We proceeded to… well, I was on her back, and she was in the arena, and we were going in a direction that was, well, a direction. At one point, she was cantering on four separate tracks and doing her best giraffe imitation. It was impressive. Less try-that-at-home impressive and more what-not-to-do impressive, but still, impressive.

And because I worry when my horse goes around traveling with her body in multiple zip codes, I immediately started trying to figure out the issue. Rider is riding like a monkey with ADD, true, and Rider’s body… let’s not discuss Rider’s body. Horse was mentally looking for every excuse to check out, true, but there didn’t seem to be a physical reason for it. Well, besides the excusable response to poorly-applied aids. But the aids were not THAT poor. Not multiple-zip-codes poor.

It nagged at me all night—Ro doesn’t do stuff like this without a reason, and being distracted is not sufficient reason. The voices in my head kept coming back to something physical. Since I was at the barn this morning, I repalpated her back and lunged her quickly to see how she was moving. She was fine.

Unhappily, I told my doubts to stuff it. Apparently, it was all crappy riding. I was glad she wasn’t in pain—of course I was—but I hate the thought that I was riding that badly.

This evening, I was back at the barn and brought her in clean her up a little—trim her bridlepath and such. Then I turned her back out. To get to her turnout paddock, we have to go through the gelding paddock. This is fine; we’re all used to it.

One of the geldings was hanging around by the gate to the mare paddock, but he retreated a polite distance. I unhooked the gate and started to lead Ro in, but she balked. I looked back to see why—surely, standing still for two whole seconds hadn’t turned her feet to lead?

She took advantage of those two seconds to spread her legs and proposition the gelding. Who looked very confused.

I tossed her in the mare paddock and even though her new BFF had come down to the gate, Ro was miserable. Girl just can’t get a break—no one ever lets her have a good time.

So—coming into raging heat last night. This explains a lot.

But she got today off from riding (planned in advance, the timing was just good) and hopefully in the next couple days she’ll stop thinking with her ovaries and we can go back to our regularly scheduled program. I think this was still an improvement over her spring transitional heats, but clearly she and I need to sit down and sort out our schedules so that only one of us is having an off day at a time.

And my instinct was right after all. There was a physical issue.** I should trust myself more.

** Ro would like everyone to know that there wouldn’t be a physical issue if the two legged creatures would stop interfering and just let her get on with finding a suitable mate, TYVM.

The million dollar question was how much TB?

I’ve done rough estimates before and ended up around 16-18%. I decided to do a little more thorough research, and this time ended up around 21%. I doubt I could find another 4% in there—I was going pretty far back into the pedigree already.

However, going pretty far back into the pedigree brings up some interesting TB bloodlines.

For example, the direct sire line goes back to Chimney Sweep, whose direct sire line continues back to Whalebone/Waxy/Pot8os/Eclipse—and so back to the Darley Arabian. Also thanks to Eclipse: Regulus and the Goldolphin Arabian. Also through Waxy: Cade (by the Goldolphin Arabian out of Roxana). Also through Pot8os, Oroonoko and so back to the Byerley Turk.

From Whalebone’s dam line, Matchem (by Cade). And Highflyer/Herod, thus Flying Childers. Also Snap (so Flying Childers again and also Bay Bolton).

Other TBs via Chimney Sweep, in one way or another: Woodpecker, Australian/West Australian/Melbourne. Lexington/Boston/Timoleon/Sir Archy. Galopin (The Flying Dutchman, Bay Middleton, Blacklock). Voltigeur. Hanover (Hindoo, Glencoe, Birdcatcher). King Tom (Pochahontas).

She also has Three Bars in her, who traces back to a lot of the names already mentioned and also Don John, Faugh-a-Ballagh, Stockwell, St Simon, Rataplan, Isonomy, Bend Or, and Sir Peter Teazle.

I’m not being very systematic here—this is just skimming through the bloodlines of the two most obvious TBs and picking out names I recognize and that are ringing bells as being influential in some way.

Obviously I’m more familiar with sires than dams.

I think that once you get back to the 17/1800s, the pedigrees tend to become pretty standard, with the same names showing up all the time. Still—those are some impressive names.

And it amuses me no end that Pot8os is in her pedigree as much as he is. I love that horse. Actually, I just love his name. Always have.

Pot00000000!

Since there was no lightening, I tacked Ro up and we rode anyway.

You can guess how happy she was about that.

Coming out of the barn, she spooked at some steps she has walked past dozens of times, doing the snorty ‘Make one move, buster, and I’ll kick your head in” thing.

You go, girl, Make those wooden stairs shake right down to their cold, concrete foundation hearts!

After a discussion about standing at the mounting block (yes, we can), I started off with our normal walk warmup. Usually, even when she comes out bouncing off the walls, she settles after ten minutes of walking or so. And I use those ten minutes to shake off work and adjust mentally to riding. Also physically, as I shift from slouching slob to less slouching hunter rider to, eventually, something approximating a dressage rider. Or so I like to tell myself.

Ro never did settle at the walk, so I decided to just go to work and settle her through work.

And work.

And work.

About the time she came to the party, someone shut a car door and she thought about spooking.

So more work.

And work.

She came to the party again, so I figured we would finish up with some canter work now that she was doing less Pepe Le Pew trot and more… wait, is that really the only cartoon character I can think of? A skunk? What a sad state of affairs for me. Anyway, she was moving more like a real horse and had let go of a lot of tension and was staying fairly straight most of the time. If we wait until everything is absolutely perfect to canter, we’ll never canter. But cantering from a Pepe Le Pew trot gets me a pogo stick canter. And while pogo sticks are fun and all, they aren’t that fun.

Anyway. So there we were, trotting a circle while I debated how to ask her for the canter. Our transitions suck, so we need a plan.

Finally, I settled on leg yielding in to the quarter line, canter, 15 meter circle.

I thought I ought to test the leg yield first, and for that I like an exercise introduced to me earlier this year—if you are going left, for example, leg yield from the corner to X, circle right 10 meters, ending back at X, circle left ten meters, ending back at X, then leg yield back to the rail. Basically, you’re just adding a figure eight to a standard leg yield in to X/back to the rail exercise, but it tells you a lot about your horse’s straightness and whether they are really on your aids (if they aren’t, the circles are uggggly—ask me how I know).

Ro started blowing through the bend in the circles, as she does, so I decided to forget the canter and focus on fixing that. She’s so out of shape right now that I knew we couldn’t do both.

After a couple run throughs we were seeing some improvement—at least she wasn’t free-wheeling around the circles like a skateboarder on crack.

Then the right leg yield/circle were ok, but not great, the left circle was almost there, and the left leg yield—spot on. Straight, even, and powerful. One of our best leg yields, ever.

So we did it again, with the same result.

I hopped off immediately and called it a day. She gave me a look to see if this was for real or if I was hopping back on (I do, sometimes), then rubbed her muddy green foamy mouth all over my shoulder.

Note to self: no more molasses-based treats while tacking up.

But other than that, a good end to the ride.

The couple pictures I took of her at the new barn made her look like a mutant, so here’s one from the show we went to this spring:

You should see the close-up of my face: I look like I’m headed to face a firing squad or something. Ah, show nerves. They are awesome.

But Ro is cute enough for both of us.

And here is Dexter, after getting a bath today:

Normally he has his head shoved in the round bale, but he was busy checking to see if any of the other horses had left grain by their buckets (fat chance, but he’s an optimist). By the time I left the barn, he was back to inhaling hay like there is no tomorrow.

Sunday morning, I’m at home playing Minesweeper planning out all the things I need to get done when I get a text: Dexter is having a ball!

That’s great, I think. Then I wonder… Ro went to her new barn on Saturday, and Dexter is turned out alone in his paddock until we get him rotated back in with the barn owner’s horses. He’s a social little critter. I have a hard time seeing him tearing it up in his paddock all alone. So maybe someone put him out on the grass with the barn manager’s horses? That would be kind of cool.

I text back to find out.

A minute later, my phone rings. He’s out with the barn manager’s horses. They thought I put him out there, although they did think it was kind of weird that I’ve leave him out there all night.

Ah. I see.

Dexter is an escape artist.

There’s a weak spot in his paddock fence, and while he hasn’t challenged it before, apparently being turned out alone while his buddies were out on the grass was too much for him. I’m assuming he wiggled out through the weak spot.

They put him back in his paddock and tossed him some hay to keep him entertained, since he was galloping all over and distracting lesson people. When I went out later in the morning, he looked very pleased with himself. He’s a little scraped up, and his fly mask was in another horse’s paddock for reasons I don’t even want to know, but he had obviously been having fun and felt it was horribly unfair that he’d been tossed back in solitary.

He was going back into the group turnout last night, so hopefully that will keep him entertained enough not to try escaping again.

I should have known from the first time he went out in the group turnout, when the mares put him in his place and he retreated to a back corner… but was obviously plotting his next moves and not wallowing in remorse for overstepping the boundaries.

He’s cute. With a pony brain.

Lord help me. I’m going to need it.

The Earth is not the center of the universe. The Earth isn’t even flat!

And ponying Dexter (Aiden’s name was changed, for those not following along) off Ro? Good idea in theory. The sort of good idea that should have stayed a theory, probably.

After all, Ro is the queen of protecting her space, which appears to encompass a mile-wide bubble around her.

And Dexter is short and walks half as fast as she does.

Plus, he’s the herd boss.

No, really, he is.

Ro, for all her posturing, sucks at being in charge. She never follows through on threats and, consequently, ends up in the bottom of whatever group she’s in. She was like this with her brother, she is like this with Dexter. Heck, she even let a goat boss her around.

It only took a couple turnout sessions for Dexter to inform Ro that she was not the boss of him, which he did mainly by ignoring her nasty mare face and eating whatever hay pile he darn well wanted to eat, thank you very much. He doesn’t mind if she shares it, but he’s not going to go find another hay pile just because she says so.

So, as you might expect, attempting to pony Dexter from Ro meant that 1) Ro tried to speed off, while Dexter lagged behind; 2) Ro made nasty mare face and threatened to kick if he got too close; and 3) if Dexter so much as popped an eyebrow at her (so to speak), Ro tried to take off backwards and get away form the herd boss.

So… that went well. Not.

It ended up being a good lesson in “Ro will tolerate other horses in her bubble,” but most of that was done on the ground, not from the saddle. Oh well.

I think with more time, we could get the ponying thing worked out. And I probably will keep working on it a little bit this week, more for Ro’s benefit than Dexter’s. Although I suspect Ro would object to the word “benefit” there. Oh well.

It turned out she broke all her toes on that foot (likely she was bitten by a dog or caught in a trap), but I can only keep her until she is healed up. I’m at my limit for cats per my lease. I’m trying to find her a home (hint, hint, Houston people) but so far no takers. But she purrs non-stop, practically jumps in my arms to get attention, and basically just loves her life right now. She didn’t love her splint so much, so she took it off (and looked rather proud of herself, too), but the vet was not concerned about that as long as she stays confined for another couple weeks.

Meanwhile, Mica, the kitten I picked up in October, was suddenly becoming super sweet. I was suspicious of that, but not suspicious enough, and sure enough—she came in heat.

Let’s just say I will never procrastinate on getting a cat spayed. Ever. Again.

And she IS spayed now. I took her to a spay/neuter clinic. When I went to pick her up, the technician gave me the hairy eyeball and said—in a very disapproving tone—“The next time you bring in a feral cat…”

Feral? Ok, granted, I call her the demon child—but feral?!

I guess she is channeling Pookie and will be one of those cats that is sweet and friendly(ish) to me but tries to disembowel everyone else.

The good news is that she seems to be staying a little sweeter and friendlier since being in heat and getting spayed. I’m not sure why, but I’m not going to argue with it.

And in the middle of all this, Ro got sick, too—went off her appetite and started acting lethargic and a little colicky. It took about two weeks for her to completely recover, but she is back to normal now.

As she proved yesterday. I picked up a load of hay and turned Aiden out on the grass to graze while I unloaded. Some other horses were already out, so I couldn’t put Ro out as well (Aiden gets along with everyone. Ro… not so much). She spent the next several hours hollering at me, in case I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to turn her out. So—definitely feeling better.

But my hay stall is clean and organized (and full of hay!) and I got a few other things organized a bit at the barn, so it was a productive afternoon anyway.

And Aiden, meanwhile, is doing just fine. I am going to rename him, because Aiden just doesn’t really suit him. Current front-runners (suggested by other people, since I pick out horrible names) are Dexter or Rubicon/Reuben. I’m waiting to see if either of these stick.

But with all that going on, you can see why I haven’t posted much. It’s been exhausting. Hopefully things are settling down now, though, and we’ll get back to something approaching normal.

Ro moves to a new barn at the end of the month, so that we’ll have a real dressage arena to work in. I’m very excited about that.

I think everyone finds a way to make their life easier. Mine was to stick the haynet in a bucket:

Please excuse the colors in the images, by the way. My hay does not actually resemble bleached straw, but it was night and the barn lighting + flash conspired against me.

The bucket works well enough for occasional hay stuffing—at least I can get it half full before I have to go back to trying to hold the net open and stuff hay into it at the same time. But still—there is stuffing. And swearing. And a general dislike of haynets. Or filling haynets, rather.

So when I had an opportunity to do a product review for Schneiders Saddlery, including the chance to list out horse tack that I thought would be interesting to my readers, I jumped on the Stable Hand.

I’d seen it advertised and I was curious about it, but I was never curious enough to actually buy it. After all, I had my bucket sitting right in my hay room. It worked well enough, and lord knows Ro can think up plenty of other things for me to spend my money on.

So Schneiders sent me the Stable Hand, and I took it out to the barn, opened it, stuck it in my haynet, and voila:

Total failure.

I stared at it for a moment, trying to understand. It’s a sheet of plastic. How complicated could it be? Surely I did not need to go find an instruction manual? I mean, I am a great tester at work because I can break anything, but this was a bit much, even for me.

After a moment, I decided it had just been so tightly rolled during shipping that it was maintaining its shape, and if I turned it around, it would unfold. Or something like that.

Now is the time to admit that I am not a handyman, by any stretch of the imagination. I manipulate words; I hire people to manipulate tools and stuff.

So, a little unrolling and re-rolling in the opposite direction later, I had the Stable Hand in the net, and it was sort of holding up the net:

At this point, I figured it would probably work at least as well as my bucket—I could get it half full and then would have to stuff the rest while holding the net open.

As it turned out, though, as I put hay into the net, I could pull the net up and the Stable Hand still kept it all open. So it was much easier to fill than my bucket method, and in no time at all I had a full net:

My next question was whether the edges of the plastic would catch on the holes when I pulled it out, but that turned out not to be an issue.

My net (ha ha—I kill myself) impression?

Assuming you get it set up right (I imagine I am the only one who could fail that part), it is easier to use than my bucket method. It is definitely easier to use than no method at all. You may have to play with the way it is rolled/how tightly it is rolled to get it to hold the net (or bag, or whatever else you are filling) open, but the plastic seems pretty flexible and like it will hold up to use over time. The edges are a little rough, but that wasn’t a problem with the hay net and wouldn’t be a problem with something like a feed bag. It might be an issue with a light-duty plastic bag, but probably not a heavy-duty bag (e.g. if you were using to help bag up trash or leaves or something).

Would I buy one? Should you buy one? If you stuff a lot of haynets, I would say yes. It really does what it says. I thought my bucket stuffing method worked ok, but the Stable Hand was definitely better than the bucket. If you don’t stuff a lot of haynets, then you might not get enough use out of it to justify the purchase price. However, I would definitely consider this as a gift for the horse person who has everything (or as a White Elephant/Chinese Gift Exchange gift)—I think it’s one of those things people may not be able to justify to themselves, but would happily use if they had their hands on it.

And you can get your hands on one for free!

While I would definitely use this Stable Hand if I kept it around, I never keep sample/review items—too much like receiving payment for the review.

And that means I am giving it away to one of you!

Simply leave a comment explaining why you need the Stable Hand. Make it funny. Make it poignant. Link to a picture of yourself covered in hay, holding an empty net—whatever floats your boat. The most convincing response will receive the Stable Hand. (Note: please make sure you put in a valid email when submitting your comment. I will need it to contact you if you are the winner—and it will be used ONLY for that purpose. It will not be passed on to Schneiders or any other third party.)

Comments can be left through Friday, April 13, and I will announce the winner on Sunday, April 15.

And into the ring! And we got scores!

(For those not following along, I’ve been trying to get Ro to a show for a year now. Every. Single. Show. something happened and we wouldn’t make it. I was ready to open a betting pool on what would happen to keep us from this show.)

I decided to go alone, without anyone along for support. I figured if my show nerves exploded (or imploded) my brain, it would be easier for me to deal with it on my own than to have company.

This meant Ro had to spend a little time on the trailer or tied to the trailer while I was running some errands (picking up my number, picking up scores, etc), but Ro handled that pretty well for a horse that has the patience of a gnat.

Our warmup wasn’t great. I just couldn’t really relax, and Ro picked up on that and wanted to be tense and hollow. I could get her connected for brief periods, but there was no consistency.

I decided to go into the first test and just focus on trying to be accurate and consistent. And by that I mean—if we were tense and hollow? We’d be the same degree of tense and hollow throughout the test.

I hadn’t been in the show ring in about three years, and I completely froze up last time. Ro has never been in the show ring. On the balance, I thought low expectations were an awesome idea.

Overall, that worked out ok for us. I was tense and Ro was consequently hollow, but the test itself was fairly accurate and I felt like I was riding the test, not just a series of unconnected movements. We ended up with a 60%, but I think the judge was a little generous on the numbers side. The comments were accurate and unsurprising—we need more connection, etc.

The second test I decided to focus on more relaxation and connection. It was kind of a weird test, because we were more relaxed, but I was also a little less mentally focused and the accuracy in the test suffered. I felt better about the test, because there were moments where we really started to come together and I could tell that we have the capability for putting together a very respectable test. But in terms of how things get scored, we did much worse. We ended up with a 57%—again, probably generous—and the judge’s comments were pretty much the same as the first test.

But I think the judge saw something of what I was feeling about those moments in the test, because our collective scores went up. Like I said, it was just kind of odd—I’ve just never had a test where the individual movement scores went down and the collective marks went up, but I think that swing is a pretty accurate reflection of how the test went for us.

Next show I can raise my expectations for us both. We had our show where I kind of skated through like a deer in the headlights, but as it turns out, there wasn’t nearly as much of a “ZOMG freeze!” tendency as I expected. So enough of that—next show we need to be relaxed and accurate, all in the same test.

All in all, it was a good day. I went into the ring with very simple plans, and I achieved my goals. Ro went along with everything (although she did have a bit of an “are you kidding me?” moment over the judge’s booth) and any issues she had were a reflection of my riding and not, say, a horse having problems with the show atmosphere.

We’ll go up from here (one hopes…), but as beginnings go? This is a good one.

Hardly any, really.

But we have a family get-together coming up, and I was told to bring pictures of Aiden.

“What pictures?” I asked. Meaning: Why are people who are related to me, and who theoretically know me best, acting like I would have pictures?

After a day or two, I realized I was being told in a round-about way to go take pictures. Which I could then bring.

I may be slow, but I get there eventually.

So I went and took pictures of Aiden. They look like this:

This is not a flattering picture. This is not flattering because 1) I can’t take pictures of anything that moves faster than a rock; 2) as far as I’m concerned, there are two types of lighting: off and on, and neither is relevant to picture-taking (cameras have flashes in case the lighting is off, right?); and 3) Aiden is not photogenic.

I mean, sure, that’s Aiden. But that’s not Aiden. That picture makes him look… dull.

Fine, I thought. I’ll go take video.

I put Aiden out in the arena. He went and splashed in some puddles, and then stared at me. Muddy arenas are boring? There is grass? I could be eating?

No problem. I went and got Ro and tossed her in the arena, too. Ro went Wheeee! and Aiden went Wheee—aaaait for me! I can’t run that faaaa… you’re not going to wait? I’ll just stand here until you come around again and… wheeeee—aaaait…!

This is Aiden, as he comes alive in video:

Although I’ll admit that one of my fellow boarders couldn’t believe that was Aiden. She’s more familiar with the da-dum-de-dum laid back, droopy lip Aiden. The one who does things like wander over and try to eat barrels:

If I had tried to actually take these pictures, instead of relying on video, they would have been even worse. I know it’s hard to believe, but I refer you to example #1 above, where I had a non-moving horse to work with and still couldn’t figure out what I was doing.

Ah, well. These are good enough for government work. Or, more relevant to my situation, for family gatherings.

If you’re interested, video snippets of Ro and Aiden playing in the arena:

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