Spread Thin

This last week has been so busy and I have some fun stuff to share!

Trask is now officially my lease horse and we moved to a new barn! I'm so, so excited to be at this place, it's AMAZING. When Alanna moved Emi home, I stole her place at NDF. I've boarded at the last barn (we'll call it SS) for over three years and it was time to move on. While I'm excited to have Trask at NDF I cannot wait to move Jetta here. She's gonna love it!

It is so beautiful here

I'm still spread pretty thin though. Jetta is still at the old barn until I'm done with finals (exactly one week until I'm 1/2 of a vet!) then I am moving her home to my parent's barn to foal. She'll have a nice big 12x30' stall with an attached run and a big paddock to hang out in. Once baby is born we can turn them out in the big 3 acre pasture where there's lots of room and hills for baby to roam.



I'm still riding Vante a bit just cause I enjoy it, not that I really have the time for it with finals approaching, but oh well.

Things I'm not gonna miss about the old barn:

• Struggling to get the hay in the loft, especially since the hay elevator is permanently broken
• Having to buy hay because I don't want my horse to eat straw
• Parking my trailer in a swamp underneath an awful tree where birds nest and poop on my truck and the beetles breed and infest my truck and trailer. And I have to use 4-wheel drive to park and pull my trailer out of the swamp

Swamp after a couple days of "drying out". Mud up to my ankles... Vs. my new parking spot!

• A wash rack with no warm water
• The slickly lined poop mountain (aka manure pile)
• A stall that I pay to get cleaned daily that often looks like it hasn't been cleaned in 3 days

• Not being told my horse is out of her supplement
• An open tack room where all of my tack is covered in a thick layer of dust and my things regularly walk away
• An arena where it is deemed a miracle when the ground gets worked
• Passive-agressive text messages from the barn owner
• When my horse gets turned out in 80+ degree weather with a blanket on and no shade
• Not being allowed at the barn before 9am or after 9pm
• Not being able to see a dang thing when it's dark out because the barn lights are so dim... you know it's bad when the farrier has to use a headlamp and you basically never really get to see your horse in the light for months at a time during winter 
• Tiny grass-less "turnout" paddocks
• Not a single pitchfork is missing less than 2 tines

Things I'm going to miss about the old barn:

• Outdoor arena (though new barn has a big pasture we can ride in and set jumps in once hay is cut!!)
• Round pen
• Absolutely nothing else 

I can't decide what I'm most excited about at the new barn... the fact that I can ride before class some days or get to the barn late when I have a busy day? How absolutely beautiful and well-kept everything is? The fact that I get to park my trailer on actual gravel? That I can access trails right off the property?

Trask learning to pose

We get individual tack lockers at NDF so I'm still figuring out how to organize mine. I pulled out an old saddle blanket rack I have for saddle pads, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep it. It only has one saddle rack, but I have a free-standing saddle rack that will hopefully fit. I got some awesome aqua-colored plastic bins at Target that I'm going to use to store boots/polos and other random things. Plus I have my plastic drawer thing and a bin of sheets that I think will fit. I still have a ton of stuff to move from the old barn, but the new barn has a storage room where I can stash my bin of winter blankets and other odds-and-ends.

Current configuration of my tack locker... still need to cram a bunch of stuff in!

I cannot convey how perfect this new barn is and how excited I am to be there! I was reaching my breaking point at the old barn so this was amazing timing.

Happy boy

Pet Peeves

Wow, I can't believe it's been two weeks since I last posted but I really have nothing exciting to write about!

It's been midterm central here and the last midterm was finally Monday. Freedom! Kind of. I don't have any tests for a whole two weeks, I just have a mountain of homework to do instead.

Lots of boring lunging pics

Anyways, Jetta has been slightly neglected. I think I've only ridden her once since my last post where I went on a trail ride. Spoiler alert: she was awful. But that's what I get for letting her sit for 5 days and then deciding to hop on for an arena ride. So we've been lunging a lot until I can string together a coupe days where I can lunge one day and ride the next so she won't be so awful.

zooooooom

She got a pedicure the other day and the farrier hasn't been out since November. She commented that Jetta's belly is definitely getting big, which is hard for me to see. I keep thinking it's getting bigger but then I compare older pictures and she kinda looks the same.

Little preggo belly!

But when I lunged her yesterday I could definitely tell she's got the preggo belly. She's almost at 200 days! I've just been a giant ball of nerves about it. I love Facebook's memories and today this picture popped up with the comment "I want a foal!" four years ago when I saw a foal being born for the first time. And now it's finally going to be a reality!

In reference to the title, otherwise nothing is too exciting besides barn drama. Jetta almost ran over a small child the other night who was running around in the arena while his mom was riding, he ran directly through the circle Jetta was lunging on, spooking her so she took off galloping, almost colliding with child and mom. So that was fun. Funny how common sense doesn't really seem to be that common. If I had ever done that at that age, I would have gotten not only yelled at, but I would have probably been put in time out or not been able to come to the barn again. Mom said not a word to the child who then proceeded to go outside and throw rocks.

Not going to talk too much about the other barn drama until I leave, but I am so OVER IT. I've been an ideal boarder at this barn for over 3 years and there's many things I like about it, but the bad things have just all the sudden started to add up. I really don't want to leave because there are so many good things about this barn and I've actually been pretty happy there and it's super cheap, plus we live in such a tough area for finding a good barn, especially one that ticks all the boxes I want in a barn without being astronomically expensive. So we will see what happens...

Much Happier

I am a much happier person when I get to ride. I was in a fantastic mood today with my pony time in combination with the sunshine finally coming out and getting rid of all the gloomy fog that's been hanging around.

Sunny drive

I spent a good two hours at the barn, first lunging Jetta then riding Misty and cleaning both their stalls.

Jetta was zoomy on the lunge, speed trotting around but eventually she settled down and had a nice stretchy trot. I think we'll stick to lunging with side reins for the week and try to get some relaxation back and get her using her muscles correctly. After a month of basically no riding I feel like we're going to be starting right back at square one. Sigh...

Stretchy pony

Misty was good. I rode her western in a bosal for the first time. At first she thought that she had no steering and we were walk/trotting around the arena like a couple of drunks (luckily we weren't riding with anyone else!) but eventually she figured out the steering and cues and we had a nice jog on a loose rein.



She was absolutely fascinated by her reflection in the mirrors. There's four little mirrors around the arena and every time we passed one she had to bring her head up and turn to look at herself go by, lol. I stopped and let her eyeball her reflection for a minute and it was just too cute how she sniffed and turned her head this way and that in the mirror.

"Who is that?"

And as promised, more pictures!

Official barn members - name plates!

The arena

Jetta in her run

Misty nomming in her stall

The lower (main) barn where the ponies are!

Settled

Ponies are moved! I don't have any pictures, but I will try to make up for that tomorrow when I go out to the barn. I am so, so very excited to start riding again. I CANNOT WAIT. It's been much too long.

The horses went up on Saturday. They got a brief spa day since they looked (and are acting) like feral ponies. It was their last hot water bath for a while as the new barn doesn't have hot water...

So far I am really liking the new barn, save for a few little things, like the no hot water, the fact that there's a gate you have to get out to open and close (hate doing this when it's raining), their hay isn't very nice quality, etc. But, with that said, everyone's been super nice that I've met so far. It's weird actually being with other boarders. The barn manager is really nice and helpful. The stalls are nice, the arenas are nice, the drive is nice. So for the time being I'm happy!

I think I'm probably most excited about the multiple arenas. There's 3 barns. The upper, middle and lower. I think of the lower as the "main" barn. The upper barn is the BO's horses only I believe and there's only a couple stalls in the middle barn. The lower barn is very big with lots of boarders. Each barn has an arena. The upper barn is more like a covered round pen, the middle one has a small square arena with deep-ish dirt footing and then the lower barn has a larger arena with sand mix footing that seems pretty nice. And there's an outdoor arena that we're allowed to use as long as there's no standing water in it. Yay!

Today a friend helped me move hay in to supplement the crappy barn hay. It was awful. The hay goes in the loft above each horse's stall so they can just throw it down into their stall at feeding time. The barn has 2 hay elevators, both of which are broken. So on our way, we stopped at a friends and borrowed their hay elevator. It only worked for one bale and then died. Great.

I felt so bad for my friend doing the hay, he had to toss it all up from the back of the truck, all 40 bales! (This hay should last me at least 2 to 3 months, the whole duration that I'm planning on staying there). It was a nightmare for him I'm sure, especially as I'm not very much any help in lifting 80 pound bales... and certainly not any help tossing them up into the loft. I kind of scooched them around for him but that was it.

I cleaned the stalls while he did hay. It definitely won't be too much of an issue as it didn't take me very long. The only hard part was wheeling the wheelbarrow out to dump it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to slip and die out there. There's slick rubber mats going down the first part of a hill and then you have to go back up through the manure pile and dump it in the back. Fun.

The girls seem to be settling in fine. Misty's neighbor is pretty nasty and was biting her as soon as she moved in, but it seems like they might have figured stuff out a little bit. I just hope there's no kicking through the panels separating them. Also, if this horse (it's name is Sizzle) rips Misty's last blanket I will be very upset...

Misty and Jetta are separated by one horse in between. I hope this will get their little romance to settle down. They both really like the sweet old gelding that's between them, which is good because they spend a lot of time with their heads over the panels and making eyes at each other. Mares...

I will make sure to take lots of pics tomorrow to share!

Excited

Now that there's a semi-concrete plan in place, I'm really excited that the horses will be back up in a barn close to me with an indoor arena where I'll be able to ride regularly! I still need to call the BO and set up a day, also coordinate with a friend who is going to help bring some alfalfa for Miss Misty and another friend who is going to loan a hay elevator because of course the hay has to go in the loft and there's no way *I'm* toting 80+ pound bales up the stairs!

It's not going to be as soon as I'd like, at the earliest next weekend or the week following on a Tuesday or Thursday when I don't have class/work. I would have loved to bring them up this weekend, but I'll be gone for a couple days next week so I shouldn't bring them to a partial care barn just to leave again due to stall cleaning having to be done, because.... out of state vet school interview!!

I'll be going up to Washington State University next Wednesday (well up on Tuesday, back on Thursday). I'm so incredibly excited and nervous for this. It's awesome that I got an out of state interview because that's at least the first step in the door. Or at least near the door? I'm trying not to get too excited about it because I don't want to be absolutely crushed if I don't get in, which it's very likely I won't since with several hundred applicants they only take barely 30 out of state students. It also takes an average of 3 tries to get into vet school and my GPA is on the low end of the acceptable range.

I also got an interview at my in state vet school which I have a better chance at getting into. Fingers crossed for both!

So I'm excited (and crazy nervous) for all sorts of things right now.

And a bonus, funny story of the day:

For some reason, the horses have really been liking leaning over the fence at the moment. The whole time they've been home the electric fence has been off because it's so broken and my parents were planning on redoing the whole pasture's fencing and actually started on it right before I brought the horses home. I guess they just figured it out that the hotwire was off. Anyways, Misty's blanket has clips on the front closure and for the SECOND time in a row, she has clipped herself to the fence and one of my parents has had to go rescue her when they couldn't find her and heard her whinnying for help. So now they're going to duct tape the clips and we'll pretend she has a closed front blanket now! Silly horse.

Oh Misty Moo. At least you're cute.

Back to School

Sigh, it's that time again. Back to school we go. I definitely am not feeling ready to start classes again, I was enjoying my break way too much! This term is yet again, not that exciting. I'm taking the second Physics course in the 3-part series and an Equine Exercise Physiology class.

I'm not that excited about the equine class just because of the teacher. I just don't have a very high opinion of either her, her horse management, or her teaching style, thus while I'm hoping to learn lots more about equine muscle form and function, I'm just not "excited" for it. But I will make sure to share any interesting tidbits on the blog. It is a good sign though that one of the required texts is by Gerd Heuschmann and several of the recommended texts are by Hilary Clayton, who has to be one of my favorite equine researchers.

And well, Physics is just Physics. Not the most awful thing surely, but the sheer amount of work needed for this class is daunting to say the least. When the first words your teacher utters is "I expect you to spend 30 hours a week on physics outside of class" you know it's not going to be fun...

Saw this on eventing nation today and thought it very appropriate! It would certainly make class more interesting if this was how the problems looked ;)

What I am excited about however is the fact that I'm basically taking only TWO classes. I do have 12 credits, which is the least I've ever taken, but the third class I have is only for one weekend. I'm excited! This is probably the lightest load I've ever taken because usually I'm around 16 credits with four classes.

I'm hoping that this light course load will allow me some "free time" not spent doing physics homework or working that will be my horse time. My schedule is quite nicely arranged so I hope it will lend itself to horsey activities well. In that train of thought, I give you the overview of the barn I'm going to most likely move to soon:

Pros:

• Cheap, very cheap. Almost half the cost of board at the other place I'm considering. 
• Close-ish. 20 minutes as opposed to the 40 minutes I was previously driving to the other barn. 
• Nice footing in the main arena. 
• Multiple arenas!
• Stalls are fairly nice with runs that have concrete = no mud
• Lots of openings (I needed at least two open stalls of course)
• My vet friend lives virtually right next door
• I have a friend who boards there who would be happy to trade stall cleaning days

Cons:

• Partial board. I have to clean my own stalls every day and fill water, they will feed hay and grain 2x a day
• Crazy amount of rules
• No hot water
• Tack rooms are open areas, no doors therefore no locks. Thus I will be keeping tack in my trailer/at home
• Only allow use of a small amount of shavings, so I'd have to supplement with buying bags of stall pellets
• No trails
• No winter turnout (a couple small outside paddocks, but fairly small and muddy)
• Trailer parking is kind of sketch - doable, but sketch. You have to back the trailer down around a slight hill to park it. 

So yeah. In a nutshell. I'm thinking I'll move there for a few months until I sell Misty. I'm fairly certain I'll be unhappy there, there's just way too many negatives for me not to be, but the cost should make up for that. I don't mind cleaning my own stalls. The fact that the footing in the arena is good was a major selling point, as are the stalls with the runs. Most places that have runs have swamps because they don't use any sort of mud management so it was nice to see no mud!

My option number 2 I never got to go see, but I am thinking that after I sell Misty that's probably where I'll move Jetta to unless I end up actually liking the place I'm at (highly doubtful).

Something Different

Yesterday was pretty fun, I got to do something a little different. I met up with a horsey friend, CL, that I haven't gotten to see recently. We used to board together almost four years ago (wow, time flies!) and at that time, she owned a horse named Tanq. If she couldn't get out to the barn some days I'd ride him for her, which was really fun and different to go from a sensitive, hot and catty TB to a ginormous, floaty and less reactive Warmblood.

I met her new horse at the beginning of the summer when we went for a trail ride. Hayes is STUNNING. He's basically the horse I would buy if I was in the market for a Warmblood (he's an imported Trakehner), minus a few little flaws. He just has perfect conformation, is my favorite shade of light orange chestnut with chrome, the best work ethic under saddle and did I mention he's gorgeous?!

Pictures just don't do him justice

We'd been trying to coordinate a time for me to come ride him but never could make it work due to both our crazy schedules, but now that it's winter break we have a lot more free time so we finally did it!

It was a ton of fun. Riding Hayes just solidified my love for him. He has very nice gaits, uphill and floaty. He naturally really engages his hind end and lowers his haunches in transitions. He's basically naturally just on the bit. Oh my goodness, riding him was awesome.

He's not convinced that pictures are fun

CL is showing him Second Level and will hopefully get to Third Level this summer. He was just really different from Jetta in that he didn't really get rushy, he'd go fast sometimes, but I never felt like we were snowballing faster and faster. He never got heavy on the forehand. Like not once. Transitions were amazing, so simple and just there. He's got the dreamiest trot ever. Like, I could just trot him all day. Collecting, extending, asking for some almost-passage steps. So. Cool. He was a lot "heavier" in the contact than Jetta, but not pulling, just accepting it, whereas Jetta is very light mouthed except for when she's pulling on you so contact is typically very light. He didn't argue about leg yields or shoulder-in. His canter wasn't super amazing, he wanted to be really uphill but at the same time I had trouble getting him really through and he almost got a little bit lateral in the canter, though CL got back on afterwards to show off his flying changes and I didn't see the same issue, so that was obviously a rider error!

Gosh, it was a lot of fun. I need to bring Jetta over and introduce her to Hayes and tell her to be more like him. I know her trot can get better, maybe not to the same quality as his, but close. It just made me more driven to work hard with Jetta and hopefully get her to that same point as Hayes. Someday.

Makes me miss a certain pair of fuzzy little orange ears.

I've been thinking about what I want to do with the horses. I was kind of toying with the idea of leaving them at my parents' for another month and moving them up at the beginning of February, but decided that it would honestly drive me nuts to have them so far away and not able to ride often, plus if I want to achieve my goals with Jetta this next year, we need to start soon and work really hard and consistently at it, which I can't do right now with them at home. So, I have 3 places on my list to go look at. All would be feasible for the horses.

Barn #1 is CL's barn. It's adequate, but not as nice as I would hope. The stalls are pretty old and dinky and it's a little more than I would like to pay. But KB trains out of there, which would be awesome to get into a regular lesson plan with her.

Barn #2 I looked at before, but I don't know why I decided not to board there. It's at least a 30 minute drive, so it's a little farther than I hoped. The arena is kind of a funky layout, but the owners seem to be making lots of improvements. There's a covered round pen, an outdoor arena, year-round turnout paddocks and the property backs up to lots of trails which would be awesome. It's right at what the max I'd like to pay.

 Barn #3 I also looked at previously. Another friend boards there now. There's two (or maybe three arenas?). The main arena is huge and really nice. The stalls are ok. Not a ton of turnout and runs are super muddy. The BO seemed kind of crazy, but supposedly she's fine and you don't really have to interact with her that much. And if I did self care it would be super cheap and maybe I could trade off days with my friend who boards there.

 I'll give more info when I finally get to go see these barns!

Barn Tour Part 2: The Barn

You've already seen the barn from the outside...

And now the inside. View of the entire barn from the back corner by the feed area.

The feed area. Like my little table for supplements on the wall? Lol

Misty's stall. She has the one stall that got completely finished.

Jetta has the extra large middle stall. We use wood pellet bedding which I really like. Also, you can see this stall has "kick plates" for the monster pony...

The runs. We put pea gravel in the runs to keep the mud down, hopefully that will work this year!

The third stall is currently serving as the hay room. I just feed orchard grass.

 

My dad's toys. I used to keep the hay in that area.

The tack room is on the right hand wall across from the stalls. All my random junk is sitting outside of it.

Inside the door of the tack toom. All my grooming products and miscellaneous things. Red glow is because the light bulb in the tack room is a heat lamp bulb to keep things from molding in the winter.

All my bridles and strap goods... Yes, I have a problem.

Far wall. I have a sweet Schneider's blanket rack for saddle pads. A mini fridge on the left.

Three saddle racks... And I have four saddles. One of the western saddles isn't mine, my friend just left it there and doesn't want it back apparently? My fourth saddle sits on a portable rack.

Hopefully I'm going to have time soon to organize the tack room because it needs it badly. I haven't really had time to put everything where they belong so stuff is sort of strewn everywhere. Excuse the mess!

Barn Tour Part 1: The Grounds

I thought I'd share a little (well, more like a lot) about my barn. Since it's "my" barn I don't feel bad sharing pics of it and at least you can see the set up and see what I'm talking about when I refer to it!

I love my barn. It's nothing fancy at all, but it has everything I need. I think the only thing I really want is hot water. Ok and for the runs to be covered. And possibly for the tack room to be insulated. And the leaks in the roof to be fixed. Lol. It could still use some work.

A little background:

My parents' property has 13 acres with 3 of it for the horses. It's all fenced in as one pasture. The barn was there when we bought it, though it has been considerably worked on. Originally it had 3 stalls on the wall opposite the entry. Dirt floors throughout. We put in half a floor of concrete when we originally bought it. Why half, I have no idea. Then later tore out the original stalls and put in 3 stalls on the adjacent wall and put concrete in the rest of the barn. It took forever for the stalls to be done. I wanted them forever and they were never completed until my senior year of high school, just in time for me to move out.

Walk down to the barn. I can literally take a minute to go from the house to the barn.

Plain white wrapper. It's rather ugly actually.

To your left of the barn door there is my "wash rack/hitching post" which I basically only use in summer.

Back view of the barn with the runs.

The top corner of the pasture. The horses have their big water tank and you can see the arena at the top of the hill and my neighbor's gorgeous barn.

The main part of the pasture. There's a round pen on top of the hill. Grady is buried in the top left corner under the giant pine tree. There's a creek that runs through the middle into the pond and multiple apple trees.

More pasture. You can see the pond is directly in front of us down the hill.

The "lower riding area". Semi-flat, but gets very soggy in the winter

The "far lower corner" of the pasture. As you can see, that's where my brother likes to go mudding with his truck... My dad just dragged it and reseeded it though. It's always super wet down there.

The neighbor's arena. You can see our barn!

More of the arena. My parent's house is nestled in the trees in the back. Also, you can kind of see how the ground drops away on either side of the arena which I think is a factor in Jetta's dislike for the place. It's like an infinity arena, there's no edges!

Bonus picture: we have chickens.