which_chick | (no subject)

Busy weekend, with lots of things (mostly pony activities) in it.

On Friday, I went to the Quentin Riding Club to watch the Mason-Dixon Classic. That was fun, but organized horse showing always manages to piss me off. Some day when I have more time (work in 20 minutes), I will go over this in more detail.

On Saturday, I painted ground poles (free, salvaged 8' treated landscape timbers that were used to stabilize tractor-trailer loads) blue and white (free paint a tenant had left behind) so that I could have them to do excercises over with the horse. I've decided that the horse needs to be able to go over jumps and ground poles is the first step in that direction. I will be building most of the jumps and stuff as we go along -- this is a budget project.

I drilled holes and put in eyebolts for about half of my rose trellis. I bought eye bolts for metal instead of eye screws for wood. My bad -- they work, but starting them kind of sucks.

I also went to the fun show up at the fairgrounds. It's the kind of thing we've gone to for several years with Nicknick, who has spent the previous time trotting through the patterns and cantering (mostly without bucking) back to the gate. This year we cantered from the start and in between the turn parts. I did not ask for speed, but I did ask for cantering. After the first go (high, tight, WTF is that pattern on the footing!?!) she got better. After the second go (barrels -- I was laughing at her. Loudly. Freaked her out.) she got a lot better. We (I) still need to work on turns because going in the ring apparently makes me stupid. Horse turns better with leg and yet I forget to use it and then am sitting there wondering why she's not turning well. I am dumber than my horse. All canter departures were buck-free. Horse has pretty much got the idea, here, needs to relax some (will come with time and practice). I need to shore up my pre-turn rate and work on turns with leg. Horse has depressing tendency to accellerate without me asking but appears to have brakes.

On Sunday, it got damn hot. I moved the ground poles to where they will live and set them up. Unfortunately, I set them up in one set of eight and they need to be in two sets of four. I'll have to fix that this afternoon after work. Also am going to run horse over them once they're set up right.

I went shopping for antihistimine/expectorant granules (think "Claritin for horses") for Meatly. She has heaves (COPD -- chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, basically means she can't freaking breathe) but gets better (breathing-wise) in winter. When the tree buds break and the red maples flower, she loses condition like her weight was melting off of her, just stands there and wheezes. She can eat hay in the wintertime and be pretty OK even though hay bothers a lot of heave-y horses. Because she gets better for both winter and high summer (both low-pollen/irritant times) and worse for both spring and fall, I'm starting to think some of her issue is allergies. I'm hoping the antihistimine stuff helps her out. It can't hurt. And she's always had this, but it's gotten a lot worse as she's aged. (She's 18 this year.)