Starting out in English with Dollar

Well thank you Mother Nature for ruining my plans for today. See my hubby starts work at 6 am, so I thought that I'd drive him to work and then go ride Dollar to escape the heat. Haha. It was FREEZING outside and wasn't even 20*. Yes this was cold compared to last week when it was almost 30-something degrees EVERY SINGLE DAY and the Humidex was INSANE! So this was my plan: go ride Dollar in the early morning to escape the heat and it would be easier for both of us. Seeing as it was pretty cold outside, I opted to wait until noon to see what the weather did. So I did some stuff around the house and got Dollar's new grooming tub ready (yes!!) and left the house around 12:30.

Got down to the barn (which is conveniently located at my parents place), brought my stuff to the barn, grabbed my bridle and the 4-wheeler and gunned it off to the pasture where Dollar is, about ¼ mile away. Yes, I could've taken my car, but I had warmer clothes in there if I needed them. Walked out to Dollar in pasture, where of course, he stood like the perfect gentleman. Unfortunately, I had to spend some time re-adjusting his bridle because it was used on another horse that I was hoping to do Dressage with, but ultimately was told no by my Dad, so the bridle was fitted a bit small for Mr. Prince's big head. And he kept yawning at me! As if saying that he was bored already. Oh Dollar. I tried getting a picture of it, but as soon as I got my camera out, he stopped yawning. Oh well. Once he was all fitted with his bridle, we headed towards the gate and home.

Well, at this time, his pasture buddy Mars decided that it would be cool to try to charge the gate to come with us. Haha, yeah right Mars. No can do. And that's when I noticed that Mars was lame. He came up to the fence and just held out his front left leg totally off the ground and looked like he didn't want to put weight on it. Huh, weird. Seeing as we were already at the gate, I left Dollar standing there and went to take a look at Mars' leg. Couldn't feel any heat, so I made myself a mental note to let Sam (my sister) know when I got back to the house. Once I got Dollar out of the pasture (and continually trying to scare Mars away from the gate), I hopped on him bareback and started our ¼ mile hack home.

This is the really nice thing about having Dollar out in pasture. I can ride him home and start warming him up on that ¼ mile ride back. He usually has more energy when heading towards home, so we alternate between walking and trotting, just to get him a bit warmed-up before we do more riding with the saddle. Yes, I do more warm-ups in the ring once we get to actual riding. The other nice thing is that with the ride home, I can assess how he's breathing because of his heaves and figure out our riding plan on the way home. Well, today he was huffing and puffing a bit, along with a tiny bit of wheezing possibly. I say possibly because he is out of shape and sometimes confuse the being out of breath and wheezing. He is a bit weird in that department. Got him home with no issues (other than wanting to run home), got him in the coral, put up some of the gates that were down and turned him loose to roam around while I got his grain ready. I did go chase him around a bit, which he loved. As I was mixing his grain, he tried getting into the barn and when that didn't work, he kept following me back and forth, hoping to get some grain. Once I was almost done mixing the grain, I ran into the house and grabbed some vegetable oil and some Nature Valley granola bars. My friend over at The Jumping Percheron says that her horse loves them, so I decided to try them on Dollar. He just about took my hand off! Guess he loves them. Lol.


Once I was done mixing his grain, I gave it to him outside and then went to cleaning the barn. See, normally we kick all the horses out during the summer, but because it has been so wet and everything, Dad's been keeping the Reiners inside so that they don't lose their sliders. Well, they're still stuck inside in thsi 30*C heat. Feel so bad for them. And I couldn't kick them out while I was cleaning because otherwise they'll chase Dollar away from his grain and I need him to eat all that. Sigh.

After I was done cleaning the barn, I took some photos of Dollar's feet, seeing as this is the last days that he is wearing shoes. The farrier is coming tomorrow and those shoes are coming off permanently. He is 18 and is on very light work duty. He has been wearing shoes since he was 5 and there is no reason for him to wear them (yes, Andrea converted me to going barefoot). I know that there are better solutions for feet and just not realizing this until now. So, starting tomorrow, those shoes are off and we're going to be looking at doing stuff barefoot. Never mind that he old, and he doesn't really need them, they also hurt my wallet as well, since it's about $20-30 more just for shoes.

 Left Front

 Left Back

 Right Back (yes he took a chunk out of his foot. Oh Dollar...)

 Right Front

Trotting around the arena

Enjoying his grain

Anyways, I tacked up Dollar in English and started warming him up. During our warm-up, Natalie showed up and said that she was go get Mars. I told her about his leg and she said that she'll check it when she gets there, grabbed the 4-wheeler and took off. We continued on our warm-up just doing walking and jogging, getting him to loosen up. I tried getting him into a trot, but he was back to being slow and lazy. Dang it. I wanted him fresh! Oh well, we'll deal with it.

A couple minutes later Natalie called me to ask me to come help her get Mars home. Natalie was leading him with the 4-wheeler because she knows that she can't ride him home, he's just too pumped full of energy. But apparently, he was trying to go in front of the quad and almost trying to kick. So I went down there on Dollar (they weren't too far from home, about halfway between pasture and home) to get Mars home. Haha, yeah right. I grabbed the lead rope and let Dollar slowly start walking towards home. Mars?? Well, Mars was high as a kite and I had to continually tell him to slow and calm down. Nope. I had to keep his head held up high so that he wouldn't pull any stupid stunts, yet he was still trying. So Natalie took the quad home and then walked to us, grabbed Mars and walked with him home. So glad Dollar doesn't act up like that.

Once we got back home, I continued working Dollar. He was being very light and responsive (as always) of everything I asked for. Around this time, Sam came home with her barrel racing Percheron because she wanted to do some work with him. And Natalie was riding her horse. Yes, it was a bit crowded, but we're used to that.

I worked Dollar both ways walking, trotting and loping. I actually had to get my whip to use with him to get him to actually trot. He just didn't want to lengthen his strides at all. And the whip seemed to help.

After going both ways and working Dollar quite a bit, I decided to have some fun and set up a little jump for Dollar. So I took our Barrel racing cans, set them on their sides and made a tiny cross-rail (I'm not kidding. Maybe 1 foot) and proceeded to trot Dollar over that. Well, it seems that he has retained that information that we shouldn't touch any jumping poles at all. So while we were trotting over the tiny jump, Dollar was daintily clearing the jump with out no hesitation at all, unlike Reno (post link here).

And then Sam decided to try something with her Percheron. Seems she might have an idea making her Perch into something like Klein. So I took down the poles so that he could get sued to just jogging through. Yeah...ummm...No. He jogged up to them totally fine and then balked when he saw the barrels. So Sam had to convince him that it was safe to go through the barrels and just kept going back and forth until he did it without hesitation. Hey, he might have a new career after all.

After Sam was done with the jumps, I set them back up, but put the poles straight this time, so they were maybe 2 feet and let Dollar lope over them. Again, very dainty with how he jumps. And no hesitations.

All tacked up in English!!

Oh, and the best part?!?! I got some video. I will say this before hand, that yes, I was not hearing a helmet, I know I should and I always do (except for this time). I couldn't find my helmet anywheres and I wasn't planning on jumping today. But I did find it and it is will all my other stuff with strict instructions to my sister not to take it for her speed events.

Once we were done, I put the barrels and poles back where they belonged, grabbed Dollar and took him back to pasture. Tomorrow....Dollar's is officially going Barefoot!!