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Sep. 25th, 2005 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWe went up to Shady Trail (an organized trail ride up by Lynn's house) with Absolut, Nick, Goldrush, Lynn's mare, Elklin, and Chelsea. It was a pretty productive day and the weather was cool and overcast without actually raining on us..
I got to try out my NEW, gooseneck-compatible truck. Okay, so it's the same old truck I've had for rather a while now, but it has a shiny new gooseneck hitch in the bed which actually will pull a trailer. It also has a light plug that makes the lights on the trailer come on. Yay. I can back a pickup up well enough to be able to hook up a gooseneck trailer. Yay. The truck has a power-steering pump whine in it. boo. The truck also has a smells-like-brakes-or-clutch smell when first started, not sure what's up with that because it doesn't smell that way when pulling a load. I'll have to get that investigated here in a bit. It does not seem to have any difficulty at all pulling a horse trailer. La (she drove) said it handled pretty well.
I think I need to go horse-trailer-shopping.
I got to try out my NEW horse booties which conveniently arrived in the mail the other day. Yay. The horse booties (Technically, these are easyboots, quite probably TM and everything) are quite nifty. They stay on as advertised. They are not terribly difficult to remove from the horse's feet. I think the back heel strap will need to be cut down slightly on these, but it's a replacable part if I screw up and there are also online instructions for cutting down the back heel strap so I should probably be okay. (The back heel strap scuffed the hoof-part of her feet in the back more than I thought it should so we're going to see how to adjust for that. It's partly a trial-and-error thing, fitting the boot, but initial results were very encouraging and I think a little more tinkering will get me set. If I can't find a way to adjust for scuffing, there's always vetrap, which will cover and protect-from-scuffing.
Trysta was very enthusiastic about the booties particularly after they stayed on for the four hour ride without shifting or coming off. She wants a pair of her own now. I told her she could try out the smaller (back-foot-size) ones I got for Nick so that she could see if she liked 'em before spending money on them. The booties also appear to provide quite passable traction on pavement, which is nice. (Steel shoes without borium on them are slippery on pavement.)
I got to ride the IRH, who was reasonably pleasant except for a small spot of bucking that may have been yellowjacket instigated. We rode over a nest of them, you see. I'm not certain she got stung, but it seems likely. Anyway, I got her stopped and I didn't come off and we continued the ride just like our IQ was normal, so no biggie. There weren't cars to speak of, so no practice with those.
We practiced being a good horse and leaving room between us and the person in front of us. (This was the skill we failed at when we got kicked by Mariah, as attentive readers will recall...) That was kind of productive. She's not expert at it, but she's showing some improvement. She's also getting a little better at carrying herself down hills, which is encouraging. Meatly did that automatically but Nick apparently doesn't have an intuitive grasp of these things. We worked on better downhill posture and I think we made some progress on that front, too.
I got to try out my NEW, gooseneck-compatible truck. Okay, so it's the same old truck I've had for rather a while now, but it has a shiny new gooseneck hitch in the bed which actually will pull a trailer. It also has a light plug that makes the lights on the trailer come on. Yay. I can back a pickup up well enough to be able to hook up a gooseneck trailer. Yay. The truck has a power-steering pump whine in it. boo. The truck also has a smells-like-brakes-or-clutch smell when first started, not sure what's up with that because it doesn't smell that way when pulling a load. I'll have to get that investigated here in a bit. It does not seem to have any difficulty at all pulling a horse trailer. La (she drove) said it handled pretty well.
I think I need to go horse-trailer-shopping.
I got to try out my NEW horse booties which conveniently arrived in the mail the other day. Yay. The horse booties (Technically, these are easyboots, quite probably TM and everything) are quite nifty. They stay on as advertised. They are not terribly difficult to remove from the horse's feet. I think the back heel strap will need to be cut down slightly on these, but it's a replacable part if I screw up and there are also online instructions for cutting down the back heel strap so I should probably be okay. (The back heel strap scuffed the hoof-part of her feet in the back more than I thought it should so we're going to see how to adjust for that. It's partly a trial-and-error thing, fitting the boot, but initial results were very encouraging and I think a little more tinkering will get me set. If I can't find a way to adjust for scuffing, there's always vetrap, which will cover and protect-from-scuffing.
Trysta was very enthusiastic about the booties particularly after they stayed on for the four hour ride without shifting or coming off. She wants a pair of her own now. I told her she could try out the smaller (back-foot-size) ones I got for Nick so that she could see if she liked 'em before spending money on them. The booties also appear to provide quite passable traction on pavement, which is nice. (Steel shoes without borium on them are slippery on pavement.)
I got to ride the IRH, who was reasonably pleasant except for a small spot of bucking that may have been yellowjacket instigated. We rode over a nest of them, you see. I'm not certain she got stung, but it seems likely. Anyway, I got her stopped and I didn't come off and we continued the ride just like our IQ was normal, so no biggie. There weren't cars to speak of, so no practice with those.
We practiced being a good horse and leaving room between us and the person in front of us. (This was the skill we failed at when we got kicked by Mariah, as attentive readers will recall...) That was kind of productive. She's not expert at it, but she's showing some improvement. She's also getting a little better at carrying herself down hills, which is encouraging. Meatly did that automatically but Nick apparently doesn't have an intuitive grasp of these things. We worked on better downhill posture and I think we made some progress on that front, too.
