And so it begins!

ENTER THE FOALING CONTEST HERE

Foal watch, that is. Rosalee is at 330 days today and although she is not showing signs of foaling being imminent I am being cautious as she is a maiden mare.

 She has started to drop and soften in the tail area which you can just see in this photo, but her bag is still quite small. She is getting a flake of alfalfa every day to help with milk production but really no change there in the last couple of weeks.

We set up a camera over the foaling pen so I can keep an eye on her during the day, and I have my holiday trailer set up close to the foaling pen so all I have to do during the night is sit up and peer out the window. Which I did several times last night! Every time she goes and stands by the fence closest to Beamer he hollers at her - he just loves her and always has.
So this should get her used to me being around at night; I had Tess with me as she has to go pee during the night, so had to pop out a couple of times, it didn't seem to bother her.

I have been trying to get more rides in on Gussie, but only got one in since my last post- been working on garden projects that need doing right away. But we did get in a good schooling ride. I found a nice flat grassy area up by the road that worked good.
I focused on keeping her straight up instead of working endless circles. When she would speed up, I would direct her into a small circle and send her straight again. I worked on very light contact, if any as she is very soft in the face. She is also very responsive to leg, and the little circles I could do with just a bit of leg and focusing my body on the circle. Going right she wanted to speed up at first, but I would small circle, and come out straight again and it would fix it for a bit. Still a work in progress.
I liked that even though the other horses could see her and were calling to her, she would only flick an ear at them, sometimes a half step hesitation and then get back to the job at hand. We also worked the two track and double turn (forehand, haunches in one circle). I really want to lope her but think I should wait until she isn't falling apart at the trot. I think we are ready for some trail riding with other people now, and I'd like to get her in some hilly country so she will have to use her hind end and build up some muscle.
At the end of the ride, as we rode back towards the herd, I put a dwell in when she wanted to speed up. We stood there and let her look at the girls...

her head was up and I could feel her anxiety to be back with them...

which didn't happen until she softened, dropped her head and gave a big sigh and stood quietly.

I have been hand grazing them over the last week and yesterday they got a half hour in the paddock we fenced off, some happy girls!
Beamer gets hand grazed too and yesterday he got a half hour to eat the grass in the round pen. I have a spot to set up an electric fence grazing paddock for him, that's this week's job.

Yes, Beamer, I'll get right on that....

Riding day 24

Spring training

ENTER THE FOALING CONTEST HERE


Today's ride was a schooling ride.
Lots of circles, working on holding frame, working on holding bend especially to the right, at a walk and trotting. Counter bending circles and then keeping the same bend and going in a circle the other direction, then back to the counter bend....
Once I got her softened up I let her long trot circles on a loose rein. Still better to the left, but she is starting to hold her form going right for a few strides, then she loses it and her head comes up and out and she speeds up and then tries to stop, so I pick up the rein, soften her again, and keep her circling, turn her loose and help her when I need to.
Some sidepassing over boards and logs, and then it was time to relax a bit so we went through the pond again.

She is trying to do all the things I ask, and when she gets all bound up we just go back to where it was good and then build again from there.

Have I mentioned that this is the smoothest moving quarter horse I have ever ridden?  I love riding her and it's so nice to ride a horse with try again.

She's looking good and my saddle is fitting her perfectly now.

And then I did this....

Because he was giving me the "What am I. chopped liver?" look... so I just had to ride him for a bit too.

Riding day 23

Trials and trails

ENTER THE FOALING CONTEST HERE


Kind of been awol here for the last few days.... had a very upsetting week. My dog Tess went off her feed last week; I gave it a few days to rule out tummy troubles but she literally quit eating no matter what I put in front of her. I took her to the vet on Monday and they did an emergency surgery to remove her uterus which had a bad infection. Apparently common on older intact females- so if you have a dog who is intact and not going to breed her again- get her spayed and save yourself a lot of trouble! Lesson learned. However- the next day she was not looking good, still not eating and her temperature dropped so I took her back to the vet where they did blood work and found that the infection had spread. Long story short, they put her on IV fluids and a powerful antibiotic, and a steroid shot to stimulate her appetite and she bounced back and I was able to bring her home today. Still undergoing treatment, but at least I have her home!

Got a really nice ride on Gussie today. Took Tay and went through the pond which is about knee deep on Gussie; Tay had to swim. Then to the river and back. In the video there is one section where Gussie is doing her little running walk, almost feels like she is gaited when she does  that it is so comfy to ride.

When we got back, we gave the neighbour kids a ride. I love to see happy smiles on them!

 One ride wasn't enough so they each got two!

After that I worked with ponying lessons with Mesa. First leading both horses from the ground and then riding Gussie and ponying her.

The goal is to get her going well enough to be able to pony her on a few trail rides. This fall I will be doing a lot of ground work on her to prepare her for her 2 year old year; the more I can do this year to expose her to many different things the better.

Belle is in heat, I have been taking her over to visit Beamer. Not breeding her this cycle but with the crazy weather this year many mares are late cycling, some haven't even started, so I want to get her in the rhythm so to speak.

Beamer thinks that's just fine. I have also been letting Gussie visit him just to socialize, but I won't do that while she is in heat because I am not breeding her .

She just visits and then walks away. It's good for the ole boy to have some time with the other horses.

So in case you missed it, or haven't entered yet, I am running my foaling contest. Click on the link and enter your guess in the comments!  It's a lot of fun seeing what the guesses are. Don't worry about entering if you live far away, I will think of a nice gift that I can send, maybe something that can be ordered on line. They don't call it the world wide web for nothing! So enter up!

Riding day 22

What'll it be?

Here we go- contest time! Below are the possibilities for foal colour- I marked them both as non agouti carriers which eliminates bay and buckskin since neither of them have black points.

Offspring Color Probability 

12.50% -	Palomino
12.50% -	Grullo
12.50% -	Red Dun
12.50% -	Black
12.50% -	Smoky Grullo
12.50% -	Red (Chestnut/Sorrel)
12.50% -	Dunalino
12.50% -	Smoky Black

Her supposed due date is May 12. I would think the range of possible dates for foaling would lie between the end of this month and the first few days of June, depending on if she goes early or late. And this year, mares are all over the place time wise!

So give it your best guess- Colour, sex, date and time! I will start a chart on the sidebar as usual so you can see other people's guesses.  Winner will be sent an appropriate gift!

Working with what I have

Haven't ridden since my last post, got a few things going on that are taking up my attention. First, I spent a lot of time rearranging the corral panels to give the mares higher ground, especially the foaling pen. This also allows the mares to use the west side of the foaling shelter as a windbreak from the east and north-east winds; they didn't have anything before for that direction.

Rosalee is getting the large marge look, starting to build a good bag and starting to soften in the tailhead area. She is at 315 days today.... I follow Mare Match Up page on Facebook and so many people are posting about their mares going to extremes this year: several going 370 plus days, and several going right around 320 and even less. I feel that she is on track for mid May- but she is a maiden , so there is no telling what she will do with no history on her. Tomorrow, I will open up the foaling contest! Guesses will be for Date, time, colour and sex, and I will give all the colour options in that post.
I put Gussie in the round pen this evening, wanted to see how she is using herself now that she is feeling better. I'm still not too happy with it but she is getting fitter.

This was after I had worked her for a while, she still was having trouble with her right hind at first.

Also she seems to have forgotten what whoa means. She also puts her head to the outside as she goes around, makes me wonder just what the heck they were doing with her over the last 4 years. I have a long way to go before I get her mind in the right place, let alone her body.

 I  want her to start carrying her neck level, it looks upside down when she travels with it that high.

This is an old photo from 2013 that shows her natural movement.

We'll get back to that with some work!

Pause for the cause

Had a pretty good session with Gussie today. Worked on the circles first, at a walk, just wanting her to use her body properly. She still is adjusting to being able to do stuff, but it's almost like I have to start with the basics and work my way up to where she was before I sold her. And to think that she was getting training from professional trainers while she was gone.... they didn't do her any favours.

She can't hold frame yet for more than one stride at a walk. Sometimes 2, but not consistent yet. So it's a work in progress. Working to the right she is starting to get more comfortable but she seems to always start with tipping her nose to the left and then it's :"oh yeah, I can do that!" So some progress there.
Then we went over to my little mini trail course and rode her through it but added a side pass in both directions over top of one of the slabs. And found another big hole in her training. She gets anxious. She wants to back up. She tucks her head to her chest even on a loose rein. So I worked her with forward and lateral motion to get her to understand that yes she can physically do this now. After that, instead of going back to the side pass, I let her dwell a bit, just standing there, chilling out and relaxing.

Gussie is an emotional mare. Keeping her mind with me is more important than getting correct movement.
We went for a little jaunt to the pond and up though the woods, just enjoying the day.

Pausing and soaking up the moment and reflecting on what to do next is not a popular skill on social media. This was a lesson for me yesterday with some of the posts on social media that could have escalated, but I pondered over night and it really helped me to sort things out.  So today, when Gussie got rattled over a simple task the she used to do quite well, it helped to think about that and just stop, reflect, breathe and relax, which also gave me a happy and relaxed horse.
Near the end of the ride I went back to the side pass with forward motion, and broke it down to straight sideways, only asking for a couple of steps sideways each way, and when she got it we ended the lesson there, again with a long pause of just sitting there enjoying the moment.

Looking forward to what tomorrow will bring!

Riding day 22

Good stuff going on

It's been a good couple of days, we are getting decent weather, especially compared to other places where winter seems reluctant to loosen its icy grip.

On Sunday the guys installed the gate, (with a little quality control inspection by Mesa) now the cross fence is complete and the grass will get a chance to grow.
Monday, I rode Gussie.
I started off in the round pen; free longed her because I wanted to see if she would pick up her right lead behind. She cross fired one stride, then hopped both hinds and then picked up the correct lead -no problems going left. I worked her a couple times at this until she picked up the right lead right off the bat. I think her body was adjusting to not being out of whack. When I rode her before she would have trouble going right, would put her head to the left a bit and drop her right shoulder, but now I can get her upright and following her nose to the right. I think I need to retrain her muscle memory. After that I rode her through the swamp which only has 6 inches of water in places, and she went through it no problem. Then up top and worked circles and getting her soft in the bridle using lots of leg. Also walked her across the little step- definitely have to modify it because it tipped a bit as she stepped off.

I was having a bit of trouble with saddle fit so I switched to the 1" thick 5 Star pad. It did help to keep the saddle in place a bit better, but I hope that once she gets her topline built up again the hollow behind her shoulder blades/wither will fill in more and help lift that saddle, otherwise I will be looking for a new saddle for her. This one doesn't have much clearance in the hand hold, even with the thicker pad, it is just touching the leather of the saddle.

The Wade saddle is even wider and sits lower and slides further back.
Anybody wanna buy a Wade saddle?

I rode again today, and managed to just beat the rain. I worked again on circles and getting her to hold the correct body position in the circles, again easy to the left and harder for her to the right. Also worked on haunches over, and shoulders over in a sequence; a half circle with hip over (turn on the forehand), switch to a half circle with shoulders over (turn on the haunches) and we will try to progress to one step over each way as she gets more comfortable with picking up and crossing over with her hind feet. I don't think she has been able to do that for a while properly so she is going to have to relearn all this stuff.
Then it was time for a li'l trail ride just to get her extending and using herself in a relaxed manner.

After that I found a good spot to trot big circles and work some more on holding frame going to the right. I did work her to the left to start with, then switched to the right and trotted lots of circles both ways.
I love how it feels riding this horse as compared to riding Rosalee. She is much more my style, willing to go wherever I ask, but not without her quirks as well.

Here is the update on her condition:

Here is another interesting thing: a month ago, she had a turkey neck:

and here is what it looks like today:

You can see right where the rein is laying along her neck that she is building muscle and filling in that geeky neck. And that is exactly what Tribute Essential K is supposed to do.
All in all, we are making progress!

Riding day 20 and 21

Relief for the red head

My equine chiro came this morning to work on Gussie. Wow.

There wasn't one spot on her body that didn't need work. Her pelvis was twisted like I figured, and pretty much every other bone on her body was out of whack. Not surprising as this is her first ever chiro adjustment.

She has the most expressive face of any horse I've ever had.  I will give her a day or two to adjust to her new configuration, and then it will be time to start conditioning her.
I went down to check on her mid afternoon- she was having a yawn fest! I asked her how she was feeling, and she started yawning....

and yawning.....

Yes we did get some snow today.....

and yawing some more! But look how bright her eyes are, I'm sure she feels so much better!

What a goober!

She still has uneven nostrils but it varies with her expression whereas before her whole nose was on tilt. I will probably get him to adjust her again next time he is out, and meanwhile I can ride her and do some stretches and other body work to keep her limbered up.
It will be nice to have a happy horse!

Gussie's program

As you know, I was dismayed at Gussie's condition when I bought her back. She wasn't quite the horse she was when I sold her 4 years previously. So I am keeping track of her progress here on the blog.
She is on free choice grass hay. She has been dewormed and her feet trimmed. 4 days ago, I started her on a supplement called Tribute Essential K, at the rate of 3.5 to 4 lbs a day. This is a video I took today.

Her muscles are like jelly, no muscle tone. I expect that riding her regularly will be what is needed there. She is still gaunt in the flanks. She isn't skinny, she just isn't thriving. Very slow improvement after 5 weeks here compared to Belle at 5 weeks when I brought her home. So I am hoping the Essential K will give her the boost she needs. Another point is that I feel that I wasted my money taking her to the local vet to get her teeth done. She still can't hold her feed in her mouth, it dribbles out when she eats her ration, so I have to make sure she keeps her mouth over the bucket; and she is still getting wads when she chews her hay. I can see them in the water tub after she drinks. The other horses don't do that. That might be part of the problem of why she isn't gaining like I thought she would. I'm pretty sure it's because he didn't touch her incisors and I would bet the molars are not quite touching. So I guess I'll have to find someone else and get her redone, I won't take her back to that vet.

Way too gaunt for my liking. I'll do a weekly update on her and hopefully we shall see improvement!

April you can't fool me

Springtime in the Rockies- you never know what you are going to get. March went out like it came in- like a lamb. This is what I usually see when I go down to do my morning chores- happy hungry horses waiting at the gate.

This morning.... well... not so much.

It was downright nasty! I had looked on my spy cam before I headed down and saw them chasing each other in and out of the shelter, but by the time I got there they were hunkered down out of the wind.

Mesa was the most snow covered, I guess the other two were pushing her out of the shelter the most. But she wasn't shivering and seemed in fine spirits.
Those were huge snowflakes! We ended up with about 5 inches of fluffy snow.
However...
wait a few hours....
and the sun came out , a lot of the snow melted, and it was just perfect for a bareback ride on Beamer.

I had to check the pond level, it is coming up, maybe a foot or two in the level spots. Then down through the trees and to the river.

Really enjoyed the ride! Beamer had his little moment when he didn't want to go past the big cement blocks that block off the dyke to traffic, and he started backing up... not a good idea when there are 10 ft. drop offs on each side! I tried circling him, I tried letting him stand quietly and looking over the situation... but every time he just backed up. For the sake of safety, I slid off... or at least, I tried to, he went sideways just as I was swinging my leg over and I landed on my butt in quite an undignified manner!!!! Needless to say, he got told just how bad his manners are and how balking at something as harmless as cement blocks is just. not. allowed! Humbled, he allowed as how I could lead him up to those horse eating blocks and climb up on them and get back on him while he stood quietly beside them. We got some nice trotting in too, and he was well behaved even going past the mares on the way back- Coyote Belle is just coming out of heat.

Rosalee is 302 days pregnant now. Baby is getting pretty big and is fairly active.

Every time I see him kicking, I get so excited to meet him!

Riding day 19

Have a blessed Easter

Always, there are flowers for Easter Sunday even when it comes early in the year.

Fencing fun

Yesterday was fencing day. This was the view as I got to the barnyard....

However, once we got started on the fencing project..... 

We had lots of help! Especially from Miss Mesa, she appointed herself as job supervisor.

We are cross fencing the mare's pasture to allow grass to grow and to keep them from eating too much spring grass. Last year I had this cross fenced with hot wire, this year we put in double strand twist (barbless). Today Ted is refurbishing an old gate and we have to put in one more post for a cross brace to finish the project.

Such a helpful filly! Rosalee inspected the bucket of tools too. And then at feeding time, of course they had to goof off and it was great to see them all feeling good and enjoying the day.