micro munchies

We are definitely into the dog days of summer now, oof! Hot, humid, interminable days… punctuated as often as not by violent little thunderstorms… 

Which, real talk, I won’t complain about the rain bc for once in recent memory we are STILL growing pasture grass into July. Doozy’s farm is apparently the opposite of our last place in that it seems to catch every passing storm — something I appreciate as a grass-loving TB owner!

baking in the early evening summer sun

Still, tho, we’re getting into that time of year — esp with the post-solstice coat change — when Doozy seems to start cultivating skin funk like it’s her job. No joke, I’ve never seen rain rot as bad as what Doozy gets — it grows on her like moss. 

She already had a bad case by the time I first met and bought her, but I had hoped that by last summer (after a year in my care), the improvements in nutrition, general health, and regular grooming would naturally help prevent another severe case. And, uh, I was wrong.

jealous of the ponies in the shade lol, but grateful for the outdoor breeze!

Doozy’s skin funk last year was so bad, I would 100% have judged the F out of her owner if… uh, ya know, it wasn’t *me.* Life lessons, y’all. I continue to learn them with horses — sometimes things aren’t what they appear. You can really try, and still kinda fail. It is what it is lol.

Anyway, tho, we’ve so far kept the funk at bay this summer with constant post-work rinses of diluted apple cider vinegar. No emergent signs yet, at least. Ask me again in two weeks tho lol, and we’ll really know the truth!

walkway wanderin <3

As it is, we’ve had a quiet week or so after all the fun and festivities of back to back schooling shows at Loch Moy and then Tranquillity, plus shipping out for weekly lessons. We skipped last week’s lesson bc of the heat index, and then had to bump yesterday bc we scheduled for exactly the same time as yet another little expected thunderstorm. 

waiting out yet another late day thunderstorm

Nbd, tho, Doozy continues to do quite nicely with our rides. Something about getting her out more often really suits her. Too much time spent at home (like over this past winter), and Doozy starts creating her own excitement among the everyday mundane routine lol. But now that she’s back in the swing of more frequent adventures, home life is pleasantly ho hum. Gotta love it lol.

celebrity horse sighting while jump judging with my mom @ fair hill!
super socks bcf, 19 years young, having a blast around the starter course <3

An unfortunate downside to the frequent rain showers tho is that we’re often stuck inside for our schooling, in the dusty stuffy airless indoor, bleh. No joke, I’d rather negotiate with terrorists than ride indoors… But our outdoor ring footing simply doesn’t hold up to any moisture whatsoever and mgmt understandably prefers it stay closed in poor conditions. 

These are the tradeoffs for being at a place that actually cares about the maintenance and upkeep of its facilities LOL. So we make do with what’s available in the conditions, nbd.

ooooh we played with little jompies too <3

The rides themselves have mostly continued exploring the concepts I wrote about two weeks ago — namely, the “riding the footsteps” exercise with a deep focus on utilizing lateral flexion (without totally sacrificing straightness) to improve speed and balance. It honestly feels like really productive work especially relating to preserving relaxation vs introducing tension. 

A quote I read recently has really stuck with me — and I’ve been marinating on its applications and relevance toward horse training ever since:

A word is not a relationship between sound and object, it’s an agreement between people.

Which, according to ChatGPT, is a modern paraphrase of a core idea stemming from Saussure (circa 1906–1911), who emphasized that language is a social contract, not a mirror of reality.

more farm walkies

In other words, my riding aids are essentially meaningless to Doozy if we haven’t already established an agreed upon definition. Doozy hasn’t read the text book, she can’t inherently know about the whole “inside leg to outside hand” thing, if she doesn’t already understand and accept individually those leg or hand aids, ya know? 

Like, sure, the prescribed and studied ‘best practice’ postures and methods are fairly universally accepted bc when done right, they set both horse and rider up for success. But I feel like sometimes it’s easy to miss that… for many horse and rider partnerships, we kinda have to start from a more fundamental place.

so good at selfies lol

Take, for example, this idea of getting Doozy to accept my leg aids. For the last few weeks, I’ve started every ride with establishing leg contact right away, regardless of how Doozy feels about it. (And lemme tell ya, Doozy feels about it.) With the idea that eventually she’ll just, ya know, get used to it. Accept it. Or something. 

Meanwhile, since we’ve been practicing this more intentional steering exercise — being thoughtful and deliberate about staying constantly on a well defined line of travel, down to the very footfall — I realized in our ride yesterday that actually, Doozy had nothing to say whatsoever about my leg contact. She just… went along quietly responsive. No bouncing off the leg, jigging or swishing her tail at the touching omg!

And it occurred to me that… ya know. Maybe I’ve kinda misunderstood the directive about Doozy “accepting the leg aid,” lol. Maybe it doesn’t matter so much that it’s touching her — rather, it matters that the touching means something, communicating a specific and understood thing. She accepts bc she understands. 

truly a hard life

Always good food for thought for me to remember to focus on what I’m trying to tell the mare, vs how the text book says my aids need to be applied. Eventually lol maybe the two things will be perfectly aligned… But, eh, not yet haha.

For now, it’s enough to sorta go through our paces and patterns and figures (and little jompies lol) with just this simple idea in mind. Lord knows I’m always on the hunt for easy ways to score quick wins when it feels too hot for “heavy work” lol…. Anyone else out there working on little micro tasks while trying to avoid melting in all this heat?