Winter trail ride

Sunday I picked up Steph on the way to the barn. Laurie was coming out to ride Kalani to help her decide if she was going to buy him or not. We went out a little early and I thought we'd get some photos of the horses running around in the pasture but I guess the side pasture isn't as exciting yet. I opened the gate and they all just walked out and looked for grass. Not exactly the usual crazy running around excitement. I guess I have to wait until the dead of winter when they've been cooped up in the paddock for too long.

So when Laurie arrived we groomed and tacked up Kiko, Kalani, and Axel and went out on the trail.

We don't often use the trail in the winter due to the hills and thinking it'll be too slippery but it had only just snowed so it seemed like it would probably be okay. Kalani had some issues at first, once he figured Laurie out and stopped putting his tongue over the bit then he settled right into the ride. Axel was just okay. We kept it at a walk and everyone was happy. Axel brought up the rear as usual, Kalani gets annoyed when Axel is in front and he has to walk too slow. We took the last loop and Axel stopped to relieve himself leaving the other two horses to get further in front of us. That led Axel to trot to catch up. Unfortunately that meant trotting towards the big hill on the way home. I got him into a walk right before the hill but he was pretty wound up. Very occasionally he gets worked up about the group of horses leaving him and this was apparently one of those occasions.

He could see the horses, they were only 30 feet in front of us on the way down the hill. He proceeded to start trotting down the hill, not something I tend to enjoy doing so I tried to slow him down. That just lead to bucking. Bucking down the hill on the upside of the trail in the trees. So I close my eyes as to not loose one of them on a branch, and try my darnedest to get Axel to stop. I can't really use a pulley rein, his balance isn't so great and going down hill all I could see in my head was us tumbling head over heals. I couldn't push him through the bucking as I would normally do because we were headed down hill. So instead I yelled "here we come, I'm sorry, watch out!" Luckily we caught up to the other two quickly and stopped the shenanigans.

So overall it was quite the adventure and I'm pretty sure I pulled a muscle in my butt in the process. Laurie isn't sure about Kalani yet and she has another horse to look at that is a mare in foal and her husband wants a baby. So Kalani might still be in the market for a new home.

Another bareback ride

Steph and I met out at the barn and just did some bareback riding in the round pen and the pasture. Kalani has been kind of a crankypants lately so she wanted to feel him out and see what his deal was. I figured it was too cold to get on a saddle. So while she worked on Kalani in the round pen, Axel and I hung out in the pasture. Axel was not happy about Gunner who kept following us around. At one point Axel had his ears pinned back so far and was about to kick him. We didn't really work on much, Axel and I. I asked for some trotting and was met with some head tossing. I'm pretty sure his deal now is just a combination of sore leg from the ringbone, hard ground, and out of shape. But I think when I get my tax refund in the spring it'll be another round of chiropractor and dentist visits before we really get working on getting back into shape.

I have decided that when it's chilly bareback is the only way to go. Unfortunately when the snow comes riding bareback for me means lots of walking. Axel's trot gets pretty vertical when he has to pick up his feet for snow. I'll have to try riding Cody in the snow, he's usually really smooth, I wonder how his snow gait is! And of course now we're getting into the time when we can't work too hard or the horse will get sweaty and then I have to blanket them and hang out til they're dry. I should put a waterproof blanket on my Xmas list. That way I could throw the cooler on with the blanket over top and Patti can just take them off in the morning. Anyone have a suggestion for a good blanket to wear over top of a cooler?

(I apologize for the short post, I waited way too long to update and now I have four blog posts to make and can't remember back that far!)

32 Degrees isn't so bad when you ride without a saddle!

Thinking that Wednesday was going to be warmer and being that I was a bit under the weather at the beginning of the week I didn't go out to the barn until last night. The horses were in the side pasture and they all came up to the fence to see what kind of fabulous treats the yellow car might have in store. It was almost dark already and windy and gloomy and I was all on my own. I had thought maybe I'd go on the trail but without orange clothing or the blinky light I had planned to dig out of my bike bag I decided to stay up in the yard.

I grabbed both Cody and Axel and groomed them while Axel ate his bute. I decided I would work with both horses but it's too dusty in the barn so it was out to the round pen. Axel can easily occupy himself alone in the barn so Cody got to go first. We did a few rounds of the circle game and switching directions. He was a little wound up about that. His switching directions looked more like rearing but he responded instantaneously when asked so at least he was paying attention. He worked a bit at liberty as I tried to get him to use the whole round pen. We only worked at the trot and canter a very small amount. He doesn't seem to like to canter and he often disunites so we'll have to keep working on that. I wanted to jump on bareback and to spare myself the embarrassment and Cody the pain of my literally jumping, I tried to get him near the fence. That didn't work. So I tried for the barrel. He'd stand there. Then as I moved to get on he'd back up. I could get him to move back forward in place very easily but as soon as I stepped behind his eye he'd back up. So it's back to the drawing board on that one. I did eventually get on and we walked around a bit, had a wee trot, and just kind of worked on leg aids and neck reining with just the halter and lead rope. He was his usual clingy self after that work and just stood there looking at me after I took his halter off and tried to turn him out. He ended up following me back into the barn and going out the dutch doors instead where he stood with his head in the window watching.

I haven't done a lot of work with Axel and lunging so I thought we'd work on that a little. The Parelli rope is too short and I have yet to pick up the 22' rope that I want. I got on Axel bareback first with just the halter and lead and rode around a bit. Mostly at the walk. Asked for a few trots and got some cranky head toss and pinned ears and only a few strides. As I'm not an expert rider I didn't feel the need to push him until he bucked and left me on the ground. We tried to ease into some lateral work with some spirals around the barrel but bending requires a lot of warm up which we didn't have. We did make some nice figure 8s with very little rein work. When I got off I had the lunge whip out so I sent Axel out on the circle at liberty and he did amazingly well. He actually stays on the rail fairly decently. And he's not too shabby at voice cues. Surprisingly he even responded to the whip when I asked him to canter. He didn't quite get a canter out but he tried. He worked pretty well at liberty until he was bored and then he just stopped, looked at me, and came to stand next to me in the center.

So that was about it for me, it was much warmer on the horse than on the ground but without a nice fluffy layer of snow on the ground to make me feel a bit safer about falling I didn't do much riding. I passed out my pile of apples and sent everyone back out into the dark, and it was only a little after 5.

Time to find a new barn

Sooner than later my barn owner is going to be putting his place on the market which means I am going to be needing a new barn for my horses. In a perfect world I'd find a place in Farmington so I could ride more often. But I will probably have to expand my search area to include anything in the south metro area (Lakeville, Rosemount, Prior Lake, etc). There's a few places that are almost on my way home from work but so far they seem to be kind of spendy.

I've been trying to figure out what kind of barn I am interested in. Money is a big factor of course, having two horses limits my choices on what I can afford. It seems like several places have multi horse discounts so I'll have to keep my eyes open for something like that. It would cool to board them somewhere that also gave riding lessons. I'd love an indoor arena so I can ride in the winter and actually see what I'm doing. And having some non arena riding adjacent is really nice. Since I've only ever boarded at a private residence I'm not sure if I'll like boarding at a busier facility. There's obviously things about a small barn that are annoying and I imagine there are just as many annoyances at a large barn. I also need to find a barn that has pasture board but also feeds grain. I want to keep Axel on his supplement and maybe start giving Cody the same supplement in the future.

I will definitely have to tour a bunch of barns before I decide. I made the mistake once when I first started riding and didn't look at the barn/lessons ahead of time and that was a disaster. Timing will be an interesting factor, I'm not sure when the current property will sell or when it does how long I'll have to move out. There's not really anything that would stop me from moving the horses out early if I find a nice place that's closer. But you know, change is hard.

So if anyone has any barn suggestions I am open to them!

Mud and snow and darkness

Well it is quite evident after a few recent rides that Axel has settled nicely into his life as an invalid. I've only tried to school in a few times since his big ringbone lameness issue and I don't think he's too jazzed about it. Per my new regimen I grabbed Axel from the muddy paddock and gave him his snack of an apple, bute, and a bit of grain. I groomed him and then since Cody was waiting at the door I let him in and groomed him. I didn't want to waste too much time but I was partly waiting for Steph and partly waiting for the bute to kick in. I turned Cody back out after inspecting his shoes and tacked up Axel.

The road was pretty wet so that's where we went to ride. Really it's the only place left to ride this time of year. The fields are a muddy mess and the trail requires traversing a bunch of hills which don't fair well when there's snow or wet. So down the road it was. After a little warm up at the walk we went for a trot. I just wanted Axel to get out and move a bit. I think he wanted to nap. I got a decent trot but when I asked for more I got some head tossing. We did some walking between trotting since he's not been worked all summer really. When we got to the wide grassy ditch I asked for a trot, asked for a right lead canter, trot again, then left lead canter. Yay Axel! I would have gotten off there as a reward but then I would have had to walk back to the barn. So we kept going down the road. I asked for a bit more trot, tried to get more canter but only got one really heavy right lead canter on the road. We turned around and trotted some more but I think the road is really hard on his legs or else he's just a wimp. We had a few more right lead canters in the grassy ditch and then I asked for more cantering on the road. That time I ended up with something that probably resembled a Capriole. Think: leap then buck. By this time it was starting to get pretty dark. Steph had texted that she was on her way and we'd get some dinner. She came up the road and had she not known I was out there she said she would have been really confused as to what we were, it was really hard to see the black horse at dusk. Guess I better get my blinky red light and maybe some nice orange accents if I'm going to ride on the road.

Ride with Jeff

Jeff came out to the barn with me tonight to go for a little ride. Kalani has potentially found a new home so Jeff wanted to go for a ride before he left. We fetched the horses and groomed and tacked them up. Axel got his bute and a snack and we were off. Kalani wasn't in too great a mood and didn't want to stand for mounting. Not to mention he's pretty round so the saddle doesn't stay on him too well. Jeff finally got mounted and we headed up the back hill. Axel was behaving very well and Kalani was apparently picking up the slack. He was a little full of himself and wouldn't slow down. We ended up putting a bridle on him because I couldn't find the hack. That was probably a good thing in the end. We did a lap in the meadow area and then through the woods.

I of course brought the camera but didn't have a memory card in it so that was a waste. On one hand all the leaves were gone so there wasn't pretty colors to photograph. Jeff did take a photo of me with his phone. :> When we got back to the barn both horses were a little sweaty. It was over 70F today and everyone is already getting into their winter fuzz so they were a bit warm. Cody came up to visit and everyone got their official Thomson Reuters apples. The horses had the farrier out last week and Cody's still in shoes. The next visit is December 18 and I think that time I'll have him pull the shoes and see how things go.