Weekend Update and Trailering Progress

This weekend was amazing!! Like Teresa at Journey with a Dancing Horse I used every minute and spent a lot of time outside.

Starting on Friday evening I got out to the barn and had a great ride. Katai was a little quiet and not especially forward (when I first started looking into Ulcers) which is unusual for her but she had a busy week so that's likely part of it as well. Jane also mentioned that the massage person turned up that Katai had sore hind legs/stifles and we've been working on increasing her cross over and getting her carrying in the canter so it may partially be muscle soreness too.

Plus I made vegan buddha bowls to
celebrate my 2 year vegan anniversary

Then Saturday I had another great ride. Katai was right with me and we played a couple of times with simple changes across the diagonal. She nailed the transitions and I just need to work on being more organized and less flustered but it was fun to try something new.

Finally (for the weekend), Sunday was trailer training day. You've all seen the pictures from my last post but we ended in a decent place with Katai stepping just into the trailer and off the ramp with her front feet. I was really happy with that but especially that she was stepping forward off pressure which she hasn't been the last several times I've needed to trailer her despite a lot of natural horsemanship type techniques. These were the same things that helped me originally train Katai to trailer load (which she used to do beautifully BUT with a ton of tension to the point of shaking sometimes).

Prepping the ingredients for my buddha bowls :)

Since those weren't working and with my change in training methods/mindset since working with Jane I've been trying something different this time. Mostly I'm trying to keep everything as low stress as possible. I'm not escalating at all and my only rules are that she move forward (eventually) off pressure, face the trailer, and that we make at least an inch of progress each day.

Today I brought her back out to the trailer for a continuation of yesterday's training. If anything I focused on using even less pressure than yesterday and I was SO pleased with her! She stayed really calm the whole time, almost no tension other than that she started to paw twice. Plus, she never reared up and when she pulled back and I held pressure she came right forward.

Again I asked with some pressure (barely an ounce) for her to step up into the trailer after me and she came right with me. I did lots of having her stand for a second and then backing her out, praising the heck out of her and then bringing her back in. Today we got all the way in with her back feet just barely staying on the ramp more than twice! SUCH huge progress especially with no blow ups and she was relaxed when we ended.

Then I brought her back to the barn, she walked calmly back, and then I spent the whole rest of the evening at the barn :) I lunged her (and she was great) and she wasn't as stiff or sore as I thought she might be after all of her shenanigans yesterday.  I'm certainly sore, my hands took a beating and typing was sore today at work. Then I tried braiding her!

This was my first try and I think they turned out decently well. I'll try take a bit wider sections of mane next time but otherwise I'm pleased! Also, I wondered if I could get away with using white yarn for that first braid.  The answer is no, no I can't.

Finally I stuffed her with peppermints and lots of pets, cleaned her stall, and headed home.

Summer Favorites

I don't have a lot of favorites for Summer. Mainly because I hadn't been buying much and have pretty much reviewed all of the items that I would consider favorites already. Recently I've picked up a few more things so I should have a better fall favorites.

Oh, and lesson recap to follow. It was AMAZING but I wanted to get this post out since I've been siting on it for a little while.

Horze Slow Hay Feeder Net

When I was moving to my previous barn the BM sent an email to everyone moving in that she would only do hay nets if they were like this one because then, tough to tell from the picture, but you can just dump the hay in the top and don't have to take it down first. They're also nice and big and are slow feeders, however, they cost $99.

I headed over to my favorite website, Horze (no they don't pay me), and found this one for $23.

Yep, looks the same to me too

I wasn't sure how the quality would compare but having now had one for a full year and being able to see the Freedom Feeder hay nets at the barn I can say that they are very comparable. The biggest difference is that the top of the Horze one is nylon strapping and the top of the Freedom Feeder is the same nylon rope. Katai did chew a hole in one side of mine after about 9-10 months but I just turned it around so that the hole was against the wall of her stall and we were back in business! I'm not sure that it would have lasted another 9-10 months since it was wearing but still, 1 year out of a hay net is pretty damn good and seems to be similar to the name brand one. I did buy a new one to move to the new barn since the other was on it's last legs but I'm hoping to get at least a year out of this new one as well however, at $23 it's certainly less painful to replace them than to replace the name brand one.


SoloComb

I have no issue with pulling manes and spent a lot of time making it pleasant for Katai so that she wouldn't be bad about it. I would pull a little at a time while she was eating her grain or hay and make sure that, within my power, she didn't object to it. However, I started to realize that I was needing to pull about half or more of her hair to actually get it thin enough and that I'm just not ok with. It's too much time and way too much hair pulling for either of us to deal with it.

Instead, thanks to a conversation with L who's from Sweden originally, I discovered the concept of braiding on both sides of the neck.

Not sure that mine will ever look this good but
I am going to spend some time practicing this winter 

That meant that I didn't need to thin but just to trim so I got a Solocomb to test out using it to backcomb and trim instead of pulling to make her mane look pulled and natural and get a nice short length. I've gotten pretty good at it so I think it looks pretty natural now. I just start similarly to how I would if I were going to pull only instead of pulling the hair out I back comb it and trim. By doing that all down her mane it has a nice natural look. 

Not a great example of how her mane looks since it actually looks a bit chopped off here
but there's a good shot of the hay net in the background