I am FINALLY almost all ready to move the horses to the new barn. I am planning on taking them on Sunday. I can't wait to have both horses at the same barn haha! It has been such a pain trying to find time to visit 2 different barns. I went to the new barn today to drop off some of my stuff. I also went and picked up some hay and straw so that i will have it there already when I bring the boys. I didn't get a whole lot because 1.) I am not sure how much I am going to use just yet, 2.) I can only fit so much in the back of my Yukon, and 3.) I am stacking them in front of my stalls at the moment so I can't fit all that many bales there. When I first went to look at the barn, Donna told me that the other self care boarder just picks up 1 or 2 bales at a time and I was thinking that that is such a pain in the ass and there is no way I'm doing that. But when I went to the hay place that she recommended I can see why it works for her to do that. Basically they have 3 barns and there are a bunch of different kinds of hay and straw and whatnot. Each stack is labeled with what it is and the price and you just take what you need. It's self serve and basically on the honor system although they have security cameras throughout. When you've gotten what you want you just fill out a slip with your name and then you write down what you got, how many bales, and the price. Then you just clip it to your money and stick it in the slot where it goes in this big metal pipe that they have labeled as "the bank". It's pretty convenient because it's only about 5 minutes away from the barn so it's quick to just run down there and grab what I need. I got 5 bales of straw, 2 bales of timothy, and 2 nice big dense bales of some really nice looking mixed grass hay. The grass hay was the most expensive but the bales are really super dense and it's lovely 2nd cutting good quality stuff. The prices are a little higher than I was expecting but then again I really wasn't exactly sure what to expect. The straw there is $3.50/bale and to me the bales look kinda small but we'll see how they shake out. I am hoping that 1 bale will be enough to fill up each stall. The timothy was $4.50/bale and the nice grass mix was $5.75/bale. I'll see how this works out and if I need to try something different they have lots of options. They have an orchard/meadow grass mix and a couple of different alfalfa mixes. Donna said that in the future we could possibly all chip in and get a delivery but for now I guess it works just as well to go up the road to Carmar. I am thinking that maybe next time I will hook up my trailer and load that up and maybe get twice as many bales as I got today. I can just leave some of them in the trailer and stack the rest in front of the stalls. That will at least save me a trip.

I am going to try to make it to the feed store tomorrow to pick up grain. They are both getting Nutrena Triumph right now which is a 10/10 sweet feed. I am going to start adding a ration balancer to try and eventually reduce the amount of grain they need. Kristen's horse Tony was always kinda ribby when he was at Kate's but she had him on a balancer here for a couple months and now he is FAT and he's been cut back to 4qts a dayof the regular grain (and this is a huge horse, at least 17.1). I want to cut back Freddy's grain especially because he's showing a lot of the classic ulcer symptoms. I always sort of suspected that he might have ulcers but he's definitely looking/acting worse these days so I am taking action. Amanda had started giving him Alfalfa but he turns into a monster on that so we've stopped that. He's been getting some aloe vera juice in his grain every day and then I've also just started hiving him Calcium Bentonite Clay. I did a lot of reading up on alternative ulcer treatments and that is one that I heard a lot so I decided to try it. Basically it comes in a powder form and you mix it with water to make it sort of like the consistency of mustard. I give it to him in a syringe and it's supposed to coat the ulcers and allow them to heal. Plus the aloe is supposed to be soothing. I first gave it to him on Monday. When I got to the barn that day he had already been fed but he'd left some of his grain and didn't seem interested in eating. Today I went out around the same time and his bucket was completely clean and he was looking for more. I think that's a good sign so I'm going to continue with this for a month or so and see how he looks. I really don't want to spend $1000 on gastrogard or ulcergard so I hope this works. Plus I definitely think it will help for him to get less grain and more hay. The horses don't get a ton of hay at Amanda's so I am looking forward to having control over exactly what my horses get fed.

I am just not getting around to putting these up here. Pics and vid from a visit with the new boy last week. And I did decide on a barn name for him. It's going to be Therin. I chose that because it is sort of a male version of Katherine and it means Hunter. My Grandma, Katherine Hunter, passed away last month and she was absolutely the biggest supporter of my riding and just my biggest fan in every way. I miss her terribly but I feel good about naming this horse in her memory. Now I will see her every time I look at him and hopefully she will be watching over us and cheering us on :) Grandma Kay was the kindest, sweetest, most wonderful woman you could ever imagine and Therin so far has the same sweet easy manner about him.

I am itching to actually start working with him! I haven't been out to visit him since Friday because I've been sick. It started Thursday night and got progressively worse the next few days. I worked an 8 hour shift on Saturday, did the AM and PM shifts at the barn on Sunday, and did the closing shift at work on Monday. By this morning I couldn't get out of bed. Rather than force myself to trudge to class in the cold and rain and sit through 7 hours of lectures I decided to just go ahead and give my body a rest and just stay home. I felt a little guilty at first but it was definitely what I needed. I have finally started feeling better in the last couple of hours thank goodness!

Now for some lovely pics and a couple of videos showing off Therin's lovely trot.

vids:

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/kait_the_great/?action=view&current=P1000549.flv

http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/kait_the_great/?action=view&current=P1000545.flv

I really need to start updating this thing regularly again. It was really helpful when I was keeping a log of my rides. Not that I've been riding much lately with all of this SNOW but still.

Lots to update about. Most importantly I GOT A NEW HORSE. He's a 4yr old TB and his JC name is Professor Turgeson. I'm not sure what I want to call him but I'm trying to come up with something inspired by my Grandma who passed away last month. The was absolutely the biggest supported of my riding in my family and she's always been an inspiration to me so I thought that would be nice. Her name was Katherine Hunter. Therin is apparently a male version of Katherine. Some names with the same meaning (pure) include Bronwyn, Caden, and Kit. I'll decide on a name one of these days.

Here are some pics I took yesterday. Perhaps I will go into a more detailed update later or tomorrow. I want to jot down some of my plans for the spring. I cannot waitttt for it to be spring!!

Freddy posing.

Oh Hai!

I like his white eye

Shiela sent me this pic of him trotting in the snow :)

I won a free entry to Bruce Davidson's clinic this weekend!!!! I am sooooo excited, but soo nervous to ride in front of him.

Quick recap of Waredaca. 29.5 in dressage in ankle deep mud. Freddy was really good, he stayed relaxed and responsive even though he was slipping every few strides due to the footing. We had a rail in stadium which dropped us from 2nd to 7th (saddddd) but went clean XC and had a blast.

Now I am off to ride before class.

I am very pleased to report that I had a much more successful ride on Fred yesterday than I did on Monday. I decided, just in case he wanted to be naughty again, that I would put the draw reins on him. I find that I don't even have to use them at all but just having them there sort of keeps him from challenging me quite as much. I also didn't ride with the spurs because I don't want to rely on them and I am not sure I trust my leg quite enough. I did carry my whip, however, and I had to give him a couple taps in the beginning to wake him up and let him know that I meant business. He was a little bit slow to relax over his back, but I blame that on the ride the previous day. I definitely argued with him too much and over corrected him a few times and I think that made him a little nervous. I think that one thing I really need to work on is remembering not to keep my leg on all the time. I have to give him an aid, then take the leg off. I think I tend to just squeeze all the time then just squeeze harder when I need to give him an aid. That's why he's not as sharp off of my aids as I'd like him to be.

He wasn't really softening his back at the trot right away so I did a couple circles at canter in each direction and that helped. Once I got him stretching in the trot a bit I really worked on sending him forward and trying to get him really pushing from behind. His trot felt excellent, he felt very swingy and loose and supple. His trot is SOOO much bigger than it was a year ago. Once I felt like I'd gotten his butt underneath him a little bit I played with changing the frame and asking him to carry himself with his neck up and his poll higher. I am just starting to ask him to carry himself up more as I feel like he's strong enough behind now to do it. This step in the training has always been sort of a stumbling block for me because I was never really sure how exactly to get the horse into a more uphill carriage. I realize that all I really have to do is harry my hands a little higher, thus positioning the bit higher, and push him to reach for the bit in its new position. As long as I just keep my hand really soft and keep him in front of my leg he starts to carry himself. I would only ride him in this frame for a minute or 2 at a time then I'd go on a long rein and let him stretch. I was very pleased with how responsive he was and how relaxed he stayed.

I really need to start doing more lateral work with him to really get his hind legs pushing more. He needs to learn to be more relaxed about the shoulder-in and stuff like that so that is our next step. I really think I want to move him somewhere with an indoor for the winter so that I can keep working on strengthening him and keep him at least somewhat fit so we're not starting from square 1 in the spring. I'd like to just go ahead and start him out at training level in the spring.

Kate was in the ring when I was riding yesterday and she thought that he looked really good. She said that when I first brought him there that he kind of always just looked like he was running a bit but that now he looks like he's much softer in his back and stepping under with his hind legs. She said that she thinks his dressage looks about ready for Training and she said that right now she's give his trot a 7 so that's not bad. And I think that if I keep working on it over the winter that he'll come out in the spring ready to be competitive. I don't want to do more than the required 4 trainings simply because it's expensive to compete at a lot of events and also I don't really think he'll need to do a ton. If he's as easy about Training as he was about Novice, I don't see any reason why we can't work towards Prelim at the end of next year. He'll be 6, which is still relatively young for Prelim, but I don't think it'll be much of a challenge for him as far as the movements on the dressage tests and the height of the fences.

Right now I feel as though his dressage and his XC are strong and just the SJ needs some polishing up. I also want to work on that some this winter and maybe go to some of those little jumper shows to practice that.

Tomorrow my first class is cancelled so I am going to head over and ride in the AM first thing. I'm going to jump him tomorrow and I want to work on some of the things that gave us problems at Radnor. I want to set up an in and out off of a turn and maybe a long bending line to a wide-ish oxer to work on not letting him get strung out going down a long 6 or 7 stride line. I am excites for waredaca this weekend, I think it's going to be fa good one!

I rode Fred today for the first time since I think Wednesday last week. The weather was just awful, rainy and in the 40s for 4 or 5 days. I feel awful for everyone who came down for Fair Hill, either to ride or spectate, because it was disgusting outside.

The several days off and drop in temperature definitely had an effect on Fred today. He was awful. I had the hardest time getting him to pay any attention to me. He was tense and very spooky today and I hardly feel like I got anything accomplished.

I was able to get some decent moments but he was just very inconsistent today. By the end of the ride I was able to get some nice swingy stretchy trot with him snorting and lop-eared. I just ended with that and called it a day. I'm going to do my best to rush over to the barn after class tomorrow so I can flat him again and hopefully have a better ride.

My last post failed to mention quite possibly the most important part of the day! Bruce Davidson was coaching a little girl who was riding right after me. I walked past him on my way back from XC and he commented that my horse was beautiful and that he looked great and asked me how my ride went. How nice is that?! I love eventers. Now I hope more than ever that I get chosen in the essay contest for his clinic. I would loveeeeeee to ride with him.