The Horse who Shares with Goats

Even if reluctantly.

Actually, the little doe kid that's turned away from Arabee in the bottom picture, or the one farthest left in the top picture, has formed a special bond with Arabee - she's nearly always sharing her hay. I'm not 100% sure there's more to their relationship than the food value Arabee's sharing, but still, it's sweet to see her having a pal.

Notice her stand-out mane? Over the summer she'd rubbed the middle section of it down to nothing, and I'd decided to clip the whole thing off so it would grow back in evenly. I kept putting it off, and finally did it a few days after Jack died. I have his tail hair and her mane hair, I'm thinking I will have it braided together into a belt perhaps. I think the white/gray tail hair and the bronze/chestnut mane hair will complement each other, not only in color, but as a remembrance of the 10 years the horses spent as companions. I'd love to find a horsehair artist somewhat locally if I can, but if not I have found someone online, I believe located in Michigan.

Fitness and Carriage Rides

(I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time now, but just never forced myself to sit down and type. It's about time I found something to write so I have a more cheery post at the top of my blog. )

I stopped taking time to ride Arabee in April because it's something I can't do with my children. I expect to get more time this winter to ride, but after a few weeks of not much physical activity I found a second-hand (but in great condition) double jogging stroller and started training to run a 5k race (3.1 miles).

My goal before the end of 2010 is to be able to run from my driveway, to the stop sign North of our house, then turn around and continue South to that stop sign, then back home, which is a hilly distance of about 3.5 miles. I don't push myself very much, really, but right now I can run for about 2 minutes at a time, then take a walking break to catch my breath, and so on. Eventually I'll get there.

But I'd entered a 5k Fun Run that supported the Ronald McDonald House back in June, held at the Indianapolis Canal - a beautiful paved course that follows the canal, pretty much completely flat. Which was a lot of fun, I probably ran about half the time, walked half the time, alternately, and learned that I had a lot of training to do before I could keep up a running pace the whole time. But I'll get there. It's good for me, I think, as someone who is aspiring to compete "someday" in endurance - if I'm asking my horse to compete, maybe I ought to have a clue what it's like to be physically in shape! And besides all that, I'm losing baby weight, too :-)

Well, the whole family made a mini-vacation out of this fun run. We traveled up to Indianapolis and checked into a hotel just across the street from the NCAA Hall of Champions (where the race was to begin and end) with a pool, had dinner in town, and walked around the Circle Center Mall a bit. My daughter was amazed by many of the sights of the big city, including but not limited to: man hole covers, newspaper stands, and elevators......we need to get her out more. haha!

Before we checked into the hotel we stopped by Yellow Rose Carriage's downtown stable. I had worked there for several summers as a carriage driver and it was such a great place to work. It was such a great feeling to stop in unannounced at their barn and see how everything was still in perfect condition. The horses' stalls were spotless, fans were running to keep them cool (it was unusually hot for June when we were there) the harness was all hung up neatly and clean, the carriages parked nicely, ready for their next shift. It just felt really good to stop by and see how very very well everything was being taken care of for the horses.

I wasn't able to talk to the manager/owner - she had taken a couple of the horses to the equine chiropractor. I know there's a good amount of controversy over horse-drawn carriages in some cities, but the horses at Yellow Rose have the good life. If you find yourself in downtown Indianapolis, take a ride with a Yellow Rose Carriage - it's a great company who treats their horses very very well.

We had a really nice ride through the city - it is so relaxing to sit back and take in the city surroundings at the relaxed speed of the draft horse's walk, and comforting to know that the horse pulling the vehicle has received the best of care. Keep up the good work, YRC!

A Good Kind of Busy

I had been going back and forth so much in my mind about whether to compete in our first LD this last weekend, until Thursday night when I finally decided not to try it! Talk about last minute! It was a very good decision.

I'd been getting pretty grumpy here lately because while I LOOOOVE my horse time, and really enjoy riding, it seemed as if I never saw my husband! I was anxious for him to get home from work, not necessarily so I could see him, but so I could run out the door and ride the horse. It seemed like I spent all of his free time on the back of my horse, or trimming feet, or cleaning tack, or detangling mane. We keep a busy schedule, between my husband having a fulltime off farm job that requires him to be reachable by phone 24/7, part time (evenings and weekends) on the farm where we have goats and beef cattle to feed and check on, tractors and equipment to maintain, manure to spread, calving going on, and then maintaining our house and vegetable gardens (we can tomatoes, green beans, freeze corn, dig our own potatoes, and so on - we try to raise enough to last us for the whole year), and then I haven't even yet mentioned our 2 year old and 5 month old children, who keep us very busy in the happiest way.

But, over this winter, with the colder temperatures nicely removing a lot of the outdoor chores, it was easy enough for me to take the time to ride 2 or 3 times each week. We still had enough time to do some things all together as a family. But now that it's warmed up and every spare minute is spent doing necessary things, it's clear that my riding habit has to change until our load lightens up. I'm okay with that. I'm not okay with me spending our only free time on my own with my horse, instead of with my family of 4 getting to enjoy seeing my children play with their daddy and me. To be honest, while I truly loved the time spent riding, during the first part of April I was really starting to crave more family time. My children are only going to be little once. For now during our busy spring planting season, Arabee just will not be the priority. Too many other things that are more important in the grand scheme of things.

And this last weekend, when Chicken Chase was happening, I was disappointed that I didn't get to ride, but on the other hand, I really didn't get the chance to think about it. I had some really fun time spent with my family and extended family. We planted some garden, checked fence and turned the cattle, goats, and horses out to pasture for the first time since Thanksgiving and worked outside with the beautiful sight of grazing animals in the background.

My conditioning Arabee is going to have to wait until our workload lightens up a bit, and I am completely fine with that. First things first.

King...err - Queens of the Road (?)

"trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let $0.50, no phone, no pool, no pets. . . I'm a man of means by no means King of the Road!"

All right, so Arabee and I aren't exactly ruling the road, but we sure have been spending a lot of time walking it. Also, I hope at least some of you are humming that song to yourselves while reading this post!

On Sunday I wanted to see how far 15 minutes of handwalking got us as we traveled south. I'll check the distance with the car maybe today if I remember, but we got past B & S's house to "the roost" and then past the north side of the field about 50 feet. I know this means almost nothing to anyone reading, but in another 5 minutes of walking we'd have probably reached the barn with the arena.

Which probably means that it wouldn't be too much of an advantage to trailer Arabee over there if I am able to ride in it again. By the time I'd get the truck started, warmed up, hitched to the trailer, put the tack in the trailer, loaded her up, drove down there, unloaded her, tacked up, got in the barn, rode, got out of the barn, untacked, loaded back up, drove back home, unloaded Arabee, unloaded the tack, parked the trailer, and unhitched the truck....I think it would take about the same amount of time to just walk down there! And I am out of shape enough it will do me a lot of good to do just that!

I am unclear though about the Rules of the road when it comes to walking your horse on it. Pedestrians are supposed to walk against traffic, with the right shoulder towards the road. Bicyclists are supposed to ride with traffic, with the left shoulder towards the road. My guess is that when I'm walking Arabee, we're Pedestrians, but if I were Riding her on the road, we'd ride WITH traffic, like a Bicyclist would? Does anyone know the law on this? I want to follow the rules in case an accident would happen we'd be in the right.

There isn't much traffic on the road, really. In a little over 1/2 hour of walking, only 4 vehicles came by. The trouble is that half of the time the vehicles were noisy trucks, which are a little more scary apparantly for Arabee than SUVs or cars. Judging from her current reaction - I could ride out a passing SUV or car if it slowed down, but it'd be a little iffy if a truck passed. Right now, I make sure we keep walking, and assuming traffic is clear, we turn around and face the vehicle as it approaches. She's fine as it approaches, but once it's behind her she gets a little fast/bouncy. It's good practice for her to be on the road while I'm on the ground.

Her hooves have been improving also since I've been walking her on the road - they look nice! It's so neat to watch the way they wear on their own.

I'll post more soon about the bitless headgear. I've ordered something, and it should ship tomorrow, but I'll wait until I try it out to post more about it.

Also, on Saturday (posting this since a lot of the point of the blog is to keep a log of what we do) I tacked Arabee up - saddle, breastcollar, and crupper, just to remind her that the crupper was okay. I wasn't dressed to ride, so I just walked her down to the house where Matt was unloading a wagonload of fire wood into our woodshed. He'd just finished up, and he fired up the old JD 50 tractor to put the wagon away. Rodeo time! So we walked (me) and bounced sideways (Arabee) along while he put the wagon away, then followed him back. She finally did calm down, but it took a little bit. It took longer than it should've, I think because she was feeling good and it was fun to snort and prance, and it was cold and brisk.

Anyway, I've been having fun gradually getting back in shape, and playing around with Arabee, even if I'm too wimpy to actually get on and ride in the cold right now! We'll get there, soon enough.

Birth Announcement

After much anticipation, our son Luke was born on 11/10/09, at 3:35am. He weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce, and was 21 inches long.

He is 2 weeks old today, and we're all getting used to being a family of 4, with 2 children under 2!

I am still way too sore to even THINK about riding a horse, but that will change with time!

I won't bore everyone with the details surrounding his birth here on this blog, but if you happen to be interested, you can read about it here.

Update

Haven't posted in a while again, so I thought I might mention that Arabee is going sound again (yay!) but the hole in the bottom of her sole has not yet closed up, so she still requires a bandage to keep the dirt out until it closes up. So she's still in her stall, and not too thrilled about it, either.

This beautiful fall weather has me just itching to ride! But, of course I won't be doing any of that for a while, anyway, between being very pregnant and Arabee's abscess.

I finally had to give up trimming hooves myself, and now Matt has taken over. So far, he's only trimmed Arabee, and Jack is going to get his hooves done tonight. All in all, he's done a great job, especially considering he barely knew how to pick out a horse's hooves, let alone handle them long enough to trim them! If he could just take the hoof off and trim it, he'd do great, as it is, Arabee is especially good at testing him with her hind feet, and let's face it - it's disconcerting for anyone, let alone a beginner, when a horse jerks their hind legs at you!

With all the stall rest, her walls were plenty long, and we did try using an electric grinder on the hoof. She handled the noise and vibration well, but there was just too much material to take off to use it for a whole trim. I may be able to take back over the trimming if I use the electric grinder about once/week - just a few passes over the hoof should keep things in pretty good shape at that frequency. It's just that bending over for any length of time is not my favorite thing to do, and our baby doesn't like it either judging by how often I get kicked in the ribs when I try!

Honest Scrap Award

This little blog of mine has (waaaay back in July!) been awarded the Honest Scrap Award three times! Go Diego Go, If the Trees had Ears, and Endurance Granny all nominated me! Thank you. I'm honored, but haven't been blogging an awful lot lately, so it's taken me a while to get around to posting this!

When you receive The Honest Scrap award you must stick to some rules:

Recognize your award presenter and link back to their blog in your post.

List 10 honest things about yourself that others might not know.

Present this award to 10 admirable bloggers and link to their blogs.

Leave a comment on your recipients' blogs to let them know to visit your post to retrieve their award.

Here are 10 honest scraps about me:

1. I am ridiculously excited about the birth of our son, who's estimated due date is November 1st. I cannot wait! Getting to meet him, to hold him, nurse him, bathe him, introduce him to our daughter, who will be 22 months old when he's born - I just can't wait.



2. I am a stay at home mom, and I absolutely love it. I think if you are a mommy, that is the most important job that absolutely needs first priority over everything else. No one else can impact the lives of your children more than the person who cares for them most of the time, which ideally, is their mother.



3. I really enjoy working in the kitchen. I've started baking our bread (have you had french toast from homemade bread???), we preserve a lot of foods that we grow in our own garden, I make my own refried beans - in my not-so-humble opinion, my family eats REALLY good, every time I fix dinner! And surprisingly, the more I cook, the easier it is to maintain a healthy weight - I guess less eating out is the key to that one?



4. When driving my car, every time I see a nice little ditch, or woods, or farm lane - I picture myself riding Arabee, right down to the gait we'd be riding in, the feel of her motion, the smell of the horse, the sound of the saddle and her hoofbeats.



5. It's a lot harder to come up with 10 things than I expected it would be!



6. I don't want to be a "sheeple." As in, it's important to me to make decisions based on what is best for the situation, rather than what everyone else is doing. It may seem easier to just go with the crowd, but that isn't always the case.



7. I'm firm in my faith, and that is what keeps things going. Without God, nothing is possible - but with God, all things are possible. There's so much more to being a Christian than just going to church on Sundays, and it took me a long time to realize how freeing it is to rely fully on Jesus for all things - I guess I'm still learning that.



8. I've always loved animals, and horses especially - but I never wanted to be a vet, because animals don't like vets! They just don't understand the fact that that guy with the needle is actually helping them.



9. Even before I ever met my husband, I always felt that farmers were the best people - hard working, honest, and trustworthy. I married into a farming family, and now I know that's true. Farmers were (and still are) the first to be good stewards of the land, have always wanted the best for the animals they raise, and even so, they catch a lot of slack for using the best management practices, from environmentalists and animal rights groups that simply don't understand the reasons certain practices are in place.



10. My family lives in a home that was built by my husband's great great grandmother, built in 1902/1908 (exact year not certain) that we renovated in 2005, the year we were married. I love our home's charm, and have been really enjoying building flower beds and learning about perennials to add to our landscaping. I am taking forever to hang things on our walls, because I want to be sure it is just right! Barring flood (unlikely, since we live on a big hill) or fire, or tornado, we plan to live here forever, so I guess I have plenty of time to decorate.

And, here is my list of blogs I will nominate for this award. I'm going to keep it to the blogs I make sure I read every post on, but I do follow quite a few additional blogs that are also great, and I check in on others that I don't officially "follow" so please don't feel slighted if your blog isn't included here. I get a lot out of every blog I read, but I enjoy the ones I am listing the most.

1. Generation Cedar - a Christian blog which has included several eye-opening and thought-provoking posts, things that make me question things I never really thought about before.


2. The Equestrian Vagabond - often breathtakingly beautiful horse photography!


3. Endurance Granny - I met Jacke at the 2008 AERC National Championship ride in Clarksville, and enjoy reading about her bitless, barefoot trail riding, and enjoy riding with her when we had the chance, and hope to do so again after this baby is born!


4. Karen's Musings and Endurance Ride Stuff - this blog is full of information pertaining to endurance riding, especially interesting for me since I choose to keep my horses barefoot.


5. The Barb Wire - Beautiful photography, amazing writing, and full of useful information that relates to the sport of endurance

Adventures WithOUT Arabee

Last spring, I wrote about how I was able to use an indoor arena a couple of times to ride in. That's the same place I go now once each week to volunteer for a therapeutic riding program called Reins to Recovery.

It has been a really great experience. We have one rider at a time in a 45 minute lesson, and as a volunteer I help by grooming and tacking up the horse before the lesson, either leading the horse or being a "sidewalker" - someone who walks next to the rider to help make sure they stay on, and then untacking and grooming after the lesson. It's a pretty simple job, but it has been so much fun, and very rewarding. It's great to get to see improvement in the rider, and to be a part of it.

This Sunday, August 23rd, they will be having a fundraising event in Nashville, IN, from 1-5pm. A hog roast, a silent auction, dancing, live music, pony rides, games - should be a fun time that will benefit a great cause. I have some tickets to sell if anyone is interested in attending!

Yes, I'm still here

I have a couple of posts planned, but first I have to find the time to do it! Been busy, and it's hard to come in and sit down and type when it's so nice out. All I want to take time for is to read the blogs I follow and then go do something!

But soon I'll write about how Jack's thrush treatment's been coming along. Mostly nicely.

I'll also write about some of my recent and ongoing "Adventures withOUT Arabee" but still involving horses.

Plus, I have received an award, and that requires it's own post!


But I have to first post about Arabee's mystery lameness, read about it here.

Teamwork and Partnership - On the Ground to Down the Trail

For the next several months, any work I do with Arabee is going to be done from the ground. At this point, I am not concerned about fitness. Baby's not due until the very end of October, maybe first part of November, and then I'll have another 6-8 weeks before I'll really be ready to get back in the saddle. So, we're looking at not starting riding again until mid-late December. If I make Chicken Chase 2010 my first LD completion goal (which should be sometime in April) I'll have enough time to get her ready for a slow LD even if I don't start riding again until January. I have a much better idea of what it will take to do this now than I did before. I have most of the equipment I need, saddle, pad, saddle pack, hoof boots, rump rug, sheets, etc - I should be good to go to jump back into training mode when the time comes.

I don't want to just sit around this summer though and wait. I'm still scouting out good deals on water tubs, rain gear, horse camping equipment, winter riding wear. I'm really working hard on keeping Arabee's feet perfectly trimmed. We're taking walks around the farm - I have several routes figured out: the hive, the river, to the red barn, down to the Polly field, the mound...each ranging from 1/2 mile to hopefully 2 miles (I have yet to actually measure distance). These are the places I'll be training at for the first couple of months until baby is old enough to be away from me. I won't haul out for any training rides until baby is at least 12 weeks old, and then I don't want to miss more than one feeding, so it's important I set up a good network of riding places around home. So far, these walks have been good for us, and have actually improved bonding somewhat, but I want to do more.

Arabee wears her rope halter, I clip on one of the leather split reins, tie a knot in the end and stick it in my waistband - I am hands-free and she sticks to my side without interference from me whatsoever if she behaves well (which 97% of the time she does). If I turn my shoulders towards her, she stops. If I turn my shoulders to face her, she backs. She keeps her head at my shoulder always, if she lags, I give her a tug on the rope, if she gets too far ahead, we stop abruptly and she has to back several steps. I want to be able to have the same "feel" under saddle - traveling along on a loose rein unless she needs correction, otherwise moving from my body and voice cues. I don't want to have to mess with her head unless she spooks, or decides she doesn't need to listen to my seat and legs.

I put the surcingle and long lines on her a couple of weeks ago, and we did some long-lining around the barn lot. She did well, was very responsive, framed up really fast and stayed that way most of the time. But, basically the whole time the lines were "in contact" - she never got a release unless she rooted down with her head to pull the lines loose - this is not behavior I want to reinforce! Since it's important to me to be able to ride with basically no rein contact, I think I will have to nix long-lining. We don't have a round pen or arena, and I really don't want to just chase her around the paddock since I'm not really concerned with improving fitness at this time. What I really want to do is some sort of ground exercise beyond just going on walks to improve our communication, improve the bond, improve our teamwork so that when I am ready to get back on and ride things go more smoothly.

I'm drawn to the idea of using TTEAM this summer. It pretty much sounds like a low-stress, hands-on way to work with my horse, that could have helpful meaning for vet checks later when the time comes. Has anyone out there used any TTEAM ideas/methods with their horses, or heard of someone else who has??

I'd love to hear your input on not only TTEAM, but if you know of other similar ideas that I could try out this summer, with the focus on building a better partnership with the horse. Thanks in advance!!

Today's Ride

Here are some pictures of the ride we had today. I decided that today will be my last ride for this pregnancy. Over the last week my belly has really "popped" out there big time, and I felt pretty off-balance. It's not often you see pictures of pregnant women riding horses, I thought they were funny!

I just wanted to get the pictures up...I'll write more tomorrow about what we actually did....and how Arabee was trotting off...kind of lame, actually. So bottom line is that it's a good thing for Arabee that tonight will be my last right until after Baby is born.

**Update**
Well, it was really no biggie what we did - I caught her, saddled up, and Matt and I were just going to go for a quiet walk down the road. Right away after I settled into the saddle I was just like, "Whoa! This big belly has got me off-balance!" and I already told Matt that this was going to have to be my last ride...I was just too much "off" to be well-balanced and safe much longer.

Arabee was super-super looky. So I told Matt I needed to trot her a bit to get her "fresh" off before we tried walking down the road again. There were calves now turned out in the pasture I'd used to ride in, so we had to keep to the barn lot driveway (gravel). After about 5 minutes of trotting, I started noticing her feeling "off" and then it was just obvious she was having problems when her head was gently bobbing (or was that just her mane flopping?.....it was pretty discreet, but it was still there) at the trot. Not good. So I asked Matt and his dad to tell me which leg it was. I suspected it was her injured RF, but they were having a REALLY hard time being able to tell me for sure. But that was the leg they settled on. Shoot!

It could've just been the gravel and she may have stepped wrong, since she was fine for the first 5 minutes or so. Since this was going to be our last ride though until probably December or January, I decided we'd go ahead and try the nice quiet walk down the road originally planned. She really wasn't any calmer, and was just really hooking her neck and blowing and looking all around and essentially "forgetting" all about me...so I hopped off and we called it quits.

Riding horses you really just have to forget about the risk of falling off and just RIDE.....but being as I am carrying a precious baby, my mind was pretty in-tune with the idea that falling off was not an option. So rather than ride all wishy-washy on a spooky horse, I felt that the best thing was to just hop off and play it safe. Kind of a disappointing way to "go out" for the year, with a spooky, inattentive mount and a lame horse, but that's the way it was!

I still have all kinds of plans for doing in-hand work with her for the rest of the summer, this won't be the last you hear from me by any means, but I just won't be riding! I'm actually pretty glad it working out this way, I should be able to allow her plenty of rest to allow that coronet band injury to grow out before I try serious riding again, she should become super-familiar with the local area I plan to handwalk her in this summer, and I should be able to perfect her barefoot trim, hopefully.

1st Saturday in May

Well, my two horses apparantly know what day it is today.

Usually when I open the gate to the pasture, they gallop out to the middle then give me a few strides of that big floating, tail over the back Arab trot, then stop to quite calmly eat grass after the initial burst of speed.

Not this morning!

They made not one, not two, but Three big, all-out galloping laps around the pasture, plus some of that pretty trotting, and plenty of snorting. Jack somehow managed to get out of the gate before Arabee, and I have never seen her run so fast, but she caught up with him, then lapped him.

I love getting to watch them move at liberty so freely like that! Such natural-born athletes, so talented and graceful!

Announcement

So I still plan on going to the Chicken Chase this coming weekend, although not as a competitor. I’ll be volunteering and learning as much as I can by “absorption.” It should be a good experience for me, and Arabee is well on the mend, although her wound is not closed well enough for me to allow her to get muddy, so still no riding at this point.

Even if Arabee’s cut would have healed before the ride (it's healing well, though) she would not have been fit enough to try to tackle the 25 miles with so much time off, so there won’t be any competing for me and Arabee this year, although I will continue to work with her. My goal is to start logging competitive miles in 2010.

Why the long wait??

I’m so excited to announce that my husband and I are expecting our second child around the end of October, first of November. While it can be safe to ride while pregnant, it is certainly risky to do so, so I won’t be doing any competing with Arabee, just pleasure riding until my belly gets too big to make it comfortable, and after Arabee's cut is healed.

Hope to jump back onto the conditioning trail by the first of January, 2010, and perhaps Chicken Chase 2010 will be our first competition. In the mean time, my family and I have lots of exciting things to be looking forward to!

Off Topic

I want to take the time to make everyone aware of an issue that is going on right now that jeapordizes a parent's right to parent their children. View my blog post here. Check out www.parentalrights.org

This is a serious issue that has big time implications, and as usual it has a nice sounding name. It's the "United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child." With a title like that, it actually sounds like a good thing, but what it really means is that if your child doesn't like some of the limits you as their parent place on them, then they could be separated from you. I go into further detail at the other blog post, so I ask you to PLEASE check it out, and be sure to visit www.parentalrights.org

If you are a parent, or care about the future of this country and our children, please take the time to check out the links I posted. Thanks!

Hello again!

Well - for me things took a bit of an unexpected turn last week! I started with getting sick on Thursday, and it just kept getting worse until Monday morning! I actually went to the doctor twice. Turned out to be nothing serious, and I started feeling better by Tuesday, and in fact today if I had the time to do it, I'd ride tonight. It was probably the flu or something, had coughing, body aches, headache, coughing, sore throat, extreme tiredness, even some trouble breathing, and did I say coughing?? So, I am very thankful to be past that now!

Needless to say, I have not ridden in over a week! I had been hoping to ride with Jacke and others at Clark State Forest last weekend, to do 15 miles of that trail. That didn't happen, and I didn't even SEE Arabee until Tuesday night. My husband is wonderful, he did all the chores, he did most of the baby care, he took such good care of me, as I was basically asleep or miserable the whole time.

So, I'm hoping to get on Friday afternoon for a quick ride before I hope to re-try the ride at Clark. I haven't yet decided whether to join up for the 15 mile loop, or the 10 mile loop. Arabee's had a lot of time off, but I think she could probably handle either one. She'd be tired after the 15 mile loop, but I doubt the 10 mile loop would trouble her hardly at all. I just have to decide which loop I'm up for, since it'll probably take a bit to get back in perfect shape after the last week. The 15 mile loop would be better for her conditioning. The 10 mile loop would be better for mine!




***** Below is a photo of my family and Arabee taken on Tuesday. It was such perfect weather that we had to take a walk. Cora's just 15 months old now, and is walking along side of us. She's not fast, not balanced, but she loves having the independance! We always go visit the horses first when she takes me on walks. :-)

Abetta Saddle Rigging Credit

Do you remember way back when I was talking about getting a new saddle that I posted a link to a photo of an Abetta saddle with english stirrups and centered rigging? It was really a great idea, I thought.

Well, the person who came up with the idea posted to the blog, and I'm happy to post a link to her blog here! She's got a haflinger, who from the photos on her blog, is a real cutie!

What am I getting myself into??

On the drive to and from Louisville, KY where this year's AERC Convention and Trade Show was held, I was able to talk to Jacke, and in talking with her and looking at the hills in the distance of Clark State Forest off of I-65, I've come to the realization that I have no idea what I am getting into with this whole endurance thing!!

I mean, it doesn't sound too bad, to ride a horse for a maximum of 6 hours including an hour long hold covering 25 miles of varying terrain. With a good base of conditioning, that shouldn't be impossible to tackle.

Except the fact that the only other trail ride I've been on was in 2002 when I discovered that Arabee is afraid of maps, and I ended up in the dirt with a compression fracture in my spine. I was able to get back on and ride to the trailer, it was a long time ago, it doesn't bother me anymore, but it happened. This is an inherently risky activity, and I have a 14 month old daughter to think about.

Then there's the fact that I have not a clue how to take a horse's pulse, but I can learn. Thanks for the stethoscope, Jacke!!!

And we still haven't mentioned how I am pretty much afraid of heights - to the point of even when hiking on trails I stay very close to the hill side when there is a steep drop off and try hard not to think about it - and I have a strong suspicion there will be several single-track trails with steep drop offs.......yikes!

I'm working on collecting my endurance tack ensemble. This has been an interesting time where I've been challenged to learn more about saddle fit, hoof care, leather vs. synthetic, sizing, and most of all a time when I've been very creative on how to save money when most of the items needed are pricey.

Am I in over my head??? Probably a little. Maybe a lot. But I think I can do it.

I have a mentally and physically sound Arabian mare who knows me, and whom I am getting to know better and better. We're putting in the basic training, adding on miles, and getting conditioned little by little.

I have a very supportive husband who loves me and who wants me to be able to do this - he can see how much fun I have been having. He also wants me to be safe, and isn't quite sure that riding horses is a good way to keep me safe - but beyond that he knows I am loving every minute of it, and for now that is good enough for him.

I have a great location. Plenty of area to ride in, access to rivers, hills, flat places to build wind, good pasture. My farm is about 1.5 hour trailer drive from Brown County, Versailles, and Clark State Forest - I have PLENTY of places to train, just got to find someone to ride with me close to my level - I am as BEGINNER as they come, and a hesitant, cautious beginner at that.

I've found so far that the people in this sport seem to be genuinely interested in seeing others succeed at endurance also. Sure, they want to win too, but it seems there are so many definitions of "winning" at endurance that people aren't afraid to help you out. This is great!



So, I don't want to be all "gloom and doom, I can't do this" - because I think I can, I have a lot of good things going for me that say I can succeed at this. On the other hand, I have got to make sure I don't jump into the deep end before I know how to swim, so to speak. I think it would be very easy to get in over my head with endurance, so I have got to remember to take things slow and easy. 2009 will be my first season riding endurance, I don't want it to be my last - I want to make sure I get a good start and don't scare myself or ruin my mare. I'll quote someone I forget who said it: "The slow way is the fast way"

I think they might be right.

Change of Plans!

I had posted up my planned riding schedule for this week. So far it's not going as planned!

I was going to go to the arena and ride again on Sunday, but I couldn't justify it!! Our house had become somewhat of a war zone (it happens quickly with a toddler and two not-so-neat adults) and I hadn't kept up with laundry and I hadn't made any plans for supper that night and we had to be in town at 6:30 for a bible study (small group, for young adults - it is AWESOME to have bible study in a group with people your own age!!).

Anyway, one of the "rules" I had set for myself was that if the house was clean enough that I wouldn't be embarrased to have unexpected guests and if I had a good idea of what we were having for supper, then I would ride. Well, I wasn't at that point, and Matt was encouraging me to ride anyway, and he would work on the house a little, but I would have felt way too guilty, so we had a fun afternoon working together in the house and playing with Cora.

So Matt goes to do chores, feeding the horses and our meat goats and the LGDs, and had mostly finished, and had gone back to give the goats mineral, when he climbed over the gate and twisted his ankle VERY BADLY. He had called me saying he thought he broke it and to come get him - so it was bad!

We went to the dr. yesterday and they x-rayed it but it wasn't broken thankfully, but unfortunately they didn't do anything really for him - gave him some exercises. Yesterday was a very busy day for me between helping Matt move around, going to the doctor, caring for Cora 100% myself since he could hardly walk (hobble around...), let alone carry her, and we also had our first goat babies of the year (yay!) but it was going to be a cold night so they had to come in the barn and having to make sure they were nursing and up and okay.

So I didn't ride Sunday. Monday was scheduled off, and while I had thoughts of trying to ride there was no way - I was wore out yesterday. I will try to ride tonight, but it won't be in the arena since the therapeutic riding program uses it Monday thru Wednesday.

Arabee has been extra welcoming (whinnying/nickering more than usual) when she sees me from the paddock - I can tell she wants to go out and work with me, which is great! Seems like with her the more I work with her, the more she wants to.

My thought right now is to ride in the pasture/woods across the road, close the gate, and do some walking and trotting and cross the little creek. If it feels right I might canter, based on her ANGELIC performance Friday night. I had such a GREAT time riding on Friday, I couldn't stop grinning about it all weekend! I am such a horse geek!


**also, yesterday I went to Jo-ann Fabrics (Presidents Day sale and good coupons!) and got enough stuff for 3 projects - Re-cover the antique rocking chair from his grandparents, a Rump Rug for Arabee, and webbing to finish up that throw-blanket-into-a-cooler-sheet I was talking about Friday. All this for less than $22!! I would have been willing to spend that much on the rocking chair alone, so I got some really great deals! I'll take pictures along the way, and if the Rump Rug and Sheet turn out, I'll post up tutorials.

What a fun afternoon's ride!

Well.....

I have found a local riding partner! I'm not sure what Arabee thinks of the steed (stud?) :-) But it sure seemed to ease her and we were able to go farther and in places I would NOT have felt comfortable riding alone!

Yeah.....he's pictured below - the one in the black ball cap! The little girl in the gray hat w/ teal coat carried on his back is just so enamored with the horse that she wouldn't look at the camera (she loves getting her picture taken). Technically, the both of them together have 4 legs....no tail though :-)




With Matt carrying Cora on foot, we walked for 30 minutes through the woods on some farm trails, Arabee stuck right to his side more or less. It wasn't like he was leading her, but she didn't want to let him get too far away!

This next picture shows Arabee carefully negotiating through a stumpy/rooty area.

Proof that she'll drink out of puddles:

And this next picture shows a creek that had a still pool to Arabee's left, and ran off quite swiftly on towards her right. I was glad I got off to lead her through the first time - she jumped it! But after she got used to it she walked through very well under saddle a couple times. We walked up and down a steep hill, then headed back to the barn lot.

When we got to the gate (shown behind the picture of her drinking) she was blowing air pretty hard. Matt wasn't impressed - he thought he was carrying more weight that she was, but if you do the math he actually had it easier as weight carrying percentage of body weight, plus he didn't have to wear a saddle!

So we took it easy for about a minute of flat walking, then I asked Arabee to trot out for a couple of laps in the barn lot. This would have been close to 1/2 mile of trotting. She tried her headshaking bit at the place where often I have her slow to a walk in front of our garage (usually when Matt's working out there I don't know what noises to expect coming from there!) but I had her trot on and she seemed very surprised at this, but she wasn't in the least bit "off". So we trotted on BEAUTIFULLY, and eventually I walked her on a loose rein for probably 10-15 minutes to get her breathing back to normal. It was a really fun ride. Matt had fun too, he said, and Cora always likes being outside and going for walks. What fun family time!

The best part is my NON-HORSEY husband said next time he'll ride, and I can walk!! Maybe there's hope yet that there will be a "husband" horse in our future??? :-)

What's the best place to get a stethoscope? It would be good probably to learn how to take her pulse and keep track of this.

New Saddle, and other stuff

So this is bound to be a long one......sorry. It's just that so many things have happened this weekend that I want to be thorough!

1) My new saddle came! After MUCH deliberation and research and prayer, we decided to purchase a used Thorowgood Broadback saddle. I happened to find one in the seat size I need. It is a dressage saddle.

It was EXHILARATING to drive home on Friday and find the big cardboard box on the porch. I couldn't get in the house fast enough, and if I cared, I would've been pretty embarrassed for doing the happy dance in front of my husband and daughter!! :-)

I tried it out, and Arabee seems to love it. I really am happy with the way it positions me as well. So far, so good! It is a lot easier to position the saddle properly, and it seems like the breastcollar is in a better position. I haven't ridden in it with the crupper - I will see how it goes without.

2) I've ridden in the Renegade's two different times now. Friday was great, today not so much.... I must not have gotten them on just right, they were bothering Arabee today. I need to go back and re-read the fitting portion of their site. At first I was VERY worried that the saddle was bothering her, as she kept lowering and stretching her neck out and down, and occassionally tossing her head at a trot. She also wasn't walking out very well. Friday I didn't have these problems at all.

I feel I can safely eliminate the problem beign in the saddle though (huge sigh of relief!!), because after the ride I took the saddle off and lunged her a little to see what I could find, and she was doing the same weird head/neck thing and not wanting to move forward very well. So, to check out the Renegade site again, here I go...

3) I just want to say - if you find yourself working with a hoof knife....PLEASE wear LEATHER gloves! Even if you are very careful, it is amazing how fast that blade can slice through a canvas glove and right into the side of your thumb and even into your thumbnail a bit. Now, while a hoof knife is sharp enough to cut through even leather (duh....it is designed for trimming hooves and frogs....) my husband and I decided a pair of leather gloves would have slowed the knife down significantly more than the pair I was wearing..... I'll need to double check on when was the last tetanus shot I had. What a drag! Why is it that little stuff like this hurts so much!?

4) On a good, "spring is coming" note - Arabee is starting to lose some of her winter coat! Hooray for spring and warmer weather ahead!