coco day 14, seven day 10

Slacked off and skipped a day doing the blog...but not working the horses. Seven was in rare form today, and I have the pics to prove it.

Seriously, I want to know what's up with that tail. You're (probably) not an arabian, Seven. Don't start acting like one.

So since she was feeling so good she got to canter sets of poles during her workout. Not many, she did 4 sets one way, and maybe 6 poles total in the other direction, and a lighter trotting session. She's developed and attitude about being groomed that I don't appreciate one fucking bit. Seriously, she will gnash her teeth while she's being brushed...she's not brave enough to actually bite me, but she bites everything in reach. Coco, the lead rope, the tie rail, the air...I'm moderately worried about this behavior. Next Saturday is the follow-up exam for both horses, so I'll mention it to the vet then.

Coco was his usual handsome. dopey self. He's been getting lighter workouts for the past two days because he's seemed a little off since Saturday. Not lame, just...not exactly right. He doesn't want to work to the left, either. More questions for the vet.

I finally got my carrots planted and replanted my lettuce after the pot was accidentally overturned. I also spread around the horse poop that I brought home for fertilizer. Then, I baked 3 loaves of beer bread and one loaf of wheat banana bread.

Pretty busy day, all told.

Coco day 12, Seven day 8

Spent the day yesterday putting in our small garden. I've never really gardened before so it'll be an experiment in itself. Bonus: we have all the fertilizer we could ever possibly need.

No pictures today, unfortunately. I forgot to bring the camera along and regretted it immediately.

Coco was in the middle of having his hooves trimmed when we arrived today. That's a whole other thing...His feet are terrible, gross, mealy excuses anyway and I'm not sure our current trimmer is doing much for him. Yes, Mike is a farrier, but with his wrist still healing we've had to rely on other people to trim the horses for us. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the way his feet are being trimmed and he's not lame, it's just not exactly how I would like for them to be trimmed. We're getting a second opinion next week, I think.

Speaking of idiots, Coco really showed his ass today during his workout. Wow. He tried every trick in the book to avoid going over more than 2 poles on any given lap, but also acted like he had twice the energy he normally does. Needless to say, Mike worked the stupid out of him. Well, not all of it because...let's face it, there'd be nothing left.

He's looking pretty good, though, so that's something.

Seven was an angel as usual for her workout and seemed to really want to trot today. So I let her. She didn't seem sore, taxed or winded having done it and she recovered very quickly so maybe it's time to push her a little. She has a vet appointment on April 16, so we'll definitely get more answers then. She's moving a lot better, but her joints still pop and crack a lot.

We worked a bit more on the importance of waiting until she has permission to eat her food. She's a great horse, but very pushy when it comes to eating things. And, not that people should ever be feeing my horse anything without my permission, but I'd hate to have her get grabby and bite a kid or something.

A Note To Children: Do not touch my horse. It is not for you.

And since every post is worthless without pics, here's a photo of Coco being a complete wank.

This was taken a little over a year ago. He had about 90% coverage. Literally took us hours to get him clean. I think I mentioned that Coco likes mud...just wanted to give you an idea of how much. Next time he does that shit, he's staying that way.

Coco day 11, Seven day 7

Cool, cloudy and drizzly today. I like days like that as long as it doesn't piss rain for a week and completely ruin the stalls and all of the bedding. Coco can't handle mud. It's not that he has an aversion to the stuff, he just won't stay out of it. Sometimes I think he makes his own mud from piss and horse poop to lay in just to spite me.

Speaking of the Dingus, he didn't feel well today. His breakfast was only half eaten when we got there around 1pm and he seemed really listless. I found his fly mask in his neighbor's stall (thanks jerky neighbor horse, I'm glad you're going to Hawaii if you're going to try to shred fly masks) and he had a scrape on his big dumb head.

Nothing awful, mostly just lost hair. He loves other horses so much he can't keep his face to himself so we deal with a lot of bite marks on this guy. Poor Coco, he just wants to be friends. I threw some Vetricyn on it and left it at that.

We didn't work him hard since he seemed so listless, just walking over (our new!) poles and letting him trot if he wanted. He was a touch off on his left front and Mike said it felt like he had some slight swelling in that tendon, so we used some mineral ice on all four legs and just let him hang out while Seven worked.

We followed the same outline as yesterday with Miss Sev. Eight laps in both directions, but this time over all four (new!) poles. She barely broke a sweat and didn't seem taxed by what we asked her to do. She mostly seemed bored.

Jealous of that new pole? They're incredibly adequate. Also, no sooner than we put them away, someone else at the barn dragged them back out to use. Mike and I both agree that so long as none of them decide to take a walk, we're fine with people using them. That custom paint job is hard to miss, though, so I doubt anyone would be that ballsy.

It was a so-so day. Seven did well, Coco was slightly off which always kinda worries me considering his history. Tomorrow is another day off while Mike has his PT session, so hopefully whatever is wrong with him will work itself out with some rest.

Aww...look, so friendly!

...Or not. She makes the best Mare Faces. Each one more pissy than the last.

Coco day 10, Seven day 6

No update yesterday since it was a rest day for the horses. Mondays and Thursdays they just have to hang out waiting for us to show up and torture them...but it never comes.

I was looking forward to talking about how awesome our new poles worked out, but unfortunately the paint wasn't completely dry yet this morning. Should be good to go tomorrow, though! If they're not, I'm taking them out there anyway. It's not like the horses won't trash the paint the first time we use them, right?

We didn't do any turnout today since the big arena seemed to have a steady stream of people coming and going. Just as well, because we lorded over the round pen for about an hour. First, Seven got to hang out at the patience pole while Mike worked with Coco.

I think her new diet is starting to make a difference. We've got a long way to go and she needs tons of ass muscle, but I think I'm already starting to see a little bit. Anyway, she's shiny and her dapples are starting to show so I must be doing something right.

Coco is starting to look really good. He worked for the usual amount of time first to the right, then to the left, then since he had some energy left (which he was using to be an ass) he worked to the right again. We try to push him a little every day and he seems to be responding really well to our routine. I was pretty proud of him today...Seven was tied right beside the round pen and he didn't act like (too much of) an idiot with her there. Way to focus, Dingus.

Oh, he also got a lesson on avoiding poles and how when you try to do that crazy men with whips chase you around. Scary.

Runnin' like the wind, lol. The out of shape wind.

Seven got her workout bumped up a touch. Not only did we trot 8 laps in each direction (roughly) she also got introduced to poles in the round pen. Double whammy. She rapped one pole pretty hard right off the bat, realized that it's unpleasant and I don't think she knocked another the rest of the time she was in there. Worked up a bit of a sweat today and was breathing harder than normal, but it was very light and she recovered quickly.

Yeah, she was super cute doing it, too. Isn't the little lightning bolt on her nose to die for? The answer is always yes.

Bonus Dingus:

Derp.

Coco day 9, Seven day 5

Pretty much a perfect Southern California day. Want proof?

There it is.

Weekends at the barn are usually so busy, so we try to go around mid-day to catch it when it's the most quiet. All of the early morning people are leaving and the evening people aren't around yet, which suits me just fine. It's so much nicer to have the arenas to yourself and not have to worry about being in someone's way or having them be in yours. Not that it's ever really an issue...I can't think of one person at the barn that's ever been less than completely awesome when it comes to sharing facilities.

We used the same workout as yesterday with both of the horses. Coco spent his time going over poles, and Mike says he's amazed at the difference a week has made. When we first started with him he could barely canter 5 laps and now he's easily doing 5 minutes in each direction.

Pick up those feet, Son.

Seven got her usual round pen work, and I think on Tuesday I might introduce some poles to her. She's a set it and forget it kind of mare...just tell her to start walking in a circle and she'll do it forever with minimal encouragement. She trotted her 5 laps in each direction with no sweat and was barely winded. We did lots of walking at a nice forward walk, then a little hand walk and graze around the lower part of the farm. Then we had a discussion about lunging after feed buckets and why that's a bad idea.

Shit feels good, man.

Now for the fun stuff. Currently there are only 2 communal poles that we can use at the barn. that's not too bad or anything, but the vet recommended that we work our way up to four over the course of a month and math tells me that's impossible with only two poles to work with. So, we had two options: 1) buy fucking expensive poles somewhere or 2) make some.

We're not fools, so we opted for two. Turns out, Home Depot sells almost the exact poles we needed to get started for about $9/pole. They're called peeler cores and they're around 8 feet long, if anyone ever ends up reading this and wants to sound like they know what they're doing when they ask the Home Depot lackey where to find them. They end up looking like this:

They seem pretty usable just the way they are, but knowing that ours are going to live outside, we decided we should probably paint them to give them a bit of weather resistance. Did you know that Home Depot sells gallons of "oops paint" for $5? It's paint that has been mixed with the wrong color that they obviously can't sell for full price. You don't get to pick your color, but for this project we didn't really care what color they were, just that they had a couple coats of paint for protection.

Ok, so it's actually "tinted primer". Whatever, it was the only outdoor latex paint they had in the oops rack. It's also a nice minty green. Very nice paint, too. Because we're painting them we sanded off some of the more scabby surfaces...

...using the angle grinder. I guess using some sandpaper with your hand would work, too. If you're not lazy or are lazy but don't have one of these sitting around. I'm sure this is more fun, though. And faster.

So, after all of the poles were sanded and prepped, we wiped them down with a damp cloth to remove all of the sawdust from the cracks so it wouldn't mess up the paint. It also showed us where we missed offending rough spots in the wood so we could take care of them, too.

Now we're ready for pai...Hey look! A hot air balloon!

Eeeee! *clapclapclap* I've lived here for like two years and it still makes me happy when I see them floating around. Sometimes there are like seven of them all at once and sometimes they nearly crash land in the yard. We've had them come in so low you can actually talk to the people riding inside them. Anyway, back to work.

So, we propped the poles up on our sawhorses and painted the middle sections like so:

An aside: I know Mike's the only one actually doing work in all of these pics, BUT that's just because he'd jump in and act all handy when I was busy taking the actual pictures. I actually did do a lot of this work! Anyway, once the middle sections were dry enough to handle we painted one end of each pole, allowed that to dry, flipped them and did the other ends.

And that's our progress so far. Tomorrow the horses have a day off because Monday and Thursday are Mike's physical therapy days. The poles need at least one more coat of paint and I'm also going to put some kickin' dark blue stripes on the ends and middle with some left over paint we have in the garage from our previous mounting block project.

It was a really productive day and felt damned good to get out and work on something in the sun. Projects like this not only save us money as horse owners, but also give us something to work on together. Neither one of us is particularly skilled when it comes to making shit, but building things like our mounting block or new ground poles makes us use our brains to figure out little problems that inevitably arise when you jump into projects like this. Not that sanding and painting pieces of wood takes much work or anything, but when it's finished we'll be able to say "Hey, we made this and now we're using it and it works." That's really satisfying.

Coco day 8, Seven day 4

Found out board is increasing next month. $25 per horse. Even with the increase, I wouldn't dream of looking for another place to board. Hay has increased around $8 a bale in the past two years.

It was much cooler today...mid-60s, which made getting all of our horsey errands done much easier.

Coco seems stiffer going to the right than he is going to the left, but Mike says he's able to canter longer in both directions. He wasn't too uncomfortable to act like a jerk for a while. Still working over two poles as we only have access to two of them in the upper arena. We have permission to store extra poles at the barn, though so I'm looking into buying or making some. ~20-25 min workout.

Seven was full of herself today. During turnout she was tossing her head and acting like a shit and even cantered again. I worked her in the round pen for around 20 mins. She trotted 5 laps each way, then walked for the rest of the time at a nice, forward walk. She seemed stiff after standing tied while she cooled out, but didn't seem uncomfortable during our hand-walking/grazing.

Considering putting Seven back on 2 feedings of alfalfa a day.

Coco day 7, Seven day 3

Of course they couldn't match up well.

We started our day at the feed shop. We needed hay replacer and shavings and I had a coupon (!) for a free Dura Fork when you buy 10 bags. I chose the only purple fork in the shop then we loaded up the truck and headed out to the barn.

Three bags of shavings and one 50lb bag of feed warrants being able to drive up to the barn instead of parking down in the lot and carrying everything up..especially when it's already 90 degrees and our day hasn't even begun. After getting our stuff squared away and letting both horses get about 20 minutes of free turn out to roll and do horse things, Mike set up 2 poles while I caught Seven and led her back to the tack shed.

Coco's exercise consisted of cantering over 2 poles situated opposite of each other while on the lunge line for a couple minutes in each direction with breaks to trot and walk to catch his breath. We plan to add additional poles ever week until we reach a total of four. Workout time: ~25-30 mins.

Seven was given about 20 mins of turnout where she walked briskly, trotted for about 1 total minute and even picked up a slow canter for about 10 seconds! She was hand walked for about 10 minutes after. Workout time: ~20 mins.

Both horses were hosed down, allowed to dry (mostly) and well groomed in addition to many pats and love before returning to their stalls and their lunch.