Mazzimaz

Here is another photo of Mazzaroti. I groomed him a little bit today while on my lunch break. He looked beautiful :)  And there he is not wanting the stand on that bum leg of his :( 

The Painted Pony!

So I was with my buddy the other day and we tried to chalk our hair. You wet the hair a little and use just regular pastel soft chalk and rub it on your hair and voila! Super temporary fun colored hair that washes out with just one wash! But sadly... we totally failed and it didn't work at all. So the great idea surfaced....Gypsy has white hair. It should work in hers. And so it did, oh yes it did. So purple dipped hair for my pony! Hahahahaha Everytime I looked at her it was so funny and cute. And no worries people. Non toxic, washable chalk. Totally harmless. This would work great for parades and stuff! So now we want to chalk both our horses with red and green for Christmas and go caroling with them! We could put little santa hats on them and jingle bells on their tack! :D  So here's my pretty purple pony.

And here Gypsy is being friends with Jett- My friend's gelding. He is about 4 or 5 years old now, and now boards at my house, so Gypsy has a buddy now. She is so much happier now! Jett has lived that past few years out in a pasture fairly untouched, so he is settling into living the stable life. He is finally able to be turned out all day on pasture with Gypsy now. Yay.

Here is a full body of Jett. My friend and I always joke that he is not the prettiest thing in the world, conformation-wise. But hes not so terrible either :) He's pretty cute. He isn't broke, but that is the goal for while Jett is boarded at my barn. We will use the arena to good use! Speaking of which....

 Here he is while we worked with him the other day! This is only the second time ever being sat on. The first time was probably over a year ago, and not worked at all after. So its practically his first time saddled and sat on. He was excellent! We lunged with saddle, flapped and pulled on saddle, stood in stirrups, the whole she-bang. He was a champ. So I sat on him and my buddy led us around and he was great. Success :)
More training for him on the way! I rather enjoy risking my life  by being the first rider on horses. Haha

Skinny success!

I had to share my excitement!  I have had much too big legs my whole life to comfortably wear boots, and when I started riding english I ran into the tall riding boots problem. I had to search and search for my tall boots, and ended up having to order them special online. Boo. Sad day. But! I have recently lost about 35 pounds. And I was in an awesome tack store with my friend just the other day and we saw a big sale on english tall boots. Hmm, I thought to myself, I wonder. So I found what might be my size and tried them on. OMG!!! They fit! They fit over my legs! Zipped up all the way! This seems silly and stupid to people, yes. But in my world, thats a big flippin deal! I have NEVER been able to just go to a store and find a normal pair of boots that just fit. HUZZAH! If thats not motivation to keep losing weight, nothing is. It was very exciting :D

Mazzi

This is Mazzarati. He is a National Show Horse, I believe. He broke his coffin bone. Its been months and months of stall rest, which he deals with suprisingly well. But not getting much better. I think he will unfortunatly be put down at some point in the near-ish future. Which makes me sad...I have grown to like him a lot. He is not super well liked by some of the others-he can have an attitude and doesn't always like to be good for vet work. But I don't blame him much, what with all the stall rest. I think he is pretty sweet and he is so gorgeous. I also hear he is actually pretty highly trained in dressage. I will have to try and get a better picture of him soon. He gets to be outside now for short periods of time in a small paddock, so I will take a picture of him there next time. I will be very sad when he goes.

New horse!

New horse at the barn I work at! She is a cutey, sort of lovey too! I was cleaning her stall and she was nosing at me the whole time. Follwed my every step for a while before she got bored of me. Thoroughbred I'm pretty sure. Not sure what her name is, I'll have to ask next time I see the owner.

Chubby pony! I think it is safe to say Gypsy is no longer looking too thin. Good ol grain. And look! The wild pony is in a -GASP- stall! And now looking at this picture...her tail looks sad and wimpy. I promise it doesn't really look like that.
And now I sit here watching HRTV...instead of doing something productive like weed-wacking in the pasture or along the fenceline. And there is a very strange trainer on the program lunging horses and trotting around with them. They look like arabians. Except for this one very furry pony. And one horse is cantering around the roundpen and being crazy...and rearing at him. Okay. Pet peeve time. People who decide they are magically now "natural horsemanship" people who parade around and poke at horses with their big long sticks and magical wands. And either one of two things happen. One. The horse is horribly 'trained' and bites and strikes and rears and has no respect whatsoever. Or two. Sure, my horse is my best friend and will follow me around and jump over barrels and play some games. But does this make a good horse that you can show or do something with? Does this horse move under saddle nicely and put together? Could it go in a show and stand a chance? Well no...but my horse is my friend! And look at us rub this stick all over its face! YAY!
If you can't tell, I don't much like 'natural horsemanship'. Don't even get me started on parelli. Who is now currently on tv. I mean, the fundamental ideas seem good to me. But so many people just watch a tv show and buy an overpriced rope halter, then decide they are trainers and go out and do stupid, stupid things. And have horses that will run you over and disrespect you in every way- "because you can't get in his space!" But perhaps my biggest beef with it is how commercialized it has become. I'm sorry, but no halter is worth $200. And a string on a stick? Yes, good tools, but they jack up the prices so high, because you can ONLY have this magical connection with your horse with them! Don't forget to buy my $300 set of dvds!
......Okay. I am done I think. OH! A cute little mule. On tv now. But yeah. End rant.
/rant. 

Boarders, anyone?

Well wow look at this, a new blog format? Seems fancy enough..
I'm in such a good mood! I had such a good day at the clinic- got stuff done, nothing bad happened, ha. And.... my buckets came in the mail!
I have been slowly but surely trying to improve and fix up the barn so that I can begin boarding just a couple horses at a time. I figure...we used to board years ago and it worked great, and it is a shame to have 9 stalls out there with only Gypsy in it. I miss running the barn, and it is something I really enjoy and take pride in. So I am in the process. It is taking a lot of little things here and there, some cheap or free fixes, some not so much. But I think I am just about to the point where I am comfortable getting a horse or two boarded, and the rest of the fixes can happen with a horse here. And then the board money would help fund all the changes! The biggest of which would be tilling up the arena floor and adding a whole bunch more footing. It has gotten sort of lousy over the years. But now I have feed/water buckets in all stalls, the pasture has been cross-fenced with water lines going to them, hay storage areas made...cleaned up in general. It isn't anything outrageous and fancy, but it is a homey little private barn for somebody to keep their happy little pony :) And hey, a covered arena at all makes people happy, even if we don't have a wash rack or individual fancy tack lockers. People seemed to like my barn years ago, they should now I suppose. So I am excited! Now I just need to do some finishing touches and things like evening out the ground nicely under stall mats...but then I might venture an ad for the barn, see what happens! Gypsy would be happy to have some company in this big old empty barn!

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.