smellshorsey

Breyer Horse Ride Scheduled at Last!

I had no idea it would take this long to schedule my upcoming ride on an equine that was used as a model (a named model, no less) for Breyer's line of horses or I wouldn't have mentioned so long ago . But finally, the model, her owner, my daughter and I have scheduled the MLK Holiday for a get together where we can ride Famous Horse and find out more, such as the funny stories from attending Breyerfest.

I'll run the photos and stories the week of February 4.

And at this point, if we get rained or snowed out or something, I might just make the whole thing up so I don't look like a terrible liar!

Horse Rescuers Taking in Record Numbers

Local dairy milk at Wal-Mart was $6.13 a gallon yesterday (we drink a lot because it goes so well with chocolate). I'm sure if I inquired I'd be told it was the price of gas and the hay shortage.

And the hay shortage is hitting horses hard, with horse rescuers taking in record numbers this year. Here's the story from The State:

Horse rescuers taking in record numbers amid drought, hay prices

 

Horse rescue agencies are taking in a record number of horses in recent months after the dramatic price increase for hay.

The U.S. Equine Rescue league normally takes in about 100 abused or neglected horses each year in three states. This year, the agency already has 170 horses from the states - including 90 horses from North Carolina.

Other states are facing similar drought-related problems.

Equine cruelty investigator Kathy Grant said the rural roads in her eastern Tennessee community are lined with pastures dotted with emaciated horses. She said a round bale of hay that cost $12 this summer now costs $100.

In South Carolina, rescue volunteers said bale prices have tripled.

for more info: http://www.newsobserver.com

National Velvet and International Velvet

Santa must have known we would spend a good deal of our holidays inside, thrilled that it was raining, because he brought Lily some old horse movies. We've watched "National Velvet" and "International Velvet" over the past couple of days.

I never watched them back-to-back before, and I'm all for artistic license, but we did have a good laugh over The Pie changing from a chestnut gelding to a dark bay stallion and being put out to stud. It was all so miraculous -- what was going to happen next?

I kept hoping the people from "What Not to Wear" would come in and give most everyone in "International Velvet" a new hair-do, but it didn't happen. As Lily said, "Riding helmets mess up your hair no matter what," so I guess that would have been a waste.

Welcome Readers from The State

Welcome, new SmellsHorsey readers from The State. SmellsHorsey will be the featured Blog the Week of February 4, and I have something exciting planned for that week, so stay tuned.

To introduce you to SmellsHorsey, here are a few of my most popular posts:

Does Anything Smell Better than a Horse?
How Grooming Horses is Different from Grooming Little Girls
Rip Van Winkle
Losing Confidence -- and Gaining it Back
When Mom Wasn't Looking, She Jumped Three Feet
Falling Off Horses
Girls and Horses

I'll hope you'll click around a while, leave comments and come back soon. You might even see photos of people and horses you know!

And, if you have any news or stories about horses, horse people or horse-related stuff in this area, make a comment and tell me to write you. I'll get your e-mail address from the comment form (YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS WILL NEVER BE PUBLISHED) and write you back. I'll be happy to post stories and photos of horses, horse people and horse adventures that smellhorsey to me.

Welcome! And come back!

Belated Horse Trial Results

In the rush of everything, I never really did talk about Buddy's first horse trials earlier this month, other than to say that all survived.

It was actually a little better than that. I just downloaded the Christmas pictures and the horse trial pictures were in the same batch. (I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy holding my breath.)

They had a good dressage test and were in first place, in spite of some slightly less than circular circles. Here's Buddy listening to what the judge had to say afterwards.

Here's Buddy noticing the lady who feeds him, who is also holding the camera. That Buddy is my biggest fan.

Notice the blue ribbon on the boot. Very exciting.

Lily and Buddy went to that same farm last Saturday to ride with friends. Wouldn't you know it? When they were schooling in the stadium jumping ring, Buddy refused the coop and Lily fell off. So glad he waited two weeks for that little performance.

Some days he's good. Some days he's not. Timed it just right that time.

For All of Us Born in a Barn

Tonight's the Night! Miracles happen.

For me, you can't get a much holier place than a barn, with the manger licked clean by animals, and the holy smell of livestock and their feed.

Christ was born in a barn. You have to love him.

Merry Christmas if you believe, and may you still experience miracles and happiness even if you don't.

Horse Trailers: Ramp-Load or Step-In?

Santa won't be bringing me a horse trailer, so this is all academic. Horse people seem very committed to one type of horse trailer or the other -- either you're a ramp-load kind of person, or a step-in. And from my observations, you can predict which kind of person someone is based on whether they ride English or Western. English riders use trailers with ramps. Western riders use step-ins.

I was a ramp person once I was the one buying the trailer. It worked great. Horses got in and out very sanely and decently. Then one day a friend wanted me to ride with her to a show a few counties away and offered to come pick me and my horse, Jack, up. Though she had a sideline of buying TBs off the track, retraining them as hunters and selling them, she had a step-in trailer (so much for my theory but she was from out West). All was fine. Jack liked her horse just fine. He liked her trailer just fine. We arrived at the showgrounds in time for me to school and get to my first class. In theory.

Here's a not very good scan of a photo of Jack (that's me riding). I'll try to post a better one later. Well. Jack, who was a very nice, cooperative horse, got spooked when he backed carefully toward the trailer door, as always, and when he reached his hoof back for the ramp, it wasn't there. In fact, he reached a little farther down, and there was no ground. I was obviously unloading him over a bottomless canyon, and he pulled his hoof back up as fast a cat who'd accidentally stuck his paw in the water. Then Jack squished his 16.2 frame as far into the trailer as he could get. He wasn't getting out. He was going to be very small and very much in the front.

We did nice things to him to get him to back up. We tried to entice him with Good Things. We reasoned with him. Then we did not nice things to that wonderful horse to get him to back up. We did even worse things to him to get him to back up. Nothing doing. Jack wasn't about to fall into the bottomless canyon. A couple of times we got him to put his dainty little hoof back into the air, but each time he quickly withdrew it before the alligators got it. His mind was made up, and he would endure ANYTHING not to get out of that trailer.

It was painful for everybody. Eventually, a brave stranger came over. "Need help?" I offered to have his children.

He helped us remove the center partition of the two-horse trailer. And then he helped us bend that big horse into a U-shape and turn himself around (scary, because if Jack slipped or panicked we were at risk). But Jack was not panicked or silly. He just wasn't going to step where he couldn't see. So he bent himself into a U-shape and walked out of the trailer. Then we put the trailer back together again. I'd missed a couple of my classes, which was too bad, because we ended up with a Reserve Championship that day. Oh well.

We got him out at home by finding a high spot of ground and backing the trailer against that. When Jack felt earth, he got out just fine.

When Lily was two, I thought I'd never ride again and sold Jack and my trailer. Life had changed so drastically. Now that I'm back "doing" horses, the best deal we could get on a trailer was a step-in, and so far, all the horses are coping just fine. I wonder how Buddy would load in a ramp-load trailer. Since he likes to hop in (Buddy is all about jumping), I wonder if he'd just skip the ramp-part and jump right over it into the trailer.

I think I detect a little snobbery between the ramp vs. step-in crowd. At this point, as long as it's safe and it rolls, I'll take it. But I hope I never, ever have to take a trailer apart to turn a large TB around to get him out.

If you have a trailer, what kind and why? What are your theories? What's your dream trailer? Here's mine (this is not an ad, unfortunately).

Do I Really Have to Lunge Buddy?

Lily spent the night with a friend, and this afternoon she's going to deliver the Angel Tree gifts with the church youth group. The Angel Tree is a project to be sure that the children of prisoners receive special gifts on Christmas Day.

I stood there all teary reading the little messages from the incarcerated parents to their children that were inscribed on the Angel Tree tags. Yes, these are convicted criminals and possibly this is a put-on. But the child hasn't done anything. Most of them live with their moms, father's in jail. The father writes little notes such as, "No matter what, know that I'll always love you." On the mere possibility that this is true, I boo hoo. I talked to the mom of our Angel, and I think we were able to find what she wanted. I hope so.

But all this Angel Tree stuff is interrupting Lily's riding. And she's taking Buddy on a trail ride with a friend tomorrow, so she wants to be sure that he gets exercise today so he's not fresh. So I told her I would ride him or lunge him.

Do I have to? It's stopped raining but it's windy. There are puddles and it's sloppy out there. I don't want to.

But I said I would.

Odd Search Strings

It's odd how people find their way here. Here are a few of the search words (some I'm leaving out because I don't want to attract any more of that kind of traffic).

why does Lucy smell
juicy butts
can a horse eat beet pulp
i lost my bucket
dora's fighting lesson
horse afraid goats

My records don't go back that far to give me the exact words, but I've had some that made me wish I could write to the people who were searching. Like the one searching "my daughter wants to quit riding lessons" or "horse died" or "parents don't understand why I need horse" or "how to talk parents into riding lessons." Others are just plain scary.

We Might Get RAIN for Christmas

I've never seen a White Christmas. But I've just heard some exciting news: we've had a terrible drought (17 inches below normal) and we might be getting RAIN for Christmas.

We'll be singing some extra Hallelujahs if we do. Graphic from WLTX web site. Click to enlarge.