Snow Storm Activities

I'm just going to bombard everyone with pictures from the last couple days.

I worked from home Friday. Migraine + Snow Storm = Work At Home. My coworkers for the day were great.

Nickels was extra active and perky.

Penny slept in a fish.

Sophie slept next to me on the couch.
She sleeps extra soundly and that means I can mess with her, hehe.

Then I went to the barn at the start of snow storm Jonas. When I left, I debated if that was a smart idea. My Mom went with me. 28 years old, and I'm still dragging my mom to the barn like a little kid.

About an hour into the snow fall, on my way to pick up Mom.

I had a good ride! It's the first time I'd ridden Penn in about two weeks since I've been sick and then it was just too cold to ride. His trot work was excellent, there wasn't too much to nit pick. His canter needs work though- it was particularly bad- not through, tense, not going to the outside rein, rushy. I'm going to have to work it quite a bit before the show next weekend. Hopefully it was just bad since he'd been off for 5 days! I'm sure the below didn't help:

I have no idea how he did this. He's sound and not swollen. It is quite tender though- he didn't like me wiping/dabbing it and then spraying it with Aluspray.

The only thing I can think of is that his blanket hind leg surcingles got tugged on or pulled by another horse and the metal buckle that determines the length of the strap dug into him. The fields are very clean and tidy, I can only assume it was his poor social skills at work.

I'm glad I bought a blue version for horse shows.

Mom and I headed home. The roads weren't too bad, but they weren't great. I dropped Mom off and got back to my house in one piece! Or the same number of pieces we started with, haha.

Waiting at a traffic light.

In front of my house.

I woke up to this face Saturday morning:

Penny Snugglepus!

Husband and I cleared the driveway, but first we took Sophie outside for her first snow walk!

Not a fan.

I say Husband and I... meaning I cleared enough to get my car out and went to the barn while he finished up with the plow!

Fiction and Penn digging for grass. Well they were when I got my phone out. Fiction was like, "Human! Food for me?"

I opted to take Penn for his first snow ride instead of doing real work inside. We still did work, but we did it in the outdoor with the snow. I kept it short because I still insisted he work over his back and I know slogging through the snow is hard work... which was the point- he has to lift his feet and he has to lift his back too- so absolutely no sitting the trot. I let the snow slow his tempo and I focused on keeping our balance because I didn't want him to accidentally biff it and then both of us eat snow. Walk-trot-canter each way. He found an awesome trot to the right- I saw his knees lifting out in front of his shoulders and he had a great feel. He had a hard time supporting the left lead canter and his balance in the snow- however that could have been because it was the last thing I tackled.

A great view!

Walking around the track we wore in the outdoor.

Trying to make him round up so I can get a nice pic of him working.

I ventured out to the grocery store after the barn (I know, you're supposed to go BEFORE the storm. I do things backwards). I decided to get some chocolate chips (in addition to other staples) because Husband really likes chocolate chip cookies, and since he finished my trailer, I figured I'd bake him some cookies.

She begged the whole time. Like a dog.

Husband and I are taking the trailer back to the barn Sunday. I've got a bunch of pictures, but I'm missing some shots of it in the dark. I'll have to get pics of it lite up like a Christmas tree next weekend when we park it in the dark after the next horse show! :-)

A Non-Riding Week (Picture Dump Again!)

So this week is a non-riding week for me- I don't have vacation to use to this week to ride. So here's what I've been up to instead.

I went to get the mail and several packages (Amazon, SmartPak, MeowBox) Wednesday from the front porch and the tree lights were on and the cats were watching me through our big picture window.

I had to wave my hands around to make them look in the same direction,

I read an article a while ago about how if house cats were lion sized they'd probably eat us.

The face of destruction.

Let's zoom in on that face.

Yupp. If that face was lion sized, she'd eat me.

Anywho, the exciting bit is that my truck parts got here and so did Penn's Hanukkah/Christmas present- Smart Pak's Ultimate Turnout Lightweight Hood! Penn now has the complete line because Jan = Blanket Hoarder. But first:

Husband does the work. I am the tool gopher.
The truck is about 2" too tall to make it through the garage opening, but putting just the bed in is effective too.
Husband added a ton of lights to the garage so it's actually brighter down there than any other room in the house.

First was replacing the exhaust hanger while the spare tire was out of the way. Note the large break in the original one.

New solid rubber exhaust hanger!

Look! It's the gooseneck trailer ball that came with the truck! Except the mechanism that releases it so you can pull it up through the bed and turn it around is broken. It's stuck in this non-useful position until we get around to fixing it.

New spare tire hoist and hanger.

All done! I learned a ton about how to fix the two issues Husband fixed Wednesday night, and I think I could do it myself next time. Let's hope there isn't a next time though!

Wednesday night, Husband also helped me with another project made from leftover Aluminum blanks.

Blanket tags!!!!!

I saw a set advertised on Facebook a month or so ago that were round dog tags with the horse's name in the middle and the blanket weight wrapped around the bottom curve of the tag. I could NOT for the life of me find them again on ether Facebook or Etsy (I found others though that I didn't like as much).

There is another horse in the barn who has the same set of blankets as Penn, and all the blankets get hung in a communal blanket hanging area. Awkward! The other horse's owner wrote her horse's name in her blankets, but I'm afraid to do that and somehow void the 10 year warranty. Another thing, it's hard to tell which weight blanket Penn is wearing at a glance. They're all EXACTLY THE SAME. Come on Smartpak, why no color choices?!

Enter these blanket tags! Husband had the aluminum blanks for some past project, and he offered them to me since he didn't need them. He punched a hole in each one, and then used letter stamps that he got from his Pap (who was a tinsmith) to stamp Penn's name and the blanket weight. We got some key rings and voila! Cheap blanket tags instead of the $5 per tag plus shipping that I was finding online!

I'll put the turnout tags on the metal chest clips, and the hood rings on the whither clip (that's the only metal on the hood!).

I felt the need to label turnouts and hoods. I don't know why, haha.

We had some fun first with the different sized letters. Cam + Penn = Campin'

Matt's sister sent us a Meow Box for the cats for the holidays. They loved it.

It was addressed to Nickels, but the girls quickly took over.

Everyone found things they liked. Penny got the box, Sophie the paper, Nickels the Smelt toy and the cat treats.

Love this shot. Penny had one of the "Pet Candy" toys and Sophie wanted to see it.
The girls play rough in our house. Plus they were high as fuck on all that catnip.

This weekend, I'm hauling to our winter barn for a lesson with Trainer, then I'll ride Sunday and go back to the winter barn for their Christmas party. Next week I have a half day on Wednesday to ride, an early out Christmas Eve, then Christmas to ride, and all Christmas weekend. Then it's only 4 short days until Penn moves to his winter barn for 3 months and I can ride during the week again!

Last Week's Rides

I managed 3 rides on Penn in the past week- Wednesday 12/9, Saturday 12/12, Sunday 12/13.

Penny in her natural belly up, toes curled, sleeping state. I think she likes looking at the Christmas tree lights too.

Wednesday's ride was crap. Well, crap for Penn. The footing wasn't great- slightly slick on top. I didn't even canter because Penn was uncomfortable just trotting. I had asked him for some leg yields, and he just folded his body in half and threw himself sideways. He was just reactive to everything and more uncooperative than he's been. I'm sure I was to blame too- I get overly handsy when he doesn't cooperate, which doesn't make him cooperate any better. I was already in a funk- I didn't particularly want to ride, but I had taken a half day from work to do it and it was sunny and kind of warm out. I couldn't get our act together so I quit before I screwed him up too badly. I did use the road walk on the back back to the barn to leg yield from one side of the road to the other, and to shoulder in. That worked out very well- he bounced nicely off the trees that line the road and had some nice work.

Saturday was a bit better. And warmer! 65 degrees- a near record high! I got him down to the outdoor and he was all grunty for the first 15-20 min. Weird. I worked on the 10m circle to leg yield a bit and mixed in a little canter sooner than I normally would have mixed it in. He was a bit tense, and I know Mikey would unlock a bit if I let him canter, so I gave that a whirl with Penn. It didn't work- he just kind of leaned on me and went hell bent around the arena. I reset and made him go to work and did some one loops in canter when I could. Partway through my ride I made a huge effort to relax my hands/wrists/arms and give. Penn rewarded me by softening a bit too. I used turn on the haunches whenever we botched a transition from walk to trot. His turn on the haunch is getting very good! I had a super excellent one to the left, worthy of 2nd level at the end of my ride. A lesson was starting so the end of my ride got scrapped a bit. It took a while to cool Penn out since it was so warm and he was quite lathered.

Trail ride on Sunday.

Sunday was better than Saturday. There were a bunch of canter poles out, and 4 of them were raised on my cavalettis. I rolled those down to a slightly raised height more appropriate to Penn's ability and got to work. As a warm up, I asked him to be round in walk and walk over the raised poles, then trot two poles on a short side, then trot 3 on the next long side, transition to walk near the raised poles, repeat. He hit every raised pole with almost every single foot, every single time through the poles. After leaving the poles he'd have an incredible trot transition with his back up and everything. He couldn't hold it for long, but it was there. He only tapped the poles on the ground a couple times. Trotting didn't help much through the raised poles- he still whacked them. I'm sure he's just not strong enough yet, but it is kind of annoying. He sure as hell is NOT a hunter/jumper/eventer!

I moved on the leg yields- 10m trot circle left that put us on the centerline for a leg yield right. I paid attention to the crossover, but more to the amount of crooked he got through his body. I kept after his trailing hind end, asked him to keep his head in front of his chest more, and when we got to the rail, I asked for a canter left, went across the short side, and then went immediately into a one loop on the next long side.

I love this exercise. As soon as I found my seat (shoulder blades pushing back that recliner!) and got my outside elbow working with his motion, and thought about sinking my elbow down and in next to my side, he connected and lightened immediately and the one loop on the left lead was much easier. There's no anticipating for him in this exercise- he hasn't linked it together yet. I can definitely feel him questioning his leads in the one loop, and I think when he's stronger I'll be able to ask for flying changes and he'll give them. (Trainer and I already talked about that- as soon as he's strong enough we're going to teach them to him and I will have to be good enough to keep him on the correct lead in 1st/2nd level counter canter work). But the exercise keeps his brain thinking forward in a constructive manner.

I did the same exercise to the right to fantastic results. I'm very excited! His right lead canter gets 4-beaty, and this forced me to keep him going, and that same elbow/seat thinking kicked him into a nicely connected gear and he became so pliable. It was wonderful. I only did one leg yield and 2-3 one loops to the right because they were so good! We quit after 20 min of riding to go for a short trail ride with a couple other riders who were patiently waiting for me to be done schooling Penn. A short ride was ok- he was puffing pretty hard by then and was very good. Time for a walk on a long rein!

He has such cute little ears.

All this work lead me to think about what I'd like to accomplish in our winter boarding time. I want him to get stronger, and I'd like the leg yields to be solid by then. So I think this will be our schedule per week (do at least 4 of these, with minimal repeating within a week):

• 1 day of cavaletti work (note, make sure to pick up my blocks before moving!). Trainer wants to get him going on that to make him stronger, but I'll have to do it on my own since she's going south for the winter. There are several dressage riders at this barn, perhaps we can make a day of it and find a grounds person to adjust poles if they're knocked?
• 1 day focused more on lateral work and getting his canter together since the two seem to go hand in hand- leg yield and shoulder in. I'd like to add haunches in as he gets stronger. Last time we did haunches in it was VERY hard for him. This will have to be a short and structured ride.
• 1 day working on simple trot work to build muscle and fitness.
• 1 day to work on something that stood out like crazy on the other days as a problem, or just to review.
• 1 day to go for a walk or do something fun that is not related to dressage at all and is completely nonconstructive!

I don't want to ride him more than 5 days a week, and I think 4 would be better. I don't want to sour him or wear him out! I'd like to go see the trails so that maybe one day on each weekend we can go out on them. It's what I would have done if I was at home all winter (hill work in the hay fields and trail rides through the Christmas Tree Farm). When we go back home in spring, I'd like him to be at a good enough muscle and fitness level to start doing some hill work and trot sets!

12/5 Lesson and some big news!

Ok, so I've been taking a ton of lessons lately. Seems all I'm posting about! It's cool though, Trainer is heading south to Aiken in mid-January and I'll be left to my own devices until the end of March... unless GRM comes back during that time. I'm sure I'll have an issue I'd like help with!

So for this lesson, we actually trailered to a fellow blogger's new barn that is one of Trainer's travel-to-teach barns. There's an indoor if the outdoor footing is no good, so under the guise of a guaranteed lesson (the footing at home ended up being not good enough to ride on, so good call) I was able to go see this barn. I had wanted to see it and meet the owners anyway because it's close enough that I wanted to haul in on the weekends to use the indoor since the weather is slowly preventing me from using our outdoor on the weekends.

Penny and Sophie and our front door with the new wreath!

First of all, I loaded Penn into my trailer, on the first attempt, by myself! I know, you're all like, "Why so excited?" It's because when we got Penn, the trailer was a huge ordeal and I've only recently been able to get him on Trainer's slant load by myself (the divider helps convince him to stay on). I've never been able to load him by myself onto my trailer because it's a straight load and Penn wouldn't stay put long enough for me to get to the back of him to put up the butt bar (he also wouldn't tolerate the squish from the swinging divider- he'd fly out the back of the trailer). I was able to load him almost like Mikey. Since my divider swings, I bungee it to the passenger side horse stall when I load. I led Penn up into the trailer from the wrong side, convinced him to stay put without being tied, and he gave me enough time to walk next to him, get the divider un-bungeed and the butt bar up and pinned in place before he moved! The only difference is that Mikey would walk himself into place and I could stay at the back of the trailer. Good boy Penn!

The medium weight ultimate turnout blanket will be going back to SmartPak. There is a pull in the blanket that I'm sure will let water through. I'll wait for another bigger rip to happen though before sending it back.
SmartPak's Ultimate Turnout is apparently not Dix proof!

Penn was a bit nervous at a different barn (a little more nervous that he usually is- I think because he hauled alone). He wasn't quite steady in the cross ties, so I didn't bother cross tying him. No reason to have him panic and break someone else's barn! They didn't tie the cross ties to the wall using baling twine, so I wasn't taking any chances.

Surprisingly though, Penn stood quietly for me to get on him in the outdoor, and went to work. He was a bit distracted, but he still paid attention to me. It's nice to know he relaxes when he's doing his job.

Trainer and I chatted about our lessons with GRM, and then got to work. Again, I'm going to bullet what we did... it's easier for me to keep track of things!

Walk/Trot work:

• This was his first time really working outside in a new place. He's always been inside when we go practice dressage somewhere, so this was an excellent adventure!
• Since he was a little looky, I was prone to keeping him too slow in trot and too tight a hold on the reins. Trainer pushed me to keep the forward motion, keep my hand forward, and don't take away from him.
• STOP CRUSHING THE HORSE WITH THE OUTSIDE REIN. When he's looky/spooky, I need to let him have a way out (in our case, he was looking to the outside at various items around the arena, so I took the inside rein and overbent him in, and let him go out the outside shoulder- thinking leg yield towards the spooky item).
• I stuck to sit trot because he was a bit looky and I'm better at steadying him from sit trot. Not resorting to sit trot is going to be one of my goals.
• Trot shoulder fore/shoulder in/small amount of haunches in on the long walls.
• Relax the hands forward, drop my elbows down, let the forward happen, small amounts of shoulder fore = lifted back magic. I made trainer laugh because I was like "Is he pooping?" and she was like "No..." and I was like "It feels like it... so his back must be up!" and she facepalmed and laughed.
• We worked a little on leg yield, but Penn was very resistant to continuing to move forward into the leg yield. We settled on the following pattern: 10m circle right, down centerline, leg yield left, any time he resists sideways motion, 10m circle right using the last steps of the circle to encourage sideways into the next leg yield. Let him overbend his neck to the right so he gets good cross over and can flow. He's far enough along now that he's not shooting out the left shoulder and the hind end isn't trailing, so he can be a bit overbent. And for the love of God, LET GO OF YOUR LEFT REIN.
• Repeat the pattern in the other direction- 10m circle left, down centerline, leg yield right, any time he resists sideways do a 10m circle left using the last steps of the circle to encourage sideways again. Let him overbend his neck to the left so he gets good cross over and can flow.
• We finished up the trot work with a stretchy trot on a figure 8.

Canter work:

• (This one goes with the trot work too, however it was where we based the canter work too) Transitions to trot must be through and not giraffe-like. He must connect all 4 ways in walk to start: left seat to left hand, right seat to right hand, left seat to right hand, right seat to left hand. Use shoulder in and shoulder out on a 20m circle so work on all of those connections. Then trot. If it's crap, walk, repeat the connections, trot.
• Repeat the connections in trot on a 23m circle. Shoulder in, half pass in to a 20m circle, canter.
• Penn's canter is either 4 beat or rushy, there's no in between right now. He also does not want to meet the left rein while going left (he's happy to meet it going right).
• (to the right mostly) Carry myself over my outside stirrup more, stop leaning over my inside leg. I'm not helping by doing that.
• (to the left mostly) Repeat the counter bend in canter, then with the thought of half pass inwards. LET GO OF THE F-ING LEFT REIN. Remarkable, the horse stood himself up and balanced himself. It became: counterbend, bend in, half pass inwards onto a smaller circle, maintain the smaller circle, leg yield out to the 20m circle. Repeat.
• (to the left only) Since we were thinking half pass on the circle and actually getting decent floaty in on the circle, Trainer had me prep him on that circle, then go straight down a quarterline, and then ask for canter half pass left. Nothing super fabulous happened, and Penn was getting tired, but he tried and took his very first half pass steps!
• Stretchy trot to finish. Penn just about ran his nose on the ground. He LOVES to stretch out after hard work.

Penn tried his guts out in lesson. His butt felt like jelly while I cooled him out. I haven't had my butt worked like that in a long time- I was still sore Monday! Penn went for a well deserved walk on Sunday.

Walking on the road on the way home Sunday.

I took some pictures on Sunday of Penn for his new coggins. Mikey's pictures for his this year were really super terrible. He was all out of proportion, angular, and the awkward leg and body positioning didn't help the terrible picture. I get that you have to be able to see the inside of the legs too, but come on, can't we stand the horse with even weight on each hoof? Without his ears at half mast and looking around instead of forward?

I didn't realize everyone was moving towards putting pictures on the coggins instead of marking up the model horse, and this is the first year I've been forced to use the Global Vet Link coggins instead of being mailed the yellow carbon copy paper. If I had known that, I would have taken pictures of Mikey myself and sent them to the vet to use! The pictures that were taken of Penn in March 2015 for his current coggins are terrible (though not as bad as Mikey's), and they need to be redone anyway because it's a different vet. Trainer and the Vet Assistant made a list of horses that would need pictures, and I opted to take them myself instead of having them do it.

Right side

Left Side

Front

So I sent those 3 pictures in to the vet. We'll see if they'll do. He's still way under muscled and too angular for my taste. I've had him for 4 months now, I expected to see more of a difference. Don't get me wrong, the horse has still filled out a lot and has a lot of new muscle. He's working hard. BUT HE NEEDS MOAR!

Which I guess is a perfect segue into my big news! As much as the thought of winter boarding elsewhere terrifies me (ie Mikey's fractured hock from last year), I'm going to give it another try. I really liked the barn that we went to for lesson this past weekend. I've got a bunch of friends there already, including fellow blogger Hawk. The owners are super nice, there is an outdoor with incredible footing, a well maintained indoor with good footing, the barn is heated to 45 degrees in the winter, they feed essentially the same feed so I'm not going to be providing my own grain this time (I'll monitor his weight to make sure he doesn't drop weight though), and free choice hay.

With the indoor available, I can keep building muscle all winter! I'd say that's the main thing holding us back from First Level right now (aside from a messy canter, but that's a strength issue too). Yes, we've started to score very well at Training and he's schooling the First Level work nicely. He just doesn't have the musculature to support First Level yet. My biggest worry was that I'd hack him all winter at home and he'd keep the same muscle. While that's fine, it's not doing much to support First Level aside from making sure we don't deteriorate.

Penn moves in for 3 moths starting Jan 1! I think he's going to enjoy a semi-quiet December. I am planning on showing him Jan 3 (and picking up my two other blue ribbons which may or may not be the main reason I want to go), but I'm not going to fret about hacking him and having quiet time. There will be more than enough work that happens between Jan 1 and March 31!

National Cat Day

Nickels, Penny, and Sophie get their own post today. So here's a bunch of pictures of the creatures that converted me into a crazy cat lady cat lover.

First up, Husband's picture of Sophie carpet faced. Fresh from last night.

And now just an obscene number of pictures of my favorite at home furry friends.