I think I have found "the one" that will take me to where I want to go [Tevis, 100's, XP rides, etc] but there is no way to tell until we are there! Her name is Fashion District aka Vogue and she is such a sweetie.
She will be four in January [actually vet thinks she's about 4.5, but the lady I bought her from said she was born in January, I'm thinking she might have been born earlier but the lady wanted her to be considered "younger" for showing. I'll never know..] and will be starting some LD's. I plan on doing the Warner Springs 25 mile LD, and I will probably go for the turtle placing because I want to take it very slow with her. :)
She's had about a month or so of light riding, and two months of intense ground work, lunging, long-lining, etc. She is amazing, and I'm beyond happy with her. She has her moments, but what young Arabian doesn't?
She is registered half arabian, however she is full. The lady had a bunch of horses, and is still trying to find papers on the dam. It's a long, complicated story I don't want to get into too much here.
Here are a few photos of the pain in the butt!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
My current Endurance-Prospect
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
End to the Hiatus
I have been completely neglectful to this blog, but with good reason. I've pretty much overhauled my "program", if you could even call it that.
I do not have any of the original horses I started with, which is kind of depressing. I don't remember if I had updated or not, but I had sold Porscha because she had something funky going on with her hip. She wasn't lame, but my friend seems to think she was perhaps uneven conformationally. Nothing that really affected her, but it made me uncomfortable so I decided not to use her as an endurance horse.
Kandee? Well, Kandee was an amazing mare and still is. I did the 2009 Descanso with her, and we FINISHED it this year in 13th place. Certainly nothing to sneeze at, but she just wasn't built to go like that. I got stuck in the group of front runners for about six miles or so, before I finally said screw it and pushed her over into the brush so I could get OUT of them. I couldn't stop, Kandee didn't WANT to stop, but I could feel her cramping up but pushing herself to go. Once we were passed, we moved to a crawling walk and eventually a stop for about five to six minutes. She was pretty crampy in the back end, so I got off and MADE her walk. We walked for a good 45 minutes or so, until she was cooled down and her muscles were relaxed. We slow trotted towards the vet check, and got in very late. My crew was worried about me because normally I am in a lot sooner, but I let them know what happened.
Kandee ate and drank at the vet check, and her pulse was down as soon as we walked into the check. The second loop she was feeling really good, and we went a lot faster and passed a few groups of riders which is how we ended up at 13th place. Kandee also knew the trail really well, and knew we were heading towards the trailer which gave her some more oomph.
Kandee's main issue is she did not drink. She was a water snob, and would only drink HER water and it really, really hindered us. I could e-lyte til the cows came home, but she would only take little sips of water to hold her over until we got back to the trailer.
As much as it broke my heart, I had to find her a new home where endurance riding wasn't what she was going to be doing. We couldn't get out of the LD's because of her water issue, and well...I'm sorry if it sounds selfish but I really, really want to do 50's and higher.
I did go and buy her half sister, though. Why I have no idea...I have horse issues.
I'll update later on my current horses, and current goals. :)
Monday, February 9, 2009
Adventures of Sweet Feed. Or...how to make a horse completely pyschotic.
I have never really fed much sweet feed, to any of my horses. Mostly it was Senior Feed, and for a while I did feed OatMo, which I suppose you can consider a sweet feed since it's just oat-hay chopped up with molasses. So, I never really thought much of sweet feed either way, to be honest.
I came upon a coupon for $20 off two bags of Omolene. Any kind of Omolene, but I choose the 200 because it's for performance horses. What could be considered Performance more than Endurance?? Sounded good to me, and it was a great coupon. $21 for two fifty pounds bags of feed. Score!
So, get home and look at the back of the bag. For horses being conditioned, it said something like...seven pounds a day. WHAT? That is excessive to me, and Kandee wasn't completely back into training again so I decided on 3 pounds a day. So, she got her rice bran, flax, Omolene and Alfalfa twice a day.
Fast forward less than a week later [probably about three days at the most]. I have most of the afternoon off, don't have to be into work until 5, and it's absolutely gorgeous out. Sun is up, not too hot, not too cold. Perfect day for riding! Perfect day to start Kandee back up on an easy ride.
My horse is a monster.
Tacking her up, I should have known something was up because she was prancing in place, tossing her head and being just a jerk to work with. I made her flex to the left and right before I got on, because she didn't want to stand still, then I kept her flexed to my saddle while I got on.
Now, horses aren't supposed to really be able to move out/bolt/rear when you have them checked by the bridle. Well...you tell her that. I got my leg over her and she was GONE. She reared [what the hell is UP with that??], then took off. I was not impressed, and I immediately knew what the culprit was. I managed to get her under control, kind of. She was barely manageable, and felt like she was going to absolutely explode underneath me. She had so much energy, she had no idea what to do. Talk about one hot horse, I had no brains with me at all, she was just pure explosiveness.
Now, I don't like that feeling in a horse...not at all. What control I had was a complete facade, merely existing because there was a bit in her mouth and a rider on her back. If she really had wanted to do something, she would have done it and I would have had no say over it.
It took about four miles for her to cool her heels, and then she settled into the most beautiful canter I think she's ever given me. Barely touched the reins, sat back a bit and she stopped on a dime. Hrmm...nice to finally have a horse underneath me instead of a freight train!
The only thing new was the Omolene 200, which I will never be buying again once these bags are finished. I've dropped her to 2lbs a day, and she seems to have adjusted well to that amount.
However, it's been raining for four days now, with no plans of stopping in the next few days.
....Psycho Horse Take 2? We shall see.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Long, long time.
Well, it's been a long time since this thing has been thought of, let alone updated.
I apologize for the lack of updates, I really do. Life just kind of got in the way of updating and...well, that's just the truth of it.
Let's see, where do I begin?
I have three horses now. The only original horse I have left from the start of this blog is my mare, Keno's Cotton Candy. She is a nice horse, a little hot, but nice nonetheless. She is currently being feed leased by my trainer/friend, Lynn. She has picked up a nasty little habit of rearing that we are currently trying to break, but it's a long process. How do you stop a horse from rearing? Backing up, circles, etc isn't helping. I think she's fallen on her head a few too many times. [She doesn't crosstie and will flip over backwards. After three times of her doing so I gave up on her learning to cross tie and now I single-tie.]
I'd like to introduce you to my other two.
Did I mention that I really, really like this little mare? She has SO much personality! I'll let you guys know how her training progresses. Right now she is at Lynn's house, as well. Kandee is at home because we were going to try to use Kandee for my husband for lessons, but Kandee is too hot.
And now, my next addition:
He is a 2001 Chestnut Arabian stallion. I picked him up January 10th, and I am glad that I purchased him. He was purchased as a horse for my husband, as he is wider and taller than Amirah and will be easier for him to ride. However, the CC&R's of the housing association we live in don't allow stallions so he will be gelded. I am tossing the idea of breeding him to Kandee, but haven't reached a decision yet.
He is so nice to ride undersaddle, yet he is very smart and has a tendency to test his riders. I finally got smart, and when he would just stop in the middle of the trail or working and refuse to move forward, I gave him motive to move forward. I have to be a bit cautious and not use too much force with him, but enough will make him realize that he has to listen. Since he finally realized that I am the boss, I haven't had to motivate him to move forward again and we have had a few happy rides.
His canter is so forward and comfortable, as well as his trot. He is going to be an awesome endurance horse, and I'm kind of jealous that he will be my husband's horse instead of mine. However, my husband deserves a nice horse as well so it'll work out in the end.
Plus, my horse is faster :P
I'll definitely be trying to update this as much as possible, but I cannot guarentee anything. I'll also try to put a few endurance articles up here, as well, so anyone who reads this can read them. =)
Monday, May 12, 2008
Saturday May 10th, 2008
Porscha went down to the sand pits for the first time! :)
Porscha really hasn't been hauled out anywhere to go riding. She's been to my friends house once or twice, but this was a trip specifically down to a place, parking on the road, and riding from there.
She did well, except for wanting to turn herself around in the trailer [and managing it!] a few times. I tied her shorter, and that stopped. She about broke my toe coming out of the trailer. I backed her half way out, she decided she didn't want to come out, so she came back into the trailer, stood on my foot, and squashed me between her fat self and the divider.
Got that all sorted out, then tacked up and went out! She was very snorty and watching everything around her, and spooky. She spooked at a lizard, some concrete, a bush, and a squirrel. Not in any particular order, and sometimes more than once.
She seemed a bit sore [last time she was ridden we got stuck in a barbed wire fence, remeber?] so I didn't ask for more than she wanted to do. We did a lot of trotting because that was her speed of choose, and boy can that girl book it. She loves trotting, and is in her element when she does so.
There was some bright orange plastic construction "fence" [the kind with lots of holes in it] that was on the ground half way, so I decided to walk her over it. She had been very, very spooky at the black solid plastic little barriers that the construction people put up, but didn't seem to mind the BRIGHT orange stuff. So, she starts to step over it, then stops. Then backs up.
Well, as it's basically plastic grid, and has holes in it...it got stuck on her shoe. And well, when she backed up, it was stuck. So...she took off.
And the fence followed us....
I thought I was going to be done with, and on the ground. She just TOOK off, with that fence STUCK ON HER FRONT FOOT! *insert panicked horse here*
*snickers* Now that I look back, it was quite funny, and just adds to the drama that is riding with Porscha. But at the moment in time, it was very scary. It eventually fell off her hoof, and I brought her back down. After that, she decided the black AND orange construction plastic was something that deemed spook-worthy and she avoided it at all costs. *sigh* Silly horse...
We ended up going about 9 miles, not too bad. It was a slow pace, about 2 hours and 15 minutes. But it was all in the sand, so that was completely acceptable to me.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Friday May 1st, 2008
We went for a night ride this evening! Kim picked Kandee and I up at around 6. Kandee got into the trailer with relatively little fuss, which is an improvement to last week where she refused to get in the trailer, and once she did she absolutely panicked and basically tore back out of it like a freight train.
We went with a few other people. I met a new lady, Rebecca, who I like a lot. She is nice and she knows how to ride really well, not to mention her little Paso/Quarter gelding Tony is the cutest! There was also a stallion along for the ride, which irritated me a little bit due to the lack of tact in asking if it was okay with the other horses. Kandee was in a raging heat, so I felt like she was going to explode beneath me. She wanted to get up there and invistage that horse, and I was having a hard time. She just wanted to throw her head up, brace again the bit, and run ahead.
So I finally said screw it, and I told everyone I needed to pass. My little rocket needed to get some steam out of her system. And did she! We hauled ass down in the sand pits [dry river bed] until she felt somewhat normal beneath me. I looked back during my run, and there was a coyote running behind us! It was awesome, and when I pulled up the coyote stopped as well and just looked at us. It was a rather large coyote, but he/she was so gorgeous.
It got really dark [no moon], so we cracked our glow sticks. I ended up going ahead again, because I wanted to trot and canter more. Kandee loved it. And it was so peaceful, the darkness around me, trotting along with just the green glow from the sticks. I loved it, and I think she did as well.
We were out for about three hours, didn't get home until about 11pm. Kandee was a trooper, and I now know that if I have any endurance rides at night, she will be perfect. It was her first time riding in a large group, and she did well and didn't put up a fuss when I asked her to leave the group.
We had to ride the main road in Lakeside to get back, and she didn't even flinch at all the traffic. Kandee is a great horse.
I couldn't get any pictures because well...it was dark and there was no moon. BUT, I did get two pictures before I put on her bridle and got on.
