Cob Jockey

Today we leave for Waterloo. And the packing, OMG, the packing.

Part of the reason I felt like it was necessary to do Waterloo was that I need to practice traveling for long and far away shows before Pony Cup. We haven't traveled away from home for a show since the last time I did Pony Cup in 2017, and we haven't shown five hours away from home or done a four day show trip since Fox River Valley in 2016.

 

Fox River Valley. Eventing this horse was such a f****** adventure, lol.

As a result, I've lulled myself into this false sense of security about things like packing and laundry. When you live 20 minutes from the show grounds, you can come home and wash your whites in between rides and it's not the end of the world if you forget your grain at the barn. When you're five hours away from home...yeah.

Like, who knew you needed to own more than one show shirt?

And more than one pair of white breeches.

And a cooler. (We've been married a decade and somehow have never owned a proper cooler?)

 

Filled with the proper horse show supplies, naturally

This is also the furthest I've ever hauled by myself, so the truck is got an oil change and a bumper-to-bumper inspection complete with photos of consumable parts from my favorite shop, and two new automotive fire extinguishers.

We're as ready as I'll ever be! Now, if only I felt this prepared about riding 2-2...

Connor and I took our first trip with the new trailer last weekend, to a lesson with NK and then to his breeder's for a couple days of fun.  We are both so in love with this trailer, it's completely changed the way I feel about hauling.


On paper, my old trailer with one pony in it was fine for my truck, a 2005 GMC Sierra Denali with a 6.0L V8 and every available option.  And I did haul with it for two years without feeling unsafe. I know there are others out there towing more trailer with less truck.


But I cannot overstate how much safer it is, how much easier to handle, and how much better for Connor it is that I now have 1,400 fewer pounds behind me.  If I was adequately trucked before, I'm overtrucked now, and guys, it is SO much safer.

It was a beautiful morning as I was leaving the farm on Friday, but also, I can practically see the back door of my trailer with non-towing mirrors now.

With the KB, I had to plan ahead for stoplights especially on the 55mph state highway we travel regularly, because I needed more time than the yellow light afforded me to stop gracefully enough not to jostle Connor.  I was very much reliant on the trailer's brakes to stop it, and Connor felt that.

With the Shadow, I can brake normally, (even loaded it feels like I'm just driving the truck without the trailer), and stop gently within a yellow light from 55mph, no problem for either me or the horse. 


The Shadow exerts a lot less tongue pressure on the truck (you can see how much less the truck squats with the Shadow in the photos above), is shorter, and is lighter, all of which make day to day towing easier, but also could be the difference between a wreck and avoiding a wreck if I ever find myself in a less-than-ideal towing situation.


Most importantly, Connor is the happiest in the trailer I've seen him in years.  He actually ate hay on every leg of our trip, something he never once did in the KB. 

Further proof he's happy: In the KB I had to unload him with a Dressage whip because he'd shoot backwards the second I opened a door.  When I open the Shadow's door, he stands there contentedly staring at me with a leg cocked, in no hurry to get off.

It's so shiny, I kept finding myself getting freaked out by the reflections off the nose during my first nighttime haul.

I'm not trying to call out anyone hauling a bigger trailer with a half ton like I was before.  It WAS adequate in normal driving conditions.  Getting a rig at all is expensive and hard, and getting the kind of truck to trailer ratio you get with a half ton/1H trailer either requires downsizing the trailer or buying a bigger truck - and trucks are so stupidly expensive!

But I hope everyone can get to a point where they're overtrucked when they haul someday.  It's hard to get a frame of reference for hauling when most of us ammies haven't gotten the chance to drive many different rigs, but now that I know how hauling this one feels, I think if I had the KB back I'd get a 3/4 ton. 

Any other haulers have a "heavens opened up and angels sang" revelation like this?

Say hello to Connor's new ride!

Husband says it looks like half a horse trailer.

There are going to be a lot of people out there that think I'm crazy for this, and I don't blame you one bit.  My new trailer is a 2017 Shadow Stablemate 1H slant with dressing room.  You did read that right: that's a one horse.


I've been looking at this trailer for over a year now, so this is definitely not a snap decision.  My justifications:

- I refuse to haul two horses with a half ton pickup.
- I don't want to own more than one horse at once, ever, unless one is totally retired.
- I couldn't use the KB's second stall for storage because it wasn't a stud divider.
- Connor is tiny.
- I want to simplify my life, and the amount of maintenance the things in my life require.
- Resale value is overrated (says the owner of the 1H slant and the 16" Dressage saddle)

Warmblood height, because what trailer isn't 7'6 these days?

Once I settled on a 1H, I started shopping.  There are more options than you'd think.  Some were too expensive (Double D and Equispirit), some were so narrow they made me nervous about stability (4 Star) and some didn't have enough of a dressing room (Brenderup Baron One).

The divider locks all the way to the left in case you want to use it to transport...a four wheeler?  IDK.

The Shadow ticked all the boxes. It has a proper dressing room.  It's built on the chassis of a two horse trailer, so stability is fantastic (and I got to test that out on the 2 hour drive home in 30mph crosswinds and driving rain - it never moved).  The horse's weight is positioned right over the axles, and I actually think it's slightly wider than my KB was.

Technically it's an 18" short wall.  Hahaha.

Most importantly, it's 1,400lbs less than my KB was, at 2,100 lbs empty.  I never really felt undertrucked with the KB behind me, but stopping definitely required some brainpower, planning and finesse.  I was immediately much more comfortable with the Shadow behind me - braking with it felt like I was just braking the truck.  1,400 fewer pounds also means less wear and tear on my 12 year old truck and slightly better gas mileage, too.

Grate dropped.

I had planned to buy one brand new from the dealership because they're extremely cheap as far as new trailers go, but then the local Shadow dealer raffled one off at a backyard Western show in my area earlier this summer.  I figured the raffle trailer would turn up for sale sooner or later because I think I'm the only person on the planet that wants a one horse trailer.

Brrrrrrand new.

The raffle trailer did show up for sale, and I was the only person who called about it (told ya!).  I ended up getting it for $2,000 less than I was going to pay the dealer.  Brand new with every option I wanted, and a seven year warranty plus a two year tire warranty.

Factory insulated roof!  I was going to DIY this, very glad I don't have to!

The dressing room has slightly less square footage than my old one, so I need to maximize available space by mounting everything I can on the walls, which sounds like a party to my organization-obsessed self.  But that's a subject for another post!

Boot for scale.  I can stand comfortably underneath that saddle rack, I have no idea why it was mounted so high.  Good thing I don't ride Western.

So there you go.  It's not the trailer for everyone, and I don't blame you if you think I'm crazy, but I'm in love with it.  I can't wait to use it the next two weekends!

Anyone else ever considered or known someone with a one horse trailer?

I waffled most of the week on whether or not to take my Thursday lesson.  Connor is settling well into the new place on the ground, but under saddle he's been a lunatic all week.  Screaming, tense, spooky, won't relax.  I even had to one rein stop him into the wall of the indoor on Tuesday after he took off  (Cob version of "took off", anyway) when a horse being ridden by outside the indoor scared the daylights out of him.

His OTTB friend, who can't live without him.  Thankfully Connor likes him, but doesn't feel the same way.

I know that I'm dealing with a "worrier" of a horse who just needs time to learn that nothing here, specifically while being ridden, is going to kill him.  And I wondered if going "home" to my old barn so soon after moving would blow up his fledgling sense of normalcy at the new barn.

The new normal.

But, in the end, my trainer and I decided that we needed to get a good ride in SOMEWHERE, and since we're not going to get one at the new place, we should haul out.

"...I have had the weirdest f****** week."

I'm so glad I did.  We ended up having a great lesson (that I will review once I have Pixio footage), but almost more importantly, I just happened to arrive super early, my farrier just happened to be out there (normally he's there on Mondays during the day) and just happened to have time to trim Connor before my lesson.

My farrier describes trimming Connor as the "highlight of his day" because Connor is so easy to deal with and happy to see him.

Taking a phone call here, hence the broken neck look.

Note to self for the future: When you move barns, maybe try to find out the new barn's farrier schedule ahead of time so he can get sync'ed up before he moves.  As it was, Connor was due and the new farrier had just come the week before we got there, so I was scrambling trying to figure out how to get him done.


My farrier is my age, and I would say is a drinking buddy of mine and my husbands, but I had actually never seen him do my horse before.  I had never seen anyone do Connor's feet before.  He always comes out while I'm at work, and he always does a great job, so I've never felt like I needed to.

Side note: I've also apparently never even discussed foot things on the blog before, since I just discovered I've never used "farrier" or "trim" as post tags before.  This horse is so low maintenance it's amazing.


I wonder what was going through Connor's head, coming back to the place that he lived for five years for a couple of hours after being somewhere new for a week.


Luckily, he didn't stop to think about this existential crisis too much, and he hopped right onto the trailer for me without a second person to swing the divider over both times I loaded him.  Maybe he likes the new basketball-shaped haynet I bought him.  Maybe he just learned he's never going to get out of getting onto this trailer so he may as well be a good boy.  Either way, I'm happy he's loading as easily onto this one as the six horse.

Yesterday I made the hike up to northeast Indianapolis to pick up my trailer from the guy who was working on it.  Here's the full recap on how I met these folks and why I didn't take it to a shop.  Turned out to be a fantastic decision!

Doors!  We have doors!  And two fenders!  And a legal license plate!

To say I am thrilled with the work he did is an understatement.  I had just asked him to do the doors as I originally discussed with his wife, then I thought I'd take it to a trailer shop for the rest of it, but when he saw it needed more than just doors, he offered to do more.   Full list of what he ended up doing:

- Rebuilt and re-hung upper doors, including new weatherstripping
- Hung new fender
- Inspected brakes and repacked bearings
- Re-riveted the roof back on where it was coming off the trailer
- Removed JenJ's Texas plate and added mine (we're finally legal!)
- Redid the corner weatherstripping on the ramp
- Caulked the gravel guard that caused the tack room leak

New doors!  He got the shiny grey inside skin from a friend at a semi-truck repair shop.

And that list was just what I asked him to do.  He also noticed some things in the course of working on it that he took it upon himself to fix:

- Tightened all of my loose bolts, and there were a lot of them. Butt bars, hinges, door locks.
- Wire brushed and sprayed the rusted rims with Rustoleum Gray.  Even the spare.
- Noticed my lug nuts were three different sizes and replaced the weird ones so they're all one standard size now.
- Probably greased my jack.  He didn't tell me he did this, but it goes up and down with about 1/10th the effort now.

Rims before

Rims after

As he worked on it, he sent me photos of consumable parts and progress, and when he inspected the brakes he even took it out for a drive himself to see how it pulled and how the brakes felt.

One of his photos

When I picked it up, he insisted on being there so he could show me a few things, including teaching me how to rivet.  He pointed out that entire trailer is held together with rivets, even the padding in the horse area is riveted on, so I should know how to rivet.  I always assumed riveting was tough to DIY, but it's just a hand tool you pump a couple of times to seat the rivet.

He actually left the back left light access panel off the trailer until I got there so he could both teach me how to change the lights (no replaceable bulbs in KB's, you gotta change the whole housing out) and teach me how to rivet.

Shiny new rivets clearly visible in the brown strip.

One thing he didn't do is replace the small rotted area in the tack room floor.  He started to, and then learned that the tack room floor actually goes into the frame and underneath the aluminum skin (and knowing that, the fact that the leak was actually the gravel guard makes even more sense), so replacing that section is a Really Big Job instead of a quick one.

But, that section is not rotted through, is very small, is in an area that won't see horse or human standing on it, and the rest of the floor is in great shape, so he advised me that it wasn't worth my money to replace right now, especially since we fixed the leak that caused it.

Shiny new fender  and finally legal plate.

Rig glamour shot.

I started pressure washing my trailer yesterday in the hopes I could make it look slightly more attractive to potential buyers.  Once I saw how many of the things I thought were permanently attached were actually dirt, I was embarrassed that I haven't done this sooner:

Yeah...

Especially the roof:

I'm so embarrassed.

It looks so good after the pressure washing that I'm considering paying for the needed repairs myself and selling it for what it's actually worth.  You know, Love It or List It style, where they put $100,000 into a house worth $300,000 and sell it for $425,000.

Pressure washing: so rewarding, but so time consuming.  Sort of like body clipping.

There's a couple coming to look at it on Friday.  If they don't want it, I'll probably book the appointment to fix it up myself sometime in April.  Worst comes to worst, Connor has to ride in it a couple more months.

Even the grey spots came off!

Those of you who follow me on Facebook or Instagram know I somewhat casually listed my trailer for sale yesterday:


It may seem like a strange decision for someone who uses it fairly often and considers this her dream trailer (almost...would love a gooseneck with a side ramp, but you know), but hear my reasons out:

- Connor doesn't like it.  Maybe he got spoiled rear facing in the farm's 6H head to head, or he really dislikes the chest bar coming up so high on him (poor pony in a warmblood height trailer.  Honestly that could be it, he can barely reach his hay bag in it.), but it's the only trailer he's developed loading issues with.  All other trailer types (slant and head to head), he hops right into like a dog excited for a road trip.

I mean, let's just say he rides in style when he's in the barn's Kiefer Built 6H.

- I'm going to start hauling over the hills of Brown County regularly this year, and I am a huge fan of complete overkill on truck vs trailer when hauling over steep hills.  This rig is safe and my towing capacity is more than adequate, but  I think I can do about 1400 pounds better than this and still get everything I need, which would mean I wouldn't even feel it back there going up hills (including Connor and gear, it would weigh less than this one does empty)

They're not mountains, but they're not insignificant either.

- A lighter trailer will also put less load on my truck, which I baby with exceptional maintenance and as light a load as possible as often as I can, since it's 12 years old with 128,000 miles.

- I am never going to haul two horses.  Don't want to own two horses, don't want to haul anyone's horse but my own, don't use the second stall for supplies ever, especially since all my hauling is one hour or less.

- It needs some work, which I'm fine with doing, but it also needs modifications to fit Connor properly.  If it was one or the other, that'd be fine, but given those two things combined, I'd rather just sell it and get something that we both like, that fits him right off the bat, that is exactly what I need and nothing more.

No but seriously, it's tough being short.

Obviously this is something I've put a lot of thought into, and the option I'm considering is going to sound crazy to 90% of you, but I'm going to look at a brand new aluminum one horse slant with a dressing room this weekend.  Unusual configuration?  Maybe.  But for one girl that owns one pony and a half ton truck, never hauls more than one hour and rarely shows more than 20 minutes from home, I think it just might be ideal.  Either that or I actually am crazy.

Connor and I had a fun week last week!  Let's start with hauling.

Glamour shot of the rig after my first successful roundtrip haul

I hauled my own horse and no bad things happened!  I first took the trailer out empty on Tuesday night to get used to hauling it and tune the brake box.  It just didn't feel...right...and I was really starting to get nervous about Friday.  Especially when I realized my hitch was only rated for 5,000lbs dead weight, which was doable with just one pony in it, but a little close for comfort.

Turns out the ball on my hitch was just a tad loose, which caused the bad feelings on Tuesday.  When I took it out on Friday after tightening the ball, it hauled amaaaaaaaaaaaaaazingly well.  The truck handled it easily, it didn't sway, it braked easily.  (That said, still planning on getting a weight distribution kit added to bring my hitch rating up to 12,000 lbs, aka way higher than my truck's GVWR - overkill, I like it.)

I will say that I am still pretty good at backing a bumper pull, both to align it for hitching and actually backing the trailer.  First try, by myself:


In college, I had to back the 20ft feed wagon 100 feet down half the barn aisle with 1.5 feet of clearance on each side with the tractor after every feeding I did as a barn worker.  We also had a final exam in which we had to back said tractor and wagon in reverse around a cones course up a hill (my only mistake was killing it in the middle of the course because I went to put the clutch in and didn't have enough weight on the seat so it triggered the safety kill), and back a 2H bumper pull trailer 90 degrees around a corner with a truck.  That was six years ago, but I still got it.

It's nice to have that skill - makes hauling a lot more stressful when you're not worried about getting into a spot where you're concerned you'll have to back (which I did a couple of times...)

Go Cards!

It felt really good to take my own horse off the property for my own trip, rather than having to wait on everyone else.  Nothing compares to hitting the open road with your horse in the back.

About our only "issue" is that Connor hasn't ridden in anything other than the six horse in four years, and always rear-facing and going forward down the side ramp to get out.  I asked him to back out this trailer (which has a ramp) and he first tried to turn around in the stall, and then when he did back off, he fell off the side of the ramp.  Oh well.  He'll get lots of practice at that.


So happy - still can't believe that everything has come together to make this happen.  Thanks, JenJ!

Thanks to the new house and the other major life change I can't yet make public (again, I'm not pregnant!), I finally had enough excuses to start casually truck shopping and trade in my Honda Fit (sniff).  The perfect truck came up for sale at a local dealership for a great price, and today I took this thing home:

2005 GMC Sierra Denali HD

Most importantly?  It came with a tow package.  Priorities!  First comes truck...