Behavior

Since my last post, I've ridden twice. The first time could be considered a mild disaster, but also a minor breakthrough (maybe?). We started out well enough, but after a few figure eights, the resistance o the right began to escalate. At first, she was just a little bit stiff, but as I continued, she was more and more resistant.
Of course, the more she pushed into my right leg, the more I kicked back in response, but the more I kicked back, the less responsive she became. It was incredibly frustrating, and as I got increasingly frustrated, she just continued to fight me and act up. Finally, I was so frustrated and upset that I got off for a few minutes. I think that we both needed the break.
When I got back on, I tried a different tactic. Instead of fighting, I just sort of ignored the bad behavior and quietly rode through it. Magically, the more I just overlooked the behavior, the less of the bad behavior I saw. She actually became quite lovely by the end of the ride, so I took her out for a little mini-hack down the driveway to cool her down. This was the first time that we got all the way down the driveway, and she was a VERY good girl. At the point where the driveway crosses the river and a tree line (after you cross the river you can't see the barn or house anymore), she had a very minor tantrum about leaving her friends. For about a minute she was backing up and trying to turn around, but after a few failed attempts and some convincing from my end, she just marched on to a symphony of "Good girl!" I felt like a broken record, but the more I told her how wonderful she was, the more willing she seemed to keep going. I'll gladly look like a lunatic to passers-by if it makes mare happy!
The second time I rode, I once again employed the less-is-more technique of trying to overlook her shenanagins. Once again, the shenanagins disappeared when she couldn't get a rise out of me. What a cheeky minx. However, I shouldn't be surprised, considering Dusty was much the same. Overall, that was a very good ride. I did have one VERY odd moment, though. We were trotting along, she was being lovely, and then she did the most awkward, almost slow-motion little buck that I've ever seen. Then, she broke into a slow SLOW canter, did another REALLY slow little buck, and went right back to trotting around nicely. I have no idea where that came from. I can only guess that she had a horsefly on her or something, because slow, small bucks are NOT her m.o.











Day 10 - A song that makes you fall asleep - "Asleep" The Smiths

Baby Dee!

I was given this photo when I bought Dee. How cute is she!?

Day 07 - A song that reminds you of a certain event -
"Baby's on Fire" by Venus in Furs with vocals by Jonathan Rhys Meyers
New Years in Boston, 2004

My little Kindergardener

Dee and I had another very good jump school today. She jumped a grid with three elements, and just attacked it like a pro. She was focused, quiet and balanced, but most of all, she felt CONFIDENT. Then, my very long span of NOT jumping caught up with me a bit. We turned one of the little blue boxes into a little x-rail oxer (around the box). Well, that freaked her out a little, and she made a HUGE, deer-style leap over top of it. I totally lost my leg and ended up in a heap on her neck, which only served to freak her out MORE. Of coarse, being that this mare has a heart of gold, she gamely jumped it again, even though mom was a disaster the time before. It's just very frustrating to me, because my position used to be SO much better. Now, I can FEEL myself sucking, but the fix-it tools seem to have fallen out of my tool box. With nancy there to yell at me to take a deep breath, sink my weight into my leg and keep my upper body back, we managed to have a few nice go's over it, but it doesn't change the fact that I let her down the first few times, and I'm pretty upset with myself for it. I mean, this mare is truly amazing. I don't want to mess her up. I guess I'll just have to spend lots more hours in the tack to get my form back where it used to be.

Nancy and I were chatting about young horses today, and she told me something that I really liked, and therefore have to share:
When you start taking the youngsters to competitions, you sort of need to think of them like a kid in Kindergarden - the experience is not as much about the competition as it is about singing and holding hands. I just love that, and it's completely true. Just as Kindergarden teaches the child the student role, the first few competitions of a young horse's career teaches her the role of competition horse. It lays the groundwork for the rest of the horse's career. Sure, right now Dee is still in pre-k, where we play in the sand box and try to avoid eating the paste, but I'm sure she'll graduate soon, and I can't wait to start singing and holding hands with her in the fall.

Adventure time!

I'm a bad blogger. I promised video from steph's and I have nothing... totally forgot my camera. I'm taking her (hopefully) up to Nancy's this week, so maybe I can get the video then.
Thursday, we left for chase farm at 11:45 and had a blissfully uneventful 2 and a half hour ride up to Orange. When I got her off of the trailer, she took a little look around and then hunted down the nearest grass patch. What a good girl! I let her wander a little bit and then took her inside the barn to find her stall. Now, steph's main barn is an old cow barn with very low ceilings, and the doorway is very narrow (maybe 4 feet). Some horses have a little bit of a hard time being convinced that they should go through the dark, narrow doorway. Dee, on the other hand, marched right on into the barn like a little champ. She also settled right into her stall, which is more than Tango used to do. The last time I took Tango up, he was in the same stall that Dee was, and he was trying to break through the stall gate. Dee was mostly just concerned with the delicious flake of hay that was waiting for her.
About twenty minutes later I got her tacked up and headed to the outdoor. There were lots of things around - metal water troughs, a mattress under one of the jumps, blue barrels, poles stacked up on the side - and Dee hardly even gave anything a second glance (the mattress weirded her out a little at first). We got down to business after she had gotten a chance to walk all around everything, and the lesson was brilliant. Steph had me working on putting the pressure on her a little more about not coming above the bit so much, this basically involved just keeping my hands steady and my leg on when she would pop up, so she would realize that having her head up there isn't so comfy. She took it all in stride, with no fighting about the new protocol. After some pretty nice trot work, with some REALLY good stretching, we decided to try a little bit of canter. Now, she had been really good about the canter work before we went to steph's, with a decent head-set and a very relaxed stride. Our canter on Thursday? Not so great. To the left there was a lot of inversion and porpoising. The right lead was similar, but improved quite a bit. My problem was that when she would invert, I was trying to use the hold and push method to get her to bring her head down. This doesn't help when they're completely upside down and hollow, as I found out. It really only resulted in Dee and I being frustrated with eachother, and she was expressing that with some minor bucking. Steph finally suggested that I just put a loop in the rein and let her go. Well, what do you know, the bucks disappeared, the head came down a bit and her back softened. Sorry it took me so long to figure that out, Dee! I would like to add that during this lesson, we had another horse working around us (though we had a circle to ourselves when we cantered, probably because the other girl was worried about our steering abilities) and Dee didn't worry about it at all. The other horse could trot up behind her, we could pass the other horse, we could do anything with the other horse and she didn't care! Then, towards the end of our lesson a cavalcade of horse trailers pulled in. I don't even remember Dee giving that a glance.
Needless to say I was extremely pleased with Thursday's lesson. We did a LOT and Dee was a good sport about it. After I rode her, Steph asked if I wanted to ride Scudder. Are you kidding!? Of COURSE I want to ride Scud!
Let me explain. When I was a working student, all three of Steph's homebreds were on the farm: Abby, Abbett and Scudder. Abby was 6, Abbett was 4 and Scud was 2. I had an absolute blast riding Abby and Abbett, and I got a chance to do some natural horsemanship stuff with Scud. Every time that I've been back to Steph's since Scud was under saddle, he was broken. I've never even seen him go! So, I was incredibly excited about getting on him, and it was a very fun ride. It was very nice to be on a horse that isn't a wiggling worm all the time. I would also like to add that Scud has the most amazing canter EVER. It's like riding on air!

Friday, we let Dee go out for a little bit in the morning to stretch her legs before I rode, and I think she enjoyed spending time squealing at the gelding in the paddock next to her. It was a little bit of a gross, rainy day, so we rode in the indoor. I think that she was a little bit muscle sore and cranky, because the minute I got on, she was a ball of tension. I was actually worried that she was lame at first, but Steph thought it looked more like tension, and I had to agree. She was totally stuck on her right side and well on her way to full-blown tantrum mode, but we just quietly worked through it. After about fifteen minutes, I finally had her a little more relaxed and willing to play. Our left lead was much improved from the day before (though our transition was pretty bad - she sort of did a leaping squeal into it, but she was on the right lead, so I just kicked her forward through the leaping). I let go of her face right away and it resulted in a much more relaxed left lead canter than we'd had the day before. I mean, the left lead still isn't the best, but it's coming along. Going right, she had some beautiful transitions. She was quiet and even a little round into the canter every time. We did have a little issue with cross-cantering going to the right. Our circle was a little bit smaller than she's used to, and her haunches kept drifting in. When that happened, she would totally lose the hind end and start cross-cantering. Finally, however, I was able to convince her to stay a little straighter in her body and we got some really good canter work in.
All in all, it was a great two days. Steph seemed to really like her. She kept saying how nice Dee was, and how she thought that Dee was going to be very very fancy when she gets a little stronger behind.

And The Winner Is...

William Fox-Pitt and Cool Mountain!
They had a pretty awesome weekend, finishing on their dressage score. The wonderful Phillip Dutton came in 2nd with Woodburn and Becky Holder was 3rd with Courageous Comet. I'm pretty excited to see the footage when it airs. It just wasn't quite the same just sitting and READING about it all weekend!
So, suddenly it seems that winter has returned! I heard tell that there were FLURRIES in Litchfield County this morning... no good! But on the bright side, it's supposed to be downright balmy come saturday.
I've been pretty busy with finals coming up, but it's almost finished. The week of the 10th, the dentist is FINALLY coming (yeah, it took her a month to get back to me. I won't get into it, but I wasn't very pleased with her, and she's lucky she's such a good dentist, because otherwise she most definitely would have lost our business) and I'm going to haul miss Dee up to Steph's for an overnight! I'm pretty excited about that... it will be our first big adventure together. I'm hoping Steph likes her!
Not much else to report... mare's been being a good girl (despite being in raging heat), and is finally almost all shedded out. I'm presenting my senior paper this friday, too. A little nervous about it, but I'm confident that all will go well.

Rolex

Yup, it's that time of year again! I really wish I could have been in Kentucky this weekend, but alas, with finals looming and most of my time revolving around papers and presentations, a lovely weekend at Rolex just wasn't in the cards. I tried to purchase the live feed from Universal, but for some reason I can't make it work on my computer, so I've been obsessively watching the live blog that Eventing Nation has been kindly providing. I've also been indulging in the different ride videos, interviews and behind the scenes photos. I suppose it's the next best thing to being there!
It's shaping up to be an exciting day today, with William Fox-Pitt in the lead going into show jumping.
On the home front, we've moved the horses out of the bottom pasture and up into the front pasture. This will give the bottom a chance to dry out and grow a bit more, and the girls are pretty thrilled to be in the big front field. It's a little bit of a pain doing turn-out up there, though. The 1/4 mile walk from the field to the barn is not so fun when you have 4 horses to bring in and then chuck back out, so yesterday I decided to try a different approach. Friday I brought them in two at a time, which resulted in lots of screaming back and forth to each other and me walking an extra mile. Yesterday, I figured... hey, they're all good girls. I may as well just haul them all in at once. Roxy and Casper will pretty much come in by themselves anyway, so they're easy, and Summer and Dee are perfect ladies to lead. I just put Summer and Dee right next to me and had Roxy on the outside of Dee and Casper on the outside of Summer. Getting them into the barn was a bit tricky, but we managed with no issues! I think these are probably the only 4 horses that I would EVER do that with. I used to do 3 at a time at steph's, but those were the boys in the far paddock, and I only had to lead them through the middle paddock to get to the barn, so it was pretty simple... this is four of them down the driveway for a quarter mile. Gotta love the little ladies for being so wonderful!
Here are a few photos of the girls in the front field, enjoying their grass:





And here's a little video. Sorry that it's the wrong way, I'm still working out this whole video thing!

And Finally... Dee and I before our ride!

Advanced Horsemanship

So I just registered for next semester classes (sort of/mostly), and upon discussing what I need in order to graduate with ms. Baker, we decided that I was going to need six classes. Sort of a drag for my final semester, but she had an idea. She suggested that I do the EQU363 class, which is called Advanced Horsemanship, but is really just an independent study. I thought, gee, that's all well and good, but what does that mean? exactly? It means that Dee gets to be my class project, apparently! Still lost? Let me explain...
Basically, this summer I will set a goal and keep a training log for Dee, taking pictures and videos to document her progress. Once I've gathered up all the information, I'll make it into a full paper and video presentation. Fun! Class credit for playing with my horse!
So now, the big question: what ARE my goals? I want to keep them pretty loose, but here we go, my goals up until the start of school:
1. Get Dee's canter to be balanced, and get the correct lead on the first try most of the time.
2. Start over fences

So how am I going to achieve this? Through lessons with Nancy, Steph and Bettina, hopefully!

This week has been a good one for Dee and I. Tuesday, she spent most of our ride pretending to be a giraffe, but after a million walk/trot transitions, she finally began doing this absolutely beautiful stretchy trot... I was amazed! She was long, low, forward and totally balanced. We achieved this for the equivalent of 4 times around the ring, so I just quit, telling her what a wonderful mare she is. Wednesday I was running terribly late and didn't get a chance to ride. Yesterday was more transition work.. yay. Her transitions really aren't terrible. She's very sensitive to the seat, both from walk to halt and trot to walk. She was pretty good overall... didn't get the same amount of fabulous stretchy trot, but we did get some, so I was pleased. If it's not pouring this afternoon, I'll be riding her again, otherwise she may have to wait until tomorrow or sunday.
I am also happy to report that she has suddenly decided that getting her butt curried is the BEST THING EVER. However, she shows this by leaning into the curry comb, which eventually ends up with her butt against the wall and me struggling to reach it and yelling at her to move over. As to the mystery gray situation... she has a WHOLE lot of it, especially right around the point of the hip and the butt. There's less on her back and neck, but there is some. What a weirdo... it will be interesting to see what color my horse is this summer!

Bath Time!

Miss Dee got her first soapy bath of the year yesterday, since it was ridiculously warm. It felt weird to be sweating bullets with no leaves on the trees, but I guess that's New England for you.

Gone Gray?

So, the dentist was supposed to come on Friday at 1:30, but for some reason, she never showed. At 2, I called and left a message. At 3 I called again. I called and left another message yesterday. I don't know what's going on but I'm none to happy right now. I mean, I'm pretty sure now that the weight issue was her worms, but she still needs her teeth done because its that time of year. I won't harp on it anymore than that, but I'm thinking I may need to find a new dentist, because that sort of behavior is incredibly unprofessional.
With the warm weather, Dee's really begun to shed out. That's all well and good, she's looking sleeker and fancier and less like a ragamuffin, but what did I find underneath her fuzzy winter coat? GRAY. Lots and lots of GRAY. That was a bit of a surprise. Her butt and her back have tons of little gray hairs all over... not so much on her neck. Seriously, though, what's up with all that gray? Look:




Weird, right?

I'm thinking that today is going to be bath day, because it's really warm out. The other day, I hosed her legs down because they were just disgusting with wet, goopy mud. Well, as I was toweling them off, Dee expressed some interest in seeing the towel. I let her see it, expecting that she just wanted to take a sniff. She proceeded to grab the towel and start swinging it around like a dog would. I took a few pictures, but I didn't get any really great action shots, just Dee standing with the towel hanging out of her mouth.
Look at that cutie pie:

Steps 2 and 3

Well, the vet is coming tomorrow to pull blood and maybe do a fecal. If she thinks Dee isn't sick or anything we're also gonna do spring shots. The dentist is going to come up April 2nd. While I'm not looking forward to all the bills about to head my way, I just want to get this sorted out... cover all my bases.

Step 1

I'm implementing operation "Get Dee Fat". Step 1? Powerpac. Do I think she's wormy? Not particularly. However, it can't hurt and you never know, so she started her power pac today. I've got calls in to the vet and the dentist, too. Those are the next steps. I want to get her teeth done and some bloodwork. Plus, she needs her spring shots, so I may as well have those done while I get her blood looked at.
Also, I feel the need to share this story, because it was really creepy. I know we all like to think our animals can understand us even though everyone says it's just intonation. Well, I was just talking to Dee while I groomed her today and asked her a question (just because I do things like that...). Well... she nodded at me. So I said, "Did you understand me?" SHE NODDED AGAIN. A little weirded out, I waited a little bit and then asked her, "Dee, do you understand english?" SHE NODDED AGAIN. My mother suggested that if I ever want to say something negative about her, I'd better learn another language. I love my little mare!

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return...

I think that Dee is beginning to love me, and I'm very happy about this. The last few days, she has been very snuggly. I mean, she still protests about the curry comb, but she's not as nasty about it anymore. Yesterday, she even let me give her a great big bear hug... HUGE progress!
That said, I'm anxiously awaiting a return call from the dentist, because I think she is in dire need of some mouth attention. She's a slow eater. Painfully slow. She takes about a million years to finish her grain and every other bite is followed by a huge gulp of water. Pellets fall out while she eats. Add all that to the fact that despite a good quality grain, rice bran, APF and now Mushroom Matrix, she STILL appears to be LOSING weight, and I think we've got a tooth issue. I can't think of another explanation. She's getting enough calories and nutrients in her grain and hay to feed a horse twice her size, but she looks terrible. She's been wormed and is on a daily wormer. She shows no signs of being ill... coat looks great, she's bright and chipper, no obvious signs of distress and seemingly no abnormalities. I just can't think of any explanation beyond her teeth. Unless it's ulcers. I mean, she had been INCREDIBLY sensitive when I curry her belly lately (more so than usual). I actually thought she might have some sort of cut or scrape under there today because she was SO reactive. However, running my hands all over her belly and putting pressure on it didn't reveal any cuts and didn't provoke ANY reaction... she could care less that I was poking and prodding her, but the curry comb? HATED IT. Now, she'll usually make snarky faces at me while I curry her belly, but today she was kicking at me and backing away from me like I was hurting her. I actually stopped grooming her because she seemed so uncomfortable. However, other than that, she really doesn't strike me as being ulcery. She's not a nervous type... in fact, she generally seems to be incredibly laid back 90% of the time. Then again, she WAS a racehorse, and it's very common for track horses to be ulcery. However, she came off the track in August last year... I would think the ulcers would have presented themselves by now. Plus, from what I saw, it looked like she was living the life at the farm I bought her from. Turn out all night, easy work 3 days a week... i'm not sure what could be stressful about that. And now? She's basically just been hanging out in a field with her best buds for the past few months and eating boat loads of grain and all the hay she could stuff into her face.
I'm just feeling a little lost and very upset. I'm hoping an appointment to the dentist will fix this issue, because I feel AWFUL right now. I cant stand being able to see her ribs as much as I can, and I'm doing everything in my power food-wise to fix it with NO results. None. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this problem will be fixed soon... whether it will be fixed with a dentist visit, gastroguard or some yet-unknown remedy to a yet-unknown ailment is beyond me, but I WILL sort her out. I want my baby fat and happy.

All I need is my Pony.

Every have those times when life just gets so stressful that you need that ONE thing you can turn to? For me, that has always been my horse, and Dee hasn't let me down. I'm the type of person who is very black and white. I don't like it when people are are misleading, and I don't like it when my life turns into shades of gray. I think that's why I've always loved horses. They tell you how it is no matter what. My life has been full of gray lately, and it's been driving me nuts. But yesterday, Dee and I trucked over to Nancy's and had an amazing ride, which made everything that little bit better. She was really fabulous... forward, straight and totally relaxed through the whole ride. I mean, she had bobbles here and there (mostly at the scary, horse-eating side of the ring), but even those were very minor. Nancy seemed very happy with her, and we only did about 20 minutes of work, but it was plenty for my little out of shape baby.
She even dealt with another horse in the ring like a total pro. When I first went in there, Nancy was jumping Bunny around a bit. Needless to say, I waited to get on because Dee's little eyes were rolling around in her little head trying to figure out what on EARTH was going on. Eventually, Nancy went out to jump outside, so I jumped on and started working. A few minutes later, Bunny came back in to walk around and cool out (so that nancy could give me some pointers) and Dee could CARE LESS. Trot by Bunny? No worries! Bunny left? Who cares! She was a proper grown-up about everything and I was SO PROUD.
For me, horses have always been a way to regulate my life... keep things on track. They let me know where I stand every step of the way. Dogs and cats are similar, sure, but we don't ever work as closely with them as we do with our horses. If Dee is mad at me, she'll let me know immediately. If she's happy, she lets me know that, too. Granted, she often seems more peeved than anything else when I work with her on the ground, but that's only because she's momma's little princess and has to make sure I keep that in mind!

I used to dream that one day I would run away and live in the wild with my horse, like the people of olden days. I wanted it to be just me and my horse depending on each other and no one else. I'm a firm believer that there is no better thing than spending a day at the barn... in the tack and just hanging out with the horses.
At eleven years old, balmy summer days were spent as an Indian – bare feet and bare legs on the bare back on a horse. I would sit and scan the horizon, supreme upon a grassy knoll, held close by the haze, which hung in the air like a tapestry. Sweat, dirt and hair leapt from the horse, gluing me to his back, securing me in my position. A cotton lead hung loose in my hand, hardly a form of control, but I trusted my steed to remain on the hill, gorging on the fragrant green grass. Enveloped in the hot, humid air, we were safe, we were wild Indians, unconcerned with the world outside our field. There was no future, no past, just a perfect fantasy. We didn't worry about future horrors. They didn't exist. I was blithely ignorant to the future, a future where my sublime golden pony would be ripped from my life, a future where Indians on grassy knolls were a crumpled memory in a photo album.
I miss those days constantly. I always secretly wish that those dreams could be reality. All I need is my pony, who speaks in black and white and doesn't feed me bull shit.

And just as an aside... I'm watching Moulin Rouge right now... this is my favorite sequence ever:

Bye Bye Bearded Lady!

March 1st came on with high winds and lovely temperatures. Of course, the ring was still thick with snow, but I thought, it's MARCH now. I can't just let Dee hang out anymore. She needs to start working. So she got on the lounge line. I thought that gale force winds plus not having worked in weeks would equal a crazy, entertaining rodeo spectacle. I was wrong. Dee was LOVELY, and with the snow, she had this big, springy, beautiful trot that I didn't ever expect her to produce. I mean, she's a cute mover, but sort of the daisy-cutter type. This was a HUGE. GORGEOUS. TROT. I was blown away, she looked fantastic. Add this to the fact that any worry I may have had about pulling her shoes went out the window and all in all it was a great day. She did about 15 minutes of work.. a 2x5 trot set and some walking, but I feel like that was more than sufficient, especially considering that she was powering through about 6 inches of snow (and I DO mean powering!). Did I want to jump on her? You bet! However, seeing that the ring was SO snowy, I was a little wary of getting on. She's currently going through a growth spurt, and right now she's in that awkward butt-higher-than-withers stage. It's easy to see that she's trying to figure out her new balance, and I figure it's best not to stress her out with having to figure out how to balance herself with a rider in 6 inches of snow.
With the great weather, I honestly figured that the ring would melt in a few days.. especially since Dee and I had already broken it up. Unfortunately, it's STILL covered in snow, so I STILL haven't gotten on her. She worked monday, tuesday and friday. She's hopefully going to work tomorrow, too. Tuesday and Friday she did 2x8min Trot. She's actually great to lounge, which means that I don't have to have her on the same boring 20m circle all the time. Sometimes we go large, sometimes we spiral down a little, we change which side of the ring we circle on... it keeps her interested. The best part? She's TOTALLY FOCUSED. I don't know what happened, but she's absolutely on the job when we get to the ring. Other horses? WHAT other horses? She could care less about her friends in the paddock. I'm really excited about that because it means that she's willing to pay more attention to ME instead of worrying about her best buddies.
So what have we been doing besides introducing work again? Getting beautified!! Now, I've had horses that get furry before, but Dee has taken it to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL. I've NEVER had a horse with so much hair. Her facial hair can rival a yak, and her mane is like a forest. When I put the bridle on, first I have to somehow manage to pull her great big bush of a forelock out from under the headstall. Next I have to try my hardest not to accidentally tug her chin hair while tightening the noseband. This never works, and she inevitably gets very angry with me for pulling her hair. I finally relented and brought my clippers up.
So today, Miss Dee got a spa day instead of working. Mane? Pulled. Bridle path? Exists again. Yak beard? Gone! Rest of winter hair covered body? Shedding bladed. Was she happy? Absolutely not. Does she look fabulous? You bet!
I didn't get any body shots or neck shots, but I DID take a before and after of her face. Please excuse the angle on the 'after' shot.. I don't know what angle I was at, but it made her jaw look enormous and not at all proportional. Her head is actually very nice.
So:

Dee Before her makeover.

Dee after a nice shave!

Tomorrow is supposed to be almost 60 degrees. Here's to hoping the ring will melt!

Dee's First Bra

I got Dee a bra the other day. I've been meaning to get one for awhile because she's getting little rubs on her shoulders from her blanket, and I actually stumbled across one for free! We had someone drop off bags full of blankets and tack the other day at work, and upon sifting through it I found a shoulder guard that, while not sellable due to a small rip, was perfectly adequate for my purposes... and it's RED! Jackpot!
It fits her pretty well, too. I put it on and told her how lovely she looked in her first bra... she responded with a VERY ugly face, so I told her that once summer came around we could have a bra burning ceremony. That seemed to cheer her up again... God I love that mare, she's such an adorable little character.

I am currently working on my senior paper for Post, which is about the Thoroughbred (history, current issues and future). In doing all of my research, I read a lot about several illustrious sires such as eclipse, herod, man o' war, etc. I also read about 3 european stallions that were introduced to provide more size. Well, after all this reading about pedigrees and such, I decided to look a little further into Dee's. The exciting part? I really can trace her all the way back to the Godolphin Arabian, Byerley Turk and Darley Arabian. I also found Herod, Eclipse, Man o' War, the Tetrarch, Sickle, and Roberto, among others. I also scrounged up a picture of her sire, Action This Day.. Here he is. I like him. All in all, Dee actually has a decent pedigree (not ridiculously inbred), and while that may no have translated into good racing skills, I'm hoping it will translate into eventing skills. I mean, she's got a good head on her shoulders at least, so that's a good start! Does she have a stubborn streak? I think so... but I also think that she's the type that will test her boundaries and, once they are established, will be happy to comply. That's how Tango was, a little bit. And but for his chronic injury, he would have been brilliant. So maybe Dee will be brilliant, but I'll settle for just having a horse that I can enjoy, which I think she will be.
Ok, enough of my rambling.

Other Horses!?

Dee had her first ever experience with SHARING yesterday. That is, she was made to share the indoor with not one but TWO horses. Well, ok, she didn't share with both until the end, but she held it together.
Now, of course she's shared space on the track, but that's a very different experience than sharing space in the ring, and I've had horses who get VERY upset about it. Luckily, Beth - who we were in there with first - was nice enough to let us just tag along behind her, which Dee loved. Also, by the end, Taylor could be half of the indoor away from us, and Dee was ok with it, because she could still see her, and felt like she MUST still be following her, so it was ok... what a crap racehorse she must have been! She was totally unconcerned with keeping up!
When Taylor needed to have a canter, another horse had walked into the ring, and that girl was nice enough to have her gelding babysit us in the center of the ring while Beth went for her canter. Dee actually STOOD STILL in the center with Miles and didn't even bat an eyelash when Taylor was cantering behind her. What a good girl! I was expecting her to be a little panicked about such a big horse thundering behind her, but it was no big deal at all.
All in all we did lots of trotting, just slow and steady. It was a good time for her to get her head around other horses in the ring (and when Miles went out and started trotting while we were trotting, she was fine with it!), and it was also a good workout for her (by the end, however, it was a good workout for ME, while I was trying to convince her that continuing to trot was a good idea even though she was tired).
I was very very happy with her, she's a good mare.

In other news, I finally got ahold of Steph yesterday after weeks of attempting, and she's on her way to sunny and warm Florida. Jealous. She's going down with 9 horses and 1 WS... so she's gonna be BUSY (We had 10 between the two of us), but at least she'll be warm. One of these winters when I have the money (I'm actually thinking of starting a Dee Account), I want to be able to send the mare down to sunny Florida for the winter and maybe visit for a week or two and compete somewhere. Hopefully someday... maybe next winter? Who knows!



That was what I woke up to every morning in Ocala.

Rodeo Days

Oh yes, Wednesday the rodeo came to Litchfield and I was the not-so-happy sole participant. Granted, due to the weather, a lack of indoor and absolutely no time to get out to an indoor, Dee has basically just been sitting around for a month, so I wasn't expecting her to be an angel. I WAS, however, expecting her to NOT act like a tempermental herdbound COW.
Almost immediately after I got on, she was totally out of control and I'll tell you something... Horse can BUCK and she's crafty about it, too. After she spent time carreening around doing her best impression of a saddle bronc and nearly landing me on the floor, I finally got her stopped long enough to jump off and promptly threw her on the lounge. Now... normally, I don't lounge unless I'm trying to look for lameness or doing something productive, because I don't like to put that kind of stress on their joints if it isn't necessary, but considering that I could see no way for me to stay on her if she continued her antics, I relented. I was glad I did. She performed some pretty impressive acrobatic feats that I was very greatful didn't take place while I was on her back... and that was just her TROT. She broke into a canter twice and REALLY acted like a wild woman, but I tried to keep the canter work to a minimum (as much as was possible, anyway).
Once she'd gotten her kicks (literally), I felt safe to jump back on. Of course, at that point, I didn't feel right making her do much more work, so I just asked her to walk around quietly and do some trot circles in each direction. That was a much greater success then my first time in the saddle that day, but I was dissapointed with how awful she felt. She's going to take a LOT of strengthening work to get her going well... that hind end is just mush at the moment, and it was VERY obvious at the trot (though it didn't impede her ability to buck and twirl with the best). Oh well... all in good time.
On a brighter note, she's getting much more manageable on the ground. She now lets me brush her without trying to take my head off, and she has been almost... dare I say... FRIENDLY towards me.

Then... on a not so bright note... I had a bit of bad luck on Wednesday. My computer's harddrive crashed. Brilliant. Just what I wanted to go home to. Now, it's holed up at the mac factory getting a new harddrive. Yay for paying a left arm to get a new harddrive!

Queen Of Munchkin Land

I'm pretty sure that in the few days she's been here, the other horses have accepted Disco as their leader. Roxi is like her little shadow, Casper gets out of her way even if there's food involved and Summer just leaves her alone all together. I think Dee enjoys living in munchkin land!
Yesterday was her first trip ever to an indoor. We had some minor mishaps, and she's going to have to learn to load on the trailer with just me, but we got over to Nancy's safe and sound. She was a very good girl getting tacked up in the barn aisle, and then came the big task: going inside the indoor. As I slid the door open, I'm pretty sure her eyes popped out of her head... there were jumps! mirrors! birds! She ogled all the jumps, stared at herself in the mirror and just generally scoped the whole place out. Once I'd walked her once around in each direction, Nancy held her while I got on. Now, she hasn't REALLY been ridden in a few weeks. I'd jumped on her the day before, but the ring was an ice rink and we just walked. Needless to say, I was expecting some fireworks... I mean, a 3 year old in a new place that hasn't been ridden in awhile? Surely there is going to be spooking, bucking or something, right? WRONG! She was an absolute doll, getting straight to business. I just did walk/trot, and we worked on her transitions a little bit... her last trot - walk transition was actually not terrible, since she didn't turn into a giraffe, so I quit with that.
I must say, I was quite impressed. Most of the time, she was stretching and relaxed, coming quietly from behind. I was very, very pleased with her, and I think she'll be quite nice eventually... it seems like she's very sensible under saddle. Now, if I can just get her to stop being such a witch on the ground, we'll be all set!

"We accept you, one of us! Gooble Gobble!"

Disco made new friends yesterday! I tossed her out with Roxi and Casper first, since I was a little worried about Summer. Roxi was first to investigate, and after touching noses for a moment, Disco commenced with the squealing. She squealed at Roxi, she squealed at Casper, she squealed at nothing much in general. As all of this squealing was happening, Disco was exploring the paddock. Roxi quickly decided that she is Disco's new shadow. Maybe it's because she can't really see and Disco is awfully big, so she's hard to miss.
Anyway, after those three had gotten used to one another and were more interested in the hay piles than eachother, I brought Disco in, fed dinner, turned Disco back out and then let Summer loose. Well, just as Summer realized that there was a new horse out with them, Casper and Roxi went charging over to Disco like her little back-up crew, so Summer just said hi and the two began eating from the hay pile (after a totally non-commited squeal from disco).

Discotrax!

Well, it's official. As of yesterday I am the new owner of Disco, a 3 year old TB mare. Megan and I drove up to Millbrook in the FREEZING cold to get her vetted, and once she had passed with flying colors, we loaded her up and brought her home to Litchfield. She was very calm and collected about the entire thing. When I went to take her out of the trailer, I undid her from the trailer tie, hooked on her lead rope and tossed it over her neck, and then undid the back of the trailer. As I was standing at the back of the trailer, all of the bars and doors down and ready for her to leave, she just sort of turned around and looked at me, as if to say "excuse me? why aren't you UP HERE? Shouldn't you be leading me down?" But a little coaxing convinced her that it was not such a big deal and she calmly wandered down the ramp.





Casper, Roxi and Summer thought she was a totally big deal, and there was some curious through-the-bars sniffing with minor squealing (mostly from Disco) but no striking or otherwise bad behavior. I'm hoping to toss her out with them today, so fingers crossed that all will go well.
Once she got in her stall, she set right to gobbling down her hay - always a good thing. I let her do that for a bit while I unhitched the trailer and got her stuff situated, then I took her out for a mini-tour of the property (a mini-tour because walking up the driveway more closely resembled trekking through the frozen tundra, with very high, totally frigid wind.)
She took everything in stride.







Following our little tour, it was time to introduce her to her new blanket, which she was none to thrilled about. Those hind leg straps were EVIL, and she wanted to teach them a lesson, which meant almost kicking me, which resulted in her getting in trouble. She responded to getting in trouble by squealing at me, throwing a small fit, and then standing like a little soldier while I did up the rest of the blanket. Oh mares. I forgot what divas they can be!