Progress

Today I was supposed to work at noon but with all the snow we got I wasn't able to get out of the driveway and since this is the first time I've missed a day in the two years I've worked here I didn't feel too bad. I was also excited because it freed me up to work with Katai some more.

I had put her and Myshla in the large stall that they share last night in preparation for the snow storm and had planned on getting them both out this morning but we got a lot of snow and its still coming down pretty hard so I decided to leave them in. However, since working in even a large stall with two ponies would be dangerous I took Mysh out and tied her and kept Katai in the stall. I had been out this morning before I decided I wouldn't be able to make it into work and did her feet since that was the top priority. That meant that I had some options as far as what to work on and since I had limited space I decided it was time for her to wear a bridle again.

She has had one on a couple of times but I have never been consistent enough for her to really be used to it so its time for her to wear it more. I also got a bridle for her for Christmas that I hadn't tried on yet and just yesterday her bit arrived and I wanted to be sure it would fit. I ordered her a 4.5" which was an educated guess on her size since Myshla's 4.75" bit seemed a little loose on her and I was right, the 4.5" fit perfectly.

She always pulls away when I go to put my hand by her ears with the bridle but after that she doesn't fuss very much and today was no different. I got it on and adjusted it a bit so that it sat right in her mouth. I'm sure that as I get more consistent with her and start to put her bridle on more she will get over some of that and eventually things will smooth out.

Once she had her bridle on and buckled up and was loose in her pony safe stall I decided to grab my trimmers and get Myshla's bridle path trimmed. Once I had the trimmers in the barn and had finished with Myshla I realized that it would be a perfect time to start to desensitize Katai to them as long as she didn't freak out too bad in which case I would need to wait until we were outside and had more space.

As it was she did the typical Haflinger thing, she takes after her mom alot, and didn't care at all while I turned it on, rubbed it all over her on both sides and even trimmed some of the long hairs on her neck until suddenly I must have done something a little different and she freaked. It wasn't really a bad freak out but there was a lot of stubbornness behind it so it took me almost half an hour to get back to being able to just stand next to her with it on. The more I read about Haflingers the more I find that this type of behavior is very common. They have good minds and tend to have no issues with new things until suddenly they do lol. It is easy to push too fast because they are calm and steady and then they freak out about the same thing that they were good with a minute ago.

Luckily it was still easier to have the trimmer around her than it ever was with Sora who would have hit the wall if I even tried to turn it on with her in a stall. We ended with me standing right next to her hold the running trimmer and tossing the lead rope over her back on both sides. I'm sure that after a couple more times I'll be back to rubbing it on her and doing some clipping, at least in areas that she's not too sensitive about.

Through that all she wore the bridle very nicely and it was good to have her mind on something else so that she learns to just hold it nice in her mouth while working. She usually has more issues with having the bridle taken off than put on which is pretty normal since if they don't relax the bit hits their teeth on the way out. We have made a lot of progress on this though because every time she's worn the bridle I refuse to take it off and leave it off if she throws her head. Instead I keep putting it back on and taking it off until she relaxes and drops the bit nice. It took her three times today but eventually she dropped it nice rather than flipping her head so we ended on a good note. I put Mysh back into the stall and gave them another chunk of grass hay to keep them busy. Hopefully the snow will stop soon so that I can get them put outside.

The plan for tomorrow is to get up early to get to the gym and then still have enough time to at least have Katai wear the bridle some more and maybe do some more desensitization. Hopefully the Easyboot Fit Kit will get here sometime this week so that I can try that this weekend.

Boots

Last night I ordered an Easyboot Glove fit kit to try with Katai. I would like to get her comfy so that she can heal and I can get her hooves trimmed the rest of the way. At this point she needs exercise and to move on her feet so that they can become strong and healthy. I also want to be sure she is comfortable :)

I have a little more trimming to do but I'll wait until we get our snow tomorrow because that will do a lot to pad her feet and make them comfy until I can get her some actual foot protection.

Pictures will be taken for anyone who is curious about fit or how these boots work.

Gear

I feel like my tack wishlist keeps growing and it has been so completely awesome and freeing to be able to think about having fun/cute/popular tack for my girl. Right now the list goes something like this

People On Horses Dressage boots

I'm getting a set of four of these in one of the pink options because they are SOO pony appropriate.


Custom Mattes Pad

I have ALWAYs wanted a Mattes pad but didn't think I would be able to get one in a size small enough for a pony so when I found out how small they come and that you can get them without the fur under the saddle, since I'm worried it will make my saddle tipsy, I knew I needed one. Now I just need to figure out what part of the pad should be pink :-)

Nice Bit

 I have a nice quality bit coming so that I can start to figure out what Katai likes but I've heard amazing things about these bits and if the one that I just ordered fits and she likes it I will eventually get her one of these which are specifically made for ponies with smaller 10mm mouths for their lower pallets and smaller cheek pieces to fit their smaller heads but with all the features of the nicest horse sized bits.


Pony Sized Shipping Boots

These are completely adorable and useful of course

Of course it will take me awhile to get this stuff and half the fun is just finding cute pony stuff but it is nice to be able to actually think about being able to have some nice stuff.

March Goals

Following in the footsteps of several other bloggers i'm going to start setting goals for each month and following up to see how I did at the end.

With that cleared up ;) here are my goals for March;

1. Get Katai's feet sorted.
I was finally able to get a good trim on both her front feet but since they had been so bad, she wouldn't let me even touch them when I got her, I've been doing things a little bit at a time so there is still some heel I need to take down after I give her frog a chance to adjust to bearing weight again. She is a little tender and I think I'm going to fit her for some boots to help with the transition.

2. Get her ground driving polished up.
Once her feet aren't quite as tender I plan on getting her ground driving to the point where I can trot her around the arena in both directions and do some circles before I climb on her again.

3. Saddle time
Until her steering and stopping are good with ground driving there is simply no reason to do much riding but once she is at that point, hopefully by March 20th, I plan on really starting her work under saddle :)

4. Desensitization
Katai is extremely bold and will march straight up to new things with me at her side but when I approach her with scary stuff she is not as brave. I would like to work on exposing her to more new things and to start walking her around to get her out of the pen and her comfort zone.

Hopefully we can get this accomplished in the next month :)

Mind Set

Is something I constantly struggle with when it comes to really throwing myself into this journey with Katai. I had no trouble doing it properly with my music because my mom made sure we had plenty of opportunities and I have no problem getting the mindset right with my career because I make the opportunities myself but I still can't believe that I can make things happen with Katai.

Part of it is not having those opportunities with horses when I was little. I never had the correct tack, no transportation for our horses so no lessons and no good instructors in the area for lessons anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful for the fact that we even had horses. I'm bringing it up just because it is affecting how I think about being competitive with Katai.

I'm hoping that as we go into spring and summer and I have more of those opportunities it will start to sink in. It's also really helping that I'm finally able to afford the right tack. I'm not talking popular tack I just mean tack that fits properly and is appropriate for the type if riding I'm doing. I do have to say that I am very excited to get my custom Mattes pad in pony appropriate colors though ;)

This quote by Ayn Rand is something I just found and feel is appropriate,

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplacable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

Pony Family

With my new promotion things change a little as far as me being able to attain my goal of getting my bronze medal, or at least most of my scores, on Katai. Basically it allows me to fast track a bit.

Something I haven't even been able to dream about.

Because of that its time to change up my pony family a little. Myshla deserves tons of attention and I know I won't be able to give her the time and attention that she deserves. Because of this I am seriously considering rehoming her. I have neighbors on each side that have been wanting her since I got her and the person who we get our hay from would love to take her as well. All three would be excellent homes with wonderfully behaved small children.

The other thing that makes rehoming Myshla a good option is that I'm going to start boarding Katai. I will now be able to afford it and with a better arena, indoor and more chances to take lessons it's exactly what we both need to help my goal become a reality. There are two facilities that I'm trying to choose between and barring availability I have a tough decision to figure out where she should go.

I will say that whether I keep Myshla or find her a new home it will be done only with her best interest in mind and if she does go to a neighbor I'll see her on almost a daily basis :)

Promotion :)

I started this blog with the idea that it would mainly be about my ponies but an important thing happened yesterday and that is that I got the job offer I was working towards! I've done a few interviews over the past month and did plenty of worrying but today I officially got the job offer.

This changes a few things with my plans for my girls which I will go into further in a future post. For now I'm just going to bask in the joy and excitement of a hard won promotion :)

Progress

I didn't realize until I really started working with Katai just how impossible Sora was to train. I was starting to feel like a completely incompetent horse trainer and I'm not. I'm hardly an expert but I did train three ponies that all went on to young kids and two horses, one of which ended up with a couple of beginning trail riders. I've also retrained horses and brought them to higher levels.

I would never suggest that I know everything, or even most things, about horse training but I would say I'm pretty competent at getting them started well and safe with no bad manners and with the skills to go onto a performance career if desired but Sora was starting to make me think otherwise.

I don't know if there was actually something wrong with her mentally or if it was her background but now that I have another horse to compare her to I'm beginning to realize that there was definitely something wrong. She simply couldn't retain things and couldn't generalize at all. I could teach her something simple in one place, after tons of repetitions, but take her someplace else even if it were familiar and she felt safe and she would completely loose the lesson that she previously had down. It was insanely frustrating and I was blaming it all on myself.

Now I feel like I can at least share the blame.

Yesterday, in about half an hour, Katai learned more about ground driving and quicker than Sora ever did because she had retained and can generalize information. I had taught her all the necessary steps and she put them together just the way she should, with some help from me of course :) It certainly wasn't elegant but she worked with me, tried her hardest, thought about what I was asking and learned from the experience which is all I could ask.

There is a dressage trainer, that I would really like to take lessons with, who has just about given up on me because of Sora. She teaches at the place that I was boarding at and tried to give me advice, which I happily took and tried so hard to accomplish but never could. She showed me a bunch of desensitizing techniques that I did a TON of with Sora and while she would eventually calm down about that stimulus in one environment as soon as I would change it even a little I would be back to square one. She would see Sora freak out and I'm sure she thought that I wasn't even attempting to try her suggestions.

The whole thing was sickening to me especially since I've been a student since I was 5 years old. I've taken weekly lessons for music, and sometimes bi-weekly lessons, for the past 20ish years. If there is anything I DO know its how to take what a teacher is saying and put it into practice and this was making her think I didn't want to or couldn't.

This trainer knows that I have Katai and knows that she is untrained. I'm sure she is thinking this will be a train wreck especially since she didn't see what wonderful citizens the other horses I trained where once I was done with them.

I'm competitive and stubborn. Katai and I are going to wow her and change her mind if its the last thing I do

Talk about motivation ;)

Saddle Tryouts

I knew when I acquired Katai that I would need to buy another saddle because her back is shaped so differently that Myshla's. I did hope that Myshla's Niedersuss would fit her well enough to use for the first couple of months but alas it wasn't to be so and so I've been using a western saddle when I've been working with her recently. Over this winter with fewer hours and smaller payroll bonuses a saddle wasn't in the budget but I just received my profit sharing bonus so I finally had a good saddle budget :)

Time for saddle shopping, yay! (Dripping sarcasm)

I started out with the local tack shop since they have about 50 or so dressage saddles that you can take out on trial. I ended up choosing a Kieffer Wein 16.5" with a medium tree and a Thornhill Danube 17" with a wide tree. I thought that the Kieffer would be too narrow and the Thornhill would be too long for her back.

I tried both on her without a saddle pad and, while they both fit, the Thornhill looked like it had been custom made for her. Then it was time for me to try it out since a rider can change a lot. I was nervous that since I hadn't been on her back since December she would be a naughty pony but she was perfect! She remembered everything that we had done at out last ride and was stretching out her back and relaxing which told me that the saddle did still fit well. Even better I love it as well, its sooooo comfy!

I was originally hoping to spend less than either saddle was listed at and thought that if either did fit I would go online and try to find a good deal just like I did with my $450 Niedersuss but the Thornhill seriously fit so well and was in such great condition that I just drove straight back to the tack shop and bought it.

Pictures will follow :)

Another Personal Fitness Post

Since my last post about gaining strength and loosing weight I've lost another 10 pounds which means I've lost over 40 so far. I have a bit more to loose and definitely want to continue to improve my fitness level but it is amazing how much easier everything is now!

When I was trying saddles on Katai I found out that my 16.5" niedersuss that fit snugly now almost feels big to me. I can also really tell the difference in my core strength. Then there is the fact that I have removed nearly the weight of a bag of grain from my girls backs. I am now well under 20% of Katai's body weight which is an awesome feeling :)

I will continue to work out at the gym and I'm hoping to do a mud run or two this summer to help me continue to work toward my goal. Bronze medal here we come!

My Past

Long time, no post.

Winter in Northern WI sucks. Between the ice and snow I haven't had any time to work with Katai at all. Then last weekend after receiving my bonus check from work I decided it was time to find her a saddle that fit. That whole story will be my next post but saddle trials and the thought of her bucking brought back thoughts of my first horse so I found a picture.

This is Bucky. The 16.1 hand appendix that tried to kill me on a daily basis. It's no wonder I have a thing for ponies lol. Just getting him tacked up when I was that tiny meant lining him up with a hill so that I could reach his back to puuussshhhh that heavy western saddle up there. He was an incredible teacher in many ways though and I owe him a lot. I've written about him many times because many of my fears related to horses are his fault but I also wouldn't be nearly the rider I am today if I hadn't overcome everything he put me through. I think we all need at least one horse like that to teach us, to make us better riders and make us truly thankful for the horses that actually want to work within and be our friends :)