Year: 2014

We have arrived! Trainer (new trainer? soon to be new trainer? almost trainer? barn owner? whatever, let’s call him D.) came to pick Henry up and take him the 15 minutes back towards town to his place. My 35 minute toll-road-included commute has now turned into an 18-20 minute toll-free commute. Score. Henry was a little confused about the head-to-head trailer (I’m supposed to back in to the stall? Pony don’t back.) but rode well. He strode off the trailer and announced his arrival with a lovely piercing whinny directly in my ear. I didn’t need to hear out of that thing anymore anyway.

We got him settled in his stall then I walked back to my car to grab his fan, my checkbook and his beloved salt block. After we got his stall all set up I hosed him off then handwalked him around (while he continued to periodically announce his arrival into my ear, but it’s ok I couldn’t hear it anymore) and let him graze a bit while I took PICTURES.

It’s a little hard to explain the layout of this place because it’s more like a complex. There are 4 barns, 2 arenas, an office/lounge, a pavilion, round pen, fancy walker machine thingy, lots of turnout paddocks, and several open fields for riding.

Starting at the “top”… there are two barns that look like this at the top of the hill, nearest the entrance. The round pen and some paddocks are to the right of this barn.

If you turn around and look directly across from that barn, there’s the top ring. Beyond the top ring on the left side is the happy hour pavilion (yes, I said that). To the right in the back you can see the grandstand for the main ring and in the forefront, farther to the right is the lounge/office.

Standing in the same spot but looking more to the right. You can see the grandstand for the big ring in the background, the office/lounge is the house in the middle foreground, and the big barn is on the far right. That’s Henry’s barn.

Here’s half of the inside of Henry’s barn. The aisle basically goes in a horseshoe shape around the middle, which is the tack room. The crossties are on either side of the aisle. Henry’s stall is around the corner on the other side.

Henry’s stall… guessing it’s 14 x 14 or something around there.

Total goofball loves his new fan.

The stalls are deeply bedded with rice hulls. Very interesting. Seems MUCH less dusty than shavings and all the stalls seem very dry/clean all the time, so I’m interested to see if it helps his breathing at all.

The view from his stall window. To the right is one of the grassy areas for hacking, to the left is the big ring.

Here’s the view from the aisle Henry’s stall is on. That’s the big ring, stands, and all the extra jumps.

If you head down to the happy hour pavilion…

There are more fields for hacking, like this one…

and if you look across from the pavilion, there’s the big ring with the big barn behind it and the lounge/office on the right. You can also see just the very edge of the fence for the smaller top ring.

The one barn I managed to not take a picture of (oops) is the broodmare barn. It’s basically a shedrow with a big area on the end that contains all the washracks. Here’s a few of them.

If you look outside of the door to the washrack area, there’s the crazy awesome computerized walker machine thingy that I will probably never be brave enough to try.

That’s the basic tour. However, my very favorite part is contained in the tack room of Henry’s barn. Are you ready for this? Meet – my tack locker. Or my tack closet, whichever is more appropriate. It’s. So. Giant. The groom is going to scrub it out for me this morning, then I get to go crazy. I can’t even handle it, the possibilities are endless. I see a trip to The Container Store in my future.

 

Also: BABIES. These two are both by Mezcalero, the same stallion my mare Sadie is being bred to this year.

 

It was yet another great, mostly stress-free horsey filled weekend. I started off with a non-horsey thing – a 35 mile bike ride. I pretty much wanted to get hit by a car the entire way home as I pedaled straight into a 20mph headwind. I would have gladly traded my bike (or first born child, or a kidney) for a ride home… talk about pure misery. When you have to pedal downhill just to keep moving forward, it’s too freaking windy. Ugh, fried quads.

After that I headed out to ride the pony, because my legs weren’t quite dead enough yet. We did some flatwork first…

then hopped around the little jumps that were set up in the ring. My friend was there so I actually have video! Mostly we worked on short approaches and turns.

HenryJune from amanda chance on Vimeo.

Good thing to note: he’s no longer curling up behind the bit at any whiff of contact. Praise Jesus hallelujah, the month of flatwork bootcamp was not in vain. There’s still a lot more to work on, but I’m glad to have made progress on what has been the biggest problem we’ve had to date. I feel like the rest of it isn’t nearly so difficult to fix. The video also makes me think I really need to try a figure 8 on him, or – dare I even say it – a Micklem (itssooougly) or a Perfect Sit (iloveit)? Thoughts, blogosphere? He’s a fussy creature.

After the barn I went to Walmart to pick him up a new (seriously heavy duty) fan for the new barn. It’s powerful enough that I’m pretty sure if I ever put it on the highest setting he’d look something like this:

On Sunday we just did a pretty relaxed hack out in the grass ring. He did give me two really nice trot lengthenings across the diagonal, which is seriously noteworthy. This horse doesn’t lengthen anything. I just finally got him to do an actual stretchy trot circle a week ago. Henry generally stays in Henry outline at all times, he’s a very “stuck” creature by nature. The fact that he lengthened – a real true honest to goodness, rocked back on his butt lengthening – was nothing short of a miracle. These are the baby steps that give me hope.

After that I let him gallop down the long stretch of grass by the road. I’m so endlessly amused by his pogo stick gallop, I’m usually about to fall off laughing by the time I pull him up. He’s not quite sure what’s so funny but I don’t think he could outrun a 3-legged goat. After our ride it was spa time, since he can’t go to a new barn looking like a hood rat. Lots of scrubbing, some suds, clippers, scissors, and a mane pull later, he looks presentable again.

Oh yeah that reminds me – the other fun thing of the weekend! My newest batch of Personally Preppy monograms came! Monogram Everything.

monograms before:

monograms after:

Today is moving day… fingers crossed!

Nothing like sliding in at the last minute, but better almost-late than never right? This is for Eventing In Color’s June photo challenge… I did the best I could.

1. Between-the-ears shot.

Wild man hair adds to the appeal

2. Anything blooming at your barn.

3. A picture of your horse taken from a random/weird/artistic angle.

4. The most attractive horse at your barn other than yours.

It’s a baby with gray goggles… I mean come on, how do you beat that?

5. Bath time photo.

6. A sweet picture of you and your horse.

Best I could do, apparently we’re just not sweet.

While I was digging manically  browsing through the Internet a couple weeks ago desperately looking for pictures of Henry’s sire, I came across a couple of tiny photo collage proofs from his Oaklawn wins. I just about died of hysterical fits of the giggles when I saw these pictures. Meet Henry’s sire Skeet.

That is my Henrypants EXACTLY. I have so many pictures just like that.

There you have it guys – the Derps are definitely genetic. This proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Also big round fat butts. Those too are genetic.

Dat azz.

The apple bottom didn’t fall far from the tree

 

Another fun note – I may or may not have picked up an XC vest on ebay yesterday, in case I ever actually get to take Henry out. It was a smokin’ deal I couldn’t pass up, albeit not navy which is sad.

Oh and I now have PURPLE HAIR! Not all of it, just some streaks underneath. I love it though. Happy almost Friday, y’all.

 

Since I used a picture of Kai on yesterday’s blog post I figured I should probably write a little bit about him. He was yet another horse that happened quite by chance. A friend of mine in California that I “met” via an online forum many years ago had a lovely young Oldenburg gelding by Ideal that was coming back from an injury. However, she was headed to law school and didn’t really have the time to rehab him and get him going again. Enter: me. At the time Sadie was 4 and I was really wanting something kinda “made” (or at least not bright green) to ride while she started learning the ropes. Plus I really was starting to have an itch to do the jumpers again, and Kai could potentially be a great way to scratch that itch. His owner was kind enough to trust me with Kai’s rehab (for which I will forever be flattered), so off he went from CA to TX for me to free lease.

I was super meticulous about his rehab schedule. I had a calendar and I had everything written out day by day with exact increments of walking, trotting, when it was ok to start adding circles, etc etc. I figured if someone was going to trust me with their horse, I damn well better do a good job and do it right. After a few months he was back to a mostly regular flatwork routine, although still a bit weak from his extended vacation.

 

 

We spent a few more months working on more intense flatwork, building his strength back up, etc. By mid summer he was ready to start jumping again. We started low and slow, and he came back very well with nary a hitch. Before his injury Kai had done a lot of dressage and a little eventing, but hadn’t really competed much. So while he had good basics and a sound foundation to build on, he didn’t have many show miles and still was young enough to where he needed all the finesse work that comes with moving a horse up the levels.

 

 

In October he went to his first show with me, an A show in Katy. It was a lot to ask of him. The jumps were bigger than he’d ever done before in competition, and it had been a couple years since he’d been to a show. But he stepped up and went around the .95m and 1m without any real hiccups. He leaped a mile over the top of everything (pretty sure I got jumped way loose about 15 times that week – there was much sticky spray happening by the end), but he was willing.

 

 

 

We went to a few more shows, moving up to the low Adult jumpers. Most times he was pretty solid, although we were riding more to get us both miles, not to win, so there weren’t a lot of ribbons. One particularly hilarious (and frustrating) show was Waco in January 2012. I don’t know what it was about that ring, but he was terrified of the jump crew (in the middle of the long side on one side of the ring) and the giant judge’s tower of doom (in the middle of the long side on the other side of the ring). So, basically all of our rounds looked like this:

 

He spent the whole week wheeling, spooking, and running sideways from the jump crew and the judges. Thanks Kai.

The thing about Kai is that he could be a real jerk. Every single time you got on him it was a fight to get him moving forward off your leg. A super work ethic, he did NOT possess, and he could be really stupid about the absolutely most inane things. But when it came down to the important things, like the jumps, he was always willing and able. I learned a lot on this horse.

1) How to correctly rehab a ligament injury. I was probably overly cautious to a completely obsessive level, but it worked.

2) Patience. That horse could really push my buttons sometimes with his attitude, but when it came down to a battle of wills I could always win if I just quietly but firmly waited him out. As someone who does not come by a plethora of patience naturally, this was important for me to learn.

3) Tenacity. If you had any “quit” in you, Kai could detect it. Therefore you better be darn sure about what you wanted and be prepared to work for it.

4) How to ride every stride. Kai was unforgiving in that if you made one mistake, he would pull a rail. It’s almost like he decided he was my own personal Mr Miyagi and eventually he could teach his puny human how to ride properly if he just kept “correcting” my mistakes by not giving me a clean round. On one hand – that’s annoying. No one rides THAT well. On the other hand – if I made a mistake I knew about it immediately. Dropped my hands a bit? Rail. Was a little too quick with my shoulders off the ground? Rail. Leaned a little to the side over the jump to make a turn? Rail. He was a crash course in small details and really made me much more aware of my body and how it affects the horse.

5) He re-ignited my love for the jumpers. Before him I hadn’t been in the jumper ring since 2002/2003. I had truly forgotten how much I really loved it. Getting to show and ride him reminded me of where my heart lies, and for that I am eternally grateful.