Author: Amanda C

The weekend started out with a lot of promise. We had gotten a couple rainy days last week so were unable to ride except for hacking down the road, but the sun came out towards the end of the week and we were hopeful that things would dry up. A couple of new things arrived in the mail for Henry – a new bonnet from If the Bonnet Fits, and a new-to-us Nunn Finer Piaffe dressage girth. This is now the FIFTH dressage girth I’ve bought for this horse in an attempt to find just the right one, and finally – FINALLY – I think we’ve got a winner. More on both items coming up soon.

On Saturday we hauled over to Dressage Trainer’s covered arena for lessons. Henry hadn’t really been ridden in a week, save for one road hack, and for him he was actually a little wild. There was someone else riding in the arena during our lesson and every time she smacked her very lazy horse with the whip, Henry got more and more worried that she was going to come beat him next. It was not our best lesson, he was a little tense and dragging me in the down transitions, but it had some good moments. Mostly I’m just happy we actually got to ride.

And then it rained. And rained and rained and rained some more. Sunday we had plans for a barn-wide road hack and mimosas, but it looked like we were gonna get rained out.

Still, we are alcoholics troopers, so we sat in the barn drinking our mimosas while it rained. I let Henry sniff mine and he stuck his entire tongue in to taste it (he said EW). I drank it anyway, because it’s never going to stop raining and we’re never going to ride regularly again and I need a coping mechanism whether it’s got horse slobber in it or not.

When the clouds parted we all jumped on and actually managed to have perfect timing. We fit our little road ride in and were settled back in the barn before it started raining again.

Y’all need a better picture to fully appreciate my shirt… Bobby got this for me for Texas Rose. Yes that’s a rainbow butterfly caticorn. I can think of nothing more magnificent. Bobby loves me.

Sadly we’re rained out of our riding plans for today and tomorrow but hopefully the sun will come out and start drying things up. Surely it will eventually… right?

Oh, and for those wondering how Sadie is doing – she actually regressed after I posted last week and is now holding steady in the “maybe any minute, maybe two weeks from now” stage. I really wouldn’t expect anything less from her, she’s gonna toy with us until the end.

I was pretty ridiculously ants-in-my-pants excited while waiting to get these pictures. Terrie Hatcher was the photographer and she does really beautiful work, plus Texas Rose Horse Park is such a gorgeous facility – it was the perfect storm for great pics. Not to mention the fact that it was Henry’s first Novice and I wanted as much media as possible of my superpony. I was hopeful that Terrie would get some good shots and I’m certainly not disappointed! I will probably go back and buy more but here are the first five, starting with my new absolute favorite photo of Henry ever:

Thanks Terrie for the beautiful pictures! This is why it’s so important to support our really good photographers – we need them to keep coming back to help us make the memories into treasures. Great pictures are truly irreplaceable.

 

 

As you can probably tell, I used last night’s rain as a good excuse to finally redo my blog. Aside from the cosmetic changes with color and picture, I now have my own domain name: the900facebookpony.com. You can access my blog either through that link or from the previous the900facebookpony.wordpress.com link. Both should work, although you might have to change the link if my blog is on your blog roll… not sure.

You should also no longer be seeing any WordPress generated ads on this site. I want 100% control of what businesses and products I endorse here, so they had to go. If you see one (especially if you’re on mobile, since that’s where they seemed to show up the most) let me know and I will yell obscenities at the appropriate person at WordPress.

There are a couple new things in the menu bar as well, and some updates to both my and Henry’s About Us posts. Most notably, I added a Contact page so you can email me directly if you want.

Sadly when I switched over to a new template all of my sidebar widgets re-set (thanks WordPress) so I had to start from scratch. I think I restored everything back to working order, but if you see anything broken or out of place or missing, please let me know. Also, if you don’t see something that you want to see, let me know so I can consider adding it.

Hope you like the new look and link. And if not, well.. too bad, because it took HOURS and I’m not re-doing it anytime soon. Instead enjoy this unicorn gif and lie to me and tell me you love it.

If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you know how particular I am about tack. Someone will have to pry my PS of Sweden, CWD and Devoucoux from my cold dead hands. Therefore what I have to confess to you here today might be pretty surprising… in fact, I surprised even myself.

Bobby (of Course Walks with Bobby fame) is a Wintec guy. I keep telling him that he’s the worst gay I’ve ever met, because he’s basically anti-fabulous. He has one saddle, one bridle, a white saddle pad, and a red saddle pad. That’s ALL he brings with him to events. He likes tack that he can hose off when it’s dirty, right on down to his rubber boots. I tease Bobby endlessly about his plastic and nylon and rubber ensemble, but really Wintec should be sponsoring him because he kicks everyone’s ass in his plastic tack, including mine.

So, on one of our many adventures this spring I was telling Bobby about a shop on English Tack Trader that sells Beta reins with colored rubber grips. I think he NEEDS the red ones for XC, because I will accessorize this man if it’s the last damn thing I do and no matter how much he protests. Then last week when we were out doing trot sets my Mark Todd rubber reins finally gave up the ghost and melted. Into my gloves. Like, I could open my fingers completely and my reins stayed stuck to them, that’s how melted they are. Since those reins are on my cheapie hackamore bridle that I only use for hacking and conditioning work, I really didn’t want to spend much money on reins, yet I’m pretty particular about what kind of grips I like. Enter the idea of “Well… I could just get the beta ones that I’ve been ragging on Bobby to get. They’re cheap, they have the grips I like, and no one will ever see them anyway since they’re on my ‘junker’ bridle!”. Brilliant. “And while I’m at it I should get blue, because I’m an eventer now and those kinds of ridiculous things are expected of our kind.” Double brilliant.

Off I went perusing their site to order the reins, and I stumbled across a halter made from beta. I immediately sent it to Bobby since it was his colors (red and black). He was like “OMG that’s awesome, I could just hose it off to clean it and it’ll last forever!”. Hmm… he has a point there. My nice leather halter, while I do love it, gets nastier by the day. I gave up keeping it clean a long time ago because it’s impossible. It’s perpetually dirty and the brass nameplate is tarnished and sad looking. Henry looks a little bit like a hobo horse. The Beta halters were only $40 and you could order whatever color combo you wanted. Something came over me and next thing I knew I’d ordered one of those too.

Honestly, I don’t even know what happened. I can’t explain myself. I don’t know what to say. But somehow instead of accessorizing Bobby’s plastic and rubbery tack collection, I acquired my own. And to top it all off, I’m really not even sorry.

As I briefly mentioned yesterday, Brandy and I were able to dodge rain storms well enough to fit in a trail ride at Granger Lake on Sunday. I’ve been to Granger Lake before for camping and kayaking, but I’ve never ridden on the equestrian trails. It’s mostly open grassy fields, with just a few short detours through trees. It’s actually kind of perfect for conditioning work.

 

We got there, unloaded, and tacked up quickly. Henry gave me the big eyeball like “What fresh hell is THIS?”. Poor horse, it’s a new adventure every weekend. For such a big brave event horse who never bats an eye on cross country, he sure did start out awfully looky. In Henry’s mind, unknown things are only safe if you’re cantering. Walking is when they eat you. So we snorted past the picnic table, and the gate, and the stick, and the bush, and the trees, and had a small baby cow at the super tiny water crossing (next time I’ll guess I’ll just canter it instead of trying to walk over it, I mean COME ON Henry are you serious).

 

 

 

Then once we started trotting he put his brain back in his head and chilled out, so after a couple trot sets we mostly just meandered around on the buckle. The storms were rolling in all around us the whole time, which made for some neat pictures.

Finally towards the end Henry seemed to actually relax and enjoy himself. He was no longer snorting at everything and walking around poised for a hasty exit at the first sign of trouble. Although he did leave poor tired Auto in the dust with his power walk.

It was a nice fun outing, and only about a 30 minute haul down the road. Hopefully we’ll be able to go back regularly throughout the summer. It’d be an awesome place to do some gallops, with those long grassy stretches. But next time I’m not going first through the wooded areas… taking down all the giant spiderwebs with my face was horrifying.