New Living Situation and A Handsome Gelding

I hinted a few weeks ago that the girls were moving, and so they have. Lets start at the beginning, back in July. We went on an extended vacation, and during the middle, there was a flood. Specifically into my stalls. Jellybean's stall was completely saturated while Gracie's stall was moderately saturated. Since stalls need to be vacant to dry out, the ponies got to move into the pond pasture. They were the only two horses out there, and they stayed until I got home. 

After we returned, we talked about moving the horses into a paddock instead of stalls. The catch? The paddocks were not complete yet. But there was another paddock, a nice one. Except it holds water REALLY well when it really rains. So we moved the horses into the paddock with the understanding that they would move into the completed paddock asap, but definitely before the monsoon season comes. 

And so now the horses have been living in the flood prone paddock for a few weeks. We bought them a round bale, so they can eat hay continuously now. And then we added a new man into the mix. Now before you get all fired up about us buying another horse, we didn't. Knots is going to be living in the paddock. This way, I am taking care of him in exchange for a half lease. I can ride him Monday nights, Thursday mornings, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday. This should work out well for me, as he will be available for some fun weekend jaunts while being leased out in the mornings. Maggie has him leased out to a student who wants to ride in the mornings. She should be able to give him some exercise without counteracting any training rides I put on him. Onward to the December derby :)

Nom Nom

The horses have been really funny this week with the new herd dynamic. Knots is very much the boss man. Gracie is second, and Jellybean is bottom of the totem pole. Knots only has to look at the girls, and they walk away from whatever he might want, be it grain or water. In fact, he had them eating out of one grain pan while he monopolized two. Wow. Talk about bossy. Luckily the round bale is too much trouble to run other horses off, so they should all be eating enough. Especially since they just got a bump in feed, considering Gracie is looking a little bit sad. Knots is getting the same amount as his previous living situation. And we will have to see how Jellybean handles the extra calories.

In which I prove how easy it is to get hurt doing stupid things

Jellybean has, by all accounts, been doing splendidly. So of course I decided to push the envelope a little bit more! I was riding around in the the large arena with the boys (maybe mistake one?) on Friday night. They were roping and dragging a five gallon bucket.

Seems boring right?

Jellybean was a little bit apprehensive about the bucket moving around and making noises, but she seemed interested, not terrified. So she walked behind the bucket while the boys drug it forward. She was following it in a funny, kind of like she was tracking a calf. She had her neck arched, ears forward and was looking at it like she might bite it. So I decided to build on that, and asked the kid to trot off, and we followed at a trot. Then he stopped. And we didn't stop as fast. And she saw it from the corner of her eye...

...And I hit the dirt. Hard. I think she started trying to turn around and run, but she baby bucked and spun. I tried to close my outside leg and managed to unbalance myself instead, and off I went. I landed hard on my left hip, shoulder, head. I hopped back up, but it was real hard to move. I walked slowly over to Jellybean (who was just standing looking at Gracie across a couple of fences) and collected her. I had to get back on, so I walked back to the mounting block. 

Jellybean didn't want to stand still (we have been working on this), so I had to finagle for a couple of minutes, but I finally got on. When I flexed my glutes to stand up in the saddle, I had some shooting pains, and decided I was only going to ride for a few minutes. I trotted her around through a couple of figure 8s, and then got off and untacked. Whew. Then I popped some ibuprofen and limped around. 

I have been getting much better everyday, but I am still waiting for the bruise to form on half of my back. I am going to take it easy until the end of the week, and then back to the grind. Don't worry, I'll be fine :) I like to think its awesome that my injuries have occurred mostly when I am doing something stupid, and no concussion this time ;)

Market Day!

Robert modeled some bull riding kids chaps.

Three Brothers Stable had a moderately successful trip to the market day on Saturday. We were very on time this year, and managed to have our booth set up and ready to go before 8am. We had enough people to man the booth, and lots more people available to shop with the students. One student managed to get an entire new tack set for under 500 dollars. All of our students managed to snag a new-to-them pair of tall boots, and there were lots of new saddles going around.

This is a scandalous boot jack I'm sad I didn't buy

Here's our haul!

At the final count, I managed to sell a hunt coat, a dressage coat, all the associated shirts, a western saddle, and two saddle covers. I managed to buy the items in the picture: a blanket for Jellybean, two sets of stirrup leathers, a leather girth, a dressage girth, a breast plate, a kimberwicke, boot pulls, and three pairs of breeches, including a gently used pair of pikeur's that retail for 340. Boom. Until next year :)

Its that time of year again

... for the Horseman's Market Day, aka the horsey flea market. We are super pumped about all the fun things we hope to find, and of course hoping to make a few dollars on some other things we don't need anymore. Last year was the first year I went, and I only sold one item and bought this huge pile! So I don't think I was in the green when I left last year. This year makes no promises to be in the black either, but nevertheless, very exciting :)

I think I paid less than 100 for all these things :)

Jellybean's first adventure off the farm

On Sunday my friends at the barn and I loaded up the ponies to go trail riding. I decided to take Jellybean and have a learning experience! We started off ok tying in the wash pit and grooming. It was super hot out (about 100), and Jellybean came in from her paddock sweaty. I brushed her off and picked her feet out really well. She seems to have a small touch of thrush?

Anyways, then we loaded Starfire and Panda up onto the trailer and then it was Jellybean's turn. She tried to make the step, but she wasn't picking her foot up high enough. We encouraged her with the whip, but she still wasn't making the step. We tried for about 15 minutes, and then tried something weird. Since the step was bothering her (she was even giving a slow motion rear to try to feel out the step), we picked her foot up and placed it in the trailer. Apparently that was all she needed to step up on her own. She went right up (Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried). I gave her a snack and tied her up and we went on our way.

Well mostly. We got pulled over on our way, apparently the driver tail light was out. This is amusing, since it has been out since at least June, albeit sporadically. Jeannette got a warning while we tried not to giggle too much at the circumstances; then we were on our way. We rolled up to Indian Spirit Springs and signed our liabilities and chatted about the trails. We opted for the mid-range trail, in case we had difficulties or dark.

We tacked up and hopped on, and off we went! Jellybean was pretty eager to go somewhere, although we didn't have a pace or plan. She walked in front through the open spots, and sucked back a little bit when we went into the trees. We had a nice rotation of leader, Panda/Starfire/Jellybean, none of the horses were too upset either way.

We walked past a large tractor (do you call them tractors when their bucket holds like 10 cubic yards?) and through some more grassy fields. Jellybean kept stealing snacks, but she was otherwise uninterested in much of anything.

These weeds were taller then we were!

Down the trail we go

After walking through some enormously tall weeds, we ended up walking through a wooded trail. Jellybean actually spooked just a little bit when a bush touched her butt unexpectedly. Oops. Then came the one obstacle on the trail: a "water" crossing! I was slightly concerned about this going out, since Jellybean has a history of disliking water, but I figured we would get through it somehow. Of course, maybe this wasn't a good plan, because Jellybean doesn't care so much about being with other horses.

The dread water crossing!

I guess it worked out then, that the water crossing had no water, just dried mud. Jellybean was not excited about going through it, but she did it while leading the pack (eventually)! Then when I was taking a picture she hopped back across. She didn't actually jump, but she was very careful to only cross on the left side of the photo.

Majestic and shit. The photo took with this fancy halo.

After this obstacle it was definitely smooth sailing and we made it with no further incident! Once we got back to the trailer we had some daylight left, and decided to trot around the field. Jellybean scared a herd of deer without scaring herself, although she did look at them. Anyway, she was being so good I decided to ask for a bit of cantering, and she cantered around in the big field with no misbehavior at all!

At the end, we untacked and snacked on some grass while the other ponies hopped on the trailer. Then Jellybean loaded up with minimal fuss herself! I think once she knew she could get into the trailer she was feeling more confident. On the way home I proceeded to annoy my friends by being so pleased with Jellybean! I think our first outing was a solid confidence building experience :)

So I made some saddle covers!

 Warning: The title is deceptively simple. I actually purchased a pattern from Suitability #7400 and then followed the directions the old fashioned way. But still ;)

So we have a couple of challenges at the farm, namely dust and mud, depending on the moisture level. None of these things facilitate clean tack. So I was browsing online looking for cute saddle covers, and coming up short. Limited selection, ugly colors. Of course, I didn't look on Etsy, so maybe my problems would have been solved there, but alas. 

Anyways, its fairly straightforward, cut two pieces and sew them together with some elastic on the edge (ok its more complicated, but since this isn't a tutorial I don't need to go into it).   

First I cut the fabric

Then I added the gusset triangle to each side

Then I stitched the two sides together and added a zigzag topstich

Then I added some nylon strapping to the top of the cover

I missed a picture, but I added the bias tape around the edge with the elastic, then topstiched then pulled the strings tight.

Voila!

My plan is to make a few more of these bad boys and sell them at the tack swap coming up in a couple of weeks! These are the other patterns I want to make:

  

Some updates to the layout...

I think its time to update the layout of the page. Its been over a year and a half since I started this little blog, and I have changed several things in my life since then. It seems like a blog makeover is a good place to start. The current sidebar:

I have been riding for many years and started by competing at local hunter shows before becoming more interested in eventing. After playing around in eventing, I moved to college and took up reining. I captained the western IHSA team and managed to learn some horsemanship patterns. With this variety of experiences, I am very interested in the pursuit of the "all around horse."

Dusty Summer (affectionately known as Jellybean) is a 3 year old mostly quarter horse mare. She is growing like a weed, and will hopefully be almost 16 hands. She's going to be my partner as we work towards a balanced training program which will allow us to compete in the lower levels of eventing, reining, and dressage.

When I am not working with Jellybean, I teach horseback riding lessons at Three Brothers Stable. I also work at a non-horsey job as a biochemistry PhD student at Texas A&M.

A new description of myself is necessary at this point, since my goals have changed and I no longer want to focus on my previous experiences as much as my current experiences.

Sooooo I have added pages to the top of the blog, check out a short blurb about the animals in our lives and some information about other places we frequent constantly.