VOTE FOR ME!!!!!

I need your help today! This a totally shameless plug, but two of my pictures, taken by Max's girl Chloe, have been selected as the the 75 pictures in EquusNow's photo contest!

Please go here:

EquusNow Facebook Photo Contest or EquusNow on Facebook

You might have to friend EquusNow to vote. The first two pictures, the black and white ones of my saddle and my stirrup/boot/shoulder are ours. If we get the most votes, we get a $100 gift certificate to the store!!!

Your votes will win my undying love and appreciation!!! (You already have that anyway, of course!) Voting closes January 21st at noon!

Thanks!!!!!

The Woe of Winter - Gloves

I hate winter. I've mentioned this fact HERE and HERE and pretty much every post during the months of January and February for the last three years. The only thing nice about winter is one very specific kind of snow that falls in big, soft, slow, silent flakes that makes everything seem like it's in a beautiful and quiet sort of slow motion. Everything else just plain sucks.

***Just a note that this barn is INFINITELY better insulated than my last barn. I know for a fact that they've had solid frozen buckets in my former barn for weeks and we have yet to see more that a slight crystallization on the tops of the buckets overnight in our barn. Usually my winter included thawing, dumping and refilling my buckets each day and worrying sick on the days that I couldn't make it out that He wouldn't have water. Max's Mom and I would trade off days when we could. We'd also end up doing some of the lesson horses buckets on the weekends when no one else was there because the feeders wouldn't actually dump buckets, only break the shell with a hammer, so when they were frozen solid they were just frozen. And that barn leaked like you wouldn't believe. But I won't continue on that rant. We are so very pleased with our new digs and the very attentive care Junior receives including changing his blankets for appropriate temperatures at no extra cost. Such a relief to be getting what I'm paying for!!!***

But back to the Woe part: I have a difficult time staying warm if the temp is below freezing. I have to take winter dressing very seriously and have had to invest a lot in warm clothing. Target carries a knock-off of Under Armour in their Champion C4 line. Turns out to be the best thing EVER. On a normal day lately I wear the Cold Gear mock-turtleneck and leggings, jeans, either wool or super fuzzy microfiber socks, Mountain Horse Ice Rider Paddock boots, a thermo fleece zip up, a down vest, and a Mountain Horse Inferno Jacket. On my head is a cheap fleece cap I bought for 50 cents at JoAnn Fabrics and then cut a pony-tail hole in it. This way I can pull the hat down far enough to cover my ears. Brilliant, I must say. My helmet has ear home-made warmers attached to it. (Eventual tutorial on that.) My toes and especially fingers are still very difficult to keep warm.

I recently learned that I have a vascular condition, which explains a lot. (Only KAT seemed to wear more layers than I, but she was the skinniest thing I've ever seen and she would teach in that uninsulated arena for 8-10 hours every day. Each spring she would shed her Carhardts and I would remember with a double-take that she was actually a size zero. That's her on the right. This was the winter before Junior, so I'm riding the dear old Nubbins.)

This condition means essentially that if left in cold temperatures long enough 2/3 of my fingers from the tips down become white, numb, and very painful. It's referred to as "an annoyance" rather than a severe issue but it is highly recommended that those with the "phenomenon" should not live in cold climates and should wear mittens rather than gloves. BUT IT'S REALLY HARD TO RIDE IN MITTENS!!!!

I have been on a 3 year search for gloves that accomplish 3 things:

1. Warm enough not to set off my aforementioned condition.

2. Provide enough dexterity to be able to work the necessary buckles and tools of grooming and tacking. (Removing mittens to do those things is tedious and that burst of cold commonly causes an episode.)

3. Actually fit my absurdly short hands. I wear children's sized mittens. :)

Aparently what I ask for is vexingly elusive. I bought a pair of Ovations the first winter at EquusNow for I think $35. Then miraculously found the exact same pair at my University's Thrift Store for $4 last winter. They only seem to last one winter and both pairs are retired during the deep winter, so I don't think I want more of those, at least not at that price. This year I'm wearing a pair of "Defender Rider" leather and 40g Thinsulate gloves I got for $5 on clearance from Dover. They were just so cheap I threw them in with an order I made last summer. They don't fit as well as the Ovations with the stretch panels did. I've been having to put Grabber Warmers in them along with silk glove liners. The only problem with that is it's costing me $1 every time I go to the barn. It adds up after a while, and my fingertips are still cold.

I spent a good while at Dicks Sporting Goods today looking for gloves. Even the thin little Under Armour ones are $50. NOTHING I found actually fit and I was afraid nothing would be warm enough. Now that I know I actually have a condition I know I'm not crazy that gloves are never warm enough for me.

Before Christmas during some extensive interweb searching, I found the SHE System Gloves which I think is exactly what I need. They are a set of gloves and over-mittens made for female hunters, hence the real-tree camo. I love that the mitten part can either be removed, or be held back by magnets so it'll be easy to go from the mitten for standing around quickly to useful fingers and back again.

But of course they were on infinite back order at Cabelas.com. I even stopped at a Cabelas in Minnesota to see if they carried them in the store... That store freaked me out. There was a mountain in the middle with a bunch of sad, dusty, faded taxidermied animals. It was disturbing. Taxidermy doesn't freak me out, in fact my Dad was quite an accomplished critter-stuffer once upon a time, and I still have a fondness for a particular Canada goose mount I named George when I was a kid. It was just that these were in terrible condition. There was a huge skylight above them and it seems nobody thought about making it UV blocking glass...

After more web searching and searching I found them in stock but for nearly double what they were at Cabela's at some random site called "Modern Markswoman". It took a good while to convince myself that it's okay to purchase something at a store who's logo is a bullet going through a rose. And they're camo, which is not exactly my style... And again, expensive gloves that don't work suck as much as cold hands. They might just LOOK warm and not be warm at all. It's hard to say. I might have to put the silk liners in them, too, but after spending $20 today on Grabbers to make my $5 gloves and $7 silk liners semi-sufficient......I'm willing to take a gamble and I ordered them. So no Starbucks for two months, but they're out of Gingerbread syrup anyway so oh well. *Sigh* At least I got free shipping. :) I sure hope they're a legit company and not just one of those web site fronts that just steals and sells people's credit card info. But I paid with Paypal and I was pleased to see I had a $20 balance which I had forgotten about, so maybe that's a good omen?

I'll certainly be doing a product review when I get them.

Below, just for fun, is Junior catching snowflakes on his tongue last winter.

Stuff I'm Learnin'.

It's cold here. Too cold for comfort. I know I grew up in Minnesota, but I didn't ride in the winter and in fact took to hibernation from about mid November until May. So I haven't been riding much. Things are fine here. Been working a little on slowing the lope, but I think I have to re-strategize. Junior has lost some weight and some muscling. This might be due to lack of exercise and or the cold. He's from Texas, ya know, and he's less fond of Winter than I am. So we're giving him extra feedstuff. It's hard to measure exactly how much hay he's getting since he gets some in the field when he's turned out and I'm not sure how equally those four boys share. Junior more likely to share with someone than someone is likely to share with him so who knows. We'll watch it. He's surely lost muscling in his rear end. I've also been paying attention to his stride. I lunged him Sunday instead of riding so I was able to really watch. At the walk he tracks anywhere from half a rear hoof into the print of the front hoof or about 100%. At the trot he doesn't track at all, and stays a few inches back from the hoof print. He wants to take tiny steps, surely a side-effect from training for the western pleasure jog. This is what I will be working on with the Dressage trainer at our lesson next month. I'm skipping this month, but he'll be ridden by one of Max's girls in this month's lesson.

He also has a vertebra out of place about midway down his neck. Monet diagnosed this back in late November and she adjusted him then, but he's still showing the lump and the tendency to turn his head to the right when we halt. I don't think he's hurting and his work ethic is fine, but we've been taking it easy until the equine chiropractor/massage therapist can come out.

I am auditing a class this quarter on Photoshop. I have some basic skills in the program but I'm entirely self taught so there's a TON I don't know. So far the class has been review but with little things about each tool that I hadn't figured out and that make things WAY easier. Today I made this just for fun:

I'll probably continue working on it. Unfortunately the picture of us is poor quality because it's a screenshot from the website of a photographer that was at our show last June so the color is bad, but it was just a practice experiment. You can see the original in my post on that show HERE.

Equilutions #3 - Happy 2011!

For background on our Equilutions, start with Equilutions #1 - 2009 and then Equilutions #2 - 2010.

First, how we did in 2010:

1. Start working on Showmanship.
Achieved! Not only did we start working on it, we competed in four showmanship classes, even winning 2 of them! This has also helped TREMENDOUSLY with his ground manners, which was a somewhat-unachieved goal of 2009.

2. Find a new western work pad that WORKS.
Achieved.... mostly! I still think I'll end up with a different one someday, but the neoprene/felt contour pad is doing the job WAY better than my thin old fleece one or that monster of a bald-patch maker. The only downside is that the wear "leathers" are vinyl and their adhesive is beginning to separate, but they're also sewn on so they're not actually going anywhere.

3. Have my work saddle taken in to have the buckles replaced and the seat replaced with soft pink suede instead of the icky brown slick leather.
NOT achieved, but only because I decided to sell my Circle Y show saddle and therefore am on a slow hunt for a western saddle that does everything I want it to. (see 2011- #1 below) Probably will be a post on this at some point, but I can't really move forward until the Circle Y is sold.... anybody want it?

4. Have all my tack bags monogrammed.
Achieved! My boot bag is not done because I haven't convinced myself it's worth wrestling it through my machine. I'm also trying to make a stencil out of the monogram so I can paint it onto my hat can, grooming box, etc.

5. Get Junior's weight stabilized.
Achieved! And boy what a difference. I was watching the video from showmanship practice and what a CHUNK! He looks so much better now and he seems so much more chill. Still a goof, thankfully, just more chill. I now estimate his BCS at a 5 instead of the 8 he was a year ago. Going through the process of analyzing his ration was very time consuming, sometimes frustrating, but in the end very rewarding. He has been pretty stable at this weight since last June, so it took about 6 months to get him down safely and he's maintained it for about that long.

I think 4 out of 5 goals is pretty good!

And on to 2011:

1. Solve the Western Saddle issue. I want ONE western saddle that's pretty enough to go to shows in, but workmanlike enough to do Cowboy Challenges, trail riding, and regular work in without having to baby it too much. This goal is dependent on several factors somewhat beyond my control including selling my show saddle before I can consider moving forward. There will be a post about this in the near future.

2. Work on jumping. It would be cool to do the Hunter Hack class at the shows next summer, but I'm not going to commit that as a goal after only ONE lesson. So for now my goal is to have a few more lessons, get a little stronger and better balanced and start to feel like I'm staying out of his way.

3. Learn to braid well enough to pass at a show. I still may opt to hire someone (probably KAT) to do it for an actual show to save myself some prep time, but I would like to see if I can learn to do pretty and consistent braids. I understand the mechanics and I've done the first step a few times, but I've yet to get out the yarn and latch-hook and really DO it.

4. Place in a cowboy challenge. I would like to say WIN one, but lets not get silly.

5. Trailer out and go trail riding. Junior is pretty great now about going into our woods around the farm, but I need to test him in woods he's never seen before.

7. Be able to do a fast and slow lope. I've pretty much given up on doing that gross WP head bobby navicular-looking lope and I didn't really want to do that anyway, but it's hard to place in a western pleasure class if you have to canter in a dressage frame to avoid looking like a (relative) runaway. I know I've made noise about not showing western anymore, but I do like riding western. I'm lazy and it's less physical. Just bein' honest. It seems the training we've done so far has plateaued though. So taking a page from the reining book, I'm looking at training steps to achieve both fast and slow lopes.

I just got back from a great trip home to Minnesota to visit family and friends. I was thrilled to go from 23 degrees this morning in Minneapolis to 57 degrees when we landed in Ohio. Tomorrow I head out to see the pony. I need some horse hugs!

Happy New Year!