Riding During Naps: New Horse and Horse Shows! Part I

So it's been a LONG time since an update! Here's a quick run down.

Fourth baby girl is now days away from being 9 months! Oldest girl is almost 9, middle girl is 5 and about to start Kindergarten! She has also been in three shows this year already! Third baby girl is finally coming out of the 'whiny' stage at about 3.5 years and is now daddies best friend.

BIG NEWS. We bought another horse! The husband remarked he would ride with me if he had a horse he trusted and liked. And that's all it took to get the wheels turning! We decided to sell Snowy, who really was not being used much. And look for a smaller horse that would work for the kids AND be big enough for daddy.

We found her!! She wasn't EXACTLY what we were looking for but she WILL be. Meet Darlene! She is a just turned 6 year old APH, bay tovero. We tried her out in the dark in a arena under lights (which she had never done) and she was foot perfect. Quiet and calm, listened well walk, trot, lope. I liked her a lot. We came back the next day and tried her out again in a wooded area to make sure we liked her, and then brought her home!

She did awesome for about three weeks. And then all of a sudden turned really nervous, spooky, just unsettled. It was so weird. It coincided with spring and her first cycle so we put her on mare magic and changed her to a low starch feed. Wha la, 2 weeks later she was great again. :shrug: We aren't positive what caused it but jut happy she is back. I have taken her off the mare magic the last few weeks to see if that changes anything. We shall see! Don't you wish horses could talk?!

Here is some Darlene pic spam:

These two are from her ad. I passed over her already based on these pictures! She looks small and homely, lol. We had traveled to TN to look at a buckskin that was TOTALLY not what they said she was, and had another person cancel on us. So I jumped on FB to look again on a horse sale page and saw her. I thought, well she's sort of on the way home and sounds good, let's just go for kicks. I'm SO GLAD WE DID.

These are from the night we brought her home and the next morning, isn't she pretty!!

From one of her first rides at home, before she went Jekyll on us, lol. My man looks so good up there. He really likes her, and not just because I think he is doing it for me, but because he genuinely likes her.

Slicked out! She had bad rain rot we are STILL battling, and took part of her mane out, ugh. But thankfully it is white lol and blends into her neck. It's starting to come back now!

The last two are from her first off property ride! We went to my instructors place and rode her after my lesson on Harold. She did great! Trailered perfect, stood tied great, and rode great. I think we have a winner. We haven't gotten to trail ride her yet, so that will be another big test. Chunky baby girl is still eating too often to go off without her yet, so that may be a fall adventure, or even next spring.

I had a great informative conversation with her trainer on messenger. She has only been under saddle maybe a year, which was a lot less then we were wanting, lol. But she said her mind was so good she always felt comfortable on her, even her first ride. She told me she was starting lope circles with her, and had put her on a barrel and pole pattern a few times. She also used to take her to the stock yard and work cows there, and she seemed to be pretty 'cowy', which was kind of neat to know! They have only trail rode her once so I hope she will be ok doing that, I think she will be though.

Anyway we have just been riding her around here, mainly me. Getting her started neck reining and guiding and stopping well at all gaits. Teaching her to be still for mounting and standing when we stop her until we say to go again.
She has come a long way in a few months! Her trot still needs lots of work and we are just now starting to do a bit of loping. I did some at Lee's and she was basically galloping lol! Speed control is something we have to work on. She would rather go slow, but she has PLENTY of pep and energy. She likes to just make random laps around the pasture for the fun of it. She even got Harold into playing one day! It was adorable.
She is a lot more 'wary' of things then Harold, which I hope with more riding and exposure she will improve at. Hubby does great riding her and taking care of her. It has been a blast having him be involved in the horses.

So on to my favoritest, Harold! I finally feel like we have got a pretty decent bit of conditioning now. We both can ride and jump for a good while before getting tired. In April we started back jumping. Whew, that has been a bit of a mess for both of us. But thanks to my instructor we have slowly been improving. Well mostly slowly for me, Harold has done great. He's so good at taking care of me.

We had our first show in March, which I got 2nd with Intro B I think? It was SO COLD, Sadie was being the devil for Lee, we were in an covered arena with no where to warm up. Let's just say that was all grounds for a sub par couple of tests. Shelby did her first test and did awesome! I had to DRAG Harold around but she sat up there so pretty and did her favorite part (the halt and salute) perfect.

Don't let this photo fool you. We were pokey and stiff
all ride -_- (check out my hair coming down too, sigh)

The barn that hosted the show put this photo on their Instagram story :). Anyway there was no one else in leadline so easy blue. Our next show had no one either. She loves her blues! And she doesn't care if she's the only one.

Our next show was a few weeks later. And ALSO cold, but this time we added rain! Yippee! My gosh. So the kids spent much of the time in the truck out of the mist. I spent most of my time warming up in the indoor next to the arena. I popped out right before my test and then waited a bit for my next test before tying him back up and untacking. It was Easter weekend so they had a fun little egg hunt the kids participated in.

Harold did quite well. I mean, the warm up in the covered helped a ton. I had a horse that was supple and bendy. BUT, I wish I had brought my whip. By the second test he was dodging puddles and running out of steam and my legs aren't strong enough to be proper motivation. We got 1st for A and 2nd for B.

Not quite sure he likes all the commotion outside.
There were jumping horses above us in the jump arena.

Fancy in the mud, notice my leg, lol. Go pony!

Sadie: Can I eat this? Thanks.

So Sadie was a bit less of a devil then she was at the other show, thankfully. Or the husband would be banning me from further escapades until she is weaned. She is a good baby but she is very sensitive. She wants what she wants and now. If she doesn't get it she SCREECHES or pitches a fit. And WILL NOT STOP until she gets it. I'm not exaggerating.

So the end of March I knew I had time to start jumping again before shows in April. I aimed myself at the Full Circle show the end of the month. I wanted to do Intro B and a jumping class. Which specifically was the 12" crossrails.
The video above is our first jumps back since BEFORE baby. It wasn't horrible! But that was to come...lol.

So back to lessons we went! I took Harold to Lee's and showed her what she was working with first, lol, then let her get on and school him for me. She had warned me a few times to get onto him for putting his head down and kind of twisting it. I was like yeah, I'm trying. But frankly I was trying to do SO much already it was all I could do. I was still so out of shape, had been off my meds quite a few days, and hadn't ate breakfast. All this added up to me hitting the dirt (sand) at the end of my lesson. Whoops! Harold did his silly snakey head where he pulled me out of the saddle over his shoulder. I landed just fine on my side/hip still holding the reins! A little shook up but not horrible. Lee got on him and got after him and then I rode again with success.

I'm not gonna lie. Knowing that your not invincible and you CAN come off, put a bit of nervousness in me for a while. I am doing better now after quite a few subsequent rides, but it's still there. I'm gonna work through it be better for it though. He hasn't done it in quite a few rides so I'm hoping he has decided to kick that behavior, lol. I'm also much stronger and getting my technique back also helps.

Lee schooling Harold for me

You can see at the end of the vid below the snakey neck I was talking about that pulled me off, lol. Don't look at me, my eq is HIDEOUS.

Anywho! We practiced at home as much as I could. Many times we didn't come in to eat supper until almost 8 clock. Thankfully the kids love playing outside. In between jumps I also worked on his canter a lot. We can do a decent canter now sort of with contact and not breaking every other stride which is so huge for us! Lee also has me cantering up out of my seat. She said that's how I have to ride him around a course. That's hard yo! It's getting better though. Come on thigh muscles, work!

Our next few lessons went great. Lee always rode him first for me and got him going well so we could really work on us both as a team.