A little mid-week pick-me-up

Smartpak has an awesome youtube channel with tons of funny videos, but this one in particular is too good not to share!







p.s. I'm not dead and neither is the Christmas pony, and we hope to return very soon to regular blogging!

Quarterly goals recap Jan-March/Second Quarter Goals

The first three months of this year have gone by faster than I could possibly have imagined.  I think I may have found the time to grab the occasional breath a handful of times in the first quarter of 2015, but I can't be sure.  Without further ado, the overdue analysis of my goals:

Make more horse time.  Too many excuses and not enough pony have been happening recently, and I intend to put a stop to it.   Success! The lengthening daylight hours especially have been a huge help in completing this goal!

Play with the Horse Ball.  Jazz's absolute favourite thing and I'm not even sure I've brought it out more than twice in the last year.  Plus a fun thing both on the ground and under saddle. I brought out the ball one day, only to remember why it had been put away in the first place after an immense half-hour struggle to get it inflated enough to be safe.  

Put the Western saddle back on occasionally. I kind of miss it.   Done and done! I had it on at least twice, one of which was  pony sharing with two awesome kids at my barn, and Jazz was an angel for them.  

Do something about my tall boots.  I need to bathe them in boot stretch or get room put in at the shoe repair place because they are much too tight on my calves.  Yes! I bought the most wonderful, most beautiful, bestest imaginable brand spanking new paddock boots and half chaps a few weeks back.

Tack store haul! I also got a new saddle pad and cookies!

Write a product review post or two.  Product reviews are the kind of post I will read 100% of the time I see them on my blogger dashboard, but I have yet to write one.  This one was a failure.  I attempted to write a review of leather care products and was starting to assemble the pieces and then pre-spring break crazy schedule and spring break happened.  

My personal favourite picture from leather care product review day. 

Think about a bitless bridle option. Since my horse needs her teeth done every 6 months at this point, it might be nice to have an alternative when her mouth hurts.  I do own a bitless bridle, but I don't love it and I'm considering a different type of bridle.  At no point did I even think about this at all.  There were too many other things on both the horsey horizon and the personal one.  

Try to talk less in lessons. Pretty self explanatory but a definite bad habit of mine. I definitely made progress, but this is ongoing, so I'll probably repeat it in another quarter.  

Show off the horse.  I have been telling many, many friends for a long time they can come meet my horse, but I have taken very few people out to the farm.  I may end up moving this goal to a different quarter depending on how our winter goes (I probably shouldn't introduce my non-horsey friends who have never ridden a horse to the crazy winter Jazz I know and love).  I had a relative come to visit just last week and we went for a farm visit.  Plus I shared her with the two kids at my barn mentioned earlier.  I like the idea of sharing her, so this will be another repeat goal.

Get better at leg protection. I will divide this one into two parts
a) use the brushing boots and/or open front boots I own much more often
b) polos! I have one set and I am honestly pitiful at wrapping them  Truth be told, I didn't do this, but in hindsight the last three months were not a good time for this goal, as we're lucky to be able to do a good flatwork session most days, so it doesn't seem that necessary to do boots.  This one will probably be back in the summer.  

And because I love sharing him, here's my cat, continuing to be deluded into thinking he's a person.  

Goals for the Second Quarter (April-June)

Survive the next month and a half.  There are huge time commitments coming up on the personal horizon.  May especially will be no doubt roaring along at 1000 miles an hour, and I think it's only fair to myself to acknowledge that fact and try to do my best.

See to it the horse is fed. I think I've mentioned here before that Jazz is prone to bouts of diarrhea that can cause a sore, rubbed bum. I had the vet out on her last episode, and one of the new management protocols we're trying out is more regular doses of her probiotic.  At very least every 2-3 days she needs to be fed a dose of it, and luckily C will be able to help on some of the aforementioned crazy weeks.

Get the horse photo ready.  Some important photos are being taken with the horse very late May.  Make the necessary arrangements (trailer loading practise, thorough grooming the days leading up to photos, cleaning tack, etc.)

Casey is always photo ready. 

Try to get pony exercised.  I'm actually taking May off of lessons since I physically do not have the time.  I have someone in mind who I want to ask if they'd be willing, so if possible, she'll be getting a little training and exercise.


June: Advance.  Make some progress with riding.  More work in non-lesson rides, less messing around.  Get some momentum going heading into our busier riding time in the summer.

Edit: Keep it positive.  It's come to my recent attention that I am often not good enough at talking up my pony successes with my real life horsey friends, and I tend to overemphasize our difficulties.  Work on that.

Apparently I accidentally published this with no title and didn't notice for a couple days. Whoops.

In our last installment, Jazz was fresh off a great lesson.  I promised a story about a lesson which was now almost a month ago. Oops.  I'm going to go ahead and make this the last time for now that I make excuses and cite my insane schedule, blah blah blah.  From now on, I'm just gonna write about what I want to write about and get back to basics.

No farm visit pictures, so here's my cat, Casey!

I had a lesson waaaaaaay back on March 8 I want to talk about.  I arrived a little late, and didn't end up having time to lunge beforehand, the first time I had not lunged before riding since I started doing so a couple of weeks before.  Started with all the standard exercises, but the real showpiece was the canter.  Right lead was business as usual, but left lead quickly became World War III.  Jazz was having absolutely none of it, pulling on her martingale, popping mini-rears, the works.  I had so much trouble, my instructor popped a lungeline on her.  After she got a canter on the lungeline, I got back on and tried to get a canter on the line.  Jazz had a couple fits and ultimately ended up bucking me off.  She threw a couple crow hops and I ended up with my left foot out of the stirrup and over Jazz's right hip, and Jazz pretty much stopped there, so I just slid off the right side.  Luckily for me, Jazz really doesn't have much of a buck, I just consider it a side effect of the martingale (she'd rather be rearing), and she doesn't appear to want to throw me, just teeter me off balance enough that I stop pestering her.  After that episode, my trainer got on and had just as much trouble with her attitude as I was having, but eventually she did coax a left lead canter out of her.  I have to admit that I felt a little better seeing my trainer having as much trouble with my horse as I was having.

He's a very talented cat, capable of being a lump and coveting your dinner at the same time.

I had one other lesson before I went away for spring break on the 18th which went different than I expected.  I had another commitment that ran long, so I was running very late to my lesson.  Luckily my trainer is awesome, so she had my horse caught and in the barn for me when I got there.  We got her groomed and tacked quickly between the both of us, and I got to do the majority of my lesson.  We spent the bulk of my shortened lesson working on leg yields off the quarter line at the walk and trot.  It was mostly okay, but Jazz was getting lazy, especially towards the end.  Jazz likes to shut down and turn everything into a fight as soon as she decides that she's done.  I ended up getting the crop out to encourage the forward a little, and Jazz started doing little rears.  I brought her into a tight circle every time, and we eventually got a little co-operation out of her (luckily right at the time my lesson was supposed to end).  As a really great bonus to a successful lesson, my trainer even said it was the best she's seen me ride yet.

The Bestest or, Forever Catching Up

I returned from my trip to New York about two weeks ago.  Since then I have had 2845939572943 things that I have fallen behind on, and blogging was honestly not high on my list of things I needed to do.  Better late than never I figure, so prepare for a somewhat out-of-date update. I came home to a beautiful pony that I missed very much who was also at least 98% covered with mud.  

Naturally I took many pictures. 

 I have had a few blog-worthy farm visits since then, but since the best one ended with my phone dying, I was unable to take pictures except for that first visit, so please enjoy the remainder of my photos from that day, only usually slightly out of context.

Mmm, fuzzy photos

 I got out Sunday after I got back (Feb 22) and lunged, wherein Jazz was a whole week of icy pasture and no exercise worth of crazy.  She got super sweaty and worked up, and soaked through both of my coolers.  On the bright side, I got to try on my new cooler (scroll down if you don't want to wait to see adorable horse jammies!), and it is smaller than my old cooler, which would not work for a turnout blanket but kinda works for a cooler.

Return of the demon pony eyes

 Then, I had a lesson scheduled for Wednesday the 25th, and my trainer asked if I was still up for it due to the cold weather.  I debated just skipping it, but decided to go.  I got there early, and lunged before my lesson.  Jazz was super well behaved on the lunge, so I hopped on to warm up. Once my lesson started, I did the usual kind of warm up, bending and counterbending on the circle at the walk and then the trot.

Heavenly pony sunshine halo

Next order of business was moving to leg yields on the quarter line at walk and trot, and I was super pleased with how well she's starting to listen to the leg.  Next she was doing well enough to get to canter! Because she was both out of shape and a tad bit stiff, we ended up cantering whole arena.  She was still not super comfortable, so my instructor suggested I try a half seat, and that made a huge improvement.  Overall, it was great fun, and there were several moments when we were cantering where we felt really in balance and together, almost like we were one body.  I found myself thinking of  Saiph and a post she made a few weeks ago about the Centaur principle, basically feeling totally one with the horse.

Sooooooooo muddy

Jazz was so good in fact, that my instructor suggested we try leg yielding off the quarter line at the canter.  Jazz was reasonably co-operative, but tends not to make as much progress at the end of the lesson.  She is much more easily flustered when she's starting to be done with riding.  We decided to turf the canter leg yields for the day, and I hopped off not too long after.  Jazz got a nice mineral and probiotic dinner for being the best pony evar, and since it was just us, I closed up the barn doors and let her wander loose around the aisle.  It was sweet to watch her chasing the kitties and trying to open a tin of what she believed to be treats (it was stale chocolate chip cookies that I think have been there since Christmas).

This picture weirds me out.  Jazz has an infinite neck.  

Overall a pretty great ride, especially since I was considering just skipping it.    I had another lesson today (March 8), but I'll save that story for another post.  Enjoy the following spam of a) mudbeard the pony pirate and b) pyjama Jazz!

Indoor arena lighting + phone flash = ghost horse

Spooky

Happy time change everyone! Enjoy your extra hour of daylight pony time (if you can manage to stay awake, that is)!

Adventures in London- Part 4- Wednesday

Precursor:  An unbelievably busy few weeks in my non-horsey life has seriously eaten away my barn time, leaving me with no posts or pictures of interest to share.  In addition to that, I spent the first half of this week on a trip to New York City with a very full schedule.  I very nearly wrote a post about what I saw at the Met, but decided to instead resurrect another nearly-finished-but-never-published museum post from my drafts.  Enjoy! 

I really need to write these London posts already before I lose what little momentum I have left on them, so be prepared for less detail than my previous posts.  Also, almost all of these pictures were taken at the British museum, where I was apparently not very good at taking pictures of descriptions of artifacts, so excuse the occasionally vague descriptions.

First up is a group of some sort of stone slabs depicting horses.  I thought these were the plaster castings of carvings from the parthenon, but I'm almost positive the parthenon ones are below.  Your guess is as good as mine.  I'm about 90% sure these are Greek.  

Apparently they didn't teach convoys of horses to leave a horse-length between their horse and the carriage in front of them in ancient Greece.

There were also many beautiful examples of Greek pottery. This type of pottery was known as red figure pottery, because the figures were the reddish-brown color of the clay.  The pots were painted everywhere except where they wanted the people (and horses) to go.  This was a newer style that became popular after the black figure style, which was just the opposite.  The figures were painted in black paint, leaving details such as the eyes in the natural color, as well as the rest of the pot.

Okay THESE are the plaster castings of carvings from the Parthenon.

The concept of naked riding just seems wrong somehow.  This carving depicts the lesser known Lord Godiva.

As much as any horse is cute, this horse is not cute. 

Whenever my horse stops to scratch like this while I'm riding, my trainer calls it an emergency itch.

Maybe your horse wouldn't be acting up so much if you had your heels down.

This next one was from some other temple that escapes me.

This was one of the top ten pieces the map recommends you see.  It's map approved.

If I remember correctly, it's the head of a chariot horse from the moon goddess' chariot (I think)

Scary parrot mouth

Technically these next statues aren't horses, but my blog has a place for the awesome and hooved.  The section on Assyria had lots of great horses in some of the better preserved stone in the museum.

"Khorsabad The Palace of Sargon

This area Mainly contains sculptures from the city and palace of Khorsabad, built for the Assyrian King Sargon II (721-705 BC). The pair of human-headed winged bulls stood originally at one of the gates of the citadel, as magic guardians against misfortune."

"Attack on an enemy town

Assyrian, about 865-860 BC

A high official, wearing an ankle-length coat of scale armour, shoots towards an enemy town.  A chariot waits behind, while a vulture plucks at the body of a dead enemy."

"Crossing a river

Assyrian, about 865-860 BC

Ashurnasirpal's boat is rowed across the river and hauled ashore.  The royal chariot is beside him and his horses swim behind. An attendant draws the king's attention to the captured town that appears on the next panel to the right."

There were also many panels depicting the lion hunt, which I apparently did not document the descriptions of.  

The african art also featured horse-shaped objects.

As did the Asian art

See the horses?

This next piece is technically not horse related, but it's incredibly beautiful and so delicate it shook whenever someone walked nearby.  

"Gilt silver openwork and filigree crown inlaid with kingfisher feathers and hardstones (some missing)

Late Ming-early Qing dynasty, 17th century AD

The decoration of this ornate crown of 'cage' construction includes flower heads, flaming pearls, dragons and phoenixes.  It would have been worn by a lady of high birth.  

Not all the horses I saw were exactly what one might call conventional...

exhibit A

Exhibit B

I also spied this bit in the exhibit on ancient Syria.

"Horse Riding

This horse bit has large bar cheek-pieces for attaching the bridle and holes for the straps.  The knobbed snaffle must have been uncomfortable for the horse but enabled the rider to control it with the slightest movement of the reins. There are considerable signs of wear at the junction of the two rings in the centre, indigating that this object had been extensively used before it was buried."

I was not good at documenting signs to remind myself of which exhibit was what on the latter half of my museum trip.  So I'm fairly sure all these photos came from the area devoted to the areas around ancient Syria and Iran. 

"Stone relief showing horses

This fragment was originally part of a larger Assyrian relief showing a team of horses drawing a chariot. The Assyrians campaigned regularly in western Iran during the 9th and 8th centuries BC, and horses were among the items of booty that they particularly valued for their chariots and cavalry."

"The Cordoba treasure

Important hoards of silver artefacts were deposited in the Iron Age, and hte example displayed here was found by chance in 1915 at the Molino de Marrubial, on the outskirts of Cordoba.  The objects had been buried in a pit, the coins and two lumps of silver were in the bowl with the rest of the hoard outside.  The treasure includes a torc, eight armlets,the head of a brooch (in the form of a pair of horse's heads), rough lumps of silver and other fragments. The coins, 82 native and 222 Roman, show that the hoard was buried about 100 BC. Some of the objects are damaged and distorted, and the hoard might well have been the stock of a silversmith."


Last but not least of the artifacts was the Lewis Chessman, another of the museum's top ten.

"The Lewis Chessmen

In 1831 a remarkable hoard of carved walrus ivory was discovered on the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles, Scotland.  It consisted of 93 pieces and included 78 chessmen, 14 large gaming counters and an elaborately carved belt buckle.  Eleven of the chessmen are at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh and the rest of the hoard is at the British Museum.  When found, some of the chessmen were stained red. The earliest medieval chess sets appear to have combined red with plain ivory rather than black and white pieces familiar to the game today."

The day ended off really rather well with a tour of Buckingham palace! No pictures were allowed inside, but suffice it to say it was amazing.  We were allowed to snap a few pictures in the garden out back.