Author: Amanda

lesson notes

What do you bring when you fall off?

Amanda7 Comments

It happens to the best of us. You’re approaching a jump – riding a fresh horse – asking for a little too much spice in an upward transition, and then boom, you’re on the ground.

If you’re riding by yourself, you dust yourself off and get back on. (Hopefully, anyway.)

If you’re in a lesson, what happens next? Once you’re deemed to be ok, of course.

Does your lesson barn or trainer have an imposed penalty for falling off?

When I took lessons in France, if you fell off, the rule was that you had to bring a chocolate cake to the next lesson.

These were group lessons, basically cattle calls, with 8-10 people per lesson, riding in a circle. I’ve never been in a lesson format like it since. I maintain today that the French system of riding is founded on not dying. The people who make it out are damn good riders.

We had chocolate cake every week. If no one had fallen off at the 45 minute mark, we dropped stirrups. Then we sat the trot. Then we worked on canter transitions. If all else failed, out came the crossrail. Keep in mind, 8-10 people, riding in a big circle in a situation that sometimes felt an awful lot like a warmup ring from hell. Sometimes we were only riding in half of an indoor arena – a very big indoor, to be sure, way oversized, with second story bleachers for watching horseball. But still, now we’re talking 16-20 horses, in two big circles at either end. Yeah.

So: cake every week. One week it was me. Some weeks we had multiple cakes.

I’ve heard other variations on this. A bottle of wine, for the adults. What brought this to mind was a blogger recently mentioning that she had to bring doughnuts to her next lesson for falling off.

I don’t know what the current barn’s policy is, as I haven’t fallen off in a lesson (thankfully).

Do you have to bring anything to your trainer or the barn when you fall off in a lesson?

someday farm

Exciting News: Farm Hunters, coming soon to a blog near you!

Amanda7 Comments

I’ve been keeping a secret.

Late in 2014, through a series of incredible circumstances, we learned that the small farm that we’d always hoped for might become a reality in 2015. We’re SO excited, but there’s a long road ahead.

So, as the new year gets under way, we are house shopping. We’ll be looking at two very different types of property: small farms (5-12 acres with horse potential) in a higher price range, and city houses (probably fixer-uppers) in a lower price range.

I’m holding out for the right property. Tristan has (hopefully) quite a few years before he’s ready to retire, and I am lucky to be in a really fantastic boarding situation. Finding a small house that we can put work into and the re-sell toward a larger farm might be the right solution for us right now. On the other hand, if we find the right land + house now, he could start coming home for part of the year in the next two years.

We’ll start very slowly, and I hope to share details here, especially of any potential farms. Obviously for privacy reasons I’ll be a little vague, but there’s a lot to think about, and I hope – as always – that writing about it will help me work through it.

I’d welcome any input from anyone who’s bought a house before – things you wish you’d know, questions you wish you’d asked, so on and so forth. That goes double for anyone who’s bought horse property!

So, watch this space. I might start talking about some places very soon.

blog hop

TOAH Blog Hop: Faves

Amanda2 Comments


What is your horse’s absolute favorite thing? Outside of riding! Are there treats that instantly convert your pony into an addict or liniments that leave him yawning and chewing? What does your horse just love to have?


Tristan’s very, very favorite thing is doing nothing.
He would summarize doing nothing as eating all alone in a big field. Maybe taking a nap. Maybe walking to a new pile of hay or a new patch of grass from time to time. But mostly foraging without interruption.
He’s not a social horse – in fact, he’s one of those rare horses that I think would be perfectly happy alone. He’s never been a horse to introduce himself to new horses, or hang out with a buddy in the field. He’s not a workaholic, and doesn’t particularly enjoy work, beyond getting occasionally excited while going XC, or settling into a comfortable sense of mission on a trail ride.
Tristan’s idea of the best day ever.
Uncategorized

We interrupt this horse blog…

Amanda1 Comment

…for a brief heads up of a great deal.

I am a huge, huge, HUGE fan of the Ask a Manager blog. I’ve been reading it consistently for several years now and really feel it’s helped me improve beyond belief.

I purchased the e-book, How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager, when I started job-hunting about three years ago. I firmly believe it was an incredibly helpful tool.

Alison’s offering a huge discount on that book for the next few days. Check it out, and make sure to add Ask a Manager to your blog reading list!

video

In Which Tristan Is The Best Babysitter, And Also Maybe A Bad Influence

Amanda3 Comments

Still in Maine (have to talk the florist out of $5k of exotic flowers today, gulp) but the barn manager sent me some awesome videos.

Tristan is the barn’s default babysitter, and is currently teaching a yearling by UB-40 manners. It’s below zero and the turnouts are a solid sheet of ice, so they’re getting short turnouts in the indoor. The barn manager is letting them run around a little as long as Tristan doesn’t go overboard, and as you can see, he’s feeling much better!

adventures with the vet · winter

Idiot Horse Update

Amanda1 Comment

After 48 hours of bute and two applications of liniment, Tristan’s weird stomach swelling is down significantly. Not gone yet – at least not when I checked right before I left for Maine – but way better. Whew.

I didn’t have time to put him on the longe but I am not as worried – he can have a few more days to rest and I will check him on Friday when I get back.
In the meantime, wtf, Wednesday night?! Uggggghhh.

2014 roundup

2014 in Review, Part 1

Amanda1 Comment

Yeah, I’m way behind, but my pony is broken at the moment so I have time to regale you all with the roller coaster of our 2014.

First things first, wow, I posted 375 times in 2014. That’s a lot. Yikes. I can’t figure out whether I’m proud or apologetic. I do love writing here, and my happiest rhythm is one or two posts a day, but maybe that’s too often? Any thoughts?

January

January started really effing cold. I got some excellent things for Christmas, and I went to the GMHA Sleigh Rally. We dealt with some eye problems, which would become a running theme. To distract me from the weather, I daydreamed about what I would do with $100,000. I gave a tour of my barn as part of a blog hop. I threw a small tantrum about dressage salutes, and did a foot progression collage of Tristan’s foot disaster. I took you all on a tour of my childhood bedroom, and did an overview of reading BLM freezebrands.

Bottom line: it was really cold, and I didn’t ride a lot, so I blathered on about many other horse-related things.

February

Things got warmer, so we took a few lessons, and worked on counterflexion. I played around with color schemes. I cut my hand on a broken glass and was sidelined for most of the month – I couldn’t hold the reins, so we did a lot of free longeing. Tristan was featured on Transformation Tuesday at She Moved to Texas, which was really cool.

March

March started off really, really cold, double digits below, so I was stuck doing more general writing. I talked about my struggles with gout, and then when it warmed up we finally started hacking out again. We celebrated one year post-surgery. We also started lessons again, and got some good work in the canter. I pondered spring shots. I did a review of the bits I’ve used with Tristan, and then Tris got his teeth floated along with his spring checkup.

April

Snow finally started to melt, so we headed out for more road hacks, and even more. Tristan started on Pentosan, and it made a huge difference for him. I got my trailer inspected and Tristan’s saddles fitted, in preparation for the summer. We got a puppy!

May


I recapped our first event ever, and went to Everything Equine. I crewed for Hannah at the VERDA Bare Bones LD, which was an eventful day that involved hours and hours of looking for an escaped Tucker in the woods but thankfully ended well. I also got engaged, huzzah for that.

June

Not all that much happened, horse-wise, in June. I had a massive work event at the end of the month that basically ate my soul. I talked about my superstitions that related to Tristan, and he went into training with the assistant trainer, which worked out beautifully.

adventures with the vet

What Fresh Hell Is This

Amanda5 Comments

I swear to you all, until about three years ago Tristan was the hardiest, thriftiest horse in the barn. Sigh.

Anyway. Arrived at the barn Friday afternoon, having left work early on account of being sick as a dog and leaking phlegm from nearly every orifice. I resolved to pull his blanket and give him a good grooming, write my board check and head home.

I reached under to curry his stomach and – what?

I discovered a hard swelling on his right side, a few inches up from his midline, maybe 8″ long and 5″ wide. Irregular edges. No heat that I could tell. Not an edema – it was not soft or pitting. Felt like ropey muscle. No clear cut or abrasion.

Utterly stumped, I asked the barn manager to put her hands on him. She was stumped. We asked one of the barn owners to put hands on him. She was stumped.

My best attempt at a picture – you can just barely see the swelling. This is taken from his left side.

WHAT THE HELL, HORSE.

We put him on the longe line, and he looked fine at the walk but was short at the trot through his right side: like he didn’t want to stretch his stride out and involve his stomach muscles on that side.

We tossed ideas back and forth and our absolute best guess was that late on Thursday, Tris had been turned out in the indoor with baby Jovi, the coming yearling that he babysits. They go out in a relatively small drylot together, and the idea was to get them both to stretch their legs and to let Jovi get a little feisty and then let Tristan teach him about appropriate boundaries even when you’re excited. Apparently they both had a terrific time, and Tristan demonstrated some very energetic and athletic airs above ground.

So, we thought perhaps he had pulled a stomach muscle doing that, and there was some resultant swelling. He got buted Friday night and Saturday morning, and when I checked on him Saturday night, there was no clear change, so some more bute. I’ll head out and check on him this afternoon, and we’ll see what we see.

Trip to the barn Saturday night. Picture does not quite adequately convey how hard it was snowing, or how much I looooooove my new 4WD + studded snow tires.

The internet suggests many other things it might be, but the vast majority of those things require the swelling to be an edema, which this most definitely is not. The only other outside possibility is a large abscess from a cut or embedded object of some kind, but wow, that would have to have blown up FAST. It’s totally in the wrong place for pigeon fever, and he is acting 100% normally otherwise.

I suppose it works out, timing-wise – I am headed to Maine for most of the rest of the week to arrange wedding stuff, so he was either going to get time off or give trail rides to the working students (which they love and he’s good at). He can get a week off. If there’s no change or if it gets worse, pony earns himself another vet visit.

So much for putting the saddle back on and starting more intensive work…