Do You Ride Horses? V.4

[xChry.]

Small update.

Lots of slow work is paying off, my girl is finally loping a nice correct pattern, and I cant wait for barrels to start next thursday!
Sold two colts and a stallion in the past week, its been a good week. But I am SICK as all heck. Some school shut down near me because over half the school was out. Ugh.. Nasty. My birthday is tomorrow! I got some nice SMBs and a cute tack set for my early birthday present. :)

[BlingBling]

Toured this college with a lovely eq center and stables yesterday AND even better all of the horses there were so calm and well-conditioned! Hopefully I can afford it because I'd love to be on their hunter and dressage teams ;u;
Apparently first years get a horse selected for them based on their skills that they then take care of for the year. They also have loads of equine majors/minors so... Here's hoping I can get in!~

Oh, just out of curiosity, who are y'all's equestrian idols? For me, it's Denny Emerson c:

[allo vera]

My barn just recently got two babies and I'm in love.
There's two miniature horses, both are about 10 months.
They belong to a little girl, but other people are encouraged to mess around with them to help with socialization.

[ShortyTheHobbitess]

Long time no see!

@First Horse: A delightful little monster shetland that I got as a hand-me-down from my older sisters, originally named Cricket, she became 'Pony' when I got her. Prettiest mare, a flaxen chestnut, but an absolute terror if it came to the farrier. I seem to recall at one time she was snubbed to a tree and still throwing a fit.

@(◕‿◕✿): I've looked at a few schools, one that I had really wanted to go to, but have since decided against simply as its 13 hours one way, has a fantastic horse team. I think it'd be really fun to be on a college team, did they just have hunter & dressage teams or did they have more? The one that I was looking at only has a jumping and a western pleasure team, but then there's also rodeo, but I'm not terribly into games or roping.

Sunday we had another pony playdate at R's, since the pickup is (still) dead, that meant my mare had to stay home. I rode Tamale -also known as Te- again, seriously that horse is SO much fun once you understand him a bit. Played soccer with the horses - of which Te is a little useless when it gets into tighter quarters and a more aggressive game, but still fun! Then we worked the flag a few times, I swear if I had a trailer with R would be missing a horse. Then we worked on a little bit of reining and lead departures. Some day I hope to get Shorty to the level of what Te can do, he takes up the correct lead right off, a little bumping with your legs to set his head, and slight change of seat to rate the lope, one of the nicest horses I've ever ridden. That's including R's main reined cowhorse Jazzy, she's.... high maintenance & princessy?

I had one of the people there take a short video of me spinning on Te, critique is more than welcomed. I know my rein hand is more to the side than it be & that my outside leg doesn't have quite a set rhythm, but it's a work in progress. You'll hear R saying that the cluck and the kick should be at the same time, I think my clucks & kicks aren't at the same rate, I kick faster than I can cluck.

[Kwenda]

Hello everyone! Just decided to get into the forums and thought I would pop in and tell a little about myself and my horses.

I own two horses, both acquired within the last 16 months, and I support them by working full time at the local Tractor Supply Company. Because 15% off everything in the store minus clearance items is amazing when you have two horses and a dog. lol. Because of the full time status of my job my time can be limited for working with my horses. Fortunately I got semi-promoted to price changes so I work early in the morning most days and get the entire afternoon to go do horsey chores and training, and semi-regular days off to plan rides with my friend.

I got my first horse, my first 'mine and only mine' horse in October of 2014. His name is Thunder and he's a 13 year old chestnut mustang that was given to me (free!) by my best friend who had gotten him for her husband but Thunder is... short. And my friend's husband... is not. So she came into my previous place of work and asked me 'Want a mustang?' and I agreed to come see him and ride him. Thunder is not the perfect horse. He has poor under saddle manners, as he was almost never touched for the first eleven years of his life. Since I acquired him, I have developed a very strong bond with him, to the point where he's the only horse who hears his person's vehicle (or another vehicle he knows I might be in) and comes to wait at the gate to be fetched in for food and grooming. Never did get a video of him at his previous boarding location come running at full speed to me hollering his name... But because of our strong bond (he is a better shadow than my dog) we have been making better progress under saddle when I do have time to work with him.

My second horse I purchased in January of this year, and I couldn't be happier about it. Mercedes is a bay breeding stock Paint who will be two in April. She is super sweet and affectionate, especially after we established people are not for nibbling on or biting at. I have been working on her ground manners, such as successfully standing on three legs while getting her feet trimmed. She hasn't quite figured out how to balance properly, but otherwise just wants to see what you're doing, which is entertaining. Mercy's also the only other horse who comes to the gate when she sees her person coming without any sort of encouragement, it does help that I have her out with Thunder and my friend's much older mare (19 year old Morgan who has decided to adopt Mercy and tolerates Thunder).

Other horses I will probably be mentioning in discussions of Thunder and Mercedes/Mercy:
Buddy - my mom's 15 year old QH gelding, bay
Quiette - my friend's 19 year old Morgan mare, black
Max - same friend's 6 year old QH gelding, bay
As well as several other geldings/mares owned by the barn owner and other boarders who may join rides or be borrowed depending on the main group's soundness or size of riding group.

We all ride western, and I am contemplating working Thunder up into doing endurance, and training Mercy to barrels or poles as well as being an excellent trail horse. She had her first trail experience a couple weeks ago when we went to the beach and rode behind the dunes and had her ponying off of Quiette. Took most of the ride for her to figure out how to keep up and not get dragged along, and the only real issues she had was with water. But I don't blame her, about a month earlier we had rain so bad that the river decided to run through the barn and paddocks, and we had to goad her out of her flooded paddock in the middle of the night and across some pretty deep water to get her into a dry stall in the barn. Only one end flooded enough to evacuate horses, and they got put in the indoor arena. Once I get Mercy trained in how to lunge and send with regularity I am going to work on her confidence around water. Right now she just assumes every puddle is going to be deep enough to touch her belly, and does her best to not have to walk through it. Go over narrow stuff? No biggie. Wider stuff? Oh dear. Need to work on Thunder with that too, he doesn't like to be the first one across, but will otherwise splash around no biggie.

[Hime]

Heta was feeling surprisingly happy and energetic today. She was funny when I went to get her from the paddock. She was at the bale and when I got to her she let me pet her and then moved away. She sort of walked past me couple meters and then turned around and circled half way back to me. Looked at me and kinda seemed as if she was asking if we were going or not. <3 Then she let me put a halter on without sneaking off. She's shedding like crazy already though, I got a small fur mountain off her yesterday and today we got close to it as well.
I let her loose on the arena after walking couple rounds(I've been sick this week so wasn't up for too much walking in the woods). I didn't need to encourage her too much and she run around bucking few times. Then when I gave Heta her food(still just linseed and mineral as they got better hay now), the baby was kicking today! I actually saw and felt it.

[alfiq]

anyone got any diys for horse toys? my horse gets really frustrated and tears down his stall if he has to stay inside for prolonged time and i'd like to see if it'd help him a bit

also heres some photos of stuff bc

hiking up the mountains
out for a drive
majestic
nice view ft. big belly
not to worry though, he's lost a bit of weight since then and is gradually becoming fitter :)

[Mercury.Muses]

Alright! Time to sit down and crank out a post.

Update on riding!
- Went back and my last post was about the chute and Sugar turning away.

Update on that ^ real quick, Just took a couple of times of making her fully stop and now Sugar stands still at the chute again, fixed that up! ^_^

Going on to my lease, etc, that following (this would be last Sunday) Sunday I rode in the morning then gave Sugar a bath so now she's all soft and WHITE again x'D! Got to meet a new riding student and see the other one (E) who has become my riding buddy since their lessons were an hour apart and I was there in between. I'm going to ride tomorrow around 5 with E (riding buddy) because I haven't gotten the chance to for a couple of weeks.

I had family come in town this week too, which is rare because we live in the southwest and our entire family is up in the northern states. So, Thursday I rode in the afternoon, with a freshly cleaned Sugar, and just worked on jogging, she was nice and quiet for the ride.

So then yesterday, I had my trainer come pick me up and I just mucked out the stall for an hour and a half, I was going to round pen but just didn't get around to it.
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Onto other news, there is a lady who boards with her daughters at the stables and they used to lease Sugar, doing gymkhana with her, and she invited me to go to gymkhana with her! c: I can't remember if I spoke about this on the forum or not, I know I did in the skype group, I really am all over.

So I have a month to practice barrels and pole bending with Sugar, geez;o;. I did barrels 2 years ago <_< I hope I can do this. I have confidence in Sugar though! and myself! I'm going to do a lot of under saddle and groundwork with loping Sugar since she's easy with turns already, I just have to get the patterns and speed down. Any advice would be appreciated over this!
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Tack update!
Alright, so my trainer had bought this new saddle that I've mentioned quite a few times and why I think Sugar was refusing to lope for quite a bit, and it only fits Sugar correctly. My trainer is setting up a spot for me in the tack room for the saddle so I can ride even if she doesn't bring her trailer or anything! ^_^ She also bought a couple of new saddle pads and I believe I'm going to be using one of them since we used it Thursday on Sugar and she did good with it, and looked good with it.

Now I have a small question about it all too, but do any of you carry a tack box or something? My trainer gave me some brushes, curry comb, face brush, body brush, etc so I could have them if I just went to see Sugar since I can do that on my own and my trainer only needs to be there if I ride since she has the tack. As of right now, they're in a bag I can carry around and I'm not generally looking for a tack box or anything but I was just curious.

Gah, I also got mucking boots too which I'm pretty happy about!





Wow, WELP. I need to post more so I don't end up flooding you all like this again! x'D Sorry about that and good for you if you read it all! Lol.

[allo vera]

@ tack box

I don't have a box, but I have this expandable bag thingy from Dover. It's very useful, but enough for my brushes, helmet, gloves, and horse jumping protection boots without being unreasonably bulky.

[Livid-Silver]

Super quick post cause I'm supposed to be writing an English essay at this very moment
Cleo arrived safe and sound, stood rock solid the whole hour and half drive home. Settled in super well and I think she's enjoying being in with the boys. She spends time walking around with Reg, then walks over to K and then they all chill together. They also seem to like trotting around the paddock together, which can be pretty funny to watch.
Clicky
All in all, the herd is going well and just waiting for Cleo to get her feet done so we can start ridden work =D I'll do a proper reply to everyone sometime tomorrow!
Edit; Just to add quickly, anyone have any show name suggestions? My friend and I have only come up with Kiss Me Cleopatra so far