Cob Jockey

Since we're halfway through the year (uh, OMG?) I wanted to do a mid-year review of my 2025 Disco goals, which were:

• Trail ride as much as possible. Especially early in the year when the trails are quiet.
• Attend some smaller schooling shows, either as a non-compete or showing Intro tests, whatever he tells me he's ready for.
• Attend one show with atmosphere - maybe NDPC just for the in-hand breed show day.
• Start taking regular lessons again - more on this soon.

1. Trail ride as much as possible. Especially early in the year when the trails are quiet.

About that...

Normally you can't see that hill through the foliage...

As I write this, it's still not open, not even for day riding, despite 7 weeks of heroic efforts from a large group of volunteers and state employees. The damage was substantial, and one old timer rightly pointed out that it's going to be a generation before it even looks remotely like it did before, we lost so many trees. 

Photo taken from elsewhere in the park as it was hitting camp. Absolute nightmare fuel.

So, needless to say, the trail ride we did in April has been our only trail ride so far. Any other trail riding spots are twice the distance or more from Brown County, so they're more challenging to fit into my schedule.

Y'all, if you horse camp BRING A NOAA WEATHER RADIO WITH YOU. It was the only way to receive notification about these warnings at our camp, and none of the campers had one. It should be as essential as a fire extinguisher and first aid kit in LQs and RVs.

2. Attend some smaller schooling shows, either as a non-compete or showing Intro tests, whatever he tells me he's ready for.

I'm tentatively eyeballing a September or October show for this, although I feel like his National Drive experience sort of counts for this too.

Photo used with permission from Mark Jump Photgraphy

3.  Attend one show with atmosphere - maybe NDPC just for the in-hand breed show day.

Obviously he didn't go to NDPC this year, and I'm not likely to check this one off the list in general. That said, he's already had a LOT of experience at shows with more atmosphere than I can find anywhere in the US (looking at you, Canadian Royal), so I don't feel too bad if we don't get to this one. 

He didn't go to NDPC, but I did, and I have a new Section D stallion obsession. OBSESSED with this guy. He even politely snuggled Lisa and I in the stall afterwards (with permission, of course!).

4.  Start taking regular lessons again - more on this soon.

Yes! Brynne has made the trip over more or less consistently once a month since January, and while I would give almost anything for more regular instruction than monthly, she has been a big help to me in setting a direction for his early education, and I am so grateful for her. When she comes, she's been giving lessons to most of my boarders also, so it's more than just me that has benefited from this goal. 

Look at me, doing a real live lesson with a real live trainer on the real live property. Feels surreal! Photo by Leah.

 All in all, I'm not feeling too shabby about our goal progress so far!

I've gotta catch up - we've had some adventures lately!

Day parking: EMPTY!!! It's a Christmas miracle!

When I saw both Leah and I had the Friday before Easter off work and the forecast said sunny and 80, I knew that was our day. And for once, which never happens with horses, everything went exactly to plan.

This was my first off-property ride on Disco, and I really did enjoy it. The worst thing he did all day was call and gawk at other horses, but he came right back to me each time I asked him to focus. It was more young horse stuff than young stallion stuff.

The ride started out interesting in a couple of ways. We chose to do a very small amount of B, which is a trail that goes up steeply, then down steeply about 3/4ths of a mile later. 

When I asked Disco to go uphill from ride camp, he initially said no - not sure if he didn't want to leave other horses or if the hill was intimidating, but he got over it quickly, and that was his only sticky moment all day.

The most interesting part of the ride happened about 20 minutes later as we were coming down off B with the intent to cross ride camp and go to A. We were coming down off the steep grade straight into our first water crossing, a rocky creek, and as soon as Disco was in the middle of it, we heard a commotion through the underbrush at a campsite maybe 30 feet from us. A horse tied at the hitching post was bucking like a bronco because its saddle had rolled over and was totally underneath it.

Disco started to get excited, so I made a quick executive decision to walk him straight up the middle of the creek away from the horse until the owner got that situation resolved. Not that I'm surprised, but let it be known: water is no issue with this horse.

From there, we had a pretty chill rest of the day. Disco both led and followed Pyro, and we both passed and got passed by other horses. Getting passed was a bit sticky, but in a "this is a good training situation" way, not in a dangerous way.

In the end, we covered 4.5 miles in a leisurely hour and twenty minutes, which was plenty for Disco's current fitness level. It really does not take much to wear him out, and he needs to build the baseline walking fitness before anything else.

We tackled a lot of firsts for us both on this ride:

• First trail ride
• First time being tied to my trailer
• First time in ride camp with other horses around
• First water crossing
• First time being passed and passing strange horses on trail
• First time wearing Scoot Boots (he and Connor are the same size, BLESS)

He's also, as they say, "can broke" now since he didn't object to Leah cracking a cold one midway through. I stayed two hands on the reins and sober for this one just in case, but will be joining her in the future!

The only casualty? My trailer screen! I should have predicted this, but Disco has always particularly enjoyed shoving his nose between bars of all kinds (stall bars, trailer window bars, he's not picky) and he busted the screen out immediately. He's not getting it back either, since he'll just keep doing it, so it's flymasks for him on the trailer from here on out.

RIP the screen on the drop down window

All in all, I was super happy with this trip, and I'm looking forward to doing as much of it as I can this summer with him.

Yesterday we got enough of a break from the heat to take the ponies back to Brown County, and this time, the sun was shining.

This time, I also remembered my (much too large $15 Facebook find) bug quarter sheet, and $15 4th of July sale saddle bags purchased a couple weeks ago.

After riding in his custom fitted Dressage saddle for the last six months, it's wildly apparent that he's not 100% comfortable in the Western saddle, in his own obvious-to-no-one-but-me Connor way, so I'm trail riding in the Patrick, hence the need for English saddle bags. I don't ride enough to buy them when they're their usual $65, but at $15, YOLO.

It does fit so well

This time we did more of A trail, plus J trail, which are both labeled as easy trails, and they are, but the terrain on the part of A I'd never been on before was definitely more challenging than the part I usually ride. In a fun way.

We had several water crossings in the beginning, which were great for the 3 year old with us to figure out, and much of the first mile or two was on limestone, both in and out of the creek bed. It's hard to see, but that's not mud under us in this section, this is a rock ramp.

It was a little slick going up but nothing that caused our barefoot ponies any trouble. If we had been going down, I might have thought twice about it.

Setting out

We were out for about two hours this time, which was plenty. There was far less mud this time, but more hills, and our 3 year old in particular was getting pretty tired by the end of it. Connor, for his part, was still trying to trot and canter any chance he got, which I did let him do a little bit on the hills. I'd feel him asking to move, coil him up and then let him go. He had a blast.

In fact, I'm starting to think he's truly enjoying himself out there. When I put him on the trailer both times yesterday he didn't nervous poop or call, and he ALWAYS does both. I know I'm enjoying it. After several years of competing and learning and pushing myself and him, it's so nice to just meet my horse where he is and enjoy him.

Rode him through camp with no hands on the way back

Two weekends ago, barnmate Leah and I took Connor and her baby Pyro out to Brown County for a quick trail ride with friends and fellow Castleberry Cob owners Nic and Haley. It was the last cool day before the weather was to turn sharply warmer and more humid.

Half Castleberry Cob half WB Castleberrys Rockette pictured on the left

Under threat of storms, we had to be quick. It ended up being a muddy one, about an hour long, which was more than enough for how hard the horses had to work in some spots.

As with a lot of things in life, Connor has earned the right to do whatever he wants in certain situations, such as out on the trail. I let him pick his own way down the trail, which typically meant the driest route he could find, which made everyone laugh.

Connor was making everyone laugh with his usual impatience on the trail. Once you get this pony going, he does not want to stop. Period. And if you stop, he will let you know he's unhappy. It's one of those weird personality quirks that I absolutely would have dealt with ten years ago if he was for sale, but he's not, so I didn't.

Related: even after nearly an hour on sloppy, tricky trails, he would still try to trot to go faster every so often and I'd have to growl at him. Dude is just cocky enough on trails now to be bolder than he needs to be, lol.

Once again, we were left wondering why we don't do this more often when it's just an easy half hour haul from the farm! We'll see how long before we go back out there. Hopefully not long!

I'm happy to report that our newest boarder, who has been a friend of mine for years before she started boarding here last month, is down for trail riding pretty much anytime. I live 35 minutes from a wonderful state park with lots of dedicated equestrian trails, but what with cell signal being non-existent there, the forest being incredibly dense, and ground bees and timber rattlers being regularly reported on the park's Facebook page, I never feel comfortable going alone.

4 out of our 6 horses were on the move Saturday morning!

In a lot of ways, new boarder feels like Future CobJockey. She has a 19 year old QH who is her absolute heart horse, and she bred her to get her next riding horse 3 years ago. That baby is now 2, and she's doing all the things with him I'll be doing with Disco shortly.

Girl can drink a beer while riding one and ponying another. Meanwhile I spilled White Claw all over myself just trying to ride one horse down the trail, lol.

On Saturday we took them out for baby horse's first trail ride, just a quick 90 minute loop in our local state park. We kept it positive and he was a really good boy, although he had Feelings about baby's first water crossing:

"NO."

He was a good boy though, really stopped to think it through and explore and make good choices, and pretty quickly she had him through it 3 or 4 times, back and forth. She apologized for holding us up, but I was like no no, in a few years you'll be returning this favor for me, lol

As is his MO, Connor did not appreciate standing still on the trail waiting on baby to cross the water. I know I should work on that but as I always say, he's not for sale. Disco, however, will be learning to park it quietly wherever I put him!

We kept it pretty short for baby horse's sake, but also for Connor, since this was his first long ride in his Western saddle and also my first time taking the Scoot Boots out on an actual trail (although I've done a lot of riding in them at home).

Pony's first time wearing a rear cinch, and as expected, he didn't even blink.

Happily, we had no equipment issues outside of temporarily losing a Scoot Boot once when I steered Connor into some mud that went UP TO HIS KNEES. Sorry buddy. And I didn't have my mud straps fastened correctly, which didn't help.

But the saddle performed great. Since it isn't the absolute perfect fit that my jump saddle is, I sprung for a Toklat T3 shimmable woolback pad, which Mary set up with the shims where I needed them. The sweat marks were nice and even when I pulled it off and he wasn't back sore at all.

Looking forward to doing this a lot more in the future!

Yes, I know what you're thinking. CobJockey, aren't you shopping for a Dressage saddle? Yes, yes I am. I have been for two years this month. Don't you not ride Western at all? No, no I do not. And that makes it all the more INSANELY ANNOYING that a nearly perfect Western saddle just fell into my lap with zero effort last weekend.

Ok you but a Dressage saddle plz

I've been thinking I wanted a Western saddle for a while now, both to trail ride in and to pony Disco off of starting in a few months. But I wasn't going to put any effort into that search, it would practically have to show up at my door for me to pull the trigger.

And it did. I saw a posting on Facebook for a barely used Western endurance trail saddle that looked just stupid wide compared to most of the fence-rail-narrow Western saddles I see around here.

I mean, might have been made for a draft horse idk

I thought, what the heck, it's 20 minutes from me, it's the right size for me, it looks like it might be wide enough for him, and I loved that it didn't have a horn but still had a place where I could wrap a pony rope. Connor will launch over a ditch for fun like one out of every ten times we cross one on the trail, and I am no fan of getting punched in the gut with a horn.

The seller agreed to meet me at the state park so I could try it with Connor, who, bless him, had to be like "not this again!" after I threw him on the trailer for the third time in three days on Sunday morning.

It was, well, not quite perfect, but as perfect as I deserve for putting zero effort into this saddle search.

Mary had expected it to be too wide from the photos, but it was bang on perfect up front. Even the angle of the panels was perfect.

Had to ask the sellers to bring a pad and girth, and also re-teach me how to girth it up. It's been like 15 years since I did up a western girth (er, cinch. I am Western stupid)

The only slight question mark is the length. It's a hair longer than I'd strictly prefer on him. But after consulting with a trail riding buddy, Kate, Mary and several other bloggers (it takes a community to soothe my anxious soul) I think we can work with it, especially given how little I plan to ride in it.

We rode around the day riding area, through a creek, and w/t/c up and down a steep, muddy hill and it was great. Then I put Connor straight back on the trailer and brought him home, for what had to be one of the weirdest mornings he's ever had, lol. Good pony. I was tempted to stay and do some trails, but after his lesson with GP trainer the day before and two hours on the trailer right after, he deserved a day off. Another time.

Seller's husband in the background (who also rides) was like "That is a well-built little horse you've got there!"

Now to buy a breastplate and a girth and a saddle pad and a whatever the strap on the other side of the saddle the girth attaches to is called and a saddlebag and...