Month: January 2016

Now that the actual hauling of the trailer seems imminent, I’ve started to look into “extras”. I’m getting new tires for the trailer on Saturday, have gotten several quotes for trailer painting, and just have a little bit of finishing work left on the inside before she’s truly road ready.

Being that this is an older trailer, I’m a little bit extra paranoid about the possibility of things going wrong while hauling. I know several friends that have USRider, so when an email popped into my inbox the other day with a “New Year Offer” to waive the activation fee, I started looking into a bit more.

From what I’ve researched online, the reviews seem to be a bit of a mixed bag. Some have used them several times with no problems, others have been left stranded on the side of the road all day waiting for help. Of course, USRider really has the market cornered. Even AAA will not tow your trailer with your horses in it, so good luck to you if you get stuck somewhere while actually hauling a horse.

While USRider isn’t really expensive ($139 annually, plus the $29 activation fee which is waived until 1/19), it isn’t super cheap for someone that’s on a tight budget right now either. I will say, I like that you get discounts to tack shops, car rental places, hotels, etc. That could potentially “pay me back” a little bit for the membership.

The real question is… is it worth it?

Obviously re-dying a saddle is probably the biggest and scariest project I can imagine, but I have become emboldened by it’s success and am now working my way through the rest of my tack. I bought my girth used on ETT for $25 about a year and a half ago, and it’s always looked a little janky at the top on each side where the color has been rubbed away.

I’ve never really cared that much about the color, but it finally occurred to me while I was tacking up one day that I could actually fix this myself now!

Dyeing the girth was significantly easier than dyeing my saddle. First of all, the leather wasn’t coated so there was no need to deglaze. I just rubbed it down with a wet rag to clean it off, slapped on a coat of dye with a rag, rubbed it in, waited a minute, slapped on another coat of dye, rubbed that in, and voila – even color.

I opted for Tan-Kote as a top finish for this piece and did a very light coat of that, rubbing in quick circles. Start to finish it took me all of 15 minutes to do this and $0, since I already had all the supplies. Now my girth is back to beautiful again! It looks better than when I bought it.

Seriously considering dyeing my CWD this chocolate color. Poor saddle is pretty unevenly colored and its always been very reddish, which is now fading with age to look kind of orange and gross. I mean… why not, right? I’d basically be dyeing the whole thing to match the darkest parts in the middle.

In case anyone is wondering how the Childeric’s dye job is holding up, it still looks gorgeous. I never had a single bit of dye leech, no bleeding on my breeches, etc even in the rain. Still super happy with how it turned out!

On Monday I’m driving into the barn and see 3 of the 4 boys grazing close together in one corner of the field. Mine was not among them, which was weird, so I start scanning the pasture and see him standing up by the mare’s paddock. As I get out of my truck I see that his sheet looks like it’s flipped up on his shoulders. As I start walking up the barn I realize “Oh shit, he’s actually tangled in it” and take off running.

I have no idea how he did this but he managed to flip the whole sheet upside down, got stuck in it, tore 3 different holes, ripped off all the straps, and got his hind foot wrapped up in the binding. He was standing in his pasture with his neck basically hogtied to his hind pastern.

Luckily he was standing very quietly and just looked at me like “HEEEELLLP!!!” as I tried to figure out the best way to free him. Once I got him untangled I could tell he was freaked out, but luckily he didn’t even leave a mark on himself and trotted out sound. Thank goodness he didn’t struggle. That could have ended really badly.

The trouble horses can get themselves into…

And yes, the sheet is definitely ruined beyond all reasonable repair, the entire back half is basically shredded. Add it to the list of items that are ding-dong-dead.

Last week while I was getting ready to leave the barn I pulled my phone out of my pocket and saw a missed call and voicemail from Sadie’s lessee, Michelle. Like most horse people, when I see a voicemail from someone who cares for one of my horses, my heart immediately skips a few beats.

I hit play and my ear was immediately assaulted by very very loud baby horse screams. Lots of them. Very high pitched. On and on and on. Then I hear Michelle’s voice say “Just thought I’d involve you in the weaning process…” and just about died. Most hilarious voice mail ever. Well, at least for someone who has been through the weaning process before and knows how annoying those sad baby horse screams can get. She also texted me this video of poor baby Merlin being Very Pissed Off about the loss of his milkbar. His new 2yo friend is a poor substitute, he says.

Ah, weaning. Fun times. But now that Merlin is officially weaned and Sadie is spending her evenings in the barn under lights, that means it’s almost time for the fun to begin. That’s right – breeding season is just around the corner. The idea is to start early because a) this will be the first time using frozen on Sadie so we want to make sure we have plenty of time for multiple attempts, if necessary b) it’s Texas, we can start early.

When Sadie’s dam was bred (in 2006… oh my god has it been 10 years of this already?) I picked out a name before Sadie was even conceived. Well, a registered name at least. She was Westbound before she even existed. I had the barn names narrowed down before she was born – Stella or Sadie for a filly, Bodie for a colt. I’m one of those super weird people that want the name to have something to do with at least one parent, and the barn name has to have some relevance to the registered name. Her sire was Westporte, she became Westbound, and the potential barn names all had something to do with the Wild West.

So of course it makes sense then that I’m getting pre-excited about the as yet non-existent Mighty Magic embryo. I’ve been jotting down potential registered names and barn names for months now, because what else does a crazy horse person daydream about?

               Mighty Love WTW 

               Magico WTW – barn name Mago (Mah-go).

               Magic Word WTW- barn name Presto, obviously!

               Magique WTW – barn name Magie (french word for magic, since Mighty Magic stands in                France. It’s pronounced like Majie. Yes I’m overthinking this.)

And then the Potter Nerd in me takes over and starts screaming things like Mighty Marauder! Malfoy!  McGonagall! Magic Quill! Mighty Gryffindor! Mighty Sirius (haha see what I did there?)!

It is surprisingly difficult to come up with an M name that I like. Granted, you can put Mighty in front of just about anything and make it work. Good thing I’ve got over a year to think about it.

 

On Saturday Bobby and I loaded up ‘da boys and headed to meet our trainer a couple hours away for an XC school.

With all the rain we’ve gotten lately we haven’t been able to ride much at home aside from road hacks, so I thought Henry might be a nut. Plus a cold front had just blown in. Plus we were supposed to school a lot of Training fences. I thought I might die. Or pee my pants a few times at the very least, because for some reason I think the Training ramp at this place looks freaking ginormous. I’m in this really weird stage where Novice looks tiny but some of Training still looks a little bit Kill-You-Dead.

Henry warmed up a little bit “full-on retard” but once we started jumping he was game on. I’m struggling with trusting him to the bigger fences and always want to override it the first time, which of course just messes up the distance. That was kind of the theme of the day… mess it up the first time, get it right the second time. We desperately need to school (or uh… just be able to ride, thankyouverymuch El Nino) more often. He’s super game, I just need to let him do his job. When I manage that, it all works out fine.

The offset Training feeders were hard, because the footing was still deep and a little slick over there and the approach makes it hard to line them up. I always feel like Henry is going to fall on his head. Graceful and coordinated, he is not. After a couple of stupid rides on my part, we finally made it work. Mostly because he is Good Pony. The good news is, those feeders looked so big a few months ago, but not anymore.

Then we went to jump the same stupid ditch he’s jumped a thousand times and his brain fell apart until Halo finally led him over, so Henry sat out the next couple fences while the hamsters repaired his brain cells. Once he was re-brained we jumped the Training/Prelim tiki hut (which also used to look big to me and now looks just fine) to another weird massive ditchy thing that of course he didn’t even blink at, because why would he ever be logical? Those both rode great, as did the Training water.

Then we hopped up and down a bank, then down the double banks, then did a little Prelim skinny, all of which Henry was great about.

What I really took away from the day is that this horse is a lot more capable than I give him credit for. For some reason it’s in my head that he can’t make it over the bigger fences if I biff the distance, so then I inevitably override it and – of course – end up biffing the distance. But every time that happened, he had no problem making it over, so really, I learned that I can just stop worrying about it. Pony has enough hops for this, he just needs for me to stop riding him like a monkey. I like it when the mistakes end up being the most educational part… and I didn’t even pee my pants once.