Road trip

I'll be taking a little road trip this weekend.

To here:

And by little road trip, I mean a 30-hour drive across the country.

Will return with photos.

Peace.

Back in the Day ... Part 1, "Star"

I'm going to write a "mini-series" on the horses who have influenced me and taught me the most. 


KE Flight of a Star

After riding at Kaufman Stables (Westfield, Ind.) for a number of years, I got the opportunity to lease a small chestnut mare named Star. She was sired by Waskeeka's Nocture ... a decent line in the Morgan world. She was young, and cranky. She was not a horse you could go into the stall and brush or mess with. She would pin her ears and was not friendly. She also was a show horse - never turned out, locked up in a stall for 23 hours a day. At the time, I didn't know any better. I began my show career with her - showing all over the Midwest at Morgan "A" breed shows (including Dayton, Ohio, where this photo was taken) The ugly brown saddlesuit in this photo came as the recommendation of my instructor. It was even custom made. Geez. 

Even at the time when Morgan Jr. Exhibitor English Pleasure horses were still english pleasure horses, instead of park horses, Star was still very average. In today's Classic English Pleasure division, she still would not hold up. Not much movement and sort of a dumpy headset. (The dressage queen in me cringes at this word, but just work with me here) Of course, I didn't know any better at the time. My instructor filled my head with great things. How she looked fabulous and we would do great things. Star was really good at spinning and rearing. I fell off numerous times due to this antic. She was never one to rear so high that she was in danger of flipping over, but I think now she would have made a good reining horse. She also dumped me twice at the Dayton Horse Show in the warm-up ring. In the name of saving the very expensive, very ugly brown saddlesuit - I did land on my feet ... both times.

With Star I learned some hard lessons about showing. Smiling throughout the entire class won't win you ribbons. Neither will pleasantly trotting along on the rail. People are going to cut you off. During one class in Michigan, Star decided to throw in a lovely buck during the canter. Startled ... I didn't know what else to do but just keep going. One of the more valuable lessons ... ever. We never won a blue ribbon ... in fact I was more than thrilled to get ANY ribbon at all, as most of the time we were last or close to it. I could never figure out know why we always did so badly - even when we did not make any mistakes. Now I know ... obviously ... there were better horses and better riders.

As far as I know, Star is a school horse now for a Morgan stable in central Indiana (actually, last I checked, it was Sheryl Woosley's barn ... poor mare). When I took T-Bone to his first show as a 4-year old, I saw Star there ... trucking another junior rider around the ring. She had some grey hairs on her face, but still looked the same. As much as the mare dumped me, I still liked her. She was fun to show, and really for the most part safe. She set the stage for many, many years with Morgans.

... to be continued ...

Misc. stuff on the baby horse

Rope halters


I've always bought my horses leather halters. Nylon halters to me are not only unsafe, but look tacky. It sounds snobbish but I guess it was just the environment I grew up in. While I will always refuse to use nylon halters, I have recently discovered the convenience of rope halters. While they do appear "western-y," they are fantastic for starting a young horse. The bridle slips right over the halter with no problems - whereas with my leather halter I have to adjust some straps to make sure everything fits and it always looks like the horse has 10 tons of leather on his face. Rope halters also have a little bit of "bite" for when you need it. Not quite as much as a chain, but more than just a regular halter. I also like this. Rope halters are so adjustable, it's ridiculous. One size can fit a wide variety of horses. So while I do not like the current pink one I'm using with Hampton, convenience has trumped the little fashion police voice in my head ... for the moment.

Lunging
Of all the tricks to teach a horse, I have always been pretty good at teaching them to lunge. I know how to deal with just about any problem they can throw at me, and in most cases in the beginning when a horse does not cooperate on the lunge, it is because they don't understand. Hampton, however, is a large 2 year old and is VERY good at moving sideways. I mean, if there was a Kentucky Derby for a really messy, unbalanced, frantic leg yield/side pass - he would win. So while I am capable of handling and correcting a horse that "bulges" out on one side of the lunging circle, Hampton merely runs sidways - sometimes so fast that I just let go of the lunge line because I don't feel like face-planting. There's hardly anything I can do when he does this ... so instead we've gone back to lunging in the roundpen (where this does not happen) ... and in the open ring, I stick with smaller circles and slower speeds. I hope he eventually comes around with more work. Part of working babies ... sometimes it just takes time.

Weeee!

Pony-ing is something I never had the opportunity to do with T-Bone, but I found it to be not only a great form of exercise for Hampton (without stressing his young joints too much), but the old therapy horses at the barn also get good exercise ... and I find it to be quite entertaining! As you can see by the photo, Hampton is pretty bored with ring work now. He's ready to be ponyed out on the trail for sure. My goal is to do that this week. I've been on his back a few more times, and he's bored with that, too. Still needs more work on steering and stopping before we can go off without a handler, though. He's still very clueless about the bit - which is fine, I don't push the issue since he most likely needs his teeth done anyway and ... well he's just two. I'm just happy that he plods along with no bucking or tension. He'll be wormed tomorrow and maybe there won't be 500mph wind so I can actually work him a little. He probably would have behaved today, but the wind was so fierce and cold that it hurt my ears so I wimped out.

The bass player for Phish

I met Mike Gordon yesterday.




That is all.

Confirmed: He is actually 2 years old

So today I go out in the field to fetch Hampton. It's quite a walk out to the grass where the herd is grazing. I catch him, and go to walk toward the barn. The horse plants his feet and WON'T MOVE. I try to take him off balance, doesn't really work. So I get after him a bit and make him lunge a few circle to get him moving his feet. Great. Go to lead again. Stops. Won't move. If I stand beside him and swat him with the lead rope behind me, he flies backwards. So I end up backing him halfway up to the barn. I gave him several chances to go forward and walk with me, but he wouldn't - so we kept backing up. A few times he reared, and once he struck out with a front leg. Luckily I wasn't in firing range. He finally changes his mind as we get closer to the barn and the rest of the day went smoothly. I made it easy for him and just lunged in the round pen. But we were both out of breath and sweaty after trying to walk in from the pasture. GEEZ! Now I will be bringing a whip with me so that this doesn't happen again. Ah, babies.

Here horsie horsie



When I first showed Hampton the clippers, he spent about an hour pouting in the back of his stall snorting like a bull. (I had hung them on his stall door so he could deal with it while I went and rode). Turning them on also got the snorting reaction and cowering in his stall. Now I can turn them on, run them on his neck (obviously I don't clip his neck hair), and occationally touch his nose and clip some whiskers. He is still a bit leery, but mostly it's just ticklish now and he'll get over that, too. If only baths were making the same progress.



A thirsty pony!

My horse is a jungle-gym

Hampton is doing extraordinary. Today I ponied him off of one of the older school horses (I have done this a few times already), and then with the help of a friend I climbed aboard! I have sat on his back once before, but didn't go anywhere. Today we walked around just a bit. He was a bit unsure if he should walk - I'm sure it was part that he felt unbalanced, and part that he wasn't sure it that was OK. But he was not nervous at all. Not one bit of tension. My helper was even able to step away for a few minutes to snap some photos! :-) I don't intend to do anything but work on walking, stopping and steering with him until next year when we can start actually "riding." But I wanted to make sure he was ok with the whole "Yes, you let me ride you" thing before he got too enormously big.

I'm so impressed with his calm nature. All of this first ride stuff was going on at the same time that a loud dump truck was driving around the farm making loud noises. Never bothered Hampton.