This is not my beautiful horse

Where did this contemplative, calm, confident horse come from? Every other time I've moved her (5 times) she's been insecure and hyper and very worried. She picks fights or at the least makes nasty faces at other horses, and she paces and worries and frets. But not this time!

M and I walked Dixie and Billy over this morning. I led Dixie around the whole pasture, pointing out stuff, then unclipped the lead and let her wander off. She got silly and cantered back to me once, but mainly she looked at things and walked around and thought about stuff. The north side horses came running up to their fence, then one of them ran away snorting, and she just stood and watched them. She had a couple of really good rolls, and she thinks dried out dead cheatgrass is delish, and she seemed to have a perfectly good normal day. Ate, walked, stood with her head in the shade. She touched the top hot wire with her nose, got tingled, and never tested the fence again AFAIK.

Billy the goat was totally stressed out. Walking him over was awful, and he stayed glued to Dixie for a good four hours, but I think he's settled in too. He had a tough time with the fence, too - he kept trying to chew on it or stick his head through it and getting ZAPPED. I saw him touch hot and ground and get fried no less than five times, and I'm sure he tried it a few more times. It's like it's a personal insult that such a wussy looking fence keeps biting him!

Cersei ran through the fence once and got lucky, then ran through it again and got ZAPPED - she squalled and ran away, and she hasn't tried the fence again. She goes through the gate with me now!

I have a 100 gallon tank for horse water, an 18 gallon bucket for goat water, and a little bucket for dog water. The chickens love the dog water, Dixie likes the 18 gallon container, and Billy prefers to giraffe his head into the 100 gallon. Oh well, at least everybody's drinking, right?

I spent two hours sitting out in the pasture with them, then did a pretty good job organizing my tack and cleaning up the horrible junk between the barage and the fence. I turned a minefield of boards and crap into one fairly neat (huge) pile against the barn wall, then raked up four trash bags of stuff from the ground - dead sage, shingles, bits of wood, coke cans, shredded plastic, etc.

My theory is that if Waste Management will take one wheelie bin plus seven extra bags, and I give them seven extra bags a week, I can get this place cleaned up some time in my lifetime. And it's much less daunting to shove a bag full of sagebrush every night than to try to fill up a truck and Go To the Dump. Ugh, going to the dump is overrated.

This might be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen :D

Back to school

So Dixie and I are going to try a lesson with a local instructor tomorrow night. I blame this one equally on Kate and AareneX. Aarene is always extolling the virtues of taking lessons (and I totally agree - but she keeps it in the front of my head!) and Kate just did that awesome clinic with Mark Rashid. So when I saw this lady's Craigslist ad for a discounted first lesson, and she mentioned how she'd worked with Mark Rashid, I decided to jump on it.

Things I need help with: posting the elusive other diagonal. Sitting the canter better. Getting Dixie on the bit, at least some of the time! Riding from my seat, instead of (or at least in addition to) my voice.

I haven't posted hoof pics in a while. AareneX asked if Dixie's toes were too long - they don't look long to me. I've seen her wear them shorter, but I haven't deliberately trimmed them much shorter than this.

There's a goat in this picture.


Side view. The phone cunningly chose to focus on the manure ball, but the hooves aren't too fuzzy.


RF solar. You can see how my trimmer took down her inside heel a bit. And that month of light duty really took its toll - I have to ride more, or at least touch up in between trims if I'm not riding more.


RF heel. On the right side of the picture you can barely see where she clipped herself Saturday.


Right rear. See the flare on that outside wall? I am almost positive that's what's making the rear boot fit poorly. (Thank you Kirt!) I am going to start keeping that rolled back once every couple of weeks.


Left rear doesn't bell out, and the left rear boot doesn't get sand. (I think. I forget which boot gets sand in it, despite my best attempts to remember.)


Left front solar.


Left front heel. In this view, it looks like the outside front quarter is a bit long... I might take that down too.


Bonus goat!


As always, feel free to comment on her feet!

Slurp

The wind was blowing absurdly hard this afternoon, so I skipped riding to hang out with Dixie. She's in heat, and she's very sweet this time. She was mutally grooming with another mare when I got there! I don't think I've ever seen her groom another horse. She's way too bitchy and standoffish to consent to something that affectionate.

I fed Dixie and Billy an assortment of treats: cherries (Dixie approves, Billy disapproves), cheerios (both disapprove), pecans (both approve) and carrots (Dixie approves, Billy doesn't care). When I ran out, I hung out with the other humans for a while, then wandered over and hung out with Dixie. She snuffled carefully at my hand, then licked it for a while. I scratched around her ears a bit, which is something she'll sometimes tolerate. Then she twisted her head around so that I was scratching an eye. And she made the happy wiggly-lip face! I think I've owned her for two and a half years, and that is the first time she's made the happy grooming face for me. I don't know if it's just hormones or if she's decided it feels good to be scratched, but I'll take it.

Dixie really does have a lovely soft mouth. Her lips are very gentle when she takes treats, and she likes to lick my hands. She's still Dixie, though - she'd lick for a while, then she'd "bite" as my fingers with her lips, so I'd "bite" back with my fingers. I watched her carefully while she was doing this, and she was giving me a very calculating appraising gaze, like she wanted to make sure the line was where she thought it was.

I'm sure licking is on some list of Things You Shouldn't Let Your Horse Do, but I don't care. I know when her body language is telling me she's going to bite me. I've really emphasized to her that it's ok if she interacts with me, or with other things when I'm around. She was so wary when I got her - just waiting for me to do something that she didn't like, or whack her for no reason that she could understand. We both know the difference between a nuzzle and a head-toss, or a lick and a bite. I'm happy that she's relaxed enough to lick me or play with the lead rope.

June conformation

I managed to take proper conformation shots for once! Look, her feet are square. Well. Pretty close to square. As square as they ever are. ;)

I love the look on her face - it's both quizzical and sleepy.


Billy did not approve of me taking Dixie.


Dixie did not seem to care.


Here's a picture of her back. It looks even to me? Her right rear foot is slightly forward of her left rear, and I think that's why her hips are uneven.


I did wash her gross tail after I took the pictures, but I forgot to take more pictures post-wash. Trust me, it was much whiter and fluffier.

* I'm going to Vegas with my BFFs for the weekend, so I've scheduled a couple of posts for while I'm gone. Have a lovely weekend, yall!*

Fly mask fitting

Here's some goofy pictures of Dixie modeling her Cashel long-nose fly mask, which took the slow boat from the East Coast.

I got an awful lot of these:


because she's sure the phone is actually food. I did manage to outrun her enough to get a few full-horse shots.


I have no idea what to look for. I mean, her ears go in it, the velcro fastens around her jaw, and it's not poking her eyes as far as I can tell. That's all there is to it, right? (I know her forelock's supposed to come through the slit between the ears, but I didn't feel like fussing with it for a 5 minute fitting.)

Here is a bonus shot of Dixie's pet goat. She just loves this little dude. He eats with her, plays with her, even climbs on her when she's trying to nap. I have seen the hoofprints on her back!



That horse is the weirdest damn creature I've ever owned.