winter update

Not much has been going on around here lately… it is currently snowing, and already a bunch has accumulated. (its been snowing since yesterday afternoon.)

needless to say that with all this snow our show has been cancelled. I actually scratched a few days ago, right before the closing date. didn’t want to trailer the horses in all this snow, but it’s cancelled anyways. and poor Fox is still lame 😦 we think maybe it was from the ice balls accumulating in her front shoes, and maybe she tripped and pulled something. poor pony. Tanta felt good though! we only walked for 20 mins, but still. I would love to ride her bareback for these walks, so I dont have to tack up for a tiny walking ride… plus bareback is so nice and warm in the winter… but she has been a little playful! so I think I’ll keep the saddle for now.

Maren has let me have a couple rides on Oliver, which has been nice. I had a super great dressage ride on him last night! he felt really good. That might have been partially because I put my saddle on him… I LOVE my dressage saddle… but I do think Oliver felt good too. he has gotten a little sneaky, where he will put his head down and look on the bit, but he is really on the forehand hollow back etc. oh and he also braces against the hand when he gets low. so we were working on staying a bit higher with his head (not high just not way tucked down/under) and engaging his hind end more. he was a very good boy ❤

what do you mean you want your hat back?

In my last post I was complaining about frozen buckets (ugh). Emma kindly pointed me towards Olivia’s blog, where she had a DIY insulated bucket tutorial! I did that, and it worked super well!! my bucket is a little funny looking, as we did not have enough of one tape to go all the way around… so it’s a mixture. lol.

But it WORKS!! It was completely ice free in the morning! the bucket next to it had a good 2 inches of ice on it.

The other thing I’ve found really helps with the freezing is putting something that floats in the water. It’s supposed to bob around and help prevent ice buildup. it seems to help. I used a dog sized Jolly ball for one bucket, and another smallish jolly ball for Tanta’s water. for Lilliput, I just put a small cooler in the corner of her stall and filled it with water. And put a floating dog toy in. she is so gentle with things, so I dont worry about it. although I wouldn’t trust one of the big horses with that setup…

Rasty has thicker buckets, and I close his stall up at night so his buckets dont usually freeze. Oliver was getting closed in his stall at night as well, and his buckets were fine (for the most part) but… Oliver will not pee in his stall. and every morning when we turned him out he would immediately have a big pee… we started feeling bad for him, so now the door to his run out stays open. which means the buckets would freeze, but Maren put a heated bucket in there. heated buckets freak me out, so I think I will try to make Ollie a insulated bucket to replace the heated one with.  I gave Tanta a thicker bucket (like Rasty’s) with a floaty, and it seems to work okay. it still gets slushy though… maybe she needs an insulated bucket too.