What we look like at the barn

(credit: PS of Sweden)

I mean, I don't know about you guys, but this is a

TOTALLY ACCURATE

representation of what a typical day at the farm looks like for me.

Back on the trails

Since moving to our current barn, our trail access has just not been as awesome as it was previously. Granted, we now have a covered arena to ride in so I will gladly take the trade-off but I do miss trail riding. Not just taking a walk around, but actually "man from snowy river" - ing it on the trails.

Until now!

A couple of barn friends took me out this morning on some drop-dead gorgeous trails. It MAY or MAY NOT be trespassing in some parts, but we do have permission to ride on others so .... errr ... I will just play dumb if I am ever busted. Plus I do not plan on taking advantage of the land-owners' kindness too often.

We ended up on a good 2 hour ride, going down rather steep hills and ending up at the creek! (Same creek we used to ride in but about 15 miles downstream). It is STUNNING. The walk was gorgeous with rolling hills, boulders, a few old bridges that had overgrown dirt and grass on top. Plenty of deer, too.

It's still supposedly "winter" here in ky ... so nothing is green

Cool boulder. Gorgeous hills to the right.

Getting a drink

There were a couple of rugged parts where we really had to ride up or down steep, rocky hills. It's so good for Hampton to have to think about where his feet are. Next time I take this route tho I will prob need a breastcollar!

All the horses were very well behaved. All are seasoned trail horses so we had no problems at all.

I could tell Hamps worked his little ass off on the hills. I took pity on him and gave him a gram of bute with his lunch.

The covered arena is finally ready to go again (new roof!) so we can practice actual test movements again! Yay! Although the past two weeks of piro work, transitions and suppling have been very good for us. Time to get serious. For realz.

Will we be ready for PSG this spring?
You tell me Hampton!

Cat humiliation

Once upon a time (err, on Monday),

I gave my cat Buckley a mohawk.

It is AH-MAZING.

The end.

ROLEX BLOGGER MEET UP

Hampton and I jumping at Rolex.
FYI: That is an "alternative fact."

So things are a brewin' for Rolex plans this year.

I have created a private FB event for bloggers. Basically let's meet at the Dubarry Tent around 11 am on Saturday. We can chat, do shots (let's face it, SprinklerBandit and I will likely already be drunk), share stories, enable each other to do more shopping, etc. etc.

I invited fellow bloggers who are my FB friends so hopefully it will snowball from there!

EHV-1

A small outbreak of EHV-1 has hit the county in KY where Hampton lives. It seems to be confined to two local racing stables at the moment, and as far as I know no horses have been euthanized.

The stable I used to board at has to temp-check the horses twice a day. They are close to the quarantined stable, and sometimes take lay-up horses from there. For those familiar with the area, the first stable to have cases is High Pointe. I'm not sure of the second at this time.

Hampton's current home is far enough way that we are not under instructions to temp check at this time. We also have very little traffic in and out of the farm, with the exception of the show horses during show season.

However, less than a mile from us is another rather large racing operation. But I did see them working baby horses out on the track this morning, so it appears it is business as usual for them.

The year after I graduated from the University of Findlay equine program, this virus swept through the English program barn. There were many cases of EHM - the neurological strain of EHV-1. It killed 12 horses in 4 days. It is not something to be messed with. The horses who started to show neurological symptoms were tied up in the large area - with baling twine from the rafters - because once they went down, they did not get back up. And they did not want to have to remove down horses from their stalls. It was devastating to the program and to the students.

Regular old EHV-1 typically just causes some respiratory crud and horses almost always recover just fine. But it's highly contagious and is big trouble if the horse gets the wild strain, or EHM.

Here is a handy chart explaining the difference:

Hoping it stays contained! Makes me nervous!

Roofers shmoofers

Disclaimer: I apologize for the crappy cell phone media. I'm usually riding alone and the only way I can get pics is to set my phone on the rail to video for a couple of minutes. The things I do for my blog readers! ;)

So our covered area is currently under repair this week. It's basically getting a new roof. Of course it is needed, but this means that we can't really use the covered area right now because:

1) There are Amish men walking all over the roof.
2) Their trucks are parked in the arena
3) They randomly drop debris from the ceiling

So unless you have a total death wish, we have all been riding in the outdoor arena this week. That's fine with me, as the resident jump instructor usually has some fun poles set up that I frequently take advantage of.

The only problem is that the Amish roof guys are making some serious noise. I mean, they are taking HUGE (roof size) slabs of roofing/metal and DRAGGING them to the other side of the roof so that can work under them. I can't even describe this obnoxious noise to you.

See what I mean about crappy cell phone photos?!

I decided ... well, might as well ride and see what happens!

Hamps actually surprised me. He has every excuse to be obnoxious. But ... he wasn't. Now granted, there was A LOT of snorting going on. But he stayed with me, and even lit up like a show horse but never got stupid. I LOVE when he is like this! You can sit into him and sort of ride him through the snorting and up comes his poll and his trot gets really big and bouncy. But he never spooked, never even scooted and I would not have blamed him these roofers were fucking loud.

Not in a million years would I have ridden Royale or any idiotic young horse out there tho. Not unless I had a crash vest and a major life insurance policy.

Half steps. You can tell he is tight here. Roofers were straight ahead.
However, thanks roofers for keeping his poll up!

So while we are sort of limited this week in our work since there is only so much you can do on one long side (jumps are in the way everywhere else), we did get some canter pirouette work done. They are coming along - but I need to learn to be more clear with my aids. And of course I took advantage of the snorting and did some half steps. He was a little tight, but understandably so.

Collect .. collect ... turn

Getting there!

I think we are going to aim for a couple of March schooling shows to knock the dust off. I'm not sure what test yet.

And stay tuned for more freestyle posts!

In praise of potties

First, it was warm enough to ride in short sleeves in January.
'MERICA!

I really admire eventers and show jumpers. Not only do they school dressage and flat work, but they must lug standards and poles around in order to school their jumping phases. Most poles and standards are heavy. And dirty. And have SPIDERS under them sometimes.

The DQs at our farm do really enjoy trot poles and cavalettis. However, moving those standards around is just annoying. Cavaletti holders are expensive, and we are just too broke for that.

BUT.

What happens to make a cheap cavalitti holder?!

CHILDS POTTIES.

So now we have a cute little selection of potties in the arena. You can find them at Ikea for $5 a pop I believe.

Horse-poor DQs for the win!

Also, made a gif of the potties in action today. Sorry for the small gif, still figuring this thingie out.