Mister

I'm not sure that I can do Mister justice with a bunch of words. I just feel like I need to do this as part of saying good bye to him.

We made the decision to have Mister put down the week before Christmas. He'd been having issues with chronic abscesses and was not a happy camper. After a visit to the vet and xrays, it was clear that he would never be 100% sound again. In addition, his outlook was "very grim" as far as even being comfortable and pain free. As much as it was hard to hear the vet tell me that, it was the concrete answers we needed to make our decision. He was only 5 years old, which meant he had a lot of years ahead of him to be in pain. Euthanasia seemed like the kindest thing to do for him.

So good bye Buddy. Rest in peace.

Boot Camp, Shows and Mister

Midori and I have been working hard continuing with boot camp. Since the last post I have tried a few new things, one of them being switching bits to what I affectionately call my Miracle Bit. It's a gag bit and it's fabulous! Midori is almost soft in it! I'm not playing tug-o-war with her any more! She is way better and any time she thinks about hanging on the bit I can just bump her right off of it, though it does bother me wondering what made her so hard in the first place. I've always thought I had pretty soft/light hands. Regardless, it makes the lead changes so much easier! And of course as soon as we got her head under control other issues that were hindering our progress popped right out, which made it easier to understand why we were having so much trouble. Amazing how that works! Now that I know about those issues, we have been working on them and things are really coming along. Our lead changes still aren't pretty but atleast left to right they are consistant. Right to left, they are still a challenge, but she'll atleast DO them and even in a mostly collected manner (for us anyways).


So our lead changes are getting better. Still have a loooooong ways to go, but we are getting them. YAY! Our spins are looking more like very slow motion spins instead of watching and going, WTF are you trying to do?!? lol Our stops come and go, but I'm not sure that she'll ever slide. Our rating and circles are decent, we don't work on those much. She's spent the last 5 years rating and running in circles in drill, so that's not a concern for us at this point.

It's very exciting to feel that progress is being made! Unfortunately due to illnesses and scheduling conflicts we have ended up with a couple week break in lessons and riding for the most part. The ponies have all been a bit under the weather for the last week or so, recovering from a day or two of major runs, and with 2-3 shows coming up this month, I wanted to make sure they got a break and were 100% all better before we worked them too hard. Midori especially dropped a bunch of weight in a matter of days, but never got dehydrated or ran a fever and didn't look anything more then unhappy about her circumstances. I got them on Fasttrack and electrolytes to help their guts and make sure they didn't get dehydrated, but other then that I couldn't find much else that I could do for them. Sugar and Mister seem to have gotten over it just fine, but Midori is still not 100%. She was the only one that was ridden hard as she was getting sick and I wonder how much that has to do with it. I'm hoping she gets back to 100% this week! We've got our next show this coming weekend and I need to get a couple rides on her before then! We should still be able to take it pretty easy though, it's just one reining pattern and I don't think a lack of warm up time will be what hurts us. lol

There are two of the winter series shows this month and then we skip December. There is also another show at the arena that has a schooling reining pattern that we are thinking about going to. Practice is always good! They also have a trail class, which I really like so I might have to do that one too. Also happening this coming weekend is the awards/year end banquet for our cutting club. I'm looking forward to finding out if I get a buckle for my second place finish in that series!

In other news, I've gotten a few rides on Mister. We started with a new shoer who is aggressively correcting his club foot. The previous shoer was simply maintaining it and Mister had been pretty much chronically lame with abscess after abscess for most of the past 6-8 months. He's been mostly sound with this new shoer. Very exciting! From so much time off and so many issues though his shoulder was extremely atrophied so we spent a lot of time ponying him around or hand walking and light lunging to build his muscle back up. Other then some soreness, he's been just fine and in the last month or so I decided he looked ready to carry my butt around a bit. I've gotten 3 rides on him, even getting up to loping both directions. He is still, of course, very green, but seems much more confident packing a person around then he did last time I was riding him. He has been such a good boy! Last time I was on him the arena was pretty busy so I didn't want to push him with loping. He took everything going on around him in stride and stayed focused on what I was asking him to do, but instead of loping I decided to work on moving off my legs: sidepassing and pivoting on his haunches and forehand. He's very sticky with moving his shoulders or hips, though he seems to understand moving off my legs while I'm riding. He'll try to shape away from my leg or move over the direction I ask while he's going forward. It was a completely new concept for him when standing still, but after he got those wheels turning, he seemed to pick it up pretty quickly, I was pleased. I'm hoping to get some more time on him soon, but he was sick too and does still have some issues with lameness, so I don't want to push him too hard.

We had a wonderful day outside yesterday enjoying the sunshine and possibly the last of the nice weather. I only had one long sleeve thermal shirt on with my puffy vest! The ponies enjoyed some attention and a little TLC. I'm sure they appreciated having clean butts and tails, even though the water was cold. :) We got another paddock up for the boyfriends sister's horse that we are boarding and that freed up the arena-to-be area and got us motivated to have more sand brought in so we can atleast get the round pen up with some good footing. It would be really nice to have that available for turn out this winter and so that we have some where to atleast get the ponies some exercise on nice days, even if it's not great for getting any real work done with them.

Lots of work to be done, as always. And of course not enough hours in the day, but we'll get there! Atleast there is progress being made on many different fronts!

Hope you all are enjoying fall!

Sunday Stills Challenge - Self Portrait

This week's Sunday Stills Challenge is Self Portrait. I'm still a little up in the air about this one since I have not posted any real pics of myself on this blog yet. There are a couple pics that show my reflection, but that is it. It's kind of nice to maintain a certain amount of anonymity. But at the same time, it might be fun to open those flood gates. There are certainly plenty of pictures that I have thought about posting but didn't because there was someone in them.

On a side note: does that make me a bad mom since I consider my animals my children and freely post pictures of them every where?!?

Anyways, once I read what the challenge was this week the first thing I did was google "self portrait". I wanted to find a definition of it to see what I could do to still take the challenge, but not put a head shot up. Self portrait is defined as a picture of oneself taken by oneself. Well, that sounds like something I can work with. The only request in the challenge was that there wasn't a camera in front of your face and no pics from the archives. I guess it does imply that it should be a head shot, but it doesn't say that it needs to be a full on face shot.

Doing some more googling on self portrait tips, there were hints and tips for taking them, ways to make them interesting and then I found this interesting webpage. In reading thru it, I found the words I was looking for..."A self-portrait doesn't have to be of your face..." Yes! My get out of jail free card! :-)

So this week I've tried to get some interesting self portraits. I've tried some different ideas and this is what I've come up with...

I tried the shadow across the ground. Cheyanne was helping me take pictures so that lump by my leg is her.

Then I tried the barn wall.

Again, Cheyanne had to help me.

Then Mister decided to join the party too.

Then I convinced Midori to stop playing with the lens cap long enough to snap a pic...yep, that's me with the totally cheesy grin reflected in Midori's eye ball.

Then I tried doing just part of my face, zoomed in on my eye. I like it that you can see the trees and sun reflected in my eye on this one.

These were actually my first attempts at the self portrait when I was still debating whether or not to post an actual picture of myself. I decided eh, what the heck...

I just balanced the camera on the back of the couch, turned all the lights off in the house and used the flash and macro setting. The portrait setting wouldn't focus so close. Then I used the 2 second delay so I could get both my arms in the picture and voila!

There were plenty of pictures of me smiling, but for some reason I liked these serious ones better. No clue why.

So there we have it. I opened those flood gates. Not sure if I will continue to post pictures of me or not, but those are my self portraits.

Ride #3

I guess I'm making this blog my riding journal also. It's been helpful just with the few times I've written about my rides to go back and read those posts again. It reminds me of different things that I've dealt with and how other rides have gone. It's amazing how fast you can forget about something after it's fixed. Plus it's always nice to look back and see how far you've come.

So on that note, I got ride number three on Mister the other night. I decided to ride at home in the round pen for a change of scenery, because the weather was good and because I didn't want riding to take up the entire evening, like it does when we haul out to the indoor arena to ride.

I knew he was going to be feeling good so I saddled him up and lunged him for a while before I got on. While I was doing that the boyfriend decided that him and his buddy that is staying with us this week were going to get on the girls and ride around a bit also. Of course every time they rode by and then left again Mister would throw a fit. All of our horses are pretty herd bound, which is incredibly annoying sometimes. So I lunged and lunged and lunged Mister, mostly because I was a little afraid to get on him in case he decided to throw a fit while I was mounted.

I did get on him eventually and the guys stayed mostly within eye sight of us so he didn't go completely nuts. They were having fun riding around the outside of the round pen while I worked inside. Considering everything that was going on I was very pleased with my ride. I was able to keep Mister's attention and I could tell that we're making some major progress in the head tossing and giving to the bit thing. That made me really happy! He is still tossing his head and trying to yank me out of the saddle, but he would really give in between the tossing and yanking. Very exciting! I love it when I can feel progress like that!

We did lots of walk-trot, reverses, circles, working on steering, some stopping and backing. He was doing pretty good. I debated just stopping there but forced myself to suck it up and just lope him. It wasn't as much of a battle to get him into the lope as it was the last ride, which is also exciting. He did have some trouble keeping the gait and kept breaking, but it wasn't too bad. At one point I was really riding, trying to push him with my seat and keep some leg on him to keep him in gait and I guess he decided he wasn't a fan of that because he bucked. It wasn't a horrible buck and I just disciplined and got back to loping. After that I decided I would get one more full lap in a nice controlled lope, no bucking, no breaking and that would be it for the day. It took a few tries, but eventually we got it, he stopped nicely when I asked and I got off and loosened his cinch. Yay for another good ride on the butt head and making progress! I was pleased.

It was also interesting watching an inexperienced rider on Midori. My little pony is just so cute! I was so wishing I had my camera with me. She is a great babysitter, but still plenty spicy for me. I just love her. I could see just how responsive she really is, even though newbie rider had no idea that he was even asking for things. I also got to witness her little skitter-jump-buck thing she does from the ground. I always wondered what it actually looked like, I've only ever ridden it. She did it when Sugar went back to the barn, out of sight, and whinnied just as the newbie rider asked Midori to trot a bit. Love the damn herd bound horses. It was like a slow motion wreck that I totally saw coming, but was helpless to stop. Newbie rider did really good though. He stuck the skitter-jump-buck thing and pulled the emergency brake I had told him about earlier and all was well. He survived and even continued riding for a little bit after that, though I did suggest riding inside the round pen since I was done.

All in all it was a fun, productive and encouraging night with the ponies.

Number Two!

I feel the need to gloat a little bit. I'm sure it'll come back to bite me in the arse eventually, but right now I'm really excited because I got ride number two on Mister last night!

Obviously it isn't his second ride ever and it's not even my second ride on him ever, but since I want to more or less re-start him and see what happens, I'm counting it as ride number two.

It was a really great ride. Nothing particularly special, but I feel like it was a bit of a break thru for us. I'm feeling more confident on him and I think he is respecting me a bit more. I felt like he was really trying to learn last night. He was giving to the bit more, though he's still a massive head tosser with the tiniest bit of pressure, and he was starting to bend around my leg a little bit. It seemed like he was almost understanding me trying to pick up his shoulder too, though that could just be my imagination.

He was feeling pretty good yesterday (translation: he was being a total nut) so I lunged for quite a while before I got on and he still did a couple little cow kicks, but instead of having heart failure and totally freezing up when he did that I just disciplined him and got on with the ride. I even loped him after the cow kicks. Wohoo!

I'm still debating whether Mister is really, super smart or really dumb and very lucky. I really can't tell and I'm not sure which one to hope for either. He sure is a pain in the rear, but he's growing on me. I think I kinda like him.

Naked ponies frolicking

Since it was so sunny and pretty out on Sunday we decided to turn the ponies out naked for a bit. Boy did they have fun!

Midori went out first. This is her "I'm an Arab" look.

This is her "Yeehaw, I'm free!" run.

This is her half assed "Yeehaw, I'm free" buck. I don't mind that she's not a great bucker. :-)

This is her "wohoo, MUD" roll. Check out that lip! Must be a good spot.

Then out came Sugar. This is her going, "sha, FINALLY! I'm outta here!"

And literally, about 3 strides later, she just dropped and rolled. And then got up, switched sides and rolled again.

Then she jumped up and took off towards Midori. I think she was trying to buck in this pic. She can't buck to save her life. Usually about all she accomplishes is a couple really loud farts. It's hilarious!

And a couple of laps later, she's still going strong.

I think they had a blast out there. They came out sweaty, muddy gross messes, but it was worth it to watch them play. And I had a ton of fun with the continuous shoot mode on my camera!

Mister did not have quite as much fun. He isn't as insanely respectful of our dinky fence as the girls are (he likes to walk right under it) so he got turned out in the round pen by himself. Poor guy. He didn't romp around too much. In fact, I don't think I saw him get into more then a nice jog.

He was a dirty, muddy mess by the end of the day though so atleast he got a couple good rolls in!

I did it!

I just have to take a moment to pat myself on the back. Drum roll please....I loped Mister last night! Wohoo!



I know. It's a small feat. One that I accomplish regulary on a number of other horses. But Mister is special. You see, he's been known to buck. The first time he bucked the boyfriend off, was the first time he asked him to lope. He bucked regularly on the trainer at the lope. He's tried bucking once with me a year and a half ago, also at the lope. He's had 9 months off and this was really only my second ride on him. And when I say buck, I don't mean the little crow hops or a nice little buck. I mean, bit in teeth, head between his legs, full on bronc bucking. This guy is an athletic SOB and he can buck. Luckily the one time he tried with me, I felt it coming and was able to get him pulled around before he could get more then half a jump into it. Last night, he was an angel. Other then trying to spiral in to visit his buddies standing in the center and he did swish his tail once or twice while I was asking for the lope, but that was it. He was great! It was a huge deal for me. Way bigger then it should have been. I was ecstatic! And shaking like a leaf when I was finished. Not from excitement.



Now I'm just hoping he keeps doing as well as he did last night! Fingers crossed. And toes. And anything else I can cross!

Finally!

Well, I finally got some time (translation: I grew some kajones) tonight and got my butt on Mister. He was a whole lot less concerned about the whole thing then I was.

I decided that since it's been almost 8 months since he was last ridden that I would treat him as I would any other greenie and take everything slow and easy and just, basically, start over with him. I know he's had plenty of saddle time in the past, but I also know that he's been a bucker and had some issues. I really believe he's a good horse, but I think he gets frustrated easily. He's never tried to be horrible with me so I am hoping that continues. Really, really hoping.

I got him out, planning to just do some ground work with the saddle on him and see where his head was at. He is so fat and out of shape that he was puffing after just a couple laps trotting around the round pen, the bum. I got him on a long lead and did some more intensive ground work, so he was getting more exercise then I was trying to keep him going. He was so good. He's so soft and responsive and level headed when he understands what you're asking. I think he is a horse that you just have to be patient with and take baby steps and just not push him too fast. The boyfriend came out and worked with him a bit so I could observe and Mister was trying to comply, but he started fighting him after a bit. The BF was asking a lot of him rather quickly and was really getting after him for not doing it, which is usually fine, that's the way I work with Midori, but it just really didn't seem to work too well with Mister. Atleast not right now, when he is still very green and trying to figure things out. They went a couple rounds fighting each other and I told him to just get a good turn out of him and quit. I wanted him back. He fought me a little bit, but I spoke softly to him and encouraged him forward and he quickly figured out what I wanted and we got back in our groove. It was fascinating to watch that though. I'm pretty sure he really doesn't click with the boyfriend.

Anywho, we did some ground work and I smacked the saddle all over and flapped the stirrups and made sure he wasn't going to pull anything. He hardly even flinched. So I stepped up in the stirrup. Did the whole, greenie put some weight in the stirrup, see if he's going to explode thing. Again, hardly even flinched. So I got on. The BF walked us around for a bit and I patted and rubbed him all over. He could not have cared less. So it was a successful "first ride". I am happy with him. He even wanted to move off my legs when I tested that out. Wohoo! Hopefully things continue to go that well with him. Fingers crossed!

Hopefully the weather holds so I can continue to get some time on him. I know he'll be a solid horse very quickly, he just needs time. I'm excited to see how he comes along with me.

Mister

Next up - Mister

Well, really his barn name is Mister Horse. I couldn't let my boyfriend name him Horse so I stuck Mister on there and that's what I call him. He's a registered 4 year old Quarter Horse gelding. We picked him up at an auction and he is our project horse that all too frequently gets ignored. Funny story about him...my BF has always insisted that he isn't a fan of bays. If you are going to have a bay, then it just looks silly if they have white on their face. They have to be solid bay. I swear we had that discussion on the long drive to the auction. So when he called to tell me he had purchased a horse and that I was going to laugh at him when I saw the horse I was intrigued. But first, the story of the auction and why he had to call me to tell me he had purchased a horse...

We got down there Friday evening for the 3 day sale. We walked thru the pens and checked out the horses that were there, made notes on ones not to bid on for various reasons and ones that we were interested in to. We watched some of the horses go thru the sale and took notes. We wanted to find out what sellers had reputations, good or bad, and anything else that could help ensure we get a good horse, not something doped up and crazy or lame.

Being at an auction went against everything I believe in when horse shopping! I admit that it is nice to see that many horses in one place and get it all over with, but I'm one that likes to take my time shopping, ask lots of questions, go out atleast a couple times, take the horse off the property, possibly to a drill practice or on a trail ride and get a good feel for the horse, the owner, the care and training it's had, everything I can. We did go down there with the attitude that we didn't HAVE to buy anything. But we had a 3 horse trailer with us. And it was an auction. Seriously, we were that naive. Besides that, this was to be the BF's horse so I was mostly just there for moral support and to help sort thru the hundreds of horses.

So after watching the Friday evening horses go thru we headed back to the hotel to formulate a game plan for the next day. We were going to go thru the book, mark the horses that interested us so that we could check them out in the pens before hand and then only bid on the horses that we had approved. Saturday morning we did just that. Except as the morning wore on I started to not feel so hot. I had to get out of the arena and get some fresh air. Turns out I had a nice little flu bug. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping in the backseat of the truck, getting up only to go throw up behind the trailer or run to the portapotty. Ugh! I did make it in to check on the BF a couple times, see how he was doing, but I never lasted long in there. He had bid on a couple horses, but we had also set top dollars that we were willing to pay for them and they had all gone over. Finally around 5 pm I was totally sick of sleeping in the truck and felt like the major barfing fits had passed so I went in to see how BF was doing and told him I was going to head back to the hotel. He was going to stay for a while longer, he had a couple more horses going thru that he was interested in, so I was just going to come back later and get him. Well, about 8:30 I got the call. He had bought a horse and boy was I going to laugh when I saw him. He knew I'd like him. So I headed out to pick him up and check out this horse. It was really dark when I got there so I couldn't see the horse all that well, but I could definately see that he was bay and had a nice little blaze and the same white sock that Midori has. I did laugh at him. It has since become a joke that we can't buy a horse unless it has that little white sock. Upon closer inspection in the light on Sunday, we realized that he had a pretty gnarly club foot and a rather interesting shoe job, but other then that looked good. It also turns out that BF hadn't actually been able to check him out in the pens before he came thru the sale ring. He was flashy and did a nice stop and spin and lope so BF was sold. Oh well, a club foot isn't the end of the world, plus there was plenty of room to put a little time and tlc on this guy and turn him around if we choose. We weren't too worried about it.

When we brought Mister home, I was still boarding at the small barn that was just up the street from where we were living at the time. He would haul him up there and we would ride together a couple times a week. He was a nice enough horse, but we soon found out that he's a bit of a bucker. Not just little crow hoppy half assed bucks either. When I say he's a bucker I mean he could put the stock at rodeos to shame if he's feeling good. The BF first figured this out when he tried riding him at home on one of his days off. He got him tacked up and went to get on and barely had his leg over him when he spun around and took off bucking up the whole 10 acre property, dumping BF in a nice muddy puddle on his way. Oh man. The second time, we were riding at the barn. I was exercising one of the barn owners horses and heard a big commotion behind me. I looked back and he was loping, but it was not a very coordinated lope and with all the commotion the horse I was on started getting skittery. By the time I got her under control and turned around to see what was going on, BF was on the ground and Mister was running around the other side of the arena. Luckily BF bounces quite nicely and wasn't hurt. He got back on and Mister was fine the rest of the ride. He is also the most rock solid trail horse I've ever seen and a total dream on the ground. We figured out that it seemed like he just didn't quite understand how to lope period, let alone while packing some weight. We did lots of ground work with him, getting him comfortable moving in a circle and loping. I rode him when I had time and he was always good for me. He only thought about bucking on me once and he got as far as pretend spooking, ducking around the corner and going to drop his head before I got him pulled around. He was great for me other then that. Everything was going great until we got rid of the boarders in our pasture so I could bring Midori home, then I got busy with drill season, BF broke his leg and I got my Arab back from a lease and put her up for sale, on top of doing all the house and yard work and keeping my poor couch-bound BF company and helping him. Poor Mister got ignored. Then we got in to winter and poor Mister got ignored some more. Finally we decided that since I was not going to let BF back on him because his leg was still recovering and I just did not have time to ride him and Midori, we would put him in training, see if we could do something about the bucking. We found a trainer close by that sounded like he could handle it and get some good time on him, had a good reputation in my horsey circle of people and a decent place with healthy, happy looking horses and off he went. During this time, we had also decided that we wanted to start seriously looking into buying a house and since I had sold my Arab, we wanted to get another horse to. 3 just sounds like such a nice number of horses.

Mister came home from training still green, but doing well. Apparently he had the trainers number and bucked to high heaven with him, but when I rode him he was fine again. Maybe it's just guys he doesn't like. Or maybe it's heavier people. Who knows. If only horses could speak! While he was gone we had gotten another horse. Soon after he came home we found a house that we loved and made an offer on. I barely had time to ride Midori, let alone a greenie that possibly bucked so Mister got ignored some more. Anyways, I have a million excuses as to why no one has been on him in 6 months now and while they all seem totally legitimate to me, they are really just totally lame. I need to just suck it up and get on the poor thing. He loves his weekly grooming sessions and is always happy for a scratch when I feed. He is such a sweet heart and a total love bug with tons of personality. BF has talked about sending him packing more than once, but I won't let him. Not yet. I have a good feeling about him, just have to get past the crap.

Here he is enjoying sunbathing over the summer. He's such a goof ball!