Gearing back up

So last week I got to pick up Adventure The Trailer from the repair shop.  They welded in a new "stud" and remounted the hi-tie on it - it's quite good work up close.  Yay!  Let's never do that again, Funder!

 And Evelyn, the Tights Lady, made me new tights!  After VC, I'd emailed her to see about getting the silver-stripe tights patched and getting some fleece tights for my next inevitable "and then it started snowing" ride story.

"Oooh!" she said.  "I've got just the pair in mind for you.  They're really crazy, but they'll be perfect for you!"

"Aiight," I said.  After you've spent two years in neon smiley face tights, "really crazy" is no longer a scary term.

They showed up today and they are incredibly comfortable, warm, and really crazy.  

Yellow full-seat.  (I am sparing you the butt pic.)

 Blue stripe on the left.

Purple stripe on the right.

It's gonna look awesome with my blue-and-purple gear!  BRING IT, SNOW, I'M READY NOW!

(Please, please, gods of snow, stop tormenting me now that I have the right gear?)

Anyway, if all goes well and I don't crash the trailer or lame the horse, I'm off to a day or two at Gold Rush Shuffle over Thanksgiving.  If I manage to avoid frostbite and not inexplicably chicken out and quit, I should get Dixie's and my 500 miles there.  Fingers crossed, please!

The ugly

One of the things I try hard to do is share the fuckups, disappointments, accidents, etc. in my horse life. When my shit goes wrong and I think "god maybe I shouldn't blog this," that's when I make sure to blog it. So, first, please click through (if you're looking at this in Reader) and watch this video.


Dixie trotting, Sept 2012 from Funder on Vimeo.

Man, that is a fine moving horse. Unfortunately she's, like, the polar opposite of how a gaited horse should move! No flashy high action, just a real businesslike smooth easy trot. So already I'm kinda cringing - look, look at my amazing TWH endurance horse's super efficient trot. You're doin' it wrong, Funder.

(She's still so skinny. Gotta get those ribs covered - but it's only been a week of the Fat Camp plan.)

So I've watched the clip over and over, in slow motion even, and that mare is absolutely landing flat/heel-first. She's not toeing it at all. She's just flowing along perfectly.

And look at this hoof! It's a little long, yeah, and a little underrun at the heels, but that's a fine looking hoof.


Earlier this week, Tuesday or Wednesday, I checked on Miss D and that sole was looking like it was maybe ready to come out. Then I was laid very low indeed by some minor food poisoning and I wasn't able to get back out til this weekend. On Saturday I arose from my deathbed and went and shot that video - plus picked up Dixie's feet and had a look-see.

The packed-in sole was definitely ready to come out, and her frogs were absolutely eaten up by thrush. I don't know how much you can see from these shots, but here goes...





That was midway through the prying session. I got some more sole and bar out of all four feet, but I only took those shots. Then I scrubbed purple thrush stuff all up in her feet. This is a terrible photograph, but I think you can see how deep the crevices are.



Today I went back and packed those crevices with tea tree oil gauze.



Now that the sole is coming out, her heels are hugely long.



This is the bit where you might disagree with me: I'm leaving the walls alone for a couple days. My first instinct was to scrape out the crumbly sole, treat the thrush, and trim to live sole as normal, but I'm going to wait. I kinda think that the walls are protecting her poor frogs. I know they need to get back to ground contact and start doing their job, but I also think it's a good idea to let them heal up for a short time first.

Also, I think that my horse has no nerves in her feet or something.

***

You remember my sweet tack trunk I made out of a vertical tool chest from Home Depot? Yeah, it didn't work out so well. I mean, it worked fine on perfectly flat indoor surfaces, but it was almost impossible to accordion open the chest on bumpy outdoor ground. It's been demoted to living in the garage holding "stuff I might one day need," and I'm trying something new for in-trailer storage.

It's another tool chest from Home Depot - this one is like a trunk, with a telescoping handle, wheels, and a lift-off lid. Fits in the back under the saddle rack.


Holds the "I might need this on the road" stuff.


BIG removable top tray comfortably holds all my trimming junk.


Mr. September's a big handsome fellow, but his human appears to have misplaced his clothes!


And finally, I stole a couple of Tahoe Rim ribbons ;)

New clothes, spa day, dance practice

Yes, all the above refers to my horse.

Dixie got a new halter!


Mrs. Mom has started making Horse Paracord Stuff, in exciting colors, and I immediately signed up for a halter. I turned her loose in the backyard and got a couple of good shots (and a bunch of blurry nose pics).



It's big enough for her TWH head! I think she'll have full range of motion with her jaws, so she can comfortably eat with it on. And it is beautifully blue and purple, with nice padding on the crown and nose. Really lovely quality work. There's a tiny blue "button" on the tie end, not big enough to interfere with tying it, that I didn't take a picture of :(

And she sent me a bracelet!


It's pretty comfy as a bracelet, but I might clip it on the saddle if I feel that I need it somewhere. And the neat thing about paracord is that if I really needed some cord for some emergency, I could unravel the bracelet and have like a mile of cord.

Then - AFTER taking pictures, because I'm not too bright - I broke out the new magical shedding block and made a Dixie blizzard.


And it's Wednesday, so we went down to the street to drag the trash bin back to the house. I did a short trot-out on the road, just to make sure she hadn't forgotten how, and she trotted perfectly with no carrots or sticks.

Dixie hasn't done a trot-out in 9 months. The last time was the heartbreaking "please trot so the vet can see how lame you are" in June. :-/ But she looks great, she feels great, her attitude's great, and I'm excited to go ride Saturday.

Toklat Woolback final review

tl;dr: Doesn't work for Dixie.

Just over a year ago, I ordered the Woolback and was initially delighted with it. I still want to love it - it's super lightweight, Dixie gets good back scores, and it's easy to clean. (Unless you get caught with it in the brand-new clothes washer. Spouses do not like that shit.) But it wads up under the saddle, and that's totally unacceptable.

I can't flat-out blame the Woolback, because it only seems to bunch up when we're going downhill. Dixie paces downhills. That side-to-side motion, plus the braced hollow/neutral back position, just works the pad forward. There's no stiffness to the Woolback to hold it in place. :(

But getting off and untacking and straightening the pad after every set of downhills is totally unacceptable. Bottom line: Don't buy a Woolback if you have a pacey horse and a western-type saddle.

I'm trying out a Reinsman next; I'll review it when I get some saddle time again. :)

Trailer tack room cabinet

I've been thinking about how to maximize my tack room space, and last weekend I decided I needed a cabinet on the back wall. So I made one!



The front is 1x4s dowelled together. I didn't have big enough clamps, so I wedged it in between nails while the glue dried.


I cut out for the steel studs, propped the front in place, and very laboriously put in a mini stud wall behind the front. The angles were extremely hard for me to figure out.


I will need to vent for the battery and get a new spare rack mounted. Small price to pay.

The doors were easy; they're just 1/2" plywood.


The top was amazingly hard. I ended up buying a small piece of 1/4" MDF and eyeballing the curved wall. Then I started pasting cardboard on top til I had the whole thing filled in.


Carefully transferred to the rest of the sheet of 1/2" plywood...


And it fit! Really well.


I put eyebolts into the steel studs and used a bungee to hold the bucket collection in place.


Huh, I forgot to take a picture of what's IN the cabinet. It's got shipping boots, the first aid kit, my crew bag, and the compression sack of horse blankets. I got heavy-duty magnetic latches to hold the doors closed - and if I need to, I can tie the handles together or run a barrel bolt across both doors.

While I was fussing around in there, I vacuumed the carpet. I think the whole thing looks very nice. Things I rarely use are easy enough to get to, but out of the way. There's a ton of room inside now - that's good, because I use the (not as hot) trailer to store the ice chest.


I'm quite happy.


Edited to add: Here's the horrible "before" picture.

Beautiful day

Ready to go.


What an awesome day. :) Dixie was perfectly well behaved for a 23 mile outing with Diego. I think she is finally turning into an endurance horse, not just a horse that dashed through a couple of LDs - she has an easy little 8-9 mph trot that gets us places without wearing her out. I wish she'd drink better... we hit a lovely little spring-fed trough at 10 miles and she just rinsed her mouth out. But she enjoyed the rare and wonderful green grass at the spring runoff, and she didn't particularly care if she or Dig was in front, and she took care of the things I'd like her to take care of. I don't always ask her to slow down at rocks or hills or washboard roads anymore - I let her decide. She has made a lot of mistakes, but she's finally learning that she has to think for herself for some things.

C and Dig.


The day started off near 90 and cloudless. We took our time working north through the foothills, then we picked up a good pace headed east to the other side of the valley.

We rode to them hills over thar~


The trough was at the other side, up a little ways back into the hills. Dixie ate a lot of grass and sort of thought about drinking. We went a bit further up into the hills on the east, but the road we picked, while very pretty, was slow and didn't lead anywhere, so we cut cross-country and got back down to the pipeline road. I think the clouds came up while we were up at the spring - when we got back down to the valley floor, the temperature had dropped nearly 10 degrees and there were stunning huge clouds everywhere. It even looked like it was raining in parts of Reno!

The color balance on the pictures came out terribly. It's not actually a uniform gold out there - the sage is, well, sage green, there are little blue-green plants here and there, the cheatgrass is dead and almost white, and the other spring flowers are dead and various shades of gold. The sky really WAS that blue, and the clouds were amazing, and the wind was blowing just hard enough to make me totally comfortable, and it was awesome.

Don't point that damn camera at me, UNTIE ME RIGHT NOW!


When I got back, I took some foot photos so you can see how her feet look after 20 miles barefoot in the sand and rocks. Front left - too much flare at the quarters, I should start touching them up between trims.



Front left again.


Rears - I've been keeping the outside quarters of her rears rolled up off the ground to hopefully stop the flare there. Look at that stress ring that's almost grown off of her hooves - I wonder what caused that? If I kept obsessive records maybe I'd know, sigh.


Well shit! Front leg post rinse - those damn bell boots rubbed her pretty good. So much for them.


I am officially pronouncing Professional Choice No-Turn Bell Boots a don't buy. They're not amazingly sturdy, the customer service isn't amazingly great, and they rub! FFFfffff.

Of course Dixie didn't act like her legs bothered her in any way shape or form. She is so frighteningly stoic. It feels like a ton of responsibility to try to watch her at all times and guess how she's feeling.

Horse

When we last saw Our Heroine and her horse... Hahah, I can't do this. I can't write in third person. Too pretentious! Anyway, I'd ordered some bell boots because Dixie was clipping herself, I was waiting to take a lesson, and I was thinking about touching up her hooves.

I had my lesson Tuesday, and it was very helpful. To start with, M asked me to trot in a circle around her. We hurtled along and managed a couple strides of trot, a couple strides of canter, and then a very braced pace for 3/4 of a wiggly egg-shape. I pulled Dixie up and said "That is our relationship in a nutshell, and that's all of our problems." We talked for a while about what my goals are and what I'm willing to do for them. I said that I'm willing to do arena-type work a day a week, and I want to get her soft and supple on both sides and able to collect up and stretch out. I don't want to show, certainly not at dressage shows, but I'd like to work on dressagey stuff because it's good for both of us. I want to get my horse broke - or closer to broke, at any rate.

She showed me a couple of exercises to work on. It's all stuff that I've read about but never could figure out on my own. How to tell when she's crossing her rear legs when I ask for that one-rein stop. A different cue for backing up from the ground. Some stuff that I'm pretty sure is just to get me aware of my seat - get her to walk more and more slowly without touching the reins, for instance.

When I could get Dixie's attention, she was smart as a whip. The problem, as always, is getting her to focus on me and my weird demands when she wants to stare off into space and call for other horses. I stuck with it and the longer I worked her the better she got - even when all the other horses at the arena packed up and went home, she started calling for them but was still really on the aids. I told M about The House and that I'll take lessons as I can afford it, probably every two weeks, and she was fine with that.

Then we cantered wildly home, as if to underscore the importance of following through on this. :) It was a lot of fun but it was the same old fight about how fast she gets to go - she wanted to gallop, I wanted to rack or even trot, we ended up with a canter.

Friday my Pro Choice Ballistic Overreach No Turn Bell Boots came in, so I picked them up, then I stopped at the other feed store and got a really good brand new rasp. I laboriously shaved off a fraction of the flare on her back right hoof - the flared quarter is just out of ground contact now. I think I will try to keep it off the ground for a trim cycle and see how it starts to grow in. Holy crap dude, her hooves are SO FREAKIN HARD.

Then I tried on her spiffy new bell boots. I'd asked them to order M and L for me, because I wasn't sure what size she needed but I thought I'd know when I saw them. M looked too small for her dainty (snicker!) legs, so I went with L. Here's the test fit:



They seemed to fit, she didn't care that they were on, and they didn't turn. Good enough.

Then we did some ground work with the clicker. She's almost given up bullying me for treats, and now she's turning all her attention to figuring out what I want her to do. (And doing it over and over to make the Treat Dispenser hand out more mini-wheats.) I got some lovely light straight backing up and some head down, so I moved on to getting her to move her hindquarters / turn on the forehand, whatever you call it, from the ground.

I held her head still and started twirling the rope at her hindquarters, which really pissed her off. Lots of tail swishing and backing and sidepassing and then the inside leg crossed the other and by god, I clicked at that instant! I am very much a novice clicker trainer, and my timing still sucks, so that was huuuuge for both of us. Lots of praise and treats, a couple more repetitions, and then the off side was relatively easy. And bending to the right is definitely harder for her - she clearly remembered what I wanted on the near side and was trying to repeat it for more delicious treats on the off side. I love that horse so much when she tries for me :D

Yesterday a big storm front moved in about 4 and cooled things off considerably, so I took the (incredibly hyper and bored) dog with us. I put on the full kit - breastcollar, crupper, and bell boots - and we headed up in the hills for a short ride. Well, short for us, long for Cersei in the middle of summer. Guess what! Bell boots are going to be expensive disposable items for us! How exciting!

Most of our fast work was downhill, so it was mostly pace. She doesn't clip at the pace - it's physically impossible, unless your horse travels really weird in the back and somehow clips a front leg with the other side rear leg. But we did get a bit of extended trot on the last straight stretch coming home, and she did clip herself, and the boot did protect her, and it's already ripped. So much for bulletproof-vest ballistic nylon. Argh.

Does anyone make Kevlar bell boots? I'll keep using these til they quit protecting her, but they're not going to last til fall at this rate. Better yet, someone should send me free boots to review. I'll take pictures and write words and my huge audience of loyal fans will rush out and buy the ones that work the best. It'll be like a cage match, Dixie's Adamantine Hooves vs. Man's Strongest Materials.

Pretty girl

I got up early Saturday and went for a pretty pleasant ride on Dixie. It took us 27 minutes to make it out of the subdivision - various commonplace sights really spazzed her out - but we made it out and she behaved fine. On the way back home, she clocked her right front with her rear hoof, right above the bulb of her heel. She bobbled once, and that must've been when she whacked it, but afterwards she was rock solid and I didn't know til we got home.

This is the third time in a couple of weeks that she's interfered. I think she's just learning to really stretch her stride out - she was trotting at 11 mph, and pacing downhill at 10 or so - and she's banging herself. But I still don't want her to keep doing it, so I ordered some no-turn bell boots from my local feed store. She's hitting low enough on her foot that I don't think the heel captivators on the Renegades would protect her. Hopefully some time and the bell boots will help her learn how to travel.

After our ride, I gave her a real bath. I scrubbed her mane with tons of purple shampoo and it came out very white and shiny. Look at this glorious mane!



It's 22 inches long. It's just unbelievable. She has the kind of hair that you only see on Other People's Expensive Horses.

Anyway, I do love her, so after I took pics of her mane I let her roll :)

Clean horse becomes dirty from Funder on Vimeo.

The house is looking good. We got really approved by the underwriters, and it passed the well inspection. A couple more inspections, then we hope everything goes ok at the very last minute. I've heard of too many closing days gone terribly awry to be confident about it. Buuuut I think we really might own our own little suburban farm in less than a month :) Now taking suggestions for witty names - although I think DP's Farcical Farm is probably the best name ever.

Miscellaneous gear stuff

• The Toklat Woolback is awesome and I'm so glad I got it.
• My knees didn't hurt, but I moved my stirrups up a notch AND I took a lot of Advil. I'm not sure what to credit there.
• I never did attach a tube clip for the Camelbak. I ended up using double-sided velcro to make a loop off a D-ring and it worked just fine.
• I tried riding in the rope halter for the second loop, but Dixie hates that even worse than she hates having a sweaty headstall on her ears - I didn't even make it out of the arena before I got off and put the headstall back on.
• The Renegades stayed on. The footing wasn't challenging to boots, so I can't brag about how amazing they are, but I'm still very happy with them so far. I need to work on the right rear.
• I remembered to braid a dog tag in Dixie's mane, and it stayed on just fine.
• How the hell do people attach glowsticks? I suspect they're just duct taping them to the breast collar. I tied one on a pommel bag ring.
• Speaking of pommel bags, Henry's is the best possible bag. Room for a liter of water, velcro pockets for ride cards, BIG zippers that even sleep-deprived Funders can work - it's totally awesome.

Assembly is reverse of disassembly

Anybody who's ever repaired (or attempted to repair) a car knows and hates those words. Chilton's, you're a bunch of jerks. Whenever I take my tack apart to clean it, I always end up with a pile of parts and a sort of vague memory of how disassembly was accomplished. So far I've always gotten it back together, but it's never easy.

Today was saddle cleaning day, in preparation for the Thing I Shall Not Name Lest I Jinx It. I soaped and oiled my saddle, replaced some hay string ties with pretty blue nylon cord, reburned the holes in the nylon stirrup leathers, and washed the cordura fenders... and the nylon latigos. The fenders and latigos were white and stiff with dried-on sweat, yuck.

It's been well over a year since I rerigged the saddle to also use the back girth rings - I remember standing in that barn in Ohio, ineffectually trying to figure out how to tie the knot from the wrong side. (If you ride with an English girth, none of this makes any sense, but if you ride with a western cinch, you know what I'm talking about.) Anyway, I was dreading the reassembly of the cinch, but it was pretty painless!

I did have the sense to quit while I was ahead. I didn't unbuckle the end of the breastcollar - I have never gotten a Conway buckle back together on the first try.

Gratuitous goat

I didn't end up competing at the 4H show on Saturday. It was a big show, and none of the Western classes started before noon, and I just didn't want to sit on the ground for 4 hours. I packed Dixie's saddlebags with hay and let her eat and hang out in the commotion until the brand inspector arrived, then got her inspected and headed back home.

Her goat, Billy, was very glad to see us. He spent the whole time we were gone lounging in the other horses' pen, but as soon as he saw us approaching he leapt up and ran over to Dixie's pen and started chowing down on her hay. He is a very funny fellow. They were pretty cute eating together, so I wanted to get a picture. As soon as I walked up with the camera, I got a bunch of these shots:



I was patient and eventually he got bored and went back to the hay with Dixie.



I was thinking about going to volunteer at the NASTR ride, but my husband wanted to spend time with me. Awww :) We ended up going shopping and had a nice day together.

Yesterday I took Dixie on a big ride - 20 miles in just under 4:30. I booted up and tried stashing my water in the pommel bag - I think I like it, but it needs some modifications. Some friends called when I got out to her barn, so we met up with them for part of the ride. It slowed us down considerably, but it was fun for me and good for Dixie.

We headed out at a fast clip for the first 7 miles to meet up with my friends who were trailering in. It was my first time riding with them. They're normal trail riders, and the woman's a little timid, so we just walked. Walking is fun for a change but it sucks after an hour or so! But the conversation was good.

We headed up into the hills. I was looking for a trail over to Antelope Valley to take me back home by a different route, but the BLM fence is actually in good shape along that section. There was one dirt road, but it had a cattle guard. The scenery in the hills is fantastic right now - lots of wildflowers, lots of different species of grass. Some dirt bikers zipped by and Dixie was unfazed, yay!

After the others headed back down to their trailer, I tried to work my way south along the ridge to head home, but my trail didn't work out. We headed back down to the foothills and gradually back into the valley. Dixie acted like she could care less about the two other horses while we were riding with them, but once they peeled off away from us, she was somewhat distraught. She screamed a few times, spent too much time looking for them, and wanted to head back down to their trailer, instead of home. At one point she was looking off toward where they'd gone and stumbled hard, to her knees. Before I decided to leap off, she lurched back up and walked out fine. Kind of scary, but she did a slightly better job of paying attention to the trail after that. And as far as "don't leave me!" panic goes, hers wasn't bad at all.

Our only other encounter was some people out shooting cans. When they saw us coming, they stopped shooting, and I talked to them briefly. Dixie was fine with them once she realized they were people, and the (distant) shooting didn't upset her.

Gear:

I think I like the new pad. It didn't get sweat logged like I feared it would, and it didn't rub. When I stripped her tack, her back was evenly sweaty and all the hair was laying correctly. The boots all stayed on, but the left rear had a lot of grass seeds and dirt in it. I think I didn't get it aligned right when I put it on - I'll have to pay closer attention.

Getting the water bag tube out of the pommel bag, drinking from it, and stuffing it back in securely was impossible at the trot and annoying at the walk. I think I'll sew a tube hook on the other side of the pommel bag and let the tube ride across the pommel and hang off the far side. My backpack has a compartment for a camelbak, and the right strap has a hook for the tube. I never use the backpack as a camelbak - I have a real camelbak bag for when I want to use it. The hook on the strap does an amazingly good job of snagging securely to spaghetti strap tops when you take the backpack off, so I'm looking forward to removing it. I am very tired of my backpack trying to disrobe me! If I mod something up, I'll take some pics to share.

I took pecans for a snack and they were great. Dixie liked her De-Lyte Bites. I took one serving to see how she'd like them, and she thought they were good. I brought an electrolyte goo thing for me, and I really needed it at about 15 miles when I got the "don't care if I die in the desert" blahs. Some goo perked me right up and got me home.

My poor knees were the weak link. I am toying with the idea of switching riding footwear again - I think padded hiking boots plus padded enduro stirrups is too much squishy. I love the stirrups so I might try some very thin soled tennis shoes.

Questions!

So we should be good to do the LD at Moonshine on the 26th, right? It's just under 2 weeks out, and we just did our big training ride, so now I can just bomb around if I want and have fun again?

Shoe/stirrup recommendations? Or I guess more precisely, knee recommendations? Yesterday I would've paid a vet tech to inject me with Adequan behind the barn!

Any thoughts about one Renegade full of dirt when the rest were self-cleaning?

A different kind of endurance event

So I'm back from Vegas, and I feel almost entirely human again!

Ok. I can't hack the humidity anymore. I just can't. It was blisteringly meltingly hot in Vegas and disgustingly humid and the air was so thick and smelled so gross. There was nothing more wonderful than getting out of the Reno airport and smelling the cool, clean, thin mountain air! Of course my friends are from the rainy lowlands so they thought Vegas was just hot and I looked like a total wuss... but ~C and Zach would understand, it was nasty and humid and hot!!! down there!

(It was in the low 100s, so I haven't gone totally soft on heat. Just humidity.)

Anyway. We drank a lot of beer - nobody ever got stupid-drunk, but we drank pretty much nonstop. Saw the Mandalay Bay aquarium, the Bodies exhibit, rode the roller coaster at NYNY, ate at some Thai place in the Aria and Bouchon at the Venetian, watched the NHL game, played poker one night, and walked til I thought I'd die. The heat was awful, plus I got an enormous blister. I'm sure I looked pretty wussy, but oh well.

Sunday, after I got back, I napped all day. Yesterday I got a quick ride in with my brand new Toklat Woolback pad. I got the contoured barrel pad with 1/2" wool, so it's a total of 1" thick - about as thick as my old pad. I ordered it (from Sierra Feed) the week before last, and it came in on Friday while I was out of town. Dixie is somewhat suspicious of it - it doesn't smell right, and it's not purple - but it doesn't seem to bother her. More miles will tell, but for now I really like it. I ordered it with velcro openings to hold foam pads if I need more padding, but for now I'm not padding it up.

Our mid-80s heat wave should break tomorrow and it's only predicted to be 71. God, I love this town. I know I should be hoping for hot weather so I can get my horse properly conditioned for it... but just for tomorrow, I'll be glad to ride in the cool.

Spring rambling

We're back in a period of absolutely beautiful weather here, and I've had two more lovely rides. A few thoughts:

I love that pommel bag. I've started carrying water for the dog in one bag and the camera in the other bag. And I figured out a clever way to strap the GPS on the pommel with some carabiners and the bag straps! Carabiners are just as important as vet wrap and duct tape, and they don't get enough credit, IMO.

I think the boots are working out ok. She seems to move ok in them - up and down hills like a mountain goat, and she can canter in them. I made sure the pastern straps were way looser today and didn't have any rubs.

I've been looking through the USGS maps, and I have some names for places. Today we went up in the Coyote Hills. Here's a view back over the lake toward Peavine:




This picture from over the weekend is of the Petersen Range. It's just west of Red Rock Road, right on the CA state line Apparently the easiest way to get there is from Hallelujah Junction, California, and you can dig for opals and smoky quartz. Cool, huh?


I've been taking pictures of the wildflowers, too. It's amazing how the greeny-grey boring sagebrushy desert has exploded in blooms of different sizes and colors. I'm going to keep adding to the set - there's a blood-red shrub I haven't snapped a picture of yet, and a bright purply-pink flower with blooms the size of pencil erasers.

Still haven't remembered to work on the trot-out. Oh well.

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.

Vendor reviews

Here's a tale of two vendors for you. One I already loved and will definitely order from again, and one I used out of convenience and probably won't use again.

My pretty princess pony has a very white nose, and it gets fiercely sunburned in the summer if she's not stalled. The first summer I had Dixie, she was in horse heaven - a 40 acre pasture - and it just burned. Last year, in Ohio, she was in a stall and the BO would (sometimes) smear sunblock on her nose when she turned her out. This year, I am trying a long nose fly mask. I'd looked around for a while but just hadn't gotten around to ordering one when I bought that damn trailer and joined USRider, and USRider gave me a $10 gift cert to Dover as part of my membership package. See? Procrastination pays off!

So the Sunday before last, May 9th, I ordered a long nose Cashel fly mask from Dover. The cheap $10 shipping and the $10 GC cancelled each other out, so I ended up paying $27.85 for a fly mask. The package didn't even ship til Wednesday, May 12, and it shipped FedEx SmartPost. IME, SmartPost is a horrible way to ship and takes way longer than USPS mail.

One week later, on Sunday May 16th, I ordered the crupper and a pommel pack from Griffin's Tack. I had to call to read Henry my CCV number from the back of the card, and he mumbled something about "Tuesday." I thought he said "You should get it by Tuesday" but that couldn't possibly be right - I mean, he's only 50 miles from me, but still! Nothing orders, packs, ships, and arrives that fast. Anyway, I paid $12 for that shipping.

Tuesday the package from Henry Griffin arrived. Via US mail. Less than 48 hours after I ordered it. Today, Wednesday, the package from Dover arrived, via FedEx, all of ten frakkin days after I ordered.

I'm not sure whether I'm more disgusted with Dover/Fedex or happy with Griffin's/USPS, but I know where I prefer to spend my money now.


I'll review all the stuff properly once it gets applied to the model horse, but for now I think I'm happy with everything I bought. The fly mask looks comfortable? I guess? I don't know much about these things, and smart money says Dixie destroys it. The crupper has stiff wire in the tail loop, for flexibility, and it's ~C's shade of blue. (Sorry C!) And the pommel bag looks like it should attach ok, the zippers look indestructible, the workmanship is fantastic, and it's a fantastic royal purple.

All is well

Today was the last clear day before the latest round of storms moves in to the area. I'm gonna try really hard to get in one short ride tomorrow, before the storm comes, then another short one later in the week. But I'm taking Mel's clever words to heart and not stressing about Serious Training this week.

"Very little you do in the last week will make a difference as long as you have the essentials covered - plenty of rest for you and the horse, good nutrition, and NOT forgetting something essential."

So today I took the dog and horse and went out for a fun ride. Dixie was perfectly normal and we were constantly arguing about which way to turn and how fast to go. Cersei got dehydrated pretty fast so we turned around quickly - I don't think I can take the dog out without water any more this year. My bad, for forgetting to bring water, but I didn't realize she'd get so hot so fast. I will take better care of her!

On the way back, right as I was getting off to walk Dixie home, we saw a Mexican jockey. Tiny little dude, strapped bareback to the horse with some kind of leather strap cavesson that just barely held his knees on the horse. The horse had all those bizarre extra bits to her bridle, a lot like this picture of Sarah's, except with a tongue tie too. The jockey fellow had a crop, an eventing vest, and no helmet. (WTF? What's the point of a vest but no helmet? Don't you lose the macho points of riding bareheaded by putting on a wussy vest?) I've seen him cantering out there before; I just never was close enough to realize he's a real (underground?) jockey actually breezing, not just a cowboy who likes to go fast.

Even though we just went wandering around the hills by the sand pit, not trying to accomplish anything in particular, we still went 5.7 mph average. Dixie was fresh and not at all tired when we got back... but I had to cowboy up and try the damn crupper already.

So I tied up my not-very-tired horse, pried up her tail, wrapped the crupper under it, and leapt back waiting for the explosion. Nothing happened. I snapped the crupper on the saddle and looked at her. She turned her head and looked at me like "Ok, you're doing another weird thing to me. Whatevs." I took her to the round pen and got her to canter both directions - nothing.

This is yet another reason that I just love Walking Horses. They so rarely buck, for any reason, no matter what you do to them. She's got her hip cocked in the picture because it's nap time.



So I think this is my Plan for the Week: Tomorrow I'll get out early in the morning, ride over to the arena, put the crupper on, and ride in the arena. The dirt is fluffy and she can't run too far if she does freak out and buck me off. Then later this week, probably Thursday, I'll head over to the airport side where the hills are very near the houses and ride up and down some hills. It's not soft and fluffy, but I still won't have too far to walk home if she freaks out and bucks me off. And honestly, I think it'll be fine - I just want her to get used to the feeling before this weekend.

Hopefully Henry will be at the ride and I can buy a brightly colored biothane crupper and give this one back to ~C! If I see him, I'm going to give in and buy a pommel bag too - something designed to go over a saddle, with lots of straps to keep it from bouncing. I keep meaning to try to make one... but buying one is supporting a local business, and that's important too, right? ;)

Champ and Poppy

Well, I almost rode two horses today.

I got out to the field pretty early, around 8 am. I walked back to the run-in, whistling and calling softly. My horses were in the (large) run in, along with the other horses. My four were off in their own little section, but sure enough, they'd settled in well enough to want to nap in the run in. Anyway, all the horses were in that half-asleep horse trance. I walked in quietly, gave everybody a scritch, and headed back out. All four came trailing out after me.

I got Champ saddled and bridled, then spent a good hour working with him. He was all jittery - in a new place, with me asking him to leave his beloved Silky? He kept trying to circle around and calling for his buddies and generally being a pitiful nervous wreck. It was pretty uncharacteristic behavior, but moving fields has to be a huge upheaval in a horse's life. I worked him through it, I think - we'd explore out from the run-in, then stop for a few minutes, then go back. I'd let him stand near Silky til he calmed down, then we'd turn around and head out again. The first few trips out were the worst, of course, with nonstop whinnying and jiggling and trying to wheel around and run "home," but he calmed down more on every trip. By 8:45 or so, I was just running Champ through his gaits and thinking more about my riding than his state of mind. We finished up with some slow calm walking to cool down, then I untacked him and hung out with all the horses for a while.

I killed all the big horseflies I could find. Must've squashed five or six of those cicada-sized monster horseflies. I worked my way from horse to horse, scratching itchy spots and whacking flies. Again, I was impressed with how calm Dixie has become. She lets me walk right up to her with "normal" body language, scratch most anywhere, and even smash horseflies. Anyway, once I felt like I'd given them enough "hanging-out" time, Cersei and I left.

We drove across the county to Tractor Supply. I needed a helmet and Centered Riding for lessons, and I wanted to get a bag of oats as a treat for whichever horse got ridden. I found a helmet, and settled on alfalfa pellets for treats, and... well... there was a clearance sale on some English tack. I ended up getting another Collegiate bridle, exactly the same as Dixie's, for $24 instead of $99. And a spare pair of reins for $14, instead of $40. I usually manage to resist the temptation to buy stuff just because it's on sale - but that was seriously too cheap to pass up!

TSC didn't have the book. I headed north into Memphis and hit the closest bookstore, which actually DID have the book. Looped back south and back to Olive Branch. It was only noon, and it wasn't all that hot and I was tired of making excuses about Poppy.

He's not actually going to flip out and kill me. He's not even that tall - maybe 16.1? I don't know why I'm so vaguely intimidated by Poppy - he is one of the sweetest and most honest horses I've ever met. And he loves attention. Yes, I don't have a saddle for him, but he's not such a sensitive little darling that being ridden in my normal western-ish saddle would scar him for life.

First, a bit and bridle. I have a 5.5" full cheek single jointed snaffle and a 5.5" low port pelham, and I figured either would work. (And Poppy came with a 6" mullen mouth snaffle, but he absolutely detests that bit, so it's just gathering dust in a box.) I noticed that the new Collegiate bridle was actually a "full" size, but the almost-too-large bridle I'd been using on Dixie was an "xtra full." Hmmm. I fiddled around with bits and buckles for a few minutes and cobbled together a rig for Pops.

Turns out the bridle fits just fine, but Poppy has outgrown the damn bit. Sigh.

Next, I tried my saddle on him. It fits ok, but looks somewhat ridiculous. Like a toy saddle. He's at least 12" larger in the girth than Champ. Anyway, unsurprisingly, Poppy didn't mind the saddle at ALL. I gave him lots of brushing and scritching as a thank-you for putting up with saddle fitting and a too-small bit, then packed everything back up and went to my parents' for the afternoon.

I ordered a 6" hanging cheek french link snaffle from drafttack.com. Poppy seems to like jointed snaffles better than solid ones. Hopefully it'll show up soon, fit my horse, and help me communicate with the big lug. I'm actually really excited about riding him! (Yeah, nervous too, but definitely excited as well!)

Champ's tack

Here's another picture of Champ, with his current tack.


I ride him (actually, all the TWHs) in this Tennessean Endurance Saddle. When I bought Champ, I bought his saddle too, but I really hated it. It was an actual honest-to-god roping saddle. It weighed like 40 lbs, and it was designed for a man. A very manly stoic man. I promptly traded it in at the feed store for a rather horrible cheap black generic western saddle. The best thing about the black saddle was its weight - it had a fiberglass tree and cordura fenders, so it weighed about 20 lbs. However, it wasn't much more comfortable for me and I'm sure it wasn't great for Champ. My friend Sara recommended the Tennesseans, so I watched Endurance.net til one finally went up for sale. I paid $300 for my saddle, and I think I got a steal :)

The pommel is fairly high, so it clears Champ's sharklike withers nicely. The seat is amazingly comfy. The fenders are cordura, so they're 1) light 2) easy to clean and 3) very thin, so you can feel the horse with your legs. I lost a breastcollar D-ring and had to sew a replacement on at one point, but other than that, I haven't had to make any repairs.

The blue strap on the pommel is just a ziptie, loosely attached. I use it as a place to hook crap onto the saddle - that day, I hooked the camera bag onto the ziptie.

And no, I DO NOT miss having a horn at all. IMO, all the horn is good for is stabbing you in the stomach as you try to duck under that low-hanging tree branch. I can hook crap on to the pommel via the ziptie, and the pommel is nicely shaped to act as a handhold in case of airs above ground. If I want to rope cows, I will go buy a real roping saddle and only ride in it when working cows. Horns are just goofy superfluous things for 95% of the riders out there.

I like neoprene girths. They stay clean, and when they do get dirty they're easy to clean. For the same reason, I like nylon cinches and off-billets. I never have to worry about keeping my cinch oiled or checking for cracks - it's pretty obvious when it starts to wear. Like WHP, I used to ride with a breastcollar, but the land here is so flat that I've taken it off.

Champ's blanket is purple because he is a pimp. Actually, all of my equipment is purple if I can get it in purple, or spray-painted safety orange otherwise. I used to board, and I'm sure I'll be boarding again soon. People will walk right off with your black English bridle, but for some reason they hesitate to steal purple roping reins or bright orange pitchforks.

That's Champ's bridle. It came with him. The old fellow who sold Champ to me told me that he'd go just fine in that bridle. Since he also told me to stay out of Champ's mouth, and bad things happened when I didn't... well, I haven't ever tried Champ in a different bit or bridle. At this point, I think I could deal with it, but why mess with success?

The bit is almost exactly like this one, but I think my shanks are shorter, maybe 6". The bridle used to have a separate throatlatch, with cool homemade silver-dollar conchos, but I took the throatlatch off. I'm not entirely sure what the point of the throatlatch is, honestly, but it wasn't doing anything for us.