The search is on

Even though DH’s back is bothering him, the thought of him not having a horse is just too much for him to take so the search is on. I’ve been trying to talk him into just using Black until he heals up but I don’t think that is going to happen so now I’m trying to talk him into trying 100 horses before he makes a decision so he can feel the difference in them instead of just buying the first one he rides.

The one thing he has done is decided he’s ok with mares now (in the past he has hated mares). I still wish he’d look for a gelding but I’m glad he’s no longer against mares. Saturday we did go look at a mare. She was 5 and had been used to drag calves to the branding fire in South Dakota when she was younger. The weather this weekend was pretty nasty but they had an indoor so I still wanted to try her (figured she’d probably be at her worst with this weather).

The gentleman that showed us to her was very nice & seemed very honest. He said she didn’t want to get caught earlier but he had her up and brushed off for us. I asked him to saddle her up and ride her first. He saddled her nicely (didn’t just yank the cinch up like most) and when he got on he proceeded to bend her into a circle. You could tell she was hot and wanted to go and he didn’t stay in a trot very long before he moved her up into a fast trot and then into a lope.

Her stop was ok. She rooted a little and didn’t stop on a dime but once she was stopped she rolled back on her hocks and backed up fast with her head tucked. He tried to do some spins with her but it was more of a hop the butt over, hop the front end over then it was a plant the ass end and move the front end around. Her side pass was ok but she needed to catch her butt end up.

After that he hopped off and DH got on (in his saddle). He immediately took off trotting and then she broke into a lope. DH stopped her and backed her up but as soon as he released the reins she was off in a trot again and then back into a lope. *I* couldn’t figure out WTF he was doing. I could tell her trotting was starting to jar his back but he decided to try to throw a rope off of her anyways. Needless to say she pretty much ended up speeding up quickly until she was in a lope and he was stopping her again.

He finally got off and it was my turn (with his saddle – yuck). When I started off I started bending her. She was very soft in her mouth and she was very responsive to leg cues. I started trotting her down the side and then asked for her hip. Boom! She moved it right over. Then we went the other way and I asked for it. Boom! She moved it right over. Then I moved her into the center and asked her to bend around my leg. When she was doing that well I applied my outside leg and boom! She went right into a correct spin (not to gloat or anything but I think she moved better for me then she did w/her owner). I asked on the other side and got the same results.

Then I decided to lope a bit. Her lope was quicker. When I asked the owner if she’d go like this all day he replied yes. That wasn’t the answer I wanted. Lol After a few laps she did start to slow down. I loved her back! She never once drug her feet and she backed up quickly. I had DH hand me the rope and when I first started swinging it she wanted to walk off. I asked her to stop and she did so I continued to swing it. It didn’t take her long to realize that I wanted her to just stand still and the more I swung the rope the lower her head got.

On the way home DH asked me what I thought. I told him he honestly didn’t want to know but he pestered me so I told him. I thought the mare was a very nice mare. A little on the hot side but nothing that I don’t think a week of the ORS and passenger lesson wouldn’t fix. But with all of that said I told DH that unless he changed his style of riding that wasn’t the horse for him.

I think he was tense and had a lot of leg contact (even though he swears he didn’t) and I think she though he wanted her to go. I think DH rides with more contact then he realizes (and more then I realized) and I’m hoping by trying out a few horses he’ll realize that. Don’t get me wrong, she was very sensitive and it didn’t take anything to get her to go (I’m glad I told him to take his spurs off) but at the same time isn’t that what we ultimately want?

This is driving me bonkers because I see the potential in this mare. Don’t worry, I told DH that he needed to find a horse that fit him. I told him my ponies have been on the back burner for too long and it is time for them to come first. We have a few that we are going to go look at this weekend. They are higher priced (of course) but they also have more cattle experience too.

My baby is growing up!

Cat is growing up. She’s two now but she’s a very small two year old. Well that is what I thought when she was over at MIL’s but having her at home next to Lu and Abby she doesn’t look so small.

While I don’t plan on actually backing her until next year I’ve decided there is no reason why I can’t have everything minus actually getting on done with her this year. So last night I decided to saddle her up to see what she thought. We did a little bit of RPing first (in my little square pen) and she didn’t do too badly for not being RP’d in a while.

Then I put the saddle and the pad in the middle of the pen and let her sniff, lick, paw, or do whatever she wanted to do to it. We worked on tightening the rope around her belly and when I didn’t get a reaction I decided to go forth!

Here is what she thought of the saddle.



She thought about crow hopping once but I think she decided that would be too much effort and just kept cantering. I flapped the stirrups – no problem. I left it on her for about an hour and then we took a walk down the road with it and I sent her up and down the ditches with it on. She really could have cared less.

I told MIL and DH if I have problems breaking her out next year I don’t need to be breaking colts anymore!

She’s going to start going to the ropings and learning how to tie patiently while the other horses work. I need to start exposing her to more stuff. She’s a good girl though and she retains so much that I have faith she’ll be a very good mount when the time comes.

Gotta Love Spring!

Tues. we went over to the roping arena. I let DH and Chase start out while Ty and I sat at the trailer. I tied Lucy up on a post in the arena next to a few other horses so she could just stand.

Abby immediately perked up (although she didn’t want to speed up) and did well tracking. Chase wanted to throw his rope but that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. He always whacks Abby on the butt with it since he can’t get it high enough so right now she needs some desensitizing and he needs to learn how to throw it better.

I think DH (and a few other guys) were surprised by Black. He roped a few off of her and even dallied off a couple of times (he started off w/his breakaway). The only problem he had with her was getting her into a lope and that was just because he was being too nice IMO. He’s afraid he’s going to hurt her but I don’t think it will kill her.

He hopped off and I jumped on Lu. Boy does she perk up when we are around cattle! But on the flip side she also forgets a lot of her training. Her “whoa” sucked! I decided not to ride her very long. I was starting to accept less a then favorable performance from her in order to play and decided I needed to take it down a notch before I let her learn that she didn’t have to listen to me when we were around cows.

DH’s back was bothering him so I hopped on Black and persuaded her to lope. She wasn’t too happy with my persuasion and proceeded to let me know but I won and she loped. I tried to throw a few but missed. I’m going to try to get my first lesson in next week. She told me I could bring my horse but I think we’ll start with me first. I need to get Lu listening to me 100% of the time before I decide to try to rope off of her.

I do plan on taking her over and just letting her track the cows from time to time but I need to start working with her more consistently and expecting more from her.

All-in-all though I think we all had a good night.

Desensitizing the ponies & a bit about Max

Well Mr. Max passed his vet check and he is now with his new owners. It was bittersweet but I think it will be the best all around. She is young (turns 13 tomorrow) so they will have plenty of time to grow together and unlike most horses I don’t think she will grow out of him. She as already sent me an e-mail to tell me how much she loves him and how great he’s been so far (no riding yet) so hopefully they will keep me updated from time to time.

Here is a small cell pic of him checking out his sexy reflection in the stalls at ISU while he waited for the vet to do his exam.



The barn feels so empty without him and DH is starting to question his decision to sell him (a little too late for that). Since he’s still having back issues he’s in no hurry to look for another horse which is nice.

Friday DH had to work so I got the horses out for the kids. Chase was doing very well with Abby without me reminding him so I was very proud of him. His hand was low and he would stop and let her rest when she got farther down the pasture. He did so well I even let him lope her a few times. She did great with him too! No head tossing or anything like last year so hopefully the “bugs” are getting knocked loose.

Once they were almost done since both boys were listening I let them have a bit of fun.



Don’t the horses look excited? lol

After they got done I hopped on Black and roped the fence a few time. She could have cared less.

Tomorrow we’ll be taking them (Black, Lu and Abby) to our first roping of the year. I really want to see what Black is capable of.

With Max gone Abby has been trying to move up to queen “witch” status so she’s been helping us move Black. This morning it was great watching them all run and buck when I turned them out.

Quick (for me) Update

Saturday we brought Cat and Sis home (to my parents’’ house). The weather was lovely so MIL and I headed out for a ride. I decided to put spurs on just in case I needed them. Lucy does a pretty good job of ignoring my crop when she wants to so I thought maybe they’d be a little more incentive if I needed them.

We headed out and the drunken horse automatically appeared. She is getting better but it is still annoying. There is some trash down by the cattle that she doesn’t like. She isn’t bad she just wants to veer into the middle of the road instead of staying on the side so I took the opportunity to do some flexing and rollbacks until the trash didn’t look like such a big deal.

I was a bit surprised. She did the bending exercise very well with the spurs (last time w/bump spurs I still had issues). We headed down the road until we heard sirens. Lucy and Sis both stopped to see what was going on. There was apparently a grass fire down the road as several fire trucks headed down the intersection we had just gone through. Neither horse acted nervous, they more so wanted to just see what was going on.

We continued on and did a little bit of trotting and a little bit of vertical flexion. Lucy’s attention drifted when we got up by the neighbors’ horses so we did a bit of bending. It didn’t take long for her to focus on me instead of the horses. As we rounded the corner onto the next road we passed a concrete planter. Kind of like the garbage she just slowly veered away from it. I decided it was time to fix this as well so Sis and MIL sat back while Lucy and I did rollbacks and circles around the planter. Boy can she move off of her hind end when she wants to! It took about 15 minutes before she would even look at the planter but once she figured it out she was all for touching it.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, some trotting here, stopping off of rein only there, and a little loping up the big hill here. That has to be Lucy’s favorite (not). On the way home we worked on collection at the trot. This isn’t Lucy’s favorite but she did do her best. All in all it was a very nice ride.

Back at the house Lu and Sis got a little bit of patience pole time while MIL and I unloaded hay. Lu wasn’t very happy but Sis is slowly learning.

As for Max – well he’s still here at the moment. Right now I have two people who say they want him. The original people are being slow so I told them they had until Friday to have him vetted. After that I would be allowing the second person the opportunity to have him vetted. I guess I should feel lucky that he’s wanted in an economy like this.

Pleasure pony in the making

Last night I headed over to the arena for a little ride time. I wasn’t sure if I was going to miss the rain or not so I just took Abby over. We started off with some YHQ (under saddle) and then with some flexing. I can’t blame her too much for not being as responsive to the flexing since Chase hasn’t been releasing her in time but she’ll have to learn the difference in riders and what is expected so she got a few “bumps” to get around faster.

Then we did some ORS at the walk. I could tell this was going to be a good day by her “exhale”. I’m not really sure what it is called because it isn’t a nicker but it isn’t just normal breathing either. We started doing our ORS at the trot and she was finally starting to rate me a little bit so we moved onto the passenger lesson.

Keeping her in a trot for longer then 2 minutes is a chore but we continued with our squeeze, cluck and spank. I tried pushing her into a bigger trot but she just took that as a cue to lope so I let her pick her pace (for now) and just continued to get after her when she would breakdown to a walk. After about 15 minutes of this *I* could feel the burn so I decided to move onto loping.

Now if you remember this is where we had most of our problems last year. When I asked for the lope she went right into it with no head shaking or taking off. The only thing she did that I don’t like and that time will fix is that she braced against my hand when I tried to do a ORS the first few times.

Her version of the passenger lesson at the lope was pathetic. She was barely moving. She would try to take me over by Bishop and I would speed her up so she decided that maybe, just maybe if she went faster I’d shut her down. Well it wasn’t fast enough for me to shut her down and it didn’t take her long to realize she was burning calories so she came back down to her almost 4 beat lope. When she was dog tired I put her in the middle of the arena and flexed her while Terry loped Bishop. She was very happy to stand still.

Once Terry was done I worked on stopping off of two reins from a walk. Abby really is smart (which is a concern of mine since she is a ‘kid’s pony” and picks up quickly. I think with time and consistency she could be a very nice pony for Chase.

Round and Round We Go

Tuesday night DH, the boys and I headed out to the barn. We had left the horses in earlier in the week due to a rain/snow storm so we had stalls to clean. Poor Chase doesn’t think he should be responsible for cleaning Abby’s stall and when he does clean it he does it like most kids would do it. I’ll admit I’m pretty picky about how my stalls are cleaned so I wasn’t happy when he was just trying to throw away all of the sawdust vs. actually cleaning his stall.

By this time my niece had come down and started brushing Nikki for a ride. DH helped her saddle up and about 20 minutes later Chase was finally done with his stall so we started on Abby. I sent the kids out into the pasture to ride while I jumped on Black bareback and had Ty join me in the drylot. All I can say is that it is a good think Black ignores ½ of the cues you give her! Ty was clucking to her trying to get her to trot and when I’d take her towards the barn he’d grab the reins out of my hands and try to steer her back over to the gate because he wanted to go out to the pasture with the kids.

After a while of that he decided he was done. It was a good thing too because I nearly unloaded on my eldest child. Looking back I probably shouldn’t have gotten so upset but it is a little too late now. All he wants to do is run that pony (yeah I know I did the same thing when I was young). I had told him several times not to and when I would turn around he would be giving her the cue to trot and then he’d tell me “she just started doing it on her own”. **inserts not a happy mom face here**

Needless to say by the end of that night I was ready to sell Abby.

The next night we sat down and I explained to him what my expectations were for him. I expect that if he is going to have a pony and that if he wants to show (more like show off) then he needs to practice just like he would with baseball or wrestling. So that night we headed back out to the barn only this time I loaded my pockets with a few quarters. I gave both kids (my niece and Chase) $2.00 worth of quarters and told them when they didn’t listen I got one of their quarters. If they lost them all they were done riding. Whatever money they had left over at the end of the night was theirs to keep.

This seemed to work out well and Chase lost a quarter right off of the bat for giving Shari some “training tips’. About 5 minutes later he lost one for not releasing Abby when he flexed her (we had to buy her a caveson because she’s been biting him hard since he isn’t releasing her). I had them do some ORS at the walk and then I let Chase do some at the trot. We need to work on Nikki a little bit but I think her toes are a bit sore from some of the hay we had so I didn’t push her trotting.

After that I brought Nikki in with me and had Chase do the passenger lesson at the trot. Abby kept taking him behind the barn, by the gate, etc. He trotted her for probably 15 minutes and then I had him take her to the far end of the pasture, flex her and just let her stand still for about 5 minutes before bringing her back up to the barn to stand tied.

Then it was Nikki’s turn. Instead of letting Shari do this in the pasture we went to the dry lot so I could help “encourage” Nikki to go. Any time Nikki’s head would go down she’d get a friendly “pop” on the bum. I didn’t ask her to go too fast or too long before we put her up as well.

With DH’s bad back Black has been missing her exercise so I decided to RP her for 5 minutes each side at the trot. She wasn’t amused but she needs the exercise as well.

Isn't she looking good?

Let’s try this again…………………

Well I finally got the e-mail.

Hello, We enjoyed meeting you Saturday and were very impressed with Max and your handling skills. We were even more impressed with Max and feel he would be perfect for XXXXXX at her riding level. We would like to purchase Max pending a vet check if you are agreeable.

So now the wait is on. I don’t know why vet checks make me so nervous but they do. The ONLY health issue Max has had since we’ve had him was his hock sprain last year which they know about. He’s been moving out great this year and actually seems to be stronger on that hock now.

They seem like very nice people and the barn he will be going to is a pony club barn so he will be used. I think this will be a great opportunity for Max. I think he will be able to grow with the little girl (maybe 14-16 yrs. old) and hopefully if she ever does outgrow him or his potential he’ll be able to be passed on to someone else who can see what a wonderful horse he is.

So for right now I’m just asking everyone to keep their fingers and toes crossed for me that his vet check goes just fine.

Iowa Horse Fair 2009

Here is the video from Saturdays performance. I think MIL and Sis look great for only their second time in this spot!

The good, the bad, and the snow!

Well Horse Fair finally came and went. On Saturday I got Sis all cleaned up for MIL and I have to say I think she looked pretty darn good! I have their performance on video and I will try to upload it later this week. It went well and MIL did wonderful for only practicing the spot she was in a time or two.

Saturday afternoon I met a gal who came to look at Max. She was around 16 yrs. old and a VERY timid rider. Max did superb! She wasn’t used to riding on barely any contact so that was different for her. I made a joke about riding with a death grip and her mom replied “yeah that’s normally how it is”.

They loved his breaks. It almost sounds like the horse she has now took off on her and scared her quite a bit. I was so surprised to hear she jumped as timid as she was on Max. I haven’t heard back from them yet but that is ok. I was just so happy with how Max did since I’d only had a chance to jump on him a few times before she came.

Sunday the rain and snow and sleet moved in. A lot of the people left so the horse fair schedule was running ahead of schedule. This of course put everyone in a panic and the horses new it. There was no warm up either since the weather was so nasty. I didn’t get this performance on video which was probably a good thing. Some horses were going backwards, others were bucking, and even Sis was in a mood (although I was the only one who noticed that). At the end when the sent the two little girls in the one girl lost control of her horse and my worst fear came true as she came off nearly hitting the concrete wall. I won’t comment much on that.

Once all was said and done we loaded the horses up as soon as possible and headed home. MIL took Sis home with her so Cat was happy to see her big sister come home.

To error is human

Last night MIL and I headed over to the arena. We needed to drop Sis off at Terry’s so she could take her down to the fairgrounds today. I decided to take Max and put a little arena time in on him. I have someone coming to look at him this weekend & I haven’t ridden him much.

Wednesday night I rode him but it was a white knuckle ride. After my ride last night I’m not blaming that on Max but more on myself for having to high of expectations and not realizing his physical limitations but I won’t go into that too much.

When we got to the arena I started off by flexing him. I had him in the full cheek with the dog bone in the middle (remember DH has been riding him this winter in the wonder bit). He still flexed but he wasn’t as soft as I’d like. Once in the arena he felt “ready to go” so we did some ORS at the walk. Wednesday night I had tried to keep him in “frame” while maintaining a slow trot so I decided tonight to just let him trot on a loose rein. Go figure he was much slower then he was the night before.

I felt a calmness over him last night. Part of it has to do with being in an arena. He feels so much more secure in there because he knows there is no where to go. He was trotting so slow that Sis was passing us (this is not good for an English prospect lol).

Our troubles Wednesday night came with the lope. He was chargy and was bracing on the bit. When I asked him to lope last night (on a loose rein) he was dead slow. He was a bit too elevated in his shoulders but I pushed him to move out a bit more and he relaxed into a more cadenced lope.

He was rating my body wonderfully. When I’d quite riding he’d quit moving. His stops were solid and I never had to touch the reins to stop or back up. He didn’t want to go into the far end of the arena so we went there and rested. While resting we did more flexing and then some vertical flexion. I would barely pick up the reins and he would give so we started back out in the walk and I asked him for more.

It is amazing how well they do when you give them an opportunity to work with you and when you take the time to explain to them what you want (which I didn’t do Wednesday night). The only gait I couldn’t get him in frame was at the lope but I don’t think he is physically ready to carry himself that way yet so I settled for a relaxed lope.

I hope he does well for this gal tomorrow but only time will tell. I think Max will tell me if it will be a fit or not. I’m not getting to overly excited about it but it would be nice to get him sold.

Sort video clip

Horse Fair is this weekend so hopefully come Monday I will have some good post for you.

I took a short video clip of Black last night coming up to the barn. She's been running a lot more but of course when the camera is on she decides to trot. Oh well, you can still see how well she's doing.