have ridden anyway. The loop was great, as it gave us time on snowmobile trails, roads with some of the prettiest views around, then up through the woods on horse-only trails, and finally back along Jeep roads that were perfectly quiet. Here's some of the ride on one of the Jeep roads- lots of gentle climbing up, up, up






The horses loved being on the woods trails and we gave Coalie a chance to lead through there. We were able to really move out, trotting and cantering along.



















The woods connect back to a road with some of the most gorgeous views around. 




































We crossed that open field above ^^ and that led us to a street with three consecutive houses where there are horses. I don't know if was the cool weather or just a general feeling of craziness in the air, but at every house, the horses (which usually just sedately watch us pass while grazing) came charging from the back of their pasture up to the road to say hello. This is the hardest type of horse encounter for Coalie, and he got a bit amped up so M hopped off. He proceeded to spin and jump around M, launching into the prettiest, floatiest trot with his tail flagging; I don't know if his feet touched the ground at all. Pretty to look at but probably not so pretty to have to manage! I was joking with M that it's too bad he doesn't like driving because they'd clean up at any show if she got him trotting like that in front of a cart. 

Fizz doesn't usually react to his antics when he gets like this, but he was so animated this time she just sort of stopped in the middle of the road and planted her feet- which to be honest, was probably not such a bad choice to avoid being crashed into. I hopped off too, and handwalked her down the road while M made slow progress with Coalie spinning around her. All in all, we probably walked them ~1 mile to get past all the horses. The funniest thing about Coalie is that once we were out of sight of the other horses, he just let out a big sigh and then he was back to normal. M and I both got back on and went on our way like nothing had ever happened. We continued on through woods trails and didn't encounter many other people, except the occasional car heading out to a hunting camp way back in the woods.









We had a couple of miles towards the end where Coalie was dragging a little- all that showing off was tiring I guess- so Fizz was getting a little annoyed with me asking her to circle or slow down. The last 1.5 miles, M and I split off to head separate ways home (we had met in the middle of our houses to start the ride) and I let Fizz trot most of the way home, which she appreciated. She didn't seem tired after 13 miles, though she was SO thirsty (we didn't find much water on the trail, just a few puddles) and she sucked down a whole bucket while I was untacking. This is the farthest I've ever ridden, and it felt wonderful. I am just so happy with how far she's come this summer.

Sunday we took things easy and went for another short walk to the overlook. We stopped in one of our fields to talk with some neighbors who were heading out to the woods to scope out a hunting spot, and Fizz thought it was pretty great to stand around grazing while I chatted. She was a little stubborn about heading away from home after that- my fault for dawdling on the way out- but she was fine the rest of the ride. We moseyed along enjoying the foliage.


















Izzy got in on the fall fun too, mowing the lawn for awhile in the afternoon.









What a way to end a great weekend!


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## carshon

absolutely gorgeous! I am so envious of your riding area!!!


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## SueC

@egrogan, do Maggie's incisors feel like they have sharp edges on them? She's old-ish, right? I'm just asking because that can happen as horses get old and their teeth get steeply angled, and then the angle combined with the sharp edge will make them take chunks out of any solid surface they are eating from. Romeo's teeth were so angled, and with that sharp edge (which didn't worry his tongue by the way, just my hands if I was feeding him from them - ouch - but he needed that edge for grazing effectively with his old angled incisors...) - anyway, because of that configuration, he went through a new feed bucket every 2-3 months at the end - he'd just wear holes into their bottoms, and then I'd have to replace them (but I used all the old holey ones as holdalls for wood etc, they're still great for that!). Tooth enamel is really hard, and in horses it continues to be replaced, so I wouldn't worry about wearing the teeth down with the plastic. It's not like human teeth, where you can actually get ledges along the gumline from incorrect brushing, just with repetitive action of nylon bristles... Anyway, Romeo went through more than 15 hard plastic feed bins, and it didn't trouble his incisors at all. They were undamaged and functional to the end, but of course steeply angled and sharp-edged, so you couldn't feed him off your palm anymore.

Because getting enough food into Maggie isn't your problem, you might be able to get sharp incisor edges blunted next time she gets her teeth done - then she'd go through less plastic. They will re-form quickly though. One thing I really wouldn't do is use the metal type grazing muzzle with a horse like that though - as metal can indeed damage the tooth enamel.

I've got fabric / soft plastic muzzles with one hole in the bottom for my two good-doer donkeys. They're forever enlarging those holes, until eventually I have to replace them.



Re ground driving and in-hand walking: That's good exercise for horses, and _amazing_ exercise for humans! ;-)


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## egrogan

Thanks, @carshon. If you are ever in Vermont please let me know! 

We're supposed to have a (rain-only) Nor'Easter over the next couple of days, so this may be the end of the brilliant foliage for the year.


















@SueC, thanks for those stories, interesting to hear. I will have to check out Maggie's teeth as I'm not sure. She is 22, so older but not _old. _The muzzle still seems to be holding up better since I lowered it, so that's encouraging! We'll be having teeth done in the next few weeks (good reminder to schedule our fall check-ups) so will see what the vet thinks then.


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## PoptartShop

That's great Maggie's weight is improving, & also her feet.  My mare's feet have been growing a lot more lately too - it's not a bad thing! Hopefully if you get someone local they are just as good as the farrier you have. Oh my about the grazing muzzle, good on the company to try to make it right, but I know it's disappointing. Glad you got her teeth checked though. Good call.
I also don't think it'll work for her (that brand), it shouldn't be that easy to destroy. You'll definitely be able to find a more fabric-y material grazing muzzle that would work better for her. Trial & error with those things!

Such beautiful scenery on your rides! I love it! Omg, Fizz is so cute reaching for the apple. :lol: So proud of you guys!


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## egrogan

My heart is melting a little...last night I was talking with someone over FB looking to buy a Morgan, and I recommended Fizzy's breeders. I went onto their FB page to see if they had current pictures up, and started scrolling back through their timeline...where I found pictures I had never seen before of Fizz and her filly, Orchid, just a few days after she was born :loveshower:

















(_Photo credits to Windfield Morgans)
_
She's a 2-year-old now, but unfortunately they don't have any current photos posted. I'm so curious to see how she's growing up.

This is Orchid's sire, Ray (Equinox Ray of Light):


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## Knave

I’m sure if you asked they would show you.


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## gottatrot

How adorable! I'm sort of against thinking of animals as our "children," literally, but still I kind of feel like Orchid is related to your family.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> How adorable! I'm sort of against thinking of animals as our "children," literally, but still I kind of feel like Orchid is related to your family.


 I know exactly what you mean! I keep looking at that big pretty head on that little body (courtesy of mom's genetics, I think ) and feeling a weird connection. I met Orchid briefly when I was test riding, but only for a minute. I think Fizz looks kind of worried in that picture of them together. I have a hard time picturing her as a mom- she's such an independent, aloof kind of horse I don't see her being very nurturing. Makes me all the more curious about how Orchid's personality has turned out. 

@*Knave* , I was in touch with the breeders back in the spring giving them an update on Fizz. They said Orchid was doing well and they were going to send me some pictures- but then our texts just sort of petered out and I never did hear anything more. They are about 3 hours away but if I can find an excuse to go down their way I am sure I could visit her.


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## PoptartShop

Omg how cuuuute look at that! Awww! & I hope you do get pictures, that would be nice. How adorable!


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## egrogan

I didn't get to ride at all last week because of storms and work. We got 3 inches of rain in 24 hours between Wednesday and Thursday, so definitely no riding those days. We finally had a turnout footing renovation project completed on Tuesday, which was just in time! The new footing is stone dust crush and it held up beautifully in those torrential rains. The sheds got raised about a foot, and all the footing in those replaced too, so I am very hopeful we avoid the awful icy flooding we had last winter.









The funny thing now is that you can tell who's been rolling, as they have a coating of grey dust all over!









Friday morning when I went out to feed, Maggie was hobbling around looking pathetically lame on her L hind leg. It didn't look like a foot problem, it seemed higher up. She was taking the leg in an uncomfortable looking swinging motion and putting it down almost directly in front of where the R hind leg was with every step. My best guess is that she was tearing around and slipped on the muddy, wet ground at some point overnight. I decided to wait and see how she was Saturday, and fortunately she was much better. Still looking a little gimpy behind but nothing like she had been the previous day. She seemed sound enough we went back to our regular walk yesterday. Today she just looks stiff, not lame, so I think she'll be ok. My other worry was that the change to the more gravely footing was too rough on her feet and she was going to abscess on me, but I've been checking her feet obsessively and I don't _think _that's happening. 

Fizz hadn't been out to ride since last Sunday, but yesterday we met up with M and Coalie for our weekly ride. We had to adjust our plans a bit because the rain obliterated a couple of our regular routes with mud. Since the weather has been chillier (it was right around freezing when we left home yesterday morning), I've been tacking her up and then handwalking her the first 1/4 mile or so to help her warm up a bit before I get on, especially if the beginning of the ride is going to be downhill. Yesterday we rode down to meet M and Coalie at the halfway point between our houses, and that's about a solid mile of all downhill. Fizz just seems so much happier when I do get on- her back is loose and swinging and her attitude is much better. 

Once we met up, we headed up the road to get to a series of woods trails. We were really lucky that even though it was chilly, the sun was strong and felt great. There are even still some leaves hanging on, making for an unexpectedly pretty ride. 










Without being too graphic, for some reason Coalie had a lot of bathrooming needs along our ride, and when a gelding needs to pee, you just sort of need to stop and wait. Fizz was getting tired of the whole thing- _This gelding is a big yawn! Let's get on with this ride_ :wink:









We spent most of the ride on two intersecting trails through the woods. Did about 8 miles total, probably 5 of them in the woods. Coalie is much happier in the woods vs. on the roads, and he led a lot of the way. We trotted where we could see the rocks under the leaves, but everything was still really slippery from all the rain so we were pretty conservative. We were pleasantly surprised though that there really wasn't much mud along this route- you could see on the downhills where streams had popped up during the heaviest part of the storm and washed a path through the leaves and rocks, but all in all, the footing was better than expected. We came to one spot where there can sometimes be a little stream when things have been wet, and it's a nice place to step and let the horses have a drink. It was extra pretty yesterday- with all that water, there were a few little pop up waterfalls cascading over the rocks. The horses took a long break there and enthusiastically drank.


























I was telling M how a year ago, I could barely get Fizz to walk across a puddle, even if I was on the ground poking and prodding and begging her to go through it- she throw her head up and drag me backwards to avoid it. Now she'll stand in the middle of a stream to drink, and she'll cross deep, bottomless puddles that stretch across the trail without even hesitating. I don't feel like I did anything special to "train" her to "go through water." It's like a switch just flipped and she decided that she'll do it now. But she'll go through or over or around pretty much anything we see on the trails these days.

It was good to have her following Coalie for a few miles. I like to make sure that when we transition gaits, it's because I asked, not just because the horse in front does something. She's doing well with that.



























Planning to head out solo this afternoon, and thinking we'll take the route through the cattle farm today and see where the cows are. We had a hard frost and temps dipped below freezing last night (thin ice on the buckets the past two days...) so I'm hoping to go out when it's a little warmer.


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## gottatrot

What a beautiful ride! I think that is how it is with horses, you see progress better looking back after a period of time rather than trying to measure it by day or week. If you look at how things are each day, sometimes things are better and sometimes worse, so it's difficult to see how you are doing. But overall progress shows up over a longer period of time.


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## egrogan

I did get that ride yesterday, though I didn't follow my own advice I had _just_ written about earlier in the day :icon_rolleyes: I was riding in the one direction where the first part of the ride is flat, and then uphill, so I decided I'd just mount up at home without the handwalking. That was dumb. Fizz was tight and sucked back the whole beginning of the ride and I was having to really work to keep her moving forward. I should have started off walking. Apologies to Fizz...

So the beginning of the ride was pokey slow, and made slower by the fact that one of our neighbors (an older lady I've ridden with a couple of times) stopped while driving by and wanted to chat. She was very concerned for us that we were going to ride past the pigs at the farm up the road, but I told her we'd be ok. She was so funny, her response: "ooohh....well, you're very brave then" (you have to picture that in a thick Bronx accent...) Ha! I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me a little tense going past the pigs, but Fizz really didn't care at all. She'd spooked hard at them once earlier in the summer, but I think that's just because they really surprised her rustling around in the dense woods they live in. Since then she hasn't really even looked at them. It seemed like the farm is down to one sow, but she had a lot of little piglets running around. Anyway, that was uneventful. After we passed them, we had a good long trot up the hill to the paved road, over to the cattle farm- and sure enough, the cows were out in the front pasture along the main road. In case there was any question about it, Fizz let me know from quite a distance they were there :wink: They're waaaayy up there on top of the hill at the back of the open field on the right.








I'm thinking they have brought all the cows and calves together into one herd, as I've never seen this many of them all together in one field. There were quite a lot of them. Fizz definitely was on high alert, so I hopped off at the intersection, not wanting to risk any kind of spin or spook on the busy road. 








She was definitely worried about them, but there was no snorting or spooking or dancing. She stared at them very intently but didn't try to spin away from them. We actually had a nice little chat standing there looking at them, and I felt like she was doing ok.









But then I was so sad to see how worried her eyes were in this picture I happened to take while we were walking past :sad: 









Fortunately once we passed that main group, that seemed to be all there were. The bulls we had seen last time were either on another part of the farm or gone. But it was nice to just have one "encounter." I let her graze a minute on some nice grass just past the cows' field, which she seemed to appreciate (you can see the massive bite of nice grass she has in her mouth in the picture below). Lucky for me, there was a great stone wall right there (the border of the old Weld Cemetery, which the trail is named for). 










She stood nicely as I got back on and we headed off. Lo and behold, her back was loose and flexible again. Should have given her that walk at the beginning of the ride!

We ducked into the woods for a little ways before connecting back with the road to head home. 









There was no traffic for a change, so we really moved out, trotting and cantering most of the way home. It felt great that she wasn't sluggish anymore so I just let her go for it. She was really sweaty when we got home, so hand grazed her for a bit to cool out, and she was bright and happy again despite the cow incident.

I'm headed to North Carolina for work the rest of the week, so spent a little extra time on chores this morning, getting stuff ready for lovely husband before I left. Izzy, as usual, provided extra supervision- she looks so darn cute in this picture, a perfect little Morgan pony. I do miss them when I'm traveling!


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## egrogan

Every year, at the end of the fall, comes The Ride Where The World Is Different And Now Scary. It's the ride when you go out on the same route you always go out, but all the leaves are suddenly gone, so the world looks suspicious in every direction. Yesterday was that ride for Fizz and I :wink: I had been gone all week for work, so yesterday was the first ride since last weekend. 










Gave Fizz a good warm up before I got on, but she was a on her toes and a little spooky from the get go. She stopped on me and planted her feet at the donkey's house, but that was my fault because I was gawking at their massive German shepherd as it charged to the road and barked at us. I think they do have a buried dog fence for it as it never leaves the driveway, but it comes out to the very last inch along the road and snarls and lunges aggressively. I find it really irritating when the owners are outside doing whatever they're doing, and never bother to look up and say hello or sorry or call the dog off. So anyway, I was willing the dog to stay put and of course Fizz felt my indecision and came to a standstill (all while the dog owners are sitting in the yard watching me :icon_rolleyes. But I did get her going forward again with a little swat of the lead rope, and she passed the donkeys without any issues. From there, we had a little "discussion" about which way to go at a 4-way intersection, but it was a pretty minor discussion.









We were heading down the road at quite an animated walk- Fizz was still on her toes- when I heard a truck slowing behind us. As I always do, I waved a big wave in his direction to encourage him to pass, with Fizz well along the side of the road. I always try to say thanks to people who pass slowly, which I did with this driver- to which he responded, "Thank _you _for having such a well trained animal." Now I know how parents feel when someone in public tells them their kids are well behaved :grin: I was very proud of Fizz for listening when it really mattered, even though she wasn't thrilled with how the ride had been going.

We had to walk a 1/4 mile down the side of the really busy paved road, so I opted to hop off and handwalk just because I didn't want to be tippy-toeing along the pavement in case a less polite driver went by. We turned onto our home road and Fizz stood very nicely for mounting (good girl) and per usual I let her out at a nice trot up the hill. That always helps when she's been bottling up nervous energy for awhile. A little ways up the hill, I realized the poor thing was not breathing at all. She hasn't done this in awhile, but one thing she used to do a lot when internalizing her anxiousness was hold her breath for as long as she was worried. Once I realized what she was doing, I started breathing really deeply and intentionally, rubbing her shoulder and telling her she was being great and she needed to let it out. She spooked hard at ??? who knows what ??? and I just kept telling her she needed to breath, and then finally, she exhaled and then let out a long serious of snorts and head shakes. I asked her to come back to a walk, and she felt happier and more relaxed all over- we walked the last mile up the big hill on a loose rein and she continued to snort and sigh. When we got home, I grazed her around for awhile to get the sweat out of her coat, which she always enjoys. 









Unfortunately M and I had to miss our ride today because it's been raining buckets for hours- so we are trying to find a rain date during the week for at least a short ride.


I've got Maggie back to her usual walking routine (1 mile or so up and down the hills in the fields) and she definitely does appreciate it. Often I'll pull her out of the paddock looking a little gimpy and hesitant, but by the end of that walk she's perky and striding out nicely. I'm going around and around trying to figure out what's making her uncomfortable in her hind end, but maybe it's actually some arthritis causing her to stiffen up when she's doing a lot of standing and nothing else.


















Yesterday we also got out into the orchard and tried to pull in as many apples as we could. We ideally would have done this last weekend, but just ran out of time for it. So, a lot of the apples are starting to go soggy or be overtaken by bad spots, and we left a lot on the trees and on the ground. Despite that, we must have picked at least 40 pounds, and left triple that still on the trees just because we couldn't get it all down with just the two of us. The consolation is that we will be feeding the birds and other little creatures throughout the winter with all that's left on the trees. I made an apple crisp last night, which came out really tasty, and have a massive pot of apple sauce on now to freeze. I'm also working on a dozen or so apple turnover that I will freeze and then we'll pull them out one at a time to bake for a night's dessert throughout the winter. I don't have canning supplies anymore and until the kitchen renovation is done, I don't want to go buy them because I have nowhere to store it- but next year, if we have another good year like this, it seems silly not to put up more sauce and apple butter.


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## knightrider

[quote A little ways up the hill, I realized the poor thing was not breathing at all. She hasn't done this in awhile, but one thing she used to do a lot when internalizing her anxiousness was hold her breath for as long as she was worried. Once I realized what she was doing, I started breathing really deeply and intentionally, rubbing her shoulder and telling her she was being great and she needed to let it out. She spooked hard at ??? who knows what ??? and I just kept telling her she needed to breath, and then finally, she exhaled and then let out a long serious of snorts and head shakes. I asked her to come back to a walk, and she felt happier and more relaxed all over- we walked the last mile up the big hill on a loose rein and she continued to snort and sigh. When we got home, I grazed her around for awhile to get the sweat out of her coat, which she always enjoys. ][/quote]

I love the way you listen to your horse and work as a team. You go, Girl!


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## PoptartShop

I think the way you handled that ride with Fizz was perfect. What a good girl she is too. 

I also talk to my mare. It helps us through situations like that, when she gets anxious or worked up. When the leaves start falling & it really starts getting chilly, they definitely can act like they’ve never been out before! Talking to them really does help! & when you relax, & focus on YOUR breathing, it helps them too. Fizz relaxed and took a deep breath after you did. That’s fantastic, I love how you are always willing to work through these things! You guys make a great team.  Glad Maggie is doing well too! And the apples, yum! That’s a lot of apples LOL. I’ll take some! :lol: 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Thanks @knightrider & @PoptartShop. That's one thing I like about riding one horse all the time- you do get to know their actions/reactions and can help them get through it before it escalates too much. Of course there are downsides to only riding the same horse, but I imagine that's how most of my horsey life will be.


I really wish I could send all these apples to you all. There are still so many out there that we won't get to. I just keep telling myself it's not wasting them if they're there for all the wildlife this winter.


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## carshon

Our apple trees produces almost nothing this year. We had so many ice storms that it killed a lot of the buds. Last year I had oodles and made apple pie filling, apple sauce, apple butter, apple crisp, apple dumplings and everything else apple! Your trees are awesome. 

I too want to commend you on listening to your horses. Maggie could have some arthritis and the walks help - and I had to smile at your description of how the world changes when the leaves fall. It is just so TRUE!

Hope you get your ride in before the weather gets colder.


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## Knave

Wow, everything is so beautiful there! I can't imagine such beautiful apples hanging on the bare trees. Just wow! Also, those neighbors are jerks.


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## egrogan

Short ride yesterday after work. It was a very Irish afternoon, so Fizz got to wear her superhero cape :wink: I can't say enough good things about suiting up in hi vis gear- even "red truck guy" who drives like a bat out of hell on dirt roads all over town slowed down for us. 










We went a couple miles to the overlook and back- it was so foggy you couldn't even see the view! 



















We did a little schooling along the road out and back- bending, leg yielding from one side to the other, figure 8s, halts with turn on the fore. Just stuff to make it a little less boring. She was good! When I got her, she didn't understand pressure from your leg at all and would just lean into you. Now she yields pretty nicely.


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## carshon

Love your posts!!!


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## egrogan

_We're weeeettttttttttttttttttttt_


























This week has been a soggy washout. Maggie is finding great joy in rolling in the stone dust footing and covered in a grey crust at the end of everyday. Izzy insists standing outside because Fizz insists on standing outside, so Izzy is also crunchy from being wet and muddy. Even the new, water-resistant footing is starting to drown in the constant rain and starting to show some standing water. It's supposed to keep raining through tomorrow morning, but temps have been weirdly warm (nearly 60*F/16*C) so at least I haven't been messing around with blankets. And, I keep reminding myself that this time last year, the mud was so bad in the paddock that they were covered with it halfway up their legs some days. Now the new footing clings a little on their toes, but it's nothing like this time last year. This is the point in the fall where I start getting ready for snow instead of rain. Tomorrow there's supposed to be a huge change in the weather though, with temps starting off around 60*F in the morning and dropping below freezing overnight. Rain should stop early enough that the horses can dry off before then.

And, the worst possible part of fall hits this weekend....the dreaded time change. I HATE THE TIME CHANGE!


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## carshon

It is snowing her in NW IL - the temps are in the high 30's and we are expected to get 3-6 inches. And it is a soupy soppy muddy mess under the fresh snow so the ground is truly deceptive to walk on. We know the snow won't last long but will melt and add to the mucky mess. I am envious of your new footing. Mine was ordered and then it rained for 9 weeks straight and then it stopped raining for 2 weeks and rained again. So no new footing this year. Love your pics!


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## egrogan

Yikes, @carshon, that's a lot of snow already. And then to have it melt, I empathize with the mess that's left. Hang in there!


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## knightrider

> I HATE THE TIME CHANGE!


I am probably the only person on this forum who hates daylight savings time. I can't wait for the time change. Right now, I can't start riding until at least 7:15 in the morning because until then, it is still dark and I have to start out my rides on the road. I can't wait for Sunday when it will be daylight at 6:30. Sorry, @egrogan, I LOVE the time change.


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## egrogan

I understand that @*knightrider* . My lovely husband sort of agrees, because he likes to go running in the morning before he leaves for work- often he's out around 5:30/6:00am running and he's a little spooked by all the coyote eyes staring out at him lately when it's pitch black at that time. 

I just find it so hard at the end of the day to be doing chores in the dark if work meetings go late into the afternoon. Makes it hard to get the chickens time to be out free ranging, get the horses brushed up most days, etc. It's depressing- and hard to maneuver around my work schedule- when forced inside by 4:30 in the afternoon. Sigh. We will survive, of course. And I will think of you out enjoying your morning rides when I am feeling glum about doing chores in the dark :wink:


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## Chevaux

egrogan said:


> I understand that @*knightrider* . My lovely husband sort of agrees, because he likes to go running in the morning before he leaves for work- often he's out around 5:30/6:00am running and he's a little spooked by all the coyote eyes staring out at him lately when it's pitch black at that time...:


When you’re husband, egrogan, is being interviewed in the near future and asked to discuss what training techniques he uses to maintain his status as an Olympic caliber sprinter, he will be able to answer ‘coyotes in the dark’.😄


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> When you’re husband, egrogan, is being interviewed in the near future and asked to discuss what training techniques he uses to maintain his status as an Olympic caliber sprinter, he will be able to answer ‘coyotes in the dark’.😄



:rofl:
I keep telling him he should take Maggie with him on his runs for exercise but he's not into having a slow, stiff, grumpy companion!


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## PoptartShop

What a good girl, miss Fizz!  Love the photos, the fog looks pretty cool too. As for the rain...I hear you, it rained yesterday & all day today...everything is a mucky, yucky mess at the barn. :lol: I'm sure the girls are loving rolling haha. I am also dreading the time change!  I'm not ready for it at all! Ugh. When the time changes, that's when it realllllllly sinks in that winter is approaching. 



Yikes @carshon, snow already?! Sheesh, stay safe! I hate when the ground gets icky like that!


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## egrogan

Not to fear, the clocks go back ahead on March 8th, 2020. That's only 127 days from the time change this Sunday.

Sorry @knightrider :hide:


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## egrogan

Wild weather to end the week (2 inches of rain Thurs into Friday, with steady wind around 20mph for nearly 24 hours)- that pulled down tons of trees, and the power went out last night, just coming back on in the last couple of hours. Last night the temps went well below freezing and I had to do some serious ice breaking on water buckets this morning. Phew!

Today was actually a beautiful day though. Fizz and I headed out for a quick late afternoon ride to the overlook and back. She was pretty mellow giving the week wasn't very conducive to riding. Just down the road from our house, we ran into a real mess where a huge tree got uprooted in the swamp and must have been blocking the road for quite some time. Appreciative of whoever cleared it!









It was a pretty ride, though the landscape is somewhat austere. 

















Met lovely husband cleaning out the garage as we were riding home









hehe...some outtakes- lovely husband always gives her a peppermint and that sends her into all kinds of funny faces, and she always refuses to have happy ears when he's standing in front of her taking pictures...









One unsettling moment at the very end of the ride- we said goodbye to lovely husband on the way to the field to untack, and cut across the lawn to grab an apple from a tree. As we walked across the yard, Fizz tripped once, no big deal, and then suddenly stumbled or tripped _hard_, with her front legs buckling underneath her. She went all the way to her knees with her nose on the ground. I guess I instinctively kicked my feet out of the stirrups (hurray for involuntary reflexes) but she scrambled back to her feet. It was so unexpected and dramatic I honestly wondered for a split second if she'd snapped an ankle or something- there was nothing she should have tripped on that violently. Fortunately, she was fine and walked to the tree as intended, and then cooled out and grazed around fine, but it was just very odd. :think: Will look her over well later on doing night check, but she didn't seem bothered at all after the fact.

Meeting M for our ride tomorrow at 10am- it's going to be down below freezing in the morning so we figured a couple of hours of sunshine would make it a little more pleasant. Planning 6-7 miles I think, depending on much of our planned trail is washed out or blocked from the storms.

Enjoy the last night of _SENSIBLE _time and daylight everyone- you too @knightrider :wink:


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## knightrider

Thanks, @egrogan! Can't wait to start my ride at 6:30 in DAYLIGHT!!!! Yaaaay!


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## PoptartShop

Ugh, it just LOOKS cold in your pictures! :O & I am sooooo sad about the time change. :sad: 

Fizz is so cute with her silliness. As for the tripping, maybe she just lost her balance? Could've just been the footing too, or maybe there was a little hole and it was just hard to see? Glad she's okay. If she doesn't trip often I wouldn't worry. They can definitely lose their balance sometimes, over absolutely nothing. She may just be a little clumsy sometimes! I hope you enjoyed your ride this morning!  Gotta enjoy the sunshine & daylight while we can!


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## egrogan

Using my first extra hour of darkness to summarize how awesome a ride we had this morning! :wink:

Amusingly enough, the ride didn't actually start out that great for either M nor I- we rode to meet in the middle of our houses, which is about 1 mile. I planned to handwalk Fizz the first half mile to warm her up (it was below freezing when we left), and that was fine, but as soon as I got on she started gawking through the trees at the houses and yards we were passing and was getting really worked up, so I actually hopped off and walked her again to the bottom of our hill before crossing the main road to the spot I was supposed to meet M. She wasn't there (unlike her), so I continued riding towards her house. A couple of minutes later I saw _her _handwalking Coalie in our direction- turns out a neighbor had a new stack of hay covered in a tarp in the yard, and the tarp took flight towards them in the strong wind, which freaked Coalie out. She said they were both so surprised at the flying tarp and the spook that followed, she ended up coming off him  Luckily she was fine and he was fine too once they left the tarp behind! So since the horses were both on their toes, we handwalked them up the paved road before turning off to the quiet road that took us to the trail we planned on. By the time we got to the trail, they were both happy and mellow again. 

I can't say enough good things about how they handled the trail- it may have been our best ride for both horses this year. We had been on a portion of this trail a couple of weekends ago, but took a wrong turn and ended up back out on the road sooner than expected. But M had gotten better directions from a friend, and this time we were able to follow it- and, it's a GMHA trail so once we got ourselves to the right spot, we were able to follow their permanent trail markers and stay on track. Not surprisingly, the footing was tricky after the storms- sucking mud in a lot of spots, really deep ponds of water across the trail (belly deep kind of water), slippery rocks, tree limbs everywhere to bushwhack through, and full on tree trunks to scrambled over. Oh, and lots of really steep up and down. They handled it all like pros!


















There was one really tough section with a ditch about 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep, filled with rushing water- it probably is dicey enough it should have a bridge. The side were really steep and washed, out so it didn't seem feasible to ride across it (at least for me- I admit I was nervous) and M and I both decided to get off and lead them across. Coalie went first and did fine with it, but Fizz was a little buggy eyed and not super into the idea of following him. I found a slightly more appealing looking section, and waded across myself- that left her standing on top of the opposite side bank, looking at me really skeptically. M led Coalie away a short distance to entice her, and I quietly asked her not to go flying backwards with me at the end of the lead rope, dragging me into the cold water. I saw in her eyes she was thinking about going backwards...but she didn't! Good girl. Instead, she gathered herself up and sprung across like a delicate deer, knees tucked politely like a little jumper. M and I were talking afterwards about whether or not it was ok to let them jump something like that, rather than go down and up the banks. She seemed well aware of space and I never felt like I was in danger of having her jump into me, but it was a good question. I guess I was just so happy she crossed it I didn't really care in that moment how 

The weather improved a bit as the ride went on, and having the sun out made the temps more comfortable. Look at this fabulous tree we passed- it was a birch tree seeming to grow out of the top of an old pine tree stump, with its roots snaking around like tentacles to anchor it to the ground. Really wild scene - still trying to figure out how that's even possible!









Along the way, we passed several folks from the snowmobile club clearing downed trees. The horses did awesome with the 4-wheelers driving towards us on those narrow trails in the woods. To their credit, the snowmobile guys were really wonderful when they saw us- they all pulled off to the side and cut their engines, or turned off the chainsaws if they were already out working. We stopped at each little work crew we saw (4 in total) and chatted, thanking them for taking care of the trail and being good to the horses. One group had a younger boy with them, who shyly asked if he could pet the horses, so of course we said yes to that. Felt like it was a good day for snowmobiler-trailer rider karma :grin:

Also super happy with Fizz for being such a champ with me getting off and on a bunch of times. Some of the downhill sections were really steep, and too slick on the rocks or too deep with mud for me to feel comfortable, so I would hop off for a section like that and then get on when it leveled out or started climbing. She never let me down when it came to scrambling back on, even in my less-than-graceful moments. I was happy I had the good cookies in my pocket for this ride, and she didn't seem to mind either!

Every sunny, snow free day feels like a bonus at this point, so I feel really grateful we were able to ride nearly 8.5 miles today and have such a challenging but exciting ride. 

Back at home, we also got a lot of winterization work done. We needed to replace the door hinges on the tack/hay storage room that had gotten all warped and broken when they froze in icy pools of water after our mid-winter rain storm last year. Not a fun task (clearly, since we put it off about 6 months). But today lovely husband helped me replace the hinges, as well as hang up a few new hay net rings so I can make sure everyone has plenty to munch on when temps plunge. Fizz and Iz were out browsing around in the field while we were working, but Maggie Moose was sticking close to supervise :ha:


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## egrogan

How we're feeling about a gloomy fall morning...


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## csimkunas6

I love seeing your photos and reading about your rides! I miss NH/VT so much, especially in the fall! Montana is gorgeous but a different kind compared to the scenes of New England! How I miss seeing trees! LOL....that birch tree is awesome! They were always my favorite tree to see out and about too!


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## carshon

It looks like your hubby was giving Maggie smooches! I love it! and I love your pics. I was thinking back on when I first remember seeing your posts and about your initial hesitation on riding her on the trails. You should be immensely proud of how far you have come in your horsemanship - and husbandry! Having horses at home can be a challenge but you have done so well!

Love your posts.


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## egrogan

csimkunas6 said:


> LOL....that birch tree is awesome! They were always my favorite tree to see out and about too!


 Glad to give you a taste of New England. Birch trees were my favorite as a kid too. I was a horseless but horse crazy kid, and part of my imaginary horse keeping involved picking up all those funny little seed ropes that came off birch trees and grinding them up in buckets to be "oats" for my imaginary horses  I had a very active imagination!



carshon said:


> It looks like your hubby was giving Maggie smooches! I love it!


He was!! :loveshower:


Thanks for your nice comments, it has been quite a journey this past year. But we've made so much progress. I feel so much more prepared for winter this time around too!


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## egrogan

We went for a blustery lunchtime ride earlier today.









There were a few flurries when we started out, but the sun broke through the cloud at points.


























It was a mellow walk/trot ride up to the overlook and back, so nothing exciting to report - just a little mid-week leg stretch. Tomorrow our first winter storm is supposed to get here. The forecast is all over the place though- anything from a dusting to five inches of snow. Guess they just aren't really sure what is going to happen. I still have a bunch of things to do before it's really winter (e.g., snow tires and fall vet check-up are both happening Friday), so I'd prefer it if the real snow held off a couple more weeks. Hopefully we'll get lucky.

New hay net rings are working out well- nice to have lots of places to put hay on days where anything on the ground would just get blown away!


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## egrogan

Snow blew in last night, but we ended up just getting a dusting. It did get bitter cold overnight, but at least there wasn't much to clean up in the morning.



























This morning we had our fall vet check-up. Everyone got shots, blood pulled for Cushings/metabolic issues, and teeth checked. I was really happy that no one needed to be floated this time around. They will probably all need a little attention in the spring, but for now everything is looking good. 

Maggie and Fizz both need some chiro work done, so will be making a separate appointment for that. Fizz is really tight around her pelvis (both sides) and Maggie has some weird soreness inside her left hind and on her right chest. I really think she must have taken a fall in the pasture one of those really wet days a few weeks ago, because she's been uncomfortable since then. Vet is also going to run blood for anaplasmosis too just in case, but when I explained the timing of the soreness she agreed it was probably just a result of wiping out while goofing off in the field.

I feel a little guilty as I think Izzy would really like to be able to come into a barn at night. As soon as I got her in the stall, she was passed out snoozing. Vet said she's at a great weight right now but she shouldn't lose any over the winter. So I will start with the alfalfa cubes again this weekend to make sure she's getting a little extra.









Even the chickies got a little extra attention this morning. Poor things are having such a hard molt this year, and they refused to leave the barn once they saw the snow. I scrambled them up a couple of eggs with some leftover rice and oats, and they had a little breakfast feast.








Fortunately their feathers are growing in nicely. I just wish mother nature would start the molting clock earlier so they'd be more comfortable this time of year!


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## Dragoon

Chickens eating chicken eggs?! Hmm...
My cockatiel chirps a higher note when he watches me crack eggs. He sounds alarmed? And he refuses to eat any. (Saves himself for toast)

I notice that in the summer months about the horses sleeping. They are out 24/7, and when I let them in to feed grain, they eat and fall right asleep. All four of them! 
I figure they are so relieved to be away from the bugs and stomping and swishing...poor guys are exhausted. 
Perhaps Izzy is reluctant to lay on wet ground, and is tired...


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## egrogan

Dragoon said:


> Chickens eating chicken eggs?! Hmm...
> My cockatiel chirps a higher note when he watches me crack eggs. He sounds alarmed? And he refuses to eat any. (Saves himself for toast)


Haha, I forgot it sounds weird to people that chickens eat eggs. It's a great way to get extra protein into them when they need a little "umph." Regrowing their feathers after molting is so hard on them, and sucks up so much of their protein, that it's just a nice little way to supplement them, especially when it's a really cold day. Also good if you have a sick chicken and are trying to perk them up, sometimes it can really turn them around. :chicken2::chicken2:



> Perhaps Izzy is reluctant to lay on wet ground, and is tired...


I think you're right about this. I had been hoping to keep the sheds with just their dirt floor, no mats and shavings, throughout the winter, but I realized this morning that's because it's much easier and more convenient for me- but not all that comfortable for them. Like this morning, when the temp was 19*F/ -7*C, the floor was hard as concrete, and that's really not fair. So I will tackle that this weekend, and I think with a more comfortable space she will be more willing to rest. Old ladies deserve a little extra pampering :grin:


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## PoptartShop

Love reading your updates. Sounds like you’ve had such great rides on Fizz. That trail sounded really fun!  What a good girl!! That tree looks crazy too, never seen anything like it. Nature is beautiful! Fizz looks so good all decked out in orange. 

SNOW?! Already?! Ahhh! At least you didn’t get too much though. Love the haynets too, those are perfect! Such cute pictures. I’m glad everyone got a good report though. The chiro will definitely help Fizz & Maggie. Maybe she slipped & knocked something outta place. Hopefully that gives her some relief. Adjustments usually do the trick! You have such great horses, I’ve said this before but I love your herd. They are so cute! 

I was also taken aback from the chicken photo haha. Chickens eating eggs! LOL. That’s funny. They are so adorable. 



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> ...I found a slightly more appealing looking section, and waded across myself- that left her standing on top of the opposite side bank, looking at me really skeptically. M led Coalie away a short distance to entice her, and I quietly asked her not to go flying backwards with me at the end of the lead rope, dragging me into the cold water. I saw in her eyes she was thinking about going backwards...but she didn't! Good girl. Instead, she gathered herself up and sprung across like a delicate deer, knees tucked politely like a little jumper. M and I were talking afterwards about whether or not it was ok to let them jump something like that, rather than go down and up the banks. She seemed well aware of space and I never felt like I was in danger of having her jump into me, but it was a good question. I guess I was just so happy she crossed it I didn't really care in that moment how


Personally, I see nothing wrong with that. I think it's up to the horse how it's comfortable crossing, whether walking through or jumping over - and many athletic horses will jump over any obstacle, including a water crossing, which they can easily leap. It's safer for them statistically than putting their feet in the water. Underwater roots or holes, crocodiles, piranhas etc, so in situations like that, jumping was favoured by natural selection in the evolutionary development of the horse. inkunicorn:

And, I don't think it's dangerous to the handler, not if the horse and you are communicating clearly. Horses avoid jumping into people or other objects like the plague. Accidentally being jumped on by a horse is usually a case of you're leading it and it's jumping sideways into your lap because there's a bogeyman on its other side  - not something that's likely to happen during actual hand jumping. The local Pirelli people with their horse playground hand jump their horses over all sorts of things; same back in Germany. We all learnt to hand jump horses - both going with over them, and us running past the obstacle with the horse jumping. If you're over the obstacle and the horse baulks and is delayed, usually it will decide to follow you, but on its own track.

You're worried that you're on the other side facing the horse and it leaps over to your side? If your lead rope is long enough, the horse won't jump on top of you, but stay on its track. It's probably a little safer to jump together, but often a young horse won't, and then I prefer it to follow on its own than to cross back to it and make more run-ups together. Eventually the horse will jump with you on these occasions (a nice tongue-click at the right time helps produce lift-off), and then it will jump with you in the saddle next time, which saves you all sorts of bother and feels like you're on an English hunt. :Angel:




> Look at this fabulous tree we passed- it was a birch tree seeming to grow out of the top of an old pine tree stump, with its roots snaking around like tentacles to anchor it to the ground. Really wild scene - still trying to figure out how that's even possible!


Great photo! Also your friend M and her horse are very striking with the coal black steed and that waterfall of flaxen hair falling from her black cap! 

The way that kind of thing happens is that little depressions form in tree stumps because water falls on them and this moisture allows fungi to start breaking down the wood. Little hollows filled with organic material form, and seeds can get blown in; the odd one has a successful start in that kind of "flowerpot" and will typically have some roots growing down through the stump as far as possible (where it's soft), and some will grow over the side as well. Very cool! 

It's lovely reading about your horseback and farm adventures and seeing the beautiful photos.  If you're wondering where the sun has gone, it's on our side of the hemisphere scorching us. Today it's 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees F) and I'm trying to keep my seedlings alive, and hibernating in the cool house as much as possible. Great washing weather though!


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## gottatrot

I love to see your spoiled animals. Even the chickens look spoiled. Animals thrive when they are spoiled (in a good way, not meaning bad behavior). 

In general I'd say go ahead and let the horse leap over the water. Except Amore, she really would try to land on top of me where she could see the footing was safe since I was standing on it. For her it was best to wait until she was in the air and then move out of the way quickly since she was planning on landing where I was. We would go on trail rides sometimes where she would walk exactly in the hoofprints of other horses, if the footing was insecure. Safety first!


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## egrogan

@*SueC* & @*gottatrot* , thanks for the thoughts on having a horse jumping in hand. I loved the story about Amore following other horses' footprints. How funny! Sue, thanks for the explanation of how that birch tree was able to grow- love the flower pot analogy. 

We got the mats down in the sheds yesterday afternoon. We cheated a little and left a gap around the edge since we didn't have the time or patience for dealing with cutting and fitting them to a tight fit (and, yikes, I forgot how expensive they are- it was hard to justify buying an extra mat just to cut it up). I don't think the horses will mind though. Izzy already tested it out and approved









We were busy doing various errands and chores most of the day, so I didn't get Fizz out until late in the afternoon. It was the warmest part of the day but still quite blustery- once we started trotting along the wind was bringing tears to my eyes. Made for some beautiful light and fun shadows though as the sun was setting.










































By the time I got Maggie out for her walk, it was fairly dusky, but worth it to stretch her legs.



















I'm meeting up with M a little later today since it's pretty cold- definitely below freezing, probably around 25*F or -4*C right now. So we'll meet up closer to lunchtime, when it is supposed to go up above freezing.


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## egrogan

Ride with M yesterday was great. Fizz was a little fussy when we left, as I changed up the routine on her. Maggie's owner was in town (she lives out of state now) and had reached out to ask if she could come visit her. Unfortunately she could only come when I was planning to be out on my ride, but she didn't mind coming without me there- I actually thought it might be sort of nice if she could visit _without _me there so she could have some private time. Last time she came, she was pretty teary-eyed visiting with her. This time she was also coming with her mentor (who is Maggie's breeder), so I thought they would appreciate having some space. So before I left on my ride, I brought Maggie and Izzy up in the barn, and lovely husband entertained Fizz while I got the other two settled. 










I've never heard Fizz get really vocal when leaving them, but she was whinnying at them all the way down the road. She was fine once I got on though.










It was still blustery on the way out, but by the time we were finished the sun was nice and Fizz was even a little sweaty. We did ~7.5 miles, which means I met my mileage goal for the year- we passed 300 miles! :cheers:

It was "youth hunting weekend" (because there's no better idea than giving children guns and turning them loose in the woods, right?! :think: ) so we primarily stuck to the roads. We did dip into the woods on one horse-only trail that runs on a ridge along the road, figuring that even if people were back on the trails they *shouldn't* be shooting so close to the road. We definitely heard shots in the distance but didn't see anyone out there.


















One of M's friends was out in his yard when we rode by his house on our way home, and he got a picture of both of us together- even though both horses are looking a little grumpy for the photo shoot, I'm happy to have a picture of us. M has really become a good friend this summer, and I'm glad to have her as a riding buddy. It's amazing that we met because of a random Facebook post!









When we got home, Maggie's crew had come and gone. Lovely husband, who had been working out in the garage while they were there, said he heard lots of laughing and joking, plus some tears, out in the barn, so it sounds like they had a nice visit. I got a nice text from her mom afterwards saying she thought Maggie was looking great and she was grateful to have Maggie in a place where she was happy. That made me feel good- you just never know how people will react when it comes to their horses! Lovely husband helped me get the girls back out to the field so I didn't have to deal with playing musical horses and carrying tack all over the farm- much appreciated!









We had a nice, warm start to the day, but by the later afternoon the sun was gone and the ground froze up fast. All three of the girls were moving cautiously on the now froze, sharp footing, but I noticed Maggie especially was gimping around on it. On a whim, I tried Fizz's boots on her front feet. I was amazed that the sizing was actually nearly perfect- and even more amazed at how instantly they made her comfortable. With them on, she was back to her bossy self, claiming the pile of hay she really wanted.









I left them on her overnight. We're hunkered down waiting for our first snow storm, and we're expecting a few inches of snow by dinner time tonight. With that natural "cushion" on the ground, I'll take the boots off and she should be fine. Unfortunately the forecast is also calling for freezing rain overnight, followed by more snow tomorrow morning. I'm hoping that our elevation will work to our advantage and we'll only have snow. Sometimes it happens that our little town, which is "down the hill," gets wetter weather than we do "up the hill," where things often stay snow vs. ice. Fingers crossed! It would really be a shame to have ice between snow this early, as the longer term forecast doesn't look warm enough that we're going to get any serious melting if we get several inches.


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## egrogan

Well, so much for our big snow storm. We got a few snow squalls in the afternoon yesterday and then a coating of freezing rain overnight. Supposed to get bitter, bitter cold tonight- they're expecting record lows around 5*F/ -15*C. I definitely wouldn't mind if that part of the forecast didn't come to fruition!

Maggie was very spunky on our walk yesterday- the combo of the boots and snow had her feeling good


















@*SueC* , this is for you- as you are getting excited for new spring veggies, we're loving all the local fall harvest. Lovely husband had yesterday off for a federal holiday, so he made challah rolls, and then we did butternut squash risotto, roasted brussles sprouts and carrots, and apple sauce (from our apples!! :apple Even though it didn't really snow, we enjoyed a hearty dinner.


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## phantomhorse13

Ugh to the freezing rain - hope that doesn't set a trend for the winter..


Dinner looks fantastic though.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Ugh to the freezing rain - hope that doesn't set a trend for the winter..


Yeah, it doesn't bode well. It continued drizzling/sleeting/freezing raining most of the day, so now there is an ice crust covering everything. When I went out to feed dinner, the blankets were a literal frozen sheet down the horses' sides, with the belly straps frozen stiff. I was lucky I was able to get those things off to change them to something unfrozen! I had to lug them with me up to the house because the tack room is unheated and I couldn't leave them just sitting in there taking up space as solid blocks of ice. They were so heavy and awkward to carry. Yuck. If it's going to be winter, I just want it to snow. I despise the ice.

It was as cold as it looked at dinner time, and unfortunately with wind chill temps will be below 0*F tonight- actual temp around 5*F.
















Horses guilted me in to putting out extra hay at dinner because it was so cold- I had a somewhat crappy bale in the middle of my stack so gave them a little extra of that knowing they'd eat around the really hard, stemmy stuff.









_Hay hide and seek with Maggie..._









I did manage to finish winterizing the chicken's space during lunchtime today. I brought them one last round of replacement footing (they like peat moss!) so the ground in the run is deep and unfrozen. I also insulated their windows, got out the heated base for their water, added half a bag of shavings to their coop and fresh hay in the nest boxes. They've also got some old hay to play around in, which helps with boredom as well as keeping their little feet warm. They're still regrowing feathers after molting- you can't tell how scruffy they really are from this picture, except I do spot one naked little butt still growing in, and several stubby tails :rofl: But they're pretty well protected from the worst of the weather now, and I let them roam around the barn on days they refuse to go outside.


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## gottatrot

I didn't realize M's horse was so big! You two look very cute together.


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## PoptartShop

Mmm, dinner looks amazing. I'm sure it was delicious! I'm sad to see snow on the ground already, but the horses do look pretty cute in their blankets.  I'm so glad you got a good ride in with M, I love the pictures!  You really do meet some of the best people unexpectedly! The chickens look nice & cozy.


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## egrogan

Wintery weather seems determined to stay. More snow squalls and periods of freezing rain to end the week last week. Fizz cracks me up- no matter the weather, this is her preferred eating position:








Maggie's walks have been a little harder because the roads are pretty slick- so we just try to cross over to the fields and spend as little time as possible on the road.
















Friday lovely husband and I took the day off and headed to Portland, Maine for a long weekend. I had gotten a great off-season hotel deal at a place we love there, and fortunately our farm sitter was available to stay. We decided to take advantage of all that good luck and had a great 48 hours there. As usual, Izzy helped me get things ready for the farm sitter Friday morning:

















The Maine Portland definitely gets overlooked by its better known West Coast cousin, but it's really one of my favorite cities in the country. If I was going to live in a more urban spot again, I think that's the place I would pick. There are so many amazing restaurants, great beer and cocktail bars, interesting museums, and I really love the somewhat severe greyness and beauty of a blustery New England beach in the winter...
















We got home early Sunday, and it was a nice day so I was hoping to get Fizz out, even though I missed my regular riding time with M. Unfortunately it didn't go as planned. Copied from the trail riding thread:


egrogan said:


> Sadly I think I may have had my last ride for the year, since the footing is just awful due to freezing rain/ice late last week, and temps now consistently below freezing. Yesterday was a bright and sunny day, and the roads _looked _fine just driving back and forth on them, so I tacked up and headed out while there was still daylight. We hadn't walked a 1/4 mile from home when my horses' feet started slipping and sliding in 4 different directions. Looked down and it was obvious that what looked like just "road" was actually a heavy layer of sand over top of sheer ice still coating the road from last week. I was hopeful this was just because we were in a spot that is surrounded by dense woods on all sides and doesn't get a lot of sun, so I got off and handwalked down the steep, slippery hill. Got to a sunny spot and mounted back up to keep going.
> 
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> We didn't go 10 strides before her hind end swung one direction and her front end the other. So I hopped off again and kept handwalking her. Got to another clear-looking spot, mounted up, and then at the crest of the hill---sigh, more ice, though the traction was a little better on the edge of the road since there was a little snowpack:
> 
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> We did this dance a couple more times before we were both a nervous wreck. When she almost wiped out completely on her side, nearly taking me out with her while I was walking at her shoulder, I abandoned the plan for the loop we were going to do and just turned around and retraced our path home. Slowly. This is the look I got after that near-total wipeout, when I decided to just call it quits and go home- clearly neither of us were having fun!
> 
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> I guess I'll count my miles from yesterday, though I probably walked 3/4 of the way out of the saddle with her. I actually took her bridle right off in case she fell, I didn't want her to get tangled or caught up in any reins. It took us an hour to go 3 miles
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> *Total 2019 miles: 304.5*


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## PoptartShop

Oh my! :sad: Sorry to hear your ride didn't go so well, that darn ice!!!!! Glad you were both okay! 
Fizz's face is like "MOM, WHAT ARE WE DOING OUT HERE?!" :lol: Good for you for getting off though & not taking the risk. Ugh. See, this is why I hate snow! The ice always ruins everything. I can't stand it.

I'm sure Maggie enjoys her walks, despite the darn ice getting in the way! Wow, Portland looks amazing! I've always wanted to go there. I'm glad you had a fun little getaway. Well-deserved! Izzy is such a cute helper!


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## SueC

Gorgeous-looking dinner, @egrogan - and thanks for sharing that recipe with me; it's now a staple here when we have pumpkins!  First pumpkin vine here is just turning into a triffid, as they do. It was a volunteer in the compost heap and it's streets ahead of the ones I planted. I usually pull those up because they will be crosses, but this year I'm excited to see what kind of bitzer pumpkins this vine is going to make. There's a few forming already and they look orange and are the size of a ping-pong ball at the moment...

While waiting for pumpkins, I suppose we will have to make some more felafels! 

Your horses are looking super, and it's been lovely to see how you're going with Fizz after your low patch with her a while back where you wondered if you guys would ever make a team. Well, you did, didn't you! :charge:

I have to smile every time I see that horse-print rug. 

How's the house going with keeping warm these days? Is it improved? And have you got rid of those mice, and how's the kitchen reno? (And don't forget to write about it for that owner builder magazine - @Knave had an article in their last issue and now I'm waiting for yours! )


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## egrogan

@*Knave* , how did I miss your article?! Is it posted somewhere on HF? I would love to read it!
@SueC-The kitchen renovation is actually - finally - going to become a reality after the holidays, so we're deep in the planning stages now. We will have some help from a down-the-road neighbor who is a proper contractor; he has the tools and the skills we don't have to do some fairly major remodeling. We'll be combining two tiny rooms in the center of the house to make one larger kitchen space that will give us front-to-back views. We're working on selecting new appliances and cabinets now. So, it will be an investment, but given that 95% of our entertainment is cooking, it's worth it to us. Elsewhere in the house, we're doing more of the renovations on our own. The whole upstairs is basically demo'ed down to original floorboards and walls. Now that we're "trapped" inside because the weather isn't conducive to being outdoors for long periods of time, we should make some good progress on putting everything back together. M's neighbor is a bit of an antique dealer/trader/barn reclaimer, so we were just able to get some old barn floors that match the original floors in the upstairs bedroom, which the last owners had hidden under layers of plywood and indoor outdoor carpeting, so it will be fun to get the original floors patched up with this new-to-us lumber. He's got barns full of treasures he's pulled out of old houses and barns over the years, so we will probably do a little "shopping" with him to replace old fixtures and other odds and ends. I don't have any recent pictures but we've got plans for working up there in earnest over the holiday vacations, so hopefully we'll have something to show for it!


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## SueC

95% of your entertainment is cooking? Don't let your horses hear that! :Angel:

Those house plans sound good!  It sounds amazing, a kitchen with front-to-back views - and just the sort of space for two foodies to enjoy their hobby / higher calling / nutritional labours. All that stuff about heritage and antiques and old wood etc etc, take looooots of photos please so that you can share all that with the Australian continent with a little write-up talking about exactly that stuff, lots of DIY people love this sort of thing here because it's such an antidote to the plasticky Legoland houses that get built in Australia these days...
@Knave hasn't posted her article here yet, but maybe she ought to, it's so beautifully written and the pictures are amazing!  Those old barns, extraordinary, and of course going out and making your own construction based on that technique as a summer project was super! 

We eventually plan to finish our attic. Too much outdoors work at the moment...


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> 95% of your entertainment is cooking? Don't let your horses hear that! :Angel:


 Haha, I won't tell them I wrote that...

You have me excited about the prospect of putting together an article. I'll take lots of pictures and jot down my notes as we go over the next few weeks and see if something emerges. 

The weather continues to defy forecasts. Fortunately, it meant no more ice last night. Just a lot of cold rain. The ground is still pretty frozen so there's a lot of standing water and it's a soggy, uninspiring day. Good thing all I have on my agenda for the day is statistical programming- I can cozy up with a good cup of coffee, some candles, and music and type away...


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## Knave

@egrogan I never did post it here. I will have to do that.  @SueC thank you so much for the complement! I enjoyed everything about doing that barn.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> @*egrogan* I never did post it here. I will have to do that.  @*SueC* thank you so much for the complement! I enjoyed everything about doing that barn.



Please do!! :clap:


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## phantomhorse13

Sorry to hear the weather is already grounding you. Ice is just non-workable. I hope somehow things thaw and disappear before the real snow hits so you can have a safe base.


Interested in articles, so hope all involved will post links for us.


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## Knave

I’m not sure of any better way to attach it than this. So, here you go!


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## egrogan

Thanks for posting @Knave :grin:- I think I will have to print them out to read as the font is too small on my screen. Can't wait!


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## PoptartShop

I love a good article!  I bet it will look amazing when it's done. It's good you're planning early too! Ugh, the ground looks super soggy. Not as bad, but soggy here too - lots of rain yesterday & this morning. Back to the mud!


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## Knave

I do hope you enjoy it Egrogan. My girls thought it the best thing ever, and my cousins. The excitement was fun. It is so cool to see something I wrote in a magazine!! I’m glad you are doing one too. Isn’t our @SueC the best for showing us opportunities like that?!


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## SueC

Like I said to @Knave at the time, it's just connecting the right people with the right things. inkunicorn: And once you have a taste of being in one magazine, you can actually start writing for others too, just look up the kinds of magazines that take freelance contributions and go from there. You surely have owner-builder / lifestyle publications in the US too? Mother Earth News, for example.

Yeah, because of the automatic resizing thing on this forum, we tend to post our text scans from an external website we usually use for photos, and insert them that way. It's a bit of a juggle getting it readable. Thank goodness I have a computer whizz for a husband and can outsource problems like this. ;-) But the last one we did had blurry print because not scanned with high enough dpi. (PS for @Knave: I've not processed my articles yet - we could do yours too and send you the links so you can put a high-resolution version on your journal if you like!  We already have the process set up so won't take more than a couple of minutes to do.)

It will be such fun to see another overseas contribution to the Australian owner-builder magazine! The editor is fabulous to work with, by the way, and she despairs of illiterate manuscripts coming in from some of the locals, that take hours and hours and hours to edit into something actually readable - and neither of you ladies are the sort to produce illiterate manuscripts. You already know how to write.  So not only will it be interesting stuff from around the world for readers, but two extra hours of leisure for a hard-working editor who produces this independent magazine from a travelling laptop! (For four months this year, from Spain!) And you'll be supporting a truly independent publication not owned by a corporation, or Australia's dreadful Murdoch press. Publishing is becoming like fast food, and this magazine is like a small slow food establishment still holding out against the Burger Kings of the world...

If you take high-resolution photos with a dedicated digital camera, Lynda can blow them up across the whole page too.

I hope you enjoy your indoors work - the coffee, candles and music sound good. Do you like statistical programming? Is it kind of like spreadsheets as a form of work, in that half your brain can just focus on the music?


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Do you like statistical programming? Is it kind of like spreadsheets as a form of work, in that half your brain can just focus on the music?


 Your question was very thought provoking! After giving it some thought, I decided that yes, I do really like it. As I have "ascended" to the glory of middle management :icon_rolleyes:, I have fewer opportunities to actually get hands-on with the data. Instead I spend my days on conference calls trying to convince people to collect data, or talking them through how to collect data, or explaining how to interpret their data- or, I read technical reports and published research and then spend my time translating it into something a normal human can understand. But programming is something I don't get to spend a lot of time doing. And you really do need long chunks of concentrated time to spend in a file-it's bursts of intense concentration and then quick breaks and back into it. It just so happens that my team is very understaffed right now, so I got to jump in and wrangle some data files this week.

It's actually not really "zone out" kind of work, if that's what you meant above- the music is just background noise but I'm definitely deeply focused on the details of the data. Rather than being sort of mindless and repetitive, I actually find it much like writing, just in a different language. I work with very large datasets (hundreds of thousands of records and millions of data points), and that's far too much data to manipulate manually. So, the work is writing a series of scripts to process all that messy data into a usable form- writing commands that say, "go out and look through all that randomness, and if you see _this_, then do _that._" Sort of like if you gave me a long list of every apple you picked this season, and also included the longitude and latitude of its tree, its weight, its color, the time of day it was picked, and the date it was eaten, and you wanted me to use all of that to predict what combination of those factors gave you the best chance of getting an apple perfect for baking. Of course, as social scientists, we have a big chip on our shoulder because our statistical methods are woefully inadequate for handling the messiness of real life, so that leads us to write extraordinarily complicated multi-level models to try to "control" for all the things we can't measure while still predicting something that's realistically probably not predictable :hide: 

The statistical models themselves are really just an elaborate way of trying to tell a story based on our best hypothesis about how an outcome of interest might come to be- all the programming is just a shorthand way of saying, group these things together across this set of people in a particular series of schools located in specific districts and states, and try to find a pattern that explains who is most successful at attaining an outcome, and what mitigating factors might be identified and improved to try to increase the likelihood of success for everyone. You take that "best guess" you came up with and translate it to a series of variables coded as 0s and 1s and interpret the coefficients to report back to the people who are actually doing the hard work: "yes, keep doing what you're doing because it's working" or "stop doing so much of that and do more of this and your odds of success will go up." 

I guess that's a long-winded way of saying, yes, I like the puzzle/problem solving of trying to explain why something happens (or doesn't), and also of being able to take statistical models that seem confusing or intimidating and make them actionable. I just wish I spent less time talking on the phone in my daily work life :wink:

That's why HF is such a good mental break during the day- a chance to get a break from looking at and talking about data and throw my brain in a totally different direction. And why the horses at home are such great therapy- I find my body craving the opportunity to leave the computer at the end of the day and go out and move and breath fresh air and do something physical. It's a nice balance.


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## carshon

I work in the magazine industry - more of what we call database management. I am not a programmer but an Account Manager - and I feel your stuggle on trying to educate people (in my case circ directors) to gather as much info as they can - store that info and interpret that info. In todays markets information is money or in our case potential future money. With everyone wearing many hats data seems to be left to the way side because people do not understand it or feel bogged down with how to gather it. My own industry has shrunk by almost 50% since the early 90's and I feel lucky to have a job even though I make less now than I did 10 years ago.

Just saying I totally understand the urge to get outside and spend time with my horses and other animals after a long day working with clients and helping them decipher data. I don't travel like I used to - so I have the luxury of sneaking outside on nice days and spending time with my animals.


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## Knave

Oh, I love that type of stuff too! Math to me is like a fun puzzle, and I loved each class I had that focused on it. When I worked I enjoyed creating the programming for things, because of the similar math style required. Oddly, for finding such fun in that, I didn’t enjoy the low level math. I didn’t like the checks and balances in the financial aspect, which was more the actual focus of my job. Lol

I can’t remember what the question asked by the teacher was, but I only took one stats course in my life. It was something like a behavioral science stats class. The teacher wasn’t great, but it was online anyways, so you kind of teach yourself while going along with the program. She asked some question which seemed convoluted (I hate making math into words), but when I finally figured it out it was very simple to explain with numbers. Extremely simple... Anyways, I put my answer and she accused me of plagiarism. I said that the concept was the concept, quite simple and anyone could state it. She then said I wasn’t smart enough to do so.

I wrote a letter to the dean about my grade, because of course I didn’t cheat. She corrected my grade, but only to an A-, dropping my GPA. Not that it really mattered, but man it irritated me! Anyways, it’s a long story to say, “There is a language in math; I completely agree!”


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## egrogan

@carshon, one of the best Analysts I ever worked with came from magazine database management. He had so much market data at his disposal that he was able to create these crazy models for his company that should have been a goldmine for them- but no one in his management line was interested in what he was doing, so he stopped trying to help them get better at expansion and instead did all his work quickly and spent the rest of his time using data from Major League Baseball to teach himself more advanced statistics- and crush his fantasy baseball league :rofl: He got sick of being in such a soul-sucking job and came to work for the education nonprofit I used to work for.. He was able to use his immense data mining skills to help principals figure out how to form partnerships with community service agencies in their neighborhoods to better serve students and families. He was a really kind, thoughtful human being who was able to help people understand how using data that didn't seem to fit together on the surface could actually become a powerful tool.


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## egrogan

I am so excited to find so many secret data nerds right here on Horse Forum!!









Knave said:


> Math to me is like a fun puzzle, and I loved each class I had that focused on it. When I worked I enjoyed creating the programming for things, because of the similar math style required. Oddly, for finding such fun in that, I didn’t enjoy the low level math.


 Haha, I totally relate. My big joke is always that I am horrible at doing basic math in my head even though I can work out these really complicated models-like you said, it's the puzzle that intrigues me. That led to some embarrassing moments when teaching 3rd grade, and my students could add or subtract three digit numbers in their head faster than I could. I'm also horrible at geometric or spatial thinking, and have never understood why those topics are part of "math," since they seem so foreign to me. Give me an algebra proof any day!

I'm sad that it will probably be after my time on earth is done that people finally begin to better understand how our brains work- there are so many mysteries!


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## Knave

Oh, I do like geometry and trigonometry myself. I did have a really good teacher though when I learned those types of classes. He let numbers speak for numbers, and he didn't have to have any sort of explanation for how an answer was concluded. I liked teachers like that! I remember a boy in my classes. He was brilliant, and somehow he could sit up from a dead sleep and answer the trig question on the board. I needed my cosign and the like, and he could look and answer. That teacher always told him to go back to sleep. My dad could do that too, and he never even got to go to high school. I am lost at what their process is.


I totally understand your issue with the third grade math! I am so glad my girls have passed those grades. Sometimes I even had to look up how to do some of that stuff. lol


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## carshon

I am OK with math - but I do like problem solving and trying to see the whole picture. My job is part marketing and part analyzing so I thin I get the best of both worlds. I can make a mean pivot table if I have to! But - clients today want cheap and fast and those two are not usually synonymous!


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## SueC

I particularly enjoyed statistics, because it's so helpful with biological and environmental data, as well as fun in itself. Also algebra, that's great fun.  Geometry is pretty cool too - all those Greeks! ;-) Anyone actually remember how to do long division? :rofl: The maths I enjoyed least was calculus. Even the name. Did you know that calculus is also the name dentists give to calcified plaque? I had to laugh and laugh in my twenties, when I perused a dentistry bill and found an item: "Removal of calculus." :rofl: And from then on, I went around saying, "I learnt calculus at university, but my dentist has removed it from me!"

Number of times I've used statistics and algebra since graduating? Countless. Calculus? Zero. I've never worked at NASA, but even there, the computers are in charge of the calculus, and I've never seen the point of knowing how to do it - unlike adding up etc without a calculator, which of course is actually important in the real world. If anyone here has ever had an application for manual calculus post-graduating, please let me know - I'm yet to come across such an phenomenon amongst my acquaintances...

I'm glad you're all enjoying your nerdy pursuits, fellow nerds/nerdesses! :bowwdown:

It was the "programming" part that sounded a little dull to me, @egrogan, but I'll take from you that it's actually not!


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## SueC

PS: Brett, who's a computer whizz, asks me to ask you what language you're programming in, @egrogan. And he says that for him, it was the "statistical" part of the phrase that evoked boredom (he really dislikes maths), but not the "programming" part, which he finds exciting. :Angel:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> PS: Brett, who's a computer whizz, asks me to ask you what language you're programming in, @*egrogan* . And he says that for him, it was the "statistical" part of the phrase that evoked boredom (he really dislikes maths), but not the "programming" part, which he finds exciting. :Angel:



Haha. It's a polarizing topic apparently.


I'm a bit of a dinosaur and program in Stata. I know just enough R to know I don't know what I'm doing and would have to do some serious immersion to be proficient. But that's what all the cool kids are doing these days.


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## Knave

@SueC I am surprised that Brett likes programming and not math! It seems so much the same language to me!! Calculus gives me mixed feelings. Our teacher who knew calculus left my senior year, and so a friend gave me an hour of calculus one and two. 

I tried to teach what I knew to my left classmates and we finished one and went somewhat through two. Then, for the minute I was actually in college, I chose to restart calc instead of jumping in to three. My teacher only used words. He wrote words around the whole room like a crazy person. (Not crazy, but math is not words!) I felt like I missed some part completely and had no idea what he was going on about. Later I realized that I knew the math, but I missed something that comes before it. I don’t realize what still though.

Oh, I know long division! I had to learn for the kids. Lol. I hate long division!!! Calculators are everywhere. I saw a meme somewhere. It said something like:

“Teachers- Do you think you will always have a calculator in your pocket? 

Adults today- I knew it!”


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## SueC

Brett had to explain your joke to me, @Knave!  That's because I am an antiquity who never carries their phone in their pocket. It's usually in the house like a landline, and if I have to take it with me to town, it's in the car or in the handbag. I think of a phone as being something to phone people with, and always have the oldest possible model that still works! :grin: And if I'm ever forced to upgrade again, I'm seriously thinking about going back to smoke signals! 

Yeah, it's funny but Brett enjoys programming, but not maths - he has discalculia actually, and doesn't do number thinking, he does verbal logic, including with programming. I always imagined I wouldn't enjoy programming because I grew up with a workaholic systems analyst father and therefore hated computers by association of not being parented like I saw other kids being parented by their fathers. Of course, at university, I adapted to computers to do word processing, graphing, use databases and spreadsheets etc (all that developed slowly over the late 80s/early 90s), and I didn't see that as the same sort of computing that I loathed the idea of as a kid, but because I never had to programme, I continued to think of _that_ as something unpleasant. Just associations, of course, and Brett says he thinks I'd make a good programmer, but I've never had an application for that. Do you have a Raspberry Pi? Oh, and I want to kill that teacher of yours... what a ridiculous and rude assumption...and I totally get it re the A-, insulting and petty... :hug: It's teachers like that, who made me take up teaching myself just so I could displace one like that with my presence. :evil:

@egrogan, Brett says, "Aaaaah, R!" :clap: By the way, I really enjoyed that reply (and all the discussion since) but there is no "love" button. And this bit:



> ...I read technical reports and published research and then spend my time translating it into something a normal human can understand.


:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

If you get some time for light recreational reading this winter, you just might enjoy this:

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/death-sentence-9780143790983

@carshon, isn't it strange that we all de-stress around animals, yet the word "animal" gets applied as an epithet to describe some of the very worst people? inkunicorn:


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## Knave

I am debating killing my phone too @SueC. Yet, it is my only camera and I like having it with me


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## SueC

Well, if it's your on-horse camera, that's another thing, of course, @Knave!  How else are you going to do your trail photos? (...or impromptus when an animal suddenly does something funny and you can't say, "Pray continue and let me get my camera from the house"?) Normal cameras are a bit risky to carry horseback, and awkward to use, so I'll give it that it's a good thing that people put little cameras into phones. My phone is so ancient that the picture quality is completely unacceptable, so I occasionally take my husband's iPod horse-riding to take photos. It fits in my jacket pocket (my iPod is a different model and doesn't take photos). I'm waiting to see if anyone is going to bring out a phone that doubles as an electric shaver as well, or perhaps as horse clippers...


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## PoptartShop

I don't like math (don't kill me!) :lol: LOL, but I do like critical thinking & puzzles. Stuff like that. Always good to keep the brain busy. But in college/high school, I HATED algebra...I didn't mind my statistics classes, but algebra...graphing...nope, nope, nope. I always succeeded in English & Science though, math...not so much. I guess that's why I'm a paralegal though haha.


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## SueC

PoptartShop said:


> I don't like math (don't kill me!) :lol: LOL, but I do like critical thinking & puzzles. Stuff like that. Always good to keep the brain busy. But in college/high school, I HATED algebra...I didn't mind my statistics classes, but algebra...graphing...nope, nope, nope. I always succeeded in English & Science though, math...not so much. I guess that's why I'm a paralegal though haha.


 @PoptartShop, I'm stuck on a sudoku, will you come over and help me? Been stuck on it for days - really unusual. There must be some elimination thing I've missed or a strategy I've never used before. I actually checked that my current numbers are correct, and they all are. At the moment I could go forward by trial and error, in pencil - like a square that has to be a 1 or a 5, just pick one and it's 50/50 and if you pick the wrong one, you can always erase and then ink in the obviously correct numbers. But, I don't do guessing, there has to be an actual logical thing I have missed here...

Oh, and I'm not going to kill you because you don't like maths - I married someone like that!  It's really interesting to me how the brain gets around not liking maths to do logic in the many other ways it can be done. Brett is one of the most well-rounded people I know and a total self-educator, and walking encyclopaedia on his broad areas of interest...  For me too, language is stronger than mathematics, and my reasoning isn't done in the language of numbers like @Knave can do it.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was beautiful and sunny, but the roads were still a mess. M stopped by the house around lunchtime to confer about the possibility of riding- we had both checked out the roads while out running errands in the morning, and unfortunately both routes we drove led to the same conclusion- the ice was just too scary to be out riding on. So regretfully, we had to skip our regular ride, but it was the right thing to do. This is the last rifle hunting weekend, so next weekend even if the roads are sketchy in places, we should be able to get to the woods trail and take it slow.

Still, it was such a pretty day, I just _needed _to ride :grin: So I shook the hay out of the bareback pad and threw it on Fizz to see how she'd be. After some acrobatics to get on with no stirrups, we moseyed off down the muddy road to ride around one of our fields.









I hadn't been on her bareback since probably this time last year, and I remember feeling really nervous perched up there, holding on for dear life with my legs. I couldn't believe what a difference a year made- it was so nice to be cozy and warm through the fleecy pad, and just ride. She was wonderful and responsive and we had a nice stroll around. I think all those miles in the saddle this summer did me a world of good- I feel like I've moved from being more of a passenger to really being able to ride her competently. Hopefully we'll get a few more rides like this before we're really snowed in.

As we were looping back, we came across lovely husband, coming back from errands.


















When we got home, tweedledee and tweedledum were anxiously awaiting Fizz, even though we'd been gone all of 20 minutes :icon_rolleyes:









Today it's supposed to snow all day so we're working on some inside projects (I'm on wallpaper stripping duty...)


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## phantomhorse13

You two have come such a long way! 

Good luck with the wallpaper..


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## PoptartShop

Yay for a nice bareback ride!  I think so too, I think all of those miles & really staying consistent helps a ton. You are definitely more confident, & it shows!  Proud of you two!

More snow, yay.  Good luck with the wallpaper though!!


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> Good luck with the wallpaper though!!





phantomhorse13 said:


> Good luck with the wallpaper..


I needed all the good luck. Taking down wallpaper has to be one of the absolute worst home improvement projects. If anyone here is reading this and on the fence about putting up wallpaper because it's coming back into style...DON'T!!! PLEASE, for the sanity of the poor souls who will one day inhabit your house and long for a smooth, clean, simply painted wall...don't do this to them.









It was mildly cathartic to see at least one wall of the soaring eagle American patriot wallpaper flutter to the ground like confetti yesterday...









...That was until a geriatric cat decided to come upstairs to play in all the soggy, sticky residue...









After removing the cat from the scene, I took a look around and realized there is still so.much.more of this hateful stuff that I know how I'll be spending my holiday vacation. Oh well, eyes on the prize- it can only get better! :winetime:


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## Knave

Lol! I think about doing it sometimes Egrogan! I will try and force myself into better behavior.


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## PoptartShop

Ugh, it looks like a pain! It'll be nice once it's done, just have to get through all the mess first!

I've heard many wallpaper stories, none were good! But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, right?! :lol: LOL @ the cat, they probably thought they were helping. :lol:


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## egrogan

Apparently Maggie and I traveled the wildlife superhighway yesterday afternoon on our walk...

























































I'm sure this isn't an uncommon route for our bear friend (and probably the reason I catch the horses nervously gazing out across the apple field most mornings), but it's quite arresting to actually be able to see the tracks!


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## carshon

Not sure how I feel about the tracks but it is kind of neat. I have only actually seen a "wild" bear once. While visiting my sister in MN. She had told us that they had a bear that regularly went through her property on its way to and from a nearby pond and creek. Imagine my surprise one morning while out very early just enjoying myself to see what I first thought was a dog makes its way somewhat toward me and across her property - her dogs did not even blink an eye. My very first bear sighting. But not so sure I want one for a neighbor.


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## phantomhorse13

While I know bears are around, I would prefer not to see them or evidence of them!! 

That wallpaper is quite.. eye catching.. reminds me of some of the stuff in our old house. What year was your house built? Wonder if it was the same basic time period so similar patterns were popular.


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## PoptartShop

Wow, that's crazy. :O Who expects to see those tracks while going for a stroll?! Not something you see every day!


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## Avna

Lots of bears in rural New England. Brooke and I have crossed paths with a couple (they run away), and my friend over the next hill has a common bear path that crosses the edge of the "riding arena" (a flat piece of pasture bordered by a wooded hill on one side); when I had a lesson there Brooke threw a fit over going into that area. I have seen bears on my road several times, usually cubs. 

They are not particularly dangerous. Not like, say, feral pigs! Stay away from those guys. I don't think they exist in New England but they sure do in mid-coastal California.

Also, about the wall paper -- if you want to try dating it, try Adelphi Paper Hangings.

Patriotic themes in home decorating were very common in early New England. 

I found some remnants of extremely old wallpaper in the stairwell of my 1790 attic, which I tentatively dated to the early 19th century. I was warned to be careful with it as some of the pigments are toxic -- arsenic for green, for example.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> That wallpaper is quite.. eye catching.. reminds me of some of the stuff in our old house. What year was your house built? Wonder if it was the same basic time period so similar patterns were popular.



That is one way to put it :rofl: The house was built in the 1840s, but as best we can tell the last real renovation was in the 1960s, probably on the early side of the decade.


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## egrogan

Feeling very thankful this morning that my life has taken so many lucky and unexpected twists and turns to lead me to this beautiful farm with a person I love and a menagerie of animals to take care of. And that today we are going to have a truly bountiful feast made from food grown primarily by people we know, or even on our own farm. How lucky is that!?

Yesterday I got to take Fizz for a short ride to the overlook. It was a little icy once we got a short distance from our house, but the shoulder of the road was walkable and mostly just slushy, so Fizz preferred to be there rather than on the more gravely part (I had her truly barefoot as I think the boots can get a little more slippery in these conditions). Once we got through that section, the overlook road was back to mud.


















She had been happy to head away from home, but when we turned around she was a little prancy. I had planned to hop off and walk down the icy section of the hill anyway, so I used that as a chance to do a couple of groundwork exercises and she snapped out of it and settled back to walking nicely alongside until we got back to the section of the road that was just mud, not ice, where I got back on and headed home. M is hopeful we'll ride this weekend; I'm not so sure, as temps are dropping back below freezing today and staying there. The ice is just so difficult to navigate.

Yesterday my afternoon walk with Maggie was quite exciting. Not sure what got her feeling so good, but as we were crossing one of our fields- a regular route for our walks- out of the corner of my eye I caught her snort and snake her head towards me a bit. I gave her a "cut it out," and she did for a second, but then she leapt forward, doing little mini rears and head tosses. I was so surprised to see my round little potato moving so fast and powerfully, I think for a second I just stood there watching her with my mouth open. She looked awesome as she boinged around- until I realized she was thinking about bucking and kicking her heels out in my direction, so I snapped out of it and pulled her head around so she was facing me. She did a couple more rear-leaps and then was back to having all four feet on the ground. She was definitely a bit unsettled but we continued on with our walk like nothing had happened. I did manage to get my finger folded up in the lead rope while she was dancing around, but fortunately it just looks a little purple rather than broken. 

This morning was the definition of cold and blustery -- it's feeling much more like March than November out. With all the poo melting out of the ice, mud everywhere, and slick spots, it definitely feels like mud season rather than late fall. At this point, I'd rather get on with the snow, which is much less nasty to deal with than the mess on the ground right now. 

Much calmer Maggie this morning:


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## egrogan

Trying to get myself back to work-mode after a lovely holiday weekend.

Thanksgiving day was quiet and peaceful. Spent some time with the ponies and lovely husband









Made a delicious meal, and luxuriated watching a movie into the evening, which we almost never do.









We did a little local shopping on "Plaid Friday." Lovely husband and I are in the top left of this Plaid Friday celebratory picture from our favorite coffee shop.









We treated ourselves to lunch out at a Mexican restaurant we really like. I find going out to lunch so luxurious! I guess because it's something I almost never do. Later in the day, at another shop, we saw some artwork from a local folk artist we love. A few years ago, lovely husband had him do a painting of Isabel for me for Christmas, which I treasure. He now sells prints of it to the public-there she is smiling at you on the right :rofl: I love his style!









Saturday morning we got up early and headed to a tree farm down the road for our Christmas tree. I suppose we probably could cut down a tree here, but I like the festiveness of going to pick one out at a public farm. They always have hot apple cider and fresh popcorn and everyone is always in a happy holiday mood. As we walked up the driveway, we saw three headless Christmas trees walking towards us!









We picked out our own "wee tree" and got it put up and decorated; the whole house smells great.


















The rest of the weekend we just nestled in at home. We had so much good food to finish eating, and special holiday beers to enjoy. Yesterday I made big pots of turkey soup and stock, and a batch of cookies. The house smelled amazing. M and I were supposed to ride yesterday, but it ended up being really cold and blustery so she decided she wasn't going out- Fizz and I went solo instead, just to the overlook and back. It was a bit icy in places so I walked her down the worst of the icy sections, but in sunnier spots it was clear enough that we could move right out, which felt great.









Lovely husband had gone out for a run himself while we were out, and he came to find us as he was cooling down. So we got to have a nice walk home together.









Snow started last night and is still coming down hard right now. I'm thinking we probably have ~6inches now, and we're supposed to get about that much more between now and tomorrow. But, it is a really light, dry, powdery snow, so chores weren't bad this morning and the horses seemed to really enjoy being out in it. Looks like they spent the whole night in the pasture; it was the first morning in weeks the sheds didn't need to be cleaned out at all. Seems fitting that winter arrived right with December.


















As much as the horses liked it, the chickens wanted no part of it. This is as close to leaving the barn as they got this morning!








And now, back to work I suppose...


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## PoptartShop

Lovely pictures.  The food looks delicious! It's definitely hard to get back to work mode today...I'm totally dragging. :lol: 

Good for you for getting Fizz focused with some groundwork. It always helps. & wow, Maggie must've been feeling herself! :rofl: Definitely didn't expect that I'm sure!

The chickens are totally me when it's snowing. You sure got a lot of snow already. It was supposed to snow here this morning/today...hasn't yet, changed to rain. Not complaining! :lol:


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## Knave

The Isabel picture made me smile. I love that you got to have a calm weekend and the plaid seemed so fun!


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## SueC

This photo:










...looks like a Christmas card to me. All you'd have to do is put _Merry Christmas_ on it. 

Isn't it extraordinary how fast the year has gone by. It seems to me it was snowing at your place only yesterday when it got above the level of your windows in your house. Then, suddenly, it was summer, and briefly it was fall with all its colours, and now it's winter again. But, winter can be cosy - especially with nice stews and cookies and desserts - and your horses sure look cosy too. It's that _hygge_ time of year.

We had a heatwave start today, it was over 35 deg C (=95 F) and blowing wind, like in a furnace, so I was shifting (large-droplet) sprinklers all day off the back of our solar bore, to stop various plants from dying. I let the horses in the common to stand under the big shady trees with some green grass still under them, and we got back to house cleaning (we're spring cleaning).

Your food looks delicious!  We find it's the basics we enjoy the most - nature, good food and company, books, the animals, sleeping at night, the Milky Way on a night with no moon, the moon and stars on other nights. We're terrible consumers really, if everyone was like us, I'm sure the country would be in recession for lack of demand. :Angel:

That's a lovely portrait of Isabel, and that artist does have a great individual style! 

Keep warm now! :cheers:

PS: Have you seen _Pride&Prejudice&Zombies_ yet? Good fun for a night in!


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## egrogan

Quick shot of my golden girl enjoying the beautiful day that followed our first big storm. 

_If you can't decide whether to doze in the warm sunshine or have a snack...opt for both _:grin:


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## egrogan

It's been feeling very wintery this week. Yesterday it was so beautiful I couldn't resist a short ride at lunch. I am embarrassed to say that it took me about as long to get on her bareback as it did for the actual ride







My legs are so short and inflexible, without stirrups I really need to be standing at about back level with Fizz to scramble on, or else I just end up immobilized hanging off her side with one leg over her rump and the rest of me suspended in the air. I guess I need more "bounce" on my way up. Anyway, Fizzy was a rockstar standing near a variety of stone walls while I messed around trying to get on, until eventually I gave up and took her to the barn to get the mounting block. I parked her on a downhill so I could get on.

_What is wrong with you down there today?_









Once I got on, we moseyed down the road and headed across the fields. I think she was happy to be out of the pasture doing something, even though it was just a short walk.









In the middle of the ride, we suddenly found ourselves swallowed in swirling snow. It was a really odd snow, with big fat flakes that looked like big "grains" of pearl sugar. We were quickly covered in it.









I love fresh snow- makes for very satisfying spiralling circles! They were actually round for once!



















I left them to a snowy lunch


















And we woke up this morning to brilliant skies- but signalling that more snow is on the way this afternoon.


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## PoptartShop

She is sooo pretty, especially in the snow! Fizz is just too cute. The snow is beautiful, I have to admit. Riding in it is fun though (especially when it's fresh!), sounds like you had a great ride! She's such a good girl. Good experience for her too!

Look at that nose!!! So adorable. Definitely looks like a winter wonderland at your farm!


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## egrogan

Have been caught up in the arrival of winter and the busy-ness of pre-holiday work.

Winter has been...interesting...so far, to say the least. We are trying to come to terms with the "new normal" of climate change induced winter. Typically, we should have consistently cold temps and a good layer of snow on the ground by now. But the "new normal" has brought us December temp fluctuations sending the thermometer ranging wildly from 20*F to 60*F and back again. We had a foot of beautiful, dry powdery snow on the ground. Then temps spiked to 60*F and it rained for two straight days, wiped out all the snow, and flash froze back leaving everything in ice. It's miserable to navigate and so hard on the animals. Two friends-of-friends lost horses to colic this weekend :sad: 

This was the state of my dry lot yesterday morning, which was actually an improvement over how it had been the day before.









The horses are mostly marooned in a little triangle around the sheds because the ice is so bad going out to their actual pasture. They are bored and snippy with each other, and leaving me quite the mess to chip out of the ice every morning. I had to bring them up for the farrier on Friday, which was terrifying as there was sheer ice surrounding the gates and Izzy is a frantic mess if she thinks she's being left behind. Thank goodness lovely husband left for work late, as before he left, he was able to bring Fizz up to the barn for me so I could take Maggie and Izzy together and not leave anyone alone running like a maniac on that ice. I'm very thankful we all tiptoed our way safely. It got warmer yesterday afternoon so I went out with a pick ax and was able to break apart the worst ice around the gate, so now I at least feel that I can get the horses in and out safely if I need to.

And while I was working on that, poor Fizz was standing at the gate staring out longingly, begging to go do something. So, I haltered her up and took her out for a walk- the road was actually in far better shape than I expected, so that was nice.









The field across from our house was clear, with no snow or ice, so we stopped there for awhile to graze around. It's amazing how delicious half-dead grass can be when you haven't had it in awhile!









Yesterday afternoon we did get a good covering of snow, which helped the footing tremendously. Unfortunately it came with 40mph wind gusts (also something that's part of the "new normal," definitely not typical...) and that blew one of the gates right off its post, sheering off the welded loop that held it in place. It's not the end of the world as I leave that gate to the pasture open all the time anyway, just annoying to add one more thing to the list to fix or replace. Still, the girls survived the weather rollercoaster just fine.









Last week I was actually in Boston for work, missing the worst of the cold, miserable rain (lovely husband kept the girls as happy as they could be in that weather). Boston weirdly got more snow than we did at home, and it made for some really pretty morning walks to get coffee before the conference started. East coast cities look so beautiful all dressed up in snow and holiday decorations this time of year. Though give me New York over Boston any day :wink: I'm a bad New Englander in that respect...
























We were in a great location, right in Back Bay- this is the view I had from my hotel.










But, I'm happy to be back home. Can't believe there's only one more week before Christmas! I am taking the full two weeks between Christmas and New Year's off, and just have to power through my very long list at work to get there.


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## Knave

I’m sorry about the ice.


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## egrogan

Today was the first REAL winter day we've had so far. This is what I went out in this morning










Izzy was sporting impressively frozen whiskers. 



























She kept following me around and licking the back of my coat, and I couldn't figure out why until I looked and realized that the pan of warm hay cubes I'd soaked up in my house and was holding on my hip had been dripping down my back while I trudged through the snow down to the field. So now the back of my chore coat is covered in a frozen block of hay cubes and horse saliva :rofl:

Even the heated water tub had a few layers of ice over the top. I think that's because the wind was really whipping around: we had 20mph icy gusts. Made for some impressive snow drifts to fight through on the way to the poop pile!









Anyway, they seemed perfectly content- I left them with lots of fuel, happily munching away.


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## Avna

Today isn't much better. I stupidly left the hose (which I carefully drain and store in the above-freezing tackroom) set up with the valve closed for ten minutes while I finished cleaning stalls, and when I went to finish the water buckets it was frozen solid. It was 2 degrees this morning at sunrise, much like yesterday but without the wind that made yesterday so miserable. However I think it is going to get up to twenty today! And then continue a bit of a warming trend.


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## egrogan

The wind going away has made all the difference today. It was +2*F (-17C) this morning for chores but the sun was already strong and warm with no wind. Took blankets off and got immediate rolling



























@*Avna* , very sympathetic on the constant challenges of keeping water unfrozen. We had some unexpected problems a couple of weeks ago where the frost free hydrant froze up and then thawed while we were out for half a day and was pouring water all over the paddock. I was so incredibly irritated as we had the hydrant replaced this summer because the old one developed a crack underground. While we had the heavy machinery out replacing the footing in the dry lot, they dug it up and put in a whole new hydrant. At least we thought "they" did- but turned out the plumber outsourced it to someone else because he left early the day the backhoe was here, and that person installed it backwards (so the spout was facing directly onto the electric fence charger?! :evil and apparently didn't handle all the underground work of creating rock and fabric layers below the frost line correctly. To say that I was livid is an understatement. I purposely scheduled this with the plumber when it was 70*F out so I wouldn't have to worry when it was below freezing! And had no idea he wouldn't be the person doing the work himself. He came out last week and hummed and hawed about how nothing could be done below ground, but he used a butane torch on the pipe and it's been flowing fine since then. Probably helps that the ground should be done freezing/thawing and is covered with insulating snow by now. Still, I'm turning the water line from the house to the field off after every bucket fill just in case something goes wrong again. Water spewing all over for hours in this weather would be a real mess. I'm keeping my fingers crossed we won't have more problems but am now stocked up on 7 gallon water jugs in case I have to sled water out from the house to the field.


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## Knave

Oh ick. There is enough to deal with in the cold. I’m sorry about the faucet. I also get so irritated about frozen hoses @Avna . I blow through them after draining just to make sure, and husband makes fun of me, but if I don’t there is always some little piece of water left I magically missed to create problems.


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## egrogan

Thanks @Knave. You know, I never really use a hose at all regardless of time of year. Given where my water source is, and where the horses are drinking, it's just as fast for me to fill up a couple of big buckets at the spigot by hand and carry them to the buckets in the paddock/sheds. With only the three horses and a conveniently located spigot, it works for me. I don't miss the frustration of figuring out where to store the hose, how to make sure it's not freezing, avoiding kinking it up or tripping over it, etc. etc.


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## egrogan

Today was warm and sunny and I took advantage of the afternoon to do some major cleaning in the paddock. It has been so frozen all week I could hardly get anything cleaned up, but today there was just enough warm sunshine that I could chip away the piles without destroying my shoulder. 

Girls were feeling frisky in the nice weather too- they are too bored for their own good. Warming trend continues through the week so hopefully will get them all out for some exercise- both mental and physical.

These two were cracking me up:














_I mean...what IS this face Izzy is making?! _



























Throughout all the bucking and rearing, Maggie's reaction was to stand next to where I was in the feed room, rolling her eyes at those two buffoons who were making dinner late with their antics. Poor suffering Maggie, the consummate boss mare who can't be bothered with ridiculous childish behavior :rofl:








I love how red Izzy's coat gets in the winter (yes, this is after a brief roll in the snow where for some reason she coated her face with it :icon_rolleyes:








These three do crack me up though. I love having them at home.


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## carshon

Izzy looks fantastic!!! and I love that she loves to play. We have warm weather (50's) but the ground is frozen. I am actually anxious for a snow cover to cushion for frozen divets.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon! I'm really happy with how she's looking this winter too. Hard to believe she'll be 26 in just a few weeks. Her back definitely shows her age but the sass hasn't diminished :grin:


Hope you get some snow- totally agree it's helpful over ice. Although in their shenanigans yesterday, while Izzy was chasing Fizz around Fizz still managed to wipe out completely trying to canter over snow with ice under it- for a second I thought she was going to slide right under the bottom strand of the fence. Fortunately she was fine.


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## egrogan

Merry Christmas to all our Horse Forum friends! Yesterday lovely husband tolerated an afternoon of playing dress up with the ponies to take some festive pictures. He actually found it fairly hysterical as I am not typically the type to play dress up with the horses, but it ended up being really fun.









































































Izzy would also like to go on record saying that not everyone thought the photo shoot was tons of fun :rofl:




































Hope everyone who is celebrating has a wonderful day!


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## carshon

Those pictures are wonderful! No holiday pics for us. It was near 60F yesterday and the mud has reappeared. The horses look like walking mud balls.


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## PoptartShop

Omg such cute pictures!!!! Lovely little photoshoot! That looked like fun. Izzy looks great too. So pretty! All of them are!

I love the video haha. They don’t have any issues entertaining themselves huh! LOL. So fun to see them be sassy & playing! They are too funny! Geeeeeze it sounds so cold though. It’s in the 40’s here this week. You guys got a lot of snow! But it looks pretty!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Fizz has been unusually connected the last few days. I'm not sure if it's because she's bored and knows I'm her ticket out to do things, or what's going on, but she's really been seeking out attention and wanting to hang out with me in a way that she doesn't usually. She's certainly not cuddly- I don't think she'll ever be that kind of horse (and honestly, I'm not really that kind of person :wink, but it's really nice to have her engaged and wanting to hang around people.

Christmas day we took a nice ride to a beaver pond down the road. It's normally too overgrown to be able to get through the trail that leads up a hill and, ultimately, to the pond. But we were able to bushwhack through the saplings and weeds in order to stand at the edge and admire the scenery for a few minutes before heading home.


















Yesterday I was running short on time in the afternoon, so I decided we'd go for a trail walk down a different trail- I didn't turn on my mileage tracker but I'd guess we hiked in about a mile before we were blocked by trees that were too big to go over, so we turned around and hiked back out the same way. Fizz absolutely loved it. She was so interested in everything around her. We followed deer tracks and little streams that cut through the woods. She stopped to nibble some ferns, some bark, some moss. She paused for quite a long time to sniff some deer poo. When the trail got narrow and icy, she followed me quietly like a Labrador. I seriously considered unhooking the lead rope and letting her just do her own thing, but I chickened out and got a little worried I might lose her in the woods  Maybe someday we'll try that. 


















I found it so interesting to watch her figure things out on her own. We had a few tricky obstacles to walk around, and I'd go first and just let her process the best way to get through on her own. 









I think at the farm where she grew up, they had free range over both open fields and in woods, and that's part of why she's at home there. I was joking with lovely husband that the longing look in her eye was telling me she wanted to be a wild horse...









When we got home, she wanted a nice roll in the fresher snow outside their paddock before rejoining the other horses.









It will be nice to get back out on that trail with chainsaw and brush saw to do some clearing while it's not so overgrown, in hopes it becomes a trail we can extend and then actually ride next year. I think we probably have the space to make it a 3-4 mile loop if we do enough clearing.


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## SueC

Fabulous photos and stories, @egrogan! 

I can really empathise with your being livid at jobs you've paid good money for not being done properly. We had a few things like that on our house build and I too was livid. Sometimes livid is extremely helpful, like when some man is trying to BS you about his shoddy job because he things you're a woman and what would you know about that; but they had another thing coming... :evil:

I can't believe how cold it looks where you are. Hope you too are dining well!


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## egrogan

My internet connection is being very uncooperative so not sure if this post will make it, but will give it a try! 

Yesterday Fizz and I were able to take one last ride for 2019. It was a warm day, though the roads remained icy so we stuck to the fields except for the sunny spots on the roads connecting the fields. 










We've been doing a lot of stopping and admiring the scenery on our rides lately, and we did the same yesterday. 



















It's a pity though, that mountain you see in the distance should be full of snow and skiers right now, as should the field. This winter has been very atypical. 

We're in the midst of an awful ice storm right now- another part of the new normal of climate change here. This should all be snow. Instead, we have these miserable conditions, which are supposed to continue through tonight and then _hopefully_ it changes to snow tonight. 



























I barely slept last night as I was so worried about the horses holding up ok with all that ice out in their paddock. The temperature is so oddly warm that the ground has a little slushy give to it rather than being a sheer skating rink, at least for now, so they are moving around ok. They don't like the sound of the ice pelting the metal roof on the sheds so the poor things apparently decided to stand outside in it all night, despite the sheds being bedded with fresh shavings and stuffed with hay. 

PS- @*SueC* , yes, I really despise when contractors don't take women seriously. It's one of the few disagreements I have with my lovely husband- he doesn't seem to believe that's true even though I have shared specific examples with him.


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## knightrider

@egrogan, you can only imagine how much pleasure it gives me to read of your progress. I started following you on your journal, enjoying every small victory and feeling sad over each setback. 



> For quite awhile now, I've been wanting to be able to confidently ride my mare out on the trail (many of you were very helpful after my questionable first foray onto the trails earlier this spring...)
> 
> Today the BM and a couple of other women were heading out to explore some trails that we've recently been given permission to use, and asked if Isabel and I wanted to join. Figuring going out in a group of her pasturemates would be a great way to test the waters, I eagerly said yes- and she was GREAT!! I couldn't be happier. We rode for about an hour, and she encountered a lot. She rode across a big open hay field, through wooded trails, up steep inclines and down the other side, crossed the road (twice), through a parking lot with people honking and waving at us, past someone carrying a giant patio umbrella, and back across a hay field with mowers going and guys throwing tarps over other equipment. Never once did she look at anything funny, balk, shy, nothing. I'm so proud of her!
> 
> There were two things that we can clearly improve next:
> 1. It was hard to hold her back from riding over the horse in front of her. She was pretty happy to be 2nd in line, because the leader was moving at a good pace (this was all walking...), but she didn't like being 3rd or 4th behind the pokier mares. These are all buddies, so it wasn't a problem this time, but obviously not good etiquette.
> 2. Relatedly, she was very heavy on my hands and was chomping away at the bit (literally) the whole time I was trying to hold her back from riding up on the horse in front of her. I didn't like hauling on her mouth, but I didn't feel like there was much else I could do. So will need a lot of work on that.
> 
> I'm not sure I'm ready to say I'm 100% confident yet that I can ride her out alone, but it was so wonderful to have this experience today and know that it is pretty reasonable to expect eventually I can get her there. It was just a huge confidence booster all around- and a ton of fun. SOOOOOO much more fun than riding laps around the arena! Can't wait for our next ride!


This was your very first journal entry in 2014. What a long way you have come since then! I am so pleased and proud for you. Yay, egrogan!!!!!


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## egrogan

@knightrider, what a lovely and much appreciated post. Thank you so much. 

I periodically read the first 10 pages or so of this journal and sometimes that makes me miss my time with Izzy when she was still my trail buddy. But I also enjoy finding the first 10 pages with Fizz and reminding myself how far we’ve come together too.

I wish I could spend time with so many of you in real life, but the advice, suggestions, and kind comments like this one from knightrider have been invaluable over the years. You all have definitely opened doors I never would have even known existed without this forum!


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## PoptartShop

Fizz is such a good girl. Really. You two make such a great pair. I think it's absolutely adorable that she is wanting all this attention from you & you guys are spending so much time together. I think the little obstacles she had to work through are good for her brain too. It's fun seeing them try to figure things out.  So awesome!!

So much ice though, my goodness! :O I hope you catch a break soon from the ridiculous weather. I'm glad you got a ride in before the new year though. I know Fizz probably loved it!!

I also want to say how proud I am of you, you have come such a long way. Excited to see what 2020 has in store for you!!!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> It will be nice to get back out on that trail with chainsaw and brush saw to do some clearing while it's not so overgrown, in hopes it becomes a trail we can extend and then actually ride next year. I think we probably have the space to make it a 3-4 mile loop if we do enough clearing.


This sounds like a great activity for new years day - DH will be home right? I think doing this is at least equal to a good run in terms of a workout for him.. :Angel:


So sorry to hear about the ice.. I was watching the radar and hoping you would be spared.


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## egrogan

Finally, the awful ice has turned to beautiful SNOW!


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## egrogan

Happy 2020 everyone! 2020 is such a pleasing number - it's not a palindrome, but do any of our math nerds happen to know the name of a repeating pattern number like 2020?

We had a wonderful New Year's eve. I took Fizz out for a really nice walk through the fresh snow. Of course, the ice is a crunchy layer underneath so we took it easy, but it was a beautiful walk.


















Lovely husband happened to capture us coming through the snowscape on our way back home


















I think I love the holiday weeks so much because we basically spend every day cooking and thinking about what delicious things we're going to cook the next day. On Christmas, lovely husband had smoked a pork shoulder (a nod to his southern roots) and that has provided 6 meals now, with some still left. We had been holding on to a special jar of fire roasted New Mexico chiles we picked up last fall when we were in Albuquerque, waiting to use it to make something celebratory. So last night we used them with some of the leftover pork to make chile verde enchiladas- delicious! I know they're an everyday ingredient for people in the southwest, but they tasted pretty special here in the middle of a snowstorm!









Now we have dough for fresh bagels rising in the kitchen and will make "brunch for dinner" with them and some salad later tonight.

After dinner we went out and did some snowshoeing around the fields. We finished our hike coming up around the horses' pasture, and I feel bad because having people appear out of the woods unexpectedly really freaked them out. Even though we were talking to them from a ways away, they still took off snorting, bucking, farting and generally carrying on. Haven't seen Maggie move that fast in ages! :wink:










Hope everyone had a nice celebration whatever time zone you were in.


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## SueC

Gawd, I'd like to eat at your place when that's on the menu! Looks fantastic.


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## PoptartShop

Your horses are just so darn cute in the snow!  So cute seeing her roll!

Looks like you had a nice walk through the winter wonderland. The food looks amazing...can I come over?! :rofl: Looks delicious!! Glad to hear Maggie is feeling good too!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Gawd, I'd like to eat at your place when that's on the menu! Looks fantastic.





PoptartShop said:


> The food looks amazing...can I come over?! :rofl: Looks delicious!!


 Consider it a standing invite to dinner :grin: As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that one of the nice things my family left me with is the belief that showing people you care about them with good food is a very worthy way to spend your time.

Bagels came out great too- nothing can top a New York bagel (it's true, you can't reproduce the water...) but these were leaps and bounds better than anything you can buy where we live.


















(_Confession: it is neither avocado nor orange season in Vermont. In fact, it's never going to be :rofl: While we try to eat as much as we can locally, I am a sucker for avocados and do eat them every week, despite the fact that we're destroying the planet by trucking them in from California or Mexico. Mea culpa...)_

Yesterday we woke up inside an ice castle. The ice was still coating everything, but in turn it was coated with a layer of fluffy snow. The whole world was sparkling, especially as the sun came up in the morning.



























Too pretty not to ride, so I tacked Fizz up and off we went. It was a very short ride because the roads were dicey and the footing in the fields was difficult with the ice-snow layers, but I was very happy with her enthusiasm and her "go." I hope we can go out again this afternoon after it's warmed up and hopefully made the ice a little less scary. And, more snow on the way tomorrow, which is welcome.


















PS- I thought you would be amused at my horse who is afraid of trailers because they're claustrophobic, showing no concern at all climbing right into my closet of a tack/feed room (this space is 5x10) to see if the hay bales in the back are better than what I just put out for them :icon_rolleyes:








PPS- yes, I know this could become dangerous in a hurry and I don't "allow" or encourage her to do this...sometimes when I'm doing chores in the morning and leave the door open, she decides she has to see for herself if there's anything good in there, and I immediately say her name sternly and she "unloads" herself from inside. I just happened to be close enough to catch her big butt in the act this time...


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## Knave

Lol! Bones is a sneak in the tiny tack room horse too. I am glad you got a ride in! Hopefully enough snow sets in for you to get some more riding in too.


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## PoptartShop

Those bagels look AMAZING. I want one!! Mmmm!! I love avocados too. Yum!!
Beautiful ride, I'm glad you rode even if it was a short one. LOL look at that booty! :rofl: They really do love to look around in tack rooms don't they?! If I leave my trailer tack room door open, Promise always has to take a peek! :lol:


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## egrogan

Back to work today. Watching a very pretty snowstorm swirling around outside while catching up on emails. But I'm already missing all the pony time I had over the past two weeks.

Snow ponies from earlier today:














_I spy, with my little eye, one adorable set of snow-covered Izzy ears :grin:_


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## PoptartShop

Fizz is SO cute walking up to you in the snow like that! Awwww! That's melting me! It's the best greeting ever. Izzy is so cute too! They are all just adorable in the snow. I say that all the time, but they are just so cute. <3


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## egrogan

Thanks Poptart! :grin:


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## egrogan

Had a bit of a nerve-wracking weekend because of the ridiculous weather. Temps rocketed up to near 60*F/16*C (almost 30*F above normal), which melted all the snow we had but didn't melt the 1/2 inch of ice we had from the last ice storm we got. The paddock was a skating rink, as was the hill behind my house I have to walk down to get to the paddock. Saturday night I wasn't sure I'd actually be able to get out for night check as I was stranded in the middle of the hill with almost no way to get into the field because of the sheer ice surrounding the gate. I had to turn the fence off and crawl through the strands in a spot that was a little more accessible. It was miserable watching the horses sliding around so I ended up spreading around a bunch of wasted hay and used shavings to try to give them traction- I knew while I was doing it that I will regret it later when I have to clean it all up, but in the moment there didn't seem to be any other option.

After two days of it being that warm, by the end of yesterday mercifully most of the ice had melted, enough that you can walk normally around the paddocks again. The horses even found some brown grass to nibble, which thrilled them. By 4pm, the roads were very muddy but ice free. I didn't have time to tack Fizz up to ride, but figured I could at least get her out on a good walk. 










Did I mention the wind was blowing at a steady 20mph  What better time to go for a walk!? She was certainly "alert" on our way out, but she seemed to enjoy the change of scenery. I let her graze around a little about a mile from home before turning around to come back.


















When we turned for home she got really sassy and started doing little rears and head flips. Channeling my inner @*gottatrot* , I just laughed at her and asked her if she felt better getting that out of her system. :rofl: After her little outburst she was fine, though we certainly walked home faster than we walked away from home! I am hoping that now that the road is un-iced, at least for the next few days, I might be able to ride a little this week. Temps have fallen back to normal, so the mud has hardened back up, but it should be passable for riding if I can find the time around work.


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## PoptartShop

The weather is crazy lately huh?! It was like 60F here yesterday too! Just insane.

I bet Fizz enjoyed her walk, & the sassiness was definitely to be expected haha, I know that wind/change in temps can make them feel a bit cuckoo! :rofl: She was probably feeling GOOD!

I hope you get to ride this week too!


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## phantomhorse13

Hope you get some saddle time before the next storm. Assume you are gonna be hit by this next system coming for the weekend?


Fingers and toes crossed no ice!!


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## egrogan

Sigh. We've had freezing rain every night all week, so the roads are ice in the morning when I would have time to ride. I've been looking at my schedule for this afternoon trying to figure out how to get a ride in since it should be up near 40*F later today. Hopefully it works out! Right now they're saying a foot of snow Saturday into Sunday, which actually would be welcome. We'll see...


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## egrogan

Yesterday about 1pm, I got a message that my pesky 3pm meeting- the one preventing me from riding- had been cancelled! Magic! Xenophon must have been smiling down on us. Out we went!

Fizz was a muddy, wet mess when I met her in the pasture, so took some towel drying before I could get her tacked up.









The roads were muddy, but the ice was minimal except in the shady spots. Even the woodsy section of the road had a good clear strip down the middle. 


















I was very lucky we didn't see any cars either out or back, so we just stuck to that clear section and powered forward. Fizz was very eager to go, and so responsive to leg. I played around with "putting her" in a specific set of tire tracks and asking her to stay there on a loose rein, and she was right there with me. Loved that feeling.

It was so weird to get to the overlook in mid-January and look out at almost no snow, even on the mountains. Just brown.









On the way home, which is mostly downhill, I was playing around with regulating her speed. Since she's not really in shape, she's back to wanting to rush down the hills very heavy on her forehand, which gives you the feeling you might do a somersault at any moment.  I tried using really gentle alternating "spongy" squeezes on the reins with leg to match (not really half-halts but trying to have a conversation about pace) and at first she was really confused and stopped almost every stride from the squeeze of the rein. I finally convinced her I didn't need her to stop, but I did need her to let me have an opinion about the pace of the walk, and we found a good rhythm down the hill. 

When we were nearly home, I got greedy.

As we were passing one of the fields, I couldn't help but think how nice and open and inviting it looked with no snow, so even though I knew she was ready to be done, I turned off the road to the field. Picture a big grassy area that slopes downhill to a low natural ditch and then slopes sharply back up towards the barn/house. She was a little jiggy going across the field, but when we hit that ditch I knew I shouldn't have been so greedy. It was _really _wet and boggy, ankle deep sucking mud under standing water. She was not impressed. As we got a few strides into it, I thought she was going to try to jump over the rest of the wet area so I guess I instinctively started to crouch forward to absorb her jumping- and instead she started crowhopping/bucking, and I knew I was done for! :falloff: 

I was not in a very secure position for that push from behind and catapulted over her left shoulder and got a little tangled up in her front legs when I hit the ground. She did her best to avoid me and fortunately I didn't get stepped on. I feel bad that I tried to hang onto the reins and really yanked on her mouth from the ground before I finally let go. Surprisingly, she stayed with me (she could have just run home, we were literally right across the street from where Izzy and Maggie were calling to her) but she just stood there and waited for me to get up. I twisted an ankle a bit in the process (my right stirrup ended up over the saddle and hanging from the left, so I guess maybe I was a little hung up as I came off), but I was able to walk it off pretty easily. Conveniently, there was a nice boulder right near where I had come off, so I got back on and we did a few circles around the field before calling it quits. All ended well.

Snow came in last night so the ground is covered over again. Am hoping to get out for another short ride this afternoon, but we'll see how the timing works out. Tonight temps drop to 0*F/-18*C and stay that way tomorrow into the beginning of the weekend, so I don't think I'll have another chance to ride for a few days.


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## carshon

Ouch! I am so sorry that you came off!.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Ouch! I am so sorry that you came off!.


 It's ok- it was one of those falls where I could see it happening in slow motion while it was happening, if that makes sense. And hey, the ground was really soft 

I've realized that every time I've come off her, it's because I've been precariously tipped forward in the saddle. I need to velcro my butt in the seat and I'll be fine.


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## PoptartShop

Sorry to hear about your fall! Fizz sure surprised you by not jumping over it! I don't blame you for trying to be prepared! Glad you landed on soft ground & Fizz stayed with you despite her friends calling out. What a good girl. You also got back on - props to you! 
More snow again?! You really can't catch a break! :lol: Look at that cute nose!!!


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## phantomhorse13

Sorry to hear about your unexpected dismount, but I want to point out how you wrote of getting back up and getting back on her without anxiety. That is fantastic!!


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## Knave

I agree that it was fantastic that it seemed like nothing for you to get back on, and I’m so glad you weren’t really hurt. Sometimes I wonder if a fall is actually beneficial for us... like that it reminds us that we can fall and not die.


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## egrogan

Thanks for the encouragement everyone. Yeah, it was a weird situation. I mean, no one LIKES to come off, but this one genuinely wasn't that big of a deal. And, _*definitely,*_ this:


Knave said:


> Sometimes I wonder if a fall is actually beneficial for us... like that it reminds us that we can fall and not die.


Kind of like, "phew, we've got _that _out of the way for awhile!"

I haven't had the "bad butterflies" in my stomach in a long time. I feel like I understand and can trust Fizz. I know pretty well what her "I don't want to" outbursts will be, and I know that once I tell her "that's silly, stop," she will. And I know that when she gets scared or upset, even if it gets ugly for a minute, she's going to stop and wait for me to tell her she's ok. I'm sure there will be more spooks and leaps into the ditch and tantrums and falls, but I think I've gotten to a point where I can mostly handle it!

Yesterday afternoon I had time again after work to ride, and I really wanted to. It was still above freezing, but there was a front blowing through, and it was really *blowing*. Winds were a steady 20mph and it was popping up little mini snow devils all around us. Fizz was pretty skeptical this was a good idea as I led her out of the field to mount up; her eyes were wide and she was making these funny little snorting sounds every step. Not surprisingly, she was pretty tight when I got on, so we compromised and just rode around the yard for a little while. Did lots of school figures and some of our "Calm Connection" exercises from the clinic last spring. This included using spiraling to gradually get farther away from the house as she relaxed, and looping back closer when she started to get tense again. Doing that, we eventually were able to ride up and down the hills in one of the fields and ride up the road without a freak out. Also, she did the best turns-on-the-forehand (both directions!) she's ever done under saddle, so that was an awesome place to tell her what a good girl she was and stop for the day. Not quite the ride I was hoping for, but any January saddle time is a bonus! I think you can sort of see the blowing snow and wind here:


















The front that came in dropped temps 30* from where they were yesterday. Woke up to brilliant sunshine, but THIS:









Brrrr....








Temps are going to stay in this range through the middle of next week, so probably no riding again until next weekend. So, looks like there is more wallpaper removal in my future for this weekend. We made great progress on the wallpaper removal last weekend and only have a little bit left in the stairway and front foyer of the house. The big (unpleasant) surprise last Sunday was discovering a THIRD layer under one section of wall near the bottom of the stairs. Oh joy. :icon_rolleyes: These very special roses were hiding under the soaring eagles. Hopefully by the end of this weekend, this will all be gone and we can start priming for painting.


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## PoptartShop

Oh yeah, you can definitely see that wind! Super windy here too, it's horrible. That is cold, I need to really stop complaining when it's 20 degrees. :rofl: 
Glad you got her out & even did some exercises from the clinic, which definitely helped make the ride go smoother. Yay!!  What a good girl Fizz! Absolutely, you have to enjoy every second in the saddle this time of year, no matter what!
More wallpaper?! Yikes! Hopefully this one won't be as annoying to get off!


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## egrogan

Our heat wave is most definitely over! Hasn't been above 10*F/-12*C for the past two days. I feel bad putting a saddle on Fizz in those temps so I've just taken her out for a handwalk both days. Roads are back to being icy with the plows going through, so we just walk out about 3/4 of a mile and then turn around and come back. We've been slipping and sliding a little, but it's still nice to be out moving around, even though it's so chilly.

















Met lovely husband on our way home today.
_Enjoying a horse hug..._








_...Ok...TOO MUCH horse hug..._








_...Jusssttt right._









Snow came in this afternoon and we're looking to have several inches by tomorrow morning.









Fortunately I had help getting ready for the storm earlier in the day :icon_rolleyes:









Now we're just hunkered down at home, getting ready to make some pizza for dinner and have some hot apple cider with bourbon. Cheers!


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## egrogan

Another January ride! Woohoo! 









The deer had been busy since the snow stopped- they apparently checked out each and every apple tree!









The snow was deep but so light and fluffy, and best of all, no ice underneath. Still dealt with gusty winds, but it felt great to ride. Knowing there was no ice, I could finally let her trot along a little, but it was such a strange motion to ride because it was almost like she had to double pump to make it through the snow, given how deep it was. We ended our ride with nice turns-on-the-forehand and getting closer to a clean turn on the haunches too. Things are clicking :grin:

Driving home from the store earlier today, I passed about 8 people out on a sleigh ride at GMHA. There was no other traffic on the road so I just stopped in the middle of it and snapped a picture from my car window.  You could hear the sleigh bells jingling as they went. So very Vermont! Even the picture looks old-timey. Maybe that's just my finger smudge in the top right corner though :wink:










It was nice to see people out though, they've already had to cancel two full-weekend sleigh rallies because of the lack of snow. There's one more planned in mid-February, and I am hopeful the snow sticks around so they can actually hold it.


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## Knave

Beautiful!


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## PoptartShop

Talk about COLD! :O The pictures are sooo cute of Fizz & your hubby! :lol: It is definitely fun riding in snow (well, soft snow, no ice underneath!). I bet it felt like you were on a cloud! Glad you got a good ride in with Fizz!

Wow, you don't see a sleigh ride like that every day - that's beautiful!!  So cool!!


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## SueC

Beautiful photos...great smiles...gorgeous horses...lovely snowy landscape...


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone, it's nice to have snow and not ice!

Yesterday was brisk (15*F/-9*C) so I opted for another handwalk instead of trying to ride. Fizz was very eager to be out.









I love her silly little white lip spot!









I think she was sad we were home so soon. I was getting things ready for dinner after we got back and turned around to see her staring longingly back out the gate. 









This morning it was -3*F/-19*C while I (quickly) did chores, so not sure we'll be doing much today. Should go back up close to or above freezing for the rest of the week though so that will feel great!


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## PoptartShop

She is so cute! At least you got her out, but that is super cold! Don't blame you! Awwww, look at her looking out at the gate! So cute. :smile:


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## egrogan

Well, we were sort of due for a "blah" ride, and yesterday was it. Poor Fizzy was worried before I even haltered her to groom/tack up. I went out after work, and she was standing at the back gate transfixed on the woods, snorting softly in its direction. I threw out some hay, and Maggie & Izzy dove right in, but Fizz had no interest. Had a hard time getting her haltered since she wouldn't drop her head, and when I got her tied up in the shed to groom, she kept dancing around and trying to stand so her back wasn't to the woods. I kind of knew how the ride would go based on all that. She seemed to exhale for a minute once she was tacked up and I led her out to mount up, and she was ok when I got on. But as soon as we crossed into the first open field, she tensed up again and I was a bit worried she was going to tank off with me. Turned onto the road, and unfortunately it was really icy, but she stuck with me and we tiptoed across the next field without slipping. She got her head all cranked towards home and I did wonder if she might bolt that way, but I kept telling myself "sit down, sit back, sit down, sit back" and I stayed stuck in the saddle so she kept things together too. Did a lap around two other fields and I felt like she was getting ready to boil over, so we turned back to home. She was really jiggy on the ice so I hopped off and walked her the short way back to the paddock. All in all, it was just a mile and not great, but we survived. No riding pictures, both hands on the wheel for that one :wink: 

LOTS of yawning releases once we were back, poor thing:









But even after I got her untacked and let her loose again, she was right back to attentively watching the edge of the woods.










She was still being weird about it when I went out for night check to throw more hay. Usually she trots off ahead of me when I bring hay out to the back of their field, but last night she refused to leave the area around the sheds to go further out in the field, even when the other two were out there eating. I really wish they could talk and tell us what's going on!


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## carshon

that last pic with the sun on the hills in the distance is just gorgeous! Silly horses! Coyotes are running here and mine are on high alert. Enough of a snow pack now that the packs have to work a little harder for supper so there is a lot of noise in the fields around us.


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## egrogan

@carshon, it was an especially pretty afternoon here yesterday! It's getting into coyote breeding season, and I can certainly see from their tracks and scat in the snow that they are moving through back there. I also see their tracks coming under the fence into the pasture (probably hunting field mice) so I know they're around. It's just weird she'd be that bothered by them, since they're always around- at our last boarding barn, she even shared her water trough with a really tame one that hung around a lot. But I guess there were a lot more horses around there so maybe she was comforted by that. I'm sure it's nothing that big of a deal, just hate to see her looking anxious.


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## PoptartShop

I wonder if she smelled or heard something. Poor girly! I have rides like that sometimes too, they can definitely see or hear things that we can't, just have to remember to breathe, stay calm & relax. You handled that perfectly.  You got through it! I agree, that's a beautiful background!!


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## Fuddyduddy1952

Speaking of coyote does anyone here shoot them? In S.Central Virginia the county pays $50 each, they're such a nuisance. We used to have so many quail, rabbits, turkeys...list goes on that have been decimated by coyote.
I don't hunt but a few things like ground hogs digging under buildings, of course rats, mice, poisonous snakes near house are a nuisance.
I've seen coyote on my hunter cameras but haven't shot any.
Thanks...curious

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Hi Fuddyduddy! We personally aren't hunters, though I've had some neighbors offer to help me out if coyotes become a nuisance with our animals. As far as I know, there's no incentive to hunt them here, but people will kill them if they become "too bold." We live in a place that has a lot of forestland so the habitat for all kinds of creatures is fairly intact and, for the most part, keeps predators well supplied with their natural prey. Of course, anything is going to be opportunistic and grab an easy meal if given the option. Over the summer, about a dozen housecats went missing in about a week (including friends of ours) and the assumption was that it was coyotes who realized they had an easy opportunity. People started keeping kitties inside so I guess they moved on.


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## SueC

You had me at -19 deg C! mg:

Do you ever get wind chill on top of that?

Love the lip photo, Fizz' toothy grin, her dapples, just her general colour!


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> You had me at -19 deg C! mg:
> Do you ever get wind chill on top of that?
> Love the lip photo, Fizz' toothy grin, her dapples, just her general colour!



Yes, it seems like the wind has been near constant this winter- and not just gusts, but steady blowing so that I can't leave hay out loose on the ground without watching it blow away like tumbleweeds. On that -3*F/-19*C morning, the windchill was -15*F/-26*C. That's about as extreme as we get here, so I guess that makes us lucky!


I will give Fizz your compliments :wink:


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## Knave

@Fuddyduddy1952 we shoot them. Well, let me rephrase; my family shoots them. I personally hate to waste, so I will only shoot at one if I am going to skin and tan it. I did get in a war with them for a bit because they kept coming actually in my yard and leading my dogs out. They didn’t care when I yelled at them, so I was at war with that pack. I think it was just a group of pups too dumb to be cautious.

To be honest, as long as they are hunting outside of my fence I like to watch them. They jump around and act the fool. I don’t have a problem with anyone else shooting them though.


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## Fuddyduddy1952

Forgot to mention we have cats also. Cats are fine since outdoor ones locked up at night. They have an insulated temp controlled room, 60degF, so they're fine.
We rarely see the turkeys, quail, rabbits we used to see. 

Sent from my SM-S320VL using Tapatalk


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## carshon

We do not hunt them but there are plenty of hunters here that do. Calving season has started here and we have had snow with freezing rain on top of it and then more snow. So the coyotes are running calves down and killing them (just talked to the farmer behind us) so the past couple of nights we have seen and heart ATV's out in the fields looking for calves and shooting at any coyotes they see. I am not a fan of them and would shoot one if necessary here. When I was in HS my Dad shot 4 of them. We had a very old pony and they would run her into a snow bank - we started seeing marks on her and she had lost some weight - my Dad worked shifts and happened to come home one night to see them running her into a snow bank. He ran in and got his gun and shot 1 of them and possibly wounded another as we only ever saw 2 after that. The pony got to spend the nights in the barn with the pigs (we did not have stalls - just a lean too) and eventually Dad shot 2 more hanging around the back of our property.


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## phantomhorse13

While its open season on coyote here (PA), for the most part we don't have an issue as there is enough natural prey to keep them occupied. I used to regularly see a beautiful male when I rode in one specific place, but he disappeared a couple years ago. Sometimes at night we can hear them singing in the distance.


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## egrogan

Well, whether the coyotes in our woods are really or imagined, last night Fizz was still posted on guard duty when I went out for night check. It was supposed to start freezing rain overnight so I threw blankets on. Tried to anyway. I got Fizz's on over her back and got it fastened around her front, when she turned and bolted from the field back to the sheds. Eek. I was breaking every rule about how to be sure the blanket was on and secure so it wouldn't "chase" the horse in just this scenario, even though I've blanketed them loose in the field hundreds of times without ever having an issue. 

So as she's running away (it's pitch black, I just I have a headlamp on), I start to see the reflective strips that should be over her butt sliding off to the side. The other two horses see this too and THEY start running and bucking and snorting at her, so now she's zigging while they're zagging away from her. The blanket is still fastened via the chest snaps but otherwise the bulk of it has fully slipped off her and twisted so that it's all hanging on the ground in front of her like a giant bib, and as she's trying to bolt away from it she keeps getting her front legs tangled in it and falls to the ground 3 or 4 times before I can get close to her. Finally she listens to me asking her to whoa, and I'm able to walk up to her and undo the indestructible chest hooks, which are now up above her withers. Let the blanket fall to the ground and she is able to walk away. Good lord, what a scene. The three of them continue running around and snorting for several minutes after until they seem to chill out. Surprisingly, the blanket stood up to her flailing around in it, though she did rip a belly strap off somehow (it was never fastened so I guess she stepped on it just right). All was fine though, I grabbed one of Izzy's extras and put that on her instead and fortunately she didn't stress about being blanketed despite that whole ordeal. Horses, man, always giving you excitement!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> Horses, man, always giving you excitement!


Oh, yes!


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## egrogan

We got a bit lucky yesterday in that the storm arrived much later in the day than expected, so I had a date with poo removal since it was fairly warm and things that had been iced in were free. I worked away at that for a couple of hours and then took Fizz out for a walk back along the woods line. I don't really think I satisfied her anxiety, so I'm not sure how else to help her. When we got back, Izzy was waiting for her and they had a very enthusiastic run around- I love seeing Izzy still go flying around. Hard to believe she's going to be 26 soon!


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## Knave

That is very scary! I’m glad it ended well.


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## PoptartShop

Gosh, glad everything turned out okay! They really do give us excitement...all the time. Just never know what they're gonna get into. :lol: Gotta love it! Whew!
The girls are so cute running around having a ball! Izzy is a happy girl!


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## egrogan

Today was farrier day. He was running a little bit late, and Izzy took advantage of the extra time in her stall to nap- HARD. I wish I could sleep as soundly as she does. I don't know about all of you, but I too look a little shocked and dazed when I'm woken from a deep sleep for an appointment I forgot about :rofl:


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## PoptartShop

Looks like she snoozed pretty hard, & comfortably!! :rofl: LOL Izzy is our spirit animal!


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## carshon

I think that pic is adorable. It is funny that every time you bring her to the barn she lays down in her stall for a nap!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> I think that pic is adorable. It is funny that every time you bring her to the barn she lays down in her stall for a nap!


I know, she cracks me up. She does lay down in the sheds at night too, but sometimes I feel a little bad because I think she is the kind of horse that actually wouldn't mind being put up in a barn overnight. The other two despise it, but Izzy would make herself right at home if that was our routine.


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## egrogan

Do you think horse people are just really easily amused, or our horses actually as entertaining as we think they are?

I had some loose hay left in the barn from the horses being up yesterday, and didn't want to waste it so I filled a haynet to bring down this morning. I set it next to the gate and forgot about it when I got busy doing other chores. Until out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fizz looking like she was hyperventilating at the gate. Turns out, you shouldn't leave killer hay nets where they don't belong! :rofl:


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## carshon

creatures of habit for sure. Earlier this winter I actually had to sit down and in the snow to finish laughing when my hubbies horse came zooming in for her dinner from the dry lot. Her stall and pen face the others to there is a T intersection she goes left and the other go right. There is an open spot (aisle) between Belle's stall and the main shed. We drive the tractor through here to unload hay etc. Belle took her left turn and saw something up the aisle and promptly did an about face and saw me coming behind her and spun back around and then around again! She knew to not run toward me but the new "scary" thing (in this case a pile of plowed snow) had her on high alert because it was not supposed to be there. she stopped long enough for me to walk up to her as she stood there snorting and tossing her head and the intrusive snow pile. I was able to calm her down enough to get her into her pen but I was laughing the entire time, then I had to pee which made me laugh harder so I had to sit down so I could finish laughing. What a predicament.

for Belle who spent most of her life in the same pasture anything not in its place is cause for concern - and must be snorted at and stomped at.


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## PoptartShop

LOL that is too funny! :lol: She was probably like, umm what's that doing there?! :rofl: I think they definitely keep us amused. I love it!


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## gottatrot

Ha ha the hay net was like a small, round midget monster trying to come through the gate.


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## egrogan

Hahaha, @*carshon* , I can definitely picture the snow pile terror! My chickens are really funny like that. Every morning when I open their coop, they come charging like a little brigade out into the barn, and if something has moved or changed since they went to bed the night before, they slam on the brakes in unison and it's like one of those cartoon moments where you hear the sound of skidding as they stop and reverse direction. 

Nothing exciting going on with the ponies. Work is really hectic, but mostly it's because the road is a solid sheet of ice and the fields are really tough to walk through-the top layer of snow is hard and crusty and just generally not fun to navigate. But it's almost February, and we've survived January pretty well compared to last year!


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## egrogan

Hi everyone! Hoping for some advice on sudden mystery lameness in Maggie that came literally out of nowhere over the weekend :sad: Saturday afternoon, I gave everyone a good grooming (shedding is just starting, yay!), took Fizz out for a walk, and when I brought her back, all three of them had a good run and buck around the field and then dove into some hay. I puttered around doing chores, and about an hour later, Maggie was looking a little uncomfortable. At first I thought she might be a little gassy/colicky, as her flanks were tense and she was gritting her teeth a little like she did last time she colicked. No temp, good gut sounds, I walked her around for a few minutes and she had a normal poop and looked more comfortable so I kept an eye on her through the night but nothing seemed amiss. She was bright eyed, hungry, drinking normally, etc. 

Saturday morning I went out and she was dead lame. She looked most painful on her front end, but it honestly kept looking like it was alternating between her two front legs as she shuffled along. There was no heat, no pulse, nothing tender to the touch when I handled all 4 legs, though she was reluctant to pick up the right front. This continued about the same all day- no better, no worse. I checked her feet several times, still no heat/pulse. Occasionally she'd stand with one front foot stretched out a little further than normal, but she never looked "stretched" out into a founder type stance. Attitude, eating, pooping, etc all continued to be normal, she was just really gimpy moving around.

This morning, same- no better, no worse. I put front boots on her this morning to see if that would make her more comfortable, but it didn't make a difference. I'll post a video below, in the last little segment you'll see her actually look like she maybe is worse with the boots. I think that might be because it's a little slippery and the traction on ice isn't great, so I'm not going to leave them on.

Going to call the vet in a bit, but wondering if more experienced eyes can put words to what I'm seeing. I've exhausted everything I know how to look for- heat, pulse, tenderness, stance- so aside from just telling the vet "she looks lame everywhere," does anyone have a better description of what you see in the video below? Should I ask the vet to bring an x-ray machine? Unfortunately (or, maybe fortunately :wink I just don't have a lot of lameness experience so not really sure what I'm missing that might be clear to more experienced people.

In the video, when she's walking towards me she's coming down a slight incline, and away from me she's walking uphill. Obviously the ground is rutted, frozen, and slippery, so some days they look lame just navigating that, which doesn't help!

Thanks for your thoughts! I guess I should add, nothing has changed that would explain her suddenly looking this way- no change in food, no change in activity, no obvious explanation.


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## Knave

I am so sorry! I don’t know... my guesses would be that it is a stone bruise or she pulled something, but those are only guesses. I hope she hurries back to healthy.


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## carshon

I am with @Knave and guessing bruising due to the ice and the ruts. Bute and time is the only answer.


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## knightrider

I was taught that horses nod to the good leg. She hardly nods at all. Which leg do you think she is nodding to? At first I thought it was the right leg. On watching more, I'm not sure.

I hope she heals quickly.


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## egrogan

OK, thank you both for quick responses. I held off on giving her bute as I wasn't sure if/when the vet could come and thought it would be better not to do that if the vet would be seeing her. If I'm being honest, the last two times I've had the vet come for her (first time, a mild stone bruise and second time, that mild colic) I wondered if I wasn't overreacting a little. So I suppose that's why I didn't call first thing this morning, even though when I see gimpyness my head immediately goes to "foundering and will be dead tomorrow." But a bruise needing rest is a totally different situation :hide: Not asking you to play internet vet, but if this was your horse, would you wait and see a bit longer before having a vet out? I do have bute and could see how she responds to a dose.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, at first yesterday I too thought her left front was bothering her more, and that she didn't want to pick the right one up because the left hurt. My husband led her around for me to watch her move and I was sure it was the left. Then later in the day, it looked like either, or both. I really can't tell.


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## carshon

I would give her Bute and see where it takes you. I don't see founder and I don't see injury. I see a sore sole. Try the Bute but leave her boots on if you can


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## PoptartShop

Could she maybe be developing an abscess? Maybe from a stone bruise of some sort, or the hard ground. Sending jingles for miss Fizz! Keep us posted.


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## Knave

Do you have hoof testers? If it were my horse I would test the hoof and see if there was indication of a bruise. It is different for me to play vet online, because in my life, before vets were around, it was my father that people called. So, today, if it were my horse it would be my father I would call. He would tell me what to do, and we would have the stuff around to treat an abscess if that were the end result. I guess I say all this to explain that it is easy for me to say I wouldn't call a vet. If my dad wasn't my dad, and I had the money, I might call the vet.


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## gottatrot

Both Amore and Satin in our barn were very lame similar to Maggie in the past year, and both of them had pulled something in the pasture. Well, both are in their late 20s, so it is probably easier to do at their ages. Both of them improved dramatically over a couple of days, and became sound. 

If it is an abscess, it will linger around longer and probably get much worse. I had the vet come out for Amore, but we did not have the vet for Satin, since I watched the vet diagnose the first one and Satin's was nearly identical. 
The vet picked up each front leg and figured out which one the horse did not want to stand on. Then he palpated above the knee behind the leg, and found that it was warm and puffy. He said that is a common place for horses to pull something, due to slipping especially when going down hill. Just looking at your ground, I would think a slipping injury could also be very likely.

My opinion is that it is the left front, and since she is bringing it forward farther than the opposite leg when walking, it is probably not such a severe pull as what either of our horses had, if it is a muscle injury. I'd feel behind and just above the left front knee to see if you can feel any swelling or heat there.


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts- exactly why I posted here :grin: @*Knave* , I wish I had your dad on speed dial too!

I gave 1/2 gram of bute at noon yesterday and left boots on, but no change throughout the day. My desk is in front of a window looking out at the pasture so I was able to keep an eye on her during the afternoon. She moved around gingerly all day but never looked any more comfortable- though never any worse either. I took off the boots in the evening. Felt all 4 feet a few times during the day for heat/pulse and there was none. 

It was disappointing that she didn't seem to get more comfortable with the bute, but this morning...I actually think there is some improvement! She is still a bit cautious, particularly coming downhill, but she looks like she's getting around a little easier.




And lo and behold @*gottatrot* - when I feel up above her left knee towards the top of her leg, there is a swollen, squishy pocket about the size of a lemon right there! And, her chest seems to be a bit swollen and warm, and she was very sensitive to the touch there too. I'd love for it to be as simple as slipping while they were running around and straining/pulling something. Certainly rather that than an abscess or something else problematic in her feet. So, I guess I am feeling cautiously optimistic this morning.

I also thought you all would appreciate this cute anecdote. Saturday, when I first thought maybe she was a little gassy and that's why she looked uncomfortable, I haltered her up and walked her around the pasture for about 20 minutes (which I now feel badly about if she was hurting because she pulled a muscle, not because of a belly ache...). Isabel and Fizz were SO concerned about what was going on with Maggie. The two of them followed us as we walked in circles and serpentines around the pasture the whole time. When we stopped, they stopped. When we turned, they turned. At one point, I looked over my shoulder, and they were in a perfect single file line behind her, waiting for the next move. I just thought it was very cute that they are so tuned in to when something is "off" with one that they become hyper-attentive to what's happening.


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## egrogan

PS- I'm very embarrassed you can see the poo stains in the video. I pick the pasture at least once, if not twice, a day, but this time of year even when you scoop poop, it often leaves some behind because it's literally frozen in the ground. It's very ugly looking so just felt the need to say that


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## carshon

Please do no be embarrassed about the poo! My "dry lot" is so encrusted with poo that it is unbelievable. So much got covered in freezing rain then snow. Then we had a major melt and the piles turned to smush mounds of poo. Now we have a nice layer of thick ice on everything (sarcasm here) that I am wishing for more snow so the slippery stuff is covered. 

Winter horse keeping is not for the faint of heart


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## egrogan

That's exactly it @carshon- the freezing/thawing this year has been the worst I can remember. It's been slightly above freezing here this week so the snow we did have has melted enough that we are almost back to the 1/2 inch thick layer of ice that's still sitting on the ground under the snow. Thursday/Friday we're supposed to get a lot of precipitation- the forecast keeps waffling back and forth between whether or not it's going to be snow or "wintery mix"- really hoping for snow but given how it's been this year, I'm guessing it won't be.


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## Kalraii

Hahaha I'm sorry I've just been reading a fair chunk of your journal and read about the poo stains. Before riding I literally scraped the outline of a saddle AND bridle my GREY mare was so encrusted on both sides with mud... I at first was embarrassed to ride like that coz gosh what if people saw. We washed her to take her to the vets even! These days... I own a brown horse with pride ****. At this point a poo-stained pasture is like natures decoration haha. But saddle pads with hairs in... drive me insane. I can relate  Hope things resolve soon! I couldn't live somewhere that icy >.<


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## PoptartShop

Oh PLEASE about the poo stains! The pasture has so much frozen poop right now, I've tried to scoop it up, but without breaking the darn pitchfork it's impossible, so I gotta wait until the weekend when the ground softens. :lol: It's terrible! We've had so much rain too, so it's hard to get out there! I do agree that Fizz is improving. It could have been that she was playing & slipped, they do silly things! Hopefully she continues to improve.


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## Knave

I wondered about her pulling something. In the first video she held her head funny a couple times, and my parent’s new horse had just gone through pulling something and looked the same. He is good now though, but they did have a chiropractor out too. 

I always am embarrassed when I post a picture of the big corral because we clean it with a tractor. So, most of the time there is poop. Then he makes a big mound of poop in the corral, and they love it. That is where they play and where they sleep because it dries first and apparently it is fun to boot. I tried to get him to pull it out because of the looks of it, but he refused because of the benefit... I guess I must consider the benefit over the appearance, but it is hard to do sometimes!


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## egrogan

Continuing to see improvement. This morning- a snowy one- Maggie was walking around pretty well. Please excuse the crinkly sound of my snow pants in the video- I was delivering her breakfast so walking towards her while letting the video run. 




The snow is beautiful right now, light and fluffy. Unfortunately around lunch time it's supposed to transition to sleet and freezing rain (the story of this winter) and then tomorrow late morning back to snow for a period of time. I hope it does finish up with more snow on top of whatever ice we end up with. Can't seem to catch a break this year!









In a sign that spring is coming, yesterday one of my chickens laid our first egg since October! They are old ladies at this point- I'm pretty sure this spring, they're all between ages 4-6, so I don't expect them to be as productive as they used to be in their younger years, but it's always nice to see them get going again in the spring. That beautiful orange yolk was a welcome change from the paler yellow store bought eggs (and we even buy at the food co-op from local hens!).


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## PoptartShop

So sorry I kept saying Fizz instead of Maggie. *Facepalm* It's been a long week LOL.

She definitely looks better, still doing a little head nodding, maybe it was just a stone bruise or some tenderness. Definitely improving though. I think it's the front right, but it is hard to tell. I looked at the videos a few times & it looks more like the right one is the one hurting. I'm the same way, I worry & my mind goes to the worst possible outcome when it comes to my horse. At least she has the soft snow to walk on for now, until the darn freezing rain hits & the ground gets icy/hard again, I know the footing hasn't been great lately! :sad: Ugh! So cute the egg! I hope spring is near! I'm over winter. :lol:


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## SueC

Hooray!  Now you can make a very small omelette! :cheers:


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## egrogan

Hahaha, no problem Poptart, I knew what you meant! Saw Maggie trotting around in the paddock today, so that was encouraging.





SueC said:


> Hooray!  Now you can make a very small omelette! :cheers:


We got one more today too. :chicken: It's a raw, nasty day here today with sleet and freezing rain all day, which will hopefully turn over to snow in the next hour or so. The power went out a couple of hours ago but fortunately we do have a generator. Still, we're hunkered down at home as the roads are icy and there's nowhere worth going. The Friday night thread got me thinking about dinner tonight, so now that we have eggs again for baking, we'll use one of those eggs to make buttermilk scallion flatbreads to have alongside of a black bean stew. And I pulled a couple of apple turnovers out of the freezer to have for dessert. While I was in there I saw we still had a little bit of peppermint ice cream that we bought back around Christmas. Sounds like a great way to wait out the storm!


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## gottatrot

Glad to hear Maggie seems to be recovering so well!


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## egrogan

Thanks @*gottatrot* ! Didn't manage to get a video of her trotting around but fresh snow had her feeling spunky. She seems to be doing pretty well! So, she came sound just in time for FIZZ to give me a heart attack! Yesterday Fizz came up to me for her dinner with her front right foot coated in bloody snow 









After I got through my panic and brushed the snow away, I found a small scrape along her coronary band. I think she probably knicked herself on the icy crust and it just bled a lot. You can see the tiny spot that was bleeding when I found her, but by night check I couldn't really find the spot again and her foot was clean so I think she's going to be fine. There's really no rinsing or spraying or covering with ointment given the weather we're having, so I will keep an eye on it and hope it was just a little cut and not something more sinister. Let me tell you though, blood on snow is always a shocking sight!

Speaking of the weather, this weekend has been pretty exhausting because of it. Thursday-Friday, we had 24 hours of sleet and freezing rain, which was miserable. By Friday at dinner time, the poor horses were encased in suits of armor as their blankets had frozen solid around them. When they moved, the blankets literally made a "clinking" sound, like people toasting wine glasses. For a few minutes I was worried I wasn't going to be able to get those things off, but with a lot of patience I got the buckles unfrozen and peeled them off. The blankets literally stood up on their own in a horse shape when I took them off:


















I dragged the frozen blankets up to the house one at a time (they felt like they weighted 20 lbs each, I have no idea how heavy they were but they were miserable to carry!) and fortunately I've found that hanging them to dry in the basement near the furnace is very effective. And, I was lucky I had a clean, dry option for each of the horses- because temps went down to 0*F/-18*C overnight and we got another 4-5 inches of snow. 

Yesterday the sun was glorious, but it was COLD all day.









And then last night went to -7*F/-22*C, which was the coldest night of the year so far! Even their eyelashes were frosty this morning


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## egrogan

Apparently winter decided that February was the right time to finally make an appearance. At least it's pretty snow- for now.


















Perfect little individual snowflakes:


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## carshon

Your pictures are always fabulous!


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## ChasingDreams

Funny story... we had a snowfall like that last year. I was walking my pup (1 year old at the time, golden retriever male) and admiring the individual snowflakes on my jacket sleeve.

I took out my phone to take a picture, and realized my son was getting pretty far ahead of us while stomping noisily in his boots. I started to call out to him to wait up, but apparently the dog was much more concerned about him getting so far ahead and playing without him — and he took off unexpectedly.

I had the leash around my wrist because I was trying to hold my phone up to my sleeve to get a picture of the pretty snowflakes... needless to say he pulled me to the ground and drug me a couple feet before I even had a chance to think about sliding it off my wrist.

And my phone screen shattered on impact, in it’s case... so I never did get a picture [emoji849]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## ChasingDreams

But your photos are gorgeous, and I’m glad Maggie is doing better 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Oh no, @ChasingDreams, that phone story is both funny and unfortunate at the same time!!


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## PoptartShop

Happy to hear Maggie is doing better, yay!  & Fizz, oh my! I would've had a heart attack myself. She should be okay though, I agree there really isn't much you can do since there's so much snow, ointment would just come right off. I swear, they always get into something.

The snow does look pretty, & the pictures are beautiful. :loveshower:


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## egrogan

What's the phrase..."trouble comes in threes?"

So...first Maggie was lame...
Then Fizz looked like she tangled with an ax murderer...
Clearly it was Izzy's turn!

To start with the ick factor, THIS is what she greeted me with yesterday morning








I cleaned her nose off but it was quickly filled in again with thick, yellow discharge. She was clearly uncomfortable, and was running a temp at 102*F





I was assuming something dental based on how she was acting, but it was hard to get her still enough to look in her mouth. Called the vet, sent all these pictures, and she agreed it sounded dental. We scheduled her to come out today, but in the middle of the day yesterday I got a call that her last appt of the afternoon had cancelled, so she was able to get to us more quickly. Definitely appreciated that because I'm sure I would have been up all night last night worrying about her!

Brought them up about an hour before the appointment, and Izzy went right to sleep. I hate seeing her not feeling well.



























Vet and I had a good laugh about waking her up and getting her on her feet as she was conked out. She still had a temp, and she really didn't like the side of her face being touched. But, she was pretty cooperative with the dental exam without any sedation. Her mouth rinsed out clean but with some investigation the vet did find that she's got another diastema (gap between teeth that can be prone to infection) between upper molars. That pocket seemed to be infected, and as it sat right under the sinus, infection had spread to her sinus. So basically all the head shaking and yawning was a response to having a horsey sinus headache. Vet wanted her to get bute for a couple of days to help relieve that pressure while we started antibiotics. Luckily, she eats pills like candy so she happily ate them up in her dinner.

This morning her temp is already back to 99*F and she's not doing any of the aggravated head shaking. Her nose still had some discharge, but it wasn't as thick or voluminous as yesterday. Vet and I will connect tomorrow to see what we want to do next. Will probably be on antibiotics for at least a couple of weeks. Vet may end up taking out that tooth later in the year (it's right next to the two that were extracted a couple of years ago), but she said she has also seen a round of antibiotics clear up the problem well enough the tooth can stay. Or, sometimes the tooth just ends up falling out on it's own. Right now, the tooth itself isn't broken or fragmented, so that's good. Please send Izzy some healing thoughts!


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## Knave

I am sorry! I am glad she is doing so much better already though. Things always come in threes.


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## PoptartShop

Oh no! :sad: This stuff does always seem to come in threes. Poor Izzy! I hope she continues to improve. Sinus headaches, even for us humans, are no joke! Sending jingles your way! :hug:


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## carshon

Oh poor baby! so glad the vet was optimistic that antibiotics would help. Sending healing vibes for Izzy


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## knightrider

Healing thoughts for your Izzy


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## SueC

Jingles for Izzy. inkunicorn: (I'm so glad I finished breakfast before I looked at that picture...) Very interesting clip, by the way.


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone for the goods thoughts for Izzy. She has been on the upswing. Today was the first day in nearly a week that she didn't have a gunky nose, and her temp has been consistently right around 99*F. Her appetite is good and her attitude is witchy, per usual :wink: Vet has her on another week of antibiotics and we'll continue to stay in touch. 

I've also been down and out with a really nasty head cold as well. I spent most of the weekend in bed, and took today off from work (probably tomorrow too). I have been congested and headachy, and just really worn out. I've also had a ravenous appetite though! I can never remember if the saying is "feed a fever, starve a cold" - or the reverse - but this cold is really, really hungry!

Have been hand-walking Fizz when I can, but the road is so icy! GMHA released their summer/fall ride dates today, and M and I are planning on the Memorial Day pleasure ride, followed by the weekend of June 6th & 7th, when there are 10 and 15 mile intro options both days. That sounds like the perfect way to take another step forward this season- and if it goes well, think about doing an LD before the year is over. Fun to daydream on a day we are getting lots of snow. Big storm today, still going outside, looks like it might bring 8-10 more inches. The bottom strand of my fence went under the snow for the first time this winter. Good thing the girls don't test it. Spring is coming though- right?!


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## egrogan

Nothing exciting going on. Still sick. Izzy is feeling good, though still has a little trickle in her nose.

Happened to be in the right place at the right time this morning and got a couple of neat pics of Fizz
















Love the snowy flourish from her tail in that one^^


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## Knave

I am sorry you are still down. I’ve felt that too, and my youngest. Both of us had the flu and then seemed to attach a cold to it, so it feels like it’s been forever! My husband and oldest only seemed to catch the cold part of it, but even that is dragging along. 

Anyways, I hope you feel better soon! If I had a magic cure I’d tell you, but I’m pretty sure none of the doctor advice or anything we have done has helped.


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## egrogan

@Knave, it was the opposite in our house where lovely husband had the flu, and I had the killer cold. I just feel so exhausted and worn down. I took the last two days off from work but am back at it today. Just digging out of emails.


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## PoptartShop

So sorry to hear you are not feeling good either! :sad: Glad Izzy is doing better, all that snow is just insane! It is definitely nice to dream about spring rides. I think that will be so much fun & good for you guys.  More miles! That's my goal this year too.

Still soooo much snow! :O Fizz looks so cute getting up. :lol: I hope you feel better though, at least you aren't missing out on too much since the weather has been yucky!


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## phantomhorse13

Hope that you are able to rest as much as possible - the funk going around this year seems to be particularly nasty.


Are you getting the crazy warm up this weekend? I would imagine that would leave you with a slushy mess, so maybe not very exciting..


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## Spanish Rider

I can feel the cold in that pic of Izzy with the snow floatng in the air! Brrrrrr!

Sorry, but I hope it doesn't get too warm as @phantom says this weekend. My son and his college rocket club are going northwards to Lake Winnipesaukee to do test launches on the frozen ice. Trying to get his HPR level 1 certification!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone, I do feel a bit better today, still just tired. The weather this weekend is supposed to go up into the 40s during the day, so we may get some melting with the sunshine, but it will still be below freezing overnight so that makes things messy. Next week has more snow forecast. We shall see!

@Spanish Rider- that sounds so fun for your son. I think most of NH has had very little snow this winter, even when it's been cold- when we drive down to Keene/Brattleboro, there are still a lot of places where it's been bare ground most of the winter. Very strange.


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## egrogan

Well, we did get a weekend warmup (45*F/7*C woohoo!) so we spent most of it outside!

Started Saturday with chicken and biscuits :rofl: They benefited from the leftovers of what lovely husband made us for breakfast...









The last snow dump had made things miserable going to and from the poop pile, so we (lovely husband) got the tractor out and made a path. 









Tractor got bogged down in the deep snow once, but he was able to dig it out pretty quickly. Last year we had to do this several times, so it's pretty good that we've only done it once so far. Seeing Fizz standing in the path shows just how much there really is, even on a warm day where things were melting!









It was still way too icy to ride yesterday, but I couldn't resist taking her out for a really nice walk. 









We went to the overlook and back, a couple of miles. We did hit some tricky icy spots where her hind legs wanted to slip out from under her, but she was so happy to be out doing something. I loved how quiet and relaxed her expression was throughout our walk.

















Today was warm again, and we went out towards M's house; the road that direction surprised me by having melted more than I expected. In fact, it was downright mud season in that direction. I probably _could _have actually ridden, but the mud was really tough to navigate, with Fizz tripping hard in the muck a few times. It would not have been fun to come off in _this _muck!!









I had been pretty ambitious about how far I was planning to go, but to be honest the walking was not so fun because of the mud so we went about half as far as I had initially thought. When we got home, we looped around in some of the still-deep snow around the pasture.









Fizz was obsessed with eating some weird twiggy bushes that we found. Doing her best piranha impression?!









Not looking forward to leaving the nice weather for a work trip tomorrow. When I get home mid-week, we're due for...MORE SNOW.


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## PoptartShop

Finally it warmed up a bit for you! That is a lot of snow! I bet the chickens loved the leftovers! :lol: So cute. Fizz looks so calm & relaxed in the pictures, I know she must've loved being out. Glad you decided not to ride though, the ice and then all that muck - definitely wouldn't have been a fun time! :lol:

More snow on the way? Noooooooooo!


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## phantomhorse13

Ugh, still so much snow! And more to come. Where is spring?!


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## egrogan

The weather can't seem to make up its mind. All week, the forecast said we were getting 5-8 inches of snow overnight and another 5-8 tomorrow. Then this morning it changed to rain/sleet all day and all night. Then nothing. Then back to rain and sleet. Then back to 1-3 inches of snow tomorrow. So who knows what's going to happen! Poor horses have been wearing rain sheets and neck covers for about 24 hrs now since I hate them getting soaked to the skin with sleet- every time I go to take them off, the hourly forecast says freezing rain is imminent. And then an hour later, it says no precip. I am sitting in my office that looks out at the pasture and they are all staring back at me over the gate looking miserable. If this is spring, I am in an appropriately grumpy mood about it- I hate cold rain and mud. Welcome to New England, right?!


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## carshon

The same thing happened to us on Tuesday. The first forecast that we would going to get 8-12 inches of snow with some rain to start it off. Even Monday morning forecast was high on snow amounts. By Tuesday morning they had us down to 3-5 inches of snow. And we got zero - as in none - no snow at all. Their subsequent forecasts said that the low pressure system had moved very quickly to the south and east of us. We have high winds but no precip. I guess I will take that and the warm weather they are predicting this weekend


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## egrogan

Maggie seems to share my opinion on the weather. And her stupid blanket :wink:









When your mare glare is so strong your ears are just GONE


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## Knave

Lol. Cash has his ears back when I halter often because of the mare threatening him. (We have a jealous corral) So, Sometimes when I get him tied up I wonder why that ear is back still. I halter over the offside ear all the time! Lol


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## phantomhorse13

The weather has been crazy. We got lucky that the snow ending as ice so far has actually been rain. Wouldn't want the mud to dehydrate.. (though anything is better than ice!).


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## Spanish Rider

LOVE the mare glare!:rofl:


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## egrogan

Sounds like we ended up somewhere in between what you had @carshon and what you had @phantomhorse13. Didn't really do anything all night, and then around dawn I started hearing sleet pelting the windows. Since I've been up, I've watched it sleet, rain, and have moments of white-out snow. Everything outside is just soupy slushy mess. It's supposed to wrap up around noon, when 40-50mph winds will usher in a 15* temperature drop. Hoping it doesn't all turn to ice, we'll see.


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## phantomhorse13

Well that sounds fairly miserable.


We just had what I hope is the last of it here - it was raining when I fed at 4 and that changed to snow squalls about an hour ago. The wind wasn't very nice overnight but its RAGING now and the temp has already dropped 5 degrees since I got up. Guess winter isn't done after all.


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## PoptartShop

Maggie's mare glare is spot-on! :rofl: LOL she is over the weather! I hope it doesn't turn to ice either, don't need anyone slipping again!

The weather here has been odd too. All over the place. It was so nice this past weekend & earlier in the week, in the 50's & sunny. Then today, it went back down to the 30's & it's cold...next week, it says it'll be in the 60's!!!! I can't keep up! :lol:


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## egrogan

@*PoptartShop* , I had to go to Florida for a quick work trip Monday/Tuesday of this week, and it was nearly 80*F in Orlando when I was there. I didn't know what to do with myself- that was too hot for me coming from winter wonderland. But 60s and sunny sounds glorious (though that would mean extreme mud here right now! :wink


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## egrogan

Well, we survived. The gusty winds and brisk temps gave Izzy the zoomies...











Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee


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## egrogan

Second to saddle fitting, I think I'd say finding hay is the most stressful thing about having horses.

So back in the fall, I thought I finally had it all figured out. I ordered 700 bales from a guy with nice quality stuff just down the road. My loft could only hold 500, but he agreed to hold back 200 for us. Great. Went into the winter feeling I could be reasonably generous during the coldest days because more was coming when we needed it. Well, we're just starting to hit the back of what's in the loft, so I called yesterday to arrange the 200 bales to come over. Get a call back..."I'm so sorry, but unfortunately, something happened to a whole barn's worth of what I put up and it turned really dusty so I'm feeding it to my cows." First- DID YOU NOT THINK TO CALL ME WEEKS OR MONTHS AGO WHEN YOU REALIZED THIS AND STARTED FEEDING THE HAY TO THE COWS?!?!  The silver lining is that he did point me to another local guy who still had plenty. I was able to get in touch with that guy yesterday and he is willing to deliver, and his price is the same, so that's all fine. Just working on arranging the specific date/time. I'm assuming it's going to be the same quality but can't really be too choosy. We'll be feeding exclusively hay for at least 3 more months, and then depending on just how wet things are, maybe for several more weeks after that until we finally get another 5 acres fenced this year. 

Sorry for the vent, it's just so frustrating when you feel like you're planning ahead, staying on top of things, and then other people let you down.


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## PoptartShop

Aww!! Look at those happy horses!  :rofl: They are so cute playing around! Lik weeeeeeeeeee! That's so cute. I love seeing them do that!

That is so frustrating & messed up about the hay though. He didn't think to call you at all and let you know ahead of time?! :icon_rolleyes: People are useless, I swear. I'm glad you were able to get in touch with another one though, fingers crossed it's just as good. That's so annoying, & not a good way to do business. So sorry that happened! He definitely should have let you know.


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## carshon

I agree 100% hay is one of the biggest headaches of horse ownership! The last 2 years where I live have been horrendous for hay production. I always laugh when I see hay wanted ads that say no dust , no weeds, no foxtail etc etc. Some years you just have to do the best you can and feed what is out there. I am sorry this has happened but the silver lining is now you have the number of another hay provider.


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## egrogan

Yep, good to have another name to contact. I just talked to him now. Unfortunately I guess yesterday I talked to his _son_, who had said no problem. But now he says he can only part with 100 bales right now, because of promises to his regular customers. I get it, it's just frustrating. So, we will have to be a little more frugal with what gets fed. And, I guess we'll take the money we don't spend on hay and use it for fence posts to get in the ground in the other pasture as soon as we can this spring! :wink:


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## Knave

Some of the posts make me think we should sell our hay to individuals in other areas instead of brokers, but I guess that our hay is more niche. Race horses for the Timothy and dairies for 1st and 3rd alfalfa... but 2nd alfalfa is a good horse hay (and obviously the Timothy). 

It always blows my mind though the hay struggles I read about. I guess around here it is more a money struggle. Average horse owners are looking for the kickout type of hay, and sometimes that becomes more scarce. I see my neighbor sells that. People are constantly driving in and out with trailers of hay paid for by bail. Most of our hay like that we keep for our own ranch horses and cattle.


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## egrogan

@*Knave* , a good supplier for people with really harsh winters is pretty critical. I thought I had one- until I didn't! I don't know how the shipping costs would affect your ability to sell to northern states, but I bet you'd find a market. In addition to losing the hay we thought we had, we also found out this weekend our regular farm sitter is no longer farm sitting :sad: I'm crossing my fingers that Facebook is going to come through for me again- I posted in a general page for our geographic area (not even farm-specific) and have 4 people interested who are going to come out to meet in the next few weeks. I'm hoping at least a couple of them are reliable enough that they will work out. 

Weather was brisk and below freezing again all weekend, so still just handwalking vs. riding. Sounds like we're expecting a warm up this week though, so we'll see if that holds.









Fizz has been like a big puppy dog lately, she always finds a stick or two to grab along our way. Sometimes she eats it (piney fresh breath :rofl and sometimes she just carries it for awhile before dropping it. Silly girl.


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## PoptartShop

I hope it does warm up, that would be nice for once! So much snow still!
Fizz is so cute and playful. :lol: Such a personality!


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## egrogan

Happy 26th birthday to lovely, goofy Isabel!


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## PoptartShop

Happy birthday cutiepie!!!!:gallop::happy-birthday8: :loveshower:


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## carshon

Happy 26th birthday Isabel


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## knightrider

> Happy 26th birthday to lovely, goofy Isabel!


Say, hey! Today is my best friend's birthday! We've been best friends since we were two. We've never had another best friend and don't remember not being "us." That's a few months shy of 70 years now! Izzy is in good company!

We get together every year since I moved to Florida. She's the one in the middle! The other dear darling lady is our other close childhood friend.


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## phantomhorse13

Happy birthday and here's to many more! Someone has to be supervisor..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Someone has to be supervisor..



This is the most accurate summary of Izzy's life purpose I have read :rofl:


Happy birthday back at your BFF, @knightrider!!


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## gottatrot

Sorry about what you are going through with your dog.

Happy Birthday to Izzy, and it warms my heart to see older horses that haven't been discarded but are being well taken care of and living with their horse family and human friends. 

I just want to say I believe you are _that_ kind of person, and so I know your issues with the dog have not come about easily and you are only struggling with dealing with the dog because it is exhausting and you have not been able to find answers to help him.

In my mind, it is similar to having a mentally ill older relative and wishing you could ask them to live with you, but knowing it would be impossible, so they have to go into a facility (personal experience). For humans, there is less of a way out for suffering, but we can help animals more easily sometimes.


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## egrogan

That's very kind of you @gottatrot. Sort of brought tears to my eyes, if I'm honest. We all do the best we can, right?


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## egrogan

We had a decent warmup yesterday so I did some spring cleaning in the pasture but ran out of time to ride (the road seems clear of ice though, so I should be able to get in the saddle again this week). The girls lounged around in the sun while I started scraping out the paddocks. 



















The last week has been a bit like an archeological dig- first the top several inches of snow melted, exposing the February ice layer. Then that melted, and we were back to snow. Now that's gone, and we're at the January ice layer. Today is supposed to be 56*F/13*C, so I hope that knocks the ice way back. We can't see the ground yet, but I bet we will by the end of the week.

Actually had a bit of a scary moment last Wednesday doing night check, when I took a bad fall on the ice. I was like a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel- my foot hit black ice and I toppled over straight backwards. I caught myself on the palm of my right hand (it turned an interesting shade of purple) and really bruised my tailbone. But the worst part was feeling and hearing the back of my head bounce off the ice. I think I may have had a mild concussion, but the symptoms passed in a couple of days so I consider myself lucky. Have I mentioned how much I hate ice!?


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## Knave

That is awful! I am sorry.


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## egrogan

The moon last night was incredible!!

















(that's a shadowy Maggie in the right corner...)


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## Spanish Rider

Loooove the fab moonshadow pics! How is your head feeling today?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Loooove the fab moonshadow pics! How is your head feeling today?


My headache went away after a couple of days, so I am feeling fine. Funny, if embarrassing, story though. I was brushing my teeth a few days after I fell, and lovely husband walked through the bathroom. He glanced at me and in surprise and said, "when did YOU get a TATTOO?" Through toothpaste, I asked him what the heck he was talking about. He spun me around to look in the mirror from behind, and the bruise on my tailbone was so big and such dark purple it looked like a tattoo sticking up over my pant waistline  I had no idea it had bruised that badly. So we had a good laugh about my not tattoo-tattoo. Which, f you knew me in person, would be a hilarious suggestion- I have no tattoos because I'm terrified of needles. I don't even have my ears pierced!


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## PoptartShop

The girls are so cute hanging out in the sun. They sure have the life! :lol:
Ouch, I'm glad you're okay. I hate that, I can't even tell you how many times I've tried to be careful on ice, & ended up slipping, falling...yeah, no fun. :sad: Glad your headache went away. 

Gorgeous photos of the moon. I saw it the other night, it was HUGE. It looked amazing! Didn't get any good photos, but it was incredible.

Omg, ouch about the bruise...I mean, tattoo! :lol: At least you can laugh about it now! Ugh, stupid ice. I hope it melts & you see actual ground very very soon! Don't need anymore snow at all!


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## SueC

Dear @egrogan, I am sorry to hear about your head, and glad it is improving again. Similar thing happened to me in my 20s when I fell off my mare bareback, without a helmet, out of a trot, and landed headfirst on a piece of hardwood that happened to be lying on the ground. Ouch. I had double vision etc. We don't have much trouble with ice here, but one thing we do have that has seen me take a few tumbles, is these black slimy algae that grow on wet bits of granite in the winter, and then we have to be soooo careful on exposed granite when hill climbing or doing coastal rock-hopping on our hikes... doesn't look like much, but will bring you crashing down spectacularly, and I've scraped my elbow a few times and got some "temporary tattoos" in this way too.

Guess what we just had for lunch? Felafels! So of course I had to check out your journal. Your horses are looking well! inkunicorn: inkunicorn: inkunicorn: I hope you get that gate fixed and better weather soon. :cowboy: If my headache goes away, I'll go riding this afternoon - we were busy with cattle two days running because we just sold some. But it's a migraine-type headache, so I'm not sure it will oblige in the next couple of hours... and I can't ride like this... so greetings from one sore head to a recently sore head! :cheers:

And those moon photos are excellent. We were looking at that moon over our place that night too; you had it around 12 hours later!


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , I get monthly hormonal-driven migraines, so I sympathize tremendously. It's such an uncomfortable feeling.

Falling and bruising/scraping yourself up on one of your big hikes would probably be worse than what happened to me- I just limped myself back to the house, but if you're out on a long hike, far from where you started...ouch. Just have to continue on I guess.

We haven't made falafel in so long! Our temporary oven is so awful; the oven doesn't hold a consistent temp so things that need a good bake are not guaranteed to work out, and the stove-top burners are really uneven so doing the pan-fry portion of falafel is also really frustrating. Good news though, the kitchen remodel is getting close to final. Our stone countertops arrive next week, but the new oven is in place. It's taken a lot of restraint not to use it even though the rest of the kitchen is still incomplete!


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## PoptartShop

Oooh, that's exciting! Really cool to see the progress. I'd be tempted to use the new oven too haha.  It's gonna be amazing. The countertops are gonna look so nice too. How exciting!!


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## SueC

I wouldn't have that kind of restraint, @egrogan! The moment our oven was in, we were using it, after nine months of cooking in a caravan with a grill and two burners... We even used our bathtub when it was still just hanging off its timber cradle, before the bathroom was tiled (our plumber said, "Just don't splash!"). I even have a photo of Brett in it at the time, but it's a bit too nudie to post (although no bits are showing ;-)).

Isn't it nice when things start to come together? We will need an update photo when your countertop gets there! Speaking of stone countertops, did you hear about the one which was highly radioactive because unwittingly mined from a highly radioactive source? :rofl: The homeowners happened to have a Geiger counter, or they'd probably never have known - funny story...

I'm looking at your dog and starting to think he's a canine goth!


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## egrogan

Trying to maintain some sense of normalcy in our decidedly non-normal world right now. We've had a brief glimpse of spring the past few days. Rode Fizz on Saturday. I hadn't really been planning on it, but I went out to do chores and the smell of spring in the air was soooooo tempting (although the raging 20mph winds were "exciting" to say the least). Roads were finally free of ice, and the mud wasn't even particularly bad, so I decided I'd try to ride. My saddle is still stored away up at the house, so I threw the bareback pad on her and figured I'd hop on and see how things went. I didn't know if the wind and warmer temps would have her feeling frisky, so I sort of gave myself permission to stay on as long as it felt good and just jump off and lead her if needed. 

Someone is looking a little "fluffy" in more ways than one after having the couple of months off :rofl:








_(Please excuse how she's standing under herself sort of weirdly behind- I had just asked her to turn on the haunches and she got a little stuck)_

The ride went incredibly well though. Even through big gusts of wind, she never seemed nervous, so I just kept riding along. I picked little markers off in the distance and told her- ok, we're riding to the beaver pond and then we'll reconsider- going great, ok, we'll ride to the big pine tree- ok, we'll ride up the big hill- ok, we'll ride to the overlook. Before I knew it, we had gone a couple of miles. I think that might actually be the longest I've ever ridden any horse bareback, ever (makes me pine for the kind of childhood so many of you had tearing across the country bareback on your trusty ponies!). She did get a little unsure on the big downhills, but in a good way - when I'd shift my weight back a little to help balance her, she'd instantly want to stop. I don't mind her being that responsive to my weight shifting back, even though it presented a bit of a misunderstanding. She did get a little quick on the way home so as we approached the steepest downhills heading back I got off and handwalked her the rest of the way. But what a fun ride overall!


























I had hoped to ride again Sunday, but work craziness got in the way so I didn't have the opportunity. Yesterday was also hectic with the ever changing news at both work and in the community, so I didn't ride. I did take Fizz out for some handgrazing though. Here's a classic Vermont scene- fuzzy pony grazing while the guys from the local sugarhouse were doing their daily sap collection to bring back for boiling last night. It's somewhat comforting to see life continue on even though so much has ground to a halt.









Fizz is so itchy with shedding, she was desperate for a good roll in the crunchy, icy snow.









Today it's snowing again, but by Friday this week it's supposed to be 60*F/16*C so it wouldn't stick around. I guess with everything shut down, that could bode really well for getting started with spring riding over the next few weeks. Hope everyone is taking good care of themselves and their families during these strange times. Horses do remain the best therapy, as far as I'm concerned.


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## bsms

"I picked little markers off in the distance and told her- ok, we're riding to the beaver pond and then we'll reconsider- going great, ok, we'll ride to the big pine tree- ok, we'll ride up the big hill- ok, we'll ride to the overlook. Before I knew it, we had gone a couple of miles."

Impressive. To me at least! I know the feeling although I almost never make it several miles. 

I've had Bandit out solo once in the last three months - weather, a bad cold, weather, flu, twisted my right hip and then, just as it got better, twisted my left hip trying to lift a bale of hay while leaning over sideways....

Our solo trip last week, before hurting my left hip, he was great heading out. Then we turned around, into the wind, all hearing turned into a whistling sound (for me anyways) - and Bandit started melting down. Made a quarter mile then got him to stop long enough for me to get off willingly and lead him back. He was stressed out with me leading him so dismounting at a good spot was probably the right answer.

Not his fault. I think. He's just been cooped up and we're going to be restarting the solo stuff again this spring. It seems to be a spring habit anymore: March? Time to work on going out solo. Again.....:frown_color:


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## egrogan

Thanks, @bsms! It felt really good to be able to get on her after about 6 weeks of no riding at all and have her be really level-headed. The spring does feel like starting over (every year!) but I can't help but think how much better prepared I feel this spring compared to last spring. I hope more saddle time is in the cards for you in the coming weeks as well.


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## Spanish Rider

So glad you had such a great ride. I hope you realize how fortunate you are to have your horses at home in these times. And it's always nice to know that the maple syrup supply will not be depleted. 


LOVE. THOSE. FLOORS:

And I am laughing inside, because our kitchen layout is identical!


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## PoptartShop

Awww, Fizz looks great! So fluffy & adorable in the bareback pad.  Look at you go!!! So awesome you got some good miles in with her after not riding her in awhile. Yay! :loveshower:

Nice to not see as much snow too, for once. I absolutely agree, they really are the best therapy. They keep us sane. <3


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## egrogan

@Spanish Rider, I just saw your post. It IS the same kitchen- the measurements even look like they'd be nearly identical. :rofl: We did have the countertops installed yesterday. Wasn't sure if the installation guys were going to be willing to come out, but they did. 

We had been waffling on what to do with the floors. At first we were thinking we'd sand and the oil them. We knew we didn't want to stain them. But ultimately we decided that we'd paint them a deep barn red. They will get another coat and then some poly over the top to make them a little less likely to scuff and show so much dirt.









The countertops are very light grey right now but they will become darker when we start treating them with mineral oil. We can't do that just yet as there will be a small tile backsplash behind the counter and that has to go on first so the oil doesn't interfere with tile grout.








Theoretically the cabinet doors and pulls are going on this week and demo of the "old" kitchen (which is directly behind this space at the back of the house) will start next week. We're just letting our contractor decide what he's comfortable with from a social distancing perspective. He usually works solo and I work in a separate part of the house so I'm comfortable with him being here if he is.


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## carshon

My dream stove! Wow! can't wait to see the end result


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## PoptartShop

^I second that! Can’t wait to see how it looks when it’s all finished. So nice!!


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## egrogan

Haven't felt like writing much given the world collapsing all around us. The uncertainty is so difficult, yet I feel incredibly fortunate that lovely husband and I both still have our jobs for now so don't have the added stress of wondering how we'll pay the mortgage. I am hopeful that will last but who really knows. And watching our friends lose their jobs (or at least be told to stay home not working for who knows how long), worrying about friends who run small businesses, hearing about friends around the country who have been tested for the virus and are nervously just waiting...it's so heavy. Yet I feel incredibly privileged to have plenty to eat, still be able to support our animals, have a job to focus on during the day, and most of all, have both of us healthy, at least for now.

Lovely husband is involved in economic development, and the federal agency he runs is being positioned as an economic recovery agency (as opposed to the first response agencies) so it seems that in the medium to long term, he'll be working with his team to figure out how to get federal funds to communities to help keep business and infrastructure afloat. He's on the phone about 12 hours a day talking to various congressional offices, other federal agencies, etc. He's exhausted but feels an incredible sense of responsibility to get this right to ensure that money going out goes where its most needed and doesn't become more of a burden on the orgs that receive it. 

The animals, of course, have no idea that the world is in a tailspin. They were enjoying our spring thaw, even starting to see some grass poking through...









...Until yesterday, when we got another foot of snow! 









I haven't really felt like riding even though the roads are actually fine and until the snow yesterday, we probably could have gotten to the trails. I need to get myself excited about riding as I think ultimately that will help my mental health. Have been talking with my friend M about social distancing-appropriate riding, maybe this weekend if the temps are a little warmer.

The most exciting news though...we got a new puppy!! He has been an absolute joy in the midst of all of this craziness. Meet Flying Bird Allagash Hugh Malone, aka Hugh.



























He is a 9-week old English Shepherd. His parents are both farm dogs who work on goat dairies and also have lots of poultry experience. Hugh is so curious, friendly, and smart. He's got housetraining down pat and is learning basic commands already. He's "helped" me with chicken chores the past couple of nights, which has been so fun. 










Neither of us are very good at selfies :rofl:









Yesterday I took him out to meet the horses and that was the first time I've seen him act a little scared. 









I held him and brought him up to Maggie first, and she was incredibly gentle, just snuffling his fur a little bit. He trembled a bit while I held him so I didn't want to push it. They are big and weird looking :wink: So we'll try again when he's a little bigger. But if anyone has general guidance and advice for smooth puppy/horse interactions, I'm all ears. The long term goal is that he can become a trail partner- obviously there's a lot of time before we're ready for that, but I want him to see being around the horses as a positive.


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## Spanish Rider

Welcome, Hugh! Puppies: the cure to whatever ails you.

Are those countertops soapstone?


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> Welcome, Hugh! Puppies: the cure to whatever ails you.


Isn't that the truth. Yesterday in the middle of the afternoon I just went and sat on the floor for puppy snuggles.



> Are those countertops soapstone?


They are! Renovation has come to a halt for obvious reasons, but earlier in the week before the stay at home order the plumber did come out and get the sink hooked up, and most excitingly, a working dishwasher. We haven't had that for the past year (yes, first world problems for sure).


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## phantomhorse13

Hooray for Hugh!! That will hopefully help lift your spirits (or else make you too tired to worry as much).


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Hooray for Hugh!! That will hopefully help lift your spirits (or else make you too tired to worry as much).


 @phantomhorse13, so far he seems to need to go out between 11pm-midnight and again between 4-5am, but he is sleeping remarkably well. He is all puppy energy for short bursts during the day but entertains himself surprisingly well in the "romper room" we've set up for him in a spare bathroom. He is very used to getting all his food from Kongs and very enthusiastic about them. Since lovely husband and I are both home, we're able to get him out for bathrooming and some playtime every couple of hours. And of course he gets random puppy snuggles when we need a moment to destress  So yes, it's definitely a change to the routine and he's wearing me out...but so worth it!


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## Knave

Oh yay for puppy Hugh!! He is adorable. It is nice to have a pal for chores and riding.


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## gottatrot

Hugh is one cute puppy!

We were saying it is good we don't have to do social distancing from animals. The other night DH and I were on one half of the couch with two cats and the dog also on the same half. We have a pack/pride that likes to stay close together.

I don't know about the rest of you but I can stay away from people, but not animals.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, hi Hugh!! He is just adorable!  SO cute. Now you have a little helper! 

I hope you do get to go for a ride, it will really help with your mental health. I've been working from home for over 2 weeks now & just going out to see my horse really helps me stay sane! :lol: Riding is definitely a good stress-reliever too, through all this madness.

Puppy cuddles will help too!


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## egrogan

Finally, this weekend most of our snow melted (except for the most stubborn shady spots in the woods) so I was able to get in some quality time with Fizz. I had plans to ride on Sunday with my up-the-road neighbor, S, who typically drives a carriage but has recently gotten a new saddle horse. So, since Fizz hadn't been out of her pasture in at least a couple of weeks, I wanted to be sure we went out to do something to focus her brain a bit before the Sunday ride. Saturday, I took her out for a handwalk, down the hill of despair to the paved road and back. She was great on the way out, despite tweedle dee and tweedle dum screaming bloody murder after her. When we turned around to come back, all hell broke loose when a couple of dogs came charging out of their house straight at us. In between the road and their yard, there was a badly flooded section that looked like a small pond- and on the edge, there was a plastic kiddie pool. You couldn't make this up, but those two screeching dogs _jumped in the kiddie pool and rode it like pirates across an ocean_ towards where we were standing_. 
_








Well, Fizz totally lost it- understandably! There was lots of spinning and snorting while her eyes bugged out of her head. Meanwhile, the dogs' owner was standing up in her house screaming at them, screaming apologies at me, and doing absolutely nothing to get the situation under control. Despite all the commotion, the dogs did stay in their yard, so I got Fizz turned around in the right direction and once we were out of sight of the dogs we did a little basic groundwork to calm everything down. She was able to focus on me again, though she definitely wanted to get home at a brisk pace. So that was an exciting first outing 

Sunday, I'll be honest, I had some butterflies in my stomach at the thought of our first real ride since January. 









S had texted me before I was leaving the house to ask if I would mind her dog coming along for the ride- I politely asked her to leave the dog home after the Saturday fiasco, and she didn't mind that. S's barn is about 2 miles from our house, and Fizz was great on the way out, moving right along with a nice marching walk and trotting a bit up the hills. We were nearly at S's house when a couple walking a big off-leash dog rounded the corner. The dog was quiet and stuck with them, but you never know, so I hopped off Fizz and passed them on foot- she didn't even turn her head to look at them, so that was nice. At that moment, S and her horse Ricky appeared down the road, and Fizz was interested in that but calm. Ricky was looking a little tense, doing some mini spins and popping up on the front end a little, but that didn't stop Fizz from standing nicely for me to mount back up. 

No sooner had I said hello to S and gotten on, than her neighbor and his son started target practice just up the hill from where we were standing. I don't know anything about guns, but in the span of what couldn't have been more than a minute, they had fired off at least 25 shots? rounds? whatever it's called when it's just rapid fire shooting  Ricky wasn't particularly keen on passing the house, which was the direction we had planned to ride to go towards the overlook, so instead we turned around and went back the other way past S's barn. The shooting continued but both horses seemed fine. Neither horse was particularly interested in the other, but they had pretty nicely matched walks so we headed down the road about a mile chatting (all the while, the gunshots are continuing rapid fire behind us). 

Something caught Fizz's eye off in the woods, and she planted her feet and didn't want to continue even though Ricky kept marching along. I was able to get her going forward again, but something had gotten her unsettled and she started getting a little jiggy and tossing her head around. As you all know by know, I really don't like riding through that explosive feeling, so I told S that I was going to hop off, which I think surprised her. I forgot that when I ride with M, she and I both have the same general philosophy that it's better to just get off and lead through a tricky situation, and get back on when it's diffused a bit. But I get the sense S is more of a "make them ride through it" sort of rider so I was a little embarrassed. Fizz seemed to chill out a little bit, so I got back on, but at that point we had turned around back towards home, which she clearly knew, so the jigging got even worse and suddenly she had left Ricky in her dust. I told S I was jumping off again, and she seemed...skeptical...but at that point we were back to the spot where all the shooting was going on, even faster at this point, and Ricky was spinning and trying to rear again so she just focused on him. Since we were back at her barn, we decided to call it a day, and I was a little embarrassed as we said our goodbyes. Fizz was still really wound up so I probably walked for a solid mile on the ground before I got back on, but all's well that ends well as I was able to get back on and ride her the rest of the way home. 










I was feeling sort of bad about it in the moment, but after reflecting on it more, I really can't be upset with her. I probably asked her for a little much to make our first ride a 5 mile trip with a horse she'd never met before, and with all those distractions I think she did just fine. And S texted me later saying she was glad we were able to ride together and the next time will be better, so that made me a little less embarrassed.

The next two days here are supposed to be beautiful, sunny spring days, so hoping to go out for a couple of short rides at the beginning of the week. The end of the week is looking like sleet and rain again, so probably not much opportunity to ride after tomorrow. Ahhh, spring...


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## carshon

you did the right thing. I ride with an older lady whose motto is "Live To Ride Another Day" when I was just starting out my green gelding I would apologize for getting off or making him stand or for circling him and she would always just smile and say that OK we want to "Live to Ride Another Day" We have to do what is more comfortable for us - an anxious rider on an anxious horse is not good.

Glad you got your 5 miles in! Yeah Spring!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> You couldn't make this up, but those two screeching dogs _jumped in the kiddie pool and rode it like pirates across an ocean_ towards where we were standing


Dogs sailing boats? And guns in the same ride?
I thought I had bad luck when it came to whacky random events that spook horses. You have me beat!!

I am firmly in the hop off now and find out how bad the freakout was going to be later camp. In my experience it can get pretty bad sometimes, and I've fared much better watching the chaos from the safety of the ground than I have on those times it got worse than I expected and my horse pushed the "emergency eject rider" button. 

I was laughing imagining Fizz might not be scared of dogs, per se after this, but perhaps just dogs in boats.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I was laughing imagining Fizz might not be scared of dogs, per se after this, but perhaps just dogs in boats.



:rofl: :rofl:
I will have to ask her for her opinion on this later today
:rofl: :rofl:


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## bsms

"_But I get the sense S is more of a "make them ride through it" sort of rider so I was a little embarrassed._"

I know the feeling. There are times I DO wish Bandit was just a point and go horse. But then....I really prefer a horse who is involved and clearly thinking and aware. I also think Bandit's "Cheerful Dennis the Menace" personality is partly a response to knowing I care about how he feels and won't insist he suppress it and soldier on. I'd sometimes like a Nike Horse ("Just Do It") but long run I prefer.....Bandit. As he is.

You are already well ahead of Bandit & I in the "post winter riding out" phase. I rode Bandit a couple of days ago and it bothered my back - which has had successive injuries starting the end of January - so I may skip a few more days of possible riding. I need to get past the second injury!

And yeah, I'm firmly in the "Live To Ride Another Day" camp, @carshon ! I spent way too many times feeling like I was riding a volcano with Mia and my ego just isn't worth it. I adored Mia but I could happily go the rest of my life without being on top of a spinning bundle of scared muscle...


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## phantomhorse13

Another firmly in the "Live to Ride Another Day" camp here, too. And you need to consider that you getting down not only kept you safe, but probably S as well. If her horse was jumping around and rearing with you on the ground keeping Fizz calmer, what on earth may have happened if both horses were acting up?!

Just reading about charging dogs (forget in boats!!) and rapid gunfire had my heart rate rising - Phin would have been in the next county. You not only handled all that chaos, you got back on and finished the ride home!! Huge kudos to you.


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## egrogan

Look at this- yesterday we had blue skies AND no snow to be seen! I managed to sneak in a short afternoon ride.









We went back down the hill of despair to the pirate dogs. Sure enough, they were out in the yard, alongside about a billion kids who were playing near the water. I wanted to take a picture of the yard pond and the pool/boat, but there was also a mom in the yard so I didn't want her to think I was a weird stalker :wink: The scene was loud, and Fizz planted her feet once to take it all in but surprisingly a light poke of the crop on her shoulder got her moving forward again and we carried on past. We crossed the paved road and went a little ways down towards the donkeys but turned before we got to their field (I wasn't quite ready to add them back into the mix just yet). Turning around meant we were going back the way we had come, back passed the pirate dogs. By this time, they were up the hill away from the house, but when we rode past they came exploding down the hill and leapt into the yard pond, splashing while they barked. I hopped off Fizz at this point as she was much more worried about them this time. She spun around me a couple of times but once we were out of sight of the yard, I was able to get her refocused on me and I mounted back up at the bottom of the big hill at Mitchell's Field. She was tense and jigging again, but this time I had topography on my side- the way home is a mile up a steady, steep hill and I knew that would work to my advantage.








Even though she wanted to dance around, I just sat deep in the saddle and gave her a long rein so she didn't have anything to pull against. Poor thing, I knew she was enough out of shape that with me sitting deep and the exertion of that hill she really wasn't going to do anything, and she didn't. By the time we got to the top of the hill, she was on the buckle and calm again.








Today is supposed to be as nice as yesterday, so hoping that I can work out another short ride in the afternoon between meetings.


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## bsms

"_*We went back down the hill of despair to the pirate dogs.*_"

It takes a special person to write a sentence like that! :thumbsup::clap::bowwdown: I doubt one rider in a thousand has even _imagined_ a sentence like that!


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> It takes a special person to write a sentence like that


 Haha @*bsms* ! Lately I have found myself narrating my rides in my head as they're happening, sort of a way of being outside looking in when everything is going to hell. Making it into a story seems to help keep me less tense, sort of like singing can. We do have some funny adventures, thank goodness Fizz is basically trustworthy and willing!

Yesterday though, I was ready for something a little _less _adventurous so we just toodled around the fields near the house. We have a friend who is willing to help us do some socially distanced fence building at the end of the month (we don't have a post hole attachment for the tractor and given how rocky everything here is, it will be REALLY nice to have that kind of help!), so I wanted to see how wet the field actually is. It was a huge surprise, but there was only once spot that was a little squishy, and that's the predictable low lying spot at the bottom of the hill. We'll certainly get some spring rain over the next few weeks, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it will be a drier spring than last year and we can stick with our schedule.

It was so nice to just take a leisurely walk with no crazy distractions. We went up and down the hills, did a little schooling by doing figure 8s and serpentines at walk and trot around trees, practice our turns on the forehand (so much better than a year ago!) and just took things easy. The sun was shining and it felt great.









(No, I don't know what my left leg is doing above her shoulder in this picture )


















Saying hello to lovely husband at the end of our ride- and hoping for peppermints!


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## Knave

I do that too sometimes. Often, when I am riding with my husband and my horse starts getting really worried or out of control, he will make these silly stories about what they are saying and all of the fear and tenseness just melts into laughter.

I try and do it for him when situations get tense (not usually a misbehaving horse in those situations), but I don’t think I’m as funny because it doesn’t usually pull him out of his funk.


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## SueC

Now that made my day:










Missed that initially because it was posted on my birthday!


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## egrogan

It's amazing that he looks so tiny in that picture, and it was taken only two weeks ago. They grow so fast!










Practicing his fierce face. :rofl: Those little piranha teeth are mighty sharp!


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## SueC

OMG, cuteness overload! :dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05::dance-smiley05:

:happydance::happydance:

That middle face in the bottom row! :rofl:


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## egrogan

Hugh wants to know: Are you frightened of the viciousness? :rofl:


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## SueC

Show him this: :hide:


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## PoptartShop

You definitely did the right thing. If you aren’t comfortable with staying on, there’s nothing wrong with hopping off, doing some groundwork or just hand walking Fizz & then getting back on when you are comfortable again. Props to you for handling that situation so well despite all those distractions, especially the gunshots! Way to go you and Fizz!  And hopefully your next ride together goes more smoothly, but I say you handled it really well!! We tend to beat ourselves up a lot, no need to be embarrassed, you did fine!

Glad you got to enjoy a nice relaxing ride too, I know that made you feel better and more at ease!!  Really proud of how far you two have come! 

Omg, Hugh is just so cute. That face! Awwww! He is just adorable. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Last week I didn't do much with the horses. I have been having a case of the "lockdown blues" and just not feeling like I have much energy for things beyond work and basic stuff around the house (although all the cooking is fun!). Combine that with cold, blustery weather interspersed with a few days of snow squalls, and I basically just kept them fed and groomed and that's about it.



























Still, the horses didn't seem too concerned about having plenty of free time :wink:









Yesterday, the sun finally came out again and brought warmer temperatures. Horses were feeling good in the sun too :rofl:


















That was the inspiration I needed to get Fizz out to ride.


















After our ride, I let Fizz loose in the yard to mow the "lawn" (aka, still mostly brown, dead grass) a little. Lovely husband brought Hugh out to visit. He was much less intimidated than he had been the first time he got close to the horses a few weeks ago. He still kept a respectful distance, but he was very interested in checking her out.









Thank goodness for adorable puppies during these crazy times though!!


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## SueC

Hiya @egrogan! I hope you're feeling better. Quite a few of my friends have the lockdown blues on and off. I am hoping this comfort food recipe will help inspire you. I made it last week and it was very nice, although I'd probably brown the meatballs first next time around, or perhaps do them separately to the sauce but serve them together - I'm a sucker for a crunchy-crust meatball... I served this up with brown rice, not orzo because I think those are risoni and I don't like risoni, they get mushy really quickly...

https://www.theguardian.com/food/20...rs-recipe-greek-lamb-meatballs-the-simple-fix

Hygienic cyberhug for you! :hug:

Best wishes to you, DH and all your gang!


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## PoptartShop

So glad you finally had some sunshine and got to ride!  I know all that nasty weather wouldn't motivate me to do much either, ugh!

Such cute pictures!  Awww! I'm glad Hugh is slowly getting used to being around the horses too. Glad everyone is doing well! :hug:


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## egrogan

Thanks @*SueC* and @*PoptartShop* . Still feeling a bit down in the dumps. But comfort food definitely helps! It's still so cold and blustery here, we've been doing lots of hearty dishes with grains and tomatoes. The spanish rice recipe @*QtrBel* shared in a Friday night thread has become a real favorite- and so easy! Usually we add some olives, and maybe some black beans if we have them left over from something else. At the beginning of this week, we had the rice with some simple cheese quesadillas on the side- fast and delicious. I've also been making a tomato-barley soup that is amazing, and also supremely easy. It can sit on the stove on low all afternoon, you just keep feeding it water or stock as the barley absorbs the liquid. I made this recipe up and keep making little tweaks, but the basics:
-Sweat a couple of crushed garlic cloves, some thinly sliced shallot, a diced carrot, and a tsp of red pepper flakes in 1-2 tbsp olive oil and/or butter warmed in a dutch oven
-Stir in 1 tbsp of tomato paste and lightly brown
-Deglaze with a glug of white wine or stock
-Lightly toast 1 cup of pearl barley in the dutch oven
-Add 1 can crushed/diced tomatoes, and season with salt/pepper
-Add 2-3 cups water or broth, and throw in a handful of chopped fresh herbs (we still have parsley and basil that's managed to stay alive in a pot on the windowsill all winter, so in it goes)
-Give a good stir, season with salt/pepper again, and keep on a low simmer
-It will probably be ready in 45ish minutes, but if you'd like it to go longer, just keep an eye on it and feed it more liquid as the barley absorbs- can be as thick or thin as you like your soup. Taste periodically, adjust salt/pepper as needed. Probably a good time to add some dashes of your favorite hot sauce.
-Before serving, add some hearty greens (spinach, kale, etc.) to wilt, and parmesan cheese if you like it (I don't, lovely husband does)
-I like it with some crusty garlic bread on the side. But I love carbs :wink:

Yesterday was farrier day, which was convenient for the girls because the middle of the day was a washout with driving rain and high winds. They don't love being up in the barn, but it wasn't a bad day to be in. He was running late, so I gave them all a good brushing and got lots more hair shed out. Fizz is now in her smokey black phase. It's hard to believe the same horse is so golden in the summer!









Unfortunately I found some bumps where it seems she's already had some tick bites this spring :sad: But she greatly enjoyed some good scratches over the bites.









After I had put them back out, I got a call from the vet that something had happened to the blood she took last week to send for Fizz's coggins, so she asked if she could stop by around 5pm on her way to another appointment. By that time, the rain had mostly stopped, so Fizz's reward was a little bit of green grass while we waited. 









Knowing the grass was so tempting, when the vet pulled up, I brought Fizz out into the road so she'd stand still for the blood draw. We had a good laugh at what someone would have thought of the image of the vet's nondescript, windowless white van parked in the middle of the road as she stuck a big needle in Fizz's neck. I guess that's a benefit of living somewhere rural without much traffic! :rofl:

We had a brief respite from the weather in the late afternoon, but the wind was howling all night and the ground was covered with snow again this morning. No one was happy about it- have you ever seen more miserable horses??



















Chickens would not even come out of the barn!









Actually, not _everyone _was grumpy- Hugh thought a snowy walk was a ton of fun. Oh to have that endless puppy energy!


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## Knave

I’m sorry that you have the blues. I seem to hear of a lot of that. Even I was edgy for a bit, and really I am not much effected as far as my day to day goes. The girls are home to work, and I like that. 

I wish I could send you some happiness, so here is a quick try. Meet #4 and a happy goose!


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## egrogan

Love it @*Knave* , thank you. And, does #4 mean Pepper is now tending FOUR babies?!  I love that goose too, not a care in the world.

Here's a shot of Hugh this morning brightening my day. It is beautifully sunny outside but still so cold- the poop was frozen again this morning as temps are well below freezing.


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## Knave

He is so beautiful! 

Yes, she has four now. The mother of the newest just died. I will have to refuse any more babies for her though. I think we are asking much from her now.


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## egrogan

Wow, what a great mom she must be. Do cows like treats? If so, sounds like she deserves a lot of whatever is her favorite!


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## Knave

She does like apple cores. I know many like marshmallows, but I can’t get her to try them. She used to eat those molasses horse treats, but I don’t have any anymore. They are kind of expensive, and I figured Cash was not the type of horse who would benefit from regular treats (although he does get an apple core at lunch usually)...


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## Spanish Rider

Hugh is getting so big! Our kitten just turned one today, and it's always fun to be in lockdown with some live entertainment.

I must admit that I always get a chuckle out of so-called 'Spanish Rice', because in Spain we don't eat it that way. It's either plain white rice with garlic or traditional _paella_. I might have to try that recipe with my family, but I'll call it "Tex-Mex Rice". :wink:


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> I must admit that I always get a chuckle out of so-called 'Spanish Rice', because in Spain we don't eat it that way. It's either plain white rice with garlic or traditional _paella_. I might have to try that recipe with my family, but I'll call it "Tex-Mex Rice". :wink:


Haha, I’m sure! I come from a big Italian American family and we have dishes like that too, that when you go to Italy and say the name of something you’d like, they have no idea what you are talking about.

Whatever you call it though, the rice dish is tasty and would probably be doubly so with your super fresh olive oil and olives! :grin:


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## egrogan

Weather whiplash continues- back to spring yesterday. And a glorious spring day at that. Almost 60*F and not a cloud in the sky. Took Fizz out for our first "loop" ride, which I was really looking forward to since she's been getting silly when we turn for home on out-and-back rides.

We headed down the hill of despair, and immediately encountered some obstacles. The hill of despair is a really narrow dirt road- it's not technically one lane, but two pickups wouldn't be able to pass each other going different directions. As we headed down the road, I saw a really big pickup pulled over to the side. I figured they were parked and out hunting since it was youth turkey weekend (yes, let's go ahead with putting guns in the hands of children when we're begging everyone to stay home and not risk injury :icon_rolleyes but when we were about 10 feet from the truck, suddenly the guy in it started up and continued driving, nearly scraping us into the ditch  What in the world man?! Fizz was fine though. Right after that, we noticed our Connecticut neighbors were up at their cabin and out in the yard working. There was a toddler in diapers and a little yippy dog running around. To their credit, both the kid and the dog came right away when the dad called them, so we stopped to talk for a minute and let the little kid look at Fizz. She got started up right away and we continued on. It seems like a little thing, but it's the first time since last fall that I stayed in the saddle all the way down the hill of despair and didn't have to get off to walk because of her sticky feet. I was proud of her.

We passed Mitchell's field and headed towards the pirate dogs. Happily, there was _no one _out in their yard, so I snapped a quick picture of it. I was cracking up though- the pirate dogs and their children have actually acquired *a real boat* for their yard pond! Original pirate dog pool boat on the left, new boat on the right. 









Fizz was rightfully suspicious.








mg:

From there, we crossed the paved road, and were immediately chased by a _different _dog. I am so irritated at how little control people have over their dogs. This one was an obese, drooling black lab that was literally breathing down Fizz's heels while the owner pathetically called its name from across the yard. Which of course did nothing. To her credit, Fizz was good. She didn't jump around or do anything stupid, she just froze. I wish she would have kicked back, she would have nailed it. Still, I jumped off and walked a little way before finding a good tree stump to get back on from.

We passed the old stone church, and I walked the distance of the paved road connecting back to our street because there was actually quite a bit of traffic.









When we got back on our road, we were passed by a dirt bike rider, but Fizz doesn't bat an eye at that stuff. 









I do feel very lucky that she's calm and brave about all the scary stuff that could end badly if she freaked out. The worst habit she has is when she drops her shoulder and tries spin for home when she feels we've gone far enough. She did do that once yesterday, and I really do hate it. But we managed to ride through it.

By the time we got home, she was absolutely _exhausted_. :rofl: We went about 4 miles, so not sure that justified the dramatic faces.









When the vet was here for spring check-ups, she did let me know Fizz has some sharp points on her teeth and needs to be floated. But, vet isn't doing any floats at personal barns, only at her clinic, because of the social distancing rules. Since I still don't have a trailer, I can't get her to the clinic, so we have to wait. Yesterday Fizzy was flipping her nose around a lot when I had any contact, so I know she's not comfortable. I ordered her a sidepull this morning and we'll see how she does with that. I did a little experiment yesterday and attached a second set of reins to the loops under the chin of her halter, and rode off those reins a few times to see what she would do. Obviously that's not a great experiment since it's a strange pressure point to be sharing any meaningful info through the reins, but she definitely paid attention and I got a lot of ears flipping back and forth trying to figure out what I was asking. It will be interesting to see how she responds to the sidepull.

Oh- we're supposed to get 5 inches of snow between this afternoon and tomorrow. Fingers crossed it doesn't happen! Hoping for a quick ride this morning before that starts.


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## Dragoon

Haha, that last picture begs to become an internet meme! 

Such as 'What your horse REALLY thinks of your new deodorant!'

Glad to hear of your progress! All your love and care is paying off with well adjusted horses! Good rides! I'm sooo jealous!


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## egrogan

haha @*Dragoon* , good thing our horses can't tell us what they REALLY think of us!

The rain/sleet/snow has surprisingly held off, so I did get a ride this morning. When I went out to tack up, Fizz was doing her best sleeping beauty impression, and guilted me in to letting her doze. 









Maggie and Izzy both really needed a good grooming as they're all still shedding, so I spent the better part of an hour getting them brushed out so I could put blankets on before the storm. By then, Fizz was ready for her turn, so she got groomed and tacked and we headed off on a quick ride to the overlook.

We trotted the better part of the uphills on the way out, except for the places where the town had "improved" the road with big, sharp stones. I felt badly that I only had her front boots on. I didn't realize the road would be as rough as it was. Boots all around next time out.









We admired the overlook and then turned around. She did a perfect turn on the forehand, standing quietly and waiting for the cue with each quarter turn (sounds small, but a huge accomplishment given she often wants to blow through each part of it, especially if she knows we're going home). She had been moving along very relaxed all the way out, but the last few rides when we turn around to come back she gets all high headed and jiggy. But it was a pleasant surprise that even pointing for home, she kept a steady, relaxed pace. Very rare that I can ride her on the buckle the entire mile home, but I did today :grin: 









The weather is turning now and it's supposed to be cold and raw all week with lots of precipitation, so not sure we'll be able to ride again until next weekend. But we're definitely ending this weekend on a positive note!


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## Spanish Rider

> the rice dish is tasty and would probably be doubly so with your super fresh olive oil and olives!


My olive trees are covered in mini-blooms right now, so we might actually have a good harvest this year! We're getting huge almonds, too (did I just jinx myself?).

I hear you about dogs. My lab is well-trained at home, but take her out for a walk and she is off like a shot at anything that moves and simply will NOT come back. She only goes after small prey, though, and pays no attention to horses, bikers, other dogs or people, wso we let her go loose. The rabbit and grouse, though, are surely peeved.

I have to say that I have always really liked that stone colonial in your pic. I remember seeing it before.


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## egrogan

Spanish Rider said:


> My olive trees are covered in mini-blooms right now, so we might actually have a good harvest this year! We're getting huge almonds, too (did I just jinx myself?).
> 
> I hear you about dogs. My lab is well-trained at home, but take her out for a walk and she is off like a shot at anything that moves and simply will NOT come back. She only goes after small prey, though, and pays no attention to horses, bikers, other dogs or people, wso we let her go loose. The rabbit and grouse, though, are surely peeved.
> 
> I have to say that I have always really liked that stone colonial in your pic. I remember seeing it before.


 @Spanish Rider- I have never had fresh olives or almonds. That must be amazing! (Or wait, do olives need to cure first? :think

The stone building is an old church that is now the town food bank. This is my favorite picture I have of it from last fall:









It's a very different day outside today. SO.MUCH.SNOW. Izzy was feeling snorty and silly this morning while I got their breakfast ready.




Maggie was not as impressed.









But count on Hugh to enjoy the day, regardless of the circumstances...


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## bsms

Here in Arizona, we skipped spring. Went from traditional winter weather to...99 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday! I actually LIKE 90-100 degree weather, but could have used more than a couple of weeks of transition. Current forecast is to break 100 on Wednesday. Average highs this time of year run 85.

Part of me wants to move north. Part of me HATES snow. In any case, as my oldest daughter's divorce is panning out, we probably will need to be here for a few more years to help with watching kids. Single parenting is tough and childcare is incredibly expensive. And in truth, we've been having a hard time finding something better than what we have....

Still, SNOW at the end of April? Reminds me of a trip to Bozeman Montana where it snowed on the 4th of July.


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## Avna

@egrogan As a former Californian I will firmly tell you that YES olives MUST be cured. No such thing as eating a delicious fresh olive. Almonds are fine off the tree although I prefer them lightly roasted myself. 
@bsms if you hate snow, don't move to New England! Obviously. Anyway you could get plenty of snow without leaving Arizona -- I got snowed on in August in Flag once.


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## egrogan

I like the snow, much more than steamy humid summers. I haven't spent much time in your part of the world @bsms, but even though everyone told me I'd do better with the "dry heat" you have, I still nearly passed out from a simple walk around the botanical gardens when it was 100+. I'm much more acclimated to the cold and snow than the heat. But with it being nearly April, I'm ready to move on!


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## Avna

The great advantage of dry heat is that you can easily get cool simply by getting wet. On hot hikes I used soak a bandanna in a creek and put it inside my hat. 

The great disadvantage of dry heat is that nothing grows without water. 

I opted for green summer pastures and snow. The summers are quite nice in New England if the deerflies aren't too oppressive. Right now it is cold enough that even the spring blackflies aren't real bad yet. 

By the way it is nearly May, not nearly April!


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## Knave

It has been warm this week here. I think it might be here to stay. 

I was so mad for you when I read about the guy pushing you off the road! What a jerk!! Why would he do that? I know I can’t swear on here, but I’m certainly thinking it.

It sounds like Fizz has been amazing. I think this is going to be a spectacular summer for you, once it hits of course...


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> By the way it is nearly May, not nearly April!



I blame the covid time warp


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I was so mad for you when I read about the guy pushing you off the road! What a jerk!! Why would he do that? I know I can’t swear on here, but I’m certainly thinking it.
> 
> It sounds like Fizz has been amazing. I think this is going to be a spectacular summer for you, once it hits of course...


Yeah, I really don't know what was going on with that guy. I'm grateful that 99% of drivers here are very horse savvy and horse friendly. Every now and then you get one like that guy.

And thanks, Fizz is really a great partner. I'm looking forward to getting into a more consistent rhythm with rides, once the weather cooperates. It will also be fun to do more riding with my friend M and Coalie too.


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## Knave

That will be fun! I am jealous of all the people who have a friend to just ride with. I know I ride all the time with people for work, or with the family training horses in the arena, but I imagine it is so much fun to just ride for fun with someone! 

I guess husband and I play at random fun days... the other day we rode Cash and Lucy into the shop. We mess around occasionally. It is rare the trail ride type thing we do though. Hunting season felt kind of like that, but again there was an objective. 

We did start the tradition of going on a Mother’s Day ride, and it is just for fun. Husband and I went camping for our 10th and 15th anniversary too. It was so much fun! I can imagine doing it with a buddy more often.


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## Avna

Knave said:


> It has been warm this week here. I think it might be here to stay.
> 
> I was so mad for you when I read about the guy pushing you off the road! What a jerk!! Why would he do that? I know I can’t swear on here, but I’m certainly thinking it.
> 
> It sounds like Fizz has been amazing. I think this is going to be a spectacular summer for you, once it hits of course...


I've been pushed off the road too. One time it nearly killed the both of us as we fell off a cliff and if we had gone over in a very slightly different place we'd have gone all the way to the bottom, a thousand feet or so. Brooke was wary about cars passing before that, but she became a nervous wreck after it -- only noisy trucks though. I can't say I blame her but she isn't safe around trucks. Unless they're hauling horse trailers. Then she's like oooh, who's in there??


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## Knave

I only “like” it because you survived @Avna. That is terrible!! I really don’t know how I would react to such a situation. I guess hopefully survive first of all...

Well, Egrogan, you motivated me. I took the girls out today and said we were just going to ride for fun out on an adventure. It was fun, although I’m sure still not quite the whole friend experience. We were chased by an antelope, saw another herd, and picked up a few horny toads. I think we’ll do more of that.


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## PoptartShop

So glad to see Fizz has been doing well!  All of your girls are so cute, and Hugh is so photogenic. Darn! I was hoping you wouldn't have any more snow! :sad: Haha, Izzy sure doesn't seem to mind it though! SO cute.

What a jerk (if I'm being nice) that guy was...so sorry you had to deal with that. Ugh!  People these days. No respect!


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## egrogan

@Avna, that's really scary!

@Knave, sounds so fun. I don't know if the girls are old enough or allowed to have cell phones, but they might have fun installing one of the free mile tracking apps and using that on your fun rides. Things like Endomondo or Equilab track distance, speed, etc. Even without that, just being out and doing something different together sounds great. Wish I could join you all (though not sure I could keep up :wink


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## Knave

I wish you could too! I actually have Equilab! We went 11 miles for that ride. I like tracking my rides for whatever reason. This girl I know told me about it, and I was obsessed.

ETA: You could totally keep up!


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## egrogan

I took Friday off from work last week to have more time for stuff around the house, since we've got a million and one projects going. Our contractors decided they were comfortable coming back to work on the kitchen, starting today, so we finished moving everything out of the "old" kitchen and into the "new" kitchen. Goodbye and good riddance to the old kitchen!









It is so nice to be using the new space! Here's the first thing we baked in the new oven- a very delicious pizza. We are on our last canister of flour, which is slightly disconcerting since we bought a 25 lb bag at the beginning of the lock-down. We've been baking so much!










Friday afternoon I got all the horses brushed up- still in various states of shedding- and decided to take Izzy out for a handwalk. I was expecting some fireworks, since she hasn't been out alone in months, but I did some of the "yes horse" games from last year's clinic, and she actually really enjoyed being out. At some point this summer she's going to have to get trailered to the vet clinic to have another tooth problem addressed, so she's going to need some frequent practice leaving her buddies. 










Our Friday night ended up being unexpectedly quite eventful.Quoting from what I wrote on the Friday night thread:
At about 3am, I happened to get up to go to the bathroom, and in my groggy state looked out the window towards the horse pasture, as I always do. I couldn't quite process what I was seeing, which was very bright lights plus an orange glowing object heading through the pasture towards the house. That sight shook me awake, and my brain was able to process that it wasn't just a car on the road- unusual, but not impossible- but instead, two people with headlamps and a dog in a very brightly lit harness. That made me really irritated, as my first thought was that it was some random vacation house people here for the weekend trying to catch a loose dog- in my pasture. 

I flipped the outside house lights on, but the people continued standing in the front yard, headlamps sweeping around as though they were looking for something. The dog appeared to be with them, so I couldn't figure out if they were missing another dog or something else. Then I got a pit in my stomach thinking the dog had pushed the horses through the fence and they were loose. 

At that point, I woke up lovely husband and we headed out to see what was happening. The people spoke to us first. They explained they were a K9 search-and-rescue team. An elderly woman from the next street over had gone missing around dinner time, and was still missing. We felt just awful to hear that. Though we don't know the woman, where we live is pretty desolate, and I sure wouldn't want to be out in the woods alone, let alone have a parent or grandparent out there. Last night was the first one in quite awhile that it was above freezing, but we had heavy rain showers around dusk, and it was in the lower 40*F/4*C, so not exactly balmy. For the next hour and a half, we saw their headlamps circling the fields and up in the woods, so not sure what their dog was picking up. But, it was reasonable to think she could have ended up this way as our woods extend for a couple of miles through the woods to back up to her street. She has dementia and had been walking with her dog in the woods- no one had seen the dog or her, so they suspected they were still together.

She was missing until 11am on Saturday morning- search and rescue found her in the woods down the road from (right by the pirate dog house). She was ok, and the dog had stayed with her. Last I heard, they took her to the local hospital for observation but she didn't seem to have physical injuries. 

I was so impressed and thankful with the number of search and rescue volunteers from towns all over the region who showed up to help. Throughout the morning, several teams stopped by our house and worked across the woods and fields, methodically combing a grid that had been mapped out. I'm grateful their work paid off and resulted in a happy ending.

Sunday I had my first ride with M and Coalie, which was so much fun. It was a beautiful, WARM morning, the perfect day for a ride. Fizz is solidly in her "black beauty" phase of shedding out- it's so hard to believe she can have a coat this color now, yet be so golden at other times of year.









We headed out to the overlook and down the steep hill. A very Vermont sight...despite the beautiful, sunny spring day, if you look in the back right corner of this picture you'll see the ski trails of the closest ski mountain are still covered in snow!

















As has been the case lately, Fizz was really great on the way out, but when we turned down a logging road to see if it connected to a trail we've been looking for, she freaked out deciding we should be heading home instead of continuing on. She got all tense and coiled up, with even M worried she was getting ready to bolt. I got off and walked her a little way, trying to stay behind Coalie to stop her from wanting to race over me. She calmed down enough for me to get back on, but was still jigging along. M said Coalie really didn't want to be anywhere near her with the vibe she was giving off. I had to laugh when I looked back at him and saw him visibly giving her the side eye as if to say, "what's _your _problem??" But we climbed the big hill back up the overlook, and then switch flipped. Suddenly she exhaled, her neck relaxed, and we were walking along calmly again. And it wasn't just me that felt it- at almost that exact moment, Coalie was again willing to walk right up next to her and carry on like nothing happened. M said the change in him was just as obvious as the change in Fizz. 

The rest of the ride home was quiet. We were passed three times along the way by a guy towing big, rattly machinery- a bulldozer and a couple of other pieces of construction equipment. Fizz didn't care about any of that. Also passed by a couple of bikers- no big deal. It's just something about the turning for home that makes her lose her marbles! I'm sure it will just take time to get over it- and admittedly, with ridden so inconsistently so far this year I really can't get too upset with her. But I just hate that out-of-control feeling I get when she acts that way. I was glad to have M along with me and asked her to be honest about what she saw and if there was something I was doing to make the situation worse, or create it in the first place. She said she really didn't see anything that she'd do differently, except maybe try using more circles or back tracking if it was possible to do that without getting Fizz even more spun up. So I think it's just going to be more miles, more miles, more miles until we are back in a rhythm. If anyone else has thoughts or suggestions though, I'm more than open to them!

Fortunately even though we're having these tense moments in the middle of the ride, they're still ending nicely. I rode the last stretch on the way home with my feet out of the stirrups chatting with M, and it was no big deal. That seems like a good thing.


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## egrogan

The old kitchen has been removed! Woohoo! I can't begin to describe the SMELL from getting all the old stuff out of there-the source of which turns out to be layers of drywall covered in disgusting black mold 









An amusing find, behind a set of cabinets was yet another style of wallpaper- but if this one had been located elsewhere, I might have been tempted to keep it, because...PONIES!


















My ponies are just trying to stay attached to the ground with the crazy wind that's been blowing steadily the past couple of days!


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## egrogan

Was able to fit in a lunchtime ride yesterday, which is good because this afternoon it's supposed to start SNOWING again and be miserable tomorrow, so probably no riding this weekend :icon_rolleyes:


I set out with the intention of a training ride to work on the jigging/racing towards home, and I'm happy to say for once it went according to plan. I went out towards my neighbor S's house, knowing there is a lot of flat, wide road between here and there where it would be safe to do lots of turning for home and then turning back away from home to work on our issues. Sure enough, we'd stop periodically to turn for home, and she'd fling her head up and want to race along, so then I'd just sit back and turn her back away from home, even if it meant she was trotting sideways trying to yank her shoulder back around in the home direction. I broke this up with plenty of chances to straighten out and move out at a good trot (away from home of course :wink and didn't actually go home until she could walk calmly when pointed that direction. All in all, I'd say it was a success.








More silly faces at the end of the ride








At one point, a hiker emerged from the woods and was creeping quietly towards us until we were close enough that I yelled out to ask her to say something so it was clear she was a human. She seemed relieved and said she had been trying to be as quiet as possible so she didn't scare the horse. It's nice that people want to do the right thing, but I don't know how we do more education to the general public so people know what to do if they see a horse on a road or trail. On that note, my friend/trainer M got in a horrible wreck earlier this week because of an idea dirt bike rider. She was out on a green horse doing a short trail ride with a couple of other people on steady eddies, and the horse she was riding had been doing awesome. A dirt biker going way to fast came up behind them but did stop to talk- she explained the green horse situation and asked him to slow down and go more quietly (apparently the bike was really loud and he kept revving it up). They parted ways and awhile later saw him again, and he was going even faster this time, not heeding her request to walk the bike if they met up again. Instead he flew past them, her horse bolted, and she rode it out until the horse was about to go over a bank so bailed off. She ended up with two broken ribs and a collapsed lung :sad: Through a series of FB posts explaining what had happened, many other neighbors reported they had also had serious problems with this guy- whether they were walking, biking, or just playing with their kids in a yard that backed up to the trail. Last night, apparently he saw the FB post because it had been forwarded around so much, and he actually turned himself in (state police had been involved). Now we just hope she heals quickly.


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## phantomhorse13

Wow - so very sorry to hear about M!! Is her horse ok? She is in for a long recovery with those injuries. I hope that [email protected]@ss gets the book thrown at him, as he obviously doesn't care about anybody but himself. A shame some locals didn't find him first to make sure he fell down a lot of times between his house and the police station..  :x :angrily_smileys:

Super pleased that your ride with Fizz went so well. Reading about it reminds me of the stuff I had to do with Sultan. It was frustrating but it did work, so just stick with it.

Hope momma nature gives you a break with the snow. It's MAY for crying out loud!!


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## egrogan

@*phantomhorse13* , I think the horse M was riding (this is a different M than my riding buddy M by the way; this M is the trainer who hosted the clinic Fizz and I went to last year :wink is fine despite the scary incident. M is a bit of a superwoman and actually rode back to the barn after she got up, thinking she had just knocked the wind out of herself, and then back at the barn had her husband ride with them on his mountain bike just to make sure the mare had a good experience. She's a green 5 year old Morgan in for training with the ultimate goal of being a trail horse, so she'll see bikes and motorcycles again. M has had another person ride the mare a couple of times and it sounds like she's now wanting to bolt when she's asked to canter (the gait she was in when she got so scared), so that's unfortunate as she had just gotten going under saddle and was quiet in all gaits. So that will take some work to build confidence again. Just a sh**ty situation all around.

Yesterday the sidepull I ordered arrived. I asked for feedback about fit on the trailriding thread, but I'll post the pictures here too. I've never used a sidepull before so I am not quite sure if the fit is right. I was told to be careful it wouldn't twist and send the cheekpieces or hardware into her eyes, and I don't think that's a concern. It just seems like the noseband piece sits a little high. What do you all think?

























I went out on a short test ride in it yesterday to see how she'd do, and I didn't really notice her acting any different than normal. Particularly when I switched my mental soundtrack from thinking "we are riding in a sidepull" to "we are riding," then I stopped worrying about her getting the idea she could go tanking off on me. All steering and brakes were intact, and we went through upward/downward transitions at all gaits. She was definitely thinking through the funny new feeling and I kept getting lots of ears flicking back and forth to make sure she understand what we were doing. We headed out to the beaver pond and looped around the field to admire the view. It won't be too long before this field is all overgrown again- it gets filled up with *****er bushes and thick, reedy scrub brush, so you can't really walk through it easily, definitely not without getting your legs all scratched up. It's pretty when you can get back to the pond though!









Used these little baby Christmas trees as "cones" to do some figure 8s and serpentines, and that all went normally in terms of steering, so she seems to get it.









My only worry is what happens if and when we're part of the way through a ride and she decides f* this, we're heading home. I guess the reality is I'd just do the same stuff I'd do anyway, which does not generally involve tearing her mouth apart with a bit :wink: I think we'll give it a go for a couple of rides and see what happens with it. Still no word on when we can get her teeth done, but am hoping it will be sooner rather than later!

As predicted, we did get snow last night. Booooo. Got the sled back out for bringing stuff down from the barn. I think Hugh is always going to be a winter baby and love snow. We just came in from a long romp through the woods, and he had a blast. At least one of us had fun!









No riding today, winds are howling outside and blowing snow everywhere. Temps are below freezing but wind chills are brutal. It's MAY for goodness sake! Tomorrow should be better, so maybe we'll meet up with the other M and Coalie. But today is definitely going to be an indoor work day. The old kitchen is completely gutted, and the nasty old bathroom that was next to it is also torn out. It will become a pantry. I just love seeing this house from the inside out- a lot of the old posts still have bark on them, and the accordion lathe is in every room in this old part of the house. I almost hate to put drywall back up. I wish there was a way to preserve this, like you could if you had a stone house. Oh well, we'll have lots of pictures, maybe we'll put them up somewhere once we put things back together.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> On that note, my friend/trainer M got in a horrible wreck earlier this week because of an idea dirt bike rider. She was out on a green horse doing a short trail ride with a couple of other people on steady eddies, and the horse she was riding had been doing awesome. A dirt biker going way to fast came up behind them but did stop to talk- she explained the green horse situation and asked him to slow down and go more quietly (apparently the bike was really loud and he kept revving it up). They parted ways and awhile later saw him again, and he was going even faster this time, not heeding her request to walk the bike if they met up again. Instead he flew past them, her horse bolted, and she rode it out until the horse was about to go over a bank so bailed off. She ended up with two broken ribs and a collapsed lung :sad: Through a series of FB posts explaining what had happened, many other neighbors reported they had also had serious problems with this guy- whether they were walking, biking, or just playing with their kids in a yard that backed up to the trail. Last night, apparently he saw the FB post because it had been forwarded around so much, and he actually turned himself in (state police had been involved). Now we just hope she heals quickly.


I can't understand the mentality of people like that - they seem not just oblivious to other people's welfare, but to enjoy annoying and endangering others. I've got to tell you, if I were making the rules I'd be blanket banning _all_ motorised non-service vehicles from outdoor tracks so that hikers, dogs, horses and riders, and wildlife stay safe. Dirt bike enthusiasts could ride on private property (pending potential to annoy neighbours with their noise and on their veto) or dirtbike facilities, but not all over the countryside, and have the option of changing to mountain bikes and BMXs if they wanted to ride on recreational trails, thereby reducing danger, noise, fossil fuel consumption, accidents and bullying, and actually doing something for their own health and fitness - and it's so much harder to chase and intimidate others when you're having to pedal to do it.

When I had Sunsmart agisted in town in 2009, dirt bike riders like that were a constant source of worry for all the horse riders even using the specialised bridle trails on which these bikes were banned, but they would use them anyway. Nowhere was safe and a whole bunch of idiots was out there, not just riding how they pleased in disregard to other people's safety, but actively seeking out riders in order to spook their horses. I had many near misses - I was just saddle training Sunsmart and he was terrified of these noisy monsters (and they actually _are_ noisy monsters - noisy and full of malice) - and an acquaintance with a pretty experienced Percheron mare got pushed through a barbed wire fence by these idiots and both had shocking injuries, but they never caught that rider and he and his horrible ilk continued to terrorise the neighbourhood. When these situations happen, people need to blanket ban these sorts of activities - and the "responsible riders" need to wear it, because it's such a problem and because the right of everyone else to enjoy these facilities without constant anxiety, and terror and injury, is more important than the right of one group of people to enjoy one particular type of recreation that even with "responsible use" is noisy and smelly and curtails everyone else's right to enjoy peace and quiet in nature - not least of all the wildlife - and I've read studies on what this kind of motorised noise does to bird breeding in adjacent areas...

Loved your wallpaper discovery - could that have been a children's room once? It must be so good to get rid of the mouldy walls at last - and I can't imagine how long you were scrubbing that old kitchen before you could even use it when you moved in, and I well remember your battle with mice and their droppings - yechhh! :neutral:

Happy baking and cooking! We were so glad when we finally installed a kitchen in our house build. Ours was second-hand from auction but scrubbed up well!


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## Knave

I don’t have a desire to blanket ban those things. We actually use them for work sometimes @SueC. That said though, I have never experienced such a thing! Not ever!

I heard that someone spooked someone’s horse intentionally because of an argument (court was involved and everything), and he got off his horse and beat the guy up. Most of us carry ropes. Many horses will tolerate a motorcycle here, so if someone was that terrible they might get roped and they might get pretty hurt. Everyone knows everyone too, so they might see it later if someone did get hurt.... 

Maybe it is that everyone knows everyone that makes me not see actions like that. Hmm


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## gottatrot

Sorry about M. How terrible.

The sidepull is very lovely and looks like it fits well. I had one that was too loose in the noseband so if you pulled back on the reins it would move up into the horse's eyes. Another one I tried would slide into the opposite eye if you pulled on one rein.
You want the noseband a little higher than a bridle, so it sits on top of the nasal bone rather than on soft tissue. Similar to a halter. You don't need it all the way up by the cheeks though, because again that makes it too wide and less stable. So I think yours looks great.

If you practice having your horse turn easily even in smaller circles in the sidepull at the walk and trot, then you can always just do a turn or small circle even if your stop gets a little iffy when the horse gets excited. Like you said, just like you'd do in a snaffle. If she turns just as well in a sidepull, you've got it made.


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## egrogan

I'd prefer that we don't allow those motorized bikes on trails here, since there are miles and miles of dirt roads that could still be fun riding for people who like that stuff. But I think they are allowed in most places. @*Knave* , I think you're right that when there's local accountability and respect for horses, maybe it can work. My experience- and I am totally stereotyping here, so apologies- is that the kind of young guys that ride those tricked out motorbikes tend to be less respectful and understanding of other trail users than people who ride mountain bikes or road bikes. ATV riders are a mixed bag- the guys from the snowmobile club who ride ATVs on the snowmobile trails in the summer are great trail partners and most will pull over or even completely cut the engines if you pass them on horses. I've been heartened to see them teaching their young kids that when we pass them out in the woods. The ATV riders who are vacationers from out of stay who come here to get drunk and "play" don't have a clue about what they're doing and I'm scared to encounter them even in my car on the road. Even motorcyclists around here tend to be older folks who like to ride to see the scenery, and slow down near horses. Last year Fizz and I passed some sort of classic motorcycle rally where there were easily 50 riders in a row, but they slowed way down and kept their engines quiet. As long as everyone is aware of each other and trying to make it work, I have no issues with that. Clearly, the guy who messed around with M was not interested in sharing the trail. 

**********
Took Fizz out in the sidepull for a long ride yesterday. @*phantomhorse13* pointed out that it is sitting a little high so that the ring on the side is pressing up on her cheekbone. I sent an email to the company that made it to ask if it might be possible to make any adjustments, since I'm out of holes to lower it. Fizz didn't seem to be really bothered by how it's sitting and is steering and stopping nicely. It was really blustery yesterday, with the wind howling through the trees, and she rode along nice and relaxed walk/trot, up and down the hills, so that's encouraging. You can't really tell in the pictures, but it was actually SNOWING as we climbed the hill to the overlook! 









Weirdly though, there was no snow once we got up there









Let her graze around for a minute when we got home- weird to see such green grass in between snow piles!


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## egrogan

@*SueC* , your kitchen looks so warm and inviting to cook in. I bet that's a big hangout spot. Is your AirBnB business still allowed to continue right now with the pandemic? Here all of that has been suspended until mid-June at the earliest. 

That particular wallpaper was a strange find- it looked nearly brand new, like they put it up and then immediately put a bunch of cabinets over it instead. I'm pretty sure that room has always been a kitchen given where it's located in the house, but it's sort of hard to tell with these old places that have been reconfigured and added on to over time.

I made another interesting find yesterday. Ever since we've moved in, I've been intrigued by a spot on some of the old property maps that's simply labeled "cellar hole." It's about 1/4 mile away from the house, down the road behind the horses' pasture. From the map, it's set back a little bit off the road, but not too far. Usually, that spot is overgrown with thorny underbrush and other wild growth, but yesterday while I was out walking Hugh, I realized it was actually fairly easy to walk back in there since it's not overgrown yet. So we went looking around, and sure enough, you can see the remnants of an old stone foundation with something like looks like a well- too deep to see the bottom. I was scared to walk too close to it with the puppy bouncing around, since I'm not sure how solid the ground around it is at this point, but it's intriguing. I found some old rusted out tin bowls or pots around it, and I'm so curious to see if there's anything (besides wild animals!) still actually down in the hole. If I had to pick my career all over again, I think I would have loved being an archeologist :wink:


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Fizz didn't seem to be really bothered by how it's sitting and is steering and stopping nicely. It was really blustery yesterday, with the wind howling through the trees, and she rode along nice and relaxed walk/trot, up and down the hills, so that's encouraging.


Sounds like Fizz likes it, so a win!


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## QueenofFrance08

LOVE the new sidepull! Super cute color!

As I can probably attest I've been able to stop some pretty excited to go (go home, go chase the horse in front of them, go run to the grass patch...) horses with side pulls/ S hacks so I wouldn't let that get to you!


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## egrogan

Last week got pretty hectic so I'm a bit behind here. But, lots of odds and ends as updates. Lovely husband and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary last week, so we took Friday off from work and had a little pandemic-appropriate celebration. We got delicious Mexican food as take out for lunch, some fun beers from a local brewery, and had a little picnic in a local park. It was so relaxing to take a long weekend since work has been really busy, but especially so for lovely husband since he manages a big federal economic development program and is working 10 hour days at least 6 days a week figuring out how to ensure grants are being made appropriately.

Spring came on almost over night. One day there was snow, the next day everything was emerald green. So I was able to get Fizz out 3 out of the last 4 days, which has been great. 










Last Thursday we went past the mini donkeys for the first time, and I was so proud of her for riding right past them. Last year she'd plant her feet and get completely freaked out by them and I wouldn't be able to get her past without getting off and working our way by them. But she did great!

















We did get chased by the stupid pirate dogs again, but this time I was so irritated with them I turned Fizz around and we chased them home. That was satisfying :wink:

Saturday I was intending a long ride but we were barely 1/2 mile from home before we were overtaken with swarming bugs. Poor Fizz was tossing her head all around trying to get some relief, so that wasn't particularly fun. We went up to the overlook at back, which is a ride that's mostly lined with swampy woods, so there was really no escaping them. I really wanted to go a little farther than that, so when we were heading towards home we turned off away from the house and went out a different way where the bugs weren't nearly as bad, and took in some beautiful views of the local mountain, Mt. Ascutney. 










As soon as I got Fizz put up, I ran over to the local tack shop to get a riding fly mask for her, as the bugs are going to be with us for awhile and I hate to see her so miserable.

Sunday we went for a long ride with M and Coalie- 7 miles, our longest so far this year. Fizz was MUCH happier with the fly mask on, rocking the Darth Vader look :rofl:









Our ride took us through cow country, and just like with the donkeys, Fizz looked a little but she kept going right along without stopping. We also passed a free ranging flock of chickens and guinea hens, loose dogs, ATVs, and the mini donks again. She and Coalie pace really well together when trotting, so we let them trot along where the footing allowed (the roads have just been "fixed" with lots of really big, sharp gravel so in some places it is hard to do much but hug the ditch and let them walk where they're comfortable). 









We checked out one of the woods trails and it wasn't quite as wet as we expected, but a connector trail we considered was deep mud so we turned back to the road. I think we're a couple of weeks away from being able to spend much time in the woods, it's just still too wet.









Even though Fizz is quicker than Coalie while walking, all the work we've done on backtracking away from home has helped, as we were able to circle back away and go behind him when she was getting too far ahead of him. It's nice to have company while riding to work on stuff like that. 









I ended up sending her sidepull back to exchange it for one size up. I sent a bunch of pictures to the people who made it, and they agreed it was sitting a little too high on her face and she'd be more comfortable with a little more room. Hopefully the new one comes quickly, but she seems ok in the bit for now.

As far as the other two, I got bloodwork results back for Maggie and Izzy. Both were Cushings negative, which is great news. Unfortunately, Maggie's insulin levels came back high and put her in the IR range. I suppose it's not really surprising, but it's disappointing. So I'm working out a manageable exercise strategy for her, and the grazing muzzle went on yesterday. Vet has had some success with a relatively new product called Insulin Wise, so we have that ordered and will add to her diet. *Knock on wood* her feet are cool and comfortable but I am keeping an eye on that every day. 










It was great to have a warm spring weekend, but I had to laugh at myself as I was reaffirmed in my belief that I am built for cold, snowy weather. After just one spring weekend, I already have sunburn on my face and am covered with bug bites from the awful blackflies- my right ear lobe is swollen twice its normal size because of a bite, and two of my fingers look like sausages from getting bites in the joints. Oh, the joys of warm weather :grin:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @*SueC* , your kitchen looks so warm and inviting to cook in. I bet that's a big hangout spot. Is your AirBnB business still allowed to continue right now with the pandemic? Here all of that has been suspended until mid-June at the earliest.


The kitchen is a hangout spot indeed.  It's like the heart of our house. 

WA has no documented community transmission (lots of testing though) and everything started again slowly yesterday. I've changed my rules so that only one of the two rooms can be booked at a time (unless it's a group of friends wanting both rooms), so that people won't have to share bathrooms with strangers during the pandemic. There's no requirement for this, but it feels better like this to me, plus it means I'm not obliged to clean those areas until people have checked out (which is the usual procedure - people are responsible for the cleanliness of their own facilities once they're in them - I only have to hand them over clean to each new batch of people).

So we've got two bookings coming up for a night each, people from the state capital wanting to get away now that the regional travel locking has been lifted - before, people weren't allowed out of their regions. ...the state borders are all still closed.

It gets made absolutely clear to people who want to stay here that they can't stay if they (or we) have respiratory symptoms on the day - as we're a family home - and Airbnb supports cancellations on either side related to COVID-19... I hope people will be sensible, because I'd hate to have to stand in my doorway and say a sniffly coughing person can't come in, but that is exactly what I would have to do. So we will see how that goes. I've taken those two bookings as an experiment; they are guests with great reviews regarding how they treat others and the spaces they stay in. But, I'm even less interested now in taking unreviewed people - unreviewed people, and particularly unreviewed locals, are the only people I've ever had trouble with, in my farmstay. So I decline those, unless their request note makes a particularly good impression. Airbnb doesn't generally encourage us to do this, but it's our home, and at the end of the day the decision does rest with us. I think they start asking questions if you turn more than 1 in 10 away normally, but this is not a normal situation. Anyway, I've only turned one request down since enquiries started coming in again; they were going to turn up on our hiking day and since we missed out last weekend, we weren't staying home this weekend as well... plus we may have people over that night...

If the experiment doesn't go well, I'm suspending our farmstay. It can't be more hassle than it's worth, and I've got plenty of things to do on the farm...

And Happy Anniversary to you both! inkunicorn::blueunicorn:

We had our 12th in February.


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## egrogan

We're all sun drunk from our spring Vitamin D infusion over here! I can't get enough time outside with the sun and warm breezes. Took a lunchtime ride with Fizz yesterday. Down the hill of despair, past the pirate dogs, past the mini donks and looped across the paved road back home. Bugs were still really irritating, unfortunately.










When we were in the homestretch, Fizz again proved her trail horse street cred. She locked on to something walking towards us from the opposite direction, but without my glasses on I couldn't quite tell what was coming our way. It looked like it might be someone on a horse, because the head was tall, but the legs weren't really moving in a way that looked horsey. We were still aways away, but I heard a man's voice call out to us- weird, because there really aren't many men who ride around here- and I called back to say it was ok to keep coming towards us. Finally we got close enough to see, and it was a tall man with a toddler up on his shoulders, out for a walk. I joked that Fizz had never seen a two-headed human before, but we stopped for a second for the little guy to say hello to her. She didn't care a bit. As soon as we parted ways, I heard a bike coming up behind us- it turned out to be two guys on mountain bikes. To their credit, they asked if they could pass and came behind us at a reasonable speed on the left. She didn't bat an eye at that either. 










I know I've said it before, but even though she does some annoying things like occasionally trying to scoot for home when we're out on a ride, I can't say enough good things about how trustworthy she is in situations that freak other horses out.

Have been working on getting the puppy around the horses a little more. At first, he was very intimidated by them, but as he's gotten a little bigger, now he's very interested. He has started barking at them a little so we are spending lots of time just sitting on the hill outside the fence, giving lots of treats and pets when he watches them quietly. 


















He turned 4 months old on Monday. He goes to the vet for his next set of shots on Friday, and I'm guessing he's going to be over 30 lbs this time (was 25lbs last visit).

We have nothing but pretty days in the long-range forecast. Planning for another lunchtime ride today.


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## PoptartShop

Fizz is really becoming quite the trail horse!  I agree!! Such a good girl. Really love reading about your adventures together. Definitely have to get in some good rides with the nice weather, I hope it lasts! The pup is so cute too!

Lovely to see sunshine & no snow!


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## phantomhorse13

Good girl Fizz! Just reading about what you did together makes me smile (while at the same time imagining all that with Phin makes my blood pressure rise).


About time you get a break with the weather!


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## egrogan

We did squeeze in our ride yesterday. I had to get creative to make it work between meetings, so since time was limited I decided we were ready for a short, fast ride. We headed out briskly and trotted and cantered most of the way to the overlook. Even trotted slowly down some of the more modest hills. She was really cute about the canter. As soon as I asked her her ears snapped forward and she bounded happily right into it. It's like she was thrilled I remembered how to do it :wink: Doesn't take much to get her thinking forward. 

We admired the view at the overlook and turned around when a strange dog came out of the Roosevelt's house. 









Away from home was all uphill so backtracking home was all downhill, meaning we needed to walk for the steeper parts. I didn't know where her brain would be after moving out, but she wasn't a spazz at all and walked the downhills on a loose rein. 

We averaged 10 minute miles, which is pretty lightening fast for us. :gallop: Another great ride.


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## PoptartShop

Yay for another good ride!!  It's fun to switch it up, between walking, trotting, cantering. Sometimes you just gotta let go & let them take the lead - it sounds like she was happy to canter!  Definitely seems like you are more confident too, you guys are such a good team!


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## egrogan

The streak of good weather continues. Now that we finally have the winter muck scraped out of the pasture, I got the horses dewormed yesterday and gave Fizzy the day off from riding. Maggie's gentle reintroduction to exercise continued. We're doing about 10 minutes of "lunging" in walk/trot for now. "Lunging" in quotes since it's not a proper 20 meter circle, but rather I pick a largish area and get her out on the end of the line and just move with her to keep her going on a larger shape. Just using a basic halter for now. We'll probably move into a bridle and surcingle in a few days, then I'll hook the lines up and do some longlining up and down the road. Just this little bit of work gets her breathing hard and a little sweaty. So we've got aways to go...


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## egrogan

Lovely husband and I did a ton around the house today, and by the time I looked at the clock it was already time to feed the horses and get the dogs out. It was such a busy day I didn't get Fizz out to ride, but I did take Maggie out after they had their dinner. Got her cantering a bit today and she was sweatyyyyy when we were done (this is like 12 minutes of exercise, total). 

_Weeeee here we go up the hill...._


















Mr. Hugh is getting SO big all of a sudden. He weighed 31 lbs at the vet on Friday. 









Heading out with M and Coalie for a longer ride tomorrow morning, really looking forward to it!


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## egrogan

Awesome ride yesterday with M and Coalie. We decided to go on an adventure to try to find a trail that we know exists between two dirt roads- it is a part of the VT100 endurance route, so it definitely exists. We've asked so many local people how to find it, and the directions go something like this: "Take Town Farm Road until you get to Blind Mare Farm. Turn right and ride around the field until you get to the next dirt road." Of course, the logical question that follows is- how will we know we are at Blind Mare Farm? Is there a sign? Is there a blind mare in the field? The answer to both is no. Apparently, you will "know it when you get there." So that's not particularly helpful.








We rode down Town Farm Road until it is no longer a real road, but turns into a narrow Jeep Track. 









M remembered years ago, riding a nice woods loop on a snowmobile trail that ran parallel to the road, so we hopped on that for a mile or so. The horses did really great. The trail was pretty well maintained, so it must be an ATV trail too- the brush was all cut back, and there was a lot of drainage work that seemed pretty recent, so while the ground was soft it wasn't muddy. Horses had to navigate several rocky ditches that cut across the trail to move water down the hill to a big beaver pond, but they handled it really well.








Coalie is so much happier in the woods- he is much more forward moving and we usually let him lead because on the road he trails pretty far behind Fizz. Because the footing was so good we did lots of trotting and cantering, which they really enjoyed.

So, the woods trail put us back out on the Jeep road, but no sign of Blind Mare Farm. We were really torn about what to do- if we kept riding, it might have taken us just a few minutes to get to the mythical farm. Or, it might have taken several miles. If it even exists :wink: We rode on for a few minutes, and M noticed another logging road that she also used to ride on years ago, which is a place we might go back to. But alas, we just didn't want to get too lost and risk having to ride a lot farther than we wanted if we ultimately had to turn around back the way we came, so we decided to end our search for the day. We turned around and backtracked on the road. Happily Fizz didn't get antsy about backtracking and the ride home was uneventful. They were hot and tired after the adventure- the woods especially was a lot of up and down climbing, so they definitely got a workout. 7 miles total, our longest and most exciting ride so far. 

I did get a text from M later in the day saying she had some intel on Blind Mare Farm, so I think she talked with her neighbor, who runs the snowmobile club. Hoping we'll go back over there next weekend. If we can make the loop work, it should be around 10 miles from my house, across this road/trail, and then back up the hill by the overlook and home. It would be a really nice option for a longer ride.

Fizz slept away the rest of the afternoon, soaking up the sunshine 

















All of them are still shedding out the last of their winter coat, so I spent some time giving Izzy and Maggie a really thorough grooming and trying to get more of the hair off. I'm pretty happy with how Izzy is looking after only a couple of weeks of nibbling a little fresh grass. I didn't like her condition during the winter- she was skinny and her coat felt sort of yucky. But she's starting to get shiny again, and her mane finally feels soft and nice instead of brittle.









Maggie was up next. She's holding on to more of her coat than the other two, so I spent a lot of time with the curry comb on her. Farrier comes next week-her toes are really long and she's getting a little wall separation, which concerns me.









After that, I took her out for a handwalk instead of lunging.










We ran into lovely husband working on the lawn mower in the garage so he snapped a quick picture for us


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## carshon

I am so envious of your rides. I wish I could ride out from home. I hope you find the mythical blind mare farm.


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## egrogan

@*carshon* , thanks, I know we are so very lucky. I really wish I could invite all of you here to ride, it's a shame more people don't take advantage of the great trails and roads for riding.

In good news, I got a call from M this morning that she has located Blind Mare Farm! She went out with her boyfriend on his 4-wheeler yesterday and after an hour of getting lost, they found an older gentleman in his yard who was able to explain how to get there. And it turns out if we had stayed on the Jeep track, we probably _would _have "known it when we saw it" since the road basically runs right past through the front yard of the house. M said it was a little tricky to get from that field to the next road we need, but once you see how it fits together it makes more sense. So, our plan is to do that route on Sunday. It sounds like it may be closer to 12 miles round trip, so that will be a long ride for the ponies, but they should be able to do it. I'm so excited to try it out!

Yesterday Fizz and I went out solo. I was feeling determined to tackle the big hill beyond the overlook, since there are a lot of options if we ride out that way. It's a long, steep hill with nasty gravel footing and deep ditches with hidden barbed wire on either side. Generally if we go that way, Fizz starts messing around and trying to lurch into a ditch to avoid going down, and I end up getting off and walking it, which is honestly not very much fun. So I decided our only goal for the ride, even if it took a long time, was going to be to ride down it. If we needed to turn around and come right back up, that was fine. If she was doing well at the bottom we'd just keep going. I'm happy to say I think I have finally figured out how to ride her to successfully tackle the hill. She certainly wasn't perfect going down, and drunken sailored nearly the whole way. It was a good thing there was no traffic coming as we definitely used the entire road from left side to right side. But I think I've figured out what I've been doing wrong- when she would start to pop her shoulder out and try to lurch towards a ditch, I'd sort of panic and do some weird thing with my rein where I'd bring my arm way away from my body, I guess in an attempt to catch her or something? But for some reason, it sort of clicked for me yesterday that all I needed to do was take the rein and bring it non-dramatically in towards her wither and block her from where she was trying to escape (with a lot of leg too). The first couple of times I think it surprised her that she was blocked, so she tried it on each side, but with the same result of just being firmly but non-eventfully straightened out. By the time we were halfway down, lo and behold she was just walking straight down the hill without trying to escape through the ditch. It felt like a huge breakthrough! It's definitely a tough hill to navigate, but I feel like figuring that out was a real victory. I can't think of the last time we went down without me getting off to lead her. 

Here's an old picture from last summer looking up from the bottom on the way home; not sure it really does the steepness justice, but it's about 1/2 mile of climb from 1700ft to 1900ft. 









Speaking of elevation changes, I used Equilab for the first time yesterday and it's a cool app. I thought this picture of our elevation changes was pretty telling- as they say here, you're either going up or you're going down- there's really nothing flat in the middle!









I also learned from the app that what felt like "a lot of trotting" was not nearly as much as I thought  But it was interesting to see that her trot and canter speed was exactly the same- she does have that nice Morgan road trot going for her. 










When we came back up the hill, I let her stop and have a few bites of this really nice grass. She was hot and tired, and it seemed like she deserved it!









All in all, another great weekend of riding. Really happy with how she's going along right now and can't wait to start adding some even longer rides.


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## knightrider

It looks like you are getting closer and closer to your dream of endurance riding. Things are falling into place, and I couldn't be happier for you!

Could we have an update on the dog you have that wasn't working out that well? How is he doing now? I think about him sometimes and hope you are pleased with how he is getting on.


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## egrogan

Thanks @*knightrider* ! What a bummer that most rides here have already been cancelled for the summer. I do think we could tackle an LD this year, but not sure we'll get the chance. Possibly there will still be an opportunity in late August or October, depending on what happens.


The dog...sigh. Gus is not doing well at all. For the first few weeks the new puppy Hugh was here, I was feeling really optimistic. Gus was acting more "normal," playing with the puppy and not freaking out at seemingly random things. But after about a month of the puppy being here, he regressed again. We had a week where he was awake all night, pacing and panting across our bedroom, diving under the bed and shaking and wimpering, and acting terrified of everything. He rubbed all the hair off his ears again. When the puppy got big enough to get a little feistier during play time (e.g., tall enough to jump up on Gus' back), he started running away from the puppy and hiding in the corner of our bedroom. If the puppy even looked at him while he was eating, he would abandon his food and let the puppy take it. To be fair, the puppy is in an annoying, mouthy phase and his playing is aggressive. But a normal adult dog would nip that in the bud, not run away (yes, I do realize the damage this could do to puppy's learning). The nighttime terror- that's really what it seemed like- got so bad we weren't sleeping more than a couple of hours, and if we tried to put him in a different room to sleep, he would just bark and hurl himself at the door until we let him out. So sadly, he is now sleeping in the garage. He will still bark for 2-3 solid hours some nights (but not all nights), but we just ignore it if we can. He gets let back in for breakfast around 5:30, eats as quickly as he can, and then runs back to the bedroom and stays there alone the rest of the day until it's time for dinner/walk.

So all in all, he's miserable and we're miserable. It's not going well at all. We actually had an online vet consultation with another vet clinic, and the E word was mentioned, so it's on the table. They also spent a lot of time talking about what a behaviorist vet can do for dogs like this, but to be really honest we are just not going down that route. We're done with interventions. He's just not an ok dog and it's getting worse as time goes on. Whenever he does move on to greener pastures, it's going to be a relief for everyone I think. He goes in for an in-person appointment with them in a couple of weeks.


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## knightrider

So sorry to read that about Gus. My heart is with you.


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## carshon

@egrogan I want to pat you on the back and give you a hug - so cyber pats and cyber hugs. You have come so very very far with Fizz and your riding. I will remain jealous of your rode trails and cool pictures but am so happy with the amount of riding you have been doing and riding confidently out on your own and taking some time to self evaluate and make changes that benefit you and your horse. Great job!


and also to send cyber hugs for your Gus. it sounds so useless to say you have done all you can for him because even though your head may know it your heart still wants to make it work. I think you and hubby have done a wonderful job and given him a home when many would have called it quits a long time ago. Who knows what torture his brain is playing on him. E may be an escape for him as well.


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## egrogan

Thanks to you both for the well wishes. It makes me sad to think about how uncomfortable he must be and what could have happened to him to make him this way, and yet on the other hand I'm just so exhausted from dealing with him and all his needs that I'm sort of emotionally shut down to the prospect of euthanizing. I feel like a jerk, but also feel like it's the right thing. I'm just ready for some closure and it's frustrating that even though lovely husband and I both know what our decision is, we have to find someone else who is willing to help us.


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## egrogan

It's been unseasonably HOT the past two days- supposed to be 90*F this afternoon. I am not built for this weather! I wouldn't even think of riding in this heat, but I did still get Maggie out for her exercise the past couple of mornings. This morning we were drenched in sweat by the time we finished by 8am. Ick. She stood like a statute to be sponged off with a cool bucket of water when we were done, and then immediately had a good roll. 

It's a shame it's so miserably hot as the days have been very pretty.


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## carshon

Miserably hot and humid here in NW IL as well. and the gnats have bloomed with a vengeance!~ We have had so much rain after a fairly dry winter/early spring and now we are pastern deep in mud again. And I am dealing with scratched on one of my mares. The humidity and gnats have all equines grumpy and mud covered - so in turn their care taker (me) also becomes mud covered and then grumpy after trying to clean up four grumpy muddy girls!


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## egrogan

Uggh, yes, the bugs are awful. I am so allergic to our black flies and have welts all up and down my arms and legs just from the weekend. And the gnats are making the poor horses nuts. It's been very, very dry so far so no mud, thankfully. That would add to the misery!


Edited to add: TICKS. I think every year, we say, "ticks are already awful this year" and it seems it's just worse and worse every year. Yesterday I took a shower right after lunging Maggie in our front yard, so the grass is fairly short, and I looked down while showering and found a huge tick on my leg. It was just starting to attach but I was able to get it off easily. I sent it on its way down the drain. Lovely husband went for a run at lunchtime and then got in the shower, and that awful little blood sucker had somehow survived being in the drain with the shower running over it for a good 5 minutes while I finished, and then had the ability to crawl back up and into the shower. I usually either flush them down the toilet or dump them in a little container of rubbing alcohol, but I guess now I know the shower drain is not a powerful enough disposal option! :evil:


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## knightrider

They often survive the toilet as well. You will see them crawling back out of the toilet if you flush them. I cut them in half with my fingernail. It's super gross, but I know for certain they're gone. We often pick off 10 or 12 of them after a ride, so they have to be disposed of immediately.


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## Knave

That’s what I do too @knightrider. I am usually pretty lucky and don’t end up with a ton on me, maybe they don’t like me... but I just cut them in half with my fingernail.


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## egrogan

Grrrrr I hate them so much. I do sometimes crush them like you both are saying (though not if they're engorged...ewwwwww) but fortunately I haven't yet had one crawl out after a flush! 



More heat here today but a smidge cooler. May get Fizz out to ride in the afternoon if the work day doesn't get too crazy.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> The dog...sigh. Gus is not doing well at all. For the first few weeks the new puppy Hugh was here, I was feeling really optimistic. Gus was acting more "normal," playing with the puppy and not freaking out at seemingly random things. But after about a month of the puppy being here, he regressed again. We had a week where he was awake all night, pacing and panting across our bedroom, diving under the bed and shaking and wimpering, and acting terrified of everything. He rubbed all the hair off his ears again. When the puppy got big enough to get a little feistier during play time (e.g., tall enough to jump up on Gus' back), he started running away from the puppy and hiding in the corner of our bedroom. If the puppy even looked at him while he was eating, he would abandon his food and let the puppy take it. To be fair, the puppy is in an annoying, mouthy phase and his playing is aggressive. But a normal adult dog would nip that in the bud, not run away (yes, I do realize the damage this could do to puppy's learning). The nighttime terror- that's really what it seemed like- got so bad we weren't sleeping more than a couple of hours, and if we tried to put him in a different room to sleep, he would just bark and hurl himself at the door until we let him out. So sadly, he is now sleeping in the garage. He will still bark for 2-3 solid hours some nights (but not all nights), but we just ignore it if we can. He gets let back in for breakfast around 5:30, eats as quickly as he can, and then runs back to the bedroom and stays there alone the rest of the day until it's time for dinner/walk.
> 
> So all in all, he's miserable and we're miserable. It's not going well at all. We actually had an online vet consultation with another vet clinic, and the E word was mentioned, so it's on the table. They also spent a lot of time talking about what a behaviorist vet can do for dogs like this, but to be really honest we are just not going down that route. We're done with interventions. He's just not an ok dog and it's getting worse as time goes on. Whenever he does move on to greener pastures, it's going to be a relief for everyone I think. He goes in for an in-person appointment with them in a couple of weeks.


Dear @egrogan, I'm sorry about the situation with your dog and you are definitely doing the best you can, and have been all along. I've been wondering about Gus but not wanting to ask... Imagine for a moment that the thing that was making your dog act the way he is was physical pain, that you couldn't make better. You know what you would do. That's why I decided, with a very heavy heart, to euthanise my Arabian mare back in 2014 - because her quality of life was becoming unacceptable, and I didn't want her to be in pain (she had cancer and it was a quick exit or a slow painful road). With Romeo just over a year ago, we pre-empted the loss of quality of life just as he was starting the downward curve, before he was suffering, and after five years of prolonging his happy retirement by making him special expensive feeds every morning and evening that came along.

And what if it's mental suffering? It's still pain. It's a hard one to call the line on, but I think I would do the same thing. Any good times this dog had were due to your love and care. Intensive cases like this can wear you down too - and even with Romeo we were getting a bit worn down by the twice-daily effort to keep him from death's door, at the end, and my hands were sometimes raw from mixing up his enormous special feeds every 12 hours. That's not why we made the decision, we made it because of him, but I really don't miss at least one of us having to be home every morning and evening at feed time - and since we no longer have to do this, we're hiking so much more again too, and able to get away more often. We were glad to do it while it worked out, but these things have an end point, as does everything. They say that a painful end is better than an endless pain - but in the case of our pets, it's usually, if we go for euthanasia, that a peaceful end is better than unacceptable amounts of suffering.

Big hug to you. :hug: It's sad, but you're doing the right thing for the dog and for yourselves. I hope he has a peaceful way out and that you will remember the good times this fella had along the way - the bright spots in the darkness. Our farrier who comes every summer to help me out with hard hooves says when his old dog became unacceptably poorly, he didn't even take him to the vet, he shot him while he was sleeping in the sun, clean head shot, instant oblivion, he'd never have known what hit him. His dog was afraid of the vet. I don't have a gun and you don't either but if your dog is afraid of veterinarians, maybe you can sedate him orally before you take him in, or maybe you can even get a vet to come to you (after you've sedated him) - then it saves the dog the stress of being out of his familiar environment.

Thinking of you. :hug:


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## Knave

I have thoughts about this too. I am one to put something suffering down, and also I have wondered about this type of situation. My thought are dogs like this or even a dog rather unliked or with a bad trait (our Ozzie bit little girl’s face badly, and I haven’t made husband put him down but consider it often). 

When you raise animals for meat, you realize that it is their quality of life that matters. You make their life happy, and then an early death is just the end to a good life. So, I’ve wondered about other animals. Is an early death really the worst thing, or even something to be mourned? Maybe it isn’t necessarily even that bad... maybe a life is measured in perception rather than time. 

There is a random philosophical rant. Lol. I’d put him down, and I would try to not have any guilt over it. I’m sorry for you though.


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## egrogan

Well, we had a phenomenal weekend. I was off Friday, but it was still close to 90*F and extremely humid, so we went out pretty early. The larger sidepull had arrived earlier in the week, so I was excited to try it out. We did a 3.5 mile loop and she rode just like she always does, but it was so extremely hot we mostly just walked. Even with just walking, she was dripping wet and blowing hard when we got back. We had even stopped at the town water spigot, since I had to get off there anyway to walk down the paved road, so I splashed some water on our faces but she didn't really seem to want to drink.








Big rain clouds threatened us most of the way, but it never did rain, even though it probably would have felt really good that day!

















She actually kind of scared me as she sort of froze when I untacked her and wasn't interested in any of her hay that I had out hanging for her. But, a cold sponge down while she grazed in the lawn revived her and all was well.

Saturday was much more seasonable and the humidity was gone, so we went out for a more challenging ride, doing the 6.5 mile loop through Newhall Farm. 









This loop has a little bit of everything- roads, field, and woods trails, so it seemed like a good test. The first couple of miles, I was not really happy with how the sidepull seemed to be working for us. She was hanging soooo heavily on my left hand, with her head cranked to the right and no contact at all on that side, gawking at whatever was in the woods. No amount of leg, sponging on the rein, asking her to go forward, etc. seemed to work. She was just hanging on that rein. Then suddenly her odometer kicked in and told her that we were about halfway through the loop, and she suddenly just straightened out and went forward straightly again. So who knows what that means. I really don't think it was anything I did, I think she just got more interested in the ride.

One dicey moment when we went past a farmhouse where three little boys were playing in a giant hammock on the porch, taking turns flipping each other out of it while the dog ran around chasing them. That was a little much excitement so I got off and walked her past that house, but didn't really blame her for giving a hard side eye at the scene. We did have a couple of other dog encounters, when dogs came running out from yards into the road, but she's gotten the idea of turning around and chasing them and they all gave up easily. The big, beautiful German Shepherd that lives at the donkeys' house scared the bejesus out of both of us though, and she did a hard sideways spook that felt like it shook my spine and everything attached to it...he has an underground electric fences that he's very respectful of, but usually we see him in the driveway or laying in the yard, and then he'll trot along the property line as we pass. But he really caught us by surprise- it was near the end of the ride and we were both tired and sort of daydreaming on our way home, when all of a sudden he popped out from behind a tree where we couldn't see him and barked. She flew sideways, and was on a totally loose rein at the time while we were cooling out. Fortunately she kept her balance and didn't go tumbling down the ditch in the process. But the rest of the ride was uneventful, even with some ATV riders out and about. Her buddies were waiting for her when we got back...










Last night our Connecticut neighbors were up here at their camp and had a grand old party. I try to be nice and welcoming, as they seem very nice even though their hobbies are different from mine, but I nearly lost it with them last night. They started shooting guns around 8pm, and that lasted off and on for awhile, but I figured it's fine, they're just shooting at targets and it's not the end of the world. But around 9:30, the fireworks display started. Fireworks, for the record, are illegal in VT. These were the kind that make the really high pitched whine as they shoot up, and then a huge boom and shhhhhhhh afterwards. The horses are used to guns and don't seem too bothered, but this was just so loud and so unexpected I got really upset about how the horses were going to react. I trudged down there in my pajamas, and the horses were all at the far end of the pasture- this camp is through the woods at the back there. Maggie and Izzy didn't seem to be too bothered and were grazing around, but poor Fizz was distraught. Her head was sky-high and she was breathing so hard she looked like she had on Friday when we got back from that hot, sweaty ride. I tried a few of the breathing exercises we learned at our clinic last year and she at least dropped her head and rested her hind leg, but I hated seeing her on such high alert. Fortunately the fireworks didn't last long (though it felt like forever) and the rest of the night was quiet. 

This morning M and I headed out on our adventure to find the Blind Mare Farm and do the partial VT100 loop. In addition to the literal fireworks last night, a cold front had blown in, and it was 45*F when I went out to get Fizz ready, with a strong wind still blowing. Poor thing was a bit of a mess and hard to get tacked up as she was a little dancy. But no matter, once M and Coalie got to the house and we mounted up, she actually seemed a bit relieved to be riding away from home- poor thing.

When we got down to the bottom of my street, we could see the woman who has horses there was out in the paddock with one of them, and her donkey (different donkey than our mini donk friends) was also out in one of the small paddocks along the road, which is not where he usually lives. The donkey was running around the paddock bucking, and the woman who owns them was trying to halter her big 16 hand warmblood, which was apparently not going well. When her grey horse saw Coalie and Fizz, he started getting fractious, and I guess bonked her in the head with his head while he tried to get away from the halter. I don't totally know what was happening there because M and I both hopped off to lead our horses past the chaotic scene, but suddenly the woman with the grey horse started punching him and screaming that he was an f*ing awful horse and she hated him and what an *** he was and on and on. Totally losing her mind at him. M knows her and has ridden with her a couple of times, but I've really never met her since we've lived here. Certainly didn't give a very good impression!  We heard the yelling continuing behind us but just tried to get Fizz and Coalie past quickly. We mounted back up and kept going, but it was a little rattling to see someone going off on a horse like that. 

(_Post script to this story- this woman texted M later in the day and apologized for the scene and said her other horse was colicking and the donkey was being impossible to handle and she was just really overwhelmed. That definitely sucks, but geez...._)

That out of the way, the rest of the ride was a wonderful adventure. 









We DID find the Blind Mare Farm, and it was absolutely beautiful! Here it is!


















No blind mare - or any horses - but a beautiful old farmhouse surrounded by an apple orchard and then very scenic woods.









The roads we had to take to connect back up with the way home _were _a little tricky to navigate, since there were basically no street signs and we don't have reliable cell service back there to pull up online maps. But M had written out the directions and they were very accurate. We almost went the wrong way once, but that was about it. There was more traffic than usual on those roads and that got a little dicey in places where the road was narrow and people went by with things like boats on trailers, but everyone held it together. Also some interesting livestock along the way- cows, which are now suspicious but not so scary, plus a huge flock of very fluffy sheep. I don't recall ever riding past sheep before, but they did not seem to cause any concern. I should have taken a picture because they were so cute and wooly, but wasn't sure if I'd need both hands on the wheel while passing them...

Coalie seemed to get tired a bit sooner than Fizz did, so it was a little tough in the last couple of miles to have to ask Fizzy to stop and graze while we waited for him, or circle around behind him, and she was getting a little irritated by the end, but we made it work. Really thankful the day was so cool today as I think we would have had a much harder time getting through it if it had been hotter. It ended up being ~10.5 miles total. We joked when we were done that we rode 1/10 of the Vermont 100 route, which was a pretty awesome feeling! :grin: 

So I'm pretty wiped out after this weekend! We did 20 miles+ and worked through a lot of good challenges. I think Fizz is glad I have to go back to work tomorrow :wink:


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## egrogan

Fizz and I had a couple of nice rides over the weekend- solo on Friday and with M and Coalie on Sunday. I've been in a funk for the past few weeks because of some demoralizing issues at work (I had been very close to taking a new job before the pandemic started, in the final round of interviews for two different roles, but suddenly both positions were "suspended indefinitely" because of the uncertainty surrounding what education will look like next school year...leaving me feeling very "stuck" with no way to improve the situation). Feeling so grumpy at work means it's been hard to get excited about going out to ride during the week. Fortunately Fizzy is fine to sit a few days in between rides - just don't want to get too much in the habit of being a weekend warrior while also asking her to increase the distances we're going.

Anyway, Friday was beautiful and too nice to miss a ride, even though it was a short one.

















Sunday we had a nice time with M and Coalie. The morning was cool and breezy, and bugs were almost non-existent so we stayed in the woods quite a bit. It's nice to be in the woods and let Coalie take the lead. M wanted to do a good bit of trotting and cantering and the horses loved it. Parts of the trail were slick and muddy so we took it easy in those spots, especially on the downhills. It does get a little tough when the horses know we're on the home stretch- Fizz gets quicker and Coalie gets slower, and I've tried all kinds of strategies to get Fizz to stop rushing, but I know she gets a bit resentful. I don't think it's a fitness thing with Coalie, I think he genuinely doesn't like going home. But it is hard on Fizz to make her stop and wait, or constantly circle around behind him.


























Yesterday when we went out solo, I tried to work on adjusting her speed within the walk and within the trot on the way home, with some success. I've been playing around with how I'm sitting in the saddle and how I'm using the reins and she _is _responding. The ride didn't start out all that well as I felt like she was being really sulky about riding away from home and I was pushing her forward every stride (our route took us down the hill of despair on the way out, so it wasn't totally unexpected). In those moments it just feels sad to have a horse that doesn't want to do what you're asking them to do, definitely not like a partnership. There was also quite a lot of traffic, mostly contractor type trucks heading home since we were out in the later afternoon, and with the narrow roads that gets a little nerve-wracking. The beginning of the ride didn't feel great for all those reasons, but when we turned around we stopped for a few minutes to let her graze around, and it helped me to let her just enjoy herself and sit quietly with her. 










After we turned back to home, I tried the stuff I mentioned previously to see if I could get her in a comfortable, non-rushing trot and was pleased with the result. The ride got a lot better so I turned down a side street we'd never ridden on before to add an extra mile or so, and she always perks up in a new place. We are also now consistently riding past the donkeys, dealing with barking dogs that blast out into the street, etc. so it wasn't all bad. In fact, there are a lot of things going right. I'm just a bit down in the dumps in general so it's easy to focus on the bad stuff.









Also, Maggie is lame on her left front, and I'm trying to figure out what's going on there. A couple of days ago I noticed that some of the smaller pieces of the crushed stone footing in their main paddock had wedged into the white line (I think I mentioned she has some wall separation going on, even after a trim last week, which is concerning) so I picked those out but wondered if she'd have any bruising as a result. I put her in boots on the front, which gave her instant relief last fall when we had a fall grass laminitis issue, but she was still limping even with the boots on so it makes me wonder if it's something higher up? She took a funny step a couple of days ago when trotting on the lunge, and initially I though it was because she had knicked the back of a front foot with a hind and gave herself a little cut there, but now I wonder if she strained something in the shoulder. Her feet are nice and cool, no pulses or anything, so I don't think it's a laminitic attack again. At any rate, she was walking more comfortably this morning (no boots) so I'll keep watching and will be hoping it is just a strain that improves.


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## egrogan

Realized that comment about Coalie not wanting to go home might sound weird ^^ It's not that home is a bad place, he just likes adventuring!


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## carshon

I'm sorry the job prospects did not work out. The Pandemic has played hell with a lot of our jobs - even those of us lucky enough to still be working have had to make some weird adjustments. I am always in awe at how well horses can read humans. In good and bad ways. Riding a reluctant horse away from home is never fun - but you are making it work and trying to read your horse and give her something to look forward too. It makes me laugh that Coalie never wants to head home. My daughters horse Sawyer is exactly the same way - even when we ride at a new park as soon as she knows she is headed to the trailer she drags her feet. Maybe Coalie just like the company?


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## egrogan

Thanks, @*carshon* . And you're totally right, I feel so, so lucky to have a flexible job where I can use my skillset and be fairly compensated- even if the organization has some serious leadership issues that impede our ability to do our work well. I try to keep that in mind, and yet I am still hopeful there will be new opportunities later this fall when there's more clarity on how both K-12 schools and higher ed are starting up again. There is so much research needed to understand the long-term impacts of this crisis, so I'm confident there will be organizations looking for what I do. Just have to wait things out a bit longer.

Funny that Sawyer is like Coalie in that respect. What do you do with Tillie when Sawyer is enjoying the scenery and Tillie is more focused on moving down the trail? I do think Coalie likes Fizz around, even if he is sometimes a little thrown off by her very clear expression of her emotions :rofl: Mares vs. geldings in action!


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## carshon

Well to be honest I tend to have to fight Tillie to follow Sawyer if she slows down. We have been doing what you did and take a different trail but Tillie has an exceptional sense of direction and then she gets sassy with head tossing and general sassiness. Sawyer does not care what Tillie does


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## QueenofFrance08

Glad you've gotten some awesome rides in! 

I did see your worry about being a weekend warrior and wanted to tell you there's no shame in that! There's plenty of training programs out there even for 50's for people who can only ride on weekends. There's lots of endurance riders who have a hard time fitting in weekday rides with a full time job.

I get what you mean about having a hard time finding motivation. I'm having a really hard year riding wise. I don't know if it's the lack of rides, the several falls I had this spring, or something else. I've even thought about selling most of the horses and getting an older bomb proof quarter horse just to putz around on. I'm terrified to canter (always been fearful, much worse this year even though I haven't fallen at a canter in a few years) and am completely unmotivated to take the horses out by myself this year (another fear issue I think). So... You're not alone!


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## egrogan

It's just been a tough year all around @*QueenofFrance08* ! With the world exploding around us, weird adjustments to our jobs (is it a 6-8 month tax season for you this year?! ), and weather being so up and down, it's hard to stay grounded. I appreciate the encouragement though. Sending it back at you- for what it's worth, you definitely have inspired me to be braver by sharing all your rides and adventures over the past year :grin:


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## PoptartShop

Loving all these updates!  Yay for all those miles!!! Miss Fizz is so spoiled with that fly mask on! Looks so cute! She's adorable. So happy you've had such great adventures. Awww, I hope Maggie feels better, maybe she pulled a muscle or something. :sad: Keep us posted! & about Gus, I totally understand. I'm sorry you are going through this - it's not easy. :hug: Hugs to you.


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## egrogan

It's this kind of morning here:









Yuck!

Happily though, Maggie is walking sound this morning!


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## egrogan

We had a really active weekend- ended up riding ~20 miles. The weather was fairly cool and gloomy- never really raining, but just overcast and breezy with only some sunshine breaking through. The upside though is that it kept the bugs away.

Friday we did a short solo ride to the overlook and back. It's been so stressful at work that Friday afternoons I know my mood is less than ideal for riding, but I really wanted to go out to clear my head.











Saturday Hugh had his basic obedience class in the morning. The instructor isn't the greatest, but he's picking up basic commands and it's good socialization for him to be in a new place with dogs he doesn't know. He's the youngest in the class (turns 5 months old this week) but he was too old to do the Puppy Kindergarten class so this was the only option. I think he'd still enjoy the free play time with other puppies, which isn't a part of obedience. But still, it's good to get him out learning new things. Unfortunately riding in the car is still challenging for him- he threw up 3 times on the way to and from the class, which is the worst he's been in awhile. We'd had two vomit-free car rides earlier in the week, so I was hoping he was improving. Poor guy.








With the class and other errands in the morning, I didn't get out to ride until later in the afternoon. My intention was to go on a "lollipop" route that I thought was ~4-5 miles- riding on a couple of roads and then looping off on a woods trail that runs parallel to the road and connects back with it to come home. As we headed toward the trail, we passed a parked trailer with two sets of hoof prints heading off the same direction we were going. Fizz took notice of the hoofprints and seemed interested in the idea of other horses out there. There are extensive trails in all directions off the road I was riding, and I was hoping they had picked a different trail than me because I really wasn't sure what Fizz would do encountering two strange horses on a narrow trail in the woods. Let alone how the riders might be riding through those trails (insert image of crazy teens galloping down steep, rocky hills...). I was happy to see that the tracks continued on past the trail we were turning on. But about 10 minutes later, sure enough I heard voices ahead coming towards us, and I knew they must have been on the same trail after all, just riding it from the opposite direction (it has trailheads at two spots off the road). I yelled out to let them know I was there, and decided to get off and walk Fizz. They appeared over the top of the hill, an older couple on two stocky quarter horses walking quietly along. The horses stared at each other for a minute, but everyone was calm. The woman was concerned about leaving me there, but I knew Fizz would be ok with them passing- fortunately we've been on plenty of rides where we separate from the people we're with and go along on our own. Fizz was fairly alert as we walked on until I found a good rock to mount on, and thought about taking one step backwards once I was back in the saddle, but that was about it. I was so grateful to have a horse that can handle something like that, as I know not every horse would be ok with seeing strange horses and then being left behind.









We hadn't been on this particularly trail so far this year, and it was challenging- rocky, muddy, and little trickling streams crossing it in a few spots, so she had to concentrate again fairly quickly. When we reconnected with the road, she certainly wanted to powerwalk home- we were following the horses' hoofprints again- so we had to have a little discussion about speed, but overall can't complain. My only complaint is that I had seriously misjudged the length of the ride. It ended up being 7 miles instead of 4-5!

Sunday we met M and Coalie and headed back to the woods (have to take advantage of bug free days!). It's sort of hard to explain our trail system, which is a combo of horse trails maintained by GMHA, snowmobile trails maintained by a group called VAST, and ATV trails maintained by a group called RATS. All the groups mostly get along, but there's always the tension that groups are a little protective of the trails they maintain, so they don't map or mark things particularly well, making it a situation of "you can ride it if you know how to find it." The trails are all accessible from trailheads off various dirt roads, so theoretically if you can make your way through the interconnecting web of trails through the woods, you can take one road out away from home and end up on another road heading towards home. We were aiming for a roughly 10 mile loop from Point A to Point B, but we got ourselves sort of "lost" somewhere at a series of forks in the woods, and ended up riding from Point A to Point G :rofl: Getting lost on those trails is relative though- you can be confident that even if you don't know quite where you are, eventually the trail is going to put you back out at a spot along the road you'll recognize. It may just be a little farther from home than you were planning!









Still, we had a pretty ride. Unusual for our trails, we were deep in the woods but the footing was soft, grassy ground instead of gravel, rock, or dirt. The horses really enjoyed it- especially Fizz, who got to snack occasionally while we waited for Coalie to catch up. 










The most exciting moment was when we startled a momma grouse and a bunch of her babies. I was about to let Fizz put her head down to eat, when a giant bird started banging around through the underbrush. That grouse was levitating! It seemed that a couple of her babies had gotten separated from the group on the other side of the trail, and we were now between them and mom. So mom was thumping and screeching around, baby grouse were flying across our path at shoulder height, and the remaining babies on her side were scrambling to get themselves under mom. Quite an exciting moment. The horses just sort of froze while the grouse worked it all out, and we continued on our way. It's always exciting in the woods!

A couple of other Hugh pictures- yesterday afternoon we stumbled into a patch of wild strawberries, and he thought they were just about the best thing he had ever seen. Truthfully, I agreed with him :grin: They are tiny, the size of your pinky fingernail, but they are the essence of strawberry. The taste is exponentially bigger than their tiny size


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## carshon

Hugh is so handsome! and I will say again. I am extremely jealous of the trails close to your home. What a great weekend of riding for you!


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## egrogan

@mkmurphy81- tagging you here to thank you yet again for the orange ears! I've forgotten how many years they've been around, but it's been several at this point. I usually give them a wash in the washing machine once or twice during a season and line dry, and that's about it. A mouse nibbled a little bit on the yarn this winter before I realized what was happening and brought them inside from the tackroom, but otherwise they are like new.


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## PoptartShop

Looks like a lovely weekend!  Having trails nearby is such a blessing. It's nice not having to trailer anywhere! I love it haha. 
Hugh is just the cutest!!


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## egrogan

We had an unexpected end to the day yesterday: We said goodbye to Gus. We had a vet appointment, they listened to the whole story, and they were comfortable with the decision to let him go peacefully. We all fed him handfuls of yummy treats, wished him a safe journey, and he passed quietly. I am so relieved that he-and we-don’t have to live with the intense daily anxiety any more. The moment was sad but it was the right decision.


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## carshon

Hugs to you. You did the right thing for him.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, I'm so sorry about Gus, but you did make the right decision, & he is at peace now. You were with him until the end & that is what matters. Hugs to you. :hug:


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon & @PoptartShop. It's appreciated!


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## mkmurphy81

I'm glad you're still enjoying the orange ears. I love seeing them in all your photos.


I'm sorry about Gus, too, but I think you made the right decision. I think I mentioned before that I have a cat with major mental problems. If he were bigger or we hadn't been able to avoid his triggers, we would have made the same decision years ago. Even knowing it's the right choice doesn't make it easy, though. :hug:


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## egrogan

Thanks @mkmurphy81- appreciate the nice words.


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## gottatrot

I really believe it takes the most bravery to do the right thing and put an animal to sleep that is suffering as you did. Sending hugs your way. 
Glad you have sweet Hugh to cheer you up a bit.


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## egrogan

Thank you @gottatrot!


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## Knave

I’m sorry about Gus. I agree you did the right thing, but I’m still sorry.


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## egrogan

Thank you so much @Knave


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## egrogan

The weekend was ridiculously hot here so I was grumpy and grumbling. _Someone _has learned where to hang out on hot days, since we don't have air conditioning:








I actually took Friday off from work- I am uncomfortable posting too much online, but essentially my boss who I liked working with very much "quit" on Monday, presumably with strong encouragement from other members of the organizational leadership that I do not like working with at all, and that's drastically impacting me and my team. I'm just at the end of my ability to continue to tolerate this organization, but jobs in my field are very difficult to come by right now. I don't forsee good things ahead for me at this organization, but am trying to figure out an exit strategy. I'll leave it there. All that to say, I needed to clear my head Friday, so took the day off, went shopping at the farmer's market that just reopened, did some baking, and took a short ride with Fizz to the overlook. We just moseyed up there since it was stifling hot, even though we went on the earlier side of the day.


















When we got back, I have her a good scrub down with a bucket of cold water and let her out on the lawn. She had a good roll to dry off.








(My favorite curry comb, a HF Secret Santa gift from @csimkunas, is perfect for a massage with cold water since it's got a deep reservoir that holds cold water)









Baked a new-to-me quickbread recipe, which was filled with fresh herbs, some shredded cheese, and olives. Paired with a couple of salads, it was delicious for a night when we didn't want much dinner.









Also baked a cheesecake for the next day to go with strawberry sauce I made from fresh berries at the market. SOOOO good. 









Sunday met M and Coalie for our regular ride. I was in such a crummy mood I considered cancelling, but at the end I decided some time with M would do me good. She's a relentlessly positive person- not in an annoying, disconnected from reality kind of way, but in the way you'd like a friend to be a cheerleader for you. Given the heat, we kept the ride on the shorter side and just walked, and even with that the horses were still hot. On the way home, we stopped off at her friend's house to let the horses get a drink from the creek. They waded right in and didn't want to leave.

















Fizz and Coalie are well matched as riding buddies, but they are both such independent horses that they rarely interact with each other in a discernible way. Even when we meet up out on the trail, or split up and ride our own separate ways, they never nicker at each other and seem to meaningfully acknowledge each other. So we had a good laugh at how they suddenly seemed to notice each other while we were in the creek. They wanted to sniff noses, and Fizz gave Coalie a little mare nibble. Horses are so funny sometimes.









In some good news, we FINALLY finished fencing in the new pasture, so yesterday we turned the horses out there for the first time. They spent about 30 seconds looking around in confusion, and then they took off running and bucking and snorting. They spent a solid 30 minutes like that. Given how hot it was, they were completely drenched and covered in bugs, but they seemed to have a grand time. Nice to see Izzy and Maggie kicking up their heels in addition to Fizz. I've never seen Maggie gallop full-out, and I was amazed watching how fast she really is when she lengthens out.





Izzy doesn't look half-bad for being 26 years old!!


















I do feel a little bad for Maggie having to be in the grazing muzzle, but it's really not an option with this grass. In fact, Fizz is looking a little chunky to me too and I may need to have her spend some time in one as well.









Last feel good moment of the weekend- a little mutual grooming session for Fizz and Iz. It's hard not to anthropomorphize when you watch them acting like such good buddies. Most of the time they don't seem like they like each other all that much, but in these moments it does seem like they have a connection.


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## PoptartShop

Ugh, I'm sorry about what's going on at work. It sucks when people you actually like quit, especially a BOSS! Then you're just left with...well, sucky people. :sad: Like good people make the job tolerable. It really sucks. Hugs to you, I'm glad you took a day off though, that is always good to clear your mind. Plus, a ride always helps.

Glad you got a nice ride in, Fizz is so adorable, I love her fly mask! That curry comb looks really cool too - I may have to try that!  I always hose Promise off after a long ride in the summer & that would feel nice! I'm glad to see Fizz has a friend in Coalie! So cute.  I bet the creek felt amazing.

Awww, the herd is so cute running around in the new pasture, they are loving it!!!  Happy girls! Izzie looks darn good too! The grooming session pics are adorable too. 

PS can you save me a slice of that cheesecake? Looks DELISH!!


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## egrogan

@PoptartShop, we would definitely welcome someone else helping us eat this cheesecake :grin:


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## carshon

I love that Izzy still shows her gorgeous Morgan strut! She looks fantastic! I could watch horse zoomy videos all day - it makes me happy inside (I know - weird)

And I too am sorry about the work drama. I think small organizations or any organization picks a "fall guy" when things are not rosy and unfortunately in my experience it is usually the person whose staff loves them the most and the one person who the company probably truly needs. I hope this straightens out for you.


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## Spanish Rider

:loveshower:Such a beautiful video to watch the three of them like that.


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## SueC

Sorry about the work situation, @egrogan - it is so frustrating when good management leave. :hug: And I'm sorry about Gus too, but glad it went peacefully and of course you did the right thing. Ir's great to see you riding so confidently all over the countryside on longer and longer trips. You and Fizz have come a long way in your partnership. :charge: And Hugh is a cutie. 

I don't know where the time goes. How is it late June already??? (...and 2020...)


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## egrogan

Thanks, @*SueC* . The really scary thing- it's nearly _July..._not sure how that happened. One thing I've meant to ask you- since you grew up in Europe with Northern Hemisphere seasons, was it hard to adjust (physically and mentally) to the Southern Hemisphere swap? Sometimes when I read your journal, I think how disorienting it would be for July to be cold and December to be warm...

It's been muggy and buggy here, too hot to ride (hopefully the heat breaks later today and I can ride in the morning tomorrow). Yesterday Fizz and Maggie were seen by the equine dentist. This is a different person than our regular vet, who is also a dental specialist. But, she's still not doing dental care at private barns, and Fizz was overdue for some attention to her teeth, manifested in discomfort when being ridden. The sidepull bridle is working out really well for us, so at least she hasn't been carrying a bit, but still, I don't like knowing I'm making her uncomfortable. Fortunately, this dentist that had seen the horses at our last boarding barn has just doing farm calls again this month, and he was able to fit us in. Maggie needed a pretty straightforward float to take care of some sharp edges. Fizz needed a little more work- in addition to taking care of some sharp edges, she had one hook that was causing some issues and needed to be addressed, and also had some unevenness between her right and left molar table that was taken care of. She should be much more comfortable now. Izzy needs some dental surgery on another bad molar, so she'll have to go in to the clinic at some point this summer.

Hugh has been joining me for chores, still tethered to me since I don't completely trust his recall around the horses. But he's a quick learner and I like having a buddy.



























Apparently an after-breakfast love-fest is now a part of our regular routine. The bugs are making the horses nuts so some quality grooming time seems to be helping...


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## egrogan

Hi @Spanish Rider and @carshon- thanks for the well wishes. 



And, I also love watching them running with so much enthusiasm! I stood out there with them for half an hour while they ran and ran. :runninghorse2:


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## Spanish Rider

> I stood out there with them for half an hour while they ran and ran.


You know the saying, "Take time to smell the roses"? Well, that applies to animals, too.


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## Avna

Spanish Rider said:


> You know the saying, "Take time to smell the roses"? Well, that applies to animals, too.


Take time to pet the noses.


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## SueC

Avna said:


> Take time to pet the noses.


...take time to nose the pets? inkunicorn:


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## egrogan

Hmm...a lot of pressure to come up with the next witticism :wink:

Lots of riding the past few days, though the weather has been blah and the bugs have been miserable! Actually, Thursday was the exception. I didn't _really _have time to ride, but it was like a pretty fall day- around 70*F, light breeze, no humidity and no bugs. We took a quick ride to the overlook and back.


















The rest of the weekend was gloomy, but we dodged the raindrops and went out Saturday on our own and Sunday with M and Coalie. 










I feel like a jerk, I didn't notice that Fizz had a bad bug bite on her nose when I put her bridle on, and by the time we got back that spot had been rubbed pretty raw. No wonder she kept tossing her head around! :sad: So Sunday when we rode, it was back to the bridle with bit, which has no noseband. 

We went nearly 9 miles Sunday with M and Coalie.









I was a little frustrated because the last 2 miles, heading roughly in the direction of home, Fizz was relentlessly pulling to go faster and just wouldn't settle. It's difficult when she gets into power-walk mode because Coalie gets slower as Fizz gets faster, and then I start either asking her to stop and wait or circle behind. Ugh. 









So that ride didn't end all that well. We'll likely go to GMHA for an upcoming member day and ride there, so I am hoping that a change of scenery will help a little with this rushing problem.

After our long ride Sunday, gave Fizz a bucket bath and turned her out on the lawn a bit. The bugs were nasty but the nice grass was more important!









Hugh is doing so well with being around the horses. He is fascinated by the horses, particularly when they go into land whale mode :rofl:


















He did get zapped by the electric fence for the first time yesterday. He had brushed up against it a few times without it biting, but yesterday he was really wet from running through the fields, and it got him on the ear. Poor guy yelped and tucked his tail running for home, but he survived.


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## carshon

Fizz is looking really fit! I have no suggestions for getting Fizz to settle and walk with Coalie. I have owned Tillie almost 4 years now and have given up trying to make her rate her speed to the slowest member of the pack. It was just never worth the struggle. Is there anyway M will meet you in the middle and move Coalie up a notch as you bring Fizz down one?


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## egrogan

Thanks @*carshon* . I think I caught her from a good angle. :wink: Her neck is looking a little flabby in real life. Have to add more miles I guess!

M and I are trying to figure out the best way to keep Coalie and Fizz happy together. They are well matched at the trot. In the woods, their walks are better paced and Coalie even leads a lot. But on the roads, especially the last portion of a ride, is where things go south. M says she's urging him on and he's moving out faster than they usually do, so I don't know. Fizz does get on a mission, and I try to rate her which leads to resentment. Yesterday I tried to work on the quickening towards home while we were alone, by doing lots of circling and doubling back away from home. I definitely got the same sort of reaction I'll get if we're with M and Coalie- a tense back, grabbing the bit in her teeth, trying to bulge her shoulder and turn back the way she wanted to go. That ended up with more repetitions than I really wanted to be doing, so I had to find a moment when she relaxed at least a little and call it a day. At least I know what to keep working on!

Yesterday we were able to go out in the morning, before the rain hit. Lots of trotting, including down some of the hills we usually walk. She felt strong and balanced, which was pretty awesome to experience. It's been raining for days, so the roads are actually really soft and we went out totally barefoot, no boots. It was very satisfying seeing her hoofprints and how well she's overtracking- in most spots where we trotted, there was just a single impression where both feet landed. 


















And some more shots of them out in their new field. Maggie is being a bit of a pain out there- she'll go walk around for about 5 minutes and then she's standing at the gate whinnying. The other two are happily moseying around the field while she does this. The only thing I can think is that she's frustrated because the bugs are bad and with her grazing muzzle on she can't use her teeth to go after them or itch? I tried putting her back in the regular field and leaving the other two, but predictably that just led to a lot of calling back and forth and more fence pacing. So a little stumped on that one.










Fizzy laying in the tall grass :smile:


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## carshon

I am suffering the same with my muzzled mare. It is really hot and humid here even at 5 in the morning when I put them out to pasture. Belle is our lead mare but needs to wear a muzzle. She tries for a little bit but then comes up to the dry lot and stands with her head down. Being the lead mare the other 3 come in too. So NO ONE is getting any pasture. And like you when we leave her in the dry lot everyone congregates waiting for her to go to the pasture. Horses!


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## phantomhorse13

How is Fizz with lateral work? Perhaps when she gets on a mission for home, instead of turning her around or constantly asking her to slow, ask for shoulder in or leg yield for a few steps, then a few steps of balanced walk, then lateral work the other way, etc?


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## egrogan

Early last week, a neighbor from down the road stopped by to ask if some of her friends could use one of our pastures to camp this weekend. Apparently they do an annual trip with 3 other couples, and the place they usually stay in the next town over had been recently sold. The new owner wouldn't let them use the property, so they didn't have anywhere to stay. Of course we didn't mind, so their trailers rolled in on Thursday. They came with four horses, a dozen dogs, and a ride camp that would make endurance riders jealous :wink:



















Unfortunately the weather has been sticky and overcast, but they don't seem to be too bothered. Fizz and I went out to ride with one of the women yesterday, and we had a great time. It was the first time I can remember riding with a horse that could outwalk Fizz. The woman, H, had a cute little pony cross who could _walk_.








The first couple of miles I could feel Fizz thinking "what the heck is going on here" as Blue left us in the dust.








But, eventually her conditioning won out and he got a little tired on our hills so they were better matched. He's from a flat part of New Hampshire. I forget how challenging these hills are when you're not used to it!

(Yes, we did notice the saddle slipping and fixed it- roly poly pony problems!!)









It's funny how when you ride with someone for the first time, you're sort of conservative in your expectations to make sure it's not going to be someone crazy or awful to their horse or just totally mismatched for you. When I met H and we agreed to ride, she said she was looking to do a short ride, not much more than 5 miles, and mostly walking. But when we got to the place where I planned to turn around, she asked if we could go on to the next trail loop. And when we came to an intersection on that loop where we could turn back or keeping going, she wanted to keep going. So all in all, we did about 9 miles :wink: I think she was probably just uncertain of how the ride would go because her horse has such a quick walk that she is often in the position of having to hold him back, or circle around. She said she usually rides with Tennessee Walkers and they can't keep up with him. So like Fizz, he gets frustrated and resentful, but unlike Fizz, he then starts rearing. But they were both happy on this ride- they got to go at a comfortable pace for them and got to just move along without having to stop and wait for someone else. Overall, it was a quicker pace than we usually go with M and Coalie, but our average walk speed was still only right around 4mph. That's pretty average, isn't it? I don't think she's actually all that fast after all, just has places to go...

It threatened to storm our entire ride, and while we heard a rumble of thunder we only got hit with a few sprinkles. But not exaggerating at all, the second I got Fizz's tack off the skies opened and dumped buckets of rain. Couldn't have planned the timing any better!

I will probably ride with this group at some point again today, and then a long ride with M and Coalie tomorrow morning. And...lovely husband and I took all of next week off to do house stuff, but right now the weather forecast is decent so hope to intersperse the home improvement work with riding.


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## egrogan

Yesterday I ended up on another solo ride. It was later in the afternoon, so fairly warm, but there was a nice breeze so I figured I'd go out and back to the overlook quickly. 










Bugs were bad so Fizz was happy to trot off right away, and we trotted right along there and back. It's the first ride I recall where we've finally swapped the balance of walk/trot, so that we trotted more than we walked. Also first ride where our average speed was above that elusive 5mph mark. Granted, this was just a 2.5 mile ride, but still felt like a step forward in conditioning. We are now able to trot down our bigger hills in a reasonably balanced way, even going towards home. No feelings of somersaults about to happen (except when Fizz happens to kick a fly on her belly with a hind leg while trotting down hill ). Was very happy with her.

Last night we went to a potluck at "ride camp" and had a nice time visiting with all the folks staying there. Hugh had a great time playing with all the dogs there, particularly a year-old black lab named Surry. He was friendly with all the people and dogs and didn't mess with anyone's horses. All very good to see, since his socialization period has been so weird with the pandemic. I think he's going to turn into a happy, well adjusted pup despite that.









Today met M and Coalie and headed to a new trail system we haven't tried yet. It was in the same direction as Blind Mare Farm, but a couple of miles before that, there's a lefthand turn down a logging road that links you in to miles and miles more logging roads and trails. We set out wanting to go 10-12 miles but not totally sure where we'd end up. Unfortunately, the bugs were just UNBEARABLE and the poor horses coped as well as they could, but were clearly miserable. I had a deerfly get up under the brim of my helmet and have a lovely red bullseye in the middle of my forehead. :icon_rolleyes: But at least now we know where to enter the trails, and the footing was really nice. Hopefully it won't be too many more weeks before the bugs die back a bit. We backtracked the way we came and managed to do about 8 miles total. 










Will probably give her tomorrow off, but Tuesday is supposed to be nice as well so we'll get back out then.


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## egrogan

Is it fall yet?!

I am really, really not a summer person. Tuesday we went out and sweated our way through a short loop that let us stop at the town spring for a quick drink halfway through.

















Yesterday I had time to ride but it was 80*F and 90% humidity while doing morning chores and I just couldn't stand the thought of being out in the sun and bugs. The horses seemed to agree, barely budging from their sheds all day. I hated to waste a day when I had the time, but it just didn't sound fun at all. Today, temps and humidity were about the same, but at least it started out overcast so I thought maybe we could tolerate it. As of right now, the weekend is supposed to be stormy and oppressively hot, so I figured this might be our only chance before next week.

As soon as I got on, we were swarmed with dozens of biting deer flies. There was no escaping them- and she tried, by jumping off the road into a woodsy ditch to try to brush them off with tree branches  So we spent most of the ride trying to out trot them where we could, me with reins in left hand and a dressage whip in my right hand acting as a fly swisher, knocking the clouds off her neck and head while she thought about escaping out the right door to head home. We must have been quite a spectacle going down the road! There were sections where they disappeared, though I couldn't find any rhyme or reason to why. And, the fog/overcast burned off as the bright sun came out, so we were dripping with sweat. 



























We ended up doing 6.5 miles, though it felt like it was twice that it was so unpleasant. 

Switched back to bitless bridle today as the nose sore is healed and it has mostly filled back in with hair. But now she has a nasty sore near her mouth and her lips are a little swollen (I think it is buttercup burn maybe?) and she seemed very happy with the bridle set up today.


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## Avna

@egrogan, I recommend a couple of things that work moderately well for me for the deer flies. One is a much bigger fly hood. I have a new one I like quite a bit, that covers Brooke from just above her nostrils nearly to the front of the saddle. It's this one: https://www.horsehoodies.org/. They are generously sized; Brooke's is an Arab/Cob size (she is inconveniently sometimes a horse size and sometimes a cob size depending on the item and the manufacturer)

It is hotter, is the main disadvantage. 

The other is to invest in a real horsehair fly whisk. Those really work. The flies are still awful, but much more manageable.


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## bsms

FWIW, here in southern AZ it has been much hotter than normal - even for a normal Arizona July! I either need to get Bandit out by 6:30 or call it quits!

Anyways...Trooper has a slow walk but a fast trot. Bandit has a faster walk and a slower trot. So my wife lets Trooper lag, then trots him 100 yards or so to close the distance. Then walks / trots. No idea on how to get Trooper to willingly walk fast but it becomes an excuse to work on trotting.

BTW - a really good thing for me about riding solo is I don't have to limit our rides to what my wife can handle. So Bandit & I do a lot more cantering more off-trail cruising around. Another positive is Bandit is learning to trust me more, although our partnership means he has the right of refusal. I think back to my time with Mia and how so many folks here on HF told me to never dismount, NEVER accept her refusing. A big part of our problem, looking back, was rooted in how deep-seated her fears were and the advice to "never let her win"!

I love hearing about the distances you are going. Wish I could match them but with no water and morning temps often breaking 95 by 9 AM....well, I get pooped even if Bandit doesn't! I refuse to take water for me because there is none for him and I need to understand that he gets thirsty too. The flies at least are gone. I think they have all fried and gone to HEdoubleL, and I'm sure your horses will agree that is where they belong!

A couple of sunrise pictures my wife took a couple of days ago. This would be the best time to ride but I'm too lazy to get up, saddle Bandit and head out THIS early:

















It looks so beautiful where you are at but maybe for now I'll trade y'alls beauty for the flies being roasted away. I hate flies! Send yours down here and they'll be dead in 60 minutes...their sun-charred bodies dropping to the ground. Your horses might enjoy that mental picture...:smile:


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## phantomhorse13

While I am sorry to read of the heat and bugs, I was smiling like mad reading your last ride description.

You casually tell us about trotting down the road in an attempt to flee from bugs with the reins in one hand and the dressage whip beating bugs off her with the other - how far you two have come!! Great teamwork.


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## egrogan

Thanks @Avna, I will check out the hoodies. I've been trying really hard not to buy any new "stuff" this summer since my tiny tackroom is overflowing and with the house torn up in renovations there's no place to store extraneous things.



bsms said:


> BTW - a really good thing for me about riding solo is I don't have to limit our rides to what my wife can handle.


Yes, I have to admit that I do like being on my own agenda with Fizz and doing what she needs that day in that moment. I really do like having company sometimes, and it's good for Fizz to have to adjust as well, but sometimes just going along at the pace that makes sense in the moment is nice too.



bsms said:


> I think they have all fried and gone to HEdoubleL, and I'm sure your horses will agree that is where they belong!
> It looks so beautiful where you are at but maybe for now I'll trade y'alls beauty for the flies being roasted away. I hate flies! Send yours down here and they'll be dead in 60 minutes...their sun-charred bodies dropping to the ground. Your horses might enjoy that mental picture...:smile:


 On behalf of the ponies...









Those sunrise pictures you posted are absolutely gorgeous!


phantomhorse13 said:


> While I am sorry to read of the heat and bugs, I was smiling like mad reading your last ride description.
> 
> You casually tell us about trotting down the road in an attempt to flee from bugs with the reins in one hand and the dressage whip beating bugs off her with the other - how far you two have come!! Great teamwork.


 Hahaha, thank you so much. Definitely getting to a new level of comfort together. We are hoping to go to a pleasure ride at GMHA in a couple of weeks and it will be fun to be out in a different environment.

********************
Not much to say about our ride with M today except the song remains the same...
...Biting bugs...
...Aggressive dogs...
...Drenching humidity...

We actually kept our ride very short, only ~4 miles today, because the horses were restless with all that. M told me a harrowing story about a ride they had earlier in the week- Coalie was biting at a bug near his girth, and in the process got his bit caught on her stirrup iron and scared himself enough that he ended up falling over on her while he was flinging his head around to free his face. She said it all happened in seconds, from when it was clear he was stuck to when they were on the ground. Her foot did hang up in the stirrup and her leg was stuck under him, but fortunately he scrambled up quickly and then stood stock still while she sorted herself out. Miraculously she just has some bruises and he was totally fine. Given my existing fear about a horse falling on me again, that story had me a little rattled- of course it was just a freak accident, but those are the scariest kind!









Her sore on her lip is still there, with a couple of scabby spots but mostly it's just bare skin that's healing. Hopefully going in the right direction with alternating neosporin and Vetericyn applied a couple of times a day.









...But now Maggie is broken out in hives all down the right side of her body :icon_rolleyes: I guess I'm going to have to close off the pasture until it's dry enough to brush hog again since there's clearly something irritating them out there.


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## egrogan

OK, I totally want the human hoodie- but I can't figure out why it's half the price of the horse version when it actually looks like more material? :think:


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## knightrider

Oh oh oh! Show that to the poster who hates spiders!


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## egrogan

We have put off riding for now because of the bugs- just not worth the fight. Maybe tomorrow morning before the farrier comes.

Hugh is spending more and more time out with me doing chores. He is staying tethered for now as we are still working on recall, but he's getting much better. 

His nightly special treat is getting to drink out of the freshly filled bucket of well-cold water before I top off the horses- he thinks it's just the greatest thing ever.

















Working on (playful?) barking at the horses when they're milling around him, but getting a working "off" button for barking is one of our biggest training challenges at this phase with him. He turns 6 months old on Saturday and he's just such a love.


















We've had a few sunny days sprinkled in with the muggy, overcast one and the chickies are loving that. Their egg yolks are bright, bright yellow these days.


















We just passed our two-year anniversary of Maggie coming to stay with us. While she is technically still owned by her person, she feels like she's been the boss mare of our little herd for much longer.


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## carshon

Happy Anniversary Maggie! And that Hugh is just too cute for words! Today is the most picture perfect day her in NW IL. We had some rain yesterday and the world is bright green and fresh. Tomorrow bring on the high humidity and temps with heat index warnings. I so hate to be stuck inside working today- and would sneak out and ride if my world were not covered in corn and soybeans. I envy the close to home trails.

Just an FYI Cashel and other companies make human net hoodies - we have found some in the garden supply area of stores.


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## SueC

Hullo, @egrogan! :wave: The heat and bugs sound dreadful. mg: I would be trying to find a cool cellar to hibernate in during the worst heat. Your mare is looking lovely and all your photos are a treat, but this one gets my special award for this month:












It's so great that you ended up with such a wonderful dog, with loads of character and life, and no stress issues. A dog like that always makes you smile, and is great company. Here's a photo of me with our Jess today:



It was cold and blowing gale force winds on that mountain today, but it's so much easier to dress for the cold than for the heat...


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## egrogan

@*carshon* , hopefully we get a nice fall for riding after how nasty this summer has been! Wish you could come ride with us!

@*SueC* , we are loving having such a friendly, curious pup in Hugh. It's such a change to have a dog that hasn't learned the world is bad or scary. He just has no reason to even consider that something might be out to get him (except the electric fence, he did have one tangle with that, poor guy). I do think he's moving into a teenager phase- last night he would not stop barking at the horses and would not listen to "quiet," so he had to get tied up for a few minutes so I could finish chores. Lucky for him he's still cute even when he's in trouble :wink:









Fizz and I did go out for a short ride yesterday morning before the farrier. It was still really buggy on our road so most of the ride I was flicking flies off her head and neck with my dressage stick. They seem to be clustering right on her jaw where it's hard to dislodge them. A sort of funny moment- an older gentleman drove by us really slowly, and scowled nastily in my direction even though I thanked him for slowing down. Only after he drove past did it occur to me that he probably thought I was beating my horse's head with a whip  I need to get to work on making @*knightrider* 's fly swisher!

When we got to the overlook though, the bugs actually gave us a bit of a break, at least for a few minutes. 









Got this fun shot of Fizz's mane blowing in the breeze while she trotted along happily.


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## egrogan

Yesterday started off as a very Irish looking day, and it was unusually cool. That miraculously kept the bugs away, so I took the opportunity to get the horses out to the new field, and they were happily out there half the day before the fog burned off and the bugs came back out.









It did get a bit muggy in the afternoon, but it was relatively cool so Fizz and I headed out for the Newhall loop. For some reason I always leave the house thinking this loop is 4.5 miles, and then halfway through remember it's actually 6.5. So we were gone a little longer than expected, but we did ok. Just very sweaty because of the humidity.









Pretty sure we saw a bear at the beginning of the ride. We were headed down the hill of despair and heard something big moving through the woods on the right side of the road. Fizz froze and was trembling a bit- very out of character- and this is a spot where the bear(s) cross frequently so I'm guessing that's what was up. I urged her forward and she wouldn't move, so I hopped off and led her down the hill before getting back on.

Bugs were definitely still bad in places...









I also hopped off one more time as when we passed through the farm, right over the crest of this hill we came across a bunch of people out in the field flying kites. 










She actually didn't even look at them, and I think I probably could have ridden passed, but I didn't really want to risk an embarrassing freak out in front of a bunch of kids! :wink:

This astronaut flaggy thing doesn't scare her at all either...









The only thing she had a massive spook at was a new pile of logs on the side of the road :icon_rolleyes:

Oh- our new matchy breastcollar finally arrived! I just need to switch over the straps on her boots to blue and we'll be all set until hunting season. Poor thing was so, so itchy when we got home.









It's supposed to be 90*F and 90% humidity all weekend so not sure we'll do much. Hopefully this will be the worst of the summer. September is just weeks away!


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## phantomhorse13

Yay for unexpectedly cool.. can you send some of that down this way please? Bears and kites make for an interesting ride, but sounds like it was all handled well. Love that color on Fizz.


This should have been the weekend of the endurance ride.. but from your description of the heat and the bugs, maybe I am not that sorry it didn't happen. Who expects Vermont to be so hot??


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## egrogan

@*phantomhorse13* , wish I still had some cool weather to send your way but it's been nearly 90* with 90% humidity- the meteorologists got it right this time, unfortunately. But yes, I was thinking about how sad it was there was no VT100 over the weekend. Would have made for near-record heat two years in a row though. Maybe next year will be better!


Saturday morning Hugh Malone graduated from Obedience class. The other owners all commented on how much he'd grown over the course of the class. Even though he still had plenty of puppy moments, I think it was a good experience. We did a fun "hide and seek" game where we went inside the building while the trainer kept the dog a ways away outside, and then the owner called for the dog from inside to test recall. Hugh went first and I was so thrilled when he came flying to my hiding place like a rocket and seemed so relieved to find me there :loveshower: We also got to play with some of the agility jump obstacles, and he was the best jumper in the class :wink:









Even if he did miss a stride here or there :hide:









Yesterday we met M and Coalie bright and early to beat the heat. I have gotten so desperate about the bugs I sprayed Fizz down with the heavy duty human Deep Woods Off, and I also went for a Hail Mary with a dryer sheet on her bridle. I can't say it kept the bugs away, they still swarmed, but far fewer actually landed during the first half of the ride. That set a much more positive tone for the whole ride.

















Lots of haying going on here- we got our last delivery today, and are ready for the rest of the year with 600 bales put up! More about that here.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, happy anniversary to Maggie! 

Yay for Hugh graduating!!  He is just adorable. Great pictures!

So, OFF used to be my 'go to' bug spray for myself, but the only bug spray I use now is Repel max formula. I swear, it keeps ALL the bugs (including nasty ticks) away! It's 40% deet. The dryer sheet also sounds like a good idea, I may have to try that!

Fizz is so cute in her matchy-matchy! :loveshower: I second @phantomhorse13...can you send some of that cool weather down my way??? It's deathly hot here lately! :lol:


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## egrogan

So much for my theory about the human bug spray making a difference...went out at lunch today and I think she was the most miserable with the bugs I've ever seen her. She was flinging her head all around trying to shake them off, kicking at her belly with hind legs, stopping suddenly to try to rub them off her nose on her leg while trotting. Just really impossible to take more than a few steps forward before repeating. 

At one point she was spasming around so much that a car coming up behind us just stopped in the middle of the road like they didn't know what to do. I was wishing for them to just go around us so we didn't end up thrashing into them, but they wouldn’t pass so I just hopped off and we turned around and walked home. She continued fretting alongside me but no other cars passed us. I've never felt that she was unsafe around traffic before, but today I really think she wouldn't have noticed if a car was coming alongside her, she was so desperate to get away from the bugs that she was oblivious to everything else :sad:










Obviously not a fun ride, but I did get back on close to home and ride in the yard for a few minutes before calling it quits.

I can't be upset with her as I know she's just incredibly uncomfortable, but I'm really at a loss here as to why her tolerance is so, so low compared to other horses.


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## PoptartShop

Oh I can totally relate. My mare is the same way, even if a single fly lands on her face, she's flinging her head like crazy. Some horses are definitely more sensitive to the bugs than others. I also use SWAT on her face/ears which can help too, but the only fly spray I've found that actually works for my sensitive girl is the Farnam Endure Sweat-Resistant fly spray. 

It also just sounds like the bugs are really bad right now, same with over here. The heat/humidity definitely doesn't help. Hopefully it gets better!


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> So much for my theory about the human bug spray making a difference...went out at lunch today and I think she was the most miserable with the bugs I've ever seen her. She was flinging her head all around trying to shake them off, kicking at her belly with hind legs, stopping suddenly to try to rub them off her nose on her leg while trotting. Just really impossible to take more than a few steps forward before repeating.
> 
> At one point she was spasming around so much that a car coming up behind us just stopped in the middle of the road like they didn't know what to do. I was wishing for them to just go around us so we didn't end up thrashing into them, but they wouldn’t pass so I just hopped off and we turned around and walked home. She continued fretting alongside me but no other cars passed us. I've never felt that she was unsafe around traffic before, but today I really think she wouldn't have noticed if a car was coming alongside her, she was so desperate to get away from the bugs that she was oblivious to everything else :sad:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Obviously not a fun ride, but I did get back on close to home and ride in the yard for a few minutes before calling it quits.
> 
> I can't be upset with her as I know she's just incredibly uncomfortable, but I'm really at a loss here as to why her tolerance is so, so low compared to other horses.


*Fly.Whisk.
Whole-body riding netting. 
*
Brooke is just the same. As far as my research goes, there is no substance that repels deer flies (or horse flies, in the same family, Tabanidae). Nothing. Nor can their larvae be controlled as they breed in wetlands, not water like mosquitoes and midges. They can be confused, they say, by stripes and large spots that break up the outline of an animal (Tabanid flies are why Zebras are striped). I have seen an ad for a striped fly net somewhere. DEET and pyrethrins repel mosquitoes, ticks, midges, no-see-ums, gnats, but not Tabanid flies. 

Deer flies _*hurt*_ when they bite. That's why they drive horses crazy. Pippa won't go out on trails with us because of the biting flies. She runs for home. 

Yesterday I had a good seven mile ride with a friend. We started at 8 a.m. it was a cooler day than some have been, it stayed in the mid seventies for most of it. Hundreds of deer flies most of the way; they much preferred Brooke to my friend's little pinto. Brooke wore her fly hoodie, and my whisk was going like a windshield wiper the whole time except when we trotted. It was tolerable, although not possible to stand still for more than a count of five. Try that whisk!


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## carshon

We are having the same issue suddenly with daughters horse. I think she is starting to have a reaction to all of the fly spray being applied and her chest is peeling and she is not happy at all. She is so agitated by the flies this year that she will not go into the pasture at all. Today will be the first day that I am putting her in full fly gear. Neck cover, fly sheet and leg wraps. I have never had to cover a horse so much but Sawyer is absolutely miserable and leaving her in her stall alone just makes her fret more.

What a horrible year for buts it has been!


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## QueenofFrance08

Chico is the same. He's manageable with a Quiet ride mask and fly boots on but I'm looking in to the neck netting as well (not sure about needing the rump netting, he doesn't seem to be too bad with that). He of course just got a giant fly bite right where his cinch goes right before our first ride so he's in a full fly suit at home now (pink was the only color I had in his size!). Thankfully I don't usually ride roads so the worst case scenario he flings into a tree with his fussing but still not a pleasant ride.


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## egrogan

Thanks for commiserating with me. I think the bug sheet while riding is going to be too hot for Fizz, but I'm picking up a dowel rod on our errands today and will try to make a fly swisher. We've had a couple of better rides the last few days.

Friday I went out in the afternoon. I forgot my half-chaps up in the house so walked up there to get them; lovely husband was out in the yard on a work call so he was an excellent horse holder while I finished getting ready.









I'm so happy, I finally found my pommel bags that I have been missing since we moved in 2 years ago. So much of our stuff is still packed away as we work on renovations, that I could not put my hands on the box that these things were hiding in. On a lark I checked an out-of-the-way closet, and sure enough found some random tack. I definitely appreciated having a water bottle holder- and a big pocket for a bottle of bug spray to reapply along the way!









Yesterday we went out with M and Coalie bright and early. While we did still go through some clouds of deerflies, on the whole it was better than we've had in quite awhile.









Like I said, still _some _bugs. Who knew ears were this bendy!?


















We were home by 9am, but still very hot and sweaty. After I sponged her down, Fizz decided a nap was in order- even better that she could munch the lawn while resting! :rofl:









Hugh continues to be adorable and gets bigger every day. He's now 41 lbs. He's my buddy at night to do chores. Yesterday we ate dinner an hour later than usual and he was not pleased with us for going off routine. :grin:










Practicing self-control with one of his favorite treats...so tantalizingly close









Look closely to see the friend he's taken along for the ride...


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## egrogan

Another great ride yesterday. Fizz did close to 20 miles this weekend, what a good girl.

We went out to the overlook and continued on past it down the big Cavendish hill. This is the overlook at the top









And then at the bottom of the hill on the way home, looking back up to the top. It's a significant hill!










Fizzy is so grumpy for the first half of the ride when we go out that way. She was back to hopping around going down the hill trying to duck out for home via the ditch on the right side of the road. Fortunately there was no traffic, but we made it halfway down the hill before I decided things would be much easier for us both if I just hopped off and led her down the rest of the way. Sometimes after doing that she gets naughty about standing for mounting, but for whatever reason I was able to just be really zen about the whole thing and that made the situation less of a big deal and she was more than cooperative. There was one sort of tense moment though- I had switched out her hind boots for a different pair and so while I was on the ground did a quick check to make sure nothing was rubbing. While I did that I let her graze and she managed to get her right front leg through the reins. Fortunately she stood still when I asked her to and I quickly but nonchalantly got the rein unbuckled and unlooped it. She stood fine while I got back on and we went on our way.

We rode out about 3 miles before turning around to backtrack the same way for home, and as usual, she's very lovely coming home. She moves out in a very nice walk and trot, not rushing or pulling but just happily swinging along. We had some very nice trot stretches along the way.

Also came across this unusual sight, which was pretty neat to see









The field along the Cavendish hill now has cows in it. I knew they were there from driving past but it took forever for Fizzy to notice them even though I told her they were coming :wink: She scooted hard sideways when she finally noticed them, but aside from keeping a wary eye on them she didn't balk at passing. That's gotten much better this year- last year she'd plant her feet and I'd need to lead her past cows. You have to sort of squint to see them down the hill where she's looking, but they sure seemed closer to the fence in real life going past!









Day off for her today. It's going to be 95*F/35*C this afternoon. Yuck!


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## Spanish Rider

Those bent ears!


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## SwissMiss

I am late to the party to commiserate about the bugs and heat, but @egrogan, you know how lovely the South can be in summer on both accounts :wink:

The human netting is awesome - also for gnat season when they fill your ears and nose in seconds, yuck. While I like the horsehoodie version (after all, you can get it in teal trim :biggrin, I went with a cheaper fishing one. Works as well for the fraction of the cost. And yes, it helps with the spiders too!
Our horse flies were horrible (I think atm it is even too hot for them), and the fly rump rug (aka glute guard) made a world of difference do Raya. Yes, we still have horse flies sitting on her croup, but apparently they can't get through. Even our mustang mare (who goes nuts and bucks if there is a bug on her butt - how did she survive in the wild?????) is much happier during a ride. Not sure how much hotter the mesh actually is. It is so hot and humid that it doesn't seem to make a difference...

Oh, and I almost forgot: The all matchy blue looks great!!!


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## egrogan

I will pass along the compliments to Ms. Fizz. 

We went out for a short ride today. The bugs continue to be a bit better. I was unsuccessful in finding a dowel rod on shopping errands this past weekend (the joys of small towns with no real stores) so I haven't made our swisher yet, but I'm going to the big town Friday and they have a Home Depot. Today we just did a short loop at lunch. The weather was actually perfect- about 75*F/24*C, with bright blue skies.


























Tomorrow M and I are taking the afternoon off and doing a weekday ride, probably around 6-7 miles. But more excitingly, we're signed up to do a pleasure ride at GMHA this weekend. We're going to ride the horses there Saturday afternoon, stable them overnight, and do the ride Sunday morning. There are 25 mile competitive trail rides both days, but we didn't quite feel ready for 25 miles. The horses probably could do it, but I'm not sure _we _could :wink: Also, I've finally learned the fine print about what differentiates CTR from endurance, and I have to say I'm not sure I will ever do a CTR. I only recently learned they have a rule that you can't get off your horse at all on trail. That seems nuts to me. When we are in a dicey situation, I am absolutely getting off to walk my horse through something without either of us getting hurt. That just seems like one of those old fashioned "make the horse do it your way or the highway" sort of mentalities, codified in an actual rule, and it just doesn't work for me. If all goes well this weekend though, I do think we'll be trying to do the endurance 25 miler on Labor Day weekend though.

Yesterday I took Hugh out to the overlook and back on a nice walk. He's turning into a handsome little dog.

















We're still no good at selfies though! :rofl:


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## SwissMiss

egrogan said:


> The weather was actually perfect- about 75*F/24*C, with bright blue skies.


:shock: That's our nightly low - if we are lucky :shock:

I need a "I am freezing and need a jacket" emoji :biggrin:


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## MeditativeRider

I think 24°C sounds amazing (we are in winter and I am looking forward to an unseasonally warm 16°C today). Looks like a lovely day, and your dog is beautiful. Do you have to spend a lot of time caring for its coat?


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## SueC

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:clap: :clap: :clap:


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## egrogan

MeditativeRider said:


> Looks like a lovely day, and your dog is beautiful. Do you have to spend a lot of time caring for its coat?


 Thanks @MeditativeRider! He's still just a baby, 6 months old so we haven't had to do a lot with his coat yet. I've brushed it out with a basic flat grooming brush and did get some undercoat out but nothing major yet. Our previous English Shepherd had a fairly high maintenance coat and did get professional grooming every couple of months as she needed to be shampooed, trimmed, and dried or else she'd get terrible matting in her fur. I don't think Hugh has quite as robust a coat as Delia did so am hopeful he won't need a pro.





SueC said:


> :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
> 
> :clap: :clap: :clap:


Right?! I don't understand how people take cute selfies. I've decided my arms are just too short :hide:


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Right?! I don't understand how people take cute selfies. I've decided my arms are just too short :hide:


But @egrogan, that *is* a cute selfie!  At least by my own personal definition of cute!


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## egrogan

A two-day 25 miler: Part 1

This weekend, GMHA hosted their August 2-day 50 mile competitive trail ride. As with most of their rides, they also offered pleasure ride options, which allow you to get onto private land that's usually gated or posted and interspersed throughout the public roads and the formal GMHa trail system. This year, the competitive 25 mile route came right through my neighborhood; the hold, which was 12 miles into the competitive ride (e.g., halfway there...) was only 3 miles from my house. So, M and I decided that we would actually ride the horses to GMHA, vs. trailer them there. We started off by riding the back half of the formal competitive ride route, doing ~15 miles on Saturday, left them stabled there overnight, and then rode them home on the "first" part of the competitive route on Sunday, doing ~10 miles, giving us a two-day, 25 mile ride.

M and I were scheduled to meet up at 1:30 on Saturday, at a spot 1.5 miles from each of our houses. I decided I'd handwalk Fizz to warm up the first half mile, down the hill of despair, to get things started without any disagreements. She marched right along, no big deal. I stopped at the bottom of the hill to tighten her girth and run my stirrups down before getting on. As I was doing that, she was bothered by deer flies biting her jaw, and decided to try to scratch them with her hind foot- which resulted in her stepping through the reins and _snapping them in half by breaking the buckle_!!!  Eeek- I was about to go on the longest ride I've ever done with broken reins?! Even though I wasn't far from home, I didn't have any way to contact M (no cell service) and she was waiting. The metal buckle piece connecting the two reins had broken off completely, but the little leather keeper for the tab was still intact, so I slid the reins back together and hoped for the best. Off we went to meet M and Coalie (after getting sidetracked as soon as I mounted up by a very sweet neighbor who chatted my ear off for 10 minutes about whether any endurance rides would be using her property this season, and how wonderful her blueberries were doing this year... :wink. I arrived at the meeting spot exactly on time, but of course M was early and waiting for us:









The first part of the ride was familiar territory, roads we ride fairly frequently. 









The hold for the CTR riders was about 3 miles away, so the horses were happy to take a nice drink right away. Unfortunately directly across the street from the hold, there's a farm with 4 rambunctious horses that we've had some trouble with in the past, because they come bucking and galloping from the pasture to the front of the field whenever horses are coming on the road. Some might remember when I had to give away the rooster I found last year; this is the same farm where he went to live happily with a flock of his own ladies, but I didn't see him yesterday. :chicken: Anyway, of course the horses there went nuts when we passed, and this is one thing that is very hard for Coalie so he started leaping around in the road. M got off to lead him but then Fizz planted her feet wondering if she should be scared too, so I got off as well. We walked a short way and then got back on. No sooner had we gotten on than we approached the Connemara farm on one side of the road and the llama farm on the other. There was a single pony out in the field closest to the road, and he was up close to the barn, so it seemed fine. However, suddenly he saw us and came bucking and farting from the barn right up to the treeline, having a grand old time crashing around in the low branches, squealing and calling out to our horses. Fizz looked at him like he was nuts and Coalie mostly held it together. Maybe it was a good thing the pony was so distracting, because they never even noticed the llamas gawking at them from the other side of the street :rofl:

So in the first five miles, we had broken reins, chatty neighbors, a galloping herd, bucking ponies, and evil llamas. Quite an exciting start! After that though, things were quiet and uneventful right up until the last mile.

The trail stayed on dirt road for a couple more miles (another water stop was very welcome) and then crossed a busy paved road onto private trails for most of the rest of the ride. This was what we were excited about, because this is land that's typically gated/posted and not accessible to ride. This was the "estate tour" part of the ride. Hidden down dirt roads across our town are some wildly opulent estate houses on hundreds of meticulously groomed and maintained acres. Many of them are just vacation homes at this point but maintained with full time staff. Pretty wild. It made for beautiful riding though. 










M and I were laughing that at the houses where there were horses or cattle in the fields, there was not a poop pile to be seen- there must be people waiting for the horses to poop to run out and pick it up :rofl: 










The horses enjoyed another water stop and great grazing before we headed on to the last couple of miles of day one, back out on the dirt roads. We were riding along when a truck pulled up alongside us and asked if we had seen a loose horse. Apparently a very well known endurance rider had come off the horse right at the beginning of the CTR, really close to his own farm, but the horse had been missing since the morning (it was probably close to 5pm by that time). Even though the horse was close to home, he was a new horse to the farm so didn't necessarily know it was "home." There were tons of people looking for him that day with no luck. Fortunately, we heard mid-day Sunday that he had been found and was not hurt. Phew!

The final stretch of the ride goes down a long hill that drops you back into the GMHA grounds, with a big dairy farm across the street. I knew this could be dicey for Fizz, even though she's gotten so much better about cows this year. Sure enough, we came over the final crest in the hill, and about 50 dairy cows were lined up at their stanchions (is that the right term?) eating hay, mooing, and clanking against the metal part of the feeders. I don't think I've ever seen her eyes get so big. She rarely gets snorty and blowy, but she was at this scene. I hopped off, and at first she wasn't particularly happy about moving forward past them, but with some coaxing she did ok. I was happy there was no meltdown to end what had been a really great ride up to that point. And with that...day one was done! 









I hosed her down quickly but she was more interested in grass than anything else. After grazing around for a few minutes, she and Coalie cleaned up their dinner happily and settled in.









This was the longest distance we'd ever ridden and I was thrilled she handled it all like a champ!


To be continued with day 2....


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## egrogan

A two-day 25 miler: Part 2

I had done night check Saturday, so Sunday morning M got there early to feed. I have to admit, I tossed and turned a bit Saturday night with some anxiety about Fizz being ok in the stall overnight and not trying to jump out the open front stall. She was perfectly happy when I saw her at night check (and had polished off two full buckets of water and a full hay net!) but still, I just worried she'd get anxious standing there so long. M said she was fine when she arrived, so that's a relief and good confidence building for next time.

_Embarrassed getting kisses from lovely husband_









The CTR was sharing the venue with a driving competition, so we weren't sure what the horses would make of seeing so many carriages and harness horses on their way too and from the dressage competition ring (which was behind our barn). Not only "regular" harness horses, but MINIs everywhere. They were definitely interested and watched intently out their stall doors, but they handled it much better than I expected, even when we had them out on the hitching rail getting tacked up.

_A mini pulling a cart spotted in the distance_









Saturday night while I was hand grazing Fizzy around, we met a woman with another buckskin Morgan mare, Pepper, who could have been Fizz's twin. Pepper looked gorgeous all harnessed up. I think they were heading out to the marathon course at this point:









We headed out around 8:30am, and had to ride right past the ring where the drivers were doing the cones course. The horses were wide eyed but handled it ok. The first mile we rode through the GMHA eventing course








I kept both hands on the wheel because Fizz was very looky at the massive jumps, and I'll admit I was too. I don't know how eventers do it. Those obstacles were scary just to walk past, let alone run down a hill and jump over!! 

From there we crossed over the bridge leaving the grounds and headed out on the trail towards home. Sunday's ride was more of a straight shot (we did deviate from the official competitive route a little to cut out a steep section of woods in favor of a dirt road that was a bit more direct). 

We had a mix of trail footing- some gravel:









Some pretty rocky:









And then just plain old dirt road where the Jeep track turned into passable road again








^^This is where you could really see the path the competitive riders had traveled earlier in the morning. Fizz and Coalie were very interested in sniffing the footprints and inevitable poop piles we came across.

We only had one difficult situation along the way, of course with aggressive dogs (wouldn't be a ride without awful dogs :icon_rolleyes. We heard them before we saw them, and there happened to be a car along us on the Jeep trail at the same time, so first the dogs took off after the Jeep, literally trying to jump into it while it drove past. The Jeep powered past them, so then they turned their attention to us. They came charging and barking, and were milling menacingly around the horses' legs- one even started to put it's mouth on Fizz. I whacked at it with my dressage whip and M did the same. Meanwhile, a burly, angry guy came charging out of the horse cursing at them and yelling that they were his daughter's dogs that he didn't even want at his house and he didn't know their names. M calmly asked him to get them back to the house so they didn't get kicked, and his response was that he wished the horses would just kick them and get rid of them. I not so calmly said I really didn't want to get thrown off my horse if she got bit so would he please get the dogs. So he stomped across the street chasing them, paying no attention to the fact that he was brushing up against the horses and banging into their butts while he chased the dogs. God love those good horses, they just stood there and didn't move a muscle through this whole scene, when they easily could have kicked the horses, the man, or us after flinging us off. He finally chased them back across the street and opened the truck door, and they jumped in with him slamming the door behind him, then disappeared back around the corner of the house without saying another word to us. M and I took a deep breath and trotted the hell out of there! Why can't people just control their dogs, or keep them contained if they can't?!

Soon enough though, we were on the home stretch. M and I parted ways at the same spot we'd met (we often separate there so the horses are used to going home alone), but for the first time ever Fizz was actually looking back over her shoulder for Coalie. I guess they bonded during their sleepover :grin: She felt strong and happy to finish off the ride, even wanting to canter up the hill of despair as we approached home (I said no thank you to that...). 

_Sampling her literal "home turf" :rofl:_









She was sweaty and itchy and barely let me get her saddle pulled before she beelined to the dust bath hole they've created in the dry lot this summer- didn't even get her boots off first.









I took her out onto the lawn to graze around some and gave her some soggy beet pulp as a snack. I've never seen her as hungry as she was. She couldn't get the food in her mouth fast enough, alternating between mouthfuls of grass and the mash. I was glad she had such a good appetite. She drank a ton of water and ate a bunch of hay throughout the afternoon, but she looked great overall. No sore spots that I could see, no rubs from her boots or the pommel bags. I think it went great!

A few big lessons we learned:
1. The horses are mentally and physically capable of the distance, and mentally capable of being stalled in a very busy showground and still riding out calmly.
2. Fizz excels on the roads, and Coalie in the woods. That's not entirely new, but we're learning how to use that to our advantage when riding together.
3. We're still too slow to be able to successfully complete a CTR. Our average speed was about 3.5 mph. We need to be closer to 5-6 mph. That's pretty hard to imagine attaining, given we have a good idea of the kind of terrain we'd be competing on. We did agree we can probably do a lot more trotting on the roads than we currently do (harder for Coalie), and be more forward on the downhills in the woods (harder for Fizz), so if we commit to training those things on our own, when we're together we can probably get our average speed more consistently at the 4mph mark. But- that's still too slow, so what to do? :think:
4. Doing a CTR is probably not attainable for us because of the rule that you can't get off your horse. Given some of the situations we encountered this weekend, not getting off the horse and handwalking for short periods would have been dangerous and stupid. I don't understand why this rule exist if it actually makes people less safe. And it's really irritating. But I think it means we have to stick to endurance/LD vs. CTR.

So...that's a wrap. Great weekend, great horses! :loveshower:


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## knightrider

Loved the descriptions of your adventures. Thank you so much for sharing.

I used to do CTR for a number of years. The rule about not getting off your horse was to demonstrate that your horse can handle all kinds of difficult situations calmly. CTR has judged obstacles. There is a whole lot more emphasis on a quiet steady calm trail horse rather than a fast horse. If you have to dismount when scary things come up, it shows that your horse isn't as capable as one that would take that stuff in stride. 

As I'm sure you know, you are penalized for arriving too early equally as arriving later than the exact specified time (for me, it was 4 hours for 25 miles). A lot has to do with judging the time and trails exactly--a lot like sports car rallies which I also used to do. It's tricky, studying your watch, judging how fast or slow you need to ride to finish in exactly 4 hours. I understand now there are computerized gadgets that people use which make it far more accurate and easy than we did back in the 70's and 80's. I was getting fairly good at it. The best I ever did was 2nd place out of 63 people--for which I was quite pleased.

Of course, the judging at obstacles is subjective, and at times, not fair, as any judged horse event can be. I remember one time my neighbor lost 6 points because her horse tapped the rail of a railroad track we had to cross. Luckily, my horse did not tap it. The bottom of my pasture was a railroad, and we crossed it about 4 times a week. Our horses were not the least bit worried about riding across railroad tracks. But bad luck for my friend--her horse tapped it.

I think endurance rides are like open jumping and CTR rides are like hunters--lots of skill and finesse involved in CTR whereas endurance is "may the fastest horse win." Of course, both are subject to vet checks, but I doubt too many endurance horses average 6 mph, which is what we did to compete successfully at CTR. We'll have to ask @phantomhorse13, but I think endurance horses average closer to 10 mph.

I think you could have fun doing either one. I think CTR tends to be a bit tamer since it is not as fast or demanding. Both are fun.


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## phantomhorse13

Congrats on a very successful weekend! You should be very proud of yourself and Fizz!!

Just so you are aware, ECTRA's rule does say no forward progress unmounted. However, I have yet to be at a ride that would not allow you to get down for a _safety_ concern. You aren't allowed to get down and jog to save them pounding going downhill or because your legs hurt, etc. But nobody wants there to be an accident.

Let me tell you, if I had been there for that terrible dog incident, I would have gotten off.


You are right that you need to get your pace a bit faster to be able to hit the window needed for CTR, but it sounds like you have a plan to start working towards that.

@*knightrider* winning endurance riders may have an overall pace of 10 mph depending on the trail, but those just looking to complete (esp on the turtle end of things) normally are going _much_ slower. In many cases, the overall pace for an LD can actually be slower than for a CTR of the same distance. Also, the CTRs in our area are run by ECTRA and do not have the same rules as those run by NATRC - no obstacles or campsite judging for us!


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## egrogan

Thanks @*knightrider* & @*phantomhorse13* ! I'm still so proud of Fizz and how great she was this weekend.


@*knightrider* , thanks for that overview of riding CTR- how weird that it sounds so different than how CTR works in our region! I didn't think the process would vary so much in different places. The obstacles sound more like what I've seen here as "trail class" at regular horse shows. @*phantomhorse13* described well what I've experienced as a volunteer at a few CTR rides here; it's basically just endurance with a different sanctioning body that has slightly different vetting procedures and rules, and people do seem to be forced to move down the trail faster than in an AERC endurance ride over the same trail. I'm sure there's history as to why, but I don't know what it is.

I guess I appreciate the goal that a good trail horse should go quietly through something that's scary or tricky to navigate, but at the same time, crazy things happen out on a trail and I don't want to feel like I'm being sneaky to stay safe getting through it, even though a better rider would be able to handle it differently. Oh well, I guess that sport just isn't for me, and that's ok. We're lucky that we can still go out and ride the same exact trail in a way that makes sense for us.

We're supposed to get the remnants of Hurricane Isaias here later today- expecting a couple of inches of rain and 25 mph winds, which is pretty intense for us. But the rest of the week is supposed to be beautiful so looking forward to getting back in the saddle later in the week.


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## QueenofFrance08

We have our own CTR here that is developed by our Upper Midwest regional sanctioning group but you are always allowed to dismount if there is a safety concern as well. They often announce at ride meetings scary bridges/other things where the CTR riders may want to dismount as their horses may have issue with those locations and safety may be in question. I have hopped off during novice (CTR rules) rides if there has been dogs or scary animals that we had to get past. 

Maybe this is uncommon/unpopular advice but we I don't think I've ever gone ride speed during a training ride. Chico is a slug when he's by himself and our trails at home (the park by home that we generally ride at) are too hilly/rocky/muddy to maintain ride pace. Plus we stop and let them graze at certain points/adjust more things then we would at a ride. Even though we train at roughly 4-4.5 miles an hour none of our horses have ever had problems doing rides at 6+. The adrenaline and ease of already marked trails really help when at an actual event. Once again, I don't ever care to win and generally plan on being the turtle or close to it which makes a difference but just another thought for you!

Make sure you're giving her enough time off now that you're doing more distance! Rest is just as if not more important than conditioning!


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## carshon

What a happy post! I am so proud of you both and I am sure that you are proud of Fizz. What a great team you two have become!


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## egrogan

We've had really terrible internet access the past week, so I haven't been able to post much.

At the beginning of last week, we got heavy storms as the remnants of Hurricane Isaias passed over. Although there was a lot of rain and wild winds, we got lucky and didn't lose any big trees or fencing. But wasn't really able to ride at the beginning of the week. I am trying really hard to find a new job, and last week I had several interviews, so that also made it tough to juggle riding (no complaint though!!). I did get Fizz out for a quick solo spin on Wedneday, but that was it until M and I went out yesterday.

It's sort of crazy, all of a sudden some of the green is starting to turn to brown and yellow









But make no mistake, still plenty of stuff growing out there. The berries have been wonderful this year. The raspberries and black raspberries are just now finishing up in the sunny spot (though the woods are stilled loaded) but the blackberries are just getting started. Fizz and I sampled









Friday, I received a package from a Horse Forum fairy, which contained a brand new fly swisher handmade from one of her own horse's tail! :happydance: I was so grateful to this lovely person who took pity on us for being so uncomfortable on our rides. Fizz was fascinated by it, and enjoyed its benefits on our ride. Mostly she just wanted to smell it though. 



















M and I had a great ride Sunday, with picture perfect weather to go find a new-to-us trail loop.


















We were successful in finding the trail, so we ended up doing 10 miles. That puts us over 250 miles for the year so far. We're trying to focus on moving out more quickly now that the horses seem comfortable at this distance. We still have plenty of work to do, and need to add in more time at the faster gaits, but the horses are ready and I think we are too.

Unfortunately after the hot rains from the hurricane blew in, the grass has been wet and stayed wet. Poor Fizzy has developed scratches again. They are fairly mild, but I do feel bad when I see her with them. They turn into bloody, cracked skin pretty easily if I don't keep them lathered up with really thick layers of Desitin. I've kept that up all week and they do look better. It's a bit of a dilemma with riding though, as there's no way to avoid a boot rubbing on it and I really can't ride her here without some hoof protection. My compromise has been tons of Desitin, with a little non-stick gauze square on top, covered up with a layer of vet wrap that does one loop under her foot and comes up around the back of her pastern to keep everything in place. It held up really well on the ride Sunday so I will be conservative about riding the next week but use that strategy when I do. It's supposed to be mid-80*F weather all week anyway, so probably not much riding in the forecast for us.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...4. Doing a CTR is probably not attainable for us because of the rule that you can't get off your horse....


Great job! Hadn't ridden Bandit out since I don't know when. Rode him today and he rode like we've been riding every day for the last couple of weeks. But as I was about to dismount and lead him on the paved road home (about a 5 minute walk), he spotted a large pile of flattened cardboard boxes piled high for the recycling people. OMG! Space aliens!

I was going to dismount in 50 feet anyways, but I dismounted. He was very tense but kept following me as I got close to the pile. Then I stretched out my arm and had enough rein I could stand next to the pile, facing Bandit. He paused for 5 seconds, then came and stood next to me. Blew his nose, sighed...and was then fine. I could have mounted up and ridden him home if I wanted.

I understand @knightrider 's point. Sort of. But I don't think Bandit is so much poorly trained as he is trained to work with me. I understand about judging stuff and what people prefer in horses, but I'm quite happy with a horse who says, "_I'm not happy about this Bob! Help me out here!_" Maybe it was all the spinning and bolts I did on Mia, but I just don't understand the objection to dismounting. I love a horse who will let me dismount - Mia viewed it as the Captain abandoning ship, and my four-legged ship didn't want to be abandoned! - and make things right. Without fuss, bother or danger. And who will then happily stand rock solid for me to mount up again. 

Maybe it comes with learning to ride as an adult....:shrug: 

Sounds like a great time, though! :cheers:


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## PoptartShop

So proud of you and Fizz.  I'm sure she really appreciated the new fly swisher too, how cool is that!

The trails look like fun! Scratches can definitely be a pain, especially this time of year with all the rain & mud. :icon_rolleyes: Ugh. Desitin is definitely a lifesaver! I use it on my mare's nose after I apply sunscreen. :lol: It's good for all sorts of things!


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> I love a horse who will let me dismount - And who will then happily stand rock solid for me to mount up again.
> 
> Maybe it comes with learning to ride as an adult....:shrug:


My friend M has done some riding recently with a small group of local "very experienced endurance riders" who spend their entire ride telling her all the things she's doing wrong with her horse and why she has to do things the way they do. They berated her for getting off Coalie to calmly walk through something difficult, while their horses were rearing and spinning as their riders screamed and cursed at them. Come to find out, they never got off their horses because they wouldn't be able to get back on them- the horses absolutely would not stand still long enough for them to mount while on the trail. So instead of working through that and taking a less stressful approach for horse and rider, they chastised someone who did things differently. :icon_rolleyes: Oh, and whenever something "scary" came up on the trail and their horses started trotting backwards to escape, they insisted that sweet Coalie go through it in the lead because he will go through mostly anything quietly. And as soon as they passed, they were back to telling M how she needed to MAKE COALIE LISTEN and walk faster or trot when she decided he should trot or whatever other nitpicky thing she was doing wrong. I'll take a horse who's working with me in partnership over one that spends most of the ride in a state of panic while I force it to submit! She hasn't ridden with them in a couple of weeks because she was so irritated with their last ride, but I'm still frustrated on her behalf :evil:

***********
Fizz and I finally got out at lunch yesterday. It has been so hot all week, but yesterday was mostly bearable, though still sticky. Fizz was not thrilled that vacation ended, and we were decidedly _not _working in partnership the first couple of miles. She was dragging along and acting miserable at every step. I could have gotten off and hopped on one leg faster than she was moving. As soon as we finally did manage to get some reasonable forward progress, it seemed that every local contractor with a noisy truck pulling a rattly trailer full of garbage cans and lawn mowing equipment passed us on the narrow dirt road. I did end up getting off and handwalking her until we got to a quieter spot, as I was not interested in her trying to stop and spin towards home while all the traffic was going by. I probably got off and on 4 times in a mile and a half (upside; she stood nicely every time, so that's something I guess...)

We finally came to a trailhead so we could get off the road, and worked on trotting through as much of the woods trail as we could safely. The hurricane coming through last week came with torrential rain, and it really left some big ruts in the trail with a lot of loose rock.









The trail was mostly clear, except when we came to this obstacle- but luckily we were short enough to duck under it, with me laying down flat on her neck.








It was uneventful after that, and we eventually ended up back out on the road and turned for home. We didn't pass any traffic at all on the way home and kept a decent trot most of the way, even on some of the easier downhills. Trying to get faster! All in all, we did 7 miles.

And just adding some pictures of Hugh. He's getting much more comfortable with chores, and I can start to trust him more independently around the horses. He doesn't like when I touch them- whether I pat them or take off a fly mask, etc., he gets very vocal. I can't quite understand the reason for that behavior so am just trying to treat & praise when he looks at them quietly.









His favorite part of chore time- taking a big drink from the bucket I use to fill the water. I guess it's just really nice and cold as it comes out of the pump!


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## carshon

He barks because he is protecting you! I love that! My 16yr old Dachshund barks if anyone gets too close to me. Not so much at the horses or cows but at people and other dogs or cats. 

I feel sorry for M - I would hate to ride with judgmental people like that. I have really tried hard to be an advocate for any rider I meet and offer praise or kind advice - I have been criticized for putting hay bags on my trailer immediately when I park. My horse can eat while I groom and tack up. It makes her happy and it makes me happy. But I have been told many times that the hay should be the reward after the ride. I just ignore those comments and let my horse eat. A horse with a full or partially full belly would be a happier horse I would thing!

Keep up the rides. I love to see your posts and pictures.


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## bsms

"_But I have been told many times that the hay should be the reward after the ride. I just ignore those comments and let my horse eat._" - @carshon

Trying to read on a different subject, I came across an article by John Lyons saying (IIRC) that horses crave HARMONY and will work hard to achieve a feeling of general harmony. I think that is what I mean when I refer to "The Power of WE". Not a moment by moment, "My horse always loves what we do" kind of harmony because that makes the human a doormat, and who can feel safe and secure and at peace with a doormat?

But they want an overall feeling of sympathy, cooperation, unity of long term goals, feeling the other person (the rider) cares about them and respects their feelings. Bandit is eating his favorite breakfast - hay pellets - right now. We'll get in a ride in an hour. I may or may not give a half-scoop of pellets to him when we get back. But I've already taken care of Bandit's needs and, an hour from now, I bet he'll be sympathetic to my wants. It is a give-take relationship, doing things for each other. NOT a "Give a reward immediately after good behavior" thing. The "reward" is feeling sympathy and harmony and at-peace with someone who respects and cares about you. THAT is a big reward for a horse, IMHO. Much bigger than "treat-reward" for a moment in time!

"_She was dragging along and acting miserable at every step. I could have gotten off and hopped on one leg faster than she was moving. As soon as we finally did manage to get some reasonable forward progress, it seemed that every local contractor with a noisy truck pulling a rattly trailer full of garbage cans and lawn mowing equipment passed us..._" - @egrogan

Yeah, Bandit and I have those days too! There are days when we head out alone that he is soooo just, "_I don't see the purpose!_" In his defense, I have those days jogging, too, where the first half-mile or mile feels like punishment. But usually - jogging or riding - if we (I) push through, we get to a better place. Maybe not "total joy & bliss", but better.

And if I'm honest, there ARE days when we get back and Bandit is like, "_I'm glad that is over! Hope YOU enjoyed it but it wasn't MY cup of tea!_" But if we generally ride in sympathy, then the next day is a new day and may even be one of those "_It's GOOD to be out!_" days. People act as if horses can only think in terms of A & B if there is no more than a few seconds separation between them, which makes me wonder how horses in the desert can cross several miles of rough terrain to get to water (reward). Seems to me horses are often smarter and more practical than their riders. At least more observant.


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## SueC

Lovely posts, @bsms - we don't always have to agree with the rules, or with other people's way of doing things.  I'd never scare a horse past something scary - with the exception of a situation where our lives would be in danger if we didn't and we were compelled to move fast, _now_ - but anytime that's happened, a horse has felt my own panic and just gotten out of there with me, past whatever the issue was.
@egrogan, huge congratulations on your achievements with Fizz. :charge: It was a total pleasure to read all these posts and see the photos.



egrogan said:


> The final stretch of the ride goes down a long hill that drops you back into the GMHA grounds, with a big dairy farm across the street. I knew this could be dicey for Fizz, even though she's gotten so much better about cows this year. Sure enough, we came over the final crest in the hill, and about 50 dairy cows were lined up at their stanchions (is that the right term?) eating hay, mooing, and clanking against the metal part of the feeders. I don't think I've ever seen her eyes get so big. She rarely gets snorty and blowy, but she was at this scene. I hopped off, and at first she wasn't particularly happy about moving forward past them, but with some coaxing she did ok. I was happy there was no meltdown to end what had been a really great ride up to that point. And with that...day one was done!


This took me right back to my first year of saddle training Sunsmart back in 2009; _everything_ was a space alien - and cows the most carnivorous space aliens of them all. mg: I could really _feel_ all the space aliens in my gut as I was reading your post, and by the time I got to your description of the dairy cows, I was laughing very hard. :rofl:

I wonder if you could borrow some cows to graze in an adjacent field for a while at your place? Being around our own cows when we moved to our farm did wonders for Sunsmart. He loved the discovery that they ran away from him. This is back in 2010...


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## Avna

One thing herding dogs do instinctively is, when you move close to or touch livestock, they will want to move in and grab hold. This is what Hugh is feeling. 

The instinct behind this urge is that herding behavior in dogs is modified pack hunting behavior. The faster junior wolves run out around the back of a herd and push it towards an ambush of the slower senior wolves. The senior wolves pick out the victim, and then they all close in on it. This hard-wired behavior is why you can bring a young working-bred dog which has never seen a sheep out to a flock, and they will run out, gather them up, and bring them to you without training. Well, it's usually messier than that the first times. But the idea is inborn in the dog. For the same reason, if I ever try to catch a chicken, duck, goat, or sheep my dog is always eager to grab it, even if they never offer to nip or grab any stock at any other time. I'd have to tell them to back off -- and because if they are going to grab they are going to do it lightning-fast, I tell them before I make my move, not after! 

His barking is probably because he is young and anxious, and the horse is too big and threatening for him to dive in and bite, but that is what his herding instinct is telling him to do. Since you will never never never want him to try to herd a horse, I suggest you teach Hugh the command "leave alone" or something like that (the classic sheepdog command is "that'll do"). You want to convey "I understand you want to help but your help is not required right now." This is something all herding breeds have to learn. Because they ALWAYS want to help. You don't want to yell at him and make him think that wanting to help is wrong, as that can extinguish his hopes of being useful, which is the joy of this kind of dog.

Guarding behavior and herding behavior arise from two different sets of instincts -- and English Shepherds come equipped with both sets. 

Hugh is a really nice dog, by the way. If I ever get another dog it'll probably be an ES.


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## egrogan

Thanks @*carshon* and @*Avna* . I am trying to become more educated on raising a dog with those natural herding instincts. Some of his behaviors- like wanting to get close to their legs- make intuitive sense, but this behavior of barking when I touch them was confusing. I'm trying to find the right balance of giving him some independence while we continue to work on recall, vs. always keeping him tethered. I've read some people who say they absolutely won't EVER let a dog off a long line for the first two years of it's life it they wouldn't risk a $100 bet that their recall would be perfect in any situation. That seems a little dramatic, as does the idea of letting him go fully full range just to figure it out on his own. He's a work in progress, for sure! The next skill he really needs to master is the "leave it," so we're working on that now. But we're lucky to have such a nice guy to work with, and know that his parents are great minded and good on their respective farms: https://www.stillwaterenglishshepherds.com/allie-wyeth-litter-info

*************************
Good riding this weekend. Went out solo yesterday and picked a route with some time in the woods plus on the roads. The roads are concrete-hard right now since we've had so little rain, and I can feel how unyielding the surface is with Fizz trotting on it, so I figured the woods trail would have more "give" and also be good practice for hills. It was fairly uneventful, no traffic to speak of (just one farmer driving a huge tractor down the road) and we didn't see anyone else while we were out.









The footing on this particular trail is really nice so we could move right on out









Today we met M and Coalie and headed back to some logging roads we tried earlier in the summer, but had to abandon because the bugs were so, so bad then. Today was relatively cool and the bugs weren't bad at all, which made it pleasant. Unfortunately I got a little complacent thinking the cool weather meant I could go out without my customary application of Desitin to my nether-region, but that didn't work out so well 

The logging road doubled as a snowmobile route and was lots of nice ups and downs where we could trot most of the way. We were hoping we were going to be on a loop, but unfortunately we tried both directions when coming to a T intersection, and neither of them took us back to where we had entered the trail from the road, so we had to double back.


















Fizz snatched mouthfuls of grass in the moments when we'd get ahead of Coalie and wait for them to catch up, and as the ride went on she kept grabbing big clumps, roots and all, which would swing around and bop her in the face while we trotted along and she insisted holding on to her prize :rofl:









We had a nice ride, ended up being 10.8 miles in 3 hours. Still too slow. But improving.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I missed your post in my catching up. Sigh. Cows. I have thought of inviting a farmer to use our pasture for grazing, with the bonus of making them just "part of the scenery" for the horses, but the person I had in mind moved away. I need to suck it up and go up to the overlook where they are right against the road now. It's an easy, familiar ride and well within walking distance of home if things go sideways :hide:


Was glad to read on your journal that Sunsmart is doing so well! Hope that continues.


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## Avna

If Hugh is in a place where you are going to need that recall but are not quite sure he'll do it, have him drag a rope. That way if he gets in trouble you can catch him.


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## Knave

I also am super proud of you! I was catching up and reading what they said to your friend as they refused to dismount. I heard a quote that was something like, “No one doing more than you will ever criticize you.” This is something I have found to be true as I paid attention.


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## egrogan

It has been a crazy week with work, so the first chance I had to ride was yesterday afternoon. The weather was GORGEOUS- sunny, blue skies, nice breeze, 70*F/21*C and best of all, no bugs to bother us. We kept it short, to the overlook and back.









I haven't been up there in awhile, so I guess the storms a couple of weeks ago brought down one of the big old trees, and it was cut up in pieces on the side of the road. Fizz was just SHOCKED to see it :icon_rolleyes: I can now say I know what it feels like to trot backwards. :rofl:









Today we finally have the saddle fitter coming out, which I've been trying to arrange for about a month now. I've been noticing Fizz's back is a bit tight/stiff and the saddle hasn't been looked at since last spring, so I'm hoping some basic adjustments will be what we need to get her more comfortable. Vet is also stopping by to poke all three with their annual Lyme vaccine. So a busy morning ahead.


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## PoptartShop

Ugh, 70 degree weather is what I live for!  & no bugs!

Aww, Fizz was probably like what are those things on the side of the road?! LOL. She's so cute! & good luck with the saddle fitter, she is probably gaining more muscle with all the rides & her body has changed a bit (in a good way). Yay Fizz!!!


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## phantomhorse13

I am just catching up on your journal, so sorry these posts are older.



egrogan said:


> My friend M has done some riding recently with a small group of local "very experienced endurance riders" who spend their entire ride telling her all the things she's doing wrong with her horse and why she has to do things the way they do. They berated her for getting off Coalie to calmly walk through something difficult, while their horses were rearing and spinning as their riders screamed and cursed at them. Come to find out, they never got off their horses because they wouldn't be able to get back on them


Poor M and good boy Coalie! I can't fathom riding with those people more than once and honestly probably wouldn't have lasted the whole ride being able to bite my tongue. People like that are the reason so many trail riders assume all endurance riders are lunatics!!



carshon said:


> I have been criticized for putting hay bags on my trailer immediately when I park. My horse can eat while I groom and tack up. It makes her happy and it makes me happy. But I have been told many times that the hay should be the reward after the ride. I just ignore those comments and let my horse eat. A horse with a full or partially full belly would be a happier horse I would thing!


Its amazing how many people with little (or outright incorrect) knowledge are so happy to criticize those around them. Letting your horse snack on hay before the ride is not only smart in terms of keeping the horse calm and happy when preparing to ride, it also is the best thing for their belly to help prevent ulcer formation when all that acid sloshes around on an empty stomach during the ride! This is also the reason why allowing the horse some snack breaks during the ride is a good idea too.


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## egrogan

@*PoptartShop* , unfortunately the reprieve from heat and bugs was short lived. This weekend was back to hot and sticky, interspersed with thunderstorms, so the bugs were back with a vengeance. Izzy's expression pretty much captured how I've been feeling all weekend :rofl:









The visit with the saddle fitter Friday went very well. I was so pleased, she was very complimentary of Fizz's fitness- she's one of the few people who has seen her from the beginning, so hearing her say Fizz's development was looking good made me feel great. We talked through my feeling that I'm leaning to the right, and I was relieved to hear that she doesn't see any dramatic evidence of that in the development of the right side of her back and shoulder. There _is _a slight difference in the angle of her back on the right, but we added an additional shim to the middle of her ThinLine pad and it was like night and day. The saddle was reflocked, and that made everything feel so much more balanced and secure. I hopped on and just went up and down the road a few times for her to watch and adjust, and I felt none of the "stiff as a board" feeling underneath me that I had been feeling the past few weeks. 

I was really excited to go out Sunday morning to see if that feeling translated through to an actual ride. Meeting up with M and Coalie, the plan was to go on a longer, faster ride to decided whether or not we can complete the CDR (15 mile competitive trail ride) within the time allowed on Labor Day weekend. Fizz was happy and moving along at a nice pace (not the little stabby death march) the whole ride. 










We definitely pushed them to trot in every place that felt safe to do so (so that left out a good bit of very rocky, rutted out trail). At first, they almost seemed a little confused, but once we got onto the woods trails they were trotting along for good stretches.


















I did have one WTF FIZZ?! moment when she decided a large, hollowed out tree laying on its side in the woods was going to eat her. We were in the lead going up a steep, tough trail that was full of loose rock and ruts, and at first she stopped to gawk at it (not ideal, but fine) but then she did something she hasn't done in a while- backing up away from it snorting. That was problematic first because of the footing but second because she was paying no attention to poor Coalie behind her and we brushed along his right side as we went backwards. He of course froze, not knowing what we were trying to get away from, but fortunately I got her angled away from him enough that she wasn't literally on top of him, and I jumped off her right side (good thing there's no video of that as it was the epitome of an awkward dismount). I was able to lead her past with no more issues and given how steep the side of the trail was, got back on and continued with no issues. I do hate that backing-up-at-all-costs reaction though!

The only other exciting part of the ride was some insanely loud shooting right along the trail (must have been target practice) that spooked Coalie a little, but fortunately the trail turned away from the house and we didn't hear it for long. As we wound our way back towards home, we passed an apple tree that was loaded with apples right at horse level, and they enjoyed a treat. 




















At that point, we were ~3 miles from home, all on the road, and Coalie was starting to flag a little bit so we shifted back to mostly walking. Up until then, our average mph was hovering around 4.5mph, not too bad considering the up and down in the woods, but we slowed right down the rest of the way. In all, we did 10.5 miles in 3 hours. So we still have work to do. We'll entire the pleasure ride at GMHA Labor Day weekend instead of the competitive ride. No sense in asking the horses to do something we know they're not ready for. And we know our plan for the rest of the fall is to keep working on faster, faster, faster...and have fun doing it! :grin:


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> If Hugh is in a place where you are going to need that recall but are not quite sure he'll do it, have him drag a rope. That way if he gets in trouble you can catch him.



We have been doing lots of this, particularly around the horses. I'll bring him out to do chores and since the horses aren't such a novelty any more, he'll mostly just lounge around while I work...until it devolves into very enthusiastic rolling around in the grass :rofl:








There was some sort of bike race this weekend and seeing the peloton of 20 or so bikers go by the house nearly sent him over the edge. There was NO off switch while they were going by. I'm a bit embarrassed to say he nearly pulled me right off my feet as the first biker went past unexpectedly and we were walking out the door just as that happened. Caught me by surprise and he lunged forward. It's just good luck that I managed to hold on to him, and that I had him on the leash in the first place. We need to get that under control.


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## egrogan

Fizz and I had a bit of an adventure yesterday. I've recently been able to get permission from a neighbor to ride down a gated logging road(s), so yesterday was our first time heading back there. I'd walked around a little with Hugh to start to get a mental map of where the roads and offshoot trails go (we're talking a hundred acres or so maybe?) but had only scratched the surface of the options. 

The trail started off very nice, a proper road with perfect footing for a nice trot









We came to a clearing, and then it started angling down towards a valley









Unfortunately we were only a mile or so in and it turned to pretty rough going because the logging had left the branches just in the road after stripping off the trunks. The road was also full of deep ruts from the heavy machinery so we picked our way through slowly. And then it just sort of ended in a thicket. So that was a bit of a bummer, and we turned around.








We had passed another trail that looked promising, so instead of going towards home I turned Fizz down the offshoot trail. I knew she was going to protest; she does NOT like when she perceives me to be indecisive or unsure of where we're going, and gets very uncooperative. Sure enough, she planted her feet and then wanted to pull me back to the "main" trail, towards home. You can see the wheels turning in her head- this is NOT the way home, and you've already taken us to one spot that didn't work, so clearly I need to take over. We had a bit of a disagreement but got going again.

This was more trail than road, and it was pretty overgrown, so at one point I had to get off and break some branches back off the trail so we could pass through. I didn't have any tools with me, but fortunately the trail was blocked with the tops of some young trees so I could break the worst of it easily enough. 

Fizz alternated between grazing on the underbrush and looking at me judgmentally while I worked on the branches.








_"If you had just listened to me we'd be home by now..."_

After the trail was clear enough, I got back on and we continued on for a bit, until we crossed a big clearing and the trail was very overgrown. I decided we'd done enough bushwhacking for one day so we turned around for home. Not surprisingly, we trotted _vigorously _back up out of the valley towards the gate. A nice 12-minute-mile pace even up a steep hill :rofl:

Looking forward to going back next time and trying a new direction. There are lots more miles of exploration!


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## knightrider

That look on her face is priceless!


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> That look on her face is priceless!


 You always know where you stand with a Morgan :rofl:


Yesterday was chilly and breezy, it definitely felt like fall. The horses were feeling good when I went out to give them breakfast, running around and bucking and play kicking at each other. I knew Fizz was going to be on her toes when we headed out to meet M and Coalie. Also, lovely husband and Hugh had seen a bear right up near the road earlier in the morning, so I knew Fizz would not like going through that spot.

At any rate, we tacked up and headed out, and she was prancy and snorty as we headed down the road. A house at the bottom of the road just sold, and I noticed earlier in the week that the new owners had moved in with at least three horses. This was the first time passing them with Fizz, but they were very calm about it. One whinnied to her but she didn't do much more than look, so it was fine.

We crossed the paved road and met M, who was laughing saying that Coalie needed "a confident ride" given the chill in the air. We weren't sure how they'd be together since they both had that "up" energy, and sure enough they were a little squirrely. Actually, they were both downright naughty when we had to cross the paved road again to head towards the trail we were doing, and that's one place where I got a little nasty with Fizz because trying to spin towards home in the middle of a potentially busy road is not ok. Fortunately there was no traffic coming.

But after that, I think we only saw one car the rest of the ride. We headed up a quiet dirt road, and it was UP-UP-UP a big hill, so we asked the horses to trot and they enthusiastically climbed the hill at a good pace, snorting at monsters they saw in the ditches but getting their wiggles out in the process. When we turned off the road to the logging trails, they were much calmer and walking along on a loose rein.








The weather was so beautiful- sunny, breezy, and NO BUGS at all.








Last time we headed this way, we got a little lost looking for a way to ride a loop- we went down a snowmobile trail that ended up going the opposite direction of what we wanted, and then when we doubled back to the main logging road, we were afraid to go too much farther because we didn't know if it would be another dead end. But this time, we stayed on the main logging road, and we just kept going, even though we had no real way of knowing if it was looping back to where we wanted to be. We could hear a lot of logging trucks back in the woods and it sounded like we were circling around them, so we kept going. The trail in this section was a long mile of downhill on loose gravely footing, and the horses didn't love it, but they managed.

All of a sudden though, we saw a little cabin up ahead, which we recognized from our last ride! Woohooo! We DID find the loop. Soon after that, we came to the clearing where we had taken the snowmobile trail the last time, so knew to stay on the gravel road and start climbing back up out of the little stream valley we were in. The footing still wasn't great but the horses had also picked up on the fact that we were in a familiar place, and they wanted to move out, so we trotted and cantered up the hills where it was safe. We were so happy to have figured it out! The loop itself was 5 miles, and then it was another 5 miles coming out from home and back, so a nice 10 mile ride. 









Now that we know the route, I think we'll go that way more often.









When we got home, I put all the horses out in the new field. Since there were no bugs (thanks to the strong breeze that continued all day), they were finally happy to graze around rather than pace back and forth by the gate to be put back. Izzy and Maggie would occasionally take off running while Fizz enjoyed refueling on the nice grass. I sat out in the middle of the field just watching them for awhile and feeling grateful to have them at home.



























To end the day, Hugh and I went blackberry picking so I could make some muffins. 
_One for me, one for Hugh..._








I really wish the weekends didn't go by so fast!


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## carshon

Your ride sounds glorious! a 10 mile loop is so nice to have. I can't believe Hugh eats berries!


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## gottatrot

Ha ha the opinionated Fizz is so cute. My Dalmatian loved blackberries too, I'd toss them and he'd catch them. Then his mouth would get all purple around it. You are getting in some great rides!


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## SueC

When I was a kid I had a dog who would pick blackberries off the thorny vines himself, by carefully drawing back his lips and using his front teeth!


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## egrogan

Yes, Hugh loves the berries. He will pluck them off himself when they are "Hugh height" but we went to a spot where the canes were taller so I had to share. He's a character!


Another beautiful, fall like day yesterday so we went out at lunch. We trotted as much as we walked, doing 6.5 miles along the road and in the woods. 



















It's funny, I think riding with Coalie makes more of a difference to her than I initially imagined. Neither of them have a visible reaction to the other one, but I could tell yesterday in the woods that she was a little edgier than she is if we're with Coalie. We had a good ride, but she was definitely more alert alone.

We saw this neat fungus along the way- doing a little research on it, sadly it means this tree is dying. But it was still impressive looking!


















We also said hello to the mini donks on the way home. They haven't been up close to the road in awhile, but they were out grazing yesterday. It's funny to think that in the spring, I could barely even walk Fizz in hand near them- she would spin and snort and run circles around me freaking out. Yesterday she wanted to stop and look at them for a minute but that was it. Not sure what would have happened if they had started talking back to us though! onkey:









Our ride yesterday put us over 90 miles for the month- the most we've ever done in one month! Good girl Fizz :grin:


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## Knave

That fungus is neat! I think you live in the most beautiful spot. I always love the pictures.


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## egrogan

*Distance Days 2020: Friday*

This weekend, GMHA hosted their annual Distance Days, three days of all sorts of trail options headlined by the annual 100 mile ride. Sadly because of Covid, there are still many places, even in the Northeast, that can't travel to Vermont, so participation was way down. Still, a couple of weeks ago, there was talk that they might have to cancel all together, so it was nice to even have it happen. I believe there were 8 people who started the 100 (sadly my friend got pulled at the first hold so I believe 7 completed), and maybe another 8 or 10 riding various other distances, and then a dozen or so pleasure riders. 

M and I had gone back and forth about whether we'd enter the 15 mile competitive ride, but ultimately after our last couple of weekends we decided we're still too slow to complete, so opted for pleasure riding again. But we did want to make a weekend of it, so decided we'd ride over to GMHA Friday, do the long pleasure ride Saturday, and then hack home on Sunday. We'd get plenty of miles that way- ended up being 32 miles total for the weekend!

Friday morning the competitive route was 40 miles, and the hold was at Mrs. Mitchell's, down the hill of despair from my house. The ride photographer set up in our front yard so I chatted with him for a little while we waited for the horses to leave the hold and come up the hill. It's a little dorky, but I love being able to sit out front and cheer for everyone when they pass. Sort of like our own horsey version of being on the Boston marathon course.  That was around 10:30am, so after they went by, I did a little work and waited impatiently until later in the afternoon, when M and I met up at 3 to start our own first leg of the ride. 

We were taking the direct route over, which is almost exactly 10 miles all on dirt road/Jeep track. 









Being a holiday weekend, we figured we'd see some people out on ATVs, etc., and we certainly did. I have to say though, to a person, everyone out was impeccably polite to the horses. The first people we saw were two older gentlemen out in one of those fancy Gators, with a little truck bed behind it loaded up with a case of Bud Light :cheers: They pulled all the way over and cut the engine; of course we thanked them profusely but told them they didn't need to shut the engine off since our horses were good and used to that sort of thing. The guy driving laughed and said, "I'm scared as hell of those creatures and no way I'm doing anything that's going to startle 1,000 pounds of horse into jumping on top of me!" :rofl: Fair enough! We ended up seeing them again a couple of miles later, and they did the same thing. I guess they were just out cruising around for the afternoon. We saw a few more people on really loud ATVs, and they also pulled over and cut the engines unprompted. Very nice of them. We also rode through a logging operation, but fortunately they were done for the day as the road there was super narrow and we wouldn't have had many options for avoiding the bigger equipment (we jumped up a ditch and stood in the woods for their pickups to head out). Topped it off with a pair of mountain bikers who were again really kind and slowed way down as we passed. Thank goodness for those good horses! And for no mean dogs anywhere along the way...

After all that company, we were about halfway there, and didn't see anyone else the rest of the way. Parts of the roads were surprisingly pretty soggy. but we didn't mind as we were looking around at the trees starting to turn color already.


















Soon enough, we crossed the paved road and headed across the GMHA cross country field to get to the barns. Fizz was actually pretty terrible in this spot, trying to yank the reins out of my hands to eat all the green, lush grass. I felt like a little kid on a roly poly pony who kept stealing mouthfuls. I didn't want to be nasty with her because she had been so good the whole way over, but we had to have a little discussion about her rudeness.









M and I couldn't help but laugh that the last mile of the ride had been the worst by far. We didn't let it dampen our spirits though! The horses settled in nicely, with stalls in a good spot where there were other horses close by and they could watch all the activity of people arriving. They seemed more than happy to tuck into their dinner.








After they ate up, I took Fizz out to stretch her legs one more time for the evening, and she was awful about the grass again. She was convinced she was surely going to starve in that stall. At that point, it was more comical than anything else. Her message was loud and clear- she was just HUNGRY! So we spent some time hand grazing a bit.



























I dragged lovely husband back over around 8:30pm to do a quick night check, and Fizz and Coalie were still happily eating. They had drunk buckets full of water so we topped them off, said good night, and I headed to bed myself to get ready for the next morning...


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## egrogan

*Distance Days 2020: Saturday*

Saturday we got a leisurely start and headed out at 10am to do the long pleasure ride loop (12.5 miles). We figured we'd head out on the later side so the horses wouldn't be standing in their stalls all day. We were really excited because neither of us had ridden any of this trail before. We followed the competitive route for about 8 miles before cutting across a bypass to head back to GMHA. The route started back across the cross country field, and we had the bad timing of following a grounds guy driving a tractor and picking up/moving the brush jumps from the cross country course off to the side of the field for storage. Both horses were very snorty and prancy but managed to keep it together.

It was a long mile following the tractor guy down the track through the course, but finally we turned away from him and crossed the paved road to start working our way up into the hills around GMHA and the little town of South Woodstock. After leaving GMHA, the trail took us up a dirt road appropriately called "Long Hill Road"- it most definitely was! We soon turned off the road and kept climbing up a beautiful open field. 










Given the grass diving incident the prior day, I was hesitant to take my hands off the wheel for too long to take pictures, so I missed out on capturing the breathtaking views behind us, looking down across seemingly endless green fields to GMHA and the farms around it. We left the open field and entered into a thicket full of blackberry vines- all four of us were on the lookout for bears, but fortunately none presented themselves.








From there we rode into a sugarbush and had to duck under sap lines running across the trail. At times it was hard to orient yourself to where the trail actually was with the lines running in all directions, but we made it without running into any lines!










For the next few miles, the trail was a soft and grassy path mowed through the woods. We let the horses pick the speed through there when the downhill wasn't too steep, as the grass was wet enough to be slippery. About halfway through, we stopped to pee, let them have a snack and a short rest, and then headed on. The water stop was at another log landing, and from there we reconnected with dirt roads for most of the rest of the way, dipping back into the woods every now and then on trails that connected us to new roads. I had no idea where we were, which is sort of funny considering we were always within the tiny town next to my tiny town. It's just impossible to fully comprehend how many miles of out-of-the-way dirt roads are out there!

For the estate tour portion of this ride, I'll include this:








If someone told me I could buy any house I wanted, with no consideration for how impractical or expensive it was, I think I'd pick something just like this. I just love that style and the grounds were pristine. But for now I'll be happy riding past it and admiring it through Fizz's ears :wink:

We wound our way back down the hills as we started the homeward part of the loop. Somehow Fizz knew we were now heading towards "home," even though she had never stepped foot on this trail before, and she got a little strong for the last couple of miles. Coalie was getting tired and slowing down, so this made her tough to manage because she was in full-on "march swiftly towards home" mode and did not appreciate waiting around for Coalie. I tried to distract her with grass breaks while we waited for him to catch up, but even stopping for grass was irritating her. 
(_It was still pretty though..._)









So I just managed her the best I could and circled where it was safe (the road was really gravely and very steep downhill). 

Fortunately at about the point she was starting to feel like a powder keg, we headed back into the woods for a stretch and Coalie perked up. The footing was difficult- it had recently been logged, so there were a lot of branches left over and it was rocky to begin with- so she had to pay attention to what we were doing. We continued down the hills, which were very pretty because the leaves were changing...









And then finally the road popped us back out into the middle of South Woodstock, looking right at the general store and tavern...








It was just a short mile riding behind the main road through a big field to get us back onto the GMHA grounds. We rode right up to the barn and congratulated the horses on finishing such an adventurous ride!

We untacked, cooled the horses out, and left them with plenty of hay and water in their stalls. I came back a couple of hours later to feed Fizz her dinner, and was a little worried to see she hadn't pooped at all. She had been fine going to the bathroom out on the trail all day, but I didn't like that she hadn't gone since being back. So, I took her out for a long walk/handgraze on the cross country course to try to get things moving. It was fun to graze around all the things that had been so scary earlier in the day. Not a big deal when you get to eat your way through them! Seriously though, I don't know HOW cross country riders do what they do.









SQUIRREL!









When I brought her back to her stall, _finally _she pooped, so I felt ok leaving her there. She was still happily munching on hay. Lovely husband and I stopped back about 3 hours later and she had gone again and seemed totally fine.

It happened to be my birthday this weekend, so we actually had dinner plans at the tavern Fizz and I had ridden past earlier in the day. It's one of our favorite places, and up until Covid we went there every Wednesday night for dinner. They've only been reopened for a couple of weeks now, and while there is no indoor dining, they've set up tables throughout their beautiful garden and on the big wide porches of the inn, and the food and drinks are just as good as always. What a way to celebrate a birthday! I couldn't have asked for a better day.


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## egrogan

*Distance Days 2020: Sunday*

Sunday morning. Time to head home. The horses were in good spirits when we fed them breakfast, and we got an earlier start than the prior day so we could get them home. We planned to follow the competitive route from Friday, since that took us right to my house- cutting off an extra 15 miles through the woods that the competitive riders did before getting to the hold on the hill of despair :wink:

We took our time tacking up, enjoying another beautiful, sunny morning. We got SO incredibly lucky with the weather all weekend!



























_Fizz's opinion about waiting for Coalie while M took our picture..._








She was ready to get going!

Finally, after three days of walking across the cross country course to leave GMHA, they barely even looked at the jumps as we passed them. They are seasoned veterans now, apparently! :rofl:









The trail was a lot of up and down, and the horses were definitely tired, but we let them pick the pace that felt comfortable. They still offered to trot on a lot of the uphills and flats, so we let them as long as they were happy.









They were very enthusiastic about drinking at the first water stop, and that really perked them up. We crossed the paved road and headed down Jenne Road, a popular tourist spot for capturing classic Vermont pictures. It was very pretty yesterday as they were haying some of the big fields, plus there was just a little pop of color coming out on the trees.


















At the second water stop, they were definitely more interested in snacking than drinking. We'd done about 5 miles by this point so were halfway home. 









I nearly ate dirt getting back on after this break. I had Fizz standing on the side of the road while I stood on a hill above her, and just as I was getting my right leg over she shifted a little so she was facing downhill instead of parallel to me, and I nearly tumbled face first over her left shoulder :shock: Luckily somehow I managed to push myself upright in time! That would have been embarrassing!

The way home took us past three farms with very "exuberant" horses that like to run up to the fence when you go by them, but fortunately not a single horse even whinnied in our direction. The horses knew we were back in our own neighborhood, so we knew they must be pretty tired when they just walked along at a calm, comfortable pace despite being so close to home.









They had done SO WELL all weekend, we couldn't ask for better horses. Even though they both certainly had their uncooperative moments, they did everything we asked them to do, and almost always did it happily. 









It's by far the most I've ever ridden in one weekend- 32 miles in 3 days!- and the most challenging riding I've done, and I loved it! I just feel so lucky to live in a place where this sort of thing is possible, and to have a good horse and good friend to ride with. What a weekend!


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## Knave

Happy birthday!! That looks like an excellent way to spend it! (Mine is coming up right away too!)


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## carshon

What a fantastic post! Fizz looks so fit! 32 miles in 3 days is quite a feat! Good for you!!!! and Happy Birthday


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Happy birthday!! That looks like an excellent way to spend it! (Mine is coming up right away too!)


Thank you. Happy almost-birthday! I love birthday celebrations. Birthdays and Thanksgiving are my favorite days to celebrate.




carshon said:


> What a fantastic post! Fizz looks so fit! 32 miles in 3 days is quite a feat! Good for you!!!! and Happy Birthday


Thanks @carshon! We really enjoyed it. I appreciate you saying that about Fizz. She's puzzling me right now because her neck is actually looking cresty depending on how she's standing, but the rest of her body looks pretty good. Trying to figure that out to avoid getting into the IR danger zone.


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## PoptartShop

Happy birthday!!  Looks like you had a great one!! & yay for 32 miles, that is quite an accomplishment!! 

Fizz looks soooo good, check out those muscles. Lovely!!


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## QueenofFrance08

So fun! Fizz looks amazing and it sure sounds to me like she's ready for a competition ride!


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## Knave

I’m with @QueenofFrance08 in believing you are ready. Don’t convince yourself for too long that you aren’t there, because you might be the only thing holding yourself back.

I don’t think she looks cresty, only strong. I do spend a lot of time with Cashman though who is built like a tank and I am always arguing with husband “He is NOT fat!” Lol


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## phantomhorse13

Also agree you are ready! Does the October ride at GMHA offer a distance you are interested in? I think Fizz looks great.

Congrats to you and M on a great weekend. Hopefully you can make this the start of a birthday tradition!

happy almost-birthday to @*Knave* too


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## Knave

Thank you @phantomhorse13!


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## egrogan

You are all so wonderful with your votes of confidence. Much appreciated! While I do think there is probably some of _this _going on...



Knave said:


> Don’t convince yourself for too long that you aren’t there, because you might be the only thing holding yourself back.


 ...the reality is that as a researcher, I have to acknowledge the data. :wink: When I look at the data tracking our training rides, it seems pretty clear that we just can't go fast enough to finish. So for example, if we had done the 15 mile intro ride on Saturday, according to ECTRA rules we would have had to complete it in between 2 hours, 15 minutes and 2 hours, 45 minutes. 

It took us 3 hours, 25 minutes to do the 12.5 mile pleasure ride. 










If 12.5 miles had been offered as a competitive distance, according to the ECTRA rule book we would have had to shave off a full hour and complete it in no more than 2 hours, 20 minutes. 

I just don't see how we can cut off that much time. I can certainly think of some places along the trail we rode where we could have done more trotting, and we wouldn't have been able to dilly dally stopping to pee and letting the horses graze around. But still, going a full hour faster seems pretty intense. This is our mile-by-mile pace record:










And because our daily rides are on roads and trails that are so similar to (if not the same as) the competitive route, I feel like I am being pretty realistic in what speeds we can comfortably travel right now. The answer may simply be that we just need to keep getting fitter and try to be competitive next year.

@*QueenofFrance08* , you have been leading lots of intro rides- how are your riders completing in the required time?



phantomhorse13 said:


> Also agree you are ready! Does the October ride at GMHA offer a distance you are interested in?


Unfortunately the only distances they have in Oct are 50/30. A 30 feels out of reach, even 25 seems like it would be a huge stretch (though AERC allows 7 hours max for an LD, right?). It's probably too late from a sanctioning perspective to ask the organizers if they'd consider adding an intro ride, right? 

I do appreciate you all giving me the push to keep thinking about this!


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## QueenofFrance08

Is there someone more experienced you could ride with? I can honestly say that I rarely if ever ride at a ride pace when I'm on my own/training with DH or most friends. Usually if I check my GPS after a ride at home (admittedly our park is very hilly and hard to get speed) we're usually around 4-4.5 mph. Chico usually ends up 6-7.5 mph on actual rides. Something about the environment being different.... He's a lazy slug at home/fun riding but it's game on when we're at a competition. At our last ride my constant mantra was "please slow down please slow down please slow down"

The last 2 intro/novice rides I've done have had pretty short time limits (2 hours for 12.5 miles and 2 hours for 13 miles) (have to finish within 5 minutes of that time slot in either direction or you lose points). They're run off competitive trail rules as well so I would say they're pretty similar to yours (unlike a true AERC intro which is not recorded anywhere and has more of a suggested time/flexibility). Both times we haven't really had an issue with time (we were technically 1 minute late losing 1 point on the last ride but that was more related to a particular rider I had with me) and most horses hadn't done anything at that speed before. The 2 first timers at the last ride had done several 9-12 mile rides all summer but over half walking they said. Neither horse looked very tired at the end and I think definitely could have done a 25 without issue. To be completely honest I don't think I had ever ridden Stitch more than 5 miles (at a walk mostly) in the year and a half I had her before our first 12 mile novice (and same with Chico and DH) and DH and I were in a lot worse shape then both of the horses at the end, they were fine. 

Can I be frank and say something you might not want to hear? I think you and Fizz can 100% do a competitive ride at the correct pace but you might need to ride with someone else other than M because it seems like Fizz has a lot more energy than her horse. I think if you found another person (especially one who had done a competitive ride) you wouldn't have any issues. 

30 mile LD has 7hr 15 minute time limit, 25 has 6 hours (time limit includes hold of whatever length determined by ride management)

So wish I was closer and could come out and do your first ride with you!


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Is there someone more experienced you could ride with?


There is potentially one person I could ride with during an actual ride, but she lives just far enough away that it probably wouldn't be possible to go out together before a ride day- and I really just don't like the idea of slowing someone down and interfering with their own ride. Most of the experienced competitors around here are pretty old school and have been doing this competitively for a gazillion years together. I don't think that would be a good match.

And, I really wish I could join you on one of the rides you've led! Would be so fun.




> Can I be frank and say something you might not want to hear? I think you and Fizz can 100% do a competitive ride at the correct pace but you might need to ride with someone else other than M because it seems like Fizz has a lot more energy than her horse. I think if you found another person (especially one who had done a competitive ride) you wouldn't have any issues.


And, no offense taken at all by your observation! M and I have had that very conversation while we're out on trail. :wink: The funny thing is that she's more competitive than me and much more interested in being an "official" competitor instead of "just" a pleasure rider. If I wanted to enter a competitive ride on my own or with another mentor, she'd be right there cheering us on.

I do think Fizz has more "go" than Coalie- our solo rides are generally at a faster average speed- but truly, whether or not I was riding with M it's hard for me to imagine doing the pleasure ride more than an hour faster than we did. I think it's just hard for me to wrap my head around how fast people are going to complete on time. I think endurance is just a better fit for us than CTR because the time frames are more generous, but unfortunately we have fewer endurance options in this area so I will likely just continue enjoying the adventures that we are so lucky to be able to have. At the end of the day, while it would be fun to do a "real" ride, I definitely enjoy the experience of being out on these beautiful trails more than I care about competing! (Sorry if I come across as complaining here...)

Took Fizz out for a short ride at lunch- first time in the saddle since this weekend. She felt great, although she was having a wild hair day! :rofl: It was sticky and humid so we only did ~3 miles, but felt good to stretch our legs together.


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## gottatrot

I would call you and M distance riders because you go out and do long rides and get the horses fit. 

To me the most important thing is to have fun. Whether you can compete or not depends a lot on the horse you have and training situation. 

For example, I could never have competed Amore if I had no one to ride with going at a good pace. She did not have the mental drive alone, and I would have had to lead her at a jog for half the distance and ride back to get her fit.

When I was doing LD rides, I could have done 50s with either Amore or Halla. My one friend had a horse that could have trained with us. But our other friend who wanted to compete had a horse that had to be coaxed hard to do 25 miles at a decent speed, so we just all did it together and it was very fun.

People who are serious like Phantom also have fun, but if she only had the option of George right now things would become limited for a while.

For me it is OK to have Hero, knowing he would struggle mentally and physically to do more than ten mile rides at a good pace. We go slower and I suspect he would enjoy going out with a horse paced like Coalie. Nala frustrated him a bit because she was geared differently. 

But Amore is old, and I hope to have a sports car horse after her, to complement my big truck horse I have now. 

My point is, I think there are different phases in our horse life and the main thing is that we enjoy them all. Good friendships can be even more rewarding than competitions, with both horse friends and people friends. 

Goals are wonderful, but the journey is more important.

I am certain Fizz is fit enough to finish a shorter ride much faster. You don't need to feel guilty if you want to push her. But you should do what is comfortable for you.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> if we had done the 15 mile intro ride on Saturday, according to ECTRA rules we would have had to complete it in between 2 hours, 15 minutes and 2 hours, 45 minutes.
> 
> It took us 3 hours, 25 minutes to do the 12.5 mile pleasure ride.
> 
> I just don't see how we can cut off that much time. I can certainly think of some places along the trail we rode where we could have done more trotting
> 
> because our daily rides are on roads and trails that are so similar to (if not the same as) the competitive route, I feel like I am being pretty realistic in what speeds we can comfortably travel right now.


First step, def do the "more trotting" wherever you think you could have.


In the places you are walking, WHY are you walking? Is the terrain unsafe to trot? Are you tired and needed a break? Did Fizz start getting sluggish? What thoughts are in your head while you are walking - are you relieved to be going slower, frustrated to have to slow down, or pondering your grocery list, etc?


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## gottatrot

By the way, trotting can be very addictive. I miss being able to trot for miles. If you and the horse get into a good rhythm, it feels like moderate exercise for both of you, and can be a very peaceful or "zen" place.


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## egrogan

Beautiful brisk, sunny afternoon yesterday and I was able to wrap up my work meetings in the early afternoon and take advantage of the weather to do the Newhall loop- it's a little over 6 miles start to finish. Thinking of all of your comments, I made sure to very intentionally trot along wherever we could. In doing so, we finally had a ride where we trotted more than we walked, and that resulted in the ride being 15 minutes faster than the last time we did it. Progress!











phantomhorse13 said:


> In the places you are walking, WHY are you walking? Is the terrain unsafe to trot? Are you tired and needed a break? Did Fizz start getting sluggish?


The most common answer is that what goes up must come down, and we're still walking down all but the gentlest sloping downhills.








Fizz definitely asks to walk in those spots as soon as she starts to get unbalanced. Otherwise, I can't think of really ever dropping down to walk because she's tired, except on some of the steepest uphills.

Other reasons yesterday, which are pretty typical of any ride:
-Loose dogs in the road
-Sketchy footing (loose, gravely rocks over ruts and washouts in the woods)
-Some sort of large vehicle on a narrow dirt road (e.g., large farm tractor, utility truck parked in the literal middle of the road (?) while hanging cable)
-Branches loaded with tantalizing ripe apples overhanging the road :wink: :apple:













> What thoughts are in your head while you are walking - are you relieved to be going slower, frustrated to have to slow down, or pondering your grocery list, etc?


 If we're on a steep downhill, I'd say usually a combination of relieved and frustrated- relieved that we're not going to somersault down the hill or slip on loose rock and fall, but also frustrated wondering what a better rider would do to help her feel more balanced and confident being able to trot more in those spots. She has definitely gotten much better going down the hills this year, where I no longer feel like every step even at a walk is perilous, but I do still feel some degree of "holding her together" by intentionally shifting my weight back and using my core to help her balance, and taking more contact on the reins, which does encourage her to use her whole body (if I don't do that, I hear her front legs slapping the ground every stride while she sort of drags along uncomfortable- it's a notable change in her stride when I really sit up, open my shoulders, and ride every stride). 

I was happy with how the ride went yesterday. Getting ready to go on a longer loop with M and Coalie this morning and we'll see how that goes.


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## Avna

Last year, when I was more focused on conditioning -- this year I am trying to just get on my horse and go somewhere for a few hours, as often as possible -- I found that Brooke easily picked up on the pattern "footing is sketchy let's slow down until we get through this then pick it up again". Once fit, she would do this all on her own. We don't have your downhill issues, Brooke will trot down hills I won't! Any flat trail without too many rocks she asks to trot. You use far more roads than I do -- I would trot everywhere on those nice flat roads! All of my trails have parts where Brooke looks up, and up, and you can feel her sigh as she starts to dig in and climb.


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## egrogan

Our ride yesterday ended up being one of the more "blah" rides I've had in awhile. Fizz was a little fussy even during tacking up, and lackluster when we set out to meet M and Coalie. The first half of the ride, both Fizz and Coalie were kind of dragging along- neither wanted to take the lead, both just wanted to hang back and follow the other one on auto pilot. It was a chilly morning so if anything I would have expected the opposite from them. We tried to wake them up trotting along through the woods but they were still just sluggish. 

The woods trail let us out at picturesque Blind Mare Farm, and we picked some apples near the road to give them. 

















Coalie perked up a bit after the snack, but Fizz was still kind of dragging. She seemed convinced we should be turning off the road into the woods, even though there was no trail to be seen- not only was there no trail, but the side of the road was lined with a big rock wall you'd have to have climbing gear to go up. Certainly no horse was going there. But she kept fighting and fighting me, pulling towards the side of the road. Finally I just let go of the reins to see what the heck she thought she was going to do- and sure enough, she darted off the road and just stood with her nose up on the rocks. Huh?? I was joking with M that it was like if you think your car might be out of alignment, so you let go of the wheel, and sure enough it pulls you off to the shoulder of the road even though there's no where to go from there. It was just really weird behavior. Coalie wasn't acting strange at all, so it didn't seem like there was something out there. I ended up just hopping off and walking her for 1/2 mile because it wasn't fun to keep disagreeing with her. The only thing I can think of is that she may have had an uncomfortable pocket of gas or something? While I was on the ground, I ducked behind a tree to pee, and she pooped while we were standing there. After that, we walked a little farther and then I got back on and she was much more normal. Maybe she felt better?

The rest of the ride was a little more fun. The weather was beautiful and we passed some really pretty houses. 








Once the horsey GPS kicked in and they realized we were on the homeward part of the loop, they were perkier and more forward so the last few miles of the ride were thankfully faster than the death march pace we had been on at the beginning of the ride. 

Thought this was a cool vantage point- let your eye follow through to the opening in the trees at the end of the road, and you'll see the pretty house there.









It was a longer ride- 12.25 miles- but I wouldn't say it was our best. Oh well, we will ride another day! Fizz seemed totally fine health-wise the rest of the day, ate up dinner and was happy this morning, so will just chalk it up to her having a bad day.


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## phantomhorse13

Are you able to jog? And I don't mean can you go out and run a 5K, I mean are you able to stagger along at something a bit faster than walking pace for like 5 minutes and not cripple yourself in the process?

If so, then start getting off Fizz for the downhills and jogging her in hand. That is what I did with Phin, who felt like he was going to fall on his face on even the gentlest of downhills when I first got him. It sounds like you have made great improvements with Fizz walking down the hills, so I think the easiest way to start incorporating trot is to let them figure it out without a rider. And unless you jog way faster than me, they have to keep it to a slow trot to stay with you, so just falling on the forehand and getting faster and faster won't be an issue.


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## egrogan

@phantomhorse13- why yes, I am an expert at staggering along :rofl: While my face will turn beet red and people around will worry for my health, I actually can jog short distances just fine. I will give it a try!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> why yes, I am an expert at staggering along :rofl: While my face will turn beet red and people around will worry for my health, I actually can jog short distances just fine.


A similar thing happens to me when I jog (and I use that term lightly). Someone helping in the orchard one day saw me after I had jogged Phin down the maybe 1/4 mile orchard road. He very politely asked first if I was ok, and then if he could help me get back on the horse so I didn't have to strain myself any more.. :hide: :dance-smiley05:


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## egrogan

^^I just snorted :rofl: The image of a nice, innocent passerby offering you a leg up is too funny.


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## QueenofFrance08

Haha we must be wimps out here! Most of us don't trot downhills! I let Stitch and Lilo do it on occasion because they're pretty well balanced and watch their feet but if Chico was allowed to trot down most hills (more than a gradual slope) we would turn into that cartoon character somersaulting over itself in a big spinning circle. He's balanced just fine but the big oaf doesn't watch his feet at all and would trip over every pebble in the road!


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## carshon

I had to laugh at everyone's descriptions. My girl Tillie is not known to be the most sure footed animal. We do not gait downhill for most of the reasons everyone posted above!


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## PoptartShop

Sometimes I am still weary about trotting downhill! :lol: It definitely takes some getting used to. Took me awhile to get my horse to walk down a steep hill at a nice, slow pace instead of rushing. It can take time for them to get that balance, and us too in the saddle! You and Fizz are doing wonderful.


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## egrogan

Had an interesting couple of days with Fizz. Yesterday I had a nice chunk of time in the afternoon and was planning to go out on a 6-7 mile woodsy loop to enjoy the nice weather. Fizz was being fussy and agitated while tacking up again, sort of like she had been before the ride with M Saturday (the last time I'd ridden her)- she kept getting all twisted around the line she was tied with, wedging herself in the back corner of the stall she was tied in and pawing furiously at the ground. This is totally uncharacteristic behavior, and for her to do it twice in a row while getting tacked up was worrying. Still, I managed to get her ready and led her about 1/4 mile before getting on. The second I was in the saddle, she was a snorty, spooky mess. And not play spooks, actual full body leaps and shies sideways, away from a chipmunk on the side of the road or a leaf falling from a tree. When a truck came too fast up the hill of despair, which is very narrow, I hopped off since her spooks were launching us into the middle of the road. 

She was fine for me to mount again at the bottom of the hill, but as we went up the other side her whole body stiffened and she spooked towards the side of the road with a steep dropoff into Mrs. Mitchell's pond. We had to cross the paved road right after so I again hopped off and led her, and I again got back on another half mile from there. We were finally in a place where we could trot on a wider road, and there was no traffic so we shot off like a rocket. She had her head flung up in my face and was practically trotting sideways for the next mile- you can imagine it was not a comfortable trot but an awful choppy mess  

We reached a spot that was a natural turnaround, so we circled towards home and she just lost it. She was humping up her back and threatening to buck and had no response to me sitting deeper in the saddle and asking her to chill. Riding out bucks is not my jam, so I got off yet again. But she had really checked out at this point. She was pushy, running me over while leading, and no amount of circling or changing direction was helping- in fact, she started running in circles around me doing mini bucks. I wondered for a minute if I would be able to hold onto her and if not, how many cars she'd meet in the two miles she'd be running home. Fortunately it didn't get that bad. But it was a LONG walk home. I was not getting back on in that state so we just suffered through it. I was glad we didn't pass any traffic on our walk of shame. She didn't let up at all, just constantly barging into me and trying to walk as far ahead as the reins would let her- my arms and the outside of my legs had bruises from getting knocked with the saddle flaps and stirrups while she was hopping around me. 

Finally we were nearly home and I remounted using a big boulder in the neighbors' driveway. It's a steep uphill home so while she was still snorty she really didn't try the bucking again, and I just kept her leg yielding from one side of the road to the other without ever really straightening out. She still looked mentally checked out and just as upset as I was when we turned into the yard. She was awful again standing tied to get untacked, but I managed to pull the tack and her boots and just let her stand there and fight the rope herself until she finally quit. I hate doing that because she's had issues with pulling back in the now-distant past, but I admit I had reached my own max frustration level and I just felt like she needed to get over it before I moved on to feeding dinner, etc. I don't know how long it actually was- it felt like forever- but I just went about my business emptying and refilling all the water buckets, and she finally settled. I went back over to her, untied her, and she darted off to her favorite spot to roll like she usually does. She was totally normally eating her dinner and came up from the field for hay when I went out later in the evening during night check.

All in all, it totally sucked. I can't think of a worse day with her, maybe ever.

This was her before the ride started...nothing _seemed _obviously wrong aside from her bad behavior during tacking up.









So today, I didn't _really _have time to ride, but I felt like I needed to get back on to see if it was going to be a three-peat of uncharacteristically bad behavior. I planned to do the short, easy ride to the overlook and back. And decided that I was going to really try to make friends with her again while grooming and tacking up. I cut up a nice apple, and told her what a good girl she was and gave a piece of apple when she picked up each foot quietly to get the boots put on, stood calmly for the girth to be tightened, etc. She didn't fuss while tied, she didn't paw or act nasty, etc. That seemed promising. She stood nicely for mounting up and walked out willingly. It was immediately clear she had none of the awful tension in her back, with her neck nice and relaxed swinging along. She went along at a nice forward walk and then trotted right off up the first hill. My solid citizen seemed to be back like nothing had gone wrong yesterday. 

We stopped off at the overlook (still hazy from the fire winds following the jetstream out here), and then turned around calmly to backtrack. 










She was a little quick the first few strides trotting towards home, but I just slowed my posting and asked her to bring it down a notch, and she responded. The rest of the ride home was on a lose rein walking or trotting. Her ears were happy the whole way.









So I'm left scratching my head about what went so wrong yesterday. Just a really bad day? Something physical? A Lyme flareup? Her saddle was professionally refitted less than a month ago and I'm very confident it fits well. I couldn't see any signs of pain watching her walk around at liberty or palpating her back. Her boots are the same boots she always wears and there were no rocks or anything jammed in them. I guess I may never figure it out, but I truly hope it was just a bad day and not something that happens again any time soon!

Next ride will be Saturday. Fingers crossed!


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## knightrider

Isabeau tells me that when she acts so differently and upset and worried, it is because she had a scary dream and keeps thinking about it.

Acicate started spooking really badly about 2 months ago, and @4horses suggested that it might come from ulcers. So I treated him for ulcers and he stopped spooking.

Just two crazy ideas. Probably waaay off base. If you figure it out, I am eager to learn the reason.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I don't think I've ever had a horse with ulcers so I'm not sure how I would know. But it makes sense that something coming on suddenly could cause a huge change like that. How did you treat Aci?


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## knightrider

@egrogan, I bought Nexium at Wal Mart for humans. @4horses recommended it. She is the one who thought Aci might have ulcers. She rides him often and noticed he was spooking over things he would not normally spook at.

I estimated Aci's weight at 900 pounds and treated him accordingly. I opened the capsules and put it in his food, and he ate it all up. Within days, he was back riding the way he normally rode. I rode him for an hour and 45 minutes this morning. He was fine . . . and has been since I treated him with the Nexium.


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## egrogan

More mysterious behavior from Fizz...

This was the first really chilly morning we've had- about 38*F/3*C with just a hint of frost this morning- and when Fizz and Izzy came trotting in from the back of the pasture for their breakfast, I noticed Fizz was weirdly shivering all over. It was chilly, but certainly not the kind of cold they are used to in the winter. Granted, Fizz is pretty lean and she is just starting to transition summer to winter coat, but she is getting fuzzy. Neither Izzy nor Maggie were shivering at all. 




After they ate (and she did eat up), I got them ready to turn out in the new field across the street, and Fizz was acting really nervous leading over. She kept rushing ahead, snorting and huffing. So then I wondered if the shivering wasn't cold, but some sort of fear? There have been a lot of bears moving through in the morning (lovely husband is seeing them when out with Hugh in the morning), and maybe they are moving around close to the horses too? (Though I don't see any evidence of that). As soon as I turned the horses out, they took off trotting and then settled right in to grazing, and I didn't see any more of the weird shivering. Maybe she was ok again once she was in this other field?

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Despite this weirdness, it was a gorgeous fall day. While the horses were out in the new field, lovely husband and I went out and got a load of stay-pak to refresh the footing in front of the sheds before the snow comes. Hugh supervised, and occasionally helped spread it around :rofl:









After lunch, I headed out to ride. I was just catching Fizz to tack up when I heard my neighbor L calling hello from the road- she has a delightful, distinctive Brooklyn accent so you always know who it is! She was also out for a ride. She had hurt her back pretty badly at the beginning of the summer, so it was nice to see her out riding. I know she likes to have company, so I told her if she didn't mind waiting a few minutes for me to tack up I'd go along with her. She brought her nice gelding into the yard and let him graze around while I got Fizz ready. 

I could tell as soon as I tied Fizz up she was going to be fussy and agitated again. She kept swinging around to put her butt in the back corner with her side pressed up against the shed, and was back to pawing. Granted, I was rushing to get ready quickly, which I hate to do, but I was really trying to get her to work with me and stand still. I should also say she's always tied with a haynet, and until this behavior started this week has always been more than happy to stand and snack while we get ready. At any rate, I got her ready to go and we went out to meet L and Savant. I suppose a strange horse standing in the yard where she could see him _was _pretty distracting, so maybe I should be more understanding?

Our ride was uneventful - we just strolled up to the overlook and back and chatted away. Fizz got a little quick when we turned to come home, but in fairness to her we really were _strollllllllling _along leisurely, which L is always clear about being her preferred speed. 










I was happy there was none of the tense spookiness that happened after the last frustrating tacking up experience. L and I parted ways, and I rode around the front yard for a few minutes before hopping off.

Fizz was agitated again when I tied her back up in the shed to untack. I decided to try tying her outside of the shed to see if that made any difference, and it actually did. She was happy to stand and nibble hay while I brushed her out. 








Maybe lends credence to the idea that she's nervous not being able to watch out for any wildlife she thinks is out there? Or maybe that's totally off base. I'm stumped! Vet is scheduled to come out this coming Friday for fall shots/checkup, so if this pattern continues I will definitely talk through it with her...


Planning for our regular longer Sunday ride with M tomorrow. We'll see what the day brings!


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## Knave

I wonder if the weather change has her acting amiss. Maybe she’s cold and edgy and it will pass after a couple more rides... today it is cold here too. Not terrible really, but I could see my breath getting on my horse and my hands froze. Cash was a bit amiss as well, not bad, just a little hot when a cow got on the fight and a bit worried about a corner he never loves. 

Anyways, I am sitting on him now waiting for the trailers and he is chill, but we went and found this nasty bull making all sorts of ruckus, and I thought he might blow up too. He acted a wreck and I worried, but we managed back to the corral with the dumb bull. Anyways, I figure he is just feeling fresh with the cold air. I hope it disappears as he gets used to it.


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## knightrider

@egrogan, if you think the problem with Fizz might be ulcers, I have found this technique to be useful. I do it to my horses regularly, "just in case."


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## gottatrot

I could see how some longer rides and potentially more time spent with less food, acid swishing around could lead to ulcers.


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## gottatrot

Forgot to ask...do you feed up before rides? I usually feed hay while tacking up nowadays. Sometimes even on pasture you can catch them when they haven't eaten in a while.


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## egrogan

Thanks for the additional info and considerations on ulcers. I can definitely take a shot at treating and see what happens. @*gottatrot* , yes, she always has a hay net while tacking up. If I ride in the morning, usually I've fed a "meal" at 7am and then am tacking up to go around 8:30/9:00, and she's been eating hay in the time between.

@*Knave* , I am also thinking along the lines of weather change making her (more than a little) fresh. Yesterday it was right around freezing when we got ready. I actually threw a sheet on her in between the time she ate breakfast and I tacked up, thinking it might help her back feel a little more comfortable. Tied her outside the shed again, she stood nicely getting ready. 









I hand-walked her 1/4 mile to warm up a little before getting on, and she was a bit of a pain about standing for mounting- she kept wanting to dive for grass. But I clambered aboard and we headed out. She was a little "looky" and snorty again, but manageable. That is until we met up with M and Coalie. Coalie was in about the same state she was in, and so when we put the two snorty beasts together they became quite a handful! Jigging, shying, ears darting around in every direction. Fizz was walking a million miles a minute and asking her to slow down just led to more jigging, which got Coalie upset so he started hopping around. We ended up both just getting off and leading them since things were not going well. I seriously considered just turning around and heading home. We walked through the parking lot of the town garage and then turned off on a jeep trail into the woods. Coalie started bucking circles around M and Fizz tried to take that opportunity to dash for home- while this exciting display was happening, I looked up and suddenly there was a pickup truck heading down the road in our direction. These jeep tracks we ride on are narrow and rocky- just enough room for two nicely behaved horses to ride side-by-side, but definitely not enough room for a vehicle and nicely behaved horses, let alone a vehicle and two badly behaved horses :wink: The funniest part of it was, the guy driving the truck saw us and quickly put the truck in reverse and just backed the hell out of there. We never saw him again...

That all sucked, but we eventually got them in some semblance of control and Fizz actually stood very nicely for me to get back on from a big pile of dirt. She tried one more time to spin and head for home, but I was able to get her straightened out in time to block that. Fortunately we were now pointing up a steep uphill climb (I love when a good uphill appears just when you need it...) and we asked them to blow out all this pent up energy with a good trot up the hill. By the time we got to the top, it was like magic- we suddenly had our normal horses back! Phew!

From there, it was a pretty typical ride. We asked them to trot out through the woods where the footing was good, and when it was trickier they picked their way through carefully. 









After a couple of miles in the woods, we turned back onto the road towards home. We had been planning on exploring a new-to-us trail, but given the way the ride started, we figured we'd rather end on a good note. No reason to pick a fight by turning away from home in that moment and asking them to go find a trail we didn't really know.



















So- not really the ride I wanted or expected, but I do feel good that we salvaged it enough to ride along calmly for the last half after starting out borderline out of control. All told, we still managed to do 6.5 miles. Hopefully we'll get through this seasonal silliness sooner rather than later.


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## carshon

I am going to second the change in the weather. For the first time in my life I think I had a weather related health issue. On Saturday when I went out to feed at 6am our 22 yr old was standing in her run with her head hanging and refused to leave her pen to go out to the dry lot for her grain and pasture time. This is VERY unusual as I let her out first so she can find her pan and start munching before the others get let out. She just simply refused to move. The weather had turned abruptly cold and I could see my breath. I locked her pen back up and let everyone else out. She just stood there. So I get a flashlight and look her over and no marks, She picked at her grain - just not energetic. So I took her temp, listened for gut sounds and all was normal. I gave her 2 grams of bute and opened up the winter pasture for her (it hasn't been grazed yet so the grass is longer and more green than their current pasture) I came out an hour or so later and she was in the winter pasture laying down in the sun sleeping. Not sure what was wrong but I watched her closely the remainder of the day - fed her beet pulp and alfalfa mash (which she gets at lunch anyway) and she has been good ever since.

The weather changes on a horse are so weird


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## egrogan

Hope your mare is still perky and feeling good now @carshon!


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## QueenofFrance08

I'm thinking it might not hurt to treat for ulcers, but I know nothing of Lyme and not sure if that could be part of it as well. The grumpy/spooky/antsy reminds me of ulcers though.


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## egrogan

@QueenofFrance08- on paper, she probably shouldn't have any acute Lyme issues, since she's been vaccinated. The problem is that Lyme rarely does what it is "supposed to" do. The behaviors you named as symptoms of ulcers are also symptoms of active Lyme. Or changing weather!? We'll see what vet thinks Friday but we can easily pull blood and send to Cornell if she wants.


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## carshon

@Tazzie posted an ulcer treatment in her journal some time ago and Diego looked great afterward!


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## PoptartShop

You could try treating for ulcers. I add marshmallow root in the feed for prevention, or you can use aloe juice too. But it could also be the change of weather - I rode my mare the other day, first 'chilly' day of the year, & she was like OMG WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE??? WHAT'S THAT?? Like super antsy & everything. Then a few days later, she's fine again. :lol:


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## gottatrot

Yes, the weather could certainly be the culprit. I'm always careful around the first big weather change in the spring and fall.


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## QueenofFrance08

My other thought: the more fit my horses get the more naughty they are. She's in really good shape right now so possibly acting out because of that!


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## Knave

I am with you @gottatrot. The first week or so of spring riding (sometimes more depending on how broke a horse is) around here seems miserable. They then progressively become better and better and by the end of summer you can’t imagine a more wonderful horse. Then, those first couple cold weeks hit and back we are to the horse we weren’t all too pleased with and we grudgingly remember that fall is a bit like spring. Lol

I am so glad that jeep backed out! Wow! You had very good luck in that moment.


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## egrogan

Lots of great food for thought here. Appreciate you all! :grin:


Fizz has been on sentry guard duty the past couple of days. No matter what time I go out to the field, morning or evening, she's posted at the back fenceline on high alert, staring off into the woods. She does this periodically but has been particularly intense again. I am sure there is plenty of wildlife moving around as the weather changes and hunting season starts. Assuming this is a love-bite from Izzy and not a sabre tooth tiger attack like she wanted me to believe, right? 








Today we did a short ride to the overlook and back. Kept it calm and easy. She was very tense with her woods-watching while I mounted up at the edge of the field, but as soon as we headed in the direction of the overlook she relaxed right away. It was only two miles there and back (we went the most direct way) so we were only out 20 minutes or so (plus pausing for a couple of early foliage pictures), but it was nice to have a quiet, easy ride where she just trotted along happily on the buckle. Though her little ears never stopped moving in all directions, just in case. :wink:
















We're supposed to have perfect weather tomorrow, so M and I are taking the afternoon off to go ride!


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## Tazzie

carshon said:


> @Tazzie posted an ulcer treatment in her journal some time ago and Diego looked great afterward!


Thanks Carshon!

egrogan, if you want to shoot me a message through the book of faces, I can respond way faster to that than through here! What we used was a bit more of an alternative method, but far cheaper and worked every bit as good as the horrifically expensive stuff. Haven't had a single issue since.


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## egrogan

Yesterday began with Fizz back on guard duty first thing in the morning. When I went to feed, the other two were eating while she kept watch:

















In the afternoon, M trailered over here and we did the Newhall loop. The first half of the ride the horses were happy to stroll along calmly with no issues whatsoever. We had to wake them up to trot up the hills. I think we were all enjoying the warmer temps and pretty views along the way:



























When we were ready to cross over the paved road to cut through the cattle farm, we had the unwelcome surprise of a small group of steer right along the fence. Usually the cows we ride past will look in our direction but generally ignore us...not this group. One of them came trotting towards us aggressively snorting and proceeded to follow us along the fenceline. Coalie usually wants to be friends with cows but even he was freaked out by these guys. Fizz of course was not happy. We had hopped off before crossing the road as we didn't want to press our luck on the pavement, and it was a good thing because there was a lot of spinning around and backing away from the unfriendly cow. Even though I know Fizz was scared, I have to say she did pretty well in the situation and instead of freezing or trying to escape the scene, she did stick with me and we made our way passed- all while the big mean cow kept telling us to get out of his kingdom. 

I wish I could have taken a picture of how big and sharp their horns looked! When I went by them this morning they were pretty far up the hill rather than along the road so you can't really appreciate their size. Or how mean they looked :evil:









Last week I think an incident like this would have been the end of our ride, but since reasonable Fizz was back, we just continued to walk a little ways to calm down the adrenaline, and once the cows were out of sight I got back on from a stone wall where she stood nicely, no big deal.

The only other excitement was a big flock of turkeys careening around a hill a distance away from us. We stopped and watched them disappear up the hill and into the woods but then continued on.









The last half-mile or so, heading up the hill of despair for home, I felt Fizz visibly tense up again, and she was back to scanning the woods on either side of the road for danger. I think the bears must just be really active along that stretch of road- you can see the scat so kind of tell where they are crossing. She really doesn't like that spot right now, but we managed to get through it.

I had to laugh when we got home, we caught Izzy in a Maybelline commercial moment, looking very fetching  I'm glad she's going into the winter in good condition this year. She was a little thin last fall.









Vet visit tomorrow. Lots to discuss with her as she looks over each of the ladies.


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## carshon

Izzy looks great!!! I cannot even imagine having to ride where bears are. Tillie is sensitive anyway- Kudos to Fizz for proving once again that she was the right horse for you when you picked her that fateful day.


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## egrogan

Catching up on a horsey, foliage filled weekend!

Friday morning, the vet was out for fall shots/check-ups. She told me all about riding with @*phantomhorse13* for part of an endurance ride last week. Like @*phantomhorse13* said, sounds like there was a lot of excitement with people racing at the front of the pack :wink:

Fizz just got a flu/rhino shot, as did Maggie & Izzy. Maggie and Izzy also got blood pulled for a metabolic panel- specifically looking at Cushings and IR. We'll see when we get results next week. Some really good news though, in the spring Izzy had a potential pocket forming behind one of her teeth on the top right side, and we had been thinking she'd have to go into the clinic for some surgery to probably remove the tooth (she's already had two molars removed for this reason). But the good news is that the pocket had actually healed itself and the tooth is still healthy. So, no surgery needed! She didn't have any sharp spots or misalignments, so more good news was that she didn't need to be floated at all. Particularly good in that she's only got so much tooth left in there, so floating from now on will be a challenge for her. Maggie and Fizz were also fine in their mouths- I asked the vet to be sure with Maggie since she's in the grazing muzzle nearly all day, but she has no abnormal wear from it. We ended the visit discussing Maggie's overall health/weight/EMS situation. On the positive, vet did think Maggie's body condition was much better than it had been in the spring. We would of course like the crest to keep reducing and softening, but she said she's seen much worse this summer (I guess that makes me feel better?). We took a look at her feet, she confirmed I was checking for digital pulses correctly (and that there are none) and that even though she does display rings on the hooves they are uniform and don't take a sharp backwards dip at the heels suggesting something more sinister that might need x-rays. Like all of us, she should get more exercise. I will be interested to see if the IR numbers look any better (considering seasonal rise).

She is looking all dappled out and pretty in her fuzzy new coat


















Saturday morning was weirdly foggy and humid, but still beautiful because of all the turning foliage. Turned the horses out in the new field early, and it was so pretty with the fog, the light, and the leaves...



























It makes me so happy to see them take off running through the field- so good for Izzy and Maggie to be able to just MOVE those old lady joints!









The only downside of the warm weather was that by lunchtime, the flies were back out bugging them, so I switched them back over to the regular paddock and got Fizz ready to ride. To be continued with lots of foliage pictures :wink:


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## egrogan

Saturday, continued

We headed out towards the overlook, and lovely husband was outside working so snapped a couple of action shots.




























I knew it would be pretty at the top of the hill, and it did not disappoint! 
















The ride was quiet and easy, so on our way home we turned down our neighbor's logging road. I could hear some shooting in the distance so didn't want to stray too far from the main road, but that added another mile or so to our ride, which was nice on a warm day.









We actually have some logging coming up in our part of the forest, and some of the equipment had been moved over so I guess they're starting soon- nice of our neighbors to let the crew stage everything there.









Sunday

Today we had our usual Sunday meetup with M and Coalie. The horses were both being great, so we went on a bit of an adventure. First we found a trail connector- the one we had planned on riding last week before they lost their minds! :icon_rolleyes:- and were able to cut through the web of GMHA/snowmobile/ATV/state wildlife area trails in a new way. 









That brought us out briefly to a dirt road we ride alot, and we encountered a nice family out hiking, complete with two dogs and two young kids in those hiking backpacks. They seemed excited to see the horses go by- it's always nice to give people a good experience with horses. You hear so many stories about conflicts on shared trails, I'm grateful our horses are well behaved around other kinds of trail users and hope that goes a small way towards making everyone feel good about sharing the trails.









The horses were going along so nicely, we decided to extend our adventure by turning down another trail we've passed a dozen times, always saying, "We really should turn down that way and see if we can find the pond everyone talks about..." So today, we did! The trail was a little overgrown compared to some of the well maintained ones we usually ride, but the horses did well.








When the trail let us out into a clearing, we decided we'd turn around for today and plan to go back next week to try to make it all the way to the pond. Turned out that was a good decision as it looks like the pond was still a few miles from where we were, and we had already gone about 7 miles at that point (ended up being 10.5 miles total by the time we got home). We had to bushwhack a path back to the main trail, but the horses were pretty tolerant.
@*carshon* , here's my bear story for you today. We were nearly back to the dirt road from the trail, when we heard a distinct sound of a bear to our right- it sounded like the first few seconds of this 





We both sort of looked at each other and kept our hands on the reins as we urged the horses on. The sounds continued but faded into the background. It is bear hunting season, which I know nothing about, so we did consider whether it could be a hunter with a call luring them? I don't know if that's even a thing. M was pretty convinced it was a real bear. Glad we didn't stick around to find out!









The rest of the ride was uneventful. Fizz was sweaty with the humidity so when we got home, we moseyed around the yard for a few minutes. She happily snacked on apples. I think she enjoyed the adventure too!


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## phantomhorse13

The colors are really coming out! You will soon have lots of fun pics that are wall-worthy. So glad Fizz seems to be over the fall nutso phase and fingers crossed it stays that way. I am sure you were thrilled about Izzy's teeth too. She looks great.

DH says he has never heard of a bear call for hunting, so chances are you heard the real deal - yikes!!


Are you planning on riding at GMHA in a couple weeks?


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## egrogan

Thanks @phantomhorse13! I will pass on your compliments to Izzy - she loves to be told how pretty she is :grin:


Also meant to mention that vet did palpate Fizz for ulcers (no reaction whatsoever) and we decided to hold off on Lyme bloodwork.


I'm not sure if I'm glad to hear your DH thinks our bear was real- eek. It seemed so close!


We'll probably do at least one day of pleasure riding at GMHA during the endurance weekend. The LD is 30 miles, and that seems like too much to try. Wishing there was an intro. I'm thinking about trying to join the GMHA trails committee to see if we can get some interest in shorter rides- not sure I will be successful but feels like I should stop complaining and see what I can do about it :wink:


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## knightrider

Your pictures are amazing. So fun to share. That bear video! The sound at about 17 sounds like a bull alligator. When I ride in Ocala National Forest, we have both bears and alligators. When I've heard that sound, I always thought it was a bull alligator. Now, you mean I have to worry that it might be a bear instead????


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## egrogan

Haha, @knightrider, I can neither confirm nor deny the bear sounds. Still not totally sure I heard one either, though I can't come up with any other logical explanation for what it might be. Keep your hands on the reins and ride fast, I guess :rofl:


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## phantomhorse13

knightrider said:


> When I ride in Ocala National Forest, we have both bears and alligators. When I've heard that sound, I always thought it was a bull alligator. Now, you mean I have to worry that it might be a bear instead????


Honestly, I would take a bear over the horrible dogs you have to deal with routinely!!


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## knightrider

> Honestly, I would take a bear over the horrible dogs you have to deal with routinely!!


I have an unreasonable fear of bears, but I like dogs. I believe a horse can outrun a dog (at least my horses outrun the dogs that chase us). I don't mind (too much) seeing bears far away, as long as they don't come towards me.

Twice on rides, I have surprised mama bears, by accident, of course. They stand up on their hind legs and glare at me. They seem 8 feet tall when they do that. They spread their arms wide and those claws!

Someone I like to ride with at Ocala National Forest told me this story: Everyone says that bears are not really dangerous and won't bother you; they are shy and will actually run away when encountered on horseback.

So, my friend was young and not as safety conscious as she could have been. She came upon a young bear on the trail, and not wanting to turn around and go back to camp, she charged the bear. To her surprise, the bear charged towards her! She wheeled her horse around and took off running as the bear took off running at her. All the warning posters around the camps say that a running bear is quite fast, as fast as a horse (unlike a dog, I think). My riding friend was terrified as the bear got closer and closer. She wasn't far from camp (why she didn't want to turn around), and the bear did not enter the camp. So much for bears being shy and avoiding people. That's why I'm afraid of bears and not so much of dogs. Well, actually, I was afraid of bears since I was 7 years old, but that's another story.

Today I had another annoying incident with those miserable Anatolians. I thought I had figured out if I just galloped, they'd leave me alone. Every time I figure out what works with those dogs, they go one step further. I was on my good Isabeau, and when the dogs came after her, I asked her to gallop. She did, but the dogs came at her. Before, when we'd take off, they'd happily go back up their driveway. Not this morning. I don't know if the more aggressive one bit her, but she bounded forward into a bolt. I just let her bolt--she's so sweet, I figured it would be OK and it was. But the dog did not stop chasing her. He chased her past another farmstead into the planted pine acreage, maybe not a quarter mile, but at least 2/10 of a mile.

More and more bits of my lovely riding trails are being closed off to me by the grown children of the landowners. I need to ride past those Anatolians if I want to ride on great trails for long distances. I decided to get firm about those dogs. On Saturday I plan to wear my daughter's helmet camera, film the dogs going after the horses, and send it to my county animal control office. They say they can't do a thing unless the dogs are off their property. When my horses go by, they are FAR off their property! I like to solve problems amicably, but this set of dog owners won't even try.


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## PoptartShop

I am loving all the pictures!  So beautiful, it looks like fall has made its way to you. Still waiting for the leaves to change over here! I love the bear story too, I'd be so scared! Actually, not sure how I'd react, never dealt with it before! :lol: You are a brave soul! Aww, Fizz is so cute. The apples were well-deserved! I'm glad Izzy & Maggie are doing so well, movement is definitely a good thing. You have the cutest herd!


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## Knave

Ugh! I can’t believe people let their dogs behave that way! I’d let my horse teach them a lesson, but all of my horses are dog aggressive besides Beamer. Lucky for me I never have to deal with unknown dogs.

My mom had a bad accident when she led a dude string in her youth with a bear. A kid got hurt over it, and she never overcame her fear of riding with smaller kids.


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## knightrider

Sorry for co-opting your journal, @egrogan . . . but . . . @Knave, your mom was afraid of taking small kids but not afraid of bears? I'd be more afraid of bears than taking kids, since it was the bear's fault, not the kid's.


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## Knave

@knightrider I’m not sure if she’s afraid of bears. She’s just paranoid something will happen to a kid, so she gets kind of micromanaging and anxious.

I think she was a hero in that story, but it’s not that part she remembers. If I remember correctly she was leading out the group and the horses spooked when the bear came, and the kid fell off and was hurt. I think she ran her horse up to the bear and he left, and then she took care of the kid. I don’t really remember well though. All I know for certain is she is really uncomfortable when she feels responsible for kids horseback.


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## knightrider

Again, sorry sorry sorry, @egrogan, hope this doesn't de-rail your journal.

I remember reading this article in 2011. I think it was from Horse Forum, but it might have been from another horse organization. It sounds so much like your mom's story. I wish your mom would tell her story, but I understand if she doesn't want to.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/sep/18/gutsy-wrangler-huge-horse-save-boy-from-charging/

Scroll down a bit to get the photograph and the story.

Stories like this do NOT make me feel safer around bears.


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## egrogan

I think bears here generally don't want to see us as much as we don't want to see them. At least so I've heard. We are told to yell "hey bear" over and over like and idiot if we see one, and that's supposed to send them on their way? I'd rather not try to confirm.


I can understand how your mom felt @Knave. One of my worst memories of teaching therapeutic riding is when one of my students fell off without a helmet on. That is a major, major safety violation at a therapeutic riding facility. It happened because it was winter and the student was wearing a thick winter hat. I realized later with so much guilt that while my brain had processed "big hat on head" as "helmet," it wasn't, it was a wool hat. The rider was on a horse that might as well have had angel wings, because she was the most trustworthy, kind, kid safe horse you've ever met. Unfortunately she got startled by snow sliding off the roof, took a quick side step, and the rider ended up on the ground and bumped her head. Fortunately the rider wasn't hurt, the mother didn't freak out, and all that happened was that I had to fill out a lot of paperwork for an incident report. But I shudder to think how much worse it could have been and how I would not have forgiven myself if a rider got a head injury because of a mistake I made. I had kids get mildly hurt in other accidents over the years, but this incident is one I haven't forgotten over time, even though the outcome was ok. So even though your mom wasn't at fault in that story, I get how you can feel really awful if someone else's kid is hurt while you're responsible.


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## egrogan

No need to apologize @knightrider. Fizz clearly agrees we need to take this bear threat seriously :rofl:


And...this is really weird, but the horse I was talking about in my rider falling story looks exactly like the horse in the article you posted. She's a big whited-out-grey Percheron cross that rides like a couch.


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## Knave

What’s weird was I was thinking how much that rider looked like my mother probably looked and I believe she said the horse was a big grey horse! That is crazy. Of course my memory of what color and size the horse was could be wrong, but the girl definitely has a similar look to my mother. The story is similar, but I think the bear didn’t chase the horses, only frightened them. I wish I could remember it better. I’ll ask her if I get the chance and it feels right @knightrider.

Egrogan I totally get your story. I probably would get stuck on something like that too.


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## egrogan

Weather and work conspired to keep me out of hte saddle all last week, but I happily got to ride both days this weekend. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Saturday I took Fizz out past the overlook down the hill into the next town. She really despises riding down that hill. I don't know what the problem is, as it's certainly a difficult hill but not more difficult than a lot of others we ride down. It's almost like it's become a psychological test for both of us at this point :icon_rolleyes: She will get about halfway down, and then slam on the brakes and refuse to go any further, backing up if I get after her to move. I used to get a bit panicked because there was a steep, weed covered ditch that would put you at risk of falling down- but a couple of weeks ago, the town totally redid the sides of the road to improve drainage and flattened out the ditches, removing all the weeds. I felt that was going to work to my advantage because I could just wait her out without worrying about falling over. But instead, she started backing up to the _other_ side of the road, where there's now hot electric fence keeping cows in. She was getting closer and closer to backing into the fence when I finally just got off to lead her. Once I get off and lead her, she's perfectly pleasant, walking right along, asking for scratches on her shoulder. I just don't get it!? I guess I must give off some sort of half-hearted vibe there, partially because of my fear of the ditch but also because there is frequently traffic there and I won't fight with her going down a steep, gravely hill with traffic coming. Once we get to the bottom, there's a little hill where I get back on, and she's always perfectly fine for that too. It's just so weird. I wonder if I should just get off at the top and walk down without even bothering? At least the view is pretty at the top of the hill!









That little distraction aside, we had a lovely ride. The farmer with the cows at the bottom of the hill had put out a ton of pumpkins- free for the taking! Unfortunately they were too big to fit in my saddle bags, but lovely husband and I went back with Hugh later in the afternoon to take one.









I don't think I've ever been passed by so many cars while riding this way. It's unheard of to be passed by two cars, one going in each direction, but even that happened. This is a popular route for "leaf peepers" and they were certainly out in full force this weekend. A couple of cars rolled down the window and wanted to chat, asking if I lived here, wanting to know about Fizz, etc. She was a good sport about it, even though we were heading towards home at dinner time. I like giving people good horse experiences, I hope it goes at least a little ways towards people feeling positive about riders on the roads and trails.We've got to be at peak foliage, or very close. Not much rain expected this week so the leaves should hang on a bit longer.


















Sunday went out with M and Coalie as usual. M learned more about the trail to the pond we had been exploring last weekend, and according to her snowmobiling friend the pond was at least 9 miles from the trail we were on, which would make it about 25 miles round trip since it would be an out-and-back ride. We decided to skip that for now, but instead wound our way through a different set of trails. It's sort of hard to explain, but if you picture two long dirt roads that make a right angle, with hundreds of acres of forest filling up all the space of the angle, that's where we often ride. Along one of the roads yesterday:









On the way to the trails:









It's a combo of state and private land criss-crossed with miles and miles of horse, snowmobile, and ATV trails. Unfortunately there is apparently a brewing feud between the ATV and snowmobile clubs (which makes no sense to me because I think 90% of people who ride one ride the other, but whatever...), and we're starting to run into gates across trails that haven't been there before. The snowmobile people are apparently mad the ATV people tear up ruts in the trails, and the ATV people are mad the snowmobile people don't do more maintenance? Or something like that...Anyway, because M knows everyone and is the friendliest person you've ever met, we still have permission to ride on the trails even where they are gated. But the gates are locked so we have to figure out how to shimmy around them. We were sliding around one gate through a narrow opening with the fence post on the left, a tree on the right, and a big rock the horses have to step over while following a bending line to the left to avoid the tree trunk when I had a little "incident." There's a big old rusty bolt sticking out of the fencepost, so I think I was looking down and focusing too much on that and not making sure I was asking Fizz to swing her barrel wide enough around it-so she rammed my left knee cap right into the post and scraped it and the saddle flap along it before clearing it. It all happened too fast for me to adjust course, and of course it wasn't malicious, but ahhhhhhh it hurt. Kind of like hitting your funny bone so hard you are instantly nauseous. I felt a little embarrassed at first but I had to ask M to stop for a minute so I could let the pain subside. I stole one of Fizz's peppermints and that pushed back the nausea, but it definitely swelled up and got pretty stiff as we went. Fortunately it ended up as nothing more than a scrape, not even a bruise today, but man it hurt in the moment! But we continued on.










Along the way, we heard some voices and trucks ahead of us, so yelled out hello. The trucks stopped and we heard hello back, and came to a clearing where some of the snowmobile club guys were out clearing trees from the trail (so much for them not doing their share of maintenance?!). They were really friendly so we stood for awhile talking (the horses enjoyed the opportunity to snack on the underbrush) and we learned a little more about where different trails go. Turns out one of the guys is someone who passes us in his truck on the dirt road quite often (he's super polite about passing the horses) and he was very complimentary of how well behaved the horses are out on the road. Another + for building good will for riders! Even though I don't own a snowmobile or ATV, I think I'm going to go ahead and join the clubs just to support their work. Technically since we are members of GMHA, we have shared access to these trails since they all have common access agreements, but it seems like the right thing to do...

Not long after that, the trail hooked back into the road, and M and I parted ways to ride home. Fizz and I passed the mini donks without incident:








There is a huge German Shepherd that lives with the mini donks. He free roams but has an underground fence that he's really respectful of. Usually he starts barking so we know where he is, but for some reason yesterday he was completely silent as we rode up to the house, until he came flying from out of nowhere barking his head off. I think Fizz and I both noticed him coming out of the corner of our left eye at the same time, and she did a massive spook sideways away from him. Fortunately even though that spook was about as big as she'll do, she always does stop and wait afterwards. He calmed down when I talked to him and she was fine continuing on. From that house, Fizz and I headed to cross the paved road back to our road, I remembered that the town was paving that section. Even though it was a Sunday, sure enough there was still a lot of paving equipment and signage still sitting out. I think we were both a little edgy from the dog, and the paving equipment was just too much. I know I was tense because I didn't want her to spook into the paved road (traffic moves 40-50 mph there and comes down a blind hill toward the intersection). As we got close to some piece of machinery, her snorting turned into a full on spin-and-spook, and I threw myself off in an emergency dismount. Amazingly, I landed on my feet jogging alongside her with my hands on the reins, got her stopped after a couple more strides, and coaxed her past the scary machine. It's sort of silly looking back, given the ridiculous logging machinery we pass all the time, which is easily 4-5x bigger than this little thing was, but oh well. My knee definitely didn't appreciate jumping out of the saddle, but actually walking on it made it feel better. We walked a short way and I got back on to ride the last mile or so home without any more excitement. Can't be upset with her, she had been so great all weekend after sitting for a whole week doing nothing. Overall it was a great weekend of riding- 10.2 miles Sunday...


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## Dutch_Juniper

I get so jealous of your pictures, it looks like you are riding around in a movie set!


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## gottatrot

The scenery looks so gorgeous!

You're getting so confident with Fizz, it's amazing.

Reading about the atv vs snowmobilers drama is kinda funny.

About the hill, when Amore refused jumps, my friend said if my little toe didn't want to go over Amore would know. I used to ask myself if my whole body wanted to do it, otherwise it was no use trying. 
Maybe you need to ask yourself if your whole body and soul wants to go down the hill. 😄


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## egrogan

Dutch_Juniper said:


> I get so jealous of your pictures, it looks like you are riding around in a movie set!





gottatrot said:


> The scenery looks so gorgeous!


I promise I don't take it for granted and feel lucky every day to be someplace so beautiful. Well...maybe not in mud season :wink: By far, this is my most favorite time of year.

The last few days continue to be spectacular...




































This is kind of neat- it's an old stone foundation to the original barn that's now in ruins off to the left of the current barn. You can't really tell here, but there's still a large, carved stone cistern where they used to water the cows and horses next to the barn.








We do have rain coming tomorrow so a lot of the leaves will probably get knocked down. It's beautiful while it lasts though!




gottatrot said:


> You're getting so confident with Fizz, it's amazing.


It's been a great summer of small, steady building blocks leading to a really big change. I finally feel like we're able to tackle challenges together. It doesn't always go right- like the conversation in your journal, I do think it's important to write about the challenging rides, bad behavior, rides that were cut short because of nerves or whatever. But overall, there have been more ups than downs this summer and it feels great!

This is definitely right:


> About the hill, when Amore refused jumps, my friend said if my little toe didn't want to go over Amore would know. I used to ask myself if my whole body wanted to do it, otherwise it was no use trying. Maybe you need to ask yourself if your whole body and soul wants to go down the hill. 😄


I think the clear answer is _no_. I've been too worried about her jumping around when traffic is coming, the ditch, her spooking at the cows, etc. It's become such an established pattern now I'm a little perplexed how to resolve it. But at least she leads down it now without any argument so that's easy enough to do for awhile.
And now for some bloopers....First, some old lady butts (and bellies :hide









And an oh-so-majestic Gumby horse :rofl:


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## PoptartShop

The photos are so beautiful, I agree it's like something out of a movie.  I am still waiting for the leaves to change here! :lol:


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> I am still waiting for the leaves to change here! :lol:



Oh wow, that's crazy that they aren't changing yet. "Northernliness" (is that a word?!) and elevation definitely make a difference but I am surprised we're that far ahead since you're not so far south of us...


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## PoptartShop

They're slowly changing, but not as fast. I think because we've had some weird weather. Like one day it was 80 degrees, the next 50! It's starting to get cooler here & change, so things should be looking more fall-like soon! :lol: It's kinda like we had a long summer.


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## bsms

gottatrot said:


> ...my friend said if my little toe didn't want to go over Amore would know.....


Don't know about little toe, but my horse seems to know when my bunghole puckers! Can even feel it thru a western saddle. :wave:


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## egrogan

Hahaha @bsms!!


Fizz is the only horse I've ever met that notably "gulps" when she gets worried about something. It's a full on, audible gulp out loud and always reminds me of Scooby Doo and his "ruh roh" noise :rofl:









Today was the opposite of a nervous ride though. We had rain forecast, but they kept pushing back the start time, so I fit in a bonus ride. We went out to the overlook and back before lunch and enjoyed the last of the dry weather. I was hoping for a quiet, easy ride and she was in the mood for that too. We just ambled along, admiring the foliage. It's windy and rainy now so a lot will get knocked down, but it was still pretty this morning! 





























The only interruption to our quiet ride was when an awful landscaping guy came flying up a hill in a very narrow part of the road, turning away from us at the last minute. Grrrrr. This guy has also cursed me out and flipped me off while I was driving in my car alongside him one day, so I didn't expect much more polite behavior while I was on horseback. Not a very good advertisement for your business when you have a jerk behind the wheel of a truck and trailer plastered in your business name and contact info!


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## egrogan

Oh, something else really interesting happened last night. I had posted a comment with Fizz's pedigree on a FB page for Morgans, and someone reached out to me saying she used to own Fizz's sister, and had ridden and even shown Fizz in walk/trot green horse classes when she was a 5 year old. This woman also showed Fizz's mom quite a bit. She said she has old video somewhere that she's going to try to dig up and send me. I would so love to see it. 

I know I've posted here about how Fizz had an accident as a young horse, falling down a well in the middle of winter. This woman was the person who did all her wound care and rehab after that incident :loveshower: And, she sent me a version of hte newspaper article I hadn't seen before- the article headline says there is video of the firefighters pulling her out of the well, but it's so old I'm not sure the video is still embedded. https://www.registercitizen.com/news/amp/Horse-falls-down-well-with-video-12080955.php
But it did include this photo- this is the first time I've seen how scraped up her front legs were! 










You'd never know it today, she healed remarkably well. Apparently thanks to this nice woman's careful nursing back to health. The woman was just 14 years old at the time and said she learned everything she knows about wound care from that experience. It was so nice to trade stories about Fizz, then and now :grin:


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## bsms

WOW! Just.....WOW!


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## Knave

Definitely wow, but how cool that she contacted you!!!

The leaves are so pretty. We don’t really have that here to speak of. It gets cold so fast it seems like they just die off. The quakies change, but not much else.

Does your knee feel better?


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## carshon

How crazy!


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## egrogan

@Knave, thankfully the knee is just fine. A little bruising but hasn't slowed me down at all.


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## PoptartShop

Woah!! That is crazy! :O Poor Fizz, I'm glad that woman helped her too!


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## gottatrot

Oh man, maybe that's why Fizz doesn't like some downhills. Maybe they remind her of slipping into the well.


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## egrogan

@gottatrot, and also maybe why she doesn't like tight, enclosed spaces like a trailer :think: Not sure why that never occurred to me before! I really wish they could talk to us!


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## knightrider

Oh, poor Fizz, her legs are so scraped up. She must have been terrified. Glad she's doing so well for you now!


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## egrogan

We did our last organized GMHA distance ride of the season this weekend. M and I hacked the horses over Saturday, riding half of one of the endurance ride loops, and then hacked them home on Sunday.

Saturday we met around noon, and the day was bizarrely hot- around 75*F/24*C- about 20*F hotter than it should have been. The ride started off ok. Fizz actually marched right down the hill of despair with no hesitation, and we had a nice canter up the hill by Mrs. Mitchell's field before we got to our meeting point. The leaves have been hanging on so we chatted away while we enjoyed the scenery. Although Fizz was a little suspicious of the pumpkins that we saw everywhere :wink:










About 3 miles from where we met, we passed the farm with the wild horses who come galloping up to the fence when you pass. This time they had two cows with them when they came charging up to the road. Coalie flipped out over the running horses and Fizz stood wide eyed, frozen in place at the cows. We both got off to lead them by and walked them down the rest of the hill before mounting up again (including past the llamas, which you can now see very clearly from the road since the trees that buffer the road from the field are turning bare). They were a little tense but there was a water stop for the endurance riders coming up so we thought they’d feel better after getting to pause there and graze/drink for a minute. Unfortunately we rounded the bend and the water had already been picked up :sad: This was a bummer since the endurance loop was also a pleasure ride loop both Saturday and Sunday, and they usually do leave the water out for the pleasure riders. So we continued on, crossing the busy main road back into a lovely trail system. 

We had a really steep climb up a rocky trail that was slippery because of all the leaves. The horses were really struggling, breathing way too hard and dripping sweat in the heat. Fizz’s neck was drenched and I could see even her face was foamy from the sweat. As we came to a trail intersection, things leveled off from the climb, and there was a small clearing with decent grass where we could let them stop and rest for a minute. I don’t usually get worried about over-exertion given the way we ride, but I was pretty worried about Fizz. After about 10 minutes of grazing, they both were breathing much more normally and we continued on- the trail took us through beautiful farms where there were many horses turned out grazing. Fortunately these horses were much more interested in grazing than visiting us, and Coalie handled that great.


















As we wound down the trail out of the woods back onto the roads, we saw yet more horses off in the distance. The horses are the little dots in the field in the back left of the picture:









For some reason these guys freaked Fizz out a bit, so I hopped off again and walked her past them as she snorted and jigged. Once they were out of sight, I got back on and we settled in for a few more miles of road riding. It was hot in the sun, and even though we were on dirt road it was as hard as concrete because it’s been so dry. We trotted along but they were really breathing hard so we tried to give them breaks as we could. 










The road became very narrow in spots, and there was tons of leaf peeper traffic so we got into this frustrating pattern where huge SUVs would go past us, taking up most of the road, and we’d have to move the horses off into a ditch or stand in a driveway to let the traffic pass. At first Fizz was content to graze while we waited, but she started getting really frustrated with all the stopping and starting. Can’t really blame her, it was annoying, and she was hot, annoyed by the bugs, and just sort of DONE with the ride. Coalie wasn’t enjoying it much either, and all the stopping and starting was making him start to slow down, so we got to the point where I had try to circle Fizz around to let him catch up. She didn’t exactly explode, but we started to get into a pulling match when a pod of motorcycles went by and I asked her to wait in a driveway for them to pass. At that point, we were about 1.5 miles away from GMHA, with the rest of the route on the steep downhill, gravely road with all this traffic, and I decided that the best thing to do was just get off and lead her. She wasn’t being terrible, but I could feel a fight brewing, and I honestly just didn’t want to fight with her all that way. M was feeling bad that I was walking, but I kept telling her honestly that in that moment, it was really a much better option than riding given how Fizz was feeling. If the rest of the way had been an uphill climb, it might have been different because I could have ridden her forward with more energy, but the steep downhill was just not a place I wanted to be in a fight. 

We trudged along, but soon enough a bit of an oasis appeared- one of the landowners had a much appreciated water tank out along the road (we had managed to find a little trickling stream in one spot in the woods, but otherwise the horses hadn’t had any water and they were so hot….). They both dove into the tank and drank and drank….








….and all of a sudden, we heard a voice asking “are you having a nice ride?” which surprised all of us because we didn’t know there was anyone up at the house :rofl:








Sure enough, there was a little group up on a porch behind some hedges enjoying afternoon cocktails (boy was I jealous!). 










We thanked them profusely for the water while the horses enjoyed dunking their heads in and drinking their fill. After they were refreshed, we continued on our way.

As we walked across the back entrance to GMHA, I heard someone calling my name, and it was a friend who was there to ride the 50. Sadly, her horse didn’t cope well with the heat and wasn’t eating or drinking after the second loop, so she rider optioned after about 35 miles. She was bummed, but it sounds like it was a tough day for a lot of people given the unseasonable weather. In happier news though, our vet finished first in the 50 and looked bright and cheery when I saw her later in the day. Glad she had such a good ride! 

Despite the bizarrely hot afternoon, big storms were forecast to roll through in the evening. I was a little worried about leaving Fizz stalled there through the storms, but she was going to have to be brave and make it through :wink: I dragged lovely husband back with me around 8pm to do night check, and the storms were just starting. The lightning was very dramatic- the kind with big light bursts that lights everything up as bright as daylight- but the wind and rain weren’t quite as bad as they forecast. We topped up hay and water and said goodnight; the horses were both looking perfectly content, munching away when we left and paying no attention to the storm. They had drained their water buckets but otherwise looked in good shape despite the long, hot ride (11.5 miles). 

I didn't feel great about the ride, but I suppose not every ride is going to be a great one...To be continued with Sunday…


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## egrogan

By Sunday morning, the storm had cleared and temps had dropped about 30*F. Even lovely husband asked: "how wild do you think Fizz will be riding home today?" Thanks for that comment, lovely husband :icon_rolleyes: But when I got to the barn, she was still happily munching hay, just like she had been when I left the night before. She had even laid down to sleep overnight, which made me really happy. I think this season has definitely proven she can handle being stalled when she needs to be.

We tacked up and started to ride out as another pair of pleasure riders was leaving too. That was interesting, as in our previous rides we'd always left alone. The pair headed to a different loop than we were doing, and Fizz was anxious for a minute when they disappeared into the woods, but she settled right down. Coalie handled it like a champ too, particularly considering being drawn to other horses is probably his biggest "issue" to overcome. Our loop started with a mile across the cross country field, and we were so proud of these guys. They handled the piled up jumps and the driving hazard obstacles like it was no big deal- no snorting, no shying, they just calmly walked through it all across the big open field. They've really come such a long way this summer :happydance:









Our ride home was another 10 miles, but a somewhat more direct route than the trail we had taken the previous day. It was a good mix of woods and much less trafficky roads. Compared to the day before, the cool weather felt perfect. And with the rain, there were plenty of fresh puddles and little trickling streams for the horses to drink.










We played leapfrog with a couple of guys on ATVs most of the way- they seemed to be on the same exact route as us, but were very polite about passing. The last time we met them, they pulled over and cut the engine and we stopped to chat for a few minutes. I believe one of the men had a developmental disability, and Coalie was so sweet letting the nice man pet him on the nose while we talked. We also passed an older man out hunting with a very pretty English Setter. I wasn't sure how the horses would react to a guy with a gun and a loose dog with bear bells on, but they were champs!









The rest of the ride was quiet and easy- lots of places to let them trot along at the pace they felt like, and we made record time for ten miles. Not gonna lie- between the walking and the riding, I am sure sore today! But very grateful this was the ride we ended the weekend with. It (mostly) erased the disappointment of the previous day.








Another great accomplishment of the weekend- we finally got Hugh out on a couple of car rides where he didn't get carsick. Carsickness has been a constant problem with him since the day we picked him up. His father also had some issues with this, and the solution for him was to let him ride in the front seat of a truck, vs. a car. So when I went back to GMHA to clean out Fizz's stall and bring all my stuff home, I brought Hugh with me in the truck and he rode pretty well. He still panted and drooled a little, but he was happy looking out the windows and really seemed to like exploring around in a new place. Hoping this trend will continue so we can more easily take him new places (because let's be honest, cleaning dog puke out of your car every time you go somewhere is no fun at all!)


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## carshon

What an adventurous weekend. We too had an over hot ride - ours was on Friday - our poor horses (like Coalie and Fizz) were over it.

The pics were amazing. And Hugh has grown so much!


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## egrogan

@*carshon* , Hugh has definitely grown up. He is now 51.6 lbs, probably about the weight he'll settle at, and filling in nicely. He's definitely going through a teenager phase where his recall, which was so good early on, is a bit more....questionable all of a sudden :wink: Unfortunately that means off leash time is somewhat limited. Lately he's having little tantrums when we put him in his pen for the night, which is tough. But overall, he's a pretty great dog so far and I think will only get better as he ages. People with English Shepherds seem to find that right around 2 years old is when they really outgrow puppyhood and settle in to their jobs well. I worry a little about "micromanaging" by keeping him leashed so much, but I am a worry wart about the road and can't stand the thought of him chasing cars, bikes, or horses, which I am sure he would do if left fully loose.



























The streak of nice weather continued through yesterday evening, but we're in the midst of 24 hours of cold rain through tomorrow morning. Pulled out rain sheets for the first time. Yesterday vs. today.


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## egrogan

Got some not-so-great news yesterday: bloodwork came back and Maggie has moved into the Cushings positive range :sad: Her insulin numbers are still elevated too, so looks like she's got the double whammy. Since I've been managing her as though she's positive, not much to change except we are going to start her on Pergolide. She really isn't displaying any physical symptoms currently, so I'm hoping this will get the hormonal balance regulated and we'll go on our merry way.


Izzy's numbers all came back well within the seasonal rise-adjusted ranges for both PPID and IR, though if you looked at the two of them standing side-by-side you'd definitely pick Izzy as the Cushings horse rather than Maggie. But it is what it is...


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## carshon

Poor Maggie - you do such a great job of caring for her.


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## gottatrot

Aww bummer. Too bad I've used all the pergolide you so kindly sent to me, or I would send some back!
Hopefully Maggie will do really well with the medication like Amore has.


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## egrogan

Thanks @carshon, and I had to laugh at that too @gottatrot- I guess I tempted the universe and she responded :wink:


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## bsms

Supposed to hit 96 degrees here today. I put on a sweater when it drops below 80....:cheers:


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## egrogan

@*bsms* , it was 65*F here yesterday afternoon and I was in a tshirt when I went to ride, still came home sweaty :rofl:

Horses had their pedicure appt at lunchtime, and I didn't _really _have time to ride after that, but it was too nice not to. So I got online earlier this morning than usual to finish up the work stuff I neglected yesterday afternoon. Not a bad tradeoff since it's back to cool and rainy today.

To start the ride, Fizz nearly chucked me off in the yard before we even got going  I had no idea what was happening when she did a massive spook and sideways scoot from the road to the yard, but it turned out a biker had come up behind us without us even noticing since it was pretty windy and the breeze rustling the leaves meant we didn't hear the guy approaching. He seemed unconcerned about me nearly hanging off the side of the horse and started chatting away about the nice weather.

Fizz was a little jumpy throughout the ride (SQUIRREL!) with the wind so strong, but we did a lot of schooling stuff, serpentines across the road, baby leg yielding from one side of the road to the other, playing around with keeping specific tire tracks perfectly aligned between her ears...Even though she was a little tense she did great when a couple of noisy motorcycles passed us, and I can't ask for much more than that.



















Izzy says hi too:









Hoping Maggie's prascend shows up in the mail today so we can get that started. No notable changes in her feet yesterday when the farrier cleaned them up, which was good. I am hoping starting the medication will be the missing piece to the way I've been trying to manage her over the last several months and get everything back under control so she stays comfortable and symptom-free.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I've been too worried about her jumping around when traffic is coming, the ditch, her spooking at the cows, etc. It's become such an established pattern now I'm a little perplexed how to resolve it. But at least she leads down it now without any argument so that's easy enough to do for awhile.


This sounds like the perfect hill to start jogging down in hand! That way you are not only helping Fizz to practice balancing herself downhill, you are reconditioning her mind (and yours) in terms of what to expect in that place. To start, get off well before either of you get worried and then as you get more comfortable, ride a bit farther down the hill before getting off to jog in hand.




egrogan said:


> To start the ride, Fizz nearly chucked me off in the yard before we even got going  I had no idea what was happening when she did a massive spook and sideways scoot from the road to the yard, but it turned out a biker had come up behind us without us even noticing since it was pretty windy and the breeze rustling the leaves meant we didn't hear the guy approaching. He seemed unconcerned about me nearly hanging off the side of the horse and started chatting away about the nice weather.


Couldn't help but chuckle at this, as it shows you just how clueless people are about horse behavior! You must have looked calm even if you didn't feel it, if the biker was so unconcerned. Maybe he thought you were a trick rider so sitting that way on purpose? 


Hope Maggie is easily regulated - sounds like you caught it early so that should help.


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## bsms

^^ I suspect you looked so natural staying on top of Fizz that the biker didn't realize anything unusual happened. And THAT is a great job!


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## egrogan

Too funny @phantomhorse13 & @bsms! Watching the horses playing in the field on Saturday morning made me worried I'd have to be a real trick rider like @Knave to stay on Fizz when I rode later in the day. The temps had dropped down into the 30s overnight and they were feeling goooooddddddd when I moved them over to the new field. Maggie did run one big lap with them before I managed to get my phone out, but Fizz and Izzy had a fabulous time. It does warm my heart to see Izzy still going like that at 26 years old.









Fortunately though she was totally mellow when we headed out for a short, uneventful ride in the afternoon. I had to really push her to canter in a few spots! Guess she got it all out in the field.

















Yesterday M and I met for our usual Sunday ride. Things were pretty soggy because of the all-day rain on Friday, so we opted for an out-and-back ride to Blind Mare Farm. We had some dog issues early on, but fortunately even though the dog was loose and loud, he really didn't actually want to cause any trouble. 




















The trail was generally in good shape, except there were a few spots with deep puddles stretching from side to side. I'm a bit of a wimp so steered Fizz through an alternate route through the woods, while M rode Coalie through. Unfortunately, the puddles were deeper than they looked- he was up to his knees in one "puddle!"- with deep mud in the bottom, and he lost a hind boot. :sad: I was wearing waterproof tall boots so I waded around in it for a couple of minutes trying to find it, but it was futile. I was bummed for M as boots are expensive, but there wasn't really much else we could do. Fortunately that's the only time I've ever seen a Scoot come off on a ride.









We stopped the horses at the orchard near the house and grabbed a couple of apples for them before turning around for home. 









The trail was slippery in places with water and leaves covering flat rocks, but it's thrilling to feel Fizz really steady up, shift her weight back, and carefully choose her way down the incline. She couldn't have done that in the spring. She's really learned a lot this year!









This ride pushed us over the 450 mile mark- well on our way to 500 miles. The rest of this week is supposed to be pretty dreary and wet but hoping the weekend clears up.

Oh, I also realized that I've had Fizz for exactly 3 years today! It actually doesn't seem like it's been that long- I feel like we're still getting to know each other. Here she is the day she was trailered up to our old boarding barn:


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> ...Unfortunately, the puddles were deeper than they looked- he was up to his knees in one "puddle!"- with deep mud in the bottom...


Probably why All-Wise Mia used to refuse to touch a puddle with even the tip of her hoof! Now add in the threat of Puddle Sharks....:icon_rolleyes:


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## egrogan

I would guess a puddle in the middle of desert would be ultra-suspicious! Definitely a portal to the horsey underworld :rofl:


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## egrogan

Friday morning was interesting. Woke up to a dark, very foggy day. As I was getting dressed, I looked out at the pasture through the thick fog and could just barely make out a weird, dark lump towards the corner of the pasture. I couldn't figure it out: Did they drag the water bucket around? Did a blanket get blown off the gate and hung up on the fence line? Was there some kind of animal? My groggy brain decided animal, so I pulled on some boots before I even brushed my teeth and went out. FoundFizz sound asleep in the yard, outside the fence. Said her name, and she flicked ears at me but didn't really move. SH*T. Got right up alongside her, patted her shoulder, still didn't move at all. DOUBLE SH*T. Called lovely husband, in case I needed help getting her up. He was just leaving the house to drop the car off at the mechanic's, and as soon as he pulled up into the field, she stood up, shook herself off, YAWNED (seriously?! :icon_rolleyes, and started grazing like there was nothing weird going on. 










After some investigation, it seems like the energizer died, so the fence wasn't on at all and she must have crawled under. Because of all the wet leaves on the ground, I could see a little bit of the path she walked around the outside perimeter of the fence, and found just one pile of poop, so I don't think she wandered too far. She drank almost a whole tub of water when I brought her back in so she must have been out decently long. HORSES, geez, they really are trying to drive us crazy all day- and night...Just feeling grateful nothing serious happened. Working on getting the fence fixed this afternoon.

Today we went for a short ride, all the leaves are finally gone. We're now into "stick season," as the old Vermonters say, when everything is just bare and waiting for the snow to come. The starkness actually made for a pretty ride. All the leaf peepers are gone, so we didn't see any cars, and it was so quiet. All we heard were the blue jays screaming and someone cutting wood in the distance.



















It was kind of rainy along the way, and I have to admit I'm a bit of a wimp about riding in the rain so we kept it short. Was still weird to be out riding the last weekend in October in just a t-shirt, and come home sweaty! Temps are supposed to drop pretty dramatically overnight so I think it will feel more seasonable tomorrow when we meet M and Coalie.



















The sun trying to break through the rainclouds treated us to a rainbow when we got home!


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## Knave

That is crazy! What an odd horse she can be. Lol


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## SueC

Lovely photos and stories as always!  I particularly enjoyed the footage of your girls running free. Wow, does Izzy jump around when she's fresh! Good thing she's not tempted to do that when you're riding her, or you might end up in another county by airmail! :rofl:


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## SueC

...sorry, I meant Fizzy!


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## egrogan

@SueC, I was with you :wink: Fortunately, she's only bucked with me once. We were riding through some really sucking, sticky mud and she was trying to scramble and hop through it, and I was asking her to slow down and steady, and she was not having it. She did a little buck and since we were already sort unbalanced sloshing our way through the mud, off I launched over her shoulder. Fortunately she sent me forward into soft grass, not into the bog! But she generally isn't explosive, thankfully!

Yesterday afternoon we had a really nice ride with M and Coalie. The weather was chilly but the sun was strong, so it made for a pleasant ride. We did the Newhall loop, which ended up being just over 8 miles and put us over 460 total miles for the year. It was mostly uneventful. 










We saw our neighbor S out doing chores when we rode by her farm, and stopped to chat for a few minutes. Neither Fizz nor Coalie are particularly good "stand around and chat" horses- they would rather be moving- but we were pleasantly surprised that they both stood quietly for a good 10 minutes while we talked. S was excited about a lesson she had coming up this afternoon, which M and I were both thrilled to hear. As backstory, sadly S lost her amazing driving pony at the beginning of the summer to some sort of strange autoimmune disease. The disease caused her mare's hair to fall out, and then her skin to start sloughing as well :sad: There were many vets involved in consulting on the case and they were all baffled. Treatments included strong doses of steroids, which in turn let to her foundering, and that was sort of the last blow. Sadly she had to be put down, and S was devastated. They had been competing at a high level nationally and to see such a talented young mare go downhill so quickly, with no way to help, was just heartbreaking. S had actually purchased the full younger brother to her mare in the spring, with plans to drive them as a pair, but when she lost Rory she had a hard time getting excited about getting the younger horse going. Understandably. So M and I were just thrilled yesterday when S came out of the barn to chat beaming, saying she was getting ready for a driving lesson that afternoon and had a trainer helping her get Ricky going again. I really hope they build a strong relationship and S is back to doing what she loves soon!

After our chat, we continued on our way, but soon got stopped again when the horses spotted a couple with a giant mastiff near the woods at the back of a pasture we rode past. I have no idea why, but both horses were absolutely mesmerized by the scene and planted their feet to stare. M got Coalie going again, but Fizz was glued to the ground and would.not.move. even as Coalie got farther and farther ahead of us. I ended up having to get off, and even then I couldn't get her to move. The dog and people were doing nothing- just standing in a field. I have no idea why that was so bothersome!? The whole time we were standing in S's driveway, there were dogs running all around us and the horses barely even acknowledged them. We passed another farm where the very enthusiastic collie Shasta came out and ran around with us like she usually does. Horses didn't care about that either. But for some reason, this dog and couple were VERY suspicious! :icon_rolleyes: After we finally walked away from them and I got back on, we had no real issues, but that was very weird.


















Later in the ride, I was very proud of Fizz. The cows that had chased us last time we rode through Newhall Farm had been moved to another pasture, where they were very close to the road. This time, though, they were laying down and not running along the fence with us. Coalie passed with no issue, but Fizz got a bit tense. Still, she rode past without any kind of freak out- though as you can see, she kept a very close eye on them! (They're laying down to the right of the tree, you can barely make them out).












Aside from nice rides, we had more fun this weekend: on Saturday afternoon Hugh had a reunion with two of his siblings- his brother Odin and sister Fern. He and Odin squabbled a bit; at 9 months old, both are still intact so had to work out just who was in charge. I think Odin emerged as the dominant one. However, their sister Fern put them _both _in their place and broke up any growling matches. Each of the boys took a turn wrestling and running with Fern. Fern has remained with their mother's owner Miriam, so we got an update from Miriam about how the rest of the litter is doing. Four of the pups look just like Hugh/Odin, and four look just like Fern. Most of them live on working farms (sheep, goats) and all seem to be developing really lovely personalities with a good work ethic. Odin and another one of the brothers are "town dogs" and Hugh has a sort of "hobby farm" lifestyle, but they're the only ones who aren't really working dogs. 

_Hugh left, Odin middle, Fern right_








_Odin left, Hugh right_








_Hugh back, Fern front_









Seeing him with the other two did make me realize I need to step it up a bit with training. The other two had a lot bigger "vocabulary" of commands than Hugh does. I also think Hugh just needs a lot more time with other dogs. He loved playing with them and seemed genuinely sad when they left. I think his life probably is a little lonely, since we really just hang out here as our little family and don't have a lot of company. He's been so carsick all his life it's been hard to take him out on many adventures. So we'll have to be more intentional about that as I think he is a really sociable little guy and would enjoy more dog time. This is the only time since lovely husband and I have been married that we've had just one dog, so I have a feeling another one might join us in the not so distant future.


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## gottatrot

All three dogs are lovely. So nice they could have a reunion. 
My Dalmatian used to get super excited if he ever saw another dog with spots. Once he was even crazier than usual, and when we got to talking it turned out the other dog was his sister. They were about 8 yrs old at the time. The funny thing was, I'd named my dog Bucky and her name was Betsy.


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## egrogan

I love that story @gottatrot! We had a long conversation about whether or not they remembered each other. Surely they must, right? Hugh has a distinctive little whimper/whine he will do when lovely husband comes home after being out for awhile, and as soon as Odin was out of the car Hugh was doing that whimper. He didn’t react as much to Fern, but he definitely was thrilled to see the family that raised him. Especially their kids (young elementary school age). I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wag his tail as hard as he did when he saw the kids. At one point I looked over and he was blissfully laying in the sunshine between them getting petted on both ends. Turns out he had been the kids’ favorite of the litter, so their reunion was very cute. I remember feeling bad when we picked him up because the kids were crying so hard they couldn’t come outside to say goodbye :sad: Fortunately there were only smiles during the visit.


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## egrogan

Our first snow has arrived! It really is a beautiful sight.


































However, as I was hauling frozen blankets from the field to the basement to thaw, I was immediately reminded just how much work it is to keep everything going during the winter. But I won't start complaining yet :wink: The chickens, however, were not shy about complaining- they gave the snow a big THUMBS DOWN









The storm started as rain yesterday afternoon, but I was able to move work meetings around so that Fizz and I could do a ride in the morning. It was a really good ride- kept her moving forward and trotted along for most of it. 










I couldn't help but laugh at this:









As the underbrush has died back, the pirate dogs' ship has re-emerged! I guess it will stay moored there until the spring melt launches it again next year :grin:









We did have to ride a short section on the paved road, and two cars passed us, which was a bit nervewracking. But the cars were respectful and gave us plenty of room. They could certainly see us! :rofl:









It's going to warm back up so the snow won't stick around just yet, but it is pretty for now.


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## SueC

Beautiful snow and snow-faces! :happydance:

Isn't it funny, I've been back to watering the garden for the last two weeks, and the pastures are beginning to dry off higher in the landscape (still green in the valleys), and I've had a sunburn - and you're getting your first snow! 

Those colourful roadsides are really spectacular! There's beauty in every season...


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## egrogan

Temps stayed chilly yesterday, but M and I met up mid-day for a beautiful ride. There is some hunting allowed this weekend, but it's a bit esoteric: "anterless muzzleloader" weekend, meaning if you can find an anterless deer and you have a gun that you load powder into from the front yourself, it's your weekend! Deciding that we were unlikely to find many of those enthusiasts out, we did spend a little time in the woods. Still, we made sure we dressed so we were pretty obvious to anyone out there!









We went up a snowmobile trail, a short stint on the road, and then turned down the ATV trails. We took a left where we usually take a right, and ended up finding a 2 mile loop that brought us back to the road where we had gone in, which was perfect. Ended up being 7.5 miles, and now we're nearly at 475 miles for the year- 500 here we come! :grin:


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## egrogan

Yesterday afternoon we had a short but exciting ride. Poor Fizzy was napping peacefully when I rudely interrupted her to get ready to go.










I set out for the overlook, and was planning to follow @phantomhorse13's good advice about hand jogging down the big Cavendish hill without fussing about riding down it. 










As we approached the crest of the hill, up ahead I saw the outline of an animal and thought it was the friendly dog from a nearby farm that is sometimes out in the road. Without my glasses on, I don't see details in the distance all that well, but I pretty quickly realized it _wasn't _the dog. No, it was a little *black bear* crossing the road  It's sort of hard to explain the texture of the landscape right there, but it's almost naturally terraced- the road is on one level, with a step down from the road to the left into the cow pasture, and a big incline up from the road to the right, into the woods. The bear saw us at about the same time I saw him, and quickly changed direction and darted away from the pasture, across the road again and back into the woods. Fizz, somehow, noticed NONE of this happening. So much for being a prey animal always on the lookout for danger... :icon_rolleyes: Anyway, I decided that particularly since she hadn't seen it, a bear suddenly appearing above us in the woods might very likely send us off the road to the left, through the electric fence and into the cow pasture, so instead we changed plans and turned around. Jogging down the hill will have to wait for another day!

As we got close to home, a big beautiful doe came bounding across an open field and ran in front of us across the road, disappearing into the woods to our left. Fizz definitely noticed that, snorting and coming to a standstill. We were basically in our front yard, so I just hopped off there and called it a day, laughing while I asked her why a deer made her freeze but she was oblivious to the bear :wink: She just let out a big sigh and asked to munch on some of the good grass in the yard, which was fine with me.

No more grass to be seen this morning...


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## carshon

Wow! I cannot imagine seeing a bear while riding! I love M's bow on her helmet. Hunting season here too so we wore our orange vests on our ride this weekend. Your's is so much more glamourous!


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## Knave

Wow! I am with @carshon; I can’t even imagine it.


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## Avna

Knave said:


> Wow! I am with @carshon; I can’t even imagine it.


Black bears are common in the less populated areas of New England. I only saw one last year (they are quite shy), but the year before Brooke and I encountered several. Brooke is okay with anything that runs away from her, so it hasn't been much of an event. What I really do not want to encounter is a moose.Those guys are much more aggressive than bears.


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## bsms

I can't imagine what Bandit would think of bears. He dislikes coyotes and prefers to avoid them - although his behavior toward loose dogs makes me think he'd fight if cornered. He has no desire to meet javelina. Doesn't seem to care about trucks, cars or equipment, so maybe he was exposed to them on the Reservation. Bears? Pretty sure he'd say "_Not a chance in [expletive deleted]!_"

Which would work for me, too!


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## egrogan

So far whenever I've seen a bear here, they've all been off in the distance, so I've never managed to snap a picture. In this case, I'm just fine with that! The horses definitely don't like them and get really snorty and on alert when they cross around the pastures. 

I agree on hoping never to meet a moose while riding. They apparently used to be abundant in the woods around our house because of the wetlands around the beaver ponds, but that was years ago, before we moved in. There is a nature preserve a little way up the road, and it seems they've mostly moved over there, which is probably for the best as there is less traffic.

Seeing a javelina on horseback?! Eek!!

The only other exciting wildlife I've seen while riding was a huge porcupine that ran up a tree when it saw us coming down the trail. I worried about going under it and having it shoot out its quills, but apparently that's really not a concern unless you're up close to it.

Funny how the one universal issue we all have is badly behaved loose dogs...


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## Avna

egrogan said:


> So far whenever I've seen a bear here, they've all been off in the distance, so I've never managed to snap a picture. In this case, I'm just fine with that! The horses definitely don't like them and get really snorty and on alert when they cross around the pastures.
> 
> I agree on hoping never to meet a moose while riding. They apparently used to be abundant in the woods around our house because of the wetlands around the beaver ponds, but that was years ago, before we moved in. There is a nature preserve a little way up the road, and it seems they've mostly moved over there, which is probably for the best as there is less traffic.
> 
> Seeing a javelina on horseback?! Eek!!
> 
> The only other exciting wildlife I've seen while riding was a huge porcupine that ran up a tree when it saw us coming down the trail. I worried about going under it and having it shoot out its quills, but apparently that's really not a concern unless you're up close to it.
> 
> Funny how the one universal issue we all have is badly behaved loose dogs...


Porcupines do not shoot out their quills. The quills are loosely attached and come off if they are touched.This summer there was a porky that would apparently amble around under the car at night, leaving a few quills as a souvenir. 

Javelinas would be scary. There were feral pigs where I lived in central CA. You could tell where they'd been as it looked like the soil had been rototilled. They are European wild boar, and get very very big. On a memorable hike my Bonnie dog, who would herd anything whatsoever, had the bright idea to cut out the last little striped piglet of a litter as they were following their enormous mother up the slope, and herded it back to me. NO!! Bad Dog!! She did, reluctantly, let it go before the sow noticed. 

I think boars are scarier than bears, to be honest. They can't climb trees!


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## Knave

Wow! I actually heard a rumor of a moose close enough to where I live @Avna. I doubt he’ll make his way this far though. There was a bear once too, not here though but about 100 miles southeast, but I guess he was lost for one reason or another. 

Cash is bothered by antelope for some reason only he knows. Antelope are everywhere (not any like @gottatrot’s weirdly gentle elk). He doesn’t seem to appreciate anything where he thinks it should not be, but I don’t imagine coyotes bothering him more than dogs if they aren’t in our field. 

Sometimes he’ll snort and snort at some spot were I can’t see anything when we are out, but we do have lions and bobcats, and they are hard to spot, so maybe he sees what I don’t. 

I imagine my horses would come uncorked at a bear though. I don’t know why I say that, but maybe it is because it is just so different...


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## knightrider

I have encountered bears more than I'd like in Ocala National Forest. So far, the horses seem to ignore them. One time my daughter was about 7, and her pony Tico was the good leader, so she was ahead, obviously daydreaming, when we came around a bend encountering a bear. 
"Katie! Turn around!" I hissed. She ignored me. "Katie!!!! Turn around now!" Louder whisper. She did not. "Katie!!!! Turn around!" She did, and we rode quietly away.
The scariest one for me, but not for the horses, was one time when I was in a group of 5 riders, and we encountered a mother bear and 3 cubs as we rounded a curve in the trail. The cubs skittered up pine trees, but the mother bear rose up on her hind legs. She looked to be about 8 feet tall, probably wasn't, but she was very VERY close . . . and MAD. We were on a super narrow trail, appropriately named "the Kneeknocker Trail", and it was hard to turn around. The horses didn't seem fazed in the least.


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## egrogan

This week was nuts at work, and with waiting on the election taking up most of my mental headspace, the days seemed to fly by in one big mega-day, and suddenly it was Saturday and I hadn’t been out to ride at all. 

The beginning of the week started off like winter, with heavy snow covering everything. Wednesday an unusual warming trend started. When I turned the horses out in the morning, there was snow, but by the end of the day it was all gone. 





Since then it’s steadily been 70*F/21*C. 

Yesterday I finally managed to ride in the afternoon, and it was basically a comedy of errors. I headed out to the overlook, and instead of bears in the road, this time there were cows in the pasture right up against the road. I swear they were so much bigger and more intimidating in person!!! :rofl:









Fizz was snorty and not at all impressed, so I did get off to lead her passed. Since I was off anyway, it seemed like a good time to follow through on @*phantomhorse13* 's suggestion of jogging down the big Cavendish hill with her. As we headed down, a middle aged couple was coming up the hill towards us with a loose dog. To their credit, the dog did listen and they were able to hold it as we went by. The woman looked at me incredulously and asked “are you just out taking your horse for a walk?” I awkwardly tried to explain how the cows scared Fizz (while she was snorting and dancing next to me) but it didn’t really compute for this lady who kept asking why a horse would be afraid of a cow. I finally told her I wasn’t sure, because Fizz wouldn’t tell me, and we continued on :wink: I pretty quickly realized that jogging down a steep hill with a snorty, unbalanced horse that wanted to jump into your lap for safety wasn’t the best idea, but we made it. Definitely needs more work!

When we got to the bottom of the hill, the farm dog was loose as usual and came trotting after us. I was still handwalking at this point, and Fizz was nervous about standing for me to get on from the ditch because the dog was lurking around and kept darting off into the woods making a lot of noise. He’s actually really friendly and not aggressive, but she understandably didn’t like him following us. At that point, a truck went by and the dog took off after it (he is really bad about this, which is why he keeps turning up at my house two miles away- it’s the first house he gets to when he’s been chasing cars…). I didn’t love seeing that, but there was really nothing I could do and it did allow me to get back on. Fizz was a little jiggy and wanting to duck out towards home, but we made it to our turnaround spot in one piece and she was much easier to handle on the way back. 



















When we passed the farm again on the way home, the nice old man who lives there was at the end of his driveway (he drives a little blue Prius, which for some reason is a really funny sight when he’s out fixing fences…) and asked me if I had seen the dog. I told him what had happened and he headed off to find him. Hope he did. We trotted along towards home with no more issues. She didn’t care at all about passing the cows in this direction!


















Today we met M and Coalie early, to "beat the heat" (yes Gulf Coast people, feel free to laugh at us!! ). We decided to head out and back to Blind Mare Farm. While there was no deer hunting this weekend, this is the last weekend before hunters will be in the woods, and with the very warm weather we were sure there would be a lot of bikers and ATVs out on some of the more popular trails we sometimes do. The Blind Mare Farm trail is generally pretty empty. 









We paused at the farm to give the horses an apple from the orchard, and turned around uneventfully









The poor things were dripping with sweat though, and we had no good water options so we just strolled along to try not to get them any warmer. We eventually spotted a ditch that had some clear, flowing water in it, so turned the horses off the trail towards it. Fizz had been unenthusiastically lipping at gross puddle water for the previous mile, but when I pointed her towards the better water she lurched away from it. M moved around us to have Coalie go first, and then suddenly: *near disaster*!! 


In slow motion, I saw him start to buckle, with his hind legs looking like they were folding under and putting him nearly on his belly. But it was quickly clear that what was actually happening was that he was sinking fast in awful mud. I've never seen anything like it- one minute he was starting to drink, and the next I couldn't see anything below his belly. Good boy didn't panic, but flailed his way out of the mud and back onto the trail. M somehow stayed in the saddle, if jolted a bit up onto his neck. It all happened in seconds, and he looked thoroughly surprised about what he had just gone through. Unfortunately the mud sucked two of 4 boots off, but M was not leaving them behind. So I hopped off and held the horses while she checked each deep leg hole for them. The first one was pretty easy to find, but the second one seemed like it had just vanished. She had to get down on her hands and knees in the mud because the holes were so deep, and she was reaching in up to her shoulders to feel around the bottom for the boot  In the very last hole, she found it, and Coalie stood quietly while she put them back on. We mounted up and headed on our way, laughing at how ridiculous it had all been but happy that everyone was ok. And we both decided that when Fizz says NO, maybe we should listen to her!!

No more excitement after that, and we split off to head our separate ways home. With about a mile left, I heard someone yell from behind "hi Fizz, coming up on your left"- and who was it but lovely husband out for a run coming up the hill at the same time. Fizz was thrilled to see him (mostly because she wanted her face scratched :wink and also thought it was great fun to race with him. We'd slow down to walk and he'd get a little ahead, and she did not want to be left behind so wanted to trot to catch up. We leapfrogged along home laughing. Maybe she has a future as a ride & tie horse!


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## gottatrot

Great story, really scary about Coalie and the mud!

That was funny Fizz wouldn't say why the cows are scary. 
I've had that reaction from people too, who think you can only ride horses and not take them for walks or jog with them. Mini horses are great to jog with, like a big dog that doesn't pull on the leash, doesn't stop to pee or sniff things, and doesn't bark.

Non-horse people also can't fathom that a big strong animal can be like a quivering chihuahua inside.


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## Knave

@knightrider I cannot even imagine that! Wow!!! That is petrifying. 

I can’t imagine the horse just bogging down like that either Egrogan! I’m surprised he willingly stepped in so easily. That’s really scary. I bogged a horse down when I was little, and it was only the Lord that saved that mare. It was terrible and I’ve tried to be cautious since.

Lots of horses are scared of cows. Some learn to tolerate it, but they never seem to completely overcome it. My parents have two currently and one past that were scared of them. They aren’t terrible, but they don’t get ridden much because it’s always an issue and obviously a pressing one for us. Lol


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I’m surprised he willingly stepped in so easily.


That's exactly what M said- she was laughing and saying she trusts Fizz's instincts way more than Coalie's. That's the problem with a horse that's generally pretty agreeable I guess- they are willing to listen to their person more than themselves. I believe she referred to him as a "big, goofy dumb-dumb" :rofl: But he really did get them out of that "sticky" situation, even if he didn't know to avoid it in the first place.


> Lots of horses are scared of cows. Some learn to tolerate it, but they never seem to completely overcome it. My parents have two currently and one past that were scared of them. They aren’t terrible, but they don’t get ridden much because it’s always an issue and obviously a pressing one for us. Lol


 I can imagine it would be quite a problem to be a cow-scared horse in your family @Knave! I do often think of your stories when I'm jumping off yet again to pass a cow, and being amazed that some horses are born ready to boss cows around and some just want to turn and run.


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## PoptartShop

Poor Coalie, what a scare!  Glad they made it out, & I definitely don't blame her for getting those boots - that's happened to me before, you bet I got off and got them, they're expensive! :lol: 

Fizz is such a good girl! It is funny how she was scared of the cows at first, but then when you guys saw them again, she didn't seem to mind! Maybe they looked like big scary monsters in the other direction. :lol: How cute hubby met up with you guys!


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## bsms

Guess Mia was justified in her deep suspicion of puddles. It isn't just puddle sharks! Sometimes Mother Earth is out to eat you as well....


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## Avna

When you weigh a thousand pounds and walk on four bony sticks, any boggy wet place can be fatal. I know two people who almost lost their horses out on the trail during a wet season -- as in hours of professional intervention needed to save them. And I once had a very close call as a teenager out riding alone. When my horse says nope, I take her seriously.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was just too nice not to ride, so I went out first thing in the morning with Fizz. I knew she'd get sweaty because the temps are still so far above normal, but figured I'd just go at her pace if she got too hot. We headed out for the Newhall Farm loop, starting down the hill of despair. We hadn't gone that way in awhile, and she was a bit lackluster about it but didn't stall out at all. We crossed over the paved road, and as we approached the mini donk's house, we heard the most ridiculous sound: loud, insistent BRAYING trumpeting out from their field. Fizz froze in her tracks and said oh hell no. 😆😆 But to be honest, I can't really blame her. It was loud, and they've never made noise before when we passed them. I hopped off and she did follow me by them, with one very suspicious eye on them the whole way. We got to the bottom of the hill, I got back on, and off we went at a good trot.




When we turned off the road for the short trail through the woods, it was notably cooler with a little breeze, but I could see Fizz was starting to get really sweaty. 

















We kept our trot through the woods, and then dropped back down to a walk when we came out on the road. At that point, we encountered an armada of trucks, excavators, and backhoes working on the town's broadband project. Do you think she even looked twice at the backhoe working or the trucks with their backup alarm going? Nope. Donkeys braying, yes. Heavy machinery, no.








Luckily the aggressive cows with the big horns were nowhere to be seen on the farm, so we just walked along on a loose rein cooling off a little.
_Just making sure the cows weren't hiding out in their pasture...







_
We crossed back over the paved road into the home stretch, down a big hill and then straight back up the next one. Fizz really likes to canter there and really asked to go, so I let her even though sweat was flinging off her head when she shook it in annoyance at a fly. But when we got to the top of the hill, I kept her walking the rest of the way.

We were heading towards our neighbor S's farm, and saw something we've never seen there before: from about 1/4 mile away, we saw someone riding a dark brown horse down the driveaway, and then turn down the road away from us. S's horses are flaxen chestnuts, so I knew it wasn't her, but didn't recognize the horse. The rider had a man on the ground walking with them and a couple of dogs, so I wasn't sure if she was maybe a little hesitant about riding out of the arena, and asked Fizz to stay back and not rush up to them. 

It was actually a really interesting moment for Fizz, to see another horse suddenly appear and then ride away from her. She's used to seeing Coalie up ahead when we meet up, but he always stands and waits. This horse was leaving her. I wasn't totally sure what she'd do, but thought it would be a good training moment for future endurance rides! She did get very high headed and I could feel her tense, but she stayed at the pace I asked her to and didn't do anything silly. The rider ahead didn't seem to notice us, and the road was sort of twisty so she'd disappear around a curve and then reappear as we followed. A minute later, the mailman drove by, and the rider moved to the side of the road and stopped. That allowed us to get close enough that I could yell out hello. I asked Fizz to wait while I asked if her horse would be ok with us coming up, and she said that was fine. Once we got up alongside them, Fizz was interested but stayed nice and calm- she was more interested in the two dogs running around than the horse. We rode along together for a short way, and I learned that the rider is a new boarder at S's farm who is taking a year off from college and helping S with driving. Her horse was a cute Morgan gelding, and they were eventers until he had kissing spine surgery about a year ago, when they switched to dressage. She had done one of the pleasure rides at GMHA this fall and said it made her realize dressage was really boring and that distance riding might be what she wants to do next. So I gave her all my contact info and told her that I'd love to show her the trails and would be happy to do conditioning rides together if she was interested. At that point, she turned around to go back to the barn and Fizz and I continued on towards home (was pleased that Fizz was fine with splitting off from a new horse so easily- she never minds with Coalie, but good to confirm it was just as easy with a new horse that had randomly appeared out of nowhere). Hopefully I will hear from this rider in the future, it would be nice to have someone else close by that's interested in seeing the trails.

We walked the last couple miles home, and Fizz did start to cool down, but she was still quite sweaty when we got home. I pulled all her tack in the yard, since the hose was out and I figured I'd just spray her down a bit. We didn't make it as far as the hose though before she dropped down to roll. I know it's not great to let them roll in the bridle, but she was pretty insistent!




We added 6.5 miles to our yearly total, bringing us up to 495 miles. Should pass the 500 mile mark by the end of the week!


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## carshon

How exciting to find a new friend. Funny how providence works in our favor some times. You were hoping to get to ride at a faster pace, but poor Coalie is not quite there. This may be the person to help you and Fizz move up a notch.


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## egrogan

Good point @carshon- though a young former eventer may prove too speedy for me 😉 We'll see if I hear from her at all. We probably have a few more good weeks of riding here before the snow comes.

Funny story- yesterday afternoon I got an email from our local tack/feed store congratulating me on winning 5 free bags of Nutrena ProElite food! I had forgotten that I entered a contest through their FB page last month, where they asked people to post pictures of fall riding. You never really know if someone wins those "contents," but apparently this one was for real. 💖 I don't feed that kind of food, and given everything going on with Maggie's Cushings/IR, I am not going to risk switching since we're doing ok with our current strategy, but it's still thrilling to win something. I reached out to the local (reputable) horse rescue, and they were thrilled to have it, so it all ended well.


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## bsms

_Just making sure the cows weren't hiding out in their pasture..._ 

Just had a mental image of cows in camouflage, lying on their sides in a dip of terrain, muttering, "_Just one more step, you stupid horse, and we've got you!_"


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## Spanish Rider

egrogan said:


> Should pass the 500 mile mark by the end of the week!


Really amazing, @egrogan! Great job.


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## egrogan

We had an unexpectedly sad night last night-we had to put our cat Newton down  He was nearly 20 years old and had kidney disease, and had been going downhill for the past few months, so we knew he was essentially in kitty hospice and this day was coming. But around dinner time, he threw up a lot of blood and was struggling to walk, until he just sort of laid down on the kitchen floor and didn’t want to move. I thought he might just take his last breath there, but then he started to try to get up and move around, and we were not going to let him struggle through the night and do something traumatic. Fortunately his vet is a 24-hr emergency practice, so we were able to bring him in. He laid quietly in my lap the whole car ride, and passed quickly and peacefully. The vet that helped him was the same one who saved his life with emergency surgery a couple of years ago when he had a complete urinary tract blockage, and she was very kind, telling stories about how he had entertained them when he was in the hospital with them for a few days of recovery.

It’s devastating that he’s gone-He was my roommate for nearly 20 years, he was there for all the highs and lows of my adult life. He lived with me in 7 states, and over the years, he taught 5 different dogs that cats were in charge. He used up more than his fair share of 9 lives, surviving various medical emergencies and self-inflicted pickles, like lighting his tail on fire in a candle.

But last night, he was very clear that he was ready and I am glad it was quiet and easy for him. I miss him so much already. Give all the animals you love an extra hug today!


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## gottatrot

So very sad about Newton.
😢😢😿😿

20 years though! That makes me hope my 12 year old kitties will live that long. 

How wonderful to have a great friend for so long. That will be a big hole in your life. Good thing you have others to love. 🐶🐎🐎🐎🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔


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## egrogan

Thanks @gottatrot! I was very grateful to have other animals to cuddle this morning when I woke up so sad. But I also feel grateful to have had such a special cat for so long.


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## Knave

I was thinking the same thing as @carshon about the new rider. You’ve been preparing for so long, maybe she will help you to step up your game a bit. Don’t be intimidated by her. You are a perfectly good companion. 

I am sorry about your cat. I lost Skittles at the beginning of the year. Once a bit of time passed I realized it had been a blessing for her to go. She hadn’t been able to be herself for quite a bit of time.


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## Spanish Rider

So sorry, @egrogan. Twenty years is certainly a long time! My first cat also lived 20 years, from when I was 12 until I was 32, all through the teens year, college, and even meeting my first-born son. I know you'll be seeing his shadow everywhere in coming weeks. Sending hugs! (do we still have an emoji for that?)


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## carshon

I am so sorry for the loss of your dear friend. I am glad that you were there for him at the end. I am a firm believer that love helps them transition easier.


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## egrogan

Thank you for your kind thoughts @Knave, @Spanish Rider , @carshon. It definitely feels empty in the house. I am laughing at how instinctually I look down at the floor as I walk between rooms to make sure I'm not stepping on a kitty sprawled out napping, or how I make sure the door to the garage is shut so he doesn't sneak outside. Geez, I really miss him!


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## phantomhorse13

Keep looking for him.. I have no doubt he will be around to check in on you from time to time. Not the same as before of course, but hopefully something you can take comfort in. 💜


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## PoptartShop

So sorry to hear that about Newton.  Hugs to you and your family. I know how hard it is to lose a pet, especially since the house really doesn't feel the same without them.


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## Knave

He looks just like Skittles! After Skittles died one of the outside cats grew up big all the sudden, and he looked just the same as a younger Skittles. It would blow my mind to see him walking up or while I did chores.


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## SueC

Dear @egrogan, I'm sorry to hear your cat died.  After 20 years, that's going to be a big wrench. Thinking of you. There doesn't seem to be a hug emoji, so the closest I could find was: 🐙

PS: Very late to everything as the new software is so hard on the eyes etc and still finding my way around... 😝


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## egrogan

Big weekend for Fizz and I- we hit our 500 mile goal for the year! Fittingly, we rode mile 500 with M and Coalie yesterday. Unfortunately yesterday was the first day of rifle deer hunting season, so we were a little limited in where we were able to go. Poor Coalie had a tough start to his morning when his neighbor's horses broke out of their pen and charged into his yard, upsetting him and his pasture mate tremendously. He was still a little edgy when we met up, so we kept the ride very quiet. It's so nice that if he's upset, Fizz can be the calm one, and vice versa- they don't seem to feed off each other, which is really good. So we stuck to the quieter dirt roads to avoid tangling with any hunters out in the woods. The horses were pretty watchful of the woods on either side of the road, so you definitely got the sense people were "out there" somewhere.








And, we had not one, but two, huge deer come flying out of the woods and across the road in front of us. Occasionally we'll see a deer cross the road off in the distance, but each one of these was clearly on a mission and closer than they usually get. Guess they were getting pushed pretty hard out there. I wasn't sure what the horses would do if someone passed us with a deer in their truck, but we didn't have to find out since no one seemed to be having much luck. Has anyone else ever dealt with that? Does it upset the horses?









Almost home, having just ridden our 500th mile of the year!









Yesterday's dreary weather stuck with us today, but even though the forecast initially called for rain all day, it wasn't raining yet in the morning so we went out solo. It was the best ride we've had in quite awhile. Fizz, for whatever reason, was just really into it. She was happy and forward and eager to go.








We went out to the overlook and down the Cavendish hill, and we actually rode down the hill the whole way! I was so happy with her. She definitely felt like a ping pong ball under me, but she never stopped on me so that made it so much easier to just keep her between my legs and keep pushing her forward even though she was wiggly. The cows were way off in the distance, so not concerning, and we managed to catch the hill with no traffic at all. I think that's what made the difference in me just being able to ride confidently forward. It was so nice to not have to get off and walk down that big hill! 😉 Here's the view from the bottom of the hill, looking up on the way back home.









You can just barely see the ski trails have snow on them at our local mountain, Okemo (follow the tip of her right ear off to the distance, where the mountain is)









Incidentally, here's the view from the top of the mountain about a month ago, looking back across the valley towards the spot where I was riding today. The road to the top of the mountain is still open to car traffic (it closes during the winter as the skiers cross right over it!)

















We moved along at a pretty good trot on the way out to the turnaround spot, but I tried to take it easy on the way home since she's not clipped and even in the blustery weather she's still getting really sweaty and hard to cool out when we get home.









Stopped back at the top of the overlook to have a snack and cool down a little before continuing on our way.

















It sure looked like it wanted to snow, but we ended up with cold drizzle later in the afternoon. Poor puppy had a wet walk this evening, but he's no dummy- this is his current state!


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## gottatrot

People sometimes leave deer and elk carcasses along the roadside here. Once a skinned bobcat was on the path. The horses don't like the smell of death but if it drove past in a truck it would probably be less bothersome than passing by it on the ground. 

Usually for us there is just snorting and reluctance rather than wanting to run away. But racks of visible white bones disturb the horses the most.


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## egrogan

That makes sense @gottatrot. I'm surprised we've never passed anything like that.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> And, we had not one, but two, huge deer come flying out of the woods and across the road in front of us.


My last time deer hunting was about 30 years ago. A friend and I parked the truck and started hiking up the mountainside of the Wasatch front. Steep going but it was obvious a bunch of other hunters beat us to it. After several hours of brutal struggled, we turned back. Finally made it back to the truck - where a nice buck was grazing about 10 feet away.

I guess we should have shot him, but we both started laughing until we cried. Neither of us have hunted since. The buck left when we started laughing.

BTW: We were a few miles north of my alma mater, Utah State, but the hills a few miles north are just like the ones in this picture:








​Not entirely relevant, but the middle of the above picture is the  mouth of Logan Canyon, a place I came to love during my college days. This is just a picture a few miles up the canyon. Scrambling up slopes like these is exhausting and I have no idea how we expected to haul a buck back OUT of there:


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## SueC

It's because young men are Superman, @bsms! 🤪

That's such spectacular scenery. In the first picture, I'm wondering why the hillsides aren't wooded - insufficient rain? Shallow soil? Logging? The valley looks lush but is probably irrigated? And would have better soil... It's just, in Australia hills this steep are usually wooded, or covered in scrub (lower rainfall areas), because unsuited for grazing, at least by larger domestic herbivores... Are those hillsides left to the wildlife, or does someone graze something on them?

Great hunting story... Murphy's law, all right, and such an interesting conclusion... Me, I will eat kangaroo, but mostly when it has to be put down after an accident on the road... although once we did eat a fresh roadkill a friend brought us, to no ill effects - waste not, want not. We were cutting it up for the dog but the meat was perfectly OK and made great stews.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Almost home, having just ridden our 500th mile of the year!


500 miles... well, here's a song for you both! 🤓






You just gotta change the lyrics around a bit and you've got a new riding song! 😇

_And we will trot five hundred miles
And we will trot five hundred more..._

Congratulations! No wonder Fizz looks fit in all your free-range films!


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## bsms

SueC said:


> In the first picture, I'm wondering why the hillsides aren't wooded - insufficient rain? Shallow soil? Logging?


In much of the Intermountain West, the direction the slope faces determines the vegetation. The difference in how the sun hits it creates small changes in how long moisture (snow) persists, how fast it evaporates, and eventually soil chemistry. In the picture of Utah State, the slopes are facing west. They get the afternoon sun and the snow melts off fast - so drier, warmer. North facing slopes tend to get evergreen trees. The Wetstone Mountains near Benson AZ show the same pattern, only hotter and drier still. Life here exists on such a narrow margin that small changes are enough to make dramatic changes in what can survive:








​The National Forest near Utah State allows grazing in some areas, but not there. The photo above in Arizona does allow grazing, with time restrictions - on for a few weeks, then off. The slopes are fragile and cannot handle much, which is why ATVs are restricted. They can gouge out tracks in 30 minutes that will last for 20 years. Or become permanent gullies. Any one working cattle there does it on horseback.


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## tinyliny

bsms said:


> My last time deer hunting was about 30 years ago. A friend and I parked the truck and started hiking up the mountainside of the Wasatch front. Steep going but it was obvious a bunch of other hunters beat us to it. After several hours of brutal struggled, we turned back. Finally made it back to the truck - where a nice buck was grazing about 10 feet away.
> 
> I guess we should have shot him, but we both started laughing until we cried. Neither of us have hunted since. The buck left when we started laughing.
> 
> BTW: We were a few miles north of my alma mater, Utah State, but the hills a few miles north are just like the ones in this picture:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​Not entirely relevant, but the middle of the above picture is the mouth of Logan Canyon, a place I came to love during my college days. This is just a picture a few miles up the canyon. Scrambling up slopes like these is exhausting and I have no idea how we expected to haul a buck back OUT of there:


both of my parents grew up in SLC. They have fond memories of picnics 'up the canyon' , when that was all a person could do for fun. It's spectacular country, for sure.


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## egrogan

@bsms, that story it too funny! I appreciate the sportsmanship in it. Lately around here, there's been a problem with people "spotlighting" deer- sitting at the edge of the road in their truck, shining their bright headlights in the deer's eyes, and shooting it while it's essentially blinded. Or baiting bears with jelly doughnuts and shooting them while they're gorging on the food. We don't personally hunt, but we do have a few neighbors we trust who use our land for it. I understand the need for hunting for population control, and especially in these times there are people who are relying on it to feed their families for a good part of the year, but the jerks who are treating it like a video game with a real trophy at the end disgust me for their lack of regard for what the animal has sacrificed. Anyway, sorry to get preachy...

Loved the pictures @bsms- amazing how the landscape is so dramatically different on one side of the country vs. the other. My dad's sister and her family live in Salt Lake City, so I've visited there a couple of times, but I've never made it to any of the national parks out that way, unfortunately. I'm reading a book right now called _Leave Only Footprints_, a travel story of the author going to every US National Park in the course of a year, and it's a reminder of how many beautiful places there are to visit, particularly out west. His writing style can be a little sappy and the transitions between the parks are not the most elegant, but it's still a nice escape during a time when we can't really travel that easily. It's so strange to think I haven't been on a plane since February, when typically I'd be away at least twice a month for work.

@SueC- thanks for the laugh with the song. Perfect! I should have played that during our last mile


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## bsms

One summer I had a job with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. It took me southwest of Tooele, Utah. They had tame deer there used for feeding studies and needed me to feed them on the weekends. Part of my job was also to discourage the folks from Salt Lake City who came down and spotlighted deer and shot at anything moving (and even NOT moving) on the weekend nights. I had no legal authority and directly challenging heavily armed drunk guys at night 50+ miles from the nearest cop seemed a good way to die, so I mostly drove around after dark, making noise and making sure any drive-by deer shooters knew the DWR was....around. That sort of behavior sours me on human nature.

The local game warden knew the locals and knew if someone was hunting to feed their family or just to shoot deer. He turned a blind eye to people feeding their families. In return, they often gave him info to help him catch SLC drive-by shooters.


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## SueC

OMG, @bsms, that's so disgusting, people just shooting animals for kicks... 🤮

Thank you so much for your landscape information - that's fascinating! 

PS: Does anyone know what this emoji is?  ...is that meant to be an anthropomorphised happy poo? (I miss our old emojis. )


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## egrogan

@SueC, you gave me a great laugh to start my morning. That is indeed a "poop" icon- whether it's happy or something else I suppose is open to interpretation  I also miss the old emojis- these generic ones just seem to have come straight from Facebook, iPhone, whatever. I miss the horsey options. I don't know why they won't import them back since so many people seem to be asking for them.

Yesterday Maggie's mom came to visit. It's the first time she's seen her since the Cushings diagnosis. I was relieved and happy that she was complimentary about how Maggie was looking, and we had fun telling silly stories about Maggie being bossy. Of course there was nothing I could have done to have stopped Maggie from getting Cushings, and with these older Morgans it's almost a given that they will develop it, I couldn't help feeling...guilty?...or something close to that since it happened while she was here with me. But to the contrary, her owner said she expected it would develop some day, and was just happy that we caught it early and started treatment quickly. 

And I have to say, I think Maggie is responding really well to the treatment already. The last couple of days, the crushed stone footing has been frozen in the morning, and historically that has made Maggie somewhat footsore, to the point that I'd put boots on her to help keep her comfortable. I've been watching her really closely the last couple of days, but I'm not seeing any signs of tenderness. I'm not sure if it's just coincidence, or the Prascend helping reduce subtle inflammation in her feet, but I'm hopeful she'll continue to stay this comfortable.


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## Spanish Rider

@SueC misses her Tardis! I miss the hug emoji and the love shower emoji. The new ones are the same as the FB and Whattsapp emojis. Big Brother Zückerberg is watching!

@egrogan , I have zero experience with Cushings, but I'm going through the same self-doubt with Nico. The latest tests are in-line with lupus, and I can't help feeling that maybe I should have done something differently.


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## phantomhorse13

bsms said:


> Scrambling up slopes like these is exhausting and I have no idea how we expected to haul a buck back OUT of there:


Well going back, you would have been going DOWN right? So you could have just tossed the deer over the edge and watched it roll. 🤪 




egrogan said:


> I miss the horsey options. I don't know why they won't import them back since so many people seem to be asking for them.


I believe the problem with the old emojis - at least the moving ones - is that they are gif-based. For some reason, that slows down these types of platforms. So I doubt we will see them back.


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## SueC

Glad that you got a laugh out of it, @egrogan - what a horrible emoji!  What will people think of next?

@phantomhorse13, you're right about the gifs, but at this point I'd be happy to have non-animated versions of our lovely old emojis back... (and I don't see why the gifs should be such a huge problem on the new platform if they worked super for many years on the old one - and so what if the loading speed is slightly down because of them, the fun factor was sky-high and if you took a survey of HF participants I'm sure the majority of them wouldn't mind some extra loading time to have our beloved and unique emojis back...)



Spanish Rider said:


> ...I have zero experience with Cushings, but I'm going through the same self-doubt with Nico. The latest tests are in-line with lupus, and I can't help feeling that maybe I should have done something differently.


See, now I'm missing our hug emoji, and the closest I can find is this: 🐙 (...I'm sure an octopus can "hug" really well but you mightn't enjoy the cold and slimy aspect or the suckers or you might surprise me 🤪)

If you could have done something differently, you would have, had you known at the time... but hindsight is this thing, you know, and what million things wouldn't all of us have done differently in hindsight... Lots of love to you and your family. ♥


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## Spanish Rider

SueC said:


> See, now I'm missing our hug emoji, and the closest I can find is this: 🐙


Cultural differences! Show a Spaniard (or pseudo-Spaniard) an octopus, and the first thing I think of is not a hug, but dinner! 😋


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## egrogan

@Spanish Rider - I am quite confident in saying there was nothing more you could have done throughout Nico's medical journey that could have ultimately avoided the Lupus diagnosis. He's lucky to have you as such a strong advocate, and also such a strong presence not only during his illness, but this difficult covid time. _Sending octopus hugs (or tapas, whatever your preference )_

Yesterday we had a frosty ride to the overlook and back. We got caught in a massive snow squall while tacking up (during which time the Weather Channel proclaimed that our weather was "fair"), but luckily the squall passed quickly and we were still able to go ride. It's the first ride in a long time that I couldn't feel my toes for most of it! 🥶

















Despite the cold, Fizz was happy to walk along quietly, so I didn't have to worry about her getting too sweaty. As we approached the house, still strolling along on the buckle (and, admittedly, letting my mind wander to what I was going to make for dinner), Fizz suddenly took a massive sideways leap and I nearly got chucked off onto the frozen ground. I looked over to see what she had spooked at, and it was lovely husband tossing hay down from the loft into the barn. While I was very appreciative of his helpfulness, I reminded him that horses get very worried at random objects flying through the air in a place they aren't expecting it! 🧨 He very nicely brought the hay out to the pasture for the horses, as Fizz longingly followed the moveable feast.


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## Avna

I was just reading a veterinarian's blog wherein he stated that the evidence is that horses are the most comfortable from about 50F to 18F. (10C to -8C). This is why horses are so frisky when it's cold -- they feel great! 

Well, mine are sure frisky. Plus it is really windy today, bitterly cold wind. So when I was tacking up and my husband comes down the hay loft stairs with a stack of 12' boards he'd stored in the rafters, Brooke jumped like a rabbit. Glad i was not aboard. We didn't get much snow here but what there was, is sticking around on the north sides of things. And the water buckets are iced over.


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## egrogan

Well, lo and behold, re: our previous discussion about hunting, a couple of days ago, some people down the street shot a bear and have it hanging from the tree in their front yard. I grew up with neighbors and family hanging out deer, and I never loved it even as a kid, but there's something about it being a bear that just seems extra gruesome. I don't know how long they'll leave it hanging out, but Fizz and I have to ride by it to get to our normal meet-up spot with M, and I wasn't super enthused to do that today. M kindly agreed to trailer over so we didn't have to pass it. Hopefully it continues it's journey somewhere else soon!

At any rate, today we went on a nice long road ride- did about 9 miles. We went out past the overlook and the bad Cavendish hill (rode down it though!) and continued down into the next town. 








We stopped outside a pretty stone house to talk to a man who was outside working- he complimented our horses and gestured around to the pastures he was working on clearing, to be able to bring horses there. Even better, he told us if we wanted to ride through his fields and trails, we were more than welcome! We will certainly take him up on that, once it's safe to get back onto the trails. Fizz had a little tantrum while we stopped and talked, pawing the road and backing up in annoyance until she was half in a ditch. How embarrassing! Ultimately I got off and walked her down the road since she was being so naughty. But she did stand very nicely for me to get back on from a stump near a gate, so there's that. 








The rest of the ride she was great. We even passed a few farms with cows and she didn't stall out at all. She looked, but she kept going. Definitely an improvement! And feeling lucky we had such a beautiful day- seems like we haven't seen blue sky in quite awhile.



























When we got home, I did my best to curry the dampness out of Fizz's coat before turning them out in the new field so they weren't next to the machinery that was on its way over. Last week when it got very cold, the stupid "frost free" faucet I use for all their water failed again, freezing solid (this is the 2nd time in two years, and the 2nd "frost free" faucet we've had installed). Fortunately, the local guy who is a master at drainage work and excavating agreed to come today to dig it up yet again (he's done the digging both times, but the plumber we used to install it the first two times is no longer our plumber!). Lovely husband had gone out himself and bought a better quality faucet, so the two of them made quick work of getting down to the bottom of the pipe 6 feet+ below the ground, changing out the cheap faucet for the higher quality one, and backfilling with plenty of crushed stone so the water has lots of options for draining when it leaves the pipe. Really, really hoping that 3rd time's the charm with this one as I can not function in the winter without a reliable water source. Even two days of carrying buckets from the house to the field was too much.


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## egrogan

The weather unexpectedly stayed pretty nice for Sunday, so Fizz and I went out for a longish solo ride (6 miles). Still stayed on the roads, and since it had been a cold start to the morning, they were still fairly hard and frozen in places. I don't like to ask her to trot on that, it feels like concrete, so we picked spots that were a little squishier to trot along.

We headed down the hill of despair to start the ride; first time we've gone that way in awhile. I was a little sad as I passed the house/property at the bottom of the hill- the older woman who lives there has moved to assisted living, and while the property isn't technically for sale yet, the neighborhood gossip is that there's already an interested buyer who's not a horse person. It's several hundred acres well suited to horses (there haven't been any there for awhile since she is older and living alone), and it's the location of a vet check for the VT100 and the GMHA multi-day 100. Anyone want to come be my neighbor!? 😉

After passing Mrs. Mitchell's, we headed on by the pirate dogs house. For the first time in a long time, all three of them were out loose in the yard, and they came charging down the hill from the house over the stone wall and into the road barking their heads off. There was a tiny girl outside with them, and of course they gave zero cares about what she was telling them to do, swarming around Fizz's legs and barking. Unlike the beginning of the year though, this time I just turned Fizz to face them and yell at them to go home, and they backed off without me having to dismount and get out of there. So that felt good.

We continued on our way, and Fizz was very cute-every time we passed a trailhead along the road, she'd flick an ear back at me and pause slightly in her stride, like she was asking "turn here? this one? this one?" We usually do turn off and ride the trails along the road, but not happening yesterday. There was a pickup parked at every trail, and we could hear frequent shots around us. Definitely stuck to the road.


















Unfortunately there was no way to make a loop without spending some time in the woods, so when we got to the pretty aspen field we doubled back up along the stone wall and then took the same road back the way we had come.


















I'm off Wed-Fri this week for the holiday, but sadly as of right now the weather doesn't look very inspiring. Hopefully the forecast improves; would be nice to meet up with M a couple of times if weather cooperates. Postscript on our hunter neighbors- the bear has now been skinned and butchered, but the carcass is still hanging, and was joined by a deer that is also skinned and butchered. Is a horse more or less likely to be freaked out by a rotting skeleton than by a full animal? 🤔 I really hope they take them down soon as it is nice to have the option to ride that way. It does make me feel better to at least know they're using the meat, and not just after a trophy.


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## SueC

@egrogan, it sounds like you need electric socks! 

And OMG, dead bears hanging from trees...👿

Stands to reason, @Avna - I also get frisky when I feel good. 🤪


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## phantomhorse13

Hope your new faucet is exactly what you need - not having water is not an option!

I find it interesting that things are left to hang in trees so long up there.. but here we send them out to get butchered so suspect that is the difference. Glad you are getting saddle time despite it.


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## Spanish Rider

700 acres? Sounds glorious, but I can't imagine what the tax bill would be.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> @egrogan, it sounds like you need electric socks!


I've always wondered how those actually work. Usually my motor runs hot and being cold isn't an issue for me. The first few really cold days of the year it seems it takes my body awhile to regulate, but then the thermostat kicks in faster.


phantomhorse13 said:


> Hope your new faucet is exactly what you need - not having water is not an option!


Yes, thankfully the new faucet seems very solid.



phantomhorse13 said:


> I find it interesting that things are left to hang in trees so long up there.. but here we send them out to get butchered so suspect that is the difference. Glad you are getting saddle time despite it.


I wouldn't say the amount of time they've been up is typical. This is a house where things...proliferate...in the yard. For example, they set up some tents 4th of July weekend when apparently they had guests, and the tents are still there, getting snowed on. Lovely husband and I have placed bets on whether the carcasses or the tents are taken down first. My real suspicion is that both will still be there in the spring...  



Spanish Rider said:


> 700 acres? Sounds glorious, but I can't imagine what the tax bill would be.


I'm guessing it's in the "current use" tax program, so actually you might be surprised how low they can be. We pay lower taxes on our 200 acres in VT than we did on 5.5 acres in NH because of that program. Of course, since NH pretends that it's "tax free" by having no sales or income taxes, it has to make it up somewhere- and that's generally on property taxes.


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## egrogan

Hope everyone who celebrates had a nice Thanksgiving! Our streak of very dreary weather continued, but we lit a nice fire for most of the day and had some cocktails while we cooked a big dinner. It was actually really nice. Though I couldn't help but think the horses had sinister plans for me when I went out to feed them before we had our own dinner 








The weather today stayed cloudy, but it was oddly warm and at least the fog lifted, so I took Fizz on a short ride. We just went to the overlook and back. It was not particularly inspiring riding, but it had been a few days since we went out and she was in a very forward thinking mood. She's still feeling really fit.








Lovely husband was splitting wood when we came back home so snapped a couple of pictures- it was amusing to see just how "vibrant" all our reflective gear is- pretty sure cars can see us from quite a distance away. 💡








_Cookie??







_
Planning to go out with M and Coalie in the morning- it's the last weekend of rifle season so stuck with roads only for just a few more days. Because it warmed up it's super muddy everywhere, which makes for messy untacking. Looks like the warmer weather is going to hang on a few more days though...


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## egrogan

Finally, some sunshine and blue skies- at least for a fleeting moment yesterday!








M and I had been rained out Saturday morning, so we met up yesterday. Fizz froze passing the donkeys on the way to our meet-up spot, but I could understand her hesitation as they were right up along the fence at the road, and walked the fenceline as we were passing. Usually they stay at the back of their pasture and she doesn't care about them. She didn't spook at them, just froze and stared. So I hopped off and led her the rest of the way to where we met (just down a little hill), and we continued on from there.

Happily, it was also the last day of deer rifle season, and we were riding mid-morning so the only hunters we passed were in their trucks on the way home.








We didn't hear any shots or see any parked trucks, so we dipped into the woods on a trail parallel to the road. We didn't see anyone back there and the horses were very happy to be off the roads again. Everything was a mucky mess, and the part of the trail where there's usually a teeny waterfall and a little trickle of water across it was a small stream with all the water running down off the upper part of the ridge. The horses stopped and pawed and played in the water, but it was a cool morning so weren't really that interested in drinking.








Really looking forward to getting back to more regular trails the next couple of weekends- long range forecast seems like the ground is going to stay clear for at least awhile longer.

Funny horse moment of the day- on our way out to meet M, we rode past a perfect, shiny red apple in the middle of the road. It looked too big and perfect to have come off a wild tree, so I figured maybe someone threw it out the window and it landed perfectly upright. Fizz ignored it, which surprised me- she is usually laser focused on apples that have fallen and rolled out into the road. On the way home, it was still there. She seemed to notice it as we approached, so I gave her her head figuring she'd reach down and grab it. But instead, she dove for the long, reedy grass on the side of the road next to it. I let her graze a minute and guessed she'd work her way to it. But she didn't seem to want anything to do with it- in fact, she kicked it like a soccer ball when I finally pulled her head up and asked her to move along  🍎 Was it Snow White where the evil witch tried to tempt the pretty young girl with a poison apple? Fizz was not going to be tricked, apparently! You can just see it in front of her left ear:


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## Knave

That’s odd! Maybe it was a Snow White apple...

Our forecast is the same. It looks like it will stay nice for the time being. In a drought it isn’t thought of as a happy thing, but I will appreciate the nice riding time.


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## PoptartShop

You guys look great!  I love all the reflective gear! That is funny about the apple, maybe it was a Snow White apple after all! LOL.


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## egrogan

It was a strange December 1st here-far too warm, with off and on downpours followed by brilliant sunshine. It was beautiful in its strangeness though

















I suppose there’s always one grumpy dragon in any crowd though 🐉


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## Knave

It was sunshine here too. It felt warm, even when I milked. It was only 16 then, but the feeling was warm. It got up to around 50 too! I enjoyed it.

Cash was cranky too though. With bad timing he is stone bruised and Lucy is sore footed (Lucy only because she just had her shoes taken off for winter). He was sick of babysitting and so I swapped him and Lucy out. He wasn’t feeling the sunshine though. He was just annoyed.


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## gottatrot

Wow, great pictures!


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## PoptartShop

Those pictures are amazing, you should definitely frame them, especially the first one!


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## Fuddyduddy1952

egrogan said:


> Finally, some sunshine and blue skies- at least for a fleeting moment yesterday!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> M and I had been rained out Saturday morning, so we met up yesterday. Fizz froze passing the donkeys on the way to our meet-up spot, but I could understand her hesitation as they were right up along the fence at the road, and walked the fenceline as we were passing. Usually they stay at the back of their pasture and she doesn't care about them. She didn't spook at them, just froze and stared. So I hopped off and led her the rest of the way to where we met (just down a little hill), and we continued on from there.
> 
> Happily, it was also the last day of deer rifle season, and we were riding mid-morning so the only hunters we passed were in their trucks on the way home.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We didn't hear any shots or see any parked trucks, so we dipped into the woods on a trail parallel to the road. We didn't see anyone back there and the horses were very happy to be off the roads again. Everything was a mucky mess, and the part of the trail where there's usually a teeny waterfall and a little trickle of water across it was a small stream with all the water running down off the upper part of the ridge. The horses stopped and pawed and played in the water, but it was a cool morning so weren't really that interested in drinking.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Really looking forward to getting back to more regular trails the next couple of weekends- long range forecast seems like the ground is going to stay clear for at least awhile longer.
> 
> Funny horse moment of the day- on our way out to meet M, we rode past a perfect, shiny red apple in the middle of the road. It looked too big and perfect to have come off a wild tree, so I figured maybe someone threw it out the window and it landed perfectly upright. Fizz ignored it, which surprised me- she is usually laser focused on apples that have fallen and rolled out into the road. On the way home, it was still there. She seemed to notice it as we approached, so I gave her her head figuring she'd reach down and grab it. But instead, she dove for the long, reedy grass on the side of the road next to it. I let her graze a minute and guessed she'd work her way to it. But she didn't seem to want anything to do with it- in fact, she kicked it like a soccer ball when I finally pulled her head up and asked her to move along   Was it Snow White where the evil witch tried to tempt the pretty young girl with a poison apple? Fizz was not going to be tricked, apparently! You can just see it in front of her left ear:


Horses are smarter than people. Fizz saw the "made in China" label knowing it was plastic. 

Sent from my SM-S205DL using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

Haha @Fuddyduddy1952 - guess we'll never know, it was gone the next time through there!


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## SueC

💕 this photo - the light, the colours!

How's the insulation in your farmhouse - are you able to do any retro-fits, e.g. ceiling? I'm asking because you mention heating and it can get so cold in a lot of houses. I had to wear thermal underwear and mountaineering gear in the last rental we were in before building our own house, because heating the uninsulated house was prohibitively expensive via the (unflued!) gas heater (which we didn't use) or the electic heater provided - you could heat a room up, turn the heater off, and be back to freezing within ten minutes... Of course, Australia is famous for having poorly constructed housing like this, and in your neck of the woods, people might build better for winters, as they do in Europe...


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## egrogan

A bit bummed, this is the first weekend of the year that M and I missed our ride because of the weather. We didn't actually end up with much snow, but the roads are a slippery mess and we're left with 20-30mph icy winds blowing and below freezing temps. Since the storm is a nor-easter, it's sort of spinning around meaning the wind keeps changing direction.








Even the sheds weren't all that helpful this morning since the wind was swirling the snow around and blowing it inside. Poor horses would go in to eat and still end up hit in the face with wind and snow. Not the most pleasant morning, but I'll keep plenty of hay out for them and they'll be fine.








As always, feeling very grateful to have electricity and running water out there. The new faucet didn't miss a beat this morning despite the weather. So glad we were able to get that replaced before the freezing temps got here!










SueC said:


> How's the insulation in your farmhouse - are you able to do any retro-fits, e.g. ceiling? I'm asking because you mention heating and it can get so cold in a lot of houses.


Like so much of what was done by the previous owners, what insulation there is was done on the cheap in the 1980s, so it's not very helpful. As we renovate, we're improving the insulation and it's made a big difference. We also had some structural issues with the chimney repaired over the summer, and pulled out an old, cracked woodstove to use the original wood-burning fireplace again. It makes it very cosy in the main living section of the house. And the dog is a huge fan!

















He kept me company the other night while I made turkey soup from Thanksgiving leftovers. The puddle underneath him is literal drool from anticipation


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## phantomhorse13

I am glad you didn't get buried in snow, but ice is miserable all on its own. I am already over the nasty wind of winter..

So glad the faucet and the fireplace are both working! I am hoping for another warm winter, but I am not going to hold my breath.


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## PoptartShop

Ugh, I am not happy to see snow in your pictures!  I'm glad the new faucet is working out, as these cold temps are NOT fun!  It was below freezing for us this morning! So not looking forward to hard ground...omg, he is so cute posing at the fireplace. Awww!  So cute. I can't stand the cold & wind, I am over winter already & I feel like it's just starting over here lol.


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## egrogan

Now that the calendar says mid-December, we have come around to accepting that it's winter. We did get a bit of snow last week. It was pretty for a couple of days. It's nice having the extra pasture to still give the girls a change of scenery and make them move around a bit. Although a little sketchy leading 3 horses together across a somewhat icy road...Luckily the cold didn't make anyone lose their marbles...









I had put a few flakes of hay out just to encourage them to move, and Fizz and Izzy seemed to figure it out right way. For some reason Maggie instead chose to pout and lip at dead weeds while giving me dirty looks- until she noticed that Fizz and Iz were eating, and then galloped across the pasture to claim the hay, having a silly tantrum 




Unfortunately with even this little bit of snow, the roads turned into a mess after people drove on them for a couple of days. Saturday, the weather was actually pretty warm, but the road was still slushy and icy in most places. I was determined to ride, so picked the route to the overlook, as it has the fewest shady spots- the other directions were clearly ice, where this way was more slush and seemed safe enough. Pretty quickly though, I realized that while the middle of the road _was_ fine, the shoulders were slick. Fortunately only one truck passed us, so we didn't have to skate over to the edge much, but it was still enough to make me pretty nervous. Once I recognized that I was clamped around Fizz like an old wooden clothespin, I was able to relax enough to make her stop jigging along. That certainly made the ride better, but it tells me our riding days are numbered. I just get too nervous to be on the roads when they're like that, and when I'm nervous it makes Fizz nervous.


















M and I had been planning to meet up as usual on Sunday, but as I was riding home I decided I'd have to cancel on her. Riding the other way down the road to meet her was going to be even worse, and I don't like bringing nervous energy to a ride with someone else. After I got home and turned Fizz back out, I got ready to text M, but already had a message from her, saying exactly what I was going to say- she too had had a slippery ride with Coalie and didn't think meeting up was a good idea.

Although we didn't meet up on Sunday, weirdly the weather got even warmer as the day went on, and the roads and shoulders were actually fine. We probably could have met up, but since we had cancelled our plans Fizz and I just went the same route to the overlook and back again. It was mud, mud, mud...


















The roads were so soft we were able to trot along most of the way, and Fizz asked to have a canter up the big hill so away we went. It wasn't the prettiest day, but as we headed home we did finally see a little blue sky, which was a nice way to end the day.








Really cold temps are on their way starting tomorrow, with lows in the single digits. May or may not end up with a lot of snow at the end of the week. But if it doesn't snow too much, we should be able to keep riding when it warms back up again. We'll see what happens. Would love to hit 550 miles for the year, but we have about 15 miles to go and that may be more than we can do if the roads turn to ice again.


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## phantomhorse13

Hoping momma natures gives you a break. the weather has been so odd this year, i am not holding my breath that the next season will be any improvement..


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> Hoping momma natures gives you a break. the weather has been so odd this year, i am not holding my breath that the next season will be any improvement..


My fear is we’re just going to have the back and forth swings of freezes and thaws. Once it starts snowing, I’d rather it stay than melt and freeze over.

A few flurries showed up today


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## Knave

I hope you make it! Either way you have gone far this year and I am proud of you!


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## phantomhorse13

agree the freeze/thaw cycle is miserable. for your sake I hope the perm freeze hits when there isn't a lot of ice around!

fingers and toes crossed you can eek out the last miles you are hoping for.


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## bsms

Great pictures. We're hoping to permanently move this winter/spring. At 4500' it will be cooler than where we've been, but NOTHING like what y'all get!

Question: Your shelter is what is called a mare shed around here. Do you have issues with horses getting fussy with each other or challenging each other? We've always had shelters open on 4 sides and may do so again. But we're going to need to build facilities if our offer on a house goes thru and we're thinking more protection might be nice for the horses. Even if this offer doesn't work out, we may need to build something at anything we find so I need to learn about more options.


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## Avna

Looking at the forecast for us, almost 100 miles south, I don't think you have to worry about thawing for a good while. We are hunkering down for some cold. And snow. Christmas looks to be white.


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## Avna

bsms said:


> Great pictures. We're hoping to permanently move this winter/spring. At 4500' it will be cooler than where we've been, but NOTHING like what y'all get!
> 
> Question: Your shelter is what is called a mare shed around here. Do you have issues with horses getting fussy with each other or challenging each other? We've always had shelters open on 4 sides and may do so again. But we're going to need to build facilities if our offer on a house goes thru and we're thinking more protection might be nice for the horses. Even if this offer doesn't work out, we may need to build something at anything we find so I need to learn about more options.


Are you moving up near Flag? It's the only part of Arizona I find very tolerable myself. Snowed on me in August there once. Shelters should be three sided with the open face away from prevailing winter winds, in places with winter. You may find it is helpful to divide the shelter with panels (like portable pipe corral) sufficient that every horse has a place. If you feed concentrates you still may have to tie the horses while they eat though. That is the set up I had in California.


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## bsms

Looking to do a lateral move, almost due east of Tuscon. But at 4500' MSL, it will be cooler and wetter. Not northern Arizona cold, and certainly not NH cold (!), but we want to give the horses a better shelter than their current "It almost never snows" shelter. The one @egrogan has looks like it would combine good protection with fresh air.


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Question: Your shelter is what is called a mare shed around here. Do you have issues with horses getting fussy with each other or challenging each other? We've always had shelters open on 4 sides and may do so again.


Thankfully, we really don't have any issues. The thing that I probably did wrong was set a single shed apart from the double shed. In my mind, I was doing that because I imagined if I ever had an injured horse, I could put up a little portable fence around the single shed to keep that one isolated while still being close to the others. Fortunately I haven't had to use it for that purpose, but it also means it's not a very popular place because it's set off on its own. Fizz will go in it in the summer when the bugs are bad, but in the current weather, she'd rather stand parallel to the big shed, taking advantage of the wind block but still close to the other two if they are standing in their own space.

It amazed me how quickly they learned "their" shed for feeding time. It works like clockwork: I go in feed room and start prepping. Izzy comes in to "her" shed, closest to the feed room. She gets the most and takes the longest to eat, so she gets her bowl first. I set Izzy's in the back left corner so she doesn't feel the need to try to attack Fizz when she comes in to her shed, the right side of the big building. Fizz gets her food in the front right corner because she's claustrophobic and gets upset if I put it in the back corner (she'll take a bite, turn around and walk out to chew, go back in, repeat). Maggie gets almost no hard feed and hoovers it up, so she gets fed last. When she sees Fizz go into the shed, Maggie turns and walks to the single shed where she eats. They all do this on their own, they aren't tied while they eat. Because Maggie finishes earlier than the others, she's inclined to want to go harrass Izzy off her food by lurking at the opening of the shed. If I wasn't out there, she'd probably push Izzy off it and finish her bowl. But I'm always out there finishing chores while they eat (it can't take any more than 10 min start to finish, they don't get much hard feed) and I always have hay out for them so she has something else to go to.

Overnight I'm not quite sure how they share the sheds, but my sense is that Maggie does go in and lay down to sleep (usually has shavings on her belly in the morning) and I think Izzy does that too. But most mornings except in the very worst weather, there's no poop in the sheds, so I don't think they spend a lot of time in there. The most popular time to stand around inside the sheds is definitely on hot summer days when the bugs are bad. Even in the dead of winter, I find they're more inclined to stand around outside, unless the wind is driving.

I've almost never seen more than 1 horse inside each shed (they're only 10x10 by the way, and plenty big for horses my size). Except this moment, when we first moved home and Maggie joined us:

















(How naive I was to think some of that grass would last in the small paddock! )

Around here this kind of shed is pretty common and there are a lot of Amish families that build them for reasonable prices. It's been a few years now, but I want to say the small one was $5K, and the double shed with feed rooms was $9K? Something like that. And there was a delivery fee to get them here- they showed up on a huge flatbed truck and were set in place with a tractor. They have very thick metal hooks on the side so you could drag them to a new spot with a tractor or good truck.


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## Knave

I have only had shelters twice in my life. When I was a kid my father built my mother a big shelter for her horses, three sided, and large enough to panel an injured horse or a broodmare in one side. I don’t think the horses tended to spend much time in it, preferring the outside in most storms.

Later in life, when I worked for an Arabian ranch, each field had its own shelter. Those were three sided as well, and again large. Sometimes the horses would fight over them, leaving only the lead horse inside, where in other corrals they were all friendly and inside or all wanted to stay outside. It just depended on the animal.

Mama Pepper is the only sheltered animal on my place, and she lives in that barn!


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## carshon

We have a shed row with all of the stalls having a run in front of them. One row is 3 15 x 15 stalls - so 45 feet long and we have another with 2 15 x 15 stalls that faces the first one. We went this route when our older horses started to get picked on and our bottle calves needed more space. They all have electricity and water tanks in the stalls - I hope to add fans one day. My one wish is that they had doors to actually lock a horse in if need be. A couple of years ago my daughters mare was very ill - we were in the middle of the polar vortex - my wonderful hubby fashioned a gate in front of her shed that we put a tarp around for wind block and we locked her in her stall. I love our set up as it allows me to feed each horse as an individual. I also have a dry lot (sacrifice lot) that they are let into every day. There is a shelter there as well.


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## egrogan

We are all hunkered down waiting for our first big storm of the year to get here. Forecast is calling for 8-12" overnight with another 3-5" during the day tomorrow. Temps have plummeted- was 4*F/-16*C this morning and it is expected to be that way the next few days. Ponies are bundled up and will get plenty of hay overnight. 

I think this is probably the last we will see of the grass until spring!


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## Knave

Now that will be a storm!


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## phantomhorse13

If we get more snow down there than you do up there, I am gonna have a tantrum!!

Least I can hold out some hope to see the ground again this winter, though not looking likely in the next week (or more if we really get what they are threatening). Can we start the countdown to April now?


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## Avna

We are forecast to get up to two feet of snow this storm.


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## egrogan

For once we do seem to be on the low end of snow total estimates. We shall see. Heading to bed and expect a blanket of white tomorrow.


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## Avna

Over a foot and still snowing hard this morning at 9 a.m. Hard to tell how much exactly as it has blown into drifts. Amazingly powdery -- my barn aisle filled up with snow just from it being blown underneath the doors.


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## egrogan

We currently have 23” and still coming down hard. It is honestly a bit overwhelming. I did the bare minimum of getting horses and chickens fed and watered, but had to wade through snow nearly to my waist to do so. We couldn’t get the dog out to go to the bathroom until we got a primitive path punched through with the plow on the tractor. We’re going to be cleaning this up through the weekend I think...not feeling very fun right now. The only saving grace is definitely that it’s very light and powdery, so you can move through it easily enough.




































^^thats a 16gal water tub down there in the hole...


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## carshon

Wow! Just wow! We haven't had snow like that since I was a kid. I don't think I miss it.


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## Avna

So much for the light end of the storm in Vermont, eh? We have waist high drifts but in other spots the wind scoured down to bare ground. Still snowing hard here. Supposed to start easing up by midday.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> So much for the light end of the storm in Vermont, eh? We have waist high drifts but in other spots the wind scoured down to bare ground. Still snowing hard here. Supposed to start easing up by midday.


But weirdly I just heard from a friend in Montpelier they have 4", and one up in the Northeast Kingdom with only an inch. So odd!


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## phantomhorse13

This storm was totally bizarre.

We were forecast 18-24" and got lucky to "just" get a foot. The bullseye apparently shifted more north than expected. Binghamton was at 40" when I watched the news this morning at 6:30 and I haven't seen a final total.

Thank god for equipment, cause just shoveling away from the building here and at the elderly neighbors was more than enough for me.


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## egrogan

Well, we had quite a day yesterday. By the end of the storm, we had *38" *on the ground. I grew up in upstate NY and have lived in the Northeast most of my life, and this is the biggest storm I've ever been in. No idea how the forecasters got it so, so wrong. Not sure if I would have done anything different, though I was having some regrets about the horses being out in it- until I saw that for the most part, they were literally out in it, not really wanting to be in the sheds at all. I guess they're fine, though am feeling a little worried about strain on their legs wading through so much snow. 
















We managed to hand-shovel them out a little box in front of the shed so they had a relatively flat place to stand around, but from all the tunnels they've made, they do still want to move around. We'll probably spend most of the weekend out with the tractor moving as much as we can off to the sides to clear more space. Sort of scary to contemplate that this is just the _beginning _of the winter though- where will we put more snow as it comes over the next three months?! 😟 








Hugh, on the other hand, loved the winter wonderland. He is still exhausted today from all the running and leaping and burrowing he did yesterday.




































I feel like a broken record, but it's just SO.MUCH.SNOW. It's really sort of shocking to look out the window and contemplate just how much there is. 








And where it's all going to go.









Night check last night:
This bucket is usually _on the ground_ to fill it up, about 4 feet below where it is here!









Making my way back inside after tossing out plenty of hay:


















I think I can pretty safely say riding is done for the year


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## carshon

Your horses are nice and cozy and don't seem any worse for wear. If anything they are probably hot under their blankets from walking around. That is such a large amount of snow. It has been cold here and now we are in for a warm up - I wish we had a little snow because our lots are frozen mud divets and my horses hate walking on it. I hope you get some melting


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## egrogan

@carshon, I keep checking under the blankets to make sure no one is too hot. I took the neck covers off this morning, now that the snow has stopped. It was right around 0* last night and will be again today. I can't honestly say I'd rather have _this much _snow than frozen mud, but I agree with you I'd rather have snow in general vs the awful frozen mud. I had boots on Maggie the day before the snow came because our paddocks were so rutted and frozen- glad I remembered to take them off the night before the snow or those boots would be gone until spring 🤣


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## Avna

Wow, we only got like 15 to 20"(it really drifted as it was a very windy storm), and we still aren't all dug out. The chickens refuse to put a scaly toe outside their coop, and the goats hang out out in the horse stalls. The horses meanwhile? No worries. They're up to their hocks but apparently do not care at all. They spent last night way out in the pasture eating a hay bale I dragged out yesterday, never came in at all.

By the way, my pertinent early-Christmas present to myself was a jet sled junior from Cabela's. Replacing the Walmart kiddie sled I had to bungee the bale to. SO worth the fifty bucks. I'm in winter hay dragging heaven.


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## bsms

Amazing pictures. Brought the wife over to the computer to show her how it looks. My rancher friend doesn't shelter his horses at all, apart from some trees. Doesn't get that depth of snow but gets sub-zero temps. The horses don't seem bothered but they live in it their entire lives. And of course, people need to saddle them up and go check sheep regardless of temperature or snowfall. That's a part of ranching I would not miss. Snow is best looked at thru the window.....or in photos taken thru someone ELSE's window!


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## gottatrot

That is an insane amount of snow! Hugh is so cute. I love how we think things are a big problem and dogs look at the same things and go "Awesome!"


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## SueC

I really miss the "happydance" emoji so you'll all just have to imagine it.

@egrogan, those photos are so stunning. I know it's a hassle and lots of work but it's definitely the whitest near-Christmas I've ever seen. It's like a postcard - like illustrations from a fairy tale book - just beautiful. 💞

I'm assuming you have proper snow boots with thick insulating soles and lots of fleece inside?

I forgot what breed Hugh is but he's so like a Scottish Collie. Which is funny if he actually is one, but maybe he's a related breed?

Are you making gingerbread?


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Overnight I'm not quite sure how they share the sheds, but my sense is that Maggie does go in and lay down to sleep (usually has shavings on her belly in the morning) and I think Izzy does that too. But most mornings except in the very worst weather, there's no poop in the sheds, so I don't think they spend a lot of time in there. The most popular time to stand around inside the sheds is definitely on hot summer days when the bugs are bad. Even in the dead of winter, I find they're more inclined to stand around outside, unless the wind is driving.
> 
> I've almost never seen more than 1 horse inside each shed (they're only 10x10 by the way, and plenty big for horses my size). Except this moment, when we first moved home and Maggie joined us:


We have a donkey shelter about the size of your small shed, which the donkeys use in the rain (and the horses never do, when they're in rugs), and the horses use mostly when there's botflies around, and then they all cram in like sardines in a tin. Or if the flies are bad and they don't have their veils on yet for the day. The moment I put their veils on, they march off to the gate and ask to be let into the big "common" for adventures - 58 hectares, as opposed to their 4 hectare night paddock. There they will spend a lot of their summer days under the big paperbark trees, in the shade and with a breeze:




Those are from last summer, about midsummer, when there's no more veils because there's no more flies, because the dung beetles do a very good job of getting rid of those once the nights get warm enough for them to breed and be active. There's always a lag at the start of summer though, where the horses and donkeys are in veils.

All three horses were born in yard/stable setups, but it hasn't taken them long to start doing what wild horses would do. Having said that, we had two horses here at the start, 10 years ago, who were born in the open in a herd - Romeo and my Arabian mare - and those two taught a lot of this stuff to the others, and then it got passed on in the herd culture.

@egrogan, our boysenberries are in full swing, and yesterday I made another one of these:

The secret to crunchy crust in fruit-custard tarts is to coat the inside of your pastry shell with some melted good-quality dark chocolate - it makes a moisture barrier - and is extra yummy.


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## phantomhorse13

We got lucky to get half of what was predicted.. but it was still more than we had the past 2 winters put together.

I am voting for this to be it for the season. All done! 🤞


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## Avna

SueC said:


> I forgot what breed Hugh is but he's so like a Scottish Collie. Which is funny if he actually is one, but maybe he's a related breed?


He's an English Shepherd. Basically the same dog as the old-fashioned Scottish Collie. They were once the ubiquitous American farm collie east of the Rockies as the closely related Australian Shepherd was, west of them, and are still popular in rural areas. Australian Shepherds are not from Australia, but they have a kinship with the Koolie, which you might be familiar with. All of these breeds came from Great Britain with sheep and cattle during colonial days.

I'm responding even though this isn't my journal because I know a zillion facts about this worldwide complex of related herding breeds, for boring reasons.


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## SueC

Want a Christmas treat for yourself, @Avna? If you don't have this beautiful coffee table book yet, it's worth tracking down one. I love our copy... Here's an article with wonderful sample photos: Working Dogs, a photographic documentary by Andrew Chapman and Melanie Faith Dove


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## egrogan

Glad you are all enjoying the photos. This is a once-in-a-generation storm I think, not sure if I'm glad I was part of it 😉 I really hope @phantomhorse13 is right and Mother Nature just gave us a winter's worth at once...what are the odds?

@SueC, that fruit tart looks amazing. I sure could go for a piece of that with a big mug of hot chocolate.

As @Avna mentioned, Hugh is indeed an English Shepherd. Some people think of the breed as interchangeable with Scotch collies; that said, I know a couple of people who have Scotch collies and they definitely would not call them English Shepherds (and correct you if you do). But Avna knows a lot more than I do about the history of these herding breeds, and how they are all related. Hugh occupied himself yesterday with herding frozen poop balls that got shot out of the snowblower as we cleared more space for the horses in the paddock:








He actually turned 11 months old yesterday. What a year he picked to come into the world! His breeder shared this picture with the sibling owners and asked if we could pick our dog out of the days-old puppy pile. Hugh is more red than the rest of his siblings and I guessed right, he's the little reddish one with the white triangle on his neck in the top right corner.

















We hiked the horses up the road and let them hang out in the barn for a couple of hours so we could open all the gates and run the tractor through the field to clear.

















Izzy definitely took advantage of the opportunity to lay down and nap. It was much easier to work on snow removal without working around them. They seemed sort of shocked when we got them back out and they realized they could move around again- lots of happy trotting.

@SueC, here is part of my snow gear- I love my insulated, waterproof tall boots, which I am wearing over multiple layers of wool socks and fleecey leggings under snow pants ⛄








At this point I was actually almost sweaty and had stripped off a few outer layers. I always run hot in my core, but sometimes my legs get cold. This year I've finally found a baselayer fleece-lined legging that I can wear under other pants and that is working pretty well.

Horses also wanted to get their layers stripped off, so I pulled all their blankets off before we went to the barn. Fizz immediately went for a satisfying roll. Blankets off, bellies up!


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## Knave

That made me smile. My oldest girl and I tried to get Queen a chance to roll in the snow yesterday, but she just dug and dug. I’m a bit worried about letting her play very much with me leading her, but I can see she loves snow.

I wonder if you did get all of winter. My grandpa talks of a year that was big snow. So much that all of the fences were covered. He said they dug tunnels to keep the milk cow alive. I don’t remember him saying the cows or horses died, so something must have happened there (I know they dropped hay from airplanes at one point; I’m not sure if it was that winter. He talks of two big snows in his life time.). Anyways, I remember him saying that it ended up being a very dry year after all that. I think the snow was like yours, more dried fluff than heavy, and they really didn’t get moisture to speak of later.


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## Avna

"Some people think of the breed as interchangeable with Scotch collies; that said, I know a couple of people who have Scotch collies and they definitely would not call them English Shepherds (and correct you if you do)." 

Yes, I've met some of those. It always surprises me how territorial the dog world is. They will go to war to try to prevent "their" name from being used for a slight variation on "their" breed. But the truth is, all the collie breeds are related to each other, some very closely, like Scotch Collies, Farm Collies, English Shepherds, and Welsh Sheepdogs, which are essentially interchangeable in terms of appearance, temperament, and working style, and probably, genetics. Since none of them are show breeds they all show a lot of variability in the way they look.


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## phantomhorse13

Avna said:


> It always surprises me how territorial the dog world is.


The more I interact with dog people, the more I think they are even crazier than horse people. I thought the arabs got their fair share of unrequested (often negative) comments.. but I have had more of those comments about my border collie regarding her breeding (or lack thereof), her bodyweight, and her living situation (e.g. did you know putting a BC on a leash and walking her is cruel? ).


@egrogan : do you have contact with any of the owners of Hugh's littermates? It would be fun to see pictures of all the puppies as adults in terms of color and build.


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## bsms

phantomhorse13 said:


> I have had more of those comments about my border collie


Did you know Border Collies cannot be trusted around kids? Yep! They go psycho and will tear a small child apart....

















Well, it may be PARTIALLY true:


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## SueC

ROFL, @bsms. 

@egrogan, if only there was a little galactic portal through which I could send two pieces! Alas, even the HF TARDIS has disappeared... 😭

Good to hear you're very well insulated in all that cold. 

And I wish I had some snow like that to roll in. Still, we have our own things to be grateful for.

I've pulled out some photos of the last snowy winter I had with horses, before we came to Australia - January 1982.
































































The chestnut mare is Sunsmart's great-grandmother. ♥


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## PoptartShop

Holy snow! :O We only got maybe a few inches here.They do look so pretty in the snow though. Hugh is also adorable in the snow. I still can't believe how much you got!! I hope that's it for the rest of the winter...we can hope LOL. That video of Fizz rolling in the snow is just to die for. I love it! The lights look beautiful too!


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## egrogan

@SueC- I love your snowy horse photos!

Fortunately I am not around enough dog people to have experienced the crazy ones, and both Hugh's breeder and the owner of the siblings are all lovely. Of the 8 puppies, I'd say I'm pretty up-to-date with 5 of the siblings, and have also gotten to know his sire's people pretty well. One of the few things Facebook is good for! There were only two females in the litter, and the breeder kept one with the other one going to a goat dairy. The girls are both dark shaded sable (or maybe tricolors, I can never remember the coat color terms) and more petite than the boys, who all seem to be weighing in right around 50-55 lbs. Temperament wise, it sounds like a lot of similarities- they are all serious, smart, and have some of the same quirks (all of them seem to be going through a "leash biting" phase if walked on leash right now- maybe the woman who told @phantomhorse13 what to do with Kestrel was on to something 😉). A couple of the brothers also work with sheep/goats on large farms, and a couple of them are "town dogs" and have outdoorsy lives with their families. It is shocking to me how similar the "red' puppies look- when I see them posted on FB I definitely do a double take, thinking I'm looking at Hugh. 

This is Hugh and his brother Odin from a play date we had a couple of months ago:









This is their other brother Whiskey, who lives on a dairy in Quebec:









I don't see as many updates about the other boys, but this is Odin and Hugh with their sister Fern, who has stayed with her mom/breeder:








Despite being smaller than the boys, she put them both in their place within seconds of arrival 🤣 








I believe she will be retained for breeding; I don't know enough about their bloodlines to know all the ins and outs, but apparently their sire is sort of a special guy and there is interest in keeping his lines going. They did ask if we'd consider keeping Hugh intact, but I don't want to be a dog breeder and I don't know enough about training dogs to get him to accomplish the sort of things I think he probably should accomplish if bred. He's a sweet, lovable guy but there are plenty of sweet dogs out there. Here are mom and dad:


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## phantomhorse13

So fun to see how everyone has grown up!

From the pics, mom is a sable and dad is tan point (or tri, seeing as he has white too). Sable is dominant to tan points, so makes sense all the pups appear to be some type of sable. Interesting to see the difference in heaviness of coat between the parents.


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## SueC

@egrogan, I was reading about anhedonia recently and thinking that the dog you had before might have had that. I didn't know it was a thing. I just found that interesting, and it makes no difference one way or another to know about the condition, it wouldn't have changed anything. Some people have anhedonia permanently, like author Thomas Ligotti - and anhedonia can also be a temporary thing that goes with depression, PTSD, and other mental/emotional health conditions.

Looking at the photos of how Hugh has this amazing enjoyment of life, I'm so happy for him, and for you - that kind of enjoyment is contagious. Likewise, to live with a person or animal that gets no enjoyment out of life is not only sad for that individual, but also for those caring for them - and can have real health ramifications for the carers long-term, especially if it's a permanent or near-permanent thing. I think your previous dog is in a better place now, and that Hugh and you is a win-win situation all around. 💞

I didn't know how to say this so I just dived right in. Just some thoughts I had.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I had not heard of that disorder- must be very difficult for a person to experience that. Certainly Gus seemed to fit that outline. Lovely husband and I were just talking last night about how Gus never wanted to be around us, never seemed to enjoy anything- and having Hugh as such a "velcro dog" is such a welcome difference. I'm happy to be ending this year of ups and downs with such a nice dog around.

We've had two beautiful morning in a row since the storm:


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## Knave

Those photos are beautiful!!!


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## egrogan

Well, our White Christmas is about to turn into a Noah’s Ark Christmas. We’re supposed to get 2 inches of rain from this afternoon through tomorrow afternoon, with temps up to 50*F. Severe flooding is expected, followed by temps dropping back below freezing tomorrow night. What a fitting way to end 2020 😟 

I’ve been really stressed out about the forecast the past couple of days, but at this point I think I’ve reached the stage of acceptance and am just hoping the flooding in the sheds and barn isn’t too bad. We bought a lot of supplies, including a new submersible pump, sand bags, etc and feel as ready as we can be. Today we’re doing our best to enjoy the calm before the storm and enjoy the day.








Hugh and the rest of the herd wish all our HF friends a very Merry Christmas! 🎄 Hopefully we won’t be washed away and we’ll still be here to wish you a happy new year as well!


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## bsms

Wish we could split the water you are getting with the water we are not. It would be a win:win. Right now it is a lose:lose. :>(


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## egrogan

I agree wholeheartedly @bsms! Wish there was a way to make it happen


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## Knave

Me too! I am sorry about the forecast though. That is going to be something... I think you are handling it perfectly though. Prepared as you can be, and now settle and enjoy the calm. I wish I could help some way, but I’ll be looking for updates and wishing you the best.


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## SueC




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## gottatrot

My husband wants to know if the maple syrup is going to be watery. 
Hope you survive the deluge!


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## egrogan

Just a quick note to say we survived our second “storm of a generation” for the month 🙄 We did indeed get 2 inches of rain over the 3 feet of snow, with temps almost 60*F. Miraculously, neither the sheds nor the barn flooded. The chickens’ run took on a little bit of water late in the day yesterday, but we pumped most of it out last night and the rest had drained away this morning. It did go back to freezing today, but the ground managed to suck up a lot of the water so the ice isn’t as bad as I expected. What a wild couple of days-I’m exhausted, but it was better than I hoped...

this was Sunday:








This was yesterday:









I’ve never seen three feet of snow disappear over night!


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> My husband wants to know if the maple syrup is going to be watery.
> Hope you survive the deluge!


Haha, this really cracked me up! Maybe this is common knowledge (especially for our resident biologists, like @SueC), but it was only earlier this year that I learned that once the forest goes dormant for the winter, trees no longer "drink" from the groundwater, which is why areas which are dry the rest of the year get soggy during the late fall and early winter. I found this completely perplexing, but learned that the leaves, as the primary source of respiration, are really regulating the pull of water up through the roots. I feel pretty stupid that I somehow missed learning that, but now I know. All that to say, fortunately our sugar maples are letting all this water go elsewhere for now. 

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. We barely slept at all Christmas Eve as we heard the storm raging outside- very high winds pelting water on the house all night- and I had a feeling of dread when I got up early Christmas Day to go get everyone fed and watered. I started with the chickens, and amazingly there was no water in the barn or in their run (the run is built off the back of the barn). I was happy that I didn't have to spend time pumping water out to let them out of the coop, and held my breath when I went down to feed the horses. The ground was squishy, but the sheds had no water inside. We had raised them a foot a couple of summers ago, and also had a "swale" dug into the hill in front of the paddock, and it was doing it's job well, diverting water around the paddock and out to the road to the ditch. It was still pouring rain, but it was very warm so they were content standing around outside eating hay. I was able to come back up to the house and we had some Irish coffee and breakfast before opening our gifts. Lovely husband had an artist friend paint a beautiful portrait of Fizz- I can't believe how real her face looks, and captures her expression perfectly!








We took the morning to just relax and read for awhile, and then before lunch he helped me bring the horses up from the pasture to the barn so they could spend a couple of hours drying out in front of dry hay in their stalls. Their blankets held up better than I expected, but some spots were starting to soak through, and temperatures were predicted to fall throughout the day. So, I gave everyone a good grooming and managed to pull together enough dry blankets and neck covers to bring them back out to the field. The rain had lightened up by that point, but it continued raining until the evening. Unfortunately when I went back out to close the chickens up for the night, the water coming down from the ridge above the house had finally made it's way into their run. It was ankle deep in a couple of places, and we did pump out many buckets full, but noticed that some of it was also draining away from the barn on its own. Since the coop itself had stayed dry, we figured we'd deal with the rest this morning. But happily, a lot of it drained out overnight, and as the ground firmed back up with colder temps, the deep puddles were gone and the chickens were perfectly happy today as if nothing had happened.

We do have some ice to contend with on the back hill leading from the house to the paddock, but the paddock itself is pretty clear. Their turnout fields are under ice lakes, but they have enough room to move around safely that they'll be fine. The weather is supposed to continue in these awful freeze/thaw periods into early January, so I think a lot of the ice will have a chance to melt. I may even end up taking one last ride for the year on Monday if the forecast holds.

All in all, definitely not the way I had hoped to spend Christmas, and not sleeping while being so worried left me pretty exhausted. Even with that though, we made really good dinners both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and had fun yesterday afternoon baking cookies over eggnog. I hope we don't have any more massive storms like this any time soon, but that is one of the things in this world that is really truly out of our hands.


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## gottatrot

That is a gorgeous picture of Fizz. What a great present!


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## Knave

The picture is lovely! I cannot believe that before and after! Wow!


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## SueC

Love the painting - so well done! 🥰

What an incredible difference overnight...I thought it would take months for that snow to clear! Sorry you had a bad night in the storm and were sleep deprived... we can empathise, because hayfever season just finished over here and we had more than two months of waking up almost every night sneezing and itchy, despite antihistamines. We were looking into allergy desensitisation a year ago because we know how that is, but then the pandemic happened.

Haha about the maple syrup! I used to have a 40+ thread pal up in Michigan who actually sent me some maple syrup and recipes, and explained how the stuff is made in great detail, with photos, since she's made it herself! That was @Northernstar, who sadly disappeared from HF years ago. She told me they tap off the sap and then have to evaporate it to concentrate it. So, if anyone's maple syrup is watery, it's because it wasn't evaporated to standard! 

Isn't the transpiration stream an amazing thing? Water being pumped though evaporation off leaf surfaces combined with the cohesiveness of water being dragged up through narrow xylem tubes in the plants - for dozens of metres, in the case of tall trees! If the trees tried to shift alcohol instead of water, I'm not sure it would work so well, because alcohol is less cohesive than water - the attractions between the molecules aren't as strong. That's also why alcohol evaporates more rapidly off surfaces than water does, and why it feels "cooler" than water to skin. And it's related to why insects couldn't walk on alcohol, even though some of them can walk on water!










Water has enough surface tension to support some lightweight objects. 😎

Another really interesting thing is that a lot of perennial plants in cold areas like yours have antifreeze in them, which is what allows their roots to survive even if the ground freezes solid, and their needle leaves to stay alive in Siberian temperatures... even deciduous plants have sap that acts like antifreeze, so that their living bark layer isn't destroyed during their winter dormancy.

Animals in cold areas, like the Arctic fox, have a countercurrent heat exchange system set up in their blood vessels so that they can save energy by not losing too much of their body heat through contact with cold ground - the blood in the outgoing vessels to the paws is cooled by close contact with the blood in the incoming vessels, whose blood is heated back up a bit before returning to the body core.

Nature is amazing and studying biology is no hardship at all, just a loooong series of oooh-aaahs! 😍

I'm glad to hear your shelters didn't flood - I remember they were indoor swimming pools at the start of your first winter on your farm!


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## SueC

By the way, the transpiration stream is an entirely physical process and requires no energy input from the plant, other than it has to open its stomata so water can evaporate out of the leaves. The rest happens automatically, provided the roots are in contact with water.

The xylem vessels bring water and minerals up from the roots - and it doesn't matter how soggy the ground gets, this wouldn't overly affect the salt and mineral concentrations on the plant side of the root interface, because uptake of water and salts is tightly regulated. However, plant roots can die from lack of oxygen in waterlogged conditions, when the air spaces in the soil that provide most of the oxygen to the roots are flooded.

In maples, the sap from which maple syrup gets made is carried in the other plant vascular system that all trees have - the phloem, in the bark - which is responsible for the transport of sugars and other plant-manufactured products around the plant. If you ringbark a tree, the roots will die because the plant can no longer send sap and its nutritious contents to the roots, who can't make these things themselves because there is no light for photosynthesis underground...


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## egrogan

Happy New Year to all! @SueC, I love all these facts about plants and cold weather. In another couple of months, we'll start watching the forecast to see if conditions are right for the sap to start running in the sugarbush- warm days and nights below freezing really jumpstart the process. But we have a couple of real winter months between now and then. Looking at some gentle, accumulating snow in the forecast over the next few days. If we get enough snow, we might be able to safely ride around the fields again as long as it's really covering the ice.

Fizz and I managed one last ride of the year, heading out to the overlook and back. The road was actually dry and ice-free, so we could relax and enjoy it.
















I brought an apple with me, so when we got to the top of the view, we stopped and I gave it to her in chunks while we talked about what a great year of rides we'd had.








I do feel like we're ending the year in a different place than where we started, and I'm proud of all the miles we covered together. I think next year is going to present even more adventures. GMHA is offering two "intro" distance rides early on in the season, and I think we'll be able to do those in preparation for doing a 25 mile ride during the distance days weekend in the fall. That's the goal anyway! I finally treated myself to a sheepskin seat cover, which should make all that saddle time more pleasant 

No big festivities for new years, but we did make a delicious dinner last night. For Christmas, I gave lovely husband some food-themed gifts, one of them being a giant bag of dried New Mexico chile peppers. Since we couldn't take another trip there this year, the next best thing was being able to cook some of the food we loved last time we visited. We made a big batch of Chile Colorado sauce for enchiladas, and lovely husband made black eyed peas for good luck heading into the new year. Goodness knows we all need it, and I sincerely hope 2021 is a better year for the world!

Today the sun is shining and the snow is supposed to come later in the day. I pulled the blankets off to give them some time to air out before the snow, and Fizz and Izzy made me laugh with their synchronized rolling- can't say I've ever seen that before. Horses do help us remember to enjoy the simple things, like a good back scratch after you've been in a coat too long


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## bsms

The house we rented is in a subdivision. Not much space between houses. My neighbor thinks fireworks are needed to bring in the New Year. I ushered in the New Year spending 30 minutes sitting on the floor, our 12 year old Border Collie pressed tight against me, shivering and with a pounding heart. The Border Collie, not me. About 15 minutes after the noise stopped, Jack decided he was probably going to survive another New Year. 



egrogan said:


> I do feel like we're ending the year in a different place than where we started, and I'm proud of all the miles we covered together. I think next year is going to present even more adventures.


Hope I can say the same thing in 12 months. I've enjoyed reading about you & Fizz this year. Best wishes to you and yours for 2021!


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## egrogan

Thank you @bsms for the nice note, and happy New Year to you and your family as well! I too have enjoyed following along with your journal this year. The journals really are the best part of the HF, I think. Sorry to hear the story about your dog and the fireworks though. I know many dogs react that way. We heard some low, loud booms a few times NYE, I think the ski resort about 20 min away must have been doing some sort of celebration- we couldn't see any fire works but I think that's what we were hearing. Hugh didn't react beyond lifting his head a couple of times, so that's good. 

We got a bit of snow yesterday, the heavy, dense kind. It was actually welcome because it provided a good layer of traction over the ice lakes the rain left behind. The roads are an icy mess, but after walking Hugh around the fields and woods pretty extensively, I felt confident I could take Fizz for a short, low-key ride around the fields, with minimal time on the road.

She seemed eager to get out of the field and do something. Before it snowed, I took her out handgrazing (how weird there was bare grass given two weeks ago we had 3 feet of snow!) and not surprisingly, she loved that outing. The last couple of days, I look out the window and see her standing at the gate staring across the street to the spot we went. Unfortunately the grass is buried now, but I think she wanted to confirm that for herself. 








I usually tie her up in the shed in front of a haynet while we're tacking up, but today I forgot to re-tie her after I had unhooked the lead rope to slip her breastcollar over her head...I went into the tack room to get her bridle, and over my shoulder saw her leave the shed and head to the gate again  Like I said...she was ready to go do something.

We crunched our way through the icy snow around one of the big fields, and she was careful and easy going. 








We came to a low spot where there's a little water flowing across, and she hesitated when she felt and heard some thick ice crackling under the snow. This is the one and only spot she's bucked me off before when she didn't like crossing through the mucky footing in the spring, so I just sat back deep and urged her on, and she walked across with a hesitant snort but nothing more. 

From there, we headed behind the house and up into the woods. In the summer, it's far too overgrown to ride back there, but this time of year, we were able to thread through the trees up and down the hill towards the top of the ridge. There's not a clear trail (yet) but it's open enough I didn't have to worry about bashing my knees on anything. 








She rushed a little on the way back down, but was fairly responsive to a shift of weight backwards and a warning of "watch...." when we were on steeper slopes. 








It was only 20 min or so of riding, but felt nice to get out and do something with her. Hopefully the weather will cooperate enough so that we'll be able to keep doing little rides like this so we don't have to have a total stop all winter.


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## egrogan

Another fluffy inch of snow overnight. To me, this is the best kind of winter.


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## PoptartShop

Wow, that painting of Fizz is just beautiful!  It really looks like her too, especially with those eyes! So cute!!

That sucks about all the snow, but it is pretty, I'm glad you were able to get Fizz out & hopefully you can continue to get out more, even though it's snowy. We haven't had snow here lately, just lots & lots of rain...so everything is a muddy mess. I'd rather have the snow, LOL.


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## egrogan

I decided to participate in a "Winter Riding Challenge" as part of another group I belong to, so I got started with that today. The goal is 20 hours of saddle time and 10 hours of "horsemanship" between January and March. The horsemanship part is basically anything that's not routine care (so you count anything done on the ground except regular grooming, feeding, stall mucking, etc.). I decided the first thing I'd like to work on is getting Fizz comfortable with mounting from the off side. I pretty quickly realized the issue was going to be getting _me _comfortable mounting on the right, because Fizz really doesn't care 🤣

I got her lined up at the mounting rock.








Then stood over her from the rock to get her used to the idea (no reaction), put some weight in the stirrup (no reaction), gave her a treat, asked her to stop chewing on the random branches on the ground (ear pin reaction), then finally just went for it and flopped on inelegantly, realizing I have no idea how to use my body parts in that sequence. Turns out the one who needs practice on this is ME, not her! I gave her lots of pats and treats, but she was much more interested in just heading on our way.

Roads are still iced over, so we walked through the backyard and down the driveway and tip toed across a sunny spot in the road to head through the fields. She hesitated and snorted when we crossed the crackly ice at the low wet spot, but she felt more confident than last time.








Up to the flattest of the fields, and did some school figures for a few minutes before going back the way we came (no hestitation at the crackling ice!), crossed the street in a different spot, and walked through the orchard.

















All told, this was only 20 minutes of riding, but the point is really just to be in the saddle and do something when we can. It was a beautiful day for it, if brisk- about 30*F with a strong breeze. We did some grooming and stretching when we were done, and I think she enjoyed herself too!


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## PoptartShop

That looks like such a pretty ride with all the snow!  I wanna join in on the challenge myself!!


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## Knave

I’ll be in your challenge (between us on here of course)! I’ve been super enjoying winter riding this year!


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## SueC

Now I want to try mounting from the off-side, but I think I'm going to practice with a barrel first! 🥳


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## egrogan

Well you all are more than welcome to join in the Winter Riding Challenge if you want to keep track and post your updates here 😁 

Fizz and I got another ride today. I mounted from the right again, and it went much more smoothly this time. It definitely does not feel natural, but at least I didn't feel like I was doing a belly flop into the saddle this time. I'm sure it will feel more comfortable the more we practice.

My sheepskin seat saver arrived, but I'm not sure yet if it is the right size for my saddle. I assume there will be some stretch and "deflating" as it gets used, but it was very difficult to force it to sit where it seemed like it was supposed to sit based on the pictures. It seemed like it was stretched so tight it was lifted off the saddle with lots of space in between the seat of the saddle and the seat saver. Also...sorry to @bsms and any other guys that happen to be following along...the seam down the middle stuck out and felt like sitting my lady parts on a freaking knife blade 🔪 For something designed to make for a more comfortable ride, I'm a little disappointed in the first ride. I am going to write to the company to see if they think it's just the wrong size, or if it will stretch.

Anyway, after the first few awkward strides while I tried to adjust my position in the saddle around sitting on a shark fin, we had a very nice ride. We rode around the new field and then came up to the flat part under the apple trees.
















There, we had enough room for a big 20meter+ circle, which had a little up and downhill undulating to it, enough that she had to pay attention to balance. I was so surprised at how wonderful she really felt. The first couple of times we were going downhill, she would lurch to a stop when she felt off balance, but with some encouragement she was soon moving smoothly and confident- so much so that I asked her to pick up a trot and she moved right out. That was going well, the footing was holding up and she wasn't slipping, so I asked her to canter. She sort of crowhopped into it like she'd always do in our lessons, but it was a halfhearted little jump and then she'd smooth out. It was worse to the right than the left, and she got really heavy hanging on me in that direction so we moved on to doing some other things rather than get into a pulling match. I found a couple of unused fence posts and laid them out on the ground in a right angle, so we did some trotting in various patterns back and forth across them and tried to stay really straight and hit the center each time.








I really wanted to be able to sidepass down the length of the post on the ground, but that didn't go as well. I could feel her doing some crossing steps in the front, but she was wanting to go forward and sideways rather than just sideways. I'm sure a lot of this problem is operator error as much as her just not really understanding. Does anyone have any videos or instructions that might help? I'm happy to start on the ground and move to the saddle if needed. Would love advice!

The long term forecast is looking promising- sunny days with highs right around freezing, which is great for this kind of riding. The ice on the roads isn't budging, so we can't really get anywhere away from the house, but for now playing around with schooling type stuff is fun enough, and like I keep saying, it's just nice to be able to ride at all. If we make it through most of January with at least a couple of rides a week, that will be an improvement over last year.


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## egrogan

Another ride, similar to yesterday. Mounted from the right again, getting a little easier. We rode around the new field and then crossed the road to go to the other big flat field. Did a lot of circle work over there- big circles, spiraling circles, circles off of the circle  She was a little more animated being a bit farther from home, though we could still hear Izzy calling for her like a lunatic. She kept wanting to bulge her shoulder out off the circle while trotting and try to drag towards home. So that gives us something work on- relaxation and a nice, steady pace farther from home but within earshot.
























I got a very speedy response from the seller of the seat saver, and she confirmed it was too small given how it was fitting. She also said since I rode in it, they can't take it back as "new," but would give me half the purchase price to take it back as used. That was a bummer. But, M has also been wanting one, and her saddle is smaller and a different shape than mine, so she picked it up today to see if it fits. If she doesn't like it, I'll post on FB.

Week 1 of winter riding challenge: 1.5 hours riding, 15 min in-hand


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## egrogan

Haven't been posting much as winter can get so uninspiring this time of year. It feels like I am just doing the basics- keeping horses fed, watered, cleaned up- and not much else. We had another big storm over a week ago, which brought a foot or so of very heavy, wet snow, and it was very difficult to clear. Too heavy for the snowblower deck on the tractor, and even a struggle to plow. The horses are not interested in venturing out very far from the sheds, because the footing is so deep and heavy.








So I've been luring them out with hay, to at least give them a reason to move around.








The snow is easily up to my knees, so it's hard to take Hugh anywhere for good walks/runs/hikes; he just has to sort of dolphin leap through it because he's up to his elbows in it and can't really move that easily.
















He's surviving though 😉








It didn't help that we had snow every day for the past 8 days! The new snow is actually fairly light and powdery, but unfortunately the base is still the heavy stuff that's hard to get through.








The town plows coming through have created tall, dense banks along the roads which means it's hard to get into the fields to ride. Lovely husband did punch out a couple of tenuous spots where we can sort of crawl through and over the worst of the snow banks, but it's tough going. Yesterday though, the snow finally stopped and it was sunny if blustery cold. I was pretty determined to ride at least a little.








For the first time in awhile, the footing on the roads was not too scary, so we walked a little way down the road, cut into one of the fields, and circled through the deep stuff back up to the road.








I wasn't sure if it would be ok to ask Fizz to go through the really deep parts, but she was pretty feisty. On an uphill part, she actually wanted to start trotting, which was a strange, multi-beat stutter step sort of trot as she bounced along. When we got back to a flat spot, she still wanted to boing along, and I think it was good that the snow was so deep or she might have bounced me right into a snow bank. 🤣 I only rode for 20 minutes, as we had really strong winds in our faces, with a windchill close to 0*F, but I think it was good for both of us to do something.












Even colder today, with worse winds, so probably won't be able to ride even though the sun is pretty again.


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## bsms

The house I hope to move to (final walkthrough is scheduled for Wednesday) is supposed to get 5 inches of snow Mon/Tues. Absolutely trivial compared to what you get, but desperately needed here! It will be rain at the lower elevations, like where we've lived. The prickly pear there has turned RED from lack of water! We finally got 1/2 inch a few days back and hopefully will get s long drizzle/snow this week. I won't mind moving to a place that gets snow every year since it won't stick around for long. Besides, if we're going to be on well water.....

And during the winter, our horses get very fuzzy. If they can stay dry, they can stay warm.


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## knightrider

All that snow and cold! Very pretty, but brrrrrr! It wouldn't be fair for me to do your winter challenge. Our winter is the best time to ride. I am hoping for a 3 day horse camping trip really soon. I had planned to go today, but life got in the way.


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## SueC

I much enjoyed your update - great photos as usual, I'm marvelling at all that snow, and your Hugh is ultra cute and always looks super happy. Jess does that rolling-on-the-back-thing too. Good idea to coax the horses to move by spreading hay around! I might have to do something similar for myself, I'm spending so much of my recovery time horizontal - maybe I need to be fed my dinner five miles away as an incentive to walk! 🤪 On the other hand, I know me - when the energy returns, I'll be champing at the bit to go for a good hike. Meanwhile I'm doing half-days of work, and having mornings to myself.

High summer here is a bit like your winter - I just do maintenance tasks, and nothing "new" happens very often - summer is a time of shifting sprinklers around, trimming hooves, feeding the mineral mix hard feed at night, administering "scratchies" to everyone, letting the whole bunch into the big common in the mornings, working in the garden before or after the UV and heat make it unbearable, routine farm maintenance, etc. And the farmstay. If it's hot it cuts down the riding, because I'm not as early a riser as @knightrider (hope you got another ride in since!). However, it's amazing how I can get out of bed better since I've decided the mornings are my own time just to have some fun and relax, until I've got my energy back.

I wish you could buy the stuff bottled - there's a lot of things I'd love to do. If you could plug a lithium battery into a human I'd be going around at double speed getting loads of things done in one single day, and then I'd also saddle educate Julian, ride Sunsmart more regularly than I currently do, practice music, do daily Pilates and challenging cardiovascular stuff every second day... and I wonder how much of that is going to creep in, during the mornings that are "mine" until further notice...

Are you tending to hibernate during winter? I sort of do during summer. Because I get up earlier than in winter, I sleep a few hours after lunch, when it's not nice outside. That's in "normal" times - right now I'm sleeping even more, to recover that sleep debt. I think bears have the right idea! 😀


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## bsms

If someone finds a lithium battery for humans, PLEASE let me know! Nearing 63 and I could really use a bunch of them.


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> The house I hope to move to (final walkthrough is scheduled for Wednesday) is supposed to get 5 inches of snow Mon/Tues. Absolutely trivial compared to what you get, but desperately needed here! It will be rain at the lower elevations, like where we've lived. The prickly pear there has turned RED from lack of water! We finally got 1/2 inch a few days back and hopefully will get s long drizzle/snow this week. I won't mind moving to a place that gets snow every year since it won't stick around for long. Besides, if we're going to be on well water.....
> 
> And during the winter, our horses get very fuzzy. If they can stay dry, they can stay warm.


We've heard there is a lot of rain/snow coming to the SW- must be a relief for you all. Snow in the desert must be a fascinating sight! Hope all goes well with the house closing and that you get to begin the move soon.



knightrider said:


> All that snow and cold! Very pretty, but brrrrrr! It wouldn't be fair for me to do your winter challenge. Our winter is the best time to ride. I am hoping for a 3 day horse camping trip really soon. I had planned to go today, but life got in the way.


I hope you'll take pictures on your camping trip when you do go. I always love to see them! 



SueC said:


> Are you tending to hibernate during winter? I sort of do during summer. Because I get up earlier than in winter, I sleep a few hours after lunch, when it's not nice outside. That's in "normal" times - right now I'm sleeping even more, to recover that sleep debt. I think bears have the right idea! 😀


I think any extreme weather- very hot or very cold- calls for hibernation  My problem in the winter is that the short daylight makes me ready for bed so, so early at the end of the day. And my problem in the summer is that I feel like I am drowning in humidity and can't possible move. I wish Fall lasted all year, then I'd be happy!

Hugh's got the right idea for these short winter days:


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## SueC

That's so massively cute!  Brett says he now has the theory that human civilisation was secretly orchestrated by cats and dogs all along, for their own comfort! 🥳


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## PoptartShop

Winter is definitely a pain. I'm not riding as nearly as much as I do in the spring/summer/fall either. I try to suck it up, bundle up & go, but sometimes it's hard to get that motivation. I agree, the days definitely seem shorter. So glad you were able to get Fizz out & she was such a good girl in the snow!  That selfie is so cute! It is really pretty. I really need to stop complaining about when we get just a few inches LOL. 

Hugh is such a cutie, so adorable in the snow!


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## Knave

I was very behind. I also haven’t been posting much. It’s not that I haven’t been riding, more that it’s not very interesting. Lope or trot around a pivot, maybe do some finesse type stuff in the yard on days with decent footing. Day in and out it feels the same...

I love riding in heavy snow. It’s one of my favorite things. Here there isn’t enough snow for it to be good riding right now. I actually stayed in yesterday because of the wind. Ick


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## egrogan

New month, new storm. Hard to tell how much snow there really is because the wind is howling and building up deep drifts.

Our water fully disappeared overnight.
















I’ve never seen that happen before-must have been from the wind, but I’m surprised they didn’t keep it open. They did drink from the buckets in the shed, but they eat a lot of snow when it’s fresh.


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## Knave

Wow!


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## egrogan

I will be curious to see @phantomhorse13 update- I think she was getting more than us!


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## PoptartShop

We only got a few inches & I was complaining...LOL. I am pathetic!

Sheesh, that's crazy about the water trough! I know the winds can get crazy, they've been pretty bad here. The girls are so cute though, I always say this, but just something about horses in the snow!


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I will be curious to see @phantomhorse13 update- I think she was getting more than us!


We got pretty lucky here, getting "only" 2 feet - not too far NE of us wound up with 3!! I am so profoundly grateful for large equipment and hope I never see a shovel again. I just updated my journal, but can't resist sharing some cuteness here too:





























I assume your pup loved the snow as much as mine?


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## egrogan

Yay, just the cuteness I needed in the middle of the day! Dolphin-leaping puppies make me laught so hard. Hugh does love the snow, but I think he’d love it even more with a doggie friend.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> Hugh does love the snow, but I think he’d love it even more with a doggie friend.


Friends do make everything better!

Kali would have gone back in the house a lot sooner if Kestrel wasn't running around like a fool, which of course enticed her back to play more. I keep warning Kestrel that before long she won't win the tug games, but I suspect she will always be faster and more agile.


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## PoptartShop

Hugh is so cute in the snow! Look at that snowy nose! Too adorable.


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## egrogan

Snow. Cold. Frozen poop. Repeat. That’s pretty much it for us!
























This is the state of the snowbanks along the public road as of this morning. Behind it, you can sort of see the gate and fence for the new field. I’m guessing it will be...April? Before we can get in there again. And just a month ago I was riding there. Sigh.


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## egrogan

Weather was pretty nice yesterday- sunny skies and no wind made 20F/-7C feel nice. After Fizz finished off her afternoon nap, we went out for a handwalk along the road.








I was just starting to think I could have ridden instead of walked it, when her hind end nearly slipped out from under her on ice. Guess walking was the right call.
















We're expecting another 10" of snow tomorrow...fun times.

More renovations happening inside, this time upstairs. The old bathroom up there has been gutted, and above the ceiling, there were some interesting treasures. Check out these very old beams and the remnants of very, very old hand cut wooden roofing shingles.








Can you imagine having wood bark shingles on a house that takes on as much precipitation year round as this one?








I wonder how often shingles had to be replaced? Or how sharp your ax was to cut them to size?! I really do love old houses and the stories they can tell.









Finally, some comedy from Hugh Malone showing off the "English Shepherd pose" and a very silly protruding tongue while he was deep in sleep.
















Doesn't take much to amuse us these days


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## carshon

Our old home is an old cabin and a house cabled together. When you go into the attic you can see the original shingles - and our beams are trees with the bark still on them. Frustrating when doing renovations but really cool to see what they used way back when!


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## egrogan

@carshon, during the downstairs part of the project, all the walls in the kitchen had the old pine beams with bark still on. I loved seeing it! I guess you used what you had. Your house sounds fascinating- how much of an age difference is there between the cabin (assuming that's the older part?) and the house that was joined to it? Are the shingles you found wooden too?


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## egrogan

Izzy nearly gave me a heart attack tonight at dinner. She was finishing her evening meal (soaked beet pulp, senior, and ration balancer) while I was cleaning up in front of the sheds. She always takes her time, but today at both breakfast and dinner she seemed a little irritated and dumped half her food while eating.

Anyway, I heard her take a big drink and looked over because she started coughing immediately and violently. In seconds, she was spewing liquid and soggy grain out of her mouth and nostrils (and, weirdly, out of her bum for good measure). She hacked big and deep three full times, and then stopped. I ran over to her and massaged her neck but didn’t feel anything hard or stuck, but after the three hard coughs she seemed fine.

She choked seriously enough to have a vet out 6 or 7 years ago, but never since. What happened tonight almost seemed like she “got water down the wrong pipe,” like people do sometimes. Can that happen to horses too?

She acted fine after, running around, interested in hay with no issues. So I think she’s fine, heading out now to check on her again. Horses!!


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## egrogan

Postscript-she was happily munching hay when Hugh and I went out to check, and even politely gave me the peace of mind to take a nice, long drink while I hung out their evening hay nets. She looked like her perky, normal self. Hoping we dodged a bullet.


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## Knave

I hope so too! I personally have been super lucky and never had a horse choke (yet, please don’t jinx myself). It seems like it would be possible, or maybe a minor start of a choke?

Bones has been coughing. He has a virus, and Zeus seems to have a bit of it too. He’s much more stoic about it, but his eyes are a bit goopy and he seems a little depressed at times. Dang horses!


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## carshon

It could be she was gulping down her food. My Tillie has choked 3 times in the last 2 years. twice needing vet intervention and once she cleared on her own. She tends to be a "gulper" and I am watching her soaked beet pulp etc now as the horses know it freezes fairly fast and they are all gulping it down


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## egrogan

Thanks for the support! I do believe the first choke all those years ago was gulping hay cubes that had not been properly soaked. I watch her very carefully while eating and she really does take her time. With the quantity of soaked beet pulp in there, everything is pretty soft and I don't think she tends to take big bites and swallow- but given the condition of her teeth, including missing a few molars her chewing is compromised.

I've been fighting a balance with her food all winter- I'd like the feed to be a little soupier than it is (right now I'd say it's moist but not soupy) but it seems like if I cross over a threshold of "wetness" that I can't precisely define, her manure gets very loose and watery. I've been experimenting with different levels of wetness in the beet pulp and it has helped her manure stay more solid and well formed. It's definitely not dry when fed (and I feed SpeediBeet vs. pellets or shreds, and the flake that SpeediBeet comes in is puffed and wet within just minutes of being submerged in hot water). But it could be a lot soupier if her digestive system could take it. This morning I poured a cup of warm water over her senior pellets and ration balancer before mixing in the wet beet pulp, so we'll see what that does to her manure. Didn't notice anything different about how she ate it.

My gut still says she took a weird drink of water, but I guess I'll never know.

@Knave, hope your horses feel better!


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## SueC

I'm nowhere near caught up but just wanted to say hello and hope you're all well! 🌻


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## PoptartShop

Glad Izzy is okay, what a scare! Hopefully she just took a weird sip.


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## egrogan

Izzy seems to be ok and hasn’t had any similar incidents, fortunately.

Earlier in the week we were unfortunate enough to get an evening of sleet and freezing rain, which left our 3 ft of snow crusted over with an impenetrable layer of ice. In most places, it was thick enough to support my weight without breaking through it-behind the sheds, the snow is piled up so high I could actually touch the top of the roof standing on top of the snow.

Unfortunately it’s not strong enough to support the horses’ weight, so now their options for moving around are even more limited. Poor Fizz got chased over a hay pile and flung herself forward into a snow bank, where she was almost fully stuck. It was actually really scary watching her try to get out of this position once I realized she was struggling and not just standing around.









It was like she was trying to get out of a mud bog, flailing around to try to get her footing while also trying to launch back to solid ground. Especially scary was how her front pasterns kept knuckling over because the icy crust was resistant until she could get her full weight over top of the foot to break down through. I thought I might have to try to dig her out (with no idea how I could possibly do that), but she struggled ungracefully for a minute before getting back onto the solid ground of their walking path.

Yesterday was farrier day. With the ice, the entire path from the turnouts up to the road looks like a luge track (you can see how icy it was backlit by the house last night) and the road itself was also treacherous.







So farrier kindly agreed to trim them out in the paddock on the flat(ish) spot in front of the shed. Everyone was cooperative, and I got him a couple of good VT beers for his trouble  Glad we still were able to get them trimmed, even though there was not much growth.

And to top all that off, we’ve had another 5 or so inches since we went to bed last night. This winter just won’t quit!


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## knightrider

Glad to read about it, and it surely is an interesting post, but I can't "like" it. I feel so sorry for everyone who is struggling and suffering so. Prayers.


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## egrogan

Sorry for a bit of a gloomy post. Here’s something beautiful from evening feeding to counteract it!


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## gottatrot

Glad Fizz is OK! Poor horse! Your house looks so eerie...


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## Knave

I liked it because you wrote it well, but I didn’t actually like it. That sounds awful. I am sorry.

We don’t have nearly the snow that you do. It really hasn’t dropped any particularly heavy amounts all winter.

Thanks for the good wishes for Bones and Zeus. I think the new baby, sent to my parents in trade for the roan horse, brought the illness. He was sick when he came, and I’m surprised it traveled from their home to mine in wintertime, but it must have somehow.

They seem to be doing better, they are less snotty for sure. We’ve been gone over the weekend, so maybe they are completely better now.


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## PoptartShop

Poor Fizz getting stuck!  Aww, that's just horrible. I really hope mother nature calm down for your sake - that's so much snow, plus ice! What a mess!
We got some snow & sleet here today, but like 1-2in, max. I really shouldn't complain even though it's icy here, because it's nothing compared to what you are dealing with. So sorry it's definitely a rough winter! I hope you don't get anymore snow, OR sleet! It's not fun for you or the horses!

I'm glad the farrier was able to still come and do them in the pasture though, & they were well-behaved!  Good girls! Beautiful eye shot too!


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## egrogan

The weekend here was actually fairly pretty, though still very cold. Yesterday especially was beautiful- bright, bright blue skies and lots of sunshine. The roads are mostly still covered in snow and ice, but it was too pretty not to go do something. So I put on my YakTrax and took Fizz for a walk to the overlook and back.
























We were fortunate we were only passed by one car- the road is basically down to a lane and a half at this point, and the snow banks are nearly as tall as me, so not much room to get out of the way if there was traffic.

And now today, we're back to...this.




Think she got a little up her nose with that roll


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## gottatrot

I love watching horses roll. It's really funny how individualized they are about it. Like horses with really tall withers usually can't go all the way over, and some seem really prissy like they just lightly touch their side to the ground while others just dig in and shovel into the ground with their head. Halla would amaze me because she could always get dirt encrusted between her front legs. Amore has to spin around and around multiple times before going down. Sometimes she'll spin a few times in both directions, and then change her mind and never roll. She did that even when she was young, so it's not about arthritis or anything. And Hero gets up and down so many times people think he is colicking. LOL. Then some have to always buck when they're done.


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## egrogan

I agree. I have way too many videos on my phone of horses rolling and looking silly. Fizz usually goes all the way over, multiple times (what's the old saying, a horse is worth $1 for every time they do a complete roll?), but the frozen ground right now is really irritating her and she can't get the roll she really wants. I'm sure when I get blankets off tomorrow she'll figure it out.

I was actually listening to a podcast the other day and heard the host share a really interesting story about a horse who had been on stall rest- because he had a leg fracture from a kick, he was in a fairly confined space. Over the weeks he was stalled, she noticed he was holding his head at odd angles, making weird movements with his lips, and generally acting a little spacey. The first day he was allowed a small "paddock" for turnout, he spent most of his time rolling, and all the odd behaviors went away the next day. She talked to her vet, who was closely involved, and they felt that all the strange physical signs he was exhibiting were connected to the fact that his stall was too small for him to feel comfortable rolling in, and that it was chiropractically affecting him so much that he almost appeared to be neurological. Once he could "self adjust" by rolling the way he wanted, he was back on track. I've never heard anything like that before, but it was intriguing. The rolling looks cute, and even satisfying, to me, but it makes sense that it might serve a more fundamental physical need for them beyond just itching a scratchy spot.


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## PoptartShop

So nice to see some sunshine where you are, well, at least for a little while right! Awww, I'm glad you were able to take Fizz out even if it was just a short walk. I'm sure she liked that! What a cute rolling video, too! So cute seeing them roll in the snow. I bet she enjoyed that!!
Promise was having the same trouble the other day when it snowed - she couldn't roll all the way over, even though I could tell she wanted to. The frozen ground is just brutal!


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## egrogan

Two naked ladies enjoying a sundrenched breakfast.








It was above freezing this morning, and the sun felt SO good. _Observation_: It was actually above freezing overnight last night, so I left blankets off for the first time in many weeks. This morning, every piece of hay was gone and the sheds were a mess. Most nights, they have plenty of hay left over and there is a poop pile or two in the sheds but nothing dramatic unless it's stormy. I think that's a useful anecdote on whether or not horses are more comfortable with blankets on, whether they _need_ them or not...

Something I've been chewing on for awhile...With the pandemic and winter, my horsey community is pretty limited, so I've been listening to a lot of horse podcasts (also useful when chores take twice as long as other times of year...). I've started to notice a trend- so many of these shows focus on giving advice to people who are stressed out and feel bad about their self-worth when they work with their horses. I can't tell you the number of "equestrian mindset coaches" who either host or are guests on these podcasts. And the level of anxiety people are feeling seems through the roof, particularly if they regularly go to clinics or horse shows. One of the podcasts is targeted to high-end hunter/jumpers, and nearly every story the host (who is a successful business woman and professor) tells about riding a round at a horse show involves her talking about how she leaves the ring in tears because she feels that she isn't good enough. These kinds of stories seem to be repeated across the spectrum of equestrian sports- from the high end hunter jumpers to the adult re-riders to the competitive reiners to the teens who are trying to get a start on the path to be a pro. It's just made me wonder: _What is it about horses that makes so many people want to invest copious amounts of time and money, yet spend so much time stressed out and anxious, requiring special counseling support to get through it?_

I realize that I wouldn't have to read that far back in my own journal to read about feeling anxious and not good enough, so I guess I can sympathize with the feelings. And maybe you all are my free "equestrian mindset coaches" helping me keep moving forward by reading and commenting on my journal. But after listening to enough shows to recognize this seems to be a fairly central theme in the horse world, it just really makes me want to understand WHY so many people feel this way. And I think it also makes me feel pretty committed to going out and enjoying riding Fizz this year and not getting so hung up on things not going perfectly. If it's not enjoyable, then why the heck am I spending all this money and so.much.time taking care of the horses when there are so many other things I can be doing instead? I feel really bad for what seems to be a huge number of adult amateurs who are spending five or six figures on horses they are terrified to ride, in environments that make them feel powerless and inadequate. What is that about? Does anyone else see this or even feel this themselves?


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## gottatrot

That's very interesting, and gives me something to ponder over. Something I was wondering recently along the same lines is if most people through a period of disillusionment with horses. Is it because so many things with horses are sold as fairy tales and fantasy? My own disillusionment came when I realized that trainers were saying one thing and doing another. Like saying if I just rode like this or that, my horse would shape up beautifully, but then in reality, when I watched behind the scenes, they were using all kinds of gadgets to "nip and tuck" their horses into the aesthetic form they wanted. That was when I started seeing the ugly behind the beautiful parts of the horse world. 

I guess as a kid, I thought if I just worked hard, I could go to the olympics. But later in life I found out that pretty much only those with a lot of money and who were willing to discard all the horses that didn't work out would have those possibilities. I suffered a little from too much Black Stallion and National Velvet. 

The show scene is another story. That disillusioned me pretty quickly, when I saw all the compromises it would take to be truly competitive. I wonder if that dichotomy between wanting what is good for their horses and wanting to win can cause stress for some people. But also I think people are thrown into things they don't have enough experience for. There's probably a lot more to it than that...


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## Knave

I see it a lot. I think that’s why I so like @gottatrot’s theory about holes.

I have seen it at shows. The time I wrote about taking Bones in and failing to the cutting, it was crazy watching all of these open (top) riders lose their temper and beat on their horses. The cows were hard and things just weren’t working for a lot of people.

I of course was giggling about the fool I was making of myself. When I went into the herd though and things continued to go wrong, I felt this immense pressure to beat on Bones. I didn’t fall into that pressure, instead I probably embarrassed myself by laughing like a lunatic. The pressure I felt was to make sure people there watching knew I knew Bones was not doing as he should, and that my expectations were higher. It was a silly thought and I’m glad I didn’t fall into the trap.

When I went and sat in the stands, many of the old timers commented to me about what they saw in the ring, and about people beating their horses. They were not impressed with Bones of course, but they were not impressed with the lack of control the other riders showed.

I have seen people who are very good, and could be competitive, stay on the sidelines because of not feeling good enough.

I don’t think the kind of pressure that we put on ourselves and each other does anyone any good. Sometimes other people cause it, but often it is internal.

I feel a sort of pressure riding Cashman. He is such a big beast and a mustang on top of it, and people look down on him. I can’t cut or run a reining pattern well, and if I’m not in a work environment his worth is not easily apparent to the people around me. I have to remind myself that it doesn’t matter what they think. People have a lot to say about it too. I’ve sat in the stands last year to have people come to me to tell me how much they didn’t like that I was riding him. It’s an odd thing to me. I guess it should be remembered that you must be up high when people are trying to tear you down. Some part of what you are doing challenges them...

It’s too bad that we cannot be kind to ourselves and self confident. I don’t understand what makes us tear our own selves apart.


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## egrogan

@Knave, love your post. I had not thought about coming at this from the perspective of feeling pressured to show others that your horse is worth being proud of. That's so interesting, and I think I'm glad I'm not part of a community that thinks that way. The idea of being judgemental about the value of someone else's horse is foreign to me. I know you've written before about the "mustang shaming" in your community. It's hard for me to understand that, particularly since your horses are out there doing the job alongside other people. And of course, I look at the beautiful videos and pictures of you and your daughters riding so naturally with so much skill, and think that you are one of my horsey heroes and can't even imagine you having insecurities about riding in front of other people. Isn't it so strange how our perceptions of ourselves can be misaligned with others' perceptions of us?!

The most recent podcast I was listening to divided the causes behind these feelings of anxiety into two main categories: 1. Feeling afraid of getting hurt, and 2. Feeling afraid of not being good enough in the eyes of other people. The "fear of not being good enough" people tended to be in the show pen, though not exclusively. I think that leads to some of the behaviors you were describing @Knave, as well as what @gottatrot's talking about with trainers taking shortcuts to look good without fundamentally _being _good.

I think I relate to #1, the fear of getting hurt, more strongly than the feeling of being judged. When I think about the times that I've least liked how I've treated Fizz, it's been in situations where I was just straight up scared, and took that out on her with a lot of pressure (either yanking her around or yelling). I'm not proud of that. I don't know where that response to fear comes from because I have never really experienced being physically unsafe in my life, thank goodness. But I think that being more conscious of it is helpful; while we can't avoid every situation where there's a chance of getting hurt, I do try to plan ahead for what I'm asking Fizz to do, to make sure that it's something we should be able to handle. I know I've mentioned before that her falling on me a few years ago has been a defining experience, because knowing that it happened once means it could happen again. I don't know if I'll ever "get over" it, but I do believe I can manage my way around it. 

PS- I actually _do _enjoy listening to these podcasts. They make me think a lot, and try to figure out my place in the world of horses. It's just that this particular topic has been nagging at me and I needed to talk it out!


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## Knave

Firstly, thank you for the compliment. 😊

Secondly, I think that is also when I have lost my temper. If I let my anxiety build to that point I tend towards those meltdowns.

For me it is two fold. When the horse I am riding is very young, or having a bad day, I am nervous about things going wrong. Then when I have work on top of it I take that anxiety and intensify it. I am thinking, ‘If she doesn’t watch that calf he is going to turn back and I’m going to have to go get him. I might have to rope him.’ I feel the pressure knowing my horse might not be able to handle the situation, and I feel cornered.

Those are the moments I have lost it. That does me no good, and only effects my horse or my children negatively, and I am ashamed of those moments.

One time I was feeling that way. Bones was just a baby and the day had been super hard. He was so wrapped up by that point that he was kind of melting down.

I lost my temper about how things were going, so I jumped off of him and started dragging this calf by hand into where I needed it to go. I was blind with my temper, and I heard my husband yell, “you rotten *****!” I was going to come uncorked, and I looked up in a rage to see him beating this cow off of me. My fear and anxiety had me make a really bad decision in a temper, completely unaware of the consequences.

I think that was the perfect picture for me of one of those moments. I try and bring down my anxiety when I am getting to that point, but it seems almost impossible in those moments of fear and pressure. I am lucky they are few and far between.

Don’t ever think you are alone in those reactions!


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## gottatrot

Very interesting points. Something I have come to realize is that we all lose our temper with horses at times, and we all get afraid. Maybe there should be more information about that for horse people. I've been learning to forgive myself when I do lose my temper, because it makes me feel like such a failure. But I have a lot of great people I want to be like, including both of you, @egrogan and @Knave, and when I can observe people who honestly admit they get afraid or frustrated it makes me understand we all do. 

It wasn't long ago that I was reading about a great eventer, who was talking about how he gets afraid. It used to be that I assumed the people out there doing very courageous things just didn't feel fear like the rest of us. But I believe we all do. When I was a kid, I really struggled with being afraid of riding but also wanting to do it so badly. My fears were about being out of control, more than being injured. Now I think we will always have phases of fear when we do things that are pushing ourselves or our horses to a new level. I'm not sure about how to help people who seem to get trapped by fear and never get over it. That does make one wonder why they stick with horses. 

I've come to realize it doesn't matter if I have fear, because it is natural. I guess it helps me to not fear having fear, if that makes sense. So I don't think about it as much as a big deal, or worry about overcoming it, because I've been through it enough times to understand it's just natural and will go away once I have enough experiences with the horse. Knowledge and experience are the enemies of fear. The main thing is to use the fear to help us think about safety, but not to let it affect our actions toward the horse (such as becoming frustrated or angry). Easier said than done! But something I work on. 

When Hero ran over me recently, of course I got mad because of all the endorphins that blasted through me as I was trampled a bit. But after I yelled and flailed around some, I laughed at myself and told myself that was natural. Horses forgive us, we forgive them. So we should forgive ourselves too.


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## Knave

I like that idea too @gottatrot . My husband came to help me once with Bones when I first bought him and told me that. He said, “Don’t you think everyone gets scared? You decide how bad you want something and you do it anyways.”

It was a good point for me and I remember it when moments get overwhelming. Always before I thought I was being weak if I was scared. I knew the John Wayne quote, “courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyways,” but I didn’t think about it.

Now it is easier to be brave. Of course, I say that, and yet I have a brick wall over driving in certain situations... lol


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I've come to realize it doesn't matter if I have fear, because it is natural. I guess it helps me to not fear having fear, if that makes sense. So I don't think about it as much as a big deal, or worry about overcoming it, because I've been through it enough times to understand it's just natural and will go away once I have enough experiences with the horse. Knowledge and experience are the enemies of fear. The main thing is to use the fear to help us think about safety, but not to let it affect our actions toward the horse (such as becoming frustrated or angry). Easier said than done! But something I work on.


Great stories and examples in the last few posts. And I am aspiring to get to stage of "not fearing having fear." I think where I am right now is...something happens that is scary, my first reaction might be to grab a rein or say "STOP," but I am now at the point where the first reaction might be involuntary, but in the next moment, I can at least process the fact that I am scared and what I am doing in response isn't helping. What I want to get to is to break that involuntary reaction, where the first action is to recognize "this is scary," and the next action is a thought that says "getting loud with her is not helping" and the behavior towards her is more intentional. Per that negative punishment thread, I'm not saying there is never going to be a dangerous moment where a quick, strong redirection needs to happen (e.g., shying away from something in the woods that launches you towards oncoming traffic), but a frustrated crowhop because we are walking slowly to allow our friends to keep up with us is not something that should be so scary to me to cause that involuntary reaction. I think the rational answer in that situation is the acknowledge it makes me nervous --> ride forward anyway to release that tension --> circle around or backtrack to allow the friend to stay close. But don't take frustration out on Fizz, it's not her fault she's riding with a horse that has a smaller stride than her.

I've noticed this reaction in myself working with Hugh too. He is now over a year old and so, so strong. He still really dislikes being passed by big trucks if he's leashed and walking on the road, and he erupts at them barking and lunging. With the road as icy as it is, I worry he is now strong enough he could pull me right off my feet, so when he has that reaction it makes me want to grab him by the harness and pull him back away from the road. I need a better response because getting yanked like that just makes him more upset.


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## egrogan

Unrelated to this discussion, in a sign that warmer days are coming, this morning I was greeted by a dramatic sight when I went out to feed: the foot or so of snow on top of the shed roof finally let go last night. It doesn’t look like any horses were buried in the avalanche, thank goodness.

















Its nice that it finally came off, but let me tell you, shoveling that heavy, densely packed mess was a real PITA!!

(PS-please ignore the poopy mess, I had not picked it up yet and they clearly stood in front of the sheds all night because of the avalanche!)


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> What I want to get to is to break that involuntary reaction, where the first action is to recognize "this is scary," and the next action is a thought that says "getting loud with her is not helping" and the behavior towards her is more intentional.


Amen and hallelujah! It looks like my future riding may involve more paved roads. It will mean back to wearing a helmet all the time and I'm pretty sure Bandit won't approve of all the neighbors. The selling realtor has already warned us of a horse sculpture someone put next to their driveway. She says live horses HATE it! Balancing the need for safety with not overreacting will be a challenge.


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## Knave

That is a funny thing to imagine @bsms ! I remember a video where they introduced some horses to a pretend stuffed horse (with humans inside to make it move I believe). There were a lot of interesting reactions! Lol

Oh Egrogan I hope warmer days are coming! I didn’t know what @gottatrot said about the turkey buzzards. Now I am going to keep an eye out for them. Queen is shedding just a tiny bit, and Cash has a little slip around his forelock, but those are my only signs of springtime, except the baby calves of course.


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## egrogan

Vet came this morning for Lyme vaccines. I brought the horses up to the barn about an hour early to give them a much needed deep clean. With blankets on and off so much, they get a quick brush in between changes but I haven’t given them a deep curry in awhile. Talking about spring-LOOK!! 








Izzy cracked me up, I spent the most time on her because she had the most hair flying off in all directions, plus she had a lot of dead mane that I needed to pull out. Unfortunately having the blanket hood on does run some of it, but it doesn’t seem as bad as last year. 30 minutes later when the vet showed up, we had to pull her out of the fresh shavings, where she had been happily dozing.








So much for a deep clean! 😂


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## Avna

Took me awhile to catch up on back posts here ... interesting discussion about fear of getting hurt and fear of "not being good enough". I have a couple of thoughts although nothing very original.

I have long -- _long_-- thought that competition is way overdone in our society, and that on balance it is far more destructive than it is positive. There is a big segment of horse people who for whatever reason have come up believing that competition is the only way to be a 'real' horse person. Their first exposure to horses was in a lesson barn where the aim was to produce competitive riders, and they never really experienced any other facet of riding to any great degree. I believe you see this more in English styles, as there has always been a big population of western riders whose sole aim is trail riding.

I probably feel so negatively about competition because I don't enjoy it. Even when I win, there's so much stress involved it never seems worth it. So I have this jaundiced view going in. I see how horribly horses are often treated in the service of prizes, and it turns me off even more.

Fearing getting hurt seems a function of two separate things. One is not riding as a child, and the other is surviving a bad fall. I can't imagine getting on a sproingy horse like mine and casually heading off alone down a steep rocky trail if I had not spent a sizeable chunk of my childhood doing exactly that. Even now, when I first swing up after a long hiatus I always have this moment of "hey, there's nothing to hold on to up here!" Then it goes away. But for all the times my horses have dumped me, I have never gotten terribly hurt. I don't know how I would react to that.

I also lose my temper pretty regularly. Oh, that is a part of my personality I wish I didn't have. Seems like the main reason I get angry is because I have expectations. No expectations, no temper! Nothing I do out of anger is ever a good thing.

I have a tip for Hugh, though. When you see a truck coming down the road, have him sit and look at you for a treat. I say "watch me! watch me!" Keep little pieces of cheese or something with you (trainers use waist belt "bait bags"). This works for most dogs. Dogs think: _ack, scary truck, alarm alarm! Hey, I scared it off! Woo, I'm gonna do that next time too! _You have to interrupt that thought process. Preferably well before he starts barking and pulling. Take advantage of being able to see farther down the road than he can, and get him staring up greedily at your pocket _before_ vehicles pass.


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## PoptartShop

So much HAIR!!! LOL! I can't wait until my girl starts to shed a bit then we can get back to that shiny easy-to-groom coat hahaa. It is definitely hard to keep them clean in the winter. Especially since they just get so dusty with their thick coats!

Hahaha Izzy was full of shavings, that's so cute! She's like 'why'd you wake me from my nappppp!' 

I hope the warmer days come to you soon, too!


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## Knave

I can’t wait until everyone is shedded out! I want so bad to see what color Queen will be, and just to get rid of that ick hair.

Mama Pepper has started to shed some. She’s a dirty mess. I clean her corral every day, and still she’s coated with poop that I can’t brush off. I am impatiently waiting for the day it is warm enough to wash her. It won’t be until May at best, but I am still anxious.


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## carshon

We have a horse blanketed now (winter laminitis) and She is the only clean one. The downside is she is afraid to lay down and sleep with a blanket on! We are quickly melting and our roof avalanche also came crashing down - burying the hay room door. You are right PITA with all of the shoveling. Mud season will start here soon - we are in ice berg season now as the snow melts and turns the ground into an ice rink. I truly despice spring!


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## egrogan

I came in the other night with a pop quiz for lovely husband. We've been having really extreme weather, with intense, 20-40mph winds and very cold temps, and I'm struggling to keep hay from blowing into the water buckets. The other night, I filled up a small, 5 gal bucket and brought it around to each of the horses to offer them a good drink at night check. My riddle to lovely husband was to name the horse based on their reaction: Horse 1 took a long, greedy drink, finishing almost the whole bucket very fast. Horse 2 wanted the water, but wanted to alternate bites of hay with shallow drinks. Horse 3 was excited at the sight of the bucket, but upon realizing it was not food, banged it around violently with her nose and then kicked it over, making an icy puddle  As soon as I described Horse 3, he laughed and said, "Isabel, no question." And he was right. It was such a classic Isabel reaction. She has always been such a grump- a cute, entertaining grump, but a grump all the same.

Yesterday was her 27th birthday. She got a lot of soft peppermints to celebrate, and seemed to like the attention. I'm hoping she has many more years of gracing us with her grumpy personality 🎂








A sort of strange coincidence- I've been trying to sell Izzy's dressage saddle. As much as I love riding in it because it fit me so well, it never really fit Fizz right, and Izzy is really and truly retired, so it seemed silly to just have it sit in a closet and not get used. I posted in a few places on FB, and the first interested person I heard from was actually the lovely woman who bred Hugh's dad, and does some eventing on large ponies with her teenage daughter. They've had the saddle on trial for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday had a fitting consultation and decided it would work well for her daughter and pony. And, the cool coincidence, it was her daughter's birthday yesterday too! So Izzy's saddle finds a wonderful new home on her birthday, as a birthday gift to a great teenager. I like when the stars align in that way. 😄


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## carshon

Happy Birthday Izzy!!! I hope your temps turn around. We are entering freeze thaw freeze time of year. Everything is a sheet of ice now and my girls are hating it! I despise Spring! And I also love happy coincidences. What a lovely birthday gift.


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## egrogan

@carshon - free, thaw, freeze is the worst, with a close second being when the freeze part stops and it's all mud. Next week we might see temps up in the 50s for a couple of days. We have a lot of snow to melt before we get into mud, but that will be the next thing I complain about once it gets here, don't worry


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## egrogan

We're starting to feel a little bit of a thaw. It's still really cold at night so things are re-freezing, but it was nice enough over the weekend to take a walk and check out the footing down the road. I was pleasantly surprised, except for in the deep shade, the road was actually fairly ice-free. Probably could have ridden instead of walked!








Some of you might remember the neighbors down the road who hung out their deer and bear last fall and decided to just...leave it. Well, the bear did come down around the holidays, but the deer carcass is still there. You can just barely see it still hanging out under the tree. The bones are a very sparkly bleached white at this point. I kept thinking it would fall out of the tree every time we got snow and ice, but they apparently know how to tie a knot  Lovely husband and I are taking bets on what will happen first: will we get our vaccines, high speed internet, or see the carcass fall out of the tree? Only time will tell...








Sugaring season is here though. That's always the surest sign of spring.








We should get some good melting this week, after today, temps go up to the 50s, and no precipitation forecast until next week! I am hoping to ride but my work schedule may not cooperate. We'll see what magic I can work to be able to get out at least a couple of times.


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## carshon

Why kill the deer if you are not going to eat it? what a waste! freeze thaw continues here. We are estimated to be near 60 the next 3 days and then rain comes in and temps drop to the low 40's during the day. Looks like mud season will come to NW IL. Hope you get to ride soon!


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## egrogan

@carshon, they actually did butcher it out (and the bear too). For some reason, they just couldn't take that final step of taking down the carcass. It ended up being a nice treat for the birds for the beginning part of the winter, but it's picked clean now. 

Good luck with the mud/ice combo. We'll get through this


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## PoptartShop

Awww, happy birthday Izzy!!   Pretty girl!! 27 never looked so good, I'd say!


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## egrogan

Saying goodbye to the polar bear hair!















Fizz's white coat always lets go first-in a couple of weeks she’ll be starting to turn black before she goes golden again.


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## egrogan

Such a great day today- it was nearly 60*F and sunny. We had to head out for a ride with that kind of weather! It was so strange riding along through warm breezes, and then suddenly being hit with a cool breeze when the wind changed direction and came at your directly off the snow. Hard to explain...

As you can see, the roads were mucky and goopy, but I didn't expect there to be as many frozen sections as there were. The areas that stay shaded had a thin melted layer on top, but every step made a hard, hollow sound, so I knew I was going to have to be careful coming back home down the hills we went up on the way out.








The first half of the ride, we were marching along and I was filled with warm and fuzzy feelings about what a nice horse Fizz is, to be able to have been off for two months and then to be so good being saddled and ridden out for the first time with no special preparation or lunging or anything. Just saddled up and off we went. I actually let out a long, contented sigh as we rode along, and she was so tuned in that deep breath and exhale actually caused her to stop and look back at me, wondering why I asked her to whoa. I fed her peppermints and told her she was a very good girl, and we continued on. 

When we got to the overlook, we turned right instead of left, which meant we were going on a "real ride," rather than just our quick out and back to admire the view. Riding in this direction, she got a little less enthusiastic about going along together holding hands and whistling in the warm breeze  She couldn't quite drag me over to the ditch to spin around, because the snow bank was there, but she started taking really teeny tiny steps and threatening to stall out. She did plant her feet once, and I gave her a tap-tap-tap on her butt and she kicked up at the stick with her hind leg. Ooohhh....attitude still in there I guess! Anyway, that was as much as it escalated and she got going again- I picked a posted sign about 1/4 mile up the road and decided if she walked along willing until that point, we'd turn around. I couldn't really ask her to trot along, which would have helped, because we were on one of those hidden icy mud patches. But we made it to the spot I had in mind, and turned around. She got a little jiggy when we turned, so I tried doing that deep breathing that had caused her to stop earlier in the ride. It helped a little, but she was still intent on going home. At that point, we were at one of the steeper downhills, and she started tossing and shaking her head around a bit. A very inopportune moment to meet a truck coming towards us, but she's sensible about that stuff and although she had been fussy and throwing her head around when he approached, when he passed she walked along quietly as far over to the side of the road as we could get and sort of dropped the fussiness.

We continued on towards home at a relaxed pace, but had one scare when we hit a patch of black ice and all four feet suddenly slid forward a larger-than-comfortable distance. I had to sort of scoop her up with the reins and my seat when she unexpectedly pitched forward. After that, I could feel her really wanting to stay in contact through the reins, but that made for a very nice walk the rest of the way. I'd call it a huge success for our first ride of the season!

























I did notice that someone was a little...ahem...fluffy when I put the saddle on. I had to give her an entire extra girth hole! I suppose we can blame it partially on the winter coat. Partially. Does anyone think the saddle looks placed too far forward here? I didn't necessarily feel out of position while riding, but I was also trying out a new seat saver, so everything felt a bit different because of that anyway.









This warm weather isn't going to last, but I can't even complain about that because today was such a great day to get out. Tomorrow the dentist comes for all three of them, so likely won't ride after that depending on what he has to do. But hopefully cooler temps on the weekend won't mean the ice is back.


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## Knave

That ride sounds kind of stressful!

It snowed here again... it is sad to be reminded wintertime will hang around another couple months in my area. Queen has started to shed a little though.

Those bones blow my mind! Maybe I am just used to coyotes everywhere, but in my mind bones don’t stay together!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Those bones blow my mind! Maybe I am just used to coyotes everywhere, but in my mind bones don’t stay together!


Isn’t it weird?? We have tons of coyotes here too, and given how hard the winter was I really thought something would come and take it apart. Doesn’t connective tissue break down? It’s a mystery to me.

Can’t wait to see what Queen looks like when she sheds out!


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## Knave

I can’t either! I think it will be a while before she is shedded out, but it’s nice to see it starting. I will have to send a picture to the guys at the corrals because we were all betting on what color she would end up being. Dad says a roan, but he thinks she’ll always be colored with that same look she has now in wintertime. He saw a few older horses with her coloring I guess.

The guys at the blm were on different pages too, but the main guy we dealt with is convinced she is grey. We will see soon enough I guess!

I think the deer is just the weirdest thing. It’s pretend seeming. I wonder how long it will last that way...


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## carshon

Congratulations on your first ride! Spring is right around the corner!


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## egrogan

The weather really can’t make up it’s mind. Friday, the horsey dentist came, and it was warm and sunny. Lots of melting happening. Unfortunately with taking time for the appointment, I couldn't also take time to ride, but it was worth it to get him here early in the season. Everyone actually got a pretty good bill of health from him- even Izzy. She's not growing much, if any, new tooth these days, so he is very, very conservative with her. But he did clean up a couple of sharp spots where needed, and didn't see anything infected, broken, or loose to raise with our regular vet. She'll of course also look and feel around, but all my fingers and crossed that she doesn't see anything that will require an in-office visit for extraction or x-rays.

Fizz and Maggie were both in good shape too. Both had some hooks filed, and he was pleased that some corrective work he had done in June for "wave mouth" with Fizz had really stayed where it needed to be and didn't require much additional work. 

Even the chickens were thrilled with the bright, warm weather, and wanted to venture outside. If you can see the (broken) metal hinge at the bottom left of the door that the chicken seems to be looking at- the snow was well above that hinge until things started melting this week. We're finally able to go in and out of the door without taking a huge step down into the barn from the packed snow.









Saturday was another gorgeous day, and the snow banks continued to recede. The wind picked up a little which helped dry the road out. After running errands most of the morning, I had to make myself focus on starting to deal with the emerging poop pile- the absolute worst part of spring arriving. Slow and steady though is the way to do it, until it's dry enough to get the tractor out to finish scraping it out.

I had a lot of close supervision as I worked, who also enjoyed the sun...








...as well as enjoying frequent rolls in the melting snow to scratch itchy backs as the hair continues coming off.









But today, unfortunately, was back to winter. It was really cold, only in the 20s, with 25mph wind gusts which hit you so hard in the face it made your eyes water. Tomorrow will be the same. But the for the next week, it's looking to be low 40s, sunny, no precipitation. Mud season may move quickly this year, let's hope!


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## Knave

Those first sunny days are so joyful feeling, don’t you think?

Wintertime came back to my house last week, but yesterday the sun was back out and the wind was calm. Of course we had somewhere to be... ugh. Lol


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## egrogan

Yes, when it's a sunny spring day, sometimes I find myself just standing with my eyes closed facing the sun. It's like you can feel the Vitamin D soaking into your skin!! ☀


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## Knave

Definitely! One February day the oldest and I laid ourselves out on the side of the house, where the wind is blocked and the sun was shining. She said we should nap, and we did! I forget how much I love just soaking in the sun.


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## PoptartShop

Agreed. It's back to the cold today, I was really enjoying some spring weather...nope!
I'm glad they are starting to shed though, yay! So nice to see them sunbathing!


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## egrogan

I can honestly say I’ve never experienced such sustained high winds like we’ve had all weekend. It is just punishing when it’s in the teens and there’s a constant gust hitting you from all directions.

Hugh and I went out at lunch to refill hay nets (can’t leave anything on the ground since it’s immediately carried off on the wind). He had fun running around, but you can see how crazy the wind was on his fluffy coat.


























I don’t know what’s caused such extremes this winter, but this definitely feels like a part of winter that is changing, not for the better!


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## PoptartShop

Dealing with the cold is annoying enough - when you add fierce winds to it...I CANNOT STAND IT! LOL. I know how you feel. Our hay feeder toppled over this weekend (nobody got hurt) because the winds were so bad, it's never been that bad but nothing would stay in it so we had to bring it in & just hang more nets for the night then bring it out again in the AM when the wind stopped. I am not a fan of the wind at all. 

Putting hay out is so not fun in the wind. LOL. 

Hugh looks so fluffy and cute! He's adorable in the snow!


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## egrogan

@PoptartShop - glad the flying hay feeder didn't hurt anyone! I know someone here in VT whose whole run-in shed blew over in the wind 😨 Fortunately, none of their horses were hurt either. Still chilly today, but at least it's calm.


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## bsms

We've had 3 weeks of high winds (25 mph with gusts to 40). Today seems to be 30 gusts to 50. We tend to get a lot of wind in the spring but this is ridiculous! I refuse to ride when it is windy enough that I need to hang on to the horn to prevent being blown off! ;>)


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## Knave

There always seems to be wind here. I am not a fan of the wind. Sometimes it blows down people’s barns. Ick.


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## egrogan

Here’s the first patch of grass to poke out from under the snow in the pasture... ☀


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## egrogan

The official arrival of spring ushered in a fabulously horsey weekend. On Saturday, I got up bright and early to volunteer at the Vermont Equine Riding and Driving Association (VERDA) "March Meltdown" competitive trail ride. It was well below freezing to start the day, and there were only 8 riders (2 doing a 25, and the rest doing a 15 mile intro), so vetting in was pretty leisurely. Also, all CTRs (at least in our region) this year are running as Pass/Fail (vs. scored) because of Covid, so that made scribing _really _easy. The vet still checked all the metabolic markers, lameness, muscle tone, etc., but as a scribe all I had to do was mark a big "P" across all the sections of the vet form. I met some great people and am really thrilled that VERDA is making a big push this year to have lots of educational/mentored events for new riders. I got signed up for a new FB page focused on introduction to distance riding in VT, and I am also volunteering at our local horse park GMHA to help kick off outreach to new "green beans." My biggest goal is to get a couple of mentored intro and/or LD rides this year, and I think that's going to be possible. Feeling really optimistic about the season already!

Since the ride was short and everyone who went out was very experienced, we were done by noon and I had plenty of time to come home and take advantage of the sunshine and warm temps to get out with Fizz. We headed out to the overlook, and continued past the house down the Cavendish hill. Fizz got noodly once she understood we were going down the hill, but the snowbanks did work to my advantage because she couldn't jump in the ditch to spin around back uphill. We made it about halfway down the hill, ping ponging from side to side, when a truck approached. Frustrating! I don't mind working through the hill issues when the road is clear, but I wasn't going to mess around with it with traffic coming, so I hopped off. It ended up being a neighbor, who stopped to talk and ask if I was ok. I always seem to see her when things are going south and I'm getting off, which is a bit embarrassing 😳 At any rate, she drove off, and I walked Fizz back up to the top of the hill. I got back on from a snowbank at the house, and we continued on our way. She was a bit jiggy heading towards home, but mostly kept it together. 








I hopped off again to walk her when we were close to home, because she was really sweaty. As we were walking along, she took a massive stumble, skidding across the ground on her knees and dragging her nose on the ground. When she popped back upright, she was licking and yawning and making weird motions with her mouth, so I was worried she had done some damage. I looked in her mouth, and she hadn't bit her tongue, but I did find a spot where she bit the corner of her bottom lip, drawing a little blood. Poor thing. Fortunately it seemed to be pretty surface level, and it wasn't bothering her later in the day or while eating. I have no idea what tripped her up, but I was sort of glad I wasn't on her back when it happened as I probably would have dragged my face across the road too! 









Sunday was equally gorgeous, and even warmer, with temps up around 50*F. I went out the opposite direction, down the hill of despair for the first time all season. I was pleasantly surprised that she was forward and not balky heading down the hill. 








Our neighbors in that direction had some logging done a few weeks ago, and there were still some trees piled up at the landing, plus a new logging road cleared out, so I wasn't sure what she'd do given how different everything looked. She paused for a minute looking at the stack of horse eating trees on the ground, but got over that pretty easily and continued. We had a good trot up the next hill, waited for a little traffic at the paved road, and kept going towards the German Shepherd and donkey house. She started stalling out at that point, and I just kept at it, doing what I could to encourage her forward. Of course, that's when a truck was heading in our direction (is it only me that seems to have traffic appear exactly when things are starting to fall apart?!), and it was a friend who wanted to stop and talk. Fizz didn't mind the stopping part at first. But she got more antsy as we stood there, tossing her head and pawing. Friend is horsey so got the message that it was time for us to go  The German Shepherd had come out to the end of his electric fence and was barking his head off at us, so I decided we'd had enough good moments for the day and we'd turn around to go back the way we'd come. At that point, Fizz was fixated on home and was jigging and throwing her head. It was a good place to just let her trot, which I thought would help her settle down, but it ended up doing the opposite- with every stride, her back got tighter and tighter and her steps got shorter and choppier. Since we had to cross the paved road again, and the nice day had brought out a lot of traffic, I did get off to walk her across the intersection. She calmed down a bit with the handwalking and easy ground work- she actually did several very nice turns on the forehand and backed up lightly. By the time we were across the road, it seemed like she was in a good head space for me to mount up again for the last little stretch uphill towards home. The logging landing was a convenient spot to get back on- after she had the chance to sniff and nibble some pine bark...








My butt hit the saddle and it was immediately clear that she was not as calm as she had looked from the ground. I let her take off at a trot up the hill, and she was even choppier and humping up through her back. That quickly became a short, choppy canter with little mad bucks thrown in. That was what I had been worried about happening on the pavement, so I'm glad I had gotten off. But as weird as this sounds, I'm actually _really glad_ she started doing that uncomfortable canter and little bucks, because it gave me a chance to prove to myself that I could ride through it. I just sat deep, kept her head up, and told her to stop being such a jerk. By this time, we were home (we hadn't been very far away), and she was trotting again, albeit unhappily. I decided we were going to trot right past home and keep going until she was relaxed again. So we passed Izzy and Maggie screaming for her and headed up the road in the direction of the overlook. I wondered if she'd try to throw on the brakes when she realized I intended to keep going, but I guess I was riding her forward enough that she didn't consider it. We trotted along, up (and down!) the first small hills, and by the time we were almost to the overlook, she was trotting along on a loose rein with a relaxed back and neck. Success! I asked her if she wanted to walk, which she did, and we turned around for home, walking the rest of the way on the buckle. It was a small thing, but I was bubbling with happiness that we got through a potentially nasty situation.








Lovely husband was outside when we passed the house, so he snapped a couple of cute pictures.
















Including...cookie time...for a good ending to the ride.








This gorgeous weather is here to stay all week- sunny, dry, and nearly 60*F right through the weekend. The first half of the week is frustratingly busy with work, but I am determined to figure out how to sneak in a few rides. Fingers crossed.


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## gottatrot

Great job on the ride!


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## Knave

I so understand where you are coming from! It seems to me that I have this hold back with a horse until I have ridden them when I didn’t get them calmed down quick enough. When I’ve seen them mad and I’ve seen them scared and I have gotten through the other side of that, then I feel confident. It is knowing I can ride them that gives me that feeling.

Cash, I know I can ride when he is scared. I have ridden him mad, and he’s a little cranky naturally. Lol. I’ve never ridden him when he truly blew up though. Sure, I’ve ridden a jump or two, but I’ve always been able to stop him. I guess I now rely on that, because I’m not sure I could ride him if I couldn’t stop him. He’s so strong. It’s not that he’s fast or can get out from under me, but because those couple jumps I’ve ridden have always knocked the wind out of me! I’ve never had another horse do that!


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## egrogan

Well it makes me happy to be in such good company @Knave. I suppose as a somewhat "worst case scenario" thinker, having the worst case scenario present itself is one way I move forward and improve.


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## egrogan

*Playing chicken with traffic, charging bulls, and a possibly sprained ankle?*

It was gloriously sunny yesterday, so after I got through all my work meetings- including two grumpy clients- I couldn't wait to go ride before dinner. We went out to the overlook.








Even though the snow is melting, you can still see the ski trails up on the mountain...








With no traffic on the horizon, I decided we'd tackle going down the big Cavendish hill. She definitely does not want to do this, but was better about it than last time. She wasn't jumping around as much and stayed fairly straight, though she did come to a stop a couple of times and need to get going again. We both noticed the cattle at the bottom of the hill, but they didn't seem to bother her too much since they were standing around eating. After those couple of stops and starts, I was very proud of her when we finally made it to the bottom - with me still in the saddle instead of leading her.

We rode a little ways up the road before turning around to come back home. As has happened on these first few rides, as soon as we turned back towards home, her energy immediately spiked up and she started jigging along. It's frustrating because her walk "out" away from home is nice and forward, but calm. But as soon as we turn around, her head shoots up, her back tenses, and if I touch the reins at all she starts to lean right into my hands to drag me forward hard. I wasn't too concerned because we had to go back up the steep hill we had just come down, and I figured that would take some of the steam out of her pretty quickly. So we're boining along, and then of course, what happens...a truck comes flying over the crest of the hill and barrelling towards us. People don't usually drive very fast in this spot because the road is narrow and it's sp steep, but he was going way too fast. So, I picked up the reins hard to steer her as far over to the side of the road as I could (no shoulder, just a drainage ditch filled with water), and she responded by fighting my hands and crowhopping into the middle of the road. Fortunately the driver had the sense to see this wasn't going well and came to a stop while I hopped off and apologized to him profusely. I should have just gotten off and started leading her when I saw him coming, but I will admit I had been hoping not to have to walk up that big hill, and I had really wanted to work through the jigging from the saddle. Oh well, not worth an accident...

The truck drove off, and she was still really agitated, still jigging along next to me. This got the attention of the three big black bulls eating from the hay rack near the road, and all of a sudden they decided to come trotting over to see what we were all about  I'll just say _that _was even less helpful than a speeding driver! What had started as an annoyed horse turned into a freaking out horse. When they started running, she started snorting and blowing, eyes rolling and showing the whites, running circles and doing little rears around me. For a minute I worried I wouldn't be able to hold her because I stupidly still had the reins around her neck and had just been leading her by holding the left rein up near her head. So while she scrambled in circles around me blowing at the cattle, I did get the reins over her head and at least was able to put a little distance between us so she didn't trample me. I huffed and puffed my way up this ridiculously steep hill flying a kite (I am _not _in shape yet for this kind of excitement!!) and the cattle trotted along their fence line following us, which did not make things better. Finally they lost interest, we got to the top of the hill and just stood there for a minute to catch our breath. She let out a big sigh and was over it. I got back on from the side of the hill, and the tense jigging was gone, so we had a perfectly pleasant ride the rest of the way home.

I'm really looking forward to be able to get out on some of our loop routes, instead of doing the out-and-backs, but unfortunately the loops have trails through the woods and they still aren't passable because of the snow. I'm not sure what else to do about the change in attitude when turning towards home. In the past, I've tried the strategy of turning back away from home but it seemed to make her even more amped up the next time we turned back home. I can of course get off and walk, and that makes her manageable, but I'd rather not have a fire breathing dragon on the second half of every ride.

Oh...where does the possibly sprained ankle come into the picture? Not from the riding or the on-the-ground antics. It's from dismounting in my front yard and turning over my left ankle in a hole when I got off. 😬 There is finally some grass in the front yard, so I wanted to give her a few minutes to graze while she was cooling down. I got off, and my ankle just disappeared below me, accompanied with a very unpleasant crunch, an instant wave of nausea, and my ears ringing. I felt like the wind had gotten knocked out of me, and had to just lean on her for a minute until my body recovered. I was able to walk gingerly, so I got her back to the field, untacked, and let loose. I did a lot of icing and elevating last night, and so far there's no bruising or even any noticeable swelling. It seems stiff when I get up after sitting for awhile, but especially when I'm wearing my tall muck boots, I seem to be able to walk ok. I'm on the fence about whether I need to go to the doctor and get things x-rayed. It seems a little silly since there are no outward signs aside from a little pain in the top part of my foot (moreso than the ankle itself), but I also don't want to ignore something that will become a major problem later. @SueC, am I remembering correctly that this is similar to your broken foot from a couple of years ago? I don't want to mess around with something that would knock me out of the riding season. I guess I'm in a "wait and see" mode for today and will decide what to do based on how things are tonight.


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## knightrider

Don't like the sprained ankle part, but you certainly have handled a lot of hairy situations well. In your other post, you said it was "a small thing", but I think it was a big thing, and worthy of triumph. I still remember your first posts about trail riding with Izzie. You've come such a long way!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I got off, and my ankle just disappeared below me, accompanied with a very unpleasant crunch, an instant wave of nausea, and my ears ringing. I felt like the wind had gotten knocked out of me, and had to just lean on her for a minute until my body recovered. I was able to walk gingerly, so I got her back to the field, untacked, and let loose. I did a lot of icing and elevating last night, and so far there's no bruising or even any noticeable swelling. It seems stiff when I get up after sitting for awhile, but especially when I'm wearing my tall muck boots, I seem to be able to walk ok. I'm on the fence about whether I need to go to the doctor and get things x-rayed. It seems a little silly since there are no outward signs aside from a little pain in the top part of my foot (moreso than the ankle itself), but I also don't want to ignore something that will become a major problem later. @SueC, am I remembering correctly that this is similar to your broken foot from a couple of years ago? I don't want to mess around with something that would knock me out of the riding season. I guess I'm in a "wait and see" mode for today and will decide what to do based on how things are tonight.


Sounds like a sprained ankle to me - I had one of those once in a similar situation - got off the horse in a hurry (was actually riding to a landline phone because one of our riders in a group ride had a broken collarbone and the satellite phone wasn't working), didn't check out the landing terrain, and my left foot landed on top of a boulder the size and shape of a cannonball. That was a spectacular roll. It's the one time I've sprained my ankle, and I did it properly. I'll find you a photo...










If you'd broken a bone, you'd not be walking - you'd be screaming even trying to hop on your good foot, or indeed trying to get home on all fours with the broken foot up behind you. Foot fractures are excruciating - even when you're completely at rest, they produce pulsating pain, for quite a while after stabilisation of the fracture.

Here's the description of what breaking a foot felt like, and how I got the horse back to the tie rail before going to hospital: Trotters, Arabians, Donkeys and Other People

I knew I'd broken my foot fractionally before the pain hit, because it sounded like a gunshot, and I'd heard that this sound often goes with fracturing bones (properly, not hairline).

I wish you a speedy recovery. You can get elastic ankle support braces from your chemist, which are highly recommended for recovery from sprains - it will help you stabilise the area - because if you roll it again while you're trying to heal (and it's less stable when it's healing than when it's normal), you can do worse damage to already injured tissues. Wearing hiking or other boots with good ankle support is also a good idea when you're going about outdoors tasks with a sprained ankle.

A smaller possibility than a sprained ankle (which is what you'd expect from a roll) is a hairline fracture, but those hurt when you walk - nowhere near as much as a proper fracture, more like a dull ache. Those you just rest a lot. Usually though, in people with healthy bones, you need to have either a lot of leverage or a high impact speed on a funny angle to make a bone fracture.

In other matters, reading about your ride really reminded me of how my Arabian mare used to behave, and Romeo too, on the way home - all that nervous jigging at the walk. I ended up trotting them home, then they didn't jig and settled down. But when my mare was in her late 20s I didn't want to do that anymore because she needed to take things a bit easier and have a proper warm-down on the way home. Could never get it. She'd lather up in a sweat and jig like a parade horse, even if I got off and led her. She'd burn more calories fighting me than trotting. I tried all sorts of things; all the standard stuff you do with jiggers and a few non-standard things too, but the easiest thing was to let her trot home at a relatively slow pace (she really wanted to run flat-out, but a medium trot was a compromise that she was happy enough with to settle).

I've got to say, it's a real luxury riding an athletic horse that's just as happy to slow down as to go fast. I never have this issue riding Sunsmart. He does get more keen on the way home and suggests to me that we could be trotting, cantering etc, and we'll do some of that - but he never jigs or pulls or fights me. He just snorts at me and sometimes does a little leap when he wants to go faster. But he walks normal and relaxed, thank goodness. I feel for you - my mare was a lovely riding horse, but had this one issue, and it's hard work trying to fight a horse. Will your mare compromise with you if you let her trot, or does she pull at you then too and not settle?


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## Knave

Although I do understand what @SueC is saying about the pain, don’t forget that little girl went around being forced to even play volleyball with what ended up being two broken arms 11 days later. I couldn’t see them. They never swelled or bruised. She just kept saying they hurt. Yet, she used them fine and it really seemed like they couldn’t be broken... the final straw was when she called crying from PE, and said she was playing volleyball, which already hurt, and she fell and braced herself with her hands.

Anyways, I finally said I’d come get her and take her in, and I received an award for stellar parenting. 🙄 Not too far from the tree, as I have a floating vertebrae just touching my spinal cord in my neck from the same sort of decision. It doesn’t hurt to get an X-ray. This is my realization.

I don’t know what you do about the turning around. The girls and I played a game this last summer. We took our horses so far each day, that we knew they wouldn’t have the ambition to get wound up about turning around. It seemed a good plan. The horses and girls got a lot more broke, and they were super fun days.


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## SueC

Were those greenstick fractures, @Knave? Or does your little girl have a high pain tolerance?


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## egrogan

Thanks @SueC and @Knave. Sue, I remembered the story of how you broke your foot but mis-remembered the part of the foot that you injured. I definitely don't have excruciating pain nor visible bruising, just some stiffness from sitting at my desk working (need to go sit in a chair where I can elevate on a footrest for a bit). I'm also hearing both sets of opinions from other horsey friends who have rolled an ankle while dismounting: it's fairly neatly divided between people who say get an x-ray for piece of mind, and those who say rest, ice, elevate.  I think I'll just call the doctor's office and see what she suggests.

As far as the jigging towards home- if last year is a model, this will get better as we get back into a routine. She was this way in the spring, but worked out of it with more miles as the year went on. Sometimes I can let her trot home, and expect that it will relax her, but other times given the hill situation, an unbalanced and agitated trot isn't all that safe. Our rides are short right now too, just 2-3 miles at a time, so as we go out on longer rides she won't have as much left in the proverbial tank to fuss her way home.


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## Knave

These shorter rides are always a bit harder I think too.

@SueC I believe the family tends toward a high pain tolerance. The clinic here though now has something written up about taking us seriously if we call. Lol. I have been so frustrated when before they turned away big girl who had dislocated her wrist in practice. They didn’t believe her or even see her, because she didn’t complain about it.

I knew she didn’t over-exaggerate because I have seen her dislocate other parts at practice. Last year she popped her collarbone out and the coach put it back in for her. It takes a while for anyone to understand that they are just tough that way.


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## bsms

I broke my ankle in high school. The military doctor said it was just a sprain and I should be exercising it - which I tried to do in the lobby. Finally an A1C (Airman First Class, E3) walked by while the X-rays were on a light board and said, "_Oh look! Broken in three places!_" Minutes later, they decided I needed a hip cast. When the hip cast finally came off, I was told to exercise . I complained at a follow up appointment the next week that it hurt when I kicked the ball in soccer. The doctor explained he meant I should be spending more like an hour a day off crutches, walking - not playing soccer with my crutches in the closet. The ache in my ankle didn't go away for about 10 years. Not sure if it has any relevance but I'll offer it as a data point.

We've had wind gusts over 40 mph for the last week. Finally no wind but it is raining - which is a good thing even if I refuse to ride in the rain. We desperately need it. Supposed to then have 2 more days of high winds and then a week of good riding weather. Judging from the last time I rode Bandit, we'll have to work on the whole herd bound thing. Took him a couple hundred yards down the paved road and he freaked out over some neighbors working in their yard. He scrambled up an embankment and we had an argument, after which he trotted back past _The Horrible Horse-Eating Neighbors_. They were laughing and waved. I had my hands full - literally - and waving back wasn't an option. Hopefully I'll be able to push him further than last year. But it won't be automatic.

And I'm sure some folks will assume I just am not a _Fearless Leader of Horses_. But on this thread, at least, I think people will understand.


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## egrogan

In happy news, Hugh’s mom delivered a healthy litter of 7 full siblings yesterday


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## egrogan

Here is the tale of this winter in two photos...

First pic, mid-December, so much snow the water tub was buried. Snow also completely buried bottom strand of fence and was sitting halfway between strands one and two (basically, mid-thigh height)







Second pic, this morning, after good melting. Just imagine snow halfway up that corner post.


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## phantomhorse13

Winter ending is a wonderful thing. Spring crazies seem to happen everywhere. I think you are doing a grear job dealing with Mz Attitude. Always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to cars and pavement and cattle (dying doesn't accomplish anything). 

If trotting home and then continuing past worked well, perhaps continue with that? Doesn't make the initial pass much more fun, but at least you get the second approach calm..


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## Knave

There is always the idea of working hard at home when you get back. Do a bunch of serpentines and that sort of thing, then turn away from the barn before you get off. That’s what I did for Zeus, but he overcame his barn sourness very quickly. I think for him it was simply a confidence issue. He’s the only barn sour horse I’ve come across.

I’ve had lots that get prancy on the way back to the trailer or house though. That’s why the girls and I had that as a goal.


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## gottatrot

Hero is very funny, he usually slows down when we turn back toward home. I think he has my same "finish line" anxiety, thinking that just because you made it this far, that's no guarantee you'll make it that last little distance safely. He's relieved when we turn around at first, but then he's like, "Wait a minute, now we have to make it all that way back?"


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## egrogan

@gottatrot, one more reason Coalie and Hero sound like long lost brothers. Coalie always slows down on the homestretch, like he’s just enjoying the ride too much for it to end...


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## bsms

Bandit doesn't slow down, but he's been known to spook 100 yards away....

If you plan on living forever, caution is called for! BTW - Did you know horses hand out medals, not for courage, but for caution? Bandit has a bunch of them.


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## PoptartShop

OMGoodness the pup pictures, I can't take it! How cute! <3 

Ouch about your ankle though, that's no fun. I hope it feels better!  Yay for winter starting to end, finally...you've had so much snow & ice! Nice to see it melting!
Way to go on the ride! The way you handled Fizz's anxiety was perfect though. I've had to do that with my horse many times - she also likes to do the pawing, & prancing around if she's antsy - sometimes, getting off & handwalking is all it takes. If you get back on, great, if not, that's great too.  I would've done the same thing! Once they start throwing their head, & a choppy stride, even if you're super relaxed, sometimes just getting off is best. 

Lovely pictures though, you guys look adorable!


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## egrogan

Spring is actually a really ugly time here, but there are small redeeming moments. I love how it _smells_ like spring in the mornings when I go out to do chores. One day, the birds were just back, and now it's a symphony outside in the mornings and in the evenings when I'm closing everyone in for the night.

Also, the ruffed grouse are entering mating season, so the woods line all around the pasture is practically vibrating every morning. You can hear the males drumming on logs, but more than hearing them, you can _feel _the drumming all through your body. It's a really crazy thing, actually. This is what it sounds like, but it loses a little something when you can't feel the vibrations too.





We've had a lot of gloomy, windy weather, but yesterday was bright and sunny so we went for a short ride to the overlook. I ordered a fancy athletic ankle brace thinking it would help me keep my ankle happy, but it isn't here yet, so I thought I'd be ok if I just took things easy. It had been a week since we rode, and Fizz is still out of shape too, so she was happy enough just walking going up the hills to the overlook.








I tried to take @Knave's advice and keep the ride short, turning around a little sooner than we usually do so we didn't even begin to have the idea that it was worth getting riled up. I also tried to do everything in an extra-quiet way; only asked for a little trot on the flat spots when her walk was very quiet. Asked for turn on the forehand in both directions and over-exaggerated each quarter turn, stopping and waiting quietly with each turn before going into the next step. Even with the strong winds at the top of the overlook she stayed nice and relaxed when we turned for home.

















When we got home, I carefully slid out of the saddle and made sure to land on my right leg instead of my left. The strained left ankle was a little achy and my toes were a little tingly (I was probably overcompensating and holding it at a weird angle), but it's fine today so no harm. 

There is just beginning to be a little new grass poking through the dreary dead stuff, so Fizz enjoyed nosing around through that for a few minutes before untacking.









And...now we're expecting snow tonight into tomorrow.  Hopefully not too much!!


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## Knave

I actually meant going very long, but the short seemed to work good too! 😂 

The girls and I have been talking about things you can feel, like the rattle from the birds. We have these big blasting shakes and sounds from the mine, and I can feel them inside. So, one the other day was small, but I jumped and my horse looked up, and the big girl was asking what our problem was. I asked her, and she said she doesn’t feel them inside!! Little girl said she does. I wonder if some people don’t feel those things internally though....


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## egrogan

Geez, I'm going to have to go back and check my reading comprehension 😬 I could have sworn you said you did a bunch of short rides, but clearly I'm remembering wrong  Oh well, a good ride is a good ride!

That's interesting about who can pick up those physical sensations. My lovely husband didn't notice the grouse until I pointed it out to him. It's so obvious to me, it feels like my whole body is pulsing. I think he's much more attuned to people and I'm much more attuned to nature.


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## Knave

I wonder if that is it, what people are attuned to. That’s why I felt the blast when it didn’t make much noise and the girl said she doesn’t even feel the big blasts inside. She’s good at people. hmm...

I could have easily written wrong what I meant to say. Lol


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## phantomhorse13

Glad you had a successful ride - whatever works! Hopefully you have found the key to keeping Fizz calm.

Hope momma nature doesn't play a big April Fool's joke on you (she is playing one on us here, too 🤬 ).


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## gottatrot

Those birds are amazing. At the Perth zoo we saw Cassowaries, and those make a cool drumming sound too. Again, on the video you can't feel the deep vibration they send out.


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## SueC

I loved those Ruffed Grouse sounds and have shared them around with other people. Plus, I got the vibrations as well because we've got a bass speaker under the office desk and it makes the desk shake! 

Wow, @gottatrot, you went to Perth Zoo!

...this is the Australian Lyre Bird... enjoy!


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## PoptartShop

So glad you had a nice relaxing ride on Fizz.  I hope your ankle brace helps too, when it arrives! It can definitely help to keep the ride short & simple when necessary. That is great!!
Isn't it so nice to see grass popping up?!! Like FINALLY! LOL.


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## egrogan

Mud season riding in full effect yesterday. People hear "mud season" and think that the annoyance is everything being, well...muddy. But that's not really even the issue. The problem with being on the roads during mud season- whether riding a horse or driving a car- is that the massive ruts that form in the muddy spots are really difficult to navigate. It can be almost scarier than driving in snow, because the ruts will suck the wheels of your car up and fling you from side to side with very little control; it's almost like driving on one of those bumper car tracks at a fair or amusement park, where you're always slightly out of control. We don't tend to have mud deep enough to really swallow up your car and get you stuck (thankfully!), but the ruts we get can cause you to skid unpredictably. So that's what really makes me cautious about riding in mud season- an approaching car could be going just a little too fast and get stuck in a rut that deposits them right in your path, with the driver unable to do much to correct it.

Fortunately yesterday we didn't come face to face with any cars in the slimy spots. We saw a couple of trucks but happily both were when we were in a dry, sunny spot. Still, I got as far as I could off the road and into the woods and asked Fizz to stand and wait for them to pass, just so we didn't take any chances.

















We had a very nice ride. We practiced shortening and lengthening the walk without having her get fussy and lean into my hands. We did tons of walk-trot transitions: trotting 10 strides, walking 10, etc. We had a nice canter up the big hill to the overlook (though we are very rusty on getting the asked-for lead, and she wants to take the right lead whether or not the bend in the road suggests that makes sense...). It was good to have a mentally engaging ride, even though we didn't go very far. When we got home, we worked a little on bending lines in the front yard as she is feeling a bit stiff and "rammy" to me at times. She was happy to cooperate. We finished with a nice graze around the yard to cool down. She's still fuzzy with winter hair, so gets sweaty under the tack. I am pulling buckets of hair off her everyday but we've still got a ways to go.










Planning a slightly longer ride this afternoon. The weather forecast is very optimistic- dry and sunny for the next week. Hoping to get into a little bit of a regular routine and then next weekend meet up with M and Coalie for the first time this year.


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## SueC

That sounds like a really successful riding/communication session with Fizz! 😎 I don't envy you the mud. We don't get mud in our neighbourhood except on river banks (alluvial mud) - our soils are sand with peat or coffee rock beneath in the valley floors, and sandy gravel on the upslopes. And you know something really perplexing? The sands around here, like a lot of Australian soils, are water repellent! They are very hard to wet once they've dried out - there's an organic wax coating on the grains etc, and it takes weeks of rain to get the sand properly wet unless you're using soil wetting agents (surfactants), which gardeners use on their fruit trees etc, otherwise they have roots in dry soil and most of the water you're putting on them runs off the surface!










Fizz looks like a bear in her coat - is it shedding yet? Our horses are due to grow their winter coats - of course, Chasseur never grows one, doesn't have the genes for it (not infrequently lost in racehorse lines), and wouldn't survive long in the wild in winter because of it - I've started rugging him already, as he's just beginning to lose condition in the cooler nights. And I'm rugging Sunsmart for good measure because of his Cushings and being 24.


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## egrogan

@SueC, wild about your soils _resisting _moisture- that seems problematic! We just read an article about mud season, which explained that because of ancient glacial deposits, we have some sort of dense silt that prevents water from soaking in deeply, causing a heavy frost layer and then melting and just sitting on the surface. Causes a mess...

Yes, Fizz is looking very fuzzy right now. Lovely husband calls her a yak. I think it looks very dramatic because she seems to hold on to the long white/blond guard hairs while the spring coat coming in underneath is almost black. She is shedding tons and tons of hair, but there is still plenty to come off. I finally took the plunge and spent $25 on a pair of those Hands On Grooming gloves. I had a friend swear by them, but I was having trouble convincing myself to spend that much on a grooming product- but I'm so glad I did. They work so well, and the horses just melt into the massage they give. Especially along their ears - it's like magic!

*****
Unfortunately our ride yesterday didn't quite go as planned. We headed out on a route that I intended to be a 4 mile loop. It was our first time going this direction this spring, and it's all downhill right from the beginning, so I suppose I had a feeling it might get a little sticky. Whether I caused it to go that way because I was riding defensively, or whether it just was going to be that way, I'm not sure. But after the first 1/2 mile she started in with those frustrating short, unwilling strides and I just kept annoying her forward as best I could (including with taps on the butt with a stick, which got a lot of tail swishing in response...). We got as far as the first house with horses, and she gawked at them a little but kept going.








The next house after that also has horses, and as she glimpsed them through the trees, she came to a standstill. Right as a car was approaching. Not wanting her to leap into the path of the car, I hopped off and started leading her. She was pretty fixated on them, and they were going nuts at the sight of her- whinnying, running, bucking. This house also has a pair of small donkeys, so at one point we had two horses and two donkeys gallivanting around the field- one of the horses came up to the corner of the fence closest to the road and actually pushed the top fenceboard off, and I had a vision of the donkeys leaping over the fence followed by the horses and surrounding us on the road 😨 Fortunately it didn't come to that! 








I got her unstuck from her standstill and started leading her past, and unfortunately the horses charged up and down the fenceline following us. This was sort of like the cow scenario being repeated- the horses running the fence got her very riled up, and she started leaping around me in circles while snorting and blowing at them. I didn't really have a great reaction except to try to keep her moving forward, thinking if we could just get past them she'd be ok. It was at this point when I saw a caravan of three trucks coming down the road toward us. While they must have seen her spazzing out in the middle of the road, they didn't really seem bothered by us and didn't stop or anything. I panicked a little and my split second decision was that the best way to get out of their way was to abandon the plan to continue on in the direction we were going, and turn around and beeline for a driveway we could stand in to get out of the road. That allowed us to avoid tangling with the cars, but she was still really amped up. I threw in the towel at that point and just continued walking towards home. It didn't take long for us to get out of sight of the horses and for her to calm back down.

I guess that's the consolation, she does calm down easily even after she gets upset by something. I walked her a bit farther up the road until there was a stone wall I could use to get back on, and she was fine. Stood nicely, walked off calmly enough. We walked and trotted up the big hill back home, and then did a loop around the apple trees before I got off.








It was a frustrating ride, but still, it ended fine. I think a temporary equipment change is in order though, at least while we're getting reacquainted with venturing back out in the world. I need to go back to having a rope halter with a longer lead rope under her bridle, since when we get into these situations I really don't like feeling like I have no choice but to have her right on top of me while holding the reins. My reins are pretty short, and I'd like to have a little more space. And I'm sure that after a few more consistent rides, these sorts of situations won't escalate as much as they are right now. 

It's always disappointing to have a bad ride after a good one, but that's part of what makes horses horses, and not motorcycles...


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## gottatrot

I've learned over the years to not expect as much from riding in April. I've had more horse accidents in April than any other month. It's just a time when the horses seem to really wake up with extra natural energy after the winter, and they get hot and spooky and I'm realizing this is just a pattern of life with horses. 

I bought those same grooming gloves a couple of years ago and they are simply the best tool for shedding out Amore's Cushing's coat that I've found. I've used all kinds of grooming blocks and curries, and gloves that are more like a mitt with shorter rubber tines. But those gloves really get all the hair under the belly, under the mane, on the legs...they are great.

I actually brought one glove down to the pony a couple days ago because I was hoping to just grab some of the big hair patches off her. But I quickly realized the little nubs and pulling on the hair were not very positive for her, and she was trying to get away more than when I petted her with my hand. Maybe someday LOL.


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## phantomhorse13

I think you made the best choice you could have in the situation. Bad enough to have horses and donkeys helping (and knocking down boards?!), but add traffic.. h#ll no. Not worth it. 

You got back on and rode home.. and she was fine. Focus on that - on how far you have come!


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## Knave

It sounds like a frustrating ride! I am with @gottatrot about spring riding though. I forget what my mom called it when I was a kid... anyways, there always seems to be some hard spring rides until horses are really grown up. Even some old horses though struggle for some spring rides!

I have a hard time with it with certain horses. Cash isn’t bad at all, but has his occasional days this spring. We do so much spring work though that you can be trying to get your job done and about to cry because your horse is wanting to run away or buck and you still have to continue doing what you are doing. Then you have cows and calves and their actions to take into account too, and baby calves are often full of nonsense. Lol

I think every spring gets better though. I really do. About when it’s perfect you get a new colt... lol


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## egrogan

I've enjoyed hearing everyone's tales of "spring sillies" with their horses. I think last year, I would have been beating myself up about things getting off track, but I feel a lot better equipped to deal with it this year. I guess it's what it feels like to gain confidence over time. I am most encouraged by the fact that even when Fizz gets a bit worked up, it doesn't take a lot before she is calm again, and it's easy to see the switch flip from worried to steady.

Today is farrier day, so I won't have time to ride, but I'm planning to bring the horses in about an hour early and to really add some elbow grease to shedding out their winter coats. Fizz is starting to get soft and fuzzy where her black coat coming in. It was very blustery last night so they had light sheets on, and I thought this was a funny picture- if you didn't know her, you'd think she was a black horse with a weirdly colored head. The optical illusion of her many colored coat doesn't do her big noggin' any favors though 








And thought I’d throw in a couple of silly puppy moments that started my day with a smile....


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## egrogan

I spent most of our ride today just laughing. I felt like we were in that blooper show "Candid Camera," where hidden pranksters keep popping out to play a practical joke on unsuspecting people...

It started off well enough. I dug out Fizz's old snaffle bridle and kept her rope halter underneath after grooming. Did a few circles and serpentines in the yard before we headed out, since it's probably been close to a year since she's ridden with a bit. Then we headed out the way we went last time. She was much more forward (in a good way) from the start, and we walked and trotted along for the first mile. We had one slight argument at a side street, where she thought it might be a good idea to try to duck and spin towards home- I felt bad because I did grab her in the mouth in the opposite direction of where she intended to turn, but that seemed to settle things.

As we approached the scene of all the excitement with the other horses & donkeys last time, over the crest of the hill, I saw (and heard) the town's giant road grader rumbling in our direction. I just started laughing, as you really couldn't have planned the timing to be any more ridiculous. The road was far too narrow to stay on and try to pass it (especially with a herd of running horses on the other side), so I hopped off and we headed quickly for a driveway to get out of the way. The guy driving it stopped and gave us plenty of space, and I waved him passed. Fizz took a good look, but actually she was more interested in eating the leaves than worrying about the equipment...








Since I was already off, I just walked her passed the horses. They did come running and whinnying to the fence again, and I think caught her by surprise, so she scooted to the side a little, but that was it. They ran the fence line as we walked, but she didn't hesitate at all.

We kept walking like this up the 1/4 mile of paved road, and as I turned right onto the next dirt road, a car pulled up alongside us. An older woman rolled down her window to ask me if I was ok, which always catches me a little off guard until I remember that people think if you're walking next to the horse something must have happened 🤷‍♀️ I assured her I was fine, and she started chatting away, asking me if I had any other horses that needed to be exercised and telling me about her riding adventures with horses that were now gone. She was very nice, and Fizz was a saint standing there while she kept talking. Finally we parted ways, and I lined Fizz up next to a stone wall and hopped back on with no issues.








On we went, but it wasn't long before up around the bend, we saw our next physical challenge: There was a tree crew taking down a huge old tree by the brook where we'll often stop to get the horses a drink. The tree was in pieces dangling from ropes, as were a few guys suspended from a giant bucket truck. Coming down the middle of the road was a giant town dump truck rattling with gravel. Fizz froze and wasn't sure if the flying men or noisy truck was more interesting  Again, the town guy was super nice, stopped the truck and actually turned off the engine. The tree guys continued on with their business, and since we didn't really have much room to pass, I jumped off again and led her through the middle of all the trucks. The town guy leaned out his window and asked if I needed a leg up  I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just being nice, but I politely declined...








On we went again, and I got back on from a still-frozen snow bank. She stood rock solid for a second time, which was much appreciated. We were in a good spot to just trot along, so I let her move out, which she seemed to appreciate. We turned towards home, passing the mini donks and Mac the very loud German Shepherd. Mac was sunning in the yard, so while he growled and barked and made a ruckus, at least we saw him coming and didn't get caught by surprise (sometimes he's sleeping under the bushes and you don't know he's there until he explodes out of his sleeping spot and acts like he's going to jump the stone wall to kill you). As long as I see him, I start talking to him by name and telling him what a good dog he is to protect his donkeys, and he usually quiets down. The last obstacle appeared after passing Mac, when a big black Lab I didn't recognize appeared in the street and started barking at us menacingly. I was NOT interested in getting off a third time, so I pointed Fizz at him and trotted towards him, and he turned and ran out of the road right away. Problem solved.

The rest of the ride was quite nice. The wood frogs were loud singing away in the vernal pools.




We had a good last trot & canter up the last hill towards home, and then did a lap around the fields to cool out a bit. She's about half shed out so was still sweaty by the time we were done and needed a good brush out after I untacked.








If horses understand comedy, I think she could see the humor in the ride as well. It was certainly a great rebound from our last ride. I couldn't stop laughing and telling her what a great horse she was for putting up with all that.








(_please excuse the dried winter muck in the pasture, it’s getting scraped and dragged this weekend!_)


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## gottatrot

Wow, it is amazing you two handled all that so well. You are doing so great!!


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## SueC

I spent Thursday in the emergency department and got a bit behind on farm and house things plus recreational stuff like looking what you're all up to. @egrogan, the dog photos are adorable. 🥰 Isn't Hugh growing fast? And he looks such a fun character!

And that cornice...is that original, or renovated? It's nice cornice. Sorry - owner builder and I'm forever after noticing this stuff.

That ride - hahaha! 😋 You've got to laugh. I'm surprised nobody was landing a hot air balloon in a field nearby, or maybe parachuting in...🥳 it's so interesting to follow nature through the seasons in other countries to where we live, courtesy of the fine observations of the general journalling crew! 😎

Really had a laugh at the rolling photo! 😄


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## egrogan

Haha, @SueC -a hot air balloon would have been the perfect addition to that ride!

I don’t think the cornice is original, but it’s also not new. We’re finding that a lot of things in the house are from the 1950s or so, with older and original details buried under the walls.

I’m sitting in a community center waiting on my 15 minute observation period after getting my covid vaccine! Woohoo! I ended up getting the single dose version and feel so very grateful.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and we spent it out cleaning up the pasture. Hugh had a real farm dog sort of day, and was absolutely exhausted last night







Someone asked about Fizz shedding, I thought this picture showed her funny color changing phase.







Horses got turned out in the big field for the first time yesterday.


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## egrogan

Our morning view. Not amused.


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## carshon

Oh My! Where did Spring go?


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## PoptartShop

Nooooooooooooooooooooo not more snow!!!!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Oh My! Where did Spring go?


Apparently far, far away... 😭


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## egrogan

I did cut my daffodils yesterday given the forecast...


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## Knave

Oh I love the daffodils! I struggle growing them. I do good with tulips and a few other bulbs, but my daffodils are rare through the garden. I saw a bunch bloomed yesterday, and I debated cutting them, but since I’m leaving for the marathon I decided to leave them. All the spring work has made me feel like I missed enjoying them.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I wish I could take credit for them, but it's all Mother Nature 💮 Somewhere underneath some overgrown weeds, there's the remnants of an old English cottage garden that a previous owner of this house clearly invested a lot of time and love into, and the clumps of daffodils throughout the old garden still make an appearance every year. My mother is an amazing gardner. I am much better at animals than plants! But still hoping to get some perennial herbs in a new bed this year, that is about the extent of my gardening prowess...


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## egrogan

I'm right in the middle of a ridiculously busy time at work (seems like I'm working 10 hour days, 6 days a week this month), and combining that with the terrible weather we had last weekend has meant that I haven't ridden in almost two weeks  It wasn't beautiful out today, but my meetings were clustered in the morning, so at lunch time I was able to go out on a truly enjoyable ride with Fizz.

She was really a pleasure to ride, happy and forward, marching right along on a very loose rein. When I wanted to trot, I just thought "trot," and she sprung into a very nice pace without rushing, and when I wanted her to come back down to walk, I just slowed my posting and sat, and she walked with me.


















She even walked all the downhills on that same loose rein, not needing much in the way of balancing beyond just my seat. There were some gnarly gravelly spots, so I got a little more directive there to try to hug the "shoulder" when the side of the road was solid, but she was mostly happy to follow along where I asked her to go.








I really just can't say enough good things about how tuned in and rateable she was, particularly after having no rides at all the past two weeks, with lots of weird ups and downs in the weather. I only wish I had had more time to go out on a longer ride- we just did the overlook and back.

On a whim, a couple of months ago I decided to buy some new gear to experiment with. I bought a jumper breastplate because I liked the idea of freeing up the d-rings on the front of my saddle, and also that given its design, it seemed that it wouldn’t drag the saddle down at an angle on her shoulders when she leaned over to graze. As often happens with tack, she seems to be in between the size needed for a regular horse vs. the size needed for an Arab. I had guessed up to the full horse size, since her regular breastcollar needed that sizing, but I think this was a little big- everything was adjusted to the last available hole, and when she moved it seemed that there was a lot of space between the chest "plate" and her body.


















She didn't really seem to offer me any feedback on how it felt one way or the other, but I guess her easy-going demeanor could be taken as a sign that at least it wasn't bothering her. Still, I had wondered if the straps would slide down the billet off where they were initially resting on the saddle pad, and at least on the left side, that did happen by the end of our ride. I would imagine that on a longer, more rigorous ride, if the strap slid down off the saddle pad and got caught up around the billet, that would give you potential for a nasty rub. That might not happen if I punch some holes and make the fit a little tighter, not sure.








Overall, I'm not sure I can really say one way or the other whether this is a better set up than the regular breastcollar. I did like how the saddle stayed flat vs. getting pulled forward while she grazed around though. I'll probably experiment with it a little more and see what happens. Anyone have any thoughts on it?

The one splurge I did make during a winter sale was a new sheepskin seat saver, and I am absolutely in love with that so far. Makes me wonder how I ever rode without one. The saddle is more comfortable, but it's so strange how much more secure it makes me feel. I can't understand the physics of why that would be true, but it absolutely is. Fizz's trot isn't the smoothest, but I can sit right down into it better than I've ever been able to. Same with having a more rhythmic canter. Can't wait to test drive it on longer distances and hopefully avoid the awful chafing I experienced last summer!

When we got home, I gave all the horses a really thorough grooming as blankets have to go back on tonight- more cold rain and snow coming our way between tonight and Thursday


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## SueC

@egrogan, one thing you can try with your new breastplate, apart from punch more holes (and cut down excess spare strapping if you don't want it flopping around), is to attach the girth straps above the girth "keepers" in your saddle blanket, and then they won't slip down. Of course, depends where the keepers are located, etc - but that's what I do to keep my little piece of rope from sliding down the girth:

I rode my Arabian mare with a breastplate so I could keep her girth a bit looser and more comfortable for her. It was a lovely, very slippery and broad leather breastplate that didn't rub at all; it was rolled at the edges so no "bitey" bits:








On her I could adjust it high enough so that there weren't issues with the ends sliding down the girth. But you know what, you could actually try using stick-on (or superglue-on ) velcro bits to keep the ends exactly where you want them...

It was a real pleasure to read about how in-tune a ride you had - and haven't you and Fizz come a hugely long way? At first you weren't sure whether she was the right horse for you, and now look at you two - developing a real partnership where you're basically working almost telepathically! 

I think that's one reason I've been putting off riding Julian - because I'm so used to riding almost-telepathically with Sunsmart (after the first year, which was challenging), and I know how much hard work it is to get that kind of relationship and riding happening, and how our backsides are on the line in the process. 😄

But I'm gonna - it's one of the things I've resolved to do this year. That and complete the attic, and get a basic cattle yard in, and upgrade the fencing in the "day" paddocks so I can have cattle over a year old in them without having all my fences constantly rearranged...

Sorry to hear work has been like a boa constrictor - how nice you could finally get out. Ridiculously, it can even get like this just being on the farm and running the place, and the farmstay, and looking after our animals and doing maintenance, landscaping etc. Sometimes I have to stop and reassess my priorities and what I can let go here - otherwise I start fantasising about leaving our place and living in a barrel!


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## Knave

What a lovely sounding ride!

I am wondering now if Queen will have the base color of Fizz...


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## egrogan

@SueC, thanks for the picture of your mare in the breastplate. Very helpful to see another photo of it properly fitted. I did contemplate attaching it up a bit higher on the billets and wasn't sure if it was too high and would pull the wither strap to a funny angle. Will experiment some more on the next ride (it's dripping a cold rain outside right now, no rides for me). I got a chuckle at the idea of "living in a barrel" as a form of total downsizing- sometimes lovely husband and I do wonder what it would be like to just trade everything in for a tiny house in the middle of the woods. We're not there yet, but yes, sometimes it's very alluring to think about not having a mortgage, and chucking these jobs out the window so we could make different choices. 

@Knave, is Queen showing chameleon, color changing tendencies? Fizz looks deep black in pictures right now but up close it's almost like peach fuzz and the yellowish coat underneath is starting to peak through.


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## Knave

It does seem kind of like that! Maybe without as much yellow... parts of her are beginning to look like a deer, but it’s hard to get through in a photograph. I am so anxious to see what color she turns out!


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## egrogan

@Knave, I never would have guess Queen had all that light-colored hair under her dark coat. Fizz is soggy right now so I didn't take any pictures of her when I was just out feeding, but she also has a light colored bum and belly, and it's particularly light on the inside of her legs. Maybe Queen will shed out like a sooty buckskin! Will be fun to see. Unfortunately I don't have any baby pictures of Fizz to compare.

It's so weird here right now- we're having "thunder snow!" Never experienced that before.


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## Knave

That is weird! I’ve never experienced it either.


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## egrogan

I tried to take a video of the "thunder snow," but the sound of the thunder didn't really come through. Maybe the rumble was just too low-pitched for the video to pick it up. It was a really odd experience. Still, it made for a pretty night after the storm was done-although more like a pretty December night than pretty April night!










These two make me laugh, they have some kind of meeting every evening during night check, I assume to discuss their day and plans for the next one 


















It's bitter cold out today with gusting winds- I'm looking out the window and see the horses huddled in the sheds as snow swirls around. This has been a pretty terrible spring so far! Feels like I'm never going to get to ride...


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## Knave

Piggy always has meetings with Zeus too! It makes me laugh. Whenever you tell Zeus he’s amazing, Pig runs over and stands on his hind legs and starts licking Zeus’s nose. Zeus is a good boy after all. Lol

After I said you said that to my family, my oldest came out with a video of Thunder snow. It was super cool what she found, because the lightning reflected off the snow and just made everything blindingly white. Husband said he’d seen it before.


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## egrogan

We finally got a nice day! And it was very well timed, as I had signed up to volunteer as a vet scribe again at another VERDA ride. Vetting in started at 7am, which meant I had to leave bright and early. I went out to feed about an hour before I usually do, and Fizz and Izzy looked at me and said "_room service is here too early, please come back later..." _









They needed a little encouragement to come in for breakfast, but I got to the ride as vetting was starting. There were 20 riders (all but 2 doing the 15 miles-the other 2 doing 25) and 3 drivers. Because this is run under competitive trail rules, everything is currently Pass/Fail, which made vetting very quick. That said, we now have confirmed cases of neurological EHV1 in northern Vermont, so temps were checked on all horses vetting in, and we had a pretty strict sanitization protocol in between each horse. Through FB groups, I actually know the people whose horses have been sick (and put down), and it's been very sad to follow. Fortunately everyone vetted in with no issues, including several juniors and young horses. It was fun to see so many new people with a lot of enthusiasm. Our vetting was right inside this beautiful new indoor:









While the riders got tacked up and began leaving, I headed out to play crossing guard at a difficult spot where the riders had to be on a fast moving paved road for about 1/4 mile before heading back to dirt roads. It’s a little frightening just how many drivers are totally oblivious to what else is in the road (we had plenty of cones and road signs and people still were going 50mph in a 40 mph). Still, we got all the riders and drivers safely across the street and _most _drivers were patient and slowed way down 









This poor horse was all alone in his field on the corner where I was standing, and he was very upset at the crowds of horses that went charging past and left him there. His owner came out to chat and said his buddy had just been sold yesterday and it was his first day alone. Sounded like he had a buddy coming. I was just glad he never got desperate enough to hop that little fence and follow the herd!










All the riders finished within the time allowed and pulsed down easily. Can’t lie, I wish I had been there with Fizz to ride, and I know we could have completed the 15. One day we’ll get a truck and trailer...

With the pass/fail vetting, and handing out completion awards after the trot out, we were able to leave around 1pm and that meant I had the afternoon to get home and take Fizz out to ride.

She felt great even though we lost all of last week to the awful winter weather. I was especially happy that she was able to trot many of the downhill sections, without feeling like she was going to trip over her own feet.


















The only bad part of our rides is that we had BUGS for the first time. Little swarming nasty black flies. I’m going to have to dig all the fly gear out of the closet where I packed it away in the fall.

Looks like we’ve got a 50/50 chance of waking up to rain tomorrow, but if it’s dry I’ll meet up with M for a longer ride. Hoping we’re able to avoid the rain so we can go!


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## egrogan

While the weather was not nice, it wasn’t a washout, so we did get to have our first meet up with M and Coalie! Rain was threatening this morning, so I got Fizz groomed up before I fed them breakfast, and wrapped her in a rain sheet. We only had a few sprinkles, but it made me understand how convenient it can be to keep your horse blanketed to stay clean! 

Our ride down the hill was actually uneventful, which was very nice! Horses were out at the first house we passed, but even though they were up close to the road they were quiet and just watched us go by. The next house is where the playful horse + donkey herd lives, but I was thrilled when I saw through the trees that they were actually turned out behind the barn rather than up along the road. So, we didn't have any issues riding through there at all. I had left a little early in case I need time to work our way past them, but this time we didn't need it. That made me about 10 minutes early for meeting M at our regular spot, so I just headed up her road towards her house. Her neighbors have a pretty little vineyard:










We caught up to M and Coalie just over the crest of the hill. I was expecting Coalie and Fizz to have some sort of reunion, but they barely even looked at each other. Fizz actually walked right past him before I turned her around to go back the way we had come. Silly horses- they nearly give themselves a panic attack at the sight of other horses, but seeing each other for the first time in months was a non-event.

We headed out a set of snowmobile trails, not sure how much mud we were going to find. We did cross a few muddy spots, but actually most sections of trail had really nice footing, so we were able to let them trot for some good stretches. Where we did come across mud, there was a reasonable detour so we didn't damage any of the trail (certainly not any more than the recent 4-wheelers had!). M had been able to ride more consistently than me through the late winter/early spring, so I was hoping maybe Coalie was fitter than Fizz and would keep up better. But, mostly he still lagged behind her, especially in sections where we were walking.


















The trail put us back out on roads which are not in the greatest shape. They are still really rutted up and potholed, and the town keeps dumping this huge sharp rock in the bad sections, I guess hoping that people driving over it will break it down into something more gravely. It's no fun to ride on though.









M and I were chatting away when suddenly poor Fizz stumbled badly in one of the potholes, and ended up on her knees. I pitched forward onto her neck, but after a brief moment she pushed herself back up and I ended up back in the saddle. This is the second time this spring she's tripped so badly. Her feet were done a couple of weeks ago, so I don't think that's it. I think maybe it's more an issue of not always paying attention when we're on the road? At any rate, I hopped off to make sure she was ok, and she had scraped up both her knees enough that they were a little bloody. I had her in a bitted bridle, and I think she scraped the roof of her mouth with the bit as she stood on the reins while she was trying to scramble back to her feet. Poor thing, there was lots of yawning and head shaking at first-but nothing was bleeding in her mouth. I handwalked her for a few minutes and she seemed to be moving along fine. We had reached the point where M and I split off to go our separate ways, and I decided I'd get back on since we were still a little more than a mile away from home.

She felt ok at the walk, took a couple of stiff steps trotting so I just asked her to walk along and we stopped to nibble grass a couple of times rather than rush home. Since we were moseying along, I thought people might get a chuckle out of seeing that the flattened tents are still in the neighbor's yard








And the deer skeleton is still flying from the tree. Yuck.









When we got home, I cold hosed her front legs and gave her a half a gram of bute in a soupy little mash. I cleaned her scrapes out with betadine and globbed on some neosporin. She's been active in the field this afternoon, and doesn't seem stiff or sore so far. Hopefully the scrapes will just be superficial and we don't have anything to worry about.

Aside from that unfortunate accident, we had a very nice ride. It was obvious both of us were a little out of shape trotting up some of the hillier sections, but with the walking in between she seemed fine. I'm so ready to get back into a regular routine of more challenging rides than we've been doing so far this year. We just need work and the weather to cooperate- unfortunately this week isn't looking all that great. 🌧 🌧 🌧


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## newtrailriders

@egrogan your mention of how the horses didn't even acknowledge one another despite near panic attacks when being separated brought back a funny memory. 

My husband and I were camping out with our two geldings once and decided to bring our dog Rosie on a trail ride with us since it was a week day and we were the only ones there. Well Rosie ran off and hubby was so worried she'd run out to the road that he decided to ride PJ back to camp, put him in the paddock, and take his truck out to the road to make sure nothing happened to her. It was the first time we'd ever ridden the horses away from one another and they were absolutely screaming for each other during our entire search for Rosie. I'd yell "Rosie!" and Joe would scream loudly for PJ. To a bystander (if there'd been any but thank God there weren't!) I'm sure it would have seemed like Joe was screaming for Rosie too! The whole thing was so absurd I was nearly crying from laughing so hard. He was so loud - even squealing like a pig sometimes! I could hear PJ calling back to him from camp.

Finally, I found Rosie right at the same point in the trail where she'd run off, and we headed back to camp with the horses bawling for each other the whole way. The second PJ was in sight, Joe pretended he didn't see him and just started casually eating leaves. PJ turned his back to Joe and they didn't even look at one another when I put Joe in the paddock. I think they were embarassed.


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## gottatrot

Too bad about the stumble! Glad Fizz and you are OK.


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## egrogan

Another really good ride yesterday. As you can see, we finally had a real spring day. Warm, sunny, not a cloud in the sky. Fizz's knees have looked fine since she scraped them up Sunday. Never had any heat or swelling, just some surface scrapes that are already looking healed, though it will take some time for the hair to grown back in. I decided that we'd head out in the direction of the Newhall Loop, but if she seemed hesitant or was moving funny, we'd just turn around. After a halfhearted attempt to stay home (a little spin backwards riding past the back gate), she seemed to be moving fine.









I was very proud of her, she handled Mac the German Shepherd and his mini-donks without more than a little side eye. The mini donks were right up along the fenceline, as close to the road as they've ever been, but she didn't screech to a halt or even hesitate, she just kept going. It's been a long time since I didn't have to get off and walk her by them!

I asked her to trot, some on the flat sections, some uphill, but I think I asked for a bit too much without breaking it up with walk breaks, as she was tired when we hit the woods trail (about 4 miles in). We mostly walked through the woods, which was probably for the best as things are still rutted up and washed out in some spots.









The woods trail let us out at the back of Newhall Farm, and I wasn't sure if cows and calves would be out in their back fields. But, all the back gates were open, meaning no cows around, so we relaxed and took in the gorgeous scenery. It's one of the prettiest views around:








We continued along to the front of the farm, and were again on the lookout for cows. It can be challenging when they're in the front fields, as the road slopes downhill pretty sharply there, and it ends up in an intersection with a paved road where cars go flying, so a bad spot for fireworks. But again, all the gates were open, and no cows to be seen. Huge relief. We trucked along, crossed the road, and were in the home stretch.








We had three dog interactions in the last 1.5 miles, but she handled them all well. One dog was out loose in the road, and I could see his owner ("red truck guy") in his driveway talking on the phone. The dog was frozen in an aggressive stance staring us down, but with the owner out I figured it would be fine. We got closer, and the guy seemed totally engrossed in the phone conversation, not noticing us or the change in the dog's demeanor. The dog charged straight at us in a dead-run, swerving at the last minute and circling behind Fizz barking. She pinned her ears but he didn't get any closer. Guy still did nothing. I don't know if he really didn't notice or just pretended to ignore us. We kept going, and the dog followed us at an ok distance. At this point, we were right next to the guy, and he gave me a little wave while whispering "sit" to the dog and continuing the phone call.  At least nothing happened, but geez!

This ended up being another 6.5 mile ride (same as Sunday). Fizz felt tired when we got home, but her knees were still looking fine so I think it really is just a fitness question. Unfortunately the rest of the week, including today, is looking like a washout, so probably won't ride again until Saturday. It's been hard to get momentum so far this spring.


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## Knave

It sounds like a good ride! I can’t imagine people being so rude though. Granted, I feel that way when people drive into my yard. I can’t really get the little dogs to come back, and everyone worries about running them over. It’s super embarrassing, and I always apologize. If I know someone is coming I try and have the two little ones in the house.

Now, if my dogs were going after someone, that would be such a different story! I would do whatever was in my power to make them come back!


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## egrogan

Bit of disappointment yesterday- Fizz turned up pretty sore in her back. She was a little touchy around her SI while I was grooming and tacking up, but I chalked it up to several days off because of all the rain (it had rained straight through from Wednesday-Friday, so I hadn't done anything with her except leave her bundled up in her rain gear). However, she was pretty "sticky" during the beginning of our ride and really not her usual forward self. Her back felt very stiff, and at first I thought maybe she just needed a slow warmup since we hadn't been out since Tuesday. But after the first mile, it wasn't feeling much better and we actually turned around towards home. She continued on with the slow plodding walk and that was a pretty clear sign she wasn't feeling very good (haha, maybe one of the only benefits of a horse who speeds up going home- if they don't, you know something's off 😉)










On the last big downhill, I actually got off and walked because she felt so short behind. Poor thing- we crept along with her giving me crinkly nosed ouch faces...









Got home and untacked, and I barely had to run my fingers along her SI for her to drop her back down away from the pressure. Even lovely husband could see her flinch when I asked him to look, and he didn't really know what he was looking for. It was just obvious she was very sensitive.

I am supposed to be out on a 10 mile ride with M and Coalie right now, but obviously I let her know that we wouldn't be able to do that. 

The vet was already booked to come out on Thursday for shots, and I had planned on having a chiropractic adjustment for Fizz then too, so I'm hoping that will help her feel better. I'm wondering if when she had that dramatic stumble last weekend she didn't strain something or throw something out. Reading about SI pain, it seems pretty clear that a fall could strain a ligament and lead to this kind of sensitivity (I've never had to deal with back issues before...). I felt like our ride on Tuesday was a bit slow and pokey, which at the time I had attributed to just lack of fitness, but now I'm not so sure...

In potentially positive news, this morning I gave her a good grooming with the grooming gloves, and was pretty vigorous along her back, and she had _no _reaction at all. Yesterday the flinching and dropping away from pressure was very obvious. Today, you wouldn't have known she was sensitive yesterday. 

It's supposed to start raining again this afternoon and keep up steady rain between now and Thursday, so I guess in that way I'm not really missing out on anything with letting her just rest between now and the vet visit. I'm just hoping whatever's going on will be easy to resolve and we get to continue on with riding the rest of the season. Fingers crossed!!


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## Knave

I’m so sorry to read that! I hope it was just a passing thing, or that the vet can fix it. Lucy has a very bad back that way, and last night, or after any long ride she obviously flinches from the brushes. Chiropractor work does help, but it isn’t a full solution. My chiropractor is pregnant, but she may have the baby today, and then hello appointments! (And new baby of course!!!!)


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## gottatrot

I hope Fizz's back is just a simple muscle soreness. Amore once had a very sore back just from being in heat.


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## egrogan

Thanks for the encouragement @Knave and @gottatrot! Hoping some rest and the chiro appt do the trick.

She took care of some mowing this afternoon-grass is finally starting to look green here.


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## knightrider

So sorry about Fizz's back and hope it is resolved quickly.



newtrailriders said:


> Finally, I found Rosie right at the same point in the trail where she'd run off, and we headed back to camp with the horses bawling for each other the whole way. The second PJ was in sight, Joe pretended he didn't see him and just started casually eating leaves. PJ turned his back to Joe and they didn't even look at one another when I put Joe in the paddock. I think they were embarassed.


My horses do this all the time when I take just one or two out and leave one or two alone. Why do they do this? Also, my dog sleeps quietly the whole time we are out somewhere. Then, when we pull in the driveway, she races to a tree barking like crazy like she has chased a squirrel up there. Why does she do this?


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## Knave

@knightrider I think she wants you to believe she was busy taking care of things while you were gone. We had an old border collie when I was young that would run out to the corrals when he heard a pickup coming. It was like he could say, “I’ve been here working, a steady eddy while you were away. Nap? Not me.”


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## PoptartShop

Awww, I hope Fizz's back feels better soon.  I'm glad she's improving already, it sounds like she may have pulled something, whew. The chiro should definitely help though, & some rest (rain can definitely come in handy sometimes). Nice to see some GREENERY!


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## egrogan

Nothing exciting here-we are all just wet and soggy. Rest seems to have done Fizz good, no reaction anywhere on her back at this point. Looking forward to the vet visit tomorrow.


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## egrogan

Vet visit went well today, though she was delayed several hours having to deal with a colic first thing in the morning  Thankfully that patient ended up being fine. I took the opportunity to really get after everyone's shedding out coats and give their feet good scrubbing with some thrush goop, since it's been a soggy, squishy week. As usual, I put Izzy back in her stall nice and clean, and retrieved her looking like this:








Everyone got a basic wellness exam and I talked the vet through the little issues/concerns I had for each of them. I really haven't liked Izzy's weight coming out of the winter- while I can explain away her saggy belly/drooping topline as part of the territory for a 27-year-old, her flanks are looking very sunken in. But every way I try to add weight, whether beet pulp, hay cubes, or even letting her graze on the front lawn now that it's nicer, is giving her almost instant diarrhea. She had a dental exam, and fer teeth are still "fine" (old horse fine), and vet liked her overall demeanor, coat, etc. We're running bloods to see if there are any signs of Cushings. But assuming not, we decided the best thing to do was to add another feeding of senior and see if that makes a difference. And will run a fecal to see what, if anything, needs to happen with deworming. Otherwise, nothing notable going on with her.

Maggie was actually rather terribly behaved for her exam, getting nasty when having blood drawn. She doesn't like needles, but she actually struck out in the direction of the vet when she drew blood, which caught us both by surprise. She was just sour about the whole exam. She still needs to lose about 100lbs, which is challenging at best. I'm interested to see how her bloodwork comes back, as this will be the first retest since we started her on the Pergolide and Insulin Wise last fall. Vet also has been asked by Tufts if she has patients who might be part of a study on IR and some new potential treatments, so she's going to follow up to see if Maggie might fit their needs. Could be interesting. We also did an eye stain to see if she's got blocked tear ducts since she's had messy, runny eyes for awhile now. The left eye drained well right away, but we didn't see the dye come through the right, so I will check that again shortly to see if it drained more slowly than the other side. If not, we'll probably have to get the duct unblocked.

Fizz was a much better patient and we got blood drawn for Coggins and all the shots done quickly. She showed no sensitivity in her back with just simple palpation, but with the chiropractic work she did need some adjustment in her left SI and her withers were actually very locked up and needed a lot of work. Other than that though, she was also in good shape, despite being a "6" on the body condition scale. I can't wait to see how she feels tomorrow when I ride. I think her extra "fluffiness" will come off pretty quickly once we can string together more consistent rides.

I also had a long talk with the vet about my concerns about the state of everyone's feet- I'm no expert, but it's obvious their toes are too long, frogs are growing thin and stretched over time, and of course the tripping with Fizz. She really encouraged me to consider a new farrier. As nice as the guy I use is, I just feel that he isn't listening to my concerns about long toes, and this is clearly a pattern of his across clients. So I think I have to suck it up and break up with him, which is going to be hard. First though, I need to find someone else who will take us on as clients. Regular farrier is coming Tuesday, so I'm not going to cancel that, but just be more insistent about the long toes.

We finally have beautiful spring weather, so I was happy to get the horses back outside after being in all morning waiting for the vet. These two made me laugh- they both went right for the water (they had full buckets of water in their stalls), and I have _NEVER_ seen them share anything...








...It didn’t last long though, Izzy told Fizz to get lost...








But they were unusually clingy with each other the rest of the afternoon. Not sure what that's about...


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## gottatrot

Your girls are so cute.

I've been feeding tri-amino for a while and feel giving amino acids can be very helpful for topline muscles. Not sure if you've tried that for Izzy. I'm giving it to my new pony, and she's putting on muscle fast. Of course she's only 6, but she is improving a lot faster than other thin horses I've put weight on with just feed.


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## egrogan

Thanks for the suggestion @gottatrot- I'm not familiar with tri-amino so will do some research. 

Poor Maggie was very sore from the vaccinations today. She couldn't put her head down to eat her pan of feed this morning so I had to hold it up for her. More concerning, she was looking very gimpy walking around (very short little steps, landing toe first in front). Her feet were cool and no pulses, but I hope we aren't having a laminitic crisis following the shots. I put boots on front and she was moving more easily. Will obviously continue watching how she's doing throughout the day.

Tomorrow and Sunday I'm vet scribing at rides. I am so excited to see @phantomhorse13 and her husband, and to meet Link!!


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## Knave

Oh yay! Have so much fun today!!!

I’m sorry about Maggie. We have a few who have had bad reactions to shots, and they just don’t get them anymore. Cash had a milder reaction last year, but that was it for him.

Beamer is terrible. It isn’t the vaccine either. I wonder if it is the base of many shots. Anything we have ever given him has sent him into terrible fits.


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## egrogan

I remember Maggie being a little uncomfortable last year after the spring shots, but not this bad. It may be that she just can't handle all three shots the same day going forward. Vet yesterday said she wouldn't be surprised if Maggie's neck was sore given how she fought the needle while having blood drawn, but I was discouraged to see her feet looking sore too. 

One year Isabel had a bad swelling reaction to one of the standard shots (can't remember now which one)- but she had an orange size swelling on her chest for a couple of days. That's the only visible reaction to a vaccine I remember over the years.


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## bsms

Had my second COVID shot Sunday. Was sore Monday morning so I went out and spent a few hours working on digging through a caliche layer to make a flower bed for the wife's planned new garden. Mr Pick and Mr Shovel. Breaking concrete with the pick. Clear out the busted concrete with the shovel. Then went for a run. Was then sore all afternoon - all over sore, from my feet to my neck. When it wore off...no more COVID soreness.

Based on years of getting shots in the military, I've concluded exercise reduces soreness from injections. Although it may be that after being sore from head to toe, merely being sore in one's shoulder feels like relief!


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## egrogan

@bsms-that’s exactly it! When I finally broke down and called the vet so I didn’t panic, she said now that so many of us have gone through the covid shots, we can be a little more understanding of our horses! Throughout the day Friday, Maggie seemed to be looking worse rather than better. She never ran a temp, but she was very unwilling to walk and couldn’t eat from the ground. I gave her 1/2 gram bute with dinner, but was dismayed to see her looking almost drunk at night check, tripping on her own feet. At this point I was really worried so called our vet, which I felt bad doing because it was 8:30 and I knew she was getting ready for the endurance ride Saturday morning. But looking drunk made me worry about something neurological, so I felt I needed to call. She reassured me that pain in their neck really can affect their gait that much, and that it was very unlikely to be neurological or laminitis. I slept a little better after that, and when I fed Saturday morning (VERY early so o could get to the ride), Maggie was finally looking better. She was moving around more and could eat from the ground, if gingerly. Got a little more bute on board and felt ok leaving her for the day. Still no temp. This morning, she had finally laid down overnight, and was looking almost normal again. Thank goodness!








So yesterday I got to ride camp around 7am to help with vetting in the horses. There were 9 each in the 15 and 25, and most arrived in the morning so we were busy. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits and ready to go.








There was an away hold, so I headed out with the vet to meet the 25s. I wish I had a better camera, the road into the hold looked like a fairy tale:










That’s our vet coming into the hold first, but unfortunately her horse had fallen on a bad patch of trail in the woods and was looking pretty lame. She got a ride back to camp. Everyone else seemed to be doing ok-this ride was pass/fail, so with good pulses and trot outs, everyone took a brief rest and refuel but didn’t hang around.

Since vetting was quick and there was no crewing, I was free to hold a few horses so people could get to the bathroom and grab something to eat. Including phantomhorse’s handsome Link:








I’m sure she’ll share all about his ride but he did get his completion 

All the riders got back and their final vettings around lunch time, so I got home in plenty of time to take Fizz out to ride. It was the first time I’d been on her since her chiro work and I couldn’t wait to see how she felt. As soon as I got on it was obvious she felt completely different than she had the past few weeks. She had a good forward walk back and was mostly enthusiastic about the ride. We went in a direction where there were lots of good stretches for trotting, and I barely had to put my leg on her and she was ready to trot ahead. She actually got a little too enthusiastic about trotting so we did a million transitions so she didn’t slip into a rushing, choppy trot. All those transitions helped her get more balanced and actually think about where her body parts were. She felt really good.









I had recently read some advice about strategies for increasing the amount of trotting in your conditioning rides-essentially, the advice was straightforward, to trot all the spots where it’s reasonable, even if that was just a few strides. I think I had been approaching training as all or nothing-either we had the right footing and incline to trot for a long way, or we walked. But yesterday when I started thinking about trotting whenever we could do 10, 15 strides it quickly increased the proportion of the ride where we weren’t just walking. And the frequent trot transitions also improved the impulsion in her walk. Our average speed overall improved-still need to get faster, but it felt like a step forward. And most of all she seemed to feel good enough in her body to want to go forward without needing a lot of urging.









Right now I’m back volunteering at the ride, waiting for the first riders to come into the hold. Pretty good turnout today, there were 23 30 milers and 15ish 50s. It’s a very pretty day to be waiting around outside 😉









Have you ever seen anything cuter than this little combo heading out on the 30 with the rest of the family???


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## Knave

Wow that is a pretty pony!! I’m glad your ride was so good and that you got to see @phantomhorse13!!!

I was thinking about your vaccine problem, and @bsms and everyone having bad reactions to the Covid shots.

It is a bad vaccine year. I say that for a few reasons. The first was a heifer who went into anaphylactic shock after her vaccines. Okay, that is fair. Sometimes you will have an allergic reaction, and this was my first I had seen. Then, we were at the neighbor’s branding and a calf went into shock, and the epi didn’t bring it back and it died. Another seemed to be seizing.

Fast forward to the day before yesterday. A calf at our last personal spring branding went into shock. We gave her the epi and dex. I held her head up and rubbed her, fully expecting her to die. Her gums were blue and her limbs cold. We doubled the epi. I sat with her for a long time as she began to warm up. We gave her boltices because she was also sick, and although we gave antibiotics I was afraid that was what she reacted to, so we didn’t give more.

It struck me that the calf at the neighbor’s was sick too. I texted little girl’s boyfriend’s mother (a doctor for the human variety). Does illness make something more likely to go into anaphylaxis? No, she says that is septic shock. I looked it all up, and our reaction was very close to what would have been done for a human.

Shockingly, the calf survived and is healthy now. Three other heifer calves were exceptionally sore from the vaccines. This is abnormal.


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## egrogan

@Knave, those are awful stories. Sorry you've had so much trouble this year. I'm glad most of the cows made it through ok. I don't know what we'll do about vaccines for Maggie next year, but I imagine we'll space them out more and go through the list to decide what she really needs.

I'm home from the ride now and getting some dinner together. It was a long day but a fun one!


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## bsms

Just FWIW: Got together a couple days ago with some friends I hadn't seen since COVID started. One is 89 and another guy is late 80s. Plus a couple of folks in their 70s, and then a group of us in our 60s who have always kept meeting with each other. The guy in his 80s said his wife wasn't there because she had a bad reaction to her COVID vaccination and wasn't feeling up to things over a month after her second shot. So bad reactions DO take place. For me, it was less of an issue than flu vaccinations were back when the military made me take them every year. Haven't gotten once since I left the military a dozen years ago since the flu vaccine normally levels me for 2-3 days. But...everyone reacts to a vaccine in their own way, and some vaccines are harder than others - with little predictability!

And I assume it is that way for horses and cattle too. My horses live by themselves and almost never see another horse so I don't get them shots unless (rare) we have the vet out. The last vet visit was $400 to look at our driveway and the horses were extra, so we don't have them out often! But when I do, I try to give them a few days to feel rotten without asking them to do anything for me. Because I know the feeling.


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## Knave

You know, I don’t think horses magically come up with a fear of needles either. I think the horses with a needle fear tend towards a bad reaction. They all seem to begin life easy to vaccinate. I think the reaction builds each year, but sometimes before they obviously react they seem to develop a fear. Cash was scared this year, and then he had a bad reaction.

The old paint horse was as bad as Beamer to react, and his fear of needles was so awful that the old (very) vet gave up on pulling any blood from him. He eventually would just coggins his corral mate. Lol. The horse figured he’d die from another shot (which everyone else figured too), and he was willing to fight to that death.

Beamer is the oddity. He is a perfectly accepting animal towards needles. Yet, no matter the shot, he ends up completely wet from sweat, colicked up terribly, and close to death. No shot to cure that...


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## egrogan

@bsms, it's hard for me to imagine not vaccinating at all because we have so many creepy crawly bugs that transmit nasty diseases...tick-borne Lyme issues and all sorts of nasty mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile, etc. which can jump from horses to people. There's an Equine Herpes virus outbreak in the northern part of the state and in other spots across New England. So I don't know what we can really do away with.

@Knave, Maggie has been getting progressively worse about needles each time she sees the vet, and she is equally mad about blood draws and shots. That's probably my fault for not working with her on it before the vet visit. We did find that if I had a treat ready as the needle was going in, she could tolerate the insult a little better. So yep, not totally sure what we'll do for her in the future. But happy to say she's pretty much feeling back to normal.


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## bsms

I guess that is one advantage to this desert. I haven't seen a tick in years - do nothing for the dogs and they just don't get them - and we see a mosquito every couple of years. As in "A" mosquito. Lots of scorpions, rattlers and a fair number of spiders. But even there, the east just has more "life" all over the place! I love looking at your photos, egrogan, but Arizona really is "home" to me. We'd like to move away from the Tucson-Phoenix corridor (someday!) but I can't imagine us moving farther away than southern Utah or western New Mexico. We really loved our years living just north of Oxford England....but it was never home to either of us. And oddly enough, my Filipina wife now considers Arizona as "home".

It's odd how a certain part of a country can sometimes just speak to a person. My wife grew up near the beach on an island in the Philippines so it isn't about where one is born. Her home was near here...definitely NOT desert!


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## carshon

I was taught many years ago (by an old vet) that if I put a pan of grain up on a bench etc and gave a shot in the neck that the horse would tolerate it better. That the act of chewing helped with not letting the horse tense up its muscles which is how soreness and abcesses happen. I still do this for our vet today and she laughs and says that she has used this trick for some of her rowdier patients after coming to my house.


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## egrogan

@bsms, I definitely believe in the "sense of place" your describing- some places really speak to us in ways that others don't. Fascinating that your wife finds that feeling in a place that's so very different than where she grew up. To be honest (unpopular opinion), I'm not much of a beach person. I'd prefer your location to a beach too.

@carshon, thanks for the old vet's trick. Certainly something we could try. I heard something similar about movement after the Covid shots- I got the advice to massage my arm aggressively right afterwards. I had about an hour drive home from the vaccine clinic so I spent a lot of it just rubbing where the shot went. Didn't have much arm pain at all (chills that night were a different story...). Also, I got the J&J vaccine just over 4 weeks ago now, and despite being the exact demographic that they were concerned about when the "pause" was called to investigate the clotting issue, I seem to have come through the risk period in ok shape. Still grateful I was able to get the "1 and done" option despite a scary few days wondering if anything would happen.

After about 2 months of work being absolutely overwhelming, I'm finally looking at a slightly less hectic week. Even though it was gloomy and there were some grey and purple clouds following us, I was able to go out for a ride after lunch. We just did a short loop (3.5 miles) but Fizz was really great again. The first 1.5 miles is almost all downhill, and the footing is horrendous since the town dumped a bunch of gravel on it, making it like walking on marbles. So we mostly walked to start off. After our short section of pavement, we were able to move out.








This is the first ride I can remember where we managed to do 50/50 walk/trot. It was a short ride of course, but she could have happily kept trotting along and wasn't even a little sweaty when we got home.








We passed a nice older woman out walking her dog, and she stopped us to say how nice it was to see someone out riding on her road. She said she really missed seeing more riders around. That made me feel really good! ❤

And I was so proud of Fizz- we were moving along at a good pace as we approached the mini donks, who happened to be right up in the corner of their pasture along the road, with Mac their German Shepherd barking his head off protectively behind them. I could feel Fizz get tense when she spotted the donkeys (she doesn't really care about Mac as long as he doesn't catch her by surprise), but she kept trotting even though we were as far away as we could get on the opposite side of the road for them. But I was really proud of her that she kept going when I asked her to. (Both hands on the wheel when passing just in case, so no pics of the cute long ears). Now to replicate the same thing when passing cows! 😉


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## egrogan

Oops,
Double post. Here’s a bonus picture of Hugh hanging out while I did night check (tied up because there are lots of close coyotes right now...)


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## Knave

Hugh looks all grown up!


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## gottatrot

Halla developed a needle phobia after a new vet couldn't get in her vein after 7 tries or so. Then she had her bad knee injuries and there was no getting around having lots of shots. The vet left me a couple of syringes with needles, and I did lots of pretend shots on her. I'd show her the syringe, take the cap off, then touch her neck with something pokey like the end of an open paper clip. It really helped.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I'd show her the syringe, take the cap off, then touch her neck with something pokey like the end of an open paper clip. It really helped.


Yep, I need to do some of this as I was mortified at one of my horses striking out at the vet 😳 Good idea to use the paper clip. I have some syringes around from old chicken ailments...


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Hugh looks all grown up!


He goes to the vet for neutering on Thursday. He's about 1.5 years old already. Where did the time go?!


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## Knave

Wow! I don’t know where it went! I think I am going to make an appointment to take the little white dog (Pig) in to get neutered. With Junie home he is acting more like a stud dog and it annoys me.


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## egrogan

Hugh hasn't really been acting study, but there aren't many other dogs around so that helps. With him it's more of an issue of managing his emotions, as weird and silly as that sounds. In some moments, he'll get excited, and then he'll quickly spin into a state of being way tooooooooooo excited and it takes him a while to come down from all that adrenaline. He's like a typical teenager bouncing off the wall with hormones. Now that it's pretty nice out again, we've got a good trainer coming over in a couple of weeks to start working with us all on the issues he has with people on the road around the house. I'm excited to get some hands on help. Everyone says English Shepherds become great dogs at 2 and are a bit of a handful until then. We'll see if that holds true with Hugh. One of his brothers has grown up a lot since neutering a couple of months ago, so I'm curious to see how things go with him.


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## bsms

Hope the neutering works out OK. We did it to our Border Collie Jack when we thought we were getting a female dog. Jack was around 4, IIRC. He gained 10-15 lbs and his personality changed. Became much more clingy. Still a good dog. Maybe my favorite of the dogs I've owned. But he was healthier and more adventurous before neutering. It's a struggle to keep his weight down. We had less of an issue when we spayed Leila many years ago, but we weren't entirely pleased with those results as well.

Not challenging your decision. Neutering was always presented to me as a no-brainer, "of course" type of decision. I've had vets get mad at me when talking about how Jack changed. To include calling me a liar! Yeah, we walked out on THAT vet and never went back! We had one dog who probably would have been a holy terror if we HADN'T neutered him. I've had multiple vets tell me neutering is ALWAYS right. And should ALWAYS be done.

Both Leila and Jack were/are Border Collies. Don't know if that was a factor. Jack is 12.5 years old now. Other than gaining weight like magic, he's the healthiest older dog we've owned.

We left Sam - our White German Shepherd - intact. My son bought him (who knows why?) from a pee-poor breeder. He's turned out to be a very sweet dog but he's too big for his hips. We think he's likely to have bad hip issues as he ages and keeping the weight off will be critical for him. He's shown no signs of roaming or dominance or wandering so it has been an easy call with him.

On the positive side, if you want to know where Jack is, you rarely need to look much farther than someone's feet. Jack The Slipper:






With Sam:






We've put both of them on a strict diet since that picture. The diet works with Sam. Jack, like our BLM Mustang, seems able to put weight on without eating....


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## egrogan

@bsms, I have definitely heard those sorts of stories. English Shepherds are already "velcro dogs" so I can't imagine what a clingier Hugh would be like 😉 Other ES people have said that after neutering, their dog's coat has changed a lot and lost its "teflon properties" (e.g., not as waterproof or resistant to prickers and stickers out in the woods). The breeders had asked those of us with the boys if we'd be interested in keeping at least a couple of them intact as apparently there are some special bloodlines in this litter (both of the girls in their litter will eventually be bred) but I really don't want to be in the dog breeding game, and I don't see much reason to keep him intact otherwise. I think one person decided not to neuter but all the other brothers have already been done. Hope it's the right choice. I haven't had a puppy in 20 years and the advice on the age to neuter has changed a lot- I was surprised they recommend waiting this long as it seems like they used to do it when they were 6 or 8 months old.


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## Knave

We tend to not neuter our male dogs. My little brown dog came from the pound, and so he’s the only cut dog I’ve been around much. I adore him. Most of our dogs have been working dogs, so they weren’t as much pets. I am all about everything being a pet of course, Junie is in the house, but Ozzy prefers to not have too much pet type interaction.

Pig is a parsons jack russell. He’s well bred and papered. I adore him, but this nonsense of him being so emotional and peeing on things is making me stinking crazy! He’s angry and then overly loving... he’s a mess since Junie came. His feelings are hurt. He’s not my dog! I keep saying that and he keeps making me feel guilty.

I hope cutting him changes his personality a bit. I love him, I do, but jacks bred strictly to hunt are a lot of dog.


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## carshon

Speaking as someone who has worked at a vet clinic and now has a daughter getting ready to enter vet school - un neutered male dogs tend to get prostate issues as they age - not all (obviously) but the larger breeds are more known for it. And for those that live with neighbors fairly close an un-neutered male dog will travel to a female in heat. That's just nature and even the most well behaved dog will heed natures call! 

End of preaching. Please carry on........


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## bsms

I just mentioned it because I really regret neutering Jack. He's still a wonderful dog, but....he was a better dog before surgery. He was already called "Gentleman Jack" by the grandkids because he always had an innate politeness about him. He may be my all time favorite dog. We've been repainting the master bedroom prior to moving our furniture back and moving into it. He's supervised our repainting while staying out of the way. But....

Sammy's nickname is "Mr. Sugar". We joke that if he got any sweeter he'd melt in the rain. He's not neutered but shows NO interest in roaming. Dan the Dog was another story. He was scary smart but he had in incredible hunting drive. He was hard enough to deal with neutered. I can't imagine what he would have been like intact. Probably would have gotten every female dog and quite a few coyotes pregnant.


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## Knave

Lol @bsms. We are far out, and I don’t think there is a female unspayed dog anywhere around. Ozzy and Pig never roam. Now that we brought Junie home we may end up meeting everyone else’s stud dogs. Where I live though, if your dog roams far enough to step onto someone else’s property he doesn’t usually make it home. Most every female dog I have know is spayed. It’s unpopular to own a female.


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## bsms

My rancher friend has as a simple policy: The first time your dog roams on to his property - a sheep ranch - he calls you. The second time? The dog just disappears. We've only owned one female dog (Leila) and spayed her. Probably 50:50 among our males dogs, with some of them coming from the pound neutered. It isn't a right/wrong answer. More of a "Depends on your circumstances" thing. I understand egrogan's point and respect it. Completely valid. And Samuel T. Dog is likely to remain anatomically complete. Unless a problem develops. But I can only change my mind once with a dog....


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## egrogan

Another great ride with Fizz this morning. We did 6 miles, average speed of 4.3mph. Still too slow, but faster than we've been. About 60% walking, 40% trotting. Lots of loose gravel on the road so that slows us down some. She was a little sweaty when we got home but not really looking like she had done much.

We went down the hill of despair to start, and had our first encounter of the year with the pirate dogs. Their boat has been put away but they came charging at us through their spring pond. Per usual, the woman in the house at the top of the hill came out yelling for them to come back as they followed us down the road barking. I spun Fizz towards them and one went running for home, but the big goofy golden retriever followed us for a bit before giving up.

Crossed the paved road, and Fizz startled a little bit when Mac the German Shepherd came running up from the back of the house barking. I think it was just the remnants of the pirate dogs catching her off guard. I was very happy with her for keeping her cool- she did stop for a minute and gawk at him, but she was willing to walk off again with just a little urging. And we passed the donkeys without much issue, even though they were wandering around their pasture pretty close to the road:








We were doing a straight out and back, all on the road, and there are two 4-way intersections that we pass through. Fizz definitely knows which way is towards home and which way is more riding at each intersection, and she can get rude and pushy when she wants to go her own way. I've fought it out with her, gotten off and walked her through it, gotten dragged through it and circled around, etc. The last few times I've tried to be smarter about it- at the intersection, I've steered her into the shoulder where there's lush green grass and let her graze for a minute before heading on the way I want to go. So far, so good. No fights, no pulling, no frustration.

I turned out to be a really beautiful day when the clouds broke up a little bit:








I tried a new saddle pad but I don't think I'll use it again. It was a simple quilted, shaped pad, but I have the sense it was a little thicker down the spine than my usual one and she felt a little tight through her back again. We'll just go back to our cheap old $20 pad that's worked well for us so far.








Supposedly there's a drought here, but I think we're in a little microclimate- there's standing water on some of the fields and the ponds are full to the brim. Pretty day!


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## egrogan

Well, the deed has been done. Mr. Hugh was quite drunk when I picked him up yesterday afternoon, but he's looking a little brighter eyed this morning. Doesn't seem to be too bothered by the incision and mostly leaving it alone. The vet did send home some light sedation to keep him quiet today, and he's not allowed off leash for a week or so.








Had a bit of a strange interaction with the vet when he was discharged. She told me that he was very anxious and stressed, and when he goes back in next Friday (he has a tech appt for some vaccines they didn't want to do on top of everything else yesterday), they would like him to be sedated to come into the office. I had the feeling that she was being very polite and didn't want to be direct about anything that had happened while he was there, so I asked her specifically if he had been aggressive or bit anyone. She said no, but again described him as very stressed and acting fearful when people were working on him. Obviously I want everyone to be safe, and for him to not be terrified of the vet, but it's hard to know what to do when she was being so vague. I was able to talk to tech who brought him out to my car (they're still fully curbside), and she said she hadn't been around him much until the end of the day, and generally felt like he was acting like a dog who needed more socialization, which makes perfect sense, as unfortunately he is fitting the stereotype of a "pandemic puppy" who just hasn't had a lot of time off the farm. She also said it was just a generally stressful day in their office, with double the number of surgeries they usually do in one day and a big emergency in the middle of the afternoon. I just don't really know what my next steps should be based on what I know. We have a trainer coming next week to start working with us on the car issue, so it's an opportunity for him to work with a "stranger," which will be good. But I really do want to make sure he isn't aggressive or dangerous with the vet.

While Hugh was away, I got in another great ride with Fizz. We headed out to the overlook with plans to go down the big Cavendish hill. The scene of many disagreements 😉 Yesterday was no exception, she really was not cooperating at all. Instead of fighting it out, I decided to use the same strategy I've been using when she gets noodly at the road intersections. Basically- you want to dance your way off the road into the ditch and the grass verge, fine. We'll just walk down the road in the ditch. I have to be a little careful because there is some old electric fencing in spots, but we were able to find a safe enough spot to go down the hill through the grass. She seemed surprised by this development but went forward a little more willingly once we got out of the road. When we got to the bottom of the steepest part, I let her stop and graze in the lush grass for a minute, and we continued along.








We did 4.5 miles, just out and back. This is the big Cavendish hill from the bottom, taken on our way home.








The house at the top of the hill is where she starts getting resistant to continuing down the hill. As you can see, there's not really good footing along the side of the road in this section, so we have to stay on it. It gets better as you get about halfway down the hill, which is where we walked through the grass.








It was breeeeeezzzzyyyyy on our way home....








When we got home and I checked out our mileage, I was thrilled to see that this was our first ride ever where we did more trotting than walking 🎉 We did the 4.5 miles in exactly 1 hour.


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## Knave

That’s awesome!!

Junie is getting very aggressive with new people. I don’t know what to do about it really, because I’ve socialized her at every opportunity. I think I may have to accept it and lock her up when people are over. I didn’t want to do that! She really really dislikes small children. Ugh...

What did it cost? (Or is that a rude question. Don’t answer and forgive me if it is!) I called to make Pig and appointment and decided against it. It was going to be very expensive. Around $500 for just the neutering. Vets are so high in my area... this is why a lot of traditional vet stuff is taken care of personally. I can’t cut a dog though.... I have a friend who says he can, and if Pig were younger I would quickly jump to that option, but I am rather attached to the dog, and there are rumors of why people don’t just cut dogs. We cut everything else... horses, calves, cats, sheep and goats. They say dogs are hard. (Pigs too, but people who own them can cut them I hear.)


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## egrogan

Haha, not rude @Knave. I was surprised it was only $300, and then another $50 for the pain meds and sedatives they sent him home with. And this was at the small animal vet practice in the fru fru neighboring town. I definitely expected a heftier bill.


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## bsms

I prefer to be with my dog while they are examined. Vets don't like it but I can handle them better than any strange vet tech. Although in modern times, liability insurance probably REQUIRES the vet tech to do it. Happily we have never reached a point of requiring an animal to be dropped off at curbside for vet appointments. We've always been able to at least be with them during examination. Sammy would be a challenge otherwise. Sweet dog but suspicious of strangers and I feel no need to try to get rid of that. He adapts quickly to strangers if we're there. If we're not? I'd just as soon he stays the way he is! (BTW - Border Collie Jack would probably show someone the silverware. Unless they acted threatening, in which case Jack would go full psycho.)

Pima County is supposed to look at dropping their mask mandate today. Didn't have one living in Cochise County. Pima has never had a mask requirement outside and no vet has ever restricted people to curbside. Hate Pima County but it is a good place if we're going to have the grandkids living with us.

IIRC, it cost around $200 for Jack's neutering years ago.


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## Knave

I guess my vet isn’t particularly high comparatively. Seriously though, that is a lot of money for what it is... my buddy said you cut a dog like anything else (again, I have a hesitation towards that, but I don’t know). So, if a cat also costs a lot of money, I can tell you truly it is a very simple procedure. 

I feel like people overcharge for necessary procedures because people don’t have other options. Doctors of human or animal variety.

I had a cat I particularly liked. A dog picked it up and hurt it, and it developed an abscess on its stomach. I was fearful because I was too attached to the little thing, and I took it in. My reaction was the desire to drain the abscess, but I was overly cautious.

The vet drained the abscess. That was all. One cut and a single suture. (Anyone who ranches could drain an abscess.) It cost me 150! Maybe max 5 minutes of work if someone was productive. The cat also ended up with a major skin reaction when I took her home, but I didn’t take her back for that and dealt with it here.

Castrating calves... we cut calves in about two minutes. Can you imagine the amount of money one could make per minute?!


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## Knave

Side note... I think a human would be just as simple as a calf... my daughter’s boyfriends had better be cautious. Lol


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## knightrider

Wow, it's a little over $100 for a male dog where I live. I paid $300 to have Chorro gelded. Lots of "good ol' boys" will do it much cheaper, but Chorro was my dreamhorse and I did not want anything to go wrong.


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## bsms

Knave said:


> Side note... I think a human would be just as simple as a calf... my daughter’s boyfriends had better be cautious. Lol


We used to tell them, "_I've got a shotgun, a shovel and a big back yard..._."


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## egrogan

I'm just reading all this and you all are too funny. I will say this is one chore I'm happy to pay someone else to do 😉


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## egrogan

More adventures with Fizz yesterday. I decided we'd try our luck on one of the woods trails to see how the mud was. I suspected there would be one muddy section, but the trail has some elevation so I was hoping that we'd be mostly ok.

To get there we had to pass the mini donks/Mac the German Shepherd's house. His people were outside gardening yesterday and he didn't make a sound while we went by. We stopped to chat for a second and I was laughing with the owner about how suspicious Fizz is of the donkeys- he said I should just tell her they're big stuffed animals and wouldn't hurt a thing. She was still skeptical, but at this point we are consistently riding by them without any major issues.

As we headed to the trail, we were passed by two big trucks towing rattly trailers with ATVs and I wondered how many people would be out in the woods with us. The trail we were doing doesn't tend to be very popular with ATVs because it's fairly narrow and really rocky in parts. But as we trotted along the first stretch in the woods, I could hear one coming in our direction. I saw them before they saw us and we gave them plenty of room, but they were very nice and slowed way down. I always try to wave people along so they don't get nervous about passing us. Fizz doesn't care at all about that sort of thing so we continued along. It was the warmest day we've had so far, so she was warm but the shade in the woods was welcome.








The spot I expected to be muddy was, and it looked like the ATV had gone through there so it was fairly rutted up. I was a little worried because she didn't want to drink at all when we got to the stream- usually she will take a good drink there but she just briefly stuck her lips in and didn't seem that interested. I stood there for a minute to see if she'd change her mind, but that just seemed to make her irritated so I didn't push it and we kept going. We were nearly at the end of the woods trail anyway and back to the road to head home.








Back out on the road and marching right along towards home, I decided to try drinking one more time in a little stream on the side of the road. We headed in that direction, and I felt her sinking into mucky ground covered over in the leaves along the side of the stream. I should have known better. She wanted nothing to do with going through that for water that wasn't her idea in the first placed, and lurched her way out of the mud back onto the road. I looked down to make sure we had all our boots- but the left front was missing  I hopped off to see if I could find it in one of the holes she'd made hopping around in the mud, but it was nowhere obvious. I couldn't really hold her and get down on the ground to fish around for it, so after a minute I gave up and decided I'd drive back over after the ride and find it. She stood well for me to get back on, after a false alarm when I tried to stand on a tree trunk that I fell through because it was completed rotted!

I felt bad because the road was full of the nasty big gravel, and I was not going to ask her to go quickly over this without hoof protection








We picked our way through it, and I got off to walk her through some of the worst spots. We had been at a decent 4.5mph pace up until we got sidetracked, but obviously we just moseyed along the rest of the way. She didn't seem any worse for it when we untacked and she got turned out- nothing was wedging in her feet and she didn't show any signs of bruising or foot soreness.

After she was settled, I drove back over to the side of the road where I thought I'd find the boot, and got down on my hands and knees to reach down into the depths of the holes trying to find the boot. I thought I had it, but it turned out to be a big stick. The stupid thing was just not there, which seemed impossible to me. But I didn't want to go home empty handed, so I drove up the road and parked at the trail head to walk back into the woods to the muddy spot where we'd stopped for a drink, which luckily was not too far to walk in. It wasn't at the stream, but I kept going a little ways and sure enough, right in the middle of the trail, there it was!








It definitely didn't look like it had been sucked off by mud, more like she had just walked right out of it. With a fresh trim and really dry weather, her feet can be right on the borderline between two boot sizes, so maybe the fit was just a little too loose for the day. I'm not really sure what she did, but it still came off. In all the years I've ridden in boots, I've never had one come off, and certainly for no apparent reason! Oh well, at least I found it- because this is one of the brand new ones I just got a month ago.

As I walked back to the car, I was feeling really guilty because based on where I found the boot, she had to cover about 1/2 a mile on that awful gravelly road without any hoof protection. I know I was definitely still asking her to trot along without realizing the boot was gone. Suddenly everything made a lot of sense- I had been getting frustrated with her during that part of the ride because she kept trying to lurch over to the right side of the road, almost like a car out of alignment, and I couldn't figure out why she was being so rude about not staying on a straight path down the road. And now I know it's because I was asking her to go faster than I should have on that awful footing  Lesson of the day- good horses don't just do "bad" things for no reason. _Listen to your horse!!_


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## egrogan

Today schedules and weather finally worked out so I could meet up with M and Coalie for a long ride. We headed off to our meeting spot, and at the house with the deer skeleton, three very exuberant dogs came bounding out from behind the house and were running in circles around us while the owners futilely called for them to stop. The dogs weren't being mean or aggressive, they just looked young and unsure of what to do. I figured the best thing was just to stand still so they didn't get more wound up, and Fizz was ok with it. Eventually they got them caught and we were able to go on our way. Side note- the deer and the tents were finally taken down on Friday 😉

We got to the meeting spot right on time and headed out for the tree farm. The farm has a 8ish mile loop on a logging road through the middle of it, and the snowmobilers maintain it so it's always clear and easy to use. Because of their spat with the ATVers, there are no motorized vehicles allowed back there, which is nice- though it does make me a bit sad that everyone has these little feuds in our town. Can't we all just get along?!

The ride was pretty uneventful. I hadn't seen M in awhile so it was good catching up. Coalie, as usual, was slow on the roads but the horses were better matched in the woods, and their trot speeds are pretty similar so we could go along side by side for stretches. I think Fizz is a little fitter and we did go slower than we've been doing on our own, but not by too much.








After we had been riding for awhile, we had the feeling that we should be getting close to the end of the loop, but things weren't looking familiar. We hadn't been back there since last fall, and of course everything looks different then, but it was just weird that we weren't finding the turnoff back to the main road that we had been expecting. We came into a clearing that had two options we could take- one gravel route that looked like a continuation of the logging road straight ahead, and one down a grassy trail through a gate. We decided to stop for a second, pee, and let the horses have a snack. The bugs were getting pretty annoying, even after respraying bug spray at our stop. Fizz was being really rude about trying to itch her head on me, and for the first time in a long time she absolutely would not stand still for me to get back on, trying to shove her face into me to scratch and swinging her haunches away from me when I tried to get on from a hill side. There was a good rock a little ways down the logging road, so we headed that way and I finally got back on. Fizz continued to be just awful, flinging her head around and stopping randomly. When the side of the road was clear, she would suddenly hop off the trail and try to spin back around the way we came. Going downhill on gravel, this was a little concerning. 

We got about 1/2 mile and we came across a fresh looking pile of horse poo. It seemed very unlikely anyone else was out there riding, so we started thinking we should have turned down the grassy trail back in the clearing, rather than going straight. 

After talking it over for a minute, it seemed like we should turn around and head back. Surprise, surprise, suddenly Fizz was quiet and happy. Even though we didn't have cell service, I had my mileage tracker going on my phone, and sure enough on the map I could see we were heading back towards the entrance to the logging road. We should have taken the grassy trail instead of continuing straight; what we had accidentally done was basically start the loop all over again! 

Not sure how we missed it, but I had to apologize to Fizz for getting upset with how she had been acting, when all along she was trying to tell us we were going the wrong way. Let me repeat yesterday's lesson: _Good horses don't do bad things for no reason_ 😉 Well- the itchy head is a bad habit, but I'm pretty confident that the rest of the behavior was just her telling us loudly that we were wrong. We had a good laugh imagining her answering my question, "Why are you being so bad right now?" with her own question: "Why are you being so stupid right now?" 








The rest of the ride home was uneventful-we split off to head our separate ways with a couple of miles to go. We had to dodge a little bit of traffic crossing the paved road to get home, but when we went passed the house with the wild dogs they were locked up inside so we didn't have any more issues. We could hear Izzy and Maggie calling to Fizz before we could see the house, so I asked her to please keep it together and not buck me off and run for home- she managed to keep it together though she returned one of those loud, full body neighs that vibrates you while you're in the saddle.

That's our longest ride so far this year- 11.5 miles. Took us almost exactly 3 hours to do 11 miles. Ideally we'll get to doing 15 miles in three hours, so...more work to do.


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## Knave

I found myself realizing that same thing this year. Often I push my horse to where I believe the footing is best. One of our long runs (I went on 3 long runs with my aunt while we prepared for the half marathon) was terrible hard in a very bad storm. My feet would slip right out on every stride, and I was often shocked at my misperception of what was easy and what was hard. I decided to allow Cash more freedom in his paths.


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## gottatrot

So glad you found your boot!


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## egrogan

Beautiful day yesterday so we went for a quick lunchtime ride to the overlook and back. We didn't have a lot of time so I almost didn't go, but I'm glad I managed to fit it in.
















Still working on shedding out the black coat, but looking more golden by the day.








She has such a massive forelock I often forget about the cute little white star she has ⭐


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## PoptartShop

So beautiful, & that color really looks great on her!


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## egrogan

Another cloudless day, so we did the 4 mile loop (all roads). I actually had to put sunscreen on to go out-my pasty white skin is not conditioned for that ☀ The bugs are also back with a vengeance-thank goodness for @knightrider’s fly whisk!









We continue to work on not blasting through the 4-way intersection and stopped to munch on dandelion greens-Fizz is very gourmet like that you know 🥗


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## egrogan

Poor Fizz got a couple of nasty tick bites on her butt and undercarriage, and can't stop itching...

https://youtube.com/shorts/4fyl-6bU8wQ?feature=share


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## Knave

It won’t let me open the video.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> It won’t let me open the video.


Hmmm..I thought it looked odd when it posted to HF (it usually displays the video in the box, rather than just being a link). Probably my terrible internet. Just imagine a horse itching their butt and making silly faces...


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## bsms

Try this: 




You may need to copy it, eliminate the 2 spaces between youtube and .com and then paste it into an open window. It seems HF's software is screwing up YouTube links.

https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=4fyl-6bU8wQ


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## egrogan

Yes, thank you! I remember in the old days we had to do some finagling with the links to get videos to show up, so I will have to remember this for the future.


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## carshon

@egrogan I am usually jealous of your trails close to home - but ticks! We do have ticks but not as many as in other parts of the country. Poor Fizz


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## egrogan

Yes, we really hate them too @carshon. In addition to these itchy ones, I found bites on the hairline right above her heel bulbs on both hind legs. I've never shaved off her 'feathers' before but I think I need to trim them back to try to keep the ticks off. I've recently heard a suggestion to get the spray bottle of cat/dog frontline and spray their lower legs and tail every morning, which I might try.


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## egrogan

More itchies...


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## egrogan

This weekend felt like we moved right to summer- it was hot and muggy for our rides. Everywhere you look has turned to brilliant green, even in the shady spots in the woods. Saturday we went for a fast ride, we're at about 50/50 walk/trot, even with incorporating woods trails more now. She still gets a little unbalanced and rushing on the downhills in the woods, so I have to work to keep her paying attention to where her feet are as she tends to want to look around. But since her recent trim and a switch to new boots on the front, the tripping has nearly stopped, so that's a relief.









One new issue that has popped up though, she suddenly is not drinking very well- she used to always take a long drink right before we left, and drink well from streams or puddles as we found them. But the last couple of weeks, she doesn't really drink much before we leave, and she has no interest in water on trail. I thought hot weather would make her more interested, but not really. Not sure what to make of that. When we stopped at the stream, she didn't care about the water, but she did want to eat - there's nice green grass all around so we paused for snacking a couple of times. Better than nothing, but I'd still like her drinking. Saturday we did 7 miles in 1.5 hours.








Sunday morning we met M and Coalie early, to beat the thunderstorms that were forecast. M trailered over and we went off to do the Newhall Farm loop. Coalie was enthusiastic and we trotted right along at the beginning of the ride. He even paced Fizz for awhile!








We rode past not one, but TWO fields with cows- and we actually were able to keep riding as we went by, which is huge for Fizz. The first field, they were probably a football field length away from the road, but she still saw them before I did and wanted to stop and look. But she got going again easily enough without having to be led past them. Then, as we made our way through the farm, we came up the hill and there was a little herd napping in the shade right along the road. I think we both noticed them at the same time, but we said hello to them and kept trotting as we passed, which was huge! Very proud of her. I think if they had gotten up and came over to say hello it might have been a different story, but it all worked out well this time! 😉








As we headed through the woods, we saw a biker and some dogs up ahead so we called out hello to let him know we were there. The biker got the dogs caught off on the side of the trail, but he left his bike laying on the ground and the horses gave that some snorty looks as we went by! 🤣 He was very nice though-one of the dogs was just a puppy, so it was a good first horse experience for her too. We ended up doing about 6.5 miles, in an hour and 45 minutes. Coalie lost some steam as the ride went on so we did a lot of walking.

M left her trailer at our house for the afternoon so we could do some loading practice. I think it's been almost a year since Fizz has been on, and she walked right on the first time I asked. We practiced just standing on there with the ramp up, and she tested out the option of going backwards once; as soon as she felt the butt bar she just stood where she belonged, even though Izzy was calling like a crazy lady from down in the field. I had a nice wet mash that I let her nibble on while we hung out, and we practiced getting off and back on a couple of times. She seemed very nonchalant about it so I didn't see any reason to overdo it. We probably played around with it for 15 minutes tops? Hopefully she'll stay calm about it when we start driving. Our tentative plan is to do a ride that ends at M's house next weekend, and then load Fizz and Coalie together and drive Fizz home. It's a short ride, so should be a good refresher.








We're planning for our first competitive weekend in a couple of weeks (June 12th/13th). I haven't quite decided which distances I'll do, but right now I'm thinking we'll hack the horses there on Friday, do the 15 mile CTR on Saturday, and the 10 mile intro endurance on Sunday (and then trailer them home). M doesn't want to do two competitive rides, so I'd be on my own on Saturday, which I think would be fine. I'm not totally sure if we'll be fast enough to do the CTR at a finishing pace, so if not we'll do the pleasure ride Saturday and the intro on Sunday. Either way, it will be a busy weekend. But I'm getting really excited!


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## SueC

Beautiful photos 😍

We were bequeathed an old iPad which is super for looking at photos and for reading but really lousy to type on... loved the scratchy film but not that Fizz is itchy obviously. We have ticks here too but only kangaroo ticks that don't really like horse or human hosts and only latch on half-heartedly. I find them on the horses sometimes but they scrape off easily and never get very big...

Those woods of yours are emerald! ☘🍀🌳🌲


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## bsms

I was interested in your comment about drinking. Around here, there is no surface water. Anywhere. No drinking from start to finish. Which is why I never take a canteen. If I start feeling dry, how much more so my horse?


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## gottatrot

Halla and Amore would almost never feel the need to drink until at least after they'd been sweating for a couple of hours. Sometimes not even then. I didn't worry about it after a while, because they never seemed to have trouble. We would trailer a couple hours somewhere, offer water and they'd say no, then we'd ride a couple of hours pretty hard, offer water and they'd say no, trailer home, and then they'd usually drink at home by then. Hero drinks a lot more than the girls ever did.


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## egrogan

Poor Maggie, tis the season for grazing muzzles as the grass comes in. Izzy is trying to be a supportive friend 😉 This shot really shows how grey Izzy is going- makes me a little sad. But her condition is looking so much better overall after a week or so with decent grass.









_Unsolicited product review: Stability Stirrup Leathers and compositi stirrups_

I’ve been wanting to try the “stability stirrup leathers” for awhile now- they are basically just a wide pair of leathers that promises to keep your leg in a more stable position- and I finally ordered a pair last week and couldn’t wait to try them out. I also had a pair of Compositi stirrup “irons” I had snagged for $10 from someone who didn’t like orange (can you imagine such a person?! 😉), so decided it would be a good time to try those too. It’s been years(?) since I changed out my stirrup setup, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. After some fiddling, I had them shortened to a length I thought I could ride in. After about a mile though, I realized they were a bit too long. So I parked Fizz on the side of the road grazing, hoping it was not a day we saw a bear or a grouse family while I had my legs up over her shoulders shortening the leathers from the saddle. Fortunately she was happy to munch away while I fiddled. One of the criticisms I’ve heard of these particular stirrups is that they are _too _lightweight, making it hard to get your foot back in the stirrup after you drop it. Now, I’m no Grand Prix rider, but also not a lead line kid, so I was fairly confident in my ability to reclaim my stirrup at any gait without having to look for it or hold it in place  Lo and behold though, those critiques were right- every time I tried to flip it with my toe, I just ended up kicking the entire stirrup forward into space, and it was swinging like a pendulum at the end of the leather. Thank goodness no one was watching, because I had to reach down and hold the stirrup in place to get my left foot situated. That was embarrassing. And would definitely be a problem if I lost a stirrup because of a funny step or a spook on trail. At any rate, I got everything situated and continued on our ride. With the leathers up a hole, they felt a smidge shorter than I like, and they must have changed my balance point because I was getting a lot of confused ears flicking back and forth from Fizz. Eventually we settled into a decent rhythm as we trotted along. I’m not sure yet if I’ll get used to them at this setting, but I think the too-short adjustment was a little more comfortable than the too-long adjustment. So overall, I’d say the inaugural ride was inconclusive- it certainly didn’t give me instant stability as promised, and I didn’t ride long enough to say whether my knee will be more comfortable over longer distances. And if the lightweight irons are impossible to pick back up when you need to, I’ll definitely switch back to my basic fillis irons. She looked cute in extra orange accessorizing though.









We did a short ride yesterday since lovely husband was actually out physically working at his office (first time in months!) and I didn't want to go too far from home with no one there. We had a beautiful day for a ride.








I've been thinking about the upcoming GMHA competition weekend, and realized I was having a little anxiety thinking about the parts of the trail that cross open fields. I don't really have any reason _not _to trust Fizz, but there's something about all that wide open space that makes me think about worst-case scenarios. So that means I need to do some work on myself. I'm trying to make it a habit to end our rides by hacking around our fields. I think that will help.









And finally, a celebratory picture of Hugh- we've now had two car rides in a row without puking. I took him to get coffee with me yesterday morning and he did so well. Maybe we've turned the corner on the car problems! He's healed up well from his surgery and is having fun with the training games.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> We have ticks here too but only kangaroo ticks that don't really like horse or human hosts and only latch on half-heartedly. I find them on the horses sometimes but they scrape off easily and never get very big...


Uggh, I found TWO on my stomach yesterday. I can't figure out how they're ending up there- on arms and legs, I can understand. But I promise I am not gallivanting around topless 🤣 



bsms said:


> I was interested in your comment about drinking. Around here, there is no surface water. Anywhere. No drinking from start to finish





gottatrot said:


> Halla and Amore would almost never feel the need to drink until at least after they'd been sweating for a couple of hours. Sometimes not even then. I didn't worry about it after a while, because they never seemed to have trouble.


I guess I noticed the lack of drinking because she's always been so enthusiastic about it. I know people say good endurance horses take care of themselves and drink whenever given the opportunity, and I was hoping she had that inclination. It's true that up until a week or so ago, we very much had "Morgan weather"- cool and pleasant, so not as much of a need to drink. But when it was so hot over the weekend, I expected her to want the drink more than she did. I'm sure as we continue to up the distance and work harder, she'll come around.


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## knightrider

My friend gives horses "Redmond salt" and that encourages them to drink. I'd like to get some and try it. Sometimes our horses don't drink on camping trips because they don't like the different taste of the water. After some Redmond salt in their food, they drink more.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @knightrider! I will look into it.


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## egrogan

Got some great news from the vet today. First, 27-year-old Izzy had amazing blood work. Not even borderline for Cushing's. With the extra senior feed I've added in, and being on grass for a couple of weeks, she's filling back in and looking really good. (Except her mane needs some spring cleaning...)








AND- Maggie also had excellent bloodwork- ACTH is well within _normal _range, not even elevated. Glucose, insulin in the upper end of normal, but normal. Of course she still needs to be managed carefully, and is back in the grazing muzzle. But the Pergolide and the diet changes over the past several months seem to be working really well for her and keeping her metabolic profile in line. I'm just so relieved!








We had beautiful weather yesterday, but rain moved in this afternoon.








Before it started raining, I took Fizz out for a short ride on the Bartley loop. I kept the new stirrup leathers on the "short" setting to give them another chance. Fizz was a little worried from the beginning- the bears are back out and moving around, and there must have been one across the field last night or this morning because she was pretty fixated on something off in the distance from the time I caught her to get ready. When I got on she wasn't thrilled about crossing the field, and spent the first mile snort-snort-snorting her way along. She wasn't particularly tense through her body, but her little spooky noises made me laugh because she's usually so level headed. I just kept her moving along. Let's see if this little video will play- if you listen over the sound of her footsteps, you can hear her little snort-snort-snorts




We turned onto the paved road and there was a lot of traffic, so we hung out in someone's driveway for a minute and nibbled their weeds while the traffic cleared. We had to ride through a thick cloud of smoke pouring out of someone's chimney - I was a little worried they were having an actual fire, but I think it was just "cleaning it out." It stunk but didn't seem to bother Fizz any, so we got through the 1/4 mile stretch of pavement efficiently, despite the traffic.

We turned onto the next dirt road and she seemed happy to be able to move up into a trot. Forward is usually the answer to her being worried. So we're trotting along, and out of nowhere, she did this huge kangaroo leap to the right, apparently spooking at something rustling in the woods on our left. Her jump flung me off to the left, and before I knew what was happening I found myself hanging off her left shoulder, my left foot still in the stirrups but my body and right leg hugging her neck. Fortunately her spooks tend to be spook-and-stop, not spook-and-spin, so she came to a quick stop perpendicular to the direction we had been going. I do have the distinct memory of looking down at the ground and trying to decide how much of a chance I had of saving myself and not hitting the ground. Since she had stopped, I figured I had to try to climb back into the saddle, so even though I was squeezed around her like a stuffed animal sunction-cupped to a car window, she didn't move and let me get myself situated. I was particularly appreciative that it ended this way given the nasty gravel we were on at the time! I thanked her for being reasonable, and figured we should just keep doing what we had been doing and picked up the trot again.

Have you ever ridden a horse that can hold their breath while trotting? This one can! She hasn't done this in awhile, but she used to stop breathing a lot in our lessons when she would get worried. It's the weirdest feeling, it's like her barrel is inflated to twice its normal size. I can sometimes get her to exhale if I start doing lots of loud breathing or deep sighing, and sometimes I can tickle her ribs with my toes to make her let out the breath. Nothing was really working though, and she refused to let that breath out for what felt like forever. Finally though, we headed up the hill towards Mac and the mini donks, and she let out a long sigh, and immediately the whole shape of her body changed, her neck relaxed, and we walked most of the rest of the way home without any concerns.









What an odd ride- definitely not what I was expecting for a quick lap around the neighborhood! I guess it just goes to show you horses are horses, not machines. Hoping the spookiness was an isolated issue and that whether it was bears or something else worrying her, she'll get used to "it" being out there and not carry it with us on our next ride. Looks like a break in the rain is coming tomorrow afternoon so I'm thinking about a longer Cavendish loop if the footing hasn't gotten too mucky overnight.

Oh- as for the new stirrups. I think the next ride I want to try them back on the longer setting. I just really don't like feeling like I'm twelve feet in the air above the saddle while I'm posting- her trot is fairly up-and-down, so there's a lot of launch up into the air. On the other hand, I guess they kept me relatively stable through the kangaroo spook!!


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## egrogan

We've had a very gloomy weekend, which is a bummer when both lovely husband and I actually had a three day weekend. It poured down rain Saturday, and was cold enough we lit a fire and made "breakfast for dinner" accompanied by big mugs of coffee and Bailey's. Yesterday started off just grey and dismal, so M and I skipped breakfast and moved up our riding time to go out before the skies opened again. We did about 6 miles, and were able to pick up the pace pretty well through the woods, which was fun. The horses were a little snorty with the cool temps and howling winds, but we managed to go 6 miles and get home with a little time to spare before the rain started up again.

















After Fizz was settled, I took Hugh out for a romp through the fields to blow off a little steam from being stuck inside most of the weekend. He needed a good run!








Unfortunately today has been more of the same, and not sure it's going to stop raining long enough for me to get out to ride this afternoon. I'm feeling stir crazy!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> We've had a very gloomy weekend, which is a bummer when both lovely husband and I actually had a three day weekend. It poured down rain Saturday, and was cold enough we lit a fire and made "breakfast for dinner" accompanied by big mugs of coffee and Bailey's. Yesterday started off just grey and dismal, so M and I skipped breakfast and moved up our riding time to go out before the skies opened again.


That breakfast for dinner thing sounds very cosy! Your weather sounds like ours. We had 60mm in one day last Sunday, at the tail of two weekends of wet, cold, windy weather - and everything is sloshing around here. I can't even plant anything in the garden until it stops squelching everywhere I walk! So we're just diving out there hiking and cycling when we can on our days off, and I suppose I will ride again when everything dries out a bit...


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## egrogan

It was another week that flew by- when it wasn't raining, I was swamped at work, and when I had some flexibility in my work schedule, it was pouring rain. So that meant Fizz didn't get ridden for an entire week because of all the bad timing.

Yesterday summer arrived out of nowhere. Temps all weekend, through tomorrow, are hitting near 90*F/32*C, which we _sometimes _will get here in late summer, but it's not typical. And it's a humid heat. With no air conditioning. And lots of black flies, deer flies, and horse flies. Yuck. Have I mentioned summer is not for me!? 😉

Stupidly I didn't head out to ride until 11am yesterday. I was naive about how bad the sun would be. This is probably the freshest we looked all afternoon, riding past lovely husband as he was out working on the tractor when we were leaving the house.








I decided on a "lollipop" route I hadn't done since last year, which would be around 9 miles. Fizz set out strong and was happy to move along at a comfortable trot. Right away it was clear that we were not the only ones out enjoying the nice weather. We were passed by several peletons of bikers, but they were all very considerate and asked if it was ok to go by. Fizz responded by looking at them sweetly while they told her how pretty she is. We also met a fleet of ATVs out for a ride, but they also slowed down for us (the last guy mentioned he had horses).

She became a bit less enthusiastic when we turned left in a spot we usually turn right, heading away from home rather than looping back. It was great because we were in the shade, but it was a long, if gradual, decline- probably close to 2 miles of all downhill with rare spots that would flatten out so we could trot a bit. Whenever we'd come to a driveway on the right side of the road, she tried to do that infuriating evasive thing where she tries to spin around over her right shoulder to go back towards home. The first time she surprised me with it so we did a big circle, but then I caught on and just gave her a firm shove with my right leg whenever I saw her cock her head in that direction and think about it.

Soon enough, we looped back in the home direction and, unfortunately, back into the blazing sun. Every time I took a sip of water I was splashing her on the neck to try to take advantage of the good breeze that was blowing. We did come across two little streams trickling through roadside ditches, but she really didn't want anything to do with the water even though she was breathing hard. She was willing to eat though, so we slowed way down and let her grab periodic bites of the tall grass. That seemed to help revive her, but we still took it easy because the rest of the way home was uphill and she was breathing hard.








We saw lots more bikers, but Fizz was far more interested in eating grass than even looking at them. The last group we saw, I joked with them that we had reached the snack time portion of the ride (Fizz was on the side of the road, up to her knees in grass at that point), and they all agreed it was too hot to be out in the sun. They hung around for quite a bit waiting for their third rider to make it up to the top of the big hill at the overlook. I think they might have been regretting starting their ride too late as well.

In addition to all the bikers, earlier in the ride we had two funny encounters with random people out driving, rolling down their window to ask for directions. I'm trotting along on a deserted dirt road, focused on my ride, when I see a lady in an SUV crawling to a stop. She rolls down the window, and asks if the road we were on connects to a paved county road, so she can go visit the spa. I have to admit that at first the mention of a spa threw me for a loop, as I'm not much of a spa person myself, nor are most people around here 😉 But she called it the "Castle Spa," and I remembered that the road she was looking for did have an old house that had been designed to look like a castle, so I guess it's a spa? At any rate, I told her how to get there, and as she drove off she said she was a horse person too. Which made me want to ask her why the heck she stopped me mid-trot to ask for directions to a spa!! 🤣

Second woman did the same thing, rolled up next to us while we were moving along, but her question was even funnier. "Where does this road go?" she asked, and looked at me expectantly. For a second I almost asked back, "where do any roads in this life go, and do we really want to be on them?" but I held back. I took a deep breath and explained...it goes a lot of places. There are three different intersections within about 2 miles, so she could end up going to three different towns depending on which turn she took. I tried to figure out where she was trying to go, and she said she was just out for a drive because she remembered the road being pretty (she was right about that). I don't know where the road ultimately led her, but hope she had fun. Oh, and she also drove off by telling me that _she _was a horse person and she was going to ride her young colt when she got home. What a weird series of interactions!

Fizz and I meandered the rest of the way home, and ended up doing the 9 miles in 2 hours and 10 minutes. Our goal for our intro endurance ride next Sunday is 10 miles in 2 hours, so we of course need to continue to pick up the pace. But given the series of interruptions, and how much we wilted in the hot sun coming home, it didn't seem too terrible.

I untacked Fizz and let her out on the lawn, rubbing her down with a big bucket of water and a curry comb that is perfect for a cool bath. She thoroughly enjoyed all the green grass!








Today we met M and Coalie, and headed out first thing in the morning. It was still very hot out in the sun, but not quite as bad as yesterday, at least that early in the day. We planned to have more woods trail for this ride, and we appreciated all the shade and the breeze. Though not the flies.








The horses drank happily at the stream, which was a relief. They seemed to enjoy standing their with their feet in the water while they splashed water over the rocks with their lips, so we let them rest there for a bit before we continued.








As we headed down the last stretch of road, we were happy about our timing for a different reason- we got passed by, no exaggeration, a dozen huge pickups pulling trailers with side-by-sides and ATVs. It was a massive caravan heading to one tiny parking area, so not sure how they all managed to get in there and offloaded. The horses didn't even glance in their direction. We weren't sure how rattly the trailers would be, so we moved over to a grassy side of the road just so the space wouldn't be tight, but they were more than happy to nibble grass rather than worry about the trucks. No pictures as I kept both hands on the wheel just in case things got exciting!

The rest of the ride home was all roads, and pretty noisy. People are just starting to hay here, so we passed a lot of loud equipment out in the fields, motorcycles, more people pulling ATVs on trailers. No cows though, so Fizz was happy.








We also ended up doing 9 miles, but a bit slower at 2.5 hours. I think there are a lot of places where we should have trotted, but still trying to get M to want to move out for longer stretches, particularly on the road. It was hot though, and the horses were dragging a little, so we didn't want to push them too much since the humidity is hard on all of us. And after last week's storms, there were a lot of washed out spots on the trail that weren't there a few weeks ago, and the rocks made the footing tricky. I'm happy that the long-term forecast for next weekend, at least right now, has temps back in the 70s and slightly overcast. That will be perfect for us, as long as it doesn't end up raining!


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## phantomhorse13

I am just catching up, so a bit late in discussing the not-drinking-much issue. 

Here is the answer:








All of that lovely green grass which they are gobbling with delight has tons of moisture in it compared to the hay they ate all winter. Every spring as our grass comes in, I notice everyone drinks much less on trail and I don't fill the tank at home nearly as often.


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## Knave

How pretty is that field where she is rolling?! My horses would be massively obese there... well, maybe not Bones or Lucy, but now that Lucy is likely pregnant that might change.

We live where it is hot and dry during summer. Often we do a lot of work without coming across water. Some of our horses drink every time, like Cash, but others rarely drink, like Beamer. In his old age he is more likely to drink on a hot day, but he still tends to turn his nose up at water. (Actually he is very funny and puts his whole nose under water when he drinks. It is better if you take his bridle off. He doesn’t like sucking air.)

I don’t worry about it almost ever though. I feel sorry for a horse I know is thirsty, but I can’t change it. Cash has been thirsty before and got super excited at an empty trough. That is sad. I wouldn’t ever think to worry about a horse who didn’t drink at work. This is especially true when there is green grass like @phantomhorse13 said. Grandpa always told me that if a horse was working hard he would let them grab bites of grass along the way. He said they could work longer because of the water in the grass.


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## egrogan

Thanks @phantomhorse13 & @Knave. I'm sure you're right about her being ok. And yes, this has been an unusually green season, even for us. My riding pictures are getting boring because it's just her little black ears pointing down a road or trail that's emerald green. 😉 When we do our intro ride Sunday, there will be plenty of water on trail- the organizers are very good about having lots of tanks out. If she's thirsty, she'll drink!








Today I'm hiding out in the house in front of the fan. It's the hottest day yet. All the horses are tucked into the back corner of their sheds, trying to escape the flies and sun. Just a couple more days until things cool back down.


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## Knave

I don’t think it’s boring!! I think it’s amazing! It never looks like that here.


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## egrogan

The look on Hugh's face pretty much sums up how we're feeling with it being 85*F and about 800 percent humidity in a house with no air conditioning 🥵🥵









Fizz and I went out this morning, just the short route to the overlook. I think the humidity was worse than the actual heat today, but I have to say she was very eager on the ride. Great walk, happy trot, we cantered a bit up the hill and down the flat section to the overlook and she did it all on a loose rein. We're now consistently trotting the gentle downhills and she balances her weight back on her hind end much more smoothly.








Those storms out there are supposed to _finally _break this heat wave later today, leaving temps much cooler for the rest of the week and into the weekend. That is a much better forecast for the endurance ride!!


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## phantomhorse13

Have a fantastic time at the ride - can't wait to hear all about it!!


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## egrogan

Took a tumble on our ride today. We were out doing the 3.5 mile loop we do pretty often, and nearly home when suddenly before I even knew what was happening, Fizz disappeared out from under me to the right, and launched me like a rock in a slingshot off over her left shoulder. Unlike previous big spooks, there was no question that I was coming off. Fortunately my amply padded a*s took the brunt of the impact 🤣 

I stood up wondering what the heck had scared her so badly, and when I looked in the direction she was looking I saw this:








Apparently our old friend Mac the German Shepherd had some kind of surgery. Usually he barks his head off when you're well away from the house, but he was silent this time and must have darted out from under the bushes looking like an alien.

I hadn't been able to hold onto the reins when I came off because she was flying backwards at the same time she was going sideways, but fortunately she just froze in place and didn't take off running (paved road was just ahead). I had to laugh, I never ride with my wedding ring on because I'm terrified of jamming my finger and having to get the ring cut off. Wouldn't you know, today as I was tacking up I noticed I forgot to take it off but figured just this once it would be fine to ride with it. Well, as I tried to keep hold of the reins, I got part of my left hand tangled up in them as she was backing up and jammed up that finger. I managed to pry the ring off before it swelled up too bad. Lesson learned, I will NOT be caught riding with the ring on again!!

I let her graze for a second while the two of them had a bit of a staring contest, and led her on down the road to get back on.








I've dreaded the possibility of falling off on the road for as long as I've lived here, so I'm glad to have it out of the way. Luckily the roads are actually pretty soft because of so much rain, and we were not on a bad gravel patch so I really didn't get scraped up at all. Now that the adrenaline has worn off a bit, the top of my shoulders/bottom of my neck are a little sore, but I do think I managed to fall pretty well overall. And I've got a new helmet that I've been meaning to switch over to- so that will go on next time I ride! 

The rest of the ride was great though. We had a gorgeous day, and had been settled into a really comfortable trot for most of the ride. After I got my bearings and led her past Mac's house, she stood nicely for me to hop back on from a big rock at the side of the hill, and the last mile home was uneventful.








I'll let her rest tomorrow, and then we're hacking over to GMHA on Saturday before the ride Sunday!


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## knightrider

So glad you were not more seriously hurt enough to ruin your ride. I hope it goes fantastically!


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## Knave

I hope your ride is excellent too!!

When I came off Queen chasing the dog, and nothing was hurt, it was a positive thing! Sometimes I think we need to remember that often we can get in a wreck and be just fine.


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## egrogan

Thanks @knightrider & @Knave! I am really looking forward to the ride.



Knave said:


> When I came off Queen chasing the dog, and nothing was hurt, it was a positive thing! Sometimes I think we need to remember that often we can get in a wreck and be just fine.


Totally agree with this. It really does feel like "getting it over with" - you know it's going to happen at some point, and having it be no big deal helps me not obsess over something happening. I don't know how many people here follow the "Sh*teventers Unite" FB page, but it's almost like desensitization for people to follow that page and see so many people posting their falls and laughing about it. I think I'll submit Fizz's encounter with Mac there and see if they find it funny too


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## gottatrot

Glad you weren't too hurt by your fall. I think Fizz was justified by that one. Obviously the alien dogs were taking over the world.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Glad you weren't too hurt by your fall. I think Fizz was justified by that one. Obviously the alien dogs were taking over the world.


Haha, yes, I told her no hard feelings, I understood it was bizarre!


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## egrogan

This weekend we entered our first intro endurance ride! It felt great to finally, finally enter competitively, after all these years of volunteering and doing the pleasure ride options.

Saturday afternoon we hacked the horses over to GMHA, which is a 10 mile ride. Same distance as the intro ride. We planned to go at a leisurely pace. Lots of snack stops:








The ride over is mostly jeep road and dirt roads, with the last mile or so coming into GMHA across the cross country field. Some of the jeep road was pretty muddy and rutted up. I had a boot pop off in a muddy spot but luckily saw it right away so I was able to hop off and get it back on. Phew!


























The bugs were pretty awful- deer flies are really bad already- and the horses seemed happy to get to the barn and be able to hide from the flies.








We were able to vet the horses in during a lull in the 25- and 50-mile vetting that evening, so I was happy to have it out of the way and not have to do it in the morning, which is how the schedule was initially laid out. Fizz stood for the vet like a rock star- she had never gone through this before and I couldn't have been happier with how chilled out she was. She did get one (-) mark in gut sounds, and a 7(!) on the body condition scale, but she seemed to be taking in all the sights without any stress. Particularly because Coalie absolutely Lost.His.Mind when we went up to the ring and there were other horses milling around. M was actually asked to remove him from the ring because he was causing such a scene, spinning and snorting and careening around her in circles. I felt bad for her because I know she was feeling flustered. Who wouldn't? I was a little worried he wasn't going to be allowed to represent, but she managed to get him calmed down and he vetted in without any issues when they came back.

Fizz and I walked a few laps around before I put her back in the stall for the night. I know she doesn't love being in there, but they were surrounded by lots of calm neighbors, had two huge full hay nets, and seemed to settle in ok.








Next step was the pre-riding briefing at 8am Sunday, and trail open at 8:30.

To be continued...


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## egrogan

Saturday night I slept a bit restlessly. Mostly I was preoccupied with our plans to trailer the horses home when we were done. M had left her trailer here a few times over the past few weeks and I'd been working on loading/unloading (and it went great!) but I hadn't actually taken Fizz anywhere in it and just hoped she'd load and come home without an issue.

I got to the barn around 6:30am and Fizz hadn't eaten or drank all that well. She didn't look like she laid down at all either. I took her out and walked around to stretch her legs and hand graze a little before feeding her breakfast, which she ate up fine. She was not happy to be put back in the stall so paced around a lot and generally looked a little tense. I was feeling a little sick to my stomach, which made me laugh a little because I am not really one to get competition butterflies, but yet there I was feeling not great. I wanted to get Fizz groomed and boots on before the ride meeting, and that helped a lot. She settled down a lot with the grooming, and when I did a little massage and stretching that really helped- she had lots of huge yawns and releases. I felt like I was leaving her in a better frame of mind when I popped over to the meeting. There were 6 of us in the intro ride, and while most of us had ridden these trails before in pleasure rides, it was the first time for any of us going out competitively. We decided we'd pair off and stagger our starts to leave a little room between pairs. M and I decided to go last, hoping Coalie would not freak at the other horses riding away. But we met a lot of nice people, everyone was very friendly and the ride manager, vet, and volunteers made everyone feel at ease.

Fizz was very happy to get out of the stall and we tacked up with no issues. With 5 minutes until the trail opened, we mounted up. We were really doing it!! 😁








We moseyed over towards the start, taking a little detour at a stream crossing to let the horses drink, which they were happy to do. Once the pair ahead of us were out of sight, we were ready to head out. It was great to get a little cheer from the group at the starters box- I have done a lot of volunteering with the vet and some of the other volunteers, and I appreciated seeing all the friendly faces as we left.

M and I agreed we were going to walk across the cross country field, but that we were pretty much going to be trotting everywhere else the footing was safe and conducive to it. I was hoping she was going to be ok with that once we were on course, as I really didn't want to have to keep asking Fizz to slow down and wait like we often do on our training rides.

The horses did great passing all the scary cross-country fences piled up...








...and Coalie was a very good boy, even when we could catch glimpses of the pair ahead of us off in the distance...








The first part of the ride was a long, uphill climb (the road we were on is called "Long Hill Road" for good reason!), and we moved into a strong trot as soon as we left the GMHA grounds. I know everyone always said that horses give you a different gear when you're doing a ride, but I was skeptical Fizz would be that way- we've ridden this exact loop before on a pleasure ride and she acted just like she always acts on our rides at home. But lo and behold- it was true. Fizz _was _different. She wasn't out of control, but she was _strong_. I haven't felt a trot like this from her before. And she would have been happy to keep it up the entire ride if I would have let her. Every now and then she would sniff footprints from the horses in front of us, and it was like she had worked out that the game was to find the other horses ahead of her. There were times that she was more tense through her body than I would have liked, but by 4 miles or so in, I could feel her relax. We did some walking at that point because we had moved into the woods, and there was a lot of rocky, downhill trail to navigate.








We did have an amusing experience about 5 miles in, when we came to a water stop. The horses were thrilled to drink. And drink. And drink. I think they sampled from every tub and bucket. I decided to hop off and go to the bathroom since we were taking a break, but once Fizz was done drinking she was ready to GO and not keen to stand around while I was going to the bathroom. I was doing my thing when she started dancing around next to me, while I literally had my pants around my knees. She knocked into me and when I tried to grab my pants, I lost hold of the lead rope, and she started walking away down the trail!!  M was re-mounted but facing the other direction to give me some privacy, but I think with the commotion she saw more of me than she would have liked when I took off "running," pants still down, to catch Fizz before she headed back to GMHA without me. Fortunately she had taken off walking, not trotting, or I really might have lost her. Since it ended well, I can admit it was pretty funny!

After the pit stop, we had a bit more woods trail ahead of us. We were coming around a bend when we saw the riders that started ahead of us coming back in our direction. They said they had gotten to a road intersection but there were no trail markers there and they weren't sure what to do. We were standing next to a red arrow, so we knew we were still on trail, but not quite sure what to do next. We rode up to the intersection as a group, and it looked like the hoofprints turned right, so that's what we all did. M and I hung back a bit to let them get out ahead of us again, but Coalie was ok with it so we probably could have continued as a group.

We were a little surprised that in just a few minutes, we realized we were almost back at GMHA. We had only done about 6 miles by then, and the loop was supposed to be 10 miles.

















We were confused, but thought maybe the trail would loop through the woods behind GMHA before bringing us back to the finish. But, no- a couple of twists and turns later, we were passing through the finish.

The pair ahead of us were also just finishing, and talking to the ride manager. Turns out a trail marker was completing missing at that confusing intersection- we were supposed to go left and do another three miles of trail up there before turning down the road, meaning we came to the finish after only 7 miles total. Bummer. The first pair of riders had done the same thing. So, all 6 of us were technically eliminated because we were "off course." It obviously doesn't matter, since the intro rides don't count for official AERC points or miles, but still, we would have liked to have done the full ride! In good news, we were absolutely on the right pace to finish the ride on time (we would have had 2 hr, 10 min for the 10 miles and we would have finished within that time).

We got the horses cooled down, vetted back through (Fizz had some bad gut sounds again, need to figure out a strategy to work on that for next time), and gave them a couple of hours to snack and decompress while we ate lunch.

I am very happy to say that when it was time to go home, Fizz walked right on without even a slight hesitation, and stood quietly while we closed it up. She did scramble pretty badly the whole ride home, you could feel the pull on the truck. And I felt awful, when we opened the doors at home, she was trembling and it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of soapy water all over her during the ride. She did unload calmly, but was shaking all over. I feel so bad for her that she's such a nervous traveler. I'm not sure I'm going to ask her to take a trailer ride again until we buy our own and practice with lots of shorter, easy trips. It just doesn't feel fair to her. We are starting to look for a new truck, but obviously right now is the absolute wrong time to buy something, so it may be several months. If that's the case, it's fine, I'll just plan rides around when we can hack in and hack out.

Doesn't look like it made her _too _upset- after an hour of being home, this is how I found her:








What a great weekend overall. I really do feel like we are a team.


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## Knave

That is awesome! I am so happy for you. It’s too bad about the wrong turn, but I’m sure that is something that happens to everyone!


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## knightrider

Wow! You set yourself a long term goal . . . and you achieved it! That is so fantastic! I was following your journal when just riding out on a trail alone was an adventure. Look how far you have come!

My very first competitive trail ride, my riding partner and I went the wrong direction on the trail (we forgot the markers are on your right). A current riding friend also missed markers and took a wrong trail and did not complete her first endurance ride. 


Knave said:


> but I’m sure that is something that happens to everyone!


 In this case, it was totally not your fault. So, in my book, you completed and did great. I hope Fizz learns that riding in the trailer won't kill her. It took Isabeau 6 years to learn it, but she does well now, doesn't even sweat.


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## carshon

Congratulations! The first one under your belt. Hopefully more to come


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> That is awesome! I am so happy for you. It’s too bad about the wrong turn, but I’m sure that is something that happens to everyone!


Thank you! At least our experience allowed the ride management to hustle out there and get the marker up, because the loop we did was also the last loop for both the 25 and 50 milers. Would have been a much bigger problem if all of them ended up "off course" and eliminated. Not sure how that's handled if there's an actual problem with trail markings that affects everyone, vs. individuals getting off track?



knightrider said:


> So, in my book, you completed and did great.


Thanks @knightrider. I'm thinking of it this way too. My biggest question was whether or not we could move along at the necessary pace, and I walked away feeling like we can, so that was "success" to me.


> I hope Fizz learns that riding in the trailer won't kill her. It took Isabeau 6 years to learn it, but she does well now, doesn't even sweat.


I was thinking of Isabeau while I listened to Fizz knocking around behind us. M, who was driving, thought Fizz was kicking but I don't think she was. I think she was just hitting the butt bar as she scrambled around. I am lucky that M is patient and willing to help us though, because Fizz is not an ideal traveler. Even though she didn't ride well, her loading and unloading has improved leaps and bounds with only sporadic practice, so I do think that when we have our own trailer and can just work on it steadily, she will improve.


carshon said:


> Congratulations! The first one under your belt. Hopefully more to come


Thank you, and I am definitely planning on more! GMHA's next ride is mid-August, but only offers a 25 mile option, so I will have to think hard about that. That would be by far the longest distance we have attempted, and I just don't know if we have the fitness. There's another 25 mile opportunity in October, that feels like it could be feasible. And another intro distance in September, which we will definitely do.


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## knightrider

A vet once told me at a 25 mile CTR, that any horse that was ridden some could complete 25 miles, not win, but complete without hurting it. That's one vet's opinion.


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## carshon

For the scrambling try having her ride on the other side. For some horses it is a problem with them trying to balance on their less dominate side and they feel week and unbalanced so they scramble


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## QueenofFrance08

So happy for you guys!

For gut issues ours do best if we add Purina Outlast to their food for a few days before and during ride weekends. I have to drive super far to find a place that has it around here but a lot of the Midwest endurance riders swear by it and we've had great results with it!

Sorry to hear about the trailer problems, I know for ours more time and practice always helps (although Comet has a new habit of bombing himself out of the stock trailer and wacking his head which isn't great) so I'll keep my fingers crossed that you can find your own rig soon!

I laughed out loud about Fizz having a faster trot at a ride, it's ALWAYS the case!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> For the scrambling try having her ride on the other side. For some horses it is a problem with them trying to balance on their less dominate side and they feel week and unbalanced so they scramble


Once we have our own trailer, I definitely will! I have lots of ideas on things to try, just no way to make them happen right now.


knightrider said:


> A vet once told me at a 25 mile CTR, that any horse that was ridden some could complete 25 miles, not win, but complete without hurting it. That's one vet's opinion.


I have heard that from a bunch of people too, but I'm not sure. I think probably we could get through the distance if we really had to, though it might take us awhile...completing it within the time allowed, I just don't know with our current fitness level. I don't want to rush into it and make it a bad experience when I know there will be more opportunities in our future. 


One more part of the story I forgot- we rode calmly right along a fenceline to pass a herd of cows!!!! There were about a dozen of them, probably three horse-lengths away from us over a fence, grazing away. We were on a narrow mowed path as we went past them, and she definitely knew they were there but stuck with me without panicking or freezing up. That might have been the part of the ride that made me proudest of her!


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> So happy for you guys!
> For gut issues ours do best if we add Purina Outlast to their food for a few days before and during ride weekends.


Thank you, and thanks for all your encouragement!! A couple of other people recommended Outlast to me so I will check it out. I know I can get it at our regular tack/feed store.



> I laughed out loud about Fizz having a faster trot at a ride, it's ALWAYS the case!


I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it. I really want to understand this element of horsey psychology. We literally rode this same loop at this same ride last year as a pleasure ride, and she was just her normal self the whole way. But Sunday something lit a fire under her! I liked it, mostly, if we could get rid of the tension a little sooner. But what is it that flips that switch in them?!


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## QueenofFrance08

egrogan said:


> I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it. I really want to understand this element of horsey psychology. We literally rode this same loop at this same ride last year as a pleasure ride, and she was just her normal self the whole way. But Sunday something lit a fire under her! I liked it, mostly, if we could get rid of the tension a little sooner. But what is it that flips that switch in them?!


I think they pickup on the energy of the other horses there or possibly on our excitement/nerves as well. Not sure but they sure do just know! We ride at one of the parks where we have a ride a couple times a year and they're usually pretty lazy and calm but on ride day in the same place it's a whole different story!


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## gottatrot

Great job on your ride!! It's very easy to miss trail markers, even when they're supposedly obvious. So not having one at all was just too tricky. I thought your pit stop incident was hilarious.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I thought your pit stop incident was hilarious.


It got several of the old ladies laughing while we were sitting around eating lunch


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## egrogan

Hi all! Was hoping to get some feedback/critique on Fizz's feet. I've had some concerns for awhile, and tried a new farrier yesterday. We've been working with the previous farrier for years, so it was a little nerve wracking making a switch. I have some opinions, but don't want to bias your feedback by sharing them first.

I don't want to post a zillion pictures, so I'm just going to post some from the R front and R hind. They are in the same order, taken over the past two months: pre-May 2021 trim, post-May 2021 trim, post-June 2021 trim

R front

Pre-trim May








Post-trim May








Post-trim June









R front
Pre-trim May








Post-trim May








Post-trim June


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## carshon

Your June trim is better. The May trim shows that too much hoof wall was left and too much heel. The crack you see was due to unbalanced hooves. The June trim shows bar height to be good although a little more bar could be cleaned up on the last picture. You can see from the most recent trim that she was developing some seedy toe from too long of toe and the laminae get stretched. All in all the June trim looks better and shows a healthier hoof. The seedy toe will go away as the laminae are no longer stretched due to a too long of toe.


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## egrogan

R hind

Pre-May trim








(couldn't find post-May trim)

Post-June trim









(couldn't find Pre-May trim)
Post-May trim

Post-June trim









Also tagging @loosie as I'm not sure she follows the journal section and would be curious her opinion.


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## carshon

Same comments. June trim is better. The bars will peel up and move away as they were over laid. This is good and the trim is better than the May trim


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## egrogan

Thank you @carshon. I feel a bit relieved to hear that. Curious what others see. New guy was very collaborative and told me he wanted to hear my ideas and things that stood out to me, showing me what he was doing as he went.


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## gottatrot

Agree with @carshon. Your previous trim did not have much actual trimming, just the edges rounded off. Heels, bars and toe all left too long. I like your new trim, it looks balanced and addresses all those areas. You don't want to over trim the frog, but the new guy has taken off the dead flaps that develop to prevent thrush and hasn't overdone it.


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## Knave

I also like the new trim better. I feel like this is the same change I made on Cash and Bones’s feet (and Queen too, but she still has improvements to go). I am happy with the change, I just wish I had put more time into protecting Cashman’s feet afterwards, because of the bruising and abscess that was created.

I feel that he is moving better. Now with the protection of the wraps he is faster and less trippy. The sun has him lazy, but his feet are actually moving better. (I’m sorry I’ve yet to take pictures @SueC!)

Bones I wish maybe I’d gone a tiny bit longer on his toes or shorter on his heels… his foot angle seems a tiny bit off. He also is moving better though. He’s outstanding right now.

I think you will be happy with the change!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone!
Any thoughts on the amount of rasping and sole paring done? I have to admit that it was a little jarring to see him take the knife to the sole, which I am not used to. But maybe this is benign, and as @gottatrot said, what I’m used to seeing as a “trim” wasn’t much of a trim at all  Especially with Maggie, who conformationally has thin soles to begin with, seeing him even touch the toe callous (which seemed to take years to form) freaked me out a bit.

Everyone has been moving around happily with their “new” feet, even Maggie over the crushed stone in the dry lot, so all good so far. Hoping to have time for a short mid-day ride with Fizz and eager to feel how she moves.


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## Knave

I did that too, which I believe is what led to the ability of Cash to get the bruising. That’s where I had been going wrong: missing the paring. I let dead sole end my trim, leading to longer feet than necessary.


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## gottatrot

I'm not seeing evidence of much sole removal in the photos. 

There are places and times where it is fine to use the knife on the sole. Around the bars and in the seat of corn, those areas are good to trim to see where the heel height needs to be. Around the edges of the white line to check for white line issues, also fine. 

Sometimes horses will also form a lump that melds in with the wall at the toe. If the toe is long, this is not the sacred "toe callus" and the toe still needs to be trimmed down.

The most important area of sole that should never be trimmed is from a little past the tip of the frog, out to a little inside the toe wall. That semi-circle of sole protects the coffin bone.

Even in that area, if a horse has very long hooves with shedding sole, it can then be safely trimmed.


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## Kalraii

I've just done a bit of a catchup over tea! I nearly spat it all over myself when I saw the pic with the dog. Your endurance adventure (like all I see on here) make me insanely jealous, in a good way  Getting lost when I finally get out there, so to speak, terrifies me I'd be relieved just to reach the finish line. Congratulations! Looked like lovely weather for it! The snooze at home also made me laugh as well poor thing


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## egrogan

@Kalraii, glad you enjoyed it! Hugh is the most expressive dog I've ever met. His facial expressions and the way he uses his paws to communicate are so human like. Here's a little more Hugh- this was yesterday, foraging together for wild strawberries. The fields haven't been mowed so he goes boinging through the tall grass and ferns like a deer. 
































Also took a short hack with Fizz yesterday for the first time since the ride. I'm still trying to figure out where I want these new stirrup leathers to be. I shortened them back up because I feel like I'm constantly reaching with my toe, which makes me sit all crooked. If this doesn't work I may just go back to the old ones at this point...








It was a really beautiful day, we took it easy and just moseyed around the fields. 




With her new and improved foot shape, her boots fit a little awkwardly and may actually be a size too big. We went through a boggy section and she lost a hind boot, which I didn't realize until I got off at the end. No worries, Hugh went out with me on a search and rescue mission later in the day- SUCCESS! 😉


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## phantomhorse13

can you punch a half hole in the leathers? I hate that game, when one way is a bit too short and one way is a bit too long.

High has matured so nicely.


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## egrogan

phantomhorse13 said:


> can you punch a half hole in the leathers? I hate that game, when one way is a bit too short and one way is a bit too long.
> 
> High has matured so nicely.


Yes, unfortunately the still-too-long feeling length was on hole "8.5" - I have played around with the holes on either side and wasn't comfortable. But today when I rode with them in the slightly shorter setting, it actually felt ok. The first time I had them set there I felt like I was going to catch the moon while I was posting the trot, but not so much today.

I will pass along your compliment to Hugh ❤

Had a not so great ride this afternoon. I decided to do a little schooling in the one field that had been mowed. I saw some pictures of myself at the ride last weekend and I looked ridiculous with almost no bend in my arms (??) and wanted to have a back to basics type of ride, just w/t/c around some 20 meter circles and figure 8s. Unfortunately those plans went out the window because Fizz was really anything but cooperative. She couldn't function with the flies around, lurching to a stop, throwing her nose up in the air, shaking her head frantically. When I asked her to trot she'd think about taking off across the field for home, so that was a hard no. So we basically just walked, and walked, and walked some more, which she found increasingly stupid and unpleasant. Not sure we really ever got any decent moments of relaxation.

I got off feeling really frustrated, but as I thought more about it I realized that just means we need to do those kinds of rides more often (maybe not when the flies are at their worst though...) and potentially ask our neighbor up the road if we can borrow her indoor once a month or so to do some ring work. Hard to stay annoyed with Fizz for too long 😉

A moment of horsey zen from this morning. Izzy takes twice as long as Fizz to finish breakfast, so Fizz now stands in the sheds hanging her head over their partition to patiently wait for Izzy to be done so they can have their morning love fest.


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## egrogan

We had a so-so ride early today. Fizz was a bit of a spooky spookster, unusual for her to be so worried about things. She was sort of sucked back and hesitant a lot of the way, waiting for monsters to jump out of the woods. I ended up taking off the Darth Vader fly mask a couple of miles in because I think it does mess with their vision a bit, especially on a really sunny day when there are a lot of shadows (she kept shying at long shadows across the road after bright, sunny spots). She was mildly less worried with the mask off, and a couple of miles of trotting made her less concerned about what might be lurking in the shadows. It's just unlike her- if it happens more than a couple of days in a row I will probably have to consider Lyme testing. But don't want to jump to that just yet.








Despite the spookiness, she redeemed herself when it really mattered. We were trotting along the last section of woods trail before coming back to the road, and all of a sudden, on this narrow, rocky trail...








...there was an F250 driving down it in my direction!  There's not even enough room on that stretch to ride side-by-side, let alone pass a full size vehicle. It's hard to tell, but immediately to the left of the dirt section, all of that greenery covers a 3-4 ft deep ditch. Rather than make her tackle the ditch, I turned around (barely enough room to do that on trail) and we went back about 1/4 mile to an intersection where we could get out of the way. The driver wasn't particularly appreciative either, he was right on our tail with two houndy dogs in the cab barking their heads off at us as we picked our way back down the hill. I would have appreciated a little bit of space! On a map, this trail is technically marked as a "road," so every now and then someone will not realize what they're getting into and drive on it in a regular vehicle. It's not unheard of to see bikes or 4-wheelers, but seeing a huge pickup is a first for me. At least it wasn't a little Honda or something!

At any rate, he passed us at the intersection without even a thank you, and we turned around and continued on the way we had been headed- as you can see from the pic above, without any more unwanted company!

We didn't see any cows as we passed through the farm, which was nice, as Fizz was still acting a little funny even out in the sunny spots without any scary shadows. She sure didn't have the supercharged trot she had at the ride last weekend  But we pushed on.








Confirming there are no cows to be found. Phew.








Did about 7 miles, and we were hot and sweaty when we got home. I gave her a good rubdown with some cold water while she grazed around in the lawn. Meeting M and Coalie for a longer ride tomorrow and hope she's feeling more like her usual unflappable self!


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## egrogan

A post-script to our Saturday ride: Lovely husband had been out biking while I was riding, and he mentioned to me that he saw a big mama bear in the middle of the road just up from our house. Coincidentally, that's one of the spots where Fizz was jumpiest on our way home. They do know things we don't know!

She was much more relaxed yesterday on our ride with M and Coalie. We ended up doing 8 miles, a good mix of roads and a lot of woods trail. We had a beautiful day for it, though the bugs were pretty irritating.


























The last part of the ride, after M and I had split off to go our separate ways, was not the most fun part though. Mac the German Shepherd is still wearing his cone, which for some reason is keeping him from barking, so we still have little spooks and scoots going past him when he emerges from the bushes stealthily. But now that I know he is going to do it, I can prepare. We had a really terrible encounter with the pirate dogs though. They were loose in the yard, which is hidden from the road by some thick trees, but I could hear there were at least adults out with them instead of just the kids. Of course, they started barking hysterically and running towards us- I heard the wife yell to the husband to "get the dogs," but apparently he's as ineffective as the kids are. They came blasting out of the underbrush swarming Fizz. I hopped off, and she tried to kick them as they lunged at her heels. I stomped at them and made a big scene, thinking their owners would take control of the situation. But...nothing. The stupid things kept coming at her for a good half mile, me walking alongside her while she spun to face them and I kept yelling at them to go home. We finally got some distance between us, and I saw one of the owners walking down the road after them, but without much urgency. Stuff like this really ****es me off- if you know your dogs have no recall, either fence the yard or keep them tied up. 

Fortunately Fizz hadn't actually been bit and she seemed less irritated than I was once the dogs were far enough behind, so I hopped back on for the last little stretch home. One more sad thing, we saw a tiny, tiny dead fawn on the side of the road that had been attacked by something but left there afterwards. I know it's the way nature works, but it's still sad.

Fizz drank well when we got home- I thought Izzy's expression watching her was pretty funny :lol:








Poor Izzy got some nasty tick bites all along her belly and under her tail. The crease between her little butt cheeks broke out in hives Saturday and seemed so uncomfortable. Fortunately a couple of days of lotion applied liberally seems to have reduced the swelling. The bugs this year are unbearable already- deer and horse flies are constantly swarming, and the ticks are everywhere. I've tried a couple of different kinds of (new to us) sprays this year, and nothing works.


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## QueenofFrance08

Just another thought-as my horses get more fit they get more naughty which usually means more spooky so it might be a little bit of that as well!

When we were riding Saturday Lilo and Stitch both slammed on the brakes when we got to a certain part of the trail. It smelled a little funny and we made them go a little further but then decided they might know more than us and turned around. Wish they could tell us what they're thinking!


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## egrogan

After two days of thunderstorms, downpours, and sticky humidity, we woke up to a gorgeous day that felt more like fall than summer. It stayed right around 60*F with refreshing breezes all day.








(yes, I know I am losing the battle with buttercup and daisies spreading in the pasture and that the fenceline is way overdue for weed whacking 😉)

Given the big weather swing, I thought Fizz might be a bit feisty on our ride today, but she was the opposite. She was really lethargic for most of it, though she was also really tense at times. I know that sounds weird, but she'd be sort of dragging along with her head and neck very low, then suddenly tuck her butt and scoot forward, throwing her head up. I have this nagging thought that I need to test her for Lyme. Technically, it shouldn't be an issue because she's vaccinated...but...

At the overlook, the farm dog who lives at the bottom of the big hill was loose and came nosing around us. He's actually very friendly and not at all aggressive, but I think she was a little jumpy from this weekend so every time he circled up into the weeds above her and popped out behind her, she'd stop and snort. He is harmless though, you can just seem him hightailing it for home when I told him to go on.








The timing was unfortunate, because it's always a battle to get her down the hill without evasive maneuvers, and the dog ahead became an opportunity to just stop and plant her feet. I pretty quickly got off and just jogged down the hill with her, not really feeling like negotiating. Got back on with no issues at the bottom as Gus the dog had headed back home when he saw his owner.

I tried not to let her mood affect mine, since it was such a wonderful day for a ride. Wish I could have captured the smell of the fresh-cut field on the left side of the road: It was that intoxicating smell of drying hay in warm sun, all carried to us on a nice, cool breeze.
















We turned around not too long after passing this field, making our ride about 4.5 miles out and back. She wasn't much more engaged- physically or mentally- on the way home. Maybe she was just having an off day. We'll see what the next couple of rides bring. I think tomorrow is supposed to be pretty similar today so planning to head out again.


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## gottatrot

Amore used to act very checked out when she was in heat sometimes. It was like she was in a fog, but then sometimes she'd way overreact if she did get spooked, because she hadn't been paying attention.


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## Knave

Daisies!!! I love it!!


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## SueC

Hiya, crazy winter here and am still catching up in dribs and drabs. First of all, a long overdue congratulations on your successful endurance ride - saw that a while back on my non-keyboard viewing device and was so happy for you, well done! 🧙‍♂️ 🦄

Fizz looks great in a way I think only horses who are regularly exercised at distance can look, and my own horse hasn't looked like that since we stopped doing the miles five years ago (and he's 24 now so we're not starting again, we're in semi-retirement mode). It's so lovely to see the photos and clips of her, and the others, and your adorable Hugh. Your place is looking great - in case you need to hear that; as a fellow smallholder I often tend only to see all the things I've not gotten around to and have to see it almost through the eyes of others to see all the things that are looking great and going well.

The trim - agree with @gottatrot's long-answers here - definitely better now. The toes are still too long compared to the heels but that isn't fixable in one trim and he's gone about as far as you can in one trim to correct that; it's a gradual process. You could debate about just how far you have to take the heel down to correct that it's undershot - I'd definitely not take it down further and my farrier, who comes out once a year to trim in summer and give me feedback, would probably leave a couple millimetres more heel to give a slightly better angle. You can't take more toe down either (although you could probably take the breakover back slightly further with even more of a mustang roll, which by the way your new guy has done a far better job on than the old one) and re the toe callus, yes, and having your horse in boots while ridden will help protect it from bruising in the necessary transition time. If you're always stressing out about the toe callus you'll never fix the angle issues and the deformities those cause. Sadly this common problem is a by-product of the domesticated horse who's usually on soft footing when not worked and more sedentary than wild horses, instead of having their feet constantly "rasped down" by friction when doing long distances through terrain that's usually not straw bedding or soft pasture grasses!

On the up side, Fizz's athletic lifestyle is giving her tons of circulation through her hooves and this will give her good horn growth too, which means you can trim more often and correct the problems more quickly than normal. You may want to touch-up rasp every two weeks to keep the hoof short and the breakover back. Or even weekly. It simulates more natural wear and keeping the hoof short reduces the pressures that deform it while you're working gradually to a better angle.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Amore used to act very checked out when she was in heat sometimes. It was like she was in a fog, but then sometimes she'd way overreact if she did get spooked, because she hadn't been paying attention.


As much as people worry about getting mares, I can say that I've honestly never seen Fizz or Maggie show any signs of heat whatsoever. Izzy, she can be...expressive...in heat, and when we boarded she'd show outward signs of pining for just about any new horse that came to the barn. But even Izzy, now that they are basically a closed herd of 3 that only sees other horses when they are ridden by the house, tends to not show heat signs. Certainly doesn't mean that it's not quietly making Fizz uncomfortable, I just can't really tell one way or the other. When I was still riding Izzy, I'd give her a couple of days off when she was in heat because she was obviously very sensitive in her flanks.



Knave said:


> Daisies!!! I love it!!


The wildflowers of all kinds are pretty showy this year. I should cut a few bunches and bring in this weekend.



SueC said:


> Your place is looking great - in case you need to hear that; as a fellow smallholder I often tend only to see all the things I've not gotten around to and have to see it almost through the eyes of others to see all the things that are looking great and going well.


I did, and I thank you for it 😉 Also appreciate your thoughts on the trim and next steps.

*****
We had gorgeous weather again yesterday, but unfortunately another sort of crummy ride. She was pretty unwilling the first half of the ride, randomly stopping and needing a lot of encouragement to go forward. When we were on our way home she felt much more fluid and willing, so I don't _think _it's a pain thing. But puzzling through it, I do wonder if all that scrambling in the trailer put something out. Maybe a chiro appt is in order?

She did seem a little happier in the woods, at least for awhile. She's getting a lot better about paying attention and picking her way through the rocky spots, to the point that we can trot through a lot of it even when the footing is a little dicey.
























But when we came to the little stream and waterfall, she had a bit of a meltdown. She threw on the brakes and wouldn't get anywhere near it, snorting and actually backing up. Now, I'm sure that other animals use it as a watering hole, and may have even been there very recently. But even so, it didn't seem like cause for such a dramatic reaction. There was no amount of asking, pleading, or insisting that was going to get her near it, and I did not like the idea of her backing down the trail blindly, so I got off to lead her. She did lead forward, jigging and snorting the whole time, and continuing for the last 1/4 mile or so out of the woods to connect back to the road. She was a little less edgy at the road, at least enough so that I could get back on, but she was very distracted by whatever was up in the woods. Maybe bear, probably deer, who knows. She knew she didn't want any part of it I guess! Made for a not-so-fun ride though.

Despite that issue, the last couple of miles home were the best part of the ride. Her walk was loose and we trotted a lot of the way at a good pace. Probably won't have a chance to get on again until a long ride with M and Coalie on Sunday. And it's supposed to get HOT again Sunday through early next week, yuck.


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## egrogan

We beat the heat yesterday morning with an early ride. M and I had planned a 10 mile loop but decided to shorten it a bit since we weren't sure how hot it was really going to get as the morning went on. We picked a slightly shorter route that was more woods than road. 

We were very happy when we got back onto the trails that a gate which had appeared early last year was gone, opening up a good trail that crossed several pretty meadows. There had been a lot of improvements done, including a new bridge that crossed what had previously been a treacherous, deep ditch. The bridge was a little weird in that there were about 5 large round trees laid on the ground in front of and behind it, so the horses had to pay attention and walk carefully to get across, but they handled it well.








Right after the bridge, there used to be a boggy section that would flood from the nearby pond. Last time we tried this trail, the water was almost knee high and I couldn't get Fizz across. This was two summer ago now, and I think we've improved our water crossing enough that she would do it now- but it wasn't an issue because there was a new little dam along the pond and the trail was totally clear in that spot.

We passed through some beautiful buffets, I mean meadows, as we went along.

















We didn't see anyone else out there, which made for a peaceful ride. And not even any bikers or cars on the roads to and from home. I guess everyone was out on their boats to try to escape the heat!








Ended up doing 8.5 miles by the time we got home. We definitely took it slow as the horses were quite hot and sweaty, even with mostly keeping them in the shade. When I looked at the weather when I got home, it was 85*F and 96% humidity. About the same for today, so no riding. The heat is supposed to break midweek.


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## bsms

"85*F and 96% humidity"

I confess I prefer 100 degrees and 15% humidity. But we ARE supposed to have a 40% chance of rain for three days running this week. Prediction is less than an inch of rain total, though. Even if we got an inch a day for three days, we'd still be in the "severe drought" category. We have noticed our two eucalyptus trees are laughing at the drought. Plan to get and plant some more.

I can't even imagine what my horses would do if they saw that much grass at one time. Probably die on the theory they had reached heaven....

They certainly would plan on never leaving!


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## egrogan

This is really not the use I had in mind this morning when I trudged through the heat and humidity to hang hay nets! 🤣









@bsms, even these horses were pretty impressed with nose-tall grass to ride through! Unfortunately our friend Coalie is prone to laminitis so he really doesn’t get to stop and graze, but he and Fizz both managed to snack “on the fly” while we rode through it.

Hope you do get some rain!


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## egrogan

Sigh. This is one of those weeks when I might like to sell the horses and the farm and buy a cute loft in Brooklyn!

I think most of you know Fizz colicked on Tuesday night. I went out around 8pm for night check, and found her on the ground like a crab:








She kept standing up, pawing, crouching down, sometimes on her knees and sometimes like this. Obviously in distress. That was a no-brainer for calling the vet, despite the time of night. She was out at dinner with friends, but just paying their bill- she just happened to be a couple of towns over so it would take her about an hour to get to us.

When the vet was about 15 minutes away, I brought Fizz up to the barn from the pasture. She was interested in grass, and actually pooped in the front yard. But then she laid back down and I couldn't get her up. I thought she might just give up and die right there.








Fortunately I finally got her back up, and we walked until the vet arrived. She got right to work, dosing with banamine and sedative. We moved her into her stall, vet cleared the impaction, and then tubed her. The sedative had worn off enough that Fizz was getting frantic about being in the barn alone. So I trudged down to the field in the dark to get Maggie and Izzy and bring them up to the barn. They were not thrilled about their forced sleep over, and I was not thrilled about getting up every couple of hours to check on them. There was no poop all night long, but finally when I went out at 5:30am and took Fizz out for some hand grazing and walking, pooping started again. Since then she's been back to her regular schedule, with clear oily piles scattered around and a good appetite. I think we were pretty lucky.

Thursday afternoon, the hot, humid weather broke, but swung wildly from the near 90*F temps we'd been having to down to 50*F with cold rain. I went out to feed dinner, and Maggie was standing in the back of her shed with her head hanging, looking very listless and depressed. She is a bit of a wimp about the rain, so I tried to convince myself she just wasn't happy about being wet, but she didn't even attempt to touch her food when I brought it out to her. **** it. I haltered her up and took her out to the really nice grass on the lawn, but no interest there either, she just hung her head and unenthusiastically lipped at it, sighing. So off we went for a brisk walk around the field. About halfway around, she pooped, but it was very dry looking. We walked some more, and when we were done, I offered her the food again, made into a soupy mash. She ate about half of it and looked a little brighter. When I went back out for night check, she was moving around, and by the next day she seemed fine. So I don't know if she had some gas colic, or was a little dehydrated (no temp though), or what. But we seemed to get through it.

Today the rain finally let up for the first time in a couple of days, so off they went to the new field. Think they were excited for the change of scenery?! 😉








Same three butts, same order, different view...








When I brought them back over, it was dinner time. Everyone was settled in happily eating, when I heard Izzy making some weird little whinnying sounds from her shed. I went in to look at her, and - shiitake. She was full-out choking, eyes bugging out and shaking while she retched and squirted foamy dinner out of her nose and mouth. Once Dr. Google reminded me horses can still breathe when choking on food, I was a little less panicked. She gagged and stretched out her head and neck in weird angles for a couple of minutes, and I set a timer for 30 minutes to see if she'd clear it on her own. When she was a little calmer and had stopped staggering around, I massaged her neck a bit and then got out the grooming gloves to brush her all over, which she loves and relaxes into. That seemed to help a lot. I couldn't feel any obvious lumps massaging her neck, and she was settled down and wanting to try to eat Fizz's food. I think probably eating the long, mature pasture grass with her bad teeth probably got something stuck in her throat which was exacerbated by dinner right on top of it, even though it was soaked senior feed. Hopefully there will be no lasting effects. I will be back to extra evening checks tonight.








It's been a tough week, but thankfully we're all still standing at the end of it.


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## knightrider

Oh! My! Gosh! If it isn't one thing, it is another! All 3 horses have worried you to bits. How awful. I am so so sorry you are dealing with crisis after crisis. At least you are getting to be an expert on evaluating horse crises.


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## egrogan

That’s something @knightrider  I do feel like I can tell if something is “off” with each of them as soon as I walk in the gate. It’s pretty amazing how much you learn about how they stand, how they hold their head, the look they usually have on their face by seeing them multiple times a day. I am grateful for that!

I think the old saying is that “bad things come in threes…” Just crossing my fingers that I’ve got my three out of the way for awhile! 🤞


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## SueC

If you had four horses, bad things might come in fours! 

You've had a real bad time of it there - it's stressful when animals are sick, especially big animals like that, and when they're sick in quick succession that's going to drive stress levels through the roof. Afterwards we can say, "A colic that got better with vet attendance, and a colic and choke that got better without," but at the time it feels horrible because of their distress and because the possibility with horses does always exist that these digestive malfunctions result in unexpected deaths. I nursed dozens of sand colics at my parents' establishment growing up and have seen a number of them die, out of the six animals that succumbed to that there over those years. Once you've seen that happen, you feel even more sick inside when something like that starts.

You don't have sand where you are and we don't have that problem here either because we don't run our animals in sand lots and they're not very sedentary, but even "ordinary" colics are worrying. That was good work with the choke, by the way - gentle massage can assist the bolus down, and grooming a horse takes their mind off the problem and relaxes them, and the more relaxed they are, the more likely the problem will resolve itself (if it's a mild problem). It also gives you something to do while you wait so you don't go crazy waiting.

I've been super stressed on and off about various animals over the past two months - the last of which is whether the new practice has actually put an order for Prascend in because I run out on Tuesday and there's nothing so far (we did try to check but can't get hold of the vet and the receptionist got shirty with me on Friday, but apparently still hadn't ordered it...). So as you can imagine, I too have at various intervals harboured fantasies of selling up everything and moving into a tiny place in a small town where all I have to do is look after the small place, earn some money, and read books in-between going hiking.

However, in reality that would of course present other problems, and it can be good to predict some of these problems so that it doesn't become too tempting to throw it all in and down-size in an actual human settlement.

So here's some problems I and my magic eye envisage for your cute loft in Brooklyn:

That set of neighbours who play Tool at high volume every weekend, all weekend
The downstairs neighbours who have a habit of bonking loudly at 3am on a regular basis
The passers-by on Saturday evenings who vomit into your recycling bin, thus invalidating the entire consignment
The sudden discovery that the building you're in doesn't meet engineering requirements - which results in three years of legal proceedings and then you still don't know who is liable
The sudden arrival of an unruly mob of local children at the age where they can get a driver's license, resulting in night-time hooning rallies local cops turn a blind eye to
You are seen as fresh meat by all the local religious loonies who then interrupt you at all hours of the day wanting to talk to you about whichever of their deities they want you to let "into your heart" (and by corollary, their middlemen into your bank account)
Poltergeist activity by the previous, deceased, occupant
Discreet droppings left on your door mat by the neighbour's cat
Mysterious bloodstains on the floorboards underneath the carpet you've decided to remove
- and so it goes on. I'm sure we could all think of a few more things to add...😋


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## gottatrot

Not fair, the horses are conspiring to make you worry! Glad to hear everyone has made it through though.


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> I do feel like I can tell if something is “off” with each of them as soon as I walk in the gate.


Now I will tell an interesting story that happened to me. I went with some novice riding friends to a super great riding establishment at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. We got a whole weekend of unlimited riding--Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and a hayride on Saturday night with a barbeque, for $28. So I went with my friends there from time to time.

One time, we were finishing up the hayride on Saturday night, and I was helping with the evening horse chores before we went to our cabin to sleep for the night. Suddenly, one of the horses looked at me with distress in his eyes, real distress. And suddenly I knew the horse was colicked. Ordinarily, I would keep my mouth shut about something like that. Who am I, a "dude", telling them what to do?

But I just "knew" the horse was in real distress, just from the look in his eyes and his posture, even though I didn't know the horse. By then, I had dealt with a bunch of colic and other emergencies over the years.

I told them the horse was colicky, and they pooh poohed it, said it was all in my imagination, the horse was fine, blah blah, thanks for your help, see you tomorrow.

And then the horse tried to yank himself loose from his standing stall (yes, a long time ago, when standing stalls were de rigueur) and hurled himself sideways and down, violently unwell. Typical of "good ole boys", they didn't call a vet, but happily, the horse got OK on his own.

I do think they looked at me with a little more respect after that.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, great story. I think I'm starting to understand "the look" they give when they're just not right. Much easier in a horse you know well of course. And I'm glad the horse from your ride ended up being ok when the guides didn't take it seriously! Also, I recall when I started taking lessons as a kid there were still lots of standing stalls around. I remember tacking horses up in one in both a saddleseat barn and a small Arabian barn where I took some lessons. A lot of the old barns here still have them, though they aren't used much now.
*****
@SueC, I think you inadvertently (intentionally?!) sent me the 4th test of my resolve this morning.

I went out to feed at the usual time, and the horses were happily grazing out in the back righthand corner of the pasture. After a quick look to see that Izzy was grazing peaceful and not showing any distress, I did some chores, picking up manure, getting their breakfast prepped, etc. It was probably 10 minutes or so before I walked behind the shed and whistled them up. As they started cantering towards me, I saw Maggie and Izzy...and no Fizz. Shiitake again. Now what?! No sooner did I do the head count again...1...2...NO 3, did I see Fizz majestically galloping to catch up with the other two- from the back _left _corner of the property, _outside the fence_.

This is me taking a picture while standing _inside_ the fence. This is a horse enjoying snack time _outside _the fence.








I can't lie, I have to take the blame for this one. Sometime back in a snowpocalypse this winter, there was an incident in which the tractor running the snowblower severed the connecting wire that runs under the back gate and connects the two sides of the fence to allow it to be electrified. I will not comment on who ahem, not me was driving said tractor/snowblower and ran over the wire 😉 At any rate, the horses tend to be so respectful of the fence we never got around to fixing the wire. I just got used to not plugging it in, and it hasn't been turned on in 6 or 7 months. And that's been fine. Until it wasn't. Apparently last night Fizz got annoyed with me for closing off the left section of the pasture because it was so wet, and decided the grass on the other side of the fence really was irresistible. She's crawled through the fence before when we had a problem with an old charger, but it's been awhile since she thought to test it. And I think it's really funny that the other two won't follow her (though I'm grateful). Anyway, I don't know how long she was out there, but I didn't find much manure outside the fence so I'm guessing not all night. And while she wanted the better grass, she also didn't want to be too far from her friends, so didn't wander. Since it all ended fine, it is pretty funny.

It took about 10 minutes to splice the wire back together, and now the fence is on and holding the charge fine. Obviously we should have done it months ago, though to be honest it is really nice to not have the fence on, especially for filling waters from inside the dry lot. I'll leave it on for a couple of days and then may go to just plugging it in overnight since she's never tried to escape during the day.

The rain has finally stopped, so I went out for a short ride in the afternoon, the first since the colic. I figured Fizz was going to be feisty after all those days off, and she was a bit wound. We did the short route out to the overlook and back. She didn't do anything crazy, just was a bit tense and more than happy to jump into a trot at every opportunity.
















I hope she got the wiggles out today, as tomorrow M and I both have the day off from work so are meeting up for a longer morning ride. Looks like it may be the only nice day weather-wise this coming week, so it's nice we get a rare weekday ride in together.









I spent the rest of the afternoon painting. The upstairs renovations are getting really close to being done. We've got two rooms (future office and library/reading/TV room) nearly ready, just down to painting the walls. Hugh helped me with the primer (note his now-white whiskers and eye antennae) 








More Hugh- the peonies bloomed last weekend before all the rain started, and he did NOT approve of the intruders!! 🤣


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## knightrider

That is hilarious, the way Hugh realized the peonies "didn't belong there."


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## Knave

Wow that was a lot. I’m sorry!


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## egrogan

Yesterday we met M and Coalie for a morning ride. Storms were threatening and it wasn’t the nicest day. Fizz was resistant from the moment I hit the saddle, really not wanting to go forward and extremely tight in her back. Her walk was a miserable creep and it was hard to keep her trotting for more than 5 strides in a row. We ended up being late to our meeting spot with M because what should have taken us 15-20 min took almost 30. M could see Fizz just wasn’t acting quite right either. We rode together for about a mile and then decided to turn around and head home because it just wasn’t fun for anyone.








I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with her when we got home. No temp, interested in grass and water, audible gut sounds and going to the bathroom. I did find a bug bite under her girth that had rubbed, so maybeeeee that was uncomfortable enough to have her bracing her back? Hard to tell. We had gone out at 9am, so I had the whole day to keep an eye on her, and I didn’t see anything amiss the rest of the day. She ate up fine at dinner.

This morning she was bright and ate up again, and the bug bite looked fine after slathering with Neosporin (no broken skin, but hair rubbed).

I decided we’d do the short ride to the overlook and back after lunch.








Temps weren’t bad, but humidity is off the charts-you can_ see _the heat haze off in the distance.

















We had a great ride! Back was loose and swinging, we trotted most of the way. We did have one levitating spook when someone started up a weed whacker out in the field, but she settled fine.

I don’t know how to explain such a difference in both attitude and physical feeling two days in a row, but I almost feel like I need to ride her like I do when I’m restarting after the winter off. A few 2-4 mile rides and then back to the 8-12 milers after a week or so of shorter stuff. If that doesn’t make a difference then I think I have to start going down the vet, chiro, saddle fitter checklist.


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## SueC

Occasionally, something just "sticks" too - like, sometimes I will turn the wrong way with my arm in a particular position and then get this stabbing pain in the back of my ribcage that recurs when I'm breathing past a certain point and this may take a day to go away. Yes yes, I know, I'm over 40 etc, but little "glitches" like this can happen to a body and you even see that in 20-something athletes sometimes. If I was a horse though, I couldn't tell you this and I'd probably just behave like Fizz did that day - be all tight and not wanting to move, which is so unlike me, or Fizz.

Anyone else get any funny little "glitches" like this sometimes?

Loved that clip of Hugh and the peonies. Hahahaha! I suppose if you'd gone up to them and touched them he'd have worked out more quickly they weren't space aliens, but then we wouldn't have had that funny clip! 😁


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## bsms

As a pleasure rider, if my horse is having an off day, I tend to quit early. We can ride some other time. Lots of folks on HF and elsewhere say that "rewards" a horse for bad behavior and you'll get more bad behavior. Me? My experience is that they'll be fine the next day. And the day after that. Had a fairly vigorous ride on Bandit yesterday (ie, a large amount of cantering in the arena, which involves a lot of tight turns). Then ran yesterday afternoon. As I type, my lower back is pooped. I don't want to ride today. And given how much Bandit worked yesterday, he may be feeling the same! 

Or not. He's in better shape than I am. Younger at least. But there are days he just doesn't want to be ridden. He isn't aggressive about it. He doesn't bite or buck. But he's just not "with me". Those are days we do little and quit early. Now, if it happens a few rides in a row, we might have a saddle issue, or he might have some longer term pain, etc. But on any one day, it may be as simple as "He rolled last night and something twisted in his back" - like mine did when I rode him over a month ago. I've now ridden him twice in the last 4 days, so that is good. I'll try for some trail time next ride - whenever that is. Today feels like a "Just hang out" kind of day.


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## egrogan

I am hoping @bsms and @SueC are right that Fizz was just feeling "glitchy" during that bad ride with M at the beginning of the week. After our quiet, uneventful ride on Tuesday, the rain moved in and stayed steady through Friday evening. It finally stopped, but left the humidity behind. 😓 😓 With all those soaked days, Fizz ended up with the week basically off, so if she had tweaked something she had some rest time.








Even though it was sticky yesterday, I was curious to see how she was feeling. One of our neighbors has given us permission to ride on their logging roads, but a few weeks ago a big tree came down across the path right near the spot we'd enter, and it was too big to break by hand. I hadn't gotten around to bringing power tools back there, but in the middle of the week when I was walking Hugh back there I realized someone had come through and cleared it away. Yay! I decided that would be the path Fizz and I took yesterday. There are a few different loops, you can go 2-3 miles depending on the direction you pick, and it's just a nice way to be mostly in the woods and off the road while still close to home.

Fizz perked up when we turned off our road and shimmied around the gate to head into the woods. Unfortunately the deer flies were almost unbearable, so there was a lot of slinging her head all around. Luckily there's lots of flat spots with good footing so we trotted to try to escape them.








We came to this pretty clearing, which is a 3-way intersection. She had a little tantrum when I asked her to continue on straight ahead- apparently being asked to do some light bushwhacking through the overgrown weeds was too much to handle. She did some impressive backing up in response to my steady request to continue on, and I hopped off to lead her through the intersection and back down into the woods. We didn't get too much further before I had to agree with her that the flies were almost intolerable- and I have the welts on my arms and hands to prove it. We turned around sooner than we needed to, but we had both had enough.








Today we were back to our Sunday morning routine of meeting up with M. We were determined to do a longer loop, so headed out to the tree farm for the 10-mile loop. The deer flies were still bad in many places, but at least we'd occasionally get some pockets of relief from them. I was drenched in sweat before we'd even made it a mile though- despite being overcast, the air was just heavy with the humidity.








There's some annoying small-town drama happening in our little village, with a loud, grumpy group of residents trying to stop one of our friends from hosting a weekend 4x4 rally later this fall. M and I got kvetching about how shortsighted it is for horse people to try to restrict other recreational users from the trails- especially when we never even _see _other riders out on these trails! Anyway, we both decided to make public statements to the zoning board that the trails should be open and accessible to everyone, and that one weekend with a group of people camping in a big field and enjoying tooling around on the jeep trails is really not going to ruin anyone's quality of life or property values  Sometimes I really hate small towns...We'll see if the rally is allowed to happen. If I were betting, I'd bet no.








Anyway, we tried not to get ourselves into a bad mood, because it was really a very nice ride despite the humidity. The horses were mellow and moved right along without complaints.








With the heat we weren't setting any speed records, but we did 10 miles in about 2.5 hours.








When we got home, I walked Fizz out for a little while because she was very sweaty, and let her graze around on the lawn. She decided that parking immediately underneath the apple tree was the best spot to hide from the bugs while she munched 🤣


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## bsms

Our local area in southern AZ has had 3" of rain (guestimate) in the last 2 weeks. Last year's monsoon season was the second worst on record with only 1.5 inches the entire summer. We're obviously WAAAY drier than Vermont - but the recent rains have the ocotillo in green and the bugs out! Bugs are so rare for us that Bandit doesn't have any protection so our last ride including a lot of head tossing due to bugs. I eventually called it quits and let him join his buddies in the corral, standing nose to tail and swatting flies off of each other.

Glad to hear Fizz is feeling better. My twisted back took a month before I could run or ride, and I can't quite do either full strength yet. 30 minutes of riding will have my back twitching. Unfortunately, too many horses who say "_This isn't a good day for me_" get whipped in response. I'm soooo glad I own my own horses! They are such expressive creatures - if anyone will listen!


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## SueC

bsms said:


> Glad to hear Fizz is feeling better. My twisted back took a month before I could run or ride, and I can't quite do either full strength yet. 30 minutes of riding will have my back twitching. Unfortunately, too many horses who say "_This isn't a good day for me_" get whipped in response. I'm soooo glad I own my own horses! They are such expressive creatures - if anyone will listen!


Yeah, I read that current thread too and wanted to keelhaul the bloody rider. OMG the attitudes of people. 👿👹👺☠

PS: I wanted to lunge that person for 45 minutes at the trot next time she felt miserable or unhappy too, or had trouble communicating with her narcissistic employer. And as a general warm-up for her before she was allowed anywhere near a horse. 👾🤖


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## Knave

I didn’t read that thread I don’t think… 

It is too bad when people forget to understand that everyone has a bad day. Cashman and I have a deal; I don’t hold his against him and he doesn’t hold mine against me. He never seems upset at all when I am, and I return the favor.


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## egrogan

We can't get much of a break with the rain, so the past week was mostly occupied with trying to fit in chores around the storms. We're starting to get really worried about hay. The grass is tall and has been growing like mad- but there are no consecutive dry days for cutting. We usually expect to have our barn full of first cut by 4th of July, but first cut hasn't even been cut yet this year, and it's starting to look brown in the fields. Not sure what's going to happen. We've got about a month's worth of last year's less-than-ideal bales left. Of course the horses have pasture, but I have to balance what Maggie can safely have with hay rationing. It's getting down to crunch time. This upcoming week's forecast looks exactly like the past month. Chance of showers every day. Really not sure what's going to happen.

We had one sunny day last week-Friday- so we did do a short ride. Of course with all the humidity and everything being so wet, when it stops raining the flies are killer. Fizz has a very low tolerance level so our rides are mostly her flinging her head everywhere and desperately trying to rub her face on her legs. Not so fun.









We just trot a lot to try to outrun them!
















Yesterday I volunteered at an endurance ride- because of Covid, the Vermont 100 was significantly modified. The ultramarathon part of the event was cancelled completely, and the ride organizers decided to shorten the course, just offering a 25 and a 50, and call it "Daylight in Vermont" (rather than the customary "Moonlight in Vermont").

Despite the weather, there were close to 30 entries for the 50, and 23 for the 25. It was a bit of a bummer that Saturday was not the dry day, but temps were very cool, so that helped. The 50 mile riders left in the rain at 6:30am, but by the time they reached the first hold, where I was volunteering as a timer, the rain had stopped though the humidity stuck around.








The first group of riders came in right around 8:30 when the hold opened and they all pulsed quickly.








The lush grass was the perfect buffet for the horses. We laughed watching most riders or their crew getting dragged around as the horses munched- quite a few were not very happy to get tacked back up and have to head back out for the second half of the ride! 








Unfortunately we did have two pulls at our hold- one horse was pretty clearly off on his right hind, and another was metabolic.

But people were really moving right along, at least for the first half of the ride- our last riders were back on trail by 11:45. I think the cool weather really helped move people along, despite the mud in the woods. The roads were pretty ideal, as soft as they were from the rain.









We had heavy downpours all night (last night when it was raining so hard that the noise it made on my metal roof woke me up from a deep sleep, I felt sorry for all the riders camping out in the middle of Silver Hill!). But we were supposed to have a break in the rain this morning, so M and I optimistically made plans to meet up for a short ride. The radar looked clear when I was doing chores, but as soon as I got ready to tack up, the skies opened and it started pouring again. Izzy came and hid out in the shed with me while I waited, hoping for it to pass. Unfortunately no such luck, so M and I cancelled. Just glad it happened while I was getting ready, not while I was riding out to meet her!








Here's hoping the forecast for the rest of the week changes and we get some dry days for haying!!


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## carshon

I have said this many times. The worst part of being a horse owner is hunting for, racking, stacking and baling the hay. We have had the opposite of too much rain. Not enough,. This is the second year where I may have to buy hay because my 5 acres of hay field will not yield enough to feed my horses. We have hay down now - but we just got our shed floor concreted so can't stack hay in there yet and now they are calling for some rain on Wednesday. We desperately need the rain but now I have hay down and no place to put it. The amount of stress Hay causes each year is crazy! Hope you get yours in soon


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> I have said this many times. The worst part of being a horse owner is hunting for, racking, stacking and baling the hay.


Agreed! Every year it's some kind of headache- a different kind each year it seems, but still a headache! I feel silly complaining about too much rain when there's not enough in so many places, but it's still disruptive. 

Yesterday the road we take to the overlook was overtopped with water overflowing from a beaver pond that didn't have anywhere else to go. Today the town was out there freeing up a drainage ditch to give it some relief, and the road is no longer flooded. Hugh and I went walking to see what else was happening along the road; not much else going on except for some tree limbs down and big stagnant puddles off the side of the road where there was probably running water at the high point yesterday. We did come across one strange sight- at the edge of a drying out puddle, we found dozens of old bones. They must have been from an old hunting pack out site that got washed down off the hill to the road? I can't imagine what else would have them cut so straight, but I don't know much about breaking down animals to know what they are. Deer legs I assume? Anyway, Hugh thought this was fabulous. He carefully picked one to carry home with him, and brought it the entire way back (over a mile). They seemed old, and I was worried about it splintering if he spent too much time chewing it, so when he got distracted I chucked it back into the woods. He was very disappointed to lose the prize he'd so carefully brought home.








The morning was stormy, but by the afternoon- SUN! BLUE SKY!








Fizz and I went and did the 4ish mile loop that involves a section of the paved road. We had a lot of traffic, dogs, and startlingly high, fast water in the brook, so I got off and handwalked the paved section since she was a little jumpy. Otherwise, we had a good ride- she had a lot of good forward energy after all these days off. Felt good to ride again, even though we bought swarms of flies with us (looks like you can see at least one sitting on her mane in the pic above...)








As of right now, we're supposed to have thunder showers tomorrow but Wed-Sat afternoon could be clear and mostly sunny🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞


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## bsms

We've actually overdosed a bit on rain here in southern Arizona. Not enough to fill the reservoirs but...so steady that the mud & water in the low part of the corral not only stayed but turned green! I wanted "green", but not in the form of green scum in the corral! Also need to spray for weeds but have had problems finding a dry patch of weather - and it only needs 6-12 hours to absorb. Ideal would be a week of dry and then MORE rain. Best wishes for some relief and good haying.


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## QueenofFrance08

Was that a rocky leaving the vet check?!? Looks like such a pretty ride, it's on my list for someday!

Wish you could send some of your rain our way!


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## knightrider

carshon said:


> I have said this many times. The worst part of being a horse owner is hunting for, racking, stacking and baling the hay.


Me too, @carshon ! I hate messing with hay, especially when it is hot. But what a great feeling when it is all in the barn, waiting for winter to arrive . . . and smells so wonderful.


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> Was that a rocky leaving the vet check?!? Looks like such a pretty ride, it's on my list for someday!
> 
> Wish you could send some of your rain our way!


That’s my friend’s Walkaloosa, Whiskey! He loves being out on the trail.

I hope you do come out here for this ride someday! You can sign me up as your crew 

I sincerely wish it was feasible to spread the rain around to places that need it…


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## egrogan

This week was more of the same- muggy and buggy, if it wasn't just downpouring. The hay situation is starting to get a bit scary. I've got about 30-40 bales of crummy, strawlike stuff left from last year that I'm feeding at about a bale a day, and I've started adding some Speedibeet back in with their ration balancer. Maggie really shouldn't have much pasture, but I'm getting to the point where I feel like I don't have much choice- she needs to be able to have some since I have to ration the hay. The new field has a lot of different weeds, tall grasses, etc.-far from lush rocket fuel- so they're going out there for 2-3 hours in the early mornings on days when the bugs aren't too terrible. We have gotten Maggie a suit of armor and that makes it a little more tolerable for her I guess.

















I have ~50 bales of this year's first cut coming at some point this week, but that's all this particular hay guy has left at this point. He might have more later, depending on what happens with the rain. My regular hay guy hasn't even done a first cut yet because of all the rain, and while I theoretically have ordered 700 bales from him, who knows what will happen. At this point I'm just crossing my fingers that things will dry up eventually and I'll ultimately be able to get at least 500- and that it will be safe for Maggie to eat. There's really not much we can do except just wait and worry.

I did get out for a couple of good rides this week on days it wasn't raining. Still, you can see how much water there is- I have never seen this trail wet before, and in the middle of the week it had water running down it. The little waterfall drinking spot was actually a proper flowing creek, which freaked Fizz out a bit because it's never moving enough to make noise.








The bugs were the worst they've been yet, but we got through it.








Yesterday was about as pretty as it could possibly be and we had one of the best rides we've had in awhile.

















Weird question- the last few rides, after we've gone a few miles, I'll feel Fizz start to get very tight in her back. Worst case scenarios start running through my head, and then all of a sudden she'll stop, pee, and then walk off feeling like a million bucks. She's done this the past few rides, and it's something new. I know generally endurance riders will rejoice with a horse that pees out on the trail, but since this is a relatively new thing, I'm wondering if it's something I should be concerned about at all?

Yesterday a friend was judging a class at a show held over at GMHA, so I took Hugh with me to see her for a bit. I wasn't totally sure how he'd handle such a busy atmosphere, as he really hasn't been in big crowds or met a lot of people- typical pandemic pup. I was happy that he did really well with all the commotion. We hung out with her for about an hour, and he met lots of new people and explored the trail class obstacles set up in the ring (lifesize teddy bears were _highly _suspicious 🧸). He got a little restless after being asked to sit/down/stay for about an hour, and started barking as more people began milling around the ring, so I decided we'd consider it a win and head home so that we didn't bother any horses that were coming to the ring for the trail obstacle class. He slept well last night!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Hugh thought this was fabulous. He carefully picked one to carry home with him, and brought it the entire way back (over a mile). They seemed old, and I was worried about it splintering if he spent too much time chewing it, so when he got distracted I chucked it back into the woods. He was very disappointed to lose the prize he'd so carefully brought home.


You meanie. 😜 That bone-splintering thing is IMHO overly pushed. I think it's much healthier for dogs to scavenge bones than for them to eat tinned industrial dog food. You do have to be careful with bird long bones, especially when cooked, because they can break into shards and puncture things - no worries with neck bones though, or pelvis, even cooked, from my experience. But really, my dog has eaten any sort of bone - raw bones, cooked bones (except cooked bird long bones), and bones scavenged from roadkill and dead kangaroos in the bush. My main issue with the cadaver bones she retrieves is that it gives her halitosis, but I don't spoil her fun - she just has to stay outside for a few hours afterwards to stop smelling like a mausoleum.

Ah, here it is - Jess with a prize she found on one of our walks - she was ecstatic - the decayed forearm of a kangaroo:

Dogs are built for scavenging and have wonderful gut microflora. They can do this and not get ill, which is more than can be said for dogs on modern manufactured foods. My dog ad libs like this several times a week and is super healthy. It's a normal, natural behaviour for a dog, and as long as she doesn't drag things in various stages of decomposition into the house, or roll in it and then sit on the sofa, it's fine with me.

Admittedly, Jess is a kelpie, with dingo DNA and excellent nature sense, including snake sense. She's not an overbred infantilised lap dog breed, she's very "feral" in a good way. But then Hugh too is a working dog breed. 😎

Signed, your correspondent from the Australian bush. 😇


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## egrogan

Oh my goodness, Jess- that is the prize above all prizes!! I wonder how long it would take Hugh to work through that 🍖


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## egrogan

Managed to get in a ride after lunch today. Fizz did something to her eye the other day- I'm guessing a bug bite that she rubbed raw- so I've been keeping an eye on it and slathering with triple antibiotic. Seems to be going in the right direction, though still a bit puffy...








It's really unbelievable to me how much the western wildfire smoke has drifted all the way to the other side of the country. Today anything on the horizon is obscured by haze, and there's a thick smoky smell in the air. I had this weird sensory memory when I smelled the smoke this morning- it reminded me of being in elementary school...the school had an incinerator in the basement and would burn the garbage every today (how bizarrely archaic that sounds!), and if you got sent down to the basement to go to the textbook storage room, you'd have to go past the custodian's room where you could see a glow from the fire in the back and smell acrid garbage burning smells. That's exactly what the smell today was like. Can't say I've experienced that smell in decades since leaving that school.

Photos don't really capture what the smoke looks like, but when Fizz and I left on our ride you could actually see it drifting through the air, almost like fog rolling in from the ocean.
















I truly don't know how those of you out west close to these fires are doing anything outside. I've been through blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, and little earthquakes, but I can say that experiencing a wildfire is truly the scariest natural disaster I can imagine. Well, maybe except being hit by a tsunami wave. Drowning terrifies me in a way even burning doesn't. OK, enough of those dark thoughts...

Our ride was short but a really good one. I realized that I've been a little lazy in our canter work lately. M has been working a lot on trot/canter transitions since for awhile Coalie was bucking really badly going into the canter. So I've gone a bit into passenger mode, just letting Fizz follow him while they transition up and down. I have a bad habit of leaning a bit to the right in the saddle, so on a recent ride a bit of a lightbulb went off when I paid attention and felt that she was almost always picking up the right lead. Since I wasn't really doing much to ask differently, it was starting to become a bad habit. The last few rides I've been trying to use the curvy part of the trail or road to be more intentional about asking for the "correct" lead. Still needs work. But it's been a good excuse to do more transitions ourselves. I try to be thoughtful about switching up the trot diagonal frequently, so I need to get better about doing that when cantering as well.

We were having such a nice time I took a short detour to go see the beaver pond, which we haven't done in a long time. I was hoping we'd see some interesting wildlife, but not much was out, just a couple of ducks that took off when they saw us coming. I've seen a beaver back there once while walking with Hugh- it gave us several warning slaps with its tail which was quite an experience!








Here's Hugh at the same spot on a different day:


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## Knave

It seems that all my horses go through that stage. Queen currently does not believe she can pee until we are back to the trailer. I can feel her get that tightness though. Cash drags it out. Oh he pees, but he stops 18 different times to get distracted until I am flustered and he actually pees. It’s never quite the hurry. He likes using the bathroom excuse to get out of work though too. Lol.

Lately when I hurry up and head a calf, and everything is intense and I’m going to my horn, that horse stops and refuses to move while he poops. The calf is running around bellering and bucking on my rope, I’m panicked and kicking, and Cash groans about my annoying nature while he takes a poop. Lol


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## egrogan

I've been having so much fun with documenting my "virtual Tevis" rides, I've neglected posting in the journal and have mostly been posting on the trail thread and the virtual Tevis FB page. Anyway, we had a few good rides last week, and have ridden about 22 miles since the virtual Tevis started last weekend. Yesterday we met up with M and Coalie for a longer ride, out the snowmobile trails to Blind Mare Farm.

The day was unseasonably cool, which suits me just fine. With low temps and a nice breeze, we had NO BUGS! Woohoo. Didn't even need the fly bonnet on. 

Someone had posted on another thread recently asking why you would ride a horse in hoof boots- this kind of large, loose gravel is why I need them. It's really awful footing, and the town goes around and dumps a thick layer of it randomly, expecting cars driving on it to eventually break it down. For the horses, it's like walking on sharp marbles. I hate riding on it, but there's really no way to avoid it.








With all the rain, there were lakes across big sections of the trail. Wanting to keep those boots on, we generally skirted around the deep spots. Fortunately there were existing paths off the trail in the worst spots, so we're clearly not the only ones who needed an alternative route.








This is one of the prettiest spots around. It seems like such a shame to me it's just a vacation house. The owners still take fantastic care of it, but if I owned this house I don't think I'd ever want to leave!

















More beautiful views in front of another vacation house on the way home.








It was such a beautiful day, I decided to go over to GMHA for an hour in the afternoon to watch some of the dressage show going on. It wasn't the Olympics, but there were some really nice horses there. I sat at the FEI ring and watched a few musical freestyles, which was fun. It's amazing how different the vibe is at a show like this vs. an endurance weekend. The grounds were packed- every stall and trailer parking space was full, which is a bit different from the endurance events. I wish we could generate that much interest in the trails!

















Not sure what this little dun stallion was, maybe Lusitano? I've never seen a horse like him in person, he had the full dorsal stripe and zebra markings up and down his legs. His freestyle had Spanish guitar music which suited him nicely.



























I know people make fun of dressage being boring, but I really did enjoy watching it. I admire how much effort goes in to the communication riders even at this level have with their horses.


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## egrogan

This morning I was sitting at the dining room table working when a woman I didn't recognize pulled into the driveway and yelled through the window "are those your horses across the street?" Shiitake. I thought maybe they had gotten out, but when I went out to talk to her she said, "I didn't really know what to do, but I wanted you to know there is a _gigantic _bear loping in one direction across your pasture while the horses are galloping up the hill in the opposite direction." 😳 I thanked her for letting me know and grabbed a pair of boots to go investigate.

When I got to the gate, they were all just standing there looking bored. "Oh, are you here to feed us extra breakfast?" It occurred to me that the past few days, promptly at 10am I see them milling around the gate, ready to move back to the dry lot from their few hours in the new field. Now I'm wondering if it's because Mr. Long Legs bear is passing through the pasture on the 10'o clock hour every morning? 🐻 I'm glad to know the horses don't seem too worried though.

Caught a funny video of Maggie demanding Izzy to be her scratching post this morning.




Lately when I've looked at pictures of Izzy, I think I have to admit to myself that her body is starting to look like an old horse. Her coat is still shiny and dapply, and her attitude is still pure Izzy, but her body is changing. She's 27 this year, and I'm glad that she'll be going into winter in good weight. But she is starting to look more and more like an old lady.


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## Knave

I’m pretty sure my horses would jump the fence. Those that couldn’t make the jump would end up rather torn up from the suicidal effort…


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## carshon

Just so you know - there is nothing more beautiful then a well loved older horse. Whose eyes are still bright and whose coat is still shiny.


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## gottatrot

carshon said:


> Just so you know - there is nothing more beautiful then a well loved older horse. Whose eyes are still bright and whose coat is still shiny.


I agree! It makes me a little sad when you talk about Izzy getting older, but I know you'll cherish the time you have with her, and I hope you have at_ least_ until age 30 like I had with Amore.


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## egrogan

All my fingers and toes crossed, it looks like we will be getting hay tomorrow. It’s far from ideal, as it’s coming off a damp field and right into our barn, so I’m sure we’ll have moldly bales as the year goes on, but I’m just hoping that most of it makes it through. Hay guy stopped this morning to make sure we were ready for it (umm…we will be ready at any time you tell us to be!!) and said he was 7,000 bales behind on first cut and didn’t think there would be a second. I feel lucky to be getting anything.

Good thing it’s coming too, I’ve been skimping on the little bit of yucky stuff I had left, trying to ration out what I’m feeding, and last night the horses apparently staged a revolt. I looked out the window when I got up this morning, and saw that the door to the tack/feed room was wide open. I couldn’t decide if I was more worried that someone had gone in to steal all my tack, or that the horses had busted in and eaten two garbage cans half full of pelleted food.

Clearly the perpetrators were of the equine variety 😆

















They made a bit of a mess, and one of the lids on a can of feed had been pulled off, but it didn’t look like much had been eaten. Fizz was standing fully in the feed room when I got down there, but she was just nibbling on the little bit of hay they had spread everywhere and didn’t seem to be that interested in the feed. She didn’t even look guilty 🙄 I’m just feeling very lucky no one gorged themselves. As you can tell, this isn’t the first time someone has mouthed at the handle, but I never thought they’d be able to pull the door open! Will have to make sure the handle is harder to turn.

Tomorrow we head off to a pleasure ride weekend at GMHA-planning on 30ish miles for the weekend.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> She didn’t even look guilty 🙄


They never do! "_What? WHAT? You're fussing over....THAT?_"


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## egrogan

Well, we had a great riding weekend! We met M and Coalie on Friday afternoon to hack over to GMHA. It was really hot and muggy so we weren't in any hurry. It took us about 3 hours to go the 10 miles.

It's going to be a fabulous apple year - all the trees are loaded. The horses are like truffle-sniffing dogs. They know when we're riding past one and ask to stop and sniff the ground to find windfalls. They were not disappointed.








With all the rain we've had, even the Jeep roads are full of the awful pointy gravel. Usually on this route, which has lots of long, relatively flat stretches, we can do a lot of trotting or cantering, but with this footing we do a lot more walking, even with boots on both of them. It's just too sharp.








There were lots of big bear footprints in the muddy spots along this trail, but I didn't manage to get any pictures of them this time...








This is what counts as a "cliff" for us, though it's hard to get a sense of perspective. It was a pretty steep dropoff. Trying to take some pictures for our virtual Tevis landmarks 😉








We rode into GMHA around dinner time. I think we've done this enough now that the horses know they are "home" when we get here.








There are lots of streams that run through the cross country course, so we stopped to stand in the water and take a good drink before heading into the stable area.








I made a few changes to Fizz's food this time, after our bad gut sounds when we did the intro ride a few weeks ago. I added in 1 cup of Purina Outlast, and also some basic electrolytes (we're using the Summer Games powder). She didn't love the electrolytes when I started adding them in this week, so I had to play around with the quantity. Adding the Outlast pellets gives a little more substance to mix the powder into, so that seemed to make it palatable enough for her to eat it. Given the humidity of the weekend, I was glad that she had them on board. And it really seemed to pay off- she drank two buckets of water in her stall between dinner and night check, and then another 1.5 buckets over night. And she cleaned up all her hay (she only picked at it overnight last time she was there). Hopefully we're on the right track!

And the best surprise of all, when I got home, the hay delivery had come! They left me a giant mess to cleanup, but who cares when the loft is FULL. Should be about 500+ bales in there. I've got another 50 coming from someone else, and about 30 left from last year, so if I'm careful that will get us through next spring. We'll just think good thoughts for an early spring and early first cut in 2022. But it was such a relief that it worked out.








To be continued with our ride Saturday...


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## egrogan

We planned on doing the pleasure ride Saturday, which gave us a couple of options to choose from- they always offer a short route (6-7 miles) and a long route (10-14 miles). We had planned to do a long route, leave the horses there Saturday, and then ride or trailer home Sunday morning depending on how tired they were. However, the Sunday forecast was looking unsettled, with thunderstorms expected starting mid-morning and going all afternoon. We didn't really want to get caught in a downpour riding home, nor have to trailer in that, so we changed our plans a bit and decided we'd just ride them home Saturday. That worked well because the Saturday long pleasure ride option basically went right to our house, but using different trails than we had ridden over on Friday night. The Sunday 25-mile competitive trail ride was using this same red loop, with the vet check right down the road from my house. It gave us a 12.5 mile ride home on trails we had never been on before, which was really exciting. And also ideal because we passed two water stops, which the horses appreciated. For all intents and purposes, we basically did our own "unofficial" intro ride.

When I got there Saturday morning, Fizz, as usual, was a bit wired from having been in the stall all night. Although she ate and drank well, it's still not her favorite thing to be in there. After I fed her her breakfast, I took her out for a walk to stretch her legs.
_I don't think this one is meant for horses Fizz..._ 😉








After we had walked and grazed around a bit, I tied her out on the tie rail while I got her stuff together.








I had ducked into her stall to pee quickly 😳 when I heard M shouting from the next stall "Fizz is leaving! Fizz is leaving!" She had been standing there fine while I was in sight, but when she found herself "alone" I guess she realized that she could throw her head up and unloop the lead rope. She didn't take off anywhere, she just wanted more grass. M grabbed her and I stuck her back in the stall to finish tacking up, which she found highly offensive. She was squirrely getting tacked up, and on her toes as we headed over to a mounting block to get on. There were several horses being unloaded from trailers, all screaming, and that amped her up more. I decided I was going to walk her out of the barn area and get on over by the warm-up ring where the trailhead starts. She was still wide eyed there, so I walked her a bit farther until we got into the woods and she stopped trying to run me over. I was very happy that the trail quickly turned uphill, and we had a good climb ahead of us. She was still tense, but it got her breathing hard right away so she was manageable. I think the ferns have absolutely loved this wet summer- it looks almost prehistoric in the woods, the ferns are huge this year!








The trail flattened out for a bit, and she was on her toes but not threatening to do anything silly. We were all sticky and sweaty with the heat and did a lot of walking. One of the nicest spots on this trail is coming into Dexter's grove, which is a beautiful birch stand in the hills up above GMHA...








What comes up must come down, and eventually the trail brought us down the hill and across a paved road crossing- then back into the woods, through the sap lines...








...and past the iconic Jenne Farm, one of the prettiest views around.








There are a couple of old draft horses in the pasture behind the farm, and Coalie found them a bit spooky as they talked to us while we passed. Fizz spooked hard at a tarp flapping in the breeze covering the door to an old shed, but that was the only spot these two got worked up about anything. And they were fine after they got it out of their system.

At this point, Fizz knew we were headed home, and she started to want to pick up speed. After Jenne Farm, there's a 2 mile stretch of downhill road, of course with the icky gravel footing, and she started to get really obnoxious pulling on me to go faster. We were most definitely not about to do a Morgan road trot down the hill with that bad footing, so we had a 2 mile argument about walking. There was a water stop at the bottom of the hill, and she took a short drink but was impatient to get going, which was also not ok because Coalie was taking full advantage of the fresh water and drinking well. So again, more circling and tossing her head around, which was really annoying. From the water stop, the road headed back uphill again, and the footing was a little more forgiving, so at least we could let them trot. She was like a freight train pulling me along, with poor Coalie cantering behind us to keep up (I apologized). That section seemed agonizingly long because she was being so uncooperative, but soon enough we ducked back into the woods. This is the portion of the trail we had never done before, and without sounding too cheesy, it was like an enchanted forest. The trail was along an old set of bridle paths that I didn't even know existed, even though it's just a couple of miles from my house. The footing was pristine, and it was probably 10* cooler in the woods. We were able to let the horses trot along at a very comfortable pace, and being in a new place Fizz finally stopped pulling and just floated along. I think M and I were both grinning from ear to ear, it was such a nice section of trail.








The trail wound along and suddenly we found ourselves at a pretty serious stream crossing. I know people out west have much more technical rivers than this, but I have to say this is the biggest crossing Fizz and I have done. The water was really moving along, and they had to step down into a really rocky streambed with water halfway up their cannon bones. Coalie took a quick drink and crossed, and Fizz wanted to stand there for a minute and have a longer drink. She has hesitated at water crossings in the past, so I wasn't sure how this would go. But after she had enough to drink, I squeezed her forward, and on she went- just like a real trail horse! I was so proud of her! If we had come to this crossing a couple of years ago, I know she wouldn't have done it without me leading her through it, so this just really made my day.








On we went, weaving through single track switchbacks climbing back up through rocky sections. And eventually we connected back with the Rich Trail, which is one we ride frequently. At that point, we were in the homestretch and the horses definitely knew where we were heading.








We eventually turned off the marked trail to head on home. It had been a great ride, and we were so happy with how the horses did across two very hot, humid days on challenging trails. Fizz was happy to be home, and rolled and rolled in all her favorite spots. She ate everything in sight for dinner and seemed like she was feeling great.

All in, it was 22.5 miles for the weekend.


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## gottatrot

Gorgeous trails! So glad you were able to get hay too. 

Amore always thought streams that wide (couple horse lengths) were no more than a water jump, and she'd try to go across without getting her hooves wet. That didn't always work out so well if it was slippery on the other side.


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## carshon

I love the pictures/ Again so very jealous of the beautiful area you ride in


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## egrogan

Yesterday we went out for the first time since the weekend. Humidity is through the roof, close to 90%, so even though it was a bit overcast we were still drenched in sweat. Despite the stickiness, Fizz felt happy and forward, and we trotted and cantered where we could to avoid the deerflies. 

We headed out past the overlook and down the big Cavendish hill, which we haven't done in awhile. As usual, she was noodly going down the hill. In some sort of Murphy's law of riding, we always have problems on this hill, and they are always compounded by a truck coming up behind us while we're arguing. Yesterday was no different, so we went most of the way down the hill in the grassy ditch on the side of the road. Fortunately it had been recently mowed, so at least I could see that there weren't any holes or things to trip us up. We made it to the bottom in one piece. 

That was the worst part of the ride, but after that her happy demeanor was back and we again moved out in the spots we could, even trotting some of the easier downhills. 

I was pretty glad to have the cloud cover for most of the ride.

















Of course, coming back _up _the Cavendish hill, the sun came back out blazing and we sweated our way up it. I don't know what it is about this hill, but it is an experience!








It's going to be 90*F with 90% humidity today through Friday, so we won't do much. Maybe try to sneak in something very short in the morning before it gets too bad, but we'll see. Temps over the weekend are supposed to be much more reasonable though, so looking forward to that.


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## knightrider

Where are you in the virtual Tevis? I love your Tevis reports and your photographs of the places that are sort of similar to what we'd be doing if we were riding the Tevis.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Where are you in the virtual Tevis? I love your Tevis reports and your photographs of the places that are sort of similar to what we'd be doing if we were riding the Tevis.


I was just going to make a post in the trail riding thread. We are over 50 miles now, just passed swinging bridge. I'll put some pictures over there 

How about you?


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## knightrider

I am still behind you by 25 miles. I climbed up Cougar Rock. I managed to get breaththrough covid, which was pretty no-fun. At least I am back riding again, if a bit shaky and woozy. I like your photographs and comparisons so much, I told one of the teens that used to be on Horse Forum to follow you. I knew she would get such a kick out of it.


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## egrogan

Oh no, @knightrider! It's hard for me to like your post. Very glad to hear you're feeling better, but not that you had to go through that! I've been growing increasingly concerned about breakthrough because I had a single dose vaccine, but am relatively confident that even if I did get sick, I'd likely not be sick enough to be hospitalized. I am hoping recommendations for boosters are released soon. And fortunately we are in a very low transmission area.

Glad the trail posts are entertaining. It makes me feel justified in the ten billionmillion (_technical term_) photos I have stored on my phone 🤣


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## knightrider

At the risk of being boring in the trail section . . . and @egrogan , you showed a little interest, so may I write about my continuing fly experiment in your journal? I know that many riders are simply not interested or say I'm wrong, so I don't want to keep talking about it. Hopefully you are mildly interested?

Today I was nervous about riding near the Anatolians, and that is the only few-fly solo trail I have. (My riding buddy is very sick.) I could just imagine that mentally unstable couple charging out of their horse accusing me of killing their dog and threatening to sue me. Today was Chorro's turn, and Chorro is extremely reactive about flies. In fact, I have decided the reason why he seems to get me off every June or July for 15 years is because of flies. He just can't stand them another second!

This morning I took Chorro on the dirt road, which is normally pretty bad for flies . . . and it was. I chose my 1 1/2 mile track, part-way into the ride, and started counting. I got 67 flies going out and 50 flies coming back. Am I doing the math correctly if I get 43% fewer flies coming home? How statistically significant is that? If it is correct? I added 67 and 50 and then divided 50 by 117.

It didn't seem like much of a difference to me and 43% does seem like a difference. I do all the counting at a walk only. Yesterday I rode Aci in an area with few flies and got 85% fewer flies. Aci is much more tolerant of flies than Chorro. So the horse temperament also skews the experiment. I should probably ride 100 horses on the same day at the same time on the same trail, shouldn't I?

I had a lot of fun making up counting rules. Head bumps or quick nods don't count. Snapping at flies with the teeth don't count. A part of a second between headshakes counts as only one headshake. More than a second between counts as two. Snaking the head around to get one off a flank does not count, nor does swiping at the chest.

Isabeau is my least reactive horse to flies. As a queen, it is far beneath her dignity to shake and dance and jump around. Chorro is my most reactive with Windy coming in a close second. Aci rarely shakes his head; he belly kicks constantly. Chorro rarely belly kicks.

One comment about the death of the Anatolian. In Florida, people seem completely pre-occupied with maintaining their freedom at all costs. Live free or die, which is ironically New Hampshire's motto, but should certainly be Florida's motto. Actually more like "Live free AND die" is what is going on currently. The Anatolian owners insisted their dogs have total freedom to stand in the road, nip at horses and bike riders, and stop traffic. And I guess they got what they demanded--to live free and/or die. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the driver of the white van that hit that dog did it on purpose. There was NO squeal of brakes, just WHAM! I'll bet they never imagined the destruction to their vehicle. Very expensive explosion of temper, if it was that. I can't imagine they didn't SEE the dog--very huge, fluffy, white on a black tar road.


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## phantomhorse13

I am not sure there is really any way to accurately count flies from horse back, because if you are only counting head shakes, that would only be counting flies near/on their heads. I know when I ride, the flies are biting them all over as I find blood spots on their heads, necks, chests, sides, legs, and belly. I would need to count basically any time their head moved!

I would also think what pace you are going would change the count, as some of the flies give up when I trot or canter. Walking, its like someone is ringing a dinner bell.

Do you find what is biting you changes by your location? Here, the deer flies seem to hang out in the woods whereas the bomber flies and the greenheads seem to prefer the fields. The gnats and black flies are everywhere.

@egrogan some of those new to you trails looked lovely! will you be able to access them for training rides?


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## knightrider

Many people in Florida struggle with horrible yellow deer flies, but we have very few where I live. Most of our flies are big, gray, and slow. We kill them with one finger or thumb, just mash slowly, no need to slap. Woods, roads, or fields, we just have big gray nasty blood drawing monsters. And a very few greenheads and even fewer deerflies.

@phantomhorse13 , if you have any ideas on how to improve or refine my experiment, I am all ears! This whole idea of fewer flies on return lines of riding was taught to me by a lady in PA near Gettysburg. She took me up a mountain with 50 deerflies around each horse and none coming down the mountain. She told me that's the way it does there, and she was right!


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## Knave

That’s all interesting! I never thought to count flies. Cashman is bad about them, as was the General. It drives me crazy that a giant plow horse looking mustang is so sensitive about bugs. I roll my eyes at him as he loses his mind.

Just now I had him, Bones, Queen and Zeus on pasture. I imagine a bot fly was bothering him, but he started running my horses like crazy. He lost his temper and went to taking it out on mostly Bones. It was big drama trying to catch horses and get them out.

General once ran me over a fence in the same circumstance. It just blew my mind. He was a bred horse and more athletic, but still a big horse. Queen seems to tolerate bugs better than most. What she does not tolerate is fly spray.

Here if someone’s dogs cause trouble they disappear. No one cares what someone’s dogs do on their own place, but the second they step out they are public. You are allowed to kill any dog on your property, so there are no repercussions either.


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## knightrider

Hopefully, @egrogan , you are having a wonderful weekend of riding, and hopefully my silly experiment is not super annoying to clog up your journal.

This morning was Windy's turn to go riding. She is generally not too terrible about flies, although she really minds them. Today she did not want to go riding AT ALL, and especially not solo. I think that is why I got so many belly kicks. "I DON'T want to be here. I DON'T like this ride. I DON'T like you on me." Kick. Kick. Kick. I decided to count both belly kicks and headshakes because the flies were horrendous and Windy was miserable. I even thought about just turning back because I wasn't having any fun anyway.

But I reminded myself that Windy will never become a decent riding horse if she doesn't get ridden. "Ain't gonna get done lookin' at it." So I rode on. Which was good, because once we got past the pigs (which Windy passed mounted for the first time this summer. I did not have to dismount today to get her past the pigs), she turned into a pleasant fun riding buddy.

My daughter explained how I was doing the math wrong to get my percentages. Hopefully I am doing it correctly now. I got 35 headshakes heading out and 55 belly kicks. I got 25 headshakes coming home and 16 belly kicks. If I did the math correctly this time, it means I got 16% fewer flies counting headshakes and 42% fewer flies if I count belly kicks. I attribute the much fewer belly kicks coming home because I think Windy kicks her belly in annoyance, like a child might kick a rock on the way to school. "These flies are HORRIBLE. I HATE this."

In any case, there were fewer flies coming home. Belly kicks while riding are certainly unpleasant, so fewer belly kicks on the way home certainly makes for a more pleasant ride. My daughter explained that now I have to count head shakes or belly kicks or both in a circle as a control, coming and going. Sigh. She's right, isn't she?


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## Knave

I don’t know @knightrider… I am a nervous driver. Seriously panic attack pass out nervous. It is always easier coming home. Going out is hard.

To me I think that is what you are seeing. The bit of anxiety of going out. Maybe the horses are even happy, but touchier still…


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## gottatrot

Not sorry I can't participate in the experiment due to lack of flies. LOL. 
Amore would freak out if a bee flew near her head. After it passed by, she'd shake her head over and over, usually for about five minutes. The first time we went to a horse show, the microphone made that same buzz and she thought it was a bee, and she wouldn't stop shaking her head. Every time the announcer "buzzed," she'd start shaking her head again. So I really sympathize about the headshaking. It's hard to steer a horse or use the bridle when their head is shaking violently.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Hopefully, @egrogan , you are having a wonderful weekend of riding, and hopefully my silly experiment is not super annoying to clog up your journal.


Yes, exactly this- we finally had perfect weather so we were outside all weekend. I am loving all this experimental discussion! I like hearing everyone's hypotheses. I think @Knave had a good one I wouldn't have thought of:


Knave said:


> To me I think that is what you are seeing. The bit of anxiety of going out. Maybe the horses are even happy, but touchier still…


@knightrider, I do think your daughter was right about calculating percent change. And also about how you've established your "baseline" or control measure. Just try to be as consistent as you can in what you're doing. By the way, I was sorry to hear about the crazy dog situation. I'm not sorry to hear that your biting dog problem will be better, but I really hate when terrible people ruin dogs.

As far as our beautiful outdoor weekend...Saturday afternoon Fizz and I went out solo. I had run a lot of errands in the morning so was a little wiped out from a lot of driving, but was determined to ride; we had not ridden since Tuesday because it had been 90* the rest of the week. I decided we'd go down our neighbor's logging road, where I take Hugh to walk a lot. It's not a long loop, but it's very hilly. In fact, the down portion of the hill is really steep, and I wasn't sure if we'd be able to ride down it or if I'd have to walk. I figured we'd give it a try and see how it went.

It's not used much, so the "trail" is a wild bed of ferns. Very pretty.








The picture doesn't really give a sense of the steepness of the hill, but we powered up it ok. As we went up, I realized it looked a lot steeper from the saddle than it does when walking Hugh! We did the lollipop circle at the end and came back down. At the steepest spot, I did hop off to lead Fizz down. She sort of paused, looking down the hill and back at me like- you expect me to walk back down that. It was sort of funny. But we slip slided our way down and made it to the bottom in one piece.








I was thinking of the fly experiment as we rode through the woods, and my anecdotal evidence is that we had 5 deerflies on Fizz's neck going in, and only 1 deerfly on her neck going out. Promising... 

Lovely husband was cutting firewood when we passed the house, so he snapped a couple of pictures.








We stopped to say hi and Fizz for once had her ears up- I think because the field down the street was being brushhogged and she was very interested.








It was so nice to get back from a ride and not be drenched in sweat!! And we had great sleeping weather Saturday night.

Sunday morning M and I planned to meet first thing in the morning- I had plans to take Hugh to his doggie dad's farm for a "play day" in the afternoon, so I needed to be home by lunch to be ready to go on our afternoon adventure.

We had an eventful ride. As soon as I turned out of our driveway and headed down the road to meet M, Fizz was snort-snort-snorting along, so I figured the bear had been through recently. We never saw it, but she was on her toes just in case it appeared! As we got closer to the paved road, a huge flock of turkeys went crashing through the woods behind us- not the bear, but Fizz went flying backwards and the snorts turned into SNORTS. She settled quickly with a little reassurance, and we continued on. Our friend Mac the German Shepherd is still wearing the cone of shame, but fortunately he was in his driveway (not hiding under the bushes until the last minute), so he wasn't too scary to pass. We met up with M and Coalie right after Mac's house, and Fizz seemed happier than usual to see him. We headed along and as we went up the next hill, I could feel Fizz get tense and start to snuff again, so I was guessing the cows that are sometimes at the top of the hill were going to be there. At first we didn't see them, but she kept snorting along. And I saw them before she did. I thought we were going to be ok, since Coalie was between us and them, but when she spotted them right along the road, she sort of exploded. She spun a 180 and then started backing up fast across the meadow on the opposite side of their street. The cows, which had been laying quietly in the shade along the fence, naturally all got up to see what the commotion was about and hung their heads over the fence. EXTRA SNORT EXTRA SPIN. At this point, I did the world's most ungraceful emergency dismount over Fizz's right side (opting for grass instead of gravel road) and landed sort of on my back but managed to keep the reins. M yelled out to me "did you do that on purpose?" which made me laugh a lot as I confirmed in fact I did. 🤣 Fizz continued to back up so popped me right back up onto my feet. Obviously this all happened in a few seconds, but me ending up on the ground sort of snapped her out of the backing up. She wasn't happy at all, but I did manage to lead her past the curious cows while she circled around me nervously a couple of times. Phew. Coalie just stood there watching Fizz spazz out but seemed unfazed, which helped. Once we were a few yards away from the cows, she took a deep breath and was fine for me to get back on. That was enough wildlife excitement for one ride! And fortunately, the rest of it was uneventful.



phantomhorse13 said:


> @egrogan some of those new to you trails looked lovely! will you be able to access them for training rides?


Yes! Luckily we can. I'm finally starting to understand how the various snowmobile, ATV, and bridle trails connect. We did a portion of the woods trail from last weekend during our ride yesterday- not the magical forest part, as that would have taken a little too much time given when I needed to be home, but still a very nice part of it:








The ATV club has been building lots of new bridges across marshy spots this year, which is so helpful (and good for keeping boots on!). This bridge was a little funky though, they had laid down probably 5-6 small birch trees in front of and behind the actual bridge, so the horses had to step really careful over those logs, which wanted to roll a little when they walked across. Definitely required them to pay close attention.








And this was also a bit of a tricky ditch- looked again like someone had intentionally put down some small logs, maybe to contain how water crossed the trails? The horses had to pay attention to where each foot was going. Funny how Fizz will shy at the dry ditches when going across the cross-country field at GMHA, but she didn't bat an eye crossing this.








The little waterfall watering hole was full of water- even after a week without much rain, the month of rain we did have has kept things really wet!








We're up to 62.8 virtual Tevis miles and 271 total miles for the year. We've got a few more miles until we get to the next virtual Tevis milestone so not quite sure what the trail looks like...

I think I've added as many pictures as I can in one post, so to be continued with Hugh's afternoon adventure!


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## Knave

That sounds like a lot! I’m sorry about the cows and everything leading up to them.


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## knightrider

I am relieved that you were just having a great fun weekend and not that you were sick. People in Florida, especially in the area where I am, are falling like flies to a highly contagious illness. When I don't see someone or hear from them, I worry.

This morning I bit the bullet and made myself count headshakes while we made a circle. I picked a 1 1/2 mile portion of the circle heading out and another 1 1/2 mile portion heading back. I got 23 headshakes heading out in the circle and 28 headshakes heading home. We picked trails that had few flies. If I am doing the math correctly, I get 15% more flies heading home. This is not particularly significant, of course, but it does at least begin to show that 1) later in the morning does not influence fewer flies (since there were more headshakes heading home, but not many) and 2) horses eager to get home don't shake their heads less. They certainly move faster going home and makes me wonder if I should use time instead of distance. You'd think they'd have fewer flies since they were walking faster. And tomorrow, they might. A one time trial is pretty inconclusive.

My neighbor and riding buddy, who originally thought the whole thing was unnecessary and a bit silly, is starting to enjoy it (or maybe he is just being a good sport--if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.) He asks me how many headshakes I've gotten or when I am planning to stop or start counting again. I've also pleasantly discovered, being a woman I think, that it isn't so hard to hold a conversation and count headshakes.

I'm behind everyone else in the Tevis Virtual Challenge. I've done 36 miles so far and just got across Robinson Flats. But it's been super fun and I'll get there. Slow and steady like the turtle, counting headshakes and flies.


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> She spun a 180 and then started backing up fast across the meadow on the opposite side of their street. The cows, which had been laying quietly in the shade along the fence, naturally all got up to see what the commotion was about and hung their heads over the fence. *EXTRA SNORT EXTRA SPIN*. At this point, I did the world's most ungraceful emergency dismount over Fizz's right side (opting for grass instead of gravel road) and landed sort of on my back but managed to keep the reins. M yelled out to me *"did you do that on purpose?"*


Okay, I laughed. No offense but I'm glad I'm not the only one who has experienced "EXTRA SNORT EXTRA SPIN". It is something I like about a western saddle. With one hand on the horn, my shoulders stay over my horse's back and I sometimes need that help during "extra spin"! Although Bandit has, happily, largely stopped with spinning. I finally rode him out into the desert solo yesterday. Probably the first time since October. So of course we encountered a woman with 2 kids riding mini-ATVs. VERY polite about it. And Bandit was barely bothered. But then....her husband came following, pushing a BABY STROLLER! OMG! We did twisting and turning but the desert cactus hedged us in and I finally got Bandit past the guy - who apologized but I told him it was just a horse being a horse around something he almost never sees. After that things calmed down and Bandit did great considering how long it has been since we made a solo trip.

But it helps to know I'm not the only person whose horse sometimes has some extra snort. I'd have dismounted at the baby carriage except I'd probably would have landed on cactus. As usual, Bandit seems to be able to do the twisty turny thing between cactus without putting either of us INTO the cacti. I've met people who would consider me a total failure as a rider since Bandit wasn't going to keep his head down and keep plodding past. I find comfort in knowing other people have horses who aren't robots. I can't even imagine any more riding a horse who doesn't sometimes look at me as if I've lost my mind....


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## egrogan

Yesterday afternoon was a grand adventure for Hugh. His dad, Wyeth, and his little sister, Josephine, live about an hour north of us on a working goat dairy. Wyeth had met Hugh's litter when they were small pups, but I had never met Wyeth and his owners. With all the covid restrictions, coupled with Hugh's awful car sickness for most of the past year, we had never been able to arrange a trip to visit. Hugh has left the car sickness behind- it was the weirdest thing, one day it was just _poof_ gone...so the one hour trip no longer seemed daunting.

Don't they make the loveliest family...Hugh, Wyeth, Jo.








Jo is a fierce little firecracker, so confident in herself. Very much like her mom and the rest of the female pups. She made a big show of snarling at Hugh when they first met, but as you can see, they figured things out pretty quickly. With the help of a swift paw inserted by Wyeth when he'd had enough of the snarling 🤣

This pretty much sum's up Hugh's afternoon. It's not like he doesn't live an active lifestyle, but this much adventure with other dogs was good for everyone's soul I think!!








I thought we lived in a pretty spot, but their farm was exceptionally beautiful- nestled right in the middle of the Green Mountain National Forest.








Another one of this year's pups, Ansel, is owned by the sister of Wyeth and Jo's owner, so he came out to play too. Adding the two pups to the mix got everyone a bit amped up after awhile, but it was fun when everyone was getting along...








We can't wait to visit again soon!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I’m sorry about the cows and everything leading up to them.


Some days I wish I could ship Fizz out to you for a month to get over this cow thing! 😉 She's gotten so much better when there are cows in a spot she expects them to be. She doesn't like it, but she handles it. Yesterday they were in a spot she's never seen them (I see them there sometimes when I'm driving but, but as luck has it, this is the first time they've ever been there when riding). 



knightrider said:


> People in Florida, especially in the area where I am, are falling like flies to a highly contagious illness.


It sucks to hear this and I truly hope things turn around soon.



bsms said:


> I've met people who would consider me a total failure as a rider since Bandit wasn't going to keep his head down and keep plodding past. I find comfort in knowing other people have horses who aren't robots.


Yep, M and I had a long conversation to this effect after the incident yesterday. We have a lot of "old school" endurance riders here who also think you're a crap rider if you ever get off to deal with a situation. M and I have concluded a lot of that attitude is because there are so many people who can't get back on by themselves 🤣


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## knightrider

@egrogan , you're the one who taught me "There is no shame in getting off." And now I do, without shame. Thanks to you!


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## gottatrot

Hero also thinks cows are very concerning. Every time we see them he worries.

@bsms, we could go on the beach and the horses would go past everything without blinking an eye, tents, cars, umbrellas, kites, but for some reason a baby carriage rolling around with a creature making sounds inside would terrify most of the horses. Nala would always have a a fit.


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## phantomhorse13

knightrider said:


> I've also pleasantly discovered, being a woman I think, that it isn't so hard to hold a conversation and count headshakes.


🤣 🤣 🤣



egrogan said:


> M and I have concluded a lot of that attitude is because there are so many people who can't get back on by themselves 🤣


While I, too, laughed hard at that comment, I think you are exactly right.



gottatrot said:


> we could go on the beach and the horses would go past everything without blinking an eye, tents, cars, umbrellas, kites, but for some reason a baby carriage rolling around with a creature making sounds inside would terrify most of the horses.


Well seeing as babies terrify me, I think the horses are just showing their intelligence! 🙃


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## Chevaux

Regarding Fizz’s cow (dare I say) phobia, don’t suppose you could borrow a couple of quiet cows or cow/calf pair, etc to put in your pasture for a few weeks in order for Fizz to get to know the enemy?


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## egrogan

Chevaux said:


> Regarding Fizz’s cow (dare I say) phobia, don’t suppose you could borrow a couple of quiet cows or cow/calf pair, etc to put in your pasture for a few weeks in order for Fizz to get to know the enemy?


Haha, I love the idea (Fizz probably wouldn't!), but practically speaking, I don't know anything about taking care of cows. Except I think it's the case that my three-strand electric rope fencing, which isn't even turned on most of the time, probably isn't strong enough to keep them contained!



knightrider said:


> @egrogan , you're the one who taught me "There is no shame in getting off." And now I do, without shame. Thanks to you!


Aww, this made me smile. And I read it yesterday afternoon right after I had come in from an epically bad ride. After lunch yesterday, Fizz and I headed off to the big Cavendish hill past the overlook- I was planning to go on a longish, 10ish mile loop that we haven't done before. I stupidly told lovely husband before I left that I should be home around dinner time if all went well, but much earlier if we had to turn around sooner. I don't even know why I said it that way, but it was definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy. 😥

We got to the big downhill, and right away she started flinging her body all over the place, trying to spin and go back towards home. She leapt into the driveway of the house at the top of the hill and I had to pull her back around in the downhill facing direction. She just fought me the whole dang way down, even when we got off the slippery gravel and into the grassy ditch. Last time we went this way, she didn't like it but I kept her pointing in the downhill direction riding the ditch. She doesn't do this anywhere else. It's like a throw-down fight. I don't know what it is about this f-ing hill, but I have to admit it made me feel enraged, which is not a feeling I'm proud of or that I usually experience. Things were going "downhill" fast (pun intended 🤣) so there was no point staying on. Maybe there was no shame in getting off, but there was shame in how I handled what came next. I made her trot fast down the hill the rest of the way next to me while I jogged along. She was fidgety about standing for me to get on at the bottom of the hill, but eventually I scrambled back on board, and then squeezed her forward hard into a strong trot up the next hill. We got passed by two cars so had to slow down and hug the shoulder, but after they passed us I squeezed her forward hard again. We came to the next intersection, and she slammed on the brakes and said no way am I going any farther away from home. So we spun and spun in the intersection arguing about going forward or going towards home. I finally got her to do...something...that was basically 3 or 4 steps in the direction I wanted, and then I turned her back towards home because we were both clearly DONE with the ride. Turning towards home she felt like a firecracker and even having her trot didn't release the pressure. I seriously thought she might start broncing on me because she was d.o.n.e.

At that point, some sense kicked me in the butt- actually, ironically, I had a podcast playing on my phone in my pocket, and they were talking about that crazy lady who flipped out on her horse in the Olympic pentathon. That broke through my frustration and made me ask what the heck was happening and why we were having this fight. I got off, and we just walked. We stopped at a nice patch of grass and calmed down. We walked some more. We passed a good spot to get back on from the side of a hill, and she stood nicely for me to mount back up. She looked back at me for a treat, and it was like her eyes were saying, "oh, thank god it's you back up there instead of that crazy psychopath that was trying to kill me." We walked the rest of the way home on a loose rein.

















^^This is the killer hill, going up on the way home instead of down. She walked up it like it was her favorite trail. I don't understand why we have such epic meltdowns coming down it, but something needs to change in that spot. Maybe I just need to go back to just getting off at the top and handwalking all the way down. It stinks, but it's better than these awful problems we always seem to have here. And I _do _want to be able to ride that way- there is some really nice road riding in that direction that I don't do nearly as often as I would if we didn't have these issues. But clearly I need some new strategies because what I'm doing isn't working- so I'm all ears if anyone has any advice for me on what to do in this spot. And I don't ever want to take it out on Fizz again. I feel gross about how that ride went.
******
This morning we went out for a mid-morning ride, since it's supposed to rain this afternoon and pretty much keep raining until next Monday (hoping that forecast changes!!). We headed out to do the Newhall Farm loop, which is about 6.5 miles and a great ride because there's lots of great opportunity for long, uninterrupted stretches of trotting along.

We had an interesting start to the ride, as we were approaching the paved road crossing we saw two endurancy-looking riders on grey Arabs heading our way, ponying another little bay Arab with them. I don't ever see riders while I'm out, so Fizz was sort of mesmerized as they got closer. Though she is used to seeing a horse "appear" on the horizon because we meet up with Coalie so often. Since she was standing quietly I decided to just wait for them to go through the intersection- no point in trying to pass them in the middle of the road when cars come along fast. I couldn't recognize who they were, but it seemed to be one younger woman and an older one. The younger one yelled out hello and how funny it was to see someone else out riding, and I yelled hello back. The older lady just growled to her horse and powered through the intersection as they turned in the opposite direction. It occurred to me that a lot of the older endurance riders here do a lot of growling at their horses while they're riding- maybe that's my problem, I'm not enough of a growler!! 🐺🐺 Fizz was interested in where they had gone when they turned left, heading away from us, and the little bay horse kept looking back over his shoulder at her, but they disappeared off down the hill and we continued on our way without any issues. I was pretty happy with how that went, I think it's good practice for similar situations in the future out at a ride.

The first 20 minutes or so of this ride is mostly downhill, but from there it turns into a gradual uphill for a few miles, so we can really trot along happily. Some of it is road, and some of it is woods trail, and we didn't see any cars or horses along the way, which allowed us to get into a really good rhythm.








We popped out of the woods onto the farm road, and stayed alert for cows, which could be anywhere across the giant farm...








...aha! Found them! They are the little white specks in the middle of the photo below, along the tree line. Fizz definitely saw them, but apparently this is a safe and acceptable distance and she never even tensed up or worried, despite a few looks at them over her shoulder.








It helped that there is a very enticing apple tree right along the road, opposite where you see the round bales in the picture. We stopped for a snack, as well as a few glances back up the hill at those nasty beasts. Fortunately they stayed put!








Right after the apple tree, we crossed back over the paved road for a second time. A car passing actually stopped in the middle of the road and rolled down the window to take a picture of us. It always makes me laugh to imagine being part of someone's Vermont fantasy vacation pictures on Facebook. 😉 This has happened a couple of times in the past.

From there, we trucked along on the mostly uphill route. The only excitement was passing a house where a whole family was unloading groceries in plastic bags from their car- I can't say I've ever ridden by something like that, and I had no idea how LOUD plastic bags are when there are kids running with them. Fizz gawked, but we kept on going, admiring the pretty views. (Note- no cows. Sometimes they are right there.)








The last mile, heading down our own road, we had an interesting encounter. I knew the town was out doing road "maintenance" - which entails using a giant grader to scrape dirt out of the ditches to spread out on the road as "fresh" surface (this seems like an extremely stupid process to me, but admittedly I'm no engineer). I had picked the route we went on because I knew they were working in the opposite direction of our house earlier in the morning, but I guess enough time had passed that they had made it farther than I thought they would while I was still riding.

So there in the distance is the town guy with the ditch-scraping grader...








...Fizz didn't seem the slightest bit concerned about it though, so I figured I'd just keep riding by it and see what she'd do. He very nicely pulled way over and stopped for us to get by, and she didn't care in the slightest. It's so funny to me seeing what bothers her (sticks and rocks on the side of the trail) and what doesn't (bazillion pound machinery).

She was, however, absolutely fascinated with the freshly scooped piles of dirt in the road waiting to be smoothed out. She tracked along it like a bloodhound, nose to the ground the whole way home.








We were both pretty sweaty when we got back-humidity was through the roof again-but I was so glad to have a good ride today after yesterday’s debacle. And hopefully we won’t have 7 straight days of rain so we can head out again soon!


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## phantomhorse13

Ugh to ongoing hill issues.. some random thoughts.

How far from home is this hill? Have you done any trotting before you get there? Is she fully warmed up? Is there a similarly steep hill any of the other places that you ride? How does she behave going down that one?

I am trying to figure out if there is a physical issue or if it's a mental issue/boogeyman place now. 

I think I would go back to dismounting before she starts getting sticky and leading her down. Can you get to grassy places along the way down to stop for a quick snack before going on (always keeping her head pointed down the hill)? After a few times of that going well, I would add jogging in hand between grazing stops. She how she handles herself and how she moves. It could be she is still learning to balance and doing so is hard work, so she would rather not (and honestly that is how I feel about most exercise, so I do sympathize). But a tantrum is not an acceptable way to have a discussion about work being hard.


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## bsms

I'd like to claim I've never cussed my horse out. But I'd be lying.


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## Knave

I think that you probably should remember to be a bit easier on yourself… everyone has a bad day. That includes the horses! I’m lucky with Cash, because when I’m having a bad day he completely ignores me, and if he’s having a bad one I try and return the favor. I’m reminded that I have those days too.

Bones wasn’t like that, and if either of us had a bad day it drug out. If I was emotional or better out, cranky, he would be upset with me for at least a week. If he were cranky I would let it get under my skin and that would worry him… it seems better the way Cash and I roll. Unless the hill continues to be a problem for a week I’d probably try and make myself ignore it and walk down the hill with the conclusion that we all have a bad day. After a week I’d start to deal with training about it.

It sounds like your next ride was good!


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## knightrider

I agree with @Knave and @phantomhorse13 about the hill. We have a little tiny bump of a hill with a gopher tortoise hole on the side of it. All of our horses hate it and request to not do it regularly. We have no idea why. When I was younger, I would have joked that there was some sort of psychic tragedy there (like someone was murdered, or a deer killed) and the horses sense it. I think our horses say, "Yuck, this is steep and eroded and we don't want to go down there." We make them go down it, but they let us know about 3 rides out of 4 (doesn't matter which horse, they all don't want to do it) that they don't wanna go there.

I also agree with @bsms that I also have acted inappropriately and used bad language unfairly at times. The horses are so forgiving, I feel guilty.

Hope readers can stand another fly report. This was a Chorro morning, my most reactive horse. I told my riding buddy I wanted to do a loooong circle today, and he did too. I counted headshakes for 25 minutes going out in the circle and 25 minutes coming home. My neighbor chose a pretty heavy fly area for our circle, so I got 72 headshakes heading out and 77 headshakes coming back. I decided to use time instead of miles since we were gaiting pretty much the whole ride and going faster coming home (of course). If my math is correct, that means 3% more flies coming home.

So far, I have done the experiment going out and coming back the same way 4 times and consistently get fewer flies coming home, anywhere from 50% fewer to 3% fewer. I've only counted in a circle twice, but both times I got more flies, 15% and 3% more flies on the way home. I am trying REALLY hard to be fair and not biased in counting headshakes or belly kicks. Chorro rarely kicks his belly, so I only count headshakes (which he does constantly) for Chorro.


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## carshon

I just had to gasp when I read that one of the Anatolians is gone! Wow! the poor dog paid the price of irresponsible owners. And now back to your reading journal!


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## egrogan

Well, thanks everyone for commiserating and sharing their ideas about this hill issue. I know most of us can find ourselves getting too emotional at times but it still feels bad. As @knightrider said, horses are certainly forgiving souls, thankfully.

Some thoughts in response to @phantomhorse13's suggestions:


phantomhorse13 said:


> How far from home is this hill? Have you done any trotting before you get there? Is she fully warmed up?


This is about 1.5 miles from home. She has a good warmup before we get there. The first 1/2 mile leaving home is actually pretty flat, so we walk briskly, and then the next 1/2 mile is a gentle uphill where we'll trot, followed by another 1/2 mile that is flat again, where we'll continue to trot. It's actually a very pleasant start to a ride, moreso than the other two options we have leaving the driveway, which are immediately downhill. 



> Is there a similarly steep hill any of the other places that you ride? How does she behave going down that one?


I think this hill is a bit unique in the combo of how steep it is + how long it goes on. She's improved tremendously on other steep hills this year compared to last year. She doesn't act like this on any other hill, even though I can't say every other steep downhill is smooth and steady. Even on other challenging downhills, she at least tries, she doesn't hop and spin around.



> I am trying to figure out if there is a physical issue or if it's a mental issue/boogeyman place now.


 My feeling is that it's more of a "don't want to" vs. physical. But I have also proven I have my own mental issues in this spot so maybe my judgement is off 😉



> I think I would go back to dismounting before she starts getting sticky and leading her down. Can you get to grassy places along the way down to stop for a quick snack before going on (always keeping her head pointed down the hill)? After a few times of that going well, I would add jogging in hand between grazing stops. She how she handles herself and how she moves. It could be she is still learning to balance and doing so is hard work, so she would rather not (and honestly that is how I feel about most exercise, so I do sympathize). But a tantrum is not an acceptable way to have a discussion about work being hard.


I like this plan. Something similar has worked very well at a tricky 4 way intersection where we generally turn away from home, but every now and then, we turn towards home. After turning towards home just once, she wanted to try to pull that way every time, when we were not planning on going towards home. At that intersection, I started pulling off onto the shoulder and letting her graze for a minute, and then picking her head back up and asking her to go the direction I had planned. After a few times of doing that, she stopped trying to pick the direction herself.

I _do_ think this is one of the most challenging hills we ride on, which is compounded by the terrible footing and by the fact that we almost always see a truck or a biker on the hill while we are struggling. It has become an unpleasant place for both of us in a lot of ways. And yet...we need to go that way sometimes. But I think I will try this handgrazing/jogging down strategy next time and see what happens. Thanks!!


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> So far, I have done the experiment going out and coming back the same way 4 times and consistently get fewer flies coming home, anywhere from 50% fewer to 3% fewer. I've only counted in a circle twice, but both times I got more flies, 15% and 3% more flies on the way home.


Here's the next question: on this circle route, where you are getting more flies on the way home...Could you take the part of the circle where there are more flies, and ride it as an out-and-back, to see if anything changes? What I'm wondering is if the second half of the circle just randomly happens to be a more fly-infested section than the first half?


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> ride it as an out-and-back, to see if anything changes? What I'm wondering is if the second half of the circle just randomly happens to be a more fly-infested section than the first half?


Great idea! I am going to try that. In fact, my riding buddy neighbor wanted to do that today, but I was trying to do circles as a control. I think my fly counting has changed his mind! If you have any more ideas, please tell me. That is one reason why I started posting on your journal rather than the trail section. I got the impression that the readers in the trail section thought I was dead wrong and furthermore didn't want to read about it. But you seemed interested.

Actually, the first half of the circle is the worst fly trail we have. We have been avoiding it all summer. I think he picked it because we agreed in June not to ride it again, the flies were so horrible. He wanted to pick something really awful heading out as a true test. The circle part going home is normally not as bad (but clearly, when counting today, it was slightly worse). I am thinking that it has to do with the time of day. We start out at dawn before the sun is up, and the flies probably get worse as it gets lighter and brighter and sunnier. That would make backtracking equally bad for flies, or worse, and so far, it consistently has not been. hmmmmm.


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## gottatrot

I do think the fly experiments are interesting.

I agree with @PhantomHorse about going back to walking on the big hill. My suspicion is that it is a habit to get upset about it rather than a physical thing. It's very natural to get frustrated and having a bad ride used to make me feel like a failure, but I've learned that horses really don't take it to heart, and it doesn't affect training much in the long run.

However, I do think that when we get upset it can sort of "cement" the idea into a horse's head that this is a bad place. So our getting upset can reinforce the badness of an area. My thought is that you have to go over the area without a fuss enough times to get the brain reset into thinking that place is not a big deal. It is different with a rider, of course. 

I don't know if Coalie has the ability to pony Fizz, but it would be very helpful if you could attach a lead and have Coalie bring Fizz down the hill several times. That helped Hero go into the woods, having Mikey drag him there several times where he liked to stall out and get upset. Now he is usually able to go in on his own. 

People seem to think that if you get off and lead, you're letting the horse win or something. I don't believe that, but I do think that following a person is much easier than doing something with a rider. So the horse might still struggle being ridden somewhere that they can be led through. Ponying sort of bridges that gap, because the horse does not have the help of a person on the ground leading them, so it's a little bit harder mentally.


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## knightrider

For two years Isabeau went into trail rides with a lead rope and halter. If she balked, I just tossed the lead rope to whomever was riding with me, and on we went. There was no "making" her go on. She'd start rearing and if the rider persisted, she'd come over on her rider sideways. But, with the lead rope, she'd just go right on. It took a long long time--two years--but we used the lead rope less and less until one day I decided to dispense with it. If I was riding solo, I'd get off and walk. I did a lot of walking in those days. When you have Coalie, you might consider just having the lead rope along.

And thanks, @gottatrot , for telling me you don't mind reading about the fly counting. I'm kind of embarrassed about telling about it. The only journal I have is Isabeau's journal, and she doesn't really mind flies, and certainly would not agree to write about it! She thinks the whole thing is stupid.


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## phantomhorse13

I rode today and thought of your bug experiment @knightrider. I was pondering reasons why bugs might be less on the way back and wondered how often do biting bugs eat? Perhaps there are less bugs on the way back because the ones who succeeded in biting your horse and/or you on the way out are off taking a nap or something. And then of course maybe you succeeded in killing a few, so they aren't around to bother you again.

I tried a quick google search and could only find info about how they need a blood meal to reproduce, but nothing about how often they ate..


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## knightrider

Very good and clever thinking @phantomhorse13. I'll bet you are right! Because when I kill one, it is loaded with blood. So they are full and done drinking . . . or dead. I had this silly theory that they lurk under leaves and once they have launched themselves they head off somewhere else when the horse leaves their territory. No reason why they wouldn't just light on another leaf like birds do. My theory doesn't make much sense. Yours is better.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> My suspicion is that it is a habit to get upset about it rather than a physical thing. It's very natural to get frustrated and having a bad ride used to make me feel like a failure, but I've learned that horses really don't take it to heart, and it doesn't affect training much in the long run.
> 
> However, I do think that when we get upset it can sort of "cement" the idea into a horse's head that this is a bad place. So our getting upset can reinforce the badness of an area. My thought is that you have to go over the area without a fuss enough times to get the brain reset into thinking that place is not a big deal. It is different with a rider, of course.


Yes to all of this, I think you're definitely right.



> I don't know if Coalie has the ability to pony Fizz, but it would be very helpful if you could attach a lead and have Coalie bring Fizz down the hill several times


This idea had crossed my mind too. We've never tried to pony them, but they are certainly used to and comfortable with riding in close quarters, and have a lot of experience giving the other a lead across a tricky spot (sans lead rope, but same follow-the-leader concept). There are a couple of logistical issues, primarily that this hill is the opposite direction of where M and I meet up, so she'd have to trailer here probably or else it would be a long ride for her before even getting to the hill; but she's done that before and if I really needed to try this I'm sure she'd be willing to give it a shot. I'll try the happy solo walks and jogs down the hill a few times first to see if that gives us the reset we need, but if not, it's an option!

Pouring rain here today with the remnants of the latest tropical storm, but hoping for at least a short ride tomorrow afternoon- as long as we don't end up with 3" of rain dumped today, which is apparently a possibility.


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## egrogan

Rainy day, so catching up on some paperwork type stuff and just got signed up for our next intro ride during Distance Days (Labor Day weekend). I was blanking on Fizz's birthday for the sign-up, so went to her papers. One rabbit hole later, I found this picture of her grand-dam (sire's dam), and was pretty wowed by the resemblance:








(Photo from Fizz's breeder, Lee's Riding Stable, who no longer owns this mare)

Fizz's sire is registered as "creme," I guess you'd typically call him cremello, and I don't really see him when I look at her. Her dam is a little dark brown plain jane, sweet-as-they-come mare who I don't think Fizz resembles much either. But this mare above, Rosewater Heather T, seems like she skipped a generation and showed up again in Fizz.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> One rabbit hole later, I found this picture of her grand-dam (sire's dam), and was pretty wowed by the resemblance:
> View attachment 1116995


Wow is right - before I read your post, I glanced at the picture and thought you had found some arena somewhere to go ride in! Genetics are amazing.


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## gottatrot

Fizz lucked out in the gene department, looking like her grand-dam. Both are gorgeous horses.


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## egrogan

Today was a day I really didn’t want to ride because the weather was so nasty, even at 9am, but I knew I needed to because of the hurricane heading our way…more on that in a minute…

We had a weird start to the ride. It began with a tuner car that was driving up and down the paved road and doing wheelies in the turnoff to our road. It was the kind of car that does the rev-rev-rev-BOOM sound. Fizz didn’t really care but it made me uneasy. We skirted across the paved road when he drove in the opposite direction, and could hear him come back behind us even when we were out of sight.

We passed Mac the German Shepherd, heading down the last hill, and saw a bizarre sight-it was some sort of military _TANK_ 😳 No pictures as I wanted both hands on the wheel for that…It crossed the intersection at the bottom of the hill and headed…somewhere?? Luckily we didn't see it again! Immediately after a dump truck pulling a huge bulldozer rattled by. I think Fizz was actually fine but I was a little rattled myself, so I hopped off and walked through the intersection, hoping nothing else would appear! Fortunately, it didn’t!








With the oppressive humidity, Fizz was sluggish, but we did a slow jog up the road until we could turn off onto a woods trail. We were happy to have shade most of the way, and given now damp everything was the bugs were surprisingly not all that bad. We kept up the little jog until the trail got too rocky and washed out, and we had to walk on the climb up.









At the waterfall drinking hole, we stopped for a minute and splashed in the stream. 








Usually from here we go back out to the road to make a big loop home, but I was really appreciating the shade (and not wanting any more traffic excitement!), so I actually turned Fizz around and backtracked the way we had come so we could stay in the woods.








It’s amazing how much water is everywhere you look. It feels like we’re in a rainforest!








Which makes this hurricane situation worrying. Hurricane Henri is supposed to make landfall in NYC/Long Island/Connecticut tonight/tomorrow and then travel right up over us late Sunday or Monday. Right now the predicted rainfall totals for us don’t seem too extreme (1-2 inches) but it’s really too soon to say. The 10 year anniversary of Hurricane Irene is next week, which devastated towns all around us, so people are getting nervous. Especially because everything is already over saturated. We should have a better idea of what’s going to happen tomorrow mid-day. And it’s supposed to stay clear all morning so M and I may even get our Sunday morning ride in.

But you can already see the outer bands of storm clouds already rolling in, and everything has that eerie feeling the air takes on when a storm is coming…


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## Knave

I hope it all goes well!


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## knightrider

I am thinking about you, Henri, and flooding and hope all is OK for you.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> I am thinking about you, Henri, and flooding and hope all is OK for you.


Thank you! So far today, just ominous skies but nothing else yet. It sounds like our potential flooding rains will be arriving tomorrow during the day. I'm just hoping it continues to weaken as it heads in this direction, but doesn't linger!


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## egrogan

Things are a bit soggy here this morning but totally fine. We got very heavy rain around 2am, but it’s actually not raining at all right now. Maybe a little more to come later in the day, but we got very lucky. It seems it stayed south and west of us and weakened quite a bit. It may make the easterly turn in MA before heading back out to sea. @phantomhorse13 - maybe you ended up getting some rain from the outer bands after all?


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## phantomhorse13

With the unexpected drift west, we did wind up getting some rain - about 2" worth (the worst bands stayed east of us, thank goodness). We were so behind on moisture that the ground was readily able to absorb most of it, so we did not have issues with flooding. I swear the soybeans in the field beside the driveway have doubled in size! Maybe the grass will actually grow again, which the horses would appreciate.


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## egrogan

Finally, a day without rain! The hurricane left behind maximum humidity and temps of about 8000 degrees, but at least it's not raining. The old ladies celebrated being back out in the big field!








I hadn't done anything with Fizz since Saturday, before the storm started, so despite the heat I was itching to go out. I decided it would be a good day to move forward with Operation Hill Redux. We headed off in that direction. Predictably, when we got to the crest of the hill, she put on the brakes, so I hopped off and began leading her down. It was all very quiet and matter of fact, and she marched right along. About 1/3 of the way down, we stopped for a quick snack...
(I just noticed that if you look carefully around her neck, we had a visitor on the trail 🦋)








When I asked her to walk on again, she did a little dance shimmy to the right to try to exit the road, but I just laughed at her and kept walking, which she found confusing. But she came along with me, no more protests. Nearly at the bottom, we stopped again. It was nice to find some shade. I managed to find a couple of tiny apples that had fallen from a nearby tree, so when we started walking again she got a nice surprise.









And in no time at all, we were at the bottom already! No fuss, no fights, nothing loud. Just a quick walk down.








I do find it endlessly amusing that Equilab always thinks we're cantering when I'm walking on the ground. I must have a very "rolling" stride when I walk 🤣 The thought of cantering down this hill is doubly amusing!








When I got her stood up in the ditch to get back on, she was totally relaxed and didn't complain at all. We trotted off, enjoying the shade for a stretch. When we got to the big hayfield, a good turnaround spot, we stopped again for a quick snack and then started off for home on a loose rein. Quite a change from last time, when in this spot she felt like a loose cannon getting ready to launch me into the sky!








And there was the hill again, this time from her preferred direction 😉








I think the heat helped keep everything a bit slow and calm- we walked almost the whole way home, when on a typical ride we'd trot most of it. But that's ok, I was feeling drained too. Close to home we stopped for a minute to admire another great year for the monarchs. We have so much milkweed, they love it here.




All in all, a great ride. Might do the same thing tomorrow as the weather is going to be about the same as today. Seems like a good thing to work on when we're going slow and steady anyway.


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## Knave

Very pretty! I’m glad you had a good ride!


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## egrogan

Had an odd ride yesterday. M and I met yesterday after work with the intention of the 10ish mile loop of the Tree Farm. The afternoon was still sticky, on the tail end of the awful humid cycle we've been in. Temps weren't quite as bad though. But from the beginning, Fizz was sluggish and sweaty. When I asked her to trot, she'd only go a few steps before shifting back to a walk. I figured the heat was still bothering her but hoped she'd feel better as she warmed up. When we met up with M and Coalie, she was still dragging along, with Coalie way out ahead of us and her stopping and standing in the middle of the road with a weird look on her face. We got about 3 miles in, and she just didn't want to go on. Even M was getting concerned. I hopped off to take a look at her feet and feel her legs to make sure there was nothing wrong, and trotted her out for M to watch her move- her legs were cool, nothing in her boots, and she trotted evenly. She just didn't want to go any farther. M gently told me she didn't think it was a good idea to keep going and we should turn back. I continued leading her for a bit and she would still randomly come to a stop, and hang her head low. I felt some mild panic wondering what I would do if she went down in the middle of the road. I handwalked her for about a mile, when we crossed a pretty open meadow. Coalie stopped to poop, and we stopped behind him- and then, Fizz decided she was in a place conducive to peeing. And she peed, and peed, and peed. It was an epic pee. Apparently that was the heart of the whole problem, she was just really uncomfortable? I'm surprised she acted so oddly instead of just going. On the one hand, I'm glad that there was nothing seriously wrong with her. But on the other, if we had been even farther from home she would have had to either pee or keep going. I know people train them to pee to a whistle, maybe I need to pursue that? Any thoughts?

We still had a couple of miles to go after the epic pee, so I was able to get back on to ride the rest of the way home. And _poof_ she felt fabulous. She sprung into a floaty trot and wanted to trot the big hill home. I was disappointed our ride had been cut short (we only ended up doing about 6 miles total), but of course was very relieved that she was ok. And it was pretty to be coming home as the sun was getting low in the sky...















The vet is coming in an hour or so to give the girls their fall Lyme vaccine, so we won't ride today. And tomorrow, there is a massive overland bike race coming through the neighborhood. Hundreds of bikers traveling at race speed on all the trails we use. Needless to say, we won't be out riding tomorrow in the middle of all that! They did put together this preview video of the course, which was neat to watch because it shows the route we regularly ride-it's a 50 mile course, but a lot of what they show is the route we take between home and GMHA. Sort of neat to see it all on video like this. Here it is if you want to see the trails from a different vantage point:





I've been working hard to make up for lost time on Hugh's socialization. With the pandemic and his carsickness, he definitely did not get the socialization he needed, which is a shame. But now that he can ride in the car without getting sick, we're trying to get out in public more. I've been trying to pick places where I know we can sit at a distance from other people/dogs, but still see a lot of activity. Yesterday we went to the country store and shared a picnic lunch:








This morning we went to the cafe outside the staging area for the bike race, and splashed around in the brook.








He still gets a little anxious when there is a lot going on, but it's getting better. I really wish we could have those early months back so it wouldn't be this way, but this is what we have to work with. Good thing he's cute 😉


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## Knave

He is cute! Junie B has had as much socializing as any dog I’ve known around here. She was there when grandpa was dying, and everyone was around her. She was his puppy in his lap, and no problems really. Once she was snappy in a bush hiding from a preschooler.

They she got a little bigger and a little meaner. I love Junie B, but she is not a people person. She loves me and I think our family, but even as young as she is people are pretty intimidated by her. She’s mean to new dogs too, and always acts as though she’s protecting me. To be honest I have no clue how to change that. Luckily we live out here, but I think I’ll always have to watch her super carefully. She may end up being a dog that has to be locked up whenever anyone comes (luckily not often).

Queen is also struggling with the idea to pee under saddle. She’s fine pooping. I can feel her start to soll up a little when she has to pee. I thought so yesterday, and of course as soon as we were home and she was in her spot she peed. At most, when she’s desperate, she will pee at the trailer saddled or unsaddled, but outside of that she will not pee. I hope she figures it out sooner than later. She’ll poop anywhere. I struggle to see the difference of feeling for a mare…


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> she is not a people person. She loves me and I think our family, but even as young as she is people are pretty intimidated by her. She’s mean to new dogs too, and always acts as though she’s protecting me. To be honest I have no clue how to change that. Luckily we live out here, but I think I’ll always have to watch her super carefully. She may end up being a dog that has to be locked up whenever anyone comes (luckily not often).


I think one thing that's hard for Hugh (and maybe my horses too), is that he's not really a working dog but he's not really a pet. Our lives have sort of one foot in each world if that makes sense. So Hugh has some chores he does every day, but he doesn't have a hard core job, like moving goats or sheep. He is very protective of the property, which would be great if we lived even more remote than we do, but is hard when our property is split into three by the roads running through it- and he HATES the people that use the roads. So I understand how all of this is confusing for a dog who really wants to know and follow the rules. He does have a kind, forgiving personality, so ultimately I think he will be ok. He's never going to have a lovey-dovey Golden Retriever sort of personality, but I do want to be able to take him in public or have people come to the house and not have him barking incessantly when I've told him he can turn it off. So, a work in progress for sure. And if he can't tone down the anxiety with people coming in the house, then he will probably have to be in his own space too when people are over (not very often for us either, which makes it harder to fix).



Knave said:


> I can feel her start to soll up a little when she has to pee.


Definitely this for Fizz too. Over the past month or so, I thought I had her figured out- she'd get broad across her back and sort of walk with her legs funny behind, so I could pretty much guess that the next time she asked to stop she'd go. She just carried it on much longer yesterday and held it in much, much longer than I've seen her do previously. I wish we had just kept going because she felt fantastic after she was finally comfortable again. Now I'm wondering why she's peeing so much under saddle recently- maybe just because it's been so hot and she's been getting electrolytes to keep her drinking. But it's also a symptom of Cushings's, so even though she should technically be too young for that, you just never know. I may end up having her blood run this fall when the other two get theirs done just for peace of mind.


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## Knave

It does make sense. Junie B is a working dog, but she’s so young that she’s really just learning. She’s like Queen right now. I am no dog trainer, so I’m having a few difficulties. There is a man here who’s particularly talented, and I’ve asked him for some advice about my struggles. She focuses too hard on a single cow… she has her own ideas too. Yesterday I struggled with her wanting to turn every calf. She wouldn’t just push….

Anyways, I treat her as a pet the rest of the time. She lives inside and she’s with me wherever I go. Maybe it makes it all confusing, and obviously she’s not bred to be a pet. She is especially not bred to be a pet, as many working dogs around here fit both the pet and the working, the dogs she came from are chained up unless they are at work. They work most days of course, but pets they are not. Her father is a friendly dog; I’ve been around him some, but she herself has no desire to be friendly with anyone but me.

I have some horses that pee too often as well. Zeus for one pees constantly. I almost wonder if horses can be something like diabetic. Where we got him from they fed wayyyyy to hot of hay. The hay is grown for dairy cows, not horses, and she didn’t understand that. He foamed at the mouth, but when we got him home and changed his feet he quit that. He always has peed though. I wish they’d never fed him like they did.

Bones pees a lot too though, not like Zeus, but still more than you would expect. He likes to drink a lot too though.


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## knightrider

Windy won't poop on the trail. And I do a lot of fecal exams with her because she has issues with colic and worms. She pees just fine on the trail, but she'll go hours and hours on a trail ride and not poop. I have been known to put her in the trailer and drive somewhere to get a fecal sample from her. When she does have to pee, she often does a few "false alarms", acting like she is going to pee, stretching out, lifting her tail, and then .. . . nothing. But at least she WILL pee. Mares!


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## gottatrot

Fizz reminds me of Amore because she creates drama around things that should be very simple and straightforward!! Then you never know if something is a big deal, or if they are making a mountain out of a molehill. Amore was amusing and frustrating because she could trot along without a misstep and a giant rock wedged in her hoof, but act like her head was going to fall off if a piece of leather on the bridle got twisted or something tiny like that.


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## carshon

We have taught our mares to pee off the side of the trail- so many times they just hate to pee on the hard packed trail. Tillie is notorious for false starts but I know when we start to wander off the side of the trail that she has to pee. And sometimes it just takes letting her relax a bit (no eating) to decide its a good spot to pee. Horses are too funn!


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## QueenofFrance08

A lot of people I know try the whistle thing with their horses but I don't see many that are successful in actually getting them to pee when they whistle. I know a couple people have trained it but it seems like the vast majority aren't really accomplishing anything so I've never bothered.


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## knightrider

QueenofFrance08 said:


> A lot of people I know try the whistle thing with their horses but I don't see many that are successful in actually getting them to pee when they whistle. I know a couple people have trained it but it seems like the vast majority aren't really accomplishing anything so I've never bothered.


 I thought as you do, @QueenofFrance08 , but when I worked at the racetrack, they swore that the horses really do pee when you make that distinctive whistle. Everyone does it there because every winning horse has to pee after they race. I worked races, but I never went to the shed where the winning horses went (gosh, I think I never had a winning horse, oh well) to see if they really did pee. I secretly didn't believe it, but they said that racehorses will pee when you do that whistle.

@egrogan , we solved the mystery of why our horses balk at a small hill on our trails! This morning we were riding that trail, and as we got to that hill, I saw a skunk crossing the trail in front of us. We stopped, waiting to see what the skunk wanted to do. It went into a hole alongside that hill! My neighbor/riding buddy said he won't go on that trail anymore. Awwww. I loved that trail.


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## Knave

@knightrider I have a funny story. I saw the cutest family of skunks, and I herded them out of the yard convincing husband that a mother and her babies were off limits for shooting. Now he is quite mad at me because we have had three dogs skunked in the last month. Never again will I be able to convince him not to shoot a skunk.


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## knightrider

You were brave to herd them! I leave them A-L-O-N-E!!!


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## Knave

I was brave @knightrider! 😂 At one point they turned towards big girl and she went running “nope, nope, nope!!!”


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## egrogan

I appreciate the commiseration about challenging pee-ers. It struck me reading through that, in a world where it seems like everyone rides geldings, so many of you currently or previously had mares. Interesting...Realistically, I'm probably not diligent enough to follow Fizz around to wait for her to pee and whistle and treat her like they do on the track. Probably easier when horses are stalled and someone is always around. Hopefully if there is another "pee protest" I can get her off the trail or road onto suitable ground and the situation won't be so drawn out.

The skunk stories are making me laugh. Weirdly, I don't think I've ever seen a skunk here. We have forest all around us, and see most everything in the woods, but no skunks. It did smell a little skunky around here over the weekend, but being Vermont, that could definitely be a different kind of skunky smell 😉

Yesterday temps were much more reasonable (around 70*F), so even though the humidity was still over 90%, I decided that we were going for a longer, fast ride. We have our 15 mile intro ride this Saturday, and given how last Friday went, I was feeling a little nervous about whether we really have a chance of finishing on time. I decided to find out. We picked a route that is similar to what we'll be riding on Saturday- a mix of roads and woods, with lots of rocks and steep sections. My goal was to trot wherever we could, and try to average ~5mph. Off we went...

The first mile away from home always feels like we're dragging a bit, but once the first 3/4 mile (all downhill) was behind us, she was ready to pick up a decent trot.








I was happy we didn't encounter any weird machinery, crazy drivers, aggressive dogs, or other horses. We saw no one, so we just zoomed along. In the woods I even got brave and asked her to trot through some of the rocky sections, which we typically walk. We both have more to learn about finding the smoothest path and staying balanced, but it was exciting to do something a little more challenging.








Soon enough, we were coming to the end of the woods and looping back out to the road.








The road home has a slight downhill slope- in most places it's not really a discernible hill, but you're on a downward sloping grade. So we continued to trot where we could. She was pretty good about telling me where she felt too off balance and wanted to walk. I also tried really hard to pay attention to my own body position, as I noticed that on the down grades I tend to curl up a little bit and my left leg shortens and bounces in the stirrup. Once I started thinking intentionally about keeping my shoulders and chest open, that seemed to fix most of the problems. Since this is hard for Fizz too, obviously I don't want my own issues getting in the way and causing problems for her as she tries to balance.

Even with boots on, asking her to trot on this big sharp gravel on the roads makes me feel bad when it's so obvious that she can still feel it when she hits it just right. I ended up ordering some Hoof Armor and am considering trying that out under her boots. I am suspicious of 'miracle products" but read enough positive reviews to figure it won't hurt to give it a try.

I was feeling very happy with how the ride had gone, but couldn't wait to get home and take a look at the mileage tracker to see how our timing had worked out. We'll have up to 3 hours and 15 minutes for the ride Saturday, so we need to be averaging that 5mph pace. We did yesterday's 7 miles in about 1 hour and 25 minutes, which included a 5 minute stop to talk to a neighbor on the way home. I feel really good about that! We definitely didn't dawdle along the way, but I don't feel like I pushed like crazy or did anything unsafe. And while we were both warm and sweaty from the humidity when we got home, we were not exhausted. I think our foundation is good enough to give it a try Saturday.


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## carshon

I use hoof armor for our previously foundered mare. She has rotation and it does seem to help. Just a word of caution. More does not mean better. it is meant to go on as a thin layer. If I think Belle needs more protection I do applications 2 days in a row. it does work!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> I use hoof armor for our previously foundered mare. She has rotation and it does seem to help. Just a word of caution. More does not mean better. it is meant to go on as a thin layer. If I think Belle needs more protection I do applications 2 days in a row. it does work!


I'm so happy you shared this- makes me feel better to hear from someone I know! Do you apply it on the frogs as it says in the directions? That seems counter to the instructions for so many other products, it made me a little nervous to think about doing that.

I was also thinking this might be helpful for Maggie later in the year when we get into that freeze-thaw cycle that makes her gimpy.


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## carshon

I do not put it on the frogs - but I read you can. Belle has thin soles and some rotation due to previous founder. I use it mostly in the winter and now when the ground is extremely hard due to the drought conditions we are in. I use flour instead of powder to coat the hoof (I don't keep powder at home) I have used it on one other horse with the same good results. Its not a miracle worker by any means but I can always tell a difference in how Belle walks post application


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## egrogan

Really helpful, thanks for the tips! We'll see how it goes for Fizz and Maggie.


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## PoptartShop

Looks like you've had some great rides lately, so nice to see the sun!


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## egrogan

We met M for another after-work ride yesterday, and it started off like the last after-work ride meeting M. Fizz would walk a few steps, swish her tail, sigh, feel very round and bloated. All the signs that a pee-protest was in effect. I rode her through an open pasture hoping that she would find the footing suitable, but while she enjoyed nibbling at the grass, we were not making any progress on the peeing. We rode the whole length of the field parallel to the road, but no action. If this beautiful green carpet isn't suitable, I'm not sure what would be!








We turned back onto the road at the end of the field, and she was grumpy and wanted to go back towards home, which didn't really surprise me. Rather than argue about it, I hopped off and we jogged down the road for about a mile (phew- I got a workout!). She was agreeable enough with that approach. Of course we got passed by a guy who lives in the neighborhood who couldn't resist yelling out the window- _"Your horse is supposed to be the one doing the work." _ Yeah, yeah. My neighbors do think I'm crazy when they see me working with the horses from the ground.

I climbed back on when we met up with M and Coalie, and Fizz did feel a lot better. She never did pee though. Maybe she just needed a better warmup? If only they could tell us.

We headed out through a series of snowmobile trails for a few miles, and found a new-to-us connector trail that let us do a loop through the woods instead of an out-and-back. The horses were quiet and happy to move along. It's nice that the bugs are not terrible and the mud is mostly gone. I can't believe today is the 1st of September- we are heading into the best riding time here now that fall is just around the corner.








We followed the trail to its end, which comes out just behind the town garage, where were were unexpectedly greeted with some massive machinery still working even though it was close to dinner time and the garage is usually quiet by then. I don't know the names of all the equipment, but there was a giant bulldozer and dump truck idling, plus an excavator (?) where the whole cab and front scoop could swivel around 360* as it took big rocks out of the dumptruck and dropped them on something. Even though these two are more than reasonable about riding past machinery, this was all happening right on the edge of the trail, close enough we would almost have to touch the dump truck if we rode past it. So we decided to double back and go a different way through someone's driveway. It made the ride a little longer but I think it was the right call 😉

Riding the last stretch home was very pretty in the late afternoon sunlight:








(Just realized you can still see the tracks from the hundreds of bikers who went through during the race over the weekend...)

With this ride, we're now finished with the Virtual Tevis! Woohoo. We'll probably do a short ride to stretch our legs this afternoon, then have tomorrow off as the remnants of Hurricane Ida push through, and then Friday we head off to GMHA for the CTR on Saturday.


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## Knave

Congratulations on the finish!! I’m so excited for you! That’s awesome!

I wonder sometimes if a horse who is anywhere near the lazy side can pick up on what might get them out of work. Cashman stalls consistently, excepting on days he’s feeling froggy. Of course, he always wants to go, and he hates coming home, but he’s preferring this colt starting business where he gets to spend half his time tied to a post napping while Queen gets worked. Lol

My hs mare that I talk about was probably the hottest horse I’ll ever ride. She was always a bundle of nervous energy, and often we found ourselves in predicaments because of it. My dad started her, and she couldn’t handle the pressure of his riding. He’s really talented, but their personalities were too much for each other. I remember him saying she had the most potential of any horse he had ridden, but he blew her up by the end of her third year.

Anyways, I tell you that only to say she was never on a lazy scale. Never. However, she didn’t want to be ridden by him. One day she went lame, and until she was better he didn’t ride her. A while after that she was lame again. He couldn’t understand what was going on. He couldn’t find anything wrong with her, but whenever he went to catch her she could barely step on the one leg. After a couple days of her being awfully lame he went out and she had swapped legs. She had been faking it the whole time. Hahahahahahaha! Even he had to laugh at her nonsense.

Cash solls up because he realized it worked. He used to soll up to pee, and I let him walk stop walk stop, slow down, and so now he does it when he just doesn’t think he needs to do what I’m asking. Lol


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## Knave

Oh, just a funny thing to add. Cash will poop to get out of things too. (Everyone gets mad that I even let horses stop to poop. I know it’s not necessary, but I don’t want to poop and walk!) 

He drives me crazy right now because things will be hairy, and I’ll be nervous and it will just get fast, and he slams the brakes and poops. He poops every time I head a fast calf now and I almost die in my head. 😂


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Cash solls up because he realized it worked. He used to soll up to pee, and I let him walk stop walk stop, slow down, and so now he does it when he just doesn’t think he needs to do what I’m asking. Lol


Yep, this definitely crossed my mind when she tried to pull towards home when we crossed back to the road from the field. That's why I figured it was best to just get off and get moving, rather than argue about which direction we were going 🤣 

The other common theme between both of these problematic rides is that we left the house around 3:30, which is within the typical window of when I usually feed them in the afternoon. I gave her a big haybag while we tacked up but not her pan of hard feed (I waited until we got home to feed them all). She gets hardly anything- just a 1/2 lb of ration balancer- but I do wonder if she was just feeling grumpy because she "missed" dinner and had to go out instead. Or maybe not even feeling emotional about it, but perhaps actually not having that food in her stomach when her body expected it did make her feel bad. I don't often ride at that time of day, so it definitely could be related to dinner.


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## Knave

That could completely be it! Cash is food centered. He might be my first, well I guess General was bad that way too. For a year or so I wouldn’t ride Cash if they had just been fed. Now, I realize you likely don’t feed and then pull her out, but here we do. Cashman would get flat angry about it.

He tends towards being a crankier type. I tease him that he’s my cranky old man even though he’s only 5. He would be a hard ride though if he was angry about feed. I started putting a big flake of hay where I saddled, and it helped a bunch, but if the other horses were eating I pretty much avoided those first two hours.

We have to work during normal breakfast hours though. They always get a feeding where they are tied while we get ready. They also get an extra feeding to make up for it. Lots of food. Lol. He never got super angry those days, but I think the trailer ride made him forget and the extra too.

He doesn’t tend to get like that anymore. If I need him I need him. It took me a few rides to figure out the angry giant though.


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## egrogan

We did get our short ride yesterday- headed up to the overlook. If you look right between Fizz's ears, you can see a little black speck between the trees, which in actuality is a very large bull grazing right along the fence. Somehow I spotted him before she did, and since we were going to turn around at the top of the overlook anyway, I decided for a slightly earlier turn back 😉 🐂








The weather was cooler than it has been, and bugs weren't bad, so I decided on a detour down the neighbor's logging road before going home. The footing is good so we stretched out a bit.








I was pleasantly surprised, at some point recently they've mowed the path. Last time I was back there the grass was up to Fizz's belly. It's also a good place to take Hugh to walk, and now I'll actually be able to see him rather than just watch the grass moving while he runs through it 🤣








It was a short ride, so when we got home I spent some time grooming, trimming up her bridle path, and doing a little massage. Looked like she enjoyed the pampering:








We got heavy rain from the hurricane around 11pm last night, but this morning it left behind a clear, beautifully cool day with a great breeze. The weather Friday/Saturday looks good so far- cool, clear, perfect days for a long ride.


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## gottatrot

Oh yes, heading out near feeding time without feeding first can cause all kinds of problems. 

I've also known a couple horses that would stop to pretend poop to get out of things. Both were geldings lol.


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## egrogan

Distance Days 2021 began on Friday. The 3-day 100 mile GMHA ride starts off with 40 miles in my town, with the vet check at my neighbor's house. The horses come out of the vet check refreshed for a good long trot up the hill of despair and then pass my house on the way towards the overlook. There were 15 in the 100, and they mostly came by in clumps, with a couple of solo riders. Everyone seemed in good spirits as they went by.








In the early afternoon, Fizz and I met up with M and Coalie to hack over to GMHA. We strolled along at an easy walk, and the ride there was uneventful after the first stretch, where there were a lot of ATVs and dirt bikes out. I forgot it was Labor Day weekend so vacationers were already here early on a Friday.








It looked like it wanted to rain for a lot of the ride, but the clouds kept things nice and cool. M outfitted Coalie with a brand new red ribbon in his tail, since he has so much trouble with strange horses close to him. Unfortunately it became foreshadowing for later in the weekend...

















As we got closer to GMHA though, the sun came back out with a cool breeze to match it, and we had a beautiful end to the ride over.








Fizz gave this ridiculous looking "jump" the hairy eyeball as we went by it crossing the GMHA jump field- I truly don't know how eventers do it! I was freaked out just riding next to this thing, let alone tearing towards it in a gallop and sailing over 😳








After we got to our stalls, I untacked Fizz and headed out to walk her around and hand graze her. She was eager for her dinner when we came back to the stall, and cleaned it all right up. I came prepared with the Purina Outlast, Summer Games electrolytes, and double stuffed hay nets after the bad gut sounds she had at the last ride. When I was satisfied she was settled, I headed home for a late dinner and an early bed time, since I had to be back early Saturday morning to vet in at 7am.

To be continued...


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## egrogan

Despite leaving more hay than I thought she could possibly eat, when I got to the stall Saturday morning Fizz had no food left, her stall was trashed, and she was pacing nervously in circles. She came out of the stall like a fire breathing dragon and I took her out to handwalk/graze for the better part of the next hour to help her get in a better headspace. I got her boots on and headed to the vet check as soon as it opened. She was rude and fidgety, barging into me and dancing around for the vet. It was all very embarrassing, but the vet is someone I have scribed for many times and she was calm and encouraging. As we were going through the hands on inspection, M came in with Coalie, and he was in even worse shape than Fizz, starting with the bucking and leaping around in circles. The vet remembered his antics from last time and wasn't thrilled to see him back. At this point I started my trot out, and the stewards were asking M to take Coalie from the ring. He started bucking some more and Fizz did a little leap and buck, catching me by surprise. I'm not sure that anyone saw, but she actually grazed me in the stomach with a back foot- if I had been a few inches closer I think she might have got me in the right hip and put me on the ground. (I ended up with just a little bruise. I guess some extra padding around the middle is good for some things 😉 ) I was feeling pretty mortified at this whole scene, but I got Fizz back under control, we finished, and were free to go. Before all the fireworks started I had managed to get us signed up to be the last riders to leave (in CTRs everyone leaves at an assigned time, with 2 minute intervals between riders). At least that lowered the stress level, because we knew we'd be slow and unlikely to catch anyone ahead of us, and shouldn't have to worry about anyone coming up beyond us. _Shouldn't..._

I honestly wasn't sure if M was going to be allowed to try to vet through again, so I was weighing my options. If Fizz had been her normal self I would have considered going out on my own, but given how ramped up she was I wasn't sure if I was ready for that. The other option was just to drop from the CTR, take some time to regroup, and do the pleasure ride with M, which I was leaning towards. However, M was given another chance to vet in, and it went fine this time, so she was able to start. Can I just say how grateful and appreciative I am of kind, patient vets? (I profusely thanked the vet multiple times this weekend.)

Since we were leaving at the end of the start, we waited until the first riders were leaving to tack up (we left 20 minutes after the first person due to the staggered start). Tied up back in the stall, Fizz was rude about tacking up and kept dancing all over. Of course tacking up didn't take 20 minutes, so we went back to hand grazing. She finally seemed happy when we stumbled across the remnants of someone else's discarded pile of alfalfa. When I finally swung a leg over, she jigged off to the start, and Coalie was actually calm. I think everyone at the starter box was holding their breath as we went by them. We were just walking, but Fizz had already put a lot of distance between her and Coalie as we started to climb.








Fortunately the first mile+ of trail was straight up, with footing that they had to pay attention to. We planned to walk for that first section, and it actually did calm her down to start off with climbing. She finally started breathing again and I felt ok for the first time all day!

As we twisted through the trees, we thought we heard a horse neighing in the distance, which was a little weird. Sure enough, around a corner we saw two little girls (pre-teens) who had left with their mom, one girl riding and one walking behind. And the mom was a bit behind them riding her horse and ponying the other. They were heading back down the hill toward the start. We stopped to make sure they were ok, and they said they were. I never did find out what happened, but it was nothing serious. Our horses actually handled that surprise pretty well, and as we rode off we let them move into a trot as we continued to climb our way towards Dexter's Grove, one of the prettiest spots on this trail:








Since we were able to let the horses trot the next mile or so, Fizz was finally feeling like herself again. She was still super charged in her walk, but she was able to take turns with letting Coalie lead for awhile when we got to steep downhill sections.








We had a welcome water stop before crossing the paved road and heading out to dirt road, leaving the woods behind for awhile.

I forgot to mention that we unluckily ended up on the trail that M and I use when we hack the horses _home _from GMHA. It was 15 miles of the trail the 100 milers had used the previous day. So while Fizz was happier, she was also on a mission, thinking she was on the way home. People love riding past Jenne Farm because it is so beautiful, but the section right after Jenne Farm is not so fun because it's 1.5 miles of unrelenting downhill gravel road. On a normal day, it's a place I'm constantly circling Fizz back and asking her to slow down to wait for Coalie, because he crawls along in this section.








As we made our way down the hill, they were getting farther and farther behind, and I really didn't want to keep asking Fizz to slow down, which would be asking for a fight. She actually was moving along in a beautifully forward, balanced walk, the best she's ever done on this hill. I was not super eager for the water stop/vet judging at the bottom of the hill, because it was at an intersection where I knew Fizz was going to be expecting to turn right (home), but the ride would require us to turn left (away from home) to finish the ride. I expected we might have a little argument there and wasn't looking forward to doing that in front of the vet.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't have to address that potential problem, because an even bigger shiit show was brewing behind me. Coming down the long, gravely hill, at times it sounded like there were riders behind us, but that didn't make sense because we had started at the end. I thought maybe it was hikers or bikers, but whatever it was, it was getting Coalie upset and he kept stopping and looking behind him at the noise, falling farther behind Fizz. It turned out it _was _other riders (later I found out they had started a few spots ahead of us but took a wrong turn in the woods so got behind), and M was getting really upset because Coalie was doing little kicks and bucks as the riders got closer. I couldn't really see what was happening because I was too far ahead, but I saw her get off and Coalie start bucking around her in circles as she held the reins. The other riders stopped and weren't sure what to do. This spectacular meltdown all unfolded as we walked into the water stop and the vet and scribe got out of their car to meet us. Coalie had totally lost it, M lost it, and the vet was just asking incredulously what was going wrong while the other two riders stayed far behind us. At that point, I just made the call that our ride was over and we were rider optioning. We were not very far from home, and M was so upset I couldn't imagine a scenario where we continued on the ride. We got out of the way so the other two riders could come into the water, and I told the vet I was so sorry to cause a scene, but it was going to be best for everyone if we pulled and just went home before someone got hurt. Obviously the vet was not thrilled about us taking the horses home without having a final safety check back at GMHA (I honestly don't even know if this was allowed per the rules), but I assured her that the horses were physically fine- we had only been walking for the last two miles- and that I would send her pictures as proof of life to show her that they were eating and drinking as soon as we got home 😉 I also texted the ride manager (who happens to be M's neighbor and sees her riding a calm and cool Coalie every day!) to let her know what happened. Ride manager had seen the whole vetting meltdown and wasn't surprised to hear the ride itself hadn't gone the way we wanted. Satisfied that everyone knew what we were doing, we broke off from the trail and headed towards home. Ugh. Not at all what I had been hoping for. 

In retrospect, maybe we should have just hung around at the water stop for a few minutes to let the situation diffuse and give everyone a chance to calm down. Once we turned away from the other horses, Coalie was absolutely fine. If we had waited for those horses to leave, it might have been possible for us to get back on and continue, even if we were ultimately over time at the end. I think it would have been hard for Fizz to stop there and wait, and then on top of all that go away from home, so I might have had a meltdown on my hands too, who knows. But in the moment, I was feeling miserable and just wanted to be DONE with the whole thing. We were close enough to home that it was an option to call it a day. If we had been in a different spot, I guess we would have had to deal with it differently. I don't know if I'm being overly dramatic, but I do feel that someone might have ended up hurt if that was the case. And I'm really glad that didn't happen.

We led the horses about 1/2 mile down the road to catch our breath and calm down. Coalie was totally fine, and M got back on even though she herself was still very upset. She was upset that it had happened and kept apologizing that I was not going to get a completion for the ride, which was honestly really not something I was concerned with at that time. I wasn't about to leave her there in the middle of that situation and I'm not competitive enough to care about the lack of completion. Of course I would have liked it to have ended differently, but the most important thing was that we were fine and the horses were fine. And it was a really beautiful day, with beautiful trail ahead of us on the way home:








No one was happier about the way things unfolded that Fizz. I don't think she minded one bit that she didn't have to spend another night in that stall 😉

We were home by lunchtime, but had to go back to GMHA to collect all our stuff and strip our stalls. I tried to avoid seeing anyone I knew because I was feeling pretty mortified. I cleaned up quickly and came home, feeling a little sorry for myself and questioning why the heck I was even trying to compete. Fizz hates the stalling part, I hate the stress of being in the middle of a meltdown, and we can ride these same exact trails any day we want. For free. With no one else around. So what is the point? I'm not ready yet to say that I'll never try again, but I'm seriously wondering if I'm a better pleasure rider than I am a competitive rider. Fizz too. And that's ok.

I had already signed up to volunteer as a vet steward for the conclusion of the 100 mile ride today, so I had to go back GMHA again feeling even more embarrassed because I couldn't avoid seeing all the people I know, including the vet who was so patient with us. But I was so thankful for how nice endurance people are. When people asked me about yesterday I simply said it wasn't our day because my friend's horse had a bit of a meltdown; the response I got was sympathy and encouragement, assuring me the next ride would be better. Rather than feeling judged, I felt more encouraged. I'm not sure that Coalie will be cut out for competing, and I definitely did get encouragement to ride alone or ride with other people in the future, and I think that's pretty clearly necessary if I try to do this again. But maybe we still do have a future in doing this. Time will tell.

Watching the final vetting was actually pretty fun, and as always, informative. I love seeing so many different kinds of horses and watching how they handle all that they have to put up with for the in-depth vetting. Something to aspire to with Fizz. Even without Coalie's antics, she was no angel for the vetting, so we have homework too. Here are three Morgans waiting their turn, one of them totally sound asleep. Definitely something to aspire to for Fizz:








I was feeling less sorry for myself when I got home. Hugh kept me company while I worked my way through a 5-gallon bucket of our apples to make sauce with:








It was not the weekend I wanted, fore sure, but fortunately I am still standing to ride another day!


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> questioning why the heck I was even trying to compete. Fizz hates the stalling part, I hate the stress of being in the middle of a meltdown, and we can ride these same exact trails any day we want. For free. With no one else around. So what is the point? I'm not ready yet to say that I'll never try again, but I'm seriously wondering if I'm a better pleasure rider than I am a competitive rider. Fizz too. And that's ok.


 I felt like this and so did @4horses when we did some endurance rides. We both agreed that we'd rather just ride a pace that appeals to us and enjoy the lovely scenery. 4horses and I did not have meltdowns--I am so sorry that happened for you--but somehow it just seemed like so much tension and pressure (and expense). I kind of miss it and pretty much don't. I am definitely a better pleasure rider than a competitive rider.

I really was looking forward to reading about your adventures. I wanted success so much for you. You've worked harder than anyone I know to achieve it and you deserve it. I guess sometimes things just don't go your way. At least Fizz could have done it and you know she could have. You might still have fun riding with a calm experienced horse, as people have offered to do. And, just think how much you learned this weekend! So sorry it wasn't a smashing success, but I'm glad you and Fizz did pretty good.


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## Knave

I’m sorry it turned out that way! That was so frustrating I’m sure. I wouldn’t be embarrassed though; you were kind to a friend who needed you to be.

I think you have worked really hard, and I think that might be for a reason. Maybe endurance is something you would love, and I think you should give it another chance. I do think that maybe you should put more miles on your own sometimes though, because you tend to do better without m. That doesn’t mean not riding with her when she wants to though!

Then maybe you could try riding with someone with a calm horse. I think Fizz would do perfectly with a calming influence with her and with the ability to actually move out. I wish I lived closer so we could ride together! Cash very much prefers the life of being a calming influence for other horses.  He even can trot and lope out several miles, although he is slower. Lol


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## phantomhorse13

First, I just have to say bless Joan!

I agree with Knave.. I think you shouldn't give up quite yet but instead continue seeing how things go on your own with training and then finding someone with an experienced horse as a buddy at competitions.

I have a question about the stabling.. do you HAVE to leave Fizz overnight at GMHA or can you hack over in the morning? I know most people hauled into the CTR in the morning to vet when I was up that was in the spring. Maybe you want to think about hacking over in the morning, riding an intro, and then hacking home. That would be more than an LD in terms of distance, but may be a good confidence booster for you both.


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## gottatrot

It warmed my heart to hear about how nice of a friend you were to M. So unselfish, and I can only imagine it meant everything to her to have someone there to help her through a tough time. I agree that you might enjoy yourself more after some more experience. I think we're always harder on ourselves, and think people are judging us more than they are. So many things we do with horses can be mortifying, but true horse people understand that and sympathize completely. I suspect kids could be even more embarrassing! Parents always think they have them "trained" too, until the right moment arrives for them to act out.


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## bsms

Years ago, my wife & I were frustrated by how our kids acted in church. We confided in a lady that we KNEW everyone in church was staring at us, wondering why we didn't have better control. The lady started giggling. "_No_", she replied. "_They are all staring at ME and wondering why such an incompetent Mom would have 4 kids...._"

We did agree that, at a minimum, those WITHOUT KIDS were frustrated by our joint failures. 

I was pretty pleased with Bandit today. Happily, no one was around to look at me. There were a couple of times he was releasing stress via a choppy trot or a canter and where I had one hand on the reins and the other on the saddle horn, just in case he suddenly squirted 75 feet sideways or did a dancing snake canter. I think even English riders who have experienced a Dancing Snake Canter would sympathize with my 'hand on horn' precaution, but I know for certain many in Arizona would assume I was riding a horse for the first time. 🙄 And I long ago got tired of hearing, "_Aren't you supposed to be RIDING your horse?_"


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## egrogan

I loved reading all your thoughts and comments and really appreciate hearing what you all think. @knightrider and @Knave, part of me wonders if it's just not meant to be because I've had to work this hard to even get this far, without much to show for it. I don't know, it just seems like it shouldn't be this hard to go out on a trail ride. I was looking longingly at people riding quiet, happy horses who seemed excited to just go down the trail where their nose was pointed. Maybe Fizz really doesn't want to do this job at all; she certainly doesn't just move along without at least once trying to pull back towards home rather than just happily trot along. I have to really ride every single stride. Should it really be that hard? I just don't know.



phantomhorse13 said:


> First, I just have to say bless Joan!


Don't worry, I told her this every single time I saw her!!!



> I agree with Knave.. I think you shouldn't give up quite yet but instead continue seeing how things go on your own with training and then finding someone with an experienced horse as a buddy at competitions.


The training part is no problem, but I struggle a little with how to find someone willing to buddy up with me at a competition. You have a good sense of the people who ride here, so many of them have been doing it forever and just get on and zoom through the miles and don't seem to have a lot of patience for working through issues, especially if that has to be done from the ground. And of course the prevailing attitude among the experienced people is that "15 mile rides are for little kids and old ladies" (direct quote). There have been some rumblings of maybe hosting a distance clinic at GMHA soon, and that would be an exciting opportunity to get some help without worrying about ruining someone else's ride. I so wish I could ride with everyone posting here, I think it would be so good for me!



> I have a question about the stabling.. do you HAVE to leave Fizz overnight at GMHA or can you hack over in the morning? I know most people hauled into the CTR in the morning to vet when I was up that was in the spring. Maybe you want to think about hacking over in the morning, riding an intro, and then hacking home. That would be more than an LD in terms of distance, but may be a good confidence booster for you both.


That's an interesting question. For the intro distances, you can come in the morning of, you don't have to be there overnight. Hacking over would be one heck of a warmup 😉 But not impossible. This was the last intro of this year, and I really, really hope the car market stabilizes a bit over the next several months, because by this time next year I intend to have a truck and trailer, which would make this option much more realistic. There just aren't any trucks to even try to buy right now, let alone trailers!



gottatrot said:


> It warmed my heart to hear about how nice of a friend you were to M. So unselfish, and I can only imagine it meant everything to her to have someone there to help her through a tough time. I agree that you might enjoy yourself more after some more experience. I think we're always harder on ourselves, and think people are judging us more than they are. So many things we do with horses can be mortifying, but true horse people understand that and sympathize completely. I suspect kids could be even more embarrassing! Parents always think they have them "trained" too, until the right moment arrives for them to act out.


Thanks for this @gottatrot, I appreciate it. I know M would have done the same for me if roles were reversed. Thank goodness I don't have kids, I don't think I could handle a public meltdown where everyone expected me to handle it whatever the circumstances. Your story made me laugh @bsms. I was always so worried about being good when I was a little kid I can't imagine ever doing anything that would make my parents feel that way- wonder if they remember things differently though? 😉

Fizz is getting today off and we'll be back at it tomorrow.


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## egrogan

double post


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> The training part is no problem, but I struggle a little with how to find someone willing to buddy up with me at a competition. You have a good sense of the people who ride here, so many of them have been doing it forever and just get on and zoom through the miles and don't seem to have a lot of patience for working through issues, especially if that has to be done from the ground. And of course the prevailing attitude among the experienced people is that "15 mile rides are for little kids and old ladies" (direct quote). There have been some rumblings of maybe hosting a distance clinic at GMHA soon, and that would be an exciting opportunity to get some help without worrying about ruining someone else's ride. I so wish I could ride with everyone posting here, I think it would be so good for me!


Yeah, the people around you that I am familiar with for the most part I do my best to avoid as I don't find them particularly pleasant.. I will have to start pondering who I may know up there that would be sympathetic to a green team. I wonder if Kyle is still up there working for Steve some? He was always lovely to share trail with. Pretty sure Spencer went back home to the mid-west when COVID happened so it seemed like Kyle was stepping back into his old role as minion.


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## egrogan

Oops, double post. Here’s Hugh instead!


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## egrogan

I haven’t seen Kyle around at all this season that I remember, and I think you’re right about Spencer. Steve has been hosting a few women from Europe that have ridden with that group most of the season.


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## Knave

I think working hard to get something makes it sweeter in the end. Boy were there days that I have been overwhelmed with a young horse, Bones or Cash, and thought I might have been in over my head. I always had my husband there to remind me that I just had to get through those years. Cash was an a-hole, and I couldn’t remember having those days on Bones, and he reminded me.

Now Cash is easy most all of the time, excepting a bit of ground stuff that hangs on from the prison. I guarantee you could step onto him and go do your rides. Yet, a year ago you likely would have felt exactly how you do now. I think they are the same age, Cash and Fizz, but Cash had to go to work which makes a horse improve faster.

I remember now what it was like though, and I have been dreading the beginning with Queen. I know I ride her now, but that’s different than actually getting a job done, or competition.

You will get there, and the beginning is never easy. It takes a lot of work, but the payoff tastes sweeter.

I realize too that I say this and also don’t try and show Bones. Bones has issues that are very deep, but I also think if I had tried harder I could have gotten him shown, and I was really embarrassed that day I couldn’t. The big girl though, she’s willing to take those embarrassing shows to get to the good ones. She wants that taste of success, and when she is better next year I will help her put in the work to get it done.

You are just at that point I think, where just a little more will find you success. I just don’t want you to give up now. I 100% support you if you do, I just am on your side too. I don’t think you’d have done the work you have, and spend so many volunteer hours, if you didn’t really want this.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I think you could have a second career as a sports psychologist if you'd like to do that. Thank you.


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## bsms

I'll mention a sort of flip side. Bandit was used competitively. Of course, he was also ridden very hard - up to 35% of his body weight and the solution to "He's afraid of X" was to whip him REALLY hard, hang on and try to force him past X. There must have been some part of Bandit that was genuinely competitive. They used him for the final leg of the relay races because, they said, if he could see the horse ahead of him at the end he'd find a way to beat the horse ahead of him. And that has to be inside a horse.

But...I don't think he misses anything about competitive rides. I want to work on doing more speed work with him when we go out, but I think he could gladly go the rest of his life without racing another horse again. 6 years after getting him, he and I seem to be genuinely enjoying going out and handling something together and then heading home and letting him chill. The wife and I talked again last night about possibly moving to Utah. I think if I trailered Bandit into the Manti Mountains and then rode him 15 miles in X time solo, he'd be happier than if I rode him 15 miles in X time...with other horses competing.






I can't give advice, obviously. These sorts of things are very personal and it really is a judgment call since our horses can't say, "You know, I really don't mind competing at X if that is what you want". I do know that for myself, as a runner/jogger, I long ago realized I don't mind pushing myself against the clock but HATE competing against others. That may shade my ideas of what Bandit wants, too.


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## Knave

You’re very welcome. I doubt that is true though. 😊


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## QueenofFrance08

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to give up. I wanted to give up when the farrier accidentally put glue instead of pour in pads for Stitch's shoes, I wanted to give up the first time I tried to ride Jake in an LD and he went on a bucking fit 2 miles in that shook me up so badly I went back and rider optioned, I wanted to quit when everyone was giving us looks for having too skinny of horses (before we learned how much hay to buy), and I wanted to quit last year when Chico kept getting pulled. Thankfully I have had some amazing friends that have talked me out of it over and over again and given me hugs and let me cry on their shoulders. So here is your virtual hug. _hug_

I've been there, and I get it. However, to me it sounds like Fizz did pretty great! She sounds like she was excited which all of my horses are at the start of the ride. At our last ride (night before vetting in ) Chico decided to do his kite impersonation during the trot out and shot off at the end of his lead rope like a rocket. I will also mention that it happened to be cool when we went out in the morning at our last ride and everyone was bucking and kicking and leaping forward. Horses that would never do this at home, they just build off your energy and the other horses around them and it brings out a whole new side. Ride day horses are not normal day horses! Even 20 year old arthritic guys!

Yes maybe you could have stayed there and waited but like my incident with Jake sometimes just getting off and being done is the best option. That does not mean the next time the same thing will happen! I happily rode Jake through the first 15 miles of an LD the next summer until his boots rubbed by choosing a different group with more experienced calm horses. He's gone on to finish several rides with no incidents with friends. 

I hate that there are no experienced people willing to ride with you. I can't believe it is so different here! We've had several rides where my offer of novice leader has been turned down this year because they have too many people offering! I have led a novice group at every ride (except the one we didn't go to) in MN this year and we always have people wanting to help out! I get to meet new friends, get a free ride entry, and put miles on my horses! I wish I could get out there and do a ride with you! Keep asking around and looking, and don't feel guilty asking an experienced rider if they would be interested. Worst they can say is no! Maybe they have a new horse they want to try out or an old retiree that would like to get a few miles in. 

Many virtual hugs. I hope you will give it another try with different circumstances. If it's not for you then great but I don't think this was a good test to determine that!


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## egrogan

Thank you @QueenofFrance08 - it's so helpful to remember that everyone has rides that don't necessarily go their way! And I know all the Green Beans you're helping appreciate it. I can't tell you how many times this summer I've started a conversation with anyone who will listen by saying, "Did you know that in the Midwest, they have intro rides led by experienced riders, and they encourage new people to try it out?!" I am determined to make something like that happen here. There were 16 riders in our 15 mile division on Saturday, so I do think there's interest. We weren't the only ones who wished we had a little more help and guidance.

It was beautiful yesterday so Fizz and I headed out for the Newhall Farm loop. I was surprised that she was still a bit amped up when I got on...our first trot was...enthusiastic! But it was nice to have a faster ride. It did help bring home the fact that maybe we do need to try a ride on our own, or at least at a more forward pace. It's no fun to keep asking her to slow down, and I'm realizing that she finds things to worry about when we're doing too much walking. 

We didn't do all that much walking yesterday, but still admired the scenery- all of a sudden the brilliant green in the woods is starting to lighten towards yellow.








Cruising right along...








We saw cows in four different fields along the way, but they were always at a distance. It feels like progress that when they are in the distance, she barely even looks at them, let alone stops and freaks out. The herd was up on the hill, right in between her ears- far away here, but closer as we went down the hill. Still, she barely even glanced at them, even though surely she could smell them, because I could.








If I could order up my ideal weather, this is what I would pick! It was about 65*F, good breeze, low humidity. Perfect!









She cracked me up with her sad attempt at apple picking:




Eventually I had to get it for her; otherwise I was worried I was about to lose an eye to a branch if she leapt deeper into the tree to try again 🤣

We collected a stowaway between the time I dismounted and got ready to untack- it seemed to like the sweaty patches on her neck.


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## carshon

As someone who rides with the same group of people all of the time I can sympathize with M - Coalie needs more time with more groups of riders. My friends group and I have had similar issues and unfortunately the only real way around them is riding with strange horses or by strange horses. Is there any way at all to go to a local park or ride with others? We had kind of a similar experience on Sunday. My daughter was home from college and we rode with a friend of hers and her new horse. So that added a new twist. A new gelding with our 2 mares. And then a few miles into the ride our friend got a call that someone she knew was also at the park looking for someone to ride with. We agreed on a meet up place and were surprised to see her riding a horse and ponying a young filly. Well that added more spice to the ride. Sawyer and Tillie took turns spinning and staring at the 2 horses who were quarter horses and would fall behind and then trot to catch up fall behind trot to catch up. The new gelding our friend was riding took a lot less time to settle in. So we decided to play leap frog. We just took turns leading and then following the new horses and finally they settled down. Honestly I had my heart in my throat a few times but stuck it out and after about half hour of jumping around and trading places and trying to navigate steep terrain and eyeball the new horses Tillie had enough - gave a big sigh and settled down. Sawyer took less time and at the end we were all good (that little filly did nothing wrong she is going to make a hell of a trail horse) I see part of the issue being - open roads (with lots of places to go ) and new horses. If you could ride with a strange horse on a more relaxed trail ride I think it would help. Coalie is so used to spacing out on rides that new things are overwhelming.

Don't give up! Both of you have got this. There is time to get this accomplished. Look back 3 years ago and see where you were. 3 years from now you will do the same thing


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## TrainedByMares

I am tremendously motivated and inspired by the pictures and stories posted here and throughout this forum by all of you horse people. I ride alone with a spooky horse and the difficult rides are manageable knowing I am not really alone in that experience!


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## egrogan

That sounds difficult @carshon! I have also suggested to M that more group rides could be useful. The sort of ironic thing is that M and Coalie ride with a lot more people than Fizz and I do. M has two retired neighbors on either side of her that both have horses and she occasionally rides with them. And she trailers out to meet up with other friends almost every week. But all of the rides Coalie has with other horses are generally just one-on-one, and they start off together. Like you described on your ride, horses coming up "by surprise" is hard for him. What seems to really set him off the most is horses moving towards him unexpectedly; he also really has a hard time with loose horses in a field (I get it, that can be hard for any horse when they don't expect other horses to be there). And the vetting in disasters mostly happened when he came into the ring but other horses were being ridden around outside the ring. I don't know, it seems like something that just needs more work, more exposure, etc. I just wish his reaction wasn't so explosive. I'll definitely take Fizz's stop-and-freeze reaction any day! I think your advice to do some relaxed rides with lots of leapfrogging and separating/coming back together would be a good strategy. And that would be good practice for Fizz too.

@TrainedByMares - glad you're enjoying the journals, and as you can tell, you are definitely _not _alone in your experiences! 😉 I do find the journal section to be the best part of Horse Forum. Jump in any time. I'm enjoying reading about your rides in your journal too.


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## egrogan

We had our first "hold on tight, fall is heerrrrreeeeeee" ride today. The wind was whipping, temps were cool, and Fizz was dancing in her boots 😉 I had been planning a somewhat challenging route, but given how she was even during tacking up, I decided that a simple overlook-and-back ride was going to be plenty. I had been curious to see what she would do wearing the flower hackamore, something I've never tried on her before (it was Izzy's), so I put that on just to make things more adventurous.

She didn't really seem to take much notice of the different feel to the bridle. Maybe she was more intently focused on the rocks on the side of the road that were trying to eat her  All ride long, she was doing little scoots and shimmies underneath me, and blowing snorty breaths at the wind, but she was manageable. We trotted and cantered pretty much the whole way up the hill, with her boinging side to side.

Little pops of color as suddenly showing up:


























As we came back down the steeper hill she suddenly gawked hard at the field to our right- I hadn't noticed the steers out there sleeping when we went charging up the hill the first time, and apparently neither did she. But she did notice them on our way back. Apparently this is a safe distance though- while she took a hard look at them, she didn't react in any other way.








I guess you can't really tell but they looked like a two headed cow the way they were sleeping- one big body with two little heads...








And sure enough, they correctly predicted that rain was coming even though the forecast said it was clear (I know it's just an old wive's tale but I definitely grew up with that one). I had planned to do the quick loop down the neighbor's logging road on the way home, but right after the cows it started raining and I'm a big wimp about getting wet. So it was a short, spirited ride. The rest of the weekend is supposed to be nice, so hopefully we'll have a longer ride tomorrow.


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## Knave

I haven’t taken that fall ride yet! Because the weather has been nasty and I want husband to go with me with Queen I’ve put it off… of course giving both Cashman and Queen time to really get hot. 🙄 lol


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## bsms

Bandit would call that first picture "*The Tunnel of Death*"! Kind of glad to hear I'm not the only one who had a "spirited" ride today....🙄...Never quite sure if I should be proud I'm still in the fight, or depressed that my horse doesn't stroll along with a joint hanging out his mouth.


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Bandit would call that first picture "*The Tunnel of Death*"!


Haha, it does sort of have that look to it. I guess the trees have been given a reprieve to grow out over the road because the power line ends at our house and the power company's endless hacking away at anything alive doesn't reach them.



Knave said:


> I haven’t taken that fall ride yet!


It seems to be that the "spirited" rides, as @bsms called them, happen when the wind is strong. Today temps were about the same but it was very muggy and the air was heavy, and I almost had to push Fizz along. A bit of a change from the last ride!

We were supposed to meet up with M this morning, but the skies were ominous when I woke up and the Weather Channel radar showed strong storms heading our way, so we cancelled. The skies stayed dark all morning, but no rain. Eventually it felt silly to just sit around and wait for storms that apparently kept disappearing before they started, and I decided to go out anyway and take my chances. Fizz thinking: are you sure?








I didn't stray too far from home, because the skies were threatening:








In case we had to head back quickly, we mostly rode the perimeter of a few of the fields. Hadn't been to the beaver pond in a few weeks and it was looking very pretty, though it looks like several of the pine trees didn't do well over the summer and may end up in the pond this winter:









Even though it was humid today, the last week or so you can feel a change in the light and the air, making it feel like fall- it was absolutely gorgeous last night when Hugh and I went out to do evening chores.








With fall comes "orange season" in earnest though- it's now bear season, and bow season starts this week. We probably will have to stay off some of our favorite trails, both horseback and with the dog, in a few weeks.








The other downside of fall is that it's the hardest time for Maggie when it comes to her metabolic issues and sensitivity to grass. The other day I went out to bring them in from the new field and found her parked under the apple tree, as though maybe if she just stood there long enough an apple would magically fall into her basket 🤭 Poor thing, she needs a basket full of apples about as much as she needs a field full of fall grass. It really does suck to be a horse that can't have horsey things...


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## Knave

That is sad for Maggie! I see Bones has taken to rearing up to get the trees again. He has to stand almost straight up and reach his neck way out, and I don’t think I’ve seen another horse do that ever. Lol

The problem with this game is that last year he shoved a branch through his sinus cavity. I hope he doesn’t manage that again.


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## QueenofFrance08

We had that fun first fall ride, during an LD! Boy was that scary.

I met the morgan that did Tevis this year (I think they were OT because they got lost but still finished all the miles)! Boy is she awesome! It made me think of you...


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> We had that fun first fall ride, during an LD! Boy was that scary.


Eek! Glad it worked out ok.



> I met the morgan that did Tevis this year (I think they were OT because they got lost but still finished all the miles)! Boy is she awesome! It made me think of you...


Very cool. She had a fan club following her on the Morgans in Endurance FB page. I've never met her in person but I feel like I know her 😉

Had a great ride yesterday afternoon. I was tired of dinking around near home, and the weather was perfect, so we set out on a longer ride (8 miles). I'm starting a new job on Thursday, so my days of being able to ride whenever I want are coming to an end, sadly. So I couldn't pass up a beautiful fall afternoon.

Fizz was a little sluggish at first, and I'm not sure if it might actually be that her front boots have finally been worn so much that it's time to replace them because the soles are a little thin. I felt like she was a little reluctant on the rockiest parts of the road. I think I have another pair I can try instead to see if that helps.

Towards the end of the road portion of the ride, we had our first "are you kidding me?!" moment of the ride. We were just moseying along, about to pass a spot where sometimes we'll turn around if we're doing an out-and-back, so I knew I needed to really ride her forward through this spot. Right at that moment, we were approached by the worst kind of driver- the one that is clearly terrified to see a horse on the road and slows down so they are going.2.miles.per.hour.very.cautiously and won't pass you. I was hugging the shoulder so this person could just go by, and felt that Fizz was going to try to duck out over her right side to spin home. I really just needed the car to go but the lady was just creeping along next to us. Fortunately there was a driveway right there, so I let Fizz spin a little, away from the car, and stopped her in the driveway. The car was basically stopped next to us as a pack of dogs came running down the driveway towards us barking. The only other house on this road was across the street, and this commotion caused _their _pack of dogs to come running towards us too (I have to say though, 6 German Shepherd puppies with giant paws running towards you is kind of funny). Following the puppies was a lady pushing a baby carriage 😳 I'm not sure Fizz has ever seen a stroller, but there was so much to look at I don't even know if she processed it was there. By this point, the car had finally driven away, we got unstuck from the driveway, waved to the lady with the baby carriage who was watching us, and continued in the direction I wanted, not towards home. Phew!

Serenity now...








After all that, Fizz was no longer sluggish, and pranced along wondering what was next. Fortunately we turned off into the woods trail, and she had to pay attention as we trotted through muddy and rocky sections, climbing up the Rich Trail.








I love when a good climb shows up right when you need it!








Most of the ride was in the woods, which was absolutely gorgeous. Sunny but cool, the trees just starting to turn. I actually saw a lot of hoof prints and fresh poo, which is unusual as there aren't often people riding back there. Looked like at least two riders from the tracks, but we never did see them.

We turned back to the road and trotted along towards home. All of a sudden, around a corner I saw a school bus lumbering towards us. I'm not sure if Fizz has ever seen a bus, but this was going to be trial by fire because the road was really narrow, and there was no shoulder. Because we were on a twisty part of the road, even though the bus driver was going slowly, he was right next to us almost as soon as I saw him- really no time or space to hop off. It was one of those moments where you sit deep, wrap your legs around the horse, and hope that your trust isn't misplaced. The bus passed us so close that if he had put his little stop sign out I would have been able to touch it. But for all her frustrating habits, Fizz has never let me down around traffic, and she just kept walking along, not putting a foot wrong. I thanked her profusely once that was over! As if that wasn't enough, we were in the home stretch, heading towards the mini donks and Mac the German Shepherd (who still has the cone of shame on, poor dog), when I heard something loud coming up behind us- it was the bus again! The road was wider with more of a shoulder here, and she was fine as it came around us, but I was happy that we had more space between us this time around. Hope we don't see them too often in the future though, that made me sweat!








For one last bit of excitement, the mini donks were at the fence line right next to the road, and Mac was standing next to them protectively barking at us. She eyed the donks hard but continued without stopping. I was thinking about how in the spring, I couldn't even walk her by their field when they were out there without her spinning in circles around me snorting. She is a good girl. Most of the time 😉

Today I'm doing something fun, taking a road trip to visit the UVM Morgan Horse Farm. I've never been despite being so close. Hoping the tour is interesting. It's another beautiful day so I'm looking forward to a pretty fall drive and being a tourist for a bit. And hoping I'll still have time for a ride when I get home.


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## TrainedByMares

Wow! Glad you pulled through! If that were Nicki and I, my heart would have been pounding! Good work, Fizz!


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## egrogan

TrainedByMares said:


> Wow! Glad you pulled through! If that were Nicki and I, my heart would have been pounding! Good work, Fizz!


Oh my heart was certainly pounding 😉 In some ways it was good that there wasn't really time to overthink, just make it work. I wish I could transfer some of her courage in traffic to courage around cows!

My road trip yesterday was great. It was a beautiful day for a drive and the UVM Morgan Farm didn't disappoint. I pulled in right behind a huge tour bus, and at first I was a little sad as I had pictured having the tour to myself and getting to geek out on horses from the farm in Fizz & Maggie's pedigrees, but that wasn't possible with such a large group. There were 30 people from the tour bus...and me 🤣 That meant the information shared was tailored toward non-horsey people ("a gelding is a castrated male horse..." type stuff), but I thought it was cool to see how non-horse people responded to the friendliness and beauty of Morgans. I think I'll post a separate thread about the farm, but here are a few of my favorite parts:








^Foundation sire Figure, who stamped the breed. Even though he died 200 years ago, you still see him in Morgans today.








^Two year old stud colt, UVM Burke, who is auditioning for a future as UVM herd sire. I haven't spent any time around stallions, but just watching him for 5 minutes drove home the idea that stallions have "presence." He's still just a baby, but he stood himself up in front of the crowd while other horses were in the barn yelling to him, and he just posed in front of the statue saying, "I'm sexy and I know it."








At the end of the tour, they turned us loose to explore the farm. They have some lovely nature trails that loop around the paddocks. The best stop was at the broodmare barn. There were three moms and babies out. Weaning is soon, but they are still looking to their moms for a morning snack.








The tour did include an interesting history of the main barn. It was built in the 1800s by a wealthy local businessman who had no wife or children, so devoted his time and energy to building a showpiece Morgan herd. After his death, the farm went to the US Cavalry remount program, and once horses were no longer needed, was given to University of Vermont as an educational program. The woman who gave the tour is a current apprentice; they have a year-long apprenticeship program that covers breeding, foaling out, training, sales prep, farm management, etc. Wish I had been on that path when I was younger.
** * * * * * *
I got home in time for a ride in the afternoon. I told Fizz all about visiting her fancy relatives while we got ready. Since we were heading out in that "dinner window" that has caused us trouble recently, I tried to make sure she was going to be as comfortable physically as I could. I gave her a quick snack of 1/2 cup of Purina Outlast to soothe any stomach issues. Did some wither rocks and basic massage while grooming. Used a new pair of boots on the front.

With all that done, we headed out to ride past the overlook and down the big Cavendish hill. We had not been that way for a couple of weeks. The last time, I got off and walked her down without any real issues. I was going to give it a try riding down this time. I rode her pretty actively the whole way up to the overlook, and she was moving well and responsive. As we headed over the crest of the hill and down, she clearly was not happy about it, swishing her tail and tossing her head around a little, but I stuck with it and insisted. Through more will than skill, and probably heavier hands than I typically like, I kept her nose pointing down the hill and kept her moving. That meant there were moments when we were going down the hill sideways, but we were going down it! Fortunately this was a rare ride where we didn't have any traffic on the hill, so I was able to keep pushing her forward even if that meant we used the entire road to do it. When we got to the bottom, we stopped for a moment to graze on some lush grass, and then trotted on our way. It wasn't pretty, but we did it!

The beautiful sunshine from earlier in the day got eaten up by stormy clouds, so we moved along to beat the rain. The road here is pretty nasty with the big, sharp gravel still everywhere, so we tried to find the best footing we could. I'm glad I had boots with nearly new tread on, but even with better boots every now and then I could still feel her hit some gravel that she could feel. I hate when that happens.








Fall oranges and reds are starting to pop out to join the yellow.








It's always a fun game to guess when peak foliage will hit. We still have 3-4 weeks to go before then, I would guess.








It's a stormy day today so probably won't be able to get out. And tomorrow, I start the new job!


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## Knave

That was a neat visit, and I’m proud you went down the hill. I can’t remember for sure if it was Cash or Bones, but one of them had a downhill problem. I’m thinking Bones since it feels so long ago. I made him stop. A few steps, stop, a few steps, stop. He would rush downhill and then think about bucking you off. Lol

Good luck today!!! I’ll be thinking of you.


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## gottatrot

Very interesting to see the pictures of the Morgan farm. Good luck on your new job!


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## egrogan

Thank you @Knave and @gottatrot! It’s been awhile since I’ve had a “first day!”


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## carshon

Happy First Day!


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## egrogan

Hunting season is here now; rifle for bear, and archery for deer and turkey. We met M and Coalie this morning, with a plan for some time in the woods, so Fizz got decked out in all her orange glory 🤣








Fizz saying, "_what...you’re telling me that people might shoot arrows at me accidentally?!!?"_

We couldn't have had a prettier day. It was a little chilly while I was tacking up, but the sun was so bright I knew I would warm up quickly once we got going. The leaves are definitely turning, but the colors didn't show up as vibrantly in pictures. There's still more green than red or yellow, but even just the hint of color made it beautiful.
















After the problems at the endurance ride, M and Coalie have been taking some lessons with an instructor who does distance riding. Sounds like they had a pretty frank conversation about the things that went wrong, and how to avoid them in the future. From talking with M, I know the big thing she's focusing on is riding more assertively and getting Coalie moving, rather than let him dawdle along and find things to get upset about. It was great to see that he is definitely responding. Usually there's a big gap between him and Fizz, especially on the roads, but with M really riding him forward, his walk was suddenly much better and he was marching right along with Fizz.

We took the snowmobile trail out to Blind Mare Farm. There's still some water in the "lakes" that have been covering the trail all summer, but most of the muddy spots have dried up, which is nice!








I just can't get over how pretty the light is this time of year!
















We turned around at the orchard, but Fizz was more interested in grass than apples.








Grass, grass, grass...what a one track mind 😉








Our ride was still mostly walking, but it wasn't frustrating for me or for Fizz because at least we were WALKING instead of w.a.l.k.i.n.g. We didn't once have to stop and wait for Coalie to catch up, especially on the way home, which is when Fizz gets really frustrated. M is focusing on improving the walk right now so hopefully as time goes on we'll be able to do more trotting too. Where we did trot though, Coalie was almost always in the lead.








After we turned our separate ways to go home, Fizz and I had a funny encounter with an older couple in a zippy little BMW convertible. We had just crossed the main paved road back onto our road, and had started trotting up the hill when the car came towards us and moved over to give us some room. I thanked them, and the woman laughed and said "if only it was easier to see you" nodding towards our ridiculous orange outfit. I thanked her for letting me know it was doing it's job. As we continued, we had to contend with neighbors' horses being turned out in paddocks along the road that are usually empty, so that was exciting for a minute. Fizz danced sideways a little when horses surprised her by cantering along the fenceline behind some trees, but I thought she held it together pretty well. After that though, we just had a good long trot up the hill towards home, racing our shadow along the way.








It was great to have such a good ride on such a beautiful day! Back to the realities of the new job tomorrow- unfortunately for the next couple of weeks I'm pretty stuck to the computer, with 7-8 hour days of Zoom meetings, but I am hoping the frequency of the meetings will calm down a little bit once I make the rounds of meeting my new colleagues and get settled into my project work. After working on my own the past year, this endless meeting schedule will be the hardest part of transitioning back to working for a bigger organization, but I can't complain as I am excited about the work and everyone I've met so far has been great.


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## carshon

I'm glad M is getting some help with Coalie. Your rides will be much more enjoyable!


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## egrogan

Since you are all animal lovers, I thought you would appreciate my sad story of my own personal Charlottes Web.

All summer, I’ve been making friends with a mama spider who built an elaborate web in the barn, right next to the light switch for my chicken’s run, which is built as a lean to off the back of the barn. Every morning and night, I’d say hi to her when doing my chicken chores. This started back early in the summer, maybe June?

She laid lots of pods that turned into baby spiders:








About a month ago, a much bigger fearsome looking spider appeared in her web-she’s the little white dot above the wolfy looking spider. Two of her egg pods are above her. Somehow she seemed to have killed the much bigger spider, and in a day it was gone! Fearsome girl.

Last week, she started climbing much higher in the web. She ended up moving all the way to the ceiling and back during the course of the day.

And then last night…she wasn’t there. Not high. Not low. She wasn’t there this morning. Or tonight. I think she’s finally gone. 😢

I think she must have had a pretty long spidery life, and I figured once it started getting cold that would be the end. But I was a little surprised how emotional I felt when she was gone. I had gotten used to watching her comings and going’s all these weeks, and it was sad not to see her there. Hope she’ll enjoy the great web in the sky 🕸


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## Knave

I’m sorry about your spider. I get it. I’m still kind of upset that my favorite water trough fish was killed. I’m guessing Queen knocked it out, and then the dogs had it, and then a small cat toted it around fighting everything over it while she ate it.


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## TrainedByMares

Signs of life are always encouraging and your awareness of them is an encouragement as well! Some people go through their lives ignoring the small things that can really brighten things up for the rest of us.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Knave. Sorry about your fish as well. @TrainedByMares , I love what you wrote, that really connects with me. I used to have a good friend, who sadly I've fallen out of touch with, but I loved going on road trips with her because she would see amazing architectural features and public art that was lost on me until it was pointed out, and I saw the same sorts of "hidden in plain sight" wonders in nature that she didn't notice until I did. I think it's incredible what our brains are primed to notice. Here's another example from earlier today- I was out with the dog and happened to look up at the tree next to me at just the right angle to catch this cocoon- some sort of moth I'm guessing but I don't know enough to identify it. Anyone know? I couldn't get over how you could see what I assume are the remains of the caterpillar's tiny legs! Someone please correct me if I have this wrong and you know more about what this is 








Fizz and I snuck out for a short lunchtime ride. I felt lucky to have a free block of time as the weather was glorious and it's going to rain from tomorrow through Sunday.

The swamp maples are starting to go red:








On the way home Fizz got to be a good horsey ambassador. We were coming down the hill as a couple of bikers were coming up. They stopped and asked if she was ok with them passing, and I said of course. They came closer and then stopped to chat for a minute. They were curious about her boots, and told me all about how they had seen some...less well behaved ...horses at the county fair over the weekend. She was content to just stand while we talked, which was nice as she's often antsy to get going. I figure any time we give bikers a good impression of riders on the road, that's a small victory for sharing the trails.

When we got home, we stopped to pick out an apple from the windfall under the very best tree. These apples are so good that every day even I'm picking them up off the ground for eating because they are just that sweet and juicy. I'm out of room in my freezer so we're seriously considering buying another small one to keep in the basement so I can make and freeze pies and turnover. I hate to waste apples this good, but I can only make so much applesauce!


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## egrogan

Had the farrier here first thing this morning. This is our third time with him now, and I’m really liking how he thinks about the shape of the foot. The horses seem to love the way he offers them a stretch when he’s rasping their front feet-today Fizz nearly put her belly on the ground when she did a “downward dog” stretch before he finished up! 😆 The wet summer has not been good to their frogs, but other than that everyone is looking pretty good, even Maggie.

Per usual, Izzy dosed in her stall until it was her turn.








She made me laugh, all of a sudden I heard her whinnying and I couldn’t figure out who she was talking to since everyone is in the barn. I peeked in the stall and she was neighing while flat out sleeping-wish they could tell us what they were dreaming about!! 😴


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## egrogan

Yesterday was gorgeous, but I had a migraine and was feeling a bit ho hum about going out to ride. Still, with the new work schedule, I was feeling guilty about not riding on a weekend day. So the compromise was to go to the overlook. The view always makes it worth it...

















On the way home, I was still feeling guilty about such a short ride, so I decided I'd turn down the neighbor's logging road. My head was still pounding, but the sun felt good. I'd say I was probably about 80% committed to going this way, since there's one section where Fizz keeps pitching a fit about continuing on. The logging road goes through a little meadow, and there's a three way split in the trail coming out of the meadow. The best way to go is the left route, but Fizz is hellbent on going to the right, which dead ends quickly in a bunch of debris left behind from the logging (and...she's never even been that way; I've walked the dog there but never ridden it). But anyway, off we went, knowing there was a chance she'd be disagreeable.

Sure enough, we got to the intersection and she slammed on the brakes and then started backing up. I had been hoping she wasn't going to do this, but since she was, it felt like one of the few times where I cared about "not letting her win." The last time we went down there, she did the same thing, and I got off and walked her past the intersection down the trail. This time I stayed on and just kept annoying her forward. After a few more times of going backwards- which she never does anywhere else except here-she grudgingly walked forward. It's so perplexing to me why she hates this spot so much - it's literally just a pleasant little grass trail through the woods, far less challenging than almost anywhere else we ride:








She was definitely not happy about it, but she didn't do anything silly. The neighbor had someone back there recently clearing the trail, and there was a lot of brush piled along the sides, but she mostly kept it together. The trail ends in another little meadow (although I think theoretically it continues through that little opening across the field, but that part hasn't been cleared in awhile and isn't really rideable). This pretty much sums up her mood though- she was starting to get a little bouncy. 








I intended to let her stop and graze there for a minute to decompress, but she was really not having it. As soon as I gave her the reins to let her eat, she wanted to dart back the way we'd come. Unfortunately it did need to be an out-and-back, so since she didn't want to eat, off we went towards home.

This sent her into quite a tizzy. She was jigging along and getting very snorty. I figured it would be better to at least let her trot to burn off some of that steam, and while the trail wasn't a dramatic hill, at least climbing a little usually helps. I only had to think the word "trot" and she was bounding forward in an awful sewing machine motion. And rather than burning off the steam and helping her breathe, it just seemed the tension was rising. At that point I think I made the mistake of taking a stronger hold of her, and she started to boil over. A couple of strides before it happened, I could tell she was about to start bucking. Fizz isn't mean, so I doubt it was a big buck, but it still popped me forward with both feet flying out of the stirrups and sent me tumbling over her left shoulder onto the ground. Fortunately the ground was soft and I kept hold of the reins. I walked her a short way until she stopped snorting and acted like she recognized me again. After that, she stood nicely just like she always does and I got back on with no issues. She was still a bit prancy the rest of the way, and snorted hard back at the main intersection, but the rest of the ride was uneventful. Not sure if the extra two miles were worth all that drama 😉 She really, really hates that trail though. I know there are bears and other wildlife crossing back there, but that's not really any different than anyplace else we ride in the woods. I'm not sure how to explain it, but it's definitely a different kind of behavior than anywhere else. A bit of a mystery.

We're off to meet M and Coalie a little later this morning. There's yet another bike race in the neighborhood this weekend so we will probably stick to the woods trails near M's house.


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## gottatrot

Aww too bad about the fall. Hope you won't be too sore.


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## Knave

Riding with a migraine is always miserable!! You needed a Lucy to trade horses to like I did when I was sick the other day and Cash was being a jerk.

I’m sorry your ride went that way. I hope your migraine has gone away by now.


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## egrogan

Thanks @gottatrot and @Knave. In the scheme of falls, this one wasn't bad so no lasting aches and pains. The migraine is mostly gone- it's all hormonal for me, I just grin and bear it at the end of every month. @Knave, it definitely would have been a good day to have a Lucy to trade for!! 😁

Our ride today was much less dramatic. We stuck to the snowmobile trails in M's "neighborhood" since there weren't any bikers or off road Jeep rally people back there, and I think both of us were looking for a quiet ride. Fizz was pretty content to follow Coalie a lot of the way. The first canter we had up a good hill she started tossing her head around and getting floaty, but I growled at her to cut it out and she didn't think about doing that again.








One spot in the woods was still pretty wet and muddy, and unfortunately we lost a boot there but didn't realize it at first. The first week after a trim, boots that typically fit her tend to be a little loose so I wasn't too surprised it came off (this was a hind boot, we are using Hero's old boots on the front now and they fit like a glove!). We were only a mile or so down the trail when M looked down and noticed Fizz was missing one, so we ended up turning around and backtracking to the boggy spot where we figured it was. I wasn't sure how this would go with Fizz, as this particular trail is usually a loop vs. out-and-back, and given yesterday's performance...welll...I didn't know what to expect. But she was totally fine with it. Her walk sped up a little but she wasn't being pushy about it. When we got to the bog, the boot was sticking out of the muck like a beached whale, so I didn't need to go wading into anything deep. It was covered in slimy mud which was a bit nasty- I've scrubbed my hands three times since I got home but they still stink from handling the boot to get it put back on. Yuck.








I did annoy her by making her stop and take some foliage pictures on the way home though 😉 At least there was an appealing buffet at her feet to distract her from her annoyance.








And here's a bonus picture of Hugh in his superhero cape for hunting season 🤣 Seriously though, it's so much easier to see him in the woods when he's wearing it, I kind of want to keep it on him year round.


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## gottatrot

Aww Hugh is so cute. Glad to hear Hero's boots fit and also that you found your lost boot! 
I put my boots in the mud room the other day and we were gone overnight...when we came back the whole house smelled terrible even though I'd washed them first. Boots can have a real odor.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I put my boots in the mud room the other day and we were gone overnight...when we came back the whole house smelled terrible even though I'd washed them first. Boots can have a real odor.


I've also been using Equiderma thrush cream before I boot her, and that has a nasty smell to it since it's neem oil based. So that certainly adds to the overall funk. 👃

Back to reality today, but horses don’t seem too upset to bask in the beautiful fall weather…though it can’t seem to decide if it wants to rain or not.


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## egrogan

Today I went to grab coffee before work, and Hugh rode along. I stopped at GMHA to give him a quick walk around a short trail just above the rings.








I love his bouncy, happy curlicue tail. It sure is a beautiful place in the morning light.








Future dressage star?! 😆








Izzy has been so mischievous lately. She can’t resist dragging this water bucket around when she’s waiting for me to switch them back over from the new field to the regular field. Good thing she’s cute too! 😉








Hoping a ride is in my future tomorrow afternoon…


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## egrogan

Friday afternoon was the first time all week I was able to get out and ride. It was a pretty day, and we just moseyed out to the overlook and back. Since it was so wet all summer, the foliage is not very good this year, but there are still some pretty vistas. And whether the foliage is good or not, the leaf peepers are starting to descend on us. Yesterday I was driving home from the grocery store, and there was a guy in a giant Tesla with Florida plates just literally stopped in the middle of the road taking pictures. People are so clueless sometimes. I just remind myself that tourists coming here is what keeps the restaurants and bars that I like open...

















I went for a short ride yesterday afternoon as well. It was sprinkling a little so we stayed close to home and rode around the fields. It turned into quite a nature walk. First, we saw a bobcat run across the road right in front of us! I've actually never seen one in person, so I was pretty awed by it. It was on the smaller side, and that little stumpy tail looked just like it does in pictures. Very cool. Fizz didn't seem impressed, so I wonder if they're around more often than I think?

After that, we headed out to the beaver pond. We must have surprised a beaver close to the shore, because he went splashing into the water as we approached, and Fizz launched sideways when he surprised her. 🚀 We watched him swim out to the middle of the pond, and then slowly circle back towards the shore to see what we were up to.








You probably can't really see, but he's a little reddish brown "log" floating in the water to the right of the leftmost tree with the red leaves. He hung around watching for quite awhile, while Fizz was happy to graze around. He must have thought she was the strangest two headed deer he's ever seen at the pond 🤣 Eventually he dove back under the water and we watched the ripples across the pond as he swam away. It was really neat to see.

















We finished the ride by grabbing a green apple off a tree near the house. 🍏 It must have been sour, because she was very comical eating it, rolling it around in her mouth and making funny faces sucking out the apple juice. I wasn't sure if horses could differentiate between sweet and sour, but from doing some reading about it, it seems they probably can. She sure looked like it was not a very enjoyable experience!








We're getting ready to head out for our Sunday ride with M and Coalie soon. Hopefully the rain holds off; it's supposed to start later today and keep going straight through Tuesday...Not good for the leaf peepers, that's for sure!


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## TrainedByMares

Ahh...funny-face Fizz! lol! I share apples,peaches and raisins with Nicki. I understand that apple seeds are somewhat toxic and I will bite off a chunk and hand-feed her (she is very respectful) or cut and slice the apple or peach and remove the seed or core before she eats it.


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares , my understanding is that you'd have to eat thousands of seeds to do any cyanide damage to animals. This comes up from time to time in chicken FB groups, and some people do take a very cautious approach. With apples blanketing the ground in every direction here, I've yet to see any damage to my chickens or dog from eating their fill in the fall. So I think if it's an occasional treat, you probably don't have to worry.

It was great to go on a long ride yesterday, but Fizz was unusually spooky. She probably spooked more times on yesterday's ride than she has all season combined. I think sitting through that was more of a workout than the 9 mile ride overall 😉 Mostly she seemed startled by the sounds of squirrels, chipmunks, and bluejays rustling through the leaves that are now lining the road. That sent her into full-on, launching sideways through the air leaps. My inner thighs are definitely sore this morning!!








The worst of the spooking was around a silly grouse that we kept flushing out from the side of the road. I don't know why the sound of them flying away sounds like a cannon (seems counterproductive to escaping a predator?!), but that, coupled with the fact that they wait until you are basically on top of them to finally fly out, led to some acrobatics. This particular grouse would launch itself into the air, settle back into the brush on the side of the road 1/4 mile away, and then repeat when we got next to it again- this happened 3 or 4 times in a long, straight stretch. At least Fizz stopped spooking after the second flight, but geez.

Despite the Weather Channel indicating the rain wouldn't be starting until dinner time, when we got to our meeting point with M, it was already drizzling. We decided on a long, woodsy loop so if the rain got harder, we'd be pretty well covered.








That turned out to be a good move, because about an hour into the ride, the drizzle turned into heavy rain. At one point we had to park under some trees to try to stay out of the sheets of rain that were coming down. Fizz and I are both particularly wimpy about getting wet, and you can see her grouchy ears in the pictures. She's actually sort of funny, when the rain hits her in the face she pins her ears back and makes nasty faces at the weather. I completely agree with her opinion on it! Oh well, I guess it's the excuse I needed to bring my saddle in and give it a proper cleaning, which is overdue. And fortunately, the heaviest downpours did let up and went back to drizzle for the second half of the ride.








The rain did leave the footing pretty slippery, and with the leaves on the ground it can get a little treacherous if you see the big, flat rocks too late. We had a couple of nice canters before it rained hard, but after that we mostly slowed down to find our way through. Made a couple of the wooden snowmobile bridges a little sketchy to cross, particularly one where they've laid down half a dozen saplings on the ground before and after the actual bridge. It was a little scary as each horse slid across those logs to cross, but fortunately everyone stayed on their feet.

Mount Ascutney, our local landmark, anchors most of our views...








The rain is supposed to stick around through tomorrow, but looking ahead the rest of the week is supposed to be a little warmer and dry. Hoping my schedule will cooperate, and already looking forward to the long holiday this weekend for Indigenous People's Day! I forgot how nice three day weekends are 😁


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> the sound of them flying away sounds like a cannon (seems counterproductive to escaping a predator?!)


They did a review to see what caliber gun is required to stop an attacking bear. Oddly enough, a 9mm was successful every time it was used (4 times). Not as effective in KILLING a bear, but just as effective as breaking off the attack. I wonder if it is the unexpected sting of even a small bullet, or if it is the loud and unfamiliar sound. If the sound is enough to give a predator a pause - even just for a second - then it may have survival value!









Defense Against Bears with Pistols: 97% Success rate, 37 incidents by Caliber - Sporting Classics Daily


This article originally appear on Ammoland.com Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- On the Internet, and in print, many people claim that pistols lack efficacy in defending against bear attacks. Here is an example that occurred on freerepublic.com: “Actually, there are legions of people who have been badly...




sportingclassicsdaily.com


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Sometimes I daydream about what it would be like to take Fizz to an endurance ride somewhere really flat 🤣


Yes! Yes! Yes! We think it's kinda boring and love to trailer to places with hills, but I wish you could get together with @phantomhorse13 once and trailer here for an endurance ride! They have them all winter. I think some of the terrain in PA is fantastic riding. I used to trailer 2 1/2 hours about 4 times a year to ride with a friend on the Horseshoe Trail near Hershey PA. It was so spectacular. Also spectacular are the trails in the Blue Ridge Mountains of VA. But, of course, nothing beats the riding in the American West. I went there 4 times to ride and felt like pinching myself every day just to make sure it was real, it was so lovely. Your Vermont pictures are sure fun to fantasize about. Thanks for sharing them. It's funny how we long for hills and you love some flat stuff.


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## egrogan

@bsms, that's really interesting about sound as a warning "shot." I suppose the grouse are mostly interested in distracting predators from possible nestlings, so being very loud and flying away certainly grabs your attention. I just wish they didn't think of horses as predators, it would be a lot easier on my body! 😉

@knightrider, that would be a dream trip. There are so many people here on HF I would love to ride with! And wish you could come here to ride on our trails.


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## TrainedByMares

@egrogan ,does your dog Hugh come with you on rides. I dont see him in recent pictures. I was wondering if he made a difference in the spooking at all. Forgive me if it is mentioned elsewhere but what kind of dog is he? I have been thinking about getting a border collie


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares, Hugh doesn’t come with us mainly because we ride on too many public roads for it to be safe, but also because I’m a mediocre dog trainer at best and his recall is just “so-so.” When we got him it was partially with the intention he’d come on rides with us, and maybe as we clear more trails on our own property I’ll be more comfortable taking him. Fizz is very dog tolerant but his exuberance running through the woods at his young age may be a bit much even for a tolerant horse!

He’s an English Shepherd, there are definitely similarities with Border Collies and Aussies, but personality wise English Shepherds are less intense as herders and tend to be described as “general farm managers.” They have a lot of energy and want a job, they are good with stock, but they are not as “on” as a border collie. I might be generalizing, but I think they are seen as somewhat more suitable than the other herding breeds to being a family pet and living a more suburban lifestyle. Hugh is my chore companion and smart around the horses, but unlike some of his family members, I wouldn’t call him a true working farm dog (again, more due to my own lack of training abilities than his innate skills). His parents and several of his siblings work stock on goat dairies in New England and Canada.

Looking like a very English landscape here today!!


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## TrainedByMares

Thanks for explaing that! English shepherds sound very suitable. I love the trail pictures with Hugh and Kestrel in them, they look like they are having so much fun! When we were taking lessons, Nicki and I used to ride the trails around the property with the BO's labrador pup and I think it made a difference for Nicki. 
We have a 13 year old lab but he doesn't move too good anymore and he was always a mama's boy so even in years past he never hung out with Nicki and I.



It may be time for a new dog soon and I appreciate your feedback!!


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## Knave

@TrainedByMares We have border collies, the pup doesn’t work yet but the older dog does. Just on regular rides they are both always there. We have two little dogs too, one mutt and one jack Russell. The jack can’t handle the speed and the miles, and he’ll about die if he goes, but the old little mutt does pretty good. He used to go lope the ten miles with Bones and I for his regular conditioning! He’s old now though and I usually put him in the trailer with the Jack when I leave.

I think Egrogan is right about something a little less ambitious than a border collie. I don’t know about the non working breeding, but the working dogs need a job or they are destructive trouble makers.


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares , I truly love the English Shepherds and imagine we might always have one in our lives. Hugh is our second. Delia was our first, we lost her a couple of years ago now to a stroke in her early teens. She may be the best family dog we'll ever have- my husband still has a hard time talking about losing her.


















The English Shepherds are harder to find than a BC or Aussie, but once you know about them you realize they're out there. They are pretty popular here in New England, the Appalachian region, Michigan, the Pacific Northwest. A lot of people call them "America's Original Farm Dog." If you are interested in looking into them, the English Shepherd Club has some resources, and if you use FB, you can look up pages like "The English Shepherd Society" and "English Shepherd Working Farm Dogs." Those pages are pretty active, with lots of pictures and stories about dogs- from therapy dogs, to agility dogs, to hobby farm dogs, to "real" working dogs. I try not to be too evangelical about them, but I do think for a lot of people with small farms and a couple of animals on a small acreage, they really can be great dogs. Since they aren't recognized by the American Kennel Club, there's not as much of a distinction between "working" and "non-working" breeding lines; there isn't really a faction that's breeding just to meet a show standard (the flipside, which concerns some people, is that there isn't a "true" standard to aim for in breeding). Like any breed that people are invested in, especially a small breed, people are passionate so sometimes you see some sniping about correct vs. incorrect breeding goals, but I have found all the ES people I've actually met in person to be really thoughtful people that I'd like to be friends with outside of the shared interest in the dogs. 

I think I like ES's for a lot of the same reasons I like Morgans- they're opinionated, they're smart, they're hardy, and they are very attached to "their people" if you prove to them you're worthy of their loyalty. 

Anyway, I won't keep going on and on, but if you ever have any questions about them let me know!


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## Knave

Well, I will say, they are definitely beautiful!


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## TrainedByMares

Thank you very much!


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## bsms

I've had two full Border Collies as family dogs. Leila was more intense than Jack, but both of them came to think of their "job" as keeping order in the house and family. I don't think they suffered from not working sheep. Leila got a chance once and I'm told she showed lots of promise, but she went back to being a family dog without issue. Chris the dog was a Border Collie/German Shepherd mix. He was an amazing dog but he didn't have any herding instinct. 

Where I think Border Collies do NOT work is if they will be left alone much of the day. They need something - or someone - to tend. Leila, in a pinch, would sit in the bathroom and watch, very intently, waiting for the next drip from the faucet.

Jack is 13. It will hurt like all get out when he passes and I don't know if we'll ever have another Border Collie. I think a lot of breeders would say we are too old and don't have sheep, but neither bothers Jack. He's a little weird but you couldn't ask for a more loyal dog.


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## egrogan

_Photo spam warning_

Something changed today and suddenly brilliant colors were everywhere! It's like someone flipped a switch and the lackluster foliage season decided to give it a try after all. I think the difference is that reds and oranges popped out so there wasn't just a brownish yellowish overtone.

I was thrilled I could ride before work this morning. Found the ladies all sunbathing after breakfast








I think Fizz knows I feel bad interrupting her naps and she pretends she doesn't see or hear me walking up to her...








Even she seemed to agree going on a ride this morning wasn't such a bad thing. No traffic, warm morning sun, perfect for moving along at a pretty good clip. On the way to the overlook, we saw our neighbor walking down the hill to trim back some trees. We stopped to chat and in the course of the conversation, he asked if we'd be interested in haying a couple of his fields that share a boundary with ours (to keep the hay to use with my horses). We haven't hayed our own pastures yet because they were so badly neglected when we first moved in. But after a couple of years of regular mowing from my lovely husband, it's recovered pretty well and it's probably in good enough shape to have the soil and grass tested to see whether it would be worth trying bale it or spend another year improving it. The neighbor's pastures are in about the same state as ours. So this could be a good opportunity. Not sure we'd invest in buying all the equipment to do it ourselves for just a couple hundred bales (?) but one of M's neighbors is willing to do small jobs at a reasonable cost so maybe we can work something out.








We waved goodbye to the neighbor and cantered along to the overlook. It was absolutely spectacular today. There was still mist settled over the mountains, and the color was just gorgeous. Fizz didn't even get fussy standing there while I took a zillion pictures (I have resisted the urge to post all of them 😉 )
















We ran into lovely husband on our way home and he sent me a couple of pictures...








...finished the ride on one chilled out pony.








Fortunately the crazy spooking at the rustling leaves seemed to be gone today. It was nice to just enjoy the ride!


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## Knave

It is so pretty! One day, when I magically have money and life settles down, I’m going to come and visit you!


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## egrogan

I would love for that @Knave !!


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## knightrider

Knave said:


> It is so pretty! One day, when I magically have money and life settles down, I’m going to come and visit you!


And then you both come visit me in February! When it is 65, sunny, and jacket weather.


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## carshon

The pictures are great! I hope haying your own works out. It takes some of the stress off of looking for hay


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## egrogan

See, I told you Fizz pretends to nap when I'm coming to get her...

Two horses in the background clearly heard me come through the gate and wanted to see what I was up to…








^^One horse in the front with an ear obviously on me pretended to be asleep in the shadows and maybe I wouldn't see her 🤣

She gave herself up pretty easily and we had another beautiful ride.
























She worried me on the way home though, we had one of those awful cars that creep behind without passing tailing us, and when they went to the side of the road and crunched through the leaves, she actually startled a little and swung her hind end into the road. The car was well behind us, so it was fine, but that sort of thing just should never happen on the road. Fortunately we were all fine.

Handsome Hugh came with me for my before work coffee today and enjoyed sniffing around the brook behind the cafe...








...and after we got home, entertained himself under the apple tree while I mucked the paddock quickly. He definitely overdid it on the apples, and later in the afternoon, he was lighting up the room with his toots before I finally got the message and let him out to the bathroom 💨💨💨


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## egrogan

What a horsey weekend this ended up being! We've been out 25 miles since Thursday, and I'm a bit exhausted at this point. But some really good adventures.

I think I wrote about this on another thread, but we had some visitors this weekend. A few weeks ago, someone I knew from endurance events posted on FB looking for a place to camp with a few horses to do a fall foliage ride in a neighboring town. I've enjoyed having people camp in the past, so I offered her space to park and the new field for her horses. Friday afternoon the horsey campers arrived and got settled in. There was lots of talking across the road between the three new horses turned out in the new field and my girls. The visiting horses seemed to love the new field and their people got their camp set up before taking a short ride down the road.

Yesterday I headed out in the morning to meet M for our ride while the horsey campers got ready to go do the pleasure ride on the other side of town. When I led Fizz out from her field and she saw the new horses tied to their trailer getting tacked up her eyes got huge and she didn't quite know what to do. I led her passed them down the road a little until we were out of sight and I could mount up. Not surprisingly, she was a little "up" at first but I thought she handled it quite well actually.

M and I headed out to Blind Mare Farm, and although the skies were a bit grey, the woods still looked like they were glowing.








The "trail" to Blind Mare is technically a Jeep road where vehicles are allowed (access to hunting camps) and we were a little surprised to be passed 3 times by people in regular vehicles (small pickups and even a Subaru wagon ). There's not a ton of room to get out of the way but we managed to make it work because everyone was very patient and polite about sharing the space. So weird to see a car driving ahead of you with the rest of this view!








We got to Blind Mare Farm and the horses were much more interested in apples than posing for foliage shots. M tried to take a few of Fizz and I, and this is the best she got because Fizz was definitely not into it, which was obvious to all of us 🤣








I think I've said before that there's almost never anyone at this farm, and I can't understand why. If this was my place I don't think I'd ever want to leave. This is just one of the many stunning fields that the house looks over.








And they have THIS steps from their door!








I feel fortunate that even if they don't spend much time there, at least other people are still able to enjoy it.

When I got home, I was confused because I saw our horsey campers still parked and the horses still tied to the trailer, tacked up. It was about 11:30, and the ride started at 9:30, so I wasn't sure what was going on. We went up to talk to them, and it turns out the starter on their truck was completely dead and they were stranded!  I felt so sad for them, they had come all the way up from Connecticut to do the ride and they were missing it. Luckily they were able to find a dealer close by who was a) open, b) willing to come tow them, and c) willing to replace the starter on a holiday weekend. It took another three hours for the tow, but they went out and rode to the overlook and then down the road a bit, so at least they got to do a _little _bit of riding, if not the ride they expected. I really felt bad for them, but they took it in stride and seemed to enjoy their ride anyway- at least they had beautiful views!

Later in the evening, we joined our horsey campers around their campfire and had a beer. Before this weekend, I didn't know them all that well, having just met casually at endurance rides, but they were very nice, welcoming people and it was fun to get to know them better. They asked if I'd like to ride with them today, which of course I said yes to, and I was excited to get to show them the trail system down the road. If they didn't get to do the "real" ride, at least I could take them on a route that's used on a lot of other "real" endurance rides.

To be continued...


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## egrogan

Yesterday morning lovely husband and I joined the horsey campers for breakfast around the campfire. Then I got ready to head out for our ride mid-morning.







Fizz was again a bit awed to mount up and walk out into the road to meet the three other horses. We headed down towards the hill of despair, with Izzy screaming at us as we left. Fizz had a little fit at the back of the field and crowhopped around, which fortunately I sat through. But after she got that out of her system she was fine, and she didn't have any crabbiness going down the hill, even when we got passed by some loud motorcycles.








The paint horse is a spotted saddle horse, and the black gelding is his pasturemate at home, so they are used to riding together. The chestnut mare was a spicy Morab, and her pace matched with the gaited horse's pace pretty well. These three ride together fairly often, so we tested out putting Fizz at different positions in the group with no problems, though she threw more mare faces than I've seen from her before, which surprised me a little. Still, she's so sensitive to body language from other horses if anyone made a face at _her, _she wanted to back right off. As we went along, she seemed most comfortable either side-by-side with the black gelding, or in the back of the line. She got a little jiggy in the front; it seemed like the other horses really pushed her along in a way that made us both a little nervous. But it was fascinating to have the chance to put her in a group of strange horses and see how she'd do. I was happy with how she handled it.








We had planned on a "calm" ride, as the chestnut mare and black gelding had done a fast ride the day before, but as soon as we turned off the road and into the woods, the three trail buddies were getting fussy and kept pulling to take the lead. It wasn't too long before our calm ride turned into full on cantering through these trails, which was a little nail biting for me. Fizz and I usually do short, happy little stretches of canter up the hills-but mostly we trot where the footing isn't rocky, and walk where there are a lot of rocks. Instead, we found ourselves flying along in places where I'm not always comfortable even trotting. She crowhopped a bit into the first uphill stretch, and again I was happy to sit through it and get her head up before it turned into bucking, but I know I was unfair with the death grip I had on her face. Finally the woman on the black gelding asked if we could slow down, as she took a branch to the face, and I wasn't upset for her to say something. All the horses were breathing hard given all the uphill we had done, so we stopped for a minute to let them catch their breath.








The guy on the paint horse is a forester, so I asked him to explain how one of my favorite trees on this trail had come to be- he said that the birch tree was a successful seedling on the rotting stump of the bottom tree, which likely came down in the 1800s. The rotting stump was as good as soil for the growing birch, and over time its root system grew around the stump to anchor it in the ground. There's no reason it won't last the way it is. I thought that was really neat to learn.

After our break, we walked for a decent stretch and I felt a lot better. We got to a good spot for trotting, and the group got a lot faster again and Fizz fell behind a decent distance. She did break into a canter at times to try to keep up, but it didn't feel out of control so I went with it, and we trotted when we caught back up. It wasn't as worrying when the footing was good!








When we turned for home, all the horses were a little amped up and there was more fussing about who was going to be in the lead- including Fizz, who knew which direction we were headed. Again the group broke into a really fast trot and canter in places I didn't feel comfortable at all. At that point, Fizz was more focused on home than the footing, and she started tripping badly on the rocks. I actually pulled her up and made her walk even as they continued on, which of course was not easy for her to do. As the group disappeared around a bend in the trail, I felt her really getting coiled up and realized I may have put myself in more trouble than I would have been in if we just kept trotting along. I was pretty worried she was going to boil over and start bucking, leaving me on the rocks while she galloped off towards home. The woman on the black gelding had stopped because her horse was also giving her trouble and she didn't want to be in a race with the other two, so Fizz settled mildly when we caught up with them. The two of us jigged together for a bit, through the slippery part of the trail. When we caught up with the others, I told them Fizz was tripping badly trying to keep up and asked if we could keep it to a walk. I'm not sure why all the horses were so hot, but they were really feeding off each other at that point and walking was not really in the cards. The woman on the chestnut, the most experienced of the group, decided she had had enough of the bad behavior and decided she was going to turn her mare back and ride the opposite direction away from the group to get her head back together.

With just the three of us, the racing to be in the lead seemed to ease up a little bit, and that was good timing as the trail had put us back out onto the road and we had to navigate around some traffic. I finally felt Fizz take a deep breath and relax a little, which was more than welcome. She thought about trying to run up the hill by Mac the German Shepherd's house, but I managed to keep her settled without anything explosive. Mac had spooked the paint horse at the beginning of the ride (he is a master at darting out from under the bushes at the last minute), but he was on the lawn when we went past the house in this direction, so we were able to see him coming.








Once we crossed the paved road and were in the true home stretch, all the horses were much more pleasant and we actually let them trot along to finish the ride. Fizz led for a bit without being worried about the horses behind her.








I just wish the middle part of the ride had been this relaxed! At least it was a good note to end on.

While there were some moments that weren't great on the ride, I stopped beating myself up about those and instead tried to think about all the things Fizz did well. Going out with a group of horses she had never met before and navigating all those herd dynamics...tolerating me being nervous and taking it out on her...not leaving me smooshed on the rocks when any horse's instinct would tell them not to get left behind when a group of worried horses goes cantering out of sight down the trail.

It's another experience that does leave me wondering if endurance is really in my future. Maybe my lack of thrill seeking and preference for a more sedate pace means I should really stick to the pleasure rides and enjoying the trails around home 😉 Or maybe I'll give one a try and truly just go out on my own and ride my own ride. I do feel confident that I can handle pretty much anything that happens, even if it gets scary. Fizz is a good soul and while she doesn't always agree with me, I think she's mostly willing to try to take care of me, maybe even when I don't deserve it. Hard to ask for more from a horse than that!


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## gottatrot

It sounds like you both did very well! I think the other riders could have been more sensitive to how everyone was feeling, but it is amazing you were able to rate Fizz so well when necessary.


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## Knave

I think you did great. You were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the decision you made was one that will benefit your horse in the long run. She learned that she might not be allowed to run with others if you say no, and she was eventually rewarded with the black horse. This showed her that you had a plan and came back together.

These are days that I find overwhelming a bit at work, the first days you are convincing a young horse that you have to go do a job in one place while the others trot off a different direction. Rare is the horse who doesn’t have issue with that at first. Even Zeus was a terror about it the first few times.

So, I know it feels discouraging, but you did exactly what you should have. I am proud of you, and I think you handled it all very bravely.


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## carshon

I was holding my breath for you! On My! I ride a hot horse and there is absolutely no way my horse would not have left me on the rocks as she cantered to keep up with her new friends. To be honest that is one of my absolute worst fears when riding with other gaited horse people. I love a good clip (don't get me wrong) but Tillie tends to lose her head (and her feet) when she gets left behind. And it's scary! And my horse is trailer sour so heading to the trailer or home at more than a walk leads to more antics than I care to admit. I think Fizz is a saint and you did so well. You need to try an endurance ride just to say you did it. Look at how well she did. I am so happy that you rode with new people and found out that she really can keep up with the big dogs!


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## TrainedByMares

What a great time! Campfire, Beer, Breakfast and Riding!! You did really well riding with the others, you and Fizz should be proud of yourselves!!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone. I think @carshon nailed it- I am lucky that Fizz is who she is. I'm wondering if I should ask my neighbor if I can use her indoor a little bit and just work on doing a million canter transitions so I get myself over that initial fear of Fizz crowhopping/bucking into it. Thinking back, even when we lived in NH and took lessons every week, she often would crowhop into the canter the first time. Obviously riding in the arena doesn't feel the same as riding on rough footing on the trail, but if the transition felt more automatic then I think it would be less worrisome on the trail. 

I think all the random meeting up and separating we do when riding with M and Coalie has helped a lot, as Fizz is pretty used to being left alone and having Coalie ride away from her. That's not quite the same as new horses taking off suddenly and being held back, but I was glad we had a lot of experience suddenly being alone.


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## knightrider

I second everyone else's comments about how well you did. It's really no fun to start out with a group and discover they are going at a pace you hadn't planned on. My daughter won't ride in groups because it happened to her several times when she wasn't experienced enough to handle it.

I used to trailer 2 1/2 hours every couple of months to ride with a dear friend in Hershey, PA. She often talked about a group of friends she rode with, how fun they were, how much I would enjoy riding with them. So, one time I trailered there to ride with that group.


egrogan said:


> . Fizz and I usually do short, happy little stretches of canter up the hills-but mostly we trot where the footing isn't rocky, and walk where there are a lot of rocks. Instead, we found ourselves flying along in places where I'm not always comfortable even trotting.


This is exactly what happened. I felt like I was on a roller coaster that I couldn't get off. The trails were very rocky and they were cantering fast. I wouldn't have normally even trotted on those trails. And then we came to a wooded area that was just loaded with gorgeous wildflowers of all colors and species. They were breathtaking! And here we were zooming along, not drinking it in for one second. It was torture for me. And I was worried about injuring my horse on the rocks. I was too embarrassed to be such a baby, so I did not ask them to slow down. My friend said they rode like this all the time and nobody's horses went lame. My friend apparently loved it. I felt rather foolish because my friend and I had been riding together for years, but always sedately, just short canters here and there, and trots when we felt like it. I had no idea that this kind of riding was what she actually craved.

I realized those sorts of rides were not for me, and I never trailered again to ride with them. As the years went by, one horse after another of that group went lame. Hmmmm, wonder why.


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## egrogan

Thanks @knightrider. What I'm realizing more and more is that everyone who spends a lot of time on trails has a set of similar stories about things going a little sideways, and this is helping me take things a lot less personally than I used to. I also feel compelled to say I don't think any of these riders did anything wrong or were unfair, everyone was just riding their horse as it needed to be ridden, and no one was out of control. They were just quicker than I was used to, and enjoying experiencing a new place where I've developed my customary caution. It's almost ironically that I knew the trails _too _well to enjoy letting loose, and maybe if I had been less familiar with them it would have felt different. At any rate, it's good to have experiences that get you out of your comfort zone (at least when everyone arrives home in one piece 😉 )


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## bsms

knightrider said:


> I had no idea that this kind of riding was what she actually craved. / I realized those sorts of rides were not for me


Yes. I'm finally starting to enjoy SOME speed work, but I'm not convinced racing across a bunch of rocks - even if Bandit can handle it - is ME. Rode Trooper out in the desert solo yesterday afternoon. Even got a couple of canters out of him, but on trail parts where I wasn't sweating the footing. And sorry, but I would not enjoy flying along with a bunch of other people/horses setting the pace. Partly worried about my health, and partly about his.


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## PoptartShop

I think you handled that really well also, especially considering Fizz didn't really know those horses too well & even though she got excited, she did listen to you & you guys ended the trail on a good note.  You worked through it, together!  
I would've also been a bit upset because those people were speeding around the trails, especially if the footing wasn't that great in certain areas. I like to be careful too when it comes to footing. I also like to take in the scenery on a trail. It's supposed to be relaxing! I wouldn't ride with that group again either. But at least you know now, & you guys got through it!  Way to go!!


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## egrogan

One more picture from our weekend rides 😁








Yesterday the vet was here for fall check-ups, including shots, bloodwork, and chiro for Fizz. Fizz _lovvveedddd _the chiro work. She was a little out in withers, as she was back in the beginning of the summer, and she had massive licking, chewing, and eye rolling while the vet did wither rocks. While I do them with her pretty regularly, my technique is definitely not as good.








Some not so great news for Isabel, she has another bad tooth and is going to have to go in to the clinic to have it extracted, as well as some pockets around her remaining molars investigated more thoroughly to see if any other teeth need to come out. I'm also eager to see her bloodwork results as her coat has come in thick and wavy just over the past couple of weeks- to this point, she has never tested Cushings positive, but I hold my breath every time we do the test and wonder if this time will finally be the time when she comes back positive. 

We finally just bought a new truck though, so that takes some of the worry out of having to haul in. It will probably be spring before we buy a trailer (if we can even find one!) but M has offered use of hers, which is incredibly kind. 

Otherwise, just enjoying the beautiful fall weather and looking forward to being able to ride again at the end of the week!


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## egrogan

We dodged raindrops to go out for a lunchtime ride earlier today. It is oddly warm - maybe close to 70*F? - so I went in just a t-shirt, and the stupid flies made a late season reappearance. I had to get our fly swisher back out after not taking it along for weeks now. So annoying!

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so not sure how many leaves will be left. The views didn't disappoint today though, so I'm glad we were able to fit in a short ride.
























Not sure what sort of style she was rocking with the bangs here 🤣 She was very annoyed with me for taking too long to produce an apple at the end of the ride!


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## TrainedByMares

Yes, the flies and the gnats can all go away! They get in my eyes and ears while riding, usually at a critical time. 
Glad someone had a ride today!


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## egrogan

Big changes in the weather today…I could barely see the horses when I went out to feed:







Apparently after a rainy night Fizz tested out how the new footing is for a good roll. I guess I’ve always said I wanted a grey!! 😆


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## Knave

That looks magical.


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## egrogan

The storm yesterday blew out the flies and humidity, and left us with a perfect fall morning. The foliage is fading, but it's still pretty in spots. Our pasture is pretty much done for the year at this point, but at least it gives the girls some busy munching and I'm still being extremely conservative with feeding out hay. The cool breeze blowing this morning was a reminder of the cold weather that's coming.








This morning M and I had plans for a long adventure. We were planning on a new-to-us trail that would connect us to the Savage Forest bridle trails that we loved so much earlier in the summer. Even though the leaves are mostly down now, they still make that awesome crunch-crunch-crunch sound as you walk through them, and everything _smells _like fall now!








The first part of the ride was down a road that eventually goes from something fairly driveable








To a rocky Jeep trail. We didn't have much company, though there did seem to be dogs running loose in everyone's yard and we had to deal with several pairs of dogs charging out into the road to "greet" us- fortunately this time around, they all seemed to be fairly friendly, except notorious old Mac the German Shepherd, who waited until we were practically standing next to him to charge out of the bushes and send Fizz hopping sideways. 

We took a right hand turn off the Jeep road, and this is the part we'd never been on before. The trail was pretty soggy from all the rain yesterday, and we soon realized we were up on a high ridge looking down to the right to the brook that we would eventually loop around to cross through the bridle paths. The trail brought us out of the woods onto a dirt road, practically in someone's front yard.








That was interesting because they had a beautiful barn and one very talkative paint gelding who was as surprised to see us as we were to see him! Our horses were a little startled, but we pushed them forward and it was fine. This was great, particularly for Coalie, as this sort of thing used to really set him off. As we rounded the next bend in the road, we heard another horse whinnying to us. Soon enough, we saw another rider on a gorgeous, leggy chestnut who looked like they had just gotten done popping around a cross country course. Our horses froze in their tracks, not sure what to make of horses behind them and in front of them. The rider was heading back to the house we had just passed, and the paint was eager for his friend to get home. There was lots of neighing!

With all the excitement, we mistakenly missed the turn off the road onto the bridle path that we had been looking for. We knew we were close, but we had always come to this trail from the opposite direction, and since we were so focused on keeping the horses moving we had completely missed it! Not sure what the odds are that the one time in the entire ride we were distracted, our trail appeared, but we pretty quickly realized we had overshot the entrance when we got to the intersection with the next dirt road.








Turning around to backtrack was a little dicey, as Fizz wasn't sure if we were going home or chasing the other horse, but whatever the purpose, she wanted to do it FAST. And right in that moment, Coalie decided that the soft dirt road was actually a wonderful place to pause and take a long pee  Fizz managed to keep it together, and though she got a bit jiggy for a portion of the trail, pretty quickly we had a big water crossing to navigate, so that helped her focus. Coalie got a nice long drink, but unfortunately Fizz was a bit too amped up to want to stop. Still, she crossed calmly and politely.








We had lots of climbing as we left the brook behind, and at the top of the hill Fizz had forgotten there was anything to be jazzed up about and we were able to take advantage of the really nice footing do let the horses trot along. It was so nice to be in the woods and moving right along calmly on a loose rein, rather than holding on for dear life like last week 😉








We managed to startle grouse not once, but twice, and Fizz did show off some impressive levitation moves. I couldn't really blame her though, because you absolutely do not see them until you are right on top of them and they decide they have to make a run for it. I almost popped off once because I was just not expecting it, but fortunately I saved myself before I tumbled out of the saddle! That was as much excitement as we had though, the rest of the ride the horses were very chill and we enjoyed ourselves a lot. 13.5 miles total, which was just about perfect for such a nice day to be out riding. We lost our sunshine a little bit by the end of the ride, but fortunately the rain held off until this evening.









When I was feeding dinner tonight, I got a little sappy hanging out with Izzy. Yesterday I was reading an article in the Morgan Horse Magazine, interviewing a famous breeder. He mentioned that the woman who bred Izzy had been one of his role models for starting his own breeding program. That made me think about how much thought and hope and planning went into breeding a little horse like Izzy. Her sire was one of her breeder's favorite stallions, and while I never met him in person, apparently he was quite a presence. Izzy is looking old, but she still loves to be fussed over and brushed and told she's beautiful, and I think tonight I realized I need to take more time to do that with her more regularly. It's so easy to rush around and be focused on spending the time I do have getting Fizz out to ride, or obsessing over how Maggie is eating and moving, and I think sometimes Izzy is the one who gets a quick pat and not much else. I'm just glad they're at home and I get to see them everyday. I am going to make sure I'm taking more time to make sure she feels the love too...


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## gottatrot

Aww, so neat about Izzy. Old horses are such treasures. I can't believe so many people miss seeing that. 

The pictures are gorgeous! What a great adventure. You're so calm and cool about everything nowadays, with all the experience you've had. The spooks and almost falling off don't faze you.


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## carshon

Your thoughts about Izzy almost made me cry. I have a 23 yr old mare - my husbands retired riding mare. She loves attention and very rarely gets any. She is a horse that I have always thought loved to be ridden. She still will come up to you and beg for her halter to be put on. Her Navicular has progressed that she is barely pasture sound now - she still trots and canters but it is with a noticable limp. I really need to spend more time with her and thank her for giving my husband so much confidence when he was really learning to ride. Thank you for the reminder.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> You're so calm and cool about everything nowadays, with all the experience you've had. The spooks and almost falling off don't faze you.


Haha, not sure I'm _quite _that brave, but thank you. I do ride pretty defensively around the German Shepherd house and I wonder if half the time she wouldn't care as much about the dog if I wasn't anticipating it was going to be an issue. But I appreciate that she spooks and then goes on like it was no big deal, that helps!!



carshon said:


> I really need to spend more time with her and thank her for giving my husband so much confidence when he was really learning to ride. Thank you for the reminder.


It's hard to believe that I've had Izzy almost 10 years. Time really flies! Whether you get your first horse as a kid or later in your life, the first horse does seem pretty special. While I don't think Izzy has ever minded being retired, sometimes I do wish I could saddle her up and take her out on some of these great trails, which are so much more fun than what we used to have access to when she was in her prime. She'd be a blast!


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## Knave

Reading about Izzy made me feel guilty too. I give Cash and Queen lots of attention, and Zeus gets attention from my youngest and Lucy gets enough attention in her opinion from husband. That leaves Beamer and Bones.

With my oldest out, Bones has been rare to get any attention. He craves it too, and so he is sad. I rub his head on the way by, but it’s always in a hurry.

Beamer is our go to. If we need a horse to be 100 percent, he’s who goes. Kids learning to rope, or another horse being out, seem to be the only times he comes in anymore. He deserves better than that.

If we try to use my cousin (same age as my girls) to replace my oldest at work this fall Beamer will have to come out.


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## egrogan

This morning I finally had the chance to ride before work. Phew. It's been one of THOSE weeks, I've had 4 days of 6-hr trainings, and I am not very well equipped to sit in front of the computer for so long. I've worked virtually for over a decade, but before the Zoom boom of the pandemic, working virtually was generally done over the phone, so I could pace around, do chores, etc. while also on work meetings (I believe in multitasking even though of course I've read the research that says it can't be done 😉). Anyway, now that everyone is all Zoom, all the time, I find I have a much harder time concentrating. So this morning I really needed that ride after not being in the saddle all week.

With storms coming tonight, we were bound to have a brilliant morning sky, and it did not disappoint. The light on the ridge behind the field was just beautiful!








We headed off to the overlook, enjoying some warm breezes with the sunshine.








As we got towards the big climb, we both noticed some strange movement through the trees. We were about 1/4 mile away, but we were seeing the two black bulls along their fenceline near the road. But Fizz was SURE those were massive bears milling around waiting to eat us. I couldn't disagree with her that it was really creepy looking. Since I was in a time crunch, I turned around rather than coaxing her through it. However, she was absolutely sure the DEADLY BEARCOWS were going to follow us to eat us. So we did some excited circling and as she looked back at where they were, she let out some impressive blows and snorts in their direction. I couldn't help but laugh at her. Fortunately we survived. 

She was still very tense when we got home, so I kept riding in the yard, just doing some school figures to get her attention back and help her start breathing again. Not quite the ride I expected, but it was better than not going at all! Looking forward to "real" rides this weekend, though it is "Youth Hunting Weekend" (aka, give your kid a gun weekend...) so I will be staying far away from the woods!


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## TrainedByMares

Work does get in the way, doesn't it? Lol Less daylight is limiting oportunities for late-in-the-day after-work rides that I enjoyed back in the summer,too. ☹

Do you think Fizz will associate the spot you turned at with ' danger ' on future rides and will become difficult again?


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## egrogan

TrainedByMares said:


> Do you think Fizz will associate the spot you turned at with ' danger ' on future rides and will become difficult again?


I did briefly think about that, but my guess is no. This is such a regular ride for us that we've had far more "safe" rides through there than scary rides so it likely won't be a big deal. I think the issue was the weird surprise of seeing movement through the trees but not really being able to make out what it was. If she gets sticky though I'll just hop off and lead her through it. I would have done that if I had more time today, so I'll make sure that we do have enough time next time just in case.


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## MeditativeRider

Youth Hunting Weekend sounds terrible.

I hope there are no more lurking cows on future rides.

Sorry you have to Zoom all the time now. I find it draining too. And multitasking in when I do my best work, so I think that research is not right either. If I don't multitask while I work, then I am super distractible and can't focus. Multitasking occupies the distractible part of my brain so I can focus on my work.


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## egrogan

Well, it was another absolutely beautiful day in the neighborhood! I am thrilled to report that the DEADLY BEARCOWS were not lurking along the road today, so we were able to pass with no concerns. This hill along their field is our favorite to canter up, so it was nice to do that without fear of being mauled by bearcows!








Fizz was feeling good, with chilly temps and a good breeze rustling the leaves. 








We raced our shadow home, but it’s not clear who won 😉









Fizz made me laugh with her post-ride apple. Apparently walking while chewing is nearly impossible!




Meanwhile, back at the ranch…the old ladies were shamelessly sunbathing all day. I gave everyone a really good grooming, including my least favorite grooming task: conditioning, brushing out, and trimming tails. Next week’s forecast calls for days of cold rain and sleet, and I find banging their tails off around their hocks makes life easier-fewer icicles to pick out!


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## Knave

Sometimes I have an apple in my saddlebags and after I eat it I give it to Cash. Trying to get him to keep working while he chews that thing goes exactly the same way. Lol


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## gottatrot

Halla used to insist I waited until she completely finished her apple before she would walk anywhere. Amore could always eat anything on the go. She could eat, poop, scratch herself, even pee in spurts and keep on going.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> even pee in spurts and keep on going.


Now _that’s _talent!! 😆


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## egrogan

Today is incredibly dreary with cold rain, so I'm glad I have an update from yesterday, which was about as different as a day could be! It did, however, start off with the first frost and frozen buckets of the year:








M trailered over to the house so we could do a road ride down the overlook hill out into the next town. I hadn't taken Fizz down this hill in quite awhile (this is the hill she wiggles all around and tries to jump off to the side), so I was curious to see what she'd do following Coalie. I wouldn't say she was perfect, but she was much better than she typically is. We did have to go off to the side once because of a truck passing, and she was sticky to get back onto the road, but I'll take it.








I really should go this way more often, it's a beautiful place to ride!
















Once we turned off onto a side street we only rarely ride on, Fizz did have a little tantrum, where she tried diving to the right every time we saw a driveway. I really don't know what she was planning to do if I said "yes, let's ride down this driveway!" because she's never been to any of these houses before. Since this was also a downhill stretch, I took @phantomhorse13's advice-I hopped off and took off jogging with her, making her stick right with me. When we got to a good spot to get back on, she was much, much better and didn't try any more of the silliness, even as we dipped back downhill. This is the one part of riding her that I truly can't understand, but I just try to work through it and manage it the best I can.








The route we took was a "lollipop" that brought us back up the climb back to the overlook. Serendipitously, as we came over the top of the hill, we saw a young couple walking towards us with fancy cameras, taking pictures of the view. I asked if they'd mind taking a picture of us (just with my phone), and they were happy to. The woman must have been a horse person, because both Fizz and Coalie went up to her asking for pets on the nose, and she laughed and said "Morgans, huh?" I got a huge kick out of that!








When we got home, I turned the girls out in the new field while lovely husband and I did some work filling in some worn spots with new footing around the sheds. With this week of nasty rain, I wanted to get on top of any potential mud, and it was a nice bonus for them to have one more day of hanging out on the good grass. There's no shelters out in the new field, so they will be stuck in their regular turnout for a few days. Izzy especially needs to be on the grass as long as she can be, since the transition to full hay is tough for her with her bad teeth. Apparently Fizz found the sunshine to be more appealing than even the grass...








Unfortunately Maggie really shouldn't be getting much grass - especially not grass that had a frost the night before - so she sulked near the gate most of the afternoon with her grazing muzzle on. I felt bad about it, but last week I pushed the envelope a little bit letting her be out without the muzzle, and she was footsore right away, so I have to stay strong. Fortunately she stopped gimping around after just a day of being tender, but I can't mess around with letting her have unrestricted access this time of year. Sadly she just can't handle it. I'm just glad it wasn't any worse than it was.








My trusty sidekick "helped" with the footing, and then "helped" me get all my freshly cleaned blankets unpacked, being sure to leave pawprints from the stone dust on each clean blanket 🤦‍♀️


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## egrogan

Now THIS is the current state of things…forecast to be this way until Thursday. Yuck!








I am going to keep looking back at yesterday’s pictures


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## TrainedByMares

You need an indoor arena!


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## Knave

My current state of things has altered as well. We went shopping today in the big town, and coming back we helped pull some poor guy back onto the road.


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## phantomhorse13

I am glad you got some good saddle time in while you could. 

Are you expecting both coastal storms up there? I keep repeating at least it's not snow..


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares -I think an indoor is something I will probably only ever dream of!

@Knave-that’s a lot of white stuff already. Good karma to help someone out though. Funny story, last winter we got a big storm and looked out the window to see a guy driving down the road on a riding lawn mower, only to get hopelessly stuck in a snow bank. Lovely husband had the tractor out for plowing so went and got him unstuck. The guy was absolutely roaring drunk (as you probably are if you’re on a riding mower in a foot of snow!), so it seemed like an especially good thing to do!

@phantomhorse13-I think we do have two waves of storms coming through. Thursday is supposed to be decent but it’s not looking good next weekend. I’m on the fence about whether I’d rather it be snow-37*F and rain is more miserable than snow in my opinion!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> @phantomhorse13-I think we do have two waves of storms coming through. Thursday is supposed to be decent but it’s not looking good next weekend. I’m on the fence about whether I’d rather it be snow-37*F and rain is more miserable than snow in my opinion!


I agree. I don't mind that it rains here so much because it's usually at least around 50F. When the temperature gets down below 45 and it's also raining, that is so cold and miserable! 
We've been having stormy weather here too, the usual rain but high winds so I couldn't do anything with the horses yesterday. It's funny though in Oregon, you'll still see people out riding bikes in 50 MPH gusts. I think I'd get blown over - it was hard enough just standing up straight and keeping the manure on my pitchfork!


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## Knave

I was so excited it was raining here all morning, and kind of disappointed when it turned to snow. I like a big heavy deep snow, but not that messy snow that will leave some ice and bad footing. We are bringing cows off the mountain this weekend, so I hope the footing is better by then, and that it’s not miserable cold.


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## bsms

I love me some snow..._Looking thru the window_. Or looking in pictures here. Just don't ask me to go out and slog thru the snow to feed the horses, or chase cows or sheep or....anything. I spent the winter of 79-80 working outdoors in the mountains in the Cache National Forest. Very cold, very wet and I netted $18.90/day for my manual labor. Convinced me I wanted a job that didn't require me to work outside all winter.....


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## egrogan

The nasty weather has cleared out...for now. I had a short window this morning to get out for a ride before work. Unfortunately as we were turning out of the yard, we fell in behind guys from the town using one of those large tractors with the "arm" attachment hacking down the brush on the side of the road. It was really noisy, and they were moving at a slow pace, so I didn't want to follow them the whole way out to the overlook. Instead, we turned off down our neighbor's logging road.








Admittedly, this is not Fizz's favorite place to ride. This was the scene of the bucking that put me on the ground a few weeks ago. I decided the focus of the ride would just be to stay calm and quiet. When we got to nice patches of green grass or clover, I stopped and let her nibble. When she walked without tension, I gave her lots of pats. Didn't even bother moving out of the walk, as I just wanted to keep things as quiet as could be.








Happy to say that worked really well! It was an uneventful, if short, ride.








On a really busy morning when I don't have a lot of time to deal with "issues," I'll take quiet and uneventful with no complaints!


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## PoptartShop

Awww, it sounds like a lovely ride.  I'm sure Fizz loves all the pats/praise too! So cute!! It really looks like fall there...so many leaves!  
The leaves are finally starting to change colors here!


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## bsms

I think horses benefit from sometimes going out and just keeping things as relaxed as possible. They need some "This is easy" time with us. And in any case, this guy needs some rides that focus on "We can do this easy"...because not all rides are like that and I don't want to go back to the days when my stomach would tie itself in knots in anticipation of trouble!


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## egrogan

M and I missed our ride this morning because of a torrential downpour that's been going since yesterday. Made me think we haven't actually missed too many Sunday rides this year, despite how wet it's been the whole riding season. Still, it's a bummer to miss it at this point in the year. Only so many more good riding weekends left! Poor horses look absolutely miserable outside- but I keep telling myself they could stand in their sheds if they wanted to, and they are choosing to be out in the rain.

I did manage to take a short ride Friday afternoon. I'm having a little issue though. Sort of a long story, but a couple of weeks ago in a neighboring town, a young girl (friend of a friend) and her horse were hit by a driver, and the horse was killed. The rider was on the shoulder, and the driver left the road, took out a mailbox, and struck the horse, who died where he was hit. The rider was ok. This week the police released the results of the investigation, concluding that the driver didn't do anything wrong, but had low visibility given the curve in the road and sun in his eyes (there is a lot of controversy because the driver is well known in the community and there's a sense that the PD is protecting him). This has really freaked me out, and the last few rides I've taken I've really tensed up whenever I hear a car coming towards us. Fizz seems confused about why I'm upset, with her ears flicking back and forth almost constantly trying to figure it out.

I know if I don't get my emotions under control I'm asking for her to start getting freaked out too. I'm honestly not sure why this has bothered me so much, but also not sure how to let it go while I'm riding. I guess it might just take some time to stop anticipating something bad.

Anyway, Friday was a lovely day before all this rain started.

























Horses managed to enjoy some pasture time and sunshine in anticipation of the rain on its way:


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## knightrider

@egrogan, many years ago, my horse was hit by a car and killed (no rider on him). He was my dream horse. I bought him as an unbroken 2 year old, trained him completely by myself, was winning at all kinds of horseshows, foxhunting every Sunday, just a fabulous guy. I had had no lessons, no help, only books to read about training him. I was so so so so proud of him. Then, in a split second, he was dead.

It took me six months to start being able to function properly in the world. I kept thinking each time that I got in the car, I was going to be killed. Every foxhunt, I felt like I was going to be in an accident. I had this heavy feeling of dread hanging over me that I could not shake. If this cataclysmic horrible thing could happen, then that meant other cataclysmic horrible things were going to happen. With time, it slowly got better and better. It was pretty grim. I think what you are dealing with is pretty normal after learning about something so awful.


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## TrainedByMares

@knightrider I have read some of your stories and you have had some sharp ups and downs.That would have been a tough loss indeed. I am glad you made it through and are carrying on. 

@egrogan that is a sad, unfortunate story. Understandably, you are shaken. That will always be in the back of your mind when you ride on roads. The road I ride on has some busier times and I avoid those times just for that reason. Here's something to distract you from negative thoughts: we might be getting an English Shepherd puppy! We contacted a breeder in VA who just had a litter of pups and we submitted an application!! They emailed back and said we sounded like a good home.We are waiting to hear some good news! We had done our research and after thinking it over, decided that an English Shepherd would be a good choice!


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## egrogan

Oh my goodness @TrainedByMares ! That makes me so happy. Please keep us posted on the puppy.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, your story about losing that good horse makes me sad


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## Knave

It made me sad too. I am sorry you are struggling with this fear. To be honest I am always afraid of riding on paved roads. It’s so slick for a horse to begin with, and we have semis hauling hay that don’t slow down. Some of them are great of course, but like anything else some just don’t care or pay attention.

Little girl has taken to riding Zeus on the road a lot. I kind of hate it, but if anyone will keep her safe it’s that horse.

I had a bad runaway down our street once. My mare was such an athlete that she didn’t fall. Plus the asphalt was hot and fairly fresh, so she left hoof prints for a half mile down the road. I think the softness saved us. I always remember my father telling me that he and his brother were riding and his brother’s colt panicked and ran away towards the highway. No one was coming, but he bailed off before the horse hit the road, and dad was confused. Obviously it hurts to bail from a horse at a dead run.

He trotted up and right as he asked his brother why the horse hit the asphalt and flipped. That was why. The story stuck with me, and I’ve always been very mindful on paved roads.

Maybe this story is sticking with you because it will teach you something. Being mindful of the traffic, which I’m sure you were already, might save a life. Maybe you writing the story on here will save someone by making them mindful of the traffic.

I hope you get to a point where it is no longer a phobia though. I have no idea how to break the cycle of phobias. Yet, you can pay attention and know you will bail your horse off a road if necessary. I’m sure Fizz would try her best.


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## carshon

@egrogan I feel for you. Many years ago my cousin and 2 friends were riding and this happened to them. Her friends horse was hit and killed on the spot. The friend (Jenny) had some bruising. Nothing was done to the driver even though IL state law says horses have the right of way. My cousin cried almost every time she got on her horse for months afterward and really never got over her fear of riding on the road. It shook our parents up enough that my sisters were banned from road riding for awhile - but I live in a rural farming area so there are no woods to ride in and I was in my teens then so my parents releted but the fear was always there. 

I am sorry this happened and has affected you - I think it would affect all of us. And the horses can sense our hesitation. Just letting you know - you are not over reacting, those kind of stories are hard to hear and put out of our minds when we are on our own horses.


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone for your replies and sharing your own stories. I am glad that Fizz and I have so many miles under us at this point as I do trust her, and I know she's sensible and responsive and going to take care of us whenever possible. As you have probably noticed in some of our photos, I am not shy at all about looking ridiculous in our orange hi viz gear, and I've had random drivers stop me to thank me for being so visible, so that's comforting too. I try to avoid riding at dusk, and don't ride when it's foggy or rainy. Fortunately there's really not a lot of heavy traffic here, even in the spots where we cross the paved roads, and given my current hesitation I've actually been handwalking across the paved roads, at least for now.

But if we don't ride on the roads, we pretty literally can't get anywhere except a few loops around our pasture, so it will remain a part of our routine. I know there's no 100% safe when it comes to horses, traffic or not, so I'm sure I'll be able to put this fear in its proper place over time. I'm sort of glad this has happened at the end of the season, rather than the beginning, because our riding is slowing down and in a month or so will be paused until spring anyway.

At any rate, the weather this week is finally looking better, and there are at least a couple of days mid-week when work is not too busy. We'll keep things easy for now so I don't rub off on Fizz.

Thank you again for the encouragement!


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## Knave

I wouldn’t want to ride in the same place all the time either. If I had to ride roads I would! I just have so many other options luckily.

I think you’ve done an excellent job and that you will feel better come spring.


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## bsms

FWIW, Mia took a while to learn about roads. Have one bad memory of her spinning circles on the paved road while a car came at us doing 60 mph...and her spinning got us just far enough away not to be hit by the guy who never did slow down. But once she learned, she had LEARNED. 

The VAST majority of drivers here go out of their way to be good to horses. However, once in our neighborhood, I heard a car coming behind us. Didn't worry because we were on the far side of the road. But that [expletive] must have wanted to play chicken. Just as he got to us from behind, Mia hopped about 18 inches sideways and the car missed my leg by inches. And spooky Mia? Didn't blink an eye. After all, she KNEW about cars!

Now...a Palo Verde tree breaking out in yellow blossoms? SCARY! But cars trying to sideswipe us? Yawn. After all, SHE saw him coming...  ...And so much for always trusting your rider to keep you safe. Sigh. 🙄


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## gottatrot

I was on a horse once that spooked when a car came around a corner by backing rapidly toward the car. It was a big truck, lifted up on tires, and thankfully the driver understood that if my horse connected with his truck it would make a big dent. He accelerated and actually swerved off into the ditch to avoid us, which he was able to do with the four wheel drive. We started on one shoulder when the car appeared, and had backed all the way into the far lane by the time the truck was around us. That same horse almost backed me off a cliff another time, moving so fast I barely had time to react. It's a reason why I dislike it when people punish horses by backing them fast. You don't want them to have that as a "go to" move when startled or upset.

A driver on the beach once came racing toward us and began doing cookies that sprayed sand at the horses. My issue is that I go from surviving the situation to feeling homicidal very quickly, so it's a good thing some people are in a car and can get away.

I've ridden around vehicles a lot, and I have to say people have done things on the ground that I felt threatened my safety on a horse at least as often as they have in a car (with dogs, umbrellas, kites, drones). 99% of the time people are great and helpful, and 1% of the time people are idiots. It's natural to feel apprehensive, and good to have a defensive mind set. Not letting it affect your horse, if possible.


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## Knave

I hate that people are that way @gottatrot. They don’t seem that way here, but I think I’m such a rural area people have a general respect for livestock and horses.

Today Bones spooked and I almost came off him! lol. I don’t know how I managed to stay on. He’s only ever made me think he had me once before.


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## TrainedByMares

This is Amish country so most drivers assume the horse will not spook if they even think about it at all. On my little dead end road, I have encountered all kinds,from people who crawl past to those that don't pay any mind to us.


The roads are dangerous for driving on ,too. I suppose you have to pick as safe a time and place as you can and then just ride...defensively of course.


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## bsms

I hate a backing horse. Don't know if it will work with anyone else's backing horse, but when Mia did it, a hard pull on one rein would spin her around and break the backing. Something to try at least, 'cuz is stinks when you have to look backwards to see where you are going! Trooper actually does it when he wants to go home. Starts backing. And again, a hard pull to one side, then a bunch of 90 degree turns, and he gets discombobulated and I can start moving forward again.


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## gottatrot

bsms said:


> I hate a backing horse. Don't know if it will work with anyone else's backing horse, but when Mia did it, a hard pull on one rein would spin her around and break the backing. Something to try at least, 'cuz is stinks when you have to look backwards to see where you are going! Trooper actually does it when he wants to go home. Starts backing. And again, a hard pull to one side, then a bunch of 90 degree turns, and he gets discombobulated and I can start moving forward again.


I agree with turning the horse that is backing with you. When I was on that particular horse backing toward the truck, it was in the days when I thought horses were basically "programmed" and a trained horse must respond to my cues if I was applying them correctly. So I tried applying the forward cues harder. Of course horses are not robots, and if the horse is scared or confused, applying any cue harder is just likely to make them go faster in a direction you don't want to go! 

Nowadays if a horse starts backing, I try to break them out of it by doing something else. Same with going sideways, etc. The only problem is if you're on a very narrow spot or if the footing is bad and you don't want to pull the horse off balance. Then it gets kind of tricky.


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## egrogan

Lots of good discussion here! I think Fizz is more likely to spook on the road when there's no traffic, she seems to intuit that when a car is coming, it's time to pay attention and tune in. We typically hug the side of the road as far over as we can, if there's a grassy verge or shoulder we'll move off the road; sometimes the ditches are steep or covered in enough underbrush you can't really tell if you're going to drop off sharply so I try to avoid stepping off the road into something where I can't really see the bottom. I can count on one hand the number of times we've been on the road and cars are coming towards us from both directions, but in those rare instances I think we were able to get off the road and into the woods or onto a lawn. Most of our roads, it's challenging to have two cars pass each other because the roads are so narrow, let alone throw a horse into the mix!

Today was a bit of return to normalcy. We had three trucks pass us on our ride, and we just kept moving along as the traffic went around us. The last couple of weeks, I've been moving us fully off to the side and stopping/standing until the car passed. But today we just kept riding right along, so that felt good.

We must have still had some butterflies in our collective stomach, as we had a very dramatic series of spooks and leaps turning the corner to go to the beaver pond, because you know...it looked...different...with all the leaves off the trees now. But we survived 

This was the first really chilly ride we've been on so far- it was only in the 30s and the first time my toes were really cold while I was tacking up. As soon as I get riding though, the furnace turns on.








Definitely had snowy, wintery looking skies though. We did get a few flurries as we were untacking, but that stopped pretty quickly. Temps are going down below freezing overnight this week. Definitely feels like the season is turning.








In other news, I actually just got some updates on Izzy's bloodwork from a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, it's now official that she has Cushings. Her ACTH values were up to 65 (reference range on the Cornell test is 2-35, even this time of year). Her insulin/glucose were fine, so no IR to work around. It's a sad reality to accept, but I'm really not at all surprised. This year her coat really does look different, in terms of being thick and wavy sooner than usual. The last couple of weeks I've been battling thrush with her and not making any progress. And her body just has "the look." So we'll get her started on the Prascend- vet wants her doing just 1/2 pill for now, and we'll retest right around the holidays to see if that will be the right dose going forward.. I need to get her into the clinic to deal with a couple of teeth issues too, so I will have to figure out those logistics. It does make me sad to see my buddy not feeling great, but in some ways I'm actually a little excited to see if the pill helps her feel better and gives her some more good years. Hard to believe she'll be 28 this March. She definitely deserves to feel as good as she can as long as she can. Here she was with Fizz yesterday, excited to get taken out to the new field. She's happiest on grass.








Weirdly, first thing this morning I had this FB memory pop up- we both look like kids here, this was almost 10 years ago! I don't know why I gave her such dorky bangs, but she doesn't look very impressed 🤣









Oh, and Maggie's ACTH and insulin levels were still spot on. It's encouraging the medicine is working so well to control her issues, so we'll keep doing what we're doing to keep her in the "normal" range.


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## carshon

I think Izzy looks great!


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## egrogan

Thank you @carshon.

First pill went down the hatch with no issues. Luckily she has always thought pills are candy-even when she was taking 100+ antibiotics a day for Lyme treatment.


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## gottatrot

Great pics! Too bad about Izzy, but it's good you can start treating her. I hope it will help the thrush. It always seemed strange to me how the ability to fight thrush is affected by Cushing's. Even though it seems like the outer frog and sole are somewhat separated from the blood supply and etc, horses lose their ability to fight off infection in the hooves with Cushing's. Amore's thrush issues improved so much with the Prascend, but I still had to keep them clean and treat any crack or groove that had muck in it or she'd start working on thrush or WLD again. I think without treatment it would have just taken over her hooves and rotted them.


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## egrogan

The farrier was here at the beginning of the week and somewhat concerned with the deep cracks Izzy has running up between her heel bulbs. Hr had me start using the “Tomorrow” cow mastitis product to see if we can get them under control. I was betting with him that the Cushings results would be positive because I’d never seen her feet do this. It’s been wet, yes, but the horses seem to hang out on the dry lot most of the night and when it’s raining, and there’s very little mud, so her frogs shouldn’t be in as rough shape as they are. It’s encouraging to hear that Amore’s thrush responded well to starting the Prascend.


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## Kalraii

OK I've been desperately trying to catch up but your journal is very long and time is lacking ahah. I have a few questions then coz I'm really eager to know and a quick run down would be greatly appreciated! 


how old is Izzy, why/how did you come by her and what led to you deciding to retire her?
same with Maggie 
does your husband ride ever? (I need to inspire my partner!)

All are so beautiful and your comment above about Izzy really pushed me as well. I wanted a 3rd horse but I just wouldn't have the time I think.


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## egrogan

Kalraii said:


> OK I've been desperately trying to catch up but your journal is very long and time is lacking ahah.


Oh my goodness, I don't know how much backwards reading you're doing but that's very sweet, though I can also see how it would be overwhelming! I never expected people would actually read this when I started, I just wanted a place to record my thoughts as I tried to get up the confidence to ride outside the arena. And over time, I guess I just kept writing. At one point the HF people told me they though they might have to close the journal because it was getting too long, but I really like having it all in one place.

OK, so on to the questions! 


> how old is Izzy, why/how did you come by her and what led to you deciding to retire her?


Izzy will be 28 on March 3rd. I have known her for 12ish years now, and bought her in 2012. She has quite an interesting history. She was bred to be a very fancy show Morgan, and was campaigned as a 2 and 3 year old show horse. She was even owned by the President of the American Morgan Horse Association for a time, I'm assuming because her sire was a World Champion and she was bred by a premier breeder. I don't know the story, but it's clear from her show record that she didn't make it in that world, and she was sold to a family in my state who kept her as a family horse. She taught a lot of little kids to ride.

When she was in her mid-teens, her kids had all grown up, and the family donated her to a therapeutic riding program. I had just begun volunteering at that program, after finishing graduate school and finally having a grown up job that gave me enough extra money to get back into regular riding lessons (I had ridden off and on as a kid, never competed, and only rode sporadically as an adult). She was a bit of a firecracker when she came to the therapy barn- to be honest, I'm not sure why they even accepted her donation. She would have been a great Pony Club/children's hunter, and to this day still has a wonderful disposition around children, but she's always been spunky and not slow/steady enough (in my opinion) to really do therapy rides. This is one of the first times I saw her, and immediately found her striking (not me riding):








Because she wasn't getting used much in the therapy program, the barn began using her in able bodied riding lessons and kids camps. I started riding her in my lessons, and she fit like a glove. She was the perfect size, challenging but mostly agreeable. We seemed to click. The head instructor seemed to notice this too, and asked if I'd like to have her on a free lease. Since she wasn't being used much in lessons, she was starting to get a little too hot and needed more regular work than the barn staff could give her. So I started riding her a few times a week outside of my lessons. This was back in 2011/2012.

At about that same time, I got a nice promotion at work, and felt secure enough financially that I was ready to take the plunge to buy my first horse. The therapy program was shifting horses out that were not suitable for the therapy lessons, and Izzy was on their "sell" list since she wasn't earning her place. They offered her to me before listing her publicly for sale. A lot of people, here and in real life, tried to talk me out of buying her- at that point I was focusing on intro dressage type lessons, thinking maybe it could be fun to try a little showing locally, and just dabbling in hacking out (this journal starts right around the time I bought her as I started realizing how much fun it was to trail ride). I went and test rode a bunch of sale horses, and none of them made me feel as comfortable and confident as Izzy did. So I decided to say yes to the sale offer, and she became mine in 2012, when she was 18 years old.

There were enough stalls at the therapy program that I kept her boarded there for several more years, kept riding her in lessons but found a nice group of women that I trail rode with regularly. At some point (maybe 2016ish?), the land where we rode was sold, and no longer open to riders. Overnight, we had almost nowhere to ride except around the paddocks. I decided I'd start looking for a new boarding barn, and while it was sad to move, we ended up in another great place. I got more serious about the dressage lessons again, as the owner of the new barn was a fantastic instructor, and also continued to enjoy hacking out as the barn had good trails and quiet roads to ride in.

In mid-2017, she just wasn't acting right. She started being spooky and resistant riding away from the barn, which was very unlike her. We did some vetting, and she ended up being diagnosed with Lyme disease. She had a pretty high count on the bloodwork, so we treated her aggressively with both IV and oral antibiotics. She was in her mid-20s at that point, and while the treatment was technically successful in that it improved her bloodwork, she lost a ton of topline and we really struggled to put that muscle back on. I did ride her lightly afterwards, but she was less enthusiastic than she had been. It turned out she seemed to really like being semi-retired, and that was ok with me. The barn owner had enough room for me to keep Izzy there in retirement and add another horse, which is how Fizz ended up in my life. But that's a different story 😉



> same with Maggie


Maggie came to us after I moved the horses home from boarding to live at home. Izzy was never ok as an "only horse," so with my plans to do endurance with Fizz, I knew we needed a companion for Izzy while we were out on training rides or overnight at competitions. I barely had enough time to ride Fizz as much as I wanted, so I wanted another retiree rather than a horse I'd need to get ridden. In a happy twist, our own @phantomhorse13 knew I was looking for a companion, and when she was at an endurance ride in my area, she happened to talk to a local young woman who had just finished college and was looking for a retirement home for her mare. This young woman was hoping to find a way to keep her older endurance mare, but a situation that didn't involve expensive board while she started her first post-college job in a large city. Phantomhorse put us in touch, and it ended up being a perfect match. Maggie was 20 and had been born and raised in a neighboring town, and she was ready to transition out of a competitive career. She was still perfectly sound and rideable, and I did ride her a little when she first came, but I didn't have a saddle that fit and she bucked bareback, so that was a bit of a turnoff  Her owner was ok with the idea of her moving into full retirement, so there was no pressure to keep her riding fit (though of course for her weight, it would have probably been better if I could have ridden her more...Sigh.). Technically she is still owned by the young woman, and here as a "forever free lease." For all intents and purposes, I take care of everything as though she was my horse. If we had a medical catastrophe or had to make decisions about a large vet bill, her owner and I would decide what to do together. Her owner comes to visit every few months when she's back in town, and we stay in touch via texts and social media. Here is Maggie back during her endurance days with her owner (back left of the photo):











> does your husband ride ever? (I need to inspire my partner!)


He took some lessons around the time we got married because we went to Ireland on our honeymoon and did a 3-day trekking trip in the Ring of Kerry. But that's pretty much the only time he's ridden. He is a ton of help around the farm and the horses adore him, but riding is not interesting to him, which is ok with me. Fizz thinks he's the best person she's ever met 








Phew...that's probably way more than you wanted to know, but it was a fun trip down memory lane!


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## Knave

Wow! I never knew all that about Izzy. What a cool story!!


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## TrainedByMares

A very nice summary to bring us up to speed on all your horses. 

I was hoping to learn the secret to convincing a spouse or SO to becoming a rider . Lol


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## Kalraii

No it was perfect I love it thanks for taking the time to write it all  Now I feel I can make better sense of everything coz I love reading journals on here whenever I can. I don't always comment as I read on my phone and haven't logged in on it... just something I keep forgetting! And shame about convincing the husband eh but can't have everything. He's got a lot of girls though!


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## gottatrot

My husband rarely rides also, but that is partially my fault for never having a suitable beginner horse. When we go on vacations, he rides with me because they always have horses that are suitable for him. I can't imagine him being up for a three day trekking trip though, so your husband is intrepid!


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## MeditativeRider

That was great! I have tried to read back through your journal another time, but I just don't have the time, so it is nice to know all the back story on two of your horses now.


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## knightrider

Ah ha! I was there from the start and have loved following your journey. It pleases me very much when people try to do things they are not sure they can do . . . and succeed! Such a great story. I always clicked on your journal when I saw a new entry.


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## carshon

I have followed from the start as well and have enjoyed every triumph and cried at every set back. @egrogan journey has been an inspiration to me when I had my own self doubts when my gelding passed and I got a new horse. It does not hurt that her pictures and captions are wonderful!


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## egrogan

@knightrider and @carshon, now you’re making me blush. I met so many wonderful people through the journal, and when I look back to the beginning I see so many names of people I wish were still here posting. When I first started this I didn’t say much outside the journal, so this is really how I got to know other HF people, some that I’ve gone on to meet in person.

And I am glad I have an outlet for the bazillion horsey pictures I have on my phone. My lovely husband has stopped responding to most of the ones I text him 🤣

It has been so beautiful here all week. The light in the late afternoon has been just spectacular. I’m really not ready for the clocks to change though.








This morning I had a little more time than usual, so we went past the overlook down the difficult hill. As we were beginning to head down the hill, Gus the farm dog who lives at the bottom popped out of the shrubs on the side of the road. He’s not mean, but he’s a heeler and he would have been literally on our heels the whole way down, which is not helpful. I hopped off and we started jogging down, leaving him nosing around the bushes. She tried dancing into the ditch but I just gave her a quick NO and kept going. I got back on at the bottom and on we went. Gus was nowhere to be seen later in the ride when we came back past his farm on the way home.








She felt a little sucked back for this portion of the ride, which is not a feeling I enjoy as she feels like she could pretty easily spin for home at the drop of a hat. I just kept my leg on and pushed her forward as best I could, which had us trotting sideways at times. But mostly we went forward…








Finally she took a deep breath and relaxed, and her walk was loose and swinging again. We stopped for some grass before we turned around for home.








She was much more relaxed heading home (surprise surprise) so we trotted and cantered up the big hills. She was breathing hard before too long and I could smell that she was sweaty under her rump rug.

We were out riding during senior citizen driving hours, so our traffic was pretty tame. One very sweet old couple was coming towards us, carefully pulling off to the side and stopping to let us go by. When we passed and waved thank you, they had huge smiles on their faces and were waving back at us enthusiastically. Some people still do like to see horses on the road ❤ The mailman, on the other hand, is the worst. Given the time I’ve been riding with my new work schedule, he often passes us and is always going way too fast. Today we were next to him when he was putting mail in a box and I think he slammed it extra hard to make as much noise as possible 

Even though the second half of the ride was really nice, I still felt like she was feeling a little funny through her back. Stiff maybe. I was very surprised that when we got home and I got her untacked, I found she was missing a hind boot! No idea when or how that happened as we were on the road the entire time. She must have walked out of it at some point since the ones she was wearing are borderline too big after a fresh trim. I had forgotten to switch back to Hero’s boots after the farrier was here last week 🤦🏼‍♀️ At any rate, her foot seemed fine even after being on the gravel fully barefoot, so either she was moving a little sensitive without it or she was just feeling wonky being uneven with only three on.

I had to get myself back in front of the computer so I didn’t have a lot of time to go out looking for it, but I quickly hopped in the car and headed out the way we’d ridden to see if I could spot it in the road. Because the road had been frozen when we started and warmed up as we rode, her footprints were very easy to see.








(nice over track by the way, the missing boot was on the right hind)
Following the footprints, I realized it had come off very early in the ride, but it seemed to have vanished into thin air. It definitely wasn’t in the road, and didn’t seem to be hiding in the leaves off to the side. Lovely husband even took Hugh out for a walk along the same route later in the day to look and didn’t see it while on foot. So I have no idea where it went. Maybe someone picked it up, or maybe an animal brought it home as a new toy for their kids. It was a pretty old one, so not the end of the world, but still frustrating.


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## MeditativeRider

Sorry you lost a hoof boot. I imagine a dog would love it if they found it.

I love reading your journal. You have such lovely places to ride and pictures.

My husband does not ride horses either. He is into gravel biking. He always says I should just buy a bike, though he does tolerate me having riding lessons. I think I would only be allowed to buy a horse if we got an electric car first (he really dislikes the idea of a lot of driving to care for and ride a horse regularly if I owned one).


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## Knave

That is frustrating!!

Your first picture is stunning too.


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## egrogan

Pandemonium here earlier today turning the horses out in the new field. Typically I take all three across the street together and it’s very straightforward. Everyone knows where to line up and how to walk nicely together. Today it was like they had lost their marbles. Maggie was trying to bite Izzy on the butt through the muzzle, Izzy was trying to run over me, and Fizz opportunistically wanted to stop and graze on the lawn while the other two were fussing. I definitely would have been expelled from Pony Club if anyone had witnessed this chaos 😬

Lovely husband was outside so I called him over to help us. He grabbed Fizz and got her into the pasture; she immediately headed out to graze. Izzy was still prancing around next to me so I asked him to grab Maggie too and let her loose. My attention was on Izzy while I did some basic groundwork to try to get her brain settled, but I looked over my shoulder and told him to just unclip the lead to let Maggie go. I didn’t quite process that the gate was still wide open, and as soon as he took the lead off she wheeled around and charged back up the hill and out the gate, blowing past Izzy and I and sprinting up the road. She did a lap around the house and headed back for their regular turnout. I hustled Izzy into the field-CLOSED THE GATE-and headed across the roads to intercept Maggie. Izzy was running around screaming behind me but Maggie did respond to “woah” and “easy” and I caught her with no issues. Got her into the field finally, while Izzy continued to run around snorting and blowing and flagging her tail.




Geez!!! 🙄 There was zero reason for that level of excitement!

I think Izzy is going to be one of those horses that does have some issues with transitioning onto Prascend, but not in the typical way. She’s not off her feed or showing the “veil,” but rather one of the smaller group that’s having some diarrhea and going a little wild. Vet had initially contemplated starting with just 1/4 pill vs 1/2 but didn’t want to make me deal with cutting them that small. I’m just going to go ahead and go back to only 1/4 for the next few days and then see if we can go back to 1/2 from there. Hope that will level her out a little.


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## gottatrot

She is so cute running around though!!

That's exactly what my husband would do. If I told him to turn the horses loose and didn't notice the gate was open, he would trust that I always know what I'm doing with horses and would not question it. It's nice they're so trusting, but...


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## knightrider

Wow! Izzy was really a ball of fire! And the other two just ignored her and started enjoying their new pasture.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> And the other two just ignored her and started enjoying their new pasture.


Haha, yes! Fizz got triple bonus points for ignoring all the fireworks, including her boss mare escaping through the open gate while Izzy spazzed out, and just keeping her head buried in the grass. *Nothing to see here...nothing to see at all" 🤣

We had a fabulous ride with M this morning, although the first mile or so Fizz was a little sucked back and tense on the way to the meeting spot. She was very distracted by something off in the woods, but I think probably it's just that almost every time we ride, things look different as the leaves continue to fall.








As we got close to the paved road, I did hop off and walk her. We were passing the house that has 2 horses and 2 mini donks in a pasture right up along the road, and just as we approached their fenceline, two flatbed trucks packed high with hay came up the road towards us. You can sort of tell how narrow the road is, really no way for two stuffed flatbeds to pass us. Especially not with 4 running, bucking equines adding some fireworks to our right. So I hopped off and waited in a driveway until the trucks passed. At the bottom of our hill, just on the other side of the paved road, the family that lives on the corner was having a huge party in their yard. They had a trailer-sized smoker fired up, kids and dogs running in the yard and road, and a table saw with someone doing some sort of construction project just for good measure. Geez. Not much way to desensitize a horse to _that _kind of experience! 😉 But handwalking calmly passed it all got the job done with no issues and I hopped back on to meet M.

We headed off to the tree farm and its logging road loop, a ~10 mile ride we haven't done since the beginning of the summer. Deer season gets going next weekend through Thanksgiving, so we wanted to have at least one more good ride in the woods before we won't be able to get back there for awhile. We really couldn't have asked for a more beautiful fall day. We didn't see anyone at all on the road or in the woods. The ground is pretty wet in a lot of places, but there's good drainage along this main loop so the footing was actually really great. We were able to let the horses have fun with long trots and canters up the hilly parts, and walking elsewhere. They actually got really sweated up; the day started below freezing but it didn't take long for the sun to warm things up, even in the woods. They are both really wooly already, so it was warm for them.
















This was one of those rides that was so nice, that it felt like we were heading for home way too soon. We had to go through the same excitement of the yard party again on the way home, as the route was a "lollipop." There were even more people and trucks and ATVs motoring around when we went through the 2nd time. I hopped off again and she gave the table saw a wide eyed look but otherwise stuck right with me and walked along nicely. I got back on after crossing the paved road and we walked on a loose rein the last 1.5 miles, trying to help her cool down.

Despite the long walk, she was still itchy and sweaty when I pulled her tack. I barely had her bridle off before she beelined to a good rolling spot. Hadn't had a chance to take the boots off yet. But she looked like she enjoyed it quite a bit!


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## TrainedByMares

That last one is a great picture, it brought a smile to my face!😄 I just finished riding Jesse and she did the same thing.


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## Kalraii

I'm sorry but last one laughed my butt off with her boots still on - like getting home in uniform and grabbing the wine first!


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## Knave

I forgot, and I planned on remembering, but I had a dream about you last night. I was surprised we lived close together, and I rode to your house to go for a ride with you. Something important happened, that I wanted to tell you, and now I can’t remember!


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## egrogan

@Knave , it would be so fun if we were neighbors and you came to ride!


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## knightrider

Yes! And I want to be a neighbor and ride too. We need @SueC 's tardis. Will a horse fit in a phone booth?


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## gottatrot

I thought I was the only one who had dreams about visiting HF members.


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## Knave

It would be so fun to all ride together @gottatrot @knightrider and Egrogan!!


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## egrogan

Yesterday I had to ride in the afternoon, rather than the morning. It's a little disconcerting that 2pm is basically _dusk_ now. I really hate daylight saving time!








We met some interesting traffic on our ride. Can you make out the little speck in the distance? Fizz sees, and probably hears, them before I do:








It was our "through the woods neighbor" S out on a driving lesson with her horse Ricky. I rode Fizz with Ricky once last year when S had him under saddle, and Fizz has seen him drive by the house. But we'd never come across them while out on a ride. I wasn't sure how she'd react.








Oh, and you can't forget Ruger the Jack Russell, who goes everywhere S goes 🤣 Fizz tensed up as the carriage came towards us, but we just stopped and stood while I talked with S. They had just come up the big hill, so Ricky was pretty warm and didn't mind having a minute to stand still. I decided we'd turn around and follow the carriage for a bit, which was good. Fizz didn't seem too worried about that, but she did get a little upset with S turned left at the intersection down her road, and we turned right down ours.








We had a couple of worried circles while we waited for them to disappear down the road, and then we headed towards home.








She stayed a little tense but the good thing was I could feel her relax as I tried different kinds of breathing and (bad) singing. I'm still trying to figure out the best approach to help when she gets "up" and jiggy, but I think I've gotten closer to understanding how to sit in the saddle, and most importantly breath, to help her relax.








It's nice to meet up with weird things when we're out on a familiar ride, if only because I think being in a familiar place helps _me _stay calmer, which of course helps her. I'd call it a successful encounter!


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## Knave

What a fun person to run into though! I imagine it feeling old timey. You on your horse stopping to visit with her on her cart.


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## TrainedByMares

Here is a confession... when Nicki is ' up and jiggy' ,maybe 'prancey' is more accurate and I am sitting deep and balanced and saying "take it easy", sometimes I will enter into a poor rendition of the eagles song ,"take it easy". It only lasts for a couple verses and it never works . I would be totally embarassed if anyone heard and saw us. I'm not a fan of their music but I did stand on a corner in Winslow,Arizona once


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## Knave

I used to get nervous about General jigging. I have no idea why, as I’ve ridden many jigging horses. I just didn’t like when he was up, as the horse was bred to buck. Finally one day I decided to accept it. If he wanted to jig I would make him (I had trained this horse up enough he could dance like a dressage performer.).

So, when it didn’t bother me he wanted to stop, and I asked him to dance. You know, I did that every time when he got too jiggy after that, and it stopped bothering me and he stopped doing it. He wasn’t an overly ambitious horse, so he didn’t like choosing to get stuck dancing for the next quarter mile of wherever we needed to go. Lol


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares , that made me laugh out loud!


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## knightrider

TrainedByMares said:


> but I did stand on a corner in Winslow,Arizona once
> 
> Yes, and I'll bet you were "such a fine sight to see."





egrogan said:


> @TrainedByMares , that made me laugh out loud!
> 
> I enjoyed that too!


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## TrainedByMares

😆 LOL @knightrider ... it didn't do me any good though, all the girls in the flatbed fords were gone by the time I got there!


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## knightrider

Why is the person driving standing behind the seat? I wouldn't like being that far away from a horse I am driving. Is she standing because she might need to leap out quickly? I think that is an unusual set-up.


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## knightrider

I hope you don't mind my clogging up your journal with a driving/spooking story.

Years ago, I lived within comfortable riding distance to a race horse farm. Those of us in the neighborhood enjoyed riding through the farm regularly to enjoy seeing the new colts every spring and then watching them cavort, play, and ultimately grow up and newer new colts arrive. The farm owner was happy to see us and admire his lovely thoroughbreds. He decided to learn to drive and had two horses that he trained to drive with a cart. Sometimes when I would ride through, he would invite me to put my horse in a stall and go driving with him and his teen-age daughter. They showed me how to drive and what I needed to do and learn to drive horses.

In time, they decided to move further away, and the race horse farm was sold to a used car salesman, whose teenaged daughter was in my 4-H. By then, I had a cart of my own and two horses that would drive it. I often drove through the race horse farm because from there, I could go on lovely trails just right for driving, avoiding any traffic.

Not long after the new family had moved into the race horse farm (sans race horses now), I drove my cart down their lane to access the fine trails. The used car salesman came barreling out of his house in a high rage.

"You caused one of my horses to spook!" (in the pasture) he screamed at me. "You are trespassing on my property. You can't come on here and spook my horses! Get off now!"

I asked him if I could just continue through his lane to get onto the safe trails. I explained that heading back the other way would cause me to have to drive on a narrow road called "Horsemen's Hill", an extremely dangerous, long stretch of hill with no shoulder. To go back the way I came would take 1 1/2 hours. I was 3/4 around a circle, and wouldn't he please let me just this once continue before it got dark.

He used some pretty choice words, said he didn't care if I got hit by a car because I had no business riding on his property, and ordered me off the property. I had to drive up Horsemen's Hill to avoid driving home in the dark. And I was his daughter's 4-H leader! (She was humiliated beyond words. She was such a nice kid).

Happy ending. There were no cars coming along Horsemen's Hill. I got home safely before dark. I never rode through that property again, but went the long way to the lovely trails.

A true horseman would have said, "Bring that cart over here! I want my horses to see it and get used to it."


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> Why is the person driving standing behind the seat? I wouldn't like being that far away from a horse I am driving. Is she standing because she might need to leap out quickly? I think that is an unusual set-up.


It's sort of hard to tell from the angle of the picture, but there are actually two people in the cart. The guy standing in the back is in the navigator position, and S is seated in front of him, doing the actual driving. He was giving her a lesson, and they both had headsets on to be able to hear over the noise. Good question though!!

That story about the nasty farm owner is so irritating! I could totally see that happening today though- I think the whole "my property is my kingdom" mentality is much worse today than it was years ago. I totally agree with you, I like the opportunity for my horses to see unusual things going by their pastures. And I love when people ride (or like S, drive) through our open pastures. I do feel bad for the people who ride by our house, because I know my horses aren't easy to pass- they start whinnying and go jetting up to the fence to check out the passers by. I know from firsthand experience that's not always an easy thing to deal with in the saddle!


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## Knave

Definitely no horseman @knightrider! Queen is petrified of motorcycles, and since they are used at work sometimes I keep begging husband to come drive one around the yard often. My father knew I was kind of wanting to learn myself, and has offered many times to leave this blue bike in my yard. I won’t do it though, because my oldest is obsessed with motorcycles. She’s always wanted to buy one and learn. I know she won’t be able to control herself with the bike there, or at best it would simply depress her. So no, I’m not learning now or getting Queen over her fear.

I thought my horses would be afraid of the cart, but they never paid it any mind. In my yard the more nonsense that happens the better. That is one thing I think town people have over our ranch horses. They are always seeing things.


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## bsms

TrainedByMares said:


> Here is a confession... when Nicki is ' up and jiggy'...sometimes I will enter into a poor rendition of the eagles song ,"take it easy". ...I would be totally embarassed if anyone heard and saw us...


I've taken to riding Bandit with an mp3 player connected to one earphone (cut the second one off). People told me singing to Mia would help her and me calm, but she soon realized I only sang when nervous, so it made her nervous too. But with one ear listening to tunes, I often join in. Works fine out in the desert and works even better doing somewhat boring stuff in my little arena. But it was a good thing no one was passing by today as I was singing, "You can eat crackers in my bed anytime..."






In my neighbors' eyes, I'm eccentric at best. Singing a song like that while riding a horse? Some things couldn't be lived down. 😜


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## egrogan

We had a blustery ride yesterday afternoon, but it was still nice to go even on a short one. Went down the neighbor's logging road a bit. Fizz still fusses going back there and I wasn't in the mood to have a big argument with her, so we went in the direction she's more willing to go, rather than pushing for a bigger fight about the other direction. I was mostly in the mood to mosey along, and we did.








We only went a couple of miles, and we were both a little windswept when we got home as the breeze had really picked up, bringing the storm clouds with it. As we got close to home, we found lovely husband heading out to the compost pile to dump some of the fall's apples that had gone a little mushy from not being used fast enough. Fizz couldn't believe the audacity of throwing away a bucket of apples, and helped lighten the load 🤣
















It's pouring rain out right now, so no riding today. Or tomorrow. It's supposed to clear up by Sunday, so planning on meeting M and Coalie. Hunting also starts tomorrow, so we're a bit limited to the roads, but we've got a good route mapped out.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww! Such cute pictures.  Sounds like a lovely relaxing ride. & a nice reward with apples afterwards, yum! I hope you can ride this weekend & that it clears up. Supposed to rain here today & tomorrow, so I am bummed!


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## egrogan

The weekend seemed to fly by!

Friday we had a bit more excitement than expected. Around 2pm, I took a break from the work I was doing to let Hugh out for a potty break. We walked up into the woods behind the house, as we often do, and walked along the ridgeline for a few minutes while he snuffed and sniffed and did doggy things. It was raining and dreary, so I wasn't planning on being out long. We turned back towards the house, when a split second before I saw them, he saw two massive white tail deer who flew away at the sight of him. For him, that was game on, and he disappeared over the ridge before I really even processed what was happening. I figured he'd chase them until they were out of sight over the next hill, so I just waited where I was and called for him. He wears a GPS tracker now since he's bolted after wildlife before, so I figured I'd be able to find him if he didn't come back quickly. Cell service isn't great, so it took a couple of minutes before I could pick up the ping from the GPS tracker- imagine my surprise when I saw that he was already a mile down the road and apparently still sprinting after the deer, as his speed was clocking in at 10-12 mph  I got mildly panicked as he had crossed the road and was back somewhere in the woods off the neighbor's logging road (the area that Fizz hates riding in). I hopped in the car and drove down to the logging road so I could get out and try to get close enough that he'd hear me calling and turn back. I was getting more panicked, as he seemed to be still cruising ahead, crossing onto trails through the next property, which I don't know at all as those property owners don't allow people back there. I jogged down the logging road, and started calling, and was happy to see his little dot on the GPS tracker stop, reverse direction, and head back towards me. As an aside, this GPS tracker is a fabulous tool, even with spotty internet service. He knows the logging road and woods as we've walked back there a lot, but we got into this frustrating dance where I could see that we were getting closer to each other, sometimes as close as 500 feet apart, but the woods are very overgrown with scrubby underbrush, and there are lots of high ridges and low streambeds, so I just couldn't seem to put my eyes on him. He'd get close, but then turn away and go a different direction. I had texted lovely husband about what was happening, and he came down to help, and after about an hour, he was able to grab the dog. Poor thing was exhausted and looking more than a little sheepish.








I think once he got out of the deer chasing trance, he scared himself a little not really knowing where he was at first. He was extra snuggly the rest of the night!!









Saturday I went down to Equine Affaire (wrote about that in the Friday night chat thread), and I met up with fellow HF member @redbadger.








We explored the shopping, ate some fair food, and watched a colt starting clinic. I also got to be a little bit of a fangirl meeting some podcast hosts from the Horse Radio Network, which I listen to a lot. I'm not usually into celebrity sighting- if you can call horsey podcasters celebrities 😉- but it was nice to meet people whose voices I know really well. Overall, it was a fun afternoon! I left early in the day to beat the snow and try to feed before it was too dark. It snowed off and on overnight, leaving a crusty covering in the morning.








Once the sun came out though, it all melted off quickly. The moody winter sky made for a beautiful backdrop while the horses were in the pasture.
































M and I were supposed to ride yesterday, but she ended up cancelling because of the cold. I wasn't super motivated to ride either- it was the first weekend of rifle season, and there were a lot of trucks on the road. People aren't always paying a lot of attention the first weekend, and I didn't want to have to be on high alert for the ride. So I just skipped it, though I did feel a bit guilty about it. I'll probably get Fizz out for a short ride at lunch today, though the weather is about the same as yesterday. Not very inspiring.


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## Knave

There is so much to respond to! Firstly I’m sorry about the chase. The tracker does sound handy, especially considering that he seemed to get turned around in the trees!

Secondly I’m super excited you got to meet @redbadger in person!

Lastly, I really like the pictures and am growing quite fond of Izzy.


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## gottatrot

Ditto to everything @Knave said. 

ETA: As much as I'd really love to meet any HF friend, I'd also be super stoked if I could meet Jasper, Izzy, Fizz, Maggie, Queen (and the gang), Isabeau, Bandit, Trooper, etc.


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## Knave

That would be exciting @gottatrot!


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## MeditativeRider

I can see how the tracker is useful, and glad you found him before he went somewhere that he got hurt. You did well, I would have just been stuck at the 'totally freaking out to see my dog streaking away from me on a GPS' stage. 

I agree with @Knave, you have the best pictures.

Glad you had fun at the horse fair, and that's pretty cool you got to meet up with another HF member.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> ...I am growing quite fond of Izzy.


And I am starting to like her again now that her attitude is evening out again 😉 I did talk to the vet on Friday, as the diarrhea hasn't really improved. Vet agreed with staying on the 1/4 dose of Prascend a little longer, and upping her beet pulp and probiotics to see if that will help. So far I can't really say it has, but we're going to check in again at the end of this week.

The most surprising thing happened yesterday afternoon- I was at the computer, and Hugh started barking and wagging looking out the window, usually his way of saying someone is here. It was the afternoon, so I figured it was the Fedex delivery guy. But Hugh was insistent, so I went over to the window to look out, and saw a grey pickup truck leaving the driveway. There are a lot of guys with grey pickups here, and I wondered if maybe it was someone who was hunting and wanted to talk to us. I went out to see if they left a note, and surprise...sitting at the front door was Fizz's missing hoof boot!! 🤣 I didn't see that coming. I think it might have been one of the guys who works for the town, because when Fizz and I were out on our ride yesterday afternoon, we passed one of the town guys in a bulldozer heading towards the beaver pond, presumably to clean out the culvert. I think the boot got lost in that general area, and he had given us a big wave when we were out so maybe made the connection if he saw the boot in the culvert? It always surprises me how much people notice Fizz wearing her "sneakers." Anyway, I posted a note on the town's online bulletin board to thank this mystery person, so we'll see if I ever find out who it was. I'm just glad to have the boot back!

Our ride at lunch was quite blustery- we rode in and out of snow squalls most of the way. I love when the snow settles on their mane:








Doesn't it just _look _cold?! It was!
















I love the little white spot on her lip. If she ever gets lost, I think this is one of the best ways to identify her. You'd never know it was there unless you were looking up at her from below.








The snow continued off and on the rest of the afternoon, with hard breezes to go with it. It was the first day this season that I had to feed them more than 1 bale of hay for the day. We've been pretty lucky with the more mild fall so far, in that they've still had decent access to grass and haven't been huddling in the sheds most of the day. I think that is going to change over the next week or so, with much colder temperatures. Wet and cold, like it was yesterday, is the worst combination though.


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## Knave

What a nice person! It is surprising that someone noticed enough to put it together! That makes me happy.

Queen has a spot like that. It is under her throat, right in the center where the hair twists out.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, what a kind person to return the boot. That is so cool!  So kind. 

That is such a cute selfie!! Her little white spot is adorable! It does look super cold, too! The temps have dropped here, I was not ready LOL.


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## gottatrot

That's great you got your boot back! Where we used to ride in the woods, the neighbors would go for walks and if they found a boot they'd leave it on top of the logging road gates. It was so nice they'd pick them up for us. Those were in the days we used the original easyboots, so we lost them a lot.


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## TrainedByMares

I love the picture with Hugh sitting at the storage room doorway! What a good boy!


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## egrogan

The weather this weekend ended up being a pleasant surprise. We were supposed to have- ugh- more rain, but it ended up staying mostly clear, and we even got some afternoon sunshine. Friday though, some sort of front blew through, and Fizz and Izzy were WILD in the cold breeze while I was getting their dinner ready.




Maggie didn't join in though- every now and then you can see her butt planted next to the door where I was getting feed prepped 🤣

Izzy gave me another choking scare that night though. I'm really not sure what got stuck, but she had some pretty bad gagging, and then a worrying stream of feed came pouring out of her nose. I went through the whole massage process and she seemed to be resolving it, but I decided to call the vet to let her know what was going on just in case it went in the wrong direction. Vet agreed it sounded like it was taking care of itself, and suggested just watching her for 30 minutes and then letting her have the rest of her dinner if she was no longer struggling. It all ended up being fine, but I'm adding even more water to her pellets now, and just hoping that will be enough.

Saturday was a gorgeous day. We went to the historical society's holiday market and found a few cute gifts, and then on a mini-road trip to a brewery we like over in upstate NY. The horses did not mind spending the day sunbathing...








Sunday M and I were able to get together again for a ride. Fizz had basically had the week off, with just a short ride Monday, but I am lucky that she can handle sitting a week and not be a handful to ride. We mostly stuck to the roads because of hunting season. I wasn't taking any chances though, and we were decked out in maximum hi viz. When we rode past a neighbor, he said in a total deadpan tone, "Ya think the huntahs will be able to see ya?" Cracked me up.








I added some bells just to round out our ensemble- so technically they should be able to see AND hear us coming!





We had a great ride. It's the first time in awhile I've really enjoyed riding rather than just doing it because it felt like something I should do. We had some interesting encounters along the way. First, we went by my neighbor S's farm, and she has two new boarder horses there who were pretty chatty. And she is chatty herself, so we stopped for a few minutes to talk to her. Horses did great just standing and chilling out.

Right down the road from her farm, there was a family playing a rowdy game of football in their yard. There was lots of running and screaming with the ball flying through the air. I don't think Fizz or Coalie had ever seen anything like that, so they stopped and looked for a minute, but they were fine to ride by. From there, we passed a farm with cows, but fortunately they were napping up on a hill so far enough away that it wasn't concerning.
























After we crossed through Newhall Farm, we had a 1/2 mile trail through the woods before we came back to the next road. As we came around a bend in the trail, we saw a huge tree down across the trail, at about shoulder height. No way to go under or over, and no path around it to the left, which was a rock ledge. The only option was to go down into the ditch to the right. We still had to dismount to be able to walk under it in the ditch. We got off and coaxed the horses down the slippery two foot bank into ankle deep water in the ditch. Coalie went on like a trooper, and Fizz hesitated at first. I scrambled back up the bank and tried approaching it from more of an angle, rather than asking her to go straight down, and that worked out fine. We were proud of them though, it was a little dicey to navigate through that tight space.

We were surprised we actually _didn't _see any hunters, but we were out around lunchtime so I think we probably managed to miss them. We split up to go our own way home, and that took us past the mini-donks, who are no longer an issue...








...and Mac the German Shepherd, who got up from his resting spot under the bushes to bark and fuss at us because the donkeys were staring at us. Poor dog is back in his cone again. I didn't think it would be an issue to pass him, since we knew he was there, but at the last minute, he came charging at us doing this nasty low growl/snarling noise, which surprised Fizz and I both. She spun and flew backwards and I leapt off. I led her past from the ground and got back on once we were beyond his property. He's definitely a difficult part of our route, but at least he respects the electric fence and can't back up his threats with any real aggression.

I have a short work week this week (just today and tomorrow, then I'm off!) so hoping to get some more good, unhurried rides in. M and I are planning to go on Thanksgiving morning and over the weekend, which will be great.


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## Knave

That dog is often stuck in the cone of shame… I wonder why.

I’m glad you had a nice ride!


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## egrogan

@Knave, I wonder too what's going on with him. I've never been up close to him (for obvious reasons 🤣) but he appears healthy enough- he moves normally, he doesn't seem to be missing large patches of his coat or anything like that. I guess dogs get weird skin issues that they bother by licking too much, so maybe that's it? I really don't know. It definitely seems to make him angrier when he has it on though!


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## Knave

I guess it would have to be something like that. I didn’t know if you actually knew him since you call him Mac. I have names for animals I don’t actually know too though. Lol


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I guess it would have to be something like that. I didn’t know if you actually knew him since you call him Mac. I have names for animals I don’t actually know too though. Lol


Haha, the people who live next door to him are friends, so I asked them about him (mostly when I first started riding there and wondered if he would actually stay in the electric fence). They told me his name and said if you talked to him he would be better. Can't say that's worked for me, but I do always yell out "hi Mac, we're coming through" when we ride there.


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## egrogan

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, but it feels like we've been through multiple seasons in the past three days!

Wednesday afternoon was cold and blustery. I realized I had waited one day too long to switch over the the heated buckets- oops!








We woke up Thanksgiving Thursday to a warmer morning. M and I met up to go for a good ride, maybe our last longer one of the season. Because of hunting, we mostly stuck to the roads, but one of M's neighbors had already gotten a deer, and doesn't allow other hunters on the property, so we were able to dip into the woods for a stretch.
































We had a very peaceful ride! 








When we split up to go our own ways home, I took the path past Mac the German Shepherd's house, and I decided to dismount and just walk by because the ground was as hard as concrete and I didn't want to risk accidentally coming off and then not being able to enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner later in the day 😉 Wouldn't you know it, this is the first time in months Mac was not outside when we rode past. Oh well!

At home, lovely husband had smoked the turkey for a bit and then moved it into the oven. Hugh stood guard the rest of the afternoon. Dinner was fabulous- fried brussels sprouts, carmelized sweet potatoes, cranberry chutney, homemade rolls. So good.








Despite the mild start to the morning, Thanksgiving afternoon turned cold and blustery. @carshon shared a post last week about how keeping laminitis-prone horses warm can dramatically increase their blood flow to their feet, making them less footsore in the cold weather. After thinking about that, I started throwing a light blanket on Maggie overnight, and it's pretty incredible how much more comfortable she was the next morning. I had historically not blanketed her unless there was precipitation, but I think at this point, I'm going to keep her snugged up in the cold because it does really seem to make a difference.








Yesterday we had cold rain all morning, and it turned to snow in the afternoon. Lovely husband and I did a little "Plaid Friday" holiday shopping in town, and came home and did some Christmas decorating in the snow. We were only supposed to get an inch or snow, but it's ended up being more than that, probably 3 or 4 inches. The wind (gusting around 20-30mph) is making it feel like winter arrived very suddenly. The horses don't seem very happy to see the grass disappear, and with the wind they are just huddled up near the sheds for now. Snow doesn't have to be uncomfortable, but the wind makes it hard to move around. Hoping that lightens up between now and tomorrow. Not sure I'll want to ride with as cold as it is today, but tomorrow is supposed to be warmer and less windy so I'll at least get out for a little snowy jaunt around the fields.


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## bsms

FWIW, only about half the photos show up for me. 

Glad to hear you had a good Thanksgiving. Winds here have been crazy this week and I just can't get up the willpower to go ride when it is miserable for both Bandit and I. He gives me his "_This is stupid!_" look and I find myself agreeing. 3 of the 4 grandkids are visiting (without their parents!) and The Wife pitched a tent in the backyard and they all slept there after the winds finally dropped at 5 PM. I filled my "sleep in tent" lifetime quota during my military career so I stayed inside!


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## knightrider

bsms said:


> The Wife pitched a tent in the backyard and they all slept there


I can hardly wait until my grandkids are old enough to sleep in the tent by themselves!
I truly do not enjoy sleeping in a tent. But still doing it because mine are too little to sleep in there by themselves.



bsms said:


> I filled my "sleep in tent" lifetime quota during my military career so I stayed inside!


No military career for me, but I certainly have filled my "sleep in tent" quota from years as a Scout, then Scout leader, and parent. I've got a few more years to go with the grandkids, but I hope I can make it.


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## egrogan

@bsms, not sure about photos…I see them on my end but there were some weird error messages when I uploaded them, and at one point they were deleted and I had to upload again 🤔 

Your wife and @knightrider definitely deserve a “coolest grandparents” award. As a kid I really wanted to be able to tent out in the back yard, but that always got a resounding “no” from my parents. Ba humbug!!

Wind was still whipping when I fed horses dinner-temp was 21*F with real feel of 9*F. Brrrr 🥶 The town didn’t plow the road until late this afternoon, and after trucks drove on it to all day (hunting traffic) it’s now iced over. So no riding tomorrow. Hoping the middle of the week warms up enough to clear the roads. If the wind calms down I’ll try to ride in the fields tomorrow-should be pretty.


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Your wife and @knightrider definitely deserve a “coolest grandparents” award. As a kid I really wanted to be able to tent out in the back yard,


Awww, thanks! We do better than the back yard sometimes. We go off to primitive campsites, swim, hike, and enjoy campfires. I love doing all that stuff with the kids (they want me to bring horses, but I won't go that far because they only ride about 15 minutes), but I DO NOT LIKE crawling in and out of a tent!!! If I can get my son to go, he'll sleep in the tent with the kids and I bring my horse trailer and sleep in the trailer. Also no fun: cleaning up a poopy diaper with only wipes and a jug of water. But those days will pass, and I look forward to when the kids are older, like @bsms 's grandkids!


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## egrogan

More snow today, so no riding for us. First day of chipping frozen horse poo out of the snow around the sheds-my least favorite part of winter!








Seems like winter came right along in earnest, no easing into it this year. Not sure when we’ll have another day above freezing!


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## claudia.n.dallas

So happy to hear that! I actually went on a nice hack with my mare today. She was a trail horse from a livery barn, and was used to going out in bigger groups -- never by herself (until I came into her life ). She still struggles with the buddy-sour mentality, so I wasn't excepting a great ride today, but she proved me wrong! She was great and I couldn't have asked for a better ride.

It feels great when a horse just doesn't cause more issues than there already are.


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## egrogan

Yesterday afternoon I hopped on for a short ride. The road is staying iced over, even with a bit of sand the town put down  I just don't want to mess around with the possibility of falling, and I admit it does make me nervous in the saddle. So Fizz and I just headed off to walk around the field.








She doesn't really love just walking around close to home-must seem pointless-and gets a little fussy at times. It didn't help that Izzy was having a complete meltdown across the street, neighing and neighing and running back and forth at the gate. At one point she actually threw herself down on the ground and had a tantrum that would have made any toddler proud  Fizz mostly ignores that, which is good. Eventually she relaxed and we just puttered around for 20 minutes or so before heading back in. The afternoon was so pretty though, I was glad for even that kind of ride.
















The horses are definitely sporting their winter fuzzies at this point. Izzy's coat is so thick I can see my hand print after I stick my cold hands in there to warm up 🤣 Luckily the weird curly Cushing's hair seems to be held at bay, and her coat is nice and soft again. She is still having awful diarrhea (fun times dealing with _that _when it's this cold- it's basically like dumping a milkshake on the ground when it's below freezing and then trying to clean it up), so I've had to go back to only 1/4 tab of Prascend. When I do that, it goes away. So I guess that's our compromise for now.


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## Knave

On a pair of worn out boots I put the studs in. My boots were made with that possibility. It makes a huge difference riding on ice!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> On a pair of worn out boots I put the studs in. My boots were made with that possibility. It makes a huge difference riding on ice!


I have had a lot of people recommend that, I should give it a try this year. Scoot makes studs that are pretty affordable. I was also thinking about just doing some ground driving with her. Then I could just wear my big heavy boots with good traction, and we could go up and down the road and get some exercise without being too worried.


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## Knave

I really like them, but you do have to be a bit leery. Get them in correctly to not end up puncturing through, and ride a horse a short bit in them to get used to them. Bones loves them! He is super intense in them because he learned to hit them for great traction.


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## egrogan

We are heading into the time of year where I don't have much to share...horses eating standing in snow...horses napping laying in snow...horses frolicking in fresh snow...horses looking sadly at ice where there used to be snow. I haven't given up all hope yet- I left my saddle down in the tack room instead of bringing it up to the house this weekend as I had been contemplating-but it's not looking like much riding is possible. We had a couple of good first snowfalls, but followed by just enough warming that everything's an ice rink.








We can still carefully pick our way from one pasture to the other, so at least I can switch up turnout so the horses are still getting some scenery changes and able to stretch their legs going up and down the hills.
























From this weekend until next weekend, there's one final deer hunting season- muzzle loader. Historically this hasn't seemed that popular, but for whatever reason this year it's a madhouse out there. I have never seen the number of trucks on my road that crept past the house around 4pm this afternoon. I heard a huge blast this morning while I was doing chores, off in the direction behind the horses' field and our neighbors. Fizz was standing sentinel looking in that direction all morning. Later in the day lovely husband said there was a big bloody streak across the road just behind the pasture, so I'm hoping it was someone that got something and dragged it out, rather than something that got shot but took off injured 😟 From the number of tracks I've seen walking Hugh back in the woods since there's been fresh snow, it's clear we have a regular pair or threesome that comes on a daily loop over the ridge behind our house, past the horses' paddock, through our apples, and back through the woods to our neighbors...I'm sentimental enough that it makes me sad to think about one of "our" deer being taken.

At any rate, as crazy as the woods seem to be, instead of taking him out on the trails behind our house, I actually took Hugh over to GMHA (local horsepark) this morning to let him get some exercise. There's no hunting allowed over there, but we stuck to the trail around the cross country course just in case anyone had wandered where they didn't belong. He had a lot of fun with all the new smells to sniff.
















And now he pretty much just wants to nest where it's warm inside.








I like that this time of year makes you slow down, but at the same time I'm already feeling a little stir crazy and it's barely even December yet. I wonder what kind of winter it will end up being this year.


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## Knave

I love your Christmas picture!!!


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## MeditativeRider

How many months of the year do you get snow for?

I am intrigued by your fireplace as I have not seen one like that before. Is it an open fire place but with some sort of screen or door on it? And does it have vents (is that what the black square bits in the brick facing are)?

Our dog loves nesting too. Her favourite place is behind one of the interior doors in the house. The door is usually left open and she will sneak round into the little gap between it and the wall and curl up there.


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## egrogan

MeditativeRider said:


> How many months of the year do you get snow for?


@MeditativeRider - typically we'll have a couple of good snowstorms in November and December, but usually the snow will melt away. Generally from Jan-March the ground is covered with snow, and it could be into April too. So- about half the year!



MeditativeRider said:


> I am intrigued by your fireplace as I have not seen one like that before. Is it an open fire place but with some sort of screen or door on it? And does it have vents (is that what the black square bits in the brick facing are)?


It is an interesting fireplace! Yes, it is an open fire place with a screen/door insert. There are glass doors on the front to keep cold air from coming out when there's not a fire going. The doors are open when the fire is burning, but the screen stays closed so no ash or coals pop out into the room. The most unusual part is the vent system you mentioned. It's actually an old-time design called a "heatilator" system (funny name). This is how it works (taken from this longer overview):


> Also known as "old-style zero clearance fireplaces", heatilator fireplaces are a combination of heater and ventilator and are by their nature, fireplaces that circulate air. Old-Style Heatilator Fireplaces use a special venting system that draws in cool room air and releases it as warmer air. The air that is in the venting system never goes through the firebox so it doesn't get fouled with ash, smoke, or other unpleasant odors. Instead of pushing air through the firebox, Old-Style Heatilator Fireplaces route air around the firebox and allow it to heat, without any of the drawbacks associated with traditional fireplaces.





MeditativeRider said:


> Our dog loves nesting too. Her favourite place is behind one of the interior doors in the house. The door is usually left open and she will sneak round into the little gap between it and the wall and curl up there.


I don't know what we'd do without dogs! I love having them around.


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## Knave

I feel like we face similar winters, although mine may be a bit colder and yours brings deeper snow.

This winter has been so weird though… I started my drip lines again, only one had kept in water and froze, but I figured my trees actually can’t dry out in winter either. Husband and I were laughing that I complained that the wind blew on our ride yesterday, and yet it was December in jackets… super weird year here.


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## egrogan

Our winter has been strange too, @Knave . It was an unusually mild fall, with no November snow until the weekend after Thanksgiving. Since then, it has been much colder than usual- the last couple of weeks have felt like January. It's strange to have so much ice already. Supposedly it's going up to 50*F with rain today, and then back down below freezing by tomorrow morning. That's certainly not going to help the ice situation


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## bsms

Supposed to hit 79 here today. 😜 Also supposed to be a great week for riding but I'll be in Georgia the rest of the week 😒 to help my youngest daughter move out of the military dorm and into an apartment. I'd rather go riding. 6 months from now it will be like riding in an oven!


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## MeditativeRider

That is such a cool fireplace! Thank you for the link. It was really interesting to read about.

Gosh I would about die with that much snow. I am such a wimp when it comes to cold. The most we get is a snowy weather system that will pass through in less than 24 h and the snow might stay on the ground for a day. Some years we don't get that at all (like this past winter), other years we will get that a handful of times. I assume you get a nice summer though. We just tend to have pretty average weather all year round and summer can be thoroughly disappointing. It is a pretty regular occurrence for us to get cold weather systems come through in mid spring to early summer. 

I would also not cope in @bsms 's oven temps. My happy weather range (about 68 to 82 Fahrenheit) is pathetically narrow.


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## PoptartShop

Snow already, whew. No snow here (yet, anyway). The ice is definitely the worst! 
I love the pictures though, they are sooo cute! & Hugh posing in front of the fireplace - how adorable!  It's beautifully decorated too.


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## egrogan

We're back to winter wonderland, which is good because the turnout area had become an icy mess a couple of days ago after another thaw-freeze cycle. We got a good couple of inches of light, powdery snow last night and it was beautiful this morning.








































Hugh earned some major farm dog props last night while we were out throwing hay during night check. It was very dark with snow swirling all around us, and all of a sudden he started doing a not-playing-around deep growl and alarm barking while facing the road beyond the pasture. I thought maybe animal- coyote? was getting close, but was very disoriented to suddenly hear a man's voice calling "hello, hello." People don't just walk down our street, definitely not in the dark at night. All kinds of bad thoughts flashed through my mind. Hugh was losing it but stayed put. Pretty quickly though, the man (who I still could not see through the snow) explained he had gotten his truck stuck trying to make it up the hill, and wondered if we could give him a tow out. I called up to lovely husband, who was able to come down with the tractor and get the truck up the hill. We had just put chains on the tractor tires, and that made all the difference since the snow was fairly deep but there was still ice underneath. Turns out it was a young guy who rents a house down the street with his girlfriend, and he was embarrassed that he did not have snow tires on the truck (lovely husband said they were basically bald regular tires on a 2-wheel drive truck)- that doesn't cut it where we live. I'm glad we could help him out, but I hope I don't have any more encounters with disembodied men's voices when I'm out doing night check! Definitely freaked me out. But I was glad to have my trusty sidekick with me taking my safety very seriously! 💕

(From our walk through the woods to play in the snow earlier in the day)


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## PoptartShop

Wow, the snow is really beautiful!  Definitely a winter wonderland! The horses look so pretty!
Oh gosh, I would've been nervous too hearing that, especially in the dark. Awww! I'm glad you guys could help him get his truck out, but he better get new tires unless he wants that to keep happening, LOL. Whew! Good timing!

Hugh is so cute! What a good boy, and I love his vest!


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## Knave

So pretty!! It’s been snowing here all day too. It actually feels a little nice to get some snow back.


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## Txshecat0423

No snow pics for me…it’s 81 in Central Texas today! I enjoy the snow pics though and would have been totally freaked out hearing that disembodied voice! Good on y’all for being Good Samaritans.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## egrogan

This is a terrible update to write. We had to put Maggie down last night. The day started with her showing some worrying neurological signs-very wobbly and uncoordinated in her hind end. Vet saw her mid-day, and she was fairly stable if still weak behind; we had a plan for treatment and monitoring over the weekend. At 9:45, I went out for night check, and she had gone down in her stall and was hardly able to move. Vet came quickly, and found her with really no ability to move her hind end. There was no getting her back up. It seems likely there was a degenerative issue affecting the spinal cord in her neck, based on some other symptoms over the past week. I’m just gutted, it all went downhill so fast yesterday. We miss her already.


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## TrainedByMares

I am very sorry...


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## carshon

@egrogan My heart is breaking for you. I am so sorry for your loss. sending cyber hugs


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## knightrider

Oh no, so sorry. This is heartbreaking. I'm sure her original owner is crying too. ((((hugs)))))


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## Txshecat0423

I’m so sorry, @egrogan [emoji22]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Avna

Rest in peace, beautiful Maggie.


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## Knave

I am so so sorry. The first sentence had my stomach in knots for you. I wish I could give you a hug, so make your husband give you an extra from me. I’m super sorry, but I hope you find some relief in knowing what a good life you gave her and an end with little suffering to boot.


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## Kalraii

Oh no!  So sorry to hear this news. My heart breaks for you.


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone. I'm still in a bit of a daze. We allowed Izzy and Fizz to see and sniff her when she was gone, but they also seem a bit lost this morning. They didn't eat much and have been standing at the gate looking up towards the barn all day. I'm sure they will mourn as they adjust.

I had her original owner on the phone when the vet got here so she could be part of the conversation. I felt terrible, because we had just talked Wednesday-the vet was also here that day with the farrier, as Maggie had been looking foot/body sore for the last couple of weeks and I wanted to rule out any winter laminitis issues that might be behind how sluggishly she was moving. After a lameness exam, including no reaction to hoof testers on any foot, we all chalked it up to the frozen ground and some progressive arthritis. On Wednesday we certainly never had any idea about what was coming. She was trimmed with no issues, and vet had ordered us some Equioxx to start her on, along with some Chinese herbs to promote blood circulation. The only other weird symptom was that she was very sore around her neck, and was unable to reach down to eat hay or her bowl of food from the ground. I had to hold the bowl up for her to eat her pelleted food. She was fine eating hay from a haynet. We though the neck soreness was because she was compensating for being uncomfortable in her hind end. So I had talked to her owner Wednesday just to say there were a few things going on, but we thought we had a good plan for getting her comfortable through the winter. 

When she was so clearly off behind on Friday morning, it was surprising because she was not looking foot sore, she was clearly looking neurological. So, in hindsight, was something changing dramatically in her neck the last couple of weeks, or did she even have a fall that might have impacted her spinal cord? We won't be doing a necropsy so there's really no way we'll know for sure, but it seems likely that there was something happening in her neck that became catastrophic yesterday. It was very difficult when she went down and couldn't get up. She didn't really struggle, I'm not sure that she really could at that point. I was able to stay with her and just keep rubbing her ears, which she loves. She wasn't down long, and I was at least grateful she wasn't alone. But it was still difficult to see her down.

Her owner's family came today to pick up her remains and bring her back to their farm to be buried with the rest of her horsey family- her dam, her "aunts," "nephews," etc. It was a hard goodbye, but I'm happy that she has gone home. We've been trading pictures this morning, and it's nice to have someone else to laugh and cry with. I do just feel awful that they hadn't been here to see her recently. They had been planning to come around Thanksgiving, but things just get so busy, and it's hard to fit in one more thing...Anyway, if I have regrets, it's just that they hadn't seen her in awhile. There is so much love for that mare though, I'm certain she didn't feel lonely at all.


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## Avna

How old was she?


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## lb27312

Oh @egrogan sorry for just seeing this! I'm so very sorry for your loss.... My heart goes out to you and your horses!!


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## gottatrot

I'm so sad about Maggie. She certainly had a wonderful retirement with you, and the best of care. What is shocking with horses sometimes is how fast they can deteriorate and leave us. It's very good that Izzy and Fizz have each other, and neither one was left alone.


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## egrogan

Avna said:


> How old was she?


She was 25.


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## egrogan

We’re still hurting today. It’s amazing how chores take twice as long when your routine is completely thrown off. Everything is set up for three horses. All of my muscle memory is set to fill three bowls, scoop supplements just Maggie got, fill all the hay nets so everyone has a place to go. I lost it this morning when I took Izzy and Fizz across the street to the pasture-I instinctively slowed down when we walked on the hard ground because she would need to navigate it carefully so it didn’t hurt her feet. I thought of her when we saw the path she had worn in the snow pacing at the gate wanting to come in for dinner. Two is just so different than three. I’m still in shock that we went from this on Thursday morning








to this today.








It’s all just very sad.


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## TrainedByMares

That is such a big void. My heart goes out to you.


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## egrogan

Thanks @TrainedByMares - it really is


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## Avna

I went from three to two to one dog this year. I know so exactly what you mean. Give it all the time it needs.


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## knightrider

That empty stall is a killer for me. I sob after I lose one and walk past that empty stall. Referring to that other thread about 7 falls to make a rider. I also learned in 4-H a hundred years ago. "You are not a true horseman until you have cried over losing your first horse." Welcome to the sad club of those of us who have lost beloved horses. That must make you now a true horseperson.


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## egrogan

@Avna, losing a good dog is such deep pain. Losing two so close together is doubly painful.

@knightrider, I can't lie, stripping her stall and closing that door for the last time was terrible. This is a club I wish I wasn't part of just yet.


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## PoptartShop

I'm so sorry. Hugs to you and your family. I know it is not easy.  She was an amazing mare.


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## egrogan

@gottatrot asked me on another thread if I was thinking of getting another horse. I wrote something on that thread that I figured I'd post over here too. At any rate, another horse is definitely on my mind. Izzy is so inconsolable when left alone it was the first logistical issue I thought of once we had a plan for Maggie's burial. It was a bit of a bummer not to be able to take Fizz out to ride this week when the weather was unseasonably warm and the ice was gone- but I was worried Izzy might actually hurt herself if I left her.

Since I usually don't ride much, if at all, in January and February, I don't feel that I need another horse tomorrow, and to be honest, there's something sort of reassuring about knowing I _definitely _have enough hay for the winter now with only two horses. Plus it might be kind of tricky to introduce a new horse in the winter; it's not really that easy to put up temporary fencing or rotate around pastures once there's real snow here. But, I think I am going to start making some inquiries now to see what I can find for the spring.

In an ideal world, I'd find another late teens/20ish yr old Morgan mare who could use a retirement home through word of mouth from someone local. Another option- although one I am a little hesitant about- is one of the Morgan rescue organizations. They have a couple of "companion only" adoptable mares that are currently boarded in NY or PA, but they are really cagey about being public with info about what makes these horses "companion only," and you have to inquire via email. I reached out about a couple of horses and haven't heard anything yet. I don't know if I want to get tangled up with a rescue, so we'll see if that goes anywhere. And then the third option is to get a pair of donkeys. The vet actually (half-jokingly) tried to get me to take a pair of them that she knows need to be rehomed when we thought Maggie might require treatment for her neck that was going to possibly have extended stall rest. There are lots of them around here that need homes. My hesitation with going that route is that whatever our next equine is, I really DON'T want something that can't be turned out safely on pasture without extreme management. I really don't want to mess around with grazing muzzles and worry about laminitis all the time. So I don't know if donkeys are really our best option. Whatever we end up seriously considering, I imagine asking to do a metabolic blood panel to see what the Cushings/IR numbers are- it's one thing to manage that in a horse you already know and love, but I can't say I'd be willing to take on a horse knowing they are already dealing with those issues and all the management that comes with it.

Today it's not a bad day to have just two horses. Lots of snow coming down- maybe 10" by tomorrow morning. Izzy and Fizz were happy in the big pasture until the snow got deep enough they couldn't really scrounge anything else to graze, and then they wanted to go back to the sheds and hay. 

View from the house when Izzy told me it was time to move them to the other side of the road:








They are looking very wintery!






































There's been a lot of accumulation just since lunch time. We took Hugh out for a good run through the woods while he still could without snow banks to get bogged down in. Everything is so wet from all the melting earlier in the week.


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## Avna

Goats. Just saying. I considered and put aside the idea of donkeys for similar reasons as you. 

Advantages of goats: 
Horses and goats seem to have a natural affinity. 
Goats do not founder, won't poison themselves if they have good feed, and generally are much easier and far cheaper than horses to keep happy and healthy. They don't hurt themselves just existing, the way horses do. 
They don't take up nearly the room another horse does. All they need is a spare corner. They eat hay and companion goats need nothing else besides salt and water.
They are bright, curious, and have a distinctly wicked sense of humor. There's a reason the devil is not associated with sheep. 

Disadvantages of goats:
*Fencing.* They need better fencing than any other livestock. They climb, they crawl under, and they jump. However, my goats stay with the horses although they could escape if they really put their minds to it; there's just 3 strands of electric braid keeping the horses in. They're herd animals and stick with the herd. 
*Predators*. Coyotes, dogs, bears, and mountain lions will all attack goats. They must be in a truly predator-proof house at night. 
*Cold. *Unlike sheep, horses, and cattle, goats must be protected from cold, and especially, wet. They don't have body fat or greasy wool to ward off winter. But all they need is a snugly bedded dry box out of the wind, especially if they can cuddle up with another goat. You will want two; just like horses they need a buddy of the same species.

Think about it. Works for me. Riding horse, companion horse (pony) and a pair of goats.


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## egrogan

I’ve thought a lot about goats. Between all of Hugh’s extended human family, we could probably have as many as we wanted given to us 😉 The fencing though. I just can’t figure out how the fencing could possibly work.


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## Avna

Well, what I have works for me, at least right now. If I was to do it over I would probably run 5 strands of smooth electric wire. If there's a lot of pasture, and their horse buddies are with them, that will hold most goats. I also had (yet to be rebuilt) smaller pens which were 5' non-climb, 6" off the ground, with boards at the top and bottom for reinforcing. That really will keep goats in. Kids, and Nigerian dwarfs, are harder to fence in than standard size adults.


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## Knave

Also an important consideration of goats- sometimes they will eat your horses’ tails off. I loved my goats, but Beamer would go hang out at their corral and fed them his tail…


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## Avna

Knave said:


> Also an important consideration of goats- sometimes they will eat your horses’ tails off. I loved my goats, but Beamer would go hang out at their corral and fed them his tail…


 I forgot about that. Mine don't do that, luckily.


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## Kalraii

Soooooo... what about another riding horse? So you can rotate? As you know I have Katie and Mocha (who fortunately is rideable albeit limited work) but whenever I've thought about my plans for a trio I'd always want two riding. Curious why you prefer the other way around and maybe I'm missing the benefit of it... I'm very glad that Izzy has company poor thing. Another random thought that maybe I've missed its intentional that Izzy and Fizz have somewhat closely related names?  Back to the companion thing all I know is I never want to have to manage a mini or even some ponies. They seem harder work sometimes!


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## Knave

I actually get not wanting another riding horse. I’m alright with two, but adding Bones into my rotation is just a bit much. Honestly, I think I would be happy focusing my time on only one if I didn’t have to work.


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## Kalraii

Knave said:


> I actually get not wanting another riding horse. I’m alright with two, but adding Bones into my rotation is just a bit much. Honestly, I think I would be happy focusing my time on only one if I didn’t have to work.


My concern is if something happens to one mostly - especially because I wouldn't want to move on a horse on that has little hope for its future being unrideable. Or injury etc. Like having 5-6 years gap between each horse. Mocha 20, Katie 12/13 then something a bit younger. For options innit. But £££££$$$$$ and time. I do get that.


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## Knave

I get that @Kalraii. That is why I have to have two going. A youngster and something a bit older. We used to spread them out two years, but now it seems to work out well enough with two. I wouldn’t have aged Queen and Cash so closely, but with her being gathered when she was it was my option.

I think we can get away with two, an older and younger, now because of the kids’ horses. If the oldest doesn’t take Bones when she graduates we will always have him as a backup, Beamer has been a good backup for everyone already, and we are looking to buy Zeus next year, which will give us two backups and our two mains (when Lucy has her colt). If it weren’t for the oldest being out, Lucy being out and Beamer being older would have messed us up big time (because Beamer was husband’s second).

We have to have horses going. I see why that is a desire for anyone, not just people working horseback.


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## gottatrot

Yes, it does seem like a difficult decision. I can see not wanting a pony, donkey or anything that is likely to need IR management. So far I've been lucky with my pony pairing with Hero, but I realize it could easily be much different. It's lucky that Hero stays with his own hay and defends it in his shelter, so I can limit what I give the pony. If he left the hay/didn't care or let the pony eat too much, I'd have a problem because I couldn't limit what she eats. Also having them only on an acre, which the horses seem to graze down without there being too much grass and it doesn't overfeed the pony. 
If I'd had the pony with Halla, for example, it would be much different and I'd have to at least shut them in with their own hay at night or one would get fat and one would starve. 

Then again, finding a "companion only" horse could easily lead to expensive vet bills, or feed bills. Any horse over 20 is potentially going to get an expensive diagnosis very soon. 

I wonder if it would be better to look for a companion/light riding type horse that is younger but has some known issues that are likely to end up less expensive. I'm thinking of Hero and also several other TBs I know that my friends sent to light riding homes. Hero has his stifle malfunction that has led to arthritis. However, it is unlikely to cause any more expensive condition than arthritis. He's an easy keeper, is unlikely to develop metabolic issues, his teeth are fine, and probably he'll just be a light riding horse that lives on in decent health for many years with daily Equioxx. 

The other TBs were the same with musculoskeletal issues that meant they were generally sound but could not tolerate hard work. But being in the 9-15 age range, unlikely to be expensive as pasture pets. A nice thing about a horse with this type of problem is that you can ride them if you want, so perhaps if a friend comes over or you feel like hopping on a different horse, you can. But there is no guilt about not working them, because their issues mean exercise in turnout is plenty and fine. 

In my mind, perhaps a younger morgan that someone has decided should not be in hard work because of a leg that is set on a bit crooked, or they have back arthritis that bothers them with a rider. Maggie had something going on with her neck, but I've known horses with back arthritis that were fine for many years even though you couldn't ride them. Amore's back arthritis was severe enough you couldn't sit on her, but you'd never know she had it otherwise and she didn't need pain medication even to age 30. Often if it does not involve the neck, it doesn't compromise the health.


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## egrogan

I love hearing all your thoughts about finding our next companion! 

I really don't want another riding horse- with work, I barely have time to ride Fizz as much as I want/need to. I also don't want to have to deal with finding/fitting another saddle. And having another rideable horse for a friend who comes over leaves me with the original problem- Izzy really can't be alone. If Izzy was the kind of horse that didn't mind being alone, or even got just a little agitated but could deal with it, I honestly wouldn't get a third. But when I say she's dangerous to herself, I really mean it. Think drenched in buckets and buckets of sweat, running frantically, throwing herself down on the ground. She is just not wired to be ok as an only horse.

I know a couple of people with early-teens TB mares that are pasture sound/light riding only due to arthritis issues, and I could probably get one of them over here. I guess I'm a little tentative about committing to a horse as young as Fizz because I could imagine a time in the future- not in the next couple of years, but in the next 10ish maybe- when we decide we'd like to move a little closer to civilization, and Fizz goes to a boarding situation. I don't know for sure what the future holds, but if we downsize by stepping back from these insane jobs, I can't say for sure that I would be as willing to pay board for a young, unrideable horse as I would be today when I don't really have to think about the budget. So I guess in my mind, a slightly older horse that does have some maintenance and specialized feeding needs is a better bet (even with the potential future heartache) than something younger that has maintenance needs that I'll have to carry a lot longer. Maybe a younger horse that needs a pasture situation because of arthritis could work out if it was clear she would go back to her original owner in the future, but if that for whatever reason didn't work out, it worries me to have to think about being in the position to re-home a 20-something pasture pet if my circumstances change. We all know that situation just doesn't really end well. I don't know, it's hard to weigh hypothetical tradeoffs...lots to think about!

It was a winter wonderland outside this morning. Their turnout blankets had gotten really icy and felt like lead capes. I was worried for a minute that I wasn't going to be able to get them off because there was a solid layer of ice all around the buckles on the belly straps. Luckily the ice broke away easily and I managed to tug them off. There was instant rolling- I imagine it felt really good to be free from all that weight!


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## Knave

I think around here you could walk on to most places and walk away with a retirement horse. I would like to think that the only horses one would send into such a scenario would be ones they particularly cared for, and who had done well by them. Yet, as with Beamer, I can also see the heartache now of letting them go.

I see why you may wait until Spring, but could see you grabbing something sooner too so you could enjoy a few snowy rides. Could you pony Izzy along with you?


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## egrogan

@Knave, I’m trying to get brave enough to pony Izzy with us but I have some reservations. Fizz is sooooooo submissive and deferent to her, I have visions of Izzy giving her the mare glare and pinning her ears, and Fizz leaving me in the snow to her as far away as possible!


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## Knave

I get that @egrogan! Sometimes horses completely get that they are the boss when you are with them. Bones is great that way, weaker than any in the corral, and convinced he is massively in charge with my help. Yet, I have ridden horses who will half panic over their boss giving them dirty looks when I am ponying them at first, and they never seem great about it. It’s why the only horses we will use to pony Queen are Cash and Lucy. She also is convinced she is unstoppable with me with her, and I don’t doubt the horse fight she would get into if we tried to pony her with someone else. 

I wonder if you could try just in your yard at first. Maybe you could get a feel for what might happen. Maybe you would be left in the snow too, but I think you might be safer. I get avoiding it though too!


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## egrogan

Yes, I would definitely try in the yard first! I lead them around together, sometimes with me in between them and sometimes with them both on my right side, side-by-side. If they are both on my right side, I tend to put Fizz on the outside- if she's on the inside between me and Izzy, she seems to panic and just stops to get away from all the pressure coming at her from both direction. She's the most sensitive horse to horsey body language that I've ever met. It's like she just wants to shrink if another horse in the pasture comes near her. Weirdly, she doesn't act that way on trail, so maybe I do give her some feeling of confidence in standing up to other horses, like you're saying about Bones.


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## egrogan

Kalraii said:


> Another random thought that maybe I've missed its intentional that Izzy and Fizz have somewhat closely related names?


Haha, somehow I missed your question @Kalraii! It wasn't on purpose, but it is definitely a running joke. Izzy's registered name is Tara's Isabel, so she's pretty logically called Isabel or Izzy as a barn name. Fizz's registered name is Windfield Effervescence. She's also got pretty dapples that stand out in her coat most of the year. So that, paired with the Effervescence part of her registered name got me thinking about something "bubbly" when I first got her. Bubbles was not at all the right name for her, so I thought about plays on champagne, or sparkling, and Fizz popped into my head. To be honest the similarity to Izzy didn't even occur to me until I said the name Fizz out loud to our barn owner, who looked at me laughing and said, "you can't be serious- Fizzy and Izzy?"  But yep, it worked! And once she got to know her, even BO agreed that Fizz was definitely the right name.


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## bsms

Kalraii said:


> Izzy and Fizz have somewhat closely related names..."you can't be serious- Fizzy and Izzy?"


As long as it isn't Dizzy...😉


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## gottatrot

That makes sense why you would want an older horse. Especially if someone retains ownership of a retired horse, it does give you more flexibility for future plans. 

Ponying is strange in that it's hard to tell how it will work out. Sometimes the dominant horse will lead the submissive one, and sometimes they won't. Or like Hero, he refused to pony Amore at all. But he'll pony Aria, no problem. It can be intimidating. I can do it in the right circumstances, if I feel it's safe. 
My friend will ride her horse, pony another and have a loose mini and dog on the beach with cars and people everywhere, and somehow she controls them all. I could never do that.


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## egrogan

This morning was a really pristinely beautiful winter day. For once we got a perfect snowfall, and the warm days last week had taken care of all the awful ice that was everywhere, so the footing is great. When I was putting hay out this morning, I couldn't help myself- the snow looked so inviting, I hopped in the sled and rode it down the hill!!  🛷 There was no one else around and I felt like a little kid. Great fun!








Apparently the horses had fun in the field too- I love when there's fresh snow and you can see how they occupied themselves all day. And- they mostly ignored that hay I put out and instead spent the day digging through the snow for the grass.








Hugh didn't want to be left out- we went on an invigorating afternoon walk through the woods.
















I'm off from working starting tomorrow until the new year. Yay! I've convinced my lovely husband to help me with the ponying experiment over the break, and next week's weather is looking good. Stay tuned 😉


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## TrainedByMares

I love the sled idea! 
Hugh always looks so regal and dignified!


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## egrogan

TrainedByMares said:


> Hugh always looks so regal and dignified!


Haha, I made him cooperate with some Santa dress up this morning, maybe a little less regal than usual 🎅
















the moment when dress up was done 🤣








So logically the horses were next on the list:








Fizz: “we all know I’m only in this for the pocket full of peppermints!” 🍬
















I had to remind Izzy that Santa doesn’t generally stop for mean girls








Mare glare for your next holiday card anyone?








In all seriousness, it’s been a long, not always easy, year, but we appreciate all of you who have been along for the ride with us! Merry Christmas 🎄


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## Knave

Merry Christmas!!!!


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## bsms

Hugh _*is*_ regal. Dignity and grace are displayed at their fullest when the trappings of royalty are absent and only the inner soul is displayed... 😉


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## egrogan

It's an icy Christmas here, which is definitely not beautiful or festive. The roads are a dangerous mess and 30 miles of interstate, plus the parallel local roads, are all shut down. Fortunately we don't have anyplace to go except from the house to the animals.








The ice is unfortunately supposed to go another 12 hours. It does have some traction to it, and there's snow underneath which helps alot, but let's just hope it doesn't go sheer on us.

Horses have the option of being in the sheds, where there are over-stuffed haynets. Instead I looked out the window and saw them out in the pasture digging at hay from yesterday that was iced over, so Hugh and I took pity on them and went out to throw some fresh. Notice the icicles dripping off Fizz's blanket. I'm trying to be strategic about when I give them new blankets as I only have so many to rotate. But they are dry and comfortable underneath, so as long as these don't get too heavy I'll keep them on. Temps are hovering right around freezing so it's not cold- just trying to keep them dry.








This is our road. The town has been through almost every hour sanding but the ice is really building up quickly. I love how you can see that Hugh has four paw traction control - aka, his cute little claws - fully engaged.








Just being out for 20 minutes, his tail floof was starting to get iced over. Glad we are back inside our warm, dry house right now!


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## TrainedByMares

That is pie-making weather! How do you heat your house?


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## egrogan

What's that? A new year you say?








Izzy will be taking her 28th trip around the sun this spring.








The weather kicking off the new year has been less than inspiring. We started with cold drizzle this morning, but it's let up so now it's just foggy. Looking like more of this through tomorrow, but then hopefully a few inches of snow.








It would be nice to have some soft snow to improve the footing a bit. I officially put Fizz on her winter break from riding- I brought my saddle back up to the house for the winter. I don't like to leave it in the tack shed because the temps fluctuate too much and I don't think that's great for the leather. It definitely needed a good cleaning, so that was a worthwhile chore to check off the list- with expert supervision, of course! 😉








I did sign up to do a winter horsemanship challenge, which can be mounted or unmounted- you have to log 40 hours of working with your horse between now and the end of March. I think I'm going to use this as an opportunity to go back to ground driving, and hopefully get both Izzy and Fizz involved in the challenge. I can work in the fields so no one goes crazy being left alone, and at least this will keep them both moving a little bit. Even if I didn't have to worry about Izzy's issues being alone, the footing everywhere is a thick, icy crust, so there's really no place to ride anyway. So this could be a good compromise.

With the bad weather and difficulty being able to walk across the fields or in the woods because of how bad the ice is, poor Hugh is going a little stir crazy this weekend. I understand how he feels!








The only thing the ice crust seems good for is showing off some cool animal prints when we get a new dusting of snow overnight. I really need to put up some game cameras since we do seem to have quite a lot of winter wildlife activity. Below (top left to bottom right):
Coyote, crow, squirrel, sasquatch Hugh








The unusually warm weather seems to be confusing the wildlife though. Yesterday we were out running errands and we saw a funny sight in the road- there were 5 tom turkeys in full display spinning around in the middle of the road while the wild flock of hens ignored them and went about their business. Seems way too early for the toms to be talking to the ladies though!








Happy New Year!


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## TrainedByMares

Happy new year! Thanks for a journal that has great pics, is thoughtful and fun to read!


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## egrogan

It was 2*F this morning for chores, but at least it was bright and sunny- and, no wind made all the difference. I had enough layers of clothes on to look like Ralphie from _A Christmas Story_, but I was warm enough. Mornings like this I am so, so grateful to have a really good frost-free hydrant to keep the water flowing!








Hugh has chosen this awkward looking place to sleep, because he is directly on top of the heat vent! 🤣








Stay warm out there!


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## Knave

I was laughing about my new coat with a friend at the New Year’s dance. I told him that I love my new coat (I do. It’s the best coat I’ve ever had.), but that it is big and bulky. Then I explained my own jealousy of our neighbors.

We have a set of neighbors that are beautiful people. I am talking every one noticeably beautiful, and when we work with them or drive the cows through their place and they come out to help, they are dressed in a way that is also beautiful. I tease that they must be cold, but I also am jealous of their clothes. Sometimes I think about saving money and buying the type of things they wear (isn’t that a girly admission).

Anyways, we were laughing about this. He was saying it is better that I am warm, and I agreed. He’s pretty serious natured, and so he almost cried laughing when I said that when I take all of it off I still look the same.

It is something I wonder about though, how cold they must be. I am out there with soft snow pants, my armitas, a heated vest and a big coat over a small coat, hot hands in big bulky gloves, and an ugly hat. I am pretty comfortable, although it is difficult to climb on my giant horse. Lol


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## egrogan

@Knave, I have the same feelings about some of the beautiful people near us- it's like with horses, they must just have really good genetics to look that naturally gorgeous. But I'm totally with you, I can be comfortable outside in just about any kind of weather as long as I have the right clothes. Have you seen this meme?


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## Knave

I love it!


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## TrainedByMares

That is funny. I think beautiful is on the inside though.


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## PoptartShop

Gosh, & I'm sitting here complaining about 18-20 degree weather...(facepalm).
LOL, that meme is SO true haha.


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## Avna

I love my insulated overalls. With those, and a heavy parka (and ski gloves with chem heater packs and liners and two pairs of socks and heavy base layers and a thick wool sweater and a fleece neck gaiter and wool watch cap), I'm just set! You can see my eyes. Behind my glasses. 

My horses think I'm beautiful, when I am heading their way with their hot mash breakfasts.


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## egrogan

@Avna, for Christmas my most exciting gifts were new silk base layers and more Darn Tough socks of varying weights. They were all part of today's fashion show!


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## egrogan

So I took a tiptoe step today towards finding another horse. Even though it's super cold out, the roads are actually really well sanded and not slippery at all. I was feeling a little sorry for myself that I haven't ridden in more than a month, so I figured I should start the process of finding another horse so that I'm not still wishing I could go ride as the spring gets closer.

I think I've said before I'm very much on the fence about working with a rescue, but I know that's the first thing everyone is going to say to me when I start reaching out to individuals about finding a retired horse, so I figured I needed to be a good sport and give it a chance. The main Morgan rescue that operates in the northeast refuses to share public details (on FB or their webpage) about what medical issues/lameness make their adoptable horses suitable as "companion only," but they vehemently claim that anyone who is serious enough about adopting a horse can just email them and find out all the details. I personally don't think they should be so cagey, and I'm definitely not paying the $25 application fee to be "pre-approved" before I even know if a horse is suitable based on their health issues. I'm willing to take on some maintenance issues, but committed to steering clear of IR/restricted grazing needs. I would need to know that kind of basic info about a potential horse before I go through the hassle of applying (including providing three personal contacts and all my vet/farrier info for them to investigate me as a horse owner- I definitely don't want to waste all those other people's time either!)

But again, I'm trying to be more open-minded, so a few weeks ago I emailed about a mare that was the right age and temperament as described on their website. I didn't hear anything back, but the website clearly states that it is volunteer run, so if you don't hear a response from them in three days, email again. So I emailed again, and I eventually got a reply a couple of days before Christmas. The person who replied gave me the first name of a boarding barn owner who had the horse, and a phone number to call to "get all my questions answered." She didn't actually have any info at all about the horse. Now, anyone who has ever tried to contact a boarding barn owner over the phone knows darn well there's no way the phone call is going to be answered. The barn is in PA, so it's not like I can just stop by, and I didn't want to bother this person during the holidays. But again...channeling my good intentions...today I finally tried to call. After about a dozen rings, the call goes to VM, and surprise surprise, the mailbox is full and not accepting new messages. I tried texting the number (no idea if it's a landline or a cell), but haven't heard anything back. I'll give it 24 hours, and if I don't hear anything back, I'll consider myself having attempted to inquire about a rescue and then move on to reaching out to personal connections.


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## Knave

I know my father offered to send you a retiree, but his are geldings. One would match Fizz in looks. 😊


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## egrogan

That's very tempting @Knave! I think Izzy would love a gelding way more than another mare to boss her around. If only we were closer...


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## Knave

I know! I wish we were. He said Tigger or Spider, but I think Andy would be the ticket. Beautiful to match Fizz, and you could ride him too. Spider and Tigger are beauties themselves, Tigger is a palomino who won many a cowhorse show and team roping.


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## Knave

Tigger and Andy a few years back.


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## egrogan

They look like they would be perfectly happy in a Vermont winter. Gorgeous!


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## Knave

They certainly would be. It seems you get more moisture, but usually we are about the same cold.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> They certainly would be. It seems you get more moisture, but usually we are about the same cold.


I almost got talked into donkeys, but I happened to listen to a podcast about donkey care over the weekend and heard how awful constant damp footing is for them, and there's just no way to avoid that here. Of course the sheds are clean and dry and always available, and we don't have mud, but the grass is always dewy and in the winter, the snow is always wet under their feet. I just don't think it would work out very well.


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## Knave

Donkey’s would be fun, but I imagine your pastures would be difficult too. I heard they are very easy keepers and prone to founder. I don’t know that’s true though; I’ve never had a donkey. I do wish you lived closer by.


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## gottatrot

I think probably every donkey has IR due to their thrifty genes. I hope you find just the right horse!

It always seems a good idea to go with a rescue, but they make it so difficult. For a hamster, it was filling out pages of paperwork, waiting a long time to hear back, only to find out the hamster is in a foster care several hours away. Too much effort. My sister faced having a rescue tell her she was an unsuitable dog owner for a puppy, but she could have adopted an adult dog with behavioral issues if she wanted. The puppy was a risk because she lived on a farm, from "wild animals," but they certainly wanted to give her a difficult placement. When she gave up and said she would get a puppy from an ethical breeder, they sent her scathing emails cussing her out. 

Ha ha that meme was so funny. DH said he disagreed, that horse girls have cheeks that are actually rosy from the weather and not from makeup, and if you took off the fancy girl's makeup she'd look worse than the barn girl does naturally. LOL how sweet. 
@Knave, you crack me up about the neighbors' fashion. 
The bad thing about winter weather is trying to get on your horse. With rain pants on, I've felt that once I maneuvered myself up there, I was stuck. If the horse spooked I'd just fall off with my legs frozen in the same position, like a sack of potatoes.


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## egrogan

Most of the snow is staying south of us in places that don't need or want it- weirdly, I actually really wish we would get a few inches. The footing is a solid crust of ice over what little snow we have left. The ice crust is so thick it supports my weight walking on it without crunching through in most places. Hugh has starting taking a running leap, rolling onto his side, and sliding down the hill to the horse field. I keep trying to get a video but it's usually too dark. We've had dramatic sunrises and sunsets the last few days though with all the unsettled weather.









We got a little dusting last night. It must have come at a perfect northeast angle because there's a straight line down the trees dividing the side that got snow from the side that didn't.








Ponies were looking especially fuzzy, and had apparently spent the night outside rather than in the sheds where they'd be out of the snow. They really only go inside for their breakfast and dinner.

























The woman with the rescue Morgan did text me back yesterday, and told me she would call me at 8am today, but she didn't. I'm going to move on to other options at this point. I'd love to help them out but I get too anxious with disorganization and plans that aren't kept.


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## carshon

Have you tried MorganSafenet? I don't know much about them but have contributed to them in the past.


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Have you tried MorganSafenet? I don't know much about them but have contributed to them in the past.


Yep, most of their horses are located in Texas so that would be challenging.

I'm going to start reaching out to a few breeders that may have a retired mare that could be happy with a new address.


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## egrogan

Serious winter has arrived. Temps fell down to 0* last night, this morning was -5*F for chores. We actually had some really beautiful, powdery dry snow last night when we were out for nightcheck. I overloaded the horses with way more hay than two horses could eat, but I wanted them to have plenty of fuel.








This morning they were perfectly happy. They were actually running around, bucking and chasing each other around, when I went out for morning chores. It's a glorious, sunny day today, but I kept them bundled up because it's not going to get any warmer until late tomorrow. Every time I look out the window they're standing around sunbathing, so they seem pretty content.


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## TrainedByMares

Those are great pictures! About the same weather here. Tell Hugh he wasn't the only frosty dog doing nightcheck!


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## egrogan

@Knave, I couldn’t remember what thread it was where we were talking about owls hunting in the snow, but I came across this today and thought of you. Lots of little creatures live in the stone walls all winter; I think you can see all the little mouse tracks in the snow. There were also some red squirrel prints around, so I’m hoping the owl went for the mouse instead. I am pretty sentimental about our little red squirrels.








I also thought this was neat-there are lots of red headed woodpeckers around, and they are really busy with this dead tree. You can see all the wood chips around the base.








Despite starting off at -10*F this morning, the sun is strong and it’s around 20*F right now. I went out and pulled blankets off, and they both immediately dove for the ground to roll. Unfortunately they’ll have to go back on tonight as our next winter challenge is a foot of snow coming overnight. Fittingly called “Winter Storm Izzy” 😆


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## egrogan

Winter Storm Izzy delivered as expected. We got a foot of snow, but it was actually sort of nice that it came over a 3-day weekend. Here's my Izzy coated in Winter Storm Izzy 🤣
















We took Hugh out for a walk to the overlook in the middle of the storm. Other than having to dodge the big town plow truck, we had the road to ourselves. Because the overlook straddles two towns, it was funny to get up there and have the road clear on our town's side of the road, but not yet clear on the other town's side. We turned around rather than traipse through several inches of unplowed snow, but it was nice to be out!








When we got home, Hugh was wearing funny little snow "leg warmers" where snow balls had collected in the feathers on his legs. He happily laid by the fire and thawed the rest of the afternoon.








The snow let up by mid-afternoon, so we were able to get things cleaned up in the daylight. Because the snow was light and fluffy, it actually wasn't difficult clean up.








After the snow stopped, we actually saw beautiful blue skies, and with just a little bit of sunshine temperatures were very pleasant. I was able to pull their blankets off for a bit and give them a good grooming. My lovely husband plowed a path through the field back to the poop pile, which has the added bonus of making it a lot easier for the horses to move around when the snow is this deep. There was some bucking and running. You can really see how deep it is though when they're standing in the path, surrounded by the rest of it!

















So all in all, not a bad storm. It's just such a relief to have nice snow that _isn't _followed by sleet and ice, which is the awful pattern we've been stuck in all winter so far. I don't mind snow when it's like this!


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## PoptartShop

The snow really is so pretty!  I'm glad it's not icy too, that's the worst. We had that the other night. Snow, then turned to sleet & it was a icy mess in the morning.

When it's fluffy like that, it's perfect. The herd is sooo cute in the snow. & Hugh looks so cute with snow all over his legs!  Aww! Great photos!


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## egrogan

@PoptartShop , sorry you ended up with ice too. I hope you get some warming days so you and Promise can get back out on the trails.


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## phantomhorse13

Who would ever think I would be jealous of your snow! I am glad the storm didn't make a huge mess up there.

Any more progess on finding another companion? Have you tried contacting your vet? She may know of someone in the area needing a soft landing for a horse.


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## egrogan

@phantomhorse13 - we definitely did get lucky this time, but I'm sorry you also had ice. I hope you get some melting soon!


phantomhorse13 said:


> Any more progess on finding another companion?


Actually, yes! I've been working away at options over the past few weeks.

First, the woman from the rescue did leave me a message about a week after we were scheduled to talk. The poor mare is seriously lame on hard, frozen ground, so she's basically relegated to standing in a deeply bedded stall to get any relief. They don't know what's causing the lameness and don't have any other medical details (except the very "duh" feedback from their vet that the horse shouldn't be ridden). She is occasionally pasture sound on more forgiving ground, but it's a day to day sort of thing. It made me very sad to hear that news, but it also makes me annoyed at the whole rescue enterprise- I just don't understand why horses like this, clearly suffering, are offered for "adoption" - who, realistically, is going to take on a horse with undiagnosed lameness so painful that the horse can't do much besides stand in a stall? She's a mare that came from a "kill pen" and clearly that required resources for "bail," and now boarding and some vet care. You just have to start to ask questions about whether it would be kinder to ease this mare's suffering by putting her down and helping another horse that can at least be comfortable pasture sound. It just brings up all kinds of emotions for me about the dog we had that also should never have been adopted out. The rescue world is just not for me.

I then saw a post from a Morgan breeder I admire with a retired mare that was being offered to a new home. She had all the attributes I was looking for, but as I looked at her pictures and contemplated connecting with the breeder, I realized she looked just like Maggie, and stopped myself. I've always felt that it's ok to get another animal after you lose one that you love, but try to avoid even unconscious ways of trying to "replace" the animal you've lost with one that looks similar. Plus, this mare was in Michigan, and realistically, it didn't make much sense to think about paying all that money for shipping that far. But the fact that I was even considering it helped me realize that I _am _ready to get serious about finding something. So, I made the call I've been intending to make to Fizz's breeders, who I knew would have something.

I had a great conversation with them, and there are two mares I'm considering: one is 19, one is 22, both are Morgans, both are retired broodmares who live out in a herd 24/7 in the same sort of setup they'd have here. No maintenance issues, no signs of Cushings or other metabolic issues (though the 19 year old, the one I'm leaning towards taking, is a chunky monkey so I'd still want to do the metabolic blood panel with her to see what's up). We're going to talk later this week so I can ask a few questions about herd dynamics, as ideally I'd find something who could take on the boss mare role to help Izzy de-stress a little. There's no way I can get a trailer up my road in the next few weeks because of the snow and ice, so it will be at least a month, more likely March, before this happens. Ideally we'll hit the sweet spot of snow mostly receding but not full on mud season. But I'm really excited about it! I like the way they keep their horses, I like the temperaments of the ones I've met (the 19 year old is one I actually met and rode when I was shopping for Fizz back in 2017), and they would accept the horse back if something dramatically changed my life circumstances and I could no longer care for her. I'll wait until I finalize which one is coming to officially "introduce" her 

Another twist- they offered me the opportunity to buy Fizz's foal, who is now a coming 5-year old mare. She was just a fuzzy little weanling when I met her years ago! I'll say upfront I'm not going to do it right now. While she is going solidly w/t/c under saddle, I don't think I have enough time, skill or knowledge to really develop a young horse. I also don't have the facilities. And let's be honest, it's easy to fall in love with the idea of having a baby from Fizz, but I don't even know the mare. I got some video and photos of her, and she's developed beautifully- maybe a little lighter boned and taller than Fizz, but in the video she looks like she's trying very hard and easy to get along with. I'll have a chance to meet her when I go down there to see these other mares, but I don't think the timing is right to contemplate another horse that needs consistent work. Plus, my lovely husband would kill me if I told him we were going from 2 to 4 horses right now 😉 Anyway, it's fun to daydream. Some photos- Fizz with Orchid when she was a few days old; Orchid under saddle this summer; me riding Fizz in the same arena.


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## PoptartShop

Awww, I'm glad to hear the search is going well, Fizz's breeders definitely sound like they are good people & the two mares sound like they'd be a perfect fit for your herd.  I hope all goes well! That is so cute about the 5yr old. A young horse would definitely be fun, but you're right, it is a lot of work haha. I got Promise when she was 5, & she had barely any training at all, so we had to start from the ground up. And she was the only horse I had, so I know having more than 1, including a young one would be a LOT! But maybe in future...definitely something for you to think about. But your herd is perfect right now!  

As for the rescue, whew...I don't understand that either. Why adopt the mare out if she's so limited and in pain; why not put her down? 
That is not much of a life, standing in a stall. I agree. Ugh. Putting her down would end her suffering for sure.

And such cute pictures, look at baby Fizz! Eeeek!  Too cute!!


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## Kalraii

Awwwww I love your recent post. Gods I would LOVE a foal from Katie so you are showing some mega restraint. They are _both_ so beautiful. At least I have the bonus of Katie never having a baby nor will she if I have any say in it! But to dream... the 19 year old is he fully retired or something you could pony you think? Or even lightly ride? Seeing retired easy keepers here really makes me wonder about that. Must be so tough to manage without all the other extra stuff they can have metabolic-wise etc. I reckon you have what it takes to get a youngster! Well. No more comment on that eh. Let's see how things go when you go there xD Very exciting!


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## phantomhorse13

OMG Fizz baby!!  But you are smart to know that isn't something you should be taking on right now, as fun as daydreaming would be. The 19 yo sounds like a much better prospect.. and probably a lot kinder on your wallet!

I would have nothing more to do with that rescue. They are simply torturing that horse. There are worse things than a peaceful end and resources could be used for a horse who may at least be comfortable.


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## egrogan

The word of the day today is..._FROSTY!_ 🥶 It was -15*F real temp during chores, but with no wind and the sun out, it didn't feel too awful with the right clothes on. Just funny to see the horses covered in frost on all their whiskers.
















I talked to Fizz's breeder again yesterday and we had a good conversation about personalities and herd dynamics. They got a lot of ice earlier in the week, so there's really no getting a trailer out of there or up here. We decided we'd connect this time next month, and I'll go down there to meet a couple of the mares, probably having a vet meet me to pull blood for a metabolic panel. Then hopefully we'll get a window in late Feb/early March to make the move!


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## PoptartShop

Look at those cute frosty whiskers!! 

That is wonderful news.  Yayyy!! So exciting. I think that's good timing too, as right now the weather is just a mess! I'm excited for you to get there & meet them. 

I'm complaining about 15F degree weather...you're in the negatives! LOL. (facepalm). The wind is the worst, it's unbearable!


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## Knave

I cannot wait for you to get your horse! You are much less hasty than I would be, although ice does have a way of limiting everything.


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## egrogan

@Knave, the weather/road conditions are definitely the big factor. Partially too, it's the comfort of knowing I have plenty of hay right now to get two horses through the winter, especially as cold as it's been. And just the other logistics of introducing horses in a pasture with snow and ice. I think it will all be a little easier in a couple of months. Just in time to get Fizz back under saddle and conditioning. I am really excited, for sure!


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## carshon

What exciting news!


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## gottatrot

Can't wait to meet the new herd member! All of your animals are lucky to have you, someone who plans ahead and thinks about timing, the best fit, and is not impulsive about such important decisions. 
I love the frosty horse pictures.


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## egrogan

Hi all- I need some opinions about a situation I've found myself in. I really had memories of Maggie on the brain this weekend, I think because the farrier is coming tomorrow and we lost her a couple of days after the last farrier appointment. Thinking about her so much made me realize I had never received a bill from my vet for her visits that week. Now, her office does sometimes get backed up with billing, and there was the holiday period in there, but they have my credit card on file and it's never taken more than a month to get a receipt. The vet was here a total of three times that week: once at the farrier appointment, once on a regular call with a large Dex injection the day Maggie died, and then an emergency call that same night when she was euthanized. I'm guessing that put the bill for the week's visits in the $750-1000 range, though I'd never euthanized a horse so I don't totally know what my vet charges. So I would think that would be a big enough bill that it wouldn't get lost in the shuffle.

Yesterday I was thinking about this, and this strange thought entered my mind that Maggie's "mom" had gone directly to the vet to pay the bill. Her mom doesn't live locally anymore, but she has known and used the vet for years and they talked on the phone that night when we were making the euth decision. 

Sure enough, I called the vet's office today to ask what happened, and as soon as I asked the office manager if I had missed a bill, she said, "no, Maggie's mom called us and asked to take care of it, but not to tell you then because she knew you wouldn't let her." It's making me teary-eyed just writing that. Of course I would never have asked her to do that. I took care of all of Maggie's expenses like any of mine. And of course, I absolutely can understand her feeling that sense of care and responsibility in wanting to cover it.

So- what do I do about it? It's been 6 weeks now, and I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to follow up with the vet (I promise I pay all my bills on time; since they have my credit card I just wait for them to charge me!). I don't want to open a raw wound for Maggie's mom if I reach out to her, which it sounds like she maybe didn't want me to do. I thought about sending her something nice as a thank you (flowers? wine?), or even sending her a check? Or a gift card to buy something nice for her young filly? I don't want to make too many assumptions about her personal financial circumstances; she's a younger woman recently out of college who has a good job and is starting her career, but I don't know if a bill that size is something that's necessarily comfortable in her monthly budget, whereas it's not something that would be difficult for me. But sending something monetary seems crass. I am just really not sure what I should do. Any thoughts?


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## Knave

I am sorry you are having a hard time.

I think that, despite her financial circumstances, that you simply need to say thank you. We don’t have a lot of money, and when we do something it is because we choose to, and feel good about doing it. This girl did something kind, and that was her choice.

I wonder if you could have something made for her and for you in memory of Maggie. Did you keep some tail hair or something of that sort? Some people make rings or things like that that are really pretty. Or you could have a picture of her done nicely and sent to the girl with a thank you for letting her have been yours and being in your life, and for the kindness she showed again at the end of it.


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## egrogan

Thank you @Knave. I love the way you put that. My husband also said that she made the choice she did because it was important to her to do it. I would have done the same if roles were reversed.

We did make sure that the tail hair was saved, and she has it (I kept just a tiny part for myself). I like the idea of a nice picture and thank you, phrased just the way you phrased it. 💕


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## Kalraii

Awwww. In these situations my go-to is a hand written heartfelt letter or card with a nice recent picture printed off, framed if I can. Time delay doesn't even need apologising for or explaining - its self-explanatory given the circumstances. I think in addition to above a little gift for the filly would be a nice gesture too, for a brighter future with Maggie in your hearts. Finances wise just include a little thanks and an opening so she could contact you to help share the burden, if it is a burden. Depending how close you are I have, and would again for someone close, call their regular vets and credit their account with half the amount so they could for their future/current pets. I did it with a friends dog. I feel for you.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww...I can't imagine how hard this must be.  I agree with the above. And, it's definitely never too late.


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## carshon

I agree with the others that she did out of love for a horse that she cared and loved for many years. I think if you would like to do something for her you could donate in Maggie's name to a local rescue or shelter or some other worthy cause so that the love you both shared for her mare carries forward.
And you could let her know it was done in a nice card without ever mentioning the vet bill.


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## gottatrot

Great ideas, I agree that any of those would be nice. I do think there is a reward for the person doing something nice like that, and it was probably part of her final gift to Maggie as well.


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## phantomhorse13

I also agree with @Knave's idea of a nice picture and a thank you note. Never too late.


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## egrogan

It's made it up to a balmy 25*F today, so stripped the blankets before the farrier arrived, and they both instantly fell to the ground and rolled and rolled. 




After the farrier left we tackled the foot-deep snow bank the plow had made so I could get them out into the bigger field for a little change of scenery, at least for a few hours.
















Back to cold-cold tomorrow, and the overnight real temp from Wednesday into Thursday is supposed to be -16*F before the wind chill. Then maybe another foot of snow this weekend?


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## Kalraii

Man you really capture some good shots! I love it. Do you always braid their tails? Katie and Mocha aren't tail rubbers (thank god) and its really getting me down how muddy they get and y'know how it be with mares sometimes  I just read horror stories about tails getting caught and we do have barbed wire but I think the risk is minimal. When does the weather get better for riding?


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## egrogan

I tend to keep their tails braided this time of year because otherwise they collect big snow and ice balls (or muddy ice balls in the late fall/spring). And Izzy is still having off again, on again diarrhea from the Prascend so yes, she can get really messy! 

As far as riding, the fields are good for it now, with deep fluffy snow and a safe enough base under it. I just ordered a pair of driving lines and I'm planning on doing some in-hand stuff with Fizz in the pasture so we don't have to worry about Izzy having an "I'm alone and going to be eaten by wolves" melt down. May jump on bareback and ride in circles until we're too bored 😉

I won't trust the roads until March at the earliest, more likely April if the rest of the winter stays as cold as it's been. The roads are all dirt, so while plows do go through to clear and then dump copious amounts of sand down to make it safe for driving, it's still a solid layer of ice that isn't safe for riding until everything has defrosted. Even some days walking the dog we're wearing ice spikes to stay upright.


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## egrogan

Me next time it's above 20*F (next week maybe?)


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## knightrider

I love the dark around Fizz's eyes! She is so beautiful!

That drawing of the bundled up person is me! I can't take the cold, but if the only time I can ride is 7:00 to 8:30 a.m., I'm going! Just dressed in 5 layers, rabbit fur hat under the helmet, ski mittens, and my husband's insulated work boots. I can barely move, but at least I'm on a horse!


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## egrogan

So frigid this morning. It was -13*F when I went out for morning chores. But, things did really turn around, and it was a balmy 20*F for afternoon chores. Felt a lot better!








The big Nor'Easter predicted for the weekend looks like it's _jussssttttt _going to miss us. Right now our forecast is for flurries, heavy winds, and more near-0 temps. I'll take that over all the same plus another foot of snow! We'll see what happens. I think it's going to be one of those storms where we won't really know what happens until the storm does it's thing.

My long lines arrived today. I don't know if I'll be brave enough to be out long in the wind this weekend, but I am looking forward to getting them out to play with. Unfortunately the long-term forecast shows rain and 40*F temps later next week, which is a recipe for a mess. Hopefully there's still time for that to change. Rain over snow always sucks, unless it's April and the snow gets washed out for good.


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## phantomhorse13

Not sure what kind of day you were supposed to have up there today, but down here we were supposed to have some brief snow showers this morning as a clipper system came through, with the nor'easter arriving after dinner. It is supposed to just miss us here as well.

However, it's been snowing steadily since about 7 am. Thank goodness it's so dry that the flakes are more likes grains of sand, so only accumulated a couple inches. But it worries me that if they were so wrong on the no big deal storm.. what on earth is actually going to happen later.

Fingers and toes crossed it goes out to sea and misses us both! Sure don't need any more mess on the ground for the warm up, rain, and then drop in temps coming next week..


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## egrogan

@phantomhorse13 , it's been pretty nice all day. We had a short snow squall but I got Hugh out for a long walk through the fields and got some prep chores done. Right now they're still saying just 1-3 inches tomorrow, I think the winds are going to be the worst part.


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## phantomhorse13

Hope the storm was a big flop for you. Certainly some places got impressive amounts - glad I am not in mass or coastal NY or NJ.


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## Avna

Down in western Ma we got maybe 8 inches but my Lord it blew and blew and blew and wasn't warmer than zero all day. The snow drifted so much it's hard to say what we got. Enough to plough and shovel, for sure.


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## egrogan

I am very happy to say this time we got no measurable snow! Friends down in Boston and RI have over two feet!








We did get the very heavy winds though. It caught me off guard that the wind kept howling all day today too; wind chill temps stayed in the below zero range all day. I thought the wind was leaving over night, so when the day started with beautiful sunshine I put a bunch of hay out on the ground rather than in hay nets, and I was mighty irritated when I looked out the window later in the morning and watched it blowing away across the field! 😡


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## PoptartShop

Glad you didn't get a ton of snow! Oh yes, the wind was INSANE this weekend!!! We got about 5-6in!
Doing hay was an experience LOL, I totally get the feeling!!


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## egrogan

Friday was Fizz’s 15th birthday 🎂 She got lots of pets and a big carrot with her dinner.
























Yesterday, temps were wildly warm (42*F/6*C), so M and I went over to GMHA to watch the last sleigh rally of the season. It was awesome being outside in a long-sleeve tshirt, no hat, no gloves! I've never driven, but if I did, I think sleigh driving would be the #1 thing I'd like to do. The turnout was disappointing- they didn't have enough drivers to do the judged competition- but still, everyone who was there seemed to be having fun.
























































It sure was a picturesque day! And it's always good to have hopeful signs of spring coming. I managed to clear out 5 wheelbarrow loads of melting poo, and completely stripped and re-bedded the sheds, so that felt really productive. Of course today the high is back to around 15*F/ -9*C, and it's going to be -1*F/ -18*C tomorrow morning. But having one beautiful day lifted everyone's spirits!


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Yesterday, temps were wildly warm (42*F/6*C),


Ha ha ha ha! Wildly warm! Everyone around here in Florida would be saying, "Oh no, I can't ride. It's too cold." I'm the only one of my riding friends now days who will happily head out in 42 degrees. On the other hand, I would certainly have on gloves and a hat.

I love the pictures. Happy Birthday Fizz!! Acicate's birthday is February 16 when he'll be 10. How could my baby colt possibly be 10 years old already????

The sleigh pictures were wonderful. I am sorry there weren't more drivers, but it sure did look like fun. I am glad you could go see it. I used to have sleigh runners for my cart and take my white appaloosa mare sleigh driving when we had snow, when I lived in Maryland. It was so much fun!


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## Knave

Happy birthday to Fizz! It has been in the high fourties’ here the last like three or four days! It’s been lovely!! It’s going to get cold again here too, but I’m with you, one can certainly enjoy a good day. I was down to my talk top a couple of them!


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## TrainedByMares

Happy birthday Fizz! Our warm day here was friday and it is so nice to get a break from the cold! Glad you could pick some poo. Isnt it funny how it can be so bothersome to look at?


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## egrogan

I wanted to thank you all again for the ideas about sending a thank you to Maggie's "mom." I worked with a professional photo editor to edit out the rope halter and lead rope that were originally in this photo. It's my favorite one I have of her. I just got the frame this week, so I can send it off on Monday. I thought you all might like to see it too.


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## lb27312

Happy Birthday Fizz!! 

@egrogan - that's a beautiful picture! She will love it! Thanks for sharing!


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## knightrider

That is a super nice picture to send to your friend! What a great idea!


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## phantomhorse13

Happy Birthday Fizz!

That picture is lovely. I am sure Maggie's first mom will treasure it.


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## egrogan

Sigh…horses. Fizz insists on standing in front of the sheds, rather than inside, leaning her butt up against the door to the tack/feed room. It was bitter cold today, temps in the single digits, so I think probably the cheap metal on the handle gave out and broke off at the tip.

The problem is that I couldn’t find the broken handle tip anywhere. Now I am panicking about it ended up impaled through a foot. I checked them both and it’s not currently in a foot, and it’s not caught in their tails or hanging from their blankets. It should be fairly easy to see against the snow and ice, but…nothing. Did someone eat it?!

We’ll have to replace the handle, so I just hope it doesn’t impale anyone along this sharp broken edge between now and the weekend. Would it be worth it trying to wrap the sharp, broken edge in duct tape?

PS- it does make me laugh a little to see the photo of Maggie's teeth marks up and down the handle- she liked to turn it open for me in the mornings


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## Knave

I don’t know. It might be, but then again it might just make them chew on it…


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## egrogan

I didn’t think about it attracting chewing @Knave, but you’re right. Hmm…unfortunately I think I have to order it online since there isn’t really anyplace local I can find it, so I will have to hope they are careful


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## MeditativeRider

If you did wrap it, and they did chew it, they might get the tape off and then eat that?

That's too cute that Maggie used to open the door for you. Maybe you should keep the handle as a Maggie memory once you have replaced it?


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## phantomhorse13

if you worry they are going to mess with it, wrap it in duct tape then slap some dish soap on the duct tape. tho gonna be messy if you need to be in and out of there a lot.


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## egrogan

Found it-and happily, not embedded in someone’s foot, because it was a lot bigger piece than I was expecting!








Somehow it ended up about 20 feet away from the sheds-no idea how 🤷‍♀️ 









This innocent looking face isn’t talking, so it shall remain a mystery. I was able to order the replacement online, and it’s supposed to be here tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed no one messes around with the broken handle between now and then!


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## PoptartShop

Happy belated birthday, Fizz!!  & wow, that is a gorgeous photo. She is going to love it. Awwww, that is so sweet.

& whew, I am glad you ended up finding it, & it wasn't in anyone's foot (or tummy!). Hopefully everyone leaves the broken one alone in the meantime...someone needs to 'fess up! LOL.


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## egrogan

We're in the midst of the weather boomerang. Yesterday temps rose considerably, and melting started. I was reminded that we have a 2" thick base of ice left over from around Thanksgiving that has been insulated by a foot of snow all winter. The foot of snow is mostly melted at this point, just a few squishy inches left, but the ice is hardly budging. So when temps rose yesterday, my heart sank that Izzy's shed was starting to flood. I thought we had taken care of the risk of flooding a couple of years ago when we did all the work elevating the sheds and adding so much extra footing material, but with so much ice, water really couldn't go anywhere. I honestly couldn't tell if it was coming up from underneath, or flowing in from the paddock. Oddly, Fizz's side wasn't wet at all, and the structure is a single 25x10 building with no solid floor in the stalls. Not sure what happened. It was late at night check when I found the standing water, and I figured it wouldn't really make any difference if I just left it for the morning, since the other two sheds were still dry. So you can imagine my relief this morning when I went out to feed and the standing water had disappeared. I don't know how it found it's way out, but thankfully it did. All that was left were a few patches of soggy shavings (I had stripped it earlier in the day, before the water started coming in).

This morning I brought the horses up to the barn to give them a couple of hours in a quiet, dry place to have some hay out of the wild winds and ice. Izzy immediately laid down, as I imagined she would. Fizz seemed to have a good roll, as I found her stall mats all discombulated when I went back from them later. Both seemed to enjoy their field trip, but the clouds broke up into beautiful bluebird skies, and with temps now up to 50*F, there was much more melting. That meant that the giant snow banks from the town plow on the side of the road melted down enough that I was able to turn them out for a few hours in the new field.








Unfortunately the wind gusts continued to strengthen (gusting over 25mph right now), so all the hay I put out for them blew away. At one point I looked out the window to see a pile of hay rolling across the ground like tumbleweed, with Fizz in hot pursuit 🤣 Once the hay was gone, they were back at the gate asking to go back to their regular turnout to get out of the wind. Their main turnout is still really icy, but right now the sun and wind is helping. When temps drop back to single digits tonight, it'll be a skating rink, but they have been very careful with the ice so I think they will be ok. They still have some pathways along the fenceline that aren't too icy, and I'll load the sheds up with hay to encourage them to stay inside and quiet. Depending on how bad it is in the morning, I'll spread some sand- doesn't make sense to sand right now because there's too much water on top from the melting.

But...that's not all in terms of our weather theatrics! Tomorrow night it's supposed to start snowing again, with another foot on the ground by the end of Friday. Fun times. Just when we get a little taste of spring...NO. We have to be patient for awhile longer.


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## TrainedByMares

Lately I was wondering how the weather see-saw was treating you @egrogan . You are doing a great job looking after Izzy and Fizz!


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## egrogan

I ended up spending 30 minutes with my rickety lawn fertilizer hand cart spreading 150 lbs of sand in the main turnout paddock. As soon as the sun started to set, everything that had some give to it earlier today froze into mirror glass, and they were slipping and sliding around. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight without putting down at least a little traction. Fortunately, it didn't take much to make it safe to walk on again, every for a bipedal creature. After such a warm day, they're tucked into their blankets and much happier standing outside in the wind and now-below freezing temps. Why oh why do we have to get another foot of snow with all this melting that's just happened?!








(yes, that is old wet bedding that I pulled out of the sheds and threw down around the gate to save the sand for inside...)


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## phantomhorse13

That was a good idea, to use the spreader!

I hope the storm isn't as bad as predicted for either of us. 🤞


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## Knave

I was laughing at Fizz chasing the hay. It is cold here. It snowed a couple days and now it’s get back down to the low numbers. Ugh. I am sick though with some stomach bug, so at least I’m not regretting sitting around inside. I think since we homeschooled last year we are getting all of the bugs this year.


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## egrogan

Wow, it’s really coming down! 








It’s a lovely fluffy, powdery snow, which is usually preferable-the only problem now is that the ice is covered so that you can’t see it, but the snow is so light that it’s not much traction so if you hit the ice it sends you flying.

Izzy: Hurry up with that breakfast in there!!








Much happier with a full belly


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## TrainedByMares

I love getting up in the morning and looking after the horses! I sing silly little songs and give them kisses while I work. It is such a happy routine no matter what the weather brings!


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## PoptartShop

I'm over here complaining about rain today...whew! Look at that cute snowy Izzy face!!  Awww. I also prefer the light powdery snow! And it's pretty!!


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## egrogan

This is how Izzy greeted me this morning  








Fortunately it was superficial-I imagine she scraped herself up on the crusty ice under the new snow. But it’s still a shocking sight first thing in the morning!


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## phantomhorse13

[email protected], that is never the right way to start the day (or end it, or have it in the middle!). Glad to hear it was superficial.

🤬 ice..


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## gottatrot

Oh no, bad Izzy! Horses are always trying to hurt themselves.


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## egrogan

Happy 28th birthday to Izzy! Fortunately her scraped up leg is just fine.


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## Knave

Happy birthday Izzy!!!!

How’s the horse hunt going?


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## PoptartShop

I hope Izzy had a lovely birthday, pretty girl!!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> How’s the horse hunt going?


We are finally having a weekend without a massive snow storm, so I'm going down to Connecticut on Saturday to meet some ponies!

In other exciting news...I bought a trailer yesterday!!! It will be a month or so before I'm comfortable putting horses on it with the conditions of the roads, but still, it's a huge relief to finally have the option.

With everything in the world so terrible, I'm trying to find joy and hope in the little things. Aren't we lucky to have horses as a way to recharge when everything else seems so dire?


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## lb27312

Awwww Happy Birthday Izzy! Looking good!

Wanted to add Congrats on the trailer! Yay! I hear you on the world.... don't know what I would do without my animals...


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## Knave

We are lucky!

You know, husband and I were talking the other day, about the prime age of a horse. Anyways, for some reason this talk had me more excited about the future. Cash is 6 now, and Queen is just starting, and I felt all of the promise of what is to come.

I think I’ve gotten stuck into this stress level. Stress about what is going wrong and what could happen in a negative light, and forgotten the big picture. It was seeing their ages that reminded me of what is to come that is bright and happy. Working cows on Cash as he’s getting into his prime in the next couple years, and Queen coming into work and the anxiety but also the excitement that brings.

I think we need to look at things in the most basic and positive light for a moment. Remember the excitement of what is to come, and stop getting stuck in the negativity that seems so pervasive in our culture currently. Yes, things are going wrong, but I think always there are going to be things going wrong, and we’ve lost the focus on what can be good, right now and in the future. Basic things.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I think we need to look at things in the most basic and positive light for a moment. Remember the excitement of what is to come, and stop getting stuck in the negativity that seems so pervasive in our culture currently. Yes, things are going wrong, but I think always there are going to be things going wrong, and we’ve lost the focus on what can be good, right now and in the future. Basic things.


Lovely husband and I talk about this all the time. We've always joked that he's wired to be an optimist, and I'm wired to be a pessimist- in most cases, we can help balance each other out. But with world events right now, overlaid on a really long, cold, icy winter that has us all going stir crazy, it's personally been hard for me recently to embrace those good things. On the other hand, I am acutely aware of how privileged I am to even have horses at all, let alone the opportunity to add one right now and do things like buy a trailer so I can have fun adventures later this year. So I'm trying to reframe. And the fact that the time change is just 10 days away is going to help my mood tremendously! I can't wait to be able to ride again, once this retched ice is gone, which can't be all that long now.

This afternoon at work I get to review a dozen scholarship applications from some really impressive high school seniors applying for college next year. Seeing how hard these young people have worked despite how challenging the past two years have been is definitely inspiring!


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## Knave

I think it’s been a hard couple years on everyone. Usually, in our little environment, we are unaffected by the news or what is happening in the world. In a way we still stayed like that, in our bubble. We didn’t get the mandates and no one really wore masks excepting the school.

However, the big picture has even changed us here. Everyone is stressed and not themselves. I can only imagine how hard it must be in more urban type environments! If we are this different and stressed, it must be awful!


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## TrainedByMares

Knave said:


> I think it’s been a hard couple years on everyone. Usually, in our little environment, we are unaffected by the news or what is happening in the world. In a way we still stayed like that, in our bubble. We didn’t get the mandates and no one really wore masks excepting the school.
> 
> However, the big picture has even changed us here. Everyone is stressed and not themselves. I can only imagine how hard it must be in more urban type environments! If we are this different and stressed, it must be awful!


It is so true. If one has any sensitivity at all, it is a very stressful time we live in.
We all have many blessings as @Knave pointed out,we must 'keep our eyes on the prize' and not forget about the good things going on. 
I'm glad you are all disturbed by the negative things because it shows what great people you are!!
It's great to get it out in the open and talk about it because that helps too.


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## carshon

Congratulations on the new trailer. It truly does open up so many opportunities. As for stress levels in the last couple of years - mine has been through the roof! The company I worked for was purchased by another last Feb- I was one of the very few that were retained - but I really did not like the job the new company put me in. A former client of mine offered me an opportunity in December and I just started a new position 2 weeks ago - in a field I have never done! My stress levels have increased and my optimism level decreased. I am so looking forward to time on my horse. Being a person with no chance of riding from home - I truly look forward to posts from others that get to ride without hooking up and trailering anywhere.


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## egrogan

@carshon- congrats on the new job. I started the job I’m currently in back in September, and it’s hard to believe it’s been almost 6 months. I really like the people I work with, and the work itself is straightforward enough. We just found out the organization is being restructured, so my whole department will be moved somewhere else. Supposedly no jobs or work streams are being cut. Time will tell I suppose. It’s just a bit unsettling to be one of the newest people on the team. But fortunately the org will be hiring for more new roles, so I am trusting there really won’t be cuts. Still, so much about job happiness depends on your boss, and I really like mine and hope I stay with her.
Hope your new job ends up being something you enjoy! And still leaves you plenty of pony time


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## PoptartShop

Congrats on the trailer!  & Saturday sounds exciiiiiting...finally no snowstorm, yay!  That's a plus.
I totally agree...once I step foot at the barn, all my worries/stress seem to go away. Truly. They are quite magical, huh?!


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## egrogan

AGGGGHHHHHH. WHHHHHYYYYYYY DO HORSES ALL HAVE A DEATH WISH?!?!?!

Went out to feed about an hour ago, found the door to the feed room slightly ajar. Weird. Opened it, inside was carnage, blankets all on the ground and pooped on, lid to garbage can for Izzy's senior feed off and crushed like a soda can. The feed can was empty. THANK GOODNESS I was scraping the bottom of the can this morning, so there was probably only 4-5ish lbs of the senior feed left in there. It's this kind of can, with a locking lid mechanism, so I'm still not sure how the top ended up off. I will be getting a can with a better locking mechanism to replace it!!








Mind you, the feed room is a little closet of a space, 5' x 10'. So while it's not good the feed was eaten, the injuries could have been so much worse. Clearly this was a Fizz job- she has tried to do this before with me there, and I of course shoo her out before it escalates. I can't really make out when or how this happened, but it almost looks like she got stuck in there with the door closed or semi-closed- the whole inside of the door is chewed up and there was poop ground into the floor. The (new) handle is bent again, so I have the additional spring-loaded latches on the door hooked up and rigged up some baling twine to try to keep the handle from opening the door again until we can properly fix it tomorrow.

I managed to catch the vet over the phone as she was leaving the clinic, and she wasn't too worried about the amount of food eaten. I have to do temp checks a few times the rest of the night, watch for any colicky symptoms. First temp check was normal, 99.5*F. Without knowing when this happened, can't really say if that's a good sign or still too early to know. At least she's standing around in snow up above her coronary band, so her feet are essentially in constant cold. Vet was ok with her having free access to hay to keep those intestines moving. She did have that impaction once over the summer, so just keeping all fingers and toes crossed that nothing gets plugged up. She looks like she knows she made a mistake, but I have seen her eat hay, drink, pee, poo, so that's better than the opposite. 

GAHHHHHHH I'm just so mad that this happened. WHY do they have to find ways to try to self-destruct?

Please send us your jingles. Let's hope there are no serious consequences.


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## gottatrot

I'm sure it will all be fine, just being senior feed it will be like over eating hay. 
Amore once ate half a bag of actual grain and was fine. I was so mad since it involved gross negligence by the barn owner. Not closing a stall door, plus leaving grain in the aisle way? Just irresponsible. 
But to answer your question, YES, horses are always trying to self destruct!!

Feeling very happy for your new trailer, potential new horse, and I appreciate the other thoughts about keeping things positive from you all. I hope we can feel sad for people going through hard times, while remembering to have a good year ourselves after a couple stressful ones. My hope is to get a trailer this year too, and to take the horses on great adventures.


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## Knave

Beamer, the day we took him to the little girls, got loose and undid the lid on the grain bucket and ate however much he ate. I couldn’t tell, because I have no visual memory I had no idea how much had been in there the morning when I did Mama. It was pretty full, and a big garbage barrel! I was so worried he would die on the day he was supposed to start his new life!


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## egrogan

Thanks @Knave and @gottatrot for the reassurance. I think she’s doing ok. Her attitude was a little blasé this morning, but her feet are nice and cold with no pulses. Standing normally and I watched her trot around when Izzy gave her the dragon treatment. She was eager for hay and annoyed she didn’t get breakfast. Temp has been sticking right around 99.5. It went up as high as 101.2 in the evening, but had come back down by the next check. I’m hoping there won’t be any changes and she’ll be fine.


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## PoptartShop

Oh my goodness!! Fizz!!!! Glad she is okay & it sounds like she just got a little extra food in her, lol, but still, whew. Way to keep you on your toes.
It really is always something with these horses. We need a camera on them & bubble wrap on them, AT ALL TIMES! LOL.


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## egrogan

I spent the day yesterday looking at horses to pick our new mare. I saw 4, and while I haven't made a final decision, there is one leading contender. Would love opinions.

#1. Coming 23 year old dark buckskin mare. Still giving occasional walk/trot lessons to kids. Anyone can ride and handle. She had been sold to an older couple with another of their horses but came back to the farm in the last couple of years because the older man developed dementia and his wife couldn't manage the horses alone. She had a sweet, in-your-pocket personality. Said to be more of a leader in the herd, while always the first to meet you at the gate for scratches and pets. Has had three foals, had an ovary removed a couple of years ago because of an issue so wouldn't be breeding sound (not that it matters for me). She had a little lump on the inside of her right front ankle that felt firm but not hot. They weren't sure where that had come from, so that's a bit of a red flag. Was in her winter woolies so looked fluffy, but you could feel her ribs running your hands across; no crestiness in her neck, a little chubby around her butt.

#2. Coming 7 year old light buckskin mare. Had been sold in 2019 to a younger "trainer" who apparently had significant issues with continuing her under saddle work. There was some kind of accident where a rider fell while dismounting, the saddle slipped under the mare's belly, and she was terrified by it. After that, anyone dismounting sent her into a panic. The "trainer" returned her in 2021. They would like to see her in a home where she won't be ridden because of the baggage she has. Sounds like maybe there was more to it than the story I got, but I can't really say. She was a nice looking mare, but a bit nervous and snorty when I took her out of the barn and walked her up and down the road. Nothing "big" or dangerous, just a bit wide eyed and wary, especially compared to the puppy dog personality of all the others. On the one hand, I'd love to give a home to a horse who needs a soft landing without the pressure of riding. But on the other hand, that's a young horse to take on for retirement, especially if something ever happened to me and she needed a new home. If she was 17, I would feel differently. She has a forever home with them so that's not an issue, she's not in any danger of a bad outcome. I imagine they'd probably breed her at some point, and would probably end up restarting her under saddle to see if that gets her through the challenges enough to be used safely in the lesson program. So I will probably pass.

#3 and #4 were full sisters, one 17 and one 19. Going into the visit, I thought I would probably pick one of them. But they were f-a-t, really chubby around the butt and big necks. Not hard, cresty necks, but going in that direction. One of them had slipped a foal earlier in the season and they were still getting baby weight off her. Both absolutely sweet as can be, friendly, easy to handle, go anywhere you ask them without hesitation. But I don't want to go into another situation where I'm constantly trying to get weight off. So I don't think they are contenders either.

I think all that leaves me with #1 as the choice. I was feeling a little guilty about taking a horse that is happy with an easy job, but they really didn't seem worried about that. They would be happy for her to be in a good retirement home. I could still hack her around every now and then (not so bad to have an uncomplicated little horse for a meander...). The biggest worry I have about her is that weird knot inside her ankle. I am also feeling guilty about passing on #2, but I just don't think it's a smart choice. Any opinions?

I'd probably have a blood panel done on any I select to look at Cushings/IR (and basic CBC), but don't imagine doing a full pre-purchase. With #1, I suppose I could ask a vet to look at that knot on her ankle, though not sure how much a vet would be able to tell about that from just a basic exam. Any thoughts on that part?

I also got to play with Fizz's baby, Orchid. She was a real sweetheart. Quiet, curious, friendly. I haven't been around a lot of young horses, but I took her out for a little stroll (just from the ground, not riding) and she just marched right along without fretting over anything. She's had a decent number of rides on her, in the indoor and outdoor, even hacked out in company a little bit. Sounds like she's handling it all effortlessly. They would have let me hop on if I wanted, but I didn't want to take up more of their time and was honest that I couldn't buy another riding horse right now.

When I got back in the car, I realized I hadn't taken pictures of any of the horses except of Orchid. The sentimental part of me would love to have her. Looking into her eye was like looking right at Fizz. I just keep telling myself now isn't the right time for another horse that needs consistent riding. I just know my schedule is too nuts to make that happen right now. If it's right in the future, then she'll still be available. But she's so cutttteeeeeee.....

This is how she was when we went to get her from her stall. Not so different from her mom in her eagerness to be interrupted from her nap 😉








She's smaller than I expected based on the other pictures I'd see of her. More Izzy sized than Fizz sized, and a very short back. I'm not sure how much more growing she'll do, but she's currently right in my sweet spot. (yes, feet a little long...I think everyone was at the end of a trim cycle)








Being around her just made me smile.


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## Knave

Okay, my first vote goes to Orchid. Lol. Yet, I do know your reasoning for not taking on a riding horse and have total respect for it.

That said, your Izzy is fairly old. Now, I hope she lasts the next 5 years, but there is a chance she could go whenever at her age. So, then you are left again with an old horse who may or may not need a friend.

Orchid and Fizz could take turns at their ages, but I really do understand the desire for one riding horse. It is difficult to have both Cash and Queen to get done, but I am grateful for it with Lucy out! lol 

Yet, that said too, I wouldn’t want horse #2 by any means. So, I agree that #1 is the best bet.


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## bsms

Cowboy hasn't been ridden in a couple of years. He's completely rideable but there is no one to do it. He lives with the other two and doesn't care. Trooper is still rideable but since I'm really the only rider - and don't ride nearly as much as I ought - he is rarely ridden. I do know I can saddle him up and take him out solo without issues. I just prefer Bandit. Of course, Trooper had a solid base put on him before he got here a dozen-plus years ago. 

Seems like some horses can handle being ridden once a month just fine. And others can't. No idea how to predict which is which. We have a friend whose horse is totally sound and she never rides him. Just takes him for walks sometimes. He seems happy enough with the arrangement. OTOH, Mia's biggest problem (IMHO) was she needed to get out and RUN for miles. With no place to do that here, she'd get wound up and nervous. Unlike my other horses.


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## gottatrot

(So nice to hear from @bsms)

Orchid is adorable, and I'm quite sure you would get along great with her. I personally would feel no guilt over having her, even if she was not going to be my primary riding horse. She'd have a great life, and after Izzy passed on you would have the option of ponying her out with Fizz. Switch off which one you ride. LOL.

Option #1 does sound the best. I'd think the vet could easily tell you if the ankle lump was concerning or just an old calcification that wouldn't affect her. Except Orchid sounds better.  She has such big, soft eyes.


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## knightrider

gottatrot said:


> (So nice to hear from @bsms)


Yay! I agree. I hope whichever mare you pick is wonderful.


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## egrogan

I love all the enablers here! @bsms, I totally agree most good pleasure horses have no problem sitting for long periods without being ridden. I certainly could have ridden Izzy or Maggie over these past few years, but they also didn't mind being fully retired. I know a lot of horses need a job, but these two did not 😉

The thing with Orchid is that she's just a baby- she'll turn 4 on April 15th. I think she has the potential to be a great little riding horse, but I think to get her there, she'll need consistency at this early stage. And that's where I don't think I can give her what she needs right now, given all the other stuff I'm juggling. Let's say I ride 3-4x a week from Spring-New Years. I really want to take Fizz to a few limited distance rides this year, and she needs to be brought back into condition after her winter vacation (as do I!). So I think she needs those 3-4 rides during the week. Where would that leave time for working with a baby? Also, there's the issue of facilities- I have no indoor or outdoor, and while she seems sweet and quiet, I don't think it's realistic for me to just hop and and head out to the roads and trails alone with her. @Knave and @gottatrot, you both know far better than me all the steps in taking a young horse from green to solid citizen- as much as I'd like to have her, it just doesn't seem like I'm set up to do that right now. And I couldn't justify paying to board her.

Now, of course Izzy won't be here forever. And I dread the day I have to make that call. But I don't think it's imminent, though she is slowing down. So if and when that time comes, maybe Orchid will still be available, and then I could see myself seriously considering it (assuming she continues to mature so nicely and gain experience). I guess we will see what happens!


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## Knave

Okay, I love your maturity.


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> Okay, I love your maturity.


Ha ha, implying many of us would not be so wise! You are such a good person, @egrogan. I wish to emulate your foresight and thoughtfulness.


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## egrogan

You are cracking me up.

I'm sure being overly rational has cost me some potentially cool opportunities in life, but generally I think it's served me mostly well.

But there's still the voice that says...


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## Knave

I wanted to buy Queen, and I didn’t want to buy Queen. You see, I wanted a colt off our range, and you can’t rope them anymore of course, and I didn’t remember a time the blm had gathered it. When I was young there wasn’t the massive number of horses on it there was by that time.

So, I felt it was my only opportunity. Yet, I didn’t want a colt while Cash was still so young. Sometimes, I still think it would be easier to finish Cash and focus my time on him. It is hard to get them both ridden.

Yet, God’s timing is always better than mine. Husband needed Cash this last fall, and he’ll need him this spring. I’ll need Queen this spring. So, the timing is actually perfect. There is still a part of me that finds it a bit overwhelming however.

I feel like this is an important year for Cash. He is 6. It is the last year of really being a young horse. Now, I know he’s broke, but it still seems like he needs that solid riding. It’s good for us to have horses scattered in ages, and horses coming up, but in my dream world I would have a horse turn 10, and then consider a new colt. That way I would have something trusted and something that can sit, and focus my time on the baby, while not having guilt for the lack of time spent on the older horse. I would also have that older horse for complicated and difficult days.


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## carshon

I am going to be one of the neigh sayers on Orchid. She is very striking (I love a bay) but I think you said it all. At near 4 she still needs a lot of training. Fizz has come so far but still needs consistent riding. it is hard to juggle 2 horses and life. Especially if one or both are still in need of some training. I think a fairly uncomplicated companion will leave Izzy with a friend and you with more time to concentrate on the goals you have set for yourself and Fizz.


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## egrogan

Spring(ish)!


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## TrainedByMares

You are thinking positive-ish! 

I recently watched that PBS documentary and was impressed with the Morgan farm! It was familiar because of your post about your visit. I thought it looked like a very interesting place!


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## egrogan

TrainedByMares said:


> You are thinking positive-ish!


I'm really trying hard. It's hard because the ice is just not going anywhere, easily an inch thick and no sign of well-above-freezing days in the 10-day forecast. In fact, it's snowing today, and we might get another 8 inches Saturday 

But, ponies don't lie- so I will take that hair coming off as a good sign!

I did enjoy that documentary and definitely felt proud about the way they portrayed Morgans. I would recommend the farm tour as part of a VT road trip- probably just a couple of hours would be plenty of time to go on the tour and wander around the farm a little, and then head off for hiking/snowmobiling/skiing/biking/beer drinking...whatever else sounds fun.


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## egrogan

Winter(ish)


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## PoptartShop

Awwww, so many choices...I agree, I think a 4yr old would need a lot of work. I got Promise when she had just turned 5, & she had like no training or anything, so we really had to start from the ground up & it took a LOT of patience & time. I don't think I would've been able to juggle another horse (or 2!) during that time. I still consider 4/5yr olds 'babies'! 

I think #1 is your best bet. As for the knot on her ankle, it could be from an old injury & could be harmless! But it would be good to have a vet examine it. As long as it doesn't bother her I wouldn't be too concerned. She sounds like a sweetheart!


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## egrogan

Well, as the saying goes...winter isn't going out quietly. We've had a day of heavy, wet snow with strong winds. The wind is what makes it so uncomfortable. Even with the heavy snow, the wind is so strong that it's still drifting it into deep piles in spots.

Poor girls were frozen into their blankets. Fizz's blanket was so solid that she kept spooking herself when she moved because it made a loud cracking sound.  With the wind whipping, she was feeling very spicy. I was begging her to stay still while I chipped the ice off all the buckles and hoping she wouldn't take off in a spook with the frozen blanket dragging along behind her. Fortunately she kept it together long enough for me to peel it off- you can see how solid it is, it's practically standing up on its own. Since I had to get Izzy into something warm and dry as well, I was running low on medium weight blankets (it's going back down to single digits, with windchill way below 0*F tonight), so poor Fizz had to borrow once of Izzy's old blankets. Let's just say it's one of those situations where your sister's clothes don't always fit quite right...poor thing. 🤦‍♀️ At least it's dry, unfrozen, and keeps (most of) her covered from the wind.








She doesn't often look like she cares about the weather, but even she was looking pretty miserable with the wind whipping snow and ice into her face. She's starting to shed too and super itchy. We're all ready for spring!








Fizz thinking..._you could give me extra dinner, that might help..._


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## Kalraii

FINALLY caught up. Whatever you don't get a young horse that needs retirement. Sounds so mean and it's hard writing that but I'm saying this as if I was in your position. I'm gonna be blunt here so forgive me in advance, just gonna lay my opinion thick right 😅- how is it you're even considering a young horse that HAS to be in retirement over something like Orchid, who at her age, could sit a couple years and at least has future potential for you and with a known history. I can't help that maybe you feel tremendous pressure to do her justice because of her age and breeding that she HAS to be in full time education right off the bat and done perfectly. When I think about it quite a few privately owned horses I've come across in recent years didn't start proper training until 6-7 years old anyway. And I really do mean _started,_ sent off for training. And you have a trailer now. Surely a round pen can be put up easily? The whole indoor excuse doesn't count in my book. Horses can and are worked seasonally maybe she could be sent off at intervals for starting and refreshers. What if Fizz goes lame then you have THREE unrideable horses, which is too many in my opinion. I want three horses too, but I'd at least want ONE rideable at minimum or with the potential to be 😅 My other thought is say Izzy, god forbid anytime soon, passes. Then the other elderly horse passes. That's a lot of change for Fizz. Maybe she adapts fine, maybe its not so fair getting older companions for them to frequently disappear (relative to her lifetime I mean). Lastly I know a lot of people that only have time for one horse but they have the one, and/or board y'know. Since you're gonna basically have a whole herd do yourself a favour and give yourself another option for all the cost and maintenance it takes. Ok, I'm not done. At least if you got Orchid you can let her sit a year, do her job as companion, and if it really looks bleak sell her on. She'd be young enough still. 

With all that out the way. I'm 50/50. Either get an older companion. Or get something with potential, like Orchid, and chill out on "must do them justice with 100% perfect start"  And frankly, I think what you might consider a slow start or minimum effort probably would result in a far better horse than some self-proclaimed horse "trainers" I've met.

Good luck for spring. Our weather is yoyoing too and its ticking me off! 🍷


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## Knave

It’s pretty warm here today, and some of the plowed patches are thawing. I wish it was cold. Lol. I’ve been miserable sick all week. At least it was miserable outside until yesterday afternoon I guess.

I did manage to make myself go outside to brush of horses, and big girl convinced me to at least saddle and sit on Queen while we waited for the BLM lady to show up. Well, the ground was so treacherous that the smallest patch was rideable. Queen was hot with the two weeks off, and I was not enough human for that. So, I unsaddled after a short and luckily uneventful ride.

They were shedding pretty heavily too. Not that big spring shed yet, but the start of shedding season!


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## Knave

Big girl also unsaddled Bones pretty quick. It was like trying to ride in a six foot square. Lol


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## gottatrot

The mini skirt blanket is so funny! Whatever works, right?

@Kalraii, don't get us going again about Orchid! LOL. I know, with my luck I've felt if you have two horses you can ride, then usually one will be out "on leave" with something. They just manage to get a gash or a rash so often. 
Plus let's see...Amore was started at 11, Halla was barely started when young and then sat for at least 8 years and I began her career at age 13. Aria was unhandled until age 10, and is now getting started. After Hero's brief race career at 5, he was only "tried out" and not used so he was still green at age 10. 
Anyway, some great points, @Kalraii.


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## Knave

Okay, although I do agree with a lot of points, we need to stop bullying Egrogan! Lol


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## gottatrot

Knave said:


> Okay, although I do agree with a lot of points, we need to stop bullying Egrogan! Lol


I know!! @Kalraii started it.


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## egrogan

You all are so funny. I totally understand why you have the perspective you do. But...no 🤣 It's just not the right timing for me to have a young horse. And maybe it won't ever be. Really, I'm just not a trainer. Teaching animals to do things is really hard for me. And after these last few months of not riding, I just want to saddle up and ride once the weather is nice. Between work and the massive renovations in the house, I feel like I spend most of my time with a stressful "project" to manage- I don't want another one right now. 

I spoke with a vet down there and am working on scheduling a simple vetting for Horse #1 next week or the following one. I don't see a need for a full PPE with flexions and x-rays, but she's going to do a basic spring wellness exam (and poke and prod that knot on the ankle) and run a metabolic blood panel. Assuming there's nothing alarming, we'll work on arranging to move her up here in early to mid April. Pending how mud season treats the roads. I'm excited for Izzy to have a buddy and to be able to get out with Fizz again!

@Knave, here's some cold for you 🥶 The wind is still brutal this morning, but at least the sun feels strong!


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## gottatrot

We'll love your new mare when you get her and deny we ever suggested anything else.


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## Knave

You know what, although I do obviously lean towards the young horse, as I’ve said this whole time: I have massive respect for you. Respect for the fact that you know your limits, and respect for the fact that you can focus so completely on your goal.

Yet, reading your response today, I gained a new respect for you. I respect that you acknowledge that you are not one to want to ride a colt. I’ve known many people in my life who seem to be unaware of that. Now, I also know people who make it work and do amazingly, like @gottatrot with Amore, and @TrainedByMares with his Nicki. Some people can learn on the fly and do spectacular things. After all, how do you get experience? Everyone has to start somewhere, and I have mad respect for them as well.

Yet, I have seen people ruin good colts. I have seen bright prospects turn nasty, and people get hurt, because of overconfidence in themselves. Confidence is good, but so is a sense of reality. Starting colts, or riding green horses, takes a desire to actually do that, which is different that riding a broke horse. Some people I see think that because they have ridden quality broke horses, or horses with issues, that they obviously can ride colts. Then they don’t change the way they ride. They don’t come about it like they are teaching, and it drives me batty. Then they go and blame the colt for their own mistakes.

I appreciate a person who says they don’t ride colts. I’m not sure I did any good at explaining why, but it’s few the people I’ve seen with the confidence and knowledge to say so. I wish I could get down in words what I feel.


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## TrainedByMares

You said it well, @Knave ! I think egrogan is smart to say no to the project. It makes sense to me. Spreading oneself too thin by taking on that workload would be a mistake.

Riding a green horse is like driving a car with no brakes, it can be done but not everyone can do it.


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## egrogan

@Knave, you're making me blush. That means a lot, especially coming from you. Thank you.


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## gottatrot

I agree with @Knave, 100%. Of course, we all know that you _are_ training horses, @egrogan, and that you have trained Fizz to be a reliable riding horse. But I think those who can figure out what they enjoy doing, and what they want out of life are far happier than those who try to do things they don't really want to do. 

I know a trainer who only likes starting horses. She enjoys the beginning steps of getting the horse saddled, following simple cues, and going around with a rider. After that, she tells her clients to send the horses to another trainer for finishing. She does not like the less obvious gains and slower work of later training, and so has specialized in only starting. She believes her talent is in the beginning work, and horses do very well after a nice start with her.


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## PoptartShop

I hope that's the last snowfall for you, ugh! Winter has got to GO! That sounds like a good plan for the prospective new horse. Bloodwork is always good & can tell you a lot.
Haha, love the rolling photo!!!


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## egrogan

It was snowing again when the farrier got here first thing this morning, but by the time he was done, we actually had beautiful blue skies. The horses practically pulled me out of the barn to get to the new field to soak up the sun.

Izzy: _Thanks for dropping us off, we're done with you now, you can go home..._


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## egrogan

Wow, we woke up to a truly gorgeous morning! It had rained/snowed yesterday afternoon and overnight, so whatever moved the storm out left behind a warm, fresh spring morning. It's supposed to be up into the 50*s for the next three days. Goodbye ice...hello mud! 😉

Even Hugh couldn't resist strutting his stuff and feeling good...









We checked out the neighbor's sugaring setup. He produces on a fairly large scale, and this is just one of the many collection points that gets combined in a sap house down the road.









We investigated who else had been on the move this morning...









When we went out to do horse chores, I realized that apparently I had been distracted when blanketing last night. Good thing Fizz had the neck cover on or she probably would have shredded up this blanket if it tried to work its way off. Eek! Not good when you have too many things on your mind and should be concentrating on what you're doing! Fortunately it ended up ok.








Our potential new pony is getting her vet check today. I won't really know much for a couple of weeks I'm guessing, because the turnaround time for bloodwork has been pretty slow for the last few months. But it's exciting to have things moving along.

Another exciting thing to look forward to, I just confirmed that I'm going to be scribing at two of the early season endurance rides. The first one is just a month away. I am envious of the people who have done enough riding all winter that they're ready to do a ride. Even in a normal year, it's highly unlikely I'd be ready to do even 15 miles in April under time limits. But it will be fun to get back into the swing of the ride season.


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## egrogan

Vet check got moved to later today, so no news.

Instead, I offer a glimpse into an exciting new sport, synchronized woolly mammoth rolling:




They are SOOOOOOOOO itchy!


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## PoptartShop

Omg, how CUTE!! That video just made my morning!!


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## gottatrot

I've seen you riding Fizz in your sidepull in many photos. I trust you still like it? I ordered one for Aria. She's the kind of horse that I think would do fine bitless for riding and driving at times. I want her to learn to accept a bit, and she is doing fine with that, but her teeth aren't the greatest.


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## TrainedByMares

I hope everything is going well for you @egrogan I miss your posts! How are your house renovations doing? We are beginning a massive reno on our home ,replacing all windows,siding, one bathroom and two bedrooms among other various jobs. Expensive now!


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## egrogan

So...a long overdue update...Apologies in advance as we have a lot going on and it's been a difficult few weeks.

Last month, I arranged for a basic prepurchase exam for the horse down at Fizz's breeder. We didn't do flexions and x-rays, just a basic annual exam and a metabolic blood panel. I was busy making plans to get her up here, dealing with Coggins and shipping (our trailer is in the shop), etc. Two Fridays ago, I got the bloodwork back from the vet I was working with on the prepurchase and...her insulin levels were off the charts. If a "normal range" is 1-40, hers was more than three times the normal range. Her glucose was high-normal, and she was not testing positive for Cushings, but given that she was definitely on the pudgy side (vet put her at a 6.5 on the BCS), it seemed like a pretty clear insulin resistance diagnosis. I was really disappointed. The one thing I said I didn't want to do again with a new horse was go through the muzzling, the worrying about overeating hay, the concern about seasonal laminitis. I had a very long talk with my vet because of the "mixed" results in the bloodwork (the negative Cushings result and the normal glucose) and she had some questions about the lab this vet used. Enough questions that she said if we could run the bloodwork through a more reputable lab, it might be worth it, even though she wasn't all that optimistic the result would be different. So the seller graciously allowed that 2nd round of bloodwork, which was done last week. Those results came back, and...still more than double the "normal" range. I'm extremely disappointed, but I have to pass on the horse  I have a nagging feeling like I'm being too dramatic about this and should just move forward as I planned. The sellers have never had any issues with the horse and she's happily giving kids lessons and living outside on pasture. But I just know how much management it takes as insulin resistance progresses, and I worry her body is a ticking time bomb and laminitic issues will eventually show up.

Separately, the same day I got the first round of bloodwork on that potential horse back, I got some other lab results back, showing that Fizz is positive for PSSM1 (n/P1). This was shocking. There has been a growing movement recently to test more Morgans for PSSM1, as some breeders have recently found positives in their herds traced to a very prolific stallion. A very prolific stallion who just happens to be Fizz's great-grandsire. I've never seen any symptoms, as least not anything that seems like a symptom based on my current level of knowledge of PSSM. Still, since there were so many horses with this stallion in their pedigrees testing positive, I figured it wouldn't hurt to send some tail hairs off for the genetic testing. I don't know what I was expecting- obviously I knew it was a possibility because of the genetic connection, but I suppose realistically I figured I would do the test because it was the responsible thing to do, get a negative result and submit it to the growing Morgan Health Database to contribute to scientific understanding of the disease in Morgans, and go on our merry way. I don't think it really occurred to me that it would come back positive.

But given that it _is _positive, I'm working closely with my vet to figure out what to do next. The same day I talked to her, another good friend also found out her young Morgan, just barely started under saddle, who shares the same grandsire, also got a n/P1 result. We're all trying to figure out what, if anything, we need to do. Both of our horses live outside 24/7 and move around a lot, get fed a low NSC diet, etc. Maybe we are lucky that our horsekeeping practices are basically in line with the best options for keeping a PSSM horse comfortable. I think the hardest thing for me right now is the unknown- every time Fizz hesitates or looks uncomfortable, I know I'm going to be worried that I'm hurting her or that she's having a PSSM-related episode. Is her reluctance to go down big hills related to muscle pain? Or is it a training issue? Is her dislike of trailers and stalls because they make her hurt? Or does she just needs more practice and positive experiences? Is it fair and safe to ask her to do intro endurance rides? Would 25 milers ever be an option or should I just forget about that all together? I am so uncertain how to answer these questions and do the right thing for her. We're going to do some additional testing this spring once I am back riding, and get a better sense of whether she's experiencing muscle damage during our typical rides- I think that will give me some answers as I figure out the best way to get back to riding this season.

Which brings me to Izzy. I haven't ridden Fizz at all since Maggie died. Izzy remains inconsolable alone, even if I just attempt to take Fizz out riding around the field. Physically, Izzy is not doing very well. She's been a bit lethargic and depressed since we lost Maggie, and has lost a lot of weight. She's probably a 4-4.5 BCS right now. She needs two molars removed, which hasn't been possible because we've had the worst mud season in recent memory, and it's just not safe to put a trailer on the road right now to get her to the vet's office. We are optimistically thinking the roads should be passable in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm trying not to panic about the weight because the tooth issues are a clear and obvious cause. I've been playing around with her food to get it to a consistency she'd like to eat, but it's been a struggle. I've also been trying to get her Prascend dose correct, and don't think we're quite there yet. I had been attempting to increase her to a full pill, but am now starting to taper her back down to 1/2 pill because the last few days, she will barely eat 1lb of her senior feed/alfalfa cube/beet pulp mush, and she should be eating closer to 4lb of the soaked feed plus the extra goodies. She's just not interested, even when broken into several small feeds. I'm really worried about her and wondering if we are getting to the point where we need to consider putting her down. I don't want to make that decision until we get the teeth dealt with and see if we can't find her a new companion that puts her at ease. Fizz is extremely submissive to her, and she is very stressed having to be the leader. I think that's also contributing to the weight loss. It's very hard to see her look so sad and uncomfortable.

So I need to balance Fizz's need to have some kind of predictable exercise every day with the fact that I can't have Izzy running off any of the pounds she needs to keep on her body by going nuts while I'm working with Fizz. How to do that? I think I am going to end up taking a horse from a reputable local rescue. An endurance friend has been very involved with the organization for quite awhile, and a few months ago was part of a seizure of a small herd of Morgans (I believe there were 10 horses total, fortunately all the males were gelded so the herd wasn't growing) that an elderly woman could no longer care for. There are two older, but amazingly quite healthy little mares who are ready to be adopted out. The herd was fending for itself for some time because of the owner's problems, but prior to those problems, these mares were former show horses who have maintained their nice dispositions and ground manners. I should be going to meet them this weekend and will be able to get a sense of which might be the better fit, particularly for Izzy's needs. I have to admit I am a bit wary about the rescue world generally, but knowing the backstory of this situation, the medical and farrier care they've received over the past few months, and the involvement of someone I know and trust, I think it could be a good solution.

I could really use all your good vibes and fingers and toes crossed that this will work out. I don't want to sound like a spoiled brat, but I'm feeling so discouraged and stressed out about all of these issues, and I want nothing more than to be able to just go ride my horse without hurting her, and know that Izzy will be ok with a friend to keep her company.

Here are these two obliviously sunbathing our troubles away when the weather finally cooperated this weekend:


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## Knave

I’m sorry! That’s a lot to take in all at once.


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## PoptartShop

Oh wow.  I am so sorry to hear this. That is a heavy load to carry right now, you have a lot on your plate at once. But you did the right thing by passing on the mare. 
I always swear by bloodwork & it really does tell a LOT about a horse. So it's best that you are passing on her, as her issues would definitely catch up to her. I'm really happy that you got two rounds, just to be on the safe side. Very wise of your vet to suggest.

I'm sorry to hear that about Fizz as well, but take it one step at a time. I don't know much about PSSM personally, but from what I've heard it can be manageable. Just take it one day at a time.  It will work out one way or another, you guys do really well & she is a tough one on those trails!

As for Izzy, it makes sense she's still grieving/mourning the loss of Maggie.  That has to be hard. I hope she perks up a bit once her teeth are dealt with & is more excited to eat.
Hopefully one of the rescue mares will be a good fit, too. That's a good idea. It's good that you know someone who is involved with the rescue also, so you're not going into it blindly.
You're not being a 'spoiled brat' whatsoever; you're being smart about everything, not just acting irrational & getting just ANY horse for your herd. This is a big deal!

Sending lots of good vibes, and hugs your way!


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## knightrider

Awwww, such a load of bad news. I am so sorry. I hope things start looking up soon.


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## gottatrot

Oh wow, so much for you to deal with at once.

I think you did the best thing by passing on the mare with insulin resistance. Even if she has always been fine, she only would have to shift a tiny bit in that direction and then she might not tolerate any grass at all, have rotated coffin bones and suffer on frozen ground.

I'm very surprised about the PSSM1. Now I have to say it's a good thing you didn't listen to us and consider Orchid, because I wonder if she would be positive too. I'm going to be hopeful and think if Fizz was going to have issues with muscle breakdown, you would have seen it by now. I've heard a few people, even breeders who think PSSM is no big deal, because they had some horses that had no obvious issues. My suspicion is that there are quite a few horses that have it but we don't know, because people mostly test for it when a horse has problems and they are trying to figure out why. The good thing is you're already feeding her that way. If she does have any issues, I know many people have had success with feeding fats for the horses to use as energy rather than the glycogen from the muscles. Dr. Kellon also recommends feeding amino acids and L-Carnitine, because it supposedly bypasses the muscle stores for glucose/energy metabolism. So there are a lot of things to experiment with if Fizz does show signs of having issues.

I'm really hoping Izzy will do better once her dental issues are fixed. Something I forget every year is that when the horses start shedding, it seems to use more energy as they grow in their spring coat. I know she has other issues going on with the Cushing's, etc, but possibly that might contribute some to the weight loss. I don't remember if you're feeding any amino acids to her, but I felt giving Amore extra vitamin E and Tri-amino helped combat the Cushing's muscle loss. 

I hope maybe one of the rescue horses will work out for you and make a good horse buddy. That is a real dilemma to have one horse needing exercise, and the other horse upset by the other one getting exercise. Sending good wishes your way!!


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone for the nice thoughts. I didn't want to be a downer and wasn't going to post about all this, but I was sort of boiling over and needed to let it out somewhere. My lovely husband knows it's bothering me, but I think he gets upset (annoyed?) when I'm stressed about the horses because he thinks that for all the time and money they require, it should be something I enjoy, not worry about. I get that, but at the same time, they are living, breathing creatures and I can't just throw them out in the field and figure things will work themselves out. I don't mean to be too negative, he's great with the horses and doesn't question any of the decisions I make for them, he just doesn't really get it. This is why it's good his hobby is old cars 😉



gottatrot said:


> I'm very surprised about the PSSM1. Now I have to say it's a good thing you didn't listen to us and consider Orchid, because I wonder if she would be positive too.


After I got over the shock of it, that was the first thing I thought! I did let her breeders know what was going on in case they wanted to test Orchid or change anything about managing Fizz's sire. Genetically, her sire has to be positive. Fortunately he's gelded now. No dig on them, but they didn't really seem to have much reaction to the news, they just said they'd never had any issues like that and didn't think it was much to worry about. Unfortunately I would bet they have it throughout their herd because Fizz's grandsire is in the pedigrees of a lot of them. Actually, he's in the pedigree of what I would imagine is the vast majority of "colorful" Morgans throughout the whole Northeast. He sired a couple hundred foals, a huge number for Morgans, and they obviously went on to have more foals. He's dead now, but still available frozen for AI. You certainly can't say that PSSM is exclusive to "colorful" horses, but I think because there are certain breeders who have concentrated on color, and this stallion was so prolific in throwing it, unfortunately now that link is probably pretty tightly established. I didn't buy Fizz because of her color (I've always said I wished she was bay!) but like in any breed, there are some very nice uniquely colored horses, and then some that were probably only bred because of their color- this connection between color and PSSM is only going to solidify the negative impression a lot of people have about colorful Morgans, at least in this part of the country. I think it's looked down on less out west, with the ranch style Morgans. So far, it doesn't seem like those western bloodlines are caught up in this PSSM issue, but it's still very early and not a lot of people are testing yet. Exactly what @gottatrot said:


> My suspicion is that there are quite a few horses that have it but we don't know, because people mostly test for it when a horse has problems and they are trying to figure out why.


In that sense, I do think it's possible that there are lots of asymptomatic horses out there, and a lot of Morgans do live with lots of turnout, careful diets because of their propensity for metabolic issues, and frequent riding. So it's good that they can live with it and do ok. I am really hopeful that will be our situation.



> I'm going to be hopeful and think if Fizz was going to have issues with muscle breakdown, you would have seen it by now.


This was my vet's opinion as well. She's poking around in her vet network to see if other vets have any experience with it specific to Morgans, but as of right now, she didn't recommend any big changes, except adding the Tri-Aminos like you mentioned @gottatrot. We started those this weekend. They smelled so bad, I thought there was no way Fizz would eat them, but she actually licked the bowl! Go figure 🤣 We talked about options for adding fats, but the truth is she's coming out of the winter heavier than ideal, compounded by the lack of riding right now, so it didn't seem like a good idea to do that yet, since it doesn't seem like we need to. We'll keep it in mind as an option for the future if necessary. I've had them on Elevate natural vitamin E all winter, so I'll just keep going with that even once there's grass in. And I added the Tri-Aminos for Izzy too

I scheduled my appointment to visit the two rescue mares tomorrow morning. I'm actually trying to let myself feel some excitement about it. Getting a new horse is a big deal! It should be exciting. I need to shake off the disappointment and just move on to whatever comes next.


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## Knave

This is true! Let this be the exciting thing!!!


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## carshon

I was so bummed to read your post. managing older horses or horses with medical issues is so stressful. BUT...you have always shown your love and dedication to your girls and I see that you continue to research and educate yourself. I hope that your search for a friend for Izzy pays off.


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## lb27312

@egrogan - Soooo sorry to hear what you've been going through! That's a lot to digest. I hope the adoption works out!! Can't wait to hear about it!


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## bsms

Sorry to hear about the issues. Glad you passed on the one. I was well on my way to being IR myself when I changed my eating, but I'm a human and can choose what types of food I eat. Horses don't really have that as an option. One thing I've found is that if I go back to my old way of eating, I very quickly start putting on weight and having issues, so I'll be "keto" until I die. It is a pain in the butt for me to manage for ME and I don't want to think about what it is like dealing with it in a horse.

I had to look up PSSM. The article I found noted "_In some breeds, horses with the genetic mutation for PSSM1 are asymptomatic. This may relate to differences in diet, exercise and impact of different genotypes in different breeds....The signs are most often seen in horses when they are put into initial training or after a lay-up period when they receive little active turn-out. Episodes usually begin after very light exercise such as 10-20 minutes of walking and trotting. Horses with PSSM1 can exhibit symptoms without exercise...The degree to which horses exhibit clinical disease with the PSSM1 mutation varies between breeds. This is because diet, exercise regimes and the many interactions between genes can vary from breed to breed._"









Type 1 Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy






cvm.msu.edu





So it sounds to me like Fizz (and maybe Morgans in general) may have other genes that minimize the effect of the PSSM gene. And if Fizz hasn't been showing symptoms by now, it seems likely she never will. Arabians and Mustangs don't seem to have PSSM issues, but BANDIT has "issues" in certain spots on the trail and isn't thrilled by trailers. He certainly has days where he says, "_Really? You want me to do WHAT?_" That is just a owning a _thinking_ horse....


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> Episodes usually begin after very light exercise such as 10-20 minutes of walking and trotting


This is something I learned as well, so as I think about getting back into riding this spring I will be particularly careful about it. Since I don't have any kind of arena, usually in the spring we spend a couple of weeks doing combo walks from the ground/under saddle to get back in shape. So, I might handwalk her a mile from home, get back on and turn around and ride home, etc. Then add trotting in. Then we're kind of on our way. The ethos of distance riding seems to be that you walk the first and last mile to give the horse a warm up and warm down, so that is probably a good practice to continue.



bsms said:


> So it sounds to me like Fizz (and maybe Morgans in general) may have other genes that minimize the effect of the PSSM gene. And if Fizz hasn't been showing symptoms by now, it seems likely she never will.


Very hopeful this is the case!


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## egrogan

When I went to bring the horses in from the new field for dinner, I found poor Fizz with a giant swollen boob (is that word allowed?) on her neck. Poor thing! It was warm and a little firm, so I'm guessing a tick bite, though I couldn't find a tick on her nor a scab from one. Not sure how well it comes through in pictures, but it's at the base of her neck in front of her shoulder, in a darker section of her fur (ignore her weird long white guard hairs, this is how she sheds out every year and I think they look so weird because the color contrast is so dramatic)
















At any rate, I took her temp and it was normal, and she's vaccinated for Lyme, so hoping it doesn't turn into a big deal. I'll keep an eye on it. 

I have been so itchy to get going with Fizz but trying to find ways to work with her that don't freak Izzy out- meaning I can't really take her out to ride yet. So I decided to do some work from the ground where Izzy could be close but still separated by a fence. I have been waiting to try out a new pair of long lines that I bought over the winter, and today was the day! I know Fizz had been longlined when she was younger, and I have played around with it a little bit, but we both were a little bit awkward getting the feel of it at first.








She had a few moments where she tested out pulling against the lines, and when I asked her to trot the first time she thought maybe she could actually just jump out into a canter and make a beeline for the gate, but we successfully negotiated those explorations and got back to business 😉








I don't have a proper arena or round pen, but using the fenceline at first helped us work through steering and turning, and we soon had the hang of it, marching up and down from the front of the pasture to the back. 
















And then we tried out some serpentines and figure 8s. I think we got the hang of it pretty quickly! 








Still need to work on trotting without going nuts and trying to run away, but having the lines through the surcingle was actually sort of nice because she was really just pulling against herself, more than against me, and that made it easier to turn her and get her brain back. It was more fun and interesting than I thought it would be!


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## PoptartShop

Awwww look at miss Fizz!  She is so cute. I think that's great!! I also don't have an arena, you make do with what you have, it works! That looks like fun, & you were able to do some stuff with her, and Izzy could still see her! Although, it seems like Izzy didn't even mind! 

And hopefully it's just a bite!


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## egrogan

Gloomy and rainy today but Hugh and I still hiked around the neighbors logging road-I looked at the pictures later and found these gems


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## PoptartShop

Sooooooooooo cute!!!!


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## egrogan

Phew- the weather has been unable to settle into spring lately! Earlier this week, we had this gorgeous day:








Then last night, it started snowing again! It was mostly flurries that have lingered around this morning, but they're predicting 5-8" tomorrow night into Tuesday 








I've still been ground driving Fizz around a bit when the weather cooperates.
















We can go around the fields without Izzy getting too upset.








I got a little greedy on Friday and thought maybe I could just take her out on the road where Izzy could still see her through the tree line, but that didn't work very well. Izzy panicked and I couldn't stand listening to her screaming, so we came back.








Yesterday I volunteered at the first CTR of the year. The forecast had called for rain all day, but we got really lucky and ended up with a cloudy and chilly, but dry, day. The farm hosting the ride has a lovely indoor, so we were set up for vetting inside (I was scribing). We would have been able to get the horses out of the weather if we needed it during the hold and vetting, but turned out we were ok! The cold rain/sleet started about an hour after the riders were done.

It was a very Morgany ride. Out of 20 riders, we had 7 Morgans, 3 paints, 1 TWHx, and the rest were Arabs. After doing this a few years now, I finally feel like I've gotten to know people enough to remember their horses, how their rides went last year, etc. so it was nice chatting and catching up with people. It was funny to see the horses that had spent time down south this winter- in pretty good shape, shed out and ready to go- compared to the horses who stayed here and were a bit chubby and hairy. Most people did the 15 mile ride, with 5 going out for the 25. I connected with a few people who may come out here to ride with Fizz and I later this summer, which would be a fun change of pace.

Here are a few of the Morgans that went out:








Our gracious host, who owns this beautiful farm with her sister. Their family has been raising Morgans for generations and she and her sister are like a walking pedigree encyclopedia. It's so fun to hear them talk about every special horse they have on their property.








Morgan in the front, Morgan in the back, Walkaloosa in the middle 








Only one driver at this ride. She usually drives (or rides) a Morgan, but this cute guy is an Arab x








Next ride is in two weeks; I will be scribing again. I also signed up to scribe at this year's VT100, which will be back to a full 100 mile course, in addition to the shorter options. There weren't a lot of people willing to stay up for 24 hours to scribe for the full event. I'm not totally sure how well I'll be able to stay awake, but will do my best. That's not until July, but planning is in full swing right now. I'm getting excited thinking about the summer. First we just need the snow to stop!


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## Knave

Ugh, I’m sorry about more snow. I get the feeling. I’m also sorry you aren’t getting to ride. I’ve been thinking, why don’t you ride in the pasture with Izzy? Maybe then you could start ponying her out for little walks.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I was thinking that Friday too! It had been too wet/squishy to ride out there in the last couple of weeks, but I could have on Friday. 

Also...it's looking like we will have a new buddy for Izzy next weekend. I am not quite ready to share more until she actually steps off the trailer, but hopefully it's only one more week of being "home bound" 😁


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## Knave

Oh, I’m so happy for you!! I can’t wait to see!


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## bsms

Supposed to hit 89 here today. I'll enjoy that but it won't be long before riding will be limited to early morning or after sundown due to the pavement getting too hot for the horses' hooves. We've a quarter mile of that before reaching desert. Even as a retired old fart, the whole "_We need to be BACK by 9AM_" thing gets depressing. And your cold and snow and rain are why you have such a beautiful place to ride.








Last year's rains followed by our return to drought has left my riding area looking like an apocalyptic, post-WW3 place where mutants hide behind burnt out trees. (_Don't share that mental image with Bandit or he'll start seeing them!_) The increasing numbers of ATVs have smoothed out some paths - the area past my wife is what I call "Canter Heaven" - but the grass is leftover from last spring and the prolonged drought is starting to hammer even the mesquite trees (on the right side of the picture above).








Arizona drought may be worst in 1,200 years, with little relief in sight - AZ Big Media


The drought that’s gripped Arizona and the Southwest since 2000 is the driest in more than 1,200 years, and it is likely to continue.




azbigmedia.com




I don't miss snow but the snow and cold has some real benefits as well.


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## egrogan

Well, we didn't get 8" but we did get a couple. Just enough to make things a mess.








It had switched over to sleet when I went out to feed. Izzy hates the sound of sleet on the roof of the shed, so we had to move breakfast al fresco in order to get her to eat.








It's already warming up into the 40s and will be warmer the rest of the week, so this shouldn't stick around. And as the old timers say, April snow is "poor man's fertilizer" - so we expect bright green grass later in the week.


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## egrogan

Our new mare is loaded and on her way!
🥰


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## egrogan

Welcome home "Ginger"!


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## bsms

You owe us more details....


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> You owe us more details....


Haha, fair enough! This day has flown by.

I think I mentioned here awhile ago that I was contacted by a friend about a herd of Morgans that had been seized in a small town up north. The elderly owner was failing to care for them and they had been roaming loose in their town. I was originally contacted about a 31 year old mare, which seemed like a lovely thing to do, and also like heartbreak waiting to happen. So I regretfully declined. But they reached out a few weeks later after they had been able to fully vet and assess the rest of them. They asked me if I'd be interested in taking a 20 yr old mare instead. I went to meet her a couple of weeks ago, and she was sweet, if worried. Truthfully, she's a bit rough around the edges. She's hard to catch, and definitely prefers the company of horses to people. But after some TLC and a trim, she seemed to blossom a little bit at the farm where she was being cared for. Once you catch her, she's perfectly fine to be around, so while we have some work to do to get to be friends, her ground manners are in there, just haven't been used much in the recent past. But having her at home means I can hang out in the field with her several times a day as we get to know each other.

For a couple of weeks I was just going to take her as a foster, as the neglect case had to work its way through the courts. The owner was not showing up for court dates, so the organization that stepped in to take them couldn't rehome them until a judge ruled that the horses would not go back to the owner. But that all got finalized last week, so she is officially signed over to me. It honestly sounds like a very sad situation, with an elderly woman, probably dealing with dementia, who had a family member (stories are confusing, so not clear if it was a son or a nephew) who took care of the farm for her until dying suddenly 2 or 3 years ago. So the horses have been rather feral since then. Apparently the herd was returning to the farm as their home base daily, but they would travel as much as 2 miles away to go drink out of a brook, and were stealing hay from neighbor's fields. I can't make out how no one stepped in sooner, but no one did, so that's done. The horses are all apparently registered- this breeder was actually at one time well known in Vermont, included on statewide Morgan farm tours, etc.- but the papers are nowhere to be found. We think we've narrowed "Ginger" down to 2 or 3 potential horses based on her age and color, and I'll send hair samples to AMHA to try to confirm her identity.

Ginger doesn't feel like the right name for her. Not sure yet what it will be. I have a couple of possibilities based on who I think she might be, but I'll wait until something rises to the top. 😉

Anyway, today we've spent time meeting over the fences. Izzy is in love and thinks she's found her long lost shadow. She is also winking and peeing everywhere and generally making a scene.
















Fizz is much more skeptical and there has been a lot of squealing and posturing across the fence. I'm a little surprised, since I've always found Fizz to be _sooo_ deferrant to other horses, but I guess as the low man in the herd the stakes are higher for her. We'll see how they work it out. I think I'll keep everyone separated for a couple of days and then see how things are going. I'm imagining putting Izzy in with Ginger first and taking a little more time with Fizz.

Gosh, I do love a little bay mare though...








PS- the 31 year old mare did get adopted! She's going to be boarded at the farm where she was fostered, so won't have any more disruption to her life. I'm glad there was a happy ending for her.


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## Knave

That is so great! I’m happy for you and I’m happy for Izzy! She looks really good too, so that’s a bonus. I’m sure her and Fizz will have it out. Low man is always the meanest and it’s always shocking, but like you said, the stakes are high for them. They have a chance to transition, and they will definitely fight for it.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Low man is always the meanest and it’s always shocking, but like you said, the stakes are high for them. They have a chance to transition, and they will definitely fight for it.


I know I'll have to let them deal with it, and also that I will have a hard time not stepping in. Maybe the extra couple of days is as much for me as it is for them... 😉


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## Knave

I think it’s a good idea. We like to put an older new horse out with the leader alone for a couple days or more like two weeks when they are weanlings. Then, when they transition into the herd, the alpha protects them from the others. Sure, they take their licks, but for us the leader has kept them safe for a time.


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## Knave

I guess I should note that we started that with Pete. He was an amazing alpha, and he ran that corral with serious standards. Lol. I feel like he taught everyone the rules, and although he is gone they have lived according to them. Lucy and Cash work together to protect anything new, and Zeus took to running Bones around when the bad imaginary friends visit. I know he learned that from Pete. Sadly, last night Bones was in a bad head space, but the other horses (besides Queen) were too tired to manage him. Queen seems to just think it’s funny, and she doesn’t care to stop it.


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## gottatrot

Aww, she looks beautiful and so sweet! That is such a sad story, but also it has to make you feel great that the horses were saved and she ended up with you. I do agree that she should have a better name.


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## Txshecat0423

She’s a beauty! You’ll be such a blessing to her.


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## egrogan

Thank you @gottatrot and @Txshecat0423! I can’t wait to see how she is once she starts to feel at home.

Just went out to check on everyone. She walked right up to me and snuffled the flake of hay I had for her 💕 Izzy looks like a lovesick teenager draped over the gate and pining away for her 🤣


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## egrogan

I _finally _got back in the saddle today, first time since December! I can't express how wonderful it felt to get to ride again after all this time. I had read @gottatrot's last journal post right before I went out to ride, and so I told myself that I was going to be disciplined and not do too much this first time out, no matter what was going on. 😉

First things first, my friend here was fattttttttttttttttt. I won't tell you how much longer her girth needed to be when I did it up. As soon as I got in the saddle, I was astonished at how wide her back and barrel felt. It was like sitting on a draft horse. I mean, it was a hard winter for all of us, and I knew she had gained. Frankly, I gained weight this winter too. But I couldn't believe how much I could feel it from the saddle. We will certainly spend the next few weeks focusing on consistently building back condition and getting her slimmed down.








Despite that, I could tell she was happy to be out. Her walk was nice and forward.








We mostly just walked, but in a few easy spots we trotted down the road a bit. She was a little imbalanced, and I'm sure her saddle isn't fitting all that well right now, so we will take it easy.

We checked out the sugar house down the road- this is the last official weekend of maple season, but it seems like our neighbor has been done for a couple of weeks now.








We had the roads all to ourselves, and it was very uneventful. She was being so good I was tempted to keep going, but I restrained myself and heeded the advice not to get greedy and ask for more 😉
















Izzy hadn't been upset when we left, but she was yelling and sweaty when we got back. She and Ginger had been in the pastures next to each other, but separated. I guess Ginger isn't yet a substitute for Fizz. 

Ginger has been acting a little frustrated that she is separated from the other horses, pacing a bit and occasionally banging on the gate. She will come up to me right away when I have food or water, so that has been helpful. Today I put her on a lead rope and brushed her for a few minutes. I still haven't found her itchy spots, but she tolerated it. Right now she will only drink of these small buckets despite bigger tubs being out. Whatever works is fine with me! She is EDPP just fine, so even if she's a little worried about the other horses, she seems to be doing ok.








I did put a little catch rope on her just to make things easier, but I'm not sure it's really all that helpful so will probably take it off later today. I can already feel myself getting impatient about wanting to be able to take the halter off but I am resisting those thoughts and just letting her continue to settle. No rush.


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## bsms

I told The Wife Bandit was getting "prosperous". She didn't believe me. 

A couple of days ago, temps hit the 90s and she decided to soak down the horses. She came back in. "_Our horses have a serious medical condition._" she said. "_Really?_", I replied. "_Yes_," she said. "_Their ribs are gone. Missing! No sign of any - our horses have no ribs!_"

We now have three abused horses, starving in the backyard. 20% reduction in pellets. UNTHINKABLE! I'm talking about three _seriously offended_ horses. But until we can find their ribs...


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## egrogan

@bsms, I think we have that sickness here too. At least Fizz seems to have caught it. It's good that we can get back into an exercise program now. We both need it!

That said...food is a very powerful motivator. Look how friendly Ms. G was once she understood where the groceries live.
















We had some more friendly and curious sniffing across the fenceline. I was happy to see Fizz approach her in a more relaxed posture. They sniffed a few times and there was no squealing and striking out. Horse body language is so fascinating once you really stop and watch it. And it's immediately made me so much more aware of my own body language, and things I take for granted.

























This morning when I fed breakfast, I clipped a lead on her halter; once she was done eating I was finally able to go over her thoroughly. I brought out the "hands on" grooming gloves (those gloves with the little massaging nubs on the fingers) since I have yet to find a horse that doesn't enjoy them. Sure enough, once she realized how good they felt on her shoulders and withers, she stood stock still in the field without being held (looped the lead rope over her neck) and let me groom her all over. It was the first time I was touching her without her trying to skitter away from me. I quickly saw she has a patch of rain rot on her back, but once the scabby stuff came out the skin underneath looked ok and new hair is already coming in. She had some other scurffy patches in various spots, but they are small spots. She also banged her eye in the trailer so has a little scabby spot that healing up quickly. I found several old bite marks on her flanks and around her withers, so looks like she got beat up a little- I was told she was "middle of the pack" in the herd but I think maybe she was a little more submissive than that. She stood still for me to groom and pick up her front feet and one of her hinds; she was a little touchy about her right hind and that was when she stepped away from me so I didn't push it. I couldn't be happier with all that. After we were done, she followed me back to the feed room while I grabbed her some hay. I decided to just take the halter off- I can get it on when I go out to feed her, and it doesn't seem to serve a purpose otherwise. She's got enough rubs and dings on her body I figure we don't need to worry about that rubbing too.








I've noticed that she is _extremely _gassy. Her poop is normal and frequent, so I know things are moving through, but seems to be unusually gassy compared to most horses. She is also looking a little tucked up. I'm assuming nerves, new hay, all that, but definitely keeping an eye on it to be sure we don't get into trouble.

I was able to brush some mane hairs out and I have the DNA kit all ready to send out. Fingers crossed we get some answers about who Ms. G really is!


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## lb27312

Cute new mare @egrogan - Congrats!


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## carshon

I was so excited to see this post. Miss G is so cute and definately showing her "Morgan" Things will settle down and you will be riding regularly again soon.


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## egrogan

Great progress yesterday! We got our twins together for the afternoon. It went incredibly smoothly. A little sniffing of noses, and then that was it.
















I kept Fizz separate to make sure this pairing went well. Miss G went back out to her own part of the field overnight, but she and Izzy are back in together now. I'm planning to add Fizz to the mix later today.

G was a little less interested in hanging out with me for grooming this morning. I had to keep hold of the lead rope to keep her with me; otherwise, she would move away. I still managed to go over her whole body and keep pulling that old winter hair off, and picked up all 4 feet. Even once I turned her loose, she still followed me all around. She didn't want to let me pet on her when she was loose. She doesn't dart away, she just sidesteps a couple of steps away. But as soon as I move away from her, I feel her right there behind me. If I have food or water, she's definitely right with me. Treats don't mean anything to her though, and I'm still not sure where she likes scratches, so that doesn't help me yet. But I think it's a good sign that she's interested in following me around at a "safe" distance.








Her DNA kit just went out in the mail! 🤞


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## Knave

I’m glad the two got along. They sure do look similar!


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## egrogan

More good progress- we got everyone in together yesterday. There was a little ear pinning by Fizz, but that was the extent of it. They seem to be taking everything in stride.

(The wild turkey flock was on the move behind the pasture)








Threat of turkey invasion is over...
















I wasn't sure how feeding time would go, since my usual routine is that everyone is fed loose in their own shed, and when they finish their pellets they just wander off to hay piles. That also worked out fine. G and Fizz took about the same amount of time to eat. Izzy takes the longest, and G planted herself outside of Izzy's shed hopefully to see if there were leftovers- I figured if Izzy was annoyed by this she would have no problem telling G to get lost, but it didn't become an issue (except for G being disappointed there was nothing left 😉 )

Spent more time grooming this morning and working on getting more comfortable picking up those hind legs. I think she must have some arthritis or other kind of discomfort back there- watching her roll yesterday for the first time, she definitely hesitated getting back up.




And just for fun- she made me laugh when I came in with the wheelbarrow. Apparently she dislikes poo piking as much as I do! Her little snorts at the beginning are so funny.




Fortunately she only knocked it over when it was empty. 🤣


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## Knave

I’m so glad it went so well!


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## egrogan

Cuteness overload! 
























(yes, it’s snowing…)


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## carshon

I love it! Izzy is so happy to have a friend! I see lots of riding in your future!


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## egrogan

Now I remember…three horses poop _a lot _more than two 😉

Everyone was a little edgy this morning after 24 hours of unrelenting frigid wind. Unfortunately it’s supposed to last through tomorrow. Still, I think G is looking a little less tucked up and standing more comfortably. I haven’t seen her laying down at all but I know she’s rolled some.


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## gottatrot

Any ideas on names yet? Will it have "iz" in it?


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> Any ideas on names yet? Will it have "iz" in it?


Haha, I love that you asked about the "iz." I have been pondering that but nothing is sticking yet.

I did send her hair sample off to the Morgan Horse Association to see if we can get a match to her registered name. Based on her age and coat color, I have a suspicion about who she might be. If I'm right, the registered name has the word "fire" in it, and I've been playing around with ideas related to that word. But I probably won't decide until I see if we know her registered name. Nothing has jumped out at me yet though.


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## PoptartShop

This is SO EXCITING!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am so happy for you guys!! Everyone's gonna get along just fine! She is sooooooo pretty. & you'll think of a good name, I just know it!


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## knightrider

I was thinking Blitz, which is a fast intensive nonmilitary campaign or attack


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## egrogan

Blitz is better than the unhelpful options my husband has given me:
Cheez Wh*iz*
D*iz*zy
🤣


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## Txshecat0423

Rizzo (from Grease), or Lizzie


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## egrogan

Those are good @Txshecat0423 !


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## carshon

I like Sizzle if she has fire in her name. Still staying with the Iz theme.


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## egrogan

I like that too @carshon!


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## bsms

Mizz G? 

I like Blitz but first saw it as "Blintz", which might fit if she is scrumptious:






Then again, a horse might object to being named after something that is eaten...

If she had a personality like Mia you could call her Tizzy, but she looks more level-headed than that.


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## Knave

Gizmo 😂


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## egrogan

Keep it coming, these are great!

lovely husband also added “Lizzo,” like the pop star. But G doesn’t seem to really have a pop star personality


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## Knave

I kinda like Lizzo. Queen jams to her songs.


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## knightrider

I like Sizzle best. It fits with the fire theme, even better than Blitz.


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## TrainedByMares

You are doing some good work @egrogan I would say G is a success story! My take on the name is to stay away from names with "iz" because would that confuse Fizz?


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## egrogan

It's shaping up to be a very horsey weekend. Yesterday Fizz and I took our first ride of the season out to the overlook. Couldn't have asked for a prettier day- the skies were a perfect blue.








No sooner had we made it around the first bend in the road, then two bikers came zooming towards and past us without saying a word. Usually bikers will call out and ask if it's ok to pass, but these just ignored us. I flinched, but Fizz barely flicked an ear in their direction. She makes me so happy with how she handles things like that.
























The rest of the ride was uneventful. We trotted in a couple of places where the footing was good, but the town had just gone through and dumped the big, sharp rocks down so we walked over that stuff. She was very funny when we got to our "canter" hill and I could tell she was asking to move along, but there's no need to ask her to canter up a steep hill until we're a bit more in shape. The thing that made me happiest though was how easily she moved along on the downhills home. I just think about a couple of years ago, our early rides of the season she felt like she was going to go somersaulting down those hills because she was so unbalanced and rushed them. Yesterday even out of shape, she handled them fine.

The blue skies lasted straight through dusk into early evening- so pretty...








Today I decided to take the plunge and turn them out across the street on the big field. I'm not quite ready to lead all three of them together yet, so lovely husband came out to help me take Fizz, while I led Izzy and G together. I couldn't believe that she let him walk right up to her and pet her!








She was a little snorty being moved a new place, but as soon as I let her go she trotted from one end of the field to the other checking it all out. She quickly settled in next to the other two grazing happily.

















Let's just hope I can catch her at the end of the day! 😬 I think she'll want to stay with the other two and not get left behind, and they are always happy to come in for dinner so should be a good influence.


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## Knave

I’m so glad you’re back to riding!


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## gottatrot

It made me happy also to see photos of you out riding again. So nice to hear G is already starting to trust that things are safe and to go out with the other horses. I take it Izzy was happy to stay behind as long as G was there?


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## PoptartShop

Soooo happy to see you back out with miss Fizz.  Sounds like a perfect, relaxing ride. What a good girl. & those bikers definitely should've at least acknowledged you, ugh.
I'm so happy G is doing well & settling in!  So many good names already...I am totally no good at helping LOL


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## TrainedByMares

Yes. The pictures of your ride are very encouraging! Beautiful!


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## egrogan

Postscript to turnout in the big field yesterday- catching to bring in was not an issue at all. I had the other two caught and up at the gate (lovely husband helped me) and G was still a bit of a ways down the hill grazing. I walked towards her, and she left the grass and walked right up to me!  Haltered right up like an old pro.

The one place where we've had things regress a bit is picking up her hind feet. I've been picking up all 4 at least once every day in the course of grooming, sometimes picking out feet and other times just putting it right back down as soon as she lifts it up. She's definitely touchy about her hinds and wants to stomp them down right away. I do watch her walk and think she has some kind of discomfort in her hind end; I don't know enough to know if it's in her pelvis or maybe hocks, but I will have the vet investigate when she's here later this month. But yesterday when I asked for the left hind, not only did she try to yank back, she did and let loose with a full blown kick. I was lucky that I was standing in the right spot, off to the side by her hip and out of range of the kick, because if it had connected it wouldn't have been pretty. So I'm thinking through what I want to do next in terms of getting better at that. Her feet do need attention and the farrier will be here in a couple of weeks (before the vet), and I'm also debating how I want to handle that. I want it to be a good experience for everyone and of course don't want anyone to get hurt. So I may put her trim off until after the vet just to be sure we're not putting her in a really painful position. We'll see how things progress.

Quick ride this morning, which was much gloomier than yesterday. On our ride today we were cursed with the hard, sharp rock everywhere. She's booted all the way around, but the rocks are so big she can still feel them through the boot if she catches one just right. It's funny here how during spring, almost overnight we go from sucking mud to concrete footing with hard rocks on them. 








More rocks...








Saw these interesting mushrooms growing near a vernal pool. I'm not completely sure what they are, but iNaturalist suggests they might be called "hoof fungus," which made me chuckle. I definitely prefer my hoof fungus on a tree, not on my horse! 🤣










gottatrot said:


> I take it Izzy was happy to stay behind as long as G was there?


Yes, happy as a clam! Today she was grazing around towards the back of the paddock when we got home, and G was nowhere to be seen. For a long minute, my heart caught in my throat as I thought maybe G had somehow gotten out while we were gone. But she was just napping behind the shed, where I couldn't see her from the gate. Lovely husband also caught her napping in the sun yesterday. Makes me thrilled she's comfortable enough to lay down and sleep already. Things are going well.


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## egrogan

We've had a few gloomy, wet days this week. It's not cold-cold, but to me rain when it's in the 40's is pretty miserable. I bundled up the delicate flowers but left G without a blanket. I figured that a horse who had been feral through a couple of Vermont winters was probably ok.








They must have been fine, as no one touched the sheds all day- except the dog 😉








Happily today starts a streak of warm, sunny days. Hoping to sneak out for a ride in the afternoon.


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## egrogan

For once the weather forecast was right, and our days of rain finally broke to beautiful blue skies and green starting to burst out in every direction. We took a short ride yesterday afternoon, and Fizz was feeling great. She (politely) asked to get trotting early on, and happily kept going on a loose rein to the overlook and back. I was happy she seemed to be enjoying the ride as much as me 😄















@gottatrot had asked how Izzy was doing with Fizz leaving. It's going really well. I typically come back to these little bay mirror images waiting near the front of the pasture to welcome us home. They're happy when we get back but don't seem overly concerned that we've been gone.
















This morning before work I felt it was time to be a little more adventurous and head out into the real world. We set out for a 4 mile loop. At the end of our street, we have to pass 3 houses with horses in paddocks up near the road. Predictably, at the first of these houses, Fizz wanted to plant her feet in the middle of the road and gawk at the big dressage geldings prancing up and down the fenceline as she approached. As we were getting started in a discussion about moving along, a car came up right behind us. We were literally in the middle of the road, so I hopped off and got her out of the way, with these geldings still prancing and whispering sweet nothings to her. She responded by throwing her tail up over her back and levitating along for a few strides, which honestly made me laugh out loud. I've never seen her act that way around other horses (that was always a classic Izzy move when we'd ride by horses down the road from where we boarded). The horses at the next house were not nearly as exciting as the first pair of geldings, so we walked by quietly.

I handwalked across the paved road and crossed to the next dirt road. A friend of a friend has a really cool old stone mounting block at the edge of her yard, where it meets the road, and she doesn't mind people using it, so I parked Fizz there to get back on. Just as I swung my leg over and was fishing for my right stirrup, the mailman screeched up and stopped the truck facing us, about a horse length from Fizz's nose, lights flashing. He started slamming the mail into the boxes. Not an ideal scenario to be in such a vulnerable position, but Fizz was a saint and stood stock still while I got my stirrup and then steered her out of the way of the mail truck. I don't know if this happens to other people, but it seems like whenever I'm in a somewhat compromised situation, a car or truck seems to appear! 😬 I just really appreciate her levelheadness in those moments.

The rest of our ride was uneventful. The brook along the road was moving fast, and the sound was so loud it was hard to hear cars coming up behind us.








Our route took us past Mac the German Shepherd for the first time this year. My lovely husband often jogs by that house and had reported that the dog was not currently wearing the cone of shame, so that was a positive. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little braced in the saddle with contact on the reins when we rode by, but it was a rare day when he wasn't outside at all. Our first encounter will be another day I guess.

We also passed the pirate dogs' house. They too were nowhere to be seen. I guess it was a little later in the year this year, because their boating pond had dried up. Not surprisingly, the boat itself was still perched on the "shore." The whole yard is one of those strewn with all kinds of discarded plastic kids stuff.








This was the first ride where Fizz was a little sweaty when we got home. As soon as I got her untacked she rolled and rolled.








When I picked up my saddle to put it away, I found a single pretty ladybug exploring. Hoping that will portend good luck the rest of the riding season. I was making plans this morning to go to a Memorial Day pleasure ride, if we're ready.


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## egrogan

Another short ride yesterday. For some reason we had a ton of traffic on our rode all day, which is not typical. Coming home from grocery shopping, I got behind a caravan of 7 SUVs from NY and CT. Sort of the equivalent of being on I-95 during rush hour for our road 😉 We got passed by some loud motorcycles while we were riding, but otherwise we seemed to avoid the worst of it.

Lovely husband took a couple of pictures and I realized we looked like ragamuffins with our many shades of orange and mismatched boots 😳 I have a bucket of boots sitting in my garage that I really need to scrub and I keep putting it off. Good thing we weren’t looking for any fashion points!








Our ride was quiet. Fizz was a little less enthusiastic than she’s been the last few rides, so I followed her lead and we just ambled along. I was sad when we crossed this field, we saw the remnants of a turkey hen something had gotten :sad: I think we have a fox den on the ridge up above our barn-it’s gotten too close for comfort for my chickens the past couple of weeks so the chickens are stuck in the barn until the fox moves on. But everyone’s got to eat…
























The fields are just starting to green up, but it’s still early spring here.








Hugh made me laugh yesterday-seems he doesn’t appreciate being stuck doing chores with me rather than going on an adventure in the woods. Could a dog look more bored?! 🤣








I signed up to volunteer at an endurance ride today, but right now I’m sitting at ride camp and there’s not a soul here, so no idea what to do. I am supposed to be the timer, but there are no supplies and no note. I’m assuming everyone is out at a vet check but I was told to come here at this time, so not really sure what to do 🤷‍♀️ The whole experience with this ride has been pretty disorganized; I try to be understanding but I’m definitely going to be annoyed if I came over here for no reason.

Got a laugh out of this. We’ve talked before on here about the variety of nicknames our animals have. This was spot on.








No name yet for the new horse, but we’ve been playing around with an option that might stick. Nothing has come back yet with the DNA test, but the mail has been so slow lately who knows of the sample is even received yet. Trying to be patient!


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## gottatrot

Our spring is late here in OR, things are just now starting to grow and there were ice pellets in the rain today. 

I hope you can figure out where they want you to assist at the endurance ride! I get annoyed too when things are disorganized.


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## egrogan

Phew, what an eventful day it ended up being! First of all, I feel like a jerk for being so impatient earlier this morning. The ride _was _somewhat disorganized, but it turns out the person who had originally been coordinating most of the ride details got really sick with Covid last week, so someone stepped up last week to try to keep things running, and didn't really have the info needed. So everyone who showed up just pitched in and helped out however it was needed.

My "job" ended up being quite unexpected. Unfortunately, about a mile into the ride, a rider had a really bad accident where her horse bolted out from under her, and she came off hard on the pavement. She was taken to the emergency room, and ended up with broken ribs, collarbone, possibly hip, and a slight brain bleed (even with a helmet) :sad: The woman she was riding with walked her horse back to ride camp. But no one personally knew the injured woman or the horse (she had just met the person she was riding with today). After some back and forth over the phone with the woman's husband, it was decided that one of the volunteers was going to drive the truck, trailer and horse back to their home in Western Mass, and I volunteered to follow them down and bring the driver back.

At around 10am, a couple of other people were getting the horse loaded, but it became quickly apparent that the horse had no intention of getting on the trailer. As often happens in these situations, as the horse got more resistant, more people jumped in to try to get it loaded with "the thing that always works for them." The mare was not being mean or nasty or violent, but was just sort of glazed over/shut down and planted her feet in front of the trailer refusing to move. She did the same when there was an attempt to load her in a different trailer with the horse she had been riding with earlier in the day. Three hours later, there was no progress, even with some extraordinarily patient and capable horsepeople making their best attempts. It didn't help that the trailer design was very difficult to work with- it had a huge solid back door (step up, no ramp) and no butt bar. She actually did load fully a couple of times, but within seconds flew back and busted the half-closed door open before it could be fully latched. Since no one knew the owner or the horse, it wasn't clear which strategy worked for her, but after many different strategies being tried, nothing was working. I have to say, it reaffirmed my appreciation for the endurance community to see how carefully and fairly everyone who touched the horse treated her. No one hit her, no one menaced her, no one threw a chain on her to drag her on. Though she seemed a little shut down by the end, she wasn't acting scared or drenched in sweat. She just was.not.doing.it.

After three hours, the decision was made that the truck and trailer would go to an organizer's farm a few miles down the road, and the horse would be ponied there (ride camp was a public fair grounds, so couldn't stay there). The owner's husband was coming up from MA to meet her in the hospital, and one of her horsey friends was bringing him up, so I think they will try to get the horse home tomorrow? Not clear how long the woman will stay at the hospital but hoping she heals enough to go home quickly. The brain bleed seems particularly scary.

Of course that whole situation was a very clear illustration of how important it is that your horse loads well. None of us ever imagine our horse will be in a scenario where a bunch of strangers have to make decisions about what's best, but I know if Fizz is ever in that situation I want to be sure she is prepared to be cooperative and do what is asked. Our trailer is still over at the mechanic's for a couple of weeks, but I can't wait to get it home and get to work with our loading practice. So I guess that's the PSA of the day: practice, practice, practice loading with your horse until they will do it in their sleep. (And wear your helmet!)


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Of course that whole situation was a very clear illustration of how important it is that your horse loads well. None of us ever imagine our horse will be in a scenario where a bunch of strangers have to make decisions about what's best



What a story. It's hard to believe that all those experts at loading couldn't get the mare in. I've seen yahoos be unable to load, but usually when somebody who knows what they are doing strides up, the horse goes right in. That is so sad.

I have been in two situations now where the rider was badly injured and my friends and I had to load the horse while the owner went off to the hospital. On both occasions, the horse loaded right in, and we trailered the horse back to the owner's place. The second time was unfortunately our own beloved @LoriF, and her filly had had very little riding experience. But she loaded like a champion.

I wonder if the mare is extremely devoted to her owner. My jousting mare loaded so perfectly that when tied to the trailer, we always had to do up the butt chain to keep her from trying to get on, getting stuck, and possibly getting hurt. She couldn't wait to get on the trailer. When we moved to Florida, I had to leave her behind for a month and pay someone to haul her to Florida later. She WOULD NOT load for those people. I think it took several hours, I was told. But she was quite devoted to me and pretty much threw everybody else who tried to ride her. I didn't want or plan that, but she was quirky as all get out, and that's who she was.


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## Knave

Wow. That is an awful story. I’m sorry for that girl. It was a very nice intention to want to take the horse back. I hope the girl ends up okay. That sounds like a hard recovery coming.

@knightrider Queen is seeming like that. She always wants into the trailer and I have to keep a good hold of her to try and keep her out. Lol.


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## gottatrot

Too bad about the fall and injuries. How nice of you to be so helpful. Isn't that amazing that so many people would take all that time and energy to help out? Good points to take away. Hero would load for anyone, I'm certain. A big stall looks like home to a track TB. I need to work on Aria since she's never been in a trailer other than the time we brought her home, and she wasn't even trained to be haltered yet. Best not to try these things when they're sick or stressed.


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## egrogan

knightrider said:


> What a story. It's hard to believe that all those experts at loading couldn't get the mare in. I've seen yahoos be unable to load, but usually when somebody who knows what they are doing strides up, the horse goes right in. That is so sad.


Yep, this was not one of those 'horse show parking lot horsewhisperers' grabbing a lunge whip and whacking the horse to make her move. If I were in a similar situation, I'd have been happy to have any of these people handling Fizz. I may have been the only yahoo involved, as I was manning the back door to try to get it closed once she stepped on. Unfortunately the mare was faster than we were and we weren't able to close it. I did hear that later in the day, she was ridden over to the farm that offered to have her stay until the owner can get her, and she was totally fine for the ride there.



Knave said:


> I hope the girl ends up okay. That sounds like a hard recovery coming.


I agree. I haven't heard any updates but I do hope she ends up ok.



gottatrot said:


> Isn't that amazing that so many people would take all that time and energy to help out? Good points to take away. Hero would load for anyone, I'm certain. A big stall looks like home to a track TB. I need to work on Aria since she's never been in a trailer other than the time we brought her home, and she wasn't even trained to be haltered yet. Best not to try these things when they're sick or stressed.


It really was great to see everyone step in to help however they could. 

As someone who has had the mortifying experience of having a horse take 4 hours to load, I am determined not to be in that position again. I think back to that situation with Fizz and realize how naive I was. At the time, I just thought horses her age just knew how to ride on a trailer. When we loaded her up that day to go out to the trails with our friend, it never even occurred to me that we wouldn't be able to get her back on to come home. I didn't know much about her trailering history (I didn't really think to find out!), but everyone told me not to worry, at the end of a long ride they can't wait to jump back on to come home. Ha! How wrong that was. Once the trailer is here, we will definitely practice loading and unloading until it's so boring neither of us want to do it anymore 😉 And then practice some more!


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## TrainedByMares

Think of all the anxious,frustrated,fearful,excited,forceful and possibly even angry vibes that poor horse was picking up. Too many people! I hope the lady recovers and is reunited with her horse soon. 

The first lesson Jesse and I went to, after it was over, she did not want to load. Why don't you want to go home? I have to go to work! We can't stay here! Anxiety and frustration build...

Trainer lady told me to fasten rope halter on, walk towards or on trailer with pressure on rope. When horse balks or stops,the pressure increases,when they walk forward, it vanishes. Basically,continue this 'dance' until horse is inside trailer. A slant load trailer with ramp would defintely be easier to manage. 

So,with Jesse,it works every time. Nicki follows me onto trailer wherever ,whenever. Love you, Nicki!😍

I wish you all the best with your loading practice, @egrogan ! It is super important but something some of us take for granted and well worth practicing!


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## egrogan

TrainedByMares said:


> Think of all the anxious,frustrated,fearful,excited,forceful and possibly even angry vibes that poor horse was picking up. Too many people!


I do think the "too many people" issue made the situation worse. I was impressed with the vibes that I was picking up from most people, which mostly came across as calm and encouraging- but of course I'm not a horse 😉 Everyone was also respectful of not creating a crowd and standing around gawking. But as different people tried to help, I think you're right that the shifting of strategies was not helping. I once did a clinic on difficult loaders, and the clinician's main message was to pick one tactic and stick with it, don't try something, see it's not working, and then switch things up on the horse to try something else.


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> everyone told me not to worry, at the end of a long ride they can't wait to jump back on to come home.


Those people must have been thinking of horses with a lot of experience trailering. Most of the time, those kinds of horses do willingly jump on. Horses new to trailering? Quite the opposite. When I was trying to trailer my green colt from Texas to Maryland, people told me NOT to take him out of the trailer until the ride was done for the day . . . or he would NOT go back in for the next phase of the ride.

On the second day, we had a flat tire on the tow vehicle, a 1960 Chevy station wagon. And our trailer was a little wooden job with a canvas top that was not balanced well. We unhitched the trailer with me standing on the tongue so the trailer wouldn't tip up with the horse in it, changed the tire, and re-hitched. What a nightmare. Then we had to turn around to get back on the highway. My husband saw a house on a hill with a nice circular driveway so we headed up that way. Part way up the hill, the driveway was blocked off. So he had to back down the hill. Trailering was all new to us (we had bought the trailer for $200 days before the trip) and he backed into a stone wall. The Chevy station wagon couldn't pull the trailer back up the steep hill. We had to dismantle the stone wall to back the trailer out, then re-stack it.

And, to top it all off, Hurricane Agnes struck that day. We finished the 4 day drive going right along, exact same speed, as Hurricane Agnes. The heavy rain and cool weather probably kept the car from overheating, but boy, it was hairy driving through the downpour.

The angels were looking out for us and we made it to Maryland just fine. And at the end of the journey? My green colt loaded perfectly. That trailer was like home to him after the long trip.

Back to the original premise: most horses not used to trailering will not load willingly to go home. They are hot, tired, and hungry and do not relish a trailer ride. They want a roll, a rest, and some hay . . . and the trailer offers none of that.


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## Knave

I haven’t seen many tough loaders that I was actually a participant on. I see those fights at rodeos and pretend I don’t while I walk away because often there are already too many people with too many bosses helping.

Now, I have a funny solution though that I’ve seen work (on a horse that is very broke and knows trailers). I believe it was my mother’s best show horse when I was young, but this horse would refuse to load after a show sometimes. He just wouldn’t do it. Now, when my father wasn’t there, there were always different cowboys at the shows who would come and get the horse in the trailer by various means.

One day, this horse would not load. I can’t remember if it was my dad who was there, but I think it was. This horse had never considered not loading for him. So, he tried a couple times and the horse was having none of it. Then, he tied him to the side of the trailer, and he slowly and carefully drove it across the parking lot and to where you would leave the fairgrounds.

This horse trotted alongside the trailer, thinking he made a very bad life choice, and when he stopped at the driveway and got out, he walked up to him like nothing had ever happened and loaded him up easily. I thought it was funny as could be. He must have been thinking that he was going to drive away home and fast dragging him behind. I don’t remember if he ever questioned loading again.

Now, I only think that would work with a good horse like him who was simply throwing his weight around for whatever reason he did it. He had been trailered thousands of times and knew what it was all about.


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## knightrider

One of the loading tricks that I have seen work amazingly well is when two very experienced, very confident horse people link arms behind the horse. I think it has more to do with mind over matter than pushing the horse in. They just stand there, arms holding to one another pushing, not real hard, but definite pressure. I have seen many horses go right in that way, and I have been an "arm holder" successfully loading someone's horse several times. I think because it involves firm but gentle human contact, the horse tends to not kick out or rear.

I also have seen it not work once, but that was after several hours of failure. I really believe that tactic will not work unless both people are totally committed and totally certain it will work. I read on a trailer loading site not to do that. But I sure have seen success with it over the years.


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## Knave

I’ve seen that same theory often successful with a soft rope @knightrider.


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## QueenofFrance08

Wow what an adventure! 

I'm sure the horse was overwhelmed as well, such an excited start to the morning and then turned right back to camp and put in a trailer must have been very confusing for it. I don't think I could turn any of my horses back to camp after the first few miles of a ride (when they're all amped up, which it seems was especially the case in this situation) and try to get them to hop onto a trailer. Once they go out they want to go!

I hope the rider is okay! What a horrible thing to happen. 

I have spent a day "volunteering" at a ride catching 2 dogs that opened the door on someone's LQ and were running wild around camp! There's never a dull moment!


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## egrogan

QueenofFrance08 said:


> I have spent a day "volunteering" at a ride catching 2 dogs that opened the door on someone's LQ and were running wild around camp! There's never a dull moment!


This one made me laugh @QueenofFrance08 . That definitely sounds frustrating in the moment, but more funny afterwards.

@knightrider, the linked arms strategy was tried early on in the process, by one of the ride vets and an experienced rider. Sadly she didn't cooperate. Same with the rope behind her butt. The strategy that did work to get her on made the most sense to me, because it was really up to the horse to find the "right answer" by walking forward on her own into the trailer. I don't know if I will describe it well it writing, but it went like this: two long lines were attached to create one very long rope. This very long line was clipped to the horse's halter. One person stood inside the trailer at the front; the other person held the end of the rope which was run out through the escape door of the trailer and back around to behind the trailer, where that second person stood holding the end of the rope. The person in the trailer asked the horse to step forward with light forward pressure on the lead rope; every time the horse took a step forward, she got slack in the rope, and the person behind the trailer shortened up their hold on the rope just a little to "hold her" there (not really physically hold her, but with the leverage from the rope run around the back of the trailer, could "encourage" her to stay in the position she was). If the horse had to dance around from side to side while she was approaching the trailer, she had the freedom to move. The horse quickly got the idea that going forward would take all the pressure off, and she had both front feet on a couple of times before going backwards. She was even fully loaded twice but came flying off; there was no way of physically holding her with how hard she came back. I do think if there was more time, this would have eventually worked, because the horse was getting the idea. But we were three hours in and the person in charge decided it had gone on long enough and she should be taken to the neighboring farm to wait for her owner to figure it out. I am glad I wasn't in the position to decide, but everyone respected the decision.


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## egrogan

Switching subjects a little, I was hoping for some training advice. Our beautiful new girl is starting to slick out and dapple up! While she still needs a few groceries, I'm really pleased with how her summer coat is coming in. She was described as "hard to catch" when she got here, but _knock on wood_ I really haven't had any problems with her, even when turned out in the larger field with good grass. I halter her at least daily around feeding time, and we do some simple ground work and/or grooming. She is still a little uncertain at times, so I try to be mindful of my body language or where I'm asking her to go with respect to other horses' body language.








The biggest problem I'm having, which seems to be getting bigger, is picking up her hind feet. I've certainly worked with horses before who might "test" to see how committed you are to asking them to lift up their hinds...things like pulling the leg up tight to the body, trying to yank it down fast, etc. But her behavior is different: This is a full-on, _I mean it and I'm not playing around_ kick that starts off like a cow kick but extends with full velocity backwards. This is the same on both sides. The rescue did note that during her last trimming a couple of days before she came here, they couldn't trim her hinds because she kicked. She was trimmed once back in February while sedated.

She will pick up her fronts and I can clean them out normally. I can run my hand down the hinds and as long as I don't "grab" to pick up, she will lift it up, though quickly put it back down. But it's not the same kind of violent outburst as when I am intentional about asking her to pick it up.

I will say I think she may have some pain in her hind end, and the vet won't be here to see us until May 27th. Given that, I'm not sure if I should be trying to address this between now and then, or wait to rule out a physical reason for this behavior. I've rescheduled our next farrier appt to the week after that because it wouldn't be fair to anyone to ask him to trim her like this. That said, her feet aren't horribly long or flared, but they do need some attention. It's an issue that needs to be addressed.

If this was your horse, what would you do next?


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## Knave

If she were mine, as she is old and set in her ways, I would only do her every 9 weeks and use dormosedan.


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## egrogan

Thanks @Knave. I've never used dorm before myself but know it is effective for a lot of situations. I will ask the vet!


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## knightrider

Years ago, I had a draft mare who did exactly that. This mare was so gentle, obedient, and compliant, that I felt fairly certain there was pain in her stifles. She rode sound, but we didn't ride her hard. I sold her to a riding school, telling them about her hind feet. I recommended they get a full vet work-up and do not breed her. Sport horses were big at that time, so they did breed her. I wished they hadn't. I could clean her hind feet, but I had to be super slow and keep the foot almost on the ground. It just seemed like pain to me. I had a super great farrier, and he was able to trim her, being careful. But she was a draft, and she could really KICK!


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## gottatrot

I think I would wait also until the vet sees her to see what kind of pain she might be having.
If the vet doesn't think there is a lot of pain, then it could be this relates to fear or pain she anticipates. 

What I would do is work on teaching her first to take weight off the hoof when asked. I'd push on her hip, do everything I could to get her to shift to the other foot, and then reward her with a treat. If she picked it up high, I would not reward it because you only want her to shift the weight so it is more controlled and not heading toward a kick.

Once she trusted I would do that without picking up the foot, I would work on asking her to let me turn the foot so the sole was up. Not pick it up, just put it like a horse does when resting it, with weight on the opposite hind leg. When you touch it, she might overreact, so you might have to start with just touching it for a second and then getting away fast before she kicks, but staying at it until she realizes you're only moving her foot and not lifting it. If she tries putting weight back on the leg, go back a step and just work on having her keep the weight off the leg while you move the foot around. You could even try pushing the hoof around with a stick, just so she gets the idea that you only want her to move it and turn it over. Only try flipping it when she's relaxed with you moving the hoof.

When she trusted that for several days, and it didn't worry her, I'd try having her let me set the foot with the sole up on a very short step, something several inches off the ground. If you could work on having her stand resting the foot on a low object, a farrier can work with that and get trimming done even if she is too sore to bring the leg higher. 

She might just be scared, and if that is the case, you can eventually work toward holding the leg once she trusts more. But at least if you teach her to rest the foot for you, you'll be able to clean them, check them and use thrush treatment if needed.


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## egrogan

Yikes, @knightrider- I wouldn't want to chance being kicked by a horse that size! Thanks @gottatrot- this is why I am not a trainer, I knew I needed to break things down into smaller steps but I don't think I would have gotten to steps that small. I can definitely try this while we're waiting for the vet appt. She hasn't seemed interested in any treats I've offered her so far, and I haven't found any scratchy spots she particularly likes. She's a work in progress.

Also...drumroll....I think we're calling her Josie (Jozie?)! 😄 It isn't quite an "iz" name, but it seems to suit her.


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## gottatrot

That is a perfect name!


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## QueenofFrance08

If it's just stubborn (which a lot of times it is) Dorm works great. We always keep some on hand. Honestly, several of our horses need it in the spring for rear shoes every year, they seem to forget over the winter what having shoes put on is like. We give them Dorm once and get their feet done and the next time they don't usually need it.

If it's pain hopefully the vet can get you something to make her more comfortable so it's not an issue!


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## Knave

@QueenofFrance08 makes a great point about the dormosedan. When we’ve had horses we’ve needed it on, it wasn’t a permanent thing. Bones needed it for his first set of shoes and his second. Those were his only sets of shoes, so maybe not a great example, but after the two rounds I could trim him easily enough without it. For him it was a fear thing, and he wasn’t afraid to that same extent after that. They say a horse can remember when he’s doped with dormosedan.

Dad had one bad enough to need two times one year and then the first two times the next as well, but again it wasn’t permanent.

So, if the mare is just misbehaving, you may in a roundabout way solve the problem. I wouldn’t know if it was that or pain. She is old, which would make you think pain, but that doesn’t mean it is.


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## PoptartShop

I would definitely wait for the vet, because there could be a good reason why she's refusing to pick them up and wants to kick. She could be anticipating something too & is just being protective of her hind end. Hopefully the 27th gets here quickly! It's good you are working with her though.  Just praise her when she does lift it (not the full-blown kick, but when she lifts it, even for a second), then work on something else, etc.

And, I LOVE the name!! Jozie, Josie, either one, ADORABLE!!!  It is very fitting for her. I like it!


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## egrogan

Thanks, everyone! All good points. She'll just be trimmed, not shod (unless I'm missing something major and vet recommends shoes), so I am hopeful we can get her ready. I'm open to dorm + training to build positive experiences. I keep looking at her hind end and thinking her SI/pelvic area looks wonky. When she moves, she has sort of a side-to-side shuffle in her gait I can't really explain. At times there's an uncomfortable look to her. But I need a more experienced eye to help me figure it out. Just a couple more weeks of waiting


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## egrogan

Some photo spam from a beautiful ride yesterday. We went a little farther- 4.5 miles-down the big hill past the overlook that always gives us such problems. I decided to preempt an argument by handwalking down it. She did try to jump off the road into the ditch once about halfway down, but I just ignored her and kept walking, so she did too. She was a little rude about standing for mounting because the grass was so irresistible, but I couldn't really blame her. After some choice words, she did remember her manners and we carried on fine. Actually, better than fine- I was thrilled with her relaxation as we rode along. Sometimes on this particular route, at the point where we turn around she has a tendency to get really tight and jiggy in anticipation of going home. Often a forward trot up the big hills that come will chill her out a little. But she didn't have that coiled feeling at all, which was so nice. We did still trot a few of the hills, but didn't push too hard because it was very warm and she's definitely not in shape for the hills yet.









































The last half mile or so home was totally on the buckle, at a decently forward walk but super relaxed.


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## egrogan

I am really enjoying watching the relationship between Izzy and Josie grow. They are often hanging out together, and just seem to like to be near each other.















We've had unusually low humidity these last few days, even though it's warming up. Izzy looks like she stuck her nose in an outlet- she keeps shocking herself when she flicks her tail at flies ⚡  ⚡ 















Short, quick ride with Fizz this morning before work- mostly trotting on the way to and from the overlook.















She's looking chubby. We definitely have work to do. I'm excited though, I've got some rides with friends booked the next couple of weekends. Planning to meet M and Coalie for the first time this weekend, and a new riding buddy K and her young gelding the following weekend. Her horse is young, but she's an experienced endurance rider so I think it will be a good opportunity for us.


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## egrogan

I’m not sure what Josie and Fizz have suddenly worked out in their relationship, but quietly sharing hay piles?! Didn’t expect that!


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## egrogan

Got some wet saddle blankets in yesterday- literally. It was 85*F when we went out to ride, and the bugs were terrible. Still, it was time to step up to a more intense ride, so I picked a 6.5 mile loop that included roads and woods trail.

Our ride started off down the hill of despair and past Mac the German Shepherd and his mini donk friends. He was out in the yard today and came barreling out from under the bushes to bark at us, but she was fine with that. The donks were right up near the road close to the fence, and came walking closer as they saw us. She did plant her feet and get snorty when they started moving, but I was able to get her unstuck and moving again without getting off, so that felt positive. We got passed by a couple of bikers as we came up to a difficult 4-way intersection at the bottom of a steeper hill. Given the chance, she'll try to pull right (shorter way home) when I am typically asking her to go left (longer way home). Sure enough, at the bottom of the hill, she grabbed the bit and spun right. We spun around a couple of times (fortunately, for once there was no traffic because we were literally in the middle of the intersection) and I did manage to get us pointed in the right direction. It's a really irritating move on her part, but I am guessing that going that way a few more times will resolve the issue. This was the first time this season.

From there she was fine, if irritated by the bugs. Out of the 6.5 miles we rode, she spent probably 6 of those miles slinging her head around in frustration with the bugs. That only got worse the sweatier she got, and she was pretty sweaty. On this route, we had a bit of time down the woods trails, and the shade was most welcome. Weirdly, the bugs were actually less annoying when we were in the woods.
















At the end of last season, a big tree fell across part of the trail. Unfortunately it was still there. It's about chest height, so too tall to go over, but also too low to go under. That meant we had to slide down the embankment into the ditch to go around. Someone wanted to use this as an opportunity for snacking; as you can see from this angle, we don't need more snacks!! She also thought the tree was the perfect face scratching post. Given how sweaty she was, I did indulge her for a minute and let her have a good itch before we continued on.








I'm not sure who owns/maintains these trails, but I think it's the ATV people. If it had been the snowmobiles, I'm sure it would have been removed over the winter. I've considered going to remove it myself, but I'm hesitant because I could see a world where whoever owns the trail left it there so ATVs wouldn't use it? I don't want to cause any problems. Right when I hopped off, I noticed there was someone riding a dirt bike behind us, but when that person saw me get off to go around, they turned and went back the way they had come. I'm hoping the tree will get removed soon, because it's a bit of a pain to have to get off and go around. The bank to the ditch is a little too steep and rocky for me to be comfortable riding down it, though others probably would be ok doing that. Fortunately there's a good tree stump to mount back up on the other side of where I had to get off, so I got back on quickly and we continued on our way.

The downed tree was at about the halfway point for our ride, and I was a bit concerned with how sweaty she was. We had only been walking, but she was pretty drenched. As we came out of the woods to cross the big farm, the weather was changing rapidly. Having some cloud cover and a breeze definitely helped with how hot it had gotten.
















But the clouds were getting pretty intense and suddenly we were in the midst of really loud rumbles of thunder. We still had about 3 miles to go, so just pressed on. I figured if it turned really nasty we could make it to a friend's farm and hide out in her barn if we needed to wait for the storm to pass.








The weather forecast had said the storms wouldn't materialize until much later in the day, so I don't think I would have picked this long route if I had known! The thunder made me distracted and nervous, which in turn made her get a bit jiggy for a stretch. The thunder was rumbling loudly, but there wasn't any lightning or rain coming, so I calmed down a little. That was until we passed a house with a family outside; at the last minute, their dog came charging across the porch barking, and slammed on the brakes suddenly, sliding across the porch floor with her claws making a nails-on-blackboard kind of scraping sound that in turn sent Fizz jumping to the left. I was glad I was able to sit the spook because it would have been really embarrassing to come off in front of a huge family enjoying a spring cookout! At least the dog distracted her from the cows that were up on the hill beyond the house! 🐄

The rest of the ride was uneventful, but the skies continued to darken. The breeze felt nice, but it wasn't strong enough to knock the bugs down. She was pretty miserable the last mile home and in addition to throwing her head around, she wanted to stop suddenly to rub her face on her front leg. She tripped badly and almost fell a couple of times because she was not paying attention. I wish there was a way I could have helped her, but the bugs really were just that bad...








All in all, maybe not the most fun ride, but still a good ride as we rode through some challenges. Unfortunately my ride with M this morning got rained out. But it looks like there will be a break in the rain around lunchtime for me to at least take Fizz for a trot out to the overlook and back.


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## Knave

I’m sorry your ride got canceled! I know my horses can get pretty irritated about bugs, I’m pretty sure they would die there. Lol


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I’m sorry your ride got canceled! I know my horses can get pretty irritated about bugs, I’m pretty sure they would die there. Lol


@Knave, I have to admit that my patience with her was wearing thin when she almost put us both on the ground tripping over her own feet while trying to itch her face. But then karma got me later, as I was mucking out the paddock and my own face was swarmed with these awful little black flies and I was trying to sling my ponytail around enough that it would clear the bugs out of my eyes while I had both hands on the full wheelbarrow  I hate them as much as she does, but she does have to pay enough attention that we stay upright!!


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## Knave

Cash is bad that way too. He is one of the worst bug horses I’ve seen. Husband likes to point out that I am as bad as he is, and then I laugh because it’s true. I get annoyed though. I’m always yelling at him that he is in fact a mustang. I think he’s pretty happy to be a working horse and not a mountain horse. He definitely likes his fly spray. I even have some skin so soft in my saddle bag (for me), and when he’s having a melt down I’ll put it on him. Spoiled!

Queen hasn’t seemed dramatic yet. We will see. We get those black biting flies ever since the milk cow. They make me crazy! There a tons of them too. I tried spraying them out, but nothing kills them!


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> This was the first time this season.


I really like that approach! I'd swear God sent Bandit to me to teach me patience...although I might be keeping current on my cussing instead.

I read once about a gathering with both mule and horse riders. A mule took off thru the gathering, crow-hopping all the way. It seems the horse people were saying, "_How disrespectful! He needs to train that mule!_" But the mule people were saying, "_*There goes Ned & his mule!*_"

There was no one watching me a couple of rides ago when Bandit insisted on galloping and we argued. Thankfully. And I do tire sometimes of hearing, "_Why don't you RIDE that horse!_" But I could handle it alright if I heard, "_*Yup! There goes Bob & his mule...*_"

Maybe I should start telling people Bandit is a "Short Eared Mule"... 🤣

"_she grabbed the bit and spun right. We spun around a couple of times (fortunately, for once there was no traffic because we were literally in the middle of the intersection) and I did manage to get us pointed in the right direction_"

Yep. That's the world I live in! Any time I manage to finish with Bandit pointed in the right direction, it's a win! And...in truth, I don't always "win". 😕


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## knightrider

I really enjoy reading about all of the rides that you folks do. I like the way you describe them. I am glad you keep journals and I am able to read them.


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## PoptartShop

Ha! Promise hates bugs too! She'd be going nuts LOL. I always feel so bad but there's not much you can do, 'tis the season. I absolutely love Fizz in orange!!


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## egrogan

Another stormy day today, so the horses are just dodging raindrops and thunder. Hugh had an exciting morning going into the vet for annual vaccines. To be honest, I've been a bit nervous about it for the past couple of weeks. This was the first vet appt of his life that we've been able to go inside with him. I think I posted about his last appointment, almost a year ago now, when we were told he had tried to bite and was very difficult to handle. They recommended sedation and anti-anxiety medication for future visits. While I believe that kind of medication has its place, I was hopeful that with training, and us being allowed to go in with him (because of Covid protocols, all of his previous vet visits were ones where we had to hand him off and wait in the car), we could have a better experience. That day arrived today, and we made it through the visit with no medications needed! And no one being threatened by teeth.

We worked with a trainer last fall, and he responded very well to her. She mostly took an R+ approach and took things slowly-probably as much to train US as it was to train him. 😉 When we ended our sessions with her, she left us with the recommendation to train him to the basket muzzle, which I did in earnest over the past couple of months. I know that muzzles have a negative connotation to a lot of people; to be honest, I felt that way too, and that needing to get him to wear it was a failure in training him to be around people. But I've kind of turned around my outlook on it, realizing that it's just another tool/piece of equipment that has a time and place, and can be very helpful in an emergency if it's ever needed. I liked the idea of making sure that if he was ever in a situation where he needed to wear it, he could without fear or stress.

The first week I tried it with him, he would growl and bare his teeth at me (I think he was "wrestled" into a muzzle at the vet to keep everyone safe during that last difficult visit). So I took things really slow with building positive associations with seeing and sniffing the muzzle (peanuts became our favorite training reward!). It probably took 2-3 weeks before I could even touch the straps while he put his nose into the basket. Then one day, he didn't mind me resting the straps around his head. A couple of days later, I could fasten it. From there, he took it willingly. We wore it out on walks, took it off and put it back on randomly. I wasn't sure I could get him to that point, but by taking things slowly and listening to him when he needed more time, it really paid off. He wore it for most of the visit today (annual exam, basic vaccines and bloodwork), but at the end of the visit we were able to take it off to look at his teeth, and he even took treats from the vet after all her poking and prodding.








As you can see, he was still a bit nervous in the exam room. But in fairness to him, this photo was taken while we waited in the exam room for about 20 minutes for the vet to get in to see us, and given that, I think he did really well. We put him in a down/stay, and he held it for nearly the whole time we were waiting. String cheese helped, but he really managed to keep it together. I know this all probably sounds like really basic skills, and with all my previous dogs, I took these skills for granted. I think the combination of all the Covid weirdness that's impacted every aspect of his life, plus the real intense dog he is, made me realize how much these basic skills can't necessarily be taken for granted. I am proud of him for having such a different experience today, and have to admit I feel really empowered that doing all the work with the muzzle was something he and I were able to accomplish together. I just want him to be a happy, safe dog to be around. He is for us, and this gives me hope that he can be that way around strangers too.


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## Knave

Good for you!! Junie B is not safe for other people to be around at all. It’s a sad deal, but luckily for me she doesn’t have to be around many people. If someone is coming expectedly I lock her up.


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## egrogan

The storms finally broke overnight, and gusty winds carried out the heat and humidity, for now at least. I was lucky I had time to ride this morning before work. We headed out to the overlook and down the big hill for a 4.5 mile out-and-back.








The wind blew us along...








Fizz was uncharacteristically a little jumpy from the wind. It started going down the big hill- the pasture fencing tape was making a really loud snapping sound in the wind, which even made me jump the first time I heard it before I realized what it was. It made a series of pop-pop-pop sounds when the wind would catch it just right. I happened to have two podcast queued up that had me laughing out loud, and that really helped settle us both down. Amazing how when you're laughing, the horse can't help but relax with you.








Coming back up the hill was no problem though; she seemed convinced the popping fence was no big deal.
























We had some good trotting stretches, but we need to build up to more with all this luscious grass coming in. 








I fear for Fizz that Maggie's grazing muzzle may need to be repurposed to a new owner this year. She just still seems to be carrying the winter weight and I don't like how her neck is looking- teetering on the edge of starting to get cresty.


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## egrogan

We had a very fun weekend of riding. I can't think of the last time I've had friends to ride with two days in a row!

Saturday we rode with a new pair, K and her 6-yr-old Morgan gelding, Sailor. Sailor is a very sporty looking young guy that she bred (she has both parents) and has done all his training. He's been ponied out a good bit, and been off-site for some clinics and events, but this was his first "out in the big world" trailride away from the horses he knows. They trailered over here to meet us. He was a little amped up getting off the trailer, calling back and forth with my girls, but once we got going he settled right in. He had little bouts of snortiness at things, but if you hadn't known this was all so new to him, you'd think he'd been at it for a long time. I asked K if he was feeling tense when he'd do his little snort-snorts, and she said a bit, but he stayed very tuned in with her. She's a pro trainer and has competed extensively in multiple disciplines, endurance included. It's really nice to see what's possible when someone so skilled raises a horse from the ground up.

He mostly followed or stayed side-by-side with Fizz, but there were portions where he popped into the lead as well. It was very hot and steamy, so we took things slow and mostly just walked. When we left the house, we were in really dense fog. Fortunately we saw almost no traffic, as we are still mostly on the roads (technically trails are closed until Memorial Day to give them time to dry out).
























He did very well passing loud dogs, people out with power tools doing yard work, joggers, the mini donks. His only very big spook was mean old Mac the German Shepherd. I thought we were in the clear, as Mac was out in the open on the lawn when we went by, so he saw us coming and we saw him barking his head off at us. We were nearly passed, when he suddenly came charging behind us again, weaving in and out of the bushes. That was a little bit much for Sailor and he had a pretty big leap to the side, but came under control quickly. That was a good thing, because a biker was coming our way from the other direction. K said he had never seen a biker before, so we just pulled off the road into a yard to give them room, and stood so the horses could face the bike as it passed. He was a little wide-eyed, but had no reaction (Fizz of course had zero interest and was trying to use the stop as a snacking opportunity).

We did the Newhall Farm loop, and the only bad part of the ride was once we were on the "backend" of the loop, Fizz unhelpfully wanted to speedwalk the last couple of miles. I've certainly known that she can get quick on the way home, but with Coalie, I could never quite tell if she was going too fast or he was going too slow. Seeing her start to leave Sailor in the dust, who was certainly not slow or dawdling, was really helpful feedback for me. I started doing a bit of circling just to try to bring her back to his pace, but that seemed to make her more irritated. It would have been one thing if she was very relaxed and just striding out, but it was more of a choppy, let's-get-this-over-with sort of walk that was not fun. Sailor was a little uncertain about the circling, and at first didn't know if he should keep walking when Fizz would get behind him. But it didn't get him worked up at all. I'm glad we had this experience as it is definitely something I'll need to work on. I don't do a lot of riding home and then turning to go back out, so I suppose we have some of that kind of work in our future. Which is actually a good thing we can do when I ride during the week and don't necessarily have time to go on a longer ride.

K apparently enjoyed riding with us, as she reached out later in the day to make a plan for next weekend as well. I feel so silly, but it made me really happy that she would want to ride again. It's hard to make friends as an adult! Hopefully we'll have some more fun rides in our future.

This morning we had our first ride back with M and Coalie for the season. M kept up a good pace of riding through the winter and into the spring, so Coalie was looking really fit. Today was as fiery as yesterday, so we met up early. We did a 5 mile loop. I was proud of Fizz, we had our closest cow encounter ever - and it was successful! We came up a hill and around a bend in the road, with a pasture where a small herd sometimes grazes on our right. I've driven by the pasture a couple of times this week, and never saw cows there, so I thought we were in the clear. Unfortunately I was wrong. We came up to a solo big-horned guy (girl?) standing right in the middle of the pond, I suppose looking for relief from the heat. I could only imagine what kind of blowup was going to happen if that thing came splashing out of the pond towards us, but luck was on our side and it stayed put. Coalie stayed between us and the cow, but we were only a couple of car lengths apart. Fizz definitely locked eyes with it for a minute, and I felt her suck back momentarily, but I was able to just keep encouraging her forward until we were passed it. I did hearing some splashing from behind us once we went by, but I didn't bother turning around to see what was going on. This was definitely a "keep both hands on the wheel" encounter, but maybe if it goes as well next time, I can grab a celebratory cow-between-the-ears picture 😉 They are pretty cows- grey and white with really big horns. Not sure what that is, but it's striking. We kept our eyes focused on the road ahead and just kept going!








Not too far after the cow, we turned off the road down a snowmobile trail. It's a private trail M has permission to ride on, but I felt a little bad going that way because it was quite muddy and we left some tracks in the trail. There were other ruts from ATVs, but still, I try to be respectful about keeping the trails in good condition. Coalie, as always, was happy to take the lead once we were in the woods, and I had to keep Fizz's attention so she didn't just lock in on Coalie's butt and follow him without paying attention. For a couple of the muddy, rocky sections, I really needed her brain engaged. In one particularly slick, rocky section, Coalie slipped hard so I held Fizz back for a second to give him time to pick his way through. We started after them, and even though I expected it to be slippery, it was worse than I though; in a split second, I felt Fizz's hind end slip out from under her, and her right front buckled under her too. I was nearly certain she was going to fall over- I recall looking over to the right, the direction she was falling, and thinking how bad it was going to hurt to hit the rocks and have her fall on top of me. As soon as that thought flashed through my head, I could feel her right hind leg surge back up underneath her, and she regained her footing. One of those things that happened in seconds but felt like an eternity- it was so fast M wasn't able to turn around in time to see the slide, she just heard the commotion. Feels like we really did have good luck riding along with us today!

The rest of the ride was muddy and rocky, but we wound our way down out of the woods back to the road. Here's one of the less glamorous parts of this route- to get back home, we cut through the town garage, which always has a variety of exciting equipment parked around the yard. I particularly like riding through the huge piles of sand and gravel. One time when we rode through here, there was a strange man on top of the big sand pile on the right, sitting there by himself with a dog on a leash. We said hello to him when we passed, but he didn't seem to want to talk. A little unsettling. Fortunately that's one of the only times we've ever had to dodge shady characters on a ride. I like to imagine this is what it might be like to ride in a place like Egypt or Morocco, where you're winding your way over and through the sand dunes as you cross the desert. At 90*F today, maybe it wasn't as far off as it seems!








On the other side of the town garage, we were passed by our farrier driving home with a couple of his kids in the truck and stopped to chat for a minute (M uses him too). Fizz said hello but was more interested in a snack break. We parted ways soon after, crossing back over the paved road to go home. The house at the end of my road is being completely gutted and rehabbed, so there's a lot to look at when you ride past. Today the old front loader washing machine was sitting out in the yard along the road, and Fizz found that big fish eye staring at her very suspicious. She kept herself twisted like a banana to watch it as long as she could, until we turned the corner and headed up the road. Nothing but blue skies the rest of the way home.








We were both hot and sweaty, so I sponged her off with a cold bucket of water. It was the kind of day where you don't mind sponging yourself too! She seemed to appreciate it. I tried not to feel slighted when after my thorough grooming and bath, she asked Izzy for some mutual grooming. There's been a lot of this going on lately. Between the heat and the bugs, everyone is itchy all the time.








Another funny thing I noticed yesterday brushing Josie- she has a pretty rockin' mustache. Definitely makes me laugh.


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## Knave

You seem a lot further into warm weather than we do! It’s so pretty!!


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## egrogan

@Knave, the end of the week was totally different than the beginning of the week. It doesn't seem possible, but the trees leafed out and the grass grew up all in just a few days. Unfortunately it's bizarrely warm; no way it should be 90*F in May! We're waiting for a storm to roll through right now, and next week should be a bit more normal. Still sunny, but back to 70's, which is much more my speed!


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## egrogan

I know I’m anthropomorphizing, but I can’t help but find it heartwarming whenever I catch Josie sharing dinner with her new friends. I’ve never had horses that wanted to eat together like this, even when there are plenty of other options.


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## knightrider

Wow! Has Fizz's color gotten dramatic! She looks like someone's hobbyhorse!


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## Knave

I was thinking that too when I saw the picture @knightrider! She’s way ahead of Queen in turning. She’s so fancy!


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## egrogan

*HAPPY DANCE TIME!!!*
_HAPPY DANCE...._​I received Josie's DNA test results back, and I am proud to introduce you to *Fayre Vermont Maid*, a 19 year old registered Morgan mare.








Interestingly, she is _not _the horse the rescue thought she was. This registered name was on their list of seized horses, but they thought she was a different horse who was slightly older. They have not DNAed any of the other horses, but this helps them narrow things down a bit with the rest of the mares.

She has no breed show record, but does have one registered foal- a colt she had when she was six, who sired one foal himself before being gelded. I'm not sure if he was part of the herd seizure or not, though his registration is still linked to the original owner.

I'm getting all the paperwork ready to officially transfer her into my name with AMHA. Because of the circumstances of how I got her, there is a process for waving the current registered owner's signature, so that will not be a problem. I know it doesn't really mean anything substantive to have her transferred to me, because it's not like she will be shown or bred, but it still feels like nice closure to have her reunited with her "official" identity. 

The best part about all this: she was born on *May 26, 2003. *So this Thursday, we will get to celebrate her birthday. How fun!


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## gottatrot

That is so amazing you know so much about her now!! Such exciting news!


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## Knave

That is so exciting! She is young enough to last for a good time too!


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## carshon

19 is not old at all! My mare is 19 and still riding just as good as she did at 14


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## bsms

Trooper is 23. Maybe 24. I think Cowboy is 25. They are both going strong although Trooper has some throat issues and needs soaked pellets. Don't think he'd be alive on hay alone. Cowboy looks and acts the same as he did 10 years ago. Maybe better in some ways. I'm just too lazy to try to work him into solo trips to the desert. That...and my neighbors really would get a laugh seeing me ride him. Even Bandit is 14. And Josie seems to have worked her way into the social structure with remarkable speed. Looks like you'll be able to enjoy her company for some time to come!


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## QueenofFrance08

19 is very young! Chico will be 21 this year!


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## egrogan

A lot of good, and a little bit of frustration, on our ride yesterday. My work meetings ended early in the afternoon, so I had time for a decent ride. We headed out to the overlook and down over the big hill. The Very Good Thing from this ride is that we rode down the big hill, rather than handwalking. She was a bit resistant when she realized I was going to ask her to do this, and was a little bit of a drunken sailor on the top half of the hill, but I really focused on staying centered, keeping leg on, breathing, and just riding. I rode "one tree at a time;" instead of focusing my mind on getting to the bottom at all costs, I picked a tree part way down the hill, rode to that, and told myself that if things fell apart at that tree, I could always get off and just walk the rest of the way. Every tree we got to, we still had forward motion, so I focused on the next tree and just kept going. Fortunately there was no distracting traffic, so even though we were in the middle of the road most of the way, we made it! I was really happy with how she did.









This ride is an out-and-back, so when we got to our turn around spot I really wanted to focus on having a calm ride home in preparation of being a better riding buddy in the future. We did a nice turn on the forehand to start, and while she stuck to a walk, it was that choppy, sort of frantic walk. She doesn't respond well to my seat and body weight (possibly operator error though?) and I don't like being too handsy to "hold her" back- not that that really works anyway. I decided we'd try doing a lot of transitions to get her thinking more about me than about beelining for home. So we'd trot 15 strides, walk 15 strides, trot 15 strides, walk 15 strides...We got into a good rhythm (counting strides outloud helps a lot!). But there are a lot of steep downhill stretches on the way home, so trotting isn't the greatest option. I decided to play around with transitioning between a "small walk" and "big walk," and that also went surprisingly well. I did have to get a little handsy at first to bottle up the walk, but she seemed to get the idea and was starting to respond to me sitting deeper with less rein needed. Sometimes the walk got so small she actually came to a halt, and I was fine with that and told her she was a good girl. Where we could resume trotting, we did, and we'd go back and forth from trot to big walk to small walk to trot. She was definitely listening, and I could feel her back relaxing. Good stuff.

The frustrating part was that the last mile or so, the mosquitoes and black flies were just swarming her face, and she really stopped thinking about me and just wanted to get out of the bug cloud as fast as she could. That broke up our relaxed movement and things got choppy again. I couldn't really blame her, because the bugs _were _awful, but I do wish we could have ended on the same good note we had been on. All in all though, I think we accomplished some good stuff that we can build on.

A couple of the prettier spots on this route:








I think this is one of my favorite houses anywhere, and the bonus is that it looks out across the view at the overlook. Fun fact, it is owned by a family who are descendants of Teddy Roosevelt! His youngest daughter and her husband purchased the farm in the 1950s, and its been in their family ever since. It's a vacation home today, but they have a big family and are at the farm a lot. They're very nice people.








And a little bit of Hugh, because he's so cute and it was such a pretty day yesterday


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## Knave

Your world is so pretty today! I love it!


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## egrogan

It has turned into a very green spring here @Knave! Fall will always be my favorite, but spring has been nice so far.


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## Knave

It is stunning. I have been appreciating here and the green grass and trees starting, but it has been awful windy this year, so that feels like it’s taking away from it.

I like May usually weather wise. I used to dislike summer, because I don’t do heat particularly well, but I’ve really been learning to enjoy it more these last few years. I like early fall time too a lot, when yard work is over and it’s still nice enough to ride happily while we are weaning. It might be my favorite.

I used to love wintertime, but I feel like I’m getting over it. Lol


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## egrogan

I always joke that I love winter from December to mid-January; then we just burrow in and hope to survive the rest of it.  March and April are pretty miserable here- muddy, icy, gloomy, and seemingly never-ending. For me the most wonderful time of the year is late September through mid-November. The humidity and bugs are gone, the foliage is stunning, and there's the anticipation of the holiday season coming as the last of the fresh produce and apples come in. I really love that time.


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## Knave

It’s so odd how similar our weather patterns are. We are so far from each other, but we seem so close on everything. November gets pretty nasty here - February it’s the same. March and April are still miserable, and May is the beginning of tolerable weather. Usually it is hitting the 60s through May, and still freezing at night. This year May has been weird.

The wind has blown almost constant, and hard too. The days go from 40s for highs to 80s, and then back. It’s an odd one. It makes for little riding compared to what I normally do in May. I’m hoping June is a lot better.

I thought I would be stuck farming all summer, which kills a lot of ride time, because of one of our boys (my cousin) is graduating and he’s the last of them left besides my girls. My little one hasn’t farmed because her allergies are terrible. So, I thought I would step into his position. Lucky for me he decided to stay for this last summer. I will only have to work some of the time still. Big girl graduates next year and then I’m going to be a farmer again, and little girl might just have to figure it out herself.

The boy who’s graduating also has bad allergies, but his tractor is pretty air tight, so he always drives and depending on the field and his allergies does the servicing and everything else needed. I go grease and service when the field is too allergy inducing for him. Since his brother graduated the year prior, I’ve had to bale as well on the horse hay.


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## PoptartShop

Awwwwwwwwww, she is just BEAUTIFUL! Happy belated birthday to her! <3 19 is a perfect age, too!!  This is so wonderful! I am also looooving all the green in your photos, finally!  Yay!!


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## egrogan

The last couple of days have been so busy!

Got in a short, decent ride with Fizz yesterday and a fast ride today. The vet was out today for spring check-ups, and she pulled some blood to do a muscle enzyme test to see if there is any evidence the PSSM is negatively impacting Fizz. The test required 20 minutes of "intense trotting" about an hour before the blood draw, so we did ~5 mile ride and trotted half of it (basically anyplace that wasn't downhill- which is a nice illustration of how you're either going up or going down here! ) It was very humid and buggy, so we were both pretty nasty when we got back. It also gave me a good opportunity to test out riding away from home; as we came up the last big hill home, I realized we needed to go a bit longer to make sure we had enough trotting time for the test, so I rode past the house and out to the overlook. She was a bit of a drunken sailor when she realized we were passing the house at a trot, but actually once I put my leg on and insisted, she really moved out nicely up the hill. And then walked back home on the buckle. I'm curious to see if that experience changes her mind about rushing home at all.
















Yesterday we celebrated Josie's 19th birthday!
















I tried to give her some birthday treats, and she thoroughly rejected them. First option was peppermint- here you can see she literally spit it out! (Look under the shadow of her neck)








I then attempted to give her a few pieces of carrot in her dinner- she carefully ate around them all and left them in the bucket 🤦‍♀️ Poor thing just hasn't had much experience with treats I guess.








She was very nervous for the vet visit today. It was the first time she was stalled here, and she ended up being in the stall for close to 2 hours. I had told the vet ahead of time about my concerns around the kicking with the hinds, and potential pain issues. After going over her, vet's perception was that it was behavioral rather than pain. She did really let a kick fly hard when the vet was attempting to pick up the first of the hind legs. So, now we have a clear set of homework. Farrier is supposed to be here Wednesday, and we may try to get her trimmed with some dorm gel. I'll need to see what he wants to do. Aside from that issue, she was pretty good, all things considered, for the rest of the exam. She got a Lyme vaccine with no needle phobic issues, had her teeth and eyes looked at, etc. She's a work in progress.

As for my darling Izzy, vet felt she looked pretty good. Her weight has really rebounded well in the past few weeks, and she doesn't look as gaunt and sunken as she did a month ago. Most of her winter coat is gone and she looks shiny and healthy underneath. The tooth extractions will be done in a couple of weeks, and I'm hopeful that will turn things around. So, at this point, we'll just continue to watch her and let her tell us how she's feeling later this fall. Feeling cautiously optimistic we'll get her back to feeling good and she'll stick around awhile yet. She had no problem engaging in some very intense mutual grooming with Fizz later in the day!








It really feels like summer here today. I am really, really looking forward to the long weekend. Riding plans for Sunday and Monday (supposed to have bad thunderstorms tomorrow). Hope everyone else has fun plans too!


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## Knave

Your pictures are always the best!


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## egrogan

@Knave, I feel lucky to live in a beautiful place  And, for what it's worth, I always think the same of your photos!!


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## gottatrot

Aww, such cuteness! Aria hadn't had carrots, apples or horse treats when I got her. The only thing she liked were alfalfa pellets and grass for treats. Now she realizes "real" treats are better than hay and grass. Halla was the same, so I think horses have to develop a taste for treats when they're not used to them.


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## egrogan

Making me wonder why we have three sheds when clearly one will do! 😴


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## gottatrot

Awww, adorable!!


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## egrogan

It’s been amazing to me how different the herd dynamic has been with this trio compared to the first trio. They are all just very calm and peaceful with each other. There is a lot I miss about Maggie, but the scene above would not have happened with her. She was the boss and kept some separation between her and the other two. I kind of like this softer, gentler herd  It’s only been about a month, so there’s still time for things to change of course, but I hope this vibe continues.


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## egrogan

We had another lovely ride with K and Sailor this morning. The weather cooperated perfectly- 65*F, low humidity but plentiful sunshine. It was really ideal weather for riding. We set out from the house and did an 8 mile loop, mostly on the road but ducking into the woods for good long stretches.








I hadn't been on this ATV trail yet this year, but I was very happy with the condition. Last year it got really rutted out because of heavy rainstorms, but someone must have worked on it a bit because the worst of the ruts weren't really an issue anymore. There are still rocky sections, but the horses handled it fine. Sailor was particularly impressive given how new this is to him. We passed a lot of dogs, a couple of sweet little girls out walking with their mom (they shyly said hello when Sailor wanted to stop and sniff them), and an ATV along this trail. The horses were happy to stand in the lush grass off the side of the trail and didn't even notice the ATV going by with their noses buried in the grass.

Fizz felt a little stiff along the way, and I felt like I was really off-centered and leaning to the right- but I must have been overcompensating, because K said I was leaning more to the left when she rode behind us. Fizz also acted a little funny when we got home. Usually once I pull her tack off, she's excited to go have a good roll and a drink. Today she went over to where there was hay out loose on the ground, and laid down in the middle of the hay pile, eating while she laid on the ground. She didn't look distressed or uncomfortable, but laying down like that was sort of weird. She did the same thing later in the day when I fed them dinner. Both times she only laid down briefly, then did roll, then got up without a struggle when the other horses came over. Not sure if there's something residual from the vaccines, or if she's just sore. Vet does want to come back for a chiro adjustment when we can get that scheduled because she found Fizz to be fairly locked up in her SI (not unusual for Fizz). So maybe that's just bugging her now that we're riding more. Something to keep an eye on. We're planning to meet M and Coalie tomorrow but if Fizz feels off then obviously we won't go out. Hopefully it's nothing...

Here's a Josie glamour shot for fun.


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## Knave

You must have a rule that you only ride with the blackest of black horses!


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## Txshecat0423

I love the dynamic with your current trio [emoji3590]


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> You must have a rule that you only ride with the blackest of black horses!


Isn't it funny! And they have to be goofy geldings too. Like Coalie, Sailor wants to make lovey dovey eyes at Fizz and get as close to her as he can. She seems completely oblivious to them, but she must give off some sort of irresistible, hard to get horsey signals.


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## egrogan

I don't know how the weekend flew by so quickly. I am feeling resentful being back in front of the computer after running wild outside for three days straight. But such is life 😉

Anyway, we did ride with M and Coalie yesterday. We had agreed to meet up halfway to the woods trails we were doing, so that was 1.5 miles solo to get to the meeting spot. Fizz started off grumpy at the bugs, with lots of head tossing. I could feel that her back was very tight to start, but it did loosen up as we went along. It was hot even early in the morning so we meandered, unless the bugs were swarming and then we hopped and tossed our way along. We did catch a breeze some of the way, so that helped some.








Coalie and M had done a Memorial Day pleasure ride the day before, so he was a bit tired and pokey. It was a different experience than riding with Sailor, who mostly matched our pace, even at a good forward walk. With the bugs Fizz was definitely getting annoyed with stopping and waiting, so there were moments where I just rode ahead at a more comfortable pace until we got to a nice looking patch of grass on the side of the road and parked her there to eat until Coalie caught up. It was a little concerning because she was really not moving very fast, given the tightness in her back. But when we went into the woods, we let Coalie go ahead, as that motivated him a bit more.
















We did a nice loop of a couple of miles before the trail popped us back out onto the road again, and we split up in our respective directions to go home. I pretty much rode on the buckle the rest of the way and let her pick her own pace- she wasn't rushing home and seemed to feel good when she could really stretch down over her back.

On the left is the pond where we saw the wading cow last time we came this way- but no cows were in sight on this ride. I expected them to be up in the pond because of the heat, but they must have been down over the hill. No complaints from me, I was glad we didn't have to deal with them!








After riding, I spent the afternoon doing the not-so-fun, very dusty and dirty task of deep cleaning the chicken coop and run. We cover the run in heavy duty plastic to protect the chickens from the winter wind and snow (it's so nice that they have access to a snow-free place to scratch and dig in all winter long!). But the downside of winterizing the run is that it cuts down on airflow and allows a lot of dust to build up. Spring cleaning involves pulling all the plastic down, shopvaccing the heck out of every corner, removing all the old bedding, doing a full wash down of the roosts and inside the coop, etc. It's not fun, but it was very satisfying to have everything refreshed for them by the end of the day. I have been keeping them inside the barn a lot more than usual this spring because the bird flu situation isn't great in my area, and there have been many reports of wild ducks and eagles dying from the flu, as well as backyard flocks. But I broke down and let them out yesterday, and they fell into a sunbathing puddle for most of the afternoon.
















They're such funny little creatures, and I'm way too attached to them. It makes me happy to see them happy.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Making me wonder why we have three sheds when clearly one will do! 😴
> View attachment 1129567


This clearly means you can get another six horses like that! 😘 😇


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## SueC

Knave said:


> Wow. That is an awful story. I’m sorry for that girl. It was a very nice intention to want to take the horse back. I hope the girl ends up okay. That sounds like a hard recovery coming.
> 
> @knightrider Queen is seeming like that. She always wants into the trailer and I have to keep a good hold of her to try and keep her out. Lol.


This is _very_ belated, but: I used to trail ride a harness racer called Chip, for cross-training. He was such a character - never met another horse like it. Totally exuberant extrovert who loved going places. If he saw the trailer being backed out of the shed from his paddock he'd start neighing with excitement, run to his gate, prance and paw there, neigh and nicker as he saw you coming with the lead rope, and then nearly drag you to the trailer, skipping with joy and giving you "isn't this great" sideways glances and catching the rope in his mouth and pulling you on it - he was so playful. You'd unclip him on the loading ramp and he'd load himself with aplomb, and then make excited noises while the engine started - I used to laugh so much at his antics. He would settle on the trip but when he saw we were getting near the venue, he'd start trumpeting from the back with excitement and not stop.

The people at the racetrack could hear him coming from before the trailer got to the car park. He got a huge fan club at the races because of it - the way he came in neighing and skipping and catching the lead rope and tugging it while looking sideways at his handler. He was a very pretty chestnut with large white markings and a golden mane and tail, with a lot of Arabian in his appearance, including the dished face and long arched neck. A lot of little girls were in love with him. He also won a lot of races, but he thought that was a side event - he was there to socialise and sightsee and to say, "I'm here, everybody! What fun this is!"

He loved meeting and "talking to" other horses and people, and was super fascinated by the pony trot ponies, and the catcher's white TB, which he always side-eyed and tried to approach on the racetrack when warming up or at the parade after the race, which had the audience in stitches...


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> Those people must have been thinking of horses with a lot of experience trailering. Most of the time, those kinds of horses do willingly jump on. Horses new to trailering? Quite the opposite. When I was trying to trailer my green colt from Texas to Maryland, people told me NOT to take him out of the trailer until the ride was done for the day . . . or he would NOT go back in for the next phase of the ride.
> 
> On the second day, we had a flat tire on the tow vehicle, a 1960 Chevy station wagon. And our trailer was a little wooden job with a canvas top that was not balanced well. We unhitched the trailer with me standing on the tongue so the trailer wouldn't tip up with the horse in it, changed the tire, and re-hitched. What a nightmare. Then we had to turn around to get back on the highway. My husband saw a house on a hill with a nice circular driveway so we headed up that way. Part way up the hill, the driveway was blocked off. So he had to back down the hill. Trailering was all new to us (we had bought the trailer for $200 days before the trip) and he backed into a stone wall. The Chevy station wagon couldn't pull the trailer back up the steep hill. We had to dismantle the stone wall to back the trailer out, then re-stack it.
> 
> And, to top it all off, Hurricane Agnes struck that day. We finished the 4 day drive going right along, exact same speed, as Hurricane Agnes. The heavy rain and cool weather probably kept the car from overheating, but boy, it was hairy driving through the downpour.
> 
> The angels were looking out for us and we made it to Maryland just fine. And at the end of the journey? My green colt loaded perfectly. That trailer was like home to him after the long trip.
> 
> Back to the original premise: most horses not used to trailering will not load willingly to go home. They are hot, tired, and hungry and do not relish a trailer ride. They want a roll, a rest, and some hay . . . and the trailer offers none of that.


OMG, @knightrider - that would have taken ten years off my life span. Talk about stressful! I have a good imagination and with it I saw the wooden trailer splintering into smithereens with the horse in it for half a dozen reasons in the course of your story...


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## SueC

Knave said:


> I haven’t seen many tough loaders that I was actually a participant on. I see those fights at rodeos and pretend I don’t while I walk away because often there are already too many people with too many bosses helping.
> 
> Now, I have a funny solution though that I’ve seen work (on a horse that is very broke and knows trailers). I believe it was my mother’s best show horse when I was young, but this horse would refuse to load after a show sometimes. He just wouldn’t do it. Now, when my father wasn’t there, there were always different cowboys at the shows who would come and get the horse in the trailer by various means.
> 
> One day, this horse would not load. I can’t remember if it was my dad who was there, but I think it was. This horse had never considered not loading for him. So, he tried a couple times and the horse was having none of it. Then, he tied him to the side of the trailer, and he slowly and carefully drove it across the parking lot and to where you would leave the fairgrounds.
> 
> This horse trotted alongside the trailer, thinking he made a very bad life choice, and when he stopped at the driveway and got out, he walked up to him like nothing had ever happened and loaded him up easily. I thought it was funny as could be. He must have been thinking that he was going to drive away home and fast dragging him behind. I don’t remember if he ever questioned loading again.
> 
> Now, I only think that would work with a good horse like him who was simply throwing his weight around for whatever reason he did it. He had been trailered thousands of times and knew what it was all about.


That was very funny. Only, of course, because the person who did that wasn't a madman who didn't know when to stop!

It reminds me of a drastic solution someone had for a horse that always came flying out of a trailer backwards at a million miles an hour once the bum bar was undone, putting itself and others in danger. Some of you might have heard this one before. They tried tons of things and then in utter frustration what they did is drive the trailer to the end of a long jetty, back it up to the ocean, and let the horse unload itself in its habitual way. Big splash. Then someone jumped in and swam the horse back to shore. People commonly swim horses in Western Australia so it's probable this horse had swum before. Just not quite like that. It was reported that from then on the horse came out slowly and carefully, though I'm not sure that would cure every backwards-flying unloader...


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## bsms

Never tried it with horses. Don't even have a working horse trailer (and current prices aren't helping). But some years back we had a dog who LOVED to be taken out into the desert for runs. But he wasn't so good about getting back into the car to come home. So one day, when he refused to jump in, I left the tail gate of the SUV open and started driving away. Dan started after me. I drove just fast enough down the dirt road that he couldn't quite catch up. After half a mile, I stopped. He jumped inside before I could finish getting out to tell him to jump in - and he never refused to jump in for the return trip again.

Bandit will self-load his front end fine but not the rear legs. I've considered hooking up the truck and moving it 3-4 inches while he is like this, just to see if he might prefer in or out to "part way":






Given trailer prices, I might have this one fixed up (it is fundamentally sound) and have a small ramp added...that might be enough to convince him to get all the way in.


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## egrogan

Loving all the trailering tales. We picked up our new-to-us trailer on Thursday, but I didn't make time to mess around with it much during the week. Izzy is going to the vet on Monday for her molar removal, so we will have some practice time with it tomorrow.

We had a couple of nice rides to end the week, but I had a weird physical situation with Fizz that I'm curious about, wondering if anyone has any guesses at what was happening. This was something really strange I've never seen a horse do. Yesterday I went out to tack her up, and she was very fussy with her head, but I didn't think much of it because the bugs are swarming anything with a pulse. She kept snatching the lead rope out of my hand and wanting to put her head down towards the ground. I've seen them do this to try to get away from the swarming bugs, so didn't think much about it. I tied her up on the outside of the shed to tack up, using the blocker tie ring. I was in the tack room grabbing the saddle when I heard the lead rope zipping through the tie ring and saw her flying backwards. She wanted her head loose so she could put her nose back on the ground- literally. Her nose was resting on the dirt, but she was also doing tons of deep "release" yawns and flapping her tongue all around. If she had been a person, she would have looked like someone trying to do everything they could to get their ears to pop while on a descending plane. She was really freaking me out, so I tried to walk her over the water to see if she needed to drink. @knightrider, I also couldn't help but think of the strange stick-wedged-in-mouth scenario, so I pried her mouth open and tried to look around and under her tongue to see if I could see anything. She was still yawning and flapping her tongue, so I didn't really get much of a look, but there was nothing obvious in the front part of her mouth. I really didn't know what else to do, so I just walked her around for a minute and she seemed to come out of whatever it was that she was doing. Once the yawning had stopped, I tied her back where she had been, and she went back to eating hay out of the haynet like nothing had happened. It was a really odd incident.

She's due for a chiro appointment in a couple of weeks, and I've noticed some tightness in her back the last few rides. I obviously can't do what a vet/chiro can, but I have been doing a little massage using the Masterson Method hind end release, and it's really cool to see her respond to the various release points highlighted in this video.




I tend to take things like this with a huge grain of salt, but I really can feel her relax while I'm touching her, and stretch and yawn (but not the creepy scary yawns!). I don't think there's any way I could hurt her with this basic stuff, so we'll keep doing it since she seems to like it. I'd say her back felt looser in the early parts of the ride when I did this right before tacking up, and I don't think it was just a placebo type feeling.

Yesterday I made some time in the morning to go for ~5 miles. We went out past the overlook and down the big hill. I did get off and handwalk down the big hill, not because she was being resistant but because with the tightness in her back, you can feel how she braces on steep downhills. I didn't see any reason to make her uncomfortable, and she walked straight down without any theatrics or attempts to stop. We had storms rolling in yesterday, and the skies were dramatic. We did manage to avoid getting rained on, though heavier storms did pop up at the end of the day. I just couldn't get over all the different cloud formations we rode under.








































Everything has turned bright, bright green in the past couple of weeks. It looks tropical. The grass has shot up too; riding around the outside of this field, I could feel the grass brushing against my feet. Of course we had some snacking along the way!








Today we went out for 8.5 miles with Black Beauty #1, Sailor. With the rain last night, the roads were soft enough for some nice trot stretches, but we spent most of our time in the woods.
















There were a few boggy spots, and unfortunately I had a boot come off. Yesterday her boots were a little noisy and seemed a little loose from her trim on Thursday, so today I put a smaller pair on her fronts but left the regular ones on her hinds. That was a mistake. K noticed that a hind boot was missing, but we were more than halfway home so I didn't want to backtrack to look. The gaiter that goes in the boot and velcros around her ankle had stayed on though, and when we got back to the road it was making this bizarre slapping sound as it hit the ground. I hadn't realized it stayed on, so I had a moment of panic thinking she was doing some crazy toe/leg dragging, which made no sense because the sound it made didn't match how she felt moving. But when I looked down, I realized it wasn't her leg dangling loosely from her body, it was just the wet, floppy gaiter.  I hopped off to get it, and nearly tumbled off her side while remounting from the side of a hill because she started walking away before I was on. Not our finest or most graceful moment, but we survived.

Later I took Hugh with me back to the trail where we had ridden to look for the boot. There were four big muddy sections we went through. I guessed it would be in the first section, which is the wettest and deepest part. I wore my tall waterproof boots so I could dig around in the muck to try to find it, but even with my foot covered in mud halfway up my leg in the ruts we walked through, there was no sign of it. Nothing in the second or third spots either. I was really thinking I must not have looked hard enough in the first mud bog. But we kept on to the last spot, just in case. And...








Success! Thank goodness for those orange straps. And this faithful companion 💗


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## knightrider

Very odd about the pulling back, yawning, and head to the ground. My guess would be, like you said, something bugging her in her mouth.


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## gottatrot

My guess would be she swallowed something too large without chewing well enough, and it was passing painfully through the esophagus. The head down and yawning is what I've seen with choke type obstructions, but I think any horse can have that sensation with a large wad of food if they got too excited about eating. I always think about how it feels if you accidentally swallowed an ice cube.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I’ve been bugging her trying to peek in there since this happened, and sniffing for weird smells. So far nothing notable.

@gottatrot, choke is an interesting guess and not sure why I didn’t think of that! I’ve (unfortunately) seen Izzy choke several times, but I’ve always been there when it happened at feeding time, so it was obvious. She’s also got a flair for the dramatic and usually adds some retching in there. But maybe that is what happened-I found Fizz like this so I don’t know what she was eating before, but could definitely be possible.


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## Knave

I think those are good ideas. Bones does random things like this all the time, but he’s Bones.


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## SueC

Yeah, sounds like something either bugging her in her mouth, or in her oesophagus - if something stuck right at the top of the oesophagus they'd probably try to counter it by putting their head down - and by yawning, because that actually gives space to the top of the oesophagus and larynx. 

I know a little about this because I have a paralysed vocal cord which hangs halfway into the aperture that normally is 100% open when you breathe, so I have a 75% airway, plus my left vocal cord has had to learn to bend and stretch across the space to meet the paralysed cord to be able to speak. I get stuff stuck on the paralysed cord when eating and because that whole fold can't move, I have to cough and vibrate stuff off sometimes. When I went to speech therapy for a bit and mentioned this, the therapist taught me a trick for relaxing the whole area when it spasms, either from the live cord having to work extra hard after a while of speaking, or from having food stuck on the paralysed bit: The "Yawn-Sigh" which is basically like a big open-mouthed horse yawn in which you open your throat as widely as possible as you breathe in and stick your tongue out and then end in a big sigh, and this is excellent for instant relief of such situations (just don't do it on public transport or at a meeting). Instead of coughing and spluttering, I can go into the "Yawn-Sigh" and that is effective while also not being stressful on my remaining live cord.

The head-down thing can also happen when they are choking so badly that all their saliva and nasal mucus is coming out of their nose, and they're trying to drain that off, but your mare wasn't at that point.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> @Knave, I have to admit that my patience with her was wearing thin when she almost put us both on the ground tripping over her own feet while trying to itch her face. But then karma got me later, as I was mucking out the paddock and my own face was swarmed with these awful little black flies and I was trying to sling my ponytail around enough that it would clear the bugs out of my eyes while I had both hands on the full wheelbarrow  I hate them as much as she does, but she does have to pay enough attention that we stay upright!!


We have these fine light mosquito nets that go over our hats, about $5 a pop from a camping shop. Keeps off flies, mozzies, sandflies, midges...

ETA: We have bad bushflies in spring and early summer that go for the eyes. The horses wear veils then and except on windy days I will ride will the veil left on as it bothers the horse less than flies do. I noticed last time I was in a horse store that they now have really lightweight horse veils for riding with that are more transparent and made from similar black netting as my own mozzie veil. Would be no good for pasture as easy to tear and not very UV blocking but more breathable and less vision impairing.


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> We have these fine light mosquito nets that go over our hats, about $5 a pop from a camping shop. Keeps off flies, mozzies, sandflies, midges...


I just bought Fizz a "horse hoodie," which is made from that fine mesh which is very lightweight and airy (I tried Sailor's on Fizz to see how it fit). The company also makes a human version, which looks a bit like a beekeeper ensemble. From the manufacturer's site:








I'm so claustrophobic I can't help but think I'd feel like I was suffocating in there, no matter how light it is.

We had a nice ride with M and Coalie yesterday. We went for 9 miles out to the Blind Mare Farm. It's a nice mix of roads and great trail. Surprisingly the trail portion was fairly dry. I was expecting it to be worse given the trail I'd been on the previous day, but even the spots that tend to stay muddy were not as deep as usual.
















There is one old wooden bridge built for snowmobiles that we have to cross, and it is getting to be a little sketchy. You could hear an unsettling rotten-wood-crunching sound going over it. It's not too high up, but it still would be scary to have it go out from under you and drop a few feet into a rocky creek. The "trail" is technically a Jeep road, and in addition to snowmobiles, full size pickups and SUVs do drive back there at times, so I would think it's worth replacing. The snowmobile club apparently maintains the trail and bridge, so M was going to check in with the club President to see if he had any plans to fix it.

The trail ends at this beautiful farm, which is surrounded by beautiful hay fields and apple orchards. One of my favorite vistas. If I lived there I think I'd want to spend all my free time in a hammock outside looking over the farm.








The farm is a turnaround point, and we backtrack home the same way we came out. Said hello to our town's oldest residents on the way back...








We couldn't have asked for nicer weather, and it's great getting back to longer rides. Slowly, slowly Fizz is getting back into better shape and we're both loosing some of the winter weight.

And, big day today for Izzy! This morning she was due at the vet for her molar extraction. We finally picked our trailer up from the mechanic at the end of last week. Yesterday we did a little loading practice. It's been three years since Izzy has been on a trailer, and she's never been a particularly frequent traveler, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Of course she didn't like being taken away from the other horses, and they didn't help much by returning her frantic calls to them. But in ~15 minutes, we'd gone off and on the trailer twice, which was actually better than I thought she might be. She needed to hop and dance around behind it for a bit before walking on, but I had lots of yummy treats waiting in there for her and she didn't try to rush back off once she got on, so that was positive. She was reasonable about backing off when I asked her to. This morning I had planned for at least 30 minutes, but I'd say it took less than 3 minutes to get her on and closed up.








She was definitely not happy about it, and she kicked at the front door a lot along the way. Poor thing was drenched in sweat and shaking when we took her off, so it wasn't necessarily a pleasant experience, but she survived. We're expecting to pick her up later in the afternoon. I believe she's having the procedure start right about now, so hopefully it goes well and she recovers easily. Not to be too morbid, but I'm imagining this may be the last time she takes a trip off the farm. I feel a little guilty that it's for something that's not fun for her, but I have to imagine getting those teeth out will make her more comfortable in the long run.


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## QueenofFrance08

I wonder if maybe Fizz got a bug in her mouth or maybe something stung her in the mouth with her weird reaction?

You'll have to let me know if she likes her horse hoodie. I thought about getting one for Chico (I use a quiet ride on most everyone all summer already) but it's also kind of funny looking so I'm not sure if he would like it or if it would bother him more.

Glad you had some fun rides! Hope Izzy feels better after getting her teeth fixed!


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## egrogan

The boss lady has returned. She put on a little show not wanting to load to come home at the clinic, but after a few minutes we were back in and headed home. A little embarrassing with the very sympathetic vet tech as an audience, but it all worked out.

She had the two molars removed, but they didn’t have to do anything else in there. So just some SMZs and some banamine for the next few days.

As soon as she got back to the pasture, she had a quick nose sniff with Fizz and then chased everyone a couple of laps around the pasture, snaking her head at them, to remind everyone she was in charge. 😆
































Vet said she threw the water bucket all over the recovery stall and loudly demanded it was time to go home within minutes of the anesthesia wearing off. Clearly she knew she needed to get home to put these two back in line. Seeing her prance around the field, I am really feeling like she looks so much better than she did a few weeks ago!


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## Txshecat0423

That first pic, she seems to be saying “What are YOU looking at???”


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## egrogan

We went for a short, faster ride first thing this morning. Even early in the morning, it was hot and steamy- supposed to turn stormy tonight through most of the week. You know it's hot when you can see the haze hanging over the mountain








We had a really good ride though. We kept up a steady trot most of the way to escape the flies, with a little canter in good spots. She even offered a trot downhill, which I gladly accepted. It still feels a little unbalanced so I kept it short (and really tried to make sure I was balanced to help), but it's nice to have her offer. 








Her back felt much looser today. I am still doing the massage/release points with her tacking up, and maybe it's helping. She seems to enjoy it, I can really feel her relax; on some of the release points, she gives big sighs and will even rest her hind leg.

When we got home and untacked, I had a little time to mess around with the trailer. This would be the first time introducing it to her. I had very minimal expectations- I was thinking that if she walked up the ramp calmly and didn't try to run backwards, that would be plenty of success for the first time. Ideally I'd like to be able to trailer her home from the endurance ride this weekend, but it's always possible to just hack home if needed, so it's not a complete necessity. She was curious about it as we walked up to it, and paused to snuffle at the ramp and shavings (maybe smelled like Izzy from yesterday? Or its previous inhabitants?)








She took a step backwards onto the grass but I just kept her nose pointed at the trailer and asked her to keep going. A few seconds later...








She walked right on like it was no big deal at all 💗 💗 💗 I had a few snacks left over from Izzy yesterday, so we hung out for a minute with that. Then I asked her to back off slowly, and there was no scrambling or rushing. It couldn't have been a bigger success!

I have a question for people with more trailering experience than me. There's a lot I already like about the trailer, but one thing I really don't. I really don't like the placement of the butt bar and the ring that holds it (you can also see a different view of it in the top picture where she's sniffing the shavings). It sticks out really far into the stall, and unless they are perfectly straight walking on, and definitely backing off, there's a good chance they will bump their hip on it. Of course it's rounded and not pointy, but as a former teacher who often had hips bruised from bumping desks while walking around the classroom, I know it's not fun to run into something when you're not expecting it.








Is this a normal placement for the butt bar? When I borrowed M's trailer, I don't remember it seeming like it was so in the way. This is supposed to be a "warmblood size" trailer, which my girls are obviously not, so I can't imagine how a bigger horse would navigate around it. Anyone have any suggestions, or do we just get used to it and focus on being really straight getting off and on?


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## Knave

It’s been so long since I had a horse in a straight load I have no idea. They make me uncomfortable, but that’s because I haven’t used them in so long I’m sure. I did have a big wreck in one in high school, but yours looks a lot safer than that old trailer.

I would guess that they would get used to it. If they are in and out of it on occasion, it probably won’t seem a bit deal to them and they’ll just stay straight on their own.


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## carshon

My friend ties her butt bar to the side when loading and unloading. Her horses don't like it if it brushes their legs so she has some rope she always uses to tie it to the sides. That being said her girls load and stand long enough for her to walk around and untie the butt bar and then lock it in place.


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## QueenofFrance08

The straight load we used to have had smaller rings than that on the butt bar but they were still in the same place. Never noticed it being an issue. You could probably cut up some pool noodles and put them over as caps when you un hook the bar to let them out if you think it is becoming a problem!


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## egrogan

Thank you everyone! So much to learn


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I just bought Fizz a "horse hoodie," which is made from that fine mesh which is very lightweight and airy (I tried Sailor's on Fizz to see how it fit). The company also makes a human version, which looks a bit like a beekeeper ensemble. From the manufacturer's site:
> View attachment 1130229
> 
> I'm so claustrophobic I can't help but think I'd feel like I was suffocating in there, no matter how light it is.


So if you have bees, and they get super defensive, they have a method by which they start to attack the front of your face under a veil en masse, flying into the veil in large groups so that it obliterates the gap to your face, and then stinging en masse. This is why bee suits have several loops of wire to keep the veil off the face even under such attack:








...now that would probably make you feel a bit more claustrophobic still than the light veil you posted, and it would be really hard to ride in one, because too flappy and because the zips under the chin start to choke you if you sit down in a suit like this...

Our beginner setup was more like the veil you posted, but white material at the back to dissuade stinging where visibility isn't required, and it really does need a very broad-brimmed hat to keep the veil off the face, and the bottom of the veil over your shoulders so that bees can't get your face:








...but those were lovely tame gentle Golden Italians we started with, not cross-bred Caucasians who are basically jetfighters when riled! 

Our "mossie/midge nets" for personal use look a bit lighter than what you've posted still:








Very see-through and just a light elastic that drapes itself around your neck in non-boa-constrictor fashion.  Works on a hat or helmet or under one if it's just flies and midges you want to keep off.

That horse hoodie you got for Fizz looks really effective - I'm sure she will love it during bug season!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I have a question for people with more trailering experience than me. There's a lot I already like about the trailer, but one thing I really don't. I really don't like the placement of the butt bar and the ring that holds it (you can also see a different view of it in the top picture where she's sniffing the shavings). It sticks out really far into the stall, and unless they are perfectly straight walking on, and definitely backing off, there's a good chance they will bump their hip on it. Of course it's rounded and not pointy, but as a former teacher who often had hips bruised from bumping desks while walking around the classroom, I know it's not fun to run into something when you're not expecting it.
> View attachment 1130279
> 
> Is this a normal placement for the butt bar? When I borrowed M's trailer, I don't remember it seeming like it was so in the way. This is supposed to be a "warmblood size" trailer, which my girls are obviously not, so I can't imagine how a bigger horse would navigate around it. Anyone have any suggestions, or do we just get used to it and focus on being really straight getting off and on?


There's lot I like about your trailer too - it's nice and wide, inviting and bright inside instead of poky, well-padded, with a rubber floor.

And I don't like the bum bar or its placement either, and have only ever seen one float made in Australia which came up with an excellent design that prevents bum bar problems, which were a safety issue for horse and handler in every other float I've ever worked with, or seen other people use.

This is an Olympic float - same type I borrowed to bring my horses down to the South Coast. It has a front window to make the inside brighter and to let the horse have a view as it is travelling. The horses seem to appreciate that both for loading and travelling.

















On the rear view you see the broad padded bum bars used on all this manufacturer's floats. They swing on a hinge and can be pushed further out to the side, but this is generally how you'd load a horse, with the bum bars and pinned-in-position top doors (which you can also fold all the way back along the side of the float) making a visual barrier that discourages horses from jumping off to the side. The centre divider swings on a hinge as well, so you can open it to one side to give a horse more room when loading. It has an upright bar not shown in this stock photograph that keeps the divider centred once you have the horse in - you can see that in the next photo.








That was when I brought my mare down to Albany in 2008. You can see the closed position of the bum bars here. They have spring-loaded latches with long handles that you can engage to click into shut position easily without stepping onto the loading ramp - just off from the side. The horse walks in, you push the bum bar into the centre, it clicks into position. And there is nothing protruding from the centre or the side of the float that the horse can get caught on.

There's a rubber mat hanging off the left bum bar here because one of this float's usual occupants had a tendency to kick in the float - this provided extra padding on top of the rubber cushion over the tail ramp, and because the mat swung back a little if kicked, it discouraged said occupant from kicking as much.

Anyway - safest bum bar system I've used, safest float all around. I think you might be able to get a mechanical workshop to make a set of hinged bars like this for you, and if they're clever they can also make you those spring-loaded latches. It would really be worth making such a modification if you can arrange it.

Another thing that is important is that the breast bars have a quick-release on them in case of emergencies. We may not think about emergencies, but they happen - I travelled towing a float like this to someone else's competition, when their super-temperamental, hyper-flexible mare jumped clean over the breast bar while travelling on a freeway at 100km/h and got herself wedged so that by the time we opened the front door, the horse was planted on its face against the ground, hanging over the breast bar just in front of its hind legs, with her knees on the ground beside her face and the legs folded backwards. The hind legs were up in the air in the back of the float. The horse was essentially doing a head-stand, as if you were on your head and elbows with your legs in the air.

On any other float we would have needed an angle grinder to cut the horse out - breast bars can turn into traps. This trailer has hinged breast bars with an emergency release mechanism, so we were able to unlock one side of the bar _with the horse hanging off it_, swing it backwards slightly, then remove it altogether so that the horse was released from the bar and able to get back into a normal position.

We did this on the shoulder of a busy freeway, at night-time, with car lights and traffic noise and with huge semi-trailers whooshing past us only about 1-2 metre off to our side, shaking the trailer with their turbulence as they passed - and this horse was dead scared of semi-trailers. This was not a fun situation, but would have been far less fun if we'd had to try to get a battery-operated angle grinder 30km from the nearest main town - this is not the kind of thing people travel with. Emergency assistance teams would have taken a minimum of 30 minutes to get to us - more like 1-2 hours, realistically - and in that time the horse could have suffocated in its position, or come to worse grief by struggling and thrashing about.

She wasn't injured that time - just a few scratches - and still went on to participate in the competition. There's nothing in an Olympic float that a horse can catch itself on, except the breast bar - it's like a padded cell.

These features are also really handy were your float ever to flip with a horse in it, and you had to get a horse out. There are instances where horses have survived being tipped in a trailer, but then got additional injuries because they had to be cut from the wreckage - if your breast bars or bum bars don't release easily _under load_ in an emergency, your horse is trapped until you can cut it out.


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## egrogan

I have lots of catching up to do after having a really excellent riding weekend with Fizz. This weekend was our first endurance ride of the season. I volunteered as a vet scribe on Friday night, helping vet in the 25 mile competitive trail riders who would be going out on Saturday morning. I really like the vet who I scribed for- she's the perfect combo of sympathetic to the horses and encouraging to the riders.

Saturday afternoon, I hacked Fizz the 10 miles from home over to the horse park. This is the first time we've hacked over there alone, and I was a little surprised to find I had some butterflies in my stomach. I'm not really sure why, as I've ridden that route probably half a dozen times, so know the trail well. And she and I have certainly done longer rides on our own. I guess it was just the idea of doing something alone that I'd always done with a buddy before that had me a little edgy.

But as soon as we were on our way, the butterflies settled down. She was loose through her back and willing. I found I really liked being on our own to go at the pace that felt right for us. We trotted and cantered on the uphills, and when she needed a breather we walked. We seemed to fall into a good rhythm. It was humid and buggy, but she was decked out in her new bug gear so there was no fidgeting or head tossing.








We've had off and on rain showers, so there were some muddy spots in the woods, but it was not as muddy back there as it was this time last year when it was hard to avoid the boggy sections. This was about the worst we rode through, and it wasn't bad at all.








We passed a few trucks on the Jeep road, and being so narrow, either we pulled to the side and stopped, or the trucks did. Everyone we passed joked about her funny outfit and how easy it was to see us with all our orange on. I am always happy to be a positive horsey trail ambassador by having good interactions with people who live along the trails 😁

At about 7 miles in, I could feel her getting a little tired, and she was pretty tough to ride on the last rocky downhill section that would link us back up to the final dirt road section. The footing was slippery with the rocks, and rutted out from trucks or ATVs driving on it, and she couldn't seem to find a side of the trail that made her happy. A couple of times she tried to dive off the main trail down a side trail we've never been on before, which to be honest was frustrating. Fortunately that section of trail is only about a mile long, and we made it. I'm glad we didn't see any vehicles or bikes on that section, as she was difficult to keep straight.

Coming out of the woods, we were mostly back on the road the rest of the way, with a short section through a very overgrown snowmobile trail where the grass was so high it was in her mouth. Of course we stopped to have a snack!








We had one busy, paved road to cross, where cars travel 50mph and there isn't a great sight line at the crossing, particularly with the very robust summer foliage. I could hear a car coming but couldn't quite judge how far it was, and bumped Fizz's nose beyond some of the shrubs to try to peer around the corner into the road. A car was much closer than I expected, and we were precariously hanging out into the road, but fortunately they also saw us (yay orange!) and stopped to let us cross. Across the paved road and a short wooden bridge, we were onto the cross country course at the horse park. More enticing grass waved in her face:








From this gallop track you come through the jump field. I truly don't understand where eventers get their courage, this stuff is so intimidating to ride around!








After our very pleasant 2 hour ride from home, we headed into the barn area, where the 50 mile riders for Sunday were vetting in. Fizz was interested to take in all the activity, and was happy to get a good drink from the water tubs set up along the vetting ring.








We were stabled next to a new friend that we were planning on riding with on Sunday. I had met this rider through another online horse forum. This was her first distance ride, but she has done lots of trails and dressage with her Morgan mare, Gracie. How cute were these two waiting for their dinner?








The vetting in for the 50 mile riders went quickly, so the ride manager came down to the stabling area and told those of us doing the shorter distances that we could vet in Saturday night, which was fine by me! That way Sunday morning would be a little less hectic. Fizz stood perfectly for the vet. She had a couple of not perfect gut sounds, but I explained to him that we had just ridden 10 miles and he wasn't concerned, knowing she'd get plenty of water and good grazing after we finished the vetting. She is never one to turn down handgrazing!








To be continued with our ride report from Sunday...
🐎


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## carshon

I am on the edge of my seat waiting for PartII


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## egrogan

The forecast for Sunday had been unsettled, and there was a good chance of rain to end the ride. But when I woke up, the day was bright and sunny. I headed out to feed Fizz and leave plenty of time to handwalk her around after being stalled all night. While I wouldn't say she ever really enjoys being in the stall, this is the least anxious I've seen her after being in overnight. After about 45 minutes of walking around sampling the grass, I put her back up so I could go to the pre-ride briefing (she definitely did _not _want to go back in the stall at that point!).

The ride meeting was quick, and we had about 20 minutes before the trail would open. There were 15ish riders in our distance (10 miles). With a lot of people being brand new, I think there were some nerves, because almost everyone else was tacked up _before _the ride briefing, and then just sort of milling around afterwards. We had chosen to tack up after the meeting and wanted to be at the back of the pack, knowing we were planning a slow ride. My riding buddy wasn't sure how the hills would treat Gracie, and Fizz is really not fit given our late start to the season, so we were looking to let them tell us how they were handling the trail.

The ride started out through the cross country jump field. More giant solid fences to look at.








Here is Gracie checking out the famous GMHA squirrel.








Fizz led the whole way, since this was new to Gracie, and her rider thought Gracie would build confidence from following. Gracie is a more "show bred" Morgan, and the first couple of miles she snorted and pranced along as though she were going around the ring. Fizz was also raring to go. After our first trot up Long Hill (aptly named), both mares were breathing and thinking again. We soon found ourselves behind another pair of riders whose horses also seemed very eager. One rider was shouting and screaming at the horse, which I don't like seeing. We decided to just hang back so we didn't get in their space. The first couple of times Fizz could see the other pair of horses ahead of us through the trees, she slammed on the brakes and wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But we stayed within sight of them for the first 2-3 miles, and after the initial confusion she didn't seem too affected by them. We'd be on a clear stretch of trail or out in a field for awhile and could see them, and then they'd dip down a hill or the brush would get too thick to see them until things cleared out again. Fizz stayed strong and was eager to go, but I never got the feeling that she was getting locked in to the idea of racing to catch the other horses. Which was a relief.

A couple of people had started behind us, and ended up passing. The first time, Gracie was a little startled, but again neither of our horses fought to chase the one leaving them. We spent a little bit of time leapfrogging with a pair of Icelandics. They looked simultaneously adorable and fierce gaiting down the trail with their substantial manes flowing in the wind.








There was one narrow section of single-track trail where we got stacked up 4 in a row, but they were not bothered by us behind them. When the footing got better, they hit the accelerator and vanished up over the hill out of sight.

We connected back up with them when we got to the one water stop on the trail (I think this was ~6.5 miles in). The water stop was busy, with 6 horses when we arrived. Fizz took a great drink, but was too antsy to eat when horses started leaving. I was surprised that's where she cared about other horses disappearing, but she did. Gracie drank well but was also not really interested in eating, so we got back on and headed out before the Icelandics did.

The stop really got Fizz amped up and she was pulling a lot for the next part of the ride. We nearly went off trail, missing a left turn. We realized we'd made a mistake after just a couple of minutes, so we didn't get too far in the wrong direction. But Fizz seems to lose her confidence in me quickly if I backtrack after making a wrong turn, and there were a couple of places where she thought maybe she should make her own trail rather than go where I was suggesting. 😉 We had a lot of up and down hill, and a big stream crossing, and she was really strong through all of that. After a few long uphill trots, we were back in communication again, and while she was still eager, she stopped pulling.








In no time at all, we were crossing the last paved road section and finally had some nice flat, open fields to cross. Fizz definitely knew we were nearly back at the horse park, and she trotted right along with Gracie close behind. The ride photographer was near the finish and we got a couple of nice photos! Can't miss us in the orange! 🍊
















The Icelandics must have passed us when we took a wrong turn, because we were the last ones to cross the finish line. But we did it! We were so happy with how well the horses did together. I am grateful that Fizz was able to lead confidently, and that even though Gracie had never done this before, she wasn't phased by anything we experienced. And it was so nice to have a horse that moved at the same speed as Fizz. Gracie's rider was also pleasantly surprised, saying she'd never ridden with another horse where she wasn't constantly holding Gracie back or circling to wait. It makes such a difference in the horse's attitude to be able to go along at a pace that's comfortable for them. It was a really great ride.








We had 30 minutes to present for our final vet check, and the horses pulsed down easily and had no issues with the vet. The Icelandics were ahead of us in line and both rolled in the arena while waiting for the vet. Fizz would have liked to, but I don't think that's really something they're supposed to do, so I asked her to stand. She settled for an intense full body shake- how funny is it that their ears are so flexible!! 👂
















It was a really fabulous day, couldn't have asked for a better ride.


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## egrogan

The final part of the story was getting home. Lovely husband came over with the trailer to pick us up. This was Fizz's inaugural ride in the trailer. She had loaded up well at home, but I hadn't actually taken her anywhere yet. I was thrilled that she walked right on, and lovely husband was there to help me do up the butt bar and close the back. I stood in front with her and had a yummy bowl of treats (carrots and watermelon) which she was eager to have. She stood quietly as we got everything closed up and ready to head home. Unlike when we'd trailed in M's trailer, we couldn't feel her swaying or hear any stomping. It may be that this trailer is just a bit heavier than M's so she couldn't swing it as much.

At any rate, I was keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that when we got home and opened the doors, she'd be standing there calmly. Sadly, that was not the case. She was soaked in sweat and shaking like a leaf from head to toe. She did stand quietly for me to come in and untie her while lovely husband got the back open, but it makes me so sad to see her trembling like that. I know that we gave her a gentle, quiet ride with no difficult road conditions; the ride is probably about 30 minutes. She just really seems to hate the whole experience. I will be curious to see how she is about loading the next time. I might ask lovely husband to be the one to lead her on, because I don't want any of my creeping doubts to interfere with her willingness to get on.

I love the design of the trailer that @SueC posted- that front window and all the light it lets in seems great. I like those butt bars too- they seem easier to use, and nicer for the horse, than what I have. I've never seen anything like that.

Working on the loading challenges was a great first step, and it was so much less stressful to have her just walk right on. Now I need to figure out what I can do to help her stop having such an awful time while we're moving. The only thing I know to do is just plan for lots of extremely short trips down the road, stopping before she's sweaty and shaking. I am guessing the distance will probably be very short at first. Now that I have a trailer, I have a lot of people wanting to plan to meet up at various trails; I appreciate the invite, but there's no way Fizz is ready to be trailered someplace, unloaded, and ridden. We have more work to do before those kinds of adventures. I'm sure we'll get there, but our training goal for the summer is clear!


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## knightrider

Isabeau sweated and shook in the trailer for about 7 years. I trailered her often to get her used to the trailer. It took a very long time, but she does fairly well now. She does better with a buddy in the trailer with her. Isabeau was perfectly awful in the trailer as well as sweating and shaking. She just about kicked my trailer to pieces. But she's OK now. It just took a lot of time and patience. I am thinking that Fizz will do better than that.


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## egrogan

I hope we can work through it too @knightrider! There are lots of places I'd love to take her, but not at the expense of her being terrified.


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## TrainedByMares

Nicki and Jesse both had stress on early trailer rides but that's over now. I think it will get easier for Fizz.


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## Knave

I’m so happy for you!!!!


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## QueenofFrance08

Jake was horrible trailering when we got him. He wouldn't get on, was soaked in sweat when we finally would get him on, and hated anything related to trailers. Then he learned trailers take you to fun places and now he hops on and munches his hay happily and hops off just as happy when we get where we are going. Time and practice!


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## bsms

Mia was hard to get to load. When I swapped her for Bandit, her new owner opened the front window for her. I guess there are some reasons to NOT do that, but apparently Mia decided going 70 mph without moving her legs was fun. Talked to the guy a few months later. He said if Mia was loose and saw an open trailer, she'd trot over, jump in, then look back as if to say, "_Miss Mia is ready for her ride...._"! 🤣


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## egrogan

bsms said:


> He said if Mia was loose and saw an open trailer, she'd trot over, jump in, then look back as if to say, "_Miss Mia is ready for her ride...._"! 🤣


#GOALS


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## carshon

I agree with the others that with time she should settle down. its new and the sensation is new. We have our horses sit just a few short minutes when we stop at our destination. I would also open any vents etc. My friend has found that her horse trailers better when able to stick her nose out the little side window of her two horse trailer.


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## gottatrot

You and Fizz did so great!!

Hero loves getting in the trailer, and I know he's been from Washington to Arizona and back, so it can't have been very fun.  Maybe for a TB stuck in a stall, a moving stall is a lot less boring. 
My other horses were all scared of trailers at first, and got totally used to them.


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## SueC

I'm happy you had a great day out (and a good ride to the place as well)! 

And you know what, orange actually suits your horse's colouring - on top of being a great safety colour around traffic, etc. I think orange works for you guys and is much more flattering than either hot pink, fluoro yellow or lime green would be as high-vis alternatives.

I think moss green would also be a nice colour to complement your horse's - but not very visible - and bright white would work very well, but it's not very practical...


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## bsms

I agree with @SueC: The orange genuinely looks GOOD! It is like a bit of spice that enhances the flavor of the food rather than distracting from it. It highlights y'all!


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## egrogan

Thank you all for the trailering affirmations. It's helpful to hear of other "turnarounds." I have a week off at the beginning of July and I think we will just get in the trailer and go a short distance every day, and see what happens!

@SueC and @bsms , the practical part of me likes the orange because I know it makes a difference in visibility on the road- numerous people have stopped to tell us! The other nice thing about orange is that "hunter orange" is pretty much the same wherever you buy it, so things match even if they are different brands. I have some blue tack pieces and they are all slightly different shades of blue, which makes me nuts! But I agree with you that shades of green would look nice if I ever cleaned her up properly and took her to a show. Even the slightly mismatched sky/baby blue looks good too.

Last week I got a call from the vet telling me they had forgotten to send Izzy's teeth home with her, and I could come pick them up if I wanted them. I wasn't going to, but then I decided I would given Sue's very educational post about teeth/skulls. I figured I could share Izzy's too.

Izzy had one molar on the top and one on the bottom extracted. From the side views, you can see how little tooth was left above the root. The vet said they weren't really attached to much of anything and pretty much just twisted right out with little effort. It's hard to tell without handling them, but the surface was as smooth as glass, with hardly any rougher grinding surface left.
































I forgot that my lovely husband can be squeamish about medical/vet things and I was just asked to please kindly remove the teeth from the dining room table.  I'm not really sure what I should do with them. I've read about some people that actually make beautiful beaded jewelry from horse teeth so I might look into that- just not sure if there is enough tooth to work with!


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## Knave

If you figure it out, tell me. I have some I’ve saved from baby teeth falling out that I found on the ground.


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## egrogan

Work was a little slow yesterday afternoon, so Fizz and I snuck out to do the 6.5 mile Newhall Farm loop. It was hot and muggy, so the bugs were swarming. The Horse Hoodie is really making Fizz a lot happier! 

As we left home, a search and rescue helicopter was flying very low overhead, barely clearing the treetops. Since Tuesday, search team have been out looking for a missing 65 year old man with dementia. His truck was found parked where M and I ride on the way to Blind Mare Farm, and the search area has extended around most of the trails we ride. They've had dog teams, National Guard Teams, and drones/helicopters out, but sadly as of this morning, he's still missing. We are all hoping for a good outcome. Aside from the helicopter, we didn't see any other searchers out during our ride. 

I had gotten the results of Fizz's bloodwork back before our ride, and it was all good news. Her muscle enzyme values after her exercise test came back within the normal range, as did the rest of her CBC values. Also, her insulin/glucose were normal. So she is clear - and, encouraged - to exercise without any limitations. We really had the roads and trail to ourselves, with no traffic or anyone else out, so settled into a nice rhythm trotting right along.








Until...an unpleasant surprise...COWS AHEAD!








Fortunately I saw them before she did, so I was prepared. They were right up along the road, far closer than we've ever been. She stopped dead in her tracks and was trembling. This white bull (?) was curious about us but also stood still staring back at us. Can't see it in the picture, but he had another friend behind him. I hopped off to lead her, and at first she took a step backward, but with some cajoling we started walking towards them. She froze again, but when I switched sides so I was leading her from the right (putting myself between her and the killer cow), she actually walked passed without more than a few giant gulps. I was actually pretty proud of her- that was a lot of cow really close, and we managed without any kind of blow up. Once we had left them behind, I got back on with no concerns and we continued on our way.

Haying has started here and there were some new round bales out that she glanced at, but after the cows, nothing else is really worrying to her 😉








I gave her a good rinse down when we got home while she grazed around- we were both hot and sweaty. It was a really good, fast paced ride, and she seemed to handle it well. Finally starting to feel like her fitness is coming back.


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## Knave

I’m glad you got past him, and I really hope they find the guy!


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## PoptartShop

Ooooh!! I may need to get that hoodie for Promise - I rode for a little last night & the bugs/flies were so bad, she was so uncomfortable I had to keep swatting them off her LOL, did you get it directly from their site? She is so sensitive to bugs (like me haha), this would be amazing to have for trails!

Oh my goodness, that is so sad about the missing man - I hope he is okay.  Gosh. Poor guy. It sounds like they are doing all they can to find him though. Fingers crossed he will be found.

I'm so glad Fizz's bloodwork came back well - YAY!!  The sky is the limit for you two! That is great news. And yay Fizz for being brave towards the cows!! What a good girl! She is adorable!! 

As for trailering, it can definitely be a process. Like it took about two weeks of 'trailer training' for Promise to finally load/want to get on. Just took a lot of patience & I had to let her figure it out, let her sniff, etc. In the past she would shut down because she used to practically get beaten to get on  So I really had to make it a positive thing for her, & now she gets on with ease.

That is pretty cool, Izzy's tooth! That stuff doesn't bother me either it's quite fascinating really. But yeah, the dining room table is off limits for teeth apparently huh! LOL.


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## gottatrot

I hope they find the man! 
I am betting a white cow is even scarier than a black one. There is a white goat near where we ride and he always is frightening when he shows up outside his shed.


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## knightrider

Did they find the missing man?


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## Knave

I will tell a funny story about that. I guess my dad was showing a mare he started for my grandfather. He was cutting, and pulled out a white calf. I guess that mare wouldn’t cut at all! So, he lost the calf and goes and gets his next, and she was spectacular. A lot of people teased him after the show. They said to some horses, who have never seen a white calf, they don’t think they are cattle! They just don’t know what they’re supposed to do!


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## egrogan

The search and rescue had the happiest possible ending yesterday afternoon! Neeko, a brand new a search and rescue dog, found him! These photos were posted by the missing man’s family on our community FB page:








There is a lot of relief in town, and lots of love for Neeko making his first “find.” The man was found about 1.5 miles from where he parked his truck. He had gone out walking and got disoriented and then dehydrated. He was very tired and covered in bug bites, but otherwise his family reported that he was seen and then released from the hospital with no injuries.

———

I’m laughing at the white cow (and goat) stories. One more thing I’d like to be able to explain to them if we could have 10 minutes of conversation…


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## egrogan

I had to wait until this afternoon to ride today, and it was a cold, blustery day that felt more like October than mid-June. It was around 50*F and the wind was gusting. As I was getting the girth tightened and ready to mount up, I tried some positive self-talk to convince myself that Fizz wouldn't care about the wind bending the tiny trees next to us 😬 Not sure how effective it was. As she grew several inches next to me and took hard gulps as I swung my leg over, I couldn't help but feel worried about the wind too.

Unsurprisingly, she was pretty tense and sucked back as we headed to the overlook. The forest sounded alive on either side of us- branches cracking, wind whistling, and even small clusters of oak leaves that had broken off the end of the branches swirling around us on the wind. Hoping no deer were going to come crashing out of the woods to cross the road, I asked her to trot to get her moving forward, and that helped a little- at least she started breathing again. I realized she had been holding her breath up until then. She was snorty and gave big sideways glances at the rock wall she's passed a million times without ever noticing, but I was actually surpised there was no spooking or jumping around. She held it together pretty well! It felt more than good enough to turn around at the overlook.








I had to laugh at this picture when I saw it- the mushroom on the tree looks like a funny eyebrow!








She was looking very regal when we got home, staring off intently into the gusting wind, so I thought it would be a good photo op. Of course she made the most ridiculous face.
_Was this the shot you were looking for?








No goofball, not that look..._








Much better!

Izzy and Josie were out in the back pasture (please ignore the frustrating buttercups that I am losing the battle to contain...). Josie came ambling in, but Izzy came flying in on a mission. Everyone is happier when Fizz is home.


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## gottatrot

Great pics! My fields are full of buttercups too, but at least no tansy.


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## egrogan

Today stayed cool and blustery, with temps still below 60*F and the wind whipping. It felt like fall (no complaints from me!) so I actually threw a sheet on Fizz this morning when I fed breakfast to warm her up a little before we got ready to meet M and Coalie. M had been curious about where a trail in the woods would lead, and wanted to do a little adventuring today, so we headed that way.

We weren't sure what the wind would be like in the woods, but the horses didn't seem to care at all. We saw a few deer on the move, but the horses just gazed in their direction without worrying. I really think the ride last weekend bumped Fizz's confidence up a new level, because she powered right along in front most of the way, even when we turned off a more familiar trail to follow the spur M had been curious about.
















The new trail quickly dropped off down the ridge fairly steeply, and there were a lot of slippery rocks. We did see other hoofprints that seemed relatively fresh, which was somewhat surprising. We never passed another rider, but it's always good to see other people are using the trails.

Eventually we came past a beaver pond that looked somewhat familiar, and a set of concrete blocks that we remembered having blocked the trail at some point last year, so we had a rough idea of where we were. The thing about all these trails is that after awhile, they will all take you back to one of three dirt roads, and we'll always be able to get home on one of those road. So we don't worry too much about really getting lost (and if we let Fizz completely have her head, I am 100% certain she'd take us home the most direct way possible 😉 ). It's more just a question of whether we'll end up looping around longer than we would like to. But it the temperature was so nice, and there were NO bugs, so we didn't really rush to try to get back to the road. We made some guesses at the few intersections we came to, and ended up on a manicured bridle path along a house that we recognized. And that nice path put us back out on the road. We had been guessing it was going to take us a bit farther down that road than it did, but instead of a fat oval loop, we made a long skinny loop. It was still a very nice ride!








Parallel to the road is one of the most picturesque hayfields in town. There's a nice mowed outer path, so we moved off the road and let the horses stretch their legs on the softer footing. The roads are pretty hard right now, so they seemed to enjoy the softer ground.
















The lack of bugs made such a difference in everyone's mood! I know they'll be back, but today we enjoyed the temporary break.

When we got home, I untacked and put Fizz right out in the new field. They haven't wanted anything to do with that field in weeks because of the bugs, but today seemed like a good day for a change of scenery. I went to get Izzy and Josie and bring them over too.








Later in the afternoon, when we played musical fields again and brought them back to their regular turnout, I had a nice interaction with Josie. She's not a touchy feely horse, and I really struggle with finding spots she enjoys being scratched or groomed. She also looks a bit body sore to me and I thought it might be possible to win her over with some light massage. The horses had finished dinner and were all hanging out quietly dozing around the sheds. So I went over to Josie and tried some of the Masterson hind end release points that Fizz has been enjoying so much lately, and it was the first time I've ever seen her relax while I was touching her. She was completely loose, no halter or anything, and particularly around her hip and pelvis, she visibly relaxed, sighing and closing her eye, letting her bottom lip quiver a little. She even cocked a hind leg while I worked my way through the points. I was even able to reach up inside her thigh for the stifle release point, and ran a hand down to her hocks with no threat of kicking. That all felt like huge progress with her. We must have stood like that for 10 or 15 minutes, which is by far the longest she's ever stood still with me at liberty without moving away. Made me really happy to have some connection with her. She's a tough cookie.


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## SueC

Would you be able to film that technique sometime, @egrogan, or link me to an existing clip? I'm really interested in how that works. 🌼🌺🌸


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> Would you be able to film that technique sometime, @egrogan, or link me to an existing clip? I'm really interested in how that works. 🌼🌺🌸


@SueC, last time I tried to post the video here, it was blocked because of some sort of setting in YouTube that didn't allow it to play on another site. Let's see if it will work like this: 




If it doesn't work, you could look it up on YouTube by the title "The Masterson Method: Hind End Release" (posted January 24, 2020)

I also listened to a podcast with Jim Masterson (he's the bodyworker who created the technique/video), and while there's not really any science behind this, I appreciate that he's not selling much of anything and keeps most of his videos and lectures available for free. Long story short, sounds like he absorbed chiropractic and traditional Chinese medicine techniques from apprenticing with other bodyworkers. He had a large stable of performance horses to test out the methods he was developing. When he found things that seemed to "work," he used them with more horses and refined his practices as he went.

I was willing to try it because it's all very "light touch" without a lot of manipulation of body parts, so I figured I wouldn't hurt any horses trying it out. And seeing the relaxation that seems to follow was really interesting. If you try it out, would be curious if you see the horses enjoy it.

Fizz is having a proper chiropractic adjustment from the vet later this morning, and I'll be curious to see if she still responds to the release techniques after she's been treated.


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## egrogan

Fizz had a great visit with the vet yesterday, really enjoying the bodywork. She especially loves big, deep stretches when her front leg is extended forward and she can lean all her weight back to stretch. Her pelvis was indeed twisted in a wonky way, so after that was addressed she couldn't stop deep yawns and licking and chewing. We'll go for a short, easy ride today and then can get back to regular rides as of tomorrow.

Poor Josie on the other hand had a less positive vet visit. She needed to get her second Lyme shot, but she flipped out with it. She was already nervous just with the vet saying hello, but I thought she'd be ok with a quick shot. Vet had the shot drawn up and was just starting to say "I don't think she liked this much last time..." when the needle went in and Josie shot backwards like she'd been electrocuted. I'd been standing in front of her with a hand on the halter on either side of her face, but she caught me totally by surprise. The barn aisle isn't more than a couple of horse lengths long, and as she flew back she knocked into the muck bucket and the cans of chicken feed at the end of the aisle. Fortunately instead of panicking more, hitting all that stuff stopped her long enough that vet could hit the plunger on the needle to get the vaccine in- which was hanging out of her neck throughout this episode. Poor Josie- she needs one more of these shots in three weeks to complete the Lyme series. So guess what we will be practicing for the next three weeks!!

Despite that, I do feel confident she's going to come around. She _wants _to be friends, she just gets overwhelmed easily. I keep reminding myself that she's been here less than two months, and it for at least two _years _before that that she was just running feral with almost no human contact. 

Building good horsey relationships, on the other hand, has gone wonderfully. These were all taken the last couple of days...


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## gottatrot

Aww, I love the pictures of your sweet horses!


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## PoptartShop

Omg, I am so glad to hear they found the missing man. How cute Neeko is!! Awwwwwwwwwwwww. That is so heartwarming! <3

Oh, the buttercups are tough. We had some too & mowing helped but they're trying to come back. So annoying. But the horses avoid them which is good! I bet miss Fizz was happy for the lack of bugs on the trail!
The hind end release stuff is good to know. Josie probably enjoyed her little massage a ton! So sweet!!


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## egrogan

Tuesday we went for an easy ride to the overlook, which was miserable the whole way because of the bugs. We were swarmed by a deer fly cloud the entire way, but I think Fizz was less bothered than me because of her horse hoodie. If you look between her ears, you can see one particularly persistent deer fly that landed there. Since it didn't seem to be biting her, I didn't swat it away because I wanted to see how long it would stay there. It hitched a ride for 3/4 of a mile before flying away!








Yesterday was cool, drizzly, and breezy again; I don't think it ever got above 60*F. I wasn't feeling very inspired to ride- the gloomy weather does that to me-but there were no bugs so I figured I need to make myself get out there. I'm glad we did, the lack of bugs made everything so much better. 








There were threats of rain when we left, and when we got to the overlook the sky looked questionable. But again, no bugs, so we kept going, over and down the big Cavendish hill. I stayed on to ride down the big hill, rather than handwalking. She was a little noodly going down, but there was no attempt to jump into the ditch or spin around to go home. From the bottom of the hill to our turn-around point, we trotted and cantered along. Slowly adding more canter. The roads are really hard though so I'm hesitant to do too much pounding on her legs.

A little snack before we turned back. I was surprised to find that there were COWS in a field where there are never cows (the field is behind us in this picture). There were half a dozen of them, but they were well off the road munching their way through a row of shrubbery. Weirdly, she didn't seem to notice them at all. Don't they smell? I was actually a little concerned that she had _no _sense of them...It was odd. But since she didn't see them, I didn't make a big deal of it and we just went about our business.


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## egrogan

Ride this morning- I intended to go on a 5 mile ride, but it was actually 7 miles instead. Oops! I didn't _reallllyyyy _have time to go that far, but I still managed to make it back in time for my first work meeting. I just didn't turn on video for the meeting, as I was sporting some gnarly helmet head! I always think this trail is shorter than it really is for some reason- until I'm out there and wondering why it's taking so long. And then I remember that it's not as short as I thought.

At any rate, we had a great ride. We got to a stretch of road that allows you to trot along for a good mile that's flat to mildly-uphill road, and there was no traffic of any kind so we had the road to ourselves.








Fizz settled in to a steady tempo, so steady that I was laughing that she felt like a vaulting horse as they go round and round their circles. Her rhythm barely changed at all. Given how smoothly she was going, I decided to try to give myself a riding lesson 😉 Lately I've been feeling like my posture is terrible and I'm hunched forward in the saddle, so I did some of the balance exercises I'd have little kids do on the lunge. Put the reins in one hand and with the other, reached out straight to the side, straight in front, straight up in the air, touched my belly button, put my hand on my hip. Then I switched diagonals and did it all over again. She just trotted along like a lesson pony so we did this for a solid mile. I was thinking about how nice she felt when all of a sudden, she put the brakes on...to our left, we saw a little bear take off running for the woods! 🐻 She stared off after it, but it wanted nothing to do with us and disappeared as quickly as it could.

Not too long after the bear, we turned off the road and up onto a woods trail. The first part of it has nice enough footing to keep trotting, but it does get rocky and slippery going downhill. We trotted where we could and walked the rest.
















It wasn't especially hot, but it was a very muggy morning. She didn't want to drink even when we got to the good mini waterfall.








The rest of the ride home was uneventful, though the flies picked up in intensity the closer we got to home. We were both glad to get back- Fizz tucked right into the corner of a shed, and I think she's been there all day since!

_JOSIE UPDATE_
I've been working with her in short sessions every night after they have their evening feed. She's now standing quietly tied for some basic grooming. She's doing well with her front feet. I can pick them up easily, and she holds them nicely while I clean them out and 'pretend' to rasp around the outside of them with the end of the hoofpic. I am still not picking up her hind feet, but I can touch her from the hip to her fetlock with the end of the lunge whip, and with my hands down to her hocks.

I've been playing around with the clicker and some alfalfa pellets while doing this, but she isn't food motivated at all. She's tied with a hay bag, so as often as not when I reach up to her mouth to practically put the alfalfa pellets in it, sometimes she won't take them at all. I guess in a way it's good that she's working with me just because. It still funny to me to have a horse who doesn't care at all about treats though!

We'll see if by next week I can actually pick up her hind feet. Not sure.

I also need to start working on her shot aversion and try syringing some applesauce into her mouth. Even if she's doing better with me handling her feet, she really needs to get trimmed when the farrier is here next month, and at least right now, I'm still planning on using dorm for his visit.


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## egrogan

Phew- it was a hot, steamy weekend here. We've mostly avoided the very high temps most of the rest of the country has had the past few weeks, but it was nearly 90*F yesterday and today.

Yesterday I volunteered at GMHA as a cross country fence judge for starter horse trials. I've never volunteered for cross country before, but it was a lot of fun. I'm not an eventer, but my understanding is that this was more of a schooling show situation for young horses, newer riders, etc. The beginner novice division had a fair number of junior riders, and it was just adorable as the ponies came charging up to my fence game as can be, with their little pilots counting out their strides as they approached...ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR...JUMP!!! And then were all smiles and pats and "good job pony!" as they cantered by. I do wish I had been able to really experience riding as a kid. They seemed to be having a blast.

One of my fences:








I was there most of the day, and had fences in 4 divisions. The elementary and pre-elementary divisions were for the green horses/riders, and you could see there was a difference in the level of confidence there- for both horses and riders. But even with a few refusals sprinkled across the divisions, it all seemed very safe and supportive, and looked like most people had a good time. It wasn't specifically a Morgan show, but there was a good representation of Morgans jumping around.

Novice:
















Beginner Novice:








Elementary:








With all four feet firmly planted on the ground, Fizz and I met M and Coalie this morning to get in our ride before it got too hot. It was warm when we left, but not oppressive yet. As we headed down the hill of despair to get to our meeting place, we were soon greeted with a large tree across the road, making it impassable. We had to do some bushwalking up a ditch, into the woods, and then back down a ditch and onto the road to get around, but Fizz was game. Mac the German Shepherd is back into the cone of shame (and thus voiceless), but we saw him coming so didn't get too spooked passing him. And M and Coalie were waiting for us right past his house.

We decided to get into the woods as quickly as we could and hope temps stayed cooler than it would be in the sun out on the road. Plus, the roads are concrete hard right now. The flies were terrible, but we kept the horses as comfortable as possible swatting them away. And the batman headgear helps a lot!








We followed the snowmobile trail, which is in really good shape footing-wise, and on the sections that weren't too rocky we trotted and cantered while it wasn't too hot. We rode the trail "backwards" - in the sense that we hopped on the trail where we usually come off it back to the road - so there was a lot of fairly steep downhill for the horses to navigate. We had a long conversation about how two years ago, I never would have been comfortable riding those steep downhills and would have gotten off to handwalk down. Fizz just feels so much more confident and capable now. When we first started doing these trails, it's like she'd just fling herself down the hill on the forehand and hope for the best, which was very unnerving. Now I can feel her thinking through where her feet should go, and engaging through her whole body to balance well. It's really satisfying to think about how much different she is to ride now.








The horses passed up the opportunity to drink at the little waterfall near where we saw the bear on Friday, but Fizz was happy grazing as the tall forest grass was practically hitting her in the face in some spots. Coalie decided he did want a drink after all when we went through a mud puddle. Fizz had a huge mouthful of grass that caught his eye, and he tried to grab it out of her mouth- then stuck his tongue out at her when she wouldn't give it up!  M had to push his head away to get him to stop. Too funny.
















The bugs were really awful when we split up to go our separate ways home. My neighbors' fields near my house aren't hayed yet, and as we walked around the perimeter Fizz seemed to like the feeling of the tall grass tickling her belly and driving the bugs away.








Sure felt like summer today in a way it hasn't yet this year! Still, we were out early enough we ended up doing 9 miles, and while we were hot and itchy at the end, it wasn't unbearable. I'm hiding out inside now with a fan on for the rest of the day, but I'm glad we were able to go for such a good ride.


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## egrogan

Woke up to more excitement than I was planning on this morning. As I was groggily brushing my teeth, I glanced out the window at the horses as I usually do, and something looked weird. I quickly realized there was a horse grazing around outside the fence. I thought it was Izzy, but I didn't have my glasses on so wasn't totally sure. I figured if Izzy was out, the others were too, so I got myself dressed and shoes on, grabbed a couple of halters from the hall closet, and went out.

When I got out there, there were no horses in the yard closest to the house, but I could partially see them moving around towards the back of the field. I heard hoofbeats and realized Izzy and Fizz were actually inside the fence, and Josie was out, but cantering up towards the gate where I was standing. I was a little worried about Josie being the one out; we've made a ton of progress when it comes to haltering, but given her experience as a feral horse, I wasn't sure if she'd want to maintain her newfound freedom. Turns out I had nothing at all to worry about- she came right up to me and stopped to be haltered, looking sheepish and happy to be saved. She definitely did not like being separated from the other horses. I'm still not sure if she was the only one out, or if the others had been out too and put themselves back in?

I walked the fence and there was no fence down and nothing unusual, so I guess she must have gone through or under. Admittedly, the electric has been off, mostly out of my own laziness (it's easier to fill waters when I can just duck through the lines myself, and it's nicer for the dog to be able to go in and out without getting zapped). So that got turned back on. I had to laugh, because I've been doing pasture rotation with the back half of the field they're in, and today was the literal day they were switching to a new section to rest the part they've been on. I guess the grass was irresistibly greener on the outside this morning. Hopefully with the fence on and access to the refreshed pasture, no one will think about wandering any time soon.

Back on the appropriate side of the fence:


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## PoptartShop

HAHA! Silly girls!!! Awww, I'm glad Josie was ok with getting 'caught' & all are safe. They must've been in a mischievous mood!
Now YOU just have to remember the electric is back on...knowing me I'd probably forget & get zapped.


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## egrogan

PoptartShop said:


> knowing me I'd probably forget & get zapped.


Oh I have no doubt that I will!! ⚡ ⚡


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## SueC

I spent 20 minutes trying to find a Thelwell drawing I remember well from a book I had once, online before giving up. It showed a pony limboing under a fence with a sneaky expression on its face. If I ever come across it I'll post it.


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## egrogan

*The ride for conquering all the scary things*
Today is a gorgeous day, cool temps and low humidity, and I was fortunate that my morning was free of meetings so we could take advantage of the weather with a longer ride. Off we went to the Newhall Farm loop. As we were going down the hill of despair, we heard a loud vehicle coming up behind us, and pulled off the road to let a huge farm tractor pass. There's a lot of haying happening all over. Fizz didn't mind though, she grabbed mouthfuls of grass on the side of the road as we waited.

The road is so, so hard, but we were able to hug the somewhat sandier edge and trotted a mile until we could turn off onto a woods trail. I've been adding in more cantering in the woods because the footing is softer. She seems so happy to be doing more canter now- I think she's strong enough for it, just don't want to take advantage of her wanting to by pushing it on the road where it's so hard. We're finally up to 2 mile stretches of all trot and canter, no walk breaks.
*







*
The woods trail deadends at the farm, and in the distance, we saw behind the fence gate...
*







*
Can you see him?
*







*
Right there, behind the gate? That's the same big guy we saw last time we came through. But today- he had friends! Sneaky friends, napping in the grass...
*







*
But...drumroll please...she glanced in their direction, and...DID NOTHING. Not even a gulp, no break in her stride. I was so, so proud of her. On we went. She asked, more canter please? So we did!

Not too far from there, we crossed the paved road back to dirt road that was concrete hard, so we mostly walked.
*







*
Following directions 😉
*







*
Usually this spot is the last place things could get a little dicey, because this farm has three young boys that like to swing each other off the hammock on their porch, and a very enthusiastic English Shepherd farm dog, Shasta, who does not appreciate people near her farm (English Shepherds clearly take their job very seriously. Poor Shasta also has a farm on both sides of the road and is equally as flummoxed by that as Hugh is.) But there was more excitement ahead!

We came up to a pasture where there haven't been cows so far this year, but today, there were cows. Lots of cows, like a dozen of them. All sleeping in the tall grass but bobbing their heads up and down to shake off flies, and right next to the road. The disembodied herd did stop Fizz in her tracks snorting. While she was definitely very worried about them, as I looked around, I realized we were in a pretty safe place where even if she needed to hop around a little bit, we weren't likely to get into anything too dangerous. I decided to see if we could ride through it this time. It didn't help that just as we were cautiously taking one step at a time past them, one of the cows got curious about us and stood up out of the grass. She scooted forward a couple of steps, but then stopped and looked back at them. I am proud to say I think this is the closest we have ever ridden past a herd of cows, and we survived! 💗🐄 💗
*







*
But that wasn't the end of the excitement. A half mile up the road, we could hear some sort of large machinery working. I knew the town had plans to widen the ditches on this road, and sounded like that was happening. They were knocking over some smaller trees, which were crashing down into the woods of the road. Fizz was definitely alert, but this was all much less scary than the cows 😉 We had to stop and wait for a minute for the guys to notice we were there- the backhoe (? Sorry, I don't know my heavy equipment...) was spinning in and out of the road while it was digging out the ditch and moving trees, so I didn't want to get too close. But after a minute, I heard a guy say "got a horse coming," and the machinery stopped and they waved us on. Fizz walked right through that little space between the backhoe and the dump trucks, giving a bit of a sideways glance at some old ditch pipe they had dug out and left on the side of the road. But I was so proud of her for being a good example of non-crazy horses walking through all that equipment.
*








Phew. *So that was our ride! Feeling very grateful for such a great partner.


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## knightrider

What impresses me is that you whipped out your phone and took pictures of all those incidents, including horse ears. I can barely manage to get a picture with horse ears when nothing is happening. I would never be brave enough to sit on my horse, phone in hand, taking a picture with my horse blowing and snorting and prancing about.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, Fizz made me brave today!


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## SueC

It just reminds me of my first six months riding Sunsmart, when he thought cows were big space aliens and I always had to be prepared for snorting and hopping and trying to take off. It seems like you are getting to the point where it is changing significantly. I wish I could lend you some cows for a week or two, and you could pop them in the pasture with your girls. Once they work out cows run away from THEM that is the end of the matter! 😄


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## egrogan

If our ride yesterday was an A+, today was more of a C.

It wasn't _bad_. But it also wasn't especially _good_. Mostly, the bugs were nearly unbearable, and we sort of suffered through it. Every couple of strides, poor Fizz was shaking her head, kicking up at her belly, stopping suddenly to itch her nose on her leg or try to bite at something I wasn't shooing away fast enough along her sides. We never really got in a rhythm. I had been planning on an 8 mile "lollipop" route, but we ended up forgetting about the loop part and turning around early, doing something closer to 5 miles.

One thing that _was _kind of bad though was a renewed argument going down the big hill past the overlook. We were halfway down, riding along calmly and I was sitting in the saddle thinking "we have finally conquered this challenge!" when I felt Fizz shift her weight and I knew she was going to leap into the ditch and try to turn around. I wasn't quick enough catching her with my outside leg and the rein against her neck, and she did hop off the road into the verge. It was super frustrating, but I just stayed with her choppy trot, did a big circle in the grass, and came back to the road. I held my breath hoping there was no old fencing that I couldn't see that we were going to get tangled up in, and fortunately there wasn't. Not sure what I could have done differently to anticipate this was coming. I think maybe I was feeling too relaxed and didn't ride every stride on the way down. Lesson learned. The thing that has been most successful on this hill is visually breaking it up into smaller sections, riding from one tree to another tree in the medium distance, and then resetting my focus when we pass that mark. Basically, staying more mentally engaged.

Also...after all my bragging yesterday about how unflappable she was, today we had to confront the ultra-scary...field full of round bales...








So much snorting at the sight of bales hiding behind trees 








Not this, she could care less about this armada of equipment. But the hay bales were highly suspicious.








Funny enough, there were cows along the road on our left hand side. But she didn't even tip her ear at them. Horse-eating round bales deserved her full attention. Luckily we survived.

On the way home, to get off the hard road for a bit, we rode the edge of a field that's not been hayed. The grass was literally as high as her mouth, so she grabbed bites as we went.








We're supposed to have some rain tonight, so hopefully that will make the roads a little more forgiving. Seems like rain might stick around tomorrow, so she'll have that off. Then we're planning on a longer adventure with M and Coalie Sunday morning.

*Josie Update*
The last couple of days with Josie have been some good progress. With her front feet, I can pick them up, clean them out, rasp lightly around the edges, and pull her foot forward into a position the farrier might use. Her hind feet are coming along (slowly); we've gotten into a rhythm where if I tap lightly on her cannon bone and cluck, she picks the foot up off the ground without any kicking. It's a very quick pick up and put back down, but still, it's a calm, nonviolent response to the request, so I'm happy with it right now. I have yet to try to grab/hold it while she's got it picked up on her own, but I'm still going slow.

I've also been working on getting a tube of stuff in her mouth in preparation for giving her the dorm gel. Clicker training has been really helpful here. I bought a cheap oral medication syringe, and started by just moving it along the side of her mouth and then putting it in her mouth without squirting anything in. She didn't seem to care about that very much, so yesterday I filled the syringe with apple juice to start squirting something in. I felt so bad, there must have been some weird vacuum effect created because I didn't fill the syringe completely, and as soon as I took the top off and started to slowly depress the plunger, a violent stream of liquid squirted right into the back of her mouth, catching both of us by surprise 🤦‍♀️ You can file that under the "how not to teach a horse to accept liquids by syringe" category. Oops. Even though she jumped back, startled, she didn't seem traumatized. There was a small bit of apple juice left in the syringe, so we tried again, with a much less aggressive stream this time, and she stood quietly for that. We'll try again today and hopefully it will go a little more smoothly this time!


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## Knave

Big bales scare all of my horses too! Lol


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Big bales scare all of my horses too! Lol


No way! Isn’t that what they see in their back yard?


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## Knave

Yep! It drives me bananas. If you try and lope around a pivot with big bales, you’d better be expecting a million spooks!


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## egrogan

Horses!!


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## SueC

Rocket-propelled apple sauce! 😋

That's good progress with Josie on both fronts. And I hope you have a more enjoyable outing next time. Bugs! 👹


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## egrogan

*Adventuring with Hugh*
I am officially on vacation for the coming week, and it is such a great feeling! It rained about half the day, so we got a bunch of errands done, but when we got home, it had stopped. Hugh and I were overdue for a good hike through the woods.

We found the first ripe raspberries of the year! Observe the Malone quietly stalking his prey...
















A second later...CHOMP....raspberries gone! They were tasty, I managed to find a few myself.

The grass along the trails hasn't been cut at all, and it was high and wiry. Probably up to mid-thigh on me. Hugh was swimming in it.
















We still haven't heard a word from the logging guy who is supposed to come back this year and clear away the debris to open up proper trails. It's frustrating, but we have no leverage here so we just have to wait and hope he'll do it. In the meantime, Hugh took it as a parkour course, leaping from tree to tree with surprising agility.








It helps that he has a huge, puffy tail that works as a rudder for balance. 








I was much less graceful, and just focused on not twisting my ankle in between any of the branches that were laced together across the ground. Fortunately that didn't happen, but I am pretty scratched up from bushwhacking through raspberry canes. Somehow I got us really turned around after we crossed the brook, and instead of heading up towards an open field I went the wrong way down a different logging road and ended up looping deeper into the woods for about 1/2 mile before I regained my bearings. In the middle of summer, with everything so overgrown, the landmarks that I'm subconsciously using get lost really easily. 

It got me thinking about that poor older man who was missing a couple of weeks ago, and how very easy it would be to get lost and confused- at some point, everywhere you turn, everything just looks the same. I would never get too panicked hiking in the woods here, because like with riding, it might take longer than you'd like, but eventually you're going to come out of the woods in someone's field or at a road, and you can go from there. I would think somewhere like where @Knave lives and rides, getting really lost could turn into a bad situation fast. Still, it was an uncomfortable feeling to look up suddenly and not really recognize anything. I think I also learned that while I would trust Fizz with her head to get us home in the most direct way possible, when I started looking at where Hugh wanted to take us, I think he was more focused on following an interesting deer trail than finding home 😉


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## Knave

It is different here than where you are. I don’t think it’s as easy to get lost, although I used to be really afraid of it when I was small. Now I know the land better. Yet, even when I was little, if I would have understood that you could climb to a high point and see everything laid out for you, I probably wouldn’t have been as scared. A general direction will pretty much lead you out of the mountains, and to the few simple roads that are easily known once you’ve been around them much.

If you were to get very turned around you may be in for a very long walk until you found something human, or more importantly water would be hard to find, but a general sense of north and south would get you through for the most part. Where we run our cows, south is down, and south leads to the roads that will take you to the ranch. It is a long way, but I think you could walk it in a couple days, and the roads would lead you to water troughs. They are drinkable where they come out.

Riding you could probably make your way to the closest ranch easily enough, remembering to save your horse and water him at every chance. If you went north you would climb higher mountains and be in for a lot longer until you found a place, but you still may be able to walk it in a few days depending on exactly which direction you took, and ride it in a couple. My problem would be knowing where the water is in that direction…

To the east you would be in trouble, and to the west too. Yet, to the west you would eventually come to a highway. To the east you could miss a lot and end up on something you might not be able to walk.

Now you have me wondering how far a person could walk without food… even the water would seem far between if you had no way to carry it, and waiting for help would be pointless. It’s different though, as I don’t think you could end up in a circle like you could in the trees. The country would be hard, but if you climbed enough you would eventually find a point to head towards.


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## knightrider

Knave said:


> and the roads would lead you to water troughs. They are drinkable where they come out.


If you don't mind drinking alongside Mormon crickets! Yuck.


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## Knave

Hey, I guess you wouldn’t starve though @knightrider! 😂


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## egrogan

@Knave, that is a fascinating overview. When I look at your pictures I can’t really orient myself in your landscape, but it makes sense that you have long sight lines when you get to some elevation. That’s what was worrying me today, I could tell when I was going downhill-which means towards home-but the woods are so thick I kept looking for a break in the trees that would show me where the field was, but couldn’t see it. We also have a Brook through the whole length of our property, so following that is usually helpful, but I ended up down an old logging road I’d never been on that was taking me away from the Brook. All just very disorienting!

I can see how water would get scary if someone got lost where you live. I was thinking that in a lot of the woods around here, you have maple and birch, so at certain times of year that would help you if you were really in trouble. Better yet, if you could find sap lines, then you’d be in luck because they all run downhill and eventually they would take you to a sugarhouse or a road with a collection tank. And there are little brooks and ponds everywhere, so you’re not really too far from water, even if it might be water that I wouldn’t want to drink unless I was desperate. And the woods are full of berries and fruit, so that would help. The wild berries might be tastier, but the fishy crickets might give you more strength!  🦗


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## knightrider

I had the pleasure of going on 3 different occasions out west to dude ranches (so much fun if you have never done it!). I never felt like I could get lost because I could see and recognize the different mountains. All I had to do was look and see where the mountain was and I could know where the ranch was in relation to the mountain.

Florida has no mountains. We barely even have hills. I get lost a lot. But I always find my way home at some point. Nobody has ever sent a search party out for me. Chorro is useless to bring me home because he doesn't care about going home. He loves riding out. My other three will take the trail that leads to home. @4horses's horse Harmony won't take us home either. When we ride out with Chorro and Harmony, we can get REALLY LOST. My neighbor Joe loves it when we are lost. When we finally recognize a trail and realize we can get home, Joe yells, "Oh, I HATE it!"


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## Knave

@knightrider makes a good point. The mountains are very recognizable. So, you know what mountains you see and around where the ranches or town lies. There are markers like “that mountain that looks like the dirt all came off” or “that white rock” everywhere.

I wish I could say there were berries and the like galore. There are wild onions. There are pine nuts at the right time on the right year… lol


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## egrogan

@knightrider , I have never done a dude ranch ride or spent much time in the Rockies (where I picture dude ranches). A couple of years ago I did get to ride in landscape that looked a bit like where @bsms rides, and I was surprised about the desert. It feels so flat and vast, but there are also very high climbs where suddenly you’re a lot higher up than you thought, looking over the rim of a canyon. So different than what I see here!
















I’m pretty sure Fizz knows the fastest way home at all times and is always happy when we’re in the home loop. Coalie is more like your Chorro; he actively slows down when he realizes he’s heading home. But he often seems clueless about where we are, even in places we’ve ridden a lot!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> The wild berries might be tastier, but the fishy crickets might give you more strength!  🦗


If you're Scandinavian anyway, and think rotten fish is a delicacy! 

If not, from the way @Knave described it on her journal, you might have to do a cost-benefit analysis of the risk of unstoppable projectile vomiting, and ensuing loss of energy and hydration... 😇


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## SueC

I just remembered that the Ancient Romans also had a thing for rotten fish - in their case, they rotted it in barrels to make the much-loved Ancient Roman fish sauce...full details on this charming, funny, educational documentary that's foodie gold:


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> I just remembered that the Ancient Romans also had a thing for rotten fish - in their case, they rotted it in barrels to make the much-loved Ancient Roman fish sauce...full details on this charming, funny, educational documentary that's foodie gold


I adored the Supersizers, as well as Sue’s stint on Great British Bake-Off. I do not think I would adore rotted fish. 🐟🐠🍤

******
Yesterday we met M and Coalie for a longer ride; our destination was a beautiful piece of conservation land that we refer to as The Enchanted Forest. It's laced with bridle paths, most of them challenging rocky single track weaving through thick evergreen forest, straight up and straight down.








To get there, we followed Jeep road for ~5 miles. That part was a little frustrating, as Coalie's walk is slow as molasses. Since the road is so hard (our rain on Saturday morning didn't help much), it doesn't feel fair to trot too long on the road, so we were stuck walking.
















I could tell Fizz was getting resentful of being held back, so when we'd get too far ahead I'd try to find a grassy patch where she could at least snack while we waited for Coalie to catch up. That worked ok, and is probably good practice for continuing longer rides where she should be better about taking care of herself.








Coming into the Enchanted Forest, there's a nice water stop. This year the water was so much lower than last year, when the horses were up to their knees in some parts of the crossing. They both had a good drink, and after that Fizz was ready to go. She was tired of waiting around. 

Across the water, we started the climb back up. M asked for no cantering on the hill, because the trail was so twisty turny, and that was fine with me. But when the horses stepped up into the trot, Fizz clicked into another trot gear and I wasn't going to hold her back. The hills are steep (we went from ~1100 feet at the brook up to ~1800 feet at the top of the hill) and require the horses to really dig in with power from behind, and I was tired of asking her to slow down. I figured Coalie would keep up or catch up. I felt a little guilty, because I don't like it when people take off faster than I want to be going for the trail conditions, but at the same time, I was feeling guilty about Fizz too. It all seemed to work out fine, I think it was a little more excitement than M wanted, but Coalie kept up fine. 

The trail eventually brought us back out to the road, past one of my favorite houses. I love the old stone houses- we have some here, not quite as many as there are in the area around Philadelphia where I used to live. I just find them so classic.
















When M and I split up, I had one sort of scary moment passing Mac the German Shepherd's house. We saw him on our way out to our meeting spot, and he has the cone of shame on again, so I rode a little defensively going by on the way home. You never really know which bushes or patio furniture he's hiding under, waiting until the last minute to come lunging out from under it barking. For some reason, I seem to always have some kind of dicey traffic when passing his house, and this particular ride was some of the most challenging we've had to deal with. Three huge pickup trucks pulling squeaking, bouncing trailers loaded up with ATVs were coming from the opposite direction right as we were parallel to Mac's yard. We had enough room to get as far to the right as we could, but there is a large ditch there on the side of the road so our options were limited. The first truck didn't really bother her, but the second one rattled loudly and she shied to the side, and then the third one hit a bump and the ATV bounced on the trailer and made a lot of noise, and she had a pretty decent spook, one hind leg slipping out from under her in the ditch. All this time I was watching the yard to see where Mac was and if he was coming towards us, so I'm sure she felt my nerves and tension too, which didn't help. Fortunately, Mac wasn't outside, and she quickly regained her balance, so we avoided disaster. But that was a lot for her to deal with.

Despite that scary end to the ride, overall it was great to go on a nice long ride-we ended up clocking 12 miles. The weather was cool and humidity low, so although there were clouds of deer flies at various points of the ride, we really had a pretty ideal day for it.

Last night I wasn't sure how Josie would do with the fireworks (one of the ski resorts was having a fireworks show), but the horses all seemed to handle it fine. It seemed like most of the blasting was done by 9:30pm, so I went out for a night check after the noise died down and the horses were all in the back of the pasture grazing. I think I scared them more than the fireworks by going out there at a time I don't usually check on them. 😉 The ski resort on the other side of us has their show tonight, and it will likely be bigger, so hopefully they're ok for a second night of noise. I really don't understand the desire or fun in blowing things up, but we will grin and bear it until next year...


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## gottatrot

I love the Enchanted Forest!

I agree about the fireworks. Thankfully, my horses are in a country setting and the fireworks didn't bother Hero even when he lived in a busier area.
My dog has always been immune, and the cats barely bothered, but now we live in a retirement HOA where they are illegal. Yay! Otherwise I would worry about my hamster being scared.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> I love the Enchanted Forest!


I do too! It's one of my favorite places to ride here. It's far enough that it's not something I can do all the time, so that makes it even more special. But it is really beautiful; it feels like you've been transported somewhere else.


gottatrot said:


> My dog has always been immune,


Hugh didn't seem to mind the fireworks, but the wildlife must have because he was barking in the direction of the woods until midnight. A lot of deer, and sometimes bear, come out of the woods right at our bedroom window and cross the fields to the woods on the other side, and he is VERY aware of when they're moving through. I feel bad for the wild animals, it must be so bizarre and scary for them.


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## TrainedByMares

Blowing things up IS great excitement, @egrogan ! As long as one does not get blown up in the process. We had some fireworks being shot off some distance away and Nicki always lets me know that I should be a wee bit alarmed. The bad two-leggers are advancing toward our position! 
On thursday, I mowed the perimeter of Nicki's little sacrifice lot with my old two-stroke lawnmower and it was backfiring every minute or so,sounding like a gunshot, obviously in need of service. Nicki was unmoved,grazing like nothing was happening!

I love your rides,the scenery and old structures are beautiful! Thanks for taking pictures!


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## gottatrot

It's very helpful when horses are able to tolerate loud noises without getting too upset. Some of the things I've found quite annoying such as a massive relay run or bike competition going right by the farm where I kept my horses were very useful for helping them learn to accept things.

Amore was always spooky about traffic until her pasture was right next to the road where the log trucks went by every morning. After that I could ride her on the road very safely. 
The 4th is not my favorite holiday because I often have to work (this year too), and often in the ER, and a lot of people fall into the bonfire or injure themselves with fireworks, or drink too much, etc.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> It's very helpful when horses are able to tolerate loud noises without getting too upset.


I agree, and I think their living situation goes a long way. I think I've mentioned before, the first barn I boarded at in NH was through the woods neighbors with a gun/ammunition manufacturer facility, so the horses got used to literal canons booming. Not many noises bothered them! I just wasn't sure what to expect since I know so little about Josie's past. I have to imagine most horses that have lived in rural VT are used to gunshots because of hunting season, but she's also wound much tighter than my other two. Fortunately, it ended up being a non-issue, as we heard no fireworks at all last night. I guess the ski resort must have directed them the opposite way off the mountain, because I know they held the show, but it didn't register over here. Maybe because yesterday was a Monday and people are back to work today, Sunday ended up being the big night? No complaints from me!

We did a short ride to the overlook and back yesterday. I'm becoming a broken record with the same story most days...lots of bugs, roads were hard, rode through the fields when we could. This pic made me laugh, you can get a sense of how hilly it is- no distortion to the photo, just riding at the bottom of a slope!
















As we came up the road back towards the house, we ran into lovely husband heading out to mow.
























I'm getting ready to go out for a longer ride with K and Navy- we might be dodging some rain showers but hopefully it won't be too wet for our ride. Supposed to get steady rain this afternoon, which obviously we need.


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## SueC

Devices which think they can spell better than you and surreptitiously autocorrect can be painful, but I did get a giggle out of your "canons booming" which made me immediately think of expanding high school literature lists. 

That was a bit like the Geography student I had who wrote that groundwater levels were falling around Perth coastal areas because "boars are sucking up the groundwater" - immediately I was in Asterix cartoonland...


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## TrainedByMares

SueC said:


> Devices which think they can spell better than you and surreptitiously autocorrect can be painful, but I did get a giggle out of your "canons booming" which made me immediately think of expanding high school literature lists.
> 
> That was a bit like the Geography student I had who wrote that groundwater levels were falling around Perth coastal areas because "boars are sucking up the groundwater" - immediately I was in Asterix cartoonland...


I loved reading Asterix when I was a kid. Correct spelling is so important to some people. I'm always scanning craigslist ads for saddles, junk pickup trucks to part out etc. and I avoid an ad that is interesting but has poor grammar or spelling. What other mistakes are they making?We will forgive @egrogan though,probably typing too fast out of pure horse excitement.


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## egrogan

Oh embarrassing, I didn’t see that! I often go back and edit my posts after I’ve re-read them, when I realize that a word I didn’t even type has inserted itself somewhere via auto-“correct.” 🙄 Glad this one was worth a laugh. While I do think these horses are quite clever, they have yet to work their way through the classics, so I’m glad you still understood what I meant! 
** * * * * **
We had a fabulous ride with K and Sailor yesterday. We did the long loop past Blind Mare Farm and back through the neighboring town, up the big hill at the overlook. Ended up being 12 miles door to door. Because of the state of the roads, we did mostly walk, so it was a lonnngggg ride.








Sailor's tail gives you a clue about the clouds of flies that followed us. There were times when the horses were pretty miserable, and even trotting ahead didn't get us out of the cloud. But the breeze picked up about halfway through, and we had a light mist of rain, which helped at least a little. It started raining a little earlier than the forecast said, but fortunately it was very light rain until we got home. About 20 minutes after I was untacked and cleaned up, downpours started and continued throughout the day. Perfect timing!
















We did have one scary moment on the ride. We hadn't seen any traffic at all, which was pretty unusual, but as we came around a blind corner on a narrow dirt road, I heard a truck coming towards us pretty fast, and it sounded like it was towing something behind. Suddenly I saw a huge dumptruck flying towards us, and it had an equally huge backhoe on a trailer behind it. We were right in the crook of the curve with trees on our right and the truck close enough on our left I could have touched it. Fizz shied a little, and then as the truck came close actually spun a 180 away from the truck, but in the road. Sailor was behind her and didn't react at all (K and her husband own a big excavating business, so he actually sees this stuff all the time!) and I think him standing still helped me get Fizz stopped. The truck driver stopped as well and said he'd wait for us to pass, so I got turned around and both horses went past the truck with no more issues. It was tight passing, but I am grateful that Fizz calmed down immediately and we were able to ride by without more spooks. Definitely a scary moment! She's never spun away from something on the road like that before, but it was an intense thing for a horse to have coming at them so close.

It rained most of the rest of the day, so we had soggy chores. Is there anything cuter than a fluffy dog in his raincoat?















I know it's silly to put a raincoat on a dog, especially because English Shepherds have a naturally repellent coat that protects their body from rain and snow. But he is allowed to sleep in our bed, and it's just nicer to not have a damp, smelly dog in bed.

Fizz made me laugh when we were out filling water buckets before bed. My vet has asked before if I do "carrot stretches" with her to encourage flexibility through her body. I told the vet that she's pretty much gumby when she wants to be, so while I can do the stretches, I'm not so worried about her flexibility. This is exactly why- she is scratching an itch on the back of her hind leg...pretty flexible I'd say.








With all the rain yesterday, including most of the night, the roads are actually pretty soft right now. Planning to head out later this morning and we'll see where we end up going. But it will be nice to be able to do more than walk!


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## SueC

@egrogan, half the time I am on an iPad I argue with it about spelling because it has a woefully small vocabulary. At least on a proper computer you only have to ignore the red underlining. With this thing it makes up all sorts of fantasies on your behalf that you then have to rein in, as well as type words exceeding two syllables up to four times while exclaiming, "No, I mean it!" until it stops trying to change them to something else. I fight this thing on principle but of course for most people, just going down the path of least resistance would have the cumulative effect of infantilising their language use, which started with Microsoft back in the 90s of course, and with the Murdoch press and their ilk. 

May as well be playing "Poetry For Neanderthals" - you know that game? You have to explain concepts like empathy or thermodynamics in single-syllable words only, to another person who is holding an inflatable cudgel with which they hit you in case you accidentally use a word of more than one syllable. We have that game at home and it gives me the composure needed to operate an iPad. Why do I even bother with this device? Because it was bequeathed to us and it is fabulous for looking at photos, and therefore great for reading other people's journals, or just reading in general. Commenting, however...




TrainedByMares said:


> I loved reading Asterix when I was a kid. Correct spelling is so important to some people. I'm always scanning craigslist ads for saddles, junk pickup trucks to part out etc. and I avoid an ad that is interesting but has poor grammar or spelling. What other mistakes are they making?We will forgive @egrogan though,probably typing too fast out of pure horse excitement.


_Asterix_ is fabulous. Ever read _Groo_ _the_ _Wanderer_? 🤣 But my favourite, only starting last year, is _Sandman_. That is a spiritual experience, and very cerebral and imaginative and beautiful to boot.

Too right about the spelling. One of the reasons my husband passed the dating process early on with me is that he could spell, glory be, and had an amazing vocabulary in direct proportion to the breadth and diversity of the contents of his bookshelves. Also a fantastic speaking voice, and impeccable ethics. Having ascertained these things, I consented to have further ado with him, and we started going hiking together. He had no problems getting up a mountain and did not complain once when we walked 200km in the space of a fortnight when on our first holiday together, in Tasmania, a scenic hiking Mecca. True marriage material. 15 years in we're happier than ever, despite declining eyesight.


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## gottatrot

Here was Amore at 29 with arthritis. She could actually scratch all the way to the top of her ear. She was a gumby like Fizz. Made her a great bucker!!


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## boatagor

gottatrot said:


> Here was Amore at 29 with arthritis. She could actually scratch all the way to the top of her ear. She was a gumby like Fizz. Made her a great bucker!!


My gelding actually scratched his ear like this once while I was riding him! I was absolutely gobsmacked.


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## egrogan

@gottatrot, Fizz is also a hind-leg-on-ear scratcher. The way she can contort herself is impressive!

* * * * * *
Great ride yesterday! Still muggy and buggy, but one major change to the script- the roads were fabulous! Soft, springy, and inviting. We trotted and cantered whenever we felt like it. We went down the road to one of my favorite vistas (pic below).

















After admiring the view, we cut back into the woods to head home, and that's where the bugs were the worst. You can actually see them riding along with us in this picture, but most of the time in the woods, there was a cloud of a dozen or so deer flies all over us.








With this part of the trail system, we had several options for continuing towards home through the woods (what we've mostly been doing lately because of the bad footing on the roads), or cutting it shorter in the woods and heading back to the road- we picked that option because the bugs hadn't been as bad out on the road.








That made our rides a little bit shorter, but we ended up doing a little over 6 miles by the time we got home. Going to head out again solo in a bit- the roads are still good so we'll see where we end up this morning.


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## egrogan

boatagor said:


> My gelding actually scratched his ear like this once while I was riding him! I was absolutely gobsmacked.


This is scary though, as I've actually had a horse get a foot almost tangled in the bridle trying this!


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## PoptartShop

HAHA my mare scratches her ear like that sometimes, I think it's so funny!! I'm like, are you part-dog? LOL.
Looks like you've been getting in some great rides lately! Yayyy! & those deer flies are the worst! So beautiful though, I love the scenery...nice to not see snow in your photos, finally!


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## boatagor

egrogan said:


> This is scary though, as I've actually had a horse get a foot almost tangled in the bridle trying this!


Yeah it's not an experience I ever want to have again! I had no idea what to do other than make sure nothing got caught on the horn. There's been a couple of times he's started contorting himself and I was like no way buddy and made him move lol.


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## Knave

That’s an interesting thought. Queen is a scratchy horse, and I’m always letting her work herself into weird positions while I ride to scratch. It’s funny to me, because Cash was so uncoordinated I never let him scratch on himself while I rode, and I still rarely do. Queen I just feel confident about her staying on her feet no matter the silly thing she tries. I guess I’ve only seen her scratch her nose with her hind though, not her ear while I’ve been on her. I’m sure the thought of getting tangled up would have stuck out to me.


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## egrogan

*Josie Update*
I've continued to make progress with Josie on her feet. This week I have been able to touch and brush from hip to toe, and she's picking up the foot with a simple cluck. Today was farrier day, and while our progress has been good, I still went with the dorm gel for him to trim. I'd never used dorm on any horse before, and wasn't sure how Josie would act with it. I'd read some stories about horses fighting through it and hoped she was the type that would accept it rather than fight against it. Turns out she responded to it just as designed. I gave it to her about an hour before the appointment, and she was thoroughly doped up when he arrived. She was still able to come out of the stall and stand in the barn aisle, and had no issues balancing on three legs while he worked on her feet. She allowed her hind feet to be handled without any threats of kicking. I am so, so thankful we got her trimmed. Her shelly, pancaked out feet already look leaps and bounds better with a basic trim. Farrier said that although her feet looked rough at the surface level, she actually has very nice feet and it won't take too many trims to have her in very good shape. All such a relief. She's still a bit drunk and sleeping it off- I just checked on her a few minutes ago and she's actually snoring in the stall.








I do feel a little weird using a sedative like this, but it kept everyone safe and that was the goal. I actually have a trainer coming out to work with us on handling the hind feet next week. He has a lot of experience working mustangs and feral horses on safe hoof handling, and was recommended by a friend. If he can help me continue to make progress, then I'm hopeful we can have her acting more like a "normal" horse for future trims.

* * * * * *
Another good ride with Fizz yesterday. The roads weren't quite as inviting as they were the day before, but still soft enough that we trotted/cantered in all the spots we weren't going downhill. We did 4.5 miles in under an hour, which is a decent pace for us. We saw sheep! I don't think Fizz has ever seen them before, so I kept both hands on the wheel while passing them. Fizz was on alert but not nearly as worried as with cows- even when the ringleader started baaaing. The grass was so high they really looked like little cotton balls floating on the hillside.

We also successfully rode down the big hill past the overlook. After the last time going that way, I made sure to ride more appropriately down the hill. I kept leg on firmly and the outside rein on her neck to keep her straight and not allow even a slight wobble towards the side of the road. I went back to the strategy of focusing on going from one tree to the next, rather than from the top to the bottom of the hill, and for whatever reason that definitely works better for us in this spot.








The scary roundbales are still out in the field where they were cut, but now they're all gathered up into one spot instead of dotted across the pasture. That was apparently less scary than seeing them all across the field 😉








I think Fizz will probably have today off from riding. Tomorrow M and I are hacking over the GMHA for a pleasure ride weekend, and meeting up with a new neighbor to ride Sunday morning. Forecast is looking good, and it should be a fun weekend!


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## PoptartShop

That is wonderful news about Josie's feet!!!  YAY!! I absolutely see nothing wrong with using the gel for something like that. 
For things like that, it can be useful, & I'm sure after a bit you won't need it with her! 
I'm glad she got all trimmed up & her feet will start to improve in no time. That is good news! 

Looks like a nice ride, & I'm glad Fizz wasn't worried about the sheep too much!  But the roundbales...those are still considered monsters!! LOL.
That sounds like a fun-filled weekend, enjoy it!!


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## egrogan

Sharing a few "after" pictures of Josie's fit. I'll admit I was being a little superstitious and didn't take "before" pictures because I didn't want to be too presumptuous that we'd get her trimmed successfully. 

Yes, I know these are not a study in perfect feet, and I do have a plan with my farrier for successive trims this summer to go in the direction we'd like. What I found fascinating is how awful the outer surface looked, and how it's sort of a different story where there was just some light rasping. And yes, she does have some rings and ridges, but given what she's been through in the medium to recent past- including no consistent food supply for a lot of the winter- I'm not going to panic too much. It was too hard to take pictures of the undersides on my own, but farrier so no signs of any old abscesses or other traumatic events, so that was also encouraging. Her soles are a little flat, but hopefully we will improve that over time.
















Her right front ankle has been puffy since she's been here, but it hasn't changed in size at all and doesn't seem painful, so we're keeping an eye on it. Haven't done any x-rays or diagnostics at this time to know what's going on, but that may be something we do in the future.








She seems more comfortable already with her "new feet"- markedly less tripping with all the length that came off her toes. I can't wait to look back at these pictures in a few months as more of the yucky old stuff grows out.








Most importantly, these three are really getting along well. 😉








Heading off with Fizz to meet M and Coalie later this afternoon. The weather is glorious!


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## SueC

Great news about the trim going so well. Drunk horses are funny! You're kind of lucky - to be able to get that stuff over the counter. Here any or all sedation with pharmaceuticals is veterinary only and overpriced. No choice for us. I'll have to enquire at the stockfeeds whether anything is changed. They could always sell herbal stuff like valerian but it's not the same. We could certainly use some for the upcoming manual tooth floating, for Julian - has a big neck on him. Chasseur is like an oversized Golden Retriever. But then they each had many years being manually floated without sedation.

I shall enjoy about the current cold here the absence of biting flies. Wishing you a flock of hungry birds to help out. Something like that actually happened for a neighbour - had some sort of insect plague on their fields and were scratching their heads, then several hundred egrets came by for a morning and ate most of them...


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## egrogan

SueC said:


> You're kind of lucky - to be able to get that stuff over the counter. Here any or all sedation with pharmaceuticals is veterinary only and overpriced.


This stuff is also prescription only, but labeled for owner administration once obtained from the vet. It definitely was useful for us in this scenario!


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## gottatrot

egrogan said:


> This stuff is also prescription only, but labeled for owner administration once obtained from the vet. It definitely was useful for us in this scenario!


That's how it is here too...we can get Dorm gel from the vet for certain things if the vet agrees. Mine gave me some when Halla had her needle phobia, so I could medicate her before the vet arrived. Meanwhile I worked on getting her over the phobia.


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## egrogan

We had a wonderful weekend! The weather cooperated amazingly well, even the bugs were bearable. Saturday afternoon, we met M and Coalie to ride over to GMHA. 

Right away, we had probably quadruple the amount of traffic we typically see on the dirt road we take for about half the trip there. It became almost comical- a couple of times, there were actually cars coming at us in both directions, and there's really no shoulder to speak of so we all just had to work it out. I can't think of when that's ever happened before! The horses were, as usual, unphased by it. At one point we had a big truck pulling a catering trailer behind it rattling towards us, and I wondered if Fizz would have any worries left over from when we almost got smooshed by the dump truck last week. But she didn't even blink- she was more interested in eating the ferns on the side of the road. 








Eventually this unusually busy road narrows into more of a Jeep track, but the cars kept passing us! Finally, we saw the reason- someone with a cabin at the very end of the road, before it turns into a proper trail, was having a graduation party, and their place was swarming with teenagers. I'm used to little kids oohing and aahing over the horses, but I have to admit it was kind of funny to hear a bunch of (drunk?) teenagers get as excited as little kids. After we passed the party house, things went back to normal for us.








Now that Fizz is in shape, her walk has clicked into a new gear of forward. Unfortunately that means Coalie trails farther behind now unless we're trotting. So I try to be strategic and find spots where Fizz can at least graze around if we have to stop and wait. I know she's powerwalking, but I still wish Coalie could step up to do more than dawdle along. I've stopped trying to slow her walk down though, so it just means that we get out ahead and then wait for them to catch up. 








Despite the pokey pace, 10 miles went by fairly quickly and we were at our destination. The whole facility was open to members all weekend, so we weren't sure if we'd see people out jumping on the cross country course as we came across the jump field. I guess we were there late enough in the day that we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves.








The horses drank well and were more than ready for dinner when we got to the stalls. I took Fizz out to graze for a bit before tucking her in for the night. There was a twilight pleasure ride going out around 6pm, so I got to chat with a few friends who were getting ready to ride. I had been contemplating saddling back up after she had her dinner and doing the pleasure ride, but I decided that Fizz had done enough with the ride over so we didn't go out again. We were planning on riding one of the loops in the morning.


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## egrogan

When I got there Sunday morning, I was thrilled to find Fizz covered in shavings. I don’t think she’s ever laid down to sleep in the stall while she’s been there overnight. I am so happy to see her more comfortable with being in a stall while she’s there.

We planned to ride with M and a new horse rider combo: C and her Arab gelding JJ. C has recently bought a small farm in our general neighborhood, so we’re excited to have a new riding buddy! JJ is a former FEI level endurance horse who is now in his late teens, and she does the 25 mile CTR/LD rides with him. This would be our first time riding together. GMHA has 7 different "members trails" of varying distances, all well maintained and marked, and we had our pick of which loop we wanted. We decided on a 12 mile loop, but planned to take a connector that would make it a little shorter. Parts of the member loops are used for the various competitive rides, but I had never been on this trail at all. I was excited to try something new!

Fizz and JJ were on their toes leaving GMHA- not doing anything particularly alarming, just a little prancy. This got M upset and she kept asking us to slow down. We were all walking, if animatedly, so there really wasn't a lot of slowing down to be done. C handled it diplomatically and just calmly said not to worry about JJ, he was always eager the first mile or so. I just let Fizz walk out in front so I could focus on her and not have to worry about other horses. Since M was still seeming upset, I offered to get off and walk Fizz, because I was not going to haul on her face and ask her to tip toe along, but she seemed to get things sorted out with Coalie well enough that we all made it across the first open field and turned into the woods with a good climb.








At this point, we were about a mile in, so we let the horses trot a bit, and that helped everyone settle into a calmer rhythm. C needed to get off to retighten her girth, as her saddle had slipped a little on that first climb. I felt bad asking poor Fizz to stop and stand so soon, but thankfully she handled it fine. C got back on, and we kept winding our way through really beautiful woods trail. I hadn't seen it, but M said Coalie bucked a little on the first trot, so she asked if we could just walk. She seemed overly worried about what Fizz and JJ were doing and if they were going to bolt off (they were nowhere near bolting off...they were just...walking). I am not the kind of person who gets snippy, but I have to admit that all this worrying was starting to stress me out, and I blurted out- "don't worry about the other horses, we'll take care of them and you just worry about riding Coalie how he needs to be ridden." I didn't mean to be nasty, but the constant stream of directives was getting to me! Still, I don't like when people ride faster than I am comfortable riding, so I wasn't going to take off at the front of the line. I was a little disappointed to not take advantage of such nice footing, but we held it to a (spirited) walk. Fizz was very strong when the trail turned downhill for the first time, and it took some work to stop her from rushing down the hill and think about where her feet were going. The trail was absolutely beautiful though!








M was thinking about turning to go in a different direction so she could ride at a different pace, but the downhill trail put us out at a road and she was able to relax a bit and decided to stay with us. None of the horses seemed to care what order they went in, and at times walked together and other times spread out a bit. It's nice that all of us mostly ride alone, so none of the horses get particularly concerned about what other horses are doing. I've become more and more convinced that being able to ride alone and not care about other horses is maybe the number one trait of a good trail horse.








These roads were softer than the roads over by my house, so we did trot a bit, but in shorter stretches than Fizz and I probably would have done on our own. Also, a lot of times when the others were trotting, she was still outwalking them, so we did a lot of walking 😉

After about 5 miles, we came to a beautiful old stone water trough. It wasn't a very hot day, but the horses were thrilled to find the water, and they all dove in.








We decided to take a human pitstop too, and pulled off into the bushes to take care of business while the horses grazed a little waiting for us. Getting back on after our break:








Shortly after, we were back to climbing, this time along the edge of a hayfield with a beautiful vista.















Most of the rest of the loop was on trail, but we did come back to the road for a stretch. There are some really over the top properties back in this part of town, and this highly manicured stretch gave us a lot to look at. Their perfectly constructed and maintained stone wall was dotted with modern art sculptures along the road. We joked that we could probably make a lot of money taking tourists out on guided horseback art tours  I guess when you have as much money as these folks do, you have to do _something _with it!








Before I knew it, we were winding our way down the GMHA trails back to the main ring. There was a big jump course set up in the main ring, but no one was out riding. We did follow a couple of people driving a marathon carriage, but the horses were happy to be back "home" and didn't pay any attention to the drivers.








We ended up doing about 8.5 miles. Fizz wasn't even breathing hard, which got me rethinking what rides we might do the rest of this season. C, who has lots of experience with the LD rides, told me later that if we had been trotting on most of the uphills where we walked- which is what I would have done if I was alone- that was basically how she would ride an LD. She goes at a slow pace, but she finishes and takes care of JJ. She told me I should absolutely consider doing a 25 later this year, and she'd be happy to ride with us. I'm thinking a little more seriously about doing it, either in August or September. We'll see if Fizz's condition continues to improve between now and then. It will also depend a little on whether we get enough rain to soften the roads up- I don't want to do a lot of trotting on the very hard roads if things continue to be really dry. But there is plenty of time to decide 😉

We grazed the horses around a little when we got back, and then got things cleaned up and packed up to head home around lunchtime. Fizz loaded up in the trailer like a pro, which was great because we haven't done much of anything with it since the last ride at GMHA. Unfortunately when we got home, she was trembling and dripping sweat again, which honestly makes me feel terrible. Still, she was perfectly polite unloading. When I turned her back out, she took a long drink and then headed right to their favorite dust pit for rolling. And then she immediately went to a hay net and started snacking, so I guess she wasn't _too _distressed. Hopefully more practice will continue to make it easier on her.


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## carshon

I feel bad for "M" but you were right to tell her to keep track of Coalie. I struggled for years with a gelding that lolly gagged and then got naughty when he was left behind. I wish back then I had asked him to step it up instead of always asking my riding partners to slow down. I ride a forward horse now and can relate to the stopping and waiting and how frustrating for horse and rider it can be. I hope Sailor is a bit more forward so the rides are a tad more pleaseant. I love to see your posts and dream of some of the trails you have so close to home!


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## PoptartShop

What a beautiful trail!!  I agree completely, when you ride alone, it's really beneficial for the horse. 
I always ride my mare alone (unfortunately, not many people to ride with) but it always helps when I DO go out with someone, that my horse doesn't care who's in the front or back etc. 
You handled that perfectly with M & Coalie - she needed to take a deep breath & focus on him, not the others. I would've been a little frustrated too, hearing that every 5 seconds LOL. Like how much slower can we go?! Fizz would've been so confuzzled haha.


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Hopefully more practice will continue to make it easier on her.


It will!


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## Knave

I love how well the rides went and how beautiful it all is! I was thinking about M. I hate being pulled in two directions, let alone have any grasp of what I actually would want. You had one fast and one slow, and you were slow the whole prior day for her, and I can imagine the anxiety that was pulling on you. I have been in that situation many times. I hate it!

I don’t think you were wrong to tell her to ride her own ride. I think she probably has no idea how she always seems to dictate the rides. I think she’s probably always a little scared, and maybe she doesn’t see the big picture because she is trying to manage through that layer of fear. Fear is so limiting.

I’ve been her before too. Not in the way of dictating how things go, but in the way of being on a hot colt, trying to have things go slow, and something happens at work and husband or dad just go flying to fix it. It is hard in both positions. Yet, I know I’m responsible for my own ride. I may not like the moment, but I understand it is not spiteful. The job has to get done, is time sensitive (lol), and I have to get the colt broke, and they cannot baby me along. There is not a lot of empathy here. If you cannot ride the horse you are riding you shouldn’t own him. Complaining would end in the complainer crying in shame.

Yet, I personally have a lot of empathy for someone who is scared. I will leave them when I have to, because it is the job, and it pulls me both directions. It makes me a ball of anxiety. The problem, as I see it with M, if it were me riding with her, is that she is completely unaware of how it makes you feel. That drives me crazy. I always think if someone was completely honest about how they feel, and if they also were grateful for the help and understanding of the position they put me in, that I would feel good about it.

After many years, husband and I have that relationship. With Queen I was open about my limits, and he tried to help me, and I also got left behind in wrecks to deal with the chaos myself. I felt so grateful for his help, and he was so kind and caring, but also able to put me in bad situations because it’s what needed done. I loved that. He reminds me it will be him on Oakley in a couple years.

I don’t feel M has improved at all over your journal. I have someone like that in my life too. It’s so frustrating to me. I wonder though, if M was feeling like she did at the race. Does she ever ride with anyone but you? I’m so glad you ride with other people on occasion now.


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## egrogan

@carshon, @PoptartShop , and @Knave - thank you all for your reactions to my frustrations about the ride. M has been a good and consistent friend to me as I've gotten more comfortable and confident with Fizz. I really don't think I would have gotten through a lot of the rides we've done over the past couple of years without her. She's been patient with me when I needed it and helped me through situations that I couldn't handle in the past. So I want to figure out a way we can keep riding together happily. 

@Knave, I think you're right that I just need to be more direct that I'm not having fun having to constantly slow Fizz down. Maybe that means we just need to pick routes together where we can do a lot of trotting, because the horses do match pretty well on those kind of rides. And it probably means that I start to do the competitive rides on my own or with other riders that have more forward horses. I don't think that would offend her. She sees that Fizz is ready to step up while she doesn't want to with Coalie. I've ridden with a few new people this year with more forward thinking horses that I could ride with if I want to.

Believe me, I have endless empathy for people who are scared, because I'm very much oriented that way. But the funny thing is she seems a whole lot braver and more confident as a rider than me, so I find it confusing when she gets stressy like this on a ride. Coalie has actually improved tremendously since we started riding together- yesterday we rode through a boarding farm where there were horses turned out in paddocks up close to the trail we were on, and he didn't react at all. Last year he would have spazzed out into an all out bucking and leaping fit. She has always been able to handle him when he's making a scene like that, which makes her seem pretty darn brave and confident to me. So I'm not sure why walking fast on the trail is what bothers her. I guess I need to just ask her 😉 Like me, she mostly rides by herself when we're not together, or occasionally with older people who are very scared of their horses and need someone to sort of coach them through it. So I think she understandably is just used to setting the direction for the ride, and is most comfortable that way. It's easy to get set in your ways, I'm guilty of that too (hence not seeing a problem with a horse with a big walk 😉 ).

It really does come down to the idea of "ride your own ride." Of course we've all had a scenario riding with other people where we've asked to go a different speed, or stop to adjust something, or take a particular approach past a scary object. But when it becomes a constant need to complete the whole ride in a specific way to accomodate one person's preferences, that's when it starts to get a little hard to keep doing.


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## knightrider

I have someone that I ride with--I used to ride with her a lot, but her constant orders have made me back way off. She is the faster one and usually leads the ride. It's the "stay away from his hind end. He needs his bubble of space." and then "Can't you ride closer? I can't hear you." and then "You just cut me off! Can't you control your horse?" and then "My horse needs to eat a little here." and then, "Can't you go faster? I want to trot here." and then "I don't want to canter." and then . . . and then . . . and then . . . 

She knows that her bossiness is annoying, and she apologizes and even gets teary-eyed and upset with herself because she knows she annoys people and wants to stop. I want to forgive her because she is extremely generous and thoughtful, plus her horse leads the rides beautifully. It's really hard to deal with, for sure, when someone is actually a friend, but can be a VERY ANNOYING FRIEND at times.


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## Knave

@knightrider I am the one who will ask someone to not ride up on Queen’s tail! Lol. She’s getting better now, but she was a kicker. Now, if someone left me a horse length I had it covered, but if they were to get right up on her I knew they would be kicked. I imagine her kicking the rider accidentally rather than the horse… so it stressed me out.

This seemed to drive a person I ride with crazy. She would ride up on her when I asked her not to, and I always managed to control it, while I asked her to step beside the mare instead of getting right behind her. It didn’t seem like a hard request to me. “This mare will kick you. Please don’t get right behind her. I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop her.”

Queen ended up mad about it. She would see that horse and try to lunge at him, which made me deal with it constantly. She hated him. I kept trying to warn his rider, and she kept acting like I was talking out of my tail. It seemed she would do it purposefully, like trying to prove me wrong. What she didn’t see was how much work I was doing to keep her from being kicked. Or she would say “she needs to learn to have someone behind her.” I would fume internally. “Yes, but she’s not even two yet. She’ll get broke. I’m just not sure I can catch it in time.”

My husband got so annoyed watching. He told me to let the mare kick her. That I didn’t do, because I never would intentionally get someone hurt. One day Queen turned around and went after that horse, and I got her stopped, but I think she realized I wasn’t full of it. It’s odd, because there was no reason ever to be behind the mare in the first place. It was like I wasn’t allowed to make a single request.

Today it’s irrelevant. She did get past that worrying about a horse behind her. I knew she would. I wouldn’t put it past her to lose her temper at someone, but it’s not a forefront consideration for me anymore.


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## egrogan

Grrr...intentionally provoking another horse and/or actively undoing training a person is putting on a young or inexperienced horse just seems inexcusable! That would be so frustrating. It's one thing to go over ground rules when riding with someone for the first time...we did that before we left with JJ, who was new to us. Things like, "How does he do with horses close to him? Does he prefer a specific spot in a group? How often do we stop and let them graze?" and in the course of that conversation, his rider was very direct that because of a previous hock injury, she doesn't want to trot him down a steep hill. All fine when we discussed and agreed on these things ahead of time. But I can't imagine if she had told us that about steep hills, and then suddenly when I was in the lead I took off fast while turning back to her and saying, "he looks fine to me, just make him trot to keep up with us."  

But to @knightrider's point, having new rules and directions constantly streaming your way mid-ride gets a bit irritating.


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## Knave

That’s exactly what it feels like! I am not one to give out any direction to a day. I will deal with what I have under me and try and get a job done however I am told. Sometimes I disagree, but I keep it to myself. It is the only directive I ever remember giving!


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## bsms

Maybe hoof boots to allow more places to trot? Trooper is a lagging horse. Walks slow but trots fast - which is something he learned herding sheep, I think. Bandit likes to cover ground and if my youngest was riding Trooper, following us would work as "_Walk 100 yards, trot 30 yards, repeat, repeat, ad nauseum._" On the rare times The Wife rides, it's "_Okay, Bandit, stop and find SOMETHING to eat for a minute.._."


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## egrogan

@bsms, that does sound like our rides! Coalie has hoof boots all around. He is just a meanderer at heart I think!


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## carshon

I like the meanderer at heart comment. To be honest I think I have a riding friend like "M" my friend comes off as a confident rider and is a good rider actually. 3 years ago she purchased a gaited gelding so she could ride with me and another friend. Her gelding is a gem but the more forward gait of a gaited horse seems to just suck her confidence away- making her gelding more anxious and forward. She has ridden this horse for 3 years now and is the one saying lets not do that or just struggling to the point that we don't often gait with her because it makes her anxious. I think some people just prefer the slower rides and lose confidence with speed.


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## SueC

@egrogan, I can't stand riding with plodders and my blood pressure went up just reading your post - gorgeous trails, snail's pace, aargh! 👺 It sounds like I could have ridden Julian with your group already even though he's only had six rides and mostly walking. Anything hairy, I would just have gotten off and walked him for a while, but we're both fast walkers and wouldn't have slowed down anybody that way. I did two group trail rides with Sunsmart half a year after starting him under saddle and going solo everywhere. It was as you describe - after that I met a person who actually rode all gaits about equally and we were riding buddies until Brett and I moved to Redmond.

Sounds like talking about this with your riding buddy is the way to go, so some kind of compromise can be found. I find it easier to have this kind of conversation with a horse than a rider though. 

@Knave, that woman who doesn't seem to give an airborne intercourse about what you have requested I would be telling off, same as when a horse steps on my feet - more if anything, since horses don't generally do it on purpose. Hey! _Excuse me_! 👿 And I'll bark it if necessary and be in a person's face about it until they get out of mine. It's rude and inconsiderate and dangerous to be tailgating a green horse and she has no excuse - it needs to stop, and it needs to stop yesterday. At best it's thoughtless and bad manners, at worst it's vindictive - though they do say to never to ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity...


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## egrogan

The Vermont 100 endurance ride/ultramarathon is this weekend, and people are starting to get ready for the influx of the runners/riders/crew. Trail markers went up in my neighborhood yesterday. Hugh was majorly offended by this one that appeared in our front yard, barking at it like it was an intruder 🐶 He made peace with it after I balanced a small piece of bacon on it...








Fizz and I did 7 miles this morning. Here's a little bit of the on-road "trail" that will be used for the ride.
















Poor Fizz was very disappointed to find that although water troughs are out, they are empty. She knows what troughs mean when we find them on trail, and she pretty much climbed into this one looking for a drink.








Our ride started off fairly lackluster. It was really muggy and the flies were swarming. She didn't really want to trot on the hard road, and then had to deal with the disappointment of no water. But fortunately when we turned into the woods after a couple of miles on the road, she really perked up. The first part of this woods trail is fairly flat with great footing, so we were able to move out on some good trot/canter stretches before climbing up a rockier section.
















There is a little bit of water on this trail- though it's only a trickle right now. This was up over her feet earlier this spring. We're at the point where we really need some rain!








Uggh, you can actually see how miserable the swarming bugs are- look how many are just parked along her head and neck 








This trail runs up on a ridge parallel to the road, and usually when it spits us out back at the road, we take a right and head home. But she had been so much happier in the woods, I decided to let her graze on the nice grass at the trailhead for a minute, and turn right back around to retrace our steps through the woods and spend less time on the road. I think it was a good decision, she was much more willing to trot along on the nicer footing, which makes sense.








So our ride ended up a lot better than it started. But both of us were happy to get out of the bugs when we got home.


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## PoptartShop

Such a lovely ride, you two!  Awww! LOL, Hugh is like...what are these????? He has gotten so big!
Ugh about the bugs though, that's really the only thing I can't stand about this season, the bugs & crazy humidity. They go hand in hand. 
That fly hood really is wonderful for her...still need to get my mare one.  

LOL at the empty trough, she was probably like 'really...this is a scam'. 🤣🤣🤣


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> The Vermont 100 endurance ride/ultramarathon is this weekend, and people are starting to get ready for the influx of the runners/riders/crew. Trail markers went up in my neighborhood yesterday. Hugh was majorly offended by this one that appeared in our front yard, barking at it like it was an intruder 🐶 *He made peace with it after I balanced a small piece of bacon on it...*
> View attachment 1132156


🤣

Similar techniques sometimes work for spouses too.


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## SueC

To elaborate - yesterday my husband vacuumed the inside of the car - a terrible job that long needed doing. I then made this for afternoon tea.

After that, he volunteered to pick up a load of cow and horse manure from the utility area and shovel it onto the compost. So - useful activity followed by a nice reward which is also great fuel, classical conditioning there.  I do it for myself too, of course - do some terrible job and then reward myself with something nice. And because it's good fuel, and you're full of happy-chemicals afterwards, you're ready to do the next thing.

Cooking note especially for @egrogan: The above are wholemeal rye waffles with a boysenberry sauce - we grow and freeze boysenberries, youngberries, mulberries. I don't want to make jam because the idea of having equal weights of fruit and sugar we both find appalling (poor pancreas etc) and it defeats the health benefits of eating fruit, so instead, we freeze the berries and when needed, make an easy berry sauce by juicing an orange, grating its zest and heating up a batch of defrosted berries in that - add a couple of _teaspoons_ of sugar to taste (there's none in the waffles) because berries are very tart, and thicken with a little cornflour stirred into a splash of brandy. For the above picture we also had fresh peaches so in the sauce they went. Anyway, this is how we get a taste of summer in the middle of winter. 

Any extra sauce stores in a glass jar in the fridge and makes excellent toast topping etc. Use within 3-4 days but it's always eaten before that...


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## egrogan

@SueC , I would happily shovel compost if you made me that for breakfast!


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## egrogan

Lots of catching up to do! I had a busy, horsey weekend, which included taking Friday off for extra horse time!

*Josie*
Friday morning, I had a trainer come out to work with Josie and I on handling her hind feet. I'd felt like we made good progress with touching her hind legs, but I was unsure of how to progress to picking them up, where she was still being iffy on kicking. A friend recommended a trainer who was experienced with mustangs and feral horses, and I liked how he described how he'd work with us when we talked, so I figured we'd give it a try. After he got here and went through some basic getting to know each other with Josie, we got started. His philosophy is along the lines of Monty Roberts, and while I don't particularly follow any specific "celebrity trainer," the approach made sense to me: if she tried to dance away from the request to handle her feet, or kicked out, she'd be asked to move back. When she accepted the touch and worked with us to lift her foot quietly, she'd get lots of praise and rubs on the forehead, and a moment to relax. He came with a "handle" - a PVC pipe "arm" that looked like a hockey stick, that we started with to get her used to pressure pulling up around her fetlock to ask for the leg to come up off the ground. She was extremely sensitive to the pressure and at first, somewhat predictably, went sideways trying to get away from it. When that didn't work, she did kick out a few times. But we just kept at it quietly, and pretty soon, she was picking up the foot with the "arm." So then we went on to asking for it handling her directly. It was like starting over adding in the idea that an actual human touch was going to ask for this, so we went through the same sequence as with the "arm." She did kick out at me once, but I was in an ok position so didn't get nailed, but it's humbling to see that there's no quick fix and it's going to be practice, practice, practice.

I liked the trainer's demeanor and his way of analyzing the situation, so I'd say it was a positive experience, though the steps weren't rocket science. Mostly it was beneficial to have a second person to help handle her through all the repetition. My conundrum is that I don't generally have a second person to help me. I can recruit lovely husband occasionally, but ideally my homework is doing this practice for 15 minutes twice or three times a day for the next couple of weeks, and I can't have his help for all of that, so I'm feeling a bit stuck. If I tie her up, then I can't do the kind of correction by moving her back that seemed effective in our sessions. But if I don't tie her up, then I still can't really react with the correction while I'm trying to handle the "arm," or bent down handling her feet directly. The trainer unfortunately is 2 hours away, so we both agreed it wasn't super practical for him to spend 4 hours driving for a 1 hour training session. So I feel a bit stuck. But I'm sure I'll work my way through it- at least I understand what the steps are and what kind of response I'm going for.

*Vermont 100 weekend!*
Friday afternoon, I was off for the Vermont 100 pre-ride vetting. I was volunteering all weekend as a vet scribe, with a young vet from central NY I hadn't met before. There aren't all that many young horse vets around, so that in itself was exciting. I had a great time hanging out with and chauffeuring her around all weekend- turns out we have a lot of people and places we've lived in common, including her sister having just gotten one of Hugh's siblings from this year's litter! What a small world 😄

Vetting in was easy and efficient. Unfortunately, the ride was much smaller this year than previous year, with only 40 horses across 4 distances (25, 50, 75, 100)- as compared to closer to 80 in a more typical year. The general consensus is that gas prices have been very hard on rides around the Northeast all season, which is understandable. Though there is still some concern that we've lost a lot of people from rides like this that won't come back in the future. I guess only time will tell.

























I headed home around dinner time, did chores and ate quickly, and then tucked myself into bed early. I had to be up at 5am to meet my vet at the first hold, which was about 45 minutes from my house.

When I got to the hold, there were a couple of vets and scribes, and a flock of turkeys, but no sign of any crews yet. The "hold captain" had brought us coffee and donuts, so we groggily woke up chit chatting about the day. One of the most special things about the VT100 is that not only is it a 100 mile ride, it's also a 100 mile ultramarathon, so there are runners and their crews everywhere (approximately 400 runners). The first hold was next to a crew stop for the runners, and there was some confusion about where the runner crews were supposed to go, so I quickly volunteered to go out to the road and do traffic control- I needed to do something besides sit on the tailgate of the truck if I was going to wake up! The runners' crews started streaming up the road well before the horse crews, so I chatted with people and got them pointed in the right direction- being one of the first stops of the day, everyone was excited and in good spirits. The funniest scene was a guy in a sleek black party van who pulled up in a tux! He rolled down his window and asked me if he was in the right spot for the wedding  Oops! He was definitely not, though I told him if he wanted to ditch the wedding and go out on trail running, he'd be the most dapper man around. Fortunately there was actually cell service at this hold (not the case for much of the day), so I was able to map him to the road he was trying to get to, and sent him on his way. After countless runner crews in their little sporty Subarus and SUVs, it was clear when the horse crews came rumbling up the road in their flatbed dualies. Time for me to give up my traffic duties and head back to the field to meet the vet for scribing as the first riders came in.








These two stayed in the lead all day, and ended up the co-winners of the 100. Unfortunately we did have one pull at this hold, which was ~22 miles in to the course. A woman from down south, who doesn't ride hills like these often, was pulled after her gelding was clearly lame trotting out. He had a big uncomfortable knot on his groin, and just wasn't comfortable even after her crew went to work on it trying to massage it out. After his trailer ride back to camp, and a little more bodywork, he was much happier and sound again later in the day, so no ill effects. Just a bummer to see someone pulled so early in the day after making the trip up here. Only the 100 mile riders came through this hold, and there were only 11 of them. They came in three clumps of riders, so it didn't take us all that long to get them through and then head off for hold 2, which came at around 45 miles.

Hold 2 is at a Vermont postcard setting- a classic old Morgan breeding farm. We got there _wayyyyyy _before any riders came, but there was lunch waiting for us (there isn't much that tastes better than cold watermelon on a hot summer day!) and the runners were going past us all afternoon so we entertained ourselves cheering for them and trading stories of crazy things we'd seen runners do in previous years. After a couple of hours (seemed like an eternity 😉 ), crews pulled in, and riders weren't all that far behind.
















There was a little bit of consternation, because we were expecting riders on the 75 mile course to show up here as well (there were only 2 riders at that distance), but they never came. With cell service as spotty as it is, it took a while for the message to be relayed to the ride manager and vets that there was a major trail marking issue and the 75s had completely missed a huge section of trail, ending up on the 50 mile course and bypassing this hold, showing up at the next hold hours early. This was one of the only tense moments of the day, and I kept my nose out of it, but after a lot of discussion the decision was made to give these riders credit for a 50 mile ride. I'm not sure anyone felt very happy about what happened or that decision, but that was the decision.

After we got all the 100s through this hold, my vet and I headed back to ride camp, where she was on duty for a 15 min stop and go for the 50 milers. They had only been on course for a dozen miles or so, and were mostly perky and doing well when we saw them.








After the last rider, who was lagging pretty far behind the main group on a spooky young horse, got back out on trail successfully, we had an hour break before we needed to be at hold 4. I can't lie, I was a little bit bummed because the only hold I _didn't _get to go to was hold 3, the one held at my neighbor's house. Sentimentally, I would have liked to have been part of that one. Maybe next year.

At hold 4, we got to see both the 50s and the 100s, but we still had a decently long wait before anyone got there. There was a huge buffet dinner spread for the vets and volunteers at this hold, and I couldn't resist some pretty delicious pizza. I was happy to see that Maggie's "mom" was there volunteering as a timer, so we had a great time catching up. She and I had been texting recently because her youngest mare, who's now 6, has the same grandsire as Fizz, and was also unlucky enough to inherent PSSM1 from one of his sons 😢 But like Fizz, she's been asymptomatic and is going nicely under saddle out on trail. We have the same vet, so we've been brainstorming together about what to do with them. I just feel badly for her, because she bought this mare as a yearling with plans to breed her at some point in the future, and obviously she's not going to do that now. Still, she'll enjoy riding her, and probably look for another breeding mare at some point. It's just tough luck- she had wanted a foal out of Maggie, and Maggie never caught for her, and then wanted a foal out of her nice current mare. I hope it all eventually works out.








Unfortunately there was 1 lameness pull from the hold, and one horse that wasn't great metabolically but allowed to keep going who ended up stopping and needing a trailer ride back between hold 4 and 5. Both horses were ultimately fine, but I hated seeing anyone not able to keep going after how far they'd come.

At hold 5, the last one where there was still some daylight for the early arrivals, we had many more vets than we needed for the trickle of horses coming through (this hold also had 50s and 100s), so when one of the first riders in discovered her crew bag was missing, I helped her out with her horse since she didn't have any crew meeting her there. Another one of the volunteers was able to round up some hay, grain, and elytes from other crews to share with the rider who had none of her supplies. I got her sweet horse Echo eating while she took a pitstop and raided the volunteer snack table for bottles of water to fill her Camelback and apples and carrots to share with Echo.








He vetted through fine, and she was in reasonably good spirits despite the disappointment of not having everything she counted on for herself and the horse. Fortunately she was carrying a lot of important supplies, like her own elytes, headlamp and glosticks, in her saddlebags, so when she left, she wasn't too disdvantaged by not getting her bag. In fact- they went on to be co-winners of the 50! Here they were at the final vet check after coming through the finish line around 11:30ish:








The first 100s came in at some point around midnight, and there were a few more 50s. But we had 5 vets and scribes, plus several other volunteers there, and everyone was entering the tired and delirious phase. So the head vet started sending people home, including my vet who had over an hour drive to get home. When we left, there were still 2 50s who had to finish (they did!), and most of the 100s left. I heard the next day that the final 3 100s didn't complete until 4:30am- I can't say I minded leaving before that 😉

All in all, I love being part of this ride. I enjoy seeing how much people love riding these beautiful trails, and how much help and support there is in the endurance community. I hope next year we have a bigger ride, but it's always special!


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## egrogan

As for Fizz and I...

Feeling enthusiastic and optimistic about the future, yesterday I officially signed us up for back-to-back 15 mile intro CTRs the weekend of August 6/7. It might be overly ambitious, but at least it's on the calendar. I'm sure we'll be fine for the 15 miles on Saturday, and we'll play Sunday by ear.

Today was the first time I've been in the saddle since Thursday- Friday and Saturday I was volunteering, Sunday I was sleeping, and yesterday we got much needed, soft and steady rain all day...so no riding. The roads were soft and inviting today after that good rain, but our ride started off a little bit oddly. Fizz had a really nasty bug bite under her chin, which she had rubbed completely raw, to the point that it was bloody and weeping. I got it cleaned up, but didn't want to use her regular bridle or the Horse Hoodie, as both would have sat right on top of the raw spot and irritated her the whole way. I had a bit I'd bought in the spring but never tried, so I figured I'd give it a try today and see what she thought.








She didn't seem to like it much at first, playing with it in her mouth and somewhat sucked back and not thrilled to start with. No surprise, she was fussy about all the flies, and when she tried to brush some off by rubbing under some low lying tree branches, her ear bonnet got pulled off and I needed to jump off to get it and put it back on. We just weren't seeming to find a good rhythm. Her trot was uncomfortable and choppy, so I used a straight, flatter stretch to do a bunch of trot/walk transitions and try to get her stretching out and balancing. It probably took about 3 miles before she felt comfortable. But once we worked through that, the rest of the ride was great!








Cows safely on the hill (look at the gap in the trees, between her ears) so our nice rhythm didn't get interrupted.








I was happy to find that this is the first training ride where we've done considerably more trotting than walking. That felt great, even though the ride wasn't going that way to begin with.


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## QueenofFrance08

So jealous that you got to volunteer for the ride! It's on my list for someday! Someday when I have a 100 mile horse that is!

You guys are more than ready for the back to back 15 mile rides!


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## egrogan

I really hope you'll be able to get here for this ride in the not-so-distant future @QueenofFrance08 ! I would love to be able to crew for you and your husband


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## QueenofFrance08

@egrogan probably more like he would be helping you crew for me and @phantomhorse13 ! With the amount of complaining I had to endure on his first 50 I think I would haul his behind out of the saddle and ditch him 10 miles in during a 100! I think he'd be much happier crewing as well and lending his pony to someone else!


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## phantomhorse13

QueenofFrance08 said:


> @egrogan probably more like he would be helping you crew for me and @phantomhorse13 ! With the amount of complaining I had to endure on his first 50 I think I would haul his behind out of the saddle and ditch him 10 miles in during a 100! I think he'd be much happier crewing as well and lending his pony to someone else!


yes please!!


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## egrogan

Tried to do a bit of a faster ride today, so ~5 miles of half walk, half trot/canter. Things seem to be going in the right direction- faster trot work, more canter time. Our interruptions were mostly from fighting off miserable flies.








However, we did have a couple of moments of excitement. First was riding by a house where there was a crying baby inside- that was very unusual and stopped Fizz right in her tracks wondering what was making the screeching sounds. Not too far after that, something happened that had me sitting up a little straighter in the saddle- the cows started MOOING at us. As in, full bellied, living their best cow life, Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooingggggggggg. You know what though? Fizz didn't even look in their direction. I don't know who this brave, non-cow phobic horse was, but that was the best possible outcome. I had visions of being launched into the stratosphere while she booked it for home, but, nothing!








We are all trying our best to withstand this latest heat wave. It's really, really hot, with no end in sight.


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## egrogan

Some morning cuteness








Josie has been here exactly three months today ❤


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## egrogan

Today I discovered what it takes for Coalie to move out on the trail...being swarmed with dozens and dozens of deer flies seemed to do the trick! 😉 We did 10 miles in a respectable 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is pretty unusual when we're not on our own.

The bugs were just pure misery though. Often there will be little pockets where at least you get some relief, but we just couldn't get away from them. We took turns in the lead because the horse in front definitely got the worst of it, with huge buzzing clouds hanging over them.
























While it was not the most fun because of the bugs, we did move along at a nice pace. We went to the tree farm loop, where the footing is great and the motivation to escape the bugs had us doing some decent stretches of trot and canter.

I did tell M that I'm planning on doing the competitive rides in a couple of weekends, and she thought it was a great idea. She's going to stick with the pleasure rides but offered to help however we needed it, which was sweet. And she's thinking she might try some dressage clinics and schooling shows with Coalie later this year, which I think she will enjoy. So that was very positive, and I feel a little relieved having told her.


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## gottatrot

Coalie seems like more of a dressage/arena type horse for shows than a competitive endurance horse, with his slower mindset.


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## carshon

I feel your pain. 5 of us rode yesterday and the deer and horse flies were just a nightmare. I was so glad to get it over with! and I love to ride! I'm glad you told M - I am sure that she is more aware of Coalie's limitations than you may think but appreciates the company riding.


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## PoptartShop

The bugs have been brutal here too. I haven't even been able to ride because of the heatwave, the humidity and temperature was dangerously high over the weekend...we're mostly out of it now, but whew! Glad the deer flies got Coalie moving though! LOL, they are good for something I guess haha.

And I can't believe it's been 3mos already with Josie. I am so happy she has settled in so nicely. <3


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## egrogan

We woke up to a very welcome cool morning (only 65*F), with little humidity and few bugs. I didn't have a lot of time, but I managed to squeeze in a quick ride to the overlook and back. I wondered if Fizz would be feeling frisky with the cool breeze, but actually she was quite mellow. I think without the bugs harassing her every step of the way, she was happy to enjoy the ride.
























Tomorrow is looking to be the same, so hopefully we'll have a similar morning!


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## egrogan

This morning was happily a mirror image of yesterday. Again, mild temps and low humidity. Off we went! Today I started with a lap around the new field. The top strand is sagging, and I realized a deer or a bear took out a corner insulator so I need to fix that this weekend. Horses haven't been out there in over a month because there are no shelters in that field and the bugs are too bad. But hopefully they can start going out there again next month. It is a pretty loop to ride though, and nice up and down the hills to warm up. I'm so bad with estimating how big a field is, but I think it's ~10 acres? With previous owners, I believe there was part of a cross country course out there and a bridle path along the stone wall that runs along the road. I don't ride there nearly often enough!
















After warming up around the field, off we went to the overlook. Going past the beaver pond, the milkweed is looking really good- in some spots, it's way above our heads! If you look closely in the top corner, you can see a butterfly coming in for a landing. Not sure if others saw the report last week that migratory monarch butterflies are being added to the endangered list, but that news made me profoundly sad. We have a thriving monarch population here, and watch them go through their life cycle around the milkweeds for a few generations every summer. But knowing they are losing their overwintering ground in Mexico, and quickly being pushed out of their natural migratory rhythms because of climate change makes them so fragile. I hope it's not in my lifetime that they disappear.








After admiring the fluttering butterflies for a minute, we trotted our way to the overlook. As we came to the top of the hill, we were greeted with a strange sight- the road was closed. Fizz was not impressed at all by this odd circumstance. She slammed on the brakes, snorting at the signs, and then wanted to go backwards down the hill, which I was not interested in being a part of...It kind of made me laugh, as I would never imagine that she'd hesitate to go around a few signs, but I think it must just be the strangeness of something out of place appearing suddenly in a very familiar place. Something like this happened when we met M and Coalie Sunday- we rode over to M's house to take a trail from there, and she met us out on the road, where Coalie was very upset about a wall of balloons on a party tent in a neighbor's lawn (the floating giraffe balloons were particularly offensive!🦒). Coalie is not a spooky guy at all, but seeing something bizarre in a spot he passes almost every day really freaked him out, while Fizz rode right past it without even looking at the balloons. It is really fascinating to try to understand how the horse brain is working.








Since she was pretty clear that if I tried to push her past it from the saddle, she was heading backwards, I hopped off and walked her past it. There were lots of snorts, but she walked through the gap on the left, then we turned around and went back and forth a couple of times.








At that point, she decided maybe she could eat it instead of running away from it, and all was well  I got back on and we finished our short ride with no other interruptions.

Forecast tomorrow is saying rain, heavy winds, and even hail, so we'll have a day off.


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## Knave

I love butterflies! We have a monarch right now in the yard, but I only see a couple a year. They aren’t very common here.

Cash and Queen are painful when something is new! They are worse than any horses I have ridden about noticing changes, and I wonder if it is a survival instinct for them that I am sure is present in all horses at a lesser degree. I guess, if that rock looks a little differently today, it could be that a lion is behind it. Those two horses show me everything! Now, any of my horses would spook at signs in the road excepting Zeus, but like Coalie, those two get very upset about changes.

They notice even the tiniest differences. I moved the bicycles two feet differently, because mowing is easier. Queen is still leery about going near them. Anything a little off, that they don’t specifically see a person alter, is a big deal to them. I have no idea what Queen is always going on about at the neighbor’s. Everything they do she notices. She’s like that old woman peering out the window to learn all the gossip and judge.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> She’s like that old woman peering out the window to learn all the gossip and judge.


This made me laugh. Queen is such a character. I wish I could meet her and watch the two of you together.

I'm trying to think about how Fizz typically responds to new things. She will definitely give the side eye when a branch or part of a tree has fallen on a road or a trail we ride on a lot. And obviously cows in unexpected places are an issue. But generally, she doesn't really tend to have a big reaction to strange objects. For example, we have a primary election here in August, so political lawn signs are appearing, and she doesn't care about things like that. Cars or trucks parked in new places, people out in the yard when they're usually not, things like that, she will notice, but doesn't usually get upset about it. I will be thinking about this our next couple of rides though.


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## Knave

I would love for you to meet her!

It is awesome that Fizz is like that. I’m not sure how Queen will travel yet, but I’ll find out soon. She is really good about going to the ranch and up north into the mountains. I am not going to try and guess how she will do with the people things at other places and in town. Surprisingly, for how much Cash has to worry about new things in places he knows, he travels amazingly well. He hasn’t seemed to really do any worrying so far about town things or new place things. Maybe because it is all new it is simply interesting to him. I hope she is like that.

Then there are those like Zeus, who took a long time to get okay with town. He’s still not as great as at home. Yet, he would almost never worry about new things in the environment or people things. Crazy things don’t matter to him, and so I was absolutely shocked at his first gymkhana when everything seemed to be too much for him. Bones can’t even barely hold himself together with new environments, but doesn’t seem fearful at all in places he is comfortable, excepting the areas that always bother him.


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## egrogan

A happy update, Josie's registration papers came in the mail this morning, meaning the hardship request for ownership transfer was successful. I am so grateful that the AMHA has such a helpful DNA match program, and that they make the ownership transfer process easy to follow for horses that end up in difficult circumstances like Josie did. Three of her herdmates have also been adopted since I got Josie, so I've reached out to the rescue to let them know that I'd be happy to help any of the new owners with the registration process if they're interested in pursuing it. I have no plans to breed or sell her, but it feels important to me that she's now reunited with her proper identity and if anything unexpected happened to me, she'll have some concrete info that follows her into the future.


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## egrogan

A really nice ride today, though we had a bit of a slow start. As I was getting tacked up, all the horses were staring wide eyed into the woods on alert. We’ve had coyotes very close to the house the last couple of weeks, so maybe they were around. It’s also a turkey highway so they might have been moving through.








Anyway, Fizz was on super high alert when I got on. when she’s very tense, she’ll hold her breath, which is the oddest feeling. I don’t know if other people have horses who hold their breath, but it basically feels like sitting on an extra firm yoga ball. When she finally starts breathing again, it’s like moving down to a somewhat squishy ball  She didn’t start breathing again until a spook at…? A leaf? broke the tension and we were at least generally moving forward.

I have to thank Justin Timberlake for saving our ride though. Right as we came down the hill past Mac the German Shepherd’s house, my music playlist shuffled to one of the cheesiest and most upbeat pop songs I have: Justin Timberlake’s Bringing Sexy Back. It’s a song with a lot of energy, and we bounced forward in a good trot. Fizz finally seemed to wake up, and we were in a great spot where we can trot for a couple of miles without any reason to stop. So we did!

We turned off onto a woods trail, and stepped up into a canter. Fizz was really enjoying it too. We found good footing off to the side of the trail, but I realized too late that we were going to go flying right under some low branches. I didn’t duck fast enough, and the branches were thicker than I expected. Oops! 🤕 I managed to take a few branches to the face. Still cantering along (Fizz fit under the branches just fine ) I knew I was bleeding around my mouth, but had no idea how cut up I was. I had blood dripping down my chin and sopped it up with my shirt as best I could. I know that cuts on your face tend to bleed a lot, even when the cut isn’t that bad, so I crossed my fingers that was the case. As we came to the end of the woods trail, I could tell the bleeding had stopped, so that was good. It stung a bit but I was pretty sure I was fine.








From the woods, we came out to the cow farm, and I could see through the trees there were no cows. But there were two bikers stopped in the road, enjoying the scenery. I yelled out hello, and they seemed worried about what to do. I told them Fizz was fine walking past them and they didn’t need to move. As we went by smiling, I realized my face was probably still bloody around my new gash, and my shirt was covered in blood. They must have thought I was insane telling them about my nice, friendly horse! 😳

Without the cows in this pasture, it is a great canter spot, and Fizz was eager to go. We continued until the road dipped back downhill, and came back to walking.








Most of the rest of the ride was on the road, so nothing particularly exciting. I was pleased to peek at my ride tracker and realize we did 5.5 miles in an hour and 5 minutes, which was exactly the pace I wanted! Not bad given our lackluster start.
















As we were nearly home, we ran into the friendly bikers again and stopped for a minute to compare notes about local trails. They again ignored my bloody face as we said our goodbyes. After a short cool out lap around the field, we ended our ride at 6.5 miles.








After I got Fizz settled and everything put away, I headed inside to see what I’d actually done to my lip. Lovely husband assured me that despite the amount of blood on my shirt, my face didn’t actually look bad. Mostly just like a cat had attacked me. 😸 After jumping in the shower, I was relieved to see it really didn’t look that bad-it does really look like a cat scratch from the bottom of my nose to the top of my lip. It still stings a bit, but it won’t leave much of a mark. So much adventure for one ride!


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## Knave

That is a lot of adventure! I probably would have forgotten the blood too!


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## SueC

@Knave just wrote one treat and then I find this! The yoga ball description!  And yes, I know the feeling, but never thought of it that way before. Now I will _always_ think of it like this...😜

Face scratches tend to heal better than arm scratches. I have a map of scars from those, both from riding and gardening/farm maintenance. The ride sounds like the scratch was worth it. Fizzy is looking super. I loved some of the names in the Morgan pedigree. 🖤


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## egrogan

Glad you could relate to what I meant, @SueC! It seems that not many other people who have horses who take a big gulp and then hold their breath 😉 Also, I love nosing around in pedigrees and seeing how the pieces fit together. Josie has some interesting horses in her background. 

* * * * * * * *
Today we met M and Coalie for a more sedate, but still enjoyable ride. The weather was mild, and the bugs were much, much better. We'd still go through infrequent swarms of gnats, and find the odd horsefly, but mostly it was clear. We took a route that had us mostly in the woods, and Coalie was perky enough that he could lead. Actually, in spots where we were trotting, Fizz had to hustle to keep up with him. 








Parts of the trail were very rocky, so we let the horses pick their way somewhat cautiously through those sections. We were back on a trail system with lots of intersections/options, and since the bugs were ok we kept picking the turn that let us keep riding rather than heading back to the road home. By the end, we had gone ~8.5 miles.
















This route does have one of the prettiest views around. This beautiful field is actually where our hay came from this year.


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## egrogan

Today our ride wasn't all that great. It was back to being extremely humid, which brought the flies back in full force. The roads are hardening up again, and I actually cut our ride short as I didn't love how Fizz felt trotting on the really hard footing. She wasn't having much fun contending with the deer fly cloud again.








You can see the haze hanging over the mountain








I need to rant for a minute about small town life. About a month ago, I saw an update in the minutes of a Selectboard meeting that the town had received a grant for "ditch work" on our road and a bunch of the surrounding roads we ride on. It's not clear why they needed a grant for ditch work, but what that has meant on other roads is that they carve out huge sections of what little shoulder the roads have, and fill it in with fist-sized, sharp rocks. These roads are already narrow- you can barely squeeze two full sized pickups past each other, but if you're pulling a trailer and another car is coming the opposite direction, you're sort of in trouble- in some places, you can creep all the way over to the edge and let the other person pass. Adding these ditches remove any option of pulling out of the way for something else to pass. And if you're walking, biking, or riding, you almost have to throw yourself down a steep drop onto this awful rock, or hope whatever vehicle coming towards you will have room to pass you without brushing you. (Edited to add: You can actually see one of these new ditches in the last photo of my previous post along the pretty hayfield. That road used to be solid all the way to the edge so you had room to get out of the way of a vehicle passing). So it would be nice to understand the purpose of why these ditchless roads suddenly need such drastic ditching. I sent a concerned letter to the selectboard sharing my worries as a two- and four-legged pedestrian on these roads, but that was nearly a month ago and I've heard no response. Yesterday a town crew began going up and down the road every 30 minutes dumping loads of dirt in my neighbor's field. Whether this has anything to do with ditching is anyone's guess. I am just very frustrated that there is so little communication about what's happening and why. Given that our house is the only house on this road for more than a mile in either direction, it seems like how we feel about it might be taken into consideration? Fizz was also highly unimpressed with these mounds of dirt that multiplied between our first pass on our way to the overlook and our second pass on our way home.








I will try to ignore whatever is happening down the road and instead focus on some moments of zen from some less destructive neighbors:


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## Knave

I’m sorry. I think you might be better served by going to a commissioner meeting than writing a letter. Having been in a public office, I do know sometimes no one reads the letters even though they are included in the packets. Also, the letters can be ignored and a person who is stating a public concern cannot. It holds a lot of weight, and probably you would give them something to consider.


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## egrogan

Thanks for that @Knave. I will have to look into their schedule. I find it really hard to get to their meetings, which happen at 5 or 6pm, as I'm just winding down at work and getting animals fed, etc. But you're right that if I want them to listen I have to make the effort.


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## TrainedByMares

It's true, you should attend a meeting. Be prepared to state your facts and reasoning. Keep any emotion right out of it but let them know you take it very seriously and personally. You will probably have to attend more than one meeting for them to notice you and the best way to get any action is to be friendly with the people that make the decisions. Good luck to you!


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> I need to rant for a minute about small town life. About a month ago, I saw an update in the minutes of a Selectboard meeting that the town had received a grant for "ditch work" on our road and a bunch of the surrounding roads we ride on. It's not clear why they needed a grant for ditch work, but what that has meant on other roads is that they carve out huge sections of what little shoulder the roads have, and fill it in with fist-sized, sharp rocks. These roads are already narrow- you can barely squeeze two full sized pickups past each other...So it would be nice to understand the purpose of why these ditchless roads suddenly need such drastic ditching....


I'm really sorry that's happening - I hate riding on roads anyway, but without a shoulder, I'd be jumping off every time a car came in case a lunatic was driving, and inserting myself between the car and the horse - it's best in that case to actually take your horse to the middle of the road and with you in front of the car and making eye contact so they have to slow down - too many times have I had near misses as people hurtle cars full speed within inches of me if I'm trying to pull onto a narrow shoulder, and imagining what would have happened if my horse had turned out a little with its hindquarters because frightened...a friend told me about a friend whose horse was hit like this and had to be put down. Another about a horse who got loose and ended up on the little byroad, when some nincompoop then didn't slow down for the horse and it went through the windscreen - another euthanasia (sadly not of the nincompoop - what are people thinking???).

Cynical me: When there's unexpected and over-the-top public works like this, it usually means that someone on the council in control of budget allocation has a friend with earthmoving equipment who'd like a job. I've seen that happen a few times, including with rivers being excavated for no good reason, with tons of environmental damage to the riparian vegetation, subsequent spread of weeds, silting up of the river etc - and tried to find out who had done it and why, and was given the runaround. Department A said to ring Department B who said to ring Department C who said to ring Department A. Nobody knew anything and nobody was responsible apparently.

At least you probably won't have that problem. Best wishes for your meetings, and your riding. 🍄 💫 🌻


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## QueenofFrance08

I have totally had similar run ins with branches! Not fun!

I wish AHA had the same hardship registration program as AMHA. I can't get Jake's papers because his breeders refuse to sign him over despite asking to pay for it because they claim they sold him as grade. Grrr. Glad the Morgan Association cares more about paper's going with their horses.


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## Knave

I think that’s fair though @QueenofFrance08. You see, I have listened when I was very small to people talk about shooting a colt because of the way it looks. It wasn’t terribly uncommon. One colt I saw this argument about turned out to be this spectacular horse. I would put him in the top list of horses I’ve ever known, and he wasn’t even that ugly. Who cares about ugly?

Well, some people do. Now though, it’s more common that they’ll burn the papers on a horse and sell it as a grade on the sly. They give the horse a chance at life, and their name isn’t associated with him. They take a big pay cut in calling a papered horse grade, but I think more horses get a chance with that idea.

I do hate the other reason for papered “grade” horses. You can’t lie about the age of a papered horse…


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## QueenofFrance08

Knave said:


> I think that’s fair though @QueenofFrance08. You see, I have listened when I was very small to people talk about shooting a colt because of the way it looks. It wasn’t terribly uncommon. One colt I saw this argument about turned out to be this spectacular horse. I would put him in the top list of horses I’ve ever known, and he wasn’t even that ugly. Who cares about ugly?
> 
> Well, some people do. Now though, it’s more common that they’ll burn the papers on a horse and sell it as a grade on the sly. They give the horse a chance at life, and their name isn’t associated with him. They take a big pay cut in calling a papered horse grade, but I think more horses get a chance with that idea.
> 
> I do hate the other reason for papered “grade” horses. You can’t lie about the age of a papered horse…


It just frustrates me because I can't compete in the AHA rides with him. I know who he is, I have his number, and they don't even seem to be involved in showing/breeding anymore. He's sweepstakes nominated so if he did well (which he is doing) they would also get money. 

I'm glad he's alive and made it through auctions/owners who were trying to use him for something he wasn't successful at but I wish I could use him to his full potential.


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## Knave

Oh, I completely see your side of it too @QueenofFrance08! You know what he’s capable of, and it is hard to be limited! Yet, I think overall it is a good thing, because those back door horses would be shot in my world if someone couldn’t disassociate from them.


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## gottatrot

Something I think is great is that the Arabian Horse rescue near me does everything they can to get a horse's papers. They feel it is safer for the horse to have their papers, and also helpful for the new owners who may want to enter shows or competitions.


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## egrogan

@QueenofFrance08 , I wonder if AMHA is still so helpful on these hardship registrations because the breed is small and they are invested in keeping as many horses identified as possible. I am grateful for the option. @Knave, what you describe people doing to horses they aren't impressed with from their breeding program really rubs me the wrong way. To me, stripping their papers is a real handicap to a horse. Easy for me to say as someone who isn't a breeder I suppose. But even without having breeding plans, I really enjoy understanding pedigrees and seeing where a horse fits in historically, and for those reasons want to own registered horses.

* * * * *
Had another so-so ride today. The roads are still really hard, and I didn't have a lot of time because of work, so I set up some cones in a flat spot in one of the fields and planned on a roundy-roundy kind of ride 😉
















Lately I've been feeling that Fizz isn't very flexible side to side, which isn't so surprising since we're pretty much always going straight ahead without a lot of bending. The ride was frustrating from the get-go, and I remember why I don't try schooling in the field more. Whenever we were facing towards home, I'd completely lose her attention and she'd want to accelerate towards home rather than turning away. I know it's something I could probably spend more time and energy working on, but it's really quite a drag to be constantly having to fight over it and counterproductive when she's bent the wrong way like a banana trying to leave the field for home. I temporarily gave up on trying to do the figure 8s and smaller circles I had in mind when I set the cones out, and instead turned away from home and trotted around the field and then up the road for a short stretch, stopping and doing some turns on the forehand and then coming back to the cones. We managed to do a couple of relatively round (oval?) figure 8s, with minimal lurching in the direction of home, and I called it quits. I don't want to do arena work that often, but it would probably be beneficial to both of us to be able to do more of that. Without having any enclosed area to work, it's challenging. Sort of like holding your nose and eating your grandma's badly cooked, soggy vegetables.

I'm supposed to be doing back-to-back competitive trail rides Saturday & Sunday, but lovely husband has been testing positive for Covid all week, including this morning. I just tested myself again and am still testing negative, but I will likely scratch from the rides this weekend as I don't feel right going and being around a lot of older people knowing I'm clearly exposed to a positive case. We'll keep testing between now and Friday, but at this point with him still testing positive, it's not looking promising. At least neither of us feel particularly sick, so that's something. If I can't do the official ride, I've got a 15-20 mile ride mapped out from home that we'll do instead. It's supposed to rain Friday so the roads will be in better shape, and this is a route that I've been wanting to do since last year but haven't made time for yet. I'm guessing it will take us between 3 and 4 hours, so it's a commitment. We'll see what happens!


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## Knave

I’m sorry he’s still sick.

I see what you are saying about the papers, but I really do hate to see someone kill a baby anything. I feel like it’s a better life to see what their potential is. That Bart horse is so stinking cool. He’s roman nosed and big, but boy is he talented!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> I see what you are saying about the papers, but I really do hate to see someone kill a baby anything. I feel like it’s a better life to see what their potential is. That Bart horse is so stinking cool. He’s roman nosed and big, but boy is he talented!


It makes me sad it’s an either or choice for some people  But yes, if those are the only two options, of course I’m with you!


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## Knave

Me too. I don’t like that people are like that, but I know lots of people are, and it gives those babies a chance they wouldn’t take if it could come back to them.


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## TrainedByMares

@egrogan I subscribe to Lancaster Farming paper. Every month they publish a section called Mid-Atlantic Horse which lately has some interesting articles. This weeks edition has a spot about Lazarus the castoff Morgan who has found himself a better life and a new home. 

You probably already are aware of him and his story but I thought I would post it because it was a 'feel good' Morgan story from Vermont that I enjoyed reading








. Who doesn't like those, right?


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## knightrider

What a charming story! Thanks for sharing. 

I believe that the Paso Fino Horse Association is more lenient with gelding registration than with mares or stallions. I wanted to get my Chorro registered so that I could do Pasos for Pleasure on him. The Association was very helpful to me. When I did his DNA, I learned who sired him, but the stallion owner refused to acknowledge anything. They would not answer me or sign anything. Because I was just trying to register a gelding, the Paso Fino Horse Association helped me get it done without the necessary signatures. Everybody wins--they got my money. I got my horse registered.


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## bsms

Speaking of horses who don't impress with looks, the PBS documentary on Seabiscuit starts with a great description of why no one thought he looked (or moved) like he was any good (plus 35 races as a two year old and almost all losses), particularly 45 seconds to 2:30:






Watched the whole things on DVD a couple of days ago. Gave a MUCH better description of what happened with Seabiscuit than either the famous book or the fictionalized movie. I also thought Seabiscuit was quite good looking but I guess that is because I know nothing about horse conformation. Glad I bought the DVD. Really enjoyed it.

The playlist ends with the match race, but my favorite part was his final race:

"_One race was left in the season. A week after the San Antonio, Seabiscuit and Kayak II both took the gate for the Santa Anita Handicap and its $121,000 prize. 78,000 paying spectators crammed the racetrack, most backing Seabiscuit. Pollard found his horse blocked almost from the start. Picking his way through the field, Seabiscuit briefly led. As they thundered down the back straight, Seabiscuit became trapped in third place, behind leader Whichcee and Wedding Call on the outside.

Trusting in his horse's acceleration, Pollard steered between the leaders and burst into the lead, taking the firm ground just off the rail. As Seabiscuit showed his old surge, Wedding Call and Whichcee faltered, and Pollard drove his horse on, taking "The Hundred Grander" by a length and a half from the fast-closing Kayak II under jockey Leon Haas. Pandemonium engulfed the course. Neither horse and rider, nor trainer and owner, could get through the crowd of well-wishers to the winner's enclosure for some time.

On April 10, 1940, Seabiscuit's retirement from racing was officially announced. When he was retired to the Ridgewood Ranch near Willits, California, he was horse racing's all-time leading money winner...._"


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## egrogan

What a great story, @TrainedByMares ! I had not seen it. Thanks for sharing  @knightrider, I didn't know that DNA testing also helped you register Chorro. Another success story of finding a horse's history.

@bsms, I didn't know PBS had a Seabiscuit documentary but I will see if I can find it in the archives on their streaming service. Sounds like a good one!


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## knightrider

Chorro has such an interesting story, I will tell it and hope you all enjoy it. All my life I have made do with other people's cast-offs and horses that other people didn't want. My beloved Shadow had died and I decided that I'd just ride my 2 kids' horses. I really didn't need a horse of my own.

My husband said that for once in my life, I should have a quality horse that had never had anyone's mistakes put on it. Only one problem--we couldn't afford a horse like that. Finally I found a yearling Paso Fino with incredible breeding. I could afford him because he couldn't be registered.

What happened was that some Paso breeders were looking for quality mares to breed to their stallion. They bought a lovely mare, Caramela. But she just never came in season, so they couldn't breed her. Then they discovered she was already pregnant, so they contacted the people who sold her to them. The sellers said they only had 2 stallions, a black and a buckskin, so when the colt was born, depending on the color, they would do the DNA test and get the baby registered. Caramela was a bright chestnut mare.

When the baby was born, he was black, so they DNA'ed for the black stallion . . . and it came up negative. He was not the father. All this waiting and testing takes time, and in the meantime, the original owners of Caramela got a divorce. And it was not a nice one.

To get back at her soon-to-be ex-husband, the soon-to-be ex-wife sold the buckskin stallion, (his favorite) to someone they didn't know, who took him to Texas and did not switch over the ownership. So he was gone. That's when they advertised my baby Chorro, saying he couldn't be registered.

A few years went by. I was riding Chorro by then and wanted to do Pasos for Pleasure . . . but to enter your riding miles, your Paso must be registered and Chorro's likely sire was MIA. I hoped the Paso Fino Horse Association would be nice and let me register him with just knowing his dam, Caramela.

But they couldn't do that. What they could do is DNA Chorro for the buckskin stallion, since he was registered; we just didn't know where he was. Sure enough, Chorro, a black bay, is the offspring of a buckskin and a chestnut. Who'd a thought? His DNA matched the buckskin stallion.

The kind people at PFHA did some detective work and tracked down the buckskin stallion's owner. But he/she did not want to get involved and refused to sign any stallion or breeding certificates. They just fudged it for me, and pushed the registration through, since Chorro was a gelding, and all I wanted to do was throw money at them so I could do Pasos for Pleasure--which only involves keeping track of the hours spent riding trails. And now I have a registered Paso Fino!


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## egrogan

I love Chorro's story @knightrider. So much mystery and intrigue. Glad you got it all figured out!

I finally got back in the saddle today after not riding at all for the past week because of the oppressive heat and humidity. Most days it was in the mid-80s temp wise with humidity also above 80%. Just walking outside to feed the horses had me drenched in sweat, and the thought of putting on riding clothes was unbearable. Funny though, given how muggy and buggy it was, I think Fizz actually lost a little weight (in a good way) despite a vacation from riding. Her body looks better; neck still tending towards cresty but also less puffy looking.

Anyway, it was great to go for a ride! We just took it easy, to the overlook and back with lots of walk/trot transitions on a long rein. She seemed happy to be out too. Today was much cooler, but we did have some rain showers along the way. Still, I was happy to just be riding! Everything is so green, despite how hot it's been!
























Also, an update about my town public works situation. Yesterday we had a primary election in town, and the person who checked me in to vote was the Selectboard chair I wrote to with my concern about the ditches. He recognized my name and apologized for not responding. He said that it was a bit complicated (isn't it always?) because of state laws that dictated what kind of road maintenance they had to do, and that he would call me to explain because it would take too long to talk about it there. I thanked him and said I was most concerned with that ankle-breaking footing and wondered if I could share more about why. So I will give him a few days to call and if I don't hear from him I'll reach back out. I am so curious to hear what he has to say.

The dumptrucks are still rolling past the house every day, leaving huge mounds of dirt. Last week they filled the edge of my neighbor's field with piles, and then came and smoothed them all out flat. This week, more new piles appeared. It's so mysterious! The neighbors don't live here year round so I can't nosily ask them what's going on. So I will just have to wait and see 😉








Also, Josie says hi!








When we got home, she joined up with Fizz, who was snacking while I untacked and groomed her. I know some people would probably disapprove of loose horses around while you're doing things with another horse, but this is our setup and it seems to work for us. These two share most meals harmoniously so I don't mind Josie hanging around.


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## bsms

My other horses are always loose when the farrier comes, when we feed, etc. It hasn't ever been a problem. Well, Bandit HAS been known to try to sneak up on a horse the farrier is working on, but the farrier and I both stay alert for that and a sharp "Bandit!" is usually enough to get him to respond, "_Who? Me? I was just moseying along, minding my own business...._"


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## egrogan

I didn't have a lot of time to ride yesterday, but it was a very pretty afternoon so I wanted to get out and do something. I was feeling bored with our overlook-and-back ride down the road, so I decided we'd just go ride around the fields. The perimeter of each field between our place and the neighbor's is at least half a mile, and it's all up and down hill, so it turned into a pretty good ride. 

Heading down the road to the neighbors'








Their hay field has such beautiful views
















All their first cut is still sitting out, and I wasn't sure what Fizz would think about the intimidating marshmallow wall...but she didn't care.








Home again
















It was still a little humid in the afternoon, but thunderstorms went through and finally cleared the air. And I found the treasure at the end of the rainbow! 🌈








Today I tried turning the horses out in the new field (the one behind Hugh in the picture). It's been a couple of months since they've been out there because of the bugs. They seemed excited to find some more interesting grass than what's left in their regular pasture. I loved this picture- the angle of the sun made the best shadow on Josie's neck and shoulder.








Josie is slowing filling in, but she has no muscle to speak of. She looks a bit thoroughbredy to me with that big wither and skinnier neck. I'm not sure what to expect from her as she continues gaining weight. Without being in any kind of work, she's obviously not going to have amazing muscle. She eats well but it's hard to see where she's putting it, as she's still thin. Vet is dropping by next week to give her final Lyme vaccine, so I'll see what she thinks we should do next. I haven't done a fecal since she's been here, since she was dewormed right before she came, but we probably should. Maybe ulcer treatment will be the next step. We'll see.

Unfortunately, while the flies are down, the gnats swarmed and within an hour these guys were running in circles at the gate begging to go back to their sheds, so I guess it's still too soon to turn them out in this field. At some point in the future I'll have to invest in putting shelters up, but with all the other projects planned in the next 12 months this is pretty far down the list. Sorry ponies!


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## SueC

@egrogan, is Josie a necessary retirement or still capable of light work? Time is probably in short supply for you, but if she's capable of light work and would benefit from it, maybe there's a horseless horsey person near you who'd be happy to do some riding in the paddock with Izzy? Occasionally it's possible to find good exercisers who enjoy the chance to work with an animal when they don't have one themselves anymore etc. Though it's probably like hen's teeth and in most cases too complicated.


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## egrogan

@SueC, I know she was riding at some point in her younger days, but I don't know how long ago. I imagine she'd need to be restarted, and I'm not really the right person to do that work. And honestly don't know that I would dedicate the time to it. If I can ever get to a place where I feel like I have more time, I think just taking her out for walks would be a good first step. She's a bit of a snorty, nervous girl so it would be baby steps at first, but probably good for her.


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## SueC

The time thing, I so relate to. Julian is a super horse, but I just didn't have time to work two...

Hugh looks so cute in that shot where he's sitting with one of his front legs bent in anticipation... Jess has that gesture too!


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## egrogan

We had a wonderful ride yesterday. The weather was the best it's been in weeks- cool, sunny, no bugs. M and I met up with the intention of a longer ride, and we ended up going 13.5 miles. We left the house surrounded by beautiful early morning light.








We started off near M's house, but took a different woods trail than we typically do from there because the prior day, she and Coalie had surprised three grown bears who were snacking on blackberries. I didn't know adult bears stuck together like that, but we were not eager to see them so we avoided the thickest blackberry bramble. Luckily we didn't see any bears at all.








We wove our way through the woods on snowmobile trails, and the horses had space to stretch out into a comfortable trot, with a few bursts of canter up the hills that weren't too rocky. After a few miles, the trail connected us back to the road.








At the end of the road, we turned right where we typically turn left, heading towards a farm that has given us some issues in the past. We haven't gone that way this year, but in previous years, the combo of a small herd of inquisitive horses that likes to run up to the fence along the road, and three of their cow friends that come running with them, left both Fizz and Coalie a bit jazzed up. But yesterday, passing them was uneventful. The horses stayed at the back of their pasture, and the cows were even farther from the road. Everyone saw each other, but no one cared. Phew!

We continued down the road, passing a picturesque bed and breakfast and cemetery. There were a few people having lunch out in the courtyard in front of the inn, and Fizz was curious, but we were too far away to say hello.








After a short climb up the hill, we turned into an almost-hidden gap in the brush to enter our primary destination: The Enchanted Forest. 








It's actually called the "Savage Forest," because of the family that donated the land as a perpetual conservation property laced with beautiful bridle trails. But it's certainly anything but savage, hence our renaming! I think it may be my absolute favorite place to ride in our area. When you step into the forest, there are signs everywhere announcing "Bridle Trails, no motorized vehicles," and the footing is immaculately maintained. There are long, gently sloping sections perfect for letting the horses really move out. We trotted about a half mile, and came to some logs that gave you an over-or-around option; M and Coalie took the jumps while Fizz and I went around. We kissed the horses up into a canter, and they continued on effortlessly for another quarter-mile, Fizz in the front and Coalie right behind her. Sometimes he'll buck and act silly when he's cantering behind another horse, but he was a perfect gentleman. There really is no better feeling than gliding through the woods with the horses just as happy as you are. 

No trail can last forever, even the nearly perfect ones, but after popping out onto the road for a brief time, we were winding our way back into the forest. The horses greatly appreciated the brook crossing and drank really well.








The water must have felt nice on their legs, because they were both happy to just stand there quietly for a minute, drinking a little and resting. The brook is so low right now- usually most of the rocks are covered under the water.








After their rest, we started climbing again, in 10 minutes going from 900ft at the streambed up to about 1900 feet at the top of the ridge.








They powered up the narrow, rocky trail at a strong trot, but both of them were blowing hard at the top. We let them graze around for a minute while we took a bathroom break. When we got back on, they were breathing a little easier and ready to keep going. We continued through the woods, twisting and turning along 5 more miles of trail before we were back out on the road and heading home. When we got home, Fizz was definitely tired, and went right for a good roll. But it had been a great ride- just what we needed after having a week off because of the heat and a rather boring week this past week because of being busy at work. It put me in a great mood for the rest of the day.

This morning I'm going over to GMHA to watch cross country at the Festival of Eventing. One of the US team riders going over to the World Championships next month is taking out 4 of her young horses, so it's neat to see the "big names" roll through town. It's another beautiful day so it will be nice to be outside. Will probably get in another ride closer to home this afternoon.


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## egrogan

Yesterday was a great day...until it wasn't. I'll start backwards.

Lovely husband and I were making dinner. Our kitchen window looks out to the road in front. I was making pie and he was rolling out fresh pasta dough, when he looked up and said "oh sh**t" as a pickup truck when flying around the bend in front of the house at probably 45mph, when you should be going about 25mph there. We both watched as it skidded across the road and then lost control. A few seconds later we heard the "crunch" of the truck going off the road into the trees. We couldn't see it from the window so we weren't sure if it stopped when it hit a tree or flipped over the steep embankment down into the field. I got on the phone with 911 as I walked down the road to see. I had myself braced for anything. I was calling out "hello...are you ok" as I got closer, and getting no response, so I was worried I was going to find the worst. When I got to the truck, it was wedged in between two trees, with the front end completely accordioned. There was a 50-something man dazed and bleeding in the driver's seat, and an older beagle loose in the passenger seat and making some very unhappy noises. The dispatcher had the fire dept and state police on the way, and the man kept asking for a knife to cut himself out of his stuck seatbelt. This wouldn't have been a good idea for a lot of reasons, so we just deflected that request and told him to wait until people got there to help him. Lovely husband had joined me at that point, and he stayed at the truck until the fire dept arrived ~15 minutes later. To make a long story short, he was clearly drunk and ultimately charged with DUI. The fires dept extracted him and he was taken to the hospital. The dog was seriously injured, and the local humane society and an emergency vet came to take him before the truck was towed away; unclear if he will survive. His painful whines were so upsetting to hear; poor Hugh was frantic the entire time we were waiting for people to come get the dog. The state police called back later that night to take a formal statement from us and shared that he would be charged with the DUI. It's such a sad and infuriating situation. I'll never understand why people get behind the wheel when they are drunk. Lovely husband was very shaken; if this had happened 3 hours earlier, Fizz and I would have been in the road exactly where the driver lost control, as we are at the start of 75% of our rides. Two hours earlier, lovely husband would have been there in the road on his tractor. First thing in the morning, either one of us could have been in that spot walking Hugh. It's just frightening how something like that could happen in the blink of an eye with no warning. Fortunately this time, this man didn't hurt anyone besides himself (and sadly the poor dog). But when we saw his name reported in the paper, we realized he lives down on the other side of the overlook and drives by our house all the time. Hopefully he won't be allowed behind the wheel again any time soon.

Phew...so before the day ended like that, it was actually a perfect summer day. In the morning, M and I went over to GMHA for a couple of hours to watch the 2* and 3* cross country during the Festival of Eventing. You're able to walk through the course to sit next to any fence you'd like, so we started at the beginning and walked most of the way around, moving fences every couple of horses. I was so impressed with the skillful riding and enthusiastic horses. Watching them gallop with their ears pricked at the next fence was just beautiful. Here are just a few:








This is US Team Rider Ariel Grald on her horse Isla de Coco. She'll be at the world championships in Italy next month on a different horse. She actually grew up around here and is sponsored by the local tackshop.























After I got home, Hugh and I went out and picked a bunch of blackberries. He thoroughly enjoyed himself, climbing right into the middle of the wild bramble and helping himself to all the lowest berries while I focused on the higher spots. I made a great berry pie later in the day.








After Hugh and I were done with our adventure, I took Fizz out for ~5 miles.








We went down past the overlook, but it was muggy and buggy again in the afternoon, and the roads were hard hard hard. I didn't want to do too much pounding on the roads, and she didn't really offer going much faster so I didn't push it. I actually think she was a little tired from the day before.








Where we could, we got off the road and stayed on the grass at the edge of the fields instead of the hard footing.








The cows along this road have been moved to a new pasture, and now they are even closer to the road with no tree buffer. They used to be in the field behind the stone wall in the pic below, but they ate everything there was to eat there, including a full hedgerow, so I guess they needed some new scenery!








There were a couple of cars behind us as we approached the cows, and I didn't really want to have to dance past them so close to the road with cars around, so I decided it was not the day for it. We turned around instead, and headed back home. It was maybe not our most exciting ride, but still was good to get out and move a bit. Unfortunately this is a busy work week so not sure how much I'll be able to do around meetings. It looks like we might get some rain in the middle of the week, which would be very welcome. Eeek, bugs are back!


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## SueC

I need several other emojis to respond - including a  for that picture of Hugh, the bowl of berries, the eventing photos and the ride! ...it's good that you're talking about berries, we're six months offset and today I built a new 10 metre espalier for boysenberries. Tomorrow comes the not-nice job of tying the canes to the espalier, and transplanting runners to the espalier extensions. Your talk of berry pie will motivate me!

I hope the dog makes it. So awful. I wish people didn't have dogs loose in the passenger compartment, it's asking for them to get major injuries in a crash.  On a positive note, the laws were changed in Australia a while back and it is now an offence for people to have dogs loose on the backs of pickup trucks etc. There were so many avoidable canine deaths and horrific injuries before that.

How do you make your berry pie?


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## egrogan

Thanks, @SueC. We also hope there is a good outcome for the dog. I am not sure we will ever know 

On a lighter note, about the berry pie. For my crust, I've mostly settled on this one regardless of what filling I'm using. The recipe includes semolina flour and buttermilk, which give it a really interesting texture. I swap 1 tbs of the buttermilk for 1 tbs of vodka, an old trick that makes for a flakier crust due to the alcohol evaporating out as it cooks. The recipe makes just a single crust as it's intended for a galette or rustic open-faced pie or tart, so you could just double to make a regular pie. Last night I actually used it to make small hand pies/turnovers. It made 9 of them last night as I was a bit free-form in my shaping, but I generally do ~5 inch rounds filled with ~2tbs of berries before folding, sealing, and brushing with buttermilk.








For the berry filling, I used 2 cups of the fresh berries (for a full pie, I'd probably do 3 or 4 cups of berries, depending on how big they were), some cinnamon, squeeze of fresh lemon, 1 tbs of cornstarch, and 2 tbs of white sugar. I don't usually add much sugar to fruit pies, but I find that our wild blackberries can be almost bitter, and they do want some sugar to cut through that. I'm not sure why that is, as I don't find cultivated blackberries to be that way.

You know, I don't think I've ever had a fresh boysenberry. Do they have a berry cousin with a similar taste?

PS- did you notice the little drop of drool in the corner of Hugh's mouth looking up at the berries? 😉 He's such a goof- we've probably spoiled him with sharing tastes of too many of our own meals while we're cooking, but he could have been a poster child for Pavlov. When we're in the kitchen, he's there with the saliva fountains turned on!


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## Knave

Those look spectacular! I’m glad you helped the guy, but also sorry it gave you a fright. One of the guys who is down our ranch road is always driving drunk. Everyone waits for the day he will kill someone, but he’s been lucky and it’s only been cows thus far. There should a drunk neighbor mark for your insurance, so they just expect to pick up some dead cows. Ugh


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## egrogan

Thanks, @Knave! They were tasty.

I would think people in your neighborhood would be royally ****ed if some drunk guy was regularly killing cows. No one has paid him a visit to tell him to knock it off??


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## Knave

Well, there actually has been a lot of drama about it. The problem is that if one starts drama one faces consequences, which happened to someone who has little children who are out on the other road he uses consistently.

I like the guy, but drinking and driving is always stupid. It seems most of us learn that lesson at a young age, be it high school or young adulthood. Then there are some who never seem to get it figured out. Probably I would guess this culture leads to a wild sort of young adult, and maybe even a wild adult in comparison to the overall population, so everyone is to an extent understanding. Yet, people who lose their cattle get angry, and people who are afraid for their children do too. It’s logical.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> The problem is that if one starts drama one faces consequences,


Oh I totally understand that! Actually, when I saw the name of this man, and realized what family he is from, I said to my husband that I am a little worried and hope that no one decides that we were part of the problem by calling 911 and having the cops out. Now, I don't really know how it could have resolved without cops & fire coming because he had to be cut out of the truck and taken to the hospital, but you know, some people...you don't want to mess around with when you live in a pretty isolated place.


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## Knave

Exactly!


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## gottatrot

Amazing photos of the cross country! It was great how you started with the bad stuff and then the post got better. 😁


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## gottatrot

When I had big dogs I would tie them in the back of my pickup. I learned to buy an attachment so the dogs were clipped in the center of the bed, after one of my dogs jumped out! He was hanging by his collar, but he was fine...we were driving slow. That dog would also poop in the truck bed. 😬


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## SueC

Oh, these look delicious! 



egrogan said:


> For my crust, I've mostly settled on this one regardless of what filling I'm using. The recipe includes semolina flour and buttermilk, which give it a really interesting texture. I swap 1 tbs of the buttermilk for 1 tbs of vodka, an old trick that makes for a flakier crust due to the alcohol evaporating out as it cooks. The recipe makes just a single crust as it's intended for a galette or rustic open-faced pie or tart, so you could just double to make a regular pie. Last night I actually used it to make small hand pies/turnovers. It made 9 of them last night as I was a bit free-form in my shaping, but I generally do ~5 inch rounds filled with ~2tbs of berries before folding, sealing, and brushing with buttermilk.


Thank you very much for linking to the pastry recipe - I'm going to try that, it's not one I have done before and sounds great. Because I hate shortcrust, and never make it! I do all my pockets with a brioche pastry which I get my breadmaker to knead and raise for me, with various proportions of fresh wholemeal flour not just refined flour (I really only use 100% refined flour for calzone crusts, because they really are best that way and every now and then I'm happy to eat non-wholemeal). I have invented some shortcrust substitutes for our own use which I will share with you because I think you'll love it too. Tastes amazing and so much better for you.

Because I don't want to take over your journal I'm going to put some of my favourite recipes in a spoiler below - I wrote these up for a magazine in Australia.



Spoiler



*HEALTHY DELICIOUS PIE AND TART CRUSTS*

by Sue Coulstock, Redmond WA

Pies and tarts do not need to be junk foods that are better avoided for good health. If you make them from healthy, nutritious ingredients, they can be a regular part of your day. This should start with the pastry, since traditional shortcrust pastry has little to recommend it nutritionally besides the possible presence of eggs. Too much refined, industrialised food has created big problems for people’s health in the last few hundred years. Sugar and refined flour are best avoided, and artificially hardened plant fats and shortenings (trans-fats) are now notorious as the very worst types of fats. How then to make a pie or tart crust?

A useful clue came from a famous bakery in a little town near us called Denmark, who regularly win national pie competitions. Unusually, I found I enjoyed the taste of their shortcrust. They told me about the unrefined spelt flour they make it from, with a little butter instead of shortenings, and a general emphasis on quality ingredients. I also think they deserve the Nobel Prize for elegantly solving the soggy-pastry problem with fruit tarts: They coat the pastry case with a thin layer of dark chocolate, which is impervious to water and therefore stops moisture from the custard and fruit bleeding into the pastry. Pure genius! So much more useful to humanity than the discovery of another subatomic particle, in my opinion – and actually, I love science. But food, that touches everyone.

Inspired by that spelt pastry, I began experimenting with my own shortcrust substitutes, instead of just avoiding the stuff, making baked cheesecakes without base, etc. Good quality fresh stoneground wholemeal flour, spelt or otherwise, instead of plain flour, was an instant taste and nutrition improvement – and it transpired that a childhood aversion I had to some wholemeal wheat products turned out to be about picking up the rancid taste of wholemeal past its best, which has healthy oils degrading into unhealthy ones. (Refined flour has a far longer shelf life than wholemeal because there is little left in it besides starch and gluten. Most of the nutritional goodies go out with the germ and bran.) Now I can really see why some people swear by freshly milling their own grains just before baking.

And then there’s nut meals. Ever since I discovered the French chocolate cake recipe that uses all almond meal instead of plain flour, I’ve been hooked. Nuts are nutrition powerhouses and sustain you for lengthy periods. That’s why you don’t gobble French chocolate cake; the almond meal and eggs are substantial and fill you up rapidly and for a long time, whereas sugary, plain flour based cakes are easy to overeat as they have lots of empty calories which won’t satisfy you. I remember one time in my early twenties when I got hungry, went to a bakery and bought a pack of cinnamon doughnuts. I then proceeded to eat all twelve doughnuts one after the other without them appearing to have the slightest effect on my hunger pangs. I only stopped because I ran out of doughnuts and started to feel uncomfortably full. Half an hour later I felt quite ill. This never happens to me when eating things made from nutritious ingredients.

I found that using fresh wholemeal flours and nut meals as my main pastry ingredients, combined with a little butter, olive oil or organic coconut fat (not copha, which is hydrogenated to extend shelf life), and just enough water to bring it together, produces excellent results, without the junk. Although I love to use free-range pastured eggs and know they are full of good nutrition, eggs tended to make the pastry too solid, especially if I was using oatmeal, so I stopped putting them in this sort of pastry. They can frequently find a place in the filling instead, especially if you are making quiches or baked custard style fruit tarts. And sugar? I use none in the pastry, and drastically reduced amounts in sweet fillings. It’s nice to taste the other ingredients, as you will discover if you make the recipes below. If you’re a sweet tooth, cut down on sugar in your recipes gradually, so your palate can adjust. You’ll be amazed what other flavours you will discover and enjoy once the sugar stops overpowering them.

If Suni road-tests these, we’d love to know if they fall into her definition of frugal hedonism! That’s a concept we like at our place too, and it’s wonderful to make these lovely things for around the same price as just two slices would cost you in a coffee shop, and with far better nutrition and taste.


*RASPBERRY RHUBARB TART WITH OATMEAL/ALMOND CRUST*








A reconstructed version of an old coffee shop favourite, with better pastry, no refined flour, far less sugar, a good helping of nuts and wholegrains, more berries, and loads of antioxidants.

*Crust:*
1.5 cups oats
1 cup almonds
100g butter
3-5 tbsp water

*Filling:*
6 stalks rhubarb
50-100mL sour cherry juice (from a Morello cherry jar) or cranberry juice
Optional tbsp cinnamon / juice and rind of half a lemon
50g sago pearls, soaked
1 tbsp gelatine (can use 3tbsp tapioca starch instead)
80-100g sugar
500g raspberries, fresh or defrosted

Soften butter on low in microwave. Use either rolled or quick oats to make 1.5 cups coarse oatmeal by whizzing in your food processor, then whiz the almonds until quite fine. Add oatmeal and ground almonds to very soft butter in your breadmaker, turn on the knead cycle, gradually add 3-5 tbsp water until dough becomes pliable. (You can do this by hand but the breadmaker gives excellent results, and I make bread or pizza straight after, saves washing up.) Line a 22cm diameter tart tin with baking paper. If yours has a detachable rim, you only need to line the base and lightly grease the sides. Transfer dough to centre of tin and work outwards with hands and knuckles. Shape the pastry up the sides of the tin using your thumbs (fingers hold outside edge of tin), thick enough not to burn easily at the top. Put into middle shelf of oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes to pre-bake, but not brown (use the fan if you have one). Note: You do not need to use rice or beans to weight the pastry as in blind baking; this pastry does not deform. Do put an air hole or two into the baking paper though, to stop that from trapping air and buckling up.

Chop rhubarb into 2-3cm pieces and put in heavy-bottomed saucepan with the cherry or cranberry juice. Bring to boil, reduce heat, when rhubarb starts to fall apart add soaked sago, dissolved gelatine and lemon juice/rind/cinnamon if using. Simmer for 5 minutes, stir to prevent sticking. Turn off heat and gently stir in raspberries.

Fill pre-baked pastry case with mixture and return to the oven at 160°C for 10-15 minutes. Do not let edges burn. Take out, cool, and refrigerate overnight to set. The best partner for this tart is your own cream if you have it, or a good thickened cream if you are still planning your house cow.


*CHOCOLATE PEAR TART WITH OATMEAL/ALMOND/COCOA CRUST*

Cookbook concept adjusted to cut out refined flour, reduce sugar and butter, increase cocoa, and use nut meals and whole grains.

*Crust:*
1 cup oats
1 cup almonds
70g cocoa
80g butter
3-5 tbsp water
A little flour if necessary

*Filling:*
200g dark Plaistowe or equivalent good-quality extra-dark cooking chocolate
300mL thickened cream
2 free-range eggs, lightly whisked
50mL brandy
Big dash natural vanilla essence

*Topping:*
4 pears, peeled, cored, and cut into 8 wedges each
2 cups dry red wine (or dry white wine and two rosehip teabags)
6 each of cardamom pods and cloves (or some vanilla beans and/or aniseeds if you prefer)
1 cinnamon quill

The evening before you want to eat this tart, prepare the pears and put them in a smallish saucepan with the wine and spices, so that the liquid mostly covers the pears. Put the lid on and bring to the boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer for 25-40 minutes, turning pears occasionally. Turn off when pears are tender and before they start falling apart – they need to keep their shape. Let them sit overnight in the spiced wine to develop colour and flavour.

Next day, use the method described in the above recipe to make the pastry and get it into the tart tin. Put into middle shelf of oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes to pre-bake (use the fan if you have one).

Meanwhile, break the chocolate into pieces and put it in a glass mixing bowl, to microwave carefully on low until melted. Then add cream in batches, each time stirring gently with a whisk and returning the mix to the microwave on low for a small burst (to stop the chocolate going cool and congealing again when the cream is added). You could also do this in a saucepan on low, adding some cream from the start, but that’s a bit more tricky and requires extra washing up. Let the mixture cool a little (so you don’t make scrambled eggs) before whisking in eggs, vanilla essence and brandy. Pour your completed chocolate custard into the pastry case and return to the oven at 150°C for 15-20 minutes until just set. Let it cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Just before serving, take the pears out of the spiced wine, and arrange them around the tart. No accompaniments are needed here, there are three different flavours and textures that complement each other perfectly: The bitter dark chocolate-almond crust, the sweet velvety chocolate custard, and the spectacular spiced wine pears, whose red hue offers a feast for the eyes to go with the tastebud fireworks of this luscious tart.

The spiced wine is super mixed 50/50 with orange juice as a hot drink on a winter’s night. Don’t waste it!

(This recipe makes a great breakfast in bed on a birthday!)

*PUMPKIN CITRUS TART WITH OATMEAL/SPELT CRUST*
We have a lot of pumpkins and were sick of pumpkin pie so I experimented to create a lemon tart/pumpkin pie hybrid. We ate this happily again and again for months.
*Crust:*
1.5 cups oats
1 cup wholemeal spelt flour
100g butter
3-5 tbsp water
*Filling:*
2 cups steamed mashed pumpkin
1 tbsp gelatine (can use 3tbsp cornflour or tapioca starch instead)
70-100g sugar
100mL thickened cream
Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon (more grated rind if you like extra lemony, or vary with lime juice)
3 free-range eggs, lightly whisked
Use the method described in the first recipe to make the pastry and get it into the tart tin. Put into middle shelf of oven at 180°C for 15-20 minutes to pre-bake, but not brown (use the fan if you have one).
Cool your mashed pumpkin a little before whisking in sugar, cream, eggs, lemon rind and juice, and dissolved gelatine. Fill pre-baked pastry case with mixture and return to the oven at 160°C for 20 minutes. Do not let edges burn. Take out, cool, and refrigerate overnight to set. Great with fresh cream.



So based on those tart crust recipes, you can make berry pies like this:



  







  





All I've done here is pre-baked shells made from oat/spelt or oat/wholemeal wheat flour pastry, and then filled them with home-made egg custard (with lots of vanilla) and topped with berries. The secret though to stop the pastry going soggy and add extra yum is to brush the cooled pastry cases with a good melted dark chocolate and let it set before putting the custard in - just like the Denmark bakery does. The pastry stays crunchy and delicious and chocolate goes well with berries...



egrogan said:


> For the berry filling, I used 2 cups of the fresh berries (for a full pie, I'd probably do 3 or 4 cups of berries, depending on how big they were), some cinnamon, squeeze of fresh lemon, 1 tbs of cornstarch, and 2 tbs of white sugar. I don't usually add much sugar to fruit pies, but I find that our wild blackberries can be almost bitter, and they do want some sugar to cut through that. I'm not sure why that is, as I don't find cultivated blackberries to be that way.


Yeah, that's about what we do for a berry filling - just slightly sweetened like you do because berries are tart. The pears, apples, nectarines etc don't need it.
Actually I make a lot of berry-citrus sauce for waffle topping and pancake filling. It's dead easy and fast - just juice and zest an orange, put in a pan with several cups of berries and about 1 tablespoon of sugar, heat up, then mix some cornflour into brandy and add to the mix to thicken. Pour onto your waffles/pancakes - eat with or without cream, ice cream etc. Too easy. I never make jam - this is much quicker and tastes better and is good for you, which jam really isn't.
You can also throw in some sliced peaches, nectarines etc with the berries, like we did for these.





egrogan said:


> You know, I don't think I've ever had a fresh boysenberry. Do they have a berry cousin with a similar taste?
> 
> PS- did you notice the little drop of drool in the corner of Hugh's mouth looking up at the berries? 😉 He's such a goof- we've probably spoiled him with sharing tastes of too many of our own meals while we're cooking, but he could have been a poster child for Pavlov. When we're in the kitchen, he's there with the saliva fountains turned on!


Yes, I did notice, haha!  Our dog is non-drooly - she can see the kitchen from her sofa and her nose gets very pointy and she becomes very obvious even though on her sofa, when she is interested in something we're making. She tends to get meals on wheels from us in her spot. 

She's also our dishwasher for some recycling containers.


Youngberries are related, and we grow them too. Really though, good ripe blackberries (which we're not allowed to grow in Australia but occur as weeds in the wild) taste very similar and equally good!


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## egrogan

Sigh...I woke up this morning eager for a ride first thing, because I have a meeting-filled afternoon at work. As I was getting the horses fed, I noticed Fizz's tail was rubbed badly. A couple of days ago, I noticed what seemed like an old tick bite at the top part of her vulva; it was a hard, pea-sized lump that she didn't like me touching much. So I lifted her tail to see if she had scratched at that lump, and I found...something more...swollen lady-parts photo follows...








I've never seen anything like this, so I've sent the picture off to the vet to see if she thinks a visit is in order, or if I should put some soothing cream on it and just keep an eye on it. Fizz has no temp and ate up like normal this morning. It's so funny though, last night after night check, I came in and commented to lovely husband that I felt like Fizz wasn't feeling well. There was something about the way that she was standing that just looked a little off. When you get used to seeing the horses multiple times a day, you just notice subtle things that make you wonder if they're not quite right. I didn't check her temp last night, so can't say if this was brewing under her tail, but I did listen to her gut sounds and encourage her to walk around a little so I could watch her move. All of that was fine, but I was left with the impression she just didn't feel great. I guess that was right. I'm hoping this is one of those things that looks worse than it is, but I am anxious to talk to the vet and see what she thinks.

******


gottatrot said:


> Amazing photos of the cross country!


It was a really beautiful day to be out there watching. Here are a few more- I think it's neat to see the series of the same horse coming up to a jump and clearing it! I particularly love the expression on this grey horse's face- he couldn't wait to get to the next jump.




















































SueC said:


> All I've done here is pre-baked shells made from oat/spelt or oat/wholemeal wheat flour pastry, and then filled them with home-made egg custard (with lots of vanilla) and topped with berries. The secret though to stop the pastry going soggy and add extra yum is to brush the cooled pastry cases with a good melted dark chocolate and let it set before putting the custard in - just like the Denmark bakery does. The pastry stays crunchy and delicious and chocolate goes well with berries...


Thank you for the crust recipe (I read through the spoiler too 😁)! I love the idea of adding the chocolate under the filling- what a tasty surprise! I'll be honest, I find pastry cream intimidating, though I always enjoy tarts like this when we get them from a bakery. Goodness knows we have more eggs than I know what to do with (I usually bring several dozen a month over to the food bank in town because we can't eat them fast enough!) and this would be a good way to experiment and use them up.


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## Knave

I wonder what has caused that…


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## egrogan

Me too @Knave. I haven't heard back from the vet yet. I'll go out and check on her in a little bit and see if anything's changed.


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## carshon

Have you considered Benadryl or Bute to help with the swelling? They itch until they are sore but it still itches so they make a painful mess back there. I hope the vet has some helpful advice


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Have you considered Benadryl or Bute to help with the swelling? They itch until they are sore but it still itches so they make a painful mess back there. I hope the vet has some helpful advice


I was trying to hold off on doing anything to it with the thought that the vet should see it as it was. But I haven't heard anything back from the vet, unfortunately- though I did say it wasn't an emergency when I got her answering service when I called this morning. I also emailed her the picture (her preference vs. texting), so it's somewhat strange I haven't heard anything back from her.

In good news, the swelling was going in the right direction when I went out around noon. When I gently pried apart the sides of her vulva, there was nothing obvious inside, and the skin inside was healthy pink with no discharge or anything like that. Hopefully the swelling will continue going down. I can see the horses from the window where I'm working, and most of the day she's just been hanging out in her shed quietly. She doesn't seem agitated and I haven't seen a lot of itching/rubbing. When I go feed dinner, I can definitely give her some bute.


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## egrogan

OK, talked to the vet last night. She had been on the road all day and had no service most of the day, but she called once she was back in the office. From looking at the picture, she thought the cause was just really aggressive itching in response to bug bites. The itching actually caused the bruising around the vulva. Fortunately, by dinner time last night, the swelling was way down. This morning, there was almost no swelling. It looks like the bruising is now more inside the edge of the vulva than visible outside. Vet's opinion was just to keep an eye on it and make sure there are no abrasions that stay irritated or look infected. She also suggested washing her tail, vulva, and udders with something soothing just to give her some relief and hopefully discourage the itchiness. So, that's the plan! I'm really glad it didn't end up being something more sinister- though vet did jokingly ask if we had any unexpected midnight visitors that might have been up to no good!








And as some relief from pictures of horse lady parts, here's a cute sleeping dog...


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## PoptartShop

Whew, I'm glad the swelling went down on Fizz's lady parts & hopefully it'll clear up soon, poor girly! Ugh, those darn bugs!!! Glad you were proactive as always, you are always on top of things!!

Hugh looks quite comfy!


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## egrogan

Spent a lot of time with the horses today, and for some reason they provided a lot of laughs. This morning the farrier came first thing. We are still using the dorm with Josie, though she's been very accepting of touch on her legs lately. Still, I don't feel quite ready to have her trimmed without it. Leading the three of them up to the barn from the field all together was a bit dicey; I dosed Josie a couple of minutes before bringing them up, so she was lagging behind a little and the other two were perky and on a mission, so I definitely broke a lot of Pony Club rules and was probably a little stupid in trying to lead them all together. Fortunately we all made it down the road in one piece. Trims were uneventful. Then the vet stopped by to give fall Lyme vaccines to everyone. Josie was still dopey so we had no issues with the shot, though I have been working with her a lot, giving her a poke with a paper clip in a syringe. 

Once everyone left, and Josie had about an hour for the drugs to wear off, they were very happy to get turned back out, despite the annoying bugs that are still around. Synchronized ear flapping...
















^^Three sets of eyes staring at me, asking: "What are you looking at? Have you never seen three little brown horses in line for a drink before?" (Of course Izzy gets BOTH buckets to herself and when she decides she's done, Fizz and Josie drink together out of the same bucket...)

Later in the day when I went out to ride, I found them sardined into the single shed together...
















I know there are some horses who can handle being alone, but I just can't imagine having a horse like that. These three really enjoy each other's company.

Fizz and I did a short ride, mostly around the fields because the roads are so dry and hard. Apples are just starting to turn red- but they're still way too tart for me. Fizz disagreed.
























Heading for an early ride with M tomorrow, looking to do ~10 miles. It's supposed to be warm all weekend, but hopefully we'll escape the worst of it by going in the morning.


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## SueC

I like those coverlets and bed linens (as evidently does Hugh ). I mention it because, well, I don't know what it's like in the US at present, but last time I looked for a quilt cover I went to two huge stores and pretty much everything on offer was technicolour and gaudy.  It was bad enough when pastel florals were a thing, but technicolour florals... the rental I had before we built our house had Barbie doll pink curtains in the lounge and florals and lace in the bedroom. A friend who helped me put up something less garish memorably described the bedroom curtains as "like an overdone bride"...  I pity all the guys in the world who live in houses with pink sofas and floral curtains and doilies and lace toilet roll covers because they defer to their wives for the visual environment and have a spouse with that kind of taste. It would kind of be like letting a male decorate and ending up with Star Wars curtains and Superman bedcovers. Did you have to look far and wide to find your linens or has the technicolour floral craze not hit the US?

About the custard filling for the fruit tarts, a cheat's foolproof way to make that quickly is to melt a heaped tablespoon (or more) of butter in the saucepan, stir in plain flour like you're making a roux (but don't let it colour), then gradually add milk, a little sugar and lots of vanilla, whisking continuously. Let it stand a bit to cool a little, then whisk in 2 eggs whites and all - you have to be fast with your whisking so you don't end up with scrambled eggs, and it can't be too hot, but at the same time you don't want to put it in cold either (if that's too dicey you can just add up to 4 yolks and keep your whites to add to scrambled eggs or make meringues or macaroons). Then pour into the case and let it set before adding fruit.










Loved that photo - the tongue and the general companionable atmosphere!


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## Knave

@SueC I have a Buffalo hide as my comforter. It is amazing, and I feel attached to it because I fleshed it, but my friend took it to the tanner for it to go through that process. It puts weighted blankets to shame. Lol. Of course, we don’t use it in the summer because it’s just too hot. I did when the ac was working good, but now the house never seems to get under 72 at night, and during the day it get up to the high 70s and low 80s.


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## SueC

Knave said:


> @SueC I have a Buffalo hide as my comforter. It is amazing, and I feel attached to it because I fleshed it, but my friend took it to the tanner for it to go through that process. It puts weighted blankets to shame. Lol. Of course, we don’t use it in the summer because it’s just too hot. I did when the ac was working good, but now the house never seems to get under 72 at night, and during the day it get up to the high 70s and low 80s.


That's excellent about your buffalo hide (not the weather)! I tried to find a tanner, no luck. My black-and-white hide is still in the freezer from two years ago and we are still eating the same animal. The leather place 100 km away turned out not to be tanning but only importing finished leather from interstate...

With our blackest humour on, we thought that one day when Mary Lou unfortunately departs hence we could maybe make you a pillow to match your buffalo hide. 

@egrogan, what do you prefer - the riding aspect or the hanging out with horses, or is it a draw?


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## egrogan

Had a great ride with M on Saturday; it ended up being almost 11 miles. It was pretty warm, so we mostly took it easy. We went down a trail I haven't been on in ages to get the horses off the roads, which are still like concrete. The rain we were hoping for last week never materialized, and we really need it.

The trail was beautiful though- it's mostly used by the snowmobile club, so it doesn't have much maintenance during the summer, making it seem kind of wild. There were meadows of ferns everywhere, especially when we were tracking along a marshy pond.








Since we couldn't always see what was under all the greenery, the horses had to really pay attention to their feet and balance. There was a decent amount of up-and-down hill, so it was definitely a thinking ride for the horses. We appreciated that the woods gave us so much shade, because it was baking hot out on the road. Unfortunately most of the little brook crossings were completely dry, so we couldn't get the horses as much water as we would have liked. They were thirsty enough to drink from a couple of muddy puddles, mouthing at the mud too. I felt bad about that- Fizz drank so much when we got home.
















Aside from being hot and a little longer than expected, the ride was pretty uneventful.








Sunday was even hotter, so I didn't ride at all. This morning is a little better, so I am planning to go for a short route around the fields. This afternoon it's theoretically supposed to rain, and keep going through tomorrow. Really hoping that happens!
* * * * * * * *


SueC said:


> Did you have to look far and wide to find your linens or has the technicolour floral craze not hit the US?


I laughed at your story about the pink sofa and doilies, that would be fairly miserable. But I have to admit that there are some large floral prints that I really like, though in more muted colors. As for our bedding- the block quilt was made by my mother as a college graduation present. The coverlet on the bed is from a US-based bedding company that has been my bedding source since I was a teenager. I guess you'd call it "classic," as they are well known for their very durable down comforters that last forever.


SueC said:


> @egrogan, what do you prefer - the riding aspect or the hanging out with horses, or is it a draw?


I thought about this all weekend. Such a short question with a more complicated answer. I don't think I'd be happy having horses if I couldn't ever ride. That said, I do love having them at home and being able to really get to know them. Like being able to see Izzy start to want to eat again after Maggie died. Or noticing that Fizz wasn't quite right because of the subtle difference in how she was standing with her weight shifted slightly forward over her front legs. Or Saturday night when I went out to do night check, for some reason Josie came up to me and really wanted scratches (this is the first time that's ever happened). She leaned into the scratching and yawned and yawned. I've never seen her relax like that. The next morning, when I approached her while she was standing in the paddock eating hay, she turned to face me and took a few steps towards me, instead of away from me- again, first time she's ever walked up to me like that. It's taken a few months for her to start to trust and want to interact, and I'm sure that wouldn't have happened if I saw her only sporadically.

Even though there are lots of great things about having them home, I have to admit that I really hate the routinized nature of chores. I find it soul crushing to spend time doing a task, especially poop picking, that I know I'm just going to have to do all over again a few hours later. I loathe doing double work, and it's a big reason I knew I didn't want to be a professor- given the "publish or perish" culture in academia (at least in the US), I couldn't stomach the thought of spending a decade churning out articles and having to comply with the endless cycle of revise and resubmit to get enough stuff published. I love research, but not re-writing the same paper dozens of times. Same with the horses, I love being around them, but not picking poop up from the same spot in the paddock three times a day. If I ever have fantasies about boarding again, it's to have that taken care of. For now, the benefits of riding + relationships outweigh the amount I dislike the "tidying up" type of chores. 😉


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> If I ever have fantasies about boarding again,


Sometimes I have fantasies about boarding. Not when picking poop. For some reason, I don't mind that much. It's when the underground water pipe breaks because the horses were stepping on it, or a huge tree falls on the fence, or the endless task of pulling the Virginia creeper off the fence, ordering sand and shoveling into place, loading 100 bales of hay into the hay room when it is 103 degrees. Those big hard tedious jobs that take all day and cost a lot of money. I think, "If I were boarding, someone else would be managing this."

But like you, having the horses right at my place far outweighs the hard heavy expensive jobs.


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## egrogan

@knightrider, I think I'm still in a bit of a honeymoon period because most of the infrastructure on the farm was put in new three years ago when we moved in, so we haven't had to replace much yet. Except our frost-free hydrant, which you absolutely have to have here. We've replaced that 3 times so far! We did repair a few sections of the electric fence this weekend, where it had become really frayed in a corner, but that was pretty quick and easy to do.

I feel silly complaining about the manure management. It's not even clearing it that's so tedious, I think it's that I do it all manually with just a basic wheelbarrow, and our manure pile is way back in the woods behind the pastures. Filling the wheelbarrow only takes a couple of minutes- the walk to the woods and back takes me 10 minutes if I'm fast. I'm jealous of people who have a tractor or 4 wheeler with a dump cart! I have to admit I'm also frustrated that because of how hot and buggy it's been this month, the horses are standing in the sheds almost 12 hours a day, and leaving them looking like a stall does when horses are stabled overnight. I'm basically stripping and rebedding the sheds twice a day, and even that doesn't feel like enough. Izzy has some signs of thrush from standing in manure and urine all day, even though I'm cleaning them out completely at breakfast and dinner. Sigh. Not stalling horses is supposed to come with the added benefit of not having to strip stalls twice a day 😉 But that doesn't work when the horses park themselves in one spot and won't move!



knightrider said:


> But like you, having the horses right at my place far outweighs the hard heavy expensive jobs.


Yes, this was my reward today 😁 Just a couple of miles around the fields right before lunch, but it was so quiet and peaceful. We shared the fields with a couple of turkeys and monarchs, but that was it!
















PS- even though things still look fairly green, look how frighteningly low the pond in front of the sugar house is! ^^ Most people's ponds look like that right now. The brook that goes through the woods near my house still has some water in it, but it's not much more than a muddy trickle. In the spring, it was so deep it came up and over my insulated tall boots and got my feet soaking wet. It's not supposed to be this dry here


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## Knave

Maybe you should make a spot in your budget for a four wheeler and cart! I didn’t ever think I wanted a four wheeler, but husband traded my young cousin a motorcycle in its final days for an old four wheeler the boy had driven the life out of as well. The boy liked bikes, and no longer had any interest in the four wheeler.

I love this danged thing! Move a bale of hay, just get something little done, and the four wheeler is my best friend! Lol. We never brought it home this year, so I didn’t use it and didn’t think to miss it too much, but it really is a handy little addition.


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## egrogan

@Knave, that sounds like exactly what I'd like! It's hard to leave equipment outside here uncovered, especially in the winter, and we don't really have a place to store anything else right now. We have plans to get an old falling down garage on our property rebuilt, but with all the supply problems and just the shortage of people who can build major structures, we're on a 2ish year waiting list for a contractor to get to us (sadly that kind of building construction is outside our expertise). Ha, and by the time we get the garage rebuilt, I probably won't be able to afford a four wheeler for awhile  I try to look at schlepping the wheelbarrow as my free gym workout for the day!


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## Knave

Maybe you need to find a junkier one like mine, where it’s cheap enough that you can not worry about what happens to it over the winter. Obviously we put ours away, but honestly it wouldn’t bother me terribly if it was out. The seat has already split and it’s just lived it’s life out prior to our ownership. I doubt it could get much if any money in a sale. It works, so that’s all that matters to me, but the boy did some mechanic work to make it work before the trade. Husband did a little mechanic work to make the bike run too, so they were pretty much both worthless yard ornaments prior.

I wonder if someone on Craig’s list or something like that would have an equally old and now unloved kid’s prize. If you were using it, like if your husband moved enough snow you had a little road and kept using it over the winter, then I think it would stay running.


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## egrogan

Good idea, I will have to poke around. We do plow the path from the field back to the manure pile all winter, so it would definitely continue to get used. I wouldn't complain about not wrestling the wheelbarrow through the snow!


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## bsms

Our horse poop goes into 80 gallon buckets that we roll to the curb once a week as part of our trash. The trash buckets stay next to the corral all week long so it is just scooping into a little wheel barrow and then dumping the barrow into the trash can.

Lack of water really limits our rides. 80 degrees or more and no water anywhere, with bright sun. I walked/jogged 7 miles in Saguaro National Park this morning and am BEAT. Didn't take water with me (have now ordered a Camelback) and my rump was dragging when I got back to the car. I wouldn't ever want Bandit to go thru that. I can _choose_ to do it but I don't want to _force_ him to experience it!


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## egrogan

@bsms, out here in the rural hinterlands we have no trash pickup service 😉 That sounds like a very convenient solution!

I don’t like going 10 miles without at least one good drink, but I can get away with it and not worry tooooo much about Fizz. She is very good about taking a drink right before I get on, and she always drinks well when we get home. Most of our longer rides have at least one natural water source, at least in a more typical summer. I can see how all that would get dangerous where you are. During our SW trip a couple of years ago I was keeping the car packed with water bottles because I was so scared of being caught without enough!! 💦


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## egrogan

I was trying to take care of feeding between afternoon storms, and I was nearly successful...but while I was waiting for Josie to finish her dinner, the skies opened and buckets and buckets of rain fell! Luckily I could hide out in the sheds for 30 minutes to wait for it to pass, but I haven't seen rain this hard in quite awhile. It was so loud on the roof that I couldn't even hear the podcast I was listening to. So instead I hung out with Izzy and scratched all her itchy spots while she dozed and the other two braved the downpour to eat hay. We had a little photo shoot while I waited around for it to lighten up enough to make a run back to the house.

Two horses angry for different reasons- Fizz is mad that it's raining because she wants to eat but won't stand in the shed with the sound of the rain on the roof so she has to be outside getting drenched, and Izzy is mad because she wants to be outside to eat but won't stand outside when it's raining this hard, and if she sticks her head out the drip from the roof will get her wet 
















We're bad at selfies, but she was happy to have her chest itched and itched- so many bug bites....








Ever watchful Josie...
















Keeping an eye out for Izzy dozing through the worst of the storm.
















We're so grateful for the rain. Much needed.


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## egrogan

Short ride at lunch today. Started off with a literal "bang" - I had just gotten on when we heard a huge crash directly behind us. All the rain yesterday must have been too much for an old dead tree, and it came crashing down on the ridge behind the house. Fortunately it was far enough back in the woods it didn't damage anything, but it was very dramatic coming down. I think I jumped higher than Fizz did 

Still muggy and very buggy, so I won't say it was our best ride, but it was good to get out and move. With the rain, the road was in good shape so we hustled up to the overlook and back. A canter up the hill woke her up a bit, she had been sort of sluggish to that point. I think we're all ready for some fresh, cool fall air to blow in. Soon I hope. We did have very pretty skies though.
















Also, it's sort of hard to tell in pictures, but there is just a hint of color starting to creep into the trees. Today was the first day I really noticed it. This maple has some red streaks all of a sudden, and there are some yellow spots in birches along the road. 🍁 Fall is coming. The most wonderful time of the year! 🍁


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## egrogan

Can I ask for some of your expertise/advice? How do you handle a "big" ankle that showed up overnight? See Josie below- she's looked like this since yesterday morning. Pretty swollen (soft), warm, she's mildly lame on it. I gave 1/2 gram bute yesterday and this morning, though am not seeing much improvement. Maybe walking somewhat less painfully today. I don't have much experience with this sort of thing so I am embarrassed to say I'm not sure what I should do. I haven't called vet yet as I'm not sure how much this is a "wait and see" vs. diagnose and treat. What would you do?








We are starting to work on getting ready for blanketing later this year, and she has been spending time "wearing" Fizz's fly hood since it's lightweight and not very intimidating. I have no idea if she's been blanketed before or not- she accepted a flymask as though she'd worn one before, so hopefully the blanket won't be a big deal. But I don't know anything about her past and don't want to assume.








Short ride with Fizz this morning before meetings.








It's thunderstorming now but the weekend is supposed to be pretty nice. There's a big 100 mile bike race going through the neighborhood tomorrow, so probably won't ride. I'm going to watch a driving competition at GMHA in the morning, which should be fun!


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## knightrider

If it were me, I would cold hose it for 20 minutes and then rub it with Bigeloil before calling the vet. Cold hose again in the evening and more Bigeloil in the morning. See if it gets better on its own.


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## gottatrot

I would also do a wait and see for a day or two I second the cold hosing, and would give the Bute also.


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## Knave

I have the same advice as @knightrider, although I wouldn’t do a rub, only because we only have one around when something is longer term and needs it. My reaction would be to cold hose 20 minutes in the morning and evening for a couple days, and see what was going on then. My father likes to point out that we all twist our ankles or end up with some sort of issue every now and again. It’s not always a big deal, but we still always cold hose.

As for the rubs, here is a random story for you. When Bones was young, three I believe, I didn’t realize yet he was a brusher. He had on his second set of shoes, and we were loping out down a dirt road when a herd of antelope jumped out of the brush. He spooked, and then he walked away lame. His ankle swelled up pretty big.

I couldn’t figure out what was going on, as he stayed very lame for an extended period of time. So, I decided to have some vetting done on him. They xrayed him, saw no injury, but said without the ultrasound they couldn’t definitively diagnose what they believed, but they were certain, he had torn his suspensory.

They recommended I put him down. I took him home and thought about it myself, because I’m not one who tends to just believe what someone says, and they didn’t let me talk and tell them what I believed happened.

So, I recorded him at a walk on slow mo. I saw that he hit that swollen ankle on every step. I had my husband pull his shoes, and I went to thinking hard on the problem. I knew a very old man who had a son I happened to run into in town. The old man’s name was Monty. Monty had spend his life horseback, and he was a horseman. He spend a good part of his life mustanging, and he was known to have, I’m not sure how to explain it, but a medical curiosity and talent.

Although the other horsemen in my life wanted to side with the vets and told me to put down baby Bones, Monty listened to my story when his son called him and handed me the phone. He told me horses who toe out tend towards brushing, as I explained with Bones, and the trick would be to get the swelling out and then protect the leg from future injuries.

He had me buy two different types of liniment, and he explained to me how he wanted me to use it. He said it might burn the skin, but that I was to still do it. He had me use the first liniment and to wrap the leg after cold hosing, but to only wrap it for an hour. He said I would sluff the skin if I left it too long.

With the old man’s advice, Bones was up and going in no time at all it seemed. He talked to me again over the phone a couple of times. He brought me back into exercising the horse, and I bought brushing boots made for jumpers for him for that first year when he was at work.

Bones has never again worn a set of shoes, and today he gets along without even the brushing boots. I’ve never blown it up again, and had I blindly listened instead of trusting my gut and talking to the old man, I would have put down one of my favorite horses.


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## egrogan

Thank you all, that makes me feel better and I can definitely do the hosing.

I think probably what happened is that they have been scuffling around about who stands in the shed (why they all insist on standing in the same single shed I wish I knew…) and Josie got hustled out and tripped over herself. I’ve seen some version of that happening for a few days.

Hopefully she’ll heal up fine.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Even though there are lots of great things about having them home, I have to admit that I really hate the routinized nature of chores. I find it soul crushing to spend time doing a task, especially poop picking, that I know I'm just going to have to do all over again a few hours later. I loathe doing double work, and it's a big reason I knew I didn't want to be a professor- given the "publish or perish" culture in academia (at least in the US), I couldn't stomach the thought of spending a decade churning out articles and having to comply with the endless cycle of revise and resubmit to get enough stuff published. I love research, but not re-writing the same paper dozens of times. Same with the horses, I love being around them, but not picking poop up from the same spot in the paddock three times a day. If I ever have fantasies about boarding again, it's to have that taken care of. For now, the benefits of riding + relationships outweigh the amount I dislike the "tidying up" type of chores. 😉


You know, I hate the useless one-way, Groundhog Day type jobs as well, which is why I love permaculture. When we pick up manure, it's used to make compost. When I mow lawn, the clippings get used as mulch or in compost. So all that stuff comes back to me as food eventually and I love eating nice fresh produce. There's never just one reason for me to do something, for most of my outdoors work. I had watched my father build a farm infrastructure he then was a slave to for the rest of his days. He locked every horse up every night even though they mostly prefer being outdoors, and therefore spent every morning mucking out 10 loose boxes. He spent about three hours a day, seven days a week, just shifting manure out and food in, and that was before he even started on the paddock and fence maintenance and other actual farm tasks. Instead of letting them graze, he cut the meadows and brought the hay to the horses' miserable sand yards and the stables four times a day. It was a neverending hamster wheel, which caused the house to fall apart, the cow fences to fall down from lack of upkeep, the cows run all over the neighbourhood until some neighbours eventually said, "We'll buy them from you, they don't stay on your place anyway, they're always coming over to ours" - well, the grazing was better there! And it caused a lot of bored to tears horses nobody did anything with once they were retired.

We didn't want to live like this, so our animals (horses, donkeys, cattle) are set up to help themselves as much as possible, which means I do under an hour a day of routine work for their general maintenance. You also are grazing your horses when you can, and don't usually lock them up indoors, which makes things easier than if you did the stock-standard stable horse thing.

What are you doing with your horse manure?

Which reminds me of this old joke - a man is picking up a trailer of horse manure from a riding barn when the little girl who lives there asks, "What are you going to do with that?" The man tells her, "I'm going to put it on our strawberries!" The little girl wrinkles her nose and says, "That's funny. We put cream on ours!"


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## Kalraii

@SueC you've given me an idea - and I'm curious what you do with your compost @egrogan and definitely anyone else reading this. As I'm now renting my own bit of land for the first time this year, it'll be 10 acres once the horses have helped finishing mow it down bit by bit, if any of you use your compost to help fertilize? I don't have access to big equipment and I'm not allowed to use fertilizer as my co-livery has big problems with laminitis on her side. I've got nothing happening with my strategically placed manure pile but maybe I could use it to help rest and reseed the worst areas? Hm. 

I have to say poo picking is my therapy right now and I look forward to my mornings doing it but I had to invest in an industrial sized wheelbarrow that once full, could probably pin me in place 😅 I listen to audio books and decompress from work... I've put your story in my back pocket @Knave, Bones very lucky. From the stories you tell I'd never have thought he'd have ever had such an injury!

Lovely pictures as always egrogan. You actually helped me get my butt out to ride.


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## Knave

@Kalraii we use the manure for fertilizer, but not on horse pastures because our horses are dry lotted. At the sheds we have a feedlot style area where we keep heifers for a good part of the year. They clean those corrals and make big piles of manure. Then the manure sits for five or so years before it can be used, because it is too hot for the first years.

When I worked at the Arabian place, we meticulously cleaned the pastures and upper corrals of the horses daily. If something was stalled it was cleaned twice a day. (Each set of horses had their own barn in the outside corrals, which of course was cleaned daily.)

We drug around with us a manure spreader, which is a piece of machinery that is like a dumpster until you turn it on and it breaks apart the manure and spreads it out like a fertilizer. We drug it with the tractor of course, and added to it until it was full. Then we would take and spread it.

With how meticulous everything was there, seeing and accidentally unbroken manure would have been the end of the world, and so we spread it on further areas of the yard people did not regularly go.

All that to say it didn’t sit for five years, but it also spread finer.


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## SueC

[email protected], I tried to achieve that effect by using a pitchfork to fling individual cow pats really hard into the distance, when I was cleaning up around their hay eating area recently. The success was, shall we say, partial. And I almost pulled my shoulder on one of my most Olympic efforts...

By early summer, the dung beetles will do this job for us.


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## Knave

We have bugs that do a lot of work for us too @SueC. Luckily for us the corrals are big enough that we are not faced with constant cleaning. A couple times a year the tractor comes and piles it all up, and once a year it takes some of that cleaning and puts it on gardens.

Now, the part of me that feels a need to have people believe everything is perfect (I don’t know the word for that), hates the big mountain in the corral. I asked my husband to remove it and we got into an argument because he tried to explain to me why they do it, for they do it in all the large corral settings. I didn’t care why though, everyone would judge me negatively! Lol

The why however being important, deals with the way the weather works around here, and especially in cleaned corrals. Take Mama’s for example. I keep Mama’s pen in a really nice condition. Doing so has caused the pen to be down to hard pan. So, when a water trough overflows or anything like that, the pen will not drain. It is also lower than all the surrounding ground.

For Mama this isn’t the worst thing, because the little barn stays dry and she is able to get out of it. Without the massive poop mountains, the cows or horses would be stuck with no escape during those times.

Once I finally have accepted it (obviously it breaks down into a dirt sort of thing, so it doesn’t really look like a poop mountain or have a smell), I do grow mostly to let a piece of my need to have people see me a certain way disappear about it, and spend a lot of time enjoying watching the horses play on it. Someone is always the king of the mountain, and play fights and occasionally real fights go on over who stands directly on top. Any playing has bucking up and down the mountain. It is the place the horses mostly spend their time.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I understand what you're saying about how people judge when they see your pastures. Mine is sheltered from the road when the trees have leaves on them, but I *h a t e *that people can see the way the poop is piled up during the spring thaw. We aren't able to clear it through the winter, but there's a period of several weeks when the snow is mostly gone, but it's too wet to get the tractor in to scrape it clean for the spring. I pick their dry lot clean daily as long into the winter I can, and throughout the rest of the year, but there comes a point in the winter where even a sharp metal shovel isn't moving the frozen poop, so what can you do but wait?



Kalraii said:


> I'm curious what you do with your compost @egrogan and definitely anyone else reading this.


I wish I could say we did something useful with it, but we don't. We have two piles in the woods behind the fields. We don't really have any garden to speak of right now (long story, but the short of it is that given the endless renovation cycle we're in with the house, any place I would put a garden would be trampled, so I'm waiting until the house is "done." Ha.). The poop that stays on the larger pasture acreage, we'll break that up with the tractor drag a couple of times a year, but we don't spread anything more than that.

We bagged a bunch up and gave it away last spring, but around here so many people have horses, cows, chickens, etc. that there isn't actually much demand for it. In our state, all food waste has to be composted and can't end up in the landfill, so we toss all our food scraps on the pile and they break down there- if they last that long, as I know we're feeding the wildlife with scraps off the pile too.


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## SueC

@egrogan! If you don't have space issues at the moment, hang on to that manure and guard it with your life - it is gardening gold, particularly if it is aged for a few years, and/or hot composted. Anything organic like that that's not too wet or too dry and has the right carbon/nitrogen ratio will automatically hot compost if piled up in heaps of at least one cubic metre - except in near-freezing conditions (but it will keep and do its thing in spring). 

The nice thing about hot composted or sufficiently aged manure is that it's brilliant plant food and the weed seeds in it have been largely eliminated - which is important for gardeners who don't think weeding is a spiritually enlightening Zen practice. I know you are super busy indoors at the moment, but even if it takes you another 10 years to start a significant garden, think of all the gardening gold you have waiting for that time, which will make establishing a healthy and productive garden so much easier for you when you get around to it!

And Brett says - while you wait, throw some pumpkin seeds into your piles in spring - no work but lots of delicious pumpkin sage risotto later!  And maybe grow some decorative gourds too for fun - they grow themselves and it will give you so much happiness to have them around your house...








Here's an equally decorative eating pumpkin we grow called a Turk's Turban - lovely dry nutty flesh, great roasted whole then turned into soup, or roasted in wedges, or in risotto...








We do mixed piles of manure and garden waste/kitchen scraps, and even while they're still sitting to mature, we throw in pumpkin seeds because those plants can stand the heat of fresh manure and thrive on it. Then we use the finished compost sometime after pumpkin harvest!

And just think - that way, when you are eating pumpkin risotto, atoms that used to be part of your beloved horses will become part of you for a while. Not that the bulk of manure used to be part of them, but some of it was - like the bile pigments that make manure brown, and get recycled along with all the other stardust in it. Manure is probably the least glamorous manifestation of stardust, but is easily upcycled again into something spectacular.

@Kalraii, we sometimes sheet compost worn traffic areas on our pastures with manure. It's more effective if you can temporarily put a hot tape across your rehab area to let things establish undisturbed, but in places you can't do that, will at least protect the soil and cut down on erosion. Fresh manure is fine for that purpose; and you want the seeds in it, especially if your horses are on meadow hay or have access to a big pasture where seed heads can form.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww, poor Josie! I hope the swelling has gone down, I know that is no fun to see!

I unfortunately have a boatload of experience with swelling & whatnot because my mare loves to injure herself haha, so what I usually do is yes, cold hose, but I also swear by epsom salt poultice, the green stuff.  It works WONDERS! Regular clay poultice is good too, but I personally feel like the green stuff works better. Always good to have on hand. Really helps with the heat & swelling. It comes off with water/scrubbing but it stays on pretty good, can be on for 24-48hrs.

I would get the vet out if the swelling doesn't go down and if it starts to spread, but hopefully she will heal up just fine on her own.


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## egrogan

@SueC, yes, the composted manure pile will be there waiting for us when we're ready for it. We push it back into the woods after every summer and there's plenty of room to continue adding to it.

@PoptartShop , Josie's leg is looking better, though still bigger than it should. She's not taking lame steps on it and was even trotting around this morning. I don't know her well enough to know how stoic she is, but she doesn't seem bothered by it. Still, I would like the swelling to be gone by now. I do have a tub of green epsom salt poultice around here somewhere, so maybe I will give that a try after hosing this afternoon!

* * * WEEKEND ADVENTURES * * *
Saturday morning I went with M to GMHA to watch some of her friends who were doing the competitive driving event. Dressage was first, then cones. One of her friends was driving her Welsh ponies tandem (so impressive!) and the other had a young Morgan x Connemara cross out for one of his first competitions.

Tandem ponies in dressage:















They were the first to go, and the cones immediately followed dressage. So we walked from one ring to the next with them and spent most of our time watching the cones course. Driving is so fascinating- everything from a little shetland pony to an elegant Morgan went through the same course. They measure the width of the carriage, wheel to wheel, and adjust the amount of space between the cones for every driver. The object is to go around in the correct order and not knock any of the balls off the top of the cones. The tandem ponies were the first to zip around the course (it's all done at a trot).








Shetland pony legs look like they're always moving at warp speed ⚡⚡








This is M's other friend, with the Connemara x Morgan cross








And another Morgan who looks a lot like Fizz. We met them last year when a driving competition was the same weekend as endurance.








I really am in awe of driving. It looks both exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. It seems like you have so little control if something goes wrong. But it is really beautiful to watch when it's going well!

Sunday, M and I met for a ride. The roads are fairly soft, so we went through Newhall Farm. We had all kinds of exciting encounters along the way. Let's see...a balloon display in front of a house where there was a baby shower happening; a flock of turkeys that took off flying from a field on one side of the road to the field on the other side, while we were cantering up the hill under their flight path; lots of bikers; loose dogs with no people around...Then there was the older gentleman riding a 4 wheeler up a very rocky trail completely oblivious that we were standing just off the trail to let him pass. I think we scared him more than he scared the horses! He was pretty shocked to see us, which didn't happen until he was right in front of us.








But the best part of the ride- Fizz conquered the cows!








I know it's sort of hard to see them in this picture, but there were 4 very large bulls with very large horns right up along the fence. It's by far the closest we've ever been to them. By the time we got right next to them, all 4 had come up to the fenceline and were standing in a row giving us the evil eye. Coalie went past them, and M stopped him right after that so they didn't disappear around the bend where Fizz couldn't see them. Fizz walked along the road until we were standing directly next to the cows, and then she stopped and stared. But it was different this time, she wasn't shaking and scared and wideeyed. She wanted to look at them, but she was really _looking _at them, rather than panicking. This seemed really good, so I just sat there for a minute while she wanted to investigate. She'd glance at Coalie up ahead, and back at the cows, and back at Coalie. She really seemed to be thinking it through. I kept encouraging her forward, and after she'd taken her time thinking it over, she walked right on to join Coalie. I was so proud of her! I gave her huge pets and emptied my treat pocket 😁 That was by far the hardest cow crossing we've had to do, and I couldn't be happier she handled it so well.

The rest of our ride was mellow compared to how it started. It was hot and muggy so we ambled home. We did ~8 miles.


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## egrogan

Short ride (~4 miles) yesterday morning before the humidity got overwhelming. Took a route we haven't done in awhile (all on roads)- the first mile or so is downhill, so a very active walking warmup. Then we have to take our chance on 1/4 mile of paved road before turning onto another section of dirt road that is mostly flat/slightly uphill- so we can trot for a good 1.5 miles with no downhill interruptions. I am trying to really push myself to give her flexibility over the type of trot we do when we're on a long stretch, and just stay out of her way and _ride _when she launches into a good Morgan road trot. We're getting to the point where she can change speeds between gaits and within gaits on a loose rein. I think I've said before that I was creating issues by shortening my reins before asking for transitions, so I'm trying to be more conscious of that. As Denny Emmerson recently recounted- "we all just need to f***ing ride better!" I'm trying!  Realistically, I'm really craving being able to take some lessons, but I need to keep working on the trailer situation so that she's more comfortable unloading and doing something under saddle.








I've been struggling with saddle pad issues recently. My current pad is just a very basic thin cotton pad, and it's been used and abused enough this summer it's time to replace it. I really like a shaped pad, not a full dressage pad, but it's hard to find a thin, shaped pad that fits a dressage saddle (vs. jumping/forward flap saddle). I guess it's just not a style that's popular with dressage riders now. So anyway, I've been trying a few different things. I splurged for an Ecogold cross country pad, but the shape was all wrong under my saddle, which has traditional billets, not center fire rigging. I sadly sent that back. I have a really nice sheepskin lined pad which is the right shape. I tried that yesterday, and I could tell she wasn't super thrilled with how it fit, plus it made me feel like I was sitting about a foot off her back and being flung out of the saddle when she accelerated into that road trot. I wanted to experiment to see if doing a ride in it would compress the sheepskin enough that it might not be so puffy, but taking a picture of it when I got off, it was obvious why I felt like I was being launched over her neck given how it pops the cantle up and forward! (PS, she's standing oddly because right before I took this, she bent down to scratch her nose on her leg and tangled her foot in the reins so I had to save her)








I can't bring myself to part with this pad though, as I got a great deal on it and maybe it will fit another horse and saddle someday. It's by far the nicest pad I've ever owned 😉 So at this point, I think I'm just going to go back to a new version of my plain little $20 pad and not continue to fret over it. 

This weekend we're heading over the GMHA for a 15 mile competitive trail ride on Saturday. I've finally decided I'm going to do the ride solo. M decided she's going to stick to pleasure. We had a couple of other people who were planning on doing the 15 that we were going to partner up with, but each of them ended up opting out. To be honest though, I'm actually excited to do it on our own. That's how we do most of our riding anyway, and I think it will be much more straightforward for me to just focus on Fizz and not worry about how other horses are keeping up (or not). I was laughing thinking about @knightrider's theory of decision making- when you feel relief when one option is taken off the table, you know which decision you really wanted in your heart of hearts. That's how I felt each time someone let me know they decided they weren't going to be doing the competitive ride. I've ridden the route that we'll be on a couple of times previously, so I know a couple of sections where I'll have to convince Fizz to be excited about sticking with me, but I'm also at a point where I feel comfortable with how she'll act. We'll have to go a little faster than we typically do, but she's shown me the last few times at GMHA that the excitement of a ride will keep her moving pretty forward, so I think we're going make it on time. I'm getting really excited for it myself!


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## Knave

I’m so excited for you!!!


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## PoptartShop

Ooooh, a solo ride!!! That will be good for you!! I think since you and Fizz go out alone a lot, it'll be just fine! Whenever I do my paperchases, I'm always solo, it's really relaxing (I pretty much ride solo ALL the time lol) but it will be such a fun experience for you both.  I know you're gonna kill it! Less distraction & you don't have to worry about anyone else but you guys!

I'm glad Josie's swelling has gone down too, yay! Yeah, the green epsom salt poultice definitely wouldn't hurt.
Regarding the pad, sometimes it's best to just stick with what works, so a new version of that pad wouldn't be a bad idea!


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## egrogan

Really great ride today. Even I could not complain about the weather-a cool breeze, beautiful sunny blue skies. It was the first day it felt like fall was coming. We went to the overlook and down the big hill. That’s another thing we’ve conquered this summer-no more leaping off the road into the ditch to try to turn around. As long as I ride every step down the hill, and keep the sideways doors closed with all attention forward, down we go.

We trotted everywhere we could, so basically anything that wasn’t a steeper downhill. We cantered in a couple of spots but mostly o was trying to focus on an even, balanced trot. I am trying hard to monitor my own balance and not lean.








We passed the cows and turned around, trotting our way up the big hill. We got passed by a big, rattling work truck so we continued along in the grass while it passed us. But that was the only traffic we saw.








When we got home, we cooled out with a walk around the field. Apples awaited! 🍎


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## Knave

She reminds me of Moon. If Moon had been her size we never would have sold her. She was spectacular! She did anything asked, and she did it with a sensitivity that was perfect. She was all go, but super light. I spent a lot of time trying to explain to little girl that she couldn’t make her super cuey, because no kid could ride the way Moon wanted to be. Moon wanted to be a miniature show horse. She wanted to do everything right and I just loved her so much.

When little girl sold Moon, she sold her to the people who won the cutting horse’s version of the world that year. High end cutting people, and Moon went to live in the most beautiful barn with wonderful pastures and just the perfection for a magical pony like her. The woman was really small, smaller than I by a long shot. She rode her to keep her up until the baby could ride, and she told me she was the best broke horse on the place.


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## egrogan

Today felt like fall! I was chilly when I woke up and wore a sweatshirt to do chores. I actually took out the hairdryer for the first time in months because I was too cold with wet hair after showering. It's the beginning of the most wonderful time of year!

This morning was our last ride before the competitive trail ride this weekend. I thought of it as a "systems check"- just a short w/t/c around the fields to stretch our legs and have a conversation.

Fizz gave me a good laugh when I went out to get her. With the nice weather, the horses finally managed to tear themselves away from the sheds and were actually out in the back pasture. Izzy and Josie were grazing around and Fizz was sprawled out like a beached whale in the sunshine 








I went about my business getting tack ready and putting out a little hay, and eventually they wandered back up to see what I was doing. I always tie Fizz in a shed with a haynet to tack up. Today I untied her and took off her halter, but had to walk back into the tack room to grab her bridle. When my back was turned, I heard her clomping out of the shed on the loose. We always stop at the water tubs for a drink before we leave, and I guess I was taking too long and she was ready for her drink!!








We headed down the road to the neighbor's large hay field. They had baled a very sad looking little bit of a second cut earlier in the week, but we still stuck to the edges of the field just in case they have any intentions of trying for another cut (doubtful). I don't know how many acres this field actually is, but it seems massive because of how high you are when you're up at the top. This is a bit of a mental challenge for me, giving Fizz her head and asking her to move out around such a wide open space. She's never given me a reason to worry, but for some reason it's taken me a long time to trust that she's not going to see all that space and take off bucking. I guess I've watched too many horsey movies. Anyway, we had a nice trot along the flat lower side of the hill...








And then turned left and climbed all the way up to the top. It's a big climb but the view is so beautiful.








The top side of the field is mostly flat, and where they store the round bales.








She was huffing and puffing a bit on the top side after trotting straight up, but she continued on in a good trot. Then we headed back up the road towards our house, but turned down our logging road-we had to walk again since it's really rutted out from the mess the logging guys never came back to clean up (that was supposed to happen this spring. GRRRRR).








As we came back across our field, we hit a muddy patch and I heard a boot get sucked right off. This was part of what I wanted to check on with this ride- for about a week +/- after a trim, she's sort of in between size 3 and size 4 in front boots. She wore size 3 yesterday and tripped in a couple of spots, so I thought maybe the fit was a little too tight and we needed to move up to the next size, which she wears for all but that first freshly trimmed week of the trim cycle. But today wearing these size 4 boots, even with a shim, clearly they're a little too big. So I'm actually not sure what I will do for the ride. I'll bring both sizes with me and see how they go on. I don't have many issues with boots, but this is the main frustration I do have.

I hopped off, put the boot back on, and then got back on from a tree stump on the edge of the field. We kept the ride short and easy, and I think we're ready for Saturday! We'll trailer over tomorrow late afternoon and hopefully be able to vet in then, rather than having to do it Saturday morning. I think trail opens at 9am Saturday. I'm excited!!


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## Knave

I’m so excited for you!


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## knightrider

I'm excited for you too!


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## SueC

Have tons of fun!  It will make up for the time you had to stay home recently, because of the plague. Our last two hiking outings have already compensated us so well for the two weeks of hiking we didn't get...

Autumn is my favourite time of year too, although ours isn't as spectacular as yours and we are just heading into spring!

Best wishes to you all. I think there's 20 legs in your household?


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## egrogan

We finished! More later. 😄


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## Knave

I’m so happy!!!!


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## gottatrot

Great job!!


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## egrogan

*Distance Days 2022*
I think this was the best horsey weekend I have ever had. I am so, so proud of Fizz getting her first official completion at a ride. And I had one of the best rides of my life.

We started off Friday afternoon, trailering over to GMHA. Fizz loaded right up without any complaints. The drive is ~20 minutes, and the weather was cool so it was about as comfortable as she was going to be traveling. When we opened the doors, she was a bit trembly and covered in sweat dripping from her neck, chest, and belly. But as soon as she was off, she looked around for a second and then went right to grazing.








I set up her stall earlier in the day, so that was ready and waiting for her, but I wanted to walk her around a bit before putting her away. With how sweaty she was, I knew she would probably want to roll, so I found a discreet spot in a warmup ring no one was using and sure enough, she dropped and rolled happily. We continued on our walk around, and hung out in the brook for a few minutes, continuing to graze.








Across all the weekend distance options (100, 60, 35, 25, 15) there were nearly 50 horses, so vetting was a little more tightly scheduled than it is for some of the other rides. I was hoping they would let the 15 milers vet through Friday night as they often do, but they were too busy with the longer distances so we had to wait until Saturday morning. So after we had grazed around for an hour or so, I tucked her into her stall with tons of hay. I went back a couple of hours later for a quick night check and pulled her out for a bit more hand grazing, wanting to be sure her belly was full and she'd be as happy as she could be in the stall. I came home and passed out, ready for an early start to Saturday morning; vetting started at 7am.

Saturday morning I was up early and fed Izzy and Josie in the dark before heading back to GMHA. My plan was to get Fizz fed, then out for 30 minutes of handgrazing before vetting in. We had a ride briefing at 8:30, and I wanted to have her tacked up in time to handgraze some more before getting on. The trail opened at 9am, with riders going out in 2 minute intervals. There were 16 riders, but several people were paired up to ride together.

She was looking bright and happy when I got to her stall. She had eaten well over night, and was eager for her breakfast, and she had obviously laid down to sleep as she was covered in shavings. I got her cleaned up and her boots on, and grazed her around for a few minutes before we headed up to the vet. I was one of the first ones in line. We got to pick our starting position once we were at the vetting, so I signed up to go out last and solo, which is what I had been hoping for. That felt like a good start to the morning! She was a little pushy for the hands on part of the vetting, but her starting scorecard looked pretty good. I was happy to see that her BCS came in at a 6 this time instead of the 7 she got last time! I was also really happy that she got good marks for muscle tone and hydration- I just worry so much about her standing in the stall overnight. The vet did note moderate windpuffs in all 4 legs, which also wasn't surprising given standing in the stall. She wasn't the peppiest in our trot out and circles, even though we've been practicing at home. She only got "average" marks there, but I knew her mind was on getting back to the grass.

We had almost 45 minutes of grazing time before I had to go to the ride briefing, and she seemed quiet and calm throughout that time. She wasn't thrilled when I had to put her back in the stall, but she had a drink and went back to munching her hay. The briefing was pretty quick and upbeat (we had 5 juniors in the 15 and everyone gave them a good welcoming cheer). After that, I headed back to the stall and got her tacked up. My start time wasn't until 9:21, so I had plenty of time to do a little bit of our usual pre-ride massage and make sure all the tack was straight and comfortable. I had been going back and forth about whether I was going to use the sidepull or her bitted bridle, and at the last minute I decide to use the bitted bridle because of how she had been pushy and fussy for the vet.

My plan was to let her graze as long as possible and get on at 9:15 to walk over to the start timer and go out on time at 9:21. I knew she would be agitated if I got on earlier and did a lot of walking laps around the stalls to warm up, I and thought it would be better to just use the first mile walking as our warm up. Once I'm on, her mind is on "let's go somewhere," not, "let's walk laps around the parking lot," so I thought that would be the best approach. Still, nagging in the back of my mind was the last pleasure ride we had done at GMHA, where as soon as I got in the saddle, she was ready to prance her way off the grounds to get to the trails. Despite that thought, I really felt very calm and confident about everything. Even though she had been a bit hopped up at the start of that last ride, after our first long trot up a hill, she settled right in. And this ride started off almost straight up hill, so I figured that even if she was a little spicy, she'd quickly get her mind back to business.

To her dismay, the clock ticked over to 9:15, and it was time to leave the grass and go! As I had been anticipating, as soon as my butt hit the saddle, her head flung up and we were jigging away from the mounting block and into the parking lot. Not ideal, but I was ready for that.








Of course the jigging is not what anyone would want, but it's actually manageable because it doesn't turn into an explosion. For her, it's a very tense little western pleasure type trot-trot-trot-trot of teeny tiny little anxious steps. I had the lead rope attached to her halter so sort of used that as though it was a second set of reins, and am a little embarrassed that I probably held on to that more tightly than was fair. In my head, I didn't want to be yanking too much on her mouth, and telling her STOP IT via the lead on the halter was a better option. It may sound counterintuitive, but I regretted not having the sidepull in this moment because I think she would have responded better to it since she's more used to it. At any rate, we had what we had, so needed to make the best of it. I got to the start timer right on time, gave them my number, smiled and said we were on our way.

Right from the first 1/4 mile, my problems with following the correct trail markers began. I was so focused on keeping her jigging under control and not boiling over, I was sort of on autopilot and not paying enough attention to where we were going. There were also a lot of pleasure riders leaving at the same time and going in the same general direction, so at the first trail intersection I followed a pair of pleasure riders across a brook crossing but immediately realized we were going the wrong way. I had ridden parts of this 15 mile trail before, and knew we were climbing uphill behind GMHA through the woods; I had inadvertently crossed the creek heading in exactly the opposite direction. As you can imagine, asking an already amped up horse to turn around and go back the way they had come doesn't really have a calming effect on that already amped up horse  I got us pointed in the right direction, but the lefthand turn up the hill I was expecting just wasn't appearing (the first part of the trail is a twisty, turny path around the crosscountry course). As I backtracked trying to see where I had missed my literal first turn to get onto trail, I saw my friend V and the junior she had riding with her coming our way. She had asked me while we were in line at the vetting if I wanted to ride with them, and I thanked her but told her I was planning to go alone. She saw Fizz was a bit hyped and asked again if I wanted to follow them for a bit. I thanked her and told her that while Fizz looked like a bit of a mess, I was sure once we got a good trot uphill she'd be fine and I wouldn't have to rain on their parade all day. She said that was fine, but also that her horse was a 4 year old on his first ever ride, and could throw in some leaps and bucks once they moved beyond a walk. I actually wasn't worried about any of that, as Fizz really didn't care at all about what other horses were doing. She just wanted to be able to get on with her ride and move. It seemed like it took hours (realistically was only a minute or so), but the lefthand turn we needed finally appeared, and we started climbing up. We moved up the hill doing our best working jig, and got to a clearing in the trail where V said they'd move to the side and stop so we could go past and finally start trotting along. All the horses handled that fine, and Fizz was more than thrilled to finally be allowed to get on with it already. A photo V took of us disappearing up the hill:








The first trot was, not surprisingly, huge. But the funny thing is, throughout all of these antics, she never felt like she was dangerous and going to explode. She just felt like she knew what was coming and just couldn't wait to be able to convert all that bottled up anxiety into a big trot. We powered along and again, I was so focused on channeling her energy forward that I once again completely lost track of the trail markers. It's really hard to explain, but the trails behind GMHA are a network of miles and miles of forest tracks that crisscross each other in every direction. Every intersection has not just a left/right turn option, but multiple turnoffs. And in the middle of the woods, everything pretty much looks the same.








The 15 mile ride trail we were following was marked with "plain white arrows." The difficult thing is that in the woods behind GMHA, this network of trails is marked with white arrows of the same size and shape, but they have numbers (1-7). So as we were dashing along the trail, I could see some arrows, but without my glasses on I couldn't quite make out if they were plain or numbered. Finally I concentrated enough to tell there were no plain arrows or confidence markers, and I had yet again taken us the wrong way. We were going to have to turn around to find the right trail again. The steep climb had done wonders for Fizz going up, but I cringed at the thought of turning around and backtracking _down _that same hill. Going the wrong way and backtracking is like the cardinal sin of Fizz.  She really loses confidence in me fast if she thinks I don't know what I'm doing. Which, in this case, I truly didn't. We had gone through so many twists and turns, I didn't know how far back I was going to have to walk to pick up our plain white arrows again. And I was feeling awful at the thought of bothering V and her horses again. I don't know how far or how long we were actually going the wrong way, but it felt like an eternity. Realistically, maybe it was 5 minutes or so, if that? But the walk down the hill felt like another eternity. I decided I was going to have to get off and handwalk down- she was still amped up and I don't think it would have been pretty trying to navigate the steep section with her mad at me. I figured it wasn't against the rules to get off there and walk because the rule prohibits only _forward progress_ while you're unmounted, and this was most definitely _backwards _progress!

As we walked and walked, unsuccessfully scanning the trees for the right arrows, I briefly considered just saying f-this and walking back to camp. It felt like I had lost gobs of time, and if I couldn't even make it through the first mile controlling my horse and following the markers, what business did I have continuing on and messing up other people's rides? But at about that time, thankfully I finally recognized the intersection just beyond where I had parted with V, and sure enough, saw the plain white arrow pointing about 45* right from where I had gone left. Fizz was pretty sure we should be forgetting this crazy plan and just going back to the barn, and I wasn't sure how I was going to get back on. I looked around, and there was a great tree laying on the ground at the intersection where I could easily get back on, so I made a deal with her. If we could both keep it together enough for me to climb back into the saddle there, we were going to continue on. If we were too much of a disaster for me to get back on without hurting myself, we would call it quits. The first time I tried to line her up next to the tree, she barged past me and scrambled over the tree. I took a deep breath and told her we'd try one more time. This time, she lined up where I asked her to and stood perfectly still while I swung my leg over. I took another really deep breath, gave her a peppermint and thanked her for not exploding on me while I got on. We triple checked the arrows, got pointing in the right direction, and I gave her her head and told her to trot on.

And trot she did. Her legs were pumping so hard up the hill she couldn't help but step into a few strides of canter as we climbed. We were still early in the ride, and of course I didn't want her to blow it out so much she'd be exhausted before we even got to the first water stop, but I think we both really needed to just attack that hill and clear our heads. I had never felt her move so powerfully before, and it was the first time I've ever felt like I was molded into her back and flying along together like a single team. Trotting, cantering, it didn't matter, we were just totally in sync as she carried us up the steep hill like it was nothing. The reward at the top of this climb is a beautiful open field where I kissed at her to canter, and then Dexter's grove, a peaceful birch stand with gorgeous views.
















By the time we cruised through Dexter's, we were ~3 miles into the ride, and now settled into a comfortable, steady trot on a loose rein. All the anxiety had melted away. At that point, even though we had a ways to go, I was confident that we were going to finish the ride.

To be continued...


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## Knave

I love this! The getting lost would have freaked me out I think. I was paranoid about that running the halfs on my own feet, but there you never seem to lose sight of at least someone and they are marked really well.


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## egrogan

We did briefly catch up with V and her horses one more time past Dexter's. I apologized again for getting in their way as I explained what had gone wrong. She laughed and said they wondered where I was going but knew I'd figure it out They pulled over again and let us pass. As an aside, her 4 year old was an absolute rockstar. They too had benefited from the first big climb and he was settled and confident enough to allow them to do a lot more trotting without any baby antics than they had initially be planning. I was really happy for them, as they looked like they were really enjoying the ride.

After we passed them, we didn't see anyone else for miles. The trail wound down through the woods and we trotted more of the downhill sections than we typically do. But Fizz was feeling so balanced and strong it didn't seem risky. We did have to have a discussion about why _cantering _down the hills is not for us- we are definitely not now and never going to be eventers!  Soon enough, the trail came to the first water stop, which is in a log landing right before a paved road crossing. It's not my favorite place for water, because cars on the road there are going upwards of 50 mph, and the horses know they're going across so get distracted when they should be drinking. I was really counting on her having a good drink here, because I knew the next water stop was at an intersection where she was going to be determined to turn right, which is the direction we go when we ride home; but we were going to have to turn left to continue on the ride, and I knew I was not going to linger around there trying to get her to drink. Unfortunately at this first water stop, she flapped her lips in it unenthusiastically and didn't really drink anything substantial. Reluctantly, we crossed the paved road and continued on.

At this point, we headed into the longest section of road. The dirt roads aren't as concrete hard as they were a few weeks ago, so we trotted and cantered along while the road was mostly uphill or level. This took us past the beautiful Jenne Farm (the most photographed farm in America, according to people who keep such records).








The vista is so wide here, in the distance we could see another horse out ahead of us. We were up high above the farm, and the lone horse we saw was just beyond the farm. She definitely perked up and noticed the other horse, but it didn't really change her stride in any meaningful way, which was good. I am so impressed with how independent she is! We saw the photographer going up the hill past the farm, and I couldn't resist buying a couple of his photos where we actually look like we're both really happy and enjoying the ride 
















(Photo credit Nick Goldsmith)

I knew I wanted to keep her moving in a comfortable trot to and past the farm, because the next part of the road was a difficult, downhill road section. It's really steep and gravelly there, and goes on like that for over a mile; we were going to walk down it. The difficult water stop was at the bottom of that difficult downhill section. When I was visualizing how the ride would go the night before, this mile-long section was what I was most worried about. Going down this gravelly hill, we almost caught up with the horse in front of us, and for the first time she was tugging on me to try to catch up with the other horse. He drank at the water quickly and then continued on, and she had a dilemma- she knew she wanted to lurch to the right to go home, but she also noticed that the other horse was going the other direction. Still, the draw of home was stronger, and I had to circle her around firmly and tell her we were going after that other horse. Of course, this is the spot where the vet and her scribe were parked to watch all the horses go by (it's about the halfway point for the ride). It was embarrassing to have to have that argument right in front of the vet, but luckily the vet knows where we live and why Fizz disagreed over which direction we were going. And she understood why I didn't want to stop there for the water. All in all, this wasn't the best part of the ride, but it wasn't as tough as I worried it would be.

After leaving the water, the dirt road crosses the same busy, zooming paved road we had crossed earlier, and the trail takes you straight up Heartbreak Hill. This road crossing was another place I had been worried about Fizz getting sticky. As you cross the road, you have to shimmy alongside a closed gate to get onto the trail, and the cars on the paved road are really close. I knew she was thinking backwards and wanting to go towards home, not away from it. She briefly planted her feet and hesitated about going through the gap between the gate and the trees, and I could feel her considering trying to duck out back the way we had come; I could also hear that a car was coming on the paved road. So I flicked her hard on the shoulder a couple of times and growled at her to GO, and she did, bashing my left knee into the metal "private property" sign hanging off the edge of the gate. Know how it feels to hit your funny bone? Yep, I was instantly nauseous while my knee screamed at me as she leapt forward into a trot. At least she went forward  But for the first few strides, my left leg was flopping awkwardly as I tried to force my knee to bend and ride the trot. Fortunately, my leg started cooperating again though the side of my knee did ache the rest of the ride. I have a nice bruise there.

I was really impressed with how she handled Heartbreak Hill.








She trotted up most of it, though this is the first place where she was blowing really hard. We ended up catching and passing the horse that had been in front of us. At that point, I realized how much of an advantage Fizz has by living where we do, and doing all our rides on these crazy hills. Heartbreak Hill is called that for a reason, but she managed it pretty well. We climbed and climbed, and at the top I did keep her walking, even though she halfheartedly tried to keep trotting along in the flat spot. I was hoping I could entice her to stop there for a minute and graze a little, but she didn't want to, she wanted to keep going. We wound our way through bridle paths that lace through some of the beautiful old farms up there, and came to another water stop hosted by another endurance rider. We chatted for a minute with Kathy and a couple of other riders we had caught up to, but Fizz still didn't drink all that well. She was impatient just standing around, so I said goodbye to everyone and continued towards Springbrook Farm. This was a place that could have gone badly for us, because it's a large working dairy farm, and often the cows are right up at the fenceline on both sides of a narrow dirt road that runs through the farm. But it was a pleasant surprise that there wasn't a cow in sight. The riders we had passed at the water stop caught up with us, and we rode along together for a short stretch. The girl on the paint was another one of the junior riders, and she was having a lot of fun. They decided to stop and walk for a bit, so we said goodbye again and motored along.








The road turned back into trail. I was thrilled to be riding trail I'd never been on before. The footing was great, and there was a very welcome cool breeze back in the woods. I guess we went a couple of miles through this section, and since it was mostly uphill or flat, we just kept trucking along trotting and cantering to take advantage of the good footing. At one point, I heard lots of little kid voices up ahead, and wasn't sure what we were coming towards. It turned out it was a big group out hiking on the trails- probably 8 kids, some parents and grandparents, and a lot of barking dogs. One of the moms yelled ahead that the dogs were loud but wouldn't bother the horse, and the kids took their job of controlling their dogs very seriously as we passed them. They were very cute. I thanked the group for letting us have the trail to go by, and we soon had it all to ourselves again. After a bit of time, we came up to another water stop. Finally, Fizz decided she wanted a drink after all. We stood at the tub for a minute and she had a good long drink.








I looked at my mileage tracker and knew we were in the homestretch. We crossed a dirt road and wound our way through another woods section that brought us to yet another pretty mowed path across a field, where we cantered along for a minute. I broke out into a huge smile when I saw a sign saying we had only a mile to go! There was beautiful foliage beginning to show in the trees as well.








I looked at my watch, and we had 20 minutes left. Not only were we going to make time, we were going to finish with a few minutes to spare. Suddenly I saw the riders we had parted with back at Springbrook Farm. I was confused about how they had caught up so quickly, since we were pretty far ahead of them. I wondered if they had missed a section of trail? But I settled in behind them and followed them through the woods. And as I looked to my left, I had a funny thought- I was looking at a beautiful blueberry bush which had caught my eye in the woods awhile ago. Why was I seeing the same blueberry bush again? It was very memorable because it was SO FULL of beautiful, big blueberries, and by this point I was starving and couldn't help but think about how great they would taste. And then lo and behold, here we were back at the pretty field where we had cantered. And the same "one mile to go" sign. Huh?! I couldn't believe I had messed up AGAIN! And the two people in front of me had ridden along faster at a downhill section so I couldn't tell which direction they had gone to get out of this loop I was now completing for the second time. And **** it, all of a sudden, there was that vile blueberry bush on my left again.  I was about to do this same loop for a THIRD time. No idea how I missed the marker at the end of the meadow, but I was supposed to turn right there instead of going straight. Sigh. So poor Fizz had to deal with backtracking the way we had come because I was not about to complete the full loop three times. She was really peeved about it and started hopping around on the trail, which I didn't blame her for. I just concentrated on not getting launched off and hurting myself while she tried to take over navigational duties.

While this was happening, V and her horses came up behind us. I just laughed and told her I had really messed up the navigation yet again. She asked if she could pass us at the trot because they were close to their time cutoff (they were in the starting slot right before us). So even though we had passed 5 horses in the course of the ride, we were going to finish at the end, where we had started. I didn't care about any of that, I was just shaking my head about how Fizz had done everything I had asked her to do, but how pathetic I had been about following the arrows. Even with that last mistake, once we were actually back on the right trail, it was a quick trot through the woods to get to the finish line. We ended up being 5 minutes over our ideal time window, but it didn't matter. Fizz had been amazing. She did more than 15 miles, she did it well within the 5mph target pace, and she looked great when she finished.
















(Photo credit Spectrum Photography- who clearly caught Fizz by surprise while she trotted by  )

Lovely husband was waiting for us at the finish line, as well as another friend C. They came back to the stalls with us as I pulled off Fizz's tack, gave her another good drink, threw some water on her, and then went to graze until it was time for our P&R. We had 20 minutes to get her pulse to under 44. I didn't have a stethoscope so I wasn't sure where she was, but aside from being sweaty, visually she looked like she was in great shape. And sure enough, when our 20 minutes was up, the P&R person got her heartrate at *36*, well below where she needed to be. Her respiration was a little higher than you'd expect (18), but the P&R person was laughing saying, she won't stop sniffing something- and sure enough, the gelding who was stalled next to her was being cooled out by walking back and forth in front of the barn, and she was tracking him like a bloodhound.

We had to wait in a long line for her final hands on and trot out, but there was plenty of grass so she was happy enough. She lost 3 points for very slight changes in her gait during the trot out, but everything else was no change, or actually an improvement over how she had vetted in in the morning. I was once again thrilled and relieved that her muscle tone was so good- this is the hardest I've ever ridden her and the longest distance she's done, and with the PSSM I just worry about bringing her past a line that's not healthy for her. And based on this result, I think she's perfectly capable of doing this kind of ride.

The final placings are decided based on a numerical score that reflects your vetting and completion time. With the three points she lost in the vetting, and our 5 time penalties, she received a score of 92, which put her in 9th place out of 16 horses. But even more exciting, she had the *second lowest *heart rate of all the horses at our distance. I was so proud! What a sense of success to see our name up on the GMHA "big board" with our completion. This will stay up all year until Distance Days 2023.








(PS- we did full vetting, not pass/fail, not sure why we are marked that way on the board)

I kept her there overnight Saturday night and we had a lovely ride home with M and Coalie on Sunday morning. I'll write about that in a bit.


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## phantomhorse13

SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU BOTH!! sucks about missing the markers, but awesome that you kept on and finished anyway!!

also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!


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## knightrider

You did it! And Fizz did fine with flying colors! I am so happy for you! I have to tell you that I missed trail markers and took several wrong turns on my first CTR. I was so ignorant, I didn't know trail markers were always on the right, and did a 3 mle loop backwards! Had to backtrack and do it over. You are not alone!


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## gottatrot

You did amazing!! Fizz looks so gorgeous. I think the two of you make a great team, and will be very talented at endurance.

You were so brave to navigate all alone. When I've been on marked rides I almost always blow past the markers and people behind me yell that I have to turn around and come back. If I'd ever been alone, who knows how far I would go off course.


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## SueC

Hope your knee's OK - these things can niggle, although I think if it does, you're going to smile anyway because it will remind you of your overall experience. Well done both of you - just a joy to read what you wrote, sun myself in the radiance from the horse and human smiles coming off the photos, and to see how far both of you have come on your road together! 🌞🌛🌟⭐✨💫🌟✨⭐💫💫


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## egrogan

Thank you all so much! Although most of us will remain "virtual" friends since we live so far apart, you have all been a huge part of my journey with Fizz, and your advice and encouragement helped carry us through those miles. I really appreciate you all and couldn't wait to come here and tell you all about it 



Knave said:


> The getting lost would have freaked me out I think.





knightrider said:


> I have to tell you that I missed trail markers and took several wrong turns on my first CTR.





gottatrot said:


> You were so brave to navigate all alone.


I'm still really embarrassed about my problems following the markers. I actually consider myself to be really good with directions; I'm the one people ask when they need to get somewhere, and I have a somewhat photographic memory so I tend to give directions based on the pictures I have in my mind. I'm still baffled by how I just didn't even see so many of the markers at intersections. Even after backtracking, I had to look very hard when I came to an intersection; I knew the way I had gone wasn't right, but it still wasn't always immediately obvious which way was. I can only think that without my glasses on, the little white arrows actually were just hard to see? My glasses prescription isn't very strong, but I generally wear them to see details at farther distances. Most of the other rides I've done have very large, colorful arrows, and streamers at intersections, and I've never had a problem with those. Who knows! But I will definitely be paying more attention in the future.



phantomhorse13 said:


> SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU BOTH!! sucks about missing the markers, but awesome that you kept on and finished anyway!!


@phantomhorse13 , I've reflected a little more on the ride, and I did wonder if you had any advice for me on whether I should have done anything differently when my navigational problems meant that I crossed the paths of other riders? I'm sure the pairs I saw a couple of times must have been annoyed that I kept reappearing after we had split up. I am horrified at the thought of being "that girl" that you sometimes encounter on your rides 😉 I never used other horses to control Fizz or pull her along, and I always passed when and how they asked me to. Should I have done anything else differently?



SueC said:


> Hope your knee's OK


Fortunately seems to be fine! It's been raining heavily since Sunday night, so I didn't get to ride yesterday or today. Hopefully will be able to go out and ride tomorrow. I guess that will be the test!


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## egrogan

The final part of our weekend was a ride home with M and Coalie. They had done the pleasure ride on Saturday, but M rode out early and was gone by the time I got back from vetting. Rain was threatening on Sunday afternoon, so we met up early that morning and were ready to head home by 8am.








As we tacked up, I told M all about our ride Saturday. The only "goal" I had for our ride Sunday was for Fizz to leave GMHA walking calmly, not jigging, out across the cross-country course. We were leaving well after the Sunday competitive riders left, so there were no other horses around. I explained to M how I expected Fizz might act. I told her that if the jigging was too bad, I might just get off and walk her around, because I did not want to continue to build the association that leaving the barn means dance around for a mile. I also explained that I was confident that even if there was jigging and anxiety, nothing was going to turn explosive. I asked M to do whatever Coalie needed and not worry at all about what I did with Fizz. If she wanted to get off and lead Coalie, or stop and wait, or just keep riding and let us catch up later, it didn't matter to me, but I just wanted to be able to focus fully on Fizz. She was very accommodating.

Sure enough, I got on, and Fizz started jigging as soon as I settled into the saddle. I kept talking to her and asking her to walk, not prance. We did some big circles in the grass, and zigzagged across the field instead of just beelining straight for the trail. This all seemed to help. After a minute, she was actually walking instead of jigging. It was a very speedy walk, but it actually was a walk. Coalie and M had continued walking but we caught up with them easily given the pace Fizz was setting.








So we circled around a few more times so we were eventually riding side by side. After that, she took a breath and managed to stay in a walk until we crossed the bridge and paved road and connected up with the trail we were taking home. I'd call that a success! I know she's not the first and won't be the last horse to get amped up at the start, but I do want to feel like we can leave the start more calmly. It's hard to work on it because she certainly doesn't act this way leaving home! I think we'll probably do a couple more pleasure rides this fall (there are no more intro distance competitive rides), so that will also be a good time to work on it when we're leaving at the same time other horses are. If there are other ways I can work on making it less exciting for her, I'd love the advice!

We had a 10 mile ride home, a good mix of trail and road.








The first couple of times we trotted she was still in competition mode and roared into that huge, rolling trot. M laughed and said she understood how we had finished on time. Coalie had no interest in that pace, and soon I convinced Fizz she didn't need to be so strong either. I was also happy to see that Fizz wanted to drink from every puddle and brook crossing; maybe she did learn something important during the ride!

While our pace was more leisurely than during the competitive ride, we actually made really good time getting home, by far the fastest we've gone 10 miles with M and Coalie. She seemed pleased that he was so perky and keeping up more than usual. We still stopped when the horses wanted to drink, or to get them apples from trees where we could reach them, but it was nice to ride with them at a better pace 








When we got home, Fizz was really cute looking for her buddies. Izzy and Josie were up in the sheds because the swarming gnats were horrendous. I could feel Fizz's worry that they were gone when we rode up through the back of the field and she didn't see them. As soon as they popped out from the sheds, there was lots of happy whinnying.








I couldn't get her untacked quickly enough- she was desperate for a roll in their sand pit. Then she did a little mutual grooming with Izzy, and snuffled with Josie before they dug into a pile of hay together. I think the weekend took a little of the weight off her, and she looked really fit and not too heavy. Now to keep that weight off and keep her looking good going into the cooler weather! Picture from the gloom of yesterday morning- please excuse all the loose hay that I need to clean up when it stops raining.

















So, I think that's it for the story of our weekend. I'm still glowing a bit because it was such a great experience. I feel really lucky to have a horse like Fizz  💕

PS- we actually got a ribbon for our 9th place completion. I have never gotten a ribbon for anything horsey before, and I am as happy as a little pony princess coming out of her first lead line class to have it!


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## Knave

I am so so so happy for you!

I know nothing of endurance, so take what I say with a grain of salt. We do a lot of hard days and miles however. I think it just takes doing it for them to realize that long days await, and they learn to contain some of that energy, so that it’s there when they need it. Two to four it seems they all can come at a day with too much ambition still, but it only takes a hard one to bring them back to minding themselves after they’ve had a few under their belt.

They also learn to drink at every opportunity.  Then there are Queen and Cash, who always drank. They seem to know that from their youth on the mountain. Oddly, putting Cash on a mountain for work, he always seemed to pace himself, from the get go he knew it was work. Queen has only been on the actual mountain for me once or twice, and she seems to have that knowledge embedded into her soul as well. They don’t overdo a climb, but climb faster than the corral born horses naturally without any anxiety. (Thus far, I haven’t worked Queen enough to really know, and she’s naturally a lot hotter a horse.)

It is rare the horse we work on that doesn’t anticipate long days and mind the jigging. I did ride Runt growing up who jigged at the start and at the end of the longest days, and days in a row too of really hard work, and she never settled into that. It was just her, so there are probably some oddballs like that. Bones is a horse similar, but as he’s aging I think he is changing.


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## carshon

I read each and every one of your posts and think back to the time when Izzy was still so new and you were so nervous of the challenges you faced and the urge to trail ride. Your post about your ride show your enthusiasm is still there and as a cyber friend I could not be more proud of how far you have come. I have no advice for trail markers as I tend to get lost, but I have to say that your ride made my heart pound for you and I was so excited to know you finished so well!


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## SueC

@egrogan, about getting lost - that happened to me once too. 25km junior section ride turned into 28km. We were going at a pretty good clip and this was in hilly terrain so it was easy to miss the marking tape in the trees. It was on a shared course; after a while I thought, "That's funny, we're not meeting anyone else and I've not seen a marker in a while!" and we backtracked, and bumped into horses again. We'd been supposed to turn _off_ the track we were on to stay on the course... and it was still the fastest 25km she ever did, even though it was actually 28km. That was the time she set the club record at 57 minutes for the course, and her lifetime personal best for that distance, and vetted all-As. Our last junior ride - I was 16 and she was 5.

Even though it was hilly, this was our first ride away from the sand plain - where the deep sand on the trails is a big effort for horses, and where we lived and trained. So when we got to the hills ride with its firm ground which she'd never encountered before, my mare was like, "What? This is easy!" and ran the whole course mostly at the trot and canter. It's a long time ago, but I still have the blurry footage from that ride in my head - hills, sun, forest, stream crossings, railway line - all blurry because my mare decided, "Let's go!" 

To compete at that level I really did have to spend most of my spare time out training, so I didn't the whole time I was at university, for lack of time. We got back to it in bits and pieces when I was in my 20s, and did a few more then, but it was easier to do gymkhanas than endurance if you didn't want to spend your whole life on horseback, which for some reason I didn't anymore by then! 

But you're in a lovely position to do all this stuff because you'd ride tons anyway even if there weren't any competitions and you're probably not as driven as me - if I have to compete, I can't just be happy to compete at average level, I've got to have a super-fit horse blah blah blah. Probably because my mare and I won the first ride we ever participated in and then to place midfield would be "going backwards" - yeah, I know. Although I suppose that might be different if I was just trail riding with friends and all of us just decided to enter something like this for fun and NOT be competitive.

Doing endurance in my youth did give me a lifelong distaste for "plodding" - I can't do it, I think, "What's the point of being on a horse if I can hike faster?" And the horses I ride, being ex-competition, also think it's pointless to plod along, so we match well.  I think for me, having endurance competition in my past means that I really enjoy trail riding horses at all their paces - walk, trot, canter - and pretty equally time-wise, when a horse is moderately fit. And because I don't compete, I don't feel the pressure to always be improving our fitness and be doing better than last week etc etc, which is a bit of a personal curse I'm happy to live without.

It's lovely to follow your journal and see how you do things in a sane kind of way!  I think you've got the balance right!


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## egrogan

@SueC, I guess the best way I can explain how I feel about doing things with horses is that it’s the thing in my life I probably wanted the longest, and yet am not at all talented at it! So striving to be competitive and win would never be my goal. I did all that as a kid-winning state championships in softball, getting recruited for college soccer, full rides to graduate degrees. And through all of that, I just wanted to be able to have and ride horses, but really never had consistent access to them. Now that I have my own life and money, I’m living the dream! 😀

PS-I recently found this picture of the first state championship softball team I was on. My parents spent the entire summer driving around the state every weekend for weekend tournaments. I loved softball and was good-but I never stopped dreaming about horses 🐎
















^Bottom left 😉


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## SueC

Oh wow, that's so cute!  Please excuse, that's a standard reaction for me when I look at that age group - I get sort of clucky, because I worked with teenagers for so long and think they're lovely! Their brain stages and enthusiasm and not being jaded or cynical, and open and humorous...much more fun than jaded adults! 

It's great that you didn't get the competitive urge mixed up with horses, but got it out of the road in other ways. Horses were my first kind of sports-type competition - I lived isolated as a teenager and didn't get to do extracurricular school stuff, so all I could do is work with my horse! Because of how things were at home, I preferred to be as far away from it as possible, and because I didn't even have a bicycle at that point, I started taking long walks, doing poetry and art by the side of the river, and when my mare was old enough, to ride her on trails.

So we rode further and further, eventually for hours, on weekends and after school, and basically fell into endurance by accident. As an Arabian mare she enjoyed going through her paces, had a wonderful ground-covering trot, a canter she could do for a long long time, and a desire to see what was over the next hill!

Our neighbour who had also bred her held an annual endurance ride from his place, and when he saw us go by on our trail rides, suggested we enter the junior section. For our first ride, I was barely 15 and she had just turned 4, which was the minimum age for a horse to compete. Back then there were no lead-up "pacer" rides - just 25km and 40km for juniors, and 25km, 40km and 80km open. Anyone could ride any of these brackets either socially or competitively, that was up to them - they didn't separate these, in those days.

I was able to participate because I could ride to the event - it was just across the bridge from us. I had enough pocket money saved for the entry fee, so off we went. We just rode the 25km at our usual trail riding pace and did our first ride in just under 2 hours (deep sand!). It amazed me that she scored first in that section both in time and in fittest horse. I'd never done anything like this before and had no expectations, it was just exciting to be able to do something, anything, and not have to do it completely on our own! To actually see other horses and riders, talk to people, etc.

This was the week before that ride:








And this was from the time she was at peak fitness:








I've never had a horse quite that fit again because it is so time-consuming to do it and you have to be a bit mad to ride that much! 

In some ways it would have been better for me if I'd just come mid-field in those rides, because it's a lot of pressure when you're a driven person and you end up unexpectedly winning a competition for something that was just a hobby, first-up. Then you don't feel like you can just ride casually anymore until you've worked with a psychiatrist or something!  Which is one of the problems for Emma Raducanu, I think, winning the US Open tennis first-up and so young and now under all this pressure, most of which she probably puts on herself. I don't know she's ever going to enjoy tennis as much again as she did before she won that tournament.

It's pretty obvious you're both enjoying yourselves on those rides, both the everyday ones and the ones with others!  I hope you never get that bug about it that I had, because it really cuts down on the enjoyment of riding all-around - I prefer to be in the moment with my horse when I ride trails, not watching the clock etc, like I was before those competitions, and like I've been when I don't go anywhere near these anymore and just ride my horse! 

That is a lovely rosette you two got and I think it's great you're enjoying it all so much!  With your first competitive ride, placing where you did means you can be happy if you maintain that level and happy if you make incremental improvements and get higher up in the list, but also, that you can be happy just completing with the horse in great condition and having fun on the trail. Which is how it should be, I think. 

PS: What do you mean, not at all talented? You think just anyone can ride a feisty horse when they've not had a childhood riding, and not end up in hospital, and bring it to that level of physical fitness and glow? And do all the things you are doing, many of which are solo? 😜


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## knightrider

Wow, @SueC, your mare was GORGEOUS!!!!!


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## SueC

knightrider said:


> Wow, @SueC, your mare was GORGEOUS!!!!!


Thank you, she turned out wonderfully - which was also a bit unexpected because she was so scrappy when I first bought her, half starved in a drought. That's the only type of potentially good horse I could afford then - a half-starved yearling - yearlings were so much cheaper than trained horses, and because of the drought and her condition, she was half-price, although $1,200 was still quite a princely sum back in 1983, but she had endurance lines and Polish racing ancestry. I had $600 saved up from selling various belongings and from my grandmother's presents, and managed to get an "extra chores mortgage" for the rest. You know, extra turn of washing up, 25 cents. Polishing my father's trophies, $2. Mowing the lawn, 50 cents. Took me a few years to pay that off.

This was the first photo taken of her - I'd had her three months, and she'd already been getting extra food - she looked so dreadful when I bought her I didn't want to take photos, I thought the RSPCA would become alarmed:










Poor thing looked like a harp covered in a moth-eaten blanket.  I walked and walked and walked with her on the lead when we started feeding her up, to try to get some muscles on her. Eventually we ran a bit together too. We did trails together long before I started riding her, and she needed a fair bit of trotting on the lunge to get some back muscle on her...

So it was kind of nice that this lovely butterfly came out of this scrappy sort of cocoon! 

@egrogan, I was looking at your photo of Fizz when she was back home, she's always been beautiful and now she looks seriously fit as well! I should show the photo to Julian, as something to aspire to - although at the moment it's my fault he's not any fitter - well, most recently, the fault of a back issue cropping up again, turns out because of a nerve impingement caused by a strap running over a pressure point. - If anyone here has any kind of discomfort with bra straps, don't ignore it - we're discussing the issue on the Labor Day Weekend thread at the moment, and I had no idea this becomes more of a thing the older you get - if I'd known I would have taken care to help prevent the problem. Also if anyone wants to tell us their favourite riding and everyday comfortable bras...


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## egrogan

Wow, @SueC, I've seen pictures of your Arabian mare before, but I don't recall seeing that first picture you posted. What a gorgeous mare. And how wonderful that her good looks were matched by the talent and personality to do what you wanted to do with her. I'm not surprised you were so successful together. Can you remind us what her name was?

I can't imagine Fizz and I shaving an _hour _off our completion time! I think we probably have room to go a little faster, but not an hour faster! I do wonder sometimes what she could do if I took her to a flat place to ride. These hills where we live definitely do put fitness on a horse.

I was thinking more about being competitive and how that translates into enjoyment of a sport, or lack thereof. It reminded me that when I was in grad school, I joined a rec league softball team. It was coed, and every team had to have a minimum number of women on it. A friend was on a team that needed one more woman, and I agreed to join the team. Which I quickly regretted. It was a bunch of arrogant lawyers (all men except my friend and I and the requisite 3rd woman), and they mostly used it as a drinking game. They were really bad players, but also because they were really arrogant, they assigned all the women to positions where we just stood in the outfield and never really got to play in a meaningful way. My friend had also played softball very competitively in college, and we were both so irritated that it was such a bad experience. I only went for a couple of weeks and then I bowed out. I didn't mind the idea that a rec league was about having fun and not taking the competition too seriously, but the belligerent attitude and condescension was too much for me! I played a lot of coed soccer when I was younger, and loved it because the guys I played with saw us as assets to our team and we won a lot (we were better than a lot of the guys in the league 😉 ). But that rec league softball is the last time I've tried to do a team sport as an adult. I think I'm pretty committed to sticking with horses at this point!

I have been reading the bra discussion in that other thread but didn't contribute because it's a touchy subject. My chest is really disproportionate to my body size- I'm about 5'2" but have a size 40D. I hate, hate, hate it. I have thought a lot about a breast reduction but am wary of reconstructive surgery generally if there isn't a medical reason. I suppose you could say I get a sore back and shoulders from carrying all that weight, but I'm not sure that it rises to the level of medically necessary. I've tried all the miracle sports bras that people recommend, including all the ones recommended in that thread, and they never seem to work- when you are as short as me with so little torso, the bra that is the right size for my chest comes down almost to my belly button because I am so disproportionate. Might as well be wearing a corset! Rather than continue to waste money on the high tech options, I have defaulted to fairly cheap but reasonably comfortable bras that I just replace frequently when the elastic wears out. It's really an awful, embarrassing problem. It also affects the kinds of clothes I can buy- I have to buy a size L in many shirts/coats to fit my chest, but of course a size L doesn't fit my torso, shoulders, or arms, so most clothes hang off of me at odd angles. I've actually found that buying boys XL clothes tend to be the best proportionately- I guess teenage boys are growing a wide chest but are still short enough to approximate what I need. Ugh. It really is a dilemma.


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## Knave

That would make me so frustrated with the softball! They run coed teams here, and I don’t think it’s anything like that. If someone is good, they are depended on. I’ve never played. I played in high school, and although I tried hard I never was any good. I did get flustered with the kids who didn’t try hard. I would be right field (our pitcher was my best friend and the best in the state, and if they did hit it often went my way), and yet if it went to left field I could get there before the left fielder. That drove me batty. Our pitcher carried the team.

They run old man ball too, which is basketball. I kind of wish we would go play. Yet, they are really good and I am not, so I don’t. Again I try hard, but I’m a brute for some reason. I don’t mean to be. I just lack coordination.

Team sports get under my skin. I think it’s because I pressure myself too much, knowing I’m counted on. The team branding we do is really hard for me nerves wise. This last one was the first I’ve kind of had a bad day in, and I think it was good for me in a way. Here I saw I had a bad day, and no one was mad or upset or anything like that. I didn’t get the run down of what I should have done differently, everyone just said thank you and when I apologized for my misses they laughed and my partner said, “why are you apologizing? I’m who blew it.” The others said “It was fun!”

Hopefully that experience makes the next one easier for me nerve wise. I really enjoy competing in individual things on a horse though. I’ve never gotten nerves that are bad that way, just excitement. Next year I promised the girls we would finally run a show series, so Queen and I had better get on our game.

As far as the bras go, I never said anything because I’ve nothing to say. I wasn’t blessed with breasts. What you said made me sad for you though Egrogan. It’s funny how those without wish they had and those with often wish they didn’t. I’m sorry for the negative health aspects of them for sure. My youngest has more of that problem, but right now she just enjoys them. Her sister and I always tell her of our jealousy, so she’s always been proud of them I guess.


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## knightrider

SueC said:


> If anyone here has any kind of discomfort with bra straps, don't ignore it -


Every bra I've ever bought . . . since I got old . . . is uncomfortable. I can't find anything that is comfortable. I've tried an awful lot of 'em too.


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## SueC

egrogan said:


> Wow, @SueC, I've seen pictures of your Arabian mare before, but I don't recall seeing that first picture you posted. What a gorgeous mare. And how wonderful that her good looks were matched by the talent and personality to do what you wanted to do with her. I'm not surprised you were so successful together. Can you remind us what her name was?


She had an unpronounceable and horrid pedigree name so I tried unworkable diminutives of this and when she turned grey I decided I should never have put up with her pedigree name in any form and called her Snowstorm, and then she finally had a decent name! 

You know, when I bought her I actually had no plans for her at all other than to ride her eventually and see. The French mare Dame du Buisson (Sunsmart's great-grandmother, Chasseur's grandmother) whom I'd ridden since I was nine years old was taken off me when we got to Australia and used for breeding. That had not been the plan - she'd been sold to my parents as a child's riding horse, which she was just perfect for, and they were asked when they bought her not to breed from her because she'd had such a bad birth with her last foal. So that was never supposed to happen, and only happened because the local Trotting Association got wind of the fact that she existed and successfully hauled my parents into their game.

If it had been up to me I'd never have changed horses, I loved that mare and I was devastated. So the reason I wanted to buy a horse in 1983 is because I was hurt and suddenly horseless and I wanted that kind of thing to never, ever happen to me again, which to me meant I actually had to own the horse on paper, not just have my parents' word for it which hadn't been worth very much when it came to the crunch.

And our neighbour bred horses, so I had a look. I was a bit dubious when I got Snowstorm because she was in such poor condition. I'd had my eye on an unbroken mare who was 3 or 4; she was almost white with a really pretty face and large enough to carry me already, but the breeder pointed out she had offset cannons and that he couldn't recommend that if I wanted to have a horse I could ride for life - which was nice of him. And if she'd not had offset cannons she'd have been out of my price range.

The fact that this filly grew into a talented endurance horse and all-rounder was a total surprise to me. I didn't even know what endurance riding was, in those days - I'd done dressage, trails, a little jumping. I just fell into that by accident, because I spent so much time on trails with her and got prompted by my neighbour to have a go. And I'd never competed in anything before.



egrogan said:


> I can't imagine Fizz and I shaving an _hour _off our completion time! I think we probably have room to go a little faster, but not an hour faster! I do wonder sometimes what she could do if I took her to a flat place to ride. These hills where we live definitely do put fitness on a horse.


If I've got my mental maths right, the time you did for your first official endurance ride was within cooee of our ride time for our first ride.  That ride, however, was on deep sand the majority of the way - imagine riding on a beach for 25km and sinking in nearly to the fetlocks at every stride! The Swan Coastal Plain is essentially the world's biggest beach. It's a strip of coastal sand about 30km across and over 500km long. There's dunes up close to the coast; including where this ride was held - so you'd get long uphills and downhills along with the deep sand! It's about the best terrain to train it, but it is much slower to ride than anything else... it's a bit like doing high-altitude training; when you come back to sea level suddenly things seem easy! 

The record time she set was half her initial ride time for the same distance, but the terrain was much easier and the weather perfect etc etc. And we were both young and a bit insane! 🤪 A more "normal" time for her for that distance would have been 90 minutes or so (on sand). To ride that fast is seriously dangerous if your horse isn't fit.

There was in fact a horrible incident that happened on that ride - there was an inexperienced senior rider (early 20s?) with a large horse who was ambitious and who had heard my mare had won on her previous outings, but her horse wasn't properly fit. She saw me and laughed at my "pony" (my mare was 14.2hh, about average for an Arabian from those lines), and decided to tail onto me. Her horse was soon foaming - I told her to back off, let me ride my own ride and for her to ride her own ride, and that her horse wasn't fit enough to keep up with mine. Of course, I was 16 and a kid in her eyes and she just laughed at me and jeered. And I didn't want her on our tail all the way, she was seriously stressing me out, so I let my mare go up a notch and cantered her sharply to get away from this woman and open up a gap - you know, like they do in the Tour de France when they want to break from the peloton. So soon we had some peace and quiet again, and dropped back a little on the speed, and had a fun ride the rest of the way.

But this woman came through the finish about 10 minutes after us, having flogged her horse because she thought what we did she could do, and her horse was in terrible distress - foaming, shaking, going into shock. Stupid, stupid woman - doing that to her animal. The horse's heart rate was sky high and remained so and he was in serious danger of collapsing and needed emergency veterinary attention. He had been pushed so much he ended up urinating blood - she'd damaged her horse's kidneys. It was awful. 

And then some people tried to blame me for what had happened and said I'd gone irresponsibly fast, but the veterinarian said that my mare was straight A across all recovery criteria, heart rate 38 on return check, offering very lively extended trotting and clearly the fittest horse there, and had had no issues with doing that ride, and that the other horse's state wasn't my responsibility but his rider's.

After that, the club had pace riders for new competitors, so they'd not be able to kill their horses with their stupidity. 😡

Apart from the five minutes we were cantering faster than planned to pull away from this horrible person so she'd not spoil our enjoyment and our composure, we had done our own thing - and I knew what my mare could do safely, because of all our preparatory riding. I always did my own recovery checks after training, with a stethoscope etc. There is no way I would have pushed her - in fact, this mare I had to generally encourage to relax and slow down a bit!

Now for another time-distance comparison, when Sunsmart was 13 I took him on a group social ride as part of his saddle re-education. I'd done solo trails with him for half a year, at endurance training pace. The social ride was a total plod - walking 95% of the time, but at the kind of walking speed that upsets your Fizz when she has slow-coaching companions. The occasional trot was similarly tepid. It took us _three hours_ to do 10km - slower than Brett and I would walk it! That was to our lunch stop, nearly halfway along the circuit route the rider leaders had planned.

As we rode off again after lunch, a kangaroo jumped out of the bushes and one of the riders fell, breaking a collar bone. He was an older gentleman and went very pale - and the mobile telephone was out of reception, and we were in the middle of the State Forest! I offered to ride back solo to our starting point where there was a landline - the closest landline to where we were. They ummed and aahed because they felt they had a duty of care for me and the safety protocol didn't allow people to ride back on their own, and I told them I had an endurance background and a super-fit horse - and what else were we going to do? The injured rider needed an ambulance.

We got there in just under 30 minutes. I did not ride at the maximum speed for his fitness but conservatively because he was green and I didn't want to fall in case of a spook - we needed that ambulance. So he was almost doing the same average speed as my Arabian mare on her record ride, but he only had to do it for less than half the distance, and the terrain was faster than anything my mare had competed on - gently undulating, with firm, elastic footing!



egrogan said:


> I was thinking more about being competitive and how that translates into enjoyment of a sport, or lack thereof. It reminded me that when I was in grad school, I joined a rec league softball team. It was coed, and every team had to have a minimum number of women on it. A friend was on a team that needed one more woman, and I agreed to join the team. Which I quickly regretted. It was a bunch of arrogant lawyers (all men except my friend and I and the requisite 3rd woman), and they mostly used it as a drinking game. They were really bad players, but also because they were really arrogant, they assigned all the women to positions where we just stood in the outfield and never really got to play in a meaningful way. My friend had also played softball very competitively in college, and we were both so irritated that it was such a bad experience. I only went for a couple of weeks and then I bowed out. I didn't mind the idea that a rec league was about having fun and not taking the competition too seriously, but the belligerent attitude and condescension was too much for me! I played a lot of coed soccer when I was younger, and loved it because the guys I played with saw us as assets to our team and we won a lot (we were better than a lot of the guys in the league 😉 ). But that rec league softball is the last time I've tried to do a team sport as an adult. I think I'm pretty committed to sticking with horses at this point!


😵 Those people! ...and sadly not uncommon. How beastly that they put two super players out into the boondocks - not to mention the typical misogyny of something like this. 😡

Yeah, stick with your horse. She has more brain and heart than 1,000 of those types put together. 

So - what do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?



Spoiler



A good start. 😇





egrogan said:


> I have been reading the bra discussion in that other thread but didn't contribute because it's a touchy subject. My chest is really disproportionate to my body size- I'm about 5'2" but have a size 40D. I hate, hate, hate it. I have thought a lot about a breast reduction but am wary of reconstructive surgery generally if there isn't a medical reason. I suppose you could say I get a sore back and shoulders from carrying all that weight, but I'm not sure that it rises to the level of medically necessary. I've tried all the miracle sports bras that people recommend, including all the ones recommended in that thread, and they never seem to work- when you are as short as me with so little torso, the bra that is the right size for my chest comes down almost to my belly button because I am so disproportionate. Might as well be wearing a corset! Rather than continue to waste money on the high tech options, I have defaulted to fairly cheap but reasonably comfortable bras that I just replace frequently when the elastic wears out. It's really an awful, embarrassing problem. It also affects the kinds of clothes I can buy- I have to buy a size L in many shirts/coats to fit my chest, but of course a size L doesn't fit my torso, shoulders, or arms, so most clothes hang off of me at odd angles. I've actually found that buying boys XL clothes tend to be the best proportionately- I guess teenage boys are growing a wide chest but are still short enough to approximate what I need. Ugh. It really is a dilemma.


I'm sorry you've got to drag that kind of weight around up top - and here I was feeling sorry for myself because I went from a B to a C in my 40s. I hate how heavy those things are now but that's only average (though I swear I have lead in mine and they will end up hanging around my knees soon if I don't keep them strapped out of harm's way), and I'm sorry for anyone who has even more of this stuff to contend with.

By the way, you don't look aesthetically odd to me, if that's any help. You look Erin-shaped and healthy and usually have a huge smile on your face. We are always more painfully aware of our own physical idiosyncrasies than anyone else in the general public. It is the same with me - and it helped me to start looking in the mirror as if it was a friend of mine, and not critically because it was me! 

Can I tell you a joke on the topic? This was actually overheard at a department store, which made it even funnier: "The bra I bought yesterday is too small - I would like to exchange it for two pillowcases!"

My grandmother always lamented about the size of her feet, and said she might as well buy violin cases as shoes!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Team sports get under my skin. I think it’s because I pressure myself too much, knowing I’m counted on. The team branding we do is really hard for me nerves wise. This last one was the first I’ve kind of had a bad day in, and I think it was good for me in a way. Here I saw I had a bad day, and no one was mad or upset or anything like that.


I can understand the pressure. When I was younger I was the type that needed the pressure to rise to the occasion. There's a lot of psychological research about the "best" ratio of nerves/pressure and peak performance- performance tends to be best when people feel some nerves, but once you cross a line, the nerves interfere with performance. But I'm glad you were with a team where people weren't hypercritical about making mistakes and still able to have fun.



SueC said:


> But this woman came through the finish about 10 minutes after us, having flogged her horse because she thought what we did she could do, and her horse was in terrible distress - foaming, shaking, going into shock


Fortunately I've never seen anyone around here approach endurance that way. It does seem to be a community that really puts the horse first. I did see a horse tying up once at a vet check, maybe at the first endurance ride where I crewed with @phantomhorse13, and it was so scary to see. If I'm remembering right, he ended up going into shock, crashing into his (unmounted) rider and gave her some pretty nasty injuries as well. I'm not sure there was an explanation for why he had such an extreme incident but I think they both did end up ok.



SueC said:


> This was actually overheard at a department store, which made it even funnier: "The bra I bought yesterday is too small - I would like to exchange it for two pillowcases!"


🤭🤭

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Back in the saddle at lunch yesterday. It was a gloomy, soggy afternoon, but that's when I had time to ride. Fizz was feeling good, and so was my knee. Looks like we both came through the weekend in one piece!
















The fall colors aren't showing up that well yet in photos, but in person you're starting to be able to see swaths of red and yellow creeping across the tree tops. And I'm very pleased with Fizz, we're now able to ride down the big overlook hill as though it's just any other hill- no weaving side to side, or hopping into the ditch, or planting feet and refusing. I've always been perplexed about why she despised this hill so much, but at least right now, I think we've come to an agreement about it.

Later in the ride, we came to the cow field. Fizz spies with her little eyes...some cows through the trees. These were pretty far back off the road, and they didn't do anything but stand there and watch us (there were about half a dozen more in addition to this pair). She definitely noticed them and kept her eye on them, but we just rode past pretty normally- we walked by them on the way out, and then turned around in a field about 1/4 mile past them and came trotting by on our way home. We're getting better about the cows too!








The first orange leaves I've seen:








When we got home, I handgrazed her around in the yard for a few minutes. I realized that one of the apple trees had dropped a lot of apples overnight, and as we shared one I realized these were actually very ripe and sweet. So I swiped a few off the ground that hadn't been nibbled on by the birds and squirrels. They're good enough for eating apples!


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## PoptartShop

WOW I am so proud of you and Fizz!!!   Go girls!!!!!! I knew you'd do great & have a blast too. You are lucky to have her, but she is also very lucky to have you!
This is awesome!  

I love the pictures, you guys look fantastic. Such a great team! <3 This makes me happy!


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## Knave

I could see that for sure! My father is a great competitor. He is like that, and thrives under pressure. Because of that he ups the pressure on himself competing, and on me and whoever he is roping with or helping to coach at something.

Now, what works really well for him does not work for me. I fall apart under pressure. Yet, in those individual competitions where no one cared about my performance, like running barrels and poles, I excelled. They cared about reining, but not to the level of roping, and I did really good there too. I know it’s really arrogant to say, but I can count the shows and gymkhana events I did not win on my hands.

I always knew it related to the way I felt walking in. When I go to show a horse, I feel excited. I am on pins and needles in the most positive way. I am watching the competition, and the closer my name comes the more excited I am. I cannot wait.

When I do a team branding or team rope, I feel anxious. I feel anxious long before, even practice makes me nervous. I throw up and get a bad stomach for weeks prior. I feel judged and incompetent, even though I’m not necessarily bad. I feel like I am bad. They count down the numbers before the teams are allowed to walk, and I always stress that I’m going to pass out in front of everyone.

Once it’s going I have too much to focus on than worry over my feelings. I wish I could feel the way I feel going into a show though. I think in trying to positively effect me with what works for him, the method my father used did the opposite for me.


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## knightrider

Knave said:


> I could see that for sure! My father is a great competitor. He is like that, and thrives under pressure. Because of that he ups the pressure on himself competing, and on me and whoever he is roping with or helping to coach at something.
> 
> Now, what works really well for him does not work for me. I fall apart under pressure. Yet, in those individual competitions where no one cared about my performance, like running barrels and poles, I excelled. They cared about reining, but not to the level of roping, and I did really good there too. I know it’s really arrogant to say, but I can count the shows and gymkhana events I did not win on my hands.
> 
> I always knew it related to the way I felt walking in. When I go to show a horse, I feel excited. I am on pins and needles in the most positive way. I am watching the competition, and the closer my name comes the more excited I am. I cannot wait.
> 
> When I do a team branding or team rope, I feel anxious. I feel anxious long before, even practice makes me nervous. I throw up and get a bad stomach for weeks prior. I feel judged and incompetent, even though I’m not necessarily bad. I feel like I am bad. They count down the numbers before the teams are allowed to walk, and I always stress that I’m going to pass out in front of everyone.
> 
> Once it’s going I have too much to focus on than worry over my feelings. I wish I could feel the way I feel going into a show though. I think in trying to positively effect me with what works for him, the method my father used did the opposite for me.


I find all of this super SUPER interesting. I am glad you shared it. In fact, I am glad you are on the Forum and glad I get to read what you write. I wonder, how can we use this type of information to help people? I wish I knew. It seems like knowing things like this could help others.


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## Knave

Thank you @knightrider. I do not know the answer to it at all. I know I try to overprotect my girls at roping practice when I see them start falling apart, but I also know big girl handles that pressure much better than I do. Little girl handles it just fine because she is not a competitive person by nature at all unless it is in academics. She’s the pleasant happy to be participating person we all love to be around.

I don’t know if there are more people like me who are good competitors, or more people like my father. My husband is a mix between him and little girl. He thrives with the pressure, but he doesn’t care very much. My father cares as much as I do, which is why he sets himself up that way. He only competes to win. He knows I also am competitive and expect to win things, but he doesn’t see that I don’t succeed with that method.


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## knightrider

Knave said:


> he doesn’t see that I don’t succeed with that method.


That's what I mean. How can we figure out what helps people succeed when each person is so different in what they need? I don't know, but it is something I care about.


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## phantomhorse13

egrogan said:


> I did see a horse tying up once at a vet check, maybe at the first endurance ride where I crewed with @phantomhorse13, and it was so scary to see. If I'm remembering right, he ended up going into shock, crashing into his (unmounted) rider and gave her some pretty nasty injuries as well. I'm not sure there was an explanation for why he had such an extreme incident but I think they both did end up ok.


Unfortunately, there was a lot more to that situation than a tie up. The horse wound up having a seizure when the IV catheter was (accidentally) placed in an artery instead of a vein.. resulting in the horse landing on the owner and severely breaking her leg. The owner was taken to the hospital via ambulance while DH and I wound up taking the horse 3 hours one way to the closest emergency clinic for treatment (Steve R loaned us a rig to take the horse, as DH and I had come up with only the small truck to crew out of). Years later, the rider and horse have both returned to competition, but she has ongoing issues with that leg. 😖


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## egrogan

Thanks for the additional context @phantomhorse13. I think that might have been the first or second ride I had ever gone to, and I didn't really know what was going on. I am happy to hear that all these years later, both are back on the trail!


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## egrogan

We had a nice ride with M and Coalie yesterday. We set out to explore a trail that we hadn't been on before, though it is a turn off a Jeep road we ride on fairly often. The day was grey and gloomy; it wasn't too hot, but very, very muggy. Poor horses had foamy white sweaty between their little butt cheeks most of the way, and the riders were equally sweaty!

Fall colors are starting to appear. The green has a yellowish tinge to it. In some places, reds and oranges are popping out.








We started off in our typical direction, past Mac the German shepherd (he wasn't out). The dirt roads are fairly soft, so we could let the horses trot along for a bit.








The mini waterfall is trickling again, so the horses do have the option of a drink in the pool that forms underneath it. Even though they were sweaty, neither really wanted to drink.








We continued on down the road until we found the entrance to the trail. 








We were heading towards a new piece of the snowmobile trail, and there were a bunch of trucks and supplies at the trail head where a few of the snowmobile club members from a work party had parked. We could hear them in the distance, and guessed they were working on a bridge. They were off to the left, so we turned right.








The trail was grassy in some sections, and more like Jeep road in others. But all really lovely footing. We were encouraged to see signs along the trail that said "caution: watch for horses" and felt like we were ok to be riding back there. While riders technically do have access, you never know who you might meet who thinks horses are a pain. Seeing signs about horses makes me feel a little bit better about the prospect of running into someone while riding in a new place.








This little loop we were on was probably no more than a mile, and brought us back to the dirt road that we would take home. We looked at some maps after we got home, and figured out a route that would be a longer ride (going left down the trail when we turned right), maybe 12ish miles, where we could park our trailers at a boat launch at a pond and drive the horses home. I think we will try to do that at some point this fall, when it shouldn't be too overgrown or muddy. The rest of our ride was uneventful, and was ~10.5 miles. I can't lie, most of the second half of the ride all I could think about was getting home and out of my sticky clothes and showering. Today looks like it will be the last really miserably humid day before storms tomorrow, and hopefully more fall-like weather the rest of the week. I took the week off from work, so planning on lots of riding!

Later in the day, I puttered around doing some chores, and had some humorous moments with the horses. I brought some hay down from the barn, and per usual, they greeted me to do a bit of taste testing as I unloaded.








_What...why wouldn't we sample the hay while it's sitting here for the taking?_








Poor Josie has been having more issues the last couple of days. Her ankle swelling seems to go down, and then pop up again out of nowhere. The last two days, she's been covered in hives when I go do night check, but they are gone by the morning. And she's looking a bit skinny in her ribs and hips. I'm wondering if there's some sort of immune-related inflammatory situation going on, which makes me wonder if she's Cushings positive? She is eating really well, and seems bright and happy. Just has all these weird body issues happening. Vet will be here Friday so we'll see what she has to say about next steps.

The hives didn't seem to be bothering her in any specific way, but she was covered from neck to tail and I felt awful. The swarming gnats seem to be making one last effort to rule the world in these humid, late summer afternoons, so I found Maggie's old fly sheet yesterday. I had been wanting to work with Josie to see how she'd do with a blanket, in preparation for later this winter, so this was a good opportunity. I gave her a thorough grooming and then tested her reaction to the blanket going on her back. She didn't care at all. I fastened the chest straps, and again, no big deal. Finally I reached down for the belly straps, being a bit cautious and keeping my eye on her hind legs as I buckled the straps. But none of that bothered her in any way. I guess she's got enough blanketing experience that it's not a new, scary event. Phew!

Izzy and Fizz used to look at Maggie like she was an apparition when she had the fly sheet on, and they reacted the same way to Josie wearing it. Josie was utterly confused about why they were suddenly so keenly interested in her... _Izzy and Fizz rush to investigate this new creature_








_And then Josie joins in, wondering..."what?? what are we so concerned about?? what are we going to investigate?"_








After much snorting and some cautious sniffing, they seemed satisfied that Josie was Josie, and left her in peace


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## carshon

Izzy looks fabulous!


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## egrogan

carshon said:


> Izzy looks fabulous!


Thank you! Summer has been good to her. Hard to believe it will be birthday 29 next spring!


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## egrogan

I'm just wrapping up a week long "staycation." It was wonderful not being tethered to the computer all week. Particularly because fall weather settled in, and we had wonderful days to spend outside in the crisp air. I took Hugh on a few hikes to check out trails I've been wondering about. Lovely husband and I did some fall projects; replacing some footing in the dry lot around the sheds, stacking wood, cooking a lot, and trying a couple of new restaurants. I got to ride almost every day, except one day earlier in the week when we got a lot of rain. The rain made the roads nice and soft, so any direction we went after that, we had good footing.

Most of the week we kept rides relatively short, between 3-6 miles a day. Wednesday was an exception, when I did my own "from home" intro endurance ride 😉 I'll write a separate post about that because it was a great ride in a new place.

Every day we rode though, we were greeted with bright blue skies and a little bit more foliage color each day. Riding mid day on weekdays, we had hardly any traffic so we could really enjoy all the rides without much in the way of distraction.
























Still a few annoying gnats around at the beginning of the week, until overnight temps when down to 40*F/4*C. That seemed to knock them back.








Different day, but same beautiful blue sky over a different view of the mountain...








Yesterday we went back to take a look at the neighbor's beaver pond. This pond drains through a culvert under the public road, which runs into another pond on our side of the road. From the road it looks like something is blocking the draining out through the culvert, and I wanted to see if it was something happening further back from the road, or just that the section up near the culvert is blocked. The pond itself looked pretty normal, so I think the culvert is blocked causing a secondary pool to form behind it. It's high enough that it looks like it might overflow into the road, so I will give the town a call to see what they think. I'm not sure if it's something they would clear or if the neighbors need to.








The pond is a really beautiful, serene spot. We don't tend to have a lot of evergreens in the woods around us, but at some point someone must have planted them, or at least allowed them to fill in around the pond. No beavers visible today. Their lodge that was very active last year looked a bit rundown. I wonder if they've moved on somewhere else. I didn't see any other lodges nearby.








The nights have been chilly, and one morning when it was especially breezy, I found Josie shivering a little, so I pulled out sheets to blanket overnight. While the mornings are cool, the sun is still strong and bright in the morning. Yesterday I caught them all happily sunbathing after breakfast.
























We had our fall vet visit yesterday, which went well. Everyone's teeth appear in good order, so no one needed any dental intervention. Fizz got a chiropractic adjustment, though only needed minimal attention around her withers. Izzy could still stand to gain 50ish pounds, and Fizz could stand to lose that. If only a magical transfer from one to the other was possible!

Vet spent most of the time with Josie. She took a look at her swollen fetlock and was a bit shocked. She said she'd never seen a fetlock swollen quite the way it was. We discussed some fairly scary scenarios, like fractures, ruptures, and tears. What she found odd about it was that it was swollen where you'd expect it to be if it was a sesamoid fracture, or a joint capsule tear, or a suspensory rupture- and it was also swollen in places where you _wouldn't_ expect it to be, which was hard to explain. Essentially the whole radius around her "ankle" is hard, enlarged, but cold. She sounded skeptical when I told her Josie really didn't seem to be lame on it- she does trot around the pasture and look fairly normal doing it. So we trotted her out as best we could (poor Josie clearly had no idea what we were asking her to do, and we had to get after her a little waving a towel behind her to get her to move forward)- and vet agreed that seeing her trot, she really wasn't lame, which was unexpected when you're looking at how ugly that leg is. After talking it over, vet said she _could _do imaging if I wanted to see what was going on inside. But, she felt it was unlikely that imaging would lead us to any course of action that was different than what we could do now, which is basically allow Josie to live a quiet life in the pasture as long as she seems sound and comfortable moving around on it. I don't know if it's ultimately going to be a mistake to go in that direction, but that's what we've decided to do for now.

Aside from the fetlock issue, we also talked through the other things that have been going on with Josie. She does need to continue gaining weight, probably 50-100 pounds, but vet felt she looked better than last time she'd seen her. We discussed the hives, and how they had resolved with the fly sheet, and vet said she'd seen half a dozen other horses suddenly break out in hives the last couple of weeks, and related it to the gnats. Probably the best part of the visit though was the needly part of it. The last time the vet saw her for a vaccine, as soon as the vet poked her, Josie flew backwards to the end of the barn aisle and knocked a bunch of stuff over with the syringe hanging out of her neck. Since then, I've done everything I knew how to do to work on the needle shyness. I started with clicker training, but the clicker actually seemed to scare Josie more than anything else, so I just ditched the clicker and gave a small treat as she let me poke and prod her with pointy things. It became a non-event when I was doing it, but I didn't quite know what to expect with the vet. I was overjoyed that the vet was able to give her a vaccine _and _insert a syringe to draw 2 full vials of blood (we're going to run a basic CBC) with absolutely no reaction at all! I'm no horse trainer, but that felt like a training victory for sure. Vet will be back later in the fall to check ACTH/Cushing's levels in Josie and Izzy, so we'll see if this good behavior persists. She was also good with the vet handling her front feet while manipulating the fetlock. The last frontier is continuing to work on picking up her hind feet- I can touch her all over them, brush up and down her legs, but the motion of trying to pick them up still does bring out the kicking. A work in progress...


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## egrogan

*12 mile Wednesday*
For awhile now, I've been wanting to do a long road loop through the little town that borders ours once you go down the big overlook hill. The ride starts out like our normal ride past the overlook. I knew Fizz was going to get a little grumpy when we passed our usual turn-around spot near the cows, which is about 2.5 miles away from home. Unsurprisingly, she was less than enthusiastic when she understood we were going to keep going. The next mile or so was downhill, and I really had to push her along. I was hoping the rest of the ride wasn't going to be this annoying!

We got to the bottom of the long downhill section, and while we don't ride this way very often, we have a few times, and always turned left to go towards home (that's a shorter loop than the one I set out for). We came to the intersection and she tipped her ears left, but I asked her to turn right, which she did. As I guessed, going in a foreign direction perked her up right away, and I was thankfully no longer having to push her forward. This part of the ride took us through "the village," which is little more than a dirt road with houses on a few acre lots on either side. I was expecting some dogs to come chasing us, and had even read on the town message board that there was a roaming pig bothering people! But fortunately none of those creatures showed up to bother us. We did get passed by some traffic here. Do you know who _loves _to see a horse out on the road? Older retired people out for a drive on a nice day  Because it was such a nice day, most people who drove by had their windows rolled down to enjoy the fresh air, and several older couples flashed us huge smiles and waves when the drove by. I think it probably brings back memories for a lot of people who grew up riding horses around here as a normal way of getting around. I like that kind of traffic!

This part of the village is known for its beautiful old stone houses. We passed 4 of them in the distance of a couple of miles.















The village was settled by Scottish immigrants and they brought this style of house to a lot of the little towns around us. It's different from the old stone houses I remember from when I lived in Philadelphia. These tend to be a bit smaller scale than those houses, and if I'm remembering correctly, the stone blocks in our style of stone house are, well...blockier. I'm sure there's proper architectural terminology but that's a bit outside my wheelhouse. I will just admire them when I see them.

Soon we turned off the village road to follow 20 mile stream for a few of its miles.








This is a beautiful, twisting road with views for miles. We passed some bikers here, and some more traffic as it was lunchtime at this point and there were more people out and about.








The banks from the road down to the stream were fairly steep, but I found a place where it was possible to get down to the water if we were careful. Fizz wasn't really interested though. She nibbled at some of the overgrown shrubbery but didn't want to actually go to the water. I could see a man working in a garage across the street keeping an eye on us, so I didn't want to dawdle and cause a scene. We continued on without a drink, but she was still happy to trot along so I wasn't too worried about her.

After a couple of miles, it was time to turn away from the stream to the last leg of our loop, which was a righthand turn in the general direction of home via the overlook. Fizz had definitely never been anywhere near this road before, but her internal compass told her immediately that we were pointing in the direction of home, even though it was at least 5 miles away. She couldn't wait to leap forward into a trot. The footing in the road was soft and springy, but at first we had to contend with several trucks driving by, and they weren't as happy to see us as the retired people had been. We had to go back and forth between a fast trot and checking back to a walk hugging the road shoulder a few times before the traffic cleared up. After several pickups in quick succession, there was no more traffic. The next part of the ride was all about her beautiful Morgan road trot. The road offered up a mild incline, perfect for turning her loose and letting her really move out. She felt like one of those old horse whirligigs as she flew along in a trot.








I can't even put words to the feeling of her shoulders pumping underneath me: 



 I was mostly focused on not getting thrown behind the motion. It's the most power I've ever felt from her! Definitely a humbling gait to ride though, as I got the message loud and clear that I need to be stronger, especially in my core, to really ride a trot that big. My ride tracker had her trotting as fast as 15mph, but averaging out around 9mph in this1.5 mile section. I know that endurance horses sustain that big trot even longer, but this was the most forward moving trot we've done since I've been keeping track of my miles. Another truck passing us brought us back down to earth, and when we picked up the trot again, it was a little more modest. But wow, it was great fun when we could race along all by ourselves!
















Soon we were back to territory that Fizz recognized for real. By this point, she'd trotted along energetically for miles, and I could feel her take a deep breath and ask for a bit of a break. At 10 miles in, we came to a hayfield that had recently been baled, but there were some nice patches of grass near the road that were still long and luscious because the hay racks had been parked on top. I pulled over there for about 10 minutes and let her graze around. Because it was in the shade, the grass was still wet and dewy, so I wasn't worried about her refusal of drinking at the creek earlier. We only had a couple of miles to go.








She was content to pull away from the grass when I gave her a little squeeze to get moving again. We climbed the big hill up past the overlook, and a few minutes later we were home. Lovely husband happened to be outside as the house came into view, and snapped a picture for us. What a great ride! 12 miles at intro endurance pace (5mph), and a happy horse at the end of it. Though we were both tired, I think we each had a good time!


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## gottatrot

If I could "double love" that last post, I would. You two are doing so great, the scenery is amazing, and I love hearing what a team you are, exploring the world. That's the best place you can be with any horse. I know you adore Izzy, but I wonder if Fizz will be the horse you always remember as the very best ride ever.


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## carshon

Your post made me smile as well. What a great ride!


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## PoptartShop

Awwwww!!! These posts make me smile!  You two are such an amazing team!


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## BarbandBadgerandPedro

reading your journal is so lovely! you live in a beautiful scenic place and get to explore it on horseback. have you considered using a helmet cam like phantom horse? I would love to see the trails you travel in vids! Your pix are wonderful!


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## egrogan

BarbandBadgerandPedro said:


> reading your journal is so lovely! you live in a beautiful scenic place and get to explore it on horseback. have you considered using a helmet cam like phantom horse? I would love to see the trails you travel in vids! Your pix are wonderful!


That's so nice of you to say, thank you! I still get a kick out of the idea that people read this. I like having the documentation to go back to from time to time, but I'm happy that it's at least somewhat interesting to other people too. I feel fortunate every day to have access to this trail system! I have considered getting a helmet cam, but seem to always prioritize something else. Maybe I'll look for one more seriously when holiday sales roll around later this year.



gottatrot said:


> I love hearing what a team you are, exploring the world. That's the best place you can be with any horse. I know you adore Izzy, but I wonder if Fizz will be the horse you always remember as the very best ride ever.


Fizz is certainly the best horse I could imagine for my riding today. I also think it's a bit of a "horses for courses" sort of scenario- I think this is the kind of riding she enjoys too. I've had a lot of people ask me why I don't show her in dressage. I'm sure she'd look lovely all turned out in tack that isn't orange 😉 I am craving taking some dressage lessons but I just don't think either of us would enjoy more traditional showing. I think we're doing what we should be doing.

Speaking of Izzy- poor pony had a rough time after the flu vaccine last Friday. Saturday morning, she wasn't really acting like herself and didn't want to eat much. By the end of the day, her temp spiked up to close to 103*F and she was depressed and lethargic. Sunday her temp came back down to around 101*F (still high for her) and she still wasn't interested in eating, yet having explosive diarrhea. I knew this was connected to the shot, and we'd just have to wait it out. Unfortunately I was leaving at 6am on Monday for my first work trip in literally two years, which meant lovely husband was going to have to do the best he could to monitor her and try to get her to eat.  Her temp was more normal when I checked before I left, and she nibbled a little hay and feed in the morning. He offered her about half her typical dinner ration, and she ate some of it but not all. By Tuesday morning, she was a little bit brighter and more interested in food; Tuesday night, she ate most of what he offered her. I got home really late Tuesday, so the first time I saw her again was Wednesday morning. Her attitude was good, but her appetite was still a bit subdued. I was able to turn them out in the larger pasture for most of Wednesday, and I think a day out on grass did her a world of good and perked her back up. She's eaten up nearly her normal amount of feed since Wednesday night, and as of today you wouldn't really know she had been so out of it. I have been nervously monitoring her feet, but so far haven't seen any signs of laminitis. I'm a bit bummed out because she had been steadily gaining weight and looking more filled in, but her hips are more visible than I'd like after a few days of not really eating. Hopefully we'll have at few more weeks with ok grass before we're getting frosts, and without the bugs around they can spend more time with the grass. I don't think we'll be doing the flu vaccine for her next year!


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## egrogan

Also, I went out with M for another 10 mile ride Sunday before the work trip. It’s starting to look like fall!








We followed the trail that goes past my favorite tree- M managed to get a picture as I admired the tree and Fizz admired the snackable ferns growing under it 😆








We’re now over 400 miles for the year.


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## PoptartShop

Glad Izzy is feeling better, poor girly!  Yeah, I'd definitely skip that vaccine next time, ugh you just never know how they will react to some. I'm sure she was loving the grass though!

What a lovely ride! You guys are so darn cute!! & over 400mi that is a LOT! Way to go girls!!


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## egrogan

After a week's vacation, due to weather and my traveling for work, Fizz was back in action yesterday. She actually was a bit resentful about being pulled in for tacking up. She was fidgety in the shed where we always get ready. I have gotten lazy and don't usually bother to even tie her in there for tacking up any more; I just hang a hay net and she settles in while we go through grooming, a little massage, and then finally getting saddled up. But she kept trying to yank her feet away while I was cleaning them, and then scooted out of the shed entirely when I was brushing her. I had to catch her back up and tie her this time, and she got squirrely and tangled herself with the rope over her neck. It was a bit of a production. Finally we got back into the routine, saddled up, and headed out to the overlook. I wasn't planning on a big ride since she'd been off 5 days, but we were meeting M for a longer ride today so I wanted to be sure she at least worked a little so she was ready for today's ride.

As we rode along, I thought about something @ACinATX had written about in her journal- she mentioned paying attention to her horse's footfalls by putting a hand on the shoulder while she rode and figuring out which foot was in the air to move. I had this in mind while we walked and trotted along. Rather than a hand on a shoulder, I just focused on when my own hips were moving. I started thinking about our motion in the old army march rhythm of "Left-Left-Left-Right-Left" and trying to move over a particular leg in accordance with that rhythm. Then I tried to switch up how I was paying attention to my hips and started thinking "Right-Right-Right-Left-Right"- and that led to pandemonium! Apparently me putting my mental focus on my right hip caused my body to do all kinds of crazy things in response. Fizz shot away from my right hip clear over to the left hand side of the road. I had to think really hard about how I was sitting. Just when I thought I'd gotten her straightened out, if I kept swinging to the Right-Right-Right rhythm she lurched away to the left. Really fascinating. I know I am crooked. I don't know what this experiment tells me about my crookedness though  (except that I need lessons!)

Anyway, I stopped messing around with my position in the saddle and we had a normal rest of our ride, up to the overlook, and back through the fields on the way home. There are some tiny splashes of color but nothing really dramatic yet.








The light at dusk was really pretty though. The horses grazed around in the back pasture while I did chores after dinner.
















You can see Josie's fat right front ankle in this picture above ^^ She was a little off on it today so keeping an eye on whether we need to get the vet back for another look. It doesn't feel any different- still hard and cold- but she was favoring it slightly today.
****
Today's ride with M started off with seeing a bear! We met up down the road from my house, and as we turned to go in the opposite direction toward the trail we were taking, the horses both spotted the little black cub saunter out from the bushes and cross the road. He seemed tiny, so we stood and waited, expecting him to have company. But nothing else came through. The horses were rooted to the ground and snorting (it was probably 10 yards in front of us), but they didn't panic. They took a little encouragement to get moving again, and snorted like dragons in the spot where it had crossed, but they handled it well.

We headed off to Blind Mare Farm and had a sunny start to our ride. 








M lost a boot on this trail a couple of weeks ago, so we kept our eyes open for it. It's bear hunting season, and there were spots where the shooting was a little too close for comfort- but we jumped in surprise more than the horses did.








When we got to the farm, we grabbed an apple from the orchard and let the horses enjoy them. You could tell it was a popular spot for wildlife too. Lots of bear and deer poop all around the trees.
















This ride is an out-and-back, and we usually turn around after a stop at the orchard. Our sunny day was disappearing and we didn't dawdle so we could beat the rain.








Much to our surprise, going through a rocky section of trail- there was M's boot right in the middle! We had ridden right past it on our way out, but we both noticed it at almost the same time heading back. I was so glad we found it, as it was almost brand new.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. The trail comes back to a road, but we didn't have much traffic to contend with. We ended up doing 9 miles. And we did make it home before the rain! 😁


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## Knave

Ohh, I’m so jealous you saw a cub! Also I’m glad you found the boot.

I was going to remember to think about that, but I forgot to. When I read it it was something I never had given much thought to. I don’t know if it would make a difference to think about it or not, but it’s definitely worth the consideration!


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Ohh, I’m so jealous you saw a cub!


Now I wish I caught a picture of him. I just didn't know in the moment if the horses were going to start jumping around or if they'd stay still. But they're really good about stuff like that so I probably could have.


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## Knave

I get that! There are so many things I see I want to show you guys, but then I don’t even take out my camera. One is because usually it is during times I have to focus on the filly, but the other is that it seems impossible to get a good photo of wildlife.

I wished you could see the deer we jumped with that bull, or the big antelope who was hanging with that herd. He just trotted around us, like it wasn’t that amiss. I wanted to show you the baby curlew bunch and their parent thinking he was pushing the cows all by himself. It’s the best things we can’t show anyone else. Maybe they are only meant to be for us.


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## egrogan

Yes, there are absolutely times when it’s best to just be in the moment and experience the ride.


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## egrogan

Fall has come with lots of annoying cold rain showers over night. I’m probably overly worried but I like to keep them dry when it’s below 50* and there’s soaking rain at night, so starting to pull out the rain sheets overnight. Of course the freshly cleaned ones don’t last long!
















Goofy ponies 😆 

It’s been a crazy work week and this morning was the first time I could sneak out for even a short ride before I got sucked into meetings.


Horses got trimmed yesterday and Fizz was feeling peppy in the cool morning air. She had a canter brain on the way to and from the overlook. The air was so chilly that my eyes were watering as we cantered along. She doesn’t get wild or rude about it, but she was clear she was happy to go, so that was fun. The rest of the ride was more leisurely and we enjoyed the beginnings of the foliage popping out.


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## egrogan

A sad/vent post...

Back in the winter, I think I posted here that I inquired about a mare that was with one of the two big Morgan rescue organizations. After a lot of run-around, I finally got a message from them that described the poor mare as being so sore she essentially lived in a deeply bed stall 24/7. As bad as I felt, hearing about her condition, combined with the difficultly I had in communicating with them about basic things, made me pass without pursuing it any further. Of course, that eventually led me to Josie.

Last night scrolling FB, I happened to see a post from that rescue that the poor mare had been put down because she was in extreme pain from laminitis. I just wanted to scream...WELL, DUH!?! It seems likely she's been that way for at least the past 9 months, based on how they described her in the message I got back in the winter. Of course it's extremely sad that such a sweet looking mare had to go through that pain and be put to sleep. But I think this is one of those rescues that "bails" horses from auctions, has unrealistic expectations about how every horse can be "rehabbed," no matter their condition, and then passes them on to other people to deal with the long term implications. The post I read went on and on about how an adopter had been about to take the mare, and they just couldn't beat the clock to get the mare out to the adopter before her pain became too extreme. Of course I never put eyes on the mare or saw her in person, but I just feel like this is one of those scenarios that makes reasonable people highly skeptical of "rescues" and what they're willing to put animals through in the name of "making a save" from an auction. #EndVent

That said- I think we can all agree we're glad the mare is finally relieved of her pain and off to run green pastures again...


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## Knave

That is sad. It seems odd to me, to not be able to manage something at a rehab level and expect a private owner to be able to. It does give the organization a bad name. The idea that they would turn her without a handle on the problem gives them a bad name…


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## gottatrot

That's really sad about the mare suffering so long. My experience with Halla really opened my eyes about the ideas out there about laminitis. I read stories of horses that were recumbant for months while their hooves regrew, suffered through colic from lack of movement, stall sores and infections, but they were considered success stories because eventually the hooves regrew and they were able to be pasture sound. People encouraged me to keep going and not give up. I can't imagine putting a horse through suffering like that just to keep them alive. I can't imagine Halla enjoying life unable to go out on pasture with her friends and being unable to run, her favorite thing in life. 

It's wonderful when a rescue can get a horse that was discarded because of some health issue and give them pain management and vet care they would not have received otherwise. But some rescues also try to keep horses alive that are suffering and that needed to be put down, but owners did not want to face that and discarded them to let someone else deal with it. Most of us on the forum agree that animals must have a certain quality of life, and prolonged suffering in the hope of keeping them alive is unethical.


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## egrogan

_Plot Twist_

aka…Could Josie be pregnant?

Vet was out a couple of weeks ago and we pulled blood for a CBC just so we could keep an eye on Josie’s baseline values and see if there was anything that might suggest we need to change diet to keep her gaining weight steadily.

Vet just called with results and said everything is looking great…except something known as “enucleated red blood cells.” I had never heard of that before, and she explained it’s essentially when a red blood cell demonstrates a nucleus outside of the bone marrow, which shouldn’t be possible unless the horse was severely anemic, riddled with tumors, had leukemia…or was pregnant. The other blood work suggests anemia and tumors are not likely.

So, could she have been exposed to a stallion? Of course, anything is possible. The male horses in her herd were all gelded, so it wasn’t any of them. But they were roaming loose for who knows how long until this past January. Mares were Preg checked at the rescue and it wasn’t noted as an issue…but who can really say?

I have zero experience with pregnant mares, but she sure doesn’t look like a pregnant mare to me. Vet will be back next month for a prescheduled blood pull for Cushings, so I guess the plan is more investigation then? Vet’s conclusion was “we can’t make her unpregnant if she is” which is…true. But if she is coming up on 10 months pregnant, I would be thoroughly freaked out! I guess I will join the P Test bandwagon and start watching her udder 😳

Josie, Josie…what secrets are you hiding?


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## Knave

That is a plot twist!


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## egrogan

For what it’s worth, there is no udder on Josie to speak of. Of course that doesn’t prove anything, but it’s better than if she had a big udder!!








Today start off cool, drizzly and overall gloomy








But it ended up just gorgeous. We did a slow 7 miles through Newhall Farm soaking in the glow of the foliage.
















We tried a new trail off the farm road. I didn’t know where it would go but I thought it might just arc through the woods and cut off some time on the road. It was a pretty trail, well maintained, I think maybe used just for walking and maybe biking-no ATVs allowed.
















After a short time, it dead ended at a pretty field that I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t tell if it might pick back up through the woods at the other side of the field, but I was worried that I might get to the other side and find myself behind a wire fence. 








Instead of finding out, we turned back the way we came and went home via the road instead. 
























I was so happy that I waited to ride until later in the day and got to go in the warm sunshine instead of the morning gloom.


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## Knave

That is just stunning!


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## gottatrot

So beautiful! I just love fall.


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## PoptartShop

They definitely should've put that mare down way before then...ugh. Right, like what kind of life is that, in a stall 24/7, so limited & probably not happy at all.  Glad she did finally get put down though so she's no longer suffering or in pain.

Josie...hmmm! That is really interesting. :O 

I've unfortunately had to pull out the rain sheet too this past weekend, rainy & chilly especially at night! LOL, I wish they'd stay clean forever! 

What a beautiful ride!  Definitely starting to look more like fall!


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## egrogan

Thanks everyone! The foliage really turned it on this weekend. I think we probably have another week or so to go until we hit "peak" foliage (aka, peak tourist invasion 😉 ). 

Yesterday we did 11 miles with M and Coalie through my favorite spot, the enchanted forest. It was chilly and even a little misty when we started, but sun peaked out towards the end of the ride. When we were in the woods, we didn't feel the breeze or the rain, so that was nice.
















We were able to let the horses have a good canter down the pristine bridle path; there are a couple of logs in the trail with an over or around option, so M got to pop over the logs while Fizz and I took the overland route. The horses were really enjoying themselves too. If I ever get around to getting a GoPro, I'll have to get some video in that spot as it's probably the spot I enjoy riding the most! Fizz really gets moving there so I prefer to keep both hands on the wheel and not video with my phone.

After the canter section, we wind our way down to the brook. Coalie drank really well, but even though she was sweaty, Fizz didn't want to linger.
















Came home on the road, and even that looks pretty right now!

























We had our closest en-cow-nter of the year, and Fizz was great! There were six more down behind that white one, hanging out in what _was _a pond earlier this year but dried up during the long days without rain over the summer. The big guy in front walked the fenceline with us a bit as we passed, but fortunately didn't make any noise. Fizz did stop for a moment to consider what she saw, but then she let out a big sigh and just walked by- no hopping around or spooking away from them. It felt great for that to be her reaction!!








I promise in a week my foliage photo spam will calm down! This is our prettiest time of year by far and it's hard not to see a pretty picture everywhere you look.


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## egrogan

It's been one of those super frustrating weeks at work where I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish even a fraction of what needs to get done. You know it's bad when even your dog just wants to hide in bed rather than get up and start the day!








I guess that's why we have horses though. Just watching them eating in the field is so peaceful. I don't know if I'll be able to ride until the weekend, which stinks, but at least they are happy!


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## Knave

I’m sorry it’s been a rough week! I hear you. Of course, Queen is participating in my rough week. Lol. So, at my house it’s the puppies who are the calming influence!


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## egrogan

Was sorry to hear you're feeling so sick and still need to go to work. I hope you're feeling better today. Enjoy those puppies 💕


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## Knave

Thanks! I am hoping it’s not so bad today. So far it’s been alright saddling and the like. We will see about working. If it’s too bad today I will make an appointment for tomorrow. I know a lot of people have this bug, and I haven’t heard of anyone having too big of problems with it, so I think it should be alright.


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## egrogan

Please do take care of yourself. I also tend to err on the side of waiting things out vs. going to the doctor, but the way you described your heart rate bouncing around worried me.


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## PoptartShop

I hear you, it's been like that for me for the past week. Plus, it's been raining for about 6 days straight. I'm over it! @Knave, I hope you feel better!


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## Knave

Thanks. We turned around up the mountain. I got out just to pee and my heart rate went to 164. Husband can’t breath, and is really rattling, and we just can’t be up that mountain horseback today. The horses won’t know what to think when we unload them at home! Lol


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## egrogan

Had a great weekend of riding. Fizz hadn’t been ridden from Monday-Friday because work was crazy, plus lovely husband was away on a work trip for 3 days and everything seems to take twice as long when you’re the only one doing chores  So I couldn’t wait to get out for a ride again!

Saturday was a gorgeous afternoon so I decided to loop around the neighborhood to check out the foliage at some of the best views. It did not disappoint!

Fizz made me chuckle as we headed out around the perimeter of the field across the street-suddenly she let out a huge, full body whinny calling to the other horses. Of course, Izzy needs no encouragement to fear that Fizz is being fed to wolves whenever she’s out of sight, so she began frantically calling back. Fizz never has expressed even the slightest interest or worry about being ridden away from the other horses, so that was very out of character. She kept calling to them as we headed down the road, and it was no longer funny because I could hear two motorcycles coming up behind us. Fortunately when I asked her to pay attention, she snapped out of it and focused.

I was glad she was paying attention, because as we turned into the neighbors hay field, we surprised a small flock of turkeys.








They scooted away up the hill and we turned in the opposite direction to cross the field. It was simply gorgeous!
















We climbed up to the top of the hill and looked out to the mountain, where you could see the ski trails outlined in a different color than the rest of the trees surrounding the trails. The turkeys had also made their way to the top of the hill and were scratching around right at the tree line, so Fizz hopped away from them in surprise, but quickly realized they were there and went back to grazing around while I sat for a minute and admired the view.

From there, we cut across our logging trail and headed around a different field to see how the colors were up at the overlook.









As expected, the color did not disappoint!
















I had to laugh, I think we ended up in a couple of tourist photos while we were standing at the overlook. A couple of cars crept by really slowly and gave us hearty waves when they pulled away. We also got swarmed by a pelloton of bikers, but Fizz barely looked at them. They weren’t very friendly though. They were heading to the overlook as we were riding away, so I said hello and told them they were almost at the most beautiful spot-they just sort of glared at me and didn’t say anything at all 🤷‍♀️

Lovely husband was out splitting wood when we rode past the house and he sent me a couple of cute pictures-though it made me laugh to see how much Fizz blends into the background given how much her coat color matches the fall colors.

















^can you find her? 😆

Josie and Izzy were in high alert watching Fizz make her way home-and kept a close watch on her while she got a good drink.
















Sunday was a meetup with M and Coalie…


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## knightrider

What a ride! It looks glorious!


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## egrogan

Yesterday we did 11 miles with M and Coalie. It was really chilly, down in the 30s*F overnight, so I wanted to be sure Fizz had plenty of time for a walking warmup to be sure there was no muscle soreness. She was blanketed in a sheet overnight and was a comfortable temp underneath when we got tacked up.

She didn't pay any attention to leaving the other horses, though Izzy called after her as we walked down the road. 








Our route to meet up with M is ~1.5 miles down the hill, which can be a bit of a slog at the start of a ride. While she didn't seem focused on the other horses, she did have some tension, startling herself when we crunched through the pile of leaves that had collected at the side of the road.








As we got towards the bottom of the hill, suddenly she did an all-4-feet-in-the-air straight up and down spook. I couldn't figure out what surprised her, until I looked over and saw through the trees that our down the road neighbor was out riding in her arena. I was actually glad for her spook, because she needed to get that tension out of her system! After that, she was fine.

We met up with M and headed off to the tree farm loop. To get there, we crossed the paved road and had a short section up another dirt road before branching off onto a pretty woods trail. There were no pickups parked at the trail head so we figured we'd be ok as far as hunting goes- right now it's still bear season, plus archery for deer and turkeys. I was in orange ears to tail, but I forgot my bells at home 😉 It was really pretty back in the woods, especially looping past the pond, where the trail is a fern forest.























From there, we headed down the jeep track to the tree farm logging roads. As we went around a bend, a biker screeched to a stop in front of us as Fizz jumped back out of his way. It was actually a friend of ours, and I apologized for breaking his momentum as he came around that curve (we were sort of hogging the whole road). He laughed and said he was just about to "let it rip" down the hill, so probably a good thing we weren't a few seconds later coming through there. The horses are so good though, after that initial surprise- which honestly made me jump too!-they just kept going like nothing had happened.

There was a big pickup with Massachusetts plates parked at the gate to the logging road, so we figured there was someone back there hunting. We were planning to stay on the main logging road so didn't expect to be in the way. But pretty quickly, we saw an older guy in camo with a rifle heading our way. We yelled out hello and he was friendly enough, saying he was with a couple of other guys and they were just poking around seeing if they could find any bears. We explained to him where we were going and he said the other guys were back on the skid roads so we wouldn't see them. With that, we headed off. The loop is 6 or so miles total, and the first part of it is downhill and fairly steep and gravelly, so we did a lot of walking. Once the road turned back uphill, we mostly trotted and cantered the rest of the way back. As we got back towards the gate, we saw the same guy again. We stopped and chit chatted a bit. The horses seemed to appreciate the break as they were pretty sweaty by then. He pet Coalie a little bit and then we all went on our way. I didn't get any kind of uncomfortable feeling in the moment, but looking back, it did sort of strike me that it's kind of unnerving to come upon a guy with a gun just strolling around in the middle of the afternoon. I thought about when he was petting Coalie's nose and how easily he could have grabbed the bridle and swung M off- and I'm not sure I would have made a run for it knowing he had a rifle. Anyway...nothing like that happened and he was perfectly friendly. It just makes you think a bit that when you're out there in the woods with no cell service, you are pretty vulnerable.

We took a different route home, staying on the road instead of cutting back through the woods. It had been cool and gloomy when we started, but the sun had come out and the views were spectacular.















M and I parted ways and I crossed back over the paved road to head home. There was a ton of traffic on the paved road so Fizz and I actually had to stand and wait for a break in the traffic, which is not a regular occurrence! As we crossed, I glanced over my shoulder and saw a truck pulling a massive RV behind it. We were well out of its way before it got to the intersection, but I could hear it slowing down and knew it was going to end up turning up my road, which is narrow, really not more than 1.5 lanes wide. The truck was an F350, and the RV itself looked like it could fit 3 F350s inside it! Really massive. There was no way that thing plus Fizz and I were going to be able to share the road. Also, my road is pretty steep (the same 1.5 mile hill we came down to start), so if you're towing, you really need to pick up momentum as soon as you turn off the paved road and floor it up to the top of the hill. That's even with my little two horse bumper pull, so I can only imagine a rig this size. All that flashed through my head in a split second, and as they came our way, I figured the best thing to do was just squeeze Fizz forward and beat the truck to the first driveway, about 100 yards away, where Fizz and I could pull over and let them pass. And that's exactly what we did. She didn't hesitate for a second, just stepped up into a strong canter, and had no argument when I asked her to turn a hard right into the driveway rather than keep going in the direction of home. We turned around and stopped, waiting for the truck to go by, and as it did there were two little girls with their faces pressed to the window waving at us, so we gave them a big wave back 😄 That wasn't the end of the excitement, as we had loose dogs, walkers, more cars, and more bikers between us and home. But Fizz just carried on like none of it was a big deal. What a good horse she is! 💕















Unfortunately today has been a grey, drizzly day, so my plans to ride again didn't materialize. But I'm off the rest of the week, so we'll go for a longer ride again tomorrow.


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## Knave

What beautiful pictures!!!

I am not scared of men with rifles, although I have been scared once before. 99.9% of the time I am not frightened by hunters though. If he were to grab the bridle, and Coalie would allow for it, the trick would be to run him over. I think that if a horse runs you over, from my experience, it’s a pretty big deal, and hard to come back from. From there run.

If he were taking your friend, you could run into him hard with Fizz. Now, I don’t know if horses who aren’t used for bullying cows would agree to do so as easily, but I know any of mine would take a person out in a heartbeat.

If yours wouldn’t, running for it is a must! If someone takes you, you are probably not going to survive. That’s sad, but that’s how I look at it. I’d rather die from being shot… it is really hard to hit a running target though, and you would possibly get lucky. I know it can be done, but I would risk it.

As far as the bikers, what jerks! People like that irritate me.


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## TrainedByMares

Knave said:


> What beautiful pictures!!!
> 
> I am not scared of men with rifles, although I have been scared once before. 99.9% of the time I am not frightened by hunters though. If he were to grab the bridle, and Coalie would allow for it, the trick would be to run him over. I think that if a horse runs you over, from my experience, it’s a pretty big deal, and hard to come back from. From there run.
> 
> If he were taking your friend, you could run into him hard with Fizz. Now, I don’t know if horses who aren’t used for bullying cows would agree to do so as easily, but I know any of mine would take a person out in a heartbeat.
> 
> If yours wouldn’t, running for it is a must! If someone takes you, you are probably not going to survive. That’s sad, but that’s how I look at it. I’d rather die from being shot… it is really hard to hit a running target though, and you would possibly get lucky. I know it can be done, but I would risk it.
> 
> As far as the bikers, what jerks! People like that irritate me.


You are one tough customer, @Knave ! Good plan! 

Now, @egrogan , you could learn to become proficient with a sidearm and carry it.


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## knightrider

When I was a teenager, I spent hours riding by myself in the gravel pits of Maryland. They are very isolated. One day a sportscar with 2 young men pulled in front of me. They started chatting in a friendly way, then one got out of the car, grabbed my rein, and ordered me off my horse. I jerked the rein away, spun around, and took off running.

They took off in their sports car and tried to cut me off on the next cross road in the gravel pits from the powerline. My horse Apache was fast, and I beat them to the road (I was going straight through the brush and they had to go to a road) and went on home. I never told my parents about it. I knew they'd want to stop me from riding for hours and miles by myself in isolated places. Even if they had beat me to the road, I could have gotten away from them, because we met the powerline there, and I could have ridden cross country though the powerline where no car could go.

Someone in my 4-H wasn't so lucky. There was a group of kids who rode all the time to McDonald's from a different powerline (all us kids used the powerlines like our private highways on horseback). This girl happened to be by herself going to McDonald's close to dusk. On the powerline was a car with some young men in it.

They grabbed her bridle and ordered her off her horse. She quick slipped the bridle off her horse's head and threw it at them, spun her horse around, and took off running for home. One of them had a gun and shot her multiple times in the head and back. It was winter and she had a heavy quilted jacket on. 

She got to McDonald's and while waiting to cross the busy intersection, she fainted from loss of blood. Luckily, a neighbor recognized her, stopped his car in the intersection and got immediate help.

People said her heavy jacket saved her life. It was riddled with bullet holes. The doctors did not remove all the bullets from her skull, and she let us feel them from time to time. She had a very brave well trained horse to run home with no bridle, stop when he got to traffic, and stand when she came off in a faint.


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## egrogan

Wow, some wild stories shared here! I wonder if sometimes I am too naive with people I meet while I'm out alone. I have never found myself in an uncomfortable situation, but meeting that hunter did make me think a little harder about the "what ifs." I don't know that Fizz would understand a desire to attack a random person, but I think if I told her to take off, she would.


TrainedByMares said:


> Now, @egrogan , you could learn to become proficient with a sidearm and carry it.


Ha, nothing would make my career Army dad happier than that! Guns are not for me though.


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## egrogan

Now, speaking of wild stories. The past 12 hours have been a bit wild here. Backing up to yesterday morning, Josie was not herself and didn't eat her breakfast. Her temp was normal, but she was very gassy and weirdly, she had _no _anal tone- putting the thermometer in was like reaching into a black hole. I probably could have popped a golf ball in there, it was so loose. So that was very odd. I checked on her again at lunch, still no temp and acting a bit depressed but also still interested in hay.

When I went out at dinner, she again didn't touch her feed, and she was looking more uncomfortable. Very gassy, shifting her weight back and forth between her hind legs, and just looking sad. I took her temp, the thermometer read 103.8*F. The barn thermometer is pretty old, and the last couple of times I used it it took forever to give a temperature reading, so I thought maybe it was just finally dead and I needed a different one. I went up to the house to get the human thermometer so I would have a more accurate reading. This time I was sure the thermometer was working properly, and the reading was *105.6*F*. I did a triple take, reinserted it and got the reading again. It came back the same, 105.6*F. I didn't even know a horse could still be standing with a temperature that high! At this point, it was about 6pm, so I got the vet's answering service when I called. I was thinking some sort of awful complication or rupture from a gas colic, and beating myself up for not calling her earlier in the day when things were not quite right.

She called me back right away, and when I repeated the temp reading to her, she said she was sure it was anaplasmosis, and she'd been treating horses for it presenting exactly like this for the past week. A temp that high out of nowhere is almost always anaplasmosis this time of year. In fact, poor Josie had at least 4 really swollen, crusty tick bites over the weekend, so it all made perfect sense to me. The horses are vaccinated for Lyme, but even though ticks are still the vector, there is no anaplasmosis vaccine.

Vet was on her way home from another call, so headed right here and was actually waiting for us at the barn as I was bringing Josie up from the pasture. Vet is obviously well aware of some of Josie's _ahem_ challenging behaviors given their interactions so far. And we had kind of a funny moment in the barn- I brought all three horses up from the pasture, since everything in the barn goes a lot more smoothly when they're together. I swapped Izzy and Josie's stalls, because I wasn't sure if the vet would want to work on her in a stall and Izzy's has better light. As vet was getting all the IV supplies ready, she said offhandedly, "I'm glad we're dealing with this horse (meaning Izzy), not that other kicking horse" and I had to laugh and say..."well, actually this _is _that other kicking horse, I just swapped stalls in case you needed to work in there at all."

By the end of the visit though, she gave Josie lots of compliments for how well she handled things. She's fine taking a rectal temp (which, by the way, had continued to climb and was reading *106.1*F* when the vet took it!  ), and she stood well for the massive IV of antibiotics plus banamine. She got lots of peppermints and pets.

This morning, her temp was back down to 99.5*F. She still wasn't interested in her hard feed, but again is happy to eat hay. She got a dose of banamine paste and stood perfectly for that. Vet will be back for one more IV antibiotic treatment at the end of the day, and then we switch over to oral antibiotics for at least another week.

Hopefully she'll respond well to treatment without any side effects- seems like most horses do. I've only had experience with Lyme, never anaplasmosis, but from everything I'm reading and hearing from friends, this tends to resolve faster and more smoothly than Lyme. Although that initial very high fever is certainly scary to encounter! I have never seen a fever that high and hope I don't see another one like that any time soon.


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## carshon

Oh My! Poor Josie. Your views are gorgeous but I am not sure its worth the ticks you have to deal with.


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## egrogan

Ticks are definitely one of the worst things about where we are @carshon, and only going to get worse as our winters get more mild. I think other areas are going to start seeing more of these problems too as the climate changes and ticks spread out. Maybe higher prevalence of tick borne illnesses in people and animals will push the research to better vaccines and treatments though. I guess time will tell.


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## PoptartShop

Awwww, poor Josie!  I hate ticks! Lyme is definitely frustrating too, since it can come back at times, I've also only dealt with Lyme, never anaplasmosis but hopefully they're right & it goes away quicker. I'm glad her temperature went back down - that was a pretty high fever! My oh my, thank goodness she's doing better & I hope she recovers quickly. <3

Beautiful views though!! The colors are so pretty!


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## boatagor

Ticks are the worst. I got bit in 2017 and became allergic to mammal meat. It took months for a diagnosis. I started being able to eat beef again last year and I'm hoping to get tested for pork this year. I had no idea this was a thing until it happened to me!


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## egrogan

@boatagor, that’s awful. I know many people with Lyme and other tick borne illnesses, but I’ve never heard of that side effect either. Sorry you’re going through that! 😟


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## boatagor

egrogan said:


> @boatagor, that’s awful. I know many people with Lyme and other tick borne illnesses, but I’ve never heard of that side effect either. Sorry you’re going through that! 😟


Apparently we live in the epicenter of the "allergy" but it's spreading all over the country. My allergist told me to expect it to be a lifelong thing so I'm happy it was only 4-5 years. 

Buying beef again after 4 years was quite the sticker shock, though!


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## egrogan

I will definitely keep that in mind in case I hear of anyone else with similar symptoms! Glad you have a doctor who took you seriously though. A friend of mine eventually ended up traveling to Germany for treatment for Lyme/babesia and related issues because no doctor here would address her symptoms and didn’t believe what she described 

Follow up vet visit for Josie at 6pm was good. Temp held steady at 99.5*F all day. Heart rate was 32 vs 56 last night. Last round of IV antibiotics is in, and on to the oral version tomorrow. Fingers crossed she’s responding well and on her way back to normal. And she got complimented for her good manners, which made my heart happy ❤


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## egrogan

Josie is doing pretty well. Her temp has been consistently normal the past couple of days, and she looks more comfortable. We did banamine yesterday morning but that was the last time. Unfortunately she still doesn't have much of an appetite, at least not when it comes to her feed. She hasn't done more than nibble a few bites at breakfast or dinner. That's making it a bit complicated to get the oral antibiotics into her. She ate a few of them as she nibbled yesterday's breakfast, so I think once she starts eating again she probably will eat them in the feed. But unfortunately she needs the antibiotics in reliably twice a day for the next week. It's 20 capsules of minocycline 2x/day, so I've been popping the capsules open and mixing the powder in with applesauce to syringe. She's been good about syringing but is starting to head the opposite direction when she sees me because she knows what's coming  She is still very interested in hay and grass, so I grazed her around in the yard for half an hour last night, which she seemed to enjoy. When she first got here, I tried to take her out hand grazing and she'd panic as soon as she was on the other side of the fence from the other horses, so I was happy to see her comfort level has improved since then. Poor thing, I just want to see her really feeling better again soon.
























Yesterday was another picture perfect day, so Fizz and I went out for a longer ride (~6 miles). The roads are concrete hard again because we haven't had rain, so I went in a direction where we could take a woods trail parallel to the road for a couple of miles and get a break from the really hard footing. It was really warm, around 60*F, and the first day I've seen Fizz really sweating through her thicker coat. Really glad we went in that direction, as it was gorgeous!








































Coming home, it was like we were in a leafy snowstorm! So magical.




Today it's dreary and we're supposed to get torrential rain overnight. I think most of the leaves will be gone by tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon we're heading over to GMHA with M and Coalie, and doing the final pleasure ride of the year on Saturday. Saturday we'll be riding with a friend coming up from Massachusetts with her Morgan mare Gracie. We rode with them at another pleasure ride earlier in the spring, and Gracie and Fizz paced really well together. I'm glad I still get to ride with M Friday, and then we'll each do our own thing on Saturday. Seems like a good solution!


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## egrogan

Friday started off dreary and drizzly, but the forecast called for it to clear up around lunchtime. Happily, the forecast was spot on, and the rain ended right on time. Fizz and I had plans to meet M and Coalie to ride to GMHA in mid-afternoon. Usually the horses are at the gate ready to go from the new field to their regular field in the early afternoon, but I had to hike all the way out to the back of the field to find them. Apparently I interrupted nap time.  Izzy was also passed out on the ground when I started walking in their direction, but she got up when she saw me coming.








After getting the horses switched back to their regular field, we tacked up quickly and rode out to meet M and Coalie. We left through the back of the pasture and waved goodbye to Josie and Izzy. Poor Josie- during this week of no eating, she has lost a lot of the good weight she put on over the last couple of months, and obviously doesn't have much muscle to speak of. Sometimes I look at her and think she looks more Thoroughbred than Morgan. I'd be so curious to see how she'd look in work and in shape- she'd probably be a really pretty sport Morgan type. We'll see, maybe next year we'll try her out in the longlines and do a little work in the yard. I have no idea if she was ever trained under saddle, and I don't think that's a project for me, but I could do some work with her in the lines. She's perked up a bit and is eating a couple of handfuls of food at a time now- still not great, because she was eating 5lbs of senior feed a day prior to getting sick, but at least she's semi-interested again. We only have to do the antibiotics until Wednesday and I hope once we get through that, her appetite will improve.








Because of all the rain over the prior 24 hours, the roads were actually nice and soft. There was also no traffic, so M and I trotted and cantered through sections of the road where we usually just walk. The woods trails were a bit muddy in spots, but since it's been an overall dry summer/early fall, the mud wasn't too bad. And surprisingly, there were a lot more leaves left on the trees than I expected after all that wind and rain. Not quite stick season yet! It made for a very pretty ride.
















It's 10 miles from home to GMHA, and we've gotten faster doing it. The facility closes on Nov 1, so the cross country jump field is packed away for the winter now, and the fields look extra pretty.
















I left Fizz tucked into her stall around 5pm, and went back around 8pm for a nightcheck. I threw a blanket on her and refilled her hay and water. She had drunk a whole bucket of water and eaten most of a haynet. I was glad to see her settled in so well.








My faithful helper came with me to check on things 😁

Saturday we were meeting another friend, K, and her Morgan mare Gracie for the pleasure ride. To be continued...


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## egrogan

Saturday, after feeding and turning out Izzy and Josie in the dark, I got to GMHA early to be sure Fizz had plenty of time to move around out of the stall after breakfast. I worry about her getting stiff and cramped in that stall all night, especially since temps were in the low 40*s, but I found a very happy horse eager for breakfast. She had clearly laid down and slept, and her stall was much tidier than I'd ever found her in the morning. She had eaten all her hay and drained another bucket of water overnight. She enthusiastically cleaned up her breakfast and appreciated about 45 minutes of handgrazing. We had to be at a ride meeting at 9am, and she was a little reluctant to go back in the stall, but there was more hay waiting for her so she was agreeable enough. I put her boots on before the meeting, and once the meeting was done, we were tacked and ready to go by 9:30am.

I told K that my only goal for our ride was that Fizz walk out of the stabling area calmly, none of that anxious jigging she's done the last couple of rides. There were 4 different pleasure trail options, and we picked the long route, which was 12 miles. Three of the other options headed in the direction of home, but luckily this longer option went away from home, and about a mile in there was a long climb up the appropriately named "long hill." So I knew that even if she was fussy leaving the stalls, we didn't have too far to go before we could blow off some steam if needed. I'm thrilled to say though, that there was no jigging or anxiety at all. We did mount up in a different spot than the last couple of times, and I have no idea if maybe that made a difference. Or, if I was just in a different headspace riding with a different person/horse, and not at a competitive ride? I really don't know the reason, but I am very grateful she was so composed heading out this time.

We rode with K and Gracie last summer, but hadn't seen them since then. We had been planning to do an intro ride together in August, but that was the weekend lovely husband had Covid so we had to scratch from that. K had described Gracie as having made a lot of progress with more trails miles this year, though still a little nervous at times on trail. But I didn't see anything even remotely looking like a nervous horse. She was a bit wide-eyed as we left, taking in all the sights of the endurance hold that was set up near where our trail started, and a few horses that had left a few minutes ahead of us and visible in the distance. But aside from mouthing at her bit for a few minutes, she looked and acted like a seasoned pro. Gracie and Fizz match really well in terms of speed and stride. Neither of us were in a hurry, so we walked a lot in the beginning, which didn't feel like a drag because they just cruised along at a 4mph+ walk up and down the hills. When we did trot, they were right together at a comfortable pace, though Gracie has the more up-and-down trot of a show horse while Fizz is longer and flatter. They were also completely happy to walk side-by-side or switch off leading and following.
























With all the rain and fallen leaves, there were spots in the woods that were slick. We also mostly walked in the woods because we weren't sure how much to trust the footing. With the leaves down, it was almost impossible to see what the footing was like, and about 4 miles into the ride, we had a near-disaster on a downhill section. It wasn't particularly steep, but it was rocky with wet leaves on top. Gracie stepped onto a section of large, flat rock that was hidden by wet leaves, and in an instant I saw her start to go down. You know how sometimes in an accident, time slows down and we see disaster happening almost frame-by-frame? That's what this was like. Gracie was a couple of horse lengths ahead of us, and I saw her hind end slip out from under her to the left, and then her front end went too. I swear for a second she and K were suspended in mid-air nearly parallel to the ground below them, with no feet touching the ground. Before falling completely, Gracie somehow rotated her hind end back under her, and scrambled to regain her balance. She was helped by K staying completely still and balanced herself. I saw every muscle in her hind end tighten to power back up, and suddenly she was back up on her feet again. Since we weren't that far behind her, I knew Fizz was heading for exactly the same spot, and I didn't want the same outcome. Her hind end slipped badly too as she hit the rocks, but didn't slide out from under her dramatically and we stayed upright. After regaining their balance, K and Gracie walked forward and looked to be ok, as far as I could see. We were nearly at the bottom of the trail, which was dropping us out onto a road, so we got the horses to the firmer ground and caught our breath. Gracie had flung her right front boot off, so K hopped down to grab that and put it back on. Amazingly, Gracie had no cuts or scrapes and didn't seem to be in any kind of pain.

We had been leapfrogging with a pair of riders for a couple of miles, and while K was getting the boot back on we heard the other two coming down the hill towards us. We shouted up to them to be really careful in that section, and they made it to the bottom without any problems. After making sure we were ok, they continued on. For some reason, this really set Fizz off. She hasn't typically been concerned with riders passing us, but I think because we were stopped and I was asking her to stand, she got really upset. She was backing up and pawing, which wasn't helping K who at that point had Gracie lined up at a tree stump to get back on. I was about to get off Fizz so she'd stand still to help Gracie stand still for mounting, but K swung on and we were able to get moving again. Unfortunately the next stretch was downhill on the road, and Fizz was tense and jiggy. Gracie was not bothered by Fizz, but it was not the most fun part of the ride to have to deal with the jigging. I tried to just ignore it and stay light and breathing, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't grateful when we turned off the road and back into the woods, where we were pointed uphill and had good enough footing to ask them to trot on. After a climb, Fizz was back to breathing again and the jigging was gone. I was really glad, because it would have sucked to ride another 7 or 8 miles that way!!








After the slip, we were a little cautious about going too fast through the woods, though we probably could have. But we had some nice stretches of road where we could really let the horses move out, and they eagerly revved up into that huge, 10mph road trot.








After a period of letting them fly along like that, we caught up with the two riders who passed us while we got Gracie's boot back on. They were just walking along on a loose rein, so we asked if we could pass them. The horses were really sweaty, so after we were a distance ahead we came back to a walk as well. A few minutes later, there were the riders again, asking to pass _us_. Of course that was fine, but they went around us blasting along in a canter. They sort of laughed and said "these two are either really slow or really fast." Oh well, that was the last time we saw them until we got back to the stables. This time Fizz didn't care at all about them passing. I really think she got so upset because she was stationary and held back when they went by at the bottom of the hill. As long as she was still moving, she didn't seem to mind. The loop we were on was also the final loop of the 30 mile endurance ride that was happening at the same time, so we did get passed by a group of 3 riders really bombing along through the woods. But it was a wide section of trail, so we just stepped to the side and they disappeared quickly; that didn't bother Gracie or Fizz either. In fact, I think that was all really good practice for them.

Right after those riders passed, we had another tricky situation, we came down another little hill only to see the trail almost completely blocked by three huge tractors with mowing decks attached, and the guys driving them sitting in the shade of the tires (they were huge!) eating lunch. There was a little narrow gap through the raspberry brambles to the right where we were able to squeeze by them, but not by much. The horses were a little surprised by the people that suddenly appeared, but they just gave them a bit of side eye as they walked past. I was really impressed with them. Gracie more than held her own as a trail horse given everything she went through!

The horses were really hot and sweaty when we got back. While the day started off chilly, it was bright and sunny and 65*F by the end of the ride. So we sponged them down while handgrazing them for a bit. Lovely husband came to meet us with the trailer to head home. Randomly, I recently won a contest with a prize of a new shipping halter and fly sheet. Here is Fizz modeling our prize before going home!








She was frustratingly a little sticky about getting on the trailer, putting her front feet on but then backing down the ramp 3 times before I finally got her on. That was my fault though, I got complacent after she was so good the last time (Labor Day weekend) and didn't do any loading practice since then. Unfortunately when we got home and opened the doors, she was trembling hard, and completely soaked. I just hate ending such a good weekend with such an unhappy horse.  I guess we just need more practice.


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## egrogan

I just remembered the funniest part of our ride Saturday. We were coming to an intersection where the trail connected up with the road. Up at the road, we could see a guy out with a leafblower, clearing the leaves from the road into the ditch. He had his back to us and ear protection on, so we couldn't get his attention to let him know we were coming through. Fizz wasn't concerned about it, and Gracie was happy to follow her, so we just continued on our way, turning right onto the road while he was blowing leaves to the left. As we went past him, he turned around and saw us. He visibly gasped, throwing his hand up to his mouth and exclaiming, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry!" We laughed and said don't worry about it, there was no way you could have known we were coming through. And he kept apologizing, saying "no, you don't understand. My wife is going to kill me if she finds out what I just did!" I can only assume his wife is a horseperson and has a horse that is a little spookier than Fizz or Gracie  I kept giggling about that for the rest of our ride.


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## Knave

That is funny! I always like people who know things like that, and you sure can tell the difference!


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## egrogan

My FB memories just popped up this photo from 8 years ago:








It's been years now since Izzy has been fully retired, and I often wish that I could have another ride on her as the rider I am today. When I first got her, I was scared to even ride her around the paddocks outside the arena, and after our years together, we would go anywhere. This picture made me so happy, remembering how we pretended this corn field was our own personal racing oval, and we had our specific "gallop spot" where I'd ask her "want to go?" and she'd take off flying until we had gone all they way around the field and back to that spot. One time (when the corn was still standing) we flushed out a bunch of deer from the rows and she flew sideways, but I managed to stay on.

Your first horse is always special, and Izzy is no exception. I'm grateful for her patience and good nature on all those white knuckled, tentative rides, and helping me loosen up and get a little more adventurous as time went on. I couldn't have the partnership I have today with Fizz if Izzy hadn't been my first teacher!


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## knightrider

Awww, I remember those days. I followed your journal with great interest and hoped you would/could become a trail rider! And now, look at you! I am so proud and pleased for you!


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## egrogan

Last week was exhausting. I was in San Francisco most of the week (Wed-Fri) and the travel there was pretty brutal. What should have been a three hour drive to the airport in Boston early Wednesday morning ended up being nearly 4 hours, and I had to run from the parking garage to the gate to make it onto the plane 10 minutes before the doors closed. Thank god for pre-check or I never would have made it through in time, and rescheduling a cross-country flight is a pain. The flight itself was 6.5 hours. Fortunately the drive home Friday night was only three hours, but I still didn't crawl into bed until 1:30 am on Saturday.

Lovely husband had taken care of the horses well, but it's so funny how you can tell when they've been let to get a little...pushy...in your absence. They were all a bit grouchy with each other when I went out to do morning chores Saturday, and Fizz even pinned her ears and took a swipe at Josie with a hind leg while I was leading her. We discussed that briefly and after that, everyone seemed to snap back into shape and remember how to get along peacefully!








I was exhausted all day, but after running some errands in the morning, I was determined to go for at least a quick ride with Fizz. She hadn't been ridden since the previous Saturday, but she really is such a rock solid horse at this point that it doesn't matter. We just headed up to the overlook and back, but she seemed really happy to be out of the pasture and going someplace.
















After executing a lovely, though unplanned, walk-to-canter transition up the hill, we found ourselves in a Vermont traffic jam! We came up to a group of three women out for a walk. They stopped me and wanted to chat about where I lived, where I rode, etc. Turns out the youngest, a high school student, does some farm sitting and barn chores for a couple that lives down the street from me. I was possibly a little too enthusiastic, but I asked her right there if she'd like another client, as we are desperately in need of someone who could help out so we could actually go away again (our old farm sitter moved away right before the pandemic, and we haven't been able to find anyone else since). She is coming over to meet the herd later this week  While we were talking, a peloton of bikers came up the big hill and pedaled in between us. As they rode past, there were cars waiting to squeeze through from both directions. It was A LOT all at once, and sweet Fizz just stood there waiting to be able to move along, but never moving or complaining. I am so, so grateful for this horse!








Sunday, we had our regular ride with M and Coalie. It was youth deer hunting weekend, so we avoided the woods filled with gun-bearing children and stuck to the roads, going on the Newhall Farm loop. Our ride was pretty uneventful. The cows from the farm went on to their next destination last week, so the ride through the jeep roads around the farm was quiet.
















Last time I went through the farm, I explored a trail that looked promising, but dead-ended in a big field. I hadn't wanted to go through the field myself as I wasn't sure if I'd end up stuck behind cow fencing. M is usually more of a "let's just see if we can find a way through" person than I am, so we decided to give the trail another try 😉 When we got to the field, we just stuck to the perimeter, looking for a gap in the stone wall to duck back into the woods (there's no hunting allowed on the farm, so we weren't worried about guns).








We didn't find a way back into the woods, but when we got to the bottom of the field, we were thrilled to see an old farm road, and we knew exactly where we were and how to continue towards home.
















The loop didn't take us very far, maybe just 0.5 mile, but it was a nice alternative to being on the road.

From there, we were back to roads the rest of the way home. We did have one annoying loose dog encounter. A little black lab came blasting out of the woods barking at us, and I recognized the dog as belonging to the house we were about to pass up the road. After satisfying itself circling the horses and barking, it turned and ran back home. His owner, who we know, was in the driveway and grabbed him. But as we rode by and said hello, the owner let him go, and of course the dog came back running and circling. The horses were steady, and the dog got called back, only to scoot away from the owner and come charging back a third time. Well, at that point, Fizz had enough of the yapping, and she actually snaked her head at him and stomped in his direction. She doesn't act "mareish" very often, but seeing her snake her head in annoyance like that really made me laugh. We left the dog and clueless owner behind, and finished the ride without any other interruptions.








I definitely could have used an extra weekend day to fully recover from all that travel, but here I am back in front of the computer trying to wrap my head around another work week. 😉 Still, it was a great weekend. With those weekend rides, we're now over 500 trail miles for the year!


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## BarbandBadgerandPedro

I look at your pix and my BP drops. You live in gorgeous country


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## egrogan

BarbandBadgerandPedro said:


> I look at your pix and my BP drops. You live in gorgeous country


Thank you so much! I am grateful for it every day


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## egrogan

I really wish I could know what kind of messages pass back and forth between these two. Before Josie, I never saw Fizz share her space or connect with another horse the same way. I don't know what kind of relationship Josie had with her old herd, but I think she spent most of her life with them, and obviously the herd was an important part of her life given the way they were fending for themselves. It makes me smile to see them together and I hope the way they connect makes them both feel safe and secure.


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## egrogan

Another crazy work week where I haven't been able to ride at all  I went out early this morning- so early it was still frosty out there, around 35*F. It's the first really cold morning we've ridden in but we kept it short and slow. Things definitely look different than they did a week ago!


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## egrogan

M and I switched up our schedule and rode Saturday instead of Sunday this week. She had gotten permission to ride on a trail system behind an estate near the Enchanted Forest, and we were excited to check it out. We thought we should be able to take the trails from this property down to the brook crossing and backtrack home. That way, we'd actually cut out 3-4 miles of road and be on trail instead, which sounded great.

When we got to the house, M's neighbor (a plumber) was there working, and gave us some brief directions which basically amounted to "over the river, and through the woods, to grandmother's house you'll go.."  They were...less than specific. But, it's always fun to try a new trail, so we headed on our way.















Pretty quickly, it was evident that his instructions to "go behind the barn and then turn right, you can't miss it" was not going to get us where we thought. The trails were extremely well maintained, and even under the leaves you could tell the footing was very nice, but the problem was that there were trails _everywhere_. We came to at least a dozen intersections where you had at least three options.
















^^One of our many, "should we have gone left instead of right??" discussions on trail 😄








I was using Equilab so able to watch our "dot" on the map, and for a while we were heading the way we wanted, towards the brook crossing. But then the trail looped back on itself in the opposite direction, taking us away from the brook. Even though the distance on the map didn't look that far, there was no obvious way to get there.








^^So close_, yet so far, from the brook_. It's also making me laugh to see all the little grey spots which show where we stopped while we tried to decide which way to go at an intersection.

So after spending an hour looping around and backtracking at times to try a different way at an intersection, the horses were getting annoyed. It was also warm and sunny, and they were dripping sweat at that point, so we decided to call it quits. We found our way back to the house/barn where we started, and knew the way home from there on the road. We ended up doing 10+ miles, just not exactly where we expected.








Later that day, M actually went back over to the property and her neighbor walked her through some of the trail options, so she got a better sense of where we should have gone, as well as a different way to get into the trails from the road. We may try it again next weekend. If not, we'll probably wait until after Thanksgiving as hunting starts in two weeks.

Sunday, as I was brushing my teeth, I looked out the window and saw the horses all in line like sentries, on high alert staring at the field across the street. Eyes and ears were all focused intently on whatever was over there in the field. I figured there were deer or a bear. When I went out a few minutes later to feed breakfast, they were still hyper focused in that direction, but I couldn't see anything.








They were so bothered by it, they wouldn't even eat their breakfast. Fizz refused to go in her shed to eat, and Izzy kept going in the shed, taking a bite, and circling back outside to stare across the street. Josie wouldn't move from her position at the fence. Finally I gave up and just set their feed pans in front of them where they were standing outside, and they would grab nervous bites while blowing and snorting in the direction of the field across the street. I tried to be patient with them, but after 15 minutes of this I gave up and put their food away to offer again later. My only thought is that there was a hunter in the woods behind that field- there _shouldn't _be anyone over there, because everyone that has permission to be on our property has been asked not to go near the fenced fields. But that doesn't mean there _wasn't _someone there.

They were still on edge later in the day. When I went to tack Fizz up for a short ride, she was still very distracted by whatever was across the street, and planted her feet and refused to go in the shed where I tack up. I had to circle her around a couple of times to unstick her feet, and when I tied her up in there, she practically melted into the back corner trying to swivel around so she was facing the street. Izzy and Josie circled endlessly around the shed where Fizz was tied up. Finally I had to just untie her and bring her out into the open so that I could get around her to get the tack on.

Unsurprisingly, she was a bit tense on our ride 😉 I had actually been planning to ride around that now-scary field and go down the road that way, but I switched up that plan as it didn't really seem like it would be a good idea. I figured that going to the overlook is something we could do in our sleep so would be more relaxing; conveniently, that is the opposite direction of the area she was worried about. I got on, and immediately she was super anxious and holding her breath. When we passed my neighbor's weird dirt piles (which have been in the same spot since the summer), she again planted her feet and refused to move, snorting and giving them side eye. I suppose I could have followed another poster's advice and kicked/whipped her to make her do it because I wanted her to do it, but instead I decided to get off and lead her past them. I handwalked her for 1/4 of a mile or so, and then got back on. We trotted up the hill, and at least that got her breathing again, and she seemed to relax a little bit. We had a nice trot to the overlook, then turned around to come back.
















As we got closer to the house, again she got super tense and started snorting and shying at shadows in the road. So I hopped down again and just walked her the rest of the way. It felt like a blow up was coming, and there was no reason to be in the saddle if it happened, since we were basically home anyway. Such a weird experience. They were a little more settled later in the day, and at least willing to eat at dinner.

This morning everything was back to normal, like nothing had happened yesterday. Horses! I have no doubt _something _was there, at some point, yesterday, but I just wish it hadn't gotten under their skin for so long. This morning the farrier has already come and gone, and everyone's feet are looking nice. We're still using the dorm with Josie. She's improved so much with her front feet, to the point that I can clean them out while she's loose in the pasture. But the hind feet are just still problematic. I work on lifting them with my makeshift "hockey stick" made out of a padded, curved PVC pipe, but either she leans all her weight onto the foot and won't lift it, or kicks back hard at the "hook" once her foot is off the ground. We can get her trimmed with the dorm, but I'm starting to wonder if I can make enough progress with her that we'll be able to wean her off it. I don't know what else to do but repetition.


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## Knave

Well, her feet are getting done, that’s the main thing right? Lol

There was so much that caught my attention in this story! First I thought that Coalie isn’t as black as he can be, and it’s not the time of year because I’ve been thinking that all year. Lol

Then I thought it was frustrating to not get to the water, but your ride certainly looked fun and the gps made me laugh. I have only been in forests a handful of times in my life, so it blows my mind how easy it is to get lost. I think I would feel scared, but I don’t know. I’m also kind of obsessed with how beautiful and wild it seems.

Then I wondered about what they were scared of. I was thinking it had to be a bear, because you have bears and I don’t. Lol. I do wonder what it really was though.


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## egrogan

Knave said:


> Well, her feet are getting done, that’s the main thing right? Lol


Well, I can't help but feel like I'm failing her by not figure this out 😥 The farrier is encouraging and she's manageable with the dorm, but it feels wrong to have to rely on it. I am trying to get used to the idea of needing it as a crutch. There are not many trainers who want to work with a 19 year old kicker.



> There was so much that caught my attention in this story! First I thought that Coalie isn’t as black as he can be, and it’s not the time of year because I’ve been thinking that all year. Lol


That is funny! I don't think I've known many truly black horse, but he seems true black to me. His breeder focused on black Morgan lines; he was bred to be a driving pair with his mom, who looks just like him. Maybe the pictures just don't really capture how he looks!



> Then I thought it was frustrating to not get to the water, but your ride certainly looked fun and the gps made me laugh. I have only been in forests a handful of times in my life, so it blows my mind how easy it is to get lost. I think I would feel scared, but I don’t know. I’m also kind of obsessed with how beautiful and wild it seems.


Every time I look at the GPS I keep laughing, especially when I look at all that walking around in circles. Poor horses! They are so tolerant of us. But no wonder the spots where we let them move out were...enthusiastic! I get nervous if I'm out in the woods and it's getting dark, as all the landmarks change. But generally, I feel a lot of comfort in the woods. I think I've said before, any trail around here is going to _eventually _bring you back to one of a few roads, and I can get home from any of the roads. And if I was really lost, I'd just give Fizz her head, she'd take us the most direct way 😉 It's scary when I've been hustling through the woods trying to find Hugh after he's taken off after deer. Even though that's happened in a spot that I'm pretty familiar with, it looks so different following the route a dog would take vs. a horse!



> Then I wondered about what they were scared of. I was thinking it had to be a bear, because you have bears and I don’t. Lol. I do wonder what it really was though.


I wonder too! I don't think it was a bear because of how long they were upset over it. If it was a bear, it probably would have just moved along. Unless it was wounded and hunkered down I guess. There was some shooting over the weekend and it is still bear season. We went to a bonfire at our neighbor's last week, and saw the big male in a field between our two properties. And neighbor seems a mama bear with two cubs close to his house. So the bears are around. At any rate, they seem back to normal today, so whatever it was has moved on!


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## Knave

You aren’t failing her at all on this! You’re just being really hard on yourself. Changing an old horse’s mind is just as hard as changing an old human’s!


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## egrogan

Thanks for that @Knave!


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## egrogan

Really nice ride this morning, with Fizz back to her normal old self. The worrisome field was not worrying..








The scary dirt piles were not scary...








I've been on a quest all fall to try to find a new saddle pad. It's incredibly hard to find a cotton, unpadded, shaped option that isn't a white froofy hunter show pad. For a long time, I've used the cheap cotton PRI pads, which I really like, but they're getting really hard to find and they wear out really fast (I guess you get what you pay for). Fizz's saddle is custom, so she really doesn't need anything that alters the fit, but just something thin and breathable between her and the saddle to protect it from dirt and sweat. I've also started having a problem with the current pad we use sliding back under the flap of the saddle on our rides. We didn't manage to get the saddle fitter out this year, so I think that probably is a good signal I need to be sure we don't miss her visiting next spring.

So anyway, I've tried a lot of pads and not really been happy with them. The most promising option, at least for the shape I want, seems to be XC pads, though my saddle does not have a forward flap so even that shape is often problematic. And I don't want something as large as a dressage pad, though those are often the type that come in a very plain, unpadded cotton. Finally I spotted a picture of @phantomhorse13 riding her friend Patti's horse in a pad that looked promising. The brand was Success Equestrian, and they have a XC pad designed for a monoflap saddle with the billet loop attached at the bottom of the pad, rather than a more forward placement. I decided to give it a try! It does have that non-slip material and a little bit of squishy padding along the sides of the spine, which I am not sure I love, but it at least fit under the saddle and didn't seem to interfere with fit too much.








As an aside, Fizz definitely has a big head, but good god, not AS BIG as it looks in pictures of her from the side. I know the gaudy orange bridle doesn't help refine her, but I swear her head is not the same size as her saddle 

Anyway, I climbed on board and figured she'd let me know if she wasn't happy. But she moved right out, stretching down and seeming comfortable. In the summer, she did develop some "heat bumps" on her back, although I don't have a good answer as to why. A vet noticed them at a ride and I didn't complete understand if she was saying they develop if a horse is really sweaty, or if it was from friction with the way the pad was sliding, or ? So I'm not sure if that no-slip grippy material vs. just plain cotton will make that problem worse. We did 3.5 miles today, w/t/c on fields, trail, and road. I figured that was short enough that if she was uncomfortable I would know and be able to head home sooner, but also far enough that I'd get a good feeling for whether it might be worth trying it on a longer ride. I think my assessment after the ride was that she was comfortable enough that I'll see how she likes it on a longer ride later in the week.
























It was unseasonably warm, so she definitely got really sweaty on her neck and shoulders, but her back under the pad actually stayed pretty dry. We'll see what she thinks on our next ride!


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## egrogan

A crazy day at work so no riding time for me today, but it was oddly warm last night (close to 50*F) so these ladies are enjoying a day out on the big field


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## egrogan

Vet came yesterday morning to pull blood for our fall metabolic panels. She ended up being pretty late so I let Izzy roam the yard while I did some work and waited. Izzy thought it was a pretty ideal morning.
































After about an hour, she put herself back in her stall in the barn and took a nap until the vet came 

It was so weirdly warm yesterday afternoon I had to squeeze in at least a short ride with Fizz. It was pretty unremarkable, just to the overlook and back. We were both pretty sweaty and annoyed by flies, which should not be the case this time of year!
















Today it was even warmer, with a strong, hot breeze blowing. Lovely husband called it a day that felt “unsettled” because of how odd it is for this time of year, and I think he was right. Fizz was a little jumpy when we left on our ride and didn’t really work out of it. I ended up taking a shorter route than planned because she just wasn’t feeling like herself.








I actually got off and walked her down the paved road because I didn’t trust her not to shy away from something in someone’s yard and put us in traffic, which can be going 45mph+ on that stretch. Fortunately it’s just a short walk on the paved road before turning back onto our road.

Before I got back on, we got chased a short way by an annoying Golden Retriever, and I was glad I was still walking her because she spun a full 360 when he came crashing through the dry leaves behind us. Then his dopey owner came running through the same leaf pile in a weak attempt to catch him 🙄 That made her spin another circle.

After that, I got back on and just let her jog home on a loose rein. She seemed happy to be going in the direction of home and let go of all the tension she was carrying.
















But I think lovely husband was right, something on the wind just made it an unsettling kind of day. Hopefully tomorrow is a better one!


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## egrogan

Also, how neat is this old ad for Izzy’s famous dad? It was originally published in The Morgan Horse magazine, but someone posted a long series of photos on a Morgan History FB page last week, highlighting anothe famous Morgan stallion, Pecos, who is Izzy’s great-grandsire.


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## gottatrot

I used to look through those old Morgan horse magazines when I was a kid for eye candy. Gorgeous!


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## egrogan

The weirdly warm weather stuck with us through yesterday. In the morning, I took Hugh with me over to our favorite coffee shop and started the week off with an iced coffee- very odd in November! Then we stopped by GMHA to take advantage of the early daylight and warm morning with a walk around the trails. He really loves it there!








Wiped out when we got home!








Later that day, I had the chance to visit with one of my oldest and dearest friends and some of her family. They live in New Orleans, but were in Boston for a family wedding. I hadn't seen her son since before the pandemic, when he was a kindergartener. Now he is almost 9, and _obsessed _with horses! Which is actually kind of funny because my poor friend is deathly allergic to all animals- so much so that in the 20+ years we've been friends, I can count on one hand the number of times she's actually come into my house because I've always had a menagerie around, and she can't be around them for any length of time without being really sick.

They were staying at a beautiful Airbnb in western MA that was part of an old farmhouse located on a boarding/lesson farm. Her son has been taking lessons back home and is doing w/t independently, but he's at the kind of lesson program where they just show up and get popped onto the horse without any grooming or tacking. He got to take a lesson at the farm where they're staying, and was mesmerized by the whole tacking process. He has been studying books he got out of the library, and could name every piece of tack and brush- it's just that he never really got to use them in real life. After we ate dinner, we walked down to the barn, and watched part of a lesson happening in the indoor. Then he showed me around the tack room. He sweetly asked, "do you want to know the names of all the bits they use for their horses?" and proceeded to tour me around (correctly) pointing out french link snaffles, rubber mullen mouths, etc.

Unfortunately they are leaving today and didn't have time to come this far north to our farm, so I didn't get to let him play with my horses. But hopefully on their next visit they will have more time. Of course, I came home and ordered a bunch of horse books to send to him  Turns out it's _very _hard to find horse books targeted to tween boys!! I ordered him the Pony Club manual, since it sounds like he's read his way through the library's basic books on tack, grooming, etc. and I think he likes the reference book style. I also got _Justin Morgan has a Horse _(maybe a little young for him?), and a couple of nonfiction books featuring the Compton Cowboys and the program in Philadelphia that teaches kids to play polo. All of those books at least focus on young male characters, so hopefully he will enjoy them! He reminds me a lot of myself at that age- plowing through every horsey book or magazine I could get my hands on, and savoring every minute of every lesson, and even the time before and after the lesson just staring at other people working around horses.

Today was cold and blustery, with the wind really whipping all day. I had to wait until lunchtime to go ride and I was glad to go later in the day since it was at least a little warmer, though wind chills were still below freezing. The afternoon shadows are moving in a lot earlier already.








The town road grader had gone through in the morning, and for parts of our ride, the footing was like being in an arena!








Fizz was a little suspicious of the weird textural changes as we went along, but she didn't worry too much about it. We did flush some grouse out of the brush on the side of the road and Fizz did her best sliding stop as the bird went flapping away. The grouse have been nuts this fall! It seems like their population exploded this year and we are navigating their silliness every ride lately. I just wish they didn't wait until you were right on top of them to finally decide to take off out from under you.


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## TrainedByMares

That is very nice and thoughtful of you to look after the boy and get him some books. I'm sure he will appreciate them. He would probably love to stay at your place and enjoy your horses and other animals! Encouraging and supporting kids is very important work! Thank you!


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## egrogan

As usual, the time change/early darkness are throwing me for a loop and I'm still adjusting our riding schedule to figure out how to fit everything in. Most of our rides this week have been autopilot rides- 2-3 mile leg stretchers where I think we could both be blindfolded and know when it was time to turn around for home. The weather has been yo-yo ing from cold and blustery to unseasonably warm and sweaty. We're just trying to enjoy however much time we have left before ice and snow set in! Can't complain about how pretty the clear blue skies have been!








































Today I had a day without work meetings (!), so I was able to fit in a longer mid-day loop around Newhall Farm. It was at least 60*F, and poor Fizz is a wooly beast at this point so I knew she'd be really sweaty. We had a lovely, quiet ride. All the cows along our route have moved on. Mac the German Shepherd was on the other side of the farm when we went by, though his mini donks were in their front pasture near the road. They are cute little potatoes!








No killer grouse along our route today, though the numerous assassin squirrels made up for it rustling through the leaves. With all the leaves gone, I can't blame Fizz for being extra alert to things in the woods that look different. It looks really different to me too. Today I noticed this neat old cellar hole that I must have ridden past a dozen times this summer but never saw.








I really enjoy the route we took today; it's got a great 2.5ish mile stretch that's pretty flat (for us), with a slight uphill incline in some spots. It's perfect to motor along in trot/canter, and never need to come down to a walk. Since we haven't had a really forward ride like that in a few days, we were both sweaty and breathing hard when we came back down to walk. But she felt so much better the rest of the ride after moving out like that.


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## egrogan

Another bizarre weather day yesterday- it was 65*F/18*C when we headed out. We had a lot of rain Friday into Saturday morning, so the roads were great footing. Yesterday was the first day of rifle season, so we had to stick to the roads. I decided we'd go down the big overlook hill and back. 

Being the first day of hunting, I thought we might have a lot of traffic, but surprisingly we didn't see anyone except the mailman. We were out around lunchtime, so that probably helped. At 5pm, my husband saw an idiot out spotlighting on one of our fields  I felt bad calling the game warden on the first day, because I know he's busy, but he always says he wants to know. Sounds like they'll have to set up a decoy again this year and stake it out.








The weather was warm, but very blustery. You could tell from the sky that the wind was bringing in something different...















When we got home, lovely husband was out in the garage getting the snow blower hooked up to the tractor. Theoretically we're going to get ~6 inches of snow Tuesday night/Wednesday. We stopped for a minute to say hello.
































I'm thinking yesterday was the last day I'll be wearing a tshirt on a ride this season! We'll see if the snow actually happens, but it is definitely going to be colder starting tonight. I spent the afternoon scrubbing the heated buckets and getting them ready to switch out with the summer ones. Got all the blankets organized and ready to go. I'm not _excited _for the cold weather to get here, but it does feel like it's time.

PS- with our miles yesterday, this is officially the highest mileage season I've ever done! Right now I'm at 540 miles. In 2020, we did 538- and started riding about 1.5 months earlier in the spring than we did this year. I'm hopeful that we'll keep riding a few times a week through at least New Year's. It will all depend on how much ice we have.


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## knightrider

A great set of books that your friend's son would love are the Ben K. Green's books, among them _Horsetrading, Some More Horse Trading, Wild Cow Tales, The Village Horse Doctor, A Thousand Miles of Mustangin'. _They are the kinds of stories you just cannot put down, some of my favorite horse books. Another great book about a tween boy is _Boy on Horseback _by Lincoln Steffens. And if he is a really good reader, he might like A.F. Tschiffely's _Tschiffely's Ride_ about one man's solo ride from Argentina to Washington D.C. which has never been replicated.


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## egrogan

Thank you @knightrider! I may end up reading these before packaging them up to send


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## egrogan

Phew- winter busted in last night on a really cold, icy wind. We had snow squalls through the night but it was the wind that was really brutal. Did chores this morning with a "real feel" of 16*F/ -9*C. First morning of frozen poop removal!








Horses seem to be handling it fine though. This will be our first winter with Josie, but I'm sure she'll be more than fine, given what she lived through the last couple of winters. 

Speaking of Josie, yesterday I had to do a little at-home-doctoring for a nasty tick bite she had. On the bottom of her flank, I found a golf ball sized swollen lump. It was crusty on top, a mix of hardened serum, blood, hair, and a big fat tick stuck in the middle. When I got my little tick remover to pry the tick out, that big mass pulled right off, with a cone of hardened pus coming with it  Underneath where the scabby mess was, there was a raw bloody spot that maybe was the remnants of whatever abscess had formed to push the infected spot out under the tick. Upon closer inspection though, I realized there was _another_ smaller tick still embedded down in the raw spot. I can not express how much I hate those little f-ers! Fortunately that one pulled out easily enough, and I didn't find anything else stuck in the wound. I rinsed it out really well with betadine and slathered with neosporin. I have to say, I was relieved that Josie was an ideal patient. It must have felt awful to have that mess there, and given the location, I was directly in the line of fire if she had decided to let loose a cow kick while I was pulling the scabs and matted hair out of the way. Instead, while I was working on it I felt something gentle on the back of my hip. It was Josie turned around tentatively mutually grooming on me while I cleaned everything. I guess it must have been more itchy than painful! I can definitely say that when I've had embedded ticks on myself, the next couple of days the spot where they were itches like crazy. Fortunately by the morning, the swelling was completely gone, there was no pus and just a small healthy scab in the spot that had been so raw the day before. I think I caught it just in time!


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## bsms

If he doesn't mind reading online or a pdf file, I recommend "Frog, the Horse That Knew No Master":



https://ia800502.us.archive.org/11/items/froghorsethatkne00meek/froghorsethatkne00meek_bw.pdf



He might be a little young for it still - my youngest read The Lord of The Rings in first grade, including the appendixes, so it can be hard for me to judge. I've read part of it to 9 year old grandkids and they were able to follow along. 

When my youngest daughter left home, she begged me to get a copy of Frog for herself. It was getting pricey used even then and may not be available at all now...but the pdf is free. From the introduction:

"_Frog was a real horse. He was my first mount during those days in 1919 and 1920 when I
commanded the sub-post of Empire. I think I have painted his portrait truthfully, although the haze of
years may have made the picture more rosy than it really was. 

At any rate, he had the trick described, of jumping straight forward without any visible
preparation, and from this he got his name. It was a very disconcerting trick, and I must 
admit that he policed me more than once before I learned it, and how to guard against it. 

I do not pretend that "Frog " is, in any sense, history. It is merely a story, told to entertain, and
possibly, to instruct—a very little. However, some of the incidents described, notably certain 
of those in Chapters II, III, lV, V, and VIII, are based on actions of Frog during the time I rode him. 

I have had to take severe liberties with facts, at times, to fit these incidents into 
readable stories, but I am sure that Frog will forgive me, and I hope my readers
will. Frog was a good horse, and it was with sincere regret that I turned him over 
to another officer when I left the Canal Zone in December of 1920_."


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## egrogan

Thanks, @bsms! I will add it to the growing list I'm going to give his mom.


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## TrainedByMares

egrogan said:


> Phew- winter busted in last night on a really cold, icy wind. We had snow squalls through the night but it was the wind that was really brutal. Did chores this morning with a "real feel" of 16*F/ -9*C. First morning of frozen poop removal!
> View attachment 1138867
> 
> Horses seem to be handling it fine though. This will be our first winter with Josie, but I'm sure she'll be more than fine, given what she lived through the last couple of winters.
> 
> Speaking of Josie, yesterday I had to do a little at-home-doctoring for a nasty tick bite she had. On the bottom of her flank, I found a golf ball sized swollen lump. It was crusty on top, a mix of hardened serum, blood, hair, and a big fat tick stuck in the middle. When I got my little tick remover to pry the tick out, that big mass pulled right off, with a cone of hardened pus coming with it  Underneath where the scabby mess was, there was a raw bloody spot that maybe was the remnants of whatever abscess had formed to push the infected spot out under the tick. Upon closer inspection though, I realized there was _another_ smaller tick still embedded down in the raw spot. I can not express how much I hate those little f-ers! Fortunately that one pulled out easily enough, and I didn't find anything else stuck in the wound. I rinsed it out really well with betadine and slathered with neosporin. I have to say, I was relieved that Josie was an ideal patient. It must have felt awful to have that mess there, and given the location, I was directly in the line of fire if she had decided to let loose a cow kick while I was pulling the scabs and matted hair out of the way. Instead, while I was working on it I felt something gentle on the back of my hip. It was Josie turned around tentatively mutually grooming on me while I cleaned everything. I guess it must have been more itchy than painful! I can definitely say that when I've had embedded ticks on myself, the next couple of days the spot where they were itches like crazy. Fortunately by the morning, the swelling was completely gone, there was no pus and just a small healthy scab in the spot that had been so raw the day before. I think I caught it just in time!


I feel the same way you do about ticks! There seem to be so many this year. Maybe it was the warm weather. I am vigilant with the horses,spraying their legs and chin with fly spray so the ticks stay away. A week ago, I had one on my leg and got a big red spot so now I'm on the antibiotics. I hate ticks!


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## egrogan

@TrainedByMares - I think I had 5 embedded that I pulled off myself over the course of this year. Something like that. A couple of them left scars in the spots where they were and still itch. I have to admit I've never bothered going the antibiotic route- we do almost daily tick checks, and as far as I know, as long as you remove them within 24 hours it's highly unlikely that you'll be infected. I hope you caught yours early too and have no lasting effects!

I actually just signed up for a Lyme vaccine trial that Pfizer is running in New England. I'm not sure if I'll be selected, but if given the opportunity I would participate to bring a vaccine one step closer to availability.


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## knightrider

I second the suggestion of _Frog. _It is an amazing book and very realistic, good read!


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## Knave

Ticks are definitely abundant here, but never do I remember any sort of reaction. We have pulled them off horses who were covered. When we go to my bil’s ranch to brand, all the horses from that area I pick off ticks as I talk to their riders at the peg. Some have little pussy areas, but that’s the worst I’ve seen. As bad of reaction as I have to ants, I’ve pulled lots of ticks off myself over the years and had no issue.

I wonder what the difference is… yes, I do know people who have had or have (I’m not sure how that really works) Lyme, but I don’t think most even think about it as they pull ticks off.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I wonder if you have different kinds of ticks there than we do here? Not all of them transmit Lyme. Unfortunately ours here do. 








I did remember that once horses (and maybe people?) have anaplasmosis, they are considered to have immunity for 2 years. My horses are all vaxxed for Lyme, so that should help, but it's not a guarantee they won't get it. Like people, it seems like once they're infected, they may keep circulating the disease in their bodies even if the symptoms are dormant.


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## Knave

I wonder! I believe we have both the first and the second tick in the pictures, but I think the second appears more familiar and I would think is more common.

We don’t call them dog ticks though, we call them sheep ticks. They can look completely white sometimes, and I suppose that is how they began calling them that? I’ve never seen a white one on a human, so I guess that would make sense as it says the females are more likely to bite humans.


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## Knave

As I’m looking I’m wondering if it’s actually the first tick only, and the female looks whiter full? I have no idea!

Okay, I looked it up. Actual picture confirm my second thought. I’m not thinking I’ve ever seen a dog tick now that I see a photograph. The deer tick and sheep tick are just different words for the same thing. Lol


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## egrogan

@Knave, I do know what you mean about the white/pale ticks when they're really swollen. I think you're right those are female deer ticks. I see a ton of those on the horses.


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## egrogan

We are having a really annoying problem with hunters this year that we haven't had before. For the past two nights, a very loud Jeep Grand Cherokee has been slow rolling between 4:45-5. The first night, they were spotlighting across one of our fields. Last night, they actually took a shot from the truck while I was out doing chores across the street  Then they blasted off down the road and nearly ran my neighbor over when he went to the end of his driveway and tried to wave them to slow down- they clearly looked at him and then accelerated. The Jeep is so busted and loud you can literally hear it coming from 1/2 mile away because the muffler is non-existent. So it's not like they're even trying to be stealthy about what they're doing. It's more like they are getting a thrill out of antagonizing people. This is really not typical behavior around here and extremely frustrating. Neighbor thinks he IDed one of the kids as the son of a family that he's had problems with fishing his brook without permission over the summer. Surprise, surprise, it's one of "those" families that has been here forever and feels they have a god-given right to be anyplace, anytime they want. The sad thing is, we are one of the few that actually _don't _have our property posted. I am open to people using it for hiking, hunting, whatever. I see it as a tradeoff for all the ungated spaces where I get to ride. But the most basic expectation is that you don't act like and a-hole and you definitely don't use illegal hunting practices on someone else's property. Game warden is planning to be out here today or tomorrow. He's asked us to get a picture of the Jeep/license plate, and while I want to be helpful, I don't see a world where I'm close enough to some drunk teenagers with guns that I can get a clear picture of their license plate.

Anyway, I got orange halters for the horses and they're in those during daylight/dusk hours. Not that it really matters to people who are that reckless. It makes me feel a little better though.








Winter weather is forecast tonight- by this time tomorrow, we may have a few inches of snow, or a couple of inches of snow and ice. Hoping it's more snow than ice! I took Fizz out for a short ride. It's been really cold and the road is back to being really hard because it's going below freezing overnight.
















We'll see what riding looks like this weekend. Hoping that whatever precip comes melts back after temps go to the 40s at the end of the week.


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## egrogan

Obligatory first snow pic. We got a couple of inches of heavy wet snow, and now it’s raining. Pretty much the worst kind of storm in my opinion.








Hopefully it will just melt and we can start fresh!


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## Knave

We had a decent storm last week, but it’s all gone now. I don’t mind a big heavy snow that sticks around, or the little snow that melted off, but it’s the icy icky ground that gets to me.


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## gottatrot

That's frustrating about the idiots in the Jeep. 
The other day my friend saw two guys cruising on the private driveways by our horse property. When she confronted them, they said they were lost. Wearing full camo and with their rifles. Sure. She knew they were looking for the six point buck that has been hiding back there. 

The deer are so smart. They stay on private property during hunting season. When I was riding Aria the other day, the buck and a doe were curled up sleeping near the outdoor arena, and they didn't even get up when we rode near them. It was cute. I am not against eating meat but I can't see how anyone could shoot such a creature. He is just beautiful with his full set of horns, and moves so gracefully.


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## egrogan

gottatrot said:


> That's frustrating about the idiots in the Jeep.


I'm happy to say that after those first two annoying days, they seem to have moved on to torment someone else. Also, not sure if this is from my neighbor calling in or from communication from the game warden, but the Sheriff has been looping by every day too. Hopefully they don't reappear!



> The other day my friend saw two guys cruising on the private driveways by our horse property. When she confronted them, they said they were lost. Wearing full camo and with their rifles. Sure. She knew they were looking for the six point buck that has been hiding back there.


Haha, this happened to me when we were still boarding in NH, though during archery season. I was out on the trail with Fizz and heard a rustling in the woods next to me. Two full camo guys with those high powered bows sheepishly emerged from under some brush and said they didn't know they were on the farm's private land. Uh huh, no chance you didn't realize it was private when you crawled under the gate to walk down the trail. BO was _livid _and sent her ex-military police husband out to to "chat" with the suspected trespassers. I never did see anyone hunting back there again!



> The deer are so smart. They stay on private property during hunting season. When I was riding Aria the other day, the buck and a doe were curled up sleeping near the outdoor arena, and they didn't even get up when we rode near them. It was cute. I am not against eating meat but I can't see how anyone could shoot such a creature. He is just beautiful with his full set of horns, and moves so gracefully.


I agree with you, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. We have at least one good sized buck here. Anyone who is even a casual sportsman could easily track him, especially with fresh snow on the ground, as he makes the same loop every day. Hugh and I see his tracks and poop when we go out for our walk around the fields. The other night, Hugh erupted in the middle of the night, and we turned on the outside lights to have a look- the buck was standing in the trees just behind the house, looking in the window at us looking out at him. At this point, I'm pretty emotionally invested in his survival. He just has to make it 10 more days I guess.


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## Knave

I am a hunter, but I also understand an emotional attachment to a buck. Granny has this group of bucks who come hang out in her yard. A couple are nice bucks, but we’d never hunt them. They are her bucks! I get so mad when I even see someone slowing down and looking into her yard in hunting season.

When we were first married there was this pet buck where we lived. He was a nice buck, and everyone knew him. Someone even made a successful children’s book from him. He was a friendly guy. He wasn’t a leppy, but he just decided he liked people, and you could buy apples at the little store to feed him. Everyone knew and loved him.

Then someone poached him. Everyone was really mad. He got into lots of trouble too, because it’s a little obvious when you kill the famous pet who he was!


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## egrogan

I respect that @Knave. And like I said, we do have friends who hunt here. But I know they are the type that are going to use the whole animal if they get it, not just cut off the rack and leave the rest to rot. We'll see what happens with Mr. Buck!


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## Knave

People who shoot things just to shoot things irritate me. One had better understand they are taking a life and be appreciative and use as much as they can.


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## avjudge

egrogan said:


> Anyway, I got orange halters for the horses and they're in those during daylight/dusk hours. Not that it really matters to people who are that reckless. It makes me feel a little better though.


We have Protectavests on our horses and llamas which live out 24/7 all year, including hunting season. That makes them pretty darn visible, though I don’t trust anything 100%. But the hunting pressure seems to have been very low here over the last few years since I moved back.


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## egrogan

When the weather turned earlier in the week, it pretty much went from June to January, and it seems that January has won out and is here to stay.








For all intents and purposes, the road is down to one travel lane, and the tire tracks are icy, so we can’t safely go too far on the road. There’s just nowhere to go if a car is coming, especially if we need to move out of the way fast. So for now, we’re stranded riding around the fields.
























After a couple of laps around the field, we moved to the yard and did some 20 meter circles and figure 8s. At first Fizz would speed up and pull in the direction of her friends, and slow down going away. I found myself getting really annoyed but then just laughed at myself. Here was the first thing for us to work on while stuck in the yard! Just a steady, even rhythm and paying attention to me. And of course she was a little unbalanced on the circle, she’s spent months mostly in a straight line going down the trail.








Next week we are supposed to have several sunny days above freezing, so maybe we will see enough melting to get back to the trails again. Hopefully winter isn’t “really” here already!


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## phantomhorse13

As usual, I am behind on HF so am just catching up with your journal.

Loved hearing about your friend's horsey son. A book I loved that features some young male characters was Pony Club Cup. The author (and her sisters) wrote many horse books, but of course most of the main characters are females. [Thanks to @bsms for the link to the Frog book. I have it downloaded and can't wait to read it myself.]

Congrats on your yearly mileage!! Here is to many more.

Sorry to hear about the jerks in the Jeep. That would have me totally furious. I hope whatever caused them to move on keeps them away. I have no problem with people hunting who are respectful both to the animals they are hunting and to the landowners. We too had a particular buck - a gorgeous 10 pointer who was old enough to be greying - who I have routinely seen the last couple years. He was so used to my riding that he wouldn't even move, just watch us ride by. 








Someone got him the second day of archery season this year. At least it was a member of the family, who will not only proudly display his head by also will use the meat to feed his family.. but can't say it didn't make me sad.

Winter has arrived here with a vengeance also. I am hoping maybe we get back to normal temps next month - 20 degrees above normal to 20 degrees below normal in 24 hours was wild!


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## egrogan

@phantomhorse13 , your grey old buck story did make me sad. I suppose though it's better for a quick end than languishing through an early winter if he's slowed down a step. I haven't seen fresh tracks from our buck in a couple of days. Lots and lots of coyote tracks all of a sudden though. They seem to be tracking the stone walls where the chipmunks and red squirrels live.

We haven't seen any more problematic hunters the past few days. _But _we did just get a text from our neighbor that this morning he found a gut pile _in his brook_ and a kill site back up in his woods (a spot that is clearly posted). It's just so maddening- the more this stuff happens, the more that people are going to post their land. But even posting doesn't make a difference because the kind of people who act this way will act this way regardless. I really don't remember it being this bad even a couple of years ago.


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## Knave

We have ours posted, and it doesn’t stop people from trying or doing! It is so frustrating. We put up sign after sign, one of the neighbor’s spends hunting season yelling at everyone who breaks the rules, and she monitors the ranch since we are not always there. People are entitled.


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## phantomhorse13

In general, we don't have too many issues with poachers close by, as the farms are busy and fields open enough that someone would notice a stranger. A few years back, I actually encountered a strange man while riding on the sugarloaf one day and called the owner of the property. By dumb luck, the game warden was in the area and came out to deal with the trespasser. Not sure if word of that got out, but nobody locally has had any issues since that I have heard about.

However, one of the doctors at the vet clinic that I worked for has constant problems with people poaching his property - it's 200 acres of woods so easy for people to be there and not be seen. Once during lunch break he went out and caught someone _in his tree stand_, as his trail cam had sent a picture. Talk about nerve!!


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## egrogan

Yes, I think our problem is that everything is forest, except for the areas right around houses, and there is over a mile between the houses on our road. Plenty of places to slip in and out of where you're supposed to be.

But the thing is, that's not even what people are doing. Here's today's "you have to be ****ing kidding me story" - I just went out at lunch and chipped some frozen poop out of the snow and took the wheelbarrow back to the poop pile. This morning (fresh tracks in snow), *someone parked their truck next to my trailer, walked right along the horses' fence line, and took our logging road up into the woods on the ridge behind the house*. Excuse me- WHAT?!?! There is fresh snow on the ground, I see all the tracks clear as day. No one is trying to be sneaky, they are just being brazen at this point. We have several people who have permission to hunt here, and they all KNOW that it's not allowed behind the house & horses- everything across the street is fair game. And they all text us before they're here so I'm not out on that side of the road in the woods with the dog or riding. I am just so livid. I am putting a rope across the back driveway with the trailer now, but COME ON, are you such an entitled [email protected] that you're really going to make me do that??? I am just so done this year.

I have a little work left to do and then I'm going to ride around the fields quickly because it's a beautiful, sunny day, but this really puts a damper on even riding around the fields. Do I have to be worried about people in the woods right near the house and fenced pastures??


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## egrogan

OK, back and a little more zen after a nice ride. I was absolutely determined to get out because it was "warm" (40*F), sunny, and the roads _are _melting! 








I wanted to be back before dusk, so we hustled, but it was a good hustle. Trotting through the snow, even on a short ride, is still a pretty nice workout!
















I did go down another one of our own logging roads ^^ and felt ok about it as there were no trucks anywhere and I had a podcast loudly playing as we went.

If you look closely at the snow below, you can see that someone else was out hunting earlier today! 🦉








I am off work tomorrow, and the forecast is even better than it was for today, so maybe we'll be able to take a slightly longer ride tomorrow if the roads don't get too slick overnight.


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## egrogan

I held out most of the day hoping for the warm sun that was promised in the forecast, but it mostly just stayed cloudy. It was at least above freezing, so I was able to make good progress on poo removal as things melted a bit. I had good supervision 😉








The sun got a little stronger after lunch, so I hopefully saddled up and headed in the direction of the overlook. The part of the road near my house was in good shape, but I wasn't sure how it would be a little farther up the road where there was more shade.








Unfortunately my suspicions were right, and after we got past the beaver pond, there was a lot of icy slush and only clear footing in the narrow tire tracks. I worried about how we'd get out of the way of a fast car if we needed to, especially when we would be on downhill sections, so I decided not to push the issue and turned around.








Back we went, the way we had come.








We looped around the fields on the way back.








The sky was really dramatic, but it's supposed to stay clear overnight and_, _theoretically, be warm and sunny tomorrow. We're staying home for a quiet dinner tomorrow, but we have fun cooking plans so if I'm going to ride, it will be earlier in the day.








Fizz managed to find the one patch of exposed grass in the yard when we got home 🤣 Poor ponies are also unhappy about this early snow cover.


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## knightrider

Fizz is so so so so pretty!


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## egrogan

Awww, thank you @knightrider!


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## egrogan

Yesterday was the kind of day to be thankful for. The girls started the day with soaking up the sun in the big field before I went out after lunch to bring them back over to their regular pasture.




The weather was beautiful all afternoon, and the snow melted enough we were able to head down the road to the neighbor's big hay field. I think Fizz was happy to do something beside just go around the pasture, because she didn't even look sideways when we passed our recent turn-around spot.








The field gets a lot of sun all day, so except from this shady spot, we were able to trot and canter along without thinking about the footing. She was happy to move out, though not silly about it.















When we looped back up to home, we did a little schooling on one of the flat spots in our pasture. She was less enthusiastic about trotting 20 meter circles than she was cantering up the hill in the neighbor's field- I probably was too 😉








After I got our evening chores done, lovely husband and I made dinner. We got a small turkey from the farm where we've been getting Thanksgiving turkey for over a decade, and lovely husband smoked it. We had delicious homemade rolls, roasted beet salad, sweet potatoes with hot honey, cranberry chutney, and some sparkling wine from our neighbor's orchard. Couldn't have asked for a more delicious dinner. We all fell into bed before 9pm (Hugh included) and slept hard until this morning. We did a little bit of local shopping this morning but nothing stressful. And just finished turkey sandwiches for lunch- by far my favorite part of Thanksgiving.

Hope everyone had a great day!


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## egrogan

Here’s Hugh’s version of being both thankful _and_ helpful after thanksgiving dinner 🤣


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## egrogan

Above freezing temps have continued, so slowly but surely the melting has improved the roads. I still can't safely go to the overlook, but the opposite direction is mostly clear. That meant we could meet up with M and Coalie for an abbreviated ride this morning.








It's a little bit tricky, as the mud is greasy, and in some spots it's frozen. The final downhill section to the paved road was the worst, as the hill is steep, and the dogs, donkeys, and horses that live on both sides of the hill were all out. We caught the donks by surprise, which in turn spooked the horses in their pasture, and Fizz did a 180* spin when everyone was spazzing out. So, I ended up just getting off and walking through that spot, on the way out and the way back. Since the mud was icy there, wasn't worth risking it!








It was so nice to be out and doing something more exciting than riding circles in the field! We hadn't seen M and Coalie in a couple of weeks. We were able to ride on a private trail where there was no hunting, and Fizz was so happy to be back in the woods again!








The footing over in M's neck of the woods was better than over here, so we trotted along where it was safe. It's still really slippery on the leaves though, so we mostly just walked. The horses were really sweaty just from climbing the hills the trail followed, so walking was fine. Also, the turkeys were out in force today and they too were a bit spazzy. Rather than just scratching around in the leaves, they were running, and chattering to each other, and would randomly launch themselves in the air and take off flying through the underbrush. I love having them around, but they definitely kept us on our toes 😉 All in all, we did 5 miles.

Thankfully today is the last day of deer season. I can't wait for all the hunter harassment to end. There is a postscript to the story of the guy who parked in my driveway next to the trailer earlier in the week. On Thanksgiving, I wanted to take Hugh for a good walk before dinner, so we headed to the pine trail behind the horses' pasture. I remembered that the guy's tracks went that direction, so I decided to follow the tracks to see where he had been. He had put a bunch of trail marker ribbons up on trees- I guess planning to come back? And, just behind the poop pile, we found his kill site, where he had taken down and butchered a deer. I guess the only positive was that based on the animal tracks, his kill had fed a lot of other animals, from coyotes to turkeys to foxes. Then we followed the trail of him dragging it back out through the poop pile and along the fenceline. That really just made my blood boil. It was right on a trail that we clearly use. Within sight of the horse's field. I think that is probably the last straw, and lovely husband wants to post the property next year. I really don't want to, as it's not at all the spirit of where we live to close off land, but to know someone felt perfectly comfortable shooting that close to the horses is just too much. #endrant

On a happier note, here are a couple of cute pictures of Izzy and Josie from yesterday afternoon.


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## Knave

The love was for the ride and photos, not the postscript.

I wouldn’t feel guilty for posting it at all. We post all of ours. Yet, do you think posting it will stop these types of people? I mean, they break the rules now… I wonder if the only people you will effect are those you actually want to allow hunting privileges.

It just sucks that people are so entitled.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I really don’t know at this point. I thought people would have enough decency and common sense not to do most of the things that have happened this year. And some posted signs aren’t going to change that. Pretty universally, everyone around here I have talked to, including hunters and non-hunters, have said to post it. I guess things are just really changing fast here. I think it’s been a cascade of things leading to the problems of this year, a lot of it tracing to tons of people from out of state buying old farms as second homes and then posting the properties and taking away access to all kinds of trail activities, from hiking to hunting to riding. So that puts a lot of pressure on the remaining properties that aren’t posted. Historically it would be very unusual here for a farm to be posted (though common sense would mean people wouldn’t hunt near your house, barn, or pastures). But it seems like now we’re handling all the overflow of people who have suddenly found other places shut down. It’s not fair that we have to deal with that, and I don’t know what else to do…


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## TrainedByMares

So, yesterday I had a similar situation here. It was first day of rifle deer season. I heard a shot that sounded like it was out in my back field in the morning but assumed it was further away. Maya found a gutpile in the afternoon in the back field. I was p**ed! I contacted the owners of the nearby properties and it became evident that a young guy had permission from one of the owners and did indeed get a deer. Where is the gutpile? Is it a problem? were the questions asked. Well, *** yeah, it's a problem,that's why I'm calling you, send the guy back to clean it up. So, the property owner who gave permission came and apologized and cleaned up. He had given permission for a first-time hunter to hunt on his property but in the heat of the moment, he shot one on my property. I understand, I get it. However, during the conversation I had with the neighbor property owner, I made it clear that what happened was not acceptable and not to be repeated. All the other neighbors know what happened now, too. 
@egrogan perhaps you could reach out to your neighbors near and far and locate your hunter. Let them and him(or her) know you won't tolerate it and make them come back and clean up! 

It is a very frustrating situation dealing with people who don't respect boundaries or rules , written or implied and I feel your pain but I think you should do something about it so it doesn't happen again.


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## egrogan

Sigh, that’s frustrating @TrainedByMares! I do understand that it’s easy to cross boundaries in the woods (though with so many apps available now, you can know with some certainty where you are). We have talked to all the local hunters we know about what’s happening. We have had 5 people who have hunting permission text us at various points this season to let us know they’ll be out hunting, which is totally fine. And we’ve told all of them what’s going on and asked them to let us know if they see anything out of sorts. One guy has permission to have trail cams up in the spot he likes, and he hasn’t seen anything. None of them would ever be so disrespectful to go behind the house/horses. But they don’t seem to know who is causing the trouble. All of the properties around us are posted and don’t even allow hunting with permission, and none of the neighbors know what’s going on (and are also frustrated). We’ve also been in regular contact with the game warden, but they are so woefully understaffed that he can’t realistically cover his 500 mile zone very effectively. He even had the sheriff doing regular drive bys the past few days just to be visible since he couldn’t be out in the woods himself. I’ve complained about what’s happening l to the people who run the feed store, the woman who runs the post office, the town clerk, and the librarian-basically, anyone who will listen to me complain who also hears all the gossip. I just feel so stuck!!

I’m glad your neighbor did the right thing though and handled it. Hopefully it won’t happen again!


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## phantomhorse13

I would post your land without hesitation. That gives you some recourse if you have people like that jerk show up again. But it doesn't mean you won't allow use.. only that people ask your permission first. If you are open to strangers asking permission, include a contact phone number on the signs. The hunters who are already telling you their plans and asking about their trailcams are the ones you want to encourage. The ones like that jerk are who ruin it for everyone.


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## PoptartShop

Love all the photos as always.  Izzy and Josie are so cute, look at that snoooot!

I would definitely post it as well - it wouldn't hurt. That's ridiculous, & I hope he doesn't return. Disrespectful, even. I feel like there's always that ONE person.


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## bsms

I get frustrated here by locked gates. Often there is public land on the far side but people won't allow others to pass thru. OTOH, lots of idiots not only leave gates open but think they have the right to do donuts with their trucks or to shoot at things for fun. I love shooting and have killed MANY soda cans, but there is a time and place and, of course, cleaning up afterward. None of which seems to happen any more so...yeah, locked gates. I don't blame the owners. And...I've heard the whine of bullets passing me more often in Arizona than I did in Afghanistan!


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## egrogan

Yesterday I was hoping for one last ride to the overlook to close out November. We had a big weather front moving through, but it wasn't supposed to rain until noon, so I arranged my schedule so I could go ride at 10. At 9, I looked out the window, and freezing rain was streaming from the sky. I was so frustrated, but had to give up the opportunity to ride because the rain left an icy glaze over everything. It did warm up later in the day, and turn over to plain rain, so at least the ground cleared up. We had wild winds all night long, up to 20mph, and at some point it turned over to snow. I woke up to this!















I am hoping to ride tomorrow, then supposedly we have more warm rain coming Saturday, so who knows what the weekend holds. This time of year is so hard to plan around!


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## egrogan

December really roared in- yesterday was blustery all day. I don't mind cold, I don't mind snow, but wind makes everything really hard to navigate.








We got a couple of inches of snow, and the wind drove it around into oddly deep drifts in some spots, and bare ground in others.

Luckily this morning was clear and sunny, and the wind was calm. By the afternoon, the sun had done some good work on melting. The roads are back to the sketchy icy spots we had to navigate last week, so our ride today was more loopy loopy around the pasture. Not very exciting stuff, but I feel pressure to get in the saddle every day I can this time of year, because at some point we'll truly be forced to take a break.

Funny how the sun left some spots totally clear








Others a little patchy snow








And then in other spots the snow was fairly deep and there were icy puddles








More rain is coming tomorrow, with another warmup, so this will probably melt again. Not sure if we'll get another freeze after the rain ends, but if it stays clear, I'll meet up with M for a ride Sunday.


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## Knave

I hate the wind too, but I love the picture of Hugh!


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## egrogan

It’s a grey and gloomy day here, so while I’m stuck inside, I’m trying to wrangle a bunch of old boxes of “stuff” that we haven’t unpacked since moving here 4 years ago! (Oops!!)

I have half a dozen boxes of pictures, books, report cards, newspaper clippings, etc that my parents had saved but dropped off here when they downsized and moved south.

I rode very sporadically as a kid, and I still haven’t found the pictures I was hoping to of lessoning at the fancy saddle seat barn. Maybe they’re in there somewhere!

I must have been 6 or 7 here, pony riding at a friend of the family’s farm.








My uncle was into racehorses for awhile, and I would occasionally be sent winners circle photos. It made me insanely jealous because my cousins didn’t really care much about horses, and had a stable full. And I wanted nothing more than access to horses. Here are my cousins with one of their winners-clearly from the 1980s 😆
















^More 80s fashion, cousin in the Jean jacket. Her brother also had some stylish 80s hair, he’s standing behind her.








This was from the late 1990s, maybe 1999. I spent a semester in DC during college, and my aunt and uncle (different from the racehorse aunt and uncle) owned a large farm in central Virginia so I brought some friends out to spend a weekend. Uncle focuses on cows, but grows some nice hay that he sells to all the horse folks around him. They were right in the middle of hunt country and his biggest hay client was a nice warm blood breeding farm. They offered to take my friend and I out hacking. I’m on the grey-hadn’t ridden in years at that point, but looks like they turned me loose on my own and ponied my friend (I don’t think she had ever been on a horse at all).

I still have some more boxes to go through, maybe I’ll find some of those old lesson photos.


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## egrogan

Found a couple more of riding in Virginia.
















Yep…friend never rode before 😆


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## gottatrot

Great photos, I love them!


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## egrogan

All the rain yesterday washed out the last of the snow, and happily took out most of the icy footing in the roads too. It didn't get particularly warm, but whatever front came through kept temps up in the 40s overnight, so that really helped clear up the ice. 

Unfortunately the storm left us with crazy wind gusts and a frigid wind chill this morning, so M didn't want to ride today. So Fizz and I headed out to the overlook for the first time in a few weeks! It's funny to get excited about that ride, since it's our boring mid-week destination during the regular season. 

Poor Fizz this morning had a bit of an incident while tied. She gets so little hard feed (scant 1/2 lb ration balancer), and Izzy and Josie get a pretty large meal (they're each close to 5lbs of various old lady food at this point) that when she finishes, she tries to go "help" Josie finish hers. So I've started tying her up with a haynet until everyone is done. She was munching away while I picked up poop and the others finished breakfast. I stupidly was on the other side of the shed and wasn't really paying attention, when Izzy finished her food and lunged at Fizz to try to get her hay. Fizz was tied with the blocker ring, but I had grabbed a lead rope with a big knot in the end of it, so it couldn't slide all the way out of the ring. I heard the commotion and popped around the shed just in time to see Fizz slingshot backwards as the breakaway crown on her halter broke. Izzy is such a dragon and will go after her with teeth bared, and mean it. I'm annoyed at myself for not paying more attention to what was going on. I'm sure poor Fizz is sore from that so I will keep an eye on her and see if we need another chiro adjustment sooner than the spring, when we'd have our next planned session.

Anyway, on our ride, Fizz was a little stiff, and I wasn't sure if it was because it was so chilly or because she was sore. Or maybe I was just imagining it because I was worried about her. Regardless, we took it easy on our way to the overlook, and I didn't push her to trot. The road wasn't slippery, but it was hard, so I wouldn't have asked for much anyway. She trotted in a few spots where the ground was softer, but it was an easy ride overall.

The ponds stayed iced over all day:








Curious if anyone else sees things in the clouds?

















Through Fizz's ears, you can just barely see some of the ski trails on the mountain. I know they are making a lot of snow up there, and I think they had a good opening weekend of the season with the Thanksgiving snow. They're probably not so happy about the warm rain we got though!


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## gottatrot

I kind of see a dog's face in the clouds.


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## TrainedByMares

gottatrot said:


> I kind of see a dog's face in the clouds.


Yeah,I was looking at that too. Teddy bear face to me.


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## Knave

I couldn’t see anything until @gottatrot said the dog face and then I could see that. The clouds are a little fuzzy on my phone, so maybe that’s why I didn’t pick up anything on my own.

I do always see things in the clouds in real life. It is something I enjoy.


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## egrogan

Yes, I saw a dog- maybe wearing sunglasses- in the clouds in the top corner. It reminded me of the commercials for learning to draw via art school correspondence classes that I remember seeing on TV when I was a kid! 🤣









*The Dead Deer Saga: Final Chapter*
Well, we have the final answer about what happened with the deer in the woods behind the horses. And I have to say, my faith in humanity is restored. I was out doing chores when an older guy pulled up next to the field and introduced himself. I recognized him from around town. He started our conversation by saying, "My wife noticed you put up a rope across your driveway, and she figured you were upset about all the blood back in the woods so I better come talk to ya."

I love how Vermonters can distill things right to the most salient point.

I laughed and told him it wasn't that I was upset about the blood, but more just worried about who would have been back there so close to the horses since no one had said anything to us that day. He told me the whole long story- basically, he and his grandson had been hunting out on a friend's property off the road that is pretty literally over the river and through the woods beyond the ridge behind our house. They ended up shooting a buck, but he took off and traveled quite a distance from where they got him. So they followed him, ultimately finding him (where I found the remnants of him) behind the field. His wife met them with the truck in the driveway to take everyone home, hence the tire tracks in the driveway next to the trailer. 

So he brought us over some meat, and just wanted to let us know it was him back there. He and my husband have talked before, and he has has hunted over in our woods (where we ask people to go), so it was really a relief to know it wasn't a nefarious stranger, but actually someone we know. We had a nice conversation, and he reminded me he lives over on one of our favorite summer trails- he told me to feel free to use the hose on his barn or his pond if Fizz ever needs a drink or refresh while we're riding. It was all very neighborly. All's well that ends well, as they say. And I eat my words about how mad I was, knowing the whole story of what happened. It doesn't excuse some of the other bad behavior from other people that went on through the season, but at least there's a logical explanation for that incident.

Earlier yesterday, got Fizz out for a 4 mile ride, all on the roads. The ground was pretty hard, but the ice was gone. Didn't see much traffic, so it was a pretty straightforward ride. Though Fizz did let me know that she was _very _worried about the puddles that had a layer of ice over them. Not sure why they caught her eye the way they did, but a couple of times they caught her by surprise and shot to the other side of the road while snorting at them. Funny what can make them nervous!


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## Knave

Well that is a really positive ending to that story! I’m glad he decided to come over and explain at least.


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## gottatrot

Now it seems like a perfectly good explanation for the buck and I'm glad they followed and made sure he was killed and not suffering. Seems like a good neighbor to come and explain.


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## PoptartShop

Oh good!! Faith in humanity is definitely a bit restored after that interaction indeed!  I'm glad he came over and explained, & it makes sense now. 
Love seeing Fizz's fluffy ears!!! So cute!


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## egrogan

All the rain the past couple of days have brought us into an unseasonable mud season instead of winter, which is pretty odd for December.
















But despite the muddy ruts, the footing is actually fantastic- as you can imagine, it's soft and springy, rather than hard and frozen. I only had time to go to the overlook and back at lunch, but Fizz was extremely enthusiastic. After a quick warmup, we pretty much trotted and canter the whole way there and back. Fortunately no cars so we could just find the best spot in the road and zoom along.
















It's going to get chilly again for the weekend, but these few warm, rainy days have given us back the roads for now, at least until it snows again. Hoping for a longer trail loop with M on Sunday!


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## egrogan

Back to December weather today. M and I had plans to meet up at lunchtime, trying to find the "warmest" part of the day (aka, temps approaching 25*F/ -4*C), but the forecast kept changing in terms of when it was going to start snowing. We decided we were going to make it happen even if the snow started on the earlier side. Realistically, if we do get a few inches of snow over the next couple of days, this might be the last time this year the roads are clear enough for us to get to our meeting point.

We started off with just a few gentle flurries. The road was hard, but clear. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!








We headed out the snowmobile trail and figured we'd play it by ear about which direction we'd go when it deadended into the road. Climbing up the hill, things were clear, with the snow just barely beginning to stick.































But as we came over the top of the hill and started the descent, the footing got sketchy. The trail is made up of a lot of flat rock, and that was extremely slippery. Fizz's hind end went one way while her front went the other. At one point her front end slipped and she ended up on her knees. I am a big wuss about ice, so I got off a few times and walked down the steeper, rockier sections and over one of the snowmobile bridges, where Coalie slid hard in front of us. It ended up being a bit of a whiteknuckle ride for a stretch of the woods.

When we got back to the road, M wanted to take another woods loop home, but I wasn't having fun being worried about falling. So she turned off to go back through the woods, and I continued home on the road (she knows about my previous fall and ice phobia).

About a mile from home, the snow really started picking up. In a matter of minutes, the roads went from mostly clear








To starting to be covered!
















Fizz was sweaty on her body and wet on her neck when we got home and untacked. I curried her out pretty well and then stuck a fleece cooler on under a waterproof sheet to dry out. I'll get her changed over to something warmer after dinner since the snow is supposed to continue on through most of the night.
















We ended up doing ~5.5 miles...quite possibly our last "real" ride of the year. We'll see what the weather does.


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## Knave

I’m with you… ice is not fun and not worth a non work ride.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I was thinking of your icy work day and feeling very glad I didn’t have to keep going!


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## bsms

We do sometimes briefly get that sort of weather here. The horse's huddle together under their open shelter. I stay inside and maybe nudge the thermostat up a few degrees. I think we all pray it soon will pass. I'm pretty sure if I took Bandit out when there was ice, he'd turn his head around, stare at me with his _"WTF are you thinking!"_ expression (one I know well), utter a few expletives, then careful walk back to his corral and wait as long as it took for me to dismount! 

We're wimps here in southern Arizona!


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## Knave

So you say @bsms, but the first time a cactus actively chose to bite me or my horse, I’m pretty sure both of us would say “nope.” We might sit through a lesson on how to dress and what to avoid, and try one more time, but if we got bit again I’d move away. Lol

I think that everyone has to learn how to live in their country. It’s why my father has explained to me that people really struggle in the first generation somewhere raising cows. The rules are different, the ways to be successful are different, and often people struggle to drop their pride and ask the neighbor how it’s done.


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## bsms

BTW - the morning rain has turned to snow here. It won't stick and the water on the ground won't freeze - at least, not until tonight - but it IS snowing south of Tucson..._and horses and humans are trying to hide!_


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## egrogan

@bsms, it must be odd when it snows there! We actually ended up with a couple of inches, but it is perfect snow- the dry, grainy kind that feels like sugar.
















I couldn't wait to get out to ride at lunchtime, it was such a pretty day. My ride ended up being extremely educational. We started out looping around the new field, and went down the little logging trail to one of the big fields down the road.
























Since she's been really distracted and barn sour riding around that field, I decided I'd do some big loopy serpentines and some figure 8s in the flat part.
















At first we just walked, until I felt like she wasn't pulling or drifting in the direction of home. Then I decided to see how it would go at a trot. We continued circling and tried to get consecutive relaxed circles, but she kept throwing her head up and pulling hard in the direction of home for half the circle. And then she planted and gave me a nasty crow hop. I definitely have some anxiety about this kind of riding out in the middle of a big field, so I'm sure that apprehension is what led to the testing. And if I'm being honest, I think it was also her way of saying, "hey lady, could you let go of my face and remember that you have legs to ride with too!?" But I just rode through it and we kept on with our circles until we had at least one relatively relaxed in each direction. I had to laugh looking at the tracker map, where you can see a couple of the moments where she shot off the circle at a canter (unrequested!), like an electron being launched out of its nucleus 🤣
















I think this will be a good thing for us to work on over the winter- I have a mini goal now of being able to w/t/c in both directions on a circle in a relaxed, rhythmic way by the end of the winter. I think it's going to take both of us getting stronger and more balanced.

I also realized something funny on our ride. I have inadvertently taught her to halt when I say "oops!" I think it's what I reflexively say when the footing is dodgy and she trips or stumbles, or if I get unbalanced in the saddle. I must have been asking her to stop reliably enough in those moments that she will now stop if I say "oops" or "whoa." I suppose that could work to my advantage in the future!


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## bsms

egrogan said:


> I have inadvertently taught her to halt when I say "oops!"


Bandit sometimes does that when I make a sudden loud comment about fecal matter.... 🤠


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## gottatrot

Reminds me of this meme:


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## egrogan

We had an awful blustery night last night-so much wind this is how I found a hay net this morning! 😳


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## PoptartShop

The hay net wanted to hide up on the roof! LOL


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## egrogan

We fit in a quick lunchtime ride today, which was a priority for me because snow is on the way. Right now the forecast unhelpfully suggests we will get "5-15 inches" between tonight and Saturday morning (not sure how we're supposed to react to that range of snow totals?!). It definitely _feels _like snow is coming when you're outside. The first big storm of the year always makes me feel excited, like a little kid.

The road was in bad shape except in a couple of spots that get a lot of sun, so we tiptoed down the side of the road where we could to get from one field to the other.








We did more of our circle/figure 8 work, and it was all very calm and relaxed. Even had some moments of good bending. The ground was very hard and lumpy because it's all frozen, so we just walked. But it was nice to get out for a little while.


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## egrogan

Also…these two. More often than not, this is how they eat. I’m glad they have grown so comfortable with each other.


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## egrogan

Yep. Snow. A lot of it. And it’s going to go all day and all night.


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## egrogan

Still snowing. Feeling very frisky at dinner 😆


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## Knave

I know the snow might not be appreciated, but it sure is pretty. I’ve been enjoying it here so far. I guess it was so slick that the little bit of traction makes me happy.


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## egrogan

@Knave, I like the first big storm. I even like it through January. Once we get through that, I’m ready for it to go.

Everything is a lot more work with this much snow-even just literally walking from one place to another. But it is really pretty!


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## bsms

When I lived in northern Utah, I liked the snow until mid-January. Tired by February. Disgusted by April and positively RESENTFUL when it snowed in May! 

My pulled groin muscle is better so I went for a short run yesterday, complaining to myself about the cold every step of the way. _It was 50 degrees with a 7 mph breeze!_ It is currently 16 degrees in Price Utah. That is an argument for Old Man to continue living in southern Arizona. Just maybe someday further away from Tucson. 1,000,000 people in one county doesn't work for me.


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## Knave

It was -14 this morning @bsms. The pogonip is stunning though about now, when it’s hit 3. Lol

I am happy with it in November and December (October snow irritates me). January it’s fine I guess, but I’m feeling like hibernating. February I’m about done. It’s too cold, why is it always so cold in February? I wish it was spring. Some part of me believes February is supposed to be spring, and then I remind myself that February is actually wintertime.

March and April drag by. I’m at work and the snow is miserable and I am miserable in it. I dream of jacket days. Like you, I am resentful in May when it snows. May is finally a real spring. I have resigned myself that winter runs from the end of October through the end of April, but May is supposed to be 60* weather. It just is.

Then it’s the wind I become resentful of. Lol. It appears I won’t be happy doesn’t it?

I ran outside this week in 28* with wind and snow blowing in my face. I have been trying to keep my runs outside because of the puppies. Today it broke the “too cold” barrier in my mind.


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## egrogan

The storm exceeded the predictions and gave us 18ish inches over 24 hours.

This was 4pm yesterday








Then 8pm last night








Then 7am this morning-eek!







We lost power for a couple of hours yesterday, but are fortunate with the generator keeping everything going. It came back on before dinner, though we heard it blipping off and on throughout the night.

The first round of chores this morning was tough because it was just so hard to move around, and the horses were sick of being stuck in the little space around the shed they had trampled down. They also really wanted out of their blankets, but it was still snowing while I fed so I kept them covered up, knowing I was going back out after my breakfast and could get them undressed then.
















^^This was actually midroll (why so close to the wall Fizz?!?), but I thought it was funny how she looks like she was just lounging in the snow.

After breakfast, lovely husband plowed out around the house and garage, while I took Hugh with me back to get blankets off and then shovel out gates so the tractor could get into the field and plow a path for me back to the poop pile.







I had forgotten to take down the rope I put across the back driveway because of the stupid hunting issues, and of course it was buried under all the snow. I tried to get across the snowbank from the town plow, and suddenly found myself sunk up to my waist! 😳 Fortunately Hugh had not followed me over the bank, but he stood at the edge of the road looking at me, very concerned. I manage to flop and wriggle my way out of it back to solid ground, but it was a panicky feeling being stuck for a few seconds and not really knowing how to extract all the body parts. I guess a small taste of how terrifying it would be to actually get swept away in an avalanche-hopefully something I will never experience!

Anyway, soon after, lovely husband met us with the tractor, and it was easy to get the rope down once he plowed through the snowbank. He was fast getting the path cleared for me, and I had the sheds stripped and rebedded quickly. We managed to finish everything up by noon!








The horses were happy to have more space to move, and for the warm sun that came out. They spent most of the afternoon just sunbathing.


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## egrogan

Calm and peaceful here today.


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## Knave

Wow those are stunning!


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## egrogan

Today was my first day of holiday time off, woohoo! It ended up being a surprisingly warm and sunny day- it started off at 10*F this morning, but warmed up to above freezing and bright sun. By the late afternoon, we actually had decent melting along the road between the house and the beaver pond. It wasn't really enough room to make it worthwhile to tack up and ride, but I haltered Fizz up and we went for a stroll down the road. She quickly sniffed out the places where grass was visible, and we lingered there for a few minutes.








Not that she really needs grass, I felt sort of eek! looking at these pictures of her. Her neck is looking too thick for this early in the winter. It doesn't feel hard and swollen along her crest, but she is looking heavy after no work for a couple of weeks now. After this coming weekend's weather, who knows if the snow will be gone or covered in ice, but if the ground improves some then hopefully we can figure out an exercise routine. 

Anyway, walking her along is like taking a giantly oversized bloodhound for a walk. Her nose was on the ground the whole way back and forth. In the book _Horse Brain, Human Brain_, I've learned how strong horses' sense of smell is- rivaling even dogs. With this new knowledge, I let her walk along sniffing wherever she wanted. Even if it wasn't much physical exercise, getting out of the pasture is good mental exercise!
























While we were out, I actually got a call from the vet with some bloodwork results for Josie. A few months ago, she had an odd result on her CBC- she showed up very high in something called "enucleated red blood cells," which is apparently very rare in horses. There's not a lot of info about it, but in talking to the vet and doing some reading, it's generally only seen when a horse has leukemia or other cancer, liver failure, or very rarely in pregnant mares. She wasn't acting like a sick horse, and she's still technically within a window where it's _possible _that she was bred before the rescue picked up her herd last January. So we re-ran the CBC when we did the PPID/IR testing last month. Fortunately, she doesn't have PPID, IR, _or _continued elevated levels of red blood cells. This time, she had _low _levels of white blood cells, but vet thought that might have been the vestiges of the anaplasmosis. So, we'll just continue keeping an eye on her and test again this spring. Otherwise, everything else is normal.


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## PoptartShop

What beautiful snowy photos!!   Love it! Although you got a lot of snow, it sure is pretty!
We didn't get any snow this weekend, but it WAS really cold. Felt like it was in the negatives on Fri/Sat, with the windchill. Everything's so icy!  Supposed to warm up this week though.

That's good about Josie, definitely something to keep an eye on but all sounds good, getting bloodwork done is key.  You and miss Fizz look so cute!!


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## bsms

_"Say WHAT, Silly Human?"_🙂
_








Bandit gives me that look often enough...._​


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## egrogan

Hope everyone had a nice Christmas! The last few days have flown by. I've been off work since Wednesday, which is very nice, but the wild weather took some of the fun out of it. The days are blending together a bit at this point, but when most everyone around the country plunged into frigid temps, we actually had 24 bizarre hours of very warm weather, which brought torrential rain and nearly 50*F temps to top off the 18" of snow on the ground. As you can imagine, that made a mess. But it got even messier, when the 50*F day ended with temps falling down to 3*F overnight- but not before an hour of freezing rain followed by an hour of snow. All the slush froze up into hard, lumpy footing everywhere. The most frustrating part was that the rain stopped around dinner time, and at that point there was no more precipitation forecast, so I was able to strip the horses' soggy rain sheets off and get them bundled into warmer, dry blankets for overnight. I was feeling pretty happy the timing worked out so well- until that unexpected 2 hours of freezing rain and snow. When I went out at night check, the fresh, "dry" blankets were frozen on them like suits of armor, so I had to strip _those _blankets off and do another change. Fortunately in my obsessive planning, I had brought _two _changes of clothes each down to the tack room just in case, so they did have a spare and didn't have to spend the night in the awful frozen blankets. But dragging them back up to the house in the freezing cold, howling wind was pretty miserable. All that weather took up the better part of my first couple of days off!

Since then, we haven't had any precipitation, thankfully. Just very cold temps, mostly in the single digits and teens. The horses are fine though. I have given up trying to keep their paddock poop-free; it's just not feasible for one person to try chip frozen poo out of icy footing in these temps. I gave myself permission just to keep the sheds cleaned out and bedded. After the rain-ice-snow day, I could tell Izzy was exhausted and not wanting to lay down to sleep on the hard ground. Almost as soon as I got the sheds freshened up, I saw her lay down and take a long nap, so that felt good. We've gone through tons of hay, but they seem happy enough.
















Even keeping the sheds cleaned is a bit of an ordeal though, because the path we plowed back to the poop pile after the big snow storm became a river of ice through all the temp changes. I've got good cleats on my boots, but I have to hold my breath and hope for the best when heading out there to dump the wheelbarrow. The ice is probably 2 inches thick in places. But weirdly, it's got a lot of traction to it and it isn't _too _scary to walk on.
















Yesterday it was bright and sunny part of the day, so I could get them out of blankets for at least a bit and give them a good grooming, which was very satisfying.








Everything outside seems to take twice as long in this weather, but aside from that, it's been a really nice Christmas so far. I got a bunch of new books, which is exactly how I want to spend my time off! We've cooked a ton of great food and will treat ourselves to a couple of dinners out later this week. And it's just nice not to be stuck in front of the computer all day for a bit. Hope everyone has had a nice holiday so far!


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## egrogan

I am having a vexxing issue with Fizz that I need to vent about for a minute! For the last week or so, she has been driving me nuts by trying to eat Josie's food after she finishes her (much smaller portion of) food. I know I've been spoiled all these years by being able to feed the horses loose in their own sheds, without anyone trying to chase anyone else off their food, but looks like that luck has run out.

Poor Fizz only gets a scant 1/2 lb of ration balancer, while Izzy and Josie are each eating several lbs of concentrates at each feeding- of course, she's done instantly while they take their time and savor their food. While they're eating, I tend to be doing other things, like filling waters or stuffing nets. Typically, as they finish they wander off to one of the many haynets or piles that are out and waiting for them.

But at some point last week, Fizz got the idea that she'd go poke her head in Josie's shed- and sure enough, Josie lovingly moved to the side and invited her BFF to share her dinner. Fizz enthusiastically sunk that giant head of hers into the bowl and hoovered most of the rest up before I realized what was happening. I chased her out of the shed like a wildwoman and was vigilant for this to happen at the next feeding. So the next feeding, I put up a makeshift stall rope to keep her in the shed. Predictably, Fizz licked her bowl clean and wanted to get out. I didn't think she'd challenge the rope across the front of the shed, but she sized it up, ducked right under it, and made a beeline for Josie. I ran after her like an idiot and tried to herd her away from Josie's shed before she got there, which turned into a ridiculous game where we ran circles around the shed chasing each other (yes, embarrassing) before she hopped into the shed and grabbed several bites before I could chase her back out.

What's the saying...fool me once, fool me twice...whatever. The next feeding, after she finished, I was ready and just haltered her and tied her up in her own shed with a haynet. The sheds are open, without doors, and given our setup that's just realistically how I need them to be. So tying her is obviously effective, but annoying to have to add another extra step in chores that are already taking 2-3x as long as they do in the summer because of the awful weather. 

After tying her up after meals for several days in a row, yesterday I tried to test it to see if we had "cured" this bad habit. And wouldn't you know it, she took one look at me after she finished her breakfast and knew she was still untied, and went trotting off across the frozen snow right for Josie's food. UGGGHHHHH. I was so frustrated I wanted to scream! I think I now understand what people mean when they say their horse is doing something just to spite them!! 😉 (I know, embarrassing). A stall rope won't work, but I do have a thick stall guard that I'm going to try next- I should be able to safely put some eye hooks inside the frame of the shed so I can put the stall guard up while she eats and take it down after everyone finishes. But that's still an extra step that I really don't want to add to chores.

Am I just doomed to the fact that now that she knows the food is there for the taking, she's going to do this whenever I don't have her physically contained?? Sigh.


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## knightrider

egrogan said:


> Am I just doomed to the fact that now that she knows the food is there for the taking, she's going to do this whenever I don't have her physically contained?? Sigh.


Yes, I am afraid so. I put all my guys in stalls to eat and let them out for their hay afterwards. Your only other solution is to make separate pens for each horse, which is what I had in Maryland. But you still have to let them all out to graze when there is grass.


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## egrogan

Thanks, @knightrider . Unfortunately creating new pens is not an option right now because of how frozen everything is. So containment it is!

I guess if there's any kind of silver lining, it's that her ability to stand tied has improved dramatically even in these few days. Initially, she was very antsy, and if I left her there after Josie & Izzy were done eating and disappeared out into the pasture, she would panic. So I just started leaving her there until they were done and she was alone, and after a few times of that she was fine on her own. Of course she has a haynet there to keep her occupied, but this is progress for her.


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## PoptartShop

The stall guard sounds like an easy solution, but I know what you mean, just another thing to do now. Fizz is definitely a smart cookie - she knows now!! LOL.


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## egrogan

Our weather rollercoaster continues, but today the swing went in our favor, giving us a bright, sunny day and a heatwave- temps up to 40*F! There was definitely a springlike feeling outside. Another day of naked ponies. Izzy has lost some weight with her reluctant eating; she shows it in her hipbones. But she is back to asking for her food, now that we're on a once-daily Fiberpsyll treatment, so I'm hopeful we'll stabilize her here for the rest of the winter.

Lovely husband and I ran some errands this morning (our dishwasher conveniently died on Christmas Eve, so we got a new one) and had lunch at a great Chinese place. When we got home in the middle of the day, I was pleasantly surprised that the strong sun had done wonders for the road, knocking out the worst of the ice. At least in the places that get sun and aren't stuck in shade most of the day. My saddle was still out in the tack room (I had been waffling about bringing it up to the house for the winter, but decided to stay optimistic it would get some more use before I had to put it away)- so I decided to tack up and enjoy the sun.

Unfortunately the sun hadn't reached the ice around my mounting rock, so I took Fizz out to the road where it was clear and thought maybe I could get on from a snowbank. But even on the taller banks, I would sink in too much to be able to get on without really hauling on her back, so I didn't want to do that. I decided to chance it in our regular spot, and we just picked our way carefully through the snow to avoid the bad ice. That worked out fine.

We started off just riding some circles and figure 8s in the yard. The snow is heavy and crusty, so I was reluctant to ask her to spend too much time traipsing through it as I worry about stressing her legs too much. They're dealing with such awful footing all day as it is.















I could tell it was hard work, but she went around on a loose rein and was very responsive to leg. I figured we'd see how the road was a little farther from the house.








We made it down to the beaver pond, but right there the road is shaded, so I didn't risk going much farther. We turned back around, but did some turns on the forehand and haunches in the soft part of the road. She did really well with that. Again, really calm and responsive. Sometimes when I try doing that and she knows we've turned around towards home, she won't wait to be asked to move her body over in a turn and just barrels through the whole turn in one jerky motion. 

I was only in the saddle for 20 minutes, which gave us a whopping 1 extra mile to add to our yearly total 🤣 But I was happy to be riding at all. I think tomorrow and Saturday should be more of the same, so maybe we can eek out a couple of more miles before the year ends!


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## bsms

I could NEVER ground mount a horse this tall 🙂 - those are quite the legs!:


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## boatagor

@egrogan do you have a link to the stall guard? I think my run in is going to be about the same size as yours and I am having trouble finding something to fit that big of an opening. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right thing though.


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## egrogan

boatagor said:


> @egrogan do you have a link to the stall guard? I think my run in is going to be about the same size as yours and I am having trouble finding something to fit that big of an opening. Maybe I'm just not looking at the right thing though.


@boatagor: It's actually an aisle guard, which is a wider version of a stall guard:








Amazon.com: centaur Blackwatch Plaid Aisle Guard (470202BLK19ONE) : Pet Supplies


Buy centaur Blackwatch Plaid Aisle Guard (470202BLK19ONE): Stall & Muck Supplies - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases



www.amazon.com




Full disclosure, I haven't tried to rig it up yet so can't say for sure it's going to work. But I did a little rudimentary measuring before I bought it and think it should work. I figured if it was too long, I could crease it down the middle and sew it a bit shorter.


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## boatagor

I was thinking about metal gates but I feel like that would be more difficult. I should ask the husband to build me something maybe lol.


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## egrogan

I thought about gates too, but struggle with how they would be held open safely for the 99.9% of the time I want to have them open for the horses to go in and out as they please. If you come up with something, let me know!


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## egrogan

I definitely didn't expect to get to ride the last three days of the year, but that's exactly how it went. Things have swung into full-on mud season. It's soupy out there!
























Luckily there was no traffic to contend with yesterday, which was good, because the deep, greasy ruts will grab cars and fling them around, which is scary if you're on a narrow part of the road. We headed down to the neighbor's hay field, which we hadn't been around in a couple of weeks. I was a bit cautious, because I suspected the low parts of the field would be icy with all the melting snow running down, and they were in fact pretty icy. We probably only rode about halfway around the field perimeter before turning left and cutting up the field to the top of the hill. I was surprised that there was a lot of icy standing water pooled at the top of the hill as well. There's a funny marshy spot in the woods up there, and I guess it probably spills over into the field when it gets high. As usual, the views at the top were pretty.








We didn't see any turkeys on our ride, but we could see they had been that way recently too.








Today the forecast threatened rain off and on, so I went out early in hopes of a dry ride. We went a little farther down the road, past the hay field to the sugarhouse which is at the bottom corner of the field. There was still a little icy footing in the road beyond that point, so I didn't push it.








We turned right at the sugar house into another hay field that must get a lot of sun, because it was clear in a lot of places. I let Fizz graze around for a minute before we turned back to go home the same way we'd come.
















Since we were out earlier in the day, the footing was firmer and less sticky than it had been the previous day. So on the uphill part of the ride home, we actually were able to trot and canter most of the way.








Nothing crazy, since she has only been walking and I didn't want to get her all sweated up. It was only 1 mile back up the hill to home though, and she seemed like she enjoyed herself.








Hard to believe that brings us to the close of another year. A lot of really good things happened in our riding life this year. I feel good about the progress we made. We're ending the year at just over 582 miles, which is our highest mileage total yet. I may sit down and do a wrap up/look ahead post tomorrow. But I'm ending the year feeling grateful!

Happy New Year all! 🥂


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## Knave

Happy New Year!


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## egrogan

Same to you and your family @Knave!!


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## phantomhorse13

congrats on your mileage total. Happy New Year!


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## egrogan

The weird weather pattern has steadily kept melting ice, and I got out to the overlook and back the first two days of the year. Looking back through my tracker, I've already ridden more this January than in any previous January  

New Year's Day, the roads were very slick and muddy, which is tough footing to slog through. We just walked up there and back.








Still, it felt great to be in the saddle. We were both even a little sweaty when we got back! It's so weird to get up to the view and see almost no snow. Fizz is checking out the ski mountain in the distance. I've seen lots of complaints from vacationers on the local FB page that the skiing hasn't been very good. I'm sure it is disappointing to spend all that money and come all the way here, only to not really get to do what you were planning on.
















Yesterday, same ride, just slightly bluer skis and firmer roads. Actually, the roads were quite a bit firmer, and Fizz was very eager to move out. In the sections where we weren't tripping over deep ruts in the road, we trotted and cantered along. From reading Horse Brain, Human Brain, I am trying to get more connected to my body and what I'm doing. I know that I tense up when I'm getting ready to ask her to canter, and that includes shortening my reins. So since she was pretty forward thinking yesterday, I tried doing up and down transitions across all gaits on a long rein, and just "thinking" to ask for the gait, being really conscious of my body. And that actually worked really well. Especially for canter, and asking while we were on the buckle. She was surprised, but happy to go forward.








Couldn't ask for a better January ride, that's for sure!

Girls were all happy to get turned out in the new field both days as well. Their main field is better, but there's still significant ice out there. So some relief from that, plus the ability to paw through the thin snow for grass, made them really happy.






















Izzy really loves browsing through all the stemmy, weedy stuff. She seems particularly drawn to the dried goldenrod and milkweed. I threw a little hay out there for them and she took one sniff and turned her nose up, heading to the weeds. 








Unfortunately our streak of lucky weather ends today. The rest of the week looks like it will be a repeating cycle of ice-rain-snow. That's surely going to leave a mess. We'll see what that means for more riding later this month.


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## egrogan

I know I am a broken record at this point…but goodness, this weather is _wrong. _Today we’ve been enveloped in a thick, soupy mist. The pastures are nearly bare of snow. Most of the ice has basically melted (that’s a good thing!). We’re basically in a late-March mud season, except of course it’s early January. Theoretically we’re going to get a couple of inches of snow tomorrow, but it’s going to warm back up to high 30s/low 40s next week, so it will melt.

Poor horses have been stuck in blankets for 3 straight days now because the drizzle has not stopped. This is just not normal!!


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## Slave2Ponies

I hope this doesn't mean mud from now till April! I guess our atmospheric river must be heading East toward you now. Meanwhile, 10 more inches of warm rain coming to us (west coast) they say.


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## Knave

It’s been crazy like that here too!


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## egrogan

Started the morning with Fizz inducing mild panic. I woke up and looked out the window, and saw her laying down in a weird spot. It's weird for her to be laying down at all at that time of day (she's a mid-morning napper), and she was laying really close to the fence, facing the road, sitting on her belly with her head up. I hurried up through getting dressed and getting the chickens sorted for the morning, and headed down there. 

I figured by the time I got there, she'd be standing at the gate as she typically is. But my stomach went into knots when I saw she was still laying in that weird position. I called her name and she looked at me but stayed laying down. I worried she had messed up a leg and couldn't get up, or was in major colic pain and not willing to move. Finally, as I unlatched the gate, she stood up, shook, pooped, peed, and walked over. She didn't seem distressed at all. I went over to the spot where she had been laying, and she had melted a horsey outline in the fresh snow, so she was laying down long enough for that. There was also another fresh pile of poop right where she had been, and both piles looked very normal. She colicked last year, and the vet cleared a small impaction, but this poop didn't look overly dry or hard. She eagerly ate up all her breakfast (which includes some beet pulp) and dug into hay enthusiastically. And had gut sounds that were fine. 

So not sure what was going on. Maybe a little colicky but able to get some relief on her own? It did finally get a little colder and switch from rain to snow overnight, so who knows if all this unsettled weather finally caught up with her. I can see her in the pasture out my office window, so will keep an eye on her through the morning, and go check again at lunch unless something looks off before then.

Hopefully it's nothing to worry about. It's just scary when you find them doing something out of the ordinary!


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## egrogan

Just watched her take a big drink and poop again. Hopefully we're in good shape! 🤞 🤞


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## Knave

That is scary! I’m sorry!


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## lb27312

Scary @egrogan! I swear though that they think.... hmmm how can I get the human's blood pressure up and get them to run around like a crazy person.... Oh wait that's it I will lay somewhere where I never have before.... give a look of uhhhh... then when the human is looking crazed enough I'll feel sorry enough for them and go about business as normal! 

I used to think my two older ones would get the younger one to act like he wasn't feeling well occasionally and when he learned that earned him a thermometer up his bum he stopped! So now they take turns!... 

Seriously though sending good thoughts your way!


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## egrogan

Thanks all! She seems ok at this point. I’m hoping I was just overreacting!


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## egrogan

All good with Fizz this morning!! ❤


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## egrogan

It was a blustery day with seasonable temps, but the first day in almost a week without precipitation. So out we went for a power walk around the fields. The roads are icy again (the town hasn't done anything since the snow) so going to the overlook wasn't safe.

The footing around the fields was safe enough though. In some places, it's still very boggy and wet; with all the melting and warm temps, there are little streams where there aren't usually streams. In other spots, it was just good snow. And still other places, you could feel and hear that we were walking across a shelf of ice, but there was enough traction over the top that I wasn't too concerned.
































Fizz was a little spicy and very focused on whatever was off in the woods. We hadn't been around the fields in a couple of weeks, and it wasn't snowy last time, so I understand that she was re-acclimating. We did big loopy serpentines and figure 8s in the wide open spots, and she did make a halfhearted attempt to duck out in the direction of home, but nothing nasty. Because she was snorty though, I did get off and walk the last little stretch where we were on the road, since there was an icy crust as the late afternoon shade set in. All in all, it was a couple of miles. More good for the brain than the body I guess, but every January ride is a bonus!


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## Knave

That’s a really good way to look at it! I rode bareback for not long yesterday, because I figured it was safer crossing the ice. It’s just bonus, and not something to feel guilty about missing.


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## PoptartShop

Glad Fizz was okay, that is definitely a scare! She may have had like a super super super mild colic/gas pains or something but was able to work it out. The weather change can definitely do it. 
I haven't had a chance to ride in weeks, because of the weather/footing, it's almost like it rains every day anymore or the ground is still too mushy to really do much. Definitely can attribute to the spiciness LOL. Happy to see you got out, even if it was for a little while!


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