Cob Jockey

Since we moved into this barn, one of my only complaints has been the tack room.  When this place was a Western Pleasure barn, as it was originally designed to be, it functioned well, but now that a bunch of eventers have moved in and everyone has two or more complete sets of tack, well...

This is actually from before my barn moved in.  Picture a bridle explosion on the left and you have it, lol.

Western-style metal hooks were high quality but just not the right shape for English tack.

It's small, but that wasn't the problem: it's more that we aren't using the space efficiently.  So my barnmate and I asked our trainer if she'd let us go nuts on the tack room, and she said yes.  Barnmate is a Six Sigma ninja, and I thoroughly enjoy organization projects, so of course we've over thought this to death.

Still before everyone moved in

Her wish list:

• Better strap goods organization
• A place to store girths
• A place to store helmets so that they can air dry rather than getting gross in our tack trunks (that's actually what started all of this)

My wish list:

• Bridle racks wide enough to store everyone's anatomic crowned English bridles
• A tack cleaning station
• A saddle pad storage/drying solution
• A bit storage solution
• Better utilization of the space near the ceiling for long-term storage of things we don't use often

It's definitely a long term project, but yesterday we went to town on Phase 1.  First we cleaned out the tall cabinet and moved it out in favor of a short cabinet that will become a tack cleaning station. 

It was HOT in there!

We removed the existing strap goods racks and hung up 20 bridle racks to replace them.


We also put up helmet holders, so that our helmets can air dry in the open.  (This is about as dust-free of a tack room as I've ever seen, so that's not an issue).


Some of the smallest things we did made a big difference, like gaining an extra 5" of wall space by moving the saddle racks closer to each other and the wall.  They were originally placed for big Western saddles, but we don't need as much room to maneuver our saddles.






That was as far as we got on day 1!  Next up is rehanging the old bridle holders as strap goods holders around the corner from where these pictures are taken (the tack room is L shaped), creating some bit storage, organizing bottles/medicine, hanging girths and finishing the tack cleaning station.  Eventually we'll add those shelves by the ceiling too.

The only thing I don't know if we're going to be able to do is find a place to dry/store saddle pads, but I won't be too upset if we don't get that one done.  Gotta compromise with these small spaces sometimes!

Oh and we won this Dover contest.

Blue dot: my house.  Red pin: where Connor is now.  Yellow star at the very top of the photo: where Connor lived for five years.

Changed my whole year

So fat.

I know I'm late on this, but I'm doing it anyway.  I have so much to be thankful for this year, I'd be remiss not to write this post.



Having Connor 10 minutes from my house instead of 50 has been such a massive life improvement, I'm most grateful for that. I ride more, I see my husband more, I get things done around the house more, and my relationship with my horse has totally changed. 

Photo by my momma

I am thankful that I can catch him now.  He hasn't even thought about playing hard to catch since May, and various people catch him every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

(There's even a new barnworker that commented how much she loves catching him because he comes to the gate when she calls - she was shocked to find out he was impossible to catch literally his entire life up until six months ago.)


I am thankful that my trainer moved in to my new barn, giving me peace of mind while I travel, and immediately improving the only thing I was worried about at the new place, the footing.


I am thankful for the Shadow, which might be my favorite purchase of all time.  Yes, possibly even more than the CWD.  I know.  But seriously, we both love it.


I am thankful for the kickass ladies of Team Fluffy (sponsored by Booze Water) making my show season the most fun one yet.


I'm thankful for NK kicking my ass and telling me like it is this year.  I would not have grown nearly as much as a rider without her, and also, that ride on Mr. P at the beginning of the year!

The very best teacher

But mostly, I'm thankful for a happy horse.  He's so much happier at the new place - being turned out on grass, being turned out with other horses, being able to sniff his neighbors through the stall bars.  He's happier under saddle after how much I've learned this year and with two saddles that fit.  He loves the 1H slant so much he's started eating hay during travel again, stopped pawing at stoplights, and doesn't try to shoot out of the trailer the second the door opens.

And happy horses are what it's all about.

Happy very very very late (or early?) Thanksgiving!

When I moved to this barn in May, I knew I was compromising on only one thing over my old barn: the indoor arena footing.

Connor being sticky in the old footing.

It was round grain sand, and deep, and shifty.  Even just walking through it as a person was hard work, so I can't imagine what it was like for the horses.

From almost the moment my trainer first started talking to the barn owners, redoing the footing in both arenas was made a priority.  Not totally removing it and starting over, that's pricey, but using additives to get it where it needed to be.

I was skeptical.  It was just not great, and let's say, we were spoiled before:


But I was proved SO wrong!


This may not be as beautiful as the white sand of my old barn, but it's every bit as good now!  They scraped it down to the base, leveled the base, got rid of some of the round sand, added in some angular sand, and added in some purpose made (read: not recycled) fiber, and IT IS AMAZING! 

My trainer worked with a footing salesman to create the exact right mixture to give us both firmness and cushioning, and they NAILED it.  It's not even done yet and it's amazing.


I didn't have a lesson last night, but my trainer happened to be out at the barn and she watched me and Connor go.  She said, and I felt the same thing, that he looked very confident on it.  His strong Welsh Cob sense of self preservation makes him extremely sensitive to dodgy or changeable footing and you can really tell when he's unsure of himself.  He's an excellent litmus test for whether the footing upgrade was a good one or not.


Truth be told, that arena was so deep and shifty before, it's the first time since I've owned Connor that a tendon injury has been in the back of my mind.  That concern is totally gone with the new footing, though.  And with the outdoor getting the same treatment, I can hardly contain my excitement. 


I am so, so thankful to have him close and to have my one major complaint about this place fixed now.

Now that this is finally public knowledge, I can share: my trainer is moving her program to my new barn!

All photos in this post by my mom

My move happened first, but she got the idea shortly thereafter.  She's always wanted to be in this area, and my new BO's have always wanted to see their gorgeous basically private facility used to its fullest potential.  It seems to be a match made in heaven.


With that will come changes.  New arena footing, additional stalls being built, my board (sadly) going right back up to where it was.  My wallet really enjoyed my three month reprieve though, ha.

WOO new footing

You may have noticed I haven't written about lessons much this summer.  I haven't had a ton of them, what with all the work she's been doing getting ready to move facilities and houses (not easy, as it turns out).  I genuinely feel like the break has been good for both of us, which is a story for another post.

Happy pony in his cushy digs

So there you go.  Now my pony and my trainer will be eight minutes from my house. Or as my husband says, "You are the luckiest person I know, you know that?"

Now that Connor has been at the new place for over two months, I wanted to share what's different now that I'm not commuting 1.5 hours each time I see him.

The details are getting done around the barn.
My tack is getting wiped down after every ride.  He's getting actual baths once a week now, and I'm able to spend a few minutes picking out his tail before each ride instead of a monster marathon detangling session a few times a year.  I don't feel like I have to rush home anymore, so the details get done.


Sometimes I go out to the barn and I don't ride.
When he was 37 miles/49 minutes away, going out and not riding felt like a waste of gas.

Katlyn holding Connor for his bath at NDPC. PC: my momma

I can actually catch him in the field now.
More on this in another post, but yeah, this is a thing now.

Lot less of this going on these days.

I'm able to meet my farrier.
My old barn charged $10 to hold horses for the farrier, which, since the farrier came on Monday mornings and it would have cost me almost $10 in gas to get up there anyway, I always cheerfully paid.  Now, my farrier comes over my lunch break and I can actually hold my own damn horse for his trim.  Feels good.

He's happier.
The grazing muzzle is a pain in both of our asses, but I don't think I could ever drylot him again.  He's so happy going out in the group and grazing, even if he's still as much of a loner as he's always been.



I have more time for other things.
There was a moment recently when I was painting some trim, and as I wrapped up to head to my lesson (45 minutes before my lesson time!), I realized I had an extra hour of trim painting that I wouldn't have had if he was still at my old barn.  You don't notice things like that unless you make an effort to notice them, but when you do, you're grateful.

Like tiling my freaking backsplash which only took me two years to work up the nerve to do.  (This room was a bedroom when we bought this house)

I have to actually make a riding plan for each week.
When you can't get out to the barn every day, that sort of takes care of the week's riding routine for you.  When you can ride every day, you really have to plan out what the week looks like.  This has been a fun new challenge for me, but it's also one of the biggest changes.

Variation: we like it.

After the show, it was time to take Connor to his new home, just 25 minutes from the showgrounds.

We have arrived!

He was a perfect gentleman and charmed our new barn owner('s daughter) almost immediately.  She's my age, and used to show top level Western Pleasure (owns an OTTB now) and couldn't believe how "engaged and expressive" he is compared to QH's.


He's been there a few days now, and he:

- Has become BEST friends with the BO's OTTB.  I haven't yet gone to the barn and not found them both sidled up to the wall between them, standing as close as they can get to each other.  It's the first time ever he's had a stall wall adjoining another horses where he could see them, so yeah, he's happy.

- Has figured out the auto-waterer in his stall (and not in a bad way...yet)

Auto-waterer next to him.  Sure takes a load off my mind, not to have to worry about buckets and barn help.

- Has not figured out the auto-waterer in his paddock yet despite me leading him over to it.  It's in a corner and shared by three turnouts.  We're working on that.

- Was a complete lunatic for our first ride there.  Screaming, spooking at every possible stimulus, turning his head to look at things when we're in the middle of work.  But, I choose to see this as a positive: it's practice for a new show ground, right?


- Has only been hard to catch once on the first day, otherwise he's been coming to the gate (solo turnout so far though)

- Has been getting slowly reintroduced to grass pasture after being drylotted for years.

Two of the...seven?  turnouts they have.

They're on night turnout for the summer, so I've offered to go out and pull him off at night a few hours after he goes out while he's transitioning so the BO's don't have to.  They appreciate it, and honestly, I'm delighted that he's so close I can ride him, go home for dinner, and come back out to bring him in and it's not a big deal.  Round trip plus bring in time on Monday night was 30 minutes, vs the 2 hours that would have taken me at the old barn.  I don't know if timing my trips will ever get old!

Also, the only other boarder left me a note in the feed room before we met.  Especially since you just never know how someone is going to feel about you moving in on them, it was so sweet of her, and we've since met and she's just awesome.

I took a tour of the new barn Saturday afternoon, and guys...I'm kicking myself for not moving sooner.

Ya'll are gonna get all kinds of tiny website photos on this post since I didn't want to be creepy taking photos on the tour yesterday.

In all the best ways, it's just like what I have now, only it took me EIGHT MINUTES to get there from my house.   I could go to the barn 7 days in a row and my total drive time would be just slightly longer than a single trip to my current barn.

But wait, there's more!

- Only two other boarders, total of four horses.  One is my age (and is the BO, technically) and the other is a retired woman who comes out and toodles on her half Arabian, and also does stalls and feeds occasionally.

- They are perfectly set up to accommodate Connor's weirdness about catching thanks to a very intentionally laid out facility. All the stalls have dutch doors on the backside that open into a sacrifice area with nice footing, and that then opens into the turnouts, so they usually let the horses walk into their stalls.  The only person that will have to deal with my hard to catch horse is me - and even then they have "more pastures than horses" so if I do want private turnout, it's no big deal.


- They still feed Tribute, which Connor is currently on.

- They use Connor's previous vet, who I have no problems with (although I do love my current vet, a fellow eventer).

- They don't allow kids, and they don't enforce their posted rules (like hours) with responsible adults, just like my current barn.

- There's enough room in trailer parking that I might be able to leave my truck there too, which would be awesome since we really don't have room for it at my downtown house.  I may even be able to leave it there and hitched on days I know I need to make a quick exit to a lesson, since I can drive the Vibe there and switch vehicles.

Indoor.  BO found out I was a Dressage rider and offered to let me put up letters.

- He'll be 20 minutes from the Hoosier Horse Park, and an hour closer to the Kentucky Horse Park.


To top it all off, I really hit it off with the BO too, and I feel nothing but good about this decision.  April 30th can't come soon enough!