Slideshow

Hello, again! Here are the pictures I *promised*.


The first...30??? or so pictures are from the parade. Then there are 2 pictures from a show that I went to with Jean and Bubba, then some random pictures. I went on an Equine Careers Camp with 4H and we went to a Standard bred breeding farm, a vet clinic, an Arabian training stable, and 2 other farms...so those are pictures. I forgot to include pictures of the show, but my pictures of the show are limited, so I may put some up separate in a little while.

Sorry it's so long.... :)
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By the way, I'm not sure how many of you know, but I have another blog, if you're interested.

http://lifeoutsidethebarn.blogspot.com

Anything and Everything...Beware, ***Long*** Post

Sooo, I haven't posted in ages. If that isn't apparent, I don't know what is. I mostly haven't posted because SO much has happened, and I have so many pictures I didn't know where to start. So I solved the problem; I'm not posting pictures. Maybe in another post I'll post pictures with captions, but here I'm just writing.
Please grab some popcorn and refreshments, or you may not make it through this post. It's a long one.

Last I wrote, I was on the verge of going to a Memorial day parade with my 4H club, the Yautzy Road Yahoos. We went. We rocked. The end.

No really, that's not the end. oooook, here I go.

We all arrived at the parking lot of a bank right near where the parade would start. Jean recently got a 9 horse trailer, and one of our club member's has a dad that kinda half-owns it and pulls it for us. It's awesome. We had 4 horses on the trailer: Jean's ponies Scout, Mouse, and Bella, and my Daisy. We also brought Jean's trailer with our club member's horse, Mari. Or maybe Bella was on that trailer...idk, anyway, it doesn't matter. Our OTHER (There are a lot of members) members brought two horses: Liza and Molly. In total, there were 7 of us riding. Some of the horses were a little excited as we tacked up; the band was rehearsing and lining up right next to us. We spent awhile tacking up. I braided a ribbon in Daisy's tail and a flower in her forelock (My new profile picture). She looked great. Finally, we headed out. We have some pretty amusing pictures of us riding through the bank tellers. We were at pretty much the end of the parade because the parade marshall didn't want firetrucks to drive in horse manure. (BIG deal, right? FIRETRUCKS. Can fight fires, go to accident scenes, drive through woods in brush fires, but can't handle horse manure. I don't get it...) Jean's husband is into old cars (Nice old cars :-P) so he drove behind us, which was kinda nice, there were maybe one or two other people behind him, so he made sure he gave us room behind the horses that those people might not have given us. Daisy was pretty good...she was excited. I don't think she was necessarily afraid; she was "looky" but more interested then nervous. She did want to walk fast, though. Daisy is not a horse that enjoys meandering around, especially around other horses. She'd much rather run; race them. Sooo she had a little trouble walking slow, but it was ok. Sometimes she really got annoyed, and ended up walking sideways down the street....soo we look like idiots, but at least she wasn't rearing, bucking, etc, right? Right. Finally, a 4H mom and then my mom held Daisy for a bit so she'd slow down, and she really seemed better after that little "attitude adjustment". Jean had grown up in the area where the parade took place and rode in it as a teen, back when a lot of people rode. Unfortunately, there hadn't been any horses in the parade in years. Fortunately we came along :). I was surprised how quiet it was; not many people clapped or cheered. I wonder if it was because they were bored and didn't want to or actually knew not to scare the horses...who knows?

At the end of the parade we rode back through a graveyard and back down the street. The worst part was then. We were going back to the trailer, fairly close, across the street from a gas station. Two guys were on motorcycles (Daisy's only fear, aside from cars that splash water on her on the road after it rains) and they revved their bikes just as we were going to ride by. I can tell you one thing, Daisy was already busy looking at a flag when that happened, and you better believe she was not a happy camper. She half-reared, half tried to bolt, but I was like "Oh, man" and one of the 4H mom's heard it and grabbed Daisy....the guys kept making noise, and she was signaling for them to stop. After a few steps they did, but it was enough, damage done. Daisy was like "Where are the noisy beasts that are trying to eat me?!?!!!!!" lol. But we survived. We got to the trailer and all as well.

Lesson learned; next time we do a parade (*cough*-this Saturday) I'm round penning her a ton first. Let off some of that steam! :-P I'm glad we went; our club was pretty popular. We had 'walkers' who threw candy to the crowd, and held a banner with our name. Pretttttty cool. If you'd like to see pictures right away, check my mom's post here.
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Next event was a pleasure show the following Sunday. I rode alllll day long; English in the morning, Western in the afternoon.
It was another club event (you finding a pattern here?)


Daisy is not an English horse. You know what? She's not a western pleasure horse, either. She had been doing very well getting her right-lead canter, but it still wasn't automatic. I really had to work to get it; not hard, but I couldn't go trot to canter, walk to canter. For me, it's side pass, stand, canter. You can't do that in a show ring. We ended up not placing all morning in English; she never got her right lead on the first try (not always on second try, either). One time we technically got 7th place, but they don't ribbon to 7th :-P. She looked pretty good, though, I'll say that. But not at a canter. We finally placed half-way through the morning in hunter hack. They set up 2 cross rails that you had to go through. We schooled over them twice before the actual class. The first time, Daisy went over the first one, but then swerved the next one. I blame it on my not being totally focused and giving her leg. She wasn't afraid; she was lazy and hadn't expected it, so she wanted to take a look. We tried again and she was fine. When the class started, she was fine. A few horses refused (repeatedly), some wayyyyyy over jumped (Daisy kinda did), others swerved away from the jump, some didn't enter. In the end, I think we got 6th place, which isn't THAT good, but at least we placed. I was happy. :)


The best part of the day is always Trail class. We rock at trail class because we only do trail riding at home :-P. This trail class was kinda boring, and a little disappointing. It had rained the day before, so there were puddles in the ring that all day we just avoided. Now, they took the biggest puddle and Incorporated it into the class. They set up jump standards at the side so you couldn't go around, and you had to walk through. It was a big, deep puddle; covered Daisy's hooves. She plunged right in.


The next part was a mailbox on a barrel. We are used to mailboxes on posts, so Daisy was kind of confused, but she got over it fast and we got out the paper, flashed it to the judge, and moved on.

All winter long, when I was sick (which was more often than usual this year) I would do ground work with Daisy instead of riding. I worked a lot on side passing over poles, because last year at the county fair we did bad in a trail class because we couldn't do that. I worked hard with her on the ground, and finally moved to doing it on her back. She's good at it. She's awesome if you start standing just over the end of the pole and side pass over the pole. She's not so great at going down AND back at the same time. And that's what we had to do. Figures. However, we were better this time around then we were last summer, so that was good. The pole we used was a small tree (not a true "pole") so of course Daisy wasn't as good. Of course. I got her over going left pretty well, but then she put up a fit about going right. That was frustrating because I knew I had a limited amount of times I could try before the judge would ask us to move on. I tried about 3 times, and I knew the judge would ask us to stop any minute. I figured at that point, I had to ignore placing and just get my stubborn little mare to do it. I turned to the judge (half-way across the arena) and called (very unprofessionally :-P) "Can I please try again?" and the judge nodded sympathetically and held up one finger. There we had it: one more try. I got her to do it. Pretty messily...we ended up stumbling a bit and really only going well in the middle of the pole, but we did it. It was better than other people, because the majority couldn't do it at all. After that, we hopped over a cross rail and we were done. Pretty boring trail class compared to others...but we got 4th place. We always do well in trail. Always (knock-on-wood).


The rest of the day wasn't that great. Daisy got more and more tired as the day wore on. We stunk (as always) in Western Pleasure and Equitation...and western horsemanship...we didn't place in any of it due to Daisy's right-lead dilemma. We still had fun, though...at least, I did. The end of the day, we had command class. That is truly, besides Trail Class, the most exciting part of the day. It is, in essence, Simon-Says on horseback. Except without Simon. Whoever doesn't do what the caller calls out within 3 seconds is disqualified. In the past at this particular show, Daisy and I tied for 1st place. At the county fair we got 1st, too. I'm not sure how we did so well back then, because Daisy was even more terrible at her leads back then...I guess those wins were miracles. But in any case, I was excited for Command. Daisy wasn't; she was very tired. I was soon to realize just how tired she really was. But we forged on.

There were a lot of entrants, as usual. I don't remember how many, but probably about 20. We went on and on; Daisy's responds fast. Especially when she gets into command class; she knows what to do. Miracle of all miracles, she ACTUALLY got her leads right. At the end, it was down to 3 of us in the ring (I thought at the time it was 2, but apparently I didn't see the other person). They called for counter canter. Guess which direction we were going? Right. Guess what Daisy FINALLY did. Of all times.

That's right. She did a right lead. And not the left that the judge was looking for. I noticed it right away. When they said counter canter, I got confused (I'm not the brightest person, if you haven't noticed). I was so sure they'd ask for a canter, that I'd been preparing to ask Daisy for a right-lead canter. When they said left, I knew I wouldn't have to try hard for left. But I kinda squeezed her and turned her and sidpassed her and somewhere in that jumble of commands she did a right lead. It's a shame that I don't know just what I did; It could've come in handy.


In the big picture, I was happy that Daisy did her right lead. That's what I'd wanted all day; she just picked a nasty time to do it. That's alright, though. One of the other people did the lead wrong, too (well, technically right...you know what I mean? :-P I'm probably confusing you) so we were disqualified at the same time. I thought that'd put us in a tie for 2nd, but somehow they picked and put me in 3rd...soo I'm just going to say I got 2nd. It sure felt like 2nd. I left the ring and another person congratulated me, saw the yellow ribbon, and said "What? I thought you got 2nd!". I just said I thought so, too...so please just agree with me and say I got 2nd. :)


I trailered and exhausted Daisy home and put her up for bed.
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It took Daisy a week to get over that show. I'd ended up riding her for 7 hours. 7 HOURS. Now, I wasn't really "riding" her so much as sitting on her back that long, but it really drained her. I thought she was having a week-long colic afterward. She was lying down ALL the time. Not just a lot. All the time; she went so far as to GRAZE lying down. I still rode her, but she wasn't as peppy, and she pawed the ground a lot, and was constantly sleeping. She finally got better the following Saturday (the day I had decided to call the vet if she wasn't better; luckily she was). I've learned that I have to pick one division to ride in next time, either English or Western, or part of both. Daisy can't handle it all, poor girl!
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We haven't done much since the show; we just hung out at home. Daisy hasn't (Knock-on-wood again) gotten lame yet this spring, without shoes but with Smarthoof, a great hoof supplement. I'm praying and hoping that she'll stay strong so I don't have to shoe her.

Maybe I'll post pictures tomorrow or the day after. Until then, thanks for reading this long post. You must be a dedicated reader. Thank you, I appreciate it. :)



If you didn't make it this far and just skipped stuff, that's fine, I forgive you. :)

Life is Good

GUESS who got a new western saddle on Friday!?!?! ME! Sooo, let me tell you about it :)
Last Friday, Daisy was picked up to be driven about 1 1/2 hours to a place just outside of Buffalo, New York. Her traveling companion was a pretty boy named Jan (stands for January something-or-another (idk)). She trailered up pretty well; she paused for a minute because she wasn't sure of what to think of Jan's whinnying and stamping as he was already in the trailer, but she loaded pretty quick and they got along; she didn't bite him (That's a plus). I rode down with Jean and with Jan's owner, sharing fun horse stories and plans for the season...

Once we got there we took around; those are the horse pasture's at Jean's dad's place (who owned the tack shop).

The tack shop.

More horse pastures :)

We unloaded Jan and brought him into his new place.

Jan took the trip down with Daisy to visit the "Equine Correctional Facility" part of the property :-P. Jan has a rearing problem that just didn't stop, so now he found himself in a new place :). Ironically, Daisy spent a month at the Correctional Facility as well. Jean originally got Daisy because her old owner became afraid of her. Jean didn't have time to ride Daisy, so Daisy went to Jean's dad's place for a tune-up. Turned out, she didn't need much of a tune-up, because she only spent a month there.

Jan quickly met his stable mate in his stall. There were some very pretty horses in the barn; it's very cozy there, and pretty cool looking.

Like these two pretty horses that were across the aisle (I know, look like Jan and his new "friend").

After settling Jan into his new place, we headed to the tack shop. It's small, but filled literally to the ceiling with stuff: English and western saddles and bridles, halters, lead ropes, saddle pads, gifts, consignment stuff and new. The first saddle he showed me was this one. I didn't like it originally; it looked boring (I know, I'm so...picky:-P). However, I tried it on Daisy, and it fit her, so we headed to the round pen to try it out while riding and make sure it was good.

His round pen was AWESOME. It was indoor, and sanded. The walls were high, with just some windows, and there was a place where you could sit up high and look down onto the ring. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture of the ring because of lighting. But that's not the point. I got in that saddle and I fell in love (*sniff*). It was SO comfortable. And it fit Daisy. And it fit me like a glove. SO well. It was so comfortable, not to big or too little, and just wonderful. It was handmade by a private person (company?), not a big retailer. The leather is in GREAT condition. It's old, so it's heavy, but it was great. So of course I bought it. For $400. Which, according to Jean and her dad, is VERY cheap considering how much that saddle probably cost when it was brand new (Think a couple thousand dollars here). Jean's dad looked sad to see it go, lol, and said that if it had fit him he would have kept it for himself.

Saddle in the trailer, we loaded Daisy back up for the ride back, her alone that time.

Of course, she got a couple treats. (Man, I love my horse.)

I know, blurred picture...we drove back home.

With a beautiful new saddle.

Tomorrow the Yautzy Road Yahoos are riding and walking in a parade nearby. I'm so excited!

Hopefully I'll let you know how it goes by tomorrow night...hopefully. :)

LONG Time No Post!

Hello, People! I'm very very sorry I haven't posted...I have SO much to say, but I really just didn't feel like writing it all...a shame, really, because I'm going to write it now...

So...where do I begin? I'm sticking with just Daisy stuff and may be updating people at my other blog, so at least I don't have that much to say regarding Daisy.

Last time I posted it was our anniversary...since then, we've been riding only English or bareback (withthe bareback pad and without) through the woods. I did ride a I think 5 mile block around some different roads awhile back, which was cool...it was about an hour ride, but it was a "big deal" for me...it seems a lot longer. And it's HILLY! We passed some horses along the way that Daisy so kindly whinnied to, and continued along. The first BIG thing I have to say is that Daisy can do a right lead canter now! I KNOW, right?! RIGHT lead! It's a miracle! Back in January I posted (sorry the writing is hard to read, I still had the old template) about taking a lesson with Karin and trying to get Daisy to pick up her right lead. She had me trying to force Daisy to pick up her right lead, but she wouldn't do it. In February, I started trying myself to get Daisy to do right lead. I'd side pass her to the right, and make her "launch" into a canter from that position, because it sets the horse up for the canter stride. I'd learned that way back when I took regular lessons with my first riding teacher. Daisy didn't really do the right lead, even when I did that in the ring. I'd started doing it on the road, as I mentioned here. I took Daisy to a mounted 4H meeting at the end of April at Jean's house, at the same time that she got her shots, and WOW I need to tell you, she did AMAZING! I easily got her to right-lead canter in a circle, around and around. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, she'll pick her right-lead up by choice! Even if she doesn't, though, I can get her to do it so easily...hopefully, when we got to the pleasure show on May 31st we'll be good with our leads! :D The game show we went to, by the way, was great. I still didn't (and don't) have a western saddle, so we rode English, but Daisy and I both had a ball; we did a ton of barrel racing, and Daisy is amazing at keyhole! She shoots down through the barrels, gets barely inside, flips around and shoots back out; very impressive. Can't wait to do a game show with her! :D

So, let me tell you my agenda. Today I went to a horse show without riding Daisy, but I'll tell you about that in a minute. On Friday I'm leaving school a little early and Jean is kindly going to trailer Daisy down to just outside of Buffalo, New York (About a 1 1/2 hour drive)(Along with another horse to drop off for training) to her Dad's farm. He has a tack shop there, and we will spend time trying on western saddles for Daisy, as I can't just trust that a saddle off the Internet will fit her. I'm REALLY excited because I miss riding Western! It sounds crazy, but I haven't sat in a western saddle since last fall, at our last game show!!! That's MONTHS ago! Daisy was also kept in Jean's dad's herd for some time, so it'll be cool to see the place. :) Then we'll drive back and I'm pretty sure we'll keep her at Jean's house for the weekend. On Memorial day, Monday, May 25th, our 4H club is riding in a parade! That's going to be really cool, too. We're going to a parade in a small town near us, it's a quiet parade so it'll be good for our first time. We'll probably have 6-7 riders on horseback, and the rest of our club walking and holding a banner with our club name. (We are the Yautzy Road Yahoos... :-P) We're all wearing red, and riding with red saddle pads (red is officially our club color). It's going to be SO cool! I've wanted to do a parade with Daisy for awhile because I'm sure she'll do great. I love riding horses in situations where it could potentially be stressful, but we can work through it. I love the feeling of, in a way, "training" a horse to be "bomb-proof"...does that make sense? Like, the more experience, the better. :)
Then I will either trailer Daisy home for the week, or board her at Jean's (not decided yet)...We'll go to a pleasure show on Sunday, May 31st, probably riding western pleasure, and rackin' up points in Command class, which we rock at :P (and Trail class!!!!!!!)

Today I went to a horse show riding Scout, the new lesson pony Jean bought a few months ago. Remember him? He was a sick pony when she got him. Now he's a show pony! I could have ridden Daisy in the show, but I just didn't want to trailer her, and I didn't have a saddle, and we have the parade next week anyway. So I wasn't going to go at all, until Jean offered Scout this week. He's never been shown anywhere so Jean said it'd be good to have an experienced rider (verses one of the beginner lesson students). I rode Scout in a mounted meeting yesterday for the first time, and today in the show! It was a games show. He was GREAT! Jean recently purchased an 8 horse trailer, so we trailered 5 horses to the show, with one of our club members bringing another, and we all wore red and had a great time...Oliver got in a little accident with Bonita (who he's been riding and doing AMAZING with) so he ended up riding Bella once...Scout and I did keyhole as our first class(his first ever class) and we rode walk/trot (he's canter is minimal; he wasn't really ever taught to canter). We one first place! :D He was very good at the show, just excited in the beginning, and then he calmed down. Then we did pole bending, but he did two strides of canter (got a little too into it :-P) and we were disqualified. That's ok, though, we still got good pictures :-P. Unfortunately, the rest of the show ended up canceled because of severe thunder showers (I know, it looks so nice and sunny in the pictures! Hard to imagine that it started pouring :-/)

So that was today's experience...even though we only did two classes, it was a lot of fun; just riding around the grounds with the rest of the YRYs is always fun :). It was our first show as a group, and it was great! Can't wait for more! (We have mounted meetings weekly now; I'll probably "bum" a horse off people at Jean's barn for them, though, because I'm not trailering Daisy each week!)

Sorry this was so long and overdue...I've probably lost my readers by now. :)

Two Years of Joy and Learning

(Blue sky pics by me, middle pic by my Mom)

Two years ago today, I purchased my first horse, and you readers have followed me along almost as long, reading along as I experience the joy of owning her.

Daisy was not the perfect horse, to say the least. She still isn't. But I've learned so much. She's made me laugh so many times, been a comfort even more often, and is just always there to hang around with. I've decided that she's really just shy outwardly; she does love to be loved on. Her pinned ears show a nasty personality, but once you get past her head and scratch a little behind her ears, she's perfect.

As mentioned above, I've learned a ton. When I bought Daisy, I don't know how I did it. I knew nothing, zip, zero, zilch, about buying a horse. I went and "looked" at her without knowing what I was looking for. I wanted a horse I could ride. I still wonder what I was thinking...the first time I tried her out, she reared. And she wouldn't trot without crow-hopping. But I tried her out again. And bought her. Why? As I said in a post before, I had grown use to riding a horse (see here) that was challenging, and Daisy seemed to fit the part (*Understatement*). I fell in love with her personality pretty quickly; the way she pinned her ears like a monster, but how well-behaved she became after just a week of steady riding and reprimand. I've learned so much about the daily care of a horse that even riding lessons for 8 years can't teach you. How to deworm a horse, schedule farrier and vet appointments, deal with the drama of both, feeding schedules, providing hay, soaking a hoof in salt, etc (I have memories of all of these, some of which would have made me cry at the time, but at this point, I can only laugh at them, as it should be :)). There is a never-ending list of things to be done when you have a horse. I'm striving to make Daisy's life the best that I can, the best that I know how. I've learned that you can't set a person's opinion too highly, that you need to question it and find out things for yourself sometimes. That even though someone may tell you how to do something, and they always seem to know best, that there come times when you need to take matters in your own hands.

I've had a blast riding Daisy. She has those quirky days where I wonder again why I bought her in the first place, what I saw in her, when she is being so bad that certain day. But other days she impresses me and surprises me so much with her talent, that I wonder how anyone could have wanted to give her up. Sometimes I feel both in the same day.

She's also an awesome form of therapy. Bad day? Ride. Angry? Clean the stall like and lug hay bales to get that extra energy out (I must say that after owning her, I've gotten pretty strong). Sad? Give her a big huge hug :-P(for a horse that acts like she's mad all the time, she's a big sucker for hugs). Riding her is an endless learning process for both of us...from galloping her bareback for the first time and learning to balance while getting her to stop (haha, she loves to gallop), to teaching her to side pass, to, just today, getting her to finally do a right-lead canter. It's taught me to not always look to the biggest goal, but set little goals, and in that way, feel a big reward whenever that small goal is reached.

I've seen a glimpse of the show world, as well. When I bought Daisy, I didn't plan on showing, and didn't really want to. Then I did the county fair. She was amazing, and I had a ton of fun. After going to some local shows last fall, I had a reality check. I learned that Daisy did amazing at the county fair because the competition wasn't tough...so that was little let down. I've seen that Daisy isn't one of those slow stepping western pleasure horses, but she's also not a quick-like-a-bullet barrel racing horse, either. And I'm glad. Western pleasure horses? Pretty, but slow. oh so slow. I'm not sure I'd like that. Barrel racing horses? Fast. Very fast. but also hard to handle and pretty dangerous at times. Trail class stars like Daisy? Great. Because even though she's not top of the class in barrel racing or Western pleasure, she's great where, for me, it counts. I know I can ride her down a trail and not have to fear her spooking at something, and if she does, I know she's a sensible horse, and gets over it fast. We can ride on the road with cars and trucks speeding by, and she won't bat an eyelash.

For me, she's perfect. For others she may be too hard to handle, or not showy enough, or she may not have the greatest conformation, but for me, she's amazing. She's my dream come true. She's wonderful. I can't stress that enough. So maybe she's got her problems, but don't we all?

So in all, if I could redo the last two years, and buy her all over again, I'd do it again. It was so worth it. It's all a learning experience, with ups and downs, but so worth it.

Thank you, God, for blessing me with my Daisy-Mae. It was all in His plan.

Happy Anniversary, Daisy-Mae. To us. * insert sound of glasses containing apple juice clinking* (because Daisy likes apples and it looks likes champagne.)

Have a great Friday, everyone!

Spring Time, Spring Shots

For most horse owners, the arrival of springtime means the arrival of the veterinarian: the need to update vaccinations has come. No different here.
I had been using a very nice vet the last two spring times I was faced with, and I liked her...she was always very reasonable with price, and so patient with Daisy. (See last year's visit here.) Unfortunately, she wasn't willing to drive all the way out to our house this year, so Daisy took at little trip to Jean's farm. Jean gave her an "8-way" shot on Tuesday that covered a ton of stuff including Tetanus, and she didn't use the head stabilizer thing!(see the link from before to hear about that again). Daisy was really distracted because she knew I had treats in my sweater pocket, so Jean tapped her on the neck a few times, and one time she was tapping, she put the needle in. Daisy was like "oh, treats, yum" one minute and the next "Holy cow what was that?!" lol. But she just put her head up, and Jean screwed the vial of stuff in (The needle is separate; once you get it in, you attach the vial to it) and squirted it in. "Painless"! :)
Well, the next day was not painless. See Daisy's face below:

She looks a little strange...yeah...that was after. She was super sore from the shot, as normal, but extra sore this year. She didn't move her neck as normal; she moved it as little as possible, and was just depressed and just not as happy. The vet came to give her the rabies shot and take blood for her coggins, and I warned her that she was still sore. The vet went to pet her on the neck, and Daisy put her head up and was shaking so hard, she was so scared she'd get hurt again, my poor baby! <:-/ The vet put the little headgear thing on (as a precaution) and Daisy practically fell asleep in the aisle. Once she put the needle in for the rabies, Daisy barely flinched, and she moved backwards a little with the blood draw, but I just tightened the stabilizer, and she calmed down again. All good! Today we had an AMAZING day, she wasn't feeling bad anymore. More on today later on...Saturday or Sunday. I can't wait to tell you all about today! Just waiting for some extra pictures to add with the post... Tomorrow is Daisy and my 2 YEAR anniversary!!!!!!!

Until then,

Riding Daisy & Horsebowl

Long time no-talk, ladies and gents (if "gent's" dare visit this blog!)
I did update a few times on my other blog, http://lifeoutsidethebarn.blogspot.com so if you want to check that...
These are some pictures my mom took of Daisy and I today...she's starting to shed. Notice the shirt I'm wearing? I have to tell you about that.

As a member of 4H, I joined our county's "Horsebowl and Hippology" novice team, it being my first year. We met every week (for me, I only went every other week most of the time) and learned a ton of stuff. We learned parts of a horse's hoof, leg, bones, body parts, tack, feed, grooming, parasites, breeds, moods, vitamins/minerals, etc. This was all to get ready for our "Extravaganza" on March 28 (last Saturday). That was the "Hippology" portion.
We also practiced for "horsebowl". We practiced "jeopardy" like questions, with buzzers and such. I wasn't really expecting much of "competition" day. I thought there would be one other county, and I just didn't really know what to expect. I showed up on Saturday in my Horsebowl polo and was ready to go.

It was AMAZING. I was on a novice team with 3 other girls aged 9-11 I think. There were I think 6 or 7 other counties there. For hippology we went into different rooms and looked at diagrams of horse's bones, body parts, etc, and had to label them, as well as breeds, feeding, and tack. It was pretty hard and I didn't think I did that well. Horsebowl as the greatest part. Our team did AWESOME--we buzzed in a ton and out of the 4 rounds of 30 questions we did against each county's novice team we won them ALL! By a landslide! We won atleast 24 of the questions each time, one time us getting them all! Our team really pulled it together and did great.

Come awards time, we got 1st place for team points in both Hippology and Horsebowl, and I personally got 1st place for highest points in both as well...it was a really "feel good" day. I can't wait to do it again.

All this to say, I think if you are in 4H or have kids in it, they should totally do horsebowl if you county offers it. It was SO fun! :D

Sooo that's my slightly lengthy post...sorry...had to document that, though.
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Daisy is doing good. She had a very frustrating problem while at Jean's where she flatly refused to do a right-lead canter, no matter what direction we went in the ring and how tight we turned. I was really getting kind of discouraged. However, now that we're on the road again, I've started having her start off a canter right from a standstill after having her sidepass to the right. This sets her up for it and she does a GREAT right-lead canter! I'm hoping to do it a lot so that she'll get stronger on it and do it in a ring, too.

I'm currently in search of a new western saddle, but can't get one unless I can test it out on Daisy first...needless to say, I'm riding English and bareback. I miss western--hope I can get a new saddle soon...

I ordered Old Mac's G2's for Daisy but they didn't fit and I had to send them back for a new size...hopefully soon we'll get those "running".

That's my update...Hope you've all been well!

Daisy's Home!

Hello!
Daisy's home again! Jean trailered her home yesterday. Daisy was fine for the trailer, as always...when I first got her she didn't like trailers and was bad for loading, but now she's fine. She just missed her buddies for a little while and looked kinda confused. She whinnyed a lot, like in the video above. But now she's fine; I knew she would be, she just had to get used to the place again.

I do have a new blog, http://lifeoutsidethebarn.blogspot.com. I haven't posted anything major on it, but that is where I will be sharing about my trip to Germany, as well as an update on the chicks, who moved into the big coop yesterday! :D Video will be up soon.

Until next time,

Talk to You All Later!

Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen! :D

I just wanted to let you all know, I probably won't be posting for a little while. I'm going on a trip. I'll post pictures when I'm back!

The first pictures are just a couple of Daisy recently...she's staying at Jean's while I'm gone. The horse that's not Daisy is Jean's new horse, Scout. He will be a lesson horse. He is so sweet!!! He's pretty cool...he had never had his feet done, been vaccinated, probably never been wormed...but he looked awesome! His hooves look great for never having been done, he had good teeth (according to the dentist who came) and...well he did have worms. But still, he's a great example that horses when left on their own (kinda) will survive. He was kept in an area with rough land (hooves) and was pretty much wild...but well trained. He was a daddy quite a few times, too. He's SO sweet, though! Apparently he was great to ride, too. He seems like he would be.


Talk to you all when I'm back! :D