Spring? Huh?

I woke up to this this morning:

I had to scrape a good 3" of snow off of my car. THREE INCHES. And as I was taking it off, more was piling on! It's the end of March! Good thing this area supposedly doesn't get a lot of snow...lol.  I think it's funny that we've had more snow in the month that is supposed to be spring, than during the rest of this winter put together.

In 3 days, it will have been exactly 6 months of cold weather for Charles and me. This is the longest either of us has experienced winter. The locals keep saying that it isn't usually this cold for this long in this area; that usually it really starts to drop around December.  It's been cold since the end of October. I think it was better when, being used to living in places where it is the same temperature year-round, I kept involuntarily thinking that this is just how it would be forever and ever. But we had a couple of days in the 50's where we didn't have to wear 5 layers to walk out the door, and now we want those days back!

Parking lot from work

Courtyard at work

On another note, does anyone know what happened to Fugly Horse of the Day? The link doesn't work anymore. I really liked the direction in which the new administrator had taken the blog, but her and the blog seem to have completely disappeared.

WW: Snow storm

I posted these on my Facebook wall today. We had about 6" of snow!

It was coming down hard and fast. My first time seeing horizontal snow!

 The barn was closed today due to the snow-BQ sent out an e-mail that they'd re-open as soon as they could plow. The snow has already started to melt, so I don't think that'll be a problem tomorrow.

Flurries

On Saturday, it started to flurry as I was walking out of the apartment to the truck. It was still coming down when I parked at the barn. All of the horses were turned out, but for once they were in the upper portion of the field, something that I had not seen in almost 2 weeks. I was getting spoiled with not having to walk across at least 7 acres to fetch Lily...

She tried her little stunt of hiding behind other horses, despite most of the herd following me as I made my way to her, all of them thinking I brought treats. I walked right up to one of Lily's buddies, Beauty, the little black pony mare from when Lily was still being introduced to grass in the medical paddock, and started petting her. This got Lily's attention, and I stopped petting Beauty and faced Lily. She came. 

"Maybe if I hide back here, she won't see me."

"Wait...why is she petting her??" When I was giving Beauty all the attention...



The frozen chute. The chute is a wide path that connects the upper and lower portions of the field. It's usually pretty muddy, but it was frozen solid and extremely uneven terrain. Lily walked sound over it-no ouchiness at all with her newly bare front feet. But it was tough going anyway-I gave her lunge line so she could pick the best footing, but she ended up getting right behind me and following in my footsteps. :)

As we were coming out of the frozen chute, 2 of the other boarders were walking past us to get their own horses. The flurries were coming down harder by then, and I just kind of stood at the edge of the slope to the bottom portion of the field, looking at the winter landscape and grinning like an idiot. The other boarder, a lady in her late 60's who owns 2 horses and whom I truly consider hard-core (this woman rides EVERY DAY. Every single day. Right now she has a herniated disk, and she still rode. At a walk, but she still got on her mare. She's a tough one!), looked at me. "It's so beautiful!" I said as an explanation. "Don't you miss Florida?" she asked. "No! Not one bit! I love this!" I told her, and she laughed. "Well, I wouldn't mind being in Florida right now!" she said.

The view from the top of the bottom field. You can see the flurries when you enlarge this photo.

A snow-dusted Lily

Snowy hooves!

Inside the barn.

I tacked Lily up in the barn, and took her to the indoor again. The footing in the outdoor was also frozen to the consistency of concrete. There was only one other rider in the indoor, so at least it wasn't as crowded as the previous day. The footing, however, was slightly loose, but it was in dire need of a good dragging-you could tell it had also been frozen earlier in the day. I decided to keep the ride short and sweet, as I didn't want Lily getting her feet and tendons concussed on such a hard surface. 

We walked for a long time, then trotted a bit, and cantered once in each direction to warm Lily up thoroughly. Then we proceeded to do a productive 25 minutes of trotting and walking. The other rider left, and she was substituted by one of the trainers riding a student's horse. Of course, being a trainer, she was riding similar patterns to my own-changing directions a lot, circling at the ends of the arena, so it got interesting maneuvering around her. When I was a beginner rider starting out in the jumper world, I took lessons in a fairly crowded arena environment-my trainer at the time would be giving lessons to multiple riders of different levels at once. I got used to doing my thing while at the same time watching out for riders coming around in the opposite direction, and students flying over the fences laid out across the ring. To this day, I rarely ever have to call out, "Outside!" while riding-I just stay attuned to what everyone else is doing in such a manner that I can stay out of their way. 

My favorite part of the ride was when I deliberately decided to ride in the opposite direction the trainer was going. Each time she changed direction, so did I, just to keep going opposite from her. I stayed on the inside track along the quarter lines, and every time I passed her I would slide Lily over to the rail, not by letting her drift in a diagonal line, but by asking her to leg yield over to the rail at the trot. Lily did a fantastic job, and I confirmed each time in the mirrors that she was gliding over to the rail in 3 trot strides, crossing her legs correctly, no more butt drifting. It was so cool to see! She was soft and relaxed each time I asked for these baby leg yields-no overbending, no tail wringing. Each time we'd change directions, we'd go across the diagonal of the arena, and then 3 strides before reaching the opposite corner, I'd sit and ask her to leg yield the rest of the way to the rail. We did all of this a few times in each direction, but didn't overdo it. We finished up by trotting small circles in each corner, then walking out on a loose rein so Lily could stretch down. 

Afterwards, I untacked her and put her midweight blanket on (she had not broken a sweat at all with our fairly light workout), left her boots on, and decided to go for a walk in the woods with her. 

The footing was not concrete solid, thankfully, which is what allowed this to happen. It was fairly frozen, but since the ground was covered with fallen leaves, it was somewhat springy. Lily walked along behind me, and the flurries came down harder. We took the opposite direction from the one we usually do, to the right at the fork in the trail, towards the Dreaded Bridge. 

The snow

The bridge. This looks like a freaking painting...so beautiful!

The stream

We were standing by the bridge. I was letting Lily look around and settle a bit.

The flurries were coming down thicker here. 

The water was running fairly high through the stream beneath the bridge, and Lily became uneasy as we drew closer to it, continuing to follow behind me, but zig-zagging as we drew closer. She looked so pretty with the snow coming down-in real life she stood out against the whiteness. 

I crossed the bridge with her, after making sure it wasn't frozen underneath the light covering of snow, and Lily followed me without hesitation. We made it to the other side, and I had her stand and look around while taking some more pics. 

Still a little insecure, as you can see by her "question mark" ears (one forward and one back), but much calmer than before-she was choosing to stay next to me and her eyes were soft and relaxed.

By then she was really starting to settle. I crossed back over the bridge in front of her, and once on the other side, started to uncoil lunge line to send her across first. Lily became antsy when she realized what I was going to ask her to do, and tried to pretend she thought I was asking her to lunge, but I brought her back to neutral, had her stand in front of the bridge quietly for a minute, and sent her. She hesitated for a second, then went, all on her own, while I gave her more lunge line and followed a horse length behind her.

 

Crossing in front of me. The bridge was too long to send her all the way by herself. She was watching me as she went first, ear cocked towards me. 

This was very cool-according to Karl Hempfling, driving a horse from behind like this is the most difficult way of "leading" a horse. At some point I will properly reference him, as I can't find his book right now in the mess of boxes after the move! Lily made it easy, though. This is the first time we have attempted this in this manner. 

We crossed the bridge a couple more times, sending Lily across in front while I followed behind. 

 Crossing back over the bridge.  She was looking straight ahead but with an ear still pointing at me. Each time she went with more and more confidence, until by the last time she was enthusiastically popping onto the bridge, ears pricked, expression happy. "I can do this!"

Safe on the other side of the bridge

I stopped and bowed, and she turned and came on her own. Note the slack in the lunge line-I didn't pull her towards me.

We then made our way back to the trail, and walked back to the trail head, but continued on to the first ditch, which was now also dusted with snow. The footing was hard, but not slippery, and I tried to send Lily first, but she did not like the fact that it looked different yet again. I had her stand and stay, then crossed first, in part because I wanted to make sure it was as safe as it looked. When I turned around to look back at her from the other side, I had to grin: she was standing there, ears pricked forwards, 100% of her attention on me, as if she had studied closely how I had gotten across. I asked her to come, and she confirmed my suspicions by choosing exactly the same path I had chosen to cross the ditch! She literally stepped in my footprints! 

We continued on to the second ditch, but the stream that now crosses through it was half frozen over, and the banks were hard but slippery from the snow. I didn't want to have her lose trust in me by sending her into a situation that might be very dangerous for both of us, so we swung around and headed back. 

I had her cross the first ditch by herself a couple more times, then we walked back to the barn. All of the horses had been brought in from the field, since by then it was downright snowing. I removed Lily's boots and picked her feet, and got these shots of her hind hooves for you guys:

Left hind. You can see the remains of the old puncture wound in her frog. Her heels look faintly purple/pink due to the remainders of a previous application of Durasole.

Right hind.

Compare to the way they looked in FL. The old puncture wound in her left hind frog is almost healed-it's probably 1/4" deep now-more an indentation than the hole it used to be at its worst (at the time of the posting I linked back to, the hole was well concealed by the ridge across the center of her frog. Now you can see how big it was underneath that ridge!). I can scrape it with the hoof pick now and she doesn't care. Her white lines are still a little bit stretched, but she actually has a hoof wall now, whereas she barely had a wall before! Nothing special has been done with her hinds, other than the current trimmer's work, my touch-ups, applying Durasole to her soles, frogs and heels, and Magic Cushion to the left hind, which we discontinued a while back. 

Into her stall she went with a big pile of hay. She has lost some weight over the last couple of weeks, what with the true cold we're currently having and getting back into a more consistent work schedule. She still looks great, but I'm able to get her girth a hole tighter than usual. I told BQ and she is increasing Lily's evening hay to see if that helps. They feed whopping amounts of hay-exactly what I would feed with this weather. I love how BQ offered to first increase Lily's hay vs increasing her grain. 

It's nice to finally board at a barn managed and owned by real horsepeople.

A snowy arena. We'd had almost an inch of snow between the time I arrived at the barn and the time I left.

Hard-core

That's what 2 of the ladies at the barn called me today when they saw me working a fully tacked Lily at liberty in the indoor despite it being 27 degrees outside with a windchill of 6 degrees. Honestly, groundwork and riding are the only way to stay warm when it's this cold!

It was cold enough to make Aengus, the Maryland kitten, want to bundle up  in the hoodie I had just removed!

I woke up to a white world again, but by the time I left the house at 2:00 pm, most of the snow had blown away. There was some still at the barn, but not much.

Behind the indoor. There was still snow here, where it was blocked from the wind.

The horses were all in the bottom field again. Lily tried hiding behind her buddies (I should have taken photos of that!) but then gave up and came to me on her own, ears pricked and happy.

That's her in the purple (royal!) blanket. All of the other horses were clustered by the fence because a new  TB arrived and he had just been turned out in the medical paddock next door. Lily didn't care. She just continued grazing next to Jezebel, Sally's OTTB.

I tacked her up in the aisle, and ended up sliding a wind breaker on over my clothes because the frigid wind was cutting right through every single layer I was wearing. Her legs and hooves were uber muddy, but I scraped as much of it off as I could so I could take these pics for you guys. Of course while I'm photographing my mare's hooves, the new boarder is bringing her stuff in. She must've thought I'm nuts...

She was standing even more pigeon-toed than usual here...

Left front-the more upright hoof. 

Left front, underneath. 

Right front-the flatter hoof. She was shifting her weight when I took this pic. 

Right front, underneath. Sorry about all the mud. I had scraped it off, and she managed to step on a clump anyway.  

Left hind. It looks a little bull-nosed, but it's from the flash of the camera.

Right hind. 

I decided to ride in the indoor-with the wind, it was way too cold to ride outside. I walked Lily around to let her get used to the sound of the wind howling against the building, then got on. She was very, very "up" and distracted. We circled around and went in both directions, and she was still very looky, her ears pointing every which way except at me. I brought her to a stop in the center of the arena, dismounted, removed her reins and sent her off.

She galloped around and around and around, bucking and doing bicycles with her front legs in the corners. I let her go, every once in awhile asking her to change direction. When the fellow boarders turned up, I stopped to chat with them for a bit, and it was funny because Lily immediately came to a stop in the far corner of the arena and just waited there for me to finish talking, completely relaxed with her head down, occasionally sniffing at the ground, but with her attention 100% on me. As soon as my attention was back on her, she went right back to running around! Now, however, she was turning her head midflight to look at me, as if expecting some other command. I bowed, asking her to come to me, but this only made her circle around and continue in the opposite direction. I had her work for another 10 minutes or so, at a trot, then asked her to come to me again. This time she screeched to a halt at the far end of the arena, turned and marched right over to me until she was standing at arm's length. What a good girl!!!

I mounted up again, and she felt much better after allowing her to work off all of that excess energy. We did a brief warm-up at the walk, since she was already more than warm enough, and started working at the trot.

We had to get really creative for this ride. The indoor is the size of a small dressage arena (20m x 40m), so as soon as you have more than 2 horses in there, it gets pretty crowded. We started out by ourselves, but then 2 boarders came in to walk their horses around, a farrier parked his truck in the indoor (WTF??!!) and another rider joined us.

I mean, really???

Since Lily and I kept finding ourselves limited to a 20m circle at one end or the other of the arena, we did 10-10 at walk and trot, then 20-20 at walk and trot. I then added the canter, which was kind of a challenge because my attention was on the other horses and Lily was getting confused by my mixed signals-she kept trying to trot very fast into the canter. I had to keep bringing her back to a sane trot, and asking again. After the 4th attempt, she departed correctly and gave me a very UP canter, where I could see her knees flashing in front of her! I laughed, and after 20 strides brought her back to the trot. At that moment the other rider entered the arena and it was really getting crowded, so we ditched the 20-20, and instead circled at one end at the canter, crossed the entire arena diagonally at the trot, changed direction and circled again at the canter at the opposite end. We did this a couple of times. Then we did baby leg yields at the trot off of the quarter lines until I saw in the mirrors that Lily wasn't cheating by letting her hind end trail off to the side. Then we did circle at the trot, leg yield at the trot to canter depart. Canter a circle, trot across the diagonal, and repeat in the opposite direction. That was an interesting exercise, and while there is still room for improvement with the leg yield portion of it, she did very well when I asked her to pick up the canter on the correct lead. Basically, I had to push her over with my inside leg way back to keep her butt from trailing, then as we rounded the corner, bring my inside leg back to her girth with NO pressure, as I lightly swung my outside leg back and shifted my weight to cue the canter. She picked up the correct lead every time, instantly.

Lily was trying to get fast and flat, but responded when I half-halted and brought her back. It seems like we cantered a lot, but we did not-we were cantering about a minute at a time, between the lack of space and trying to make sensible figures while dodging the other 3 horses and the truck in the arena! This is how well she was responding: normally, I would not have cantered her AT ALL in an arena of that size with one other horse, never mind 3 others.

After this, I let her stretch at the walk, then brought her back and we did another variation of the 10-10: 10 trot strides and halt for 6 seconds. Then trot again for 10 strides. We did this several times in each direction. Then I added a challenge: trot 10 strides, halt for 6 seconds, back up for 8 strides, then trot for 10 strides. SHE DID IT!!! Her backing up was smooth and steady, and she was immediately springing into the trot from the rein-back. (She likes this sort of power-building exercise and can get quite excited about them!) We did this 4 times in each direction, then I let her walk out and stretch to cool down. She had barely broken a sweat on her neck, but then again, the temperature was dropping. Looking down, I could really see Lily's breath-it almost looked like I was riding a fire-breathing dragon. Speaking of fire, while cooling down, the farrier turned on the grinder on his trucks, and Lily got to watch. She was a very good girl-she looked at the sparks flying, but didn't spook at neither the sight nor the sound. Just kept on walking.

I dismounted, loosened her girth and took her for a brief walk outside, and tried to get a decent photo of her in her velvet pad and white boots, but she kept making faces...

"You're really going to take pictures right now? Just take me into the barn and undress me." She kept trying to come to me.

"This is boring."

"Mom, REALLY?? It's freaking COLD out here!" It didn't help that I laughed at her when she made that face...*lol*

"SOOO BORED!" She even cocked a foot in this one. 

I untacked her in the barn aisle, in a different spot because her stall was being re-done: John had purchased stall mats for Lily (her stall was one of two in the entire barn without mats), and him and the guys were working on leveling the stall floor and fitting the mats. Lily was slightly sweaty under her saddle pad, so I put her cooler on and let her sit while I put Durasole on her feet, put all of my stuff away, and talked to BQ and the new boarder.

By then, Lily's stall was ready and the little bit of sweat on her back had dried, so I put her midweight blanket on and let her go into her stall to eat her hay.

I've been trying to take her sheet and stable blanket home to wash (you guys saw the sheet in the bronc riding post...it's FILTHY) but with the radical ups and downs the weather has been doing, I hadn't been able to, as I don't have backup horse clothes. BQ gave me the clear to take them tonight, as it's supposed to stay in the 20s until Sunday.

Of course, I hosed the crap out of the sheet in the wash rack at the barn-I couldn't throw it in the washer with that much mud clinging to it-then wrapped the wet thing up into as small a bundle as I could make it and dumped it in the back of the truck with the stable blanket/cooler.

It's a 15 minute drive home from the barn. By the time I parked in front of the apartment and went to get Lily's clothes out of the truck bed, the sheet had FROZEN solid. Don't ask me why, but this cracked me up. I started laughing and laughing. I just...I LOVE IT, you know? This weather. I've been wanting seasons since I was a kid and would avidly read anything about surviving in the winter-breaking ice in the buckets and troughs, not leaving wet clothes out because they'll freeze, making sure you have waterproof insulated gloves or you will pay dearly, etc, etc. It's a neverending list of things, and it's just awesome to be able to finally EXPERIENCE it, to have to go back and review all of those things I read so long ago, because I'm actually putting the knowledge to use! When you have lived in hot weather your entire life, lands of ice and snow seem like something out of a fairy tale. You know they exist, but it is something far, far away that other people experience. It's nice to finally be one of those other people. There's a certain kind of magic in finding icicles hanging from the bottom of your car, in watching the snow blow away on the wind like plumes of smoke, in seeing your horse's breath in the air as you canter around the arena. Hell, even the layers: they are a pain in the ass but it is an art to get them just right!

Lily's sheet and stable blanket are officially clean again, and will go back to the barn tomorrow. There's supposed to be more snow tonight!

SNOW RIDE!!!

Has anyone else noticed that lately most of my post titles are full of exclamation points? Oh well-it's exciting stuff!

It was a BEAUTIFUL DAY!!! We had about 1"-2" of snow overnight. I had seen the forecast last night, but when I went to bed at midnight, no snow was falling yet. This morning I woke up, checked my e-mail and looked on Facebook. Charles and I have friends that live in Woodbridge, VA (about 30 min south of DC) and they had posted pics of their big chocolate Lab in their backyard...playing in the snow. I ran to the windows when I saw that, and this is what was waiting for me outside:

Oh my gosh!

I waited until 1:00 pm to head for the barn, as Sally would be there around that time and it meant there would be someone to talk to. I dressed in exactly the same clothes as yesterday, and this proved to be enough warmth-wise, and for the first time ever got to work warming up the truck and the accumulated snow off.

All of the horses were in the bottom part of the field again. The view was stunning as I pulled up to the barn:

The snow was like powder. Soft and fluffy, more like sand in consistency, and was blowing off of the roof tops like ocean spray in the light breeze. I was grinning like an idiot as I got out of the car and stomped around in the snow like a little kid.

Lily trotted away as soon as she saw me come into the turnout! She tried hiding behind her friends, but I cornered her by the fence, and here she gave up and came to me. Silly girl. That answered my question about whether she'd like the snow or not!

"Really, Mom? I want to stay out here!"
Me too, Lily!

Bottom part of the field

She was super-relaxed on the cross ties. Looking at the arena from the barn, I was dying to go ride out there-no one had ventured into the outdoor yet, and the snow was like the most inviting smooth white carpet. I asked BQ how insane would it be to attempt, since obviously no one else had tried it, and she said it shouldn't be a problem-I already knew where the few ice patches were under the snow, as they had already been frozen the last 2 days, and the snow hadn't melted and refrozen yet.

So we rode in the snow!

She really didn't  care, and stayed focused throughout, even when one of the horses in the paddock next to the arena charged the fence while we were walking by on a loose rein!

We did a similar warm-up to what we did yesterday and moved on to the same exercises, except we worked longer on the 10-10-10. I added the canter today, and Lily was ON IT! She nailed those transitions spot-on! Initially she was freight-training through the trot to canter transitions, so I brought her back to 10-10 only at trot and walk until she settled, then gave it another try. Her canter was so uphill and collected - it was the definition of having her "in front of my leg"- that I turned the exercise into 20-20-20. By the end of the exercise (we did 15 minutes total), she was picking up the canter in response to me gathering my outside rein and shifting my weight slightly-nothing else. After that we did spirals in the corners again, and for these she was very soft-reaching down into the contact and staying there. It was a nice, nice workout.

The one drawback of the Eponas? She does get ice balls in them, especially in the right front. Now I'm really looking forward to her being completely barefoot again. I picked the ice balls out after the ride, groomed her well (she's really enjoying getting curried right now!), and let her go outside again for another hour before going back to bring her in to her warm stall and giant pile of hay.

I hung around the barn, yakking to Sally and BQ, until my feet started to get really, really cold in my snow boots (those Blizzard boots are truly awesome-everyone else was slipping and sliding in their paddock boots, but mine have mad grip even on the ice!) Sally, who is from Southern California, was also getting cold, so her and I left at the same time, fleeing to our respective homes.

It was a gorgeous, productive day!