Bits and Pieces

One thing that has been sticking in my head since Arya came home is what to stick on her face - or in her face. So here's a question for any readers out there...

What bit does your horse wear?


Bailey wears a 16mm (relatively thin) weighted loose ring single-link snaffle. It's heavy, pretty thin and while it's single link, the mouthpiece has a touch of a curve so it doesn't really nutcracker.

Bailey in her loose ring, BS of Sweden and Dark Jewel browband

Foxie also adores the above bit, but a lot of the time goes in a french link pelham with a relatively long shank, which helps me better balance her and not spend 20 circles slowing her down (especially when her body doesn't really need to be doing that). 

Farm Life & Arya

Farm life keeps on chuggin along at the still unnamed farm. I see my kids each day, and while I love having control of every inch of their lives, it's also a little stressful...

After lots of bad luck since the move, we're part of the way through a drain tile project - which means that the horses' paddock got done and nothing else.  The drain tile has made life a lot better in the mud category, and looking out, I can start to see things come together. With the help of the neighbor, I was able to get ALL of the 8+ inches of residual poo banked up under the barn shelter (vs the regular shelter; we have an overhang off the barn in to the paddock) scooped out and started replacing it with sand. We continue to work on mowing our way out of a jungle and have plans to rent a brush hog to take down the high scrub that has taken over one of the pastures. We also plan to have the rest of our land tilled and planted for hay/pasture; the previous owners tilled under the hay the year before they moved and planted soy beans, so we need to take care of the field that is currently growing some impressive weeds.

So we spend a lot of time mowing; I haven't spent a lot of time riding, but my rides since Arya arrived have been great. Bailey has been a lot more focused now that Foxie isn't screaming her head off, and despite being kind of fat and out of shape, she's throwing down some very nice flatwork. I haven't jumped her yet because of the weird footing, but may set up some jumps on the grass so we can still play. Arya lunged over the weekend in tack and a rope halter; she knows how to lunge, but doesn't really get ground work and personal space yet, so I'm trying to lay the good ground work now. She was particularly stuck sending to the left, but by the end of our first session, she understood how to send in both directions, though she was still thinking hard. I'm interested to see what sticks - I haven't had the chance to work her again, and am currently blogging from a work trip to Salt Lake City. I won't have a chance to play with her until Friday :(

I'd like to get back into a riding routine and get everyone lunging or working under saddle rather than sitting in the pasture. It's been hard to balance doing work and chores with also doing fun stuff; we need to get better at that.

Here are some photos; I'm better at taking pics than I am at blogging rn.

Goals into July:

1. Finish the drain tile.
2. Teach Arya to ground work
3. Sit on Arya and see where we are at.
4. Ride Bailey more
5. Lunge Foxie at least 1x a week.
6. Get the horses seen by the farrier; we had a gap to match up with the neighbor's farrier and their feet look like crap.
7. Buy and store hay.


Barn Back Log Work:
- Patch holes in the roof and barn shelter roof to prevent drips
- Figure out a shavings supplier or plan
- Figure out a round bale supplier/storage/plan
- Figure out a baled hay stockpile/storage
- Set up tack area
- Problem solve a way to tie horses safely in the barn - xties? tie?
- Wash blankets or find someone to do this.
- Finish putting sand into the shelters
- Finish removing manure from shelter
- 

Meet Arya

Well... I've been busy, though this blog certainly doesn't reflect it (or my absence perhaps speaks volumes)... but I did a thing, guys.

I bought an OTTB sight unseen from New Vocations.

She arrived in a whirlwind on a transport from Kentucky at about 1 AM last night, and has wowed me from the word go. She traveled halfway across the country in one day, came off the trailer wide eyed and bewildered, and after no more than 4 minutes of waffling, got on my trailer to come home with me in the pitch black night.

I couldn't believe it, either. She's FOUR. And super chill, and kind, and sensible.

Today, she continues to be kind and sensible and earnest. She comes when you cluck to her in the pasture, and despite being horribly shunned by the horse conglomeration formerly known as Foxie and Bailey (Bailey will charge and chase her whenever she can, asshole) she's hanging out in my pasture eating grass like she isn't alone in a new place.

More details to come; she has a planned vacation of a week to settle in (while I recover from some super badly placed and intensely painful sun burn) so we won't do much but hang out... but I'm already in love. And so far, changing her name hasn't been too weird; her race name just doesn't suit her, in my mind so it got changed in the stable, and I've already got a show name in mind... and yes it's vaguely related to Bailey's. Now if only they would get along!

Here are her glamour shots from NV:

Carriage House Combined HT Recap

We made it to Carriage House! It's been a stressful week, trying to prep an out of shape horse for a show, and several times I nearly threw my hands in the air and gave up. My wonderful friend J kept pushing me, and despite some rocky rides, I packed and cleaned my tack and tried to not worry about leaving Foxie home alone for a few hours.

On the home front, things continue to be a struggle; here's a list of shit that has gone down:

• Hubby was in a car accident on Friday (no injuries, just one dented bumper)
• Our phones continue to not work reliably at home (we went to get new ones... and hubby's is already not working)
• Bailey came in from the pasture with a huge hole/sore in her butt (yay making me look like a responsible mom)
• We have to have the vet out to our property to be approved to adopt a TB mare I'm nuts about... so there goes more money.
• Foxie's been getting eaten alive by bugs
• The dog keeps banging up the corner of his eye while running around outside but can't be contained because he goes crazy
• We broke the PTO shaft on our mower.
• We bent another blade on the OTHER mower
• Grass is basically taking over our general "yard" area

But either way, we made it to Carriage House on Sunday. I got Bailey braided and loaded in fantastic time, but forgot my coat and armband. Fail. Hubby brought the coats down, and I got on extra early to warm up because I was expecting my horse to be a psycho. She, always the one to surprise, was absolutely perfect. If anything, she was lazy. 

She laid down a good test for a 32.10 and some weird judge comments. I wasn't too fond of riding on wet grass for my test, and wasn't being too accurate in my corners and turns because I didn't want to slip, and the turn from outside the ring to C was about 4 feet wide. I overshot my center line to fix it, but the judge definitely noticed, and went out of her way to say that I wandered down the center line. I'm not going to pay too much attention to the comments - Bailey put down a great test, and left us in 4th - and she definitely wasn't at her best, so that was amazing.

(video to come)

I ended up with a stall (not sure how that happened) so Bailey got to demonstrate her chill new attitude sleeping, eating and drinking like a pro in her temp stall while J and I found me an armband, socialized and I tried to not get sunburned after forgetting my sunscreen. I got on early for jumping again; I was nervous as the day before in our last jump school at home, I was swearing at the top of my lungs trying to safety-seat myself into not falling off my horse when she randomly decided to start jumping 2'9 like it was about 4'6 and while I kind of enjoy her jumping the crap out of things, this was... different. It felt very unsafe. I popped her over some starter warm up fences and she was 120% her usual self again despite the previous day's weirdness... loping around like a hunter, clearing everything happily and even doing a little jamming despite the heat (it suddenly decided to be summer and was in the mid 80's and humid). 

The course was riding kind of rough, especially between 4 (the green with Pine Trees fence) and 5 and I was nervous. I put on my coat (because I don't care if coats were waived, I came to wear my green coat, and I am going to do it!). I popped a few more fences and went in:

1 garnered a look and a tap, two went well: 

Three she jumped me out of the tack over, but jammed until I got her pointed at spooky 4: 

She tried to run past 5 a bit, but popped awkwardly over it when asked, and left it up!  6 was also super ugly due to getting a horrible line, but she went. And trotted the down bank like it wasn't a thing. I thought 8 was a bit spooky, but Bailey said "Yes Ma'am" and jumped like a good bean:

We lost some focus into 9 a & b (kids on the rail, AH!) but BB took me home: 

And she flew around for a double clear. Some fences were rocky - and maybe I was a bit tap-happy with my whip, but she jumped the shit out of a BN course (with random down bank) and took us from 4th to 2nd! We got a ribbon and a very nice body brush out of the day - not a bad bit of luck, when the rest of the weekend was a disaster. Plus, my new coat looks badass. 

Good girl, BB! She and Foxie were thrilled to be reuinited and while some more misfortune hit me when I went to go park the trailer... at this point I can't stress or be upset about things. My trailer is a bit damaged (I might have clipped a fender on another trailer trying to avoid backing my damn trailer) but everyone is fine, the other trailer is fine, and despite tons of unfortunate things happening, we're all healthy and it can only get better from here, right? 

Right. (positive thoughts would be appreciated, however). 

Surfacing

This week has been one for the books, and I don't know if I have the ability to tell all of it's stories well... but let's try.

Friday: We started the trenching project. And stopped fairly quickly because the rental trencher was NOT helpful and out of frustration, started to look for a pro to help us with the digging.

Saturday: Hubby built me jumps and worked on matting stalls. I almost got scammed into buying a feral donkey, but the feral donkey was so feral it escaped and after some reflection on the drive home with an empty trailer (read: sobbing while driving) an adult donkey isn't what I want, because someone else trained it and it might be an asshole. The new neighbors, however, talked me off the ledge of wanting nothing to do with donkey kind and got me in contact with their breeder.

One of these donkeys is actually Satan.

Scratch that, the Donkey's OWNER is actually Satan. 

Sunday: We went wheeling with the new neighbors and only almost died once. It was fun!.

Monday: Andrew spent the whole day sick and sacked out on the couch. I did similar, but I did ride my horse, too. She wasn't awful. I also put a deposit down on a soon-to-be-born donkey! The owner of the feral donkey decided to quit being a normal person and started threatening me and demanding money because I didn't  take her donkey, so she got blocked.

Tuesday: I nearly passed out in my boss' office and spent the day trying not to die. I ended it (feeling much better, but still plenty gross) by eating expensive steak at a work dinner and got home very late, and promptly went to bed under multiple blankets and a double folded down comforter.

Wednesday: I rode Bailey again, over fences! She remembered how to jump!

Thursday: Bailey got ridden again; she kind of remembers how to dressage but... honestly she almost rode better when I was wearing river boots and no spurs. I'm confused, but... ok.

Today's plans include more riding (because, show on Sunday) where we practice our test a bit and maybe lope over a few fences. I'll do a longer flat ride tomorrow, and then will be up bright and early to show on Sunday. There's plenty to be done before then!