Baby's first gymnastic with me.

Hot mess.

It appears someone does not approve of Riley's flymask and insists on taking it off despite the fact that he's wearing a halter... grrr. I found it the other day (the day after I got it) in shed half-buried. Best part? It was still fastened! Crazy horses. One of the ear covers had a nice size bite out of it so maybe I'll just stop buying the kind with ears? Anyway, this is how I found him Saturday evening. No worse for wear and still able to graze so he didn't really care that much. It was entirely too hot during the day so we opted for a near sunset ride which was glorious. We had been running around all day moving jumps, I used a chainsaw/hedge clipper thing for the first time ever, we helped the farm owner move her horse in, and I walked up and down the same hill too many times to count. Our ring is soooooo close to being finished, but we needed a space to set up some jumps so Em could show Kiwi to a potential client. We set up a small gymnastic out in the field and I hedge-clipped a path in the knee-high grass.

You win some, you lose some.

my favorite tree at the farm

Saturday was one of those perfect days where I would have killed for a buddy to go for a 3 hour hack with. Sadly, my riding friends were busy so I blasted through my Saturday morning chores so I could get down to business. Riley made me walk the length of his field to get him and he was NOT happy about coming out of there. Now that he's back in a program, leaving the field = work and so he has been blatantly ignoring me when I call him. The spring grass is starting to come in and the boys are thrilled to be grazing in the sun instead of standing knee deep in snow. I had to bribe him down with peppermints, cheeky boy! I do make a habit of tossing him a flake of hay or some grain when he comes in so it's not always a terrible experience (ahem, sarcasm). I thought we take advantage of the finally stable (ish) footing and at least get a productive session in with the Pessoa. Sadly, I've only been able to use it on him three times (this time included). He still fights it a little, but at least I got him to track right consistently with only ONE debate. So, minor success there.

Spring is around the corner... I think.

Danger Will Robinson! Alert!

We've had some new additions to the farm over the last week or so... 50 head of beef cattle. Now, Riley and i have ridden through fields with Belted Galloways, one of our favorite places to ride (The Laurels) is directly next to an enormous dairy farm and our barn is across the street from a cow farm, but apparently he was very alarmed when I walked him up the driveway on Saturday and he saw the cows for the first time. *Keep in mind they were at least 100 yards away from the fence line. This was his face when we got to the top of the driveway. He must have made himself 18 hands tall and was just snorting and carrying on. Pretty funny. My general rule with scary things is that you are allowed to look and face the fear but not run away or act ridiculous. I brought him inside the barn and let him hang out in his stall where he could peek out his dutch door and check out the cows for awhile. I have never heard Riley snort at anything and he was so silly about the cows. We have so many animals there and we used to board at a place that was like Noah's Arc, complete with peacocks that would stand on the arena fence while you were riding, so he really has no excuse. But sometimes it's simply the fact that in their brains this thing was not here before, so naturally I should fear it.

Anyway, I was at the barn all day alone so I thought it was best not to take the risk of getting on him without someone else there and after he settled in I took him to our "ring" for a free-lunge session. He was pretty good, though lazy, and took advantage of the fact that I could hardly chase after him in the deep snow (cheeky). He even hopped over the jump a few times.

Prancy pants. Also, don't look at my miserable clip job.

Showing off. Little carousel pony.

I gave him a thorough grooming. I'm so glad I clipped him (even though it's been more annoying to deal with blankets etc since our weather won't figure itself out) because his rain rot is nearly all gone. I'm hoping this year that his new coat comes in a little nicer than last year when he had all these fuzzy baby hairs and then a bunch of longer guard hairs that never went away.

Oh in case you were wondering what it looked like at the top of the driveway when Riley stood at attention:

The sheep and lambs he is used to... but the cattle were on the move and that was a major problem:)

Sunday the weather was chillier and windy, but still above freezing so we decided to go for a hack. I have to say that the one nice thing about Riley being "up" because of the cows is that I got some really nice work out of him on the hack. We did a few trot sets and he found a contact that he was happy with and we just plugged along on the bit with a nice sweeping trot. Everything is so much easier when he's not stuck behind my leg! For those of you keeping track, he's still not shod... that's right, we've been trotting distances on asphalt and he feels great! I need to get new pictures for comparison of his feet. He may still need shoes once we get into more work, but for now he is happy as a clam.

Airplane ears, engaged. I hope those get us extra points in dressage. He gets very relaxed and happy!

We've had two solid days of temps in the high 60's and today's forecast is for rain tonight so I am really hoping that all the snow goes away. Sadly, the temps are supposed to drop overnight and tomorrow is going to be mid-20's and windy! Grrrrr. I really want to get him back in the Pessoa this weekend to see if we can work on some balance. I hope the footing dries up a little to make that happen. Sunday will be another hacking day for sure.

Sorry my posts have been wickedly boring... but at least there are photos!

Riley at the top of the hill in his field waiting for his entourage.

The snow sure is pretty, but I have had enough it, for at least another 10 months!

The little girl inside. (This is a horribly written post, my brain is not working)

It's official, I HATE winter. I'm not one to usually complain about the cold, but I am OVER the snow and the ice. We've had over 50" of snow this winter making it something like the 3rd snowiest in history! There's nowhere for the new snow to go so it's getting a little crazy around the farm. There are just walls and walls of it everywhere and we've had to carve out paths to get to paddocks, totally insane! Though, to be fair, it's better than losing power and water like we did with the freak ice storm a few weeks ago.

A beautiful capture in Riley's paddock.

The farm looks completely majestic despite the what an enormous pain in the ass it is to do anything in the snow. Seriously, turning out horses in a foot and a half of snow is exhausting! *I should take some photos this weekend of our crazy paths we've made to get to and from the pastures, it's pretty funny.

Riley emerges over the hill to the sound of the bell

Luckily, Riley and Henry have the luxury of living outside. They have a 20 acre paddock, a stream, a shed the size of a barn and a round bale. They're both really acclimated to the weather so they are happy as can be in their field. It's actually really cute to see them both hanging out in their fort looking out at the horses in their tiny turnout paddocks (we can only reach the small ones right now for the horses in the barn). The only downside to them being out is trying to feed them in all the snow. They basically get the same amount of feed but Riley gets supplements and Henry is on SMZs for a few days. Plus we like to put eyes on the horses at least twice a day to check for cuts and missing shoes etc so it's important that they come down to the fence line for feed. So rather than truck all the way up the hill to the shed, we've been bell training them with a cow bell. It's been going on for a few weeks now and they are getting really good! They can't see you at all when you're down at the gate so you have to call them, shake the bucket of grain and ring the bell. One by one they'll come over the hill and saunter down for breakfast or dinner. They've carved out a little path in the snow so they have to use the least amount of energy to get down to the gate.

Saturday was a gorgeous day at the farm despite all the snow and with my saddle back in my grubby mitts all I wanted to do was ride! There were flurries and everything looked kind of magical so I convinced Emily to tack up her new boy so we could get some fun photos of us out in the big field that hadn't been touched yet! I forgot that her new horse hadn't met the sheep/lambs yet and he was quite surprised when we led the boys through one of the stalls to get to the field! The horses truly thought we had lost our minds when we hopped on and pointed them at the snow (the sheep have a shedrow kind of of overhang so there was a wall of snow to convince them to walk into. Brody wasn't so sure, but Riley showed him that it would be just fine:) It was super deep snow so all we could was walk and it felt crazy, like we were on the moon!

But all you guys care about are photos, so...

Heading out into the giant field, you can't tell but there are a bunch of hills in here.

Ha! Look at his back leg!

This looks like we are both laughing -- I assure you, Riley was NOT amused.

Caught, mid-buck! Cheeky!

Aw, snow pony. SO happy to be back in MY saddle.

The cutest.

We only stayed our for a few minutes because it was impossible to move around, but Riley and Brody were good sports about it all. We walked over near the small paddocks and the other horses gave us a look like we had lost our minds. The truth is, the little girl in me is always crafting up goofy ideas like this. Most people wouldn't want to go for a ride while it's actively snowing in 14" of it, but I was dying to. If I hadn't wanted to ride in my saddle so badly I would have hopped on him bareback! Once a horse crazy girl, always one!

The sweetest horse a girl could ever want.

We're in love.

Of course we got another couple of inches of snow today, but this weekend is supposed to be in the 50's and sunny. Some rain at the end of the week should hopefully get ride of some of the snow. I'm eager to at least go for some road hacks to build fitness on Riley. There's endless amounts of hacking around us so away we go!


I've been bartering with Emily for training rides and I've racked up 3 so far by doing blanket repairs and waterproofing! Woo hoo! Boot camp time Riley!

Oh life... you fickle beast OR The Story with a Happy Ending

To say the last two and half months of my life have been a whirlwind of emotions would be a complete understatement. Moving to a new barn, getting settled in, the burglary, the hellish winter we've been having, financially trying to rebound from losing everything, the holidays. For my anxious, neurotic brain it's been, at times, nearly more than I can bear. I am lucky to be surrounded by such amazing friends and family, and of course you guys. What would I do without my horse blog friends!?!

full disclosure...

If any of you are friends with me on Facebook or Instagram, you've probably already gathered that I tend to lean to the dark side of things from time to time. This can manifest in cryptic status updates and gloomy photos... but don't misunderstand me, I'm not looking for attention or crying out for help. It's a very real, very ingrained part of my personality. I've been an old soul since I was very, very little. I'm the kind of person who is profoundly moved by seemingly small things. I feel very deeply about things that most people don't. I'm a bit of a tortured soul (how cliche of me to say that as an artist) and I fluctuate between being extremely motivated and positive to states of crippling anxiety and depression. I had my first bona fide anxiety attack when I was 22. I remember it VERY specifically and I could not move for a few days. It felt as though someone was standing on my neck and I couldn't get out of bed. I'm sure at the time I really freaked out my roommate... but I was more frightened by all of it. Being very self-aware, I can understand and reflect back on why this happened, there were triggers, and a few major situations that led to that point. I had struggled with insomnia following a car accident in high school and that certainly didn't help much either. It took years for me to understand what was actually going on with my brain. My friend's Mother called it "underdeveloped limb syndrome"... the idea being that if you were born with one leg shorter than the other, maybe you wouldn't notice it as an infant, then as a toddler maybe your parents start to notice, as young child other children may see that you are little different, and by high school it's something that you've been made fun of for, and by the time you get to adulthood you're completely self-conscious about it, trying to hide it as much as you can and being very aware of it at all times. My anxiety is my under-developed limb. I can go long periods of times with nary an issue and then I fool myself into thinking it's gone. It creeps up on me like a stranger in the night and before I know it I'm back to being immobilized by it. But if it wasn't for this tortured soul part of my personality that feels things so intently, I wouldn't be who I am today. I'm a bit of a strange creature, and people are drawn to that, however I easily overwhelm people and can be too intense for some... I know that about myself. I fall in love with kindred spirits though and when I recognize that dark soul in someone else I want to hide there with them. Outwardly, I can seem very normal but inside I feel like a frayed wire. I am comforted by being social because it's a distraction from the war going on inside me.

In the footfalls of legends

Yesterday I moved Riley to a new farm. I'm sure if you've been following my blog for any period of time you're thinking... again? Yes, again. Our current place was only a temporary solution until we could find a barn to rent again. Despite being in one of the most horse-centric areas of the country we had a very difficult time trying to find a place. People flaked out at the last minute, didn't follow through with their promises and some places were just unfit for horses. While the amenities at the current place were great for the price (xc jumps, arena with super footing, hacking, etc) the circus atmosphere was a lot to deal with. That, and it just wasn't convenient for boarding a horse. We had to keep our stuff so far away from our horses that every time we wanted to tack up it became an ordeal, schlepping stuff all over to wherever our horse was cross-tied. That, and despite there being about 30 horses on the property, there were only two places to tack up and we had no access to a stall even if we needed one! We came across a fantastic opportunity that truly felt too good to be true. So the three of us (the two girls who rented the previous barn and I) decided to all go see this place together, meet the new owner and make a decision. It was a unanimous YES on all accounts...

What I didn't know, was that the farm was iconic. I'm not sure how long ago exactly, but the very famous Derry Meeting Farm came up for sale (if you don't feel like going to the link, Danzig and Storm Cat were both foaled there at the farm!!!). It was split into three separate parcels and each one was sold to a different owner. Erin Sylvester has one, I'm not sure who has the other, and we have the third (by we, I mean of course that a couple purchased the property and we are renting the barn)! So we drive up to the property and I immediately recognize the gates in all the fields. They are quite distinctively yellow with a large "V" shape in the middle. The barn is a modest bank barn in really good repair. It's unclear how long it was vacant for, but it was pretty cobwebby when we first looked at the place. This particular property was the broodmare farm, which would explain the gigantic stalls and sheds.

Inside of the barn, looking out the driveway. Riley's stall is the second on the left in this photo.

Despite being a little dusty, the place looked great. We were all a little wide-eyed looking around. It was just what we were looking for, 11 stalls, LOADS of turnout, sheds, access to the best hacking around and quiet. The woman that owns the property has a horse that she keeps in the area and ideally wanted to find a few people to run the barn and eventually she would like to move her horse over too. She's putting in a ring (hopefully in the next month, the contract has been signed -- we're just waiting for the company to finish up Erin's). She was pretty adamant about not wanting a boarding facility, nor does she want any real role in the barn operation, so she was just as thrilled to meet us. We were excited to know that she had a good friend who also wanted to move her horse there and we decided that the barn would be run as a co-op. We all really like the idea of shared responsibilities and a small co-op can be really effective if it's run correctly.

One of the "riding" fields. This is the view from the overhang on the side of the barn with dutch doors, looking out to Riley's turnout field. There's a large pond and a natural stream running through the whole property.

The stalls in the barn are HUGE. I think the smallest is 14' x 18'. Riley's is roughly 15' x 15' with a dutch door looking out over the property. The trickiest thing so far has been leveling the stall floors. They are clay based and were quite lumpy when we first looked at the place. We dragged out a bunch of family members yielding pick axes last weekend and tried to break up some of the old hay, pee, poop that was now like concrete. I worked on painting the newly made saddle racks and Breaking up the surface of the stall. It seriously looked like he took a jack-hammer to it. He wasn't removing any of it as he went along so I had to shovel it out in stages. The floor is looking quite a bit better, but we'll still need some sort of gravel or stone dust to level it out further and mats (down the road). I have a little more work to do on Sunday and then it will be good enough to bring him in at night until we get the other stuff sorted out. It's not a good long term solution, since cleaning stalls with dirt floors increases your costs of straw etc, but... baby steps.

So the barn was in almost ready state when we moved everyone in yesterday. You know, for someone who has only had a horse for 6 months I have certainly acquired SO much horse crap. We filled up the back of our Honda Fit, which holds a remarkable amount of cargo and I still had to put stuff in the trailer. I dragged a very reluctant Riley out of his field (ps. His Baker sheet is mostly intact) and threw him on the trailer. He was happy enough to oblige and chomp on hay. As we were loading the boys the two dog kennels surrounding the jump field were deafeningly loud. They were all hysterically barking and it made me feel so happy that we don't have to deal with that anymore (*I will miss the puppies). The new place is only 10 minutes away and the boys unloaded well. We stuck them in a small paddock together to take everything in and Riley put his head down into knee deep grass to graze.

I finished up organizing my stuff into my trunk... I bought one of these for in front of my stall -- seriously... a tack trunk for $68. It fits my saddle (though, I'm not keeping it in there) and 90% of my stuff. It even has a pull out tray that looks like a mini grooming box (I'm planning on keeping medical supplies in it). Eventually, I'd like to have a really tack trunk, but this is completely functional, has wheels, a handle and it locks!

Around 5 I took Riley down the road to his new turnout field which is roughly 20 acres. There's a catch pen at the bottom of it, which is great, as it was previously used for sorting cattle. He's going to be turned out daily with 3 other geldings and about 20 sheep! 

A photo from the real estate listing of one of the sheds. They are GIGANTIC.

I walked Riley up the hill so he could take everything in (Oh, I should mention he walked down the road landing heel-first and sound to his field, progress!) and un-clipped him at the shed and he wandered around with his turnout buddy. No shenanigans, no galloping, just two very happy horses. Phew.

View from Riley's field looking back to the barn (future xc course to be built in the field to the right of the barn in this photo). Not too shabby?

I'll try to take some better pictures this weekend. All of these fields have wide hacking lanes in between them as well as along the perimeter of each field. It could take you an hour to hack around the whole place (at least). While I'm eager for the ring to built, this is a perfect scenario for Riley's winter plan. Hacking, good footing, and lots of turnout with 12 hours of stall time a day to rest. I think we're going to like it here (and the plan is to stay for a very, very long time!) For reference, this parcel of land is located between Phillip Dutton's and Boyd's place!

I won't be out until Sunday, but I'm hoping to get lots done and still have time to saddle him up and go for a hack. Stay tuned!

*If I was ever in a position to take on another project horse, this place would be perfect.
**I'm not.
***Keep me away from CANTER MidAtlantic... I just found another AP Indy grand-baby for a steal.