A website worth checking out.

I have been following a page on Facebook called Intended Horsemanship for a while now. The horseman is David Schumpert, and I really like his take on horsemanship.
Here is a link to their website: http://www.intendedhorsemanship.com/
It is a new site so it will be fun to follow it as they go along.

Something new and something sold

Yeah, that's not a typo!
First - something new: There's a new blog by a farrier, which I found out about by this post on One Old Cowgirl's View. Head on over and check it out!
And the something sold-

well, that would be my Bob Loomis Reining saddle which I sold to Lisa over at Home on the Range blog.   One step closer to paying off my new saddle for Beamer!
I rode Beamer today, and tried posting bareback. Man- that's hard! I didn't get much rise, but I did have the rhythm good. We also loped a little bit, but not for long- the B-boy was a little too fresh for me to trust my balance at the lope. My plans for tomorrow are to sack Velvet out with the saddle blanket and saddle. I am so ready for spring! Especially since I see that Coyote Belle is slipping her winter hair a little bit; for the last two weeks, actually. Yup, cabin fever is setting in.

Go west part two

This morning I loaded up a bag of hay, some salt, minerals and grain for the mare, Chevy, and since Dirk is a vegetarian- information I found on his website- I made him a cheese, tomato and lettuce sandwich, some hard boiled eggs, a bag of nuts and a lemonade. I headed up the pass till I found them, then visited while Chevy contentedly munched hay, right on the shoulder of the road with traffic whizzing by at 6o MPH. I found out that she is 15 years old, a registered quarter horse, and that after this ride is complete she will be for sale as Dirk lives in Toronto. This is a seriously nice mare folks, tall, sound, and really good minded. She is sired by a grandson of Impressive and Two Eyed Jack, with a little Jet Deck thrown in. The ride should be about over in two weeks.

After visiting a bit, I found out that they were intending to camp at the summit, 20 km. up the road, a steep 8% grade on the last 6 miles of it. I took the horse feed up and left it in the camping area by the lake for them- on the way back I stopped to let them know where it was.

If you want to check out the website, it's called Go West Young Men.

Dirk plans to avoid the highway between Salmo and Christina Lake by taking a backroad that parallels the US border. I know that there is some lovely country down there along the PendOrielle River.

Hope they ride safe and sound!

An invitation

Edit: Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to come on a trail ride in the Canadian Rockies with Janice and I; we will pick the area to suit the type of riders we get. We need to know when would suit you best, and if you want to bring your own horse make sure you check with your veterinarian as to what papers are required if you are crossing the border.

Any time in July or early August would be the best time to be in the mountains.

Dogs are welcome!

December already! What a lot of change this year has brought me.... but that's a whole different post that I will save for the end of the month. I will say, however, that I am thankful to be living in this beautiful valley. I am meeting new people, and I love being this close to my family.

This is Creston, and the view from our place. Those are the Skimmerhorn Mountains, Tara at High Performance Quarter Horses could probably tell you the names of the mountains as she used to live here. If you haven't looked at her website for a while, go check out the photos she has of the gorgeous foals they have this year.

I love the mountains, as I spent my childhood about 60 miles from here on the other side of Kootenay Lake. I will say, however that the mountains in Alberta are spectacular, and I spent years living in the foothills west of Calgary, with the amazing panorama of the Rockies to gaze upon every day.

My friend Janice and I would like to know if any of you bloggers would like to get together next summer for a mountain trail-ride/camp out. There are plenty of options, including bringing your own horse or finding you a mount here. Please think about it, and either leave a comment, or email either of us if you would like to do this. It takes a lot of planning, so now is the time to start. I think it will be a lot of fun!

Website- science and horses

Here is the link to a cool new website called Horse Science News. It has really interesting articles, such as "At times horses simply can't remember" and "Horses find blue floors scary". Here is an example of one :

Depends On How a Horse Sees It

by Liz Osborn © HorseScienceNews.com
A study has demonstrated for the first time that a horse’s emotional response to an object influences which eye they prefer using to look at it. Whether horses experience something as new, frightening or enjoyable directs a preference to seeing it with the left or the right eye.
The experiment conducted by French researchers at Université de Rennes documented how horses responded when presented with one of three different objects. Each item had a different emotional connotation. The Arabian mares studied were shown a shirt that was considered negative, and a cone that was new to them. A bucket, being associated with food, produced a positive reaction in the horses.
Researchers watched how the mares visually investigated each object, and recorded the number of glances and amount of time the horses spent looking at it with each eye. For horses, each eye sees almost completely separate scenes. Unlike humans with our binocular vision, horse eyesight has just a tiny overlapping field of view.
The data revealed that an item’s emotional charge relates to which side horses favor for examining it. When encountering the shirt, horses had a slight preference for viewing the somewhat scary object with their left eye. The novel cone got investigated more with the right eye than the left. The pleasing bucket produced no side bias in how the horses viewed it.
The preference for looking at something with one particular eye is influenced by how the horse feels about what it’s seeing and which side of the brain primarily processes that emotional response. The brain’s two hemispheres split the work of processing the range of emotions, with each side responsible for certain ones. As well, information from each eye is processed by the opposite brain hemisphere. Thus what’s detected by the right eye goes to the left hemisphere.
This study’s findings reveal that among horses the brain’s left hemisphere plays an important role in dealing with new situations. This same left brain function has been noticed in many other animals. Additionally for horses, the right hemisphere seems significant for assessing negative reactions, while both sides of the brain participate in processing positive experiences.