Poor Woman Showing

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Brain Leaks

For the most part, Bobby Magee is a pretty amiable dude. His ground manners are essentially flawless, he longes on a loose line off of voice commands, his spook involves snorting and possibly skittering a step sideways, and he puts up with a lot of foolishness under saddle.

But Bobby also has another side. The one that involves flinging his body around, throwing himself and his rider into walls and fences, shutting down and refusing to move an inch, and even the occasional rear or buck.

I call this his Mighty Magee side, and it's a clear indicator that the devil lives inside him thanks to the Crazy As Fuck gene passed on from his papa.

"I EAT UR FACE OFF IF YOU BRUSH ME."
yeah, bobby. totally buying it.

The past week or so, all the good in Bobby has slowly been leaking out of his ears, and it's being replaced by a cheeky fucking shit head attitude. This happens a few times a year, and it's an easy fix.

I gave him a couple days off, then put him on the longe and just let him do his thing. He was a little confused at first because Bobbys are very polite gentlemen on the line. He was walking along with a big, swinging gait and continuously flicking his ears towards me when I told him his walk looked lovely.

The devil seized him in his own speshul "I'm so crazy. You better look out. I am a Crazy Horse." way.

He gave me the sideways stank eye, pinned his ears, swished his tail (I know, I know. You're on the edge of your seats wondering if I'm going to survive this!), and then TROTTED WITHOUT ME TELLING HIM TO.

>gasp<

he's eating that horse's face off!
not really, but i would give him a cookie if he did. that horse is a dick.

He did a few head snakes, a couple barely-off-the-ground bucks, and then cantered on his own.

Really, it was the craziest thing in the whole world. He is just so naughty I can't handle him sometimes.

He repeated the whole routine the other direction, but perhaps with a little less energy. Being so dangerously crazy is exhausting.

I got on him afterwards and had an absolutely perfect dressage warm up, so I got off of him after fifteen minutes and called it quits. Gotta keep those Good Horse brain cells in there and nurtured.

totally innocent.

Today we went on a long walk trail ride where the Good Horse brain cells sprung another leak, and he refused to walk along the path I was trying to keep him on. He was all, "NO! WE DO NOT WALK ON THAT PACKED DOWN, THAWED OUT, TOTALLY DRY TRAIL. WE WALK IN THE CORN FIELD WHERE WE SLIP ALL OVER BECAUSE THERE'S STILL SNOW AND ICE AND HARD GROUND BECAUSE I SAID SO."

Whatever, Bobby.

Trail rides are good for restoring brain cells, even if it's a delayed process.

I also accomplished two costume creations in the past two days, so be on the look out for those. They were both serious fucking pains in my ass.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

March Review, April Goals

March Review:

1. ~~Trail ride.~~ Yes! Sort of.... We've been walking every inch of the available trails whenever we can. It doesn't count for much, but at least we've been out of the ring a few times a week.

2. ~~Back to 3'~~-3'6". I got so fucking bored in the indoor, I even did 3' in there a few times. We only got jump in the outdoor a couple of times because of snow and frozen ground (Wait, isn't this Spring?), but we did do a few 3' and 3'3" fences out there. No 3'6" yet though. Stupid fucking never ending cold.

3. ~~The trot to canter transitions in Training A and B.~~ Yep, we finally nailed these down with minimum tantrums.

4. Pick out hunter shows. DOESN'T MATTER BECAUSE WE'RE MOVING AND MY SHOW SEASON PLANS FOR DOING THE LOCAL HUNTER CIRCUIT WITH MY BARN ARE OVERRRRRRRRR. SOB.

so much butt muscle.

April Goals:

1. Find a good barn to move Bobby to. One with a minimal amount of crazies and a maximum amount of turnout and hay fed.

2. Locate a place to school cross country. NOW THAT WE'RE MOVING AND MY LIFE IS OVERRRRRRR.

3. Find some viable show options. NOW THAT I CAN'T SHOW WITH MY BLOG FRIENDS.

Basically just survive the move with as much spring pony time as possible.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

TOABH: Introspection

I've missed a few of Beka's blog hops, but I'm back on it for this one!

Introspection

What would your horse change about you?

Bobby basically functions with the thought process that he is always right.

Always.

when a bobby says it's time to leave, it's time to leave.

Therefore, I think if he could change one thing about me, it would be that I got on the bandwagon and just let him do his thing. His daily routine would be adjusted so it resembled something like this:

Come in from turnout, eat breakfast, pee, lay down for a snugly nap in said pee.

always time for napping.

Wake up from nap, eat hay if it's up to your high standards, demand different hay if it's not. If BM refuses to give you brand new hay, drag old hay into middle of stall, pee on it, and take another nap.

Cookie Lady is here. Demand cookies. All of them. No, you need more. Lick favorite mare's blankets while getting tacked up.

Go for trail ride that involves lots of running for warm up. Come back to barn and jump some cross country jumps.

If the ground isn't good cross country jumping ground, jump around in the outdoor. Jumps must be at least 3'. They're too boring otherwise, and you'll have to put extra effort into racing over them instead of actually jumping them.

ignore cookie lady when she makes these stupid faces at you.
it's time to do the jumping.

Go for another trail ride with another gallop when you're done jumping. Pause for lots of snack breaks without getting yelled at for eating on a trail ride. Cookie Lady is going to clean your bit anyway. What's a little extra slobber?

No post ride grooming. Bobbys do not like the brushing. Baths are okay though. Make sure to demand extra cookies after the ride. Refuse to drink any water until you've gotten at least one.

Make horrible mean faces about getting your blanket put on. Have Cookie Lady leave it off.

If BM has not replaced the hay you've deemed unacceptable, tell Cookie Lady all about it. That bitch is a sucker. She'll switch it out for you. Eat said hay until dinner time. If it was an early morning ride, probably take another nap.

Eat dinner, get turned out with best friends, boss best friends around because they're amazingly even bigger losers than you, and you somehow found yourself the coolest horse in the herd.

Take best friends up to graze and/or eat hay that's been put out.

Repeat.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Boo, Hiss.

First of all, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone that reached out to me following my tragic news over the weekend. Is it really that tragic? Am I being a little melodramatic?

NO.

Worst. News. Ever.

almost as bad as it being 25* at the end of march. da fuq.

The deal is that Hubby, who works for one of the top Ag companies in the country, got a call on Thursday afternoon to drive up to New York for a meeting first thing Friday morning. The company is buying a new plant in Marion, and Hubby is going to step in as the manager.

Now, yay, so happy and proud of Hubby because being manager was why we moved in the first place. But I told him that once he got promoted, we could move literally anywhere in the country as long as it wasn't back to New York. So I haven't been taking this very well.

On top of that, they want him up there by April 8th. That's less than two weeks to relocate all our shit four hours away. Not cool, guys. Not cool at all.

We have a horse, horse trailer, a truck to haul the horse trailer, my car, Hubby's company truck, a boat, two dogs--one of whom is extra large sized--and two cats to find a home for in that time period. Essentially my stress level is through the roof, and I may just set up a box somewhere down here and refuse to come out of it....ever.

more flat pictures? sure thing.

I told my BO and best barn bud Sarah on Saturday, and it was pretty much the worst ever. Sarah and I spent our ride bemoaning all the things I'm going to miss by moving--having someone calmly change course when Bobby is about to fly backwards into them, someone to commiserate with when my fat roll gets pinched in my belt, no more swimming in the creek with water horses, no one to talk shit with, no shared locker to plunder when you need to ~~steal~~ borrow something, and on and on.

who am i going to beat my horse with?!

Bobby and I did get a little jumping in, but half the standards were still in storage, so it was only over a few verticals. Bobby had a minor case of the stupids for most of the ride, and did a lot of his favorite rocking horse canter-in-place nonsense before the jumps, but he was in a bit of a mood the whole day.

I got some helmet cam footage, which would have been even better if the moment where I smacked myself in the face with my reins over a fence had actually showed up, but sadly it didn't.

I brought up a couple of usable standards the next day since J hadn't actually fixed any of the ones he'd brought down over the winter and made a couple of the verticals into oxers. Sadly the outdoor's footing was frozen fucking solid, so we couldn't ride up there.

We were forced down to the indoor where I had zero ambition to do anything. We jumped a little 18" vertical a few times, but that wasn't even fun.

prepping for a training move up.
lolz.

Before too long, we wrapped it up and went outside to take some sad goodbye pictures with Sarah and Memphy.

my poneh is handsome sometimes!

Today I wanted to make use of the jumps I had set up yesterday, but Bobby quickly picked up on my bad mood and threw a pissy fit over pretty much everything. He kept locking onto the wrong jumps, throwing a tantrum when I'd pull him off of them, and then throw another tantrum when I'd point him at a different fence.

So I got off, knocked everything down to itty, bitty, baby jumps, and we spent forty five minutes walking jumps. I was feeling more than a little pissy myself by the time we were done.

On the plus side, my BM made me this most amazing painting ever:

complete with bobby tail hair.
way more bad ass in person.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

I do NOT heart New York

In fact, I really fucking hate New York.

But it looks like we're being relocated rather promptly. So does anyone have any leads on good barns, show venues, and, oh I don't know, a fucking house to live in in the area of Marion?

That's all I can manage right now. I'll give a long, ranting, detailed, expletive-filled post in a day or two. In the meantime, please tell me there's at least one blogger in the area that wants to be friends.

Anyone? Anyone at all?

"where i am going to go that drag is accepted?"

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Spring Sillies

Bobby had the past two days off while I took care of some things at home (like a freshly spayed puppy who didn't want to eat her food for three days) and generally hid inside from the 30* temps. I did stop in the barn once on my way to the vet to turn him loose for some rumpus time in the ring and give him some carrots.

Carrots are his fave snack EVAR, so he felt it was totally justified that when he was hanging out in his stall with the door open and I wasn't paying attention to him/feeding him said carrots, he flung my grooming tote across the barn aisle to uncover the half-hidden bag.

"hellooooo. where are the cookies?"

He was equally ~~obnoxious~~ fun today so he got a speed tack in his jump saddle and his own snaffle bridle I finally dug out for him. I think I've settled on a slow twist for his hunter outfit. I only have a loose ring with that mouthpiece, but I'm sure I'll be able to dig a dee up at the tack swap next weekend.

Then we went up to the outdoor because it was finally free of snow!!! YAY!!!

the noseband needs to come up, but that can be done when the nose of the horse isn't
stuffed in your face because it's sooo hungryyy.

Bobby's warm up flat work wasn't quite as focused as it is in the indoor, but that's par for the course when we ride outside. His jumping, however, was on point. Outdoor jumping > indoor jumping any day of the week.

We warmed up over the single barrel a few times each way because Bobby loves him a good skinny. Then we headed for the coop which looks decidedly small and not at all scary this year. I actually looked down at it in disdain as we flatted by it. 2'7" cross country jump, you don't impress us. My horse is ten now. We're too grown up to be afraid of you anymore.

I actually had to add some substantial leg to get Bobby to jump the thing from a good distance because he wasn't impressed with it either. Bobbys lope such silly fences now. Gone are the days of this:

me: look, naughty baby horse. we can approach it without it eating you.
bobby: NOT SURE THAT'S THE TRUTH.

We only did that a few times from the left before I got bored and wandered out of the ring with the hopes of doing a mini trail ride. Bobby proceeded to "spook" (His spooks involve much snorting and sometimes a sideways head--very serious stuff.) at pretty much everything we passed. The tarp that's been on the ground since last summer. The shavings in the outdoor bay that have lived in that spot longer than he's been at this barn. Hay. The port-a-pottie. A ~~snake~~ stick. My car. His reflection in the door to the warming room. A pile of snow.

It was all fair game.

"alert! i sense grass ahead! might be deadly!"

Unfortunately we didn't make it far because of a tree down over the entire trail, but at least we were out of the ring for a few minutes.

I took him out for his monthly conformation picture which he stood like a gem for and proceeded to follow me back into the barn at his usual ambling pace. That is until SOMETHING VERY SCARY HAPPENED (possibly there was air in the....air....) and he took a flying leap forward, spun around to face me, and had a snort fest.

Once I assured him I was very impressed with how crazy he is, he plodded the rest of the way back to his stall.