HGBH: Every Day Tack Setup

Annnnnd sneaking in right at the end...

It can be tough to find appropriate tack for an equine that is between pony and cob size. Most is either made for little kids on tiny ponies or for small horses. However I enjoy the challenge and for me it takes the place of a hobby like antiques shopping or something haha. As it happens this is a very exciting time for my everyday tack setup because as most of you know my setup has gone through some major changes recently. Because of that I think this is a perfect time to go through it again.

 Previously I was riding in;

Bridle - Pink lined FSS bridle that I bought on EBay in cob size. I LOVED this bridle and the leather was amazing.

Reins - Horze, pony sized plain leather reins. I miss these but they are black so don't match my current set up. I'll be holding on to them for a back up pair. I love plain leather reins but they are tough to find.

Saddle - Passier Vector dressage saddle with 17" seat. I honestly have no idea how wide it is but will need to figure it out as I will be listing it for sale now. This saddle actually fit Katai decently but I hated it. It put me in a horrible chair seat since it was meant for a much taller person and the overwhelmingly long flaps made it tough to put my leg on my pony. 

Girth - Total Saddle Fit girth, 18",Havana. I ADORE this girth! Unfortunately this one is too short for my new saddle which has shorter flaps and thus shorter billets. I will be ordering a longer one from the same company.

Bit - Neue Schule 4.5" pony sized Eggbutt bit. Another piece of tack I adore. The best things about this bit is that it's smaller diameter as well as smaller width. Katai's got a low palette and previous bits actually made it so she couldn't close her mouth all the way.  It was pricy but totally worth it and if I ever need to try anything else I'll buy another Neue Schule.

Saddle Pads - Mostly I use Horze dressage pads in pony size. These are the best pony sized saddle pads I've found. They've got multiple styles in pony size and all different types of colors. I have the style in the picture in two different colors, grey and lime green, as well as a new one in brown that I like even more which will show up later. I also have a Mattes, Euos, Baker Plaid baby pad, and a couple no name pads I picked up at tack swaps.

Boots - Normally I use my People on Horses pink sheepskin dressage boots that I'm sure all of you have seen by now but in this picture she's wearing grey fleece polo wraps from Horze. She's also wearing her Davis pink bellboots that I bought in XS from Just for Ponies.

New Setup;

Saddle - Custom by Heritage Custom Saddlery. I'm already completely, head over heels, in love with this saddle! Be sharing more pictures soon :-)

Bridle -  Micklem bridle in brown. Both Katai and I really love this bridle. The leather isn't amazing but it has softened up really well and it actually fits her well.

Reins - Horze pony sized brown reins. The only way I could order these is with stops so if I can find another reasonable pair of pony sized brown leather plain reins I'll trade them out.

Everything else is about the same!

So Beautiful

Look at how beautiful!

It's almost like it was custom made for her ;-)

I'm officially in love. It's comfy and puts me in a wonderful position. It's much easier to keep my leg in the right place and yet I'm not stuck in one spot. The leather is AMAZINGLY soft and luscious but there is still a little breaking in that needs to happen. This is actually the first new saddle I've ever owned so it's a new thing for me. 

Old saddle vs new. Don't get me wrong, I really have liked my current saddle for a lot of reasons but there are several things about it that I really don't like and I'm so glad that I bit the bullet and ordered a custom saddle, especially for the amazing price.

The detail on this saddle is amazing (the panels only look uneven in this picture). The piping is so even and nicely done! I'm honestly very, very impressed. I would buy another saddle from Heritage Custom Saddlery in a heart beat and I can't wait to ride again on Friday :-) 

Again, not great pictures but I'll get some soon!

It's Here!!!!

So sorry I've been absent but things in my life have been nuts!!

The other news I talked about in my last post is that I received a job offer :-) Finally!!! It's with an amazing local company and means that I'll finally be able to move into the cities and closer to my boyfriend. I'm so, so, so excited and can't wait to move. Life is going to be so crazy for the next few weeks that I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post but getting my saddle today was way too exciting to not share.

Sorry for the horrible picture. I was too excited not to share. Proper pictures on the amazing pony to follow :-)

Baited Breath

Still no more concrete info on when I'll receive my saddle but since I wasn't expecting to hear until the end of next week I'm not too concerned about it. Just so, so excited to see it!!

Posting in this blog is on a temporary hiatus since I'm at my sister's wedding for the rest of the weekend in New Jersey. 

         Beach at Ocean City

  Proud of the signs my sister and I made

The boy is watching Wedge while I'm away and they're having a "bro night" complete with Hunt for Red October.

We'll be back to our regularly scheduled program next week and most likely with even more exciting news!!

Lesson Recap x2 and New Addition

So this is just a bit late which means it will be long. If you finish it I’ll send you a cupcake ;-)

 

My life has been so busy lately that I just don’t have time to do the things I want to be doing and after feeling like I was having a panic attack yesterday I’ve decided that needs to change. I’m not exactly sure how I am going to eke out more time with a full time job, long distance relationship, pony, applying for new jobs, running, etc. but I need to find some answer to the problem. Until I do these posts are going to be less frequent but I do want to make sure I am at least journaling my lessons.

 

Two Sunday’s ago my lesson turned out to be a bit rough. Katai’s whole world had been changed around since she was moved out to pasture and so that whole week she had been emotional and tougher to handle than normal. For the most part it was affecting her ground manners but she was leaving it at the door of the arena for rides, however, the pony that I started warming up on Sunday was an emotional wreck. Thanks to my recent change in thinking I was actually excited for the opportunity to show L what Katai is like at her worst because I knew that L could give me some great tools to use when this happens.

Again L was just so wonderful and started off by telling me not to antagonize her, start anything new, push her over the edge, or let her pick a fight with me. I really needed to hear the last since between having previous instructors try to get me to “make her do it right” “push her until she gives in” etc I have escalated the arguments that Katai starts. As I told L, she gets emotional and then I get emotional and we pick at each other until we both fall apart. Instead L just had me go back to basics, in this case a reasonable trot with Katai bent in the correct direction, and just expect her to do what I was asking but not punish her for not. As she said “It’s uncomfortable having your human posting at a different speed than you are trotting.” and every time that I focused on just riding properly while allowing Katai to do things right she would come around without too much of a blowup.

 

I did specifically ask for help with my canter transitions where Katai has been throwing her head in the air and L identified that I’ve been blocking her with my hands. She asked me to think of pushing the reins forward, she doesn’t want me to really do it but just to think it, as I’m asking for the transition so that she doesn’t feel blocked. This did immediately make things much better and although she did still throw her head we think that it’s more of a habit at this point and it was much less than before. 

 

Then, at my lesson last week Katai was totally amazing!! She was really following the contact down, working through her back, trying to find her balance etc. Where we weren’t pushing her two weeks ago because she was too emotional this past week we didn’t push because she was being sooooo good! L complemented her several times and was saying how nice she looked and she certainly felt amazing, like she went from green pony to dressage pony overnight. I was grinning ear to ear for pretty much the whole ride :-) Of course L also gave us more great stuff to work on and helped me identify that I’ve been dropping the outside rein which is letting her fall out. She also wants me to keep more of a dialogue going both verbally and through my contact. She said that “green horses need a constant conversation about what they are doing correctly and what they need to change.” and of course as soon as I did that correctly she relaxed even more and seemed to LOVE the bit. She encouraged me to talk more and reward Katai verbally because she pointed out how much Katai feeds off that praise and how much more relaxed she is when I’m talking to her.

That same day that I had the incredible lesson I picked up a new addition to my little family! His name is Wedge Antilles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_Antilles for none Star Wars Fans) and he is a 1 year old Italian Greyhound/Chihuahua cross. I got him from a friend of a friend who can’t care for him anymore and I’m amazed at how the stars aligned on this. I had DREAMED of getting an Italian Greyhound when I was growing up and even spent time with some people who owned them to see if I really did want that breed. I loved everything about them from their cat-like-ness, to their size, to their short coat, and most of all how much they love their people. I am just as totally in love with him as I would have hoped :-) It helps that he is just a REALLY good boy. He hasn’t had a single accident, comes when he’s called, sits when he’s told, and listens to the word no. This is especially amazing for a little dog so I’m very impressed. 

 Finally, my saddle is almost done!!!! The original estimate for a saddle from this company was 4-6 weeks which I was already impressed with. Then I completely redesigned the block and was told it would take a bit longer so I estimated 8 weeks so when I received an email yesterday after about 5.5 weeks that it was almost done I was amazed! I sent the balance of my payment this morning and will hopefully hear back, because of the time difference, tomorrow. I really can’t wait until I finally get my first custom saddle and can try it on my amazing dressage pony to make sure it fits. I’ll admit that I’m a bit nervous but based on all the positive reviews I don’t think I have anything to be nervous about :-)

Not Wordless Wednesday

My pony is amazing!! 

I've had two rides since she started feeling better after #mareproblems and both times I've gotten some really great work. She's been emotional and a pain to handle on the ground. I'm chocking it up to her being moved to the pasture and all of the horses being out of sorts because their routine is thrown off. Plus the weather has turned and we've been having 40* days and 30* nights.

Of course it doesn't mean it's not frustrating. 

However as soon as I mount up she goes right into work mode. She's been a little up still when we first start out but after just a little lateral work she calms right down and has even been less rushy. I can believe how nice she's been especially with her contact and using her back. Her canter has also really improved!

I'm also excited to say that I've been fixing things. Thanks to that video I was able to identify some of the things I need to fix such as not leaning forward, getting my shoulders back and keeping my elbows more stable. I've also remembered how to post properly and have been getting rid of my hunter posting style that I definitely blame on J.

Of course this has been helping Katai as well so we are really starting to look like a team :) I can't wait for my lesson on Sunday!

Pasture Pony Weekend

The mares finally got moved out to the pasture and thanks to our amazing, resident, photographer I've got a couple of nice pictures of my pony :-)

Look at how white she looks!!

Katai is not happy with the grazing muzzle situation but she's just going to have to live with it since it's the only way to keep her from foundering on the pasture.

Her chaffing was WAY better yesterday otherwise I would have had the vet out today. I talked to a couple of people and they gave me some suggestions for how to avoid this in the future and I'm pretty sure that I'll have stock in Vaseline and Bag Balm soon. I'm so anxious to be able to ride my girl again and the plan is to ride tomorrow as long as she's feeling completely well so look for another update 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?

Pony Power

Last Sunday I went to see H’s lesson with Bill Solyntjes and I have to say he is incredible! I had heard such great things about him in the past and he really is such a calm, positive, knowledgeable expert on dressage that I’m a bit jealous that H has the opportunity to study with him. Her pony, we think he’s probably a Morgan, has amazing suspension at the trot however he was still struggling at the canter but at her lesson on Sunday she had a breakthrough which was amazing to see and I was so glad to be able to celebrate with her :-) I was also able to return the favor she did me last weekend and take a whole bunch of video of her ride.

 

I also got to meet another resident pony at Bill’s barn who is a 14 hand GRP. She is an amazing little character and is trained to I-1. Her owner was understandably so proud of her and we had a great talk about how incredible ponies are and how none of us would ever own anything else. 

 

Here's a video of her http://youtu.be/Znn6P6btRmw

The barn was bustling the entire time I was there with people tacking, untacking, and grooming/working with their horses. Everyone of them rides dressage at various, but mainly upper levels, and I have to admit that I’m a bit jealous about that too. Add to that the fact that H got to audit a Janet Foy clinic and I'm slowly turning green haha. Pretty much the only thing I miss from J’s barn was that there were ALWAYS multiple people riding and all of them rode dressage. It created such a wonderful atmosphere to be able to talk dressage and horses with like minded people as well as being able to look up to them and motivate me to make progress so I could ride that way. Now at my current barn, which I do really love, the majority of the riders are western and while there are 6-7 people there that are pretty serious about dressage my schedule never seems to put me at the barn the same time they’re there. The barn is also spread apart enough that even if there is someone else there I may never see them. Again, I’m not complaining since it is an amazing facility but I have to admit that I’m beginning to wish that I were located on the other side of the twin cities so that I could have the possibility of boarding at the barn H is at since it is such an amazing dressage barn and I'd love to be able to work with such an incredible dressage trainer.

 

As far as my pony goes, this week our weather has turned and we are back to barely getting above 50 degrees. I had to focus on some stuff at my apartment last night so I didn’t get a ride in but now tonight I rode again and Katai was really tense and rushy again. I'm proud to say though that we worked through it together as a team and got to a point where we were getting some decent work. It certainly wasn't the best she's been but it was a huge improvement over the start of the ride. I'm going to try to increase my rides to 4-5 per week and see if I can handle that addition to my schedule because I think it would be a huge benefit to both of us.

I'll leave you with a post bath picture of my pony. I had to document how white she was since it will be awhile before I see her like this again :) 

Badly Needed Update

So much has happened since my last real blog update that I think it’s time to do some catching up. I am starting to feel better but this cold is still hanging on and I’ve had way too little energy for all the commitments I have. Being an adult sucks sometimes!

 

Katai has been awesome. She is really maturing into a nice pony and just over the past couple of months has matured to the point where I don’t worry about leaving her cross tied while I’m getting tack or when a horse leaves her by herself. She deals with our slightly claustrophobic gate situation in the paddocks without batting an eye and goes right into work mode 80%-90% of the time when we enter the arena.

 

Prior to getting so sick I did get a nice lesson in with L and although she is out of town next week we decided that after that I will take weekly lessons! I’m so excited that I’m able to, and that she thinks we’re at a point where that will benefit us, because I’m sure we will make much more steady process that way. I am going to have to change my budget a bit but I think it is worth it. The lesson on Sunday went really well and it was awesome to have H there videotaping it. I have to admit I was shocked and slightly disgusted with my riding which is exactly why it’s good to have video of myself. I have unfortunately picked up some bad habits from J who encouraged a very forward, hunter style, posting trot as well as a chair seat and slouchy shoulders.  Who knows why really but now I’m paying the price L (Not that I was perfect before by any means but this has just increased the number of bad habits that I have to deal with.)

 

Katai is still quite rushy but we are starting to make progress there and her contact has gotten so, so much better. It’s both more steady and she gets it earlier in the ride rather than needing to work almost half an hour to really get her on the bit it’s now down to a few minutes. She is also starting to have relaxed moments at the trot even though they are few and far between. The most frustrating thing for me is when she gets tense and rushy and then starts blowing me off. It’s like her brain is a million miles away and I’m trying to yell at her but she’s not hearing me. Those are the moments when I start to get frustrated but I feel like everything else is a positive, if slow, work in progress.

 

I am going to share some videos, one from right when I first started riding at J’s and the other from this last lesson. I’m honestly terrified to share because it doesn’t seem like we’ve made enough progress but then I remind myself that for the 6 months we were with J we were actually going backwards and the progress we’ve made has pretty much been from December – April and I feel a bit better. My instinct is only to show the pretty moments but then this wouldn’t be a true journal of our progress and I’ve been realizing that I wish I had more video of when things were falling apart with J so that I could really see how much progress we’ve made now without her. That made me decide that it’s time to post some of these things. However, I need to get them all to the same place, like YouTube and do some editing just for length before I post and with how busy I’ve been lately I’m not sure when that will be but you can look forward to cringing at my riding sometime soon.

 

In other news I’ve gone Vegan, for health and diet reasons primarily although animal rights and environmental benefits are an added bonus, and I’m really enjoying it. I’m discovering foods and flavors that I’d forgotten or never knew existed which is fun. I will be sharing some food stuff both with recipes and meals that I’m eating etc because I think it’s really interesting and fun. The reason I bring it up here is that during my foray into natural horsemanship previously some of the people I spent time with were vegetarian or vegan and said that their horses treated them different. I can only imagine that to an animal with such an advanced sense of smell the difference between an animal that eats meat vs one that eats only plant based food would be extremely huge. I’d, however, never really thought it was true but I’ve noticed a HUGE difference in Katai’s behavior with me recently. She keeps wanting to rest her nose against me, share breath, cuddle, and she’s much quieter when I’m handling her doing things that previously were scary like clipping or spraying her with flyspray. I can imagine that it would be the difference between a predator and a pasture mate. Of course this is all just speculation but I do find it interesting!

 

I also, back to dressage related topics, officially ordered my saddle! I mailed the tracings on Monday April 20^thbut they probably didn’t get there until closer to the 24^thso I’m starting my countdown on April 27^th which means that I’m about two weeks in at this point. The estimate would have been 4-6 weeks but because of the redesigned block he said it would take more time so I’m estimating 8 weeks which would be sometime around the end of June. I’m so so so so so excited and to prepare have been slowly working on deciding which pieces of tack to purchase so that everything will be Havana and therefore match.

 

Thanks to all of your suggestions I decided on a Micklem for Katai’s bridle and I picked one up from our local tack store last night! I was little concerned about how she would deal with the chin strap since I’ve never ridden her in a flash but she was extremely quiet. She didn’t fuss at all when I bridled her and she was also quieter as I was riding. It wasn’t a 180* change but she was at least a bit softer on the contact and at least slightly less fussy. I’m interested to see how she goes this weekend!

 

Pony didn’t want to stand still for pictures.

 Of course, since I don’t like the thick rubber reins that came with it, that meant that last night I rode with a black saddle, brown girth, black reins, and brown bridle so now I just need to find brown reins that I like and pick up some brown stirrup leathers and then we will be all set!

Just because I love this photo

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

I’ve been absent because I picked up a bad cold last Thursday, summer colds suck, and then ended up with either heat stroke or food poisoning on Sunday which led to me spending about 7 hours throwing up and generally miserable while still dealing with this dratted cold. Now I'm just still trying to recover and catch up with life.

Luckily I got my lesson in on Sunday before I got sick and thanks to H I now have some lovely video stills to share :-)