Progress is a great word, and while I feel like horse pucky today and am most likely getting sick, this morning was all about progress. My awesome trimmer was headed out at 8:30 to clean up everyone’s feet and I was actually on the ball enough to pull Desire and Sheza with some spare time before she arrived. Sheza and I had a walk-about sniffing and investigating all the endlessly scary things on the property, while Desire tap danced in the cross ties protesting my baby stealing tendencies. Note to self, if Desire gets more than 2 days off, she goes right back to ridiculous, tense, tap dancing silliness. She had been quieting down being ridden every other day but got 3 days off and today was as tense and raring to go as ever.

Anyhoo I put a rope halter on Sheza today and I think it really did help. She had outgrown everything else and had been wearing her pretty grass green biothane halter but when she is being a punk she can lean and pull on that halter as hard as she wants with no effect, so I decided to try a rope halter. It fit her face really well and while I think my attitude today helped (more on that later), I think the rope halter also helped. The few times she tried to pull back or be bratty she felt the pressure points on the halter and almost immediately came forward again and stopped, rather than pulling back hard and continuing to be a snot like she had in the biothane halter. As far as my attitude, I have a bad habit of becoming irritated very quickly by pointless shenanigans and let’s face it, foals are some of the best in the business at pointless shenanigans. Patience is something I have to work veryvery hard at with Sheza. I recently exchanged emails with a nearby breeder who has been raising foals for years and she reminded me again to not take the foal silliness and “misbehaving” too seriously, but instead focus on becoming the calm steady partner who is there for her and will be there for her no matter the situation, as opposed to The Boss ruling with an iron fist, which is kind of my natural tendency. So I took the rope halter, the filly, and a calm, patient attitude on my walk around the property, and while she did scare herself and spook and did silly things, I made myself just stand calmly and quietly, and she would immediately calm down, snuff me, and move on. We even did this around the horse trailer, and she stuck her head all the way inside the trailer and was sniffing the divider and mats, which is the first time she’s been “in” the trailer in any way (I feel like I’m late on that training front, but better late than never..). Oh and when I put the halter on first thing, she pulled her head away and spooked out three times before she let me do it, which drives me CRAZY but I just stood quietly and ignored it and she came right back each time and finally let me halter her. So, patience wins.

Hooves. Desire’s thrush is in control for the time being–woohoo! I’ve been treating it and it seemed a lot better but it’s always nice to hear from a professional that things are looking good. Her hooves are doing great. Sheza had some thrush in a couple of her hooves and had grown an insane amount of hoof in the last 4 weeks, like her mother, but overall she is doing great too. Blaze even needed a trim which was exciting because he usually grows new hoof at a glacial pace but after just 4 weeks barefoot already needed some trimming done too.

I cleaned my whole tack room and never did find my size 1 Power Strap for Desire’s front boot, but luckily my trimmer, an Easyboot dealer, had just made an order and had Power Straps with her–and get this, they were out of the colors she wanted so she ended up with purple, which is the color I use. Serendipity (for me). I couldn’t install it for the life of me, something about pulling the boot together and getting the screw in place just wasn’t happening, but that’s what husbands are for, right? 😉

Even though I felt crummy I took Mr. Blaze out for a 6 mi meander around the neighborhood in his Epics and the Specialized.

We had some trots and a little blast of canter up our favorite short hill, which was funny because there were 4 or 5 people loading wood into a truck in a field next to the road who saw and heard us coming charging up the hill but I had no clue they were there til afterwards and I was talking away to Blaze the whole time, Lol. A young FedEx driver headed at us pulled over and let me trot up the straightaway we were on, nice of him and it was one of those times I was glad to be wearing my 2-bras-at-once to remedy some of that BOUNCEBOUNCEBOUNCE he was no doubt enjoying, haha!

95% even sweat mark on Blaze though I think I need to shim some more in the “hollow” behind his big shoulder and shark wither. BTW today I discovered that while Desire certainly does it smoother and (usually) more gracefully, Blaze’s trot is actually the same in mph:  6-7 mph jog, about 8.5 mph working trot, and 10+ mph extended. His walk, on the other hand, is a full mph slower than hers, and drives me a little nuts. But I love him anyway.

I’m just beat beat beat. You know that drained feeling when you’re getting sick? Yeah, but I’m not getting sick right, it’s just random allergies or something! Right?! I’m riding Desire at the lake tomorrow, there is no room for a cold!

Today is Superbowl Sunday, and the agenda for my husband and I exactly reflects our excitement about that fact: he went fishing and I went riding! We both thought, “Hey, people who care about football will stay at home today!” thus making both riding and fishing more peaceful and enjoyable for us.

I got to do one of my favorite things today and that is to ride a horse for an actual purpose. I love any time in the saddle but riding from place to place with an actual agenda to accomplish intrigues me; for example I always wished I lived where I could ride my horse to school and back. That wasn’t to be but today I got to ride and get something done. We’ve been feeding and checking on chickens for the neighbor who’s goats we are boarding and my husband was going to drive over and feed them on his way out to the river but I had a brainwave and decided to ride Desire over instead. It’s the same route as I take to the Wildlife Area, and the house I had to go to is just over 2 miles farther up the dirt road from the Wildife Area turn off.

It was a beautiful ride, blue skies and sunshine, and pretty peaceful. A few cars passed us and there was the usual endless dog barking as we passed some houses, but traffic was certainly down.

I was able to trot the 2.2 mi dirt road stretch up to the house, which had a couple of steep little hills and had Desire puffing when we got to the gate. She couldn’t figure out what I was doing when I tied her off to a tree and went to feed the chickens, she was very antsy and trying to keep her eye on me at all times.

I gave her a grazing break before we left the neighbor’s house but Desire was fired up to get going and kept snatching a bite, circling, snatching a bite, so off we went. We trotted back down the dirt road toward home, with the occasional quick stretch into canter when we reached a clear flat spot–she was really moving nicely!

Walking a downhill we saw a friendly guy taking his trash can to the end of his driveway, and he said hello and admired Desire, earnestly asking “Oh, is she a Mustang?” It was tooooo funny because Desire was being snorty about the trash can dragging noise and was at her tail-in-the-air, arch necked Arab best. Yup, that’s my ole Mustang. Hey, I give the guy points for being friendly. It’s a funny area, people are either waving, smiling, even wanting to chat when I ride by, or they just stare at me like I have 3 heads.

I tried to take photos of the palomino again on the road home but he is always just out of camera range these days.

 Boot fit: I tried one of the gaiter rub solutions I found on the Easycare website. You’re supposed to take knee high nylon stockings and pull them on over the hoof and up like you’d pull a stocking on your own leg. Apply your Glove and fold the stocking down and tuck up under the gaiter, thereby eliminating rub risk AND keeping your gaiters from getting filled with horrendous stickers which happens to me pretty often here. I didn’t have knee high stockings but I did have some tights. Now of course just cutting tights meant that the cut top of each didn’t have elastic in it which resulted in some sagging down, but they didn’t actually come undone especially with the ends tucked up into the gaiter and it was freakin awesome to pull them off at the end of the ride and see clean, un-rubbed fetlocks and heels–not to mention clean hooves!

The tights didn’t hold up to it and had little holes tearing in the hoof spots, but they were cheesy cheap tights so hopefully actual nylon stockings will hold up to more than one use. I only murdered one pair of tights today so she only had stockings on her front feet, as they had been the ones getting the worst of the rubbing. I did the slick n’ baby powder trick to her hind legs and here is what I noticed. The gaiter that was snug gave her a rub. The gaiter that was slightly looser (we’re talking 1/4″) didn’t rub.

 Saddle fit: I cut one of the long flat shims in half and put that under the saddle over the stirrups leathers, one half on each side, rather than one whole one per side as I had it the other day. The matching dry spots in the back were gone today and it was overall almost an even sweat mark, with only one small dry spot on one shoulder. I also collected her more today and had her work in frame..so. The saddle journey continues.

 I finally had enough warm daylight left today to give Desire a much needed (warm) bath. I didn’t get crazy with the shampoo and conditioner but mostly just scrubbed and rinsed her down, though I did wash her mane. It was so yellow it driving me crazy.

After I put miss D away I decided to finally clean up my tack room. Well it’s outdoor so it’s not really a room, but you know what I mean. Since it’s outdoor it gets realllyyyy grungy and full of random crap and it had been a good 6 months since I last cleaned it. I got about three 5 gallon buckets worth of trash and junk out and hosed it down, ahh it looks so much better now.

 Have to make a decision that will affect the herd and Redheaded Endurance’s future here in the next day or two..to add or not to add, that is the question! The mental gears are grinding.

There were a few unexpected moments today on our ride but in the end it was all just darn good practice. We met C and her gelding at the lake this morning around 10; thanks to treating thrush, switching the saddle fitting cushions and accessories from Blaze’s to Desire’s, and just general disorganization on my part I was almost 20 minutes late but good ole C was there ready and waiting when we pulled in and only slightly concerned that something had gone wrong on my end. I try to never be late as a rule but I guess it happens once in a while.