The Unicorn Costume

Things have gotten slightly ridiculous around here.

Mare Media

 September brought some cooler temperatures at last, and we did a fair amount of riding. With the storm at the beginning of the month came a lot of damage to the trails. I suspect Mike and I will be hiking out this fall to do trail maintenance ourselves. In the meantime, I feel like I'm relearning a lot of the trails. We also did more ring riding, which is becoming more and more enjoyable as the ring evolves. I have a few separate posts coming about stand-out rides from the month, but I'm going to drop a bunch of assorted photos here for safe keeping. As of this morning, Booger is up to ride/drive #109 for the year, and Lucy is up to #136. 

There are two small cross country style jumps on the vineyard trail. A year ago, I never would have guessed I'd be jumping either one of them. Now they feel easy! I love this little mare so much. She makes me feel braver than I really am.

August Riding Media

 This month has honestly sort of sucked for riding. Between the extreme heat, the flooding, and the gigantic biting bugs, I feel like I haven't been riding at all. Since our 15 miler, I've only worked Lucy and Booger seven times each. For Lucy, one of those rides consisted of me getting on her bareback in a rope halter. I got on her in the field, rode her to the ring, opened the gate, cantered one lap in each direction, rode down the driveway, and dismounted in the wash stall. It was too hot to do anything else. For Booger, one of those rides consisted of me riding her bareback up the driveway to the ring where we just did some ground work before hacking back home. I know fall is right around the corner, but I'm feeling rather deprived of saddle time.

Despite the lack of saddle time, the girls have been going well. Booger is up to ride #91 for the year and the difference in her training and her personality has honestly blown me away. Watching Cam jump her earlier this year really inspired me. Plus accidentally jumping those huge ditches on trail boosted my confidence and has allowed me to finally get out of Booger's way over fences. We're actually having a ton of fun jumping around! I'm  not a great jumper, but it's absolutely Booger's favorite thing ever. Her happy ears and tail in this photo make me so happy.

Drone Farm Tour

 How about something a little different? This week, I finally remembered to bring the drone to the barn.

The view across the street. The neat little rows are the grape vines. The vineyard stretches up and left on the screen. You can acually see the entire short vineyard loop that I blog about regularly. The red barns on the right are the boarding barn across the street (I never talk  about them).

Riding Media

 While I am still pretty much blogging about every single trail ride I do with Lucy, I won't be posting every last ring ride. That would be super boring, huh? I do have an increasing amount of riding photos and videos piling up though, so I'm going to dump them here. We're all pretty bored with winter riding already, and I try to find ways to mix it up on a regular basis. Here are a few things we've been up to...

Lucy seems to be enjoying her intro to jumping. We're going to spend some serious time on grids, poles, and gymnastics without raising the fences. We're going to start doing some oxers as soon as the weather permits. Still, it was fun to get some photos of our progress. Plus this way Lucy has to stand around while I set up the tripod, etc. while mounted.

The Lucy and Lilly show (feat. Booger)

Eryca gets credit for the title. We made a shared Google Photos album for our barn shenanigans, which she called the Lilly and Lucy show. 

 Business is slow right now. It's just the usual winter lull. I'm actually pretty ok with it. I get a little burned out every year, and 2020 was especially bad. I'm enjoying the dedicated clients I have every week, but I also appreciate some down time. As a result, I've been spending more time at the barn with "my" horses. 

I got invited to the PonyUP 100 Y2021 group on FB. The idea is simple: 100 rides in one year. It's a challenge meant for one horse and one rider, but the rules are pretty flexible and it's just a super wholesome group where everyone cheers everyone else on. I was eager to hop on the bandwagon. Plus I like to obsessively count everything anyway. My goal is to definitely get 100 miles on Lucy, but now that Booger has decided she wants to join the fun, I'm curious to see if I can do 100 miles on her too. 

So far this year I'm up to six rides on Lucy and four on Boo. 

For the most part, our rides are nothing exciting and I was going to just include them in my monthly recap. But by the time you factor Lilly in, it's an awful lot of media!!

So here are some photos, videos, and snippets from the last month or so.

I'll start with a photo of Booger since she's overdue for a formal appearance around here.

Deer and Turkey Playing

I forgot to tuck this into my monthly photo post. Mike and I have been spending some time each day "staring at nature" on our back deck. We have the list of usual suspects who make daily appearances at roughly the same time. The other night, however, we had an unusual pairing in the back pasture! There was a wild turkey in with the herd of deer, and one of the deer was feeling frisky and playing with the turkey! I wish they'd been in one of the closer paddocks so I could have gotten higher quality video, but I think this is worth a share anyway. It's not every day you see a turkey and a deer frolicking together.

March Photos

I think we can all agree that March was a very strange month. Even though I knew that lock down was coming long before it was announced, you can see the distinct change in photos on my phone; the moment when we went from taking safety measures to just plain staying home. I still have many posts that I'm going to ration out over the coming weeks, and I'll probably be doing snippets from our life here in the second most infected state in the world's most infected country. In the mean time, have a massive photo dump from March, when this crap began in earnest.

Probably our last trip into the Pine Barrens until winter.

Merrill Creek By Drone

I have just enough time for a quick filler post. I have a few longer posts in the making, but that requires sitting down for more than a minute and a half. Plus I have to prioritize. Sadly, things like taxes, lesson plans, and teaching clinics seem to come before blogging. Boo-hiss. 

Anyway. Two weekends ago, Mike and I were still not 100% after our flu (seriously, I don't think I've been that sick since I was a child). Still, we were both going a little stir crazy in the house. We decided to try to get out a little by driving up to Merrill Creek for a walk. We couldn't even call it a hike, honestly. Mike packed his camera and I packed the drone and we wandered off hoping to see some eagles or snow geese or... something. It was a pretty chilly, windy day, but the fresh air was a nice change. 

About a mile into our walk, Mike and I were both pretty wiped out. We hung out for a minute to see if we could spot the resident eagles. I'd seen one of them on a nearby back road after a lesson the previous week. It had flown very close to my car and landed in a corn field to my right, where it drank majestically from a puddle. Did I have my camera with me that day? No, of course not. 

Sadly, there was no sign of the eagles. It was pretty blustery so I imagine they were nested down somewhere under the cover of dense tree branches. We did see a ton of sea gulls and a handful of geese, but that's about it.

The good news is that I did send the drone up and got some pretty cool shots. With the gusting wind, I wasn't willing to fly around too much (or over the water very far), but the new perspective on one of our favorite places was fun to see. 

More proof that New Jersey is nothing but oil refineries and the turnpike. Stay away. It's hideous here.

Thankfully, both Mike and I are feeling back to our perky, adventurous selves now. We went on a real hike last weekend (more on that later). I'm back to work full time (and then some to make up for the lost income).  Hopefully the blog will pick back up as a direct result. The good (?) news about being sick is that it gave me time to actually catch up on my reading list and your blogs were the highlight of many days in a row for me.

February Photos

February apparently featured a ton of photos. I could probably make some mini entries about some of these, but I'm lazy. 

July Photos

Since I'm so sunburned that I had to cancel my morning ride and can barely walk...

One of my favorite local views.

June Photos

Monthly phone clearing below ;)

We got some more hiking in despite the increasing temperatures. This one was taken at Jenny Jump during a day of Geocaching.

Dolly's Tale

I'm pretty sure that the idea of keeping the blog up to date went right out the window the second I put Ozzy down. I am so far behind that I fear I will never catch up. I think you guys will be getting a lot of photo dumps without a lot of text until things level out again (if they ever do, which is not likely, honestly). However, I hate to leave loose ends on here, so I'm going to do a mega post about Dolly's stay with me back in March.

The short, spoiler version is as follows:
Dolly went home after 30 days, like we originally planned. I made a lot of progress with her over the course of the month, but in the end, her rearing issue was too much to warrant pumping in any more time, at least for now. The month consisted of us chiseling our way slowly forward in training, only to have to periodically cycle back to square one all over again. We found a routine that seemed to work for Dolly, and each time she'd progress a little further. Still, the rearing kept resurfacing, and if I went any slower, I'd be robbing her owner. Her owner is very happy with what we did accomplish, and the mare is not in any danger of losing her lucky home. Nobody got hurt, which is great. I was not expecting a miracle and I didn't get one. *sad trombone*

The long version features a lot of media and drama, and and and...

I did get attached to the little spotted mare.

Massive Catch Up Post

I have a growing sticky note of subjects that I need to blog about, but I'm going to get the cell phone photo dump out of the way first. That'll give you a general idea of what's been going on around here lately, and it will clear some space on my computer. With everything going on, I missed my March update so some of these are a little out dated.

The one constant in my life right now is the racehorses. I've been putting in more hours than I signed up for and I'm loving it. I need to do a separate post about how the horses are doing, with real photos from actual cameras. Mostly I'm just working on getting braver. Percy here is not helping. His issues have resolved and I'm back to riding him. His teeth really needed to be floated and that got addressed and fixed everything, but not before he reared straight up in the air with me on multiple occasions and rattled my confidence. Juli ended up riding him for me for a while and he kept her busy for sure. She's braver and more skilled than I am. They say you should do one thing every day that scares you. I have definitely found the way to do that! This photo was taken before the rearing started, when I really felt like we were making lots of progress! It's hard to remember that this horse is just a two year old and has been under saddle less than six months. The racehorses are definitely in an accelerated program, and it's an interesting exercise in perspective for me.

Racehorse Adventures

I mentioned in passing that the racehorses got about a month off after the holidays. They are now all back in work, and we've fallen into a rhythm. We currently have eight horses that are galloping daily, and with four of us riding, it works out really nicely. I have to do a separate post on my little gray friend, Harry, but the short version is that he's a Really Good Boy, and I've gotten a lot stronger, more balanced, and more confident from riding him for the last month or so. This is good because bringing  racehorses back into work can be somewhat, erm, interesting, at times.

One guess as to who this is!

Monthly Photo Post

It's that time!! (The only way I keep blogging.)

I have a bunch of new thoroughbreds on the roster. I like to stalk them after I meet them. This is Huey. He is being leased by a 14 year old girl who wants to do dressage and hunters with him. He's a big dude, and a fancy mover. I can't wait to see them progress together (and take photos of them along the way!)

Trailer Loading Tales: An Introduction

By popular demand (ok, Shauna said she wanted to hear this, and that's enough for me!) I present to you, Trailer Loading Horror Stories, a two part series. Part One: I'm Too Abusive. Part Two: I'm Not Abusive Enough. Part One takes place two years ago, which makes it pretty safe to re-tell, and also means enough time has passed that I can laugh at it.

In the spring of 2015, a woman approached me at a CTR to ask me about trailer loading a new horse she got.

Introducing: Ragnar

I have a few new client horses to introduce, but I'll start with this one.

This is KSF The Gypsy Sorceror:

And then there were two... again.

Well, Tegan didn't work out. I just sent him home an hour ago. It's not a particularly exciting story, but since I shared how I got him, I figured I shouldn't just leave you guys hanging.

Tegan is very pushy. He's young. He's a draft. I was expecting that and was ok with it.

Unfortunately, Tegan also doesn't stay in fences (or walls). That is a deal breaker for me.

Mike took care of the horses while I was away this week (ride story coming soon!) He did a great job, but he admitted he had his hands full at times, and that Tegan was making him feel anxious.

Yesterday, I pulled JR out of the pasture to give him a bath. I got about twenty feet up the driveway when I heard a loud crack behind me. I turned around to see Tegan standing on the bottom rail of the four-board fence. He had already popped the top rail free, and was actively working on the middle two. Of course, this was literally the only section of the fence where the boards are nailed to the outside of th
e posts, not the inside.

I tried to scurry back to chase Tegan off, shouting and waving my lead rope while dragging an understandably hesitant JR in my wake, but it was too late.

Tegan busted through the fence and appeared, loose, in the driveway.

Dammit.

At this exact moment, both Mike and my landlord pulled into the driveway. This was both a relief (because I would have help) and an inconvenience (I was hoping to handle this and have nobody be the wiser).

I chased Tegan down the alley between the paddocks with hopes of containing him. A very horny crazed Tookie tore after him. They touched over the fence and Tookie squealed. Thankfully, the stallion does respect the fence and stayed in his pasture. I thought Mike was going to have a stroke from the stress.

After charging up and down the alley a few times, not wanting to be caught, Tegan barged right through the tree line and into the woods at the back of the property. He pushed, shoved, and forced his way through the dense underbrush (who needs a trail?) until he appeared at the far corner of the paddock. He shoved through that fence too and I was relieved that Tookie was separated by a metal gate. I'm not sure what would have happened if the two of them got in together, but I was certain I didn't want to find out.

Thankfully, Tegan was now in the enclosed barn yard (not that fences mean much, apparently). Unfortunately, he still didn't want to be caught. Mike ran for a bucket of grain and a lead rope, and I immediately got on the phone with Nicole to tell her that Tegan wasn't going to work out.

Mike lured Tegan into a stall and closed the door. He then proceeded to do this for half an hour while Mike and I repaired the fence:

I told Nicole that there was no rush, but Tegan had to go home. I have to be able to pull my horses out of their pasture without worrying about the fence staying up. I am sure that this would be manageable with electric fence, but I'm not about to make alterations to our rental property for a horse I don't own. Plus, I can only imagine what he'll do if I try to contain him somewhere away from home.

At the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that I train other people's problematic horses for a living. It is not something I want to be doing in my free time as well. Tegan was here for ten days. In that time, I had the chance to ride him twice. To be fair, he was very good during those rides. Meanwhile, Mike and I struggled for 10/10 days to manage everyone together. The risk to reward ratio just wasn't worth it.

Did I mention I came out to feed last night to find him standing on the second-to-bottom board on the same section of fence? It held this time, but I wanted to strangle him!

It's too bad because he is a cute little guy and I really liked his mind and his personality. I'm just not set up to handle it in my back yard right now.

Nicole picked Tegan up today and was gracious and wonderful about it. She apologized and I told her not to. She's been struggling with him at home for the last six months as well, and we brain stormed some ideas on how to get Tegan over this tantrum behavior. He may be coming for a few lessons in the near future.

I think Tegan was relieved to see his mom. He must feel like he went to boot camp for ten days. All we did was yell at him and take away all his fun.

Nicole did comment on how politely he led from the field and onto the trailer, though...

Two Weeks in Photos

I'm going to start this post off with video of Tookie. This is something he does regularly and I've only now managed to catch it on camera. The horses are turned out on the entire property during the day. There is a section in the back left corner (you can see it in the video) that is wooded. There is technically a fence in the woods, but there must be a gap or hole in it, which Oreo figured out. Oreo will go through the woods to graze on the neighbor's lawn from time to time. The neighbor is a horse person and a good friend of our landlord's so that part of it is fine. For some reason, however, when Oreo gets thirsty, he doesn't know how to get back into the pasture through the woods. Instead, he walks down the neighbor's driveway, down our quiet back road, and sort of stands at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Mike or me to put him back in the paddock. This is amusing and mostly harmless and Tookie has not figured out how to follow Oreo through the woods, so it's all good. Obviously, we don't want Oreo walking down the road at night though. As a result, the horses get locked into the barnyard at night. Thankfully, Oreo does not know how to get out of the barnyard... but Tookie does! This only works if my landlord doesn't clip the rails up, which he usually does. Yesterday, while I was sipping my morning coffee, I heard the telltale bang of the fence boards, and finally thought enough to grab my phone and get a video of Tookie's great escape routine. I like that Oreo just waits for Tookie to do the work for him! The whole bunch of them are too smart.