Oh, winter...

I'm sitting here listening to the wind howl outside.  *sigh* It is supposed to get warmer by the end of the week, so fingers crossed that actually happens!

To follow up on my big plan, I am going to come up with a smaller plan to work with Spencer 4-5 times per week to get us ready to start some real work. I don't want him at zero when we get down there. I had hoped to start tonight, but with 25mph+ wind gusts and snow squalls, I caved like a house of cards! lol  Spencer didn't mind, I'm sure...he was a little wild eyed and jumpy tonight.

So, I'll start my plan within a plan this weekend, when it is forecast to be a balmy 2C.

In the meantime, I'm just going to post some funny pictures of Spencer in the snow!  I took his blanket off last weekend to give him a break. He proceeded to run around in his paddock and then rolled a few times.

I love this one - he was rubbing his head in the snow!

Snorting at something in the distance...

I love it when a plan comes together

Instead of continuing to complain about winter, I decided to come up with a bit of a plan to have something to look forward to. I am hoping to try Spencer at a couple of local schooling shows this summer and I need to get riding soon to see if we can pull it off. I would love to start riding regularly in March and it is sometimes possible, (like last year) but some years our snow doesn’t melt until April. I can sort of work Spencer in his paddock or up and down the laneway, but due to footing, we can’t do any trotting or cantering. The snow is even too deep and crunchy/uneven to do showmanship practice.


I don’t have a ton of extra cash to pay board right now, but I was able to negotiate a bit of a deal with the stable down the road. I’m taking Spencer down there in mid-March and we’ll stay until the end of April. It will give me a chance to either ride indoors or in their outdoor sand ring while my place melts and dries up. It’ll also give me a chance to have someone come in April and clean up the manure pile in my paddock – if it is dry enough!

I’ve also got lessons planned with a local coach. She is also a judge, so I feel like I’m in good hands. She is quite blunt, so I’m expecting to get an honest assessment from her on whether I’m ready to show or not. I’m not too worried about Spencer as he has been shown for the past 5 years or so. I’m definitely the weaker link in the equation!

The stable is only 1 mile down the road from me, so I’m planning to walk down and back most nights, since the exercise will be really good for me. I’m pretty excited about this – it has a bit of a boot camp feel to it. This new coach is pretty hard core (in a nice friendly way) and I’m hoping she will help motivate me to ride a lot and make some progress. This is a great opportunity for me to work with a well-known judge and meet more horse people. This judge knows everyone in the AQHA and APHA worlds around here, so it might be fun to see who else I will meet.

I have a tendency to kind of stall on things and change my mind, but I’m hoping this is the right situation to give me a big push and get me more confident and get doing some interesting things with my horse! It will be interesting to see if Spencer gives me lots of attitude once we start working, since he is out of shape and has been enjoying his leisure time… Or will he respond well to more structure? I’m hoping the latter, since the two of us need to bond a bit more and trust each other under saddle. Here’s hoping it all works out!

Spencer finally gets some exercise!

We had more snow on Friday, so that actually helped improve the footing a bit around here.

I am quite sick with some sort of plague, so I haven't been feeling up to doing much. I couldn't resist the new fresh snow and sunny skies yesterday though.   I free lunged Spencer in his paddock to start and was getting a bit of attitude from him.  It made for some good pics!

Then, since the footing seemed decent, I decided to lunge him for a few minutes.  And man did I get attitude from that horse!  I know his attitude now when I see it, so all I did was laugh and make him work a bit harder every time he did something goofy.  I was getting lots of head snaking, squeals and little bucks.  He makes a funny squealing noise when he doesn't want to work.  To me,  it sort of sounds like something a horse might sound like if it was hurt or something - it isn't mean or agressive sounding, but more of a whiny sound.

I ended up longing him longer than anticipated, due to all of the attitude. I did lots of direction and gait changes and when he could walk/trot/lope without any attitude, I let him walk a few laps to cool down. Mr. Tubs was puffing and sweating from his 20 minute workout! lol

Today, the weather was even nicer. A few degrees warmer and lots of bright sun.  I was tired of being cooped up in the house, so thought I would do a repeat of yesterday, minus the free longing.  I tacked Spencer up, thinking that if he behaved on the longe I would get on and walk around the pasture a bit.

He was 90% better on the longe line today - no big outbursts of attitude, just a bit of ear pinning and tail swishing.   He quickly worked through most of that, so after a few minutes, I got on my horse!

It felt good to be on my horse for the first time since late December!  The footing was ok, but not great for riding. I just meandered around in his paddock for 20 minutes before calling it a day.

Hopefully the weather holds and I can do a bit of work of most nights after work.  I am sure getting impatient for spring!

Random ramblings

I always think that I don’t have much to write about these days, since I’m not doing much horse stuff...Once I sit down and start typing though, lots of random stuff comes out!  Maybe I’ll try and do a “random ramblings” kind of post every week or something... 

His move looked like this! Luckily I was far away... 

Spencer hasn’t really travelled too far in his paddock with all of the deep snow we have had. He has a few trails packed down around the barn and to his shelter. I figured he wasn’t comfortable walking around in the snow much because it is all hard now and while I can walk on the top of it, he sinks down every other step. 

 I went out to feed on Monday and when I went out back door to see how he was doing, he gave me this wild eyed look and took off galloping around his pasture!   I guess the snow wasn’t too deep/hard/crunchy for him after all!  At one point, he even jumped the manure pile and then did some sort of Spanish riding school moves.  He jumped straight up in the air and then kicked out with his back feet.  I wish I had my camera with me!   It took him 10 or 15 minutes to calm down and he came back to the barn all sweaty and with his head down.   What a guy. I had to walk him for a while to cool him out before I could feed him.

While I was searching for images similar to the move Spencer “performed”, I found this cool post about in-hand dressage with a miniature horse:  http://equineink.com/2008/06/18/good-dressage-comes-in-a-small-package/

His name is Lancelot and he is so handsome!  He has some videos on YouTube and his owner has a book about training minis...

Since I can’t do much outdoors with Spencer right now, I thought I would practice clipping him.  I saw the previous owner clip him and he was fine, but to be honest, I was expecting a bit of attitude when I tried it.  I got out the clippers and he didn’t even flinch.  I was expecting to have to do a few sessions of desensitizing him and calming myself, but I had his bridle path trimmed in about 5 minutes and he would have let me trim his muzzle too, but I didn’t bother.   So, I’ll need to think of something else to work on.  Maybe I should try pulling his mane and practice braiding or something...???

Oh – I just remembered something horsey that I did a couple of weeks ago. I went with a friend to visit her young horse that is in training.  This barn is into cutting and sorting, so we went to watch an afternoon lesson. The trainer then took my friend’s young horse into the arena afterwards, to get him used to the cows.  It looked really fun actually...it would be neat to try that sometime. Maybe one winter I’ll board for a couple of months and do something like that with Spencer!

moooo

The young paint isn't too sure he likes the cows...

Ok - enough rambling for today. More to come next week. I like my rambling posts!  

Managing winter

This is my first winter with my own little barn and my own little horse to take care of (since I was a kid!).  So far, I think we have been doing just fine.  I was unsure how things would go when the snow, cold and ice hit us.

Trying to work a bit in the fluffy snow over the holidays

Tack room –  A+.  It is insulated and faces south/south-east, so it stays quite warm, especially on a sunny day.  Even when it was -25C (-13F) over the holidays, the temperature would range between 0C and -2C (32F and 28F).  My water hydrant is in the tack room, which was a smart move on the original owner’s part.  It has yet to freeze on me, but it does have a little heating coil wrapped around the exposed part, if I need it.

Fencing –   The bottom strand is buried in snow, so I’ll need to disable the connector to that strand.  Note to self for this weekend!  The north-west corner strands in my small paddock are sagging on me as well.  When we got our first big snowfall, I was able to knock the snow off and tighten up the strands, but it didn’t hold up.  I’m going to tromp out there this weekend and see what I can do. 

Spencer -  In mid December, as the weather was getting nastier, I wasn’t sure what to do with Spencer. He has a shelter, but wasn’t really using it.  He would stand in different places in his paddock, depending on which way the wind was blowing. It was getting tricky to put his hay out, because I would put it where he was standing in the morning, but the weather would change by the afternoon, so he wasn’t eating much because he didn’t want to stand in the wind (wimp!). 

Spoiled!!

Of course I felt guilty about this so I figured out another solution (spoiled horse alert!!) – I was able to open the back door of the barn and tie his stall door open so that he has good shelter for the cold, windy days. With this new arrangement, I wasn’t going to blanket him, since he had grown a really nice winter coat.  My friend that was taking care of him over Christmas felt bad because it was -234234234C and blanketed him anyway.  After wearing a blanket for a week or so, his fluffy coat was all squished down.  I pretty much had to keep the blanket on after that.

Manure Pile – The previous owners left a decent sized manure pile behind. I had intended to have someone come in with a tractor to remove it, but my budget last year didn’t allow it.  I didn’t plan on keeping Spencer in his stall much, if at all over the winter so it didn’t really cross my mind.  Of course, now that Monsieur Spencer has his own private horse hotel, complete with housekeeping staff, I’m adding the manure pile every day!  During the holidays, the snow was blowing and drifting a lot, so every couple of days the manure pile would get drifted over and covered with snow. It was tricky to push a wheelbarrow out far enough, so the manure pile is a little closer to the barn than I would like.  I can’t do much about it now, so I’ll just manage it until the spring.  Spencer also likes to paw at it (bored?) so it is a bit messier than I would like as well.

One thing I would like to change in the barn is the location of the light switches.  The switches are in the tack room, but getting there involves opening a gate in the pasture, which is hard in the dark and cold. My tack room outside door has also frozen shut several times so far this year, so getting in that way isn’t the best.  I go in via the main sliding doors and it would be nice to have light switches there as well.  I’m hoping to have an electrician out this summer to see if we can get that fixed.

All in all, we are faring quite well this winter. I sometimes daydream about taking him to a boarding stable for the winter so we could ride, but it is also nice to have time off to relax and try to stay warm!  The days are already getting a bit brighter by the time I get home from work, so by late Feb/early March we should be able to get started on some work!

I do find myself occasionally longing for the long, hot days of summer and a sleek horse!