Carpe Diem - Breeding Operation Gone Bad

I was stunned to hear about an Andalusian/Lusitano breeding farm here in Oregon that has turned into a horrible place for horses. There's a large herd of the horses "living naturally" and they haven't been handled or cared for (Hooves trimmed, teeth done, vaccinated, wormed, halter broke, etc.) and are being allowed to breed willy-nilly. There are also other horses that are penned and don't have access to food or water and are living in terrible conditions. And it seems that not much is being done by law enforcement!

I hadn't heard about this until today and supposedly this has been going on for some time with conditions just getting worse, not better.

I have always thought about starting an animal rescue in the future, but I wish I had the resources and the facilities to help horses like these right now. I hate seeing horses that need help and not being able to do anything about it. It's painful to hear about but as of right now, the only thing that can be done is to call and speak to the sherriff in Wallowa County where this is taking place. Most of the time horses have to being dying or in near death condition for action to take place. Currently, conditions include:

• Horses refused medical care
• Horses having to be destroyed by employees
• Atrocious wire cuts
• Scars and laming because of unsafe fencing conditions
• Horses growing into their own halters resulting in maggot infestations

This is supposedly a well-known farm with people from all over the US coming to look at these horses. The stallions were imported, most from South America, so they are good quality. The offspring are kind of iffy quality and will require DNA tests in order to be registered if at all. The owner of Carpe Diem is facing disciplinary action from the IALHA and has had her rights to register horses and her membership revoked. Way to go IALHA! But there is still more to do. Currently based on people's comments, Byrde Lynn Hill is only allowing some horses to be sold, but at ridiculous prices and they are not allowed to vet the horse or even take them out of their enclosures (that is if they are not running wild without being halterbroke).

I hope that she gets all of her horses taken away by authorities and that they find new homes where they will really be taken care of. For more information, go here. I would love to take one of these guys and get them back to being healthy and put a little bit of training on them before finding them a more permanent home.

EDIT: Hmmm... Seems like there's some debate as to what is actually going on. Several sites (FHOTD, Andalusian Horse Club) claim that the horses are all in terrible condition and need to be rescued, while others say that all is well... On the discussion area for the Facebook page that they created to help horses from Carpe Diem, some are saying that there is nothing wrong with the horses there, just that they're unhandled. Horses might not be in perfect condition, but it might not be "the fault of the owner". Well, regardless of what is really going on, I hope all of the horses are being well cared for and that she can find some good homes for a lot of her horses as it sounds like she might have a few too many horses on her hands regardless of their condition. The reason her membership with the IALHA was suspended was because she signed off on a stallion that wasn't hers... At least that's what someone's saying.

Brindle

As you can probably tell, I am a fan of uniquely colored horses. One color that fascinates me is brindle. Based on what I've read, there doesn't seem to be an identifiable gene yet that is passed on from horse to horse that determines whether a horse is brindled or not. I found that can be exhibited in many different breeds, from Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds to Warmbloods and can be a dark brindle or white brindle. Research suggests that it may be a random mutation (though one researcher noted that dark brindle seems to be associated with the gene for "sooty" coloring) and when a brindle stallion TB was bred, none of his foals were brindled, yet some of them were roan which is not a color found in TBs. Other times though, brindle can be passed on. In several places, it was noted that brindles can be a result of twin eggs who merged with eachother resulting in a horse with two seperate sets of DNA (Dunbars Gold is one such horse). Interesting. Here are a few pictures of some brindles. I think they're gorgeous!



Reckless Dan




Quarter Horse Stallion




Natal Clasi - WB Stallion




Remark - Related to Jetta!

 White Horse Productions
BrindleHorses.com
The Horse - Genetics
Behind the Bit - Brindles

Jumping the Young Horse

So, I've started schooling Jetta over some jumps under saddle recently. She's doing great and we have been jumping about once a week over an approximately 18" cross rail about four-six times per session. I am continually impressed with how well Jetta has taken it in stride. I was interested in how I should progress for training her over jumps. Jetta is turned four in February this year and I started her under saddle at the beginning of June. I feel like we have the most basic skills down and we're ready to take it up a notch. I did a search about how high you should be jumping a young horse maximum and found that it was quite the debated topic. Many people say that you shouldn't jump until 5 or 6 when all of their bone plates are closed, not only in their knees, but also in their spine. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I think the general consensus that I found was that around 2'-2'6" jumped sparingly and done the right way is not too much for a four year old horse to handle.

I was planning on building up to 2'3" or 2'6" over the course of this month as Jetta finds the small cross rails we are doing so simple. I have free jumped her twice over some larger jumps and I think she seems to enjoy it as even when I asked her to stop and come into the middle of the arena, she trotted over the jump one last time before coming in. I don't want to cause future soundness issues in Jetta, so I want to go slow with her. I am not planning on jumping anything big or scary and I will only jump sparingly because I want both her soundness and confidence to remain intact. Jetta will be five in three months so I am thinking that my planned jumping work load shouldn't be too much for her to handle.

I was looking at shows that I could take Jetta to this year and I was surprised that very few shows have anything under 2'9" (as I am a beginner in the world of Hunter/Jumper Rated Shows) but did find classes for 4 and 5-year-olds that seemed really large. Hmm... Overall, though, what I got out of discussions is that you have to jump a horse correctly and don't do anything that is so big it scares your horse and try to jump sparingly so you save their joints.

Here are some articles and discussions on jumping a young horse:
Teaching the Young Horse to Jump
Horse Channel Jumping Tips
COTH Discussion1
COTH Discussion2

Naming Horses

I love to name horses. I really do. With Jetta I was so excited to get to name her, she was registered as a foal with no name, so when I bought her I got to give her a registered name. Of course she was over 2 years old, so I had to pay $75, but it was worth it. Her sire is Private Gold and her dam is Step Away. I decided I wanted her barn name to be Jetta ( I actually got the idea from the VW Jetta car! ) and so I combined the names to be Gold Jet Away. The other option I came up with was Step Into Gold, but I wanted it to have her barn name in it as well. I love it when the horse's name reflects their dam and sire's name and includes their barn name. My other horse's names are Dustin's Dynasty (ick) and O'Grady Wyeast (double ick). The barn name for Dustin's Dynasty is Jasmine (where did that come from?) and O'Grady Wyeast is just Grady. Where does the word Wyeast even come from? Nothing I have ever found gives me an idea where that name comes from. At one time I owned Scribbles Apache Rose, out of Scrabbled Graffiti who was by Scribbles. I called her Apache or Patch for short, Rose just didn't fit her.

It's always funny to hear about horse's that have bad registered names. There are tons of forum discussions on the web, there are some pretty bad ones. Ones that I've heard the most about are TB's with the registered name of Sofa King Fast, Master Bates and Hoof Hearted (say them really fast out loud). I was surprised that they made it in, sometimes the JC can be picky about the names and they won't let you register a horse with a name that has a bad word or reference in it.

Some of the horse names that I love and would like to incorporate into my future horses' names are or have seen on horses are:

Aria,
Amaretto,
Adagio,
Elusive Melody,
Vivace,
Citrus Splash,
Passion,
Patent,
Gilded Elegance,
Simple Perfection,
Starlit Renegade,
Flirtation/Flirtatious,
Andante,
Armani,
Finely A Star,
Blazing Invitation,
Panoramic,
Lookn Classic,
Royal Gossip,

A Masked Asset is the perfect name for this stallion.

If anyone every has a problem naming their horse, let me know! I really do enjoy it. There was one time on Behind the Bit when they were trying to think of a name for a horse. I really liked Blue Tsunami or Blue Ocean Rose, but she ended up choosing Indigo Whisperer (which wasn't bad). If you are stuck naming your horse, here are some great guidelines.

Free Jumping

Aha! I finally figured out how to upload and embed videos. Yay!! This makes me feel so successful :) Anyways, I free jumped Jetta today, this time with the help of ML, which made it much easier for both me and Jetta. The jumps were about 3 feet, we did set them up to 4, but Jetta just wasn't getting it, so I set it back down to 3. She seemed to enjoy it though, and I think she did very well. If the embedded video doesn't work, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvtLFcpdrUg

And here are some stills, they are horrible quality because they're from the video, but you can see how she's jumping. I think she looks so cute! The one on top is the four footer, while the one to the right is three feet.

More Stallion Choices

So, as I posted earlier, someday I might like to breed Jetta. Since I am slightly obsessive and I like to plan everything, I've been mooning over stallions that I like trying to find the ideal one for Jetta. Since I like color (as shown on my previous post about Appaloosas and Knabstruppers) I also like paints. Here are a few of my favorites.



Raine Dance







Airborn




Counterclaim




Palladio




Pallido Blu CF, son of Palladio




Sempatico




Senter of Attention

These are all the viable options that I came up with. There are quite a few. All of the above, with the exception of Palladio and Raine Dance, are homozygous tobiano. Raine Dance and Airborn are my two favorites, but both with some drawbacks. Raine Dance has never competed as he got injured. I love his conformation and before when he was in training, you could see he had some great scope and a very pretty frame. He does have some great blood lines including Voltaire and Concorde, unfortunately he's not homozygous. He may also be up for sale? I'm a little confused cause I found a sale ad that says he is sound for hunters even though his website says otherwise (or doesn't say at all?). Anyways, Airborn I also love (including his bright bay color) and he has the awesome looks that I love as well as great bone and he is more substantial, just what I am looking for. His sire is also Concorde. But he is located in the UK, so I'm not sure yet how shipping semen works. Like I said, this is all just a possibility so I haven't done that much preparation or research.

Counterclaim is my next favorite. I love how substantial he is. I think he would make great hunter babies, though I haven't seen any pictures of him jumping yet.

 Next is Palladio, who although I love, is not homozygous for color, so I'd get about a 50% chance of getting a foal with color. I love how he jumps though, with his knees almost up to his eyeballs :) The other option would be his son who is homozygous, but as of yet does not have a show record. The advantage of that though is that his stud fee is cheaper.

Sempatico is the next choice. While he does have very correct conformation, there is just something about him that I don't like as well as the other horses. The other stallions just seem much more attractive to me. Anyways, he does seem to have great jumping form and also has passed both the 30 and 70-day stallion testings for German Warmbloods. His sire is Semper who is another great horse.

The last choice horse also has great conformation. I, again, haven't found any jumping pictures though he is supposed to be a hunter. This would be the "economical" choice as he has a very reasonable stud fee. Though this is the stallion whose website touts him as "The Rare Homozygous Tobiano Warmblood Stallion". He is only registered with the American Warmblood Society which is one of his downfalls. He is half Oldenburg, half questionable? The only info on the mare is a headshot labeled Sugar Magnolia. Anyways, the notables in his background include his sire, Senter Stage and his great grandsire, Rainbow. He's handsome and that's about it as far as I know :)

If the logistics worked out, I think I would choose Airborn above all of the others. There are some good conformation pics on his website, you'll see why I like him.

Raine Dance
Sempatico
Senter of Attention
Palladio & Pallido
Counterclaim
Airborn

And We Have Liftoff!

I jumped Jetta for the first time under saddle today! She was way better than I expected and actually picked her feet up over the little tiny cross rail I had set up. I am way out of shape in regard to jumping form since I haven't jumped for about 4 months. But it was good for the first time, though definitely still a work in progress.

This was actually the first time I had done two-point on Jetta and her reaction was to canter every time I sat up :) Eventually after lots and lots of trotting and cantering circles to slow down she got it. Partly she was a little tired, but after being off for four days, it wasn't bad.

I still really need to work on her with using contact = slow down. She is really light on the bit for the most part (though she can still dive down onto your hands occasionally) but when you apply some pressure on the bit, her first reaction is to curl up. I took a video (if I finally figure out how to upload it, I might post it here) and I really thought that she was way, way behind the vertical, but when I watched the video she isn't. Maybe it's just because her neck feels like it's a mile long and it's super bendy!

Anyways, I thought it was a good start for our jumping career, considering a friend of mine's hunter took his first look at a tiny trot pole and wouldn't go over it for nearly an hour! Now he's jumping 3'6" beautifully, but he took a little convincing. I can only hope that Jetta will improve as much as he did!

No pictures this time of jumping, though there will definitely be some in the future! For now, you'll have to be content with cell phone pics:


Treat, treat? Where's my apple!

 So, our goals to work towards until the show in January:
1. Slow the canter down, way down
2. Teach that pressure on the bit = slow down
3. Work on jumping up to 2' around a small course
4. More trail rides! If it ever stops raining for more than a few minutes...