New Bridle Happiness

Feast your eyes on my beautiful new bridle! I finally broke down and bought my own bridle, no more long-term borrowing! Little bit different style with the flash and crank noseband. Neither of which Gypsy really needs, so I fasten them just snug enough that they aren't flopping all over. I have ridden her in the bridle once so far, and she actually was really good for the ride. So yay :) It is pretty and leather and soft and nice. I like.

Geeky Time!

Feeling rather lame today, I got bored and decided to revisit my old notes from college classes on ideal equine conformation. And lets see how Gypsy measures up! If you ever wanted the little nit-picky points of conformation, read on!

In this pic I was measuring Gypsy's proportional back length. You don't want an overly long back or it will be weak and hard to collect, but a very short back will create a choppy stride. The ideal back length is about 65-75% of the horse's overall body length. How is my horse? Well she sits at 55%. Rather short! I also noted on this picture, but forgot to draw it, that my horse would be considered slightly uphill built! Yay! The root of her neck (where the neck originates from) is above the point of buttocks! Just barely, but it is.

This second pic I was seeing what her proportional hip length is. A big giant hip is good, everyone can agree with that I think. But how can you really check?! Well this is how :) Measure from the point of hip to point of buttock, versus their length of body. Ideal is the hip to be 1/3 of the body length. Quarter horses, as you could probably guess, are often more though. I'm rather proud of my Arabian (not so known for big ol hips) sitting pretty at 0.3. Yay! A big hip is what drives the horse forward and gives power! Also on this picture I attempted to measure the angle of her shoulder, only to find that Paint program is way too pathetic. It doesn't have a way to measure angles. But Ideal is 90 degrees, and I'd say that looks pretty close. A nice big angle on the shoulder gives a good long stride. Oh and now I see I also checked on her pastern angles too...which should be 45 degrees in a perfect world. I think Gypsy's look pretty dang close to that too.

Oh and theres other angles and things to look at, the breast box is important for straightness of front legs and all that jazz, but I don't have a good front-on shot of Gypsy.But I did get bored enough to tape some of Gypsy's skeleton on her. HAHA.

She is so tolerant sometimes. Here you can see the angle of her shoulder again, and also her hip length sort of. It would have taken way too much tape and just looked like a jumble of blue craziness if I included all the ribs and such...so they aren't there. Those aren't important anyways right?!

So pretty much...I really enjoyed that class in school, can you tell? It is nice to know what I'm looking at and looking for when I look at horses. So that when I see a horse and think 'wow that thing is ugly', I can tell you exactly WHY!

Clean Pony Time

Look! Gypsy is clean! Yes, you didn't think it could happen, but ha! I show you! This is right after a bath, and right before a roll...an evil attempt to thwart my clean plans. She was a suprisingly good girl for her bath. Yay. Then I rode her a day or so ago, and she was marvelous and good. Until I gave her a tiny challenge, and then I about came off her slippery little back. Trot and work in the front yard? Easy, cool. Walk down the road. Piece of cake. Walk in the little grassy patch next to the road. HOLY COW THATS SUICIDE!

Seriously, horse? Because we don't walk in other patches of grass? Apparently not. But we walk over there, and the psycho switch got flipped, she got incredibly barn sour and anxious. Like...feeling like a coiled wire about to explode and she prances in place. Okay, lets make this a wonderful training moment, I thought! We will go to the road where she wants to be, and work really hard there. Tight circles, trotting, tons of side passing and not fun things. Then we will walk to the grass and stand there and rest, right where she didn't want to be. I have seen and read of this method lots of times. Sounds pretty legit, right? I repeted this a few times, work on the road, rest in the grass. But the resting wasn't really resting. It was still prancing in place and be anxious and stupid. No matter how many times I worked on the road and rested in the grass. Then I was losing my temper. So I gave up. What wonderful horsemanship on my part. But it really felt like it was going nowhere. Gypsy did not mark her approval on that method. Now to think of a new one. Dismount and lead her around the grass patch, let her eat some, relax? Then get back on and ride home? Maybe that will be the next attempt. It has worked in the past. BOO to my lunatic horse.
But at least in this picture, she is beautiful and brushed and groomed and lovely. Crabby old lady.




And here is a very random picture of a baby duck I wanted to buy and take home, and let it live in a kiddy pool in my barn. Yes.