30 Day Wonders

New post… absolutely not what I sat down to write about.  I usually try to be more positive with what I write, but something needed to be said…  http://justanotherdayoutwest.com/30-day-wonders/

Hodge Podge

I keep coming up with half-formed…

What I’m trying to say is…

What to blog about…

A little bit of this and a little bit o…

You get the picture?  I got nothing cohesive to throw out to the blogosphere.  So, here’s the hodge and the podge…

I did good body work today.  Interesting things happened and it was good.  Positive changes were made for chronic conditions.

The boys are healing up.  The bay faster than the sorrel. The filly picks on the bay boy and forces him to move more.  Moving keeps the swelling down, which seems to speed the healing process.  Before I fed tonight I moved the sorrel around the pasture a bit… he started to loosen up after a couple trips across the pasture at the trot.  He’s kind of a weenie, so I’m thinking I’ll need to repeat that process a couple times over the next few days.

I watched Kanak get worked.  He is going along like he should be.  He is actually doing very well for having maybe ten rides on him.  The boy (it’s what his dad calls him) loped Kanak around the arena.  He had been riding him outside the last few rides.  All good stuff.

The weather has been gorgeous here.  Our high was about 60 with a light to moderate breeze.  It feels like Spring.  Finally.

I realized over the last couple of months I have been eating an atrocious diet.  Basically a gluten-free version of the Standard American Diet.  Lots of sugar and grains.  I need to stop that.  A couple days ago I started to get a handle on it.  I’m aiming to eat more Primal/Paleo.  Tonight I had a steak cooked just right with some green beans that were tasty and salad greens with champagne dressing.  Sometime, I need to learn foodie cooking terms, because I have no idea how to tell anyone what I did to the green beans.  But they were perfect and tasty.  Now I just need to get a chocolate munchies under control.

And I am wiped out… like I’ve been going full speed all day.  Oh wait, I think I have been.  Maybe that’s why the thoughts aren’t coming together much.  Yes, it must be Spring.

Does 9:30pm count as early to bed?  Or just worn out?

Is it Spring?

It must be just about Spring.  Our highs have been in the 60s the last couple of days.  I’ve been out doing way more, hence a lack of posts here.

Yesterday everyone (all the horses anyhow) got de-wormed.  It must have been due, as I could see the dead worms being passed in the manure today.  Yucky.  Just, yucky.

Also yesterday, Kanak got to go to the arena where the trainer works.  He was kind of an idiot with all the newness.  There was a bucket full of tractor parts on the ground between where I unloaded him and where the pens are.  He made a huge move as he spooked at it.  He dropped way down and went to spin away, until he hit the end of the lead rope.  I just looked at him, asked him if he was done, and we moved on.  Once he got into his pen there, he settled right down.  There was hay and a new girlfriend next door.

Today I stopped by to check on him about noon.  Not that I was worried about him, but he is one of my kids. It wasn’t a special trip, I just chose to come home that way after a few errands in town. He was sacked out, oblivious to everything.  A few of the other horses were crashed out too, they got up as I was pulling in.  Not Kanak.  He barely lifted his head.  He didn’t even get up when I went to his pen.  I think the excitement wore him out.  My place can be a little busy at times, but there was a roping going on at the arena when I dropped him off yesterday.  I have no idea how long it lasted.  I’m sure he was watching the goings on intently.  Plus he has all these new friends to meet. Did I mention he’s kind of a cool guy?

Today I got the all three of the yearlings brushed up a little and introduced them to the idea of working in the round pen.  I had done a little bit with the colts on this a while ago, but hadn’t gotten much done with the filly.  In fact, I still need to teach the filly to tie.  She should be pretty easy.  Her brother (Jr) got it figured out in about five minutes.  Both the colts got some time learning patience.  That means they got to stand tied for a while.  Lets just say that both of them have a ways to go before they have patience mastered.  They know better than to set back and pull, that part they figured out some time ago.  There was some rearing and much pawing though.  Much pawing.

Horses don’t have the sense of time we have.  The older horses seem to figure out that there is such a thing as later, and if they get pulled away from their buddies they will get to see them again later.  These babies seemed so relieved when I turned them loose together.  I swear the boys were saying to each other: “Oh man, I thought I’d never see you again.  Are you all right?”  After which they both took a couple of cheap shots at each other, went for a quick romp around the pasture then settled down to munch.  Normally, they tear around after each other, trying to bite each other’s face and legs and whatever else they can get at.  The filly doesn’t put up with that so much, she’ll usually just leave if they start in on her.  The colts were so much more polite to each other and the filly after I turned them all back out in the pasture.  Amazing what a little bit of education can do for their level of respect.

Monday, I need to call the vet’s office to make appointments for them to be gelded.  Is it wrong that I’m excited for this?  The thought of only having one intact male horse around here is so relieving.  I’ve even been having thoughts of castrating Jr.  Except he is starting to look more grown up and has such a nice hip on him.  Hmmm, he still gets a chance.  Plus, the guy wants to see what he’s going to turn out to be before making that call.

I have managed to get a couple rides in on Sierra.  There is a cow horse clinic I signed up for in May.  It occurred to me last weekend that I have about two months to get the both of us in shape for it.  My goal is to get her worked four to five times each week.  That should allow us to be pretty well prepped for the clinic.  I am hoping to get her as far as I know how to in that time, so the help I get at the clinic is new information.  Not just reviewing how to get a horse to a point that I know how to do already.

Finally, I’m so excited I’ll have an extra hour of day at the end of my day.  You will too.  It’s not all mine.  I’ll share.  Daylight Savings Time starts Sunday at 2:00am.  Since I almost forgot all about it, just thought I’d remind you.

Tomorrow’s Forecast

We have mud here.  Mud!  I do not like mud.  Not one bit.  I was going to try for a Seussian rhyme, but it just wasn’t in me.  Sorry.

There was a rumor that we were going to hit the 60′s mid week.  That was started by a weatherman over the weekend.  Now he appears to be wrong.  We still have snow on the ground.  More of it melted off today though.  That made more mud.

Since I couldn’t rhyme for you, let me just gripe about mud for a minute.  I moved here so I wouldn’t have to live with mud through the winter.  At least I tell myself that was only part of the reason.  I really hate mud though, so it may have weighed heavily in the decision making process.  Somewhere, somehow I knew that there would be some mud.  Some.  In my brain that translated to an almost negligible amount.  To my way of thinking that means a little tiny bit.  The small amount that you can easily go around.  As in oh look, there’s a bit of mud, guess I won’t walk right there.  But this. This I have to put on rubber boots that would be most appropriate in a dairy barn to go out and feed. (Although I do love my rubber boots in the snow too, they are very warm.)  I console myself by thinking it will be gone in a day, or two.  There are more sun icons in the ten day forecast, that’s a good sign things will dry back up.

Meanwhile my riding pen is still covered in snow.  It needs to be worked.  If fortune (and the sun) shine on me tomorrow I can get the ground worked and do something with these horses.

Jr is bored.  Every time I go by his pen he is right there, wanting to go do something.  He tore his feeder off the panel the other day.  Absolutely not a sign of boredom, right?

Kanak was playing tetherball the other morning in the snow.  Of course I didn’t even have my phone with me to get any sort of video.  He was poking the ball with his nose then letting it swing around and hit his hip as he bucked, then it would swing back towards his nose and he’d bump it again – back to his hip and so on. I have to be careful to stay away from where his halter is.  If he thinks I’m reaching for it he books it to the gate.  No he’s not bored either.  Why do you ask?

Good news.  I talked to someone that is starting colts here.  Bad news.  He will not have time until later in February to take on Kanak.  He should be pretty easy, a 30 – 60 day project I hope. Just enough time with to understand what’s expected out of him when someone climbs up on his back.  We talked about Jr too… he needs to get started as well.  It never ends.  Next year I may have three to get started.  Better save my pennies.  Or sell some horses.  While we’re marking time off the calendar until the boys can go to school, I need to be working on their pre-school stuff.  But there is mud.

Truthfully, I know better than to really bitch about a little bit of mud (everywhere!).  There are definitely worse things going on in the world.  There are definitely places with more mud!  Certainly we needed the moisture.  It’s just that whining a tiny bit is therapeutic.  Wine seems to be therapeutic too.  As is chocolate.  Anyhow, the whining is out of my system now, so I can deal with the mud tomorrow.  After it dries out some more tonight.  And maybe after some of these other forms of therapy.

Colt Starting

Because I promised you yesterday that today I would talk more about colt starting, here goes.

I don’t do it.

I used to.

But I have literally been dumped on my head too many times.  Landing on my head once was enough.  The other genuine buck-offs just helped with the learning curve.

Only one of these buck-offs was on a baby.  He supposedly had 30 days under saddle.  I believed them.  Stupid me.  One step with me on him then all buck – somebody lied.  Imagine that.

The worst one, the one that I became a lawn dart – except the lawn in this case was a hard packed arena – was a mare that I had started and was tuning up post-foaling.

The last one was one I had helped start.  He spooked, bolted went to bucking and after the third jump I was done.  Ouch.

Experiences like these are part of why I made a career change.  Something about only getting one body this go ’round.

And, it could all be because I suck at starting colts.  The ones I started when I was younger, dumber and packing around fewer scars all seemed to get broke just fine.  So I can’t be doing it all wrong.  Maybe it’s some fear/awareness of my own mortality/dislike for pain at work.

I am pretty good at playing head games with myself.  In the past I could force myself to relax, breathe and not dread the worst.  When I was working with Ki last year, before he went to get started, I had him to the point of swinging a leg over.  There was no where deep inside me that I could find enough trust in myself that I wouldn’t telegraph all sorts of bad things to him as soon as my butt hit the saddle.  So, I didn’t sit on him.

At some point, it would be good to get over it.  If I can’t find someone to start Kanak, I may just dink around with him long enough that I do climb up there.  He seems to think enough and have enough regard for me that it might happen.  Maybe.  However, I am hoping there is someone local that will do a good job getting him going for his first thirty rides or so.  After that, they don’t bother me.  When they have an idea what the right answer is.  When they don’t flinch or startle at someone wiggling around on their back.  When they don’t jump around because your leg bumped them.  Then, then I don’t worry so much.

We all have issues, right?

Here’s some pictures of Jr.  (Finally!)

He really needs a pacifier.

For whatever reason, he is a very light palomino.  Genetically there is no way he can be cremello.  He is light enough that people think he is.  Which gets me pissy, because I find cremellos fugly.  Jr has dark skin, every where except under his white markings.  So, unless you want to piss me off (not recommended) do not suggest that he is cremello.  Really, he might get a complex about it.  Not!

Pacifier. Some more.

Being a typical teenager. Dorky and awkward. And still needs a pacifier.

He did not try to roll with the saddle at all today.

But he was dressed accordingly.  It’s what happens when you are likely to roll with your saddle on.  Your momma dresses you in an ugly saddle pad with the old beater saddle.  If he continues to behave, I will start to dress him more stylishly.