Got to ride again!

I got to ride again this weekend. This time I took Cody out. I was tempted to ride her in her old bridle (double-jointed snaffle) just because I felt like if she was nervous or herd-bound like she was back in early spring when I last rode her, then I'd be able to control her a little better, but I ultimately decided to stop babying her and just ride her in her new bridle with the curb bit. The curb bit has some long shanks which give a lot of leverage when pulling back on the reins, but I don't feel like it gives me better control. It certainly makes her respond quickly if I happen to pull back firmly, but I think it also gets her a little uptight...and my way of dealing with unexpected spooks and misbehavior is to pull her head to the side (direct rein-style), and that can be awkward with a curb bit.

But, I used it. She was a little rusty with it, added to concerned about why we were heading away from home (she's always been like this when ridden alone - you have to keep her mind very busy when going away from home, other-wise you are constantly nit-picking to keep her forward and from looking back toward home). But she wasn't nervous like she was back in early spring when the snow crunching and wind rattling through brown oak leaves still holding tight to dormant branches just set her on edge. But, because she was too busy looking back, it was difficult to get her to respond appropriately to neck-reining - she took some reminders about it, and some firmness. About halfway through our ride, she sort of relaxed about being out alone and we were far enough away from home that she wasn't gawking to see if she could look back home and then she became very responsive. All in all, she was pretty good on our ride, although I'd expect an 8 year old mare whose been ridden since she was 3 and just last summer had 2 months of professional training to be a little better. Normally, I'd give her more slack since she has had quite a bit of time off from riding, but my 7 year old mustang whose had 2 years off from riding was way better than she was on his first time back on the trail! But, they are two very different horses. Chico has always been ready to go out, alone even, and he likes to explore. Cody would rather be home lounging with her buddies. When we ride out with more than one horse (usually I pony one along), my horses are much better. Cody then isn't looking back concerned with leaving the others. The only exception is when I am out with both of my mares who are both a little herd-bound. Then, occasionally, instead of boosting confidence in eachother, sometimes they'll feed off eachother and both be concerned with home and then I don't have such a relaxing ride. That's only happened a couple of times though. Usually they are doubly good riding out together.

The ride I went on this weekend was about an hour an a half long. I went in the morning, but even so, it was pretty hot and humid. I didn't push Cody too hard because of that, we only trotted a couple of times for very short distances. Despite our gentle ride, Cody was still soaked with sweat by the time we got back. Horses just don't dry when they sweat when it is that humid (sometimes I really miss riding in Idaho). She enjoyed being rinsed off with the hose when we got back.

I'm hoping to go out for a ride with my neighbors tomorrow. They have Tennesee walking horses. It should be an interesting ride.

Well, so much for that.

We are getting a couple of inches of snow today. And the weather will turn cold for the next week, so I think it will be sticking around for a while. Oh well, at least it covers the mud!


Last weekend, it was gorgeous on Saturday (55!) and I asked my mom to come and watch the little rascal (she jumped at the chance). I skipped away and rode a horse! I played with them out in the pasture for a while. Kachina is an in-your-pocket horse. I haltered her, lead her around and groomed her for some practice. She was awesome. Let me halter her and just wanted to be played with. That's wonderful for a wild horse that's been ignored all winter. Pumpkin also wouldn't leave me alone. Griffin was interested, and approached a few times, but did not let me approach him without moving away. Cody, however, didn't come to visit the person with the curry comb, but she did let me approach and halter her when I was ready. I tried a new bit on Cody. She'd been trained with a TomThumb type bit (shanked with broken mouth piece), but I've read that those types of bits can cause confusion with rein signals. Since she did seem to not respond super quickly when I rode her last fall (but she'd also had a couple months off before I climbed aboard after baby), I decided to try a solid mouth bit. So I have a very gently curved curb-type bit that I tried on her. Afterall, the severity of the bit is determined by the hands that are connected to it, not the bit itself. And those broken mouth type bits can really be severe when they pinch the mouth as they fold in half when pulled on.

I couldn't do any ground work before riding, since it was so muddy, so I took her for a walk down the road a ways first. She was excited and nervous. I'm really glad I walked her first, especially since I was riding bareback. Even so, she was still keyed up when I climbed aboard. We rode down the road and through the woods on some closed snowmobile trails. They were partly snow covered and partly bare. Cody was quite nervous and antsy and just wanted to go home. I guess that's what happens when you haven't ridden a horse all winter, it's melting snow, and a little windy. She did spook a couple of times at flushing grouse and the wind, but other than that, she was pretty good and responded really well to the bit. She turned very nicely and even bent her body in the right direction when neck-reining. I was surprised at myself for having such a good seat when she spooked while I rode bareback. It's been quite a long time since I've ridden! This was only the second time I'd ridden in the last year!

One month left!

Wow, I noticed that it's been well over a month since I last posted anything. Sorry about that, but I'm not really doing all that much with my horses right now. In fact, the summer has been so hot and uncomfortable that I'm not doing much of anything outside right now.

As of yesterday, I have exactly one month until my due date! So I guess, baby girl could come anytime now! I should post some updated pics, but I haven't taken any lately. I think I need to remedy that. I am definitely getting a big belly, but it's not too out of proportion yet. This picture is from a trip we took to go cherry picking and hiking in Door County, WI last month when I was about 7 months along.

I've seen some pregnant women with hugely protruding bellies. But, this is my first, so my stomach probably holds her in a little tighter. I promise I'll post some pictures of my current belly and of my growing horses soon!

I visited Cody at the trainer after she'd been there for a month. Cody looked great. She was fit and had settled into the training routine nicely. The trainer showed me everything she'd been learning, including how well she was doing with riding in the arena with other horses. She is also neck reining okay. Neck reining good on one side, but having a little difficulty sometimes with turning to the cue on the other side. Even though I didn't really want to keep her there another month, the trainer was very persuasive about wanting to keep her and further her more. Finances were the biggest reason I wouldn't have wanted to keep her there...I really wanted to just get a month on Cody, then possibly send Griffin to her in the fall. But my husband and I discussed it and since Cody is a forever keeper horse, while I am looking to most likely sell Griffin at some point, it is more economical to invest in Cody, since we know we will use her, she's already a great horse. But with Griffin, we are not even likely to get the cost of training back out of him if we do sell him...so, the decision was made to keep Cody there another month. Griffin's training will be delayed another year, since we still have not managed to get the round pen up this year anyway. And when we do, I've decided that I will do all his training, instead of sending him off. That should be do-able, since I won't be pregnant anymore by the time I get back to him! And now, it is almost time to pick Cody back up. She gets to stay an extra 5 days though because the trainer called me last week and said that Cody had caught a cold that was lingering, so she was going to give her 5 days off. This year has been a really bad year for respiratory infections...I've seen several cases of pneumonia in cows when I've gone out with the dairy vet. It's just been so wet and warm this year. Thankfully, Cody doesn't have pneumonia, but she does need her rest.

I feel bad that I haven't spent much time with my horses lately. But I see them everyday. I try to give them all scratches when I fill their water tank, but sometimes they are not all down at the barn. However, lately, I've noticed that they are spending a lot of time in the barn trying to stay away from flies, and the few times I've seen them out the pasture, they've been really irritated by flies. I've been trying to avoid putting fly stuff on them because it always inadvertantly gets on me too, and I don't want to expose my unborn child to pesticides. I have wiped fly stuff on them before the farrier comes though. But they were being driven so crazy that I decided I needed to get out there and get them all wiped/sprayed right away. I decided to try spraying them because it's faster than wiping and easier for me, since I don't have to bend over to get to their legs (hard to do now that I'm so big), However, I always fear that spraying means more exposure to me, especially if the horse dances around a bit while I apply it. I decided to risk it anyway. None of these horses have been sprayed since last summer, and Catlow can sometimes get a little dancy about it anyway, so I was concerned...but they actually all stood perfectly! I know that they knew the spray makes the flies go away. I did Catlow first, and she did jump at the first sound of the sprayer, but then stood perfectly still, and I did every inch of her whole body. By the time I was done, she was standing in complete relaxation with her head low and her eyes half closed and didn't even move an inch after I let her go (I caught them all in the barn and sprayed them in there). One by one, I got every horse. And I swear when I got to Griffin's turn, he was waiting for me to get to him because he approached me, I haltered him no problem and he didn't move a muscle the whole time I sprayed him. Kachina was last, and even she didn't move around at all. Darn smart mustangs. They impressed me today. They didn't forget a single thing about being sprayed with fly spray from last summer. After everyone was thoroughly coated, I was so amused by the look of utter relaxation and bliss on their faces. For the first time in a while, they had no flies biting them! And I don't think I got any spray on me. I made sure to stand upwind, and since they were all standing so still, I didn't have to worry about getting on the wrong side of the wind.

We've been working on quite a few projects around our house this summer.

The garden is giving me tons of tomatoes now.

I've started canning. So far I've canned lots of green beans...

..,some jam (jalapeno-apricot jam is so yummy), and a batch of stewed tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes.

Next I am going to try canning salsa. I've already dug up all my onions because they were finished growing. Most were kinda small because the soil is not the greatest in our garden. Broccoli is giving us lots, carrots are big enough to eat, although I want to let them keep growing till fall. And we have a couple ripe squash already! We ate a delicata and a japanese curry squash just the other night and they were awesome. I need to get some pictures up of my giant hubbard squash. I haven't tried to pic any of them yet, but they sure are huge!

Another project that goes along with the garden is our cold room in the basement. We started that this spring, and with the hot muggy weather, it became fun to work on it in the cool basement again, so we just finished it this week. It will be a great place to store all our squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, and canned goods!


The garden has been a big project, but we also put in a flowerbed with a retaining wall near our deck. It turned out to be a huge project because we got some advice from a professional landscaper friend, but we are finally done with it! The yard was really tore up for a while. All this equipment is part of Todd's irrigation business, but it came in really handy when we were digging out the wall and filling the bed!


Finished product!


Because we put in the flowerbed, we then had to reseed in our yard because it got all tore up, so we are currently in the process of getting some better topsoil in from some of the cow pastures so that the grass will grow a little better than it had. We'll get some good topsoil for the garden too before we plant next year.

Another project that turned out really well was putting a door on the back side of our house to go into the laundry room. We had a local contractor do that and also build a small deck off the back door. This door will be so convenient for entering with dirty/manure-y clothes. Plus, the deck is big enough to put one of those circular clotheslines on so we will try to save energy by line drying a lot of our clothes. And I want to do cloth diapers with the baby, so the line will come in handy with drying those too! And all just out the back door!

The back door will also be convenient for accessing the chicken coop that we are still working on getting finished. The chicks and turkeys are rapidly outgrowing their little pen and are ready for their permanent coop. We just need to get that done now.




And of course, the last big project that we are working on is getting the baby's room ready! My sister's are throwing me a baby shower this weekend, so that should be a big help in getting ready, but we do already have a crib, a changing table, and some dressers.

So, I promise to get some pictures of my 8 months pregnant belly, and some of the horses up soon. Griffin has grown so much, both in size and in his attitude toward me - he's actually become quite trusting of me without me even doing anything with him. I'm really excited to work with him, once I'm no longer pregnant and the weather cools off. I'll also try to remember to get pictures of Cody at the trainer when we go visit her next.

training

A beautiful summer is full in swing here! We are getting tons of rain (too much for right now - can't get any hay cut and the dairy folk are losing good hay because it is too mature for dairy cattle now). Even though we've had a lot of rain, the temps have been nice (in the 70's), and we actually had a sunny weekend.

I had some friends come up to visit and we went strawberry picking. It was a lot of fun, but waiting a day to process my strawberries was not a good choice because they mold very quickly when they've ripened in such wet conditions! I think I probably salvaged only 2/3 of the box of berries. I may try to pick more today. I'm going to freeze them so we have a nice stockpile of berries for the winter months when we'll really want fruit.

I took Cody to a horse trainer for a month to get someone riding her and to have someone more experienced with me advance her training a bit. The trainer works with show horses and also trains trail horses. She has a really nice facility and a number of younger people working with her that ride with her as well. Our goal with Cody is to get to neck reining consistently and just get her more exposure and time with a person other than me. The trainer is going to help me graduate her to a more advanced bit that will work well with neck reining - a snaffle with a shank. I'm just not very experienced with the advanced world of horsemanship...I like to primarily trail ride, so what I've been able to do with my horses so far is perfectly good for me. But I think that it will be good for Cody to advance, especially since she is the horse that I put most visitors on when they ride with me. And I'd like her to become Todd's riding horse when I can finally get back in the saddle later this fall. I think he'd enjoy riding her regardless, but would be much more likely to come along more often if Cody was more responsive. The trainer offers lessons on the horse that she's training to teach the rider what the horse knows as well, and Todd plans to take those lessons, so it will be a good experience for all involved.

Poor Chico is so lonely without Cody. He is pining for her. It's been almost a week now, but I'll still look out in the pasture, see Griffin, Kachina and Catlow grazing, but not Chico. I get worries, so I go out to find him, and he's standing by the gate or in the barn all by himself. He isn't whinnying for her anymore, but he still goes off searching for her. When the 5 were together, they NEVER went off by themselves (with the exception of Catlow, who would graze away from the others, but never completely be in another part of the pasture).

And my flower beds really are starting to explode with color now! Right now it is mostly poppies and bachelor's buttons blooming, but soon, the blazing star, black-eyed susans, and coreopsis should start!