Magic "Shoes"

Yesterday I dragged Killian and Cool over to a local boarding barn to give Cool a proper test ride in his new "shoes." My childhood best friend C met me at the barn. She was going to put a ride on another horse in the stable while I rode Cool. We rolled out of our farm ahead of schedule for once, jumped on the highway and made the 25 minute drive (I know, right? Yes that's "local" around here) over to the barn that I boarded Johnny and Emmy at while I was in college.

Cool unloaded surprisingly well. He lived at this barn for a couple years when we first bought him and I periodically haul him there for indoor riding or wash stall use when the weather is bad, but Coolie being Coolie...you just never know what kind of horse is going to unload of the trailer. Hes that horse at horse shows. You know, the one that gets of the trailer screaming and come blowing into the arena to hand walk like he just got shot out of a cannon. The one that's practicing his levade while other horses are quietly loping around on lunge lines. It never fails that at least one person (usually whoever dares to come near him) either makes some type of comment ("Really feeling his oats this morning, eh?") or asks me if I'd like to borrow a lunge line. I just shake my head and laugh and keep levading around the arena. After about 15 minutes of stupid, the Lipizzaner tires himself out and Cool goes back to the trailer for his mid-morning snooze. Its been like this since the beginning of time with him - its just who he is.

Needless to say, I was both pleased and surprised to un-load a lazy horse at the barn yesterday. I turned him out in the arena while I unloaded Killian and my tack, and Cool promptly hung his head over the fence and went to sleep. C arrived shortly after and got a friend's horse ready to ride.

In general one-year-old fashion, Killian refused to sit quietly for anyone but me, so in the end, with daylight fading fast, I took the reins from C's horse and just had her jump on Cool. It seemed like a good idea for me to watch him go anyway, and to have a fresh set of eyes on his back to tell me how it felt in the saddle.

C put him through his paces at the trot both directions of the ring, making a couple nice wide circles and sweeping turns. Cool took a couple bad steps here and there, but overall...dare I say it...he looked pretty damn sound. I was beyond pleased! After a few laps of trot in each direction and darkness creeping over the outdoor arena, I waved C back over to the gate and told her that it was fine to get off. I'm so thrilled with the fact that Cool is sound! And yet terrified to ask too much of him and push him too hard at the same time.

Today, Cool had the day off to rest, but tomorrow my other friend S and I are having a "pony date," and shes offered to video Cool for me. I will try to get some before and after videos posted!

As for me, I'm exhausted and off to bed.

Peace.Love.Ponies.

The Body Clipping Blues

Well folks, it's that time again. With T-minus eight days until we ship back to Painesville it's time to bid farewell to Johnny's fluffy winter coat and say hello to body clipping!

The always wonderous wolly mammoth already got a chaser clip when his coat first exploded into roughly three feet of hair way back in October, but I was reluctant to clip him further when I knew he was just going to be coming home and sitting in a field for a month over winter break. Why cause more work for myself changing blankets and worrying if he's warm enough when I'm not even riding him right? With his full winter coat, I can sleep better knowing that he's not shivering to death in his stall or out in the field. It was a good decision on my part, because the last few days here have been miserably cold. I believe the temperature was dwindling somewhere around 4 degrees the night before last.

The good news is that yesterday and today the temps went back up into the low-mid thirties (yay heat wave!) and therefore both Emmy (who wasnt blanketed at all this year until it got down into the teens) and Johnny went naked today to enjoy the warmer temperatures. Johnny's hair has all grown back in where he was orignally clipped and let me just say that his hair sure does grow in the wierdest patterns. Only his winter coat for that matter. For example, "normal" horses hair grows downward on the neck, so that when you brush from the head down to the shoulder, you are brushing the hair flat, correct? And so does Johnnys, in the summer time. In the winter though, his hair grows backwards up his neck so that in order to brush it flat, you have to brush from the shoulder up the neck to the head. His hair also does this along the top of his back, where is suddenly changes directions and also grows up, from haunches to withers, instead of down.

This horse is so weird.

Needless to say, it makes body clipping him very interesting, especially since he has roughly the attention span of a three year old child, which means that total body clipping is a lengthy process that takes 3 or 4 days to accomplish, all the while with Johnny looking like he got in a fight with a blender.

Emmy on the other hand, will continue to stay fuzzy and naked even though she is going to stay up a college for a couple months. I made that mistake last year, leaving a blanket on her while I was away and it never really got taken off...poor horse had indents in her hair from the edges of the blanket.

What is everyone's views on blanketing and/or clipping? How do you deal with your horses winter hair?

Peace.Love.Ponies.