Happy 15th birthday to my beautiful momma mare, Blazun Haatdesire. I have only had the privilege to have her in my life since this past January when she arrived from Utah, 8 months pregnant. Now she is the big boss mare on the place with her gorgeous, ever naughty 4 month old filly Sheza Blaznhaat Xpres alongside. I can’t wait to get her out on the trails and hopefully get into some endurance rides with her next season!

Some photos of Desire, from arrival to now:

My mom and nieces headed home yesterday after 4 fun-filled days of riding, fishing, playing at the river, roller skating, and shopping. It was a great experience for the girls to get to do all the “country” stuff they don’t get to do living right in town on the coast (plus my sister is deadly allergic to horses so they never get a chance to be around them). The girls got to ride horses for the first time, catch their first fish, and the youngest had her first roller skating experience as well. I must say I am more impressed than ever with people who choose motherhood, I can’t imagine having to deal with the energy level and noise of two little girls (and these are very smart, polite, well behaved little girls) let alone the third child my sister has at home–oh and the 4th is on the way!! I think entertaining kids for a day is more exhausting than any endurance ride! At least for me. My brain goes totally haywire with that much background noise and constant questions. I am a pretty quiet person in general and don’t enjoy chaos of any sort so it was definitely an experience for me having them here as well! They really were pretty fun though and it was very cool to see them riding and catching fish.

Yesterday morning I was leaning slightly over Desire’s head to put her fly mask over her ears as she was eating breakfast and the filly was being a total spazz and “spooking” around for fun; she managed to spook Desire doing this and D flung up her head and caught me square in the face with the top of her head. My whole face went numb and my lip was bleeding, which was unfortunate since I already kind of had a head ache. Anyway I still feel a little sore and woozy today. I got up early and trailered to the lake today but I only went about 8 miles and wasn’t feeling very well so I just made an abbreviated loop and came home. Still glad I got Blaze out on the trail again before Mendocino Magic ride this weekend. I will ride him once more from home Wednesday and then Friday we’ll be off again. I have to figure out if I have a place to board him after the race so I can stay in town with family and ride him on the beach for a few days. The place I was going to keep him fell through because the gal’s wedding is actually this weekend so its too busy as her place, so I am hoping to be able to put Blaze at my parent’s next door neighbor’s place for a few days, but I need to call him.

Tomorrow is Desire’s birthday, she will be 15!

I managed to get up before the visiting family this morning so had to jot a quick entry here acknowledging Sheza as a very clever and obedient girl yesterday. The farrier came out to trim Desire and take a look at her thrush and since he is usually early and catches me unprepared I decided to be on top of the game and catch everyone ahead of time. Sheza haltered nicely and we headed for the dreaded mats. She had a somewhat bratty gleam in her eye but I kept turning her head a little side to side to keep her feet moving so she didn’t lock up and go into mule mode which seemed to help. It only took two minutes tops for her to sniff at the mats and then decide the black holes aka mats were indeed safe to walk on without a fight. I was very proud of her and had her walk on and off them a few more times just for good measure. Desire was tap dancing around in her cross ties impatiently but since I pulled them about 40 minutes ahead of time they both had ample time to practice patience and relax at their respective tying spots.

When the farrier arrived he went right to work on Desire and after working on her hooves for a few minutes told me the thrush was well under control and to just keep doing what I’m doing (cleaning, spraying with Vetericyn, though now I also have the Hypozin I ordered from Utah). He also pointed out that Desire’s hooves are in the process of adapting to this different, harder ground. That was a total light bulb moment for me; I have never brought a horse home from farther away than about 150 miles, and even then the ground was quite similar, so it didn’t even occur to me to remember that Desire came from the deep red sands of Utah and is now on the hard-packed rock-growing ground of California. I had her trimmed 4 weeks ago and since then she had grown these sort of “pads” of hoof material over her soles which I had never seen before. My farrier pointed out that these were essentially calluses, since her hooves were used to softer ground they were adapting and growing more hoof out on the sole to protect themselves, which in turn was sort of “sealing over” whatever manure/junk might be in her hoof. Add heat and you had just enough moisture and compacted material in the hoof to start up some thrush. He trimmed and cleaned up her hooves nicely and I trotted her out for him because she had still been ever so slightly off at the trot. She trotted out well except for one odd step (which could have been coz my flat trot out space was full of awful prickly thistles that were whacking our legs) and the farrier agreed with my thought that the rock that embedded itself in her foot that I had to really pry out could have easily made her tender for a week or so. So, the thrush is getting under control and she trotted out sound, all good things! Now I can (hopefully) really start riding her consistently and ponying Sheza out through the neighborhood! Can’t wait 🙂

My mom and little nieces are visiting for a few days and last night they got to ride horse for the first time ever! Blaze was wonderful for them to groom and ride around the arena–what a good good boy! More later, busy busy with the family here..

Well the title says it all after my session with Sheza this evening. I haltered mom first as usual and went back for Sheza who was ready and waiting at the gate and put her nose right in the halter again. It was so great that she haltered immediately two sessions in a row, here’s hoping that behavior will stick around for a while though I won’t count on it considering what she did after the nice haltering job. I don’t remember if I mentioned on here previously that on Saturday I finally bought mats to put in our wash rack because the concrete is very smooth and slippery and I didn’t want Sheza hurting herself when she is tap dancing around in there. Well on Sunday evening when she first haltered nicely I led her right over and onto the mats with no hesitation, into her cross ties and no big deal! This evening..not so much. I went out there at 7 pm and it took me until about 8:20 before I got her to walk on those mats again!! It was SO INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING. I am honestly not a patient person in my every day life so I have to be very aware of that when I am working with Sheza, as these things are all foreign to her and that’s fair. I think the major issue I had with it this evening is that she had just walked so blithely onto the mats the other day without batting an eye and suddenly tonight she wouldn’t come within a foot of them from the get-go! What IS IT in their little horse brains that makes things acceptable one day and absolutely scary the next? I am lucky to have my steady Blaze who eyeballs rocks and stumps once in a while but is *never* dramatic about things and I am having to breathe deep and seek peace when dealing with the extreme girl drama that is Desire and Sheza. Desire isn’t so bad, she reacts to things and snorts and blows but so far still does what she is asked, but Sheza and her amazing staying power when it comes to something she doesn’t want to do–well, lets just say I feel like I have a long road of battles ahead of me with this one. I did finally get her on the mats and once there she sniffed them and wasn’t too worried about it, then I hosed her down since she was absolutely dripping sweat from the long intense session getting onto the scary black mats…I have to say, I walked away from her a couple of times today so I didn’t take out my frustration on her, and I am a little discouraged right now but that’s just part of the game I guess. I just really hope that every single thing isn’t a battle with her as she grows up, because its exhausting and no fun.

I think I mentioned in my previous post that the horse masseuse and I pulled apart my saddle yesterday after the session and realized that one panel was flexing loosely and the other was nearly rigid which was causing some wear on Blaze’s back. I wanted to ride him this evening so I took a look at it this afternoon; there was a sort of spiral “bolt” for lack of a better word that seemed to control the angle of the panel so I got a pair of channel lock pliers and tried turning it. It screwed back and forth quite easily so I checked where the one on the other side that was flexing easily was sitting, which was nearly all the way screwed in, only one thread showing. I wrestled with the pliers at first but finally got it situated right and got the other bolt screwed in pretty quickly considering I’d never messed with it before. The panel that was causing the rub now flexed equally as freely as the other side. A pretty simple fix really! I rode out up the hill past our gate to the top of the ridge this evening and the saddle felt great! Its hard to explain because while it never felt particularly “un-even” before, now it just feels SO even and centered and I can feel his back muscles under me more. The one rigid panel was canting the saddle up just slightly and I know that wasn’t good for either of us. Blaze seemed looser after his massage and we did some good hill gallop sprints. Unfortunately more cars than usual passed us and we got dusted out a couple of times but it was still a great ride. As we were about a mile from our front gate the moon was high in the sky and there was just a little pink light left to see bats flitting around and I think I even saw an owl. Such a wonderful time of night to be riding.

My truck is in the transmission shop getting a new clutch and u-joints so I am stuck at home for a couple more days but I am so glad there are dirt roads to ride out from and we aren’t truly stuck riding on the property. My mom is bringing my little nieces over from the coast on Wednesday for the first time. They live in town and haven’t had quite all the fun country experiences so I will be giving them riding lessons, or at least little rides, on Blaze and taking them fishing with the husband and all that fun country stuff. Bless Blaze for being such a patient soul that he is off top 10’ing LDs one weekend and teaching little girls to ride the next!