Spring 1 Clinic

It was the first clinic on the ranch of the season. Faith and I decided to partake in it. The first night everyone makes a run. Martha and a few others sit up in the announces booth and takes notes about your run. Faith had a couple weeks off because her feet were once again ouchy, but we finally have her figured out. So we were unable to work the pattern much. When we went we loped the whole pattern, her first was a little sloppy, her second wasn't bad, but her third came up a little wide. we ran a 22.5. on Saturday we worked on keeping an event distance all the way around, bending at the rib cage, checking her at the right moment, and getting my hand in position. You want an even distance all the way around because if you come in close you will come out wide, but if you come in to wide you might over compensate and come out to close. so if start and end about the same place you will save the most time. Bending at the rib cage is like taking you horse and bending them into a C. When they are going around the barrel you need to keep the momentum and the best way to do that is first get their nose slightly to the direction your turning, then as you approach the barrel use your inside rein and inside leg to make them move over, turning them into a C or the shape of the barrel. If you look at the good barrel horses you will see their hind end on one side of the barrel and their head at the other side. Checking checking checking. You will hear a lot of barrel racers talk about rate and checking. Well checking is when just before the barrel you just slightly pull on your reins to put the horse on their hind end and get ready to pivot. if you just run and turn the barrel it wont be pretty. its like driving a car, if you need to make a sharp turn you have to slow down right? Well constant checking will then give a horse natural rate, meaning they can soon be able to rate their own speed. They know " Ok right here i need slow down just a little" but you have to rate at the exact moment. Too early can make you turn too early, too late can make you run past the barrel. You want to rate about 1 or 2 strides away from the barrel. But it also depends on your horse. Now my hands. You want to go to your saddle horn around the barrel, other wise you will be left in the dirt my friend. These horses know what they have to do and their gonna do it with or without you. right after you rate them drop your outside hand and push on the saddle horn to push you down in the saddle. Then slowly move your inside hand toward your jean pocket. You don't want to pull it down towards your thigh because they will start to drop their shoulder and throw away their hind end. If you pull it across their neck it sends mixed signals as to which direction your going. As you cam around the back side of the barrel pull on the horn to pull your self up instead of balancing on your rein. As you pull up your giving the horse their head to move on. Faith has a pretty nice first barrel witch is good because it sets you up for success on the other two. As the weekend went on Faith started to have a really solid second. You just rate and let her do the rest, but i have to make sure she doesn't start to suck me into it and anticipate, she has to wait for me. The only barrel we have a consistent problem is third. Because she has such a good second she books it out of it and doesn't rate enough at third so makes it too wide. on Sunday, the last day she was high as a kite. she just wanted to work the pattern. But that night she hustled to first i didn't rate her at the right time so she bobbled a little but it wasn't too bad, she wrapped around second barrel, it was text book, but ran wide around third. But she ran a 19.5! We dropped three seconds off of our first time. In the barrel world every mil-second counts let alone a whole second! I was happy enough with that! But it just got better. The awards ceremony was next. They award the most improved and the 4D. 4D means the 4 Division. 1D is the fastest and 4D is the slowest, you are placed in the D's by how much slower you are from the fastest time. a 17.4 won the 1D. Faith won 3rd in the 4D! She won a halter. The first time I ran her for time and she placed. I couldn't have been happier.

If The Shoe Fits!

Well I suppose you could say we have not had much luck. after Faith came back from the hospital we had her feet done. Now Faith and feet just don't go so well. You see she needs to be trimmed in a way that puts her front feet more on an angle to take weight off of her heels. In a sense you are rolling the toe in. She also has pads on in between her shoes, they are wedged to give her even more of an angle. we first noticed this about a month from when we first got her. she was very off, camping out, and tripping. we had our vet come out and take x-rays of her feet and legs. At one point we were afraid it was navicular. navicular is when there navivular bone moves out of place causing it to be very uncomfortable for them. it is most common in quarter horses which is what her breeding is. luckily the radio graphs showed us that her hoof wall and bone were off angle, hence why we re angled her feet. It is so difficult to go to knew places because you must find new everything, you get vets and farriers that know how to work on your horse and it is hard to find it all again. When she was shod the farrier must have missed a detail because she was off, another way of saying uncomfortable. almost like a limp. she was off for about two days, and there was a race on the weekend and i was hoping to take her. on Friday we finally decided we had to do something. we thought of doing different types of shoeing but we were afraid of putting too many holes in her feet. we finally decided to get her some bute until we can make a decision. Bute is like Aspirin only for horses, its a pain killer. as we were on our way to get some we saw a farrier pull in. one we have heard good things about. we asked her to take a look at her feet. she found that the soul, the bottom of the foot, wasn't trimmed enough. it should be a very slight slope, hers was more flat and then a sudden drop, this was putting pressure on the pads and hurting her feet. if she had not had pads it may not have been a big deal. she trimmed the soul and like that my horse was once again sound. the next day i took her around the barrels. she did so good i felt she could take it up a notch, my horse has yet to fail me. i decided to take her to the race and exhibition her. well on Sunday morning we missed the exhibitions. this was fine by me, as long as she could be in the show atmosphere, but of course Pat, one of the guys at the ranch, got me to enter the race. it was a 5D race and i wasn't in it to win it, so what did i have to lose? i loped her to first so she could see what she was doing, she was going into it blind sighted because i did not exhibition her. she had a nice first barrel when she was going across to second she bobbled a little because she wasn't to go back to the chute, but once we got to our spot we had a nice second, on third i came into it too wide, i know i was scrambling for the reins so i must have pulled her off of it but we cam around it nicely. she had nice turns around the barrels, it was simply the approach. i was totally happy with it though. without any practice she was simply amazing, and still my horse has yet to fail me. threw everything, being ill, hospitals, feet, lack of practice, but the show must go on!

Helpless in Texas

Well the week started out pretty well, but we didn’t have the best ending. On Thursday morning I put faith out in her round pen and did our normal routine. Everything was normal. By noon everything was usual as well. But around 4:30 when I went to go get Faith and put her up for the night. I noticed she was laying down which was pretty usual for her, but then I noticed that when she got up she was looking pretty under the weather, I wasn’t worried but concerned, so I checked her gums. Checking their gums is like seeing if dogs nose is wet and cold, a good over all wellness, you want their gums pink enough so if you put your thumb on them you could see a brief white mark, and wet. I immediately noticed her gums were dry which was not a good sign, and her gums were pale. I listened to her stomached to see if I could hair anything. I couldn’t which was another red flag, no noise means no movements. I started to think I was dealing with a colic. Colic is basically a really bad stomach ache. It is very painful for horses and can die from it. It is usually caused by maybe bad feed, a drastic feed change, or eating sand. But colic could really be caused by almost anything, sometimes you just never know how it happened. When you have a colicing horse the first thing you want to do is walking, just keep on walking. If you walk them around their systems start moving and pushed out whatever caused the colic. We gave her 10mL of Banameine threw the vain. Banameine is basically a pain killer, something to make them more comfortable. I walked her around for about and hour. But she kept wanting to lay down. You don’t want them to lay down because they aren’t moving things threw, and if they roll they could twist an intestine or flip it over to the other side. In other words its really bad. As time went on her symptoms got worse. She started curling her upper lip which is another way of saying she is uncomfortable, she was also camping out. Camping out is when they stretch out their legs to try to get comfortable. Eventually she stopped trying to lay down so we put her in her stall. We tried giving her a bran mash, its kind of like an oatmeal I guess. Its something to cleanse them and clean them out. She did eat it but would not eat hay and didn’t drink. But we figured she was stable enough to leave her for the night. We had the girls check on her threw the night and we checked her around 8:00pm. She wasn’t laying down but wasn’t really doing much of anything. Just standing there. She didn’t look herself and was obviously unhappy. The next morning we got a call from Paula, one of the girls who live on the ranch. She said she was trying to lay down and looking at her stomach. Looking at their stomach is like a way saying ouch that hurts. We rushed over and called a vet. As we were walking her around she would just drop to the ground. We would stand her up and kept walking. We had to take off her sheet while walking because if we stopped she would try to lay down. The vet arrived and gave her 8mL of Banameine. He checked her heart rate which was normal, this was a good sign that nothing in her was twisted or flipped. Then he had to pump mineral oil into her. Mineral oil is another trick to clean them out. He took a tube and put it up her nose down into her throat. He pumped about two gallons into her. He decided she was fine and left. We kept her walking and noticed after about hour she was still getting worse. She was constantly trying to lay down, curling her lip, capping out, looking at her stomach, swishing her tail, she was just one really unhappy horse. We then tried taking her on a trailer ride. Some people say this helps because for horse being on trailers and being bounced around can make them poop. So we went around the ranch and by the end of it she had pooped once, but it wasn’t enough. She kept getting worse. The fact that it had been 24 hours and she had not drunken anything and was still colicing was really starting to worry us. We jus kept walking and thought about calling a hospital. They said to give her another shot of Banameine and to call in 2 hours. We did so and she was still no better. I was sitting on a hay bail feeling helpless when I heard it. To me it was the most beautiful noise in the world. I had to second guess myself. It was a stomach gurgle. I put my ear to her stomach and listened. I could hear gurgles, grumbles, and squirrgles. A smile cam upon my face. It was another step in the right direction. But I knew she was far from better and still needed professional help. We loaded her up on the trailer but we had to be careful that she couldn’t lay down in the trailer. Luckily the Banameine was still in effect. We got her in the trailer and to the hospital. We offloaded her brought her inside. There were 5stalls in an L shape to the right. To the left were three slots. The vet tech pointed me to the second slot. The doctor did a rectal on her (put his hand up her but to feel around and see if there is anything to come out and feel and twists) he didn’t feel anything irregular. He took blood work and tested for acid reflects. To do that he put a tube up her nose again and see if anything came out the tube. Luckily nothing came out so anything being twisted or flipped was out of the question. The fact that the colic had gone on for a full day was a bit concerning so we thought it may be something different. The blood work came back telling us she was anemic (weak or skinny) they said this could be from the stress, but also that she had low protein. Now we started thinking she may have some ulcers. An ulcer can appear from stress, this would make sense since she had been placed into a new environment, new routine, really new everything. This could be why she was acting so uncomfortable. The fact that she hasn’t drank in a day made them nervous as well. They kept her over night and had her on fluids via IV and started her on an ulcer guard. We knew she was in good hands so called it a night. The next morning I got a call from the clinic, they said she was up, eating, drinking, pooping, and seemed a lot more comfortable. Since she recovered so quickly the took ulcers out of the question and decided it was a really bad colic. They said they wanted to keep an eye on her just in case and we could pick her up in the morning. I was so relieved. Having a horse who was like part of the family being so ill and unhappy was just heartbreaking. I was so scared and felt so helpless. Mainly because with colic you can only do so much but its up to the horse to do the rest. Hearing that she was ok was such a stress relief. The next morning we picked her up and was happy to see her bright beautiful normal face. Se was so happy to see us come threw the door. I could only imagine how scary it is to be in such a state and have to trust the people around you to take care of you who you don’t even know. Especially with horses trust is very big to them. Having her home and seeing her be her normal self just put a smile on my face.

Tack, Tack, and more Tack!!!!!

This week has been pretty quiet, just a lot of moving around. On Monday Amy was assigned a new horse, so she then had four horses to ride. well I only had two, but then one of the girls wanted to ride Elli. He was originally supposed to be her project but she got pretty busy for a bit. She wanted to try to get back into the groove with him. Now i only had one. So i took over Frosty for Amy. So now she has three and I have two so while she rides her last horse Ill do little chores around the barn. Maybe cleaning tack, organizing the tack hooks, raking, etc. We have also added to our little collection of horses. A man who was at the ranch for a couple weeks had two really nice horses that he brought with him to sell. One of them sold. He let Amy ride the other one, she fell instantly in love. Her name is Kit. She is a high energy, but yet controllable horse. she is very tentative and responsive. She knows her job. She is a finished barrel horse that has been trying to sell. But the majority of people who look to buy at the ranch are kids. They don't feel as safe because she acts a little hot, but she wont do anything to you. Shes simply antsy. Well her owner had to go home for a couple weeks and left Kit here in Amy's hands. So now I have MY horse to ride and Amy has hers. We both something to call ours. But horses haven't been the only thing we've been moving around. This week Martha wanted us to use different headstalls. We would also usually use a tie-down (kind of like a halter only it is clipped to the cinch to try to keep the horses head down.) now we use running martingale. it is clipped to the cinch only it has two pieces that come out with rings at the end. you put the reins threw the rings. It is to help the horses break at the poll (tuck their head in)The bit we now use is called an O-ring, it also is used to help horses break at the poll. You want a horse to break at the poll because it helps them use they back and hind end. If you think about it you want your horse to move as if you picked up your horse by the withers (The bone connecting the back and neck.) his head tucks in and his hind end would come under neath him making his legs move loosely and fluently. So the more you can try to accomplish this the better you will ride the better your horse will move. I had to use a really old Martingale that actually snapped in half on me while i was riding Mario. i had to get off and use another one that was a home made one made of string and double end snaps. It took me quite a while to figure out all the knots and adjusting it etc. but after maybe 20minutes i got it figured out and i was bale to continue with my ride on Mario. So i've learned to always over look especially older tack and to keep track of what your are using and if it coincides with where you and your horse are at training and competing wise.

Fort Worth Texas

On Sunday we all took a trip to Fort Worth Texas to watch Martha race. She was racing in the WNFR(World National Finals Rodeo). It was so cool to watch the finals. She had ran that night to qualify to run the next day. We walked into the shoot with her. She walked her horse around a lot so he could get used to his surroundings because he was a little spooky.the coliseum seamed to go on forever. Up on the ceiling was flags. American and Texas flags hung. We found our seats and waited for the race to begin. It started with the grand entry. The grand entry starts with a drill team of horses. They all hold flags and stand for the National Anthem. Then the race began. There were broncs, calf roping, steer wrestling, Team roping, saddle bronc, bull riding, and barrel racing. Martha ran and placed 7th out of 175 riders. she qualified to ride the next day. She didn't come home so I'm assuming she qualified for today. Today we started the colts on the barrels. Fred(now known as Ellie) did well trotting around the barrels but when we tried to lope to them he did fin going to first, but couldn't pick up his correct lead going to second. It is important that horses pick up the correct lead going to barrels so they can balance better. If he is on the incorrect lead then he will not be able to make a good turn. We were unable to pick up the correct lead so I asked Terrie if he could ride him tomorrow to see if he can get him to pick it up. After we ride we go into the office and help the girls in anyway we can. Sometimes we need to stuff envelopes for clinics, move and organized files, working on the website, etc. everything has been a little busy because we now have two new colts. We have them for three days to see if we like them. If not we send them back to where they came from. One is a little all hyper and very rude on the ground. She walks all over you and doesn't care to much about you. The other is head shy, meaning she doesn't like it if someone touches her head or above her ears and is a little shy in general. We will probably end up sending them back because they are not what we are looking for. They are good project horses for individuals but not for an actual sale barn. Not everyone made the football team.

MY CHEXY CHIC ARRIVED!!!

To day was a fairly basic day in the morning. Amy and i rode out usual horses. Me on Mario and her on Frosty. We didn't ride them as long because my horse was supposed to arrive! She got picked up on Monday and was set to arrive around 5:00-7:00pm. Once I got off of Mario I went down to the store to see if they needed help with anything. Sure enough I was put straight to work. They needed some files moved from one cabinet to another and to check off the files that were and weren't there. While I was working on that Martha and R.E (her husband) were shooting a clip for the DVD's they send to the clinic coordinators. Since Martha and R.E have commitments at the ranch they send out three instructors to go around the country and hold clinics. This clip was to demonstrate what exercises and lessons they teach at the clinics and the improvements students make. I thought it was interesting watching her do take after take trying to get it perfect. She actually impressed me a great deal. She had a lot of enthusiasm and made good choices in her wording. Some parts had to be improvised for Martha to explain about the clinic's. she did exceptional. After I rode my colt I went back down to the store to await my mare's arrival. I put shavings in her stall, got hay from a grain store, retrieved/cleaned water and feed tubs, and searched for a grain similar to what she was on in VT. It is important to try to find similar grains because horses have very sensitive digestive systems. If a sudden change is made they can colic. Collicing is like having a really bad stomach ache and can be very painful. Many horses die from collicing. This proved to be quite a task. Most people feed their horses a sweet feed. Sweet feed can have a supplement in it called Athlete. It is to make horses more hyper or energetic. My horse was just on a simple pellet. Just something to maintain her weight and energy levels. We were unable to find anything close to the protein and fat percentages at first. We were almost forced to change her to a low rate Sweet Feed. Luckily we found what we were looking for. To prevent collicing you have to gradually change feed's. For example my horse was on 2 quarts of her original pellet. So I would start to give her 1 1/2quartz of original and 1/2quart of the new pellet, and every week you add a little more until it is 2quarts of the new feed. Her chariot finally pulled in. As she stepped off of the trailer I could not believe my eyes. I had missed her so much and it was good to see a familiar face again. It was like a mother being away from her child. I hugged her so long it surprising i didn't leave imprints on her neck. I put her in a small pen so she could stretch out and look around her new surroundings. This is an important factor when moving a horse. They need to know their areas. To them they check out of any dangers, how to get food and water, places they can run to, and things they would look for in the wild. Once a horse feels comfortable you will notice their body becoming more and more relaxed. I noticed she had a lost a little weight since i saw her last. This was very common for horses being shipped long distances. Shipping is a very stressful think for horses. The way they are positioned is not natural for them and even though they stop every 4 hours being in so many places in a short amount of time can worry a horse because they have no idea where they are and if something will attache them. But she was not scarily skinny, simply a little thin. She is a Palomino Quarter Horse. Palomino is a coat color. Their manes are white and some coats look gold...hers is more of a yellow. She is a registered Quarter Horse. Her Registered name is Chexy Blond Chic. But her barn name(what she is called for short) is Faith. Now that my Faith is here I feel a lot more at home. Now the whole family is here!

The True Tour Of The Place-1/25

today we started out our mornings as usual. i rode Mario and Amy rode Frosty. we did allot of work on the barrels. usually when you are working on barrels you check them just before the barrels. when you check a horse that means you slow them down or when exercising you stop them completely. you do this so the horse doesn't "run away" with you and go past the barrels. it reminds them they need to turn soon and rock on their hind end. since Mario is already so slow moving we didn't worry about checking him. we wanted him to think more of to keep moving threw the turns and push through. we also kept working on keeping him out and away from the barrels instead of short and close. he was doing pretty good at a trot so we tried it at a lope. the first two go rounds were not too good, but the last two or three times we did really well. we started to figure out each other. he knew what i wanted and i knew how to ask him for it. Frosty was a little bit more sluggish today. she wasn't as forward. Amy really had to push her to get her going and she had a hard time picking up the correct lead going from first to second. you want to make sure the horse is on the correct lead going in between barrels so that they are correctly balanced. they cant as good of a turn if they are on the incorrect lead. but towards the end they started to get it. when we were done working them we took them out on a trail ride. we rode into the hay fields. the field was so big and open there were only trees on the edges of the field. as we walked over a small hump i could see the tips of a heard of Texas Longhorn. as i climbed to the top of the hill i was able to see all of them. their great horns pointed in different directions. some looked like field goals, others came out straight at you, and others seem to be just flat out. we passed a cemetery in the middle of the field. it looked as though it was abandoned long ago. it was in the middle of the field, fenced in by stone and trees. it looks so mysterious but sacred at the same time. a ways after that there was a church, again one you would think would be abandoned but turns out they still use it and berried people in that cemetery. we walked all around the field. the cow plops looked like the field had a bad break out of black heads. the brought sun beamed down and made the dry grass seem like gold swaying in the wind, dancing almost. the quiet of it all. just us and the horses. with the occasional long horn. everything just seemed so much more natural. out in a field, with the sunlight, just walking along having a good time. nothing to worry about and nothing to fear. of course Mario and i trailed behind the other two. when we got back to the ranch we worked our colts. Fred will probably be ready to start on the pattern soon. he trots and lopes nice circles. he keeps his nose bent to the inside and doesn't drop in and keeps his momentum. we were able to quit a little early today since there wasn't much more left to do. it was a beautiful day and a great way to celebrate it. now i see why they find it so easy to call it home on the range.