Category: Uncategorized

My mare Sadie is at October Hill right now and was bred to Mezcalero on Tuesday. Fingers crossed for a nice healthy black dot on the ultrasound in a couple weeks! The mare manager said that she is just a doll and loves working with her. Such a little thing, but there’s something about that comment that makes my heart swell with maternal pride… it’s different when you breed one and raise it yourself. Kinda makes me understand how people might feel about 2-legged kids.

Since I’m thinking about Sadie (aka Sadiebug aka Bug) so much today, I thought I’d share some more pictures of her from the past 7 years. Y’all saw some when I introduced her in this post, but obviously I have a ton. Some day I will write a post about the trials and tribulations of breeding and raising your own horse, but that’d be a novel in itself, so for today just enjoy watching our journey in pictures.

June 2006 – she officially exists! Cutest black dot ever.

May 12, 2007 – only a few hours old. She looked like a baby moose.

Confused+sadie.

Two weeks

17 months. We call this the Hardcore Donkey stage.

First time wearing a saddle, coming 2yo

At her RPSI inspection, summer of her 2yo year

The great hock infection incident – late summer of her 2yo year

Fall of her 2yo year – trying to eat her older brother Weston

Coming 3 – 0ff to Kindergarten! 60 days at Dan Keen Horsemanship.

My first time ever riding her (I know, I know, no helmet. I had no idea he was going to let me ride her when I went to visit after the first 30 days, but I couldn’t resist the chance to sit on her.)

 

Her first big trail ride – only a month after coming back from the breaker. She’s the one in the lead.

Late summer of her 3yo year, hacking out

fall of her 3yo year – first horse show, English Versatility class (sorta half trail class half flat class – she won!)

winter of her 3yo year – first XC school, mainly just trotted tiny logs but she had a blast galloping through and out of the water.

Coming 4yo

Summer of her 4yo year – first o/f show

  

Fall of her 4yo year – looking more mature

Spring of her 5yo year – first A show

still spring of her 5yo year – first time in the jumper ring (sorry so tiny)

Summer of her 5yo year – schooling bigger fences at home

Coming 6yo

Winter of her 6yo year

And a few months ago, now age 7

Sorry for the MASSIVE photo dump, but hope you enjoyed the nostalgia as much as I did.

Today is a very random smattering of thoughts, so hold on to your seats and try to stay with my very ADD mind.

First, BellEqui (which you may remember from this Small Business Spotlight) revealed a sneak peek of their new coat colors on facebook. I thought this was too cool not to share. Loving the royal blue and the purple.

 

Second, I’m still on the strugglebus as far as how I feel about the Micklem. While he’s not going behind the bit in it, he also feels much less supple in it/borderline resistant, so I’m trying to figure out how I feel about all that. In essence I feel like I’ve kind of traded one problem for another, but maybe with more time he’d settle in? He does seem to prefer it with the french link eggbutt (of course he does, because I think eggbutts are ugly, so combine ugly bit with ugly bridle and YAY thanks Henry) and he did jump pretty well in it on Sunday… it’s the flatwork I’m kind of meh about. I also went by our local Dover to see/feel the brown version and was not very impressed with the quality. Looks and quality-wise I like the Perfect Sit a lot more, but I haven’t had much luck getting info from them on purchasing in the US. So, uh… that makes things difficult. I still want to try him in a figure 8 too and see if it’s that simple. I’m currently in the middle of a hunt for a monocrown figure 8 noseband.

 

I gave Henry Monday off and did a quick hack yesterday, after which I took him for a short gallop in the field and he gleefully crowhopped his way around. In his mind he’s bucking, but really it’s just enough of a hop to make you giggle. Then he stood there in the barn looking sweaty and pathetic from his 2 minute feat of extreme athleticism and struck his best Quarter Horse pose. I swear his hind end doesn’t really look like that, but I found the picture hilarious. Halter class, anyone?

Today is kind of rainy so we’ll see if I actually get to ride or not!

It’s been a while since I participated in one of Viva Carlos’ blog hops, but I can’t resist this one. Stalkers unite.

What Equestrian Blogger out there do you really want to meet?

It’s hard to narrow it down because there are so many out there that seem awesome and I hate to feel like I’m playing favorites. In reality my list would include a lot of folks. See all those fine people on my sidebar under “Other Fun Horsey Blogs”? Every single one of those weirdos would qualify. I haven’t been blogging for very long but the amount of support and camaraderie I’ve received in the equestrian blogging community has been a really unexpected treat. In a way it already feels like a lot of us are friends, so meeting them all would be pretty cool.

I do already know Lauren of She Moved to Texas in “real life” (in fact, she’s the reason I started blogging so everyone feel free to send her hate mail) therefore she’s an automatic toss. Although we’re no longer at the same barn and that gives me a bit of the sads.

Over the course of the past few months I’ve discovered that Hillary of Equestrian at Hart and I seem to have much in common. Honestly, we’re a little creepy (I’m just being nice, we all know she’s the creepy one). We have scary similar taste and seem to be really good at enabling harassing encouraging each other to buy cool stuff. Not that I really need any help with that. I’m not really sure if meeting her would be the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. My pocketbook is crying just thinking about the possibilities, but I have to say that anyone who has an intense love for all things navy and rocks brown tall boots has to be pretty damn fantastic. Not too many people will indulge me in deep conversations about Mango Bay belts and weird Swedish bridles. For that reason I suppose I would have to pick her, purely because I’m nothing if not a masochist.

^ That goes for all of you.

 

I’m on a roll lately with good weekends. As much as I love showing, it’s nice to have a summer break where I’m not out of town or totally tied up at a show for days at a time. It’s actually possible to do other things besides horses. Not that I actually do lots of other things, but in theory…

On Friday my haul of stuff from the fourth of July sales arrived – new anatomic girth and a big jar of cookies. I rode Henry after work (in his regular bridle instead of the Micklem and he was kind of awful – more about that on another day) then I went to happy hour with some old horsey friends of mine. It’s funny how none of the friendships I had from school actually lasted beyond that time, but I still keep in touch with a lot of the people I grew up riding with. Horses are the great unifier. That or we’re all just so weird that we only really get along with our own kind.

Saturday I went out and rode early, then stopped at the park on the way home to ride my cyclocross bike. I spent half an hour working on things that I actually DID need to practice, then I just got distracted going up and down this little “fish bowl” area because, well… it’s way more fun and obviously I’m 10 years old.

Then I dragged myself home to walk the dogs and do laundry and dishes, then parked in front of Netflix watching weird documentaries. I’ve been on a real kick with those lately. If you’re looking for something super depressing and awful, watch It’s a Girl. Also sad and depressing – Stuck. If you’re looking for something that will leave you saying “WTF what a bunch of idiots” watch The Imposter.

After SO got home from work we loaded up the beer and cider and headed back to the barn for a party. I’ve only been there a couple weeks so I still haven’t met a lot of people, or only met them in passing, so it was great to be able to actually get to know everyone a bit better. We had a lot of fun hanging out and swapping stories. Even SO had fun, and he usually just looks like a lost/sad/bored puppy at anything horse related.

Sunday morning I was back out at 7:30 for my first lesson with the new trainer. I will say, I had several lightbulb moments. He was on several of my old will-not-die habits right away, and helped me think about them a little differently. For instance, I love to lean. I’m a hunchback, my upper body has a mind of it’s own, always has. He suggested that I instead think about posting with my hips going UP instead of forward, and slow the rhythm of the post. That helped keep my shoulders up and open, which helped lengthen Henry’s stride without it getting quick.

After some flatwork we started jumping, first trotting and then cantering a little skinny vertical. After a few times over he asked me where I’m looking as I approach the jump. I know where I should be looking, but honestly I couldn’t answer about where I actually WAS looking. He said that sometimes I was looking at the ground pole, sometimes I was looking at the corner, but rarely was I actually looking at the middle of the top rail of the jump. He said it would make my ride and my distance more consistent and my horse more confident and he was right – it did.

We moved on to a few jumps in succession on kind of a circle. After the first time around he suggested that with this horse I try coming out of the corner with a bolder canter – a very slight move-up and more forward ride. This made a really big difference, especially if the spot came up a bit deep. Instead of landing and stalling out a bit, Henry landed still moving forward and everything just rode a lot better in general when we carried more pace to the fence.  Not a heavy in my hand pace, but pushing him UP into my hand pace. My takeaway was that if I’m creating power TO the jump, the jump will have power no matter the distance. If I’m decreasing power or just maintaining, a bad distance will be much more likely to result in a rail. This horse is one that needs a little help in creating and keeping the power in his canter, and jumps better from a bolder canter.

He also latched right on to my worst habit that I have never really been able to get rid of, much to the chagrin of a previous trainer – I always turn my head in the air. It’s like the damn thing is on a swivel, I can’t keep it straight for the life of me. Ugh. But at least now someone is yelling at me about it again so maybe I can get it back under control.

I spent Sunday afternoon watching copious amounts of Harry Potter (#PotterheadWeekend, woot!) while wearing my Lion King shirt. Because Hakuna Matata. And like I said, I’m 10.

I also used Henry’s new girth this weekend and have been pretty pleased with it. Will do a review after a few weeks but so far it’s working great.

 

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!

Last week I was wondering aloud on my blog about whether something like a Micklem or Perfect Sit bridle would make Henry (aka Fussypants) happier. Fellow blogger Forging Fiction was kind enough to let me borrow her Micklem to try it out.

I put it on Henry last night and my first thought was that it was kinda cool how it was all one piece. It’s easy to put on and lays well right away. I played with it for a while trying to get it adjusted correctly… I watched a couple different videos yesterday to get an idea of what it’s supposed to look like. It seemed to me after all of my playing that there was really only one particular setting that made it sit well on his face, so I went with that.

He was still pretty chompy when I put it on, but as soon as I fastened all the straps he stopped. I got on and started my regular warm-up, and he admittedly seemed a little confused. He didn’t chomp on it, but he kept trying to poke his nose up and out. Then he settled and we actually had several really lovely laps both directions. I started to get my hopes up about a magical cure for the fussiness.

After our walk break I started again and there he went with the chomping, as usual. Womp womp. It was gone during the warm-up but now it was back. I will say that he always gets more tense after we trot, anticipating the canter, so I’m betting that’s why it started. He internalizes everything. I made him trot for a while, then walk again, then trot again before we cantered.

No one was around so the best I could do for video was setting my camera on a standard. It’s far enough away to where you can’t really see the chomping, unfortunately.

HenryJulyMicklem from amanda chance on Vimeo.

 

Pros:

– I think he was a little steadier in the contact?
– Down transitions were definitely better. He didn’t root against me. Guessing that’s probably because of the “flash” strap.
– He really never curled up behind the bit.

Cons:

– Still chompy, still fussy.

I’m going to try it today with the eggbutt instead of the loose ring and see if that makes any difference. Micklem experts – should I make any changes to how it’s adjusted?