Missouri Trailblazing Blog

Surviving This Early Summer Heat

2009-06-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone else is too!

We haven't been riding lately because of it. The last time I rode was with Lalita over at Castlewood State Park on June 13th. I wrote an article about our ride which you are welcome to read in the Mane Connection when in comes out next month. If your local Tack or Feed store doesn't carry it, talk to them about getting it, because it's a great new paper.

I'll go on record here saying that Castlewood is a much more beautiful and challenging trail than I thought it was going to be. I'm glad we went and look forward to riding it again sometime in the future.

Lately though, we've just been trying to survive this heat. Here's how our horses try to survive it:

We've got one of our past horses, Rebel, back now, and he loves the water. Cassie loves it too, but she's too much of a lady to hog all the good spray, like Rebel does. Both of these two love the water, Lucky and Shadow are not convinced.

One tip for anyone else who might want to try this for their horse's comfort.....
Be sure you put the sprinkler outside the fence or you'll end up with a broken one like I did. LOL

Happy Trails!

A Great Ride Yesterday

2009-05-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

Our foster daughter Ashley and her boyfriend Jack came over for a visit yesterday and we took the horses out for a ride. Ashley likes my horse Shadow the best, so I let her ride Shadow while I rode Lucky and Jack rode Cassie. It was the first time in about 3 weeks that they had been ridden but they did great. We rode for about an hour and a half.

The trails were mostly dry so, although we did enjoy some road riding, most of the time we were on our trails. I hadn't had a chance yet to go through and make sure there wasn't any downed trees or weedeat the trails yet, but we didn't encounter any problems. Our little bridge in the back was washed out, we already knew that, so we had to avoid going there, but we rode all of the other trails except one so, we the horses got a good workout.

There was one or two times they balked and one time they spooked when someone in the distance shot their gun, but other than that, they acted like they'd been ridden everyday recently. At the end of the ride, we rode down our road to the mailboxes. A man with his daughter drove past us on his ATV twice. He was kind enough to slow down each time, and the horses didn't flick an ear at him. The closer we got to the end of the road though, the more hesitant and balky the horses got. Someone was running a chainsaw down there, plus there were dogs barking and running toward us, but the horses kept their cool. We got them to the end, turned around and came home at a controlled walk so they did fine.

I want to get more consistant riding time in on them to get them built up, but I'm feeling confident in them enough now to start thinking about taking them this year to a public trail to ride. I can't wait! We'll probably take them to Canaan the first time since it's closeby and not too tough of a trail.

Shadow was a pain today!

2009-04-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

This evening, our friend Tony came over to take the shoes off of my new mare Shadow and trim her. He was the one to originally put her shoes on and boy did he do a good job! He had a heck of a time getting them off...... They were as tight as the day he put them on. The rest of the week, Hank and I will trim the two other mares and add a mustang roll to Shadow's hooves. She had been shod at the end of last year, before we bought her, but spent most of her life barefoot, so although she needs to callous up, she already has a great dome to her sole. I've seen, and even delt with, worse horses being shod, but still, she was a pain in the neck. I don't think she was too bad for Tony, but she kept throwing her head which, besides being irritating, was dangerous because she almost nailed me in the face as well as the shoulder that my pacemaker is in. I'll have to work on her about that.....

I should be riding Thursday for sure because Ashley will be coming over. Hank and I were hoping to ride this week too, but I don't know if we'll get to before the weekend since we need to be working on their hooves. I'm hoping though..... They need all the riding they can get. They were all acting spoiled the last time we rode, even Lucky was acting up a bit. Course the last day we rode it was cool and windy so that's not to surprising. Can't wait for our trails to dry up. Lucky actually does better on the trail than on the road.

Tomorrow will be a busy day outside. I want to start working on my garden. I need to get the leaves out and plant the flowers I got on Sunday. I'm also going to start locking the girls in the front paddock for part of the day. I want to get them out of the mud for a few hours each day to let their hooves dry some.

Other outside chores for this week include burning a couple stumps out in the obstacle course and spraying the poison in our back grass lot to get rid of the chickweed and burdock. Don't know how those two got introduced into the grass, but they've taken over! I know we have to get rid of those two, but I'm afraid once those two are gone, we'll only have a mud lot. The horses are going to hate this year. They'll get very little grass. We're killing the weeds in the back lot and have seeded the obstacle course, so no grazing in either for quite a while. Depending on what's left in the back lot, we may have to reseed it too, which means it'll be unusable for that much longer. Poor horses.....

On a totally different note, our youngest son Jeremy goes in this Saturday to take his GED test. Hopefully he passes it the first time.

Well, I guess I'd better get off of here and get to bed if I want to get up at a reasonable time to get a lot done tomorrow.

Start Of Our Riding Season

2009-04-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

Well, last week Lalita and I started our riding season with a ride over at Babler Trail. The day started out just a bit chilly, but turned into a beautiful day. We were surprised to find out at the end of our ride that there was only one other trailer in the lot. Usually it's a full lot that can be tricky to get into if you get there late.

Most of the trails I've ridden are in the St. Louis and surrounding areas, but somehow I had never gotten around to riding at Babler. I always put off riding there because I thought it would be boring. I was wrong. Even though there were no leaves yet on the trees, and very few spring blooming trees bloomed out, I loved the trail. There are quite a few hills to negotiate. None of them too difficult or steep, but a couple of long ones. The trail is in good shape overall, we only had to work our way around two downed trees. We got to see two gorgeous farms off in the distance due to the lack of leaves, then later found ourselves riding along the road right in front of them when the trail eventually wound around and followed that road for a short while. There are a lot of dips and hollows alongside of the trail to keep the terrain interesting to look at.

After all these years of trail riding I should know to expect the unexpected. This trip though gave us two unexpected obstacles to deal with. The first one we dealt with was the sound of someone on a sound system and loud music. It was far enough from the trail that we never did see what it was from, but we could hear it loud and clear enough for me to tell one of the songs was a Hannah Montana song. (Don't ask me how I know that) LOL. The horses were slightly hesitant for a fraction of a second, but these are well traveled trail horses so they barely flicked an ear. Lalita and I were having a good laugh about it though because Lalita was just writing an article the week before about obstacles that would be helpful for trail training, listing a PA system or Mega Phone as one possible obstacle even though you wouldn't normally run into one in the woods. Lo and behold, there we were running into that very unlikely thing.....

Our second obstacle was a black wire running across the trail. We couldn't tell where it was coming from or where it was going. On our left side, part of it was draped over a limb well above our heads. We stopped, looking at each other and wondering aloud if it was electrified and if it was safe to cross over. Finally figuring that if it was hooked up to something, a wire that small couldn't have that much of a current going through it ;-), we decided to take a chance and go over it. With the phrase "If I get electrocuted you know not to go over it" Lalita & Flirt went across first..... LOL Then Jinx and I followed. No Problem.

The only other obstacles on the trail, that are well known about and that Flirt and Jinx have handled several times, are the tunnels. There's two of them. If your horse has never experienced one before, they could be a interesting thing to negotiate, but fun to try.

We didn't take any new pictures. Lalita has taken several in the past and I have them on my website.

We started our ride at about 8am and were finished by a little after 11am. We enjoyed talking and snacking for a while longer, then went on home. After I got home, my foster daughter Ashley was here and waiting so we could ride our horses. So I saddled up all three of our horses, Shadow, Lucky and Cassie, and we spent another couple of hours riding here around the house. Up and down the road and in our obstacle course out front. All in all it was a great day, aside from the torn thumb nail I ended up with thanks to Mini Cat deciding she wanted to take a ride too. Jumping from the mounting rock onto Lucky's rump, she took both of us by surprise. Lucky handled it better than I did, only spooking in place. I made a desperate grab for the saddle horn, tearing a third of my thumbnail off. Mini Cat is now a house cat again. I think she planned that carefully.

This weekend is a work and holiday weekend so I don't think I'll get any riding in..... :-( Hopefully the next week will bring better weather for riding.

Until next time, Happy Trails!

I Hate Mud

2008-02-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

I know I've said that before, but, I do.......

Went out to check on the horses today and, even though I've had horses for about 20 years now, I still haven't gotten used to the mud....

It's hard to believe there will come a time when it's all dried up, but by July or August, I know we'll be wishing for rain.

I'm trying to get a list together of the things I want to accomplish this year around the place...

1. Finish the fencing.
2. Gravel the middle lot.
3. Build more obstacles for the arena.
4. Finish the last trail we have laid out.
5. Build a hay barn. (uh, probably next year)
6. Get the gates in where we want them.
7. Build a safe hay feeder.
8. Move the tack room from where it is to the other stall.
9. Put electric fence wire at the halfway point of the fence.
10. Learn to drive the tractor so I can put the hay out instead of Hank.

That's about it I guess, but it's more than enough. Somewhere in there I want to ride.....

I'll have to do most of this by myself or with the help of Jeremy or Sean because Hank's always at work. When he is home, I want us to be able to have some fun, not work him more.

I have one woman who wants me to give lessons to her 16 year old daughter. I might, when I have the place ready, take in a few more lesson clients to help pay for the horses. That would be cool.

Other than being caked with mud, the horses are all doing fine. Getting spoiled though. It'll probably be like starting all over again this spring when we start to ride them.

The family is doing good. Hank and I are finally feeling better, just a bit of a cough left. Our daughter Amy will be having her baby soon, we're going to her baby shower on Sunday.

The website work is going great and keeping me very busy. I'm running 3 big websites and 3 small websites, plus this blog. I've got well over 250 webpages between all the sites, that I have to keep updated. Which is one reason why I don't write on this blog a whole lot...

Speaking of all that, it's 10pm now, so I guess I'd better get off of here and get some sleep. Tomorrow's another day.

Round Bale Feeder Warning.....

2008-02-09T13:50:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone's holidays and New Year have been great.

We had a wonderful time during the holidays. Almost all of January has been filled with sickness. We started out with some kind of respiratory flu that went into bronchitis and then pnuemonia. I'm just now starting to feel about 95% of normal. Still coughing. I'm trying to stay positive though and think that we're getting the bad stuff out of the way early in the year.......

The horses have all been doing good. Maintaining their weight well and staying healthy through the winter. BJ did give me a heart attack on Thursday. I included two pictures to show you because it's easier to show you than tell you.......

He's just fine.....

This is a "Horse Round Bale Feeder" that we got from Dickey Bubs. Needless to say they can still manage to get themselves in trouble.

Luckily, our son Jeremy was here to help me because another thing we never thought we'd have to worry about was rusted bolts. He was strong enough to get them loose, I wouldn't have been able to myself, and that might have made the difference in him being alright or having a broken leg or something.

The vet said we were lucky, most horses in that situation die. I just found him early enough and was able to keep him calm enough while we worked to free him. He just ended up with a few scrapes. I'm giving him antibiotics and bute to be on the safe side and keep him comfortable.

Other than that, not too much has been going on here. Just waiting for spring to officially start and looking forward to the day the mud dries up.

Until next time, happy trails!

2007-12-11T21:13:00.000-08:00

I hate mud. I wish I could just gravel our whole property. LOL

Not a whole lot going on right now in my horse life. Horses are all mostly doing fine. I've felt a little bad for BJ the last couple of days, he's been cold enough when wet to be shivering a lot. I'd like to blanket him, but I don't have one and don't see me being able to afford one until after the first of the year at least.

Mostly trying to spend my time productively right now so that when the weather is okay for riding I can do so because I've gotten different needed chorses done. Also getting ready for Christmas. I was slow to get in the christmas spirit, but I'm now starting to look forward to it.

I've been feeling overwelmed again trying to do all the things I want and need to do. Dang it, I wish I didn't have so many interests. Sometimes the frustration of feeling like I don't have enough time to do it all makes me shutdown and do nothing constructive at all.....for days...... So I decided I need to set up a schedule. I've done that now so we'll see if that works and how it goes.....

Catching up.....

2007-11-26T20:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm not all that great at this blogging thing.... LOL

The last couple months have been pretty good overall. I've gotten to ride quite a bit with Lalita, the highlight of which was when we spent a day riding at Sam A. Baker State Park. We haven't gotten to ride together in about a month, but I'm hoping we still get some riding in even though winter is just about upon us.

The other exciting news is that our Foster Daughter Ashley has moved close-by again. That means even though I lost Sean as a riding buddy since he started back to school, I now have Ashley coming out about once a week to ride our horses with me.

Speaking of my horses, BJ is doing pretty good. Last Saturday (the 24th) Ashley came out and Sean was here and we all rode for about 4 hours or so, switching off from one horse to another. I found it rather funny that of all 3 horses, BJ was the best behaved. Everyone rode him, including Sean. Of course, we were still riding in the front obstacle course because there were still people hunting all around us, but he was quite a gentleman compared to Merlin and Cassie. They both just didn't want to cooperate, throwing their heads around and trying to cut corners everywhere they could. Cassie wouldn't gait for anyone else but me. I'm going to have to work more on her, she keeps pacing, and no one else that rides with me really knows how to ride a gaited horse correctly to get her in her gait and keep her there.

One bad thing though is that I'm still not satisfied with how Cassie's saddle fits her. It's better than it was since we had it worked on, but I feel we still have to tighten it too much and it still moves around more than I like. I don't know how much of that is making her act up and pacey. We can't afford to get a different saddle though until after the first of the year, if not spring.

The weather has kept me and BJ from taking our daily walks. We've been doing that daily to get him to be less spooky when outside of the confidence course, and just so he and I can spend time together bonding. The exercise doesn't hurt us either. I have to admit that it makes it really hard to get a lot of needed wet blankets on him when I promised not to ride alone, and I only have people to ride with on the weekends. I fear I'm not able to put the time on his back to do him justice and he's going to be a perpetually green trail horse......

I keep thinking I need to find a couple of riding buddies who can ride during the week, who are moderately experienced riders but don't have a horse of their own. Great idea, but I don't know how many people I could find and you never know these days if it's safe to do that. Last thing I need is for someone to get hurt and sue us...... Wishful thinking I'm afraid....

What a Difference a Week Makes....

2007-10-01T19:25:00.000-07:00

This past week has been a great week....

First, Hank found out last Thursday that he has now gotten his promotion to Store Manager where he works, at O'Reilly's. He officially started as Manager today. We've been waiting for this ever since he was hired a year ago. We took a huge pay cut for him to change jobs, with the plan that it would only be temporary, because the plan was for him to become manager at the store here in town. It's happened now, in just about a year, which is less time than even I was planning. So we're very thankful for that.

Also this week, we checked to see if Casper's saddle could be adjusted to fit Cassie. Again, luck was with us and we were able to send it back to the company we got it from, Down Under Saddle, to be adjusted. They only charge $60.00 to adjust it and that includes the shipping back, so that's much more affordable than buying another new one right now. I had found that Majic's old saddle fit BJ just fine with the thinner saddle pad we had, so now, once we get our saddle back from Down Under, our saddle problems are taken care of without having to buy a couple new ones. We'll probably still get new ones later, as we can afford them, but at least we can still be riding until then.

Lastly, Lalita and I got to ride at Kaintuck Hollow on Saturday. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and a fantastic ride. We found a few places that Hank and I can go back and do some trail clearing on, but all in all, the trail was in pretty good shape and easy to follow. There were very few markings, something Hank and I need to work on, but since there were no illegal trails that we saw, it wasn't confusing. We saw 3 other horseback riders, a group camping at the spring, and about 4 mountain bike riders. It wasn't nearly as busy as I thought it would be on a gorgeous day like that. There was quite a bit of trash at the parking lot..... Like usual.... and someone strung a single strand of barbed wire up along some trees off to one side of the lot, by the creek. I called the forest service people today to report that and the fact that the pond by the spring has a spot along the dam that is eroding away. Hopefully that will be taken care of soon.

This coming up weekend, I won't be able to trail ride with Lalita. Hank's off work for the weekend and we're going to get some work done around here and ride our horses.

I've just got to have patience. I know life has it's ups and downs, and we've had more than our share of downs the last few years, but it's getting better and I've got to remember to be grateful for that......

Frustration......

2007-09-23T19:45:00.000-07:00

That's our word for today.

Frustration is something I've lived with a lot in the last 6 years. Seems like every time I turn around these last 6 years, something is always keeping me from riding. Usually it's no one's fault, it's just circumstances, but I don't know how I went from someone who rode all the time before 2001, to someone who has trouble getting to ride since 2001. Even now, when things in my horse life seem to be getting better, something's always coming up......

Lalita and I were going to go riding at Kaintuck Hollow today, but I wasn't able to because Hank's Mom went into the hospital after a fall yesterday morning. Obviously, it's not her fault, and I feel guilty about being frustrated about it, but I swear, it seemed like prior to 2001 things like this just didn't happen. I'm not saying people in my family, or even myself, didn't get hurt or sick, it just didn't ever seem to happen on a day I was supposed to go ride. Is it all my imagination? I don't know, but sometimes I feel like I'm in an episode of "Clash of The Titans".
You know, the movie where the "Gods" amused themselves by messing with the lives of mortal men. Throwing problems at them to see how they handled them, like a live game of chess or something.

It all started when Mystic died in Aug. of 2001...... We had trouble getting a safe and reliable horse for Hank to ride. Then Hank got hurt and we've had to work through his lack of confidence. Something I'm still not sure we've worked all the way through yet. We looked for a good horse for him for a couple years before we found one he clicked with. Things did get better when we found a good horse for him, but about that time Majic's health started to go downhill and I wasn't able to ride him as often because of that. Somewhere in there we had to sell our horsetrailer because our horses all of a sudden wouldn't load into it anymore. Majic had ridden in that trailer so many times with no trouble that I never would have dreamed that he'd start to refuse to get in. Last year Majic really started to slide and I knew that I had to find another horse to ride, that Majic wouldn't be able to handle even a simple trail anymore - even if we did get a trailer. That's when Merlin came along. This past year has been a time of getting to know another horse and spending as much time with Majic as I could because I knew his remaining time with me was short. Then came MY fear issues........ Didn't see that coming. Can't figure out how I, a person who had been a serious trailrider and had spent a lot of time in the saddle, all of a sudden started having fear issues. I've suffered a couple real anxiety attacks, and in between, have had to work through fear that would keep me from riding anytime I could think of anything else to do instead.... Still working on that problem.

Now that Majic's gone, (he died in July), I'm glad I took the time this year to spend with him instead of riding someone else all the time, so I'm not totally frustrated about a lack of riding during the first part of this year.

Thanks to Lalita, much of my horse life is improving. I'm out on trails again, but I'm still fighting other problems that are frustrating me. Something coming up to keep me from trail riding the last few weeks, having 3 fairly new horses that I haven't gotten my confidence in yet, and not having 3 saddles to fit our 3 horses right that's causing us more delays.

I keep telling myself it's going to get better...... But I've been telling myself that for 6 years now.

Okay, I guess it's time to stop feeling sorry for myself. Tomorrow's another day and it might just be the day that everything turns itself around again...... I hope.....

Two good pieces of news are -
1. Hank's Mom is going to be fine. She's just got a bad concussion and some swelling & bruising. She didn't have a heart attack or stroke. She's going to have to quit being stubborn though, and start using her cane. This was the second time she fell in one week. Earlier she fell and couldn't get up for 20 minutes until Hank's Dad came back in and found her. This time she fell in the bathroom, knocking herself out by hitting her head on the toilet.

2. I tried Majic's saddle on Big John again, this time with the thinner "aussie" saddle pad and it seems to fit him right. I rode him around for about 15 minutes this evening when we got home. The saddle didn't slide back and Big John moved freer and didn't seem to be bothered by the cinch, so I have high hopes that we are now just one saddle short instead of two..... I'll test it for a longer ride tomorrow evening after Hank gets off of work...

I'm trying to look on the bright side.....

First Post - Saturday 9/22/2007

2007-09-22T00:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I decided to take the plunge and start a blog for my website. Why? Mainly in case the things I'm going through might help others...... or in cast others might be able to help me.

I must admit though, I don't know where to start. Much of what I'm going through now would be hard for anyone to understand if they didn't know anything about my past horse life.

I guess I'll just write things as they are happening now, and add info about my past adventures as they would naturally come up.....

I haven't ridden since last weekend, but I do plan on riding this weekend. Lalita and I are going to ride at Kaintuck Hollow on Sunday, and I'm going to ride my horses around here tomorrow..... Well, I plan to anyway, if I get off of here and get some sleep. It's 3am and, wouldn't you know it, I'm wide awake.... I hate it when that happens. LOL

I guess I'll get off of here for now and go back to writing about my adventures, trials, tribulations, fears, and frustrations sometime later.