A couple of days ago I finally got the much-awaited shipping notification in my inbox that said my Specialized Eurolight saddle will be arriving within the week. I just checked the tracking with UPS and it says my 20 lb box is on time and will be delivered this Wednesday by end of day–hip hip hooray! I’m sooo excited! Blaze better get himself together because once the saddle comes and we get it fitted to him, his fat butt is rejoining the ranks of the working Arab world! 

It’s a new season buddy, there’s a saddle coming, get ready for some miles!

Desire and I joined N and her mare at the lake today for a gorgeous, sunny, warm 16.9 mile ride. Then I came home, fed the horses, ate an epic steak dinner prepared by my miraculous husband. And then I tried to get up off the couch–umm, I think I broke myself!! I can’t believe how sore my seat and thighs are already, only a few hours after the ride. Once in a while I’ll feel a little tight the next day but I am fully 100% sore from the waist down tonight! That’s what the holidays will do to you. All the drama with our heater and visiting family etc meant Desire sat for 2 1/2 weeks. And so did my bottom. I bet I’ll feel interesting tomorrow. 

Took some photos of my wild and silly filly this evening before feeding. On Saturday she will be officially 9 months old!

I had a fantastic morning ride to the top of the ridge today, about 7.4 steep miles in an hour and a half. It was a little chilly down below, especially at the bridge over the creek, but by the time we charged to the summit (it really is a good long steep hill, I’m always kind of re-surprised at how steep it is) it was probably 60 degrees and bright blue skies. Cantering along the flat at the top of the ridge was fantastic, I couldn’t force the grin off my face if I tried. I carry my crop when I ride from home and I’ve found it very useful. Desire has a tendency to drift to one side of the road in a casual attempt to turn around for home. Blaze did something similar but Desire is a lot sneakier about it, lol. I try to keep her to one side of the road in case we hear a car coming (it’s paved road for a mile and then a very wide dirt road up to the top of the ridge after that). She always has other ideas and tries to choose HER side to walk on. We have discussions about it and sometimes a little sharp tap to the neck with the crop will snap her out of it and refocus her forward. When I ask she willingly trots out and we had some really nicely paced short canters today as well. But at any speed when she felt me start to ask for slowing down she would immediately angle her hind end to be ready to stop and turn for home, Lol! It’s a little annoying but not that bad, especially since she always easily goes into a higher gait when I ask. She isn’t turtling it like Blaze does but she does take advantage of any attention lapses, that’s for certain. We had a couple of long, sustained 6 mph jogs on a loose rein on the way up, it felt fantastic. Of course once we turned for home we were having talks to stay at a walk and at the trot I was having to fight to keep her below 10 mph. Mostly we just worked on walking home. I’ve found that circling her doesn’t do a whole lot of good, it’s too easy for her. So today when she tried to break into a trot downhill I immediately stopped her and then collected her and asked her to back uphill. It took about 4 attempts per gait-break for her to continue on at a walk, but that’s better than the 10+ circles I had to do in previous attempts. Backing uphill ain’t easy and though she smoothly did it, by the last time around (let’s see, probably a total of 14 reps of 3-step backwards uphill) I could tell she was getting a little muscle tired. About a mile out from home she finally found her loose relaxed walk again, that’s pretty standard for her. She isn’t racy or pushy about trying to break gait at least, just persistent, lol. We had a brief moment of spazz on the way home on the very last flat stretch on the dirt road before the pavement began again, she wanted to trot faster and faster and break into a canter and I was asking her to slow which became a half trot/half canter head shaking/mini crow hop protestation. Pretty funny and I did my “EH EH” naughty noise and we were back to a walk with no further issue.

The Bomber is back home this afternoon, after a new fuel pump, some hoses, and O-rings. I’ve got plans to ride Friday and possibly on the weekend, and meet up with my riding buddy C again at the lake next week, now that she has her saddle back from refitting. I’m milking this weather all I can but the dry dead grasses around are pretty worrying! It’s supposed to be lush and green right now. We’ll see. When we got home with the Bomber I was hugging and scratching on Sheza, boy oh boy she is big now!!

My great barefoot trimmer came out this morning to take care of the girls’ hooves and get Blaze started on the  barefoot track as well. I tried keeping Blaze barefoot a few years ago, before I knew about boots, but he was always too tender up front. With winter on and my saddle that will fit him not arrived yet, I’d gone through two sets of steel shoes without riding him and it just seemed pointless to keep shoeing him. He has great tough hind hooves, I rode him with bare hinds in all but 1 of my LD rides last year, so I was only concerned about the fronts. I finally wrapped my slow brain around it and figured why not pull the shoes I’m not even using, and work on transitioning him to fully barefoot with the aid of boots. Now that I’ve got some miles under my belt using Easyboot Gloves on Desire I feel confident enough to attempt it with Blaze.

 My trimmer is also an Easyboot dealer so we fitted Blaze for boots and concluded that with his very high (too high) heels the Gloves are much too low-profile for him and the Easyboot Epics will be better. They are so much higher in the heel that they will accommodate his current hoof shape and should continue to work out as we transition him. I’ve never used the Epics but my trimmer said that they are much more forgiving in fit in general and they clearly fit him better than the Gloves today. When we were fitting the boot shells on he was a size 1 Glove on the left front and a size .5 Glove on the right front, Lol. In the Epic he’ll just be a size 1.

He was kind of a punk to the trimmer but then it was her first time with him and he had to do a little bit of testing. She mentioned that he has a very smart eye and asked if he was a smart alec in general; he really isn’t, in fact the slight lip curl and leg pulling he exhibited today is about as smart alec-y as he gets, and was kind of funny considering how peaceful he is in general. El Bandito the mini was stealing Blaze’s hay out of the big feeder the whole time which no doubt aggravated him, Lol. As soon as Bandito saw Blaze coming home through the gate he was away from the feeder and down the hill in no time.

The girls’ hooves looked good, Desire’s are really coming back nicely. Almost 3/4 of the hoof is healthy new hoof growth now, the old flare and junk is growing out so quickly. Sheza’s hooves (and body!) are growing just as fast as Desire’s but are in good shape and Sheza was only a brat about half the time.

Unfortunately things did not go so well for The Bomber this morning. My husband took it in early to get some leaky O-rings replaced but it turned out the fuel pump and a couple of hoses were bad too, so there’s yet another fun big bill to pay out of the blue. *Sigh*  So very very sick of auto repairs. Of course the fact that we buy older vehicles that are pretty much at the point where parts are expected to wear out doesn’t help, but that’s the budget we have. Anyway the Bomber runs great and pulls wonderfully WITH a bad fuel pump so hopefully with the new pump in all will be well and no more repairs will be needed for a while. Key word hopefully.

Hmm, almost middle of January, must be time to take down the Christmas tree…

This morning was the first inaugural trailer towing with the big orange Bomber, and my first trail ride of 2012! The Bomber towed really well, it’s a real bull dog especially when I’m a good girl and remember to turn it on and warm it up for a good 15-20 minutes before driving it. It’s an older diesel and really doesn’t get warmed up and at full power without a good long idle first. I really need to get the O-rings replaced and will hopefully get that done this week, and I also need to install the radio and speakers and I got for Christmas but that’s a more frivolous need. It’s early yet but so far I really like towing with it.

I decided to let Desire blow off some steam in the arena this morning before heading out the to lake, since she hasn’t been out in almost 3 weeks and is usually so tense in the trailer. I know the logic really doesn’t follow that letting her turn and burn in the arena=calm in the trailer but I figured letting her get some of the kinks would be all to the good for the haul and the ride.

She loaded well but as soon as I started easing forward I could hear her banging around like a nutter and when I hopped out to close the gate behind us I peeked in the window at her and she was all jelly-legged and tap dancing around. *sigh* I literally don’t go over 40 mph on our short cruise to the lake and it just doesn’t seem to matter, 9 times out of 10 she comes out of the trailer a sweaty mess. It seemed like she was hauling quieter in December when I was taking her out multiple times a week but she’s never been great in there. Well, these things take time I suppose. She was never hauled by herself at her previous home and certainly wasn’t hauling in a 2 horse straight load at GETC. I’m going to start wrapping/booting her legs before I put her in though because twice now, including today, she came out of the trailer at home with little cuts on her legs from spazzing around in there.

 The ride itself was good fun, we joined N and her grey mare and we only rode the short 6ish mile loop around the horse camp. It was a good little ride to get her back in trail mode. She’s always in trail mode, really, and could have and would have liked to go farther but with the trailer stress and time off I was more comfortable taking it easy with her today. It was a regular zoo at the trail head as it usually is on weekends; the parking lot was full of trailers and horses and riders of all kinds. We passed a couple of groups out on the loop uneventfully, including the horse trainer gal that sold us our property. Back at the trail head I was letting Desire dry/cool out some and rummaging in my trailer and a couple of young men walked up from the bike trail; one guy saw the Bomber and was elbowing his buddy telling him “you should ask if that’s for sale, that’s the kind of truck you want!” Sorry boys, the big orange is not for sale!

It was so great to get back in the saddle! I’m looking forward to my Specialized Eurolight arriving sometime this month and getting Desire back out on the trail as much as possible with the continuing sunny, mild weather. It’s fantastic riding weather but starting to get worrying for the possibly very dry summer ahead. N and I were talking about the potential for winter to just arrive late and Feb/March/April (May?) possibly being very soggy months..which could easily lead to a very snowy Rides of March..we’re both planning on going but agreed that our attendance is pretty weather dependent. As with so very much to do with horses, we’ll just have to wait and see!