Down Memory Lane

I apologize in advance for the pictures of me. I also apologize for the quality of the photos, but they were taken a very long time ago, before digital, before SLR, damn near before fire, stored in a box and then photographed on my phone.

Queenie. My heart and soul as a child, teenager and young adult.

I have tears streaming down my face from posting this photo.

 

Try not to underestimate the attractiveness of the 1970's Western attire.

 I have a story to tell about that hat . . . 

 The outfit I am wearing is a powder blue, which matched the breast collar and saddle blanket. It was the outfit I wore when I graduated from High School. It made a most spiffy Western outfit.

Bold Ace born to Queenie on May 5, 1976. About a month before the Teton Dam disaster.

Bold Ace. He died at 5 from a twisted intestine.

Shadow Dancer. Born 1978. 7/8 Appaloosa, 1/8 Arabian.

He had great color and he was the sweetest colt I ever worked prior to Ashke.

Shadow ended up tri-colored bay, with a blanket that started half way down his neck and tri-colored spots (brown, bright bay and black). 

Kiki. Born 1981. Only filly and zero appy color. 3/4 Arabian and 1/4 Appy.

Topped out at 14.2hh. 

Queenie and Kiki at a distance. That filly was going to be marvelous. She had great action and movement. Unfortunately, I just couldn't keep her.

 Bela's Impressive. Born 1990 out of Classic Impressive. HYPP negative. Bought for $1200. Registered him in my girlfriend's name (not J). Came home one day to find him gone. She sold him to a cowboy for $400 in order to buy herself some new shoes. He was two here and out of one of the best QH halter stallions to ever show (too bad Impressive passed on a horrible mutation no one knew about until he had completely contaminated the pool of QH breeding forever.)

Kiele. 5 year old National Show horse out of Legerdemain (American Saddlebred).
Even crazier than Sham, just not as mean. I could ride her, but she was never safe.

And just because I grew up in Idaho, where shit like this is very common, I thought I would share a picture I took one evening while driving from Pocatello to Denver. Shit like this happens all the time in the west:

This guy was doing 55 miles an hour on a dirt road and both the truck and the horse were bouncing all over the place.

What is wrong with people?

Thursday:TTT

Yes, I know, we took a hiatus for the holidays and I haven't posted one of my entertaining tall-tales for a while. So, back by popular demand . . .

When I was sixteen I started working with my black cowboy friend, Dick. He owned Popcorn and several other horses and we spent a lot of time together getting his BLM mustangs under saddle and behaving like proper horses. We spent hours riding in all types of weather (I was younger and tougher then) and he was the first one to show me how to rope off my horse. We did some team roping, a lot of trail riding, and some hunting (one of the nice things in the West is there is always something to toss a rope over, something to ride or something to shoot). The fall I turned seventeen, Dick finally got a tag for a bear. He had been on the waiting list for several years (he had taken a black bear in South Dakota I think, several years before and had a pair of too-die-for chaps made out of the pelt) and his number had finally been drawn in the lottery.

The tag was for a brown bear (grizzly) in the Palisades Dam area, between Yellowstone, WY and Eastern Idaho. Dick asked me if I wanted to go and I said yes. I didn't have a gun. I was just going for the fun of it. We took Queenie and Popcorn and figured we would ride them in, shoot the bear and then use the horses to haul out what we took. Dick wanted the head, the pelt and some meat (although I have to say eating bear meat of a male grizzly who is in it's middle age is not so tasty. Pretty rank, actually.) I had no idea what I was getting myself into, I just figured it would be a fun ride.

Now, I'm not opposed to hunting . . . . it's something we did. We lived on deer meat when I was younger (I don't like deer at all), slaughtered chickens, pigs and calves for food, hunted duck and rabbit and pheasant like every one else in Southern Idaho (in fact, our rule for T has always been "you can hunt whatever you like, but you kill it cleanly and you have to eat it.") I'm a decent shot with a shotgun, can handle a rifle and a pistol, although the largest caliber pistol I shot was a .22.

I must digress . . . I was working for a fast-food company in my late twenties. They were based in Colorado and decided to have a management retreat at a operating dude ranch in the Rocky Mountains near Decker. It was a pretty fun three days, filled with management meetings (boring) in the morning and free activities in the afternoon (spent a lot of time trail riding in the afternoon). One of the days they offered skeet shooting. A group of men, regional managers and the President of the company, (I was one of three women managers in the company) decided they were going to prove their manliness by shooting the guns. I tagged along. By the time we got to the shelter for the skeet shooting, the men had a pool going: $20 a piece and the shooter with the most skeet (clay discs flung into the air that you shoot at) would take the pot. They were ribbing each other and pretty much ignoring me, although they did allow me to throw my $20 into the pot, thinking it would up the ante without risk.

I went last.

A guy named Scott H did the best among the men, which I guess was to be expected since he was jawing the most, he hit and shattered 12 out of 25 and chipped two. They finally let me step up, acting like it was a waste of time, and were still chatting and ribbing each other when I picked up the gun. It was a pump-action 12 gauge. Just like my daddy's gun. I raised it, getting a feel for the weight and balance, then called for the pull. I shattered 21 out of 25, and chipped an additional 2. So I touched 23 out of 25 skeet. There was dead silence when I was done. The good humor and baiting between the men was absent as I picked up my winnings. It was bittersweet. I was driven out of the company by Scott H two weeks later (he was my regional manager). But, I do know how to handle a gun.

So, back to hunting the bear . . .

We loaded the horses up in my horse trailer early and headed for the Palisades region. The drive was a little over two hours. We parked and unloaded the horses, saddling them and Dick slid his 30-30 lever action Marlin into the scabbard attached to his saddle. We tied on jackets to the back of the saddle and Dick tied his tarp (to wrap the bear in) over the top. We each had a lariat and a couple of extra ropes tied on. I had a set of saddlebags with sandwiches and sodas on the back of the saddle. Dick slid a bunch of hollow point bullets into his vest pocket for the gun and we were off.

The mountains around Palisade's dam are incredible.

 

They are the mountain range the rests right on the border between Wyoming and Idaho, with the Grand Tetons to the North.

 

 

There is usually snow, at least when I was younger, on the north facing slopes, and we were riding in early October.

Hunting bear is not as exciting as it sounds. We trekked up the mountainside, riding deer trails up switchbacks, along some pretty decent screefields and drop offs. In some places, the horses were forcing their way through brush taller than we were, (deer are much shorter), and the path was rocky and steep. The horses had to scramble a couple of times and at one point Dick and I both dismounted to lead the horses across a narrow chasm of shale rock. It was hard work and after a couple of hours of riding, I was beginning to lose interest in finding a bear, being much more interested in keeping my hide and Queenie's in one piece. The ride was beautiful but so demanding, I really didn't get a chance to do much but focus on our next step.

We were coming up a pretty steep piece of trail, with Popcorn and Dick in the lead, Queenie and I just behind. The trail opened up into a little meadow. The edges of the meadow were lined with Aspen and bramble bushes, with a small creek winding its way through the middle. The horses both stopped to drink and Dick and I were discussing whether we should stop and eat, letting the horses graze a bit in the fairly thick, although definitely not green, grass available. The horses had just lifted their heads, water streaming from their mouths, and were eying the menu options, Dick and I arguing amiably, when there was a hoarse, grunting bark from the far end of the meadow, which was suddenly way smaller than it appeared.

A freaking grizzly bear stood up from the bushes at the far end of the meadow and huffed at us again. It was tall and broad and waved it's claws in typical bear fashion and the smell of it was pretty intense. That was all I saw, because my mare, the mare who had followed me across a railroad bridge, and into a house, and swam a river at my request, had had enough. She jumped and spun so quick that the meadow was a blur and the only thing that kept me in the saddle was the fact that I had been resting my hand on the saddle horn, which I held onto for dear life. Queenie headed back down the trail we had just come up, her butt tucked up under her and she was running for her life. All I could do was hang on.

 

Did you ever see The Man From Snowy River?  That was us.

 

 

We made the trip back down much quicker than the trip back up. Popcorn, for all of Dick's bragging that he had hunted bear on Popcorn before, was right on Queenie's heels. It passed in a blur of bush, treelimbs and sliding rock noises, with the faint grunts of the bear somewhere in the background. After the majority of the mountain was traversed at a dead run, I was finally able to pull Queenie up, trembling and sweat soaked, lather dripping from her shoulders and flanks. Popcorn wasn't much better off. Dick didn't even suggest we try to go back up. We just walked, head hanging and exhausted, back to the trailer, loaded up and headed home.

 

Dick went back up a couple of days later, found, tracked and killed the bear, hauling him out on a packhorse he had taken with him. I did not go.

 

Queenie was fine and recovered without issue. We did not hunt bear after that, however. 

Chaos

When I rode on Monday night, one of the things we kind of struggled with was riding off the rail. On the rail, Ashke is a beast.  He moves with rhythm and purpose, is more willing to try a frame, and is in his groove (literally). Moving off the rail becomes an issue and we struggle. In part, we struggle because the footing is deep and wet and plain sand, all of which make moving difficult, partly because he understands what he's supposed to do when moving on the rail. He knows his job and he is predicting what will be asked of him. He has a routine and a plan.

Cassandra recognized that tonight in our lesson and told me to ride Chaos. Organized chaos.

Chaos is where you ride without a plan, doing small circle, serpentines, teardrops, straight aways, diagonals and weaving like a drunk sailor. It is designed to shake up the horse and encourage him to listen to me instead of predicting what I am going to ask him to do next. It also takes the rail away as a crutch for the rider. As the rider, the rail becomes part of the half-halt: inside leg to outside rail. When we move away from the rail and begin to work outside of a pattern, it forces both the horse to listen and react to the rider, as well as forces the rider to direct the horse. Chaos or undefined pattern, as it actually is, is much more difficult than riding an oval.

We did not do it well.

I do, however, see the benefits of the process. By the time we had been riding that way for fifteen minutes or so, I could feel when Ashke was feeling more confident, since he would really swing into the trot, usually when we were moving toward the rail. It was like he would see the rail and go "oh, look, I know what to do there. I know where to step and I can use the rail to help me balance." And he would become more balanced as we moved toward it. Then ragged again when we moved away.

It will be our homework for the next two weeks.

That and canter transitions. Yes, we cantered. Yes, I did a bit better. Ashke was much better. There was less struggle, but I still had to remember to breathe. He came right down to the trot when I asked. I think if we can do four trot-canter-trot transitions in each direction every time we ride for the next two weeks, we will be much better in our next lesson. My body is beginning to figure it out.

Although, I do look like a complete fruit loop, arms flapping and legs flailing. Cassandra wants me to lift him up with my heel at the canter, rather than jab my heel repeatedly into his flank. We want lift not speed. I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to do all of the miniscule muscle movements she's talking about and still stay on the horse.

I'm not so good at multitasking on horseback. She was telling me to do something and rather than assume I knew what the hell she was talking about, I stopped and asked her to show me what she meant. She did and I came away with good understanding, but it's still a struggle.

Western riding is not this damn complicated.

Wordless Wednesday: For Saiph

Conversation

Last night went something like this . . . .

I walk into the barn and whistle. Ashke throws his head up and frantically begins yelling,

"Mom, Mom, Mom. You are here."
"Hey Buddy, how's my boy?"
"Where are my carrots?!?!?!"
"Here you go." He gets two pieces to start, otherwise he gets really nippy.
"Nom, nom, nom."

I put his halter on, while he snuffles my sweatshirt for additional carrots (eternal optimist). We go over to the cross-ties and I hook him up, then grab the grooming kit.

"Mom, mom, mom."
"I'm here. Calm down."
"Is Cali coming? Huh? Huh? Is N here? Where's N? Why isn't Cali coming? Why, mom, why?" His whole body was straining to see if she was walking down the aisle toward him.
"I don't think she's coming, buddy."
"oh."
Tail comes down and he stops dancing.

I groomed him, taking care to do extra on the ticklish spots. It never ceases to amaze me that he is shedding during the middle of winter when the highs were 9 degrees the day before. We took extra time over his haunches, because they seemed especially itchy. Then I brought out the saddle and set it on his back.

"TOO TIGHT, MOM!!!! The GIRTH is TOO TIGHT! I'm going to pass out. I can't breathe."
"It's not too tight Ashke."
"TOO TIGHT. It hurts! It Hurts!"
"It's not even on the saddle yet, doofus. See, it's here in my hand."
"Are you sure? You don't have two of those things, do you?"
"I'm sure. I'm going to hook it up now."
"Well, it's going to hurt."
"No, it's not. See?"
"It's too tight. I'm going to expire from lack of air. I can't breathe. I feel faint."
"IT'S NOT EVEN TOUCHING YOU!! I can see daylight between it and the bottom of your belly."
"oh. It's going to be too tight."
Sigh.

I swear he and T have more in common than you would think. And trust me, girls have nothing on boy drama. Over Christmas, T broke his little toe riding his new BMX bike. He didn't want me to touch it. I finally convinced him to let me tape it. I carefully taped it to the toe next to it with a flexible tape, then strapped the ball of his foot for more stability. When I was done, he burst into tears, saying it really hurt. I asked him if he had stepped on it, yet. He said no. Then he did and it didn't hurt any more. Ashke is exactly the same way.

We finished getting ready and went to the arena. Bentley was just leaving and then Wrangler left, so we had the arena to ourselves.

"Okay, Ashke, we are going to get ourselves centered and then move forward at a walk."
"What's that over there?"
 "That is the corner of the arena. Just like it was the last time we rode."
"It's scary."
"It's not scary, stop being a giraffe."
"There is white stuff on the ground. Inside!"
"It's snow and it's not even in the arena."
"The ground looks funny. I should mince over it. Oh! Look! A white horse!"

We stopped and admired the white horse in the mirror. He was the only other horse there.

We had some good moments. He is beginning to understand that I want him to walk with his head lower, rather than up in the air. It helps him focus too. We did walk-stop and walk-trot transitions, working more to the left than the right. No canter, since there was no one to find my body if something happened. Then we did some leg yields going counter-clockwise. After that we stopped and did our turns on the forehand, haunches and sidepassing. All of which were better.

"Done now."
"No, buddy, we still need to leg yield to the right."
"Nope. Done. We are always done after the turns. I don't want to go any more."
"No, Ashke. We are not done. We are doing things in a different order this time."
"Nope. DONE!"
"You. Will. Move. Forward."
"Backwards!"
"Forwards."
"Slowly."
"Trot. Trot. Damnit, I pay the freaking bills, I say when we are done! Now TROT!"
"Mumble, mumble."
"What was that Ashke? Can you please just trot? There is no need to jig."
"bitch."
"What?"
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!! It is so scary I must spook at the gate and go sideways fifteen feet! HA! Take that you fiendish rider."
"You jerk. There is nothing to spook at there." Slap on the shoulder with my hand.
"Scared! Scared! You hit me on the shoulder with your hand."
"You tried to dump me on the ground by the gate. For no reason."
"You're mean."
"You are being a jerk. You will stand here until your head comes down and you soften."
"No. . . . No. . . . . Well, okay."
"You will walk forward with your head down. Use your back. Do not look at anything outside the arena."
"k."
"You will trot now, with rhythm, to the right, with your head down. Good. Now we will do our leg yields from the Quarterline to the outside rail, which you will do willingly. Now."
"k"
"Good boy. Now we can be done."

We walked a bit on a loose rein and he stretched downward a lot. We stopped and I got off, running up the stirrups and loosening his girth. We were at the far end of the arena (I don't get off by the gate, and try to pick a different spot each time we are done working) and as I led him back to the gate, he reached out and bumped the back of my shoulder with his nose. This is something he does when he is seeking reassurance. It's almost like he is checking that it is still me.

"Do you still love me, mom?"
"I still love you Ashke."
"Sorry I was a jerk."
"Me too."
"Are you still angry."
"No, It's in the past. You are a good boy!"
"Are there carrots. . . ."

Rider's Responsibility

When I was a kid, I had several horses. I participated in 4-H. The combination of those two things meant that I spent at least some of my riding working on the parts of my riding that would help me be successful when showing in 4-H. I learned to ride with my heels down and toes up, even bareback. I learned to ride a fast walk, slow jog and rocking canter with a loose rein. I figured out pretty quick that if I wanted to be any good, I needed to develop my seat. (I never learned to post, because back in the Ice Age, that was something only English riders did.) I know that my second year of owning the Shitland I spent at least two hours a day riding in a circle I had devised in the stockyard next door (we had no round pen) keeping my heels down and my toes forward, making that shithead work correctly, and was rewarded with two blue ribbons and a red in the fall.

I knew, even then, that riding well was about me. That the better I could balance, the better I could move with the horse, the better the horse would be. I knew, back then, that it was my responsibility to make us better. Part of that understand, however, was driven by the need to show.

Now . . . I'm not sure when or if I will show. I'm using dressage to help increase my communication with Ashke and to make me better as a rider. I think it's my responsibility to be as balanced and solid as I can be for him. I can't expect him to be a great ride, if I am flopping all over in the saddle like a sack of potatoes. The reasons are three-fold: 1) if I am balanced and riding correctly, he is balanced and can carry himself better; 2) me being off balance or riding poorly can result in effecting how he is carrying himself, which can lead to skeletal and muscular injuries or issues; 3) by working on my riding ability I am telling my partner that I am meeting him half-way, that we are working on things together, and it allows my body and his to accommodate our connection: co-being. That is it also decreasing the pain and issues with my back is an added bonus.

My point? My point is that I believe we, as serious riders (spending 5+ hours a week on our horses) have a responsibility to be better as riders.

Now, if your desire for a horse is for a four-legged creature you can feed carrots to, post pictures of on FB, and tool around in the arena for 45 minutes twice a week, it may not be as important to you to create that riding connection (as compared to the love and affection of an animal who loves carrots) as it is to me. But if your intention is to ride and ride a lot, then I think you owe it to the horse. We are the part of this partnership that has rational thought and can make changes in what we are doing, how we are riding, how we are asking for movement and behavior from our horse.

Why this topic? In part, because it was a high of 10 yesterday with blowing snow and I couldn't ride, in part because of a woman I know.

This woman grew up wanting a horse. She hacked out a few times when she was a teenager, but it wasn't structured and she didn't take lessons. When she got married, her husband talked her into moving to Colorado by promising she could get a horse if they did. She paid a couple of hundred dollars for a SE Arabian yearling rescue horse and spent the next three years grooming and feeding him carrots. When it came time to break him to ride, she sent him to a trainer for 30 days, who got him going under saddle. The first time this woman climbed aboard her horse, he refused to move forward for her. The trainer had her get off, ran a rope around his hind legs and dropped him, then had the woman stand on top of his barrel to prove to him he should do what she expected. He did after that. They rode together for 15 years or so. He got to the point where there was no cartilege left in his right hip and he couldn't be ridden any longer (the vet recommended he be put down, but the woman refused). He was retired. This was about the time I started riding Ashke. The woman started looking for a new horse.

Last February, she bought another SE Arabian. He was in pretty rough shape, difficult to bridle, poor ground manners, but was started under saddle. She looked at him, tried him for fifteen minutes in the dusk, and bought him without negotiation (no way would I have ever considered paying $2600 for that horse.) Her reasoning behind the purchase was that he was started under saddle and she would be able to ride him. That was the one thing she didn't think she could do. Of course, it never occurred to her that he was taught dressage, was being ridden dressage, and that maybe she would need to change how she was riding.

See, this woman wants to do one thing: she wants to get on, point her horse at whatever trail she's picked out and then go hell-bent-for-leather until she is done. The one time I rode with her, she was on a very out of shape Morab who hadn't been ridden in several months, and all she wanted to do was gallop. I said no, because Ashke was still having issues with his right hip and back, we were in the stupid Aussie saddle still and I wasn't willing to risk the potential damage we could do. We still rode 5 miles that day and the Morab was sweated from his ears to his tail by the time we were done. I can't imagine how he would have been if she had ridden the way she had wanted to.

Back to the new horse . . . he is now in training with C at my barn. After a year, the problems between this woman and her new horse have reached the point where she felt like he needed a trainer. Thank god she picked C, because C expects the rider to take at least one lesson a week with her and the horse, so they can figure each other out with the trainer there. (And C would never drop a horse on it's side and have the owner stand on it to prove a point.) I know that the one time I watched her on him, she was trying to make him move forward and I could see what the issue was. I told her to cue him with her inside leg (dressage trained, remember.) She changed her cue and he immediately moved forward. (Good boy.) The woman said, "I know he will move forward from the inside leg, but I want him to move off of my outside leg and he needs to learn what I want him to do." WTF? Then why buy a horse that has already been ridden under saddle?

Almost a year later, the horse is in training because he is spooky, rears, won't move forward, still doesn't trust people, hates the saddle she rides in and hates the bit. She wants C to "finish" him. C wants the two of them to figure out each other.

I want her to wake up and smell the roses.

It really bothers me that she doesn't see the need to improve her riding. She rides in a Tucker saddle (never buy one of these, they narrow over the loins and pinch the horse's back badly) and although she has been told by two different equine professionals that it doesn't fit and is hurting him, she really wants to be able to ride in it because it holds her on his back. She hates arena riding and really just wants to be able to get on and go. (She reminds me of a ten year old girl who only wants to run.) I feel bad for the horse. He physically hasn't improved since she brought him home. N thought he was twenty and not six, from his physical condition.

And now his owner is bashing the barn. Primarily because it has an indoor and riders who show. She hates dressage. She hates the people there. She hates the facilities. She refuses to bring him into the barn to groom and saddle him, preferring to tie him at her trailer. She hasn't made an effort to meet anyone. It's like she's offended that C isn't doing the work and turning over a horse she can stand on and then ride.

Why does this bother me so much?

Snow

We got a storm today with highs in the low 20's. Might I point out it hit 61 yesterday. Colorado is psychotic, I swear.

I stayed up until almost midnight making meat rolls for breakfast this morning, so T would have good food to eat on our way to catch the bus for Winter Park. He woke me up at 12:45 having some kind of nightmare. Then he woke me up at 3:50 needing his mattress and blankets fixed (he was cold). Then the alarm went off at 5:15. I'm tired. But, he had meat rolls for breakfast and he caught the bus on time (he had a great time skiing all day).

I came back home and put away the few Christmas decorations I had put up, rearranged furniture and cleaned the floor. The super sac I purchased for T six months ago was moved back upstairs and Skittle gave us extra loves (who knew the Super Sac was the size of a queen sized bed, very uncomfortable to sleep on and too big for T's room. It has become a very freaking huge dog bed.) Then we ran to the Trading Post to pick up more beads for my browband project. Then we headed to the barn.

It was snowing but N and I braved the weather to ride.

Cali was a bit high. N lunged her for a bit when we first got in the arena and she was channeling her inner rodeo horse.

We worked on Walk-Trot transitions

Stopping from my seat.

Cali and N

Neither horse looks particularly happy in this pic.

He was very good for me today. Despite the lack of riding and the weather.

Cali settled down too.

We went in both directions. Just walk and trot. The indoor was in the low thirties, and I didn't want him sweated up at all. He felt really good and moved very well.

He also Looked At All the Things. Especially J and Cali.

I posted for a little while, which I haven't been able to do before. First, because my core is getting stronger, and second, because it is much easier to do when you are balanced on the balls of your feet and not trying to keep your heels down.

We stopped to admire ourselves.

We did some awesome leg yielding from the quarterline to the rail, which Ashke picked up very quickly. For the first time we are having zero problems with moving laterally.

He was working the bit a lot, listening and trying. All of our lateral work was amazeballs today.

We did sidepassing, leg yields at a trot, turns on the fore and turns on the hind. He was awesome.

J said his lower lip was quivering, he was concentrating so hard.

We had such a great ride. At the end I was riding on a loose rein and turning him in circles with my heel. In both directions. I was so impressed.

Best horse friends, best riding compadre.

Lots of lipstick.

Doing it again tomorrow.