Timeline

2012

Boarding Katai where I was renting in Northern WI.

 

 

Baby's first ride

2013

Moved Katai to her first boarding facility which was a pasture share with one other aged gelding.

Driving the trailer all by myself for the second time!

 

 

Fall 2013

Moved Katai to a facility with a covered arena so that I could ride during the winter. This is where she really became broke to ride. Any previous rides I had done lasted about 5 minutes at the longest and only consisted of walk.

 

 

Spring 2014

I moved Katai to a barn with a dressage instructor and a nicer indoor with MUCH better footing. Plus I was worried because Katai had lost a lot of weight at the previous barn which you can see from one of the photos. If it hadn't been for J I would have continued to board here and still really miss most of the people.

 

 

 

 

The above video is not indicative of how Katai had been going in lessons. This was after 1.5 months off lessons where all I did was ride her long and low. She was doing well unless I put any pressure on her and then she would go into full on panic/fight/flight mode.

 

Winter 2014

I moved Katai to a temporary barn because I had started to realize how brutal J's training techniques were and wasn't having fun anymore. Plus, Katai had started rearing and was moving worse and worse.

 

 

Spring 2015

I moved Katai to an amazing facility with at least three good dressage instructors and found L who has been the best for both Katai and I. Starting here I feel like we actually started to make progress!

 

Fall 2015

Unfortunately the owners turned out to be crazy so when I found that L's regular barn had an opening I jumped a it and moved for our final time.

 

Blair Witch Project pony doesn't like to have her fugly clip photographed. More photos soon!

Videos and #mareproblems

Here are the videos I promised! Please let me know if either of them don't work and I'll work on getting them fixed.

The first video is of our progress from June 2014 - March 2015.

http://youtu.be/HAVpg7B9K2g

The second video is of our most recent lesson. Be gentle please, I know there is a lot of room for improvement but I'm having fun :-)

http://youtu.be/_lMAIfGgHCQ

As far as mares go, I had last been out to the barn on Tuesday evening and didn't make it out on Wednesday or Thursday. Tonight when I went to catch her she seemed off but I couldn't quite tell what was going on. My first thought was that she had been standing at the roundbale for awhile and was stiff but it wasn't getting any better even after we had been walking for awhile. I noticed that her back legs were covered in mare goo, after having just cleaned it off on Tuesday, and when I looked closer I saw that she had a bunch of mare goo everywhere and was really, really chaffed between her back legs. Poor girl, no wonder she didn't want to walk :-(

I just feel like such a bad horse owner. I mean I've heard about mares having this problem but I've never had this issue with her since I keep her pretty clean. If in two days she did this to herself I just don't quite know what to do. I got her kind of cleaned up, she was in enough pain that I was worried I'd get kicked, and put a whole bunch of swat everywhere hoping that it would act as a lubricant. Tomorrow I'm going to pick up some baby wipes and baby rash ointment and hopefully finish cleaning her up and add some more ointment to help heal.

Does anyone who owns a mare, or has owned a mare, have any advice?