70 Degrees in January?!

After the raunchy fun that was my 21st birthday weekend, I got back to riding today.

I was feeling quite lazy after a full day of work & a grueling 30 minute run, so I went sans saddle and riding gear (pants, boots-->sweats, tennis shoes). Slightly frowned upon by BO, but since I am quite capable of bareback riding & could care less about barebackin' it in tennis shoes, I do it. If you think thats horrible, when I was in high school, I rode in a bikini top, shorts and no shoes. Yes in a saddle. No I never got rubbed...I dont know how. Yes I wore a helmet.

I digress.

Yankee was a freaking BEAST tonight. Ive never had a better dressage school on him actually and the other lady in the ring with me actually said I was a very sensible rider who seemed to know how to train a horse to do proper dressage (and that Yankee was just awesome-sauce). I like to think so.

Since I was feeling the most lazy, I thought a relaxing warm-up/ride with long and low work and lots of lateral movement would be just peachy. Plus, it was SEVENTY degrees and I was sweating. Mind you, it was like 12 degrees yesterday. WHAT the fuh.

Yankee was probably the most relaxed I have ever felt him, and he was ON his A game today. Perfect transitions, uh-mazing stretchy trot, swinging back and engaged hocks. Beautiful.

He looked a lil' somethin' like this

(Some of you might recognize this pair. Hilarious that I googled "stretchy trot circle" & the writer of "Now Thats Trot"s blog picture popped up).

Basically an amazing ride.

I also feel obligated to inform you all that Yankee is now a half-leased ponyface.

GASP, right?

I tried leasing him out my sophomore year whilst I was injured for 9 months, and it didnt work out to my advantage. Partially because he was in OH while I was in MO, which is why I found a lovely rider here in CoMO to lease the rest of this winter and summer.

The deal is, that I would like to ride/work with him 1-2 days a week and she gets him at least 3 other days or more. Being worked everyday is not his thing, so he will get a day or two off. I set some guidelines of what I want done with him and whatnot.

I am paying for all of his bills since he IS my horse and she is doing me a massive favor by working with him and SHOWING him over the summer since I cannot afford to, and don't have as much time. Its basically the perfect situation for both of us since I can afford to take care of him but barely do more than 3 shows a year. So I will take him to the first event of the year and do some jumper shows with him, but basically Jackie will have full rein (haha, horse pun) with his event showing this summer.

I'm really excited to see how this goes! She is extremely capable and I wouldn't have chosen her if I didnt think they were a good match. Not many people can keep my wiggle TB engaged and active, so I thought that was a pretty big win on her part.

Pictures and videos of our "Yankee intro" lessons to come :)

In other news. Class starts tomorrow. My life is basically over for 18 weeks.

Provacative Boredom

I rarely get bored. But I do get stir-crazy.

It literally snowed 3/4 of an inch. And I'm fugging stuck in my house. Why? Because I live on the bottom of a hill and it is solid ice. FANTASTIC. I missed both jobs today. There goes money.

So I've literally been online all day do absolutely nothing of worth, destroying brain cells.


I did venture out after the roads were salted to feed the beast and tend to his spoiled brattiness.


He was not ok with the temp drop. Note the pissed face and paw marks on the ground.

I suppose I was a little upset as well.
I was spoiled by 45-60 degree weather for a month. I thought for sure I wouldnt get any wintery delight, and gave up and embraced T-shirts in January.


He saiz..I no eats noms farther out than has toos.

And here are some hilarious fun things I found perusing the world wide web today. Mighty fine.






(really funny because I have lived in both cities...well Cinci is 40 minutes from my hometown and my brother goes to college there...so it counts)






This dude is 90. NINETY.



WTF?!

That is all.

Playing Chicken With a Bear

I know its 11 minutes, but its interesting! WATCH IT. I skipped to 2:35 and watched from there.



Talk about a beautiful horse! And a perch with a TAIL!! Love it. How brave of Tonk to trust his rider like that. I would have run as fast as I could the opposite direction.

It just makes me re-think how trusting horses really can be with their humans. I always find it interesting that they let us strap pieces of other dead animals on their bodies and crawl up on them to train them to do fancy things like piaffing and reining and jumping.

Remarkable.

Happy Thursday! I'm stuck in snow.

Pronto Monster Jumping

Its always fun jumping the monster beast. Makes me wonder how Stacey does it all the time! Its such work! Granted, Kleinmare is a bosst and knows what she is doing, while Pronto is still pretty green at jumping.

He used to haul on my shoulders SO badly, but the BO & a barn worker have been riding him for his owner and have done a TON of dressage work with him and he is much lighter/softer. Also, he only bucked twice that day which is huge step forward. He used to be almost dangerous to jump with all the bucking and running off, but as you can see, he has manners now. He was not having any of the flying changes though. Rather than fighting with him, I settled for simple changes. I will take calm, mannerly jumping over flying changes anyday.

Funny thing is, I am always extremely sore the next day after riding this big guy. My legs just are not used to the full barrel he has compared to my skinny TB!

Speaking of the TB beastie, he is exceptionally grumpy. I have no idea why, but he is actually to the point of pissing me off. He keeps trying to bite me while I lead him to and from the pasture and everytime I step in the stall he turns his butt towards me and lays his ears. Um, RUDE.

He's never acted that way...ever. Perhaps he is pissed off that he is barely getting ridden..ha.

I hope to fix that though...

I listed him on equine.com for free lease...more on that later good peoples.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

No Shoes & Pony Pic Dump

I've been attempting to cut costs here and there. Less groceries. Less Driving (right, haha). More working. But alas, bills just keep cropping up. Vet bills, farrier, $115 worth of hay, feed, rent, tuition, books, new mattress....motherf.

Apparently, Dec/Jan are the most expensive months this year. I simply could not muster up $95 for shoes this month (WOW I know ONLY $95 for shoes?! I'm spoiled here in Missouri but I still complain. I suppose its better than $200/set for Ohio shoes). My excuses for pulling the shoes were as follows..
-Barely riding
-50 degree weather-no ice
-No monies
-curious to see how his feet do without shoes for the first time since...ever

So far its been not a success. Its been 4 days and his feet are sore & chipping already. I feel terrible. I had the money, I just would rather not spend it if I didn't HAVE to. Go ahead & lecture me, but I will give this a try for a few more weeks & see if his baby TB feet improve and if not, shoes go back on I suppose.

So we will see about that.

In other news, I went to visit my pony in STL yesterday :D I usually only see her twice a year, but this was like the 5th time I got to see her sweet face! Much excitement.

The boyfriend even came with me. GASP! I was pretty stoked because I thought he'd want to watch football all day but instead he braved the semi-chilly weather to appease my need to see the fluffy yak.


How adorable :)

They all wanted a piece.

Z is SO fluffy in the winter. Like, seriously, fluffiest beast I've ever seen. Her leg hair is a goof 4 inches long and her body hair is about 2-3. To quote Despicable Me, "SO FLUFFY!"

She even lets me get on her, which is even more super cute. I hope one day she will probably tolerate my future spawn playing around/on her.

'Dohhhh :)

Pony kisses are the best :D

I Haven't Been Blogging

....because I can't decide on a topic..

Horse slaughter?
Yankee going barefoot on Friday & how I feel about that?
My lack of riding mojo & how I might get that back?
My weatherbeeta turnout blanket review?
How much I heart the new fuglyblog authors?
Smartpak supplement discussion& how I can never decide what to give him/winning on only spending about $50/mo on supps?
2012 goals?
Yankee going up for lease this year, possibly?

It's all so juicy.

War Horse Fail

MY GOD. That movie was just awfulness wrapped in fail sauce. (Though Jeremy Irvine could be rather dreamy if I get past the fact that he really was a drag in this movie)

I was SO pissed it fell short of my above average standards and did not even come close to living up to the massive hype that was created around it. Rotten tomatoes gave it a 75%, which I feel is severely overstating the watchability of this movie, especially if you are a horse person. Which is most of us here.

All of my horse friends were not even excited for it and I defended the movie, saying its going to be so good, you wait and see! But no, Speilburg, you made me look like an ass. Thanks a ton.

So for those of you who havent yet suffered through this gooey movie, please spare yourselves. I can't decide which was worse, watching him train the young Joey with earnest conversation, the fact that they treated him like a dog ("Stay Joey, stay!" or, "Come, Joey!"), the absurd acting, extreme sappiness or unrealistic scenes. Like seriously, any horse that runs into barbed wire fencing will be slashed to bits instantly, NOT able to run through two more and drag them in full gallop. ABSURD.

The horses who played Joey were freakin' gorgeous though and I really want them. Stacey told me the main one was an OTTB, even more to love! I get irritated easily though at the fact that they didnt even try to keep his tail the same when they used different horses. I might be the only one who noticed/cared since a) I'm obsessed with tails b) I'm a horse person, but they should at least attempt to make them all generally look the same. I mean, I KNOW they painted socks on some of them; not hard to tell, but to go from one horse having this GORGEOUS long, thick tail and in the next scene its scrawny and thin, then back to full...I'm just like WTF!! The cinematography was sweet though I guess and I loved the scene where he was galloping through the battlefield, until he hit the barbed wire...

These were cool stills though...

My mom loved it though, so maybe only horse people find it ridiculous.

Speilburg says,“In this day, people don't have exposure, they don't have interaction with horses,” he said. “I hope this movie makes people appreciate the innate and natural intelligence of horses. And I also hope this movie brings an awareness to the plight of horses both after World War I and the plight today in a very sad turn of events in which the slaughtering of horses is being permitted for food as a renewed export industry, which makes us all very sad.”

Did any of you see it? What did you think?
.

We sheltered beneith their salt crusted hides.
They trusted our voices, laid down and died.
Those that were left
became dust on the shore.
Lest we forget, the perils of war.