Other weekend stuff...

[which_chick]

On Saturday, we went up to ride Sweep at the state 4H competitive ride, which was fine. Mostly I'm mentioning this because I got a picture I've been wanting for several years.



See, some years ago I took Callie, project horse for the year (since sold) up to the competitive ride to do sweep. The sweep riders gather up the neon orange ribbons (on clothespins) and clip them to a bindertwine tied around the horse's neck. It makes like a lion's mane when you're done and this shows up really well on a bay horse like Callie was. I did not get a picture of Callie (actually Callisto) with her mane of neon orange ribbons and I kind of regretted that, mentioned it here.

But, this year Laur took Peake up and Peake (like Callie) is a bay mare with a white star (like Callie) and so... I got a picture of Peake. Here it is, so that you can see what a nice visual it makes.



Been making a lot of tart for Lala since the winesaps are in season, one per weekend day. (Tarte tatin, it's allegedly french for Burnt Apples With Butter Pastry or similar. Super easy to make, super delicious hot or cold.)



Frost is on the pumpkin burdock. First of the year on Sunday morning.



And also here's a Sunday picture of Finn:

Comments

[adafrog]

Sweep does look kind of fun.

[which_chick]

It is. You're behind all the kids competing and it's kind of a "brisk trail ride" experience where you pick up ribbons and signs as you go along. We gathered most of the ribbons from horseback, at a trot, which was fun for at least eight of the twelve miles. Some of the signs (on stakes or stapled to trees) required a halt and occasionally a dismount, but we made Gillian (on the solid bay Morgan) do that part because she had the shortest horse.

I also wound up wearing ribbons because we ran out of space on the bindertwine.



Also we got free ride shirts that say STAFF on the back, which was pretty awesome. And the ride management fed us free, hot, home-made soup (chicken noodle or ham and potato, both were excellent) at the end of the ride.

[adafrog]

Cool!
And yum.

[crockpotcauldron]

Tarte tatin is amazing, it's the easiest pie I've ever baked and yet the best loved. It's named after the Tatin sisters, who made it at their hotel. Definitely feels like a recipe you could crank out at a restaurant, the caramel apples don't take much babysitting.

Sweep looks like a really fun time! It's good to have an event with friends. If it's competitive, how do they keep score? By team?

Finn looks like he's coming along well. How fast do horses grow?

[which_chick]

Competitive trail is scored "against yourself". Basically, the ride staff goes over your horse BEFORE the ride (vet-in) and then again AFTER the ride (vet-out) and marks you down for any changes in your horse, including stuff like impulsion of trot and capillary refill and gut sounds. There's also a minimum time (do not go faster than this) and a maximum time (do not exceed this time) and you lose serious points for being outside of the time window but INSIDE the time window, all finishers are equal. The "against yourself" scoring system makes for a more-fair playing field where almost all light breeds can do well. The winner is the person whose horse looks the most like the horse they started with, as if the intervening twenty five or thirty miles were basically a walk in the park.

Finn's doing well, but he's got a couple of years of "baby" to go before anything really interesting happens to him. In my opinion, horses are physically mature enough to start some light under-saddle work at four. Science says most horses are fully skeletally mature at about six.

There exist a number of horsepeople who put horses under saddle before they are two. I do not agree with this and I do not do it with my horses.

From weaning (Finn is a couple of months past "weaning") to age 3, I do light ground work and civilization skillsets (handle, lead, pick up feet, see farrier, some desensitization work, load on a trailer, pony from another horse, go to new places and do easy "work" -- mostly the leading skills, bathing, grooming, clipping). Late in the horse's three-year-old year (October or thereabouts), we do "meet the tack... this is a saddle, this is a bridle, this is a saddle pad, please to be wearing these items and going about your business pleasantly". This is all that happens in the fall of their three year old year. I don't put weight on a horse's back until the spring of their four year old year. (They may not actually be four, like, if they were born in June and it's April, they are not four yet but they're pretty close to four.)

[crockpotcauldron]

That's a fascinating scoring system. I like how it prioritizes horse fitness and welfare. How do you check cap refill on horses? On humans it's generally the fingernail. Lip, I suppose? Ears?

Finn basically sounds like a large dog, for the baby years. A big pet that has to accept being handled politely and come when you call.

Is Finn going to be gelded?

[which_chick]

Cap refill on horses is done using the gums. Horses have thick, sturdy lips that are frequently dark in color so it's not easy to see cap refill on them if you can even squish them hard enough to make it work. But gums are pink and easy to squish to white.

Finn will likely be gelded at some point. First, I would like a bay Chesapeake baby (Finn is bay. Chesapeake is bay. Bay is kind of a lock, here.) but if (a) she drops dead before he's old enough or (b) he grows up in a way I don't like or (c) he's not temperamentally suited to having balls, he will be a gelding sooner rather than later. I've met colts that needed to be gelded SOONEST (Bird was an asshole, like completely and totally an asshole. Brain surgery definitely helped him and he had no business having balls to go along with his parrot mouth.) and I will make that call if needed.

Chesapeake is the 2008 purebred daughter of my beloved dead mare Nick. I like her but I don't love her. (We let her grow up and started her under saddle and rode her for a couple of years to be SURE that she wasn't THE ONE before trying again.) I bred a second baby from my beloved dead mare in 2018 (she only had two babies, ever, with ten years between them, because we are NOT swamping the world with unwanted baby horses over here). I got another filly and she was wonderful and perfect and everything I wanted and we shot her when she was just shy of seven months old because she'd gone completely blind from Leptospirosis. (Why yes, we DID call the vet. A lot. I had two thousand dollars of vet bills on the dead baby horse before she was six months old. The only reason it wasn't more was because my vet-tech friend did all the IV work for me for free.) The whole thing is a bleeding sore of a memory. You can read about it here.

Anyway, Peake, who is the bay mare with all the ribbons around her neck (in the picture above), is all that's left of Nick and I would, at this point, like a Peake baby. We'll see how that goes. I have tried shipping Peake out to a stud and it was expensive and she didn't settle and there was a ton of hauling and mare care and they only keep them for one heat cycle and it is honest to dog cheaper and easier to buy a regionals-quality colt, raise it for two years, and throw it in the field with the target mare for an entire whole summer to get the target mare knocked up as desired. Mares that do not settle from induced-heat (you give them a shot to bring them into heat) hand-breeding sometimes settle from being in a field all summer long with a stud, doing things at their own pace.

Peake baby or no Peake baby, I do not foresee Finn having a long-term career as a stallion. That is not my goal. If he stays a stallion past five, I will be shocked.

It is entirely irresponsible and wrong of me to buy a colt, raise it for two or three years, breed it to a mare of my choosing, put a foal (or at the most two) on the ground for personal use, and then geld the stallion, break him to ride, and use him as a riding horse. I am a bad person and a backyard breeder and the very worst of horse ownership. Don't care.

Long term, I expect Finn to be a good-citizen riding gelding who is capable of going out in public and being sensible. This is 100% possible for all geldings, regardless of whether they were gelded at a year old or at five years old or at twelve years old.

[crockpotcauldron]

Oh, that's a wretched situation with the baby horse. What a nightmare.

I feel like if you want the horse and have a use for it and will take good care of it, why not make the horse? You seem sensible enough. Seems like there are lots of arguments over horse stuff.

[which_chick]

People argue about all kinds of things. Horses have a lot of money and a lot of stupid together, which is kind of a recipe for drama. I try not to take it too seriously.