Beach Ride

We got invited to go to the beach! This would be my second time riding her, and she hadn't been out to do anything since the first day I got her. Oh well, I figured I could figure it out. Besides, it might be fun to see her with some serious spunk!






We had to keep the fly mask on because of her little pasture escapades...

The second day she was out in pasture, she decided to puncture a hole through her head into her sinus. This showed up as a little bumpy scrape on her head. Sarah thought nothing of it, and figured she'd mention it to me later. Well, the next day I came out only to find large quantities of yellow thick gooze coming out of her nose. I called the vet that night, he came out the next day and found the hole in her head. $200 later she had a tube poking into her sinus so that I could flush saline down into it to rinse out her nasal passages. She's still on the antibiotics, but the tube's been removed and we're now in the last phases of the healing process. Hopefully my one bucket full of antibiotics keeps me until the end of her regiment so I don't have to go to the vet for more.

Aaaanyways, the beach:

She hopped right into the back of the 2 horse trailer, even though there were already 2 horses in it (for all the safety freaks, we've done this before, and the trailer is an extra long, so they have plenty of space so hush) and even though she's the mare, she kept all four feet firmly planted while Wyatt decided to paw.

She backed right out of the trailer, took one look around, and decided that the grass was way more interesting than the other horses, ATV's, and motorhomes all around us. We tacked up, hopped on and tried to make our way through the dunes the way we usually go, but there was a terrifying terrier yapping at us right on our path, so we re-routed and found our way across all the scary shadows.

Once on the beach she wasn't too fond of the water, and I don't know if it was because she could see it really well and didn't like it, or because she couldn't see it due to her flymask. We walked up and down banks, trotted, cantered, said hi to some people, got our picture taken, and eventually we could trot into and out of the water as long as it wasn't rushing towards us too fast.

There was one really long stretch of trotting, I just put a little contact on her, and she dropped right into a nice forward frame. She wasn't too keen on moving away from the other horses however. That's something we'll need to keep working on.

First Day

She got here around 10 am on Saturday November the 14th, I have to write it down or else I'll forget :D

I bathed her, let her out into the pasture and made sure the big ole mean guys didn't try to take too many hunks out of her hide. She did just fine. After riding Godiva and making sure she got along with the other horses in pasture, we did about 30 minutes of easy riding stuff. She's not very willing in the lateral movements, she just has no clue that when only one leg goes on her she's supposed to move sideways away from it. I didn't want to keep her out too long, I worry about her burning too many calories and not being able to put enough into getting fatter.

We walked and trotted over some poles, which were very scary at first, but eventually we maintained a trot over them, although it was very gingerly.

She's just overall a very calm and pleasant horse to be around. Not jumpy, flighty, etc. She does have a shiver response when you walk up to her. I'm still trying to figure out what triggers it and how to get her over it. I think she's just still learning to trust me.