Sunday Stills

Okay, here I am checking out the chicken coop'd'villa before the chickens made it their home.

Getting to supple

Getting to forward

Wordless Wednesday

A Bump In The Road

Baythoven and Sarah had a major disappointment at the end of the summer. They had qualified for the Arabian Sporthorse Regionals earlier in the year, but as the show got closer it became clear that something wasn't right with the horse. Sarah had taken him to the Region 6 Youth Overnight Camp at Devonwood. Baythoven pulled out all the stops and acted his worst. The clinician ended up riding him at one point, and rumor has it that he nearly unseated her!

After the camp out he continued to act out with plenty of bucking. We called out our chiropractor, but for the first time even this didn't help. The DH and I decided to have a lameness work up done on him. It turns out Bay was having some arthritis issues with his hocks, and he was in pain. We were asking him to use those hocks and he was trying to tell us that he was uncomfortable. It would have been much easier if our horse could talk.

We ended up having his hocks injected. We gave him some time off. He is back in work now and moving beautifully. Our vet tells us the best thing for him is to keep moving. So we will keep showing as long as he seems comfortable.

Sarah already has a list of shows she is interested in for this year, and they will be doing OHSET again too.

Disaster Strikes

I am not a domestic goddess. Just ask my DH. Today I made the supreme sacrifice and went through one of my cookbooks for a recipe for homemade butternut squash soup. I wrote down the ingredients I would need from the store. I went out into the rain and drove to The Market of Choice. I chose that market in particular although there are two others closer to my house and easier to get to. Why? At The Market of Choice I can buy butternut squash already peeled and cubed in 2 lb tubs. I told you...I am not a domestic goddess.

Of course I went to the market at the worst possible time. I drove right past the high school as it was letting out, and I got stuck in traffic. It took 20 minutes to do a 10 minute drive. Once I arrived, I found what I needed fairly easily and made my purchases and returned home.

I chopped onion and Canadian bacon. I steamed the squash. I cooked the onion and Canadian bacon to a golden brown in olive oil. I combined the steamed squash and chicken stock with the Canadian bacon, onion, and olive oil and covered and simmered for 15 minutes. It smelled heavenly. I poured the mixture into my blender to puree. The only step left was to return the soup to the pan, reheat, and sprinkle with fresh sage. Yum.

That is when disaster struck. I picked up the blender and the bottom fell out. Literally. The bottom fell out of the blender. My beautiful soup went everywhere and my hand was badly burned. No trip to the hospital was needed, but the sucker hurt bad enough that I had to use cold water for the entire clean up as I couldn't stand to have hot water on the hand. I had soup on the counter top, soup on the floor, soup dripping down the front of the cabinet. I'm not sure if my blender is ruined or not because soup oozed into the casing around the motor. I even had soup all over my sweatshirt, jeans, and shoes.

Shortly thereafter the DH called. He was on his way home and wanted to know if he should stop and pick up something for dinner...we had Safeway's Chicken Taco Soup.

Working on the Outside Rein

I haven't been to a clinic with Boo or with Bernadine in months, but last Saturday that changed. When I got the notice through email that a clinic had been scheduled I signed up right away. It's been my experience that if you procrastinate you lose because her clinics tend to fill up quickly. I wasn't sure when I signed up if Boo was going to be able to go. That injury to his jaw took a while to heal. I hadn't put a bit in his mouth at all since he had been injured. The day before the clinic was scheduled to happen, I went to the barn and decided to longe him in side reins to see how he behaved carrying the bit. The last thing I wanted to do was hit the ground because he wasn't healed up enough yet. I tacked up and took Boo over to the indoor. We started out longeing without the side reins. Once I had seen no adverse reaction there I attached the side reins loosely and continued to longe at walk/trot/canter. Still no adverse reaction. While I was longeing another boarder showed up to meet her farrier. Having someone around helped me to make the decision to climb up on Boo's back and test him out. I wanted to be absolutely sure that it was going to be Boo at the clinic rather than Baythoven. As luck would have it he was soft and responsive and we had ourselves a nice ride. I cleaned him up after the ride and clipped his bridal path. He's so fuzzy right now that I would have loved to body clip, but there just wasn't time for a bath and a clip. I cleaned up all my tack instead and put everything together so the DH wouldn't leave anything behind the next morning when he came out to haul Boo over to Crosby Creek.

The clinic began at 8:30 Saturday morning with an hour long lecture. We partnered up in pairs with a set of reins for each pair. We switched off being the horse and the rider while Bernadine gave us instruction in the finer points of handling the reins. We simulated different experiences that can arise while riding and what to do about them. The point was to have some idea of what to do to fix the different scenarios when they arose, using our seat and legs with only minimal use of the reins. After the lecture we all had our own 45 minute lesson.

I warned Bernadine that both Boo and I were a bit out of shape since the last time we had seen her. We started off getting Boo in front of my leg which is nothing new. Every ride starts of with getting Boo in front of my leg. I don't mind because it usually doesn't take much before he gets with the program. After we had him moving forward, we worked on getting him connected to the outside rein. We did this by spiraling into a circle and back out again. I found that I really needed to work on sitting straight, using my inside leg, and supporting with the outside rein. When he got it I would relax the inside rein and give him a good boy rub. We had to do this over and over every few strides, but we had many moments when he got it. I figured that's what we were striving for. Lengthening the time when he gets it. Lengthening the time when "I" get it. It seemed as if the lesson was over in no time at all. Boo and I were actually in better shape then I had given us credit for. Now I'm looking forward to working on what we learned on a daily basis and moving on in the next clinic.