friday foto finish

Happy Friday, y'all!! And Happy Fall, too! 

cute mare! she wore my ancient Smartpak fleece cooler up to the ring bc #chilly
side note: i finally have a horse that fits this cooler LOL

We had a couple quiet days around here both bc the weather got nasty (cold rain + wind), plus I wanted to give Doozy a few days to settle in to her new lifestyle - esp if she was gonna feel any sort of way after all that grass.

flashback to 2014 with hony Isabel!

So far, tho, she seems totally fine. No weird unexplainable new marks anywhere, and doesn't seem queasy or gastrically uncomfortable either. 

2020 with Charles, and yes his butt is sticking out

If anything, she's maybe a bit quieter! Which, obvi, is another wonderful benefit to being out -- she's moving around more both bc she's grazing vs eating from a stationary pile of hay. Plus groups of horses just seem to roam more frequently around a pasture. 

here's my favorite blanketing rubric for anyone interested. of important note: our horses are stalled indoors over night, thus the focus on daytime high temps. ymmv

The timing for all this feels really good too, since Fall is coming on kinda heavy at the moment. It's been cold and windy, and more folks are gravitating toward the indoor. 

pic from last week when we experimented with using the prolite half pad. so far so good!

So, not that anything is really "urgent" in the land of Mondeuse.... But my focus is definitely pretty heavily centered on ensuring reliability and good citizenship.

i also may or may not have impulse-bought another fancy bit of linens... this Eskadron Essence pad, purchased from mybreeches.com

For example, Doozy's previous paddock was right in the main barn yard, but her new pasture is a ways down the driveway. Can she be sensible and well-mannered for turn in? 

Survey says.... yes! So far I've been available to assist with bringing her in most of the nights since she made the change, and so far she's just walked in like a normal horse. Love that, haha.

mondeuse is gettin the hang of her big pasture!

We're also experiencing more traffic in the indoor. Including maybe the hardest situation yet for Doozy -- there were three kiddo + pony pairs trotting around and jumping in the indoor when we arrived. Doozy did well hand walking around while they finished their ride, then was sensible to walk with me while I dismantled the x-rails and turned them into ground poles. 

and learning to take her #copium when the ring is unexpectedly full of small kiddos on ponies, who then congregate by the doorways (so hard, tho!) and then leave, the horror

One of the kiddos was also nice enough to stand nearby to us while I got on, for which Doozy continued her habit of behaving nicely at the block. 

But then all the kids lined up at the door (for what felt like forever), which was obvi of utmost distraction to Doozy, and then.... they left! Also kinda slowly lol bc they're kids on ponies. So the whole process of lining up at the door and then leaving took quite a bit longer than I'd ideally want... And Mondeuse definitely had pretty strong feelings about it all.

omg i also went trick or treating and it was amazing -- look at this incredibly decorated haunted house!

But, I'd planned ahead and had arrived at the indoor with another friend on a very calm and indifferent horse, who just went about his business completely ignoring both the ponies and Doozy. He offered a nice alternative center of gravity to the door, and she eventually recovered.

and a demon pony driving a ghoul cart ermagerd

In fact, she recovered well enough to do a few sessions of exceedingly pleasant and polite trotting, in a nice balance through all the ground poles, etc, with zero outbursts (tho she definitely thought about it and had a few pitiful whinnies to offer up!).

But I'll be the first to admit that... it wasn't really a "real" ride --- in that I didn't really push for anything or try anything hard or canter or anything like that. Bc... from my perspective, the "hard" part was basically existing among the chaos, and then surviving after all those ponies (one of whom is stalled next to Doozy) abandoned us so cruelly.

one little lesson at a time, tho, and she's figuring it out!

Like, this will definitely be exactly the type of situation that will happen again and again throughout the winter. So from my perspective, I wanted the first time it happened in a big way to be... as easy as possible for Doozy. Wanted to show her that being left behind in the indoor was still a safe and comfortable place. 

 

I know there are conflicting schools of thought on this aspect of training, with one camp fairly firmly in the "put them to work" perspective. But I dunno. I like to kinda work on one "skill" at a time, and in my mind, surviving being left behind is in fact a skill that needs practicing. 

Regardless, I couldn't have been happier with how well she recovered -- gives me a lot more confidence to keep going as we are!! We can always readjust or change tactics later if needed :)

Hope you all have a great weekend, and TGIF!