What's Up Wednesday

 

Things are going pretty well over here! The horses really seem to have settled in quickly. The weather has been all over the place, and the wind! Nuts! Yesterday the indoor sounded like a space ship with all the wind outside. Despite that, for the most part, the horses have been good. I also have basically no media, so my apologies. I'll try and do better next week.

Last week, most of our rides were pretty low intensity. I just wanted the horses to get used to the different footing and all the new sounds and views. Everyone jumped a few little cross rails one day and otherwise just had flat rides. We rode mostly outside until Sunday, and we've been indoors since. 

Shiny is my most trustworthy outside of the ring, so she and I have done a little exploring. We checked out the grass ring one of the days after our ride, and then Sunday she and I went for a walk down in the field that is supposed to become a mini cross country course one day. There's a ton more land to explore at the new place, so we'll see what the weather allows for! There's a HUGE field on the other side of the property that looks like a good place for hill work. I don't think I'd survive taking the boys over there, but hopefully Shiny will explore it with me. She needs some hill work. The cross country area (to be) is down hill from where the barn is. We walked two big loops down there and then she didn't want to walk back up. Lol! We meandered our way up instead to make it less steep for her. Chubby pony needs some butt muscles! This week I'm trying to get the horses back into a real work routine. It's a little slow going... I think they all thought they were pleasure horses now. Shiny especially. She's so busy looking around at everything she forgets I'm telling her things. She was zero percent interested in carrying herself while moving forward today. I had to get after her some, which always makes me feel so mean! But she came around eventually. I popped her over a raised cavalletti and a cross rail a few times at the end of the ride. Apparently that was what it took to get her to work. She was more than happy to move forward for jumpies!

Oddly enough, I think Eros is the least comfortable in the indoor of the bunch. He'll come around I'm sure, and he's behaving just fine. I can just tell he's a little looky. I think what's tough for him is that the ring is really small. He likes to warm up in a big area so he can really stretch and loosen up. This smaller arena doesn't give him that. So I think he's just a little uncomfortable to start. Once he's working he seems more happy. I think some of the shadows are weird for him too. He has one eye that doesn't see that well, so I'm sure he just has to learn where the shadows and light spots are in the new place. He hasn't quite figured out the waterers outside either. I've brought him over to it, and showed him how it works. He drinks out of it when I press down and fill it up, but I don't think he's made the connection that HE can do that too. I noticed today the footing around the waterer had been pawed at some, so I think he might have been a little frustrated with it. I'm sure he'll figure it out. I'll keep showing him.

You know who has figured out the waterers? Al! He thinks it's the most magical and amazing thing ever. I had brought him over to it, and showed him how to fill it, and he just looked at me like WHOA! Then he tried it himself. Over and over and over. The next day I was riding Shiny while he was out there. His hay was kind of far from the water, and he kept going back and forth from one to the other like he knew some kind of secret. It was so cute. He's using it at more normal intervals now, and I think is less impressed with the magic. But I love that he's so smart about it! 

I'm reluctant to sing his praises on here about his behavior under saddle because I feel like every time I do that he reverts to cuckoo crazy Al. BUT! I also like to give props where they are due, so here goes nothing. Hopefully I won't regret this later. So far, Al is pretty comfortable in the indoor. He does occasionally need a stop and stare moment, and he still gets a little snorty sometimes. But we've had high winds that do indeed make weird creaky noises in there and also blows the end doors away from the wall sometimes, and while he doesn't like it, he's handling it. On the occasion he is a bit nervous inside, he's not giving that electric feeling like he's going to try and flee at any moment. He might have a little spook, and then he gets on with his work. So I'm very pleased with him. We are still having some issues with the go button. When something grabs his attention he wants to stop and look rather than keep going and look. So that's something we need to work on. But truthfully, as rude as it is for him to break and/or stop completely, I still prefer that to the prop and spin. The gas pedal is easier to work on than the panic reaction. I popped him over the cavelletti and the cross rail today. At first I was thinking it wasn't a great ride, because he wanted to break in every corner after the little jumps. But then I stopped myself and realized that he didn't actually spook the entire ride, and though he was sticky and lazy, he was listening to me. So once I rearranged my expectations I was happy with him again. I have reached out to a trainer and he's happy to come and work with us so now we just need to figure out a time and day. I'm excited to get to work!

In other news, I'm chipping away at the horse laundry at home. I want to get all their home clothes washed and packed away this winter so the mice don't get into them. Hopefully I'll actually do it this year since I didn't last year... Ooops! Also, it's a good thing I've been working on it, because I came home to my barn flooded on Thursday evening.

I keep my worker on in the winter because you don't let a good employee go! He spends the winter really scrubbing the barn from top to bottom and doing various other projects that are hard to tackle when the horses are home. While it was warm last week, I asked him to wash the trailer for me before I put it away since it was pretty dirty. He had used the hose I use to fill the pool to wash the trailer, which is of course totally fine. He brought it inside and connected it to the wash stall spigot so he could have warm water. But the problem arose when he didn't shut the water off at the spigot, just turned it off on the nozzle end. The old outdoor hose that is older than I know because it came with the house, is leaky at the connection and also likely has a few holes in it. (Okay, yes, maybe I should replace the hose at some point.) So yeah. Good thing I popped into the barn, because what a mess! I swept most of the water back into the wash stall, and the rest dried in a couple days. No real harm done. 

Something unexpected came up a few weeks ago. I had commented on a post on Facebook looking for opinions on LM boots. Which if you've been around awhile you know I loathe the company. LOATHE. Normally I try to just ignore those posts because you know, if you don't have something nice to say don't say anything. But I dunno. Sometimes I like to try and save someone from throwing a bunch of money out the window. Well. One of the LM reps reached out to me privately. She was very nice and wanted to see if she could somehow change my opinion of the company. And I was like honestly, both of my bad experiences were many years in the past, and I didn't feel like it would be right to ask for something. But she insisted on working on it, and went to the owners and they offered me new boots. For free. Guys. It's probably been ten years since I bought my boots from them. So as much as I want to keep loathing them, I may have to come around. The very nice rep was down the road from me today at my friend's barn so I got measured and they should be here in a few months. I also brought my old half chaps from them that never fit to get altered. The height is good on them, they're just too big, so I'm paying for that alteration obviously. If all goes well I'll have a nice new pair of boots and half chaps that aren't new but will fit soon. Or if thing go like before I'll have nothing... Haha! We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll be able to speak nicely about them soon. 

I know you want to know what I got for boots, and honestly I just went boring. They don't have interesting colors for the base, and my free boots wouldn't include custom leather (obviously) so I just went with black. The options were several shades of brown, black, or navy. I have lots of brown and navy so I wouldn't let myself get those colors. I was disappointed they didn't have green anymore. But black is great, and this way I'll have back up show boots. They'll have the pretty brogue toe like a few of my Celeris have, and a punched top. I'm leaning toward excited to get them, though I'm holding my excitement in check until I actually get into them.

And that's all the excitement here. How are you all doing??