Updates from the barn

I haven't had a chance to get out and visit the horses since the big move on Saturday. It might have something to do with the -45F wind chill, you never know! But I have gotten a couple of updates on how things are going from the new caretakers.

From Tuesday, January 29
"They're good! They are staying in their herds of four and five. Red is more of a loner, and he hasn't been any trouble, at all. Kalani will stand with Red at times, but if Kiko comes over, Red will leave. Cody's gotten over his need to protect Kiko. Kalani, and sometimes Axel, feel the need to chase Gunner, but that thrill seems to be waning."

"Tom's/Elise's are in charge, so ours will move out of the way as they swarm over, but even so, there hasn't been any biting or serious kicking. They pretty much kept ours in the space behind the round pen on the first day! But now they are all quiet when tied up and waiting for dinner; however, we do have to tie "them" up before we tie "ours"; and we have to let ours go before we let theirs go. We've replaced all the lead ropes and hanging buckets with ties and bucket clips, so it's much cleaner looking. Not to mention, so much easier to feed."

"There was a possum, about the size of Koko [the cat], on the table with him last night! Koko was *so not* disturbed by that fact, that I'm expecting it's not an uncommon occurrence. The possum is no more, but Scott will be buying a gun tomorrow because - yuck, otherwise!"

"So, maybe more than you wanted to know, but every thing's good. We did harrow out there and it looks MUCH better. It's created safer traction, little clumps instead of frozen giant mounds."

And from today
"I can't believe how well this is going. The herds are starting to mingle - primarily it's Kalani, hanging out with Gunner and Poppy. Papillon and Kiko have been keeping company, too. But there's no more real chasing - and yesterday, when Axel pinned his ears back and shook his head at Daley, Daley didn't even pick up his head from the hay! (However, I did notice a bite on Daley's side - that's the only one of those I've seen on anybody so far.) They are settling down nicely."

"Yesterday, Poppy smelled like evergreen and right now, I can see Gunner scratching his behind on a tree - must feel good. Having prepped feed buckets yesterday, feeding this morning only took 20 minutes. I was surprised to find Poppy, Red, and Gunner under the overhang, waiting; Axel is always waiting at his tie. The horses are doing well and everyone's just fine."

"We should also mention that the horses are drinking a LOT more water. We put a second power strip in the tack room so we could hook up a better tank heater. It was freezing over pretty hard with the old one. They almost emptied the tank yesterday."

So that's the latest and greatest from the ever increasing herd at Pinto Creek Ranch. I plan to make a trip out there on Saturday to see how things are going, maybe do a little riding down the road, and some more ground work with Cody to see what his attitude is like.

New Horses

We lucked out with the weather today and had temperatures above zero for once. I got to the barn before everyone else arrived so I did some chores while I waited. Trailers pulled up pretty quickly after I started cleaning out the barn. They actually ended having to take 2 trips to get all 5 horses moved over. We kept the two herds separate for a while at first to see how things would go. Everything was fairly calm at first. There was the usual squealing but lots of happy and interested ears. Unfortunately Kiko decided she liked the new boys and went into season instantly. This did not make Cody happy and that's when he started getting really possessive about Kiko. He started to charge at Red through the fence and Cody is one to stay yards away from a fence whether it's hot or not, so he meant business.

When things calmed down a bit we turned out Kalani with the new herd. He was really calm about everything so we thought he'd be a good one to start with. He went straight for red and they stood and ate hay together nose to nose. We turned Axel out next and he just found a hay pile to eat by himself. Not much was happening and Cody finally stopped getting himself worked up into a sweat so we opened the gate so they could all meet if they wanted. It took a while for Cody and Kiko to figure out the gate was open. Things were a little hairy at first but everyone was able to keep their distance appropriately.

Cody made it his job to place himself between Kiko and any other horse at all costs. Kiko was very fond of Red and kept trying to hang out with him but Cody would come running and chase Red off. Red never made any attempts to get to Kiko so it was all her trying to visit the new horses. Cody doesn't seem really interested in randomly beating up new horses, he just wanted to make sure Kiko didn't leave him so we figured they would be fine all together right away. We waited around a while to see if anything would happen. The two herds kept themselves pretty separated and occasionally would switch positions in the pastures. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the next few weeks. Patti is going to have her hands full feeding 9 horses twice a day. I think I am going to have my hands full working with Cody. We might have taken several steps back in our manners. I predict Cody being quite unhappy when I try to work him in the barn away from his herd and especially his woman. Stay tuned.

New Tack Room

Sunday despite the negative temperatures, Jeff and I ventured out to the barn to work on the tack room. With 5 new horses arriving this next weekend, and at least 3 people's worth of tack we thought it might be nice to beef up the saddle racks so they stay on the walls. In the process we decided to totally remodel the room, much to Jeff's delight (not). But since he's such a nice husband he went along with it. We moved all the saddle racks to one wall and all the bridle hooks to the other wall so everything is easier to get at. I'm not convinced I liked the arrangement of the shelves for the grooming boxes but with a tiny room there is only so much you can do.

I emptied almost everything out of the room and Jeff put up some big 12x12x2s to anchor the racks to. I ended up parsing down a lot of our tack and putting a bunch of it up on top of the tack room in storage. Jeff put a few saddle racks up there for me as well. Cody and Axel's old saddles went up there until I find out what Ardy wants me to do with them. I'd like to consign them and buy a new western saddle for Axel and some nice saddle pads for both of them. But I'm not sure if he wants them back or not. There were 4 other saddles in the tack room that no one used so those went up above as well as some random tack, extra saddle blankets, and extra buckets. I swept the whole room and the only thing I didn't go through was the first aid cabinet. That will have to wait for a warmer day I think.

It wasn't too bad in the barn as far as cold, there wasn't any wind at least, but I don't think there was any wind outside either. It was actually really sunny out. But my soda froze just from sitting out and by 5pm I was frozen to the core and sick of breathing dust. In addition to all the tack we moved up above the tack room, we also hauled lawn chairs, lattice boxes, and other extra random stuff that was in the barn. And we stacked all the hay so there would be room for the next load. It was quite the undertaking.

I'm skipping on going out there during the week this week. Patti had mentioned that she thought Cody was a little gimpy out on the ice so I brought him in to see if anything was up. He lunged at the walk alright so I think he was just walking funny because of the hard ground and ice everywhere. He does have some arthritis in his one shoulder so that probably doesn't help. With Patti feeding twice a day we might start to see some changes in Cody and Axel as she'll be putting some senior flex in with their meals, hopefully that helps their joints a bit. When the senior flex is gone I want to switch to a 4-in-1 pelleted supplement that's supposed to be really good. I just have to save up the money for it first.

Watch out for a post this weekend after the new horses arrive. I'm going to drag my nice camera out there and try and take some shots of all the horses looking tall and impressive when the new kids arrive.

Barn Cleanup

Steph met me out at the barn this week. I brought Cody into the barn to do some ground work with him while Steph ended up raking the manure up that was inside the barn. Cody kept tripping over the frozen horse apples so she thought we better get them out of the way. We worked on the usual lunging and did some trotting over a pole. I also added a second pole but I'm having a hard time getting the spacing right so he can trot over both of them. After some of that ground work Steph showed me how to use her rope bitting rig. She wants some of the therapy horses to be lunged in it so she wanted to show me how to use it properly and what to look for if a horse is planning on flipping himself backward. We started just by walking Cody around so he could get used to it. It didn't seem to faze him so we went onto lunging at the walk and then the trot. We had to open the barn door to help get rid of some of the dust so Cody decided he'd rather pay attention to the open door. After I removed the bitting rig we did some more quick direction changes to get him to start paying attention before backing out of the barn twice. He's getting pretty calm at the backing but we'll keep at it until he's an expert. Next I want to hang a tarp from the rafters to create a narrow space to back him into and out of to simulate a trailer. That should be an interesting undertaking.

Axel Learns Skijorring!

So I've waited too long to remember what it was we ended up doing but I will do my best. I got to the barn pretty early for once and started grooming Axel. I ended tacking him up and still no Tricia. So I grabbed Cody and started some ground work with him in the barn. When Tricia showed up she took Axel out in the pasture and rode him a while to warm him up. Cody and I worked on our backing skills and actually got to a point that he'd back next to me as I backed up mid "lead." So that was pretty cool. We ended by backing out of the barn a few times which also went pretty well, even with "help" from Kiko. So Tricia went to get her skis and I jumped up on Axel and got the rope ready. We ended up tying the rope to the saddle horn so I could actually steer. Tricia just held her end of the rope so she was able to let go if she ever needed to. Axel pulled like a champ. It wasn't actually much work because the snow was really icy and slick. He had one minor issue with the rope must have bumped him in the butt but Axel's minor issues are pretty unnoticeable. We went around the pasture several times in both directions at the walk and the trot. All of this was in the dark of course. So now we're looking forward to some more snow so we can skijor down the road and really get moving.

Warm January Day

It was beyond warm today. Everything was melting and it was 40F. I met Tricia out at the barn for some spring like riding. We donned our light weigh jackets and sunglasses for the ride. I kept up with my plan to keep Cody doing work to build our relationship and some respect. So I tried to drive him into the barn but he needed a little reminder and we had to circle once. He was a little concerned with Kiko being outside and him inside but he was pretty calm about it. Tricia groomed Axel and I worked on Cody. After I tacked him up we did a couple circles to get on the right page. I opted for a saddle since I had no idea what Cody's mood was going to be. He hasn't been ridden in a few months so you never know. Now believe it or not but Axel was really walking out (for Axel) and Cody was lagging behind. Once we finally go out of sight of the barn he was a little better but still lagging behind Axel. Axel was even stepping under himself and carrying his head nice for once. We ended up crossing the bean field through some pretty deep snow. Axel's head was really flying up and down. Cody ended up getting a little sweated up working through that snow. Even in deep snow though, he manages to keep that butter smooth trot. The road back was pretty calm. Only a few times where Cody wanted to trot and I wanted to walk. Nothing like he used to be. When we got back we passed the driveway and I dismounted in the cul-de-sac and walked him up to the barn. We groomed them up a bit and let Axel out. Cody had a few more things to work on. He did a few more circles, at first he was a total spaz but worked back into it. Then we worked on backing out of the barn and up and over the step. After a few tries he really go it. Tricia said he has really started to listen to me. So I'll definitely have to keep up the ground work.