Progress!

Progress is a great word, and while I feel like horse pucky today and am most likely getting sick, this morning was all about progress. My awesome trimmer was headed out at 8:30 to clean up everyone's feet and I was actually on the ball enough to pull Desire and Sheza with some spare time before she arrived. Sheza and I had a walk-about sniffing and investigating all the endlessly scary things on the property, while Desire tap danced in the cross ties protesting my baby stealing tendencies. Note to self, if Desire gets more than 2 days off, she goes right back to ridiculous, tense, tap dancing silliness. She had been quieting down being ridden every other day but got 3 days off and today was as tense and raring to go as ever.

Anyhoo I put a rope halter on Sheza today and I think it really did help. She had outgrown everything else and had been wearing her pretty grass green biothane halter but when she is being a punk she can lean and pull on that halter as hard as she wants with no effect, so I decided to try a rope halter. It fit her face really well and while I think my attitude today helped (more on that later), I think the rope halter also helped. The few times she tried to pull back or be bratty she felt the pressure points on the halter and almost immediately came forward again and stopped, rather than pulling back hard and continuing to be a snot like she had in the biothane halter. As far as my attitude, I have a bad habit of becoming irritated very quickly by pointless shenanigans and let's face it, foals are some of the best in the business at pointless shenanigans. Patience is something I have to work veryvery hard at with Sheza. I recently exchanged emails with a nearby breeder who has been raising foals for years and she reminded me again to not take the foal silliness and "misbehaving" too seriously, but instead focus on becoming the calm steady partner who is there for her and will be there for her no matter the situation, as opposed to The Boss ruling with an iron fist, which is kind of my natural tendency. So I took the rope halter, the filly, and a calm, patient attitude on my walk around the property, and while she did scare herself and spook and did silly things, I made myself just stand calmly and quietly, and she would immediately calm down, snuff me, and move on. We even did this around the horse trailer, and she stuck her head all the way inside the trailer and was sniffing the divider and mats, which is the first time she's been "in" the trailer in any way (I feel like I'm late on that training front, but better late than never..). Oh and when I put the halter on first thing, she pulled her head away and spooked out three times before she let me do it, which drives me CRAZY but I just stood quietly and ignored it and she came right back each time and finally let me halter her. So, patience wins.

Hooves. Desire's thrush is in control for the time being--woohoo! I've been treating it and it seemed a lot better but it's always nice to hear from a professional that things are looking good. Her hooves are doing great. Sheza had some thrush in a couple of her hooves and had grown an insane amount of hoof in the last 4 weeks, like her mother, but overall she is doing great too. Blaze even needed a trim which was exciting because he usually grows new hoof at a glacial pace but after just 4 weeks barefoot already needed some trimming done too.

I cleaned my whole tack room and never did find my size 1 Power Strap for Desire's front boot, but luckily my trimmer, an Easyboot dealer, had just made an order and had Power Straps with her--and get this, they were out of the colors she wanted so she ended up with purple, which is the color I use. Serendipity (for me). I couldn't install it for the life of me, something about pulling the boot together and getting the screw in place just wasn't happening, but that's what husbands are for, right? ;)

Even though I felt crummy I took Mr. Blaze out for a 6 mi meander around the neighborhood in his Epics and the Specialized.

We had some trots and a little blast of canter up our favorite short hill, which was funny because there were 4 or 5 people loading wood into a truck in a field next to the road who saw and heard us coming charging up the hill but I had no clue they were there til afterwards and I was talking away to Blaze the whole time, Lol. A young FedEx driver headed at us pulled over and let me trot up the straightaway we were on, nice of him and it was one of those times I was glad to be wearing my 2-bras-at-once to remedy some of that BOUNCEBOUNCEBOUNCE he was no doubt enjoying, haha!

Glad to finally see some water down there

Love my Healthy As A Horse shirts

Hard to see but this is next to the road, over a barbed wire fence. 

Why build a gate when you can just install a ladder, right?

95% even sweat mark on Blaze though I think I need to shim some more in the "hollow" behind his big shoulder and shark wither. BTW today I discovered that while Desire certainly does it smoother and (usually) more gracefully, Blaze's trot is actually the same in mph:  6-7 mph jog, about 8.5 mph working trot, and 10+ mph extended. His walk, on the other hand, is a full mph slower than hers, and drives me a little nuts. But I love him anyway.

I wasn't kidding, Georgia the chihuahua loves to graze with the horses

I'm just beat beat beat. You know that drained feeling when you're getting sick? Yeah, but I'm not getting sick right, it's just random allergies or something! Right?! I'm riding Desire at the lake tomorrow, there is no room for a cold!