Finding our inner canter

This post , as promised in an earlier post , will be about canter  work with Maggie, but first I have to talk about our ride yesterday. I took advantage of a small window of good weather and took a PTO day from work. It was our first real "trail" ride of the season.. I met a friend who brought along her husband , who was riding a sweet but young and inexperienced little paint mare. The trail was not near as bad as I expected, only  small areas of rotten ice and mud. We ended up just walking for the majority of the ride, in fact, mostly  all of it in consideration of the youngster along. I didn't mind because this was Maggie's first ride out and I wanted to keep things low key. We climbed an area called Pete's Ridge, a trail I had been trying to find for a year but never seemed to manage. We managed to cover 8.45 miles , and some change. I was pleased with my little bay mare. We only had one meltdown and that was only a mile from the parking lot (which she knew) I was in the middle and we had one more steep but short little hill to climb and the horse ahead got too far out of range apparently.  She lunged up the hill and ignored my requests to walk. On her third and final leap, we landed at the top and she still wanted to catch up to the other horse. I asked her to stop and apparently that pissed her off enough , she attempted to rear and then buck. By then, she wasn't the only one who was pissed.  I hate rude behavior in a horse ( I made one change to it but can anyone name that quote??) We did a circle or  two and she came off her temper tantrum and was finally resigned to carry on in a more "lady like" way . She was  still a bit hopped up but was now listening. My friend was laughing at the  fit Maggie had just thrown and was quite surprised at how athletic she was , for being so short and round....I suppose it is a little funny looking on from some other saddle but when your trying to deal with it, it's not always so funny! We hit the final logging road to take us out and she settled back down. One meltdown isn't too bad.  It felt good to log the first few true condition miles.I hope to be back out on Saturday.

On to the canter work : I guess it was 3 weeks ago I finally started some concerted work with Maggie again. One section of the arena was dry enough to get something accomplished. After a long period of not riding much, I like to do a few lunge sessions at the beginning of each season to stretch Maggie out. It also allows me to assess her overall body and condition and watch how she is moving. I can see any hitches in her gait if she has any . It also help gets the “cobwebs” out of her sedentary lungs and heart . It helps gets her brain engaged into work mode and it has helped me to help her learn speed within her trot. All of this without the added burden of a rider. I usually do about 3 lunge sessions the first week back to work in the spring and no riding. Then I start riding and lunge in between for the second week. The riding is low key, mostly walking, bending, and lateral exercises. By the third week, it’s full riding at all three gaits and lunge work only if/when I am short on time or feeling lazy.


20-30 minutes is usually sufficient on the lunge as it can be hard on their legs. I use a 32 foot lunge rope made out of retired climbing rope. Last year, Maggie took quite a while to accept that she was supposed to go around on the end of the line . We mostly walked and trotted last year on the lunge. If she happened to canter, I let her but I never really asked for it. It was a rare occurrence that she did canter willingly on the lunge. She would much rather just trot as fast as those little Morgan legs would carry her, which is pretty fast and impressive coming from a 14.0 hand Morgan. I suppose its what they are made to do so I shouldn’t be surprised. The few canters she did offer only lasted a few strides and then she would , as I call it, “Seize up “. She would start to try to buck and pull against me, then she would speed up , panic, and try to run away. Fortunately, I have her trained to “WHOA” command and I would get her stopped. She would stop abruptly and look at me , with her Wild Morgan Foretop and Maine tussled, as if to say “ What just happened?”

It’s actually a little scary for both her and me. God forbid she get away from me dragging that long line and it get wrapped around a post or something!! So last fall, I did a lot of work on trying to find her canter . I set things up so it was as easy as possible for her. I used Tom’s archery track which is just a 90 meter straight line. We cantered… A LOT! I can only recall a handful of times where she offered a canter that could be considered relaxed and easy to ride and that was only because that was probably after 9-10 previous gallops.

So this spring, we have started up again with finding the canter on the lunge. We have had a few Seize Up moments going clockwise , but going counter clockwise is going well. Here is what I have found works and what doesn’t:



Do plenty of trotting first both directions

Ask for a lot of up /down transitions from walk-Trot-walk- Whoa.

Ask for a lot of speed changes within the trot

No big movements with the whip . She is hyper sensitive . Too much of a flick toward her hocks will send her to the moon.

Lots of trotting over ground rails – teaches her to stretch down and forward and think about where her feet are.

When asking for the canter, say “canter” and lean forward with my body, being careful to stay behind her shoulder (more at her rib) and just lift the whip gently from the ground up towards her flank.

Key here is to wait and not be impatient . She will pick up the biggest fastest trot you have ever seen and eventually the legs get all sorted out and pick up the canter. I give her one lunge lap to pick it up before I ask again.

Then, the final note is that I don’t ask her to stay in the canter . If she only gives me 3 strides, I let her drop back down into a trot, ask for a walk , then a whoa, and end the session at the point.

The goal with her at this point is to not make it such a big deal. Everything is over the top with her because she is hyper sensitive to pressure. Any pressure.

Chances are pretty good she’ll never truly enjoy traveling at a canter but she can certainly become more balanced and comfortable in it than she is now.

Laptop is Dead

A few weeks ago I thought the laptop was making an odd clicking noise once in a while,  but I ignored it, ..thought it was just the new updated virus scans running in the background. Yep, Queen of da NILE.  I knew better. I make a living working on the darn things. Came home Friday night, went to log in to pay a few bills. Got the dreaded black screen with this across it

"Operating System Not Found"

That can't be good...

We took it to Best Buy on Saturday. We give a quick explanation of what happened to the young, wet behind the ears techy geek squad guy  behind the service desk. He then  looks at me and says "Have you backed up recently?" to which I replied.."Yes, in fact, I just backed up into my parking spot out there". 

Blank look from techy geeky guy......

...scowl from husband (which I could see out of the corner of my eye but pretended not to)

(sigh..... fine I will play nice)

Young techy geeky guy assumes that I am just some dumb girl who only uses the computer to download stupid YouTube videos and  go onto facebook finally says (after a bit of a long awkward pause)

 .. "well, I am 99% sure that your hard drive is toast"

I decide to be less mean and say

"Really, what makes you so sure? 

He then starts asking me a bunch of other questions of how the laptop was behaving over the last several days and comes to the conclusion that he is right after all. He then begins rattling off numbers of what it would cost to have their "tech team"  rebuild it . Ofcourse, they want you to buy their tech support plan  for an added fee, and this add on service for another fee, or if you buy this whole meal deal package, it will save you 20% and you get all these other services.. blah blah blah blah blah....

I let him rattle on  for a few mintues and then when I couldn't take anymore, interrupted him and asked for a breakdown of their fees, a list of services that I could look at... and digest because listening to him was making my stomach turn at that moment.

He handed me this horribly printed out , crooked on the page, black and white list of services that looked like a 1st grader created .  I looked at it for long enough to seem polite, grabbed my laptop , and said "Well, I will take a look and let you know if" ....and out the door we went. 


I decided  inside of 10 seconds that I was not going to be  buying their stupid "plan" which has a ton of services I don't need nor will I ever use. I just wanted to know two things:   could they salvage anything from the existing hard drive and what it was going to cost to yank out the old hard drive and stick a new one in..
That's it!!

Apparently it's not that simple anymore.

So, in support of local business, I will be taking my dead laptop to the little hole in the wall tech place down the street... I am even willing to pay a bit more because I know I won't get sold a bill of goods....

Long story short, I will be off line for a bit.. My Ipod just isn't fun to try to blog from... ! Ofcourse,  you can always catch up with me on Facebook if you really need to!

Here's to a Great Week~!

Ta Do Ta Dun..

It's only Tuesday but this week has been one for the books. I watched several colleages and friends be escorted out the office doors due to a reduction in force. It was something we all knew was coming but never suspected the employer was going to handle it how they did. Corporate America is not always a nice place. For months we were all on pins and needles wondering who would be cut and the people they chose , in many cases, made poor business sense.. but then again, I don't run the business. If I did, I certainly wouldn't do the things they do. Now that the worst of it is over, those of us left have a sense of relief that it wasn't any of us but at the same time that feeling of relief is overshadowed by the sense of loss. It's been a hard week.However,  life continues and things need done at house and farm. Home/farm ownership is a constant process of change as well. Ongoing upkeep, reassessing use of land, corrals and herd managment. The big "farm" news is that Grace is going on to a new home to be a momma again.
Remember when she came home  from Texas? I posted here about it. Well, she is moving on again. We aren't sure if it's permanent move at this point, but for the time being, she is going to a friends ranch east of the mountains to be bred. She is not sound to ride more than light pleasure riding due to the mishap with JB, ( which ofcourse nearly killed JB and ended his endurance career )but also caused her some issues as well. In the mishap, she broke the tip of her coffin bone.  The good news is she still has some worth as a broodmare. She has some pretty hard to find Lippitt Bloodlines that just shouldn't be wasted and we have no intentions of breeding anymore. Tom had several foals out of her years ago but we are done with that phase of our horse life! So that's that. Moving on... 

The springtime ritual of dragging the pasture to bust up the turds is done and the pasture looks brown but neat. Now we wait for the green stuff to start sprouting. As mentioned here,the trailer is scheduled to go in to have the axles flipped at the end of the month (soonest we could get it in) and it won't be as pricey as we originally thought. That is rarely the case these days. Thanks ya'll for the info on the product that can be a protective coating. We are looking into it..

The truck goes in for a new windshield  and the trailer gets new tires next week. (Planning to hit the raod and head to Idaho in July for a pioneer ride!)

Today, we were given the good news that  the water softener system finally choked to it's final death so that was replaced  and last but not least, the fenced yard project is well underway.

With any luck ,Xena won't get any ideas and we won't have this situation..!

PS:I have also been working Maggie on the lunge a bit this week. It's going well but the canter is in need of some work. In all the years I have lunged horses, I have not yet seen a horse react quite like she does when she canters. It's almost panic as near as I can tell. I will be doing a post on it soon. Stay tuned..

Ideas please? Haywire for Home Built Hay feeders

We have mud, serious , deep EPIC mud,  like I have not seen for some time. The horses are miserable and I feel so bad but there isn't much I can do, short of putting them in the garage and all 6 won't fit. We have had to confine them to corrals now because they were tearing up the pasture too badly. They are not happy . I thought the least I could do is maybe invest in some kind of feeder to help get the hay off the ground for them.  I have always admired those heavy duty plastic spitoon looking feeders. Have you ever seen them? They are pretty nifty because they are easy to move around. You can fit 2-3 square bales in them . You can even install them with grates on the bottom for either drainage or to help keep the horses from gorging themselves. What is also nice is that the shape of the feeder does help to keep hay in the feeder better. Horses still manage to throw some out on the ground. They also won't try to crawl into these , generally, like they will with regular horse feeders( the big metal ones)
I had understood that the spitoon feeders were "economical" . So I went searching online. A company called Hi Qual makes them. But guess what? No one in my area is a dealer for them anymore. Figures.  The closest thing is about an hour drive away and I would have to order it. But the guy here that doesn't carry them said he lives near the store that can order it and pick it up for me. Sometimes I love living in Montana.! How is that for customer service. He even gave me his cell number. Ofcourse, if I order, it would be a week before it got here. That was all doable. What I wasn't expecting was the price. $455 big ones for them. Ideally I need two but that puts getting even one out of reach right now.

Plan B- I will gather the various metal water tanks I have laying around and use those until this mud subsides..sigh... I really want one of those pretty little spitoon feeders...

Anyone have any good patterns or ideas for something similar that could be home built?

Off to step into the mud boots (which almost aren't tall enough) and scrub off a horse or two....

Good Stuff to Share

Here is a link to are recent blog post on Developing Engagement by Alice Trindle.  Not only is she an excellent hand with a horse, she is an excellent teacher of her art, which is a skill that many clinicicians and trainers often lack. She only comes to Montana once a year unfortunately but I hope to get some time with her again this summer. Check out her blog and and her you tube videos for some great advice!

Honey Do List

So vacation is over and despite the snow covering the ground, it's time to get into spring riding mode. Spring break is next week. That means Tom is home. He will be busy doing projects around the house and believe me, the list is long. The first order of business  is getting Maggie fitted for her Borium shoes so I can start riding her on the trails, which are still icey and snowy.  The farrier will bring them for me all made up so that Tom can install them.  Borium shoes are expensive enough,  but having the farrier put them on is one of those expenses I can bypass. I thank my lucky stars every day that I have a husband who is also a talented farrier.

The other big event on the to do list is getting some work done to the horse trailer. I had really hoped we were going to get a new trailer this winter. We looked and looked and found a few potentials but even a good deal on a horse trailer is still thousands of dollars for what we want. That's a big investment. Our old beater is just going to have to make do for a bit longer. There is a lot I like about our old steel clunker. For one, I am comfortable pulling it. The length of the goosneck is long enough and makes turning and backing much easier. It's an open stock trailer and its heavy but horses seem to travel well in it, even horses who have never traveled well in a trailer seem to do fine in this one.
Tom  customized it when he first purchased it new in  1997 to install a wall of plywood to create a tack room. The tack room is tight  but it works okay. We just stick a folding saddle rack in there and hang bridle hanger on the wall for halters and bridles. We replaced the wood boards for flooring in it a few years back. Best of all.. The dang thing is paid for...

There are  some not so great things about it that are beginning to grate on my nerves. It's beginning to rust. That gets really expensive to have fixed. Not sure what we are going to do about that yet. There are couple areas that are worse than others.  One major fix that we are planning to complete is the axles. Years ago, we flipped the axles , making the trailer's ground clearance  much higher. I wasn't keen on the idea but Tom used the trailer for hunting. He needed that ground clearance to get to the area he hunts in without damaging the trailer. It's Montana backcountry...roads that are unmanaged. Use your imagination a bit. Roads with wheel ruts 2 feet deep...  He doesn't hunt in that area anymore and it's unlikely he'll be going back anytime soon.We decided it was kind of dumb to keep the trailer jacked up like that..The horses have to jump in and jump out, which they manage just fine 99.8% of the time, but there have been times where they have miss calculated thier departure and have ended up cutting their leg. It pisses me off every time..

Having a "lifted" trailer also creates some other difficulties for short legged people like myself to get in and out of the tack room easily.I usually have an old milk crate I use as a step but there have been mishaps with that too. Surprisingly, they aren't always stable on uneven ground. More than once,  I have stepped down onto my milk crate, usually in a hurry, arms loaded with saddle, bridle, and packs,  and have ended up in heap because the flippin millk crate tipped to one side. It's surprising I haven't broken something yet..

 So, we are flipping the axles back to how they should be and I will gladly say goodbye to my milkcrate..

We are also going to install some sort of protective rubber on the lip on the back of the trailer because it's just bare metal.. sharp metal. This is the metal lip that the horses can catch their leg on if they misstep. Usually its a scrape to the front of the cannon bone...

Anyone have any suggestions for what product to use to cover this up???(please don't say duct tape!) 

The trailer is also getting a new set of tires for the season. We have been limping along on less than adequate rubber for a while now and frankly, I don't know how we haven't ended up with a flat... so an investment in tires is a must do.Last but not least , the wheel bearing will need to be repacked which is just another maintenance thing we check yearly. Last year we didn't need to but this year, it has to get done.

So, the old beater of a trailer will have to suffice for another year.It old, ugly and not set up to make camping easy but it's paid for and it's safe. What more can a rookie endurance rider ask for?   

Now where did I pack the tent??

Top of the Rock

I  look out the window at our now snowcovered yard , drinking a margherita and longing for the weather I just came from, just 12 hours ago. I just got home from a long weekend "sister getaway" to Scottsdale, Arizona.  It was great. We laughed, we lounged by the pool, flirted with the cutepool boys, drank margheritas,  went for a  run in shorts (kind of a big deal for those of us living in the Northwest), shopped DSW , bought a cute pair of sandals, and the best part...hiked Camel back mountain, twice..
The "twice" part was not part of the plan but the first day, but I will get to that. It was forecasted to be  87 degrees. We were told it was only an hour one way. We each took a water bottle. We are both pretty fit and figured, "ha, no problem". We got this.

 This is sis at the trailhead.  We took the Cholla trail because it was supposed to be less roack scrambling. Neither of us had any previous experience rock climbing so we figured this might be more appropriate for our skill level.  We took our spot in the crowd of others also ready to take on the infamous mountain.  I had heard it was a crowded place to hike but I really  no idea how bad it was. It took us 20 minutes to find parking, about a 1/2 mile away.

Sis drinking the last of ALLthe water we had packed- shouldn't be too much further though....

The trail is sand and rock, some of it sharp , some of it smooth and covered in just enough sand to make the footing slick. We hiked for about a half hour and thought we could see the top. We thought we were about at the halfway point. We are still having a good time, nonetheless...



We kept on hiking and kept thinking it was just another corner, another short climb...we had to be close to the top ....

 This is a peek at where we had just come....

 The problem is , this is where we still had yet to go...plus more climbing  that is NOT captured in this photo....

All  I could think was  CLIFFHANGER... (the movie)

At this point, dear ol ' sis who is a vegetarian that had not eaten that morning and had not had enough to drink , and has been hospitalized for heat exhaustion was  really struggling.. We sat and rested for a bit to see if she could continue but I could clearly see she was not feeling well. her heart rate would not come down. She's a nurse but I am an endurance rider. I know all too well what that meant..We were done.. I had visions of her being airlifted off the mountain and maybe this is a bit selfish but I did not want to spend the rest of my vacation watching over a family member in a hospital. I  decided  we were going to turn back and head down...

So, DAY 1 , Camelback  was not conquered...

Sis may be a bit less durable , but she is still my sister and is almost as stubborn as me.. She wanted to get to the top. She was bound and determined...  so we made a plan to return the next day, equipped with more water and she promised to eat in the morning to fuel up appropriately....

And we did. We climbed and climbed. We made it past the point of which we had turned back at the day before. Sis reported she was "fit to continue" so we did.. We were in for a bit of a surprise. The climbing became quite a bit tougher. No longer was there a trai but boulders that had to be scrambled over. Neither of us had ever been rock climbing, before today. But scrambled we did and eventually... we made it....and joined the large crowd of others (50-60 people) at the top of the rock.

It took us two tries, but we made it...

CAMELBACK... CONQUERED...

check it off the bucket list...