Cob Jockey

On Saturday I went over to Lisa's to see Disco and help bathe some ponies before the Welsh Central Regional this weekend.

Athanasia (right) and Anna Rose (left) getting a spa day

If I wasn't already in love with cute little baby Disco, cute adolescent Disco totally sealed the deal. In all, I was there for three baby baths, so I got a good feel for how they're all doing with haltering in the field, leading out of the field, standing still for extended periods of time while on a lead, getting a bath, and getting their manes tamed.

Look at that neck, man!

With Disco, I was able to walk straight up to him in the herd, halter him, and lead him out almost as easily as if he was an adult horse. Lisa's helper Hayley joked (paraphrased) "Oh yeah he was so easy, I think he was born halter broken." Every once in a while I had to put a little pressure on the line and wait for him to take a step to release it, but not often.

Baby Anna Rose looking like a supermodel with her hair and makeup crew, lol

Then for bath time, I thought I was prepared from the videos for how much this horse loves water, but seeing it in person is a whole other thing. I should've named him Castleberrys Seahorse. As soon as the hose came out, he was like "Pick me, pick me!"

"Yessssssssssss" - Disco, probably

He stood like a rock as long as he was getting bathed, unless he was moving around to put his face in the stream, lol. Hayley even "pressure washed" his hind socks with the stream nozzle and he didn't care.

Gimme gimme gimme

Once his bath was over and he was standing around waiting on mom's bath to get finished, he was a little less inclined to stand still, but he wasn't rude about it. We were just approaching the limit of his baby horse patience.

After his bath, he got his mane banded so it will hopefully all lay to one side at the show. And I gotta be honest, he already has quite the neck on him for being not quite six months old. He at least has a shot at pinning very well at the show this weekend - not much baby horse awkward going on here yet.

Just chilling on a loose lead. Hopefully he's this good for braiding!

With the bands in, you can start to get a glimmer of what it'll look like braided in a few years.

The first weanings start to happen this week, so it really could be any time that he comes home, and I am definitely feeling a lot better about bringing him home to the co-op knowing he's already this much of a solid citizen.

Gimme that water!

Well, we know he's not afraid of water! 😂 Stay cool out there everyone, and have a good weekend!

Aeres has had a big couple of days even though I haven't ridden her yet. On Monday, I gave her a thorough grooming and started to pull her mane. Not only did the length need to go, but she's a very badly faded black with orange highlights, which also needed to go.

On Tuesday we finished up mane pulling and also banged her tail. I sent Mary this (terrible) photo and she was like "...we gotta do something about that orange forelock. Like, yesterday."

 

On Wednesday, she got her teeth done. My vet was coming out anyway, and I'd noticed her dropping lots of feed while eating, so I wanted that done before I put a bit in her mouth. "Nothing crazy" going on in there according to my vet, although I think her definition of crazy is crazier than mine, lol. She definitely needed done, so that was money well spent.

Then Wednesday night Mary came out armed with a box of $2.99 hair dye, Vaseline, saran wrap and hair ties.

Turns out she'd never done this before, but she totally acted like she had. First, she put Vaseline on Aeres's star to protect it from the hair dye, then she applied the dye, and then she thought she might wrap the forelock in Saran wrap but Aeres was not having that.

While we waited, we used whitening shampoo on her white socks (OMG. I am reminded that Connor's socks aren't and never will be pure white, sob. Aeres's socks got blindingly white) and threw her on the lunge line in a halter to watch her move for the first time.

Mary's face watching her go was like: 

She has a really nice free swinging walk, overtracks huge at the walk and the trot, and an athletic canter. Objectively speaking, she moves better than Connor does even if she's not as pretty as he is standing still. But what really got us excited was lunging her over a tiny crossrail, which she'd clearly never done before. The first couple times, she just trotted big over it like "WTF do I do with my feet??"

The next time around, I asked her to jump from a canter, and she jumped it really well but got a not-perfect distance, then the time after that, she nailed it. Not only could you watch her think through the question in real time and make adjustments each go around until it was perfect, she was bold to the fence and chill about it, with happy thinking ears.

This immediately got the wheels turning in my head.

I suspect this horse may have gotten a bit burnt out on Dressage at her previous home for a couple of (entirely theoretical, since I haven't been on her yet) reasons. If that ends up being the case, and if she ends up enjoying jumping and showing talent for it, and if I have my best jumping wingman on board to help me with her all the time, I'm not going to say no. Heck, all I've got is a jump saddle at home anyway since my Dressage saddle is with Connor, so may as well just roll with it.

I do know for a fact she is the undisputed side eye champion of the world 😂

Well I did it - I finally signed up for LASIK! 

Not the worst prescription, but not the best

I'm doing it Friday which means I'm going to blow up my three day weekend, but it also means I get an extra day to recover before I have to stare at a computer screen at work.  Having LASIK is going to require an extended period of time away from the barn and CrossFit, sigh.  If I had planned better I would've done it over the winter, but hey, here we are.

I've stocked up on special sweatbands that divert sweat away from your eyes, goggles that keep dust out, sun hats (no sunscreen on my face for a while which is terrifying to me since I wear it year round!) and sun glasses.  I'm going to take it easy and follow orders to a T, but I'm also going to do whatever it takes and buy whatever it takes and look as ridiculous as necessary to get back out there as soon as possible.

(Related: does anyone know what the definition of 'light exercise' is because running and CrossFit have totally blown up my level of effort calibration...)

So knowing I'm going to be out of commission next weekend, I used this past weekend to get stuff done around the house and horse:

Breaking sod to create this:

which got mulched the next day

Mulching.  So much mulching.  Also some new plantings ($1 clearance section hostas FTW) and some transplanting stuff that wasn't thriving.

Things that are totally thriving: $5 clearance section roses from three years ago

I also gave Connor a bath after a great ride on Sunday.  I've been giving him one weekly bath with soap so far this year and I'm so happy with his coat condition.  I've always been a soap minimalist, but I found one that's not super harsh, and weekly baths are really helping keep his mane/tail/feathers staining at bay:

Not super thrilled about it, but not enough of a bad boy to make his feelings known

And finally, I scraped the paint off five out of six transom windows this weekend too.  That concludes a project four years in the making that took several weekends in the end, but I couldn't be happier with the results.  #6 is intentionally not getting scraped yet pending a couple of other projects.

Gorgeous wavy leaded glass with seed-like imperfections. No one has seen them in decades before now. <3

Anyone else have a productive weekend?  Anyone have any thoughts on LASIK and horses and/or exercise?

It was 65 and sunny on Sunday (yeah, four days after hitting record lows below zero - I can't figure it out either) so I took advantage and gave Connor his first spa day in months.

I've modified my tail routine since I last posted about it, and I'm really happy with it - I wish I'd taken a before picture, it was so gross!  I don't bag his tail, and I also don't wash it at all over the winter.  I was convinced it was going to be stained yellow but it came out pretty dang white:


I'll write up my new routine in a post sometime.  I also gave him his third and final clip.  I tried wet clipping for the first time, and it was fine, but I don't think I'll do it again.

It did turn out really, really nice though.  Especially for that being the third clip on these two sets of blades.

Bye bye disgusting guard hairs

He was clean, but even still gunk kept getting all over my clipper blades and the wet hair was harder to brush off him and me than dry hair is.  Some people swear by wet clipping, but I don't think I am one of those people - at least not for the third clip when the hair is super short.

I took a couple glamour shots just to commemorate the fact that he was clean for approximately two hours.

Just...sigh.  I wish it was like this all the time.

I also pulled his mane.  I am deadly serious about my "no mane pulling below 50 degrees" rule.  And equally as serious about pulling it the second it's warm enough.

Tryin' ta eat here, lady.

Then he got put out without a blanket for the first time since October.  YES it killed me to watch him roll immediately, but he was so happy.  Tails will wash, happy horses are more important.

Thursday was my first chance to get out to the barn, and I had thought I would definitely ride that day - first day seeing my horse in almost two weeks.

BUT.

I'm not usually one to take photos from the air, but this thunderstorm/heavy rainstorm was super cool.

I was more jet lagged than I've ever been in my life.  I've done US to Europe and back a couple times, and I've done short trips to California before, but I've never gotten fully acclimated to Pacific time and then came back East.  Woof.  I actually took a nap over my lunch break because I felt like I couldn't go on #perksofworkingfromhome

This dog was pretty stoked about a midday nap.

So instead of trying to ride in that state, I went out to feed Connor cookies and got a bunch of stuff sorted at the barn that needed doing: cleaned out my tack locker, gave the horse a bath, brought out his SmartPaks, re-filled his fly spray, and performed some surgery on his grazing muzzle halter (more on that later).

Not the most flattering angle, but man he looks good right now.

It's good to be back!

Rocky agrees

With the clinic coming up on Tuesday, I spent the entire day Saturday at the barn, first for a lesson and then to get a few odds and ends taken care of:

1. Finished mounting the panel the fan is hanging on in the below photo.  It's been partially complete since I put it up in October.


Not shown: added a foam bumper to the upper left corner of the chair rack so it wouldn't scratch the wall anymore.  Not noticeable: did some massive rearranging on the main wall.  I had some refining to do on my setup after living with it for six months.


2. Installed pipe insulation on the bottom of the swinging door to keep shavings out of the tack room.  Seriously could not have been cheaper.  $5 for two 6 ft sections of this stuff from Lowes, and it comes pre-sliced with adhesive on both sides.

Socks: white.  Feathers. :(

I started my new job on Monday and haven't had time to respond to comments this week.  Apologies!  Hopefully things settle down soon!


I have never had a sweat scraper of my own that I know of.  Seems ridiculous, doesn't it?  At shows I borrowed a teammates, and at home, there's always one hanging in the wash rack.  But I knew I should have one of my own, so I finally went shopping.

Normally I use it with my right hand, hand on top of the handle, but taking the photo messed with my normal routine.