I’ve read several books and love the ones centered around a horse themed life (imagine that!) but there aren’t many, and there are less good ones. Well I’m almost finished with a book now and I needed to write a blog (also still putting off doing the Rolex video, go procrastination) and I decided to share my opinion of the book “Blaze of Glory” by M. Garzon. I don’t care for the title of the book, but the title isn’t really a big deal to me. Title’s seem like they would be hard to come up with…

Anyways! I love this book… I’m not done yet, maybe the end will make me change my mind. I won’t give any spoilers, but you see the world through the eyes of Tea, the main character. She seems awesomely typical and seems easy to relate to while reading. The suspense in the situations (which I can’t share with you) is very good, I have barely been able to put the book down. I read the first chapter as a downloadable sample and I wasn’t quite intrigued, but wanted a book to read so I bought the full version the next evening. After the second (or third) chapter, I was helplessly hooked.

My only complaint (other than the title) is some of the chapters seem so loooong. But again, this is such a minor detail when it comes to the content – which is what matters. And the content is fabulous.

Tea is a jumper competing in both jumper and hunter classes and ends up learning polo from her “cousin” when they get a new pony who isn’t suited for jumping. I’m not sure what else to say without spoiling the surprises… So I’ll stop before I spoil anything (else)! If you like romance and horses, you’ll love this book. At least, I did

Artwork is no longer a part of Filly Tracks, as I decided to focus Filly Tracks more on training and news related horse stuffs. But I’m running a donation sale for Horse Rescue United, so figured I could share the sale on the FT blog

My new artwork site is called Dots with Doonie and everything previously on this website is available over there. For the time being (which is currently open ended) I am donating 50% of all sales to Horse Rescue United for pieces up for sale on the DWD sale page. Shipping is free and items are unframed. Originals and prints are titled, signed and dated on the back. Prints are also numbered on the front and back, as the prints are limited to 20 each.

So head over and check things out! Maybe you’ll see something you like

I used a blender to grind up the previously mentioned ingredients, added some molasses, oats, apple cider vinegar and some whole wheat flour. Mixed them all together and put them in the oven! They looked pretty scary… smelled… well, like molasses & stuff, and wouldn’t stick together very well. Even after the oven they fell apart with a gentle enough squish. I had my doubts, until we brought them to the barn…

The horses absolutely LOVED them! It didn’t matter that they were falling apart. We’ve never seen our horses like a treat so much… I take that as a good sign, haha. But I need to get them to stick together better. And it’s not like I am good at keeping track of amounts of what I add… I just like to mix things together until they look ok… Not always the best, I’ll admit. But lets me try to be a bit creative and sometimes I make something good, like these treats!

So next go, I’ll try to make them stick together better. I have yet to figure out how I will do that…

So this past Friday I got out an worked all 3 horses and it was hot out! I’m not a fan of the heat, but not much I can do about it. Annie did very well with her straightness training, Angel did ok – I don’t think she likes the heat either! Brady was last, but he didn’t seem to mind.

I went out to the pasture to bring him in… He never runs – it’s sooo awesome! He’s always happy to see people it seems. I brought him in, he was nice and calm, stood very well to be brushed and tacked. He stood so well I gave him an early treat (I don’t usually give them until after we’re done) – but he deserved it.

• His first new experience… He had a bit for the first time! We have a rubber snaffle for him and his new headstall (from horse.com) just came. He needed a bigger size than the ponies! He took the  bit well for a first time and chewed on it. I took it off and put it back on, then put his rope halter over it and let him wear the bit while we worked with no reins attached. Within 10 minutes he seems to forget he had it on, chewing on it just occasionally. We did some ground work and then I got on him and we did some walking around the arena, changes of direction, yield the hind end, yield the front end, stop, go… The normal baby stuff.
• I had then decided I wanted us to trot… I had been thinking this before but hadn’t found a good opportunity. Well this was one… No one in the arena, Brady calm and being perfect… Why not? So we trotted! We trotted without help from the ground (because no one was around, haha) and without a whip or anything! We didn’t trot much, just one wall of the arena but I got him to do it numerous times both directions and was extremely pleased at how willing he was. I was also very excited to feel his trot! His trot looks so big from the ground, but it was surprisingly smooth! I can’t believe a trot that big is that easy to sit! Maybe it’s because I was excited, or only did short bursts so I’m not remembering it quite right… But I’m pretty sure it was super awesome, haha! I think it also helped that during our ground work I will usually say “trot” or “walk” and I think those help once the transition to the saddle is made, especially when you work on your own a lot and don’t have someone on the ground to help.
• The other thing that I wanted to do with him, but hadn’t yet, was ride outside! I figured why not push my luck, he was still in the game. At this point, even though we did a lot we had only been working maybe 30 minutes including the ground work. So I asked him to walk out the back door of the arena. We walked around the round pen, which is out behind the arena… Then walked down the side of the arena into the parking area and down the road a little bit. Turned around and came back to go around the round pen… and there it was, the train was coming! There are train tracks that run parallel to the barn behind the paddocks, but easily visible (and audible) from where we were. I’m bad at judging distance… But, the horses in the paddocks were trotting around a bit and Brady was a bit worried, even though I’m sure he’s seen and heard this train go by plenty of times. He was good though, trotted a little bit and we went back into the arena. There is another big door so we stopped and watched the train go by. After it passed we went back outside and around the round pen a few times and he did fabulous! So back into the arena we went and we were finished!

What an amazing boy Brady is! I think it’s safe to say he’s sold us very well on the Irish draught breed. I hope in the future to get an irish draught sport horse, maybe one a little shorter, haha. All in all, we are very happy to have him as a part of our family and owe a constant thanks to his breeder, Epona Farm for working with us on purchasing him

Annie and I took a break from riding because we had just hit a wall and things weren’t looking. I even took a few lessons, but Annie has an obvious problem with contact on the bit and I was advised to just ride her into the contact until she got used to it. So I gave it an honest try, I felt. But it wasn’t working – Annie and I were just fighting and our rides weren’t pleasant. We’d have nice moments, but the average was not nice. Then, I was fortunate enough to come across straightness training, and I’m not sure where we would be without it. It has really made Annie a different – happier – horse.

So about 2 weeks ago I tacked Annie up. While I groomed her she was relaxed and happy. When I went to tack her up, she got a bit defensive and I could tell there was some anxiety with the idea of the saddle. So we went to the arena and did our ground work as usual. Then I went to get on her. All I wanted to do with her was try the LFS (lateral bending, forward down, stepping under) on a large circle at a walk. Annie definitely held some resentment towards riding as she walked very fast, didn’t want to yield to many aids. She was rushing an unbalanced. I didn’t use a bit, just the cavesson. Using my legs I managed to get her into a circle, even though she was rushing a bit. I then used my inside leg and a bit of give/take on the reins to ask for the LFS, making sure the rein contact was always an ask/give and never constant pressure. I could tell when she did the LFS, because she was in balance, and because she was in balance, she slowed down. I got a few steps in both directions a few times and I was happy. So we finished.

I rode her again the other evening. This time I was pleasantly surprised that she wasn’t defensive or anxious at all about being tacked and stayed very relaxed. I was even trying to hurry a bit because there was still some light out and I wanted to ride outside. This time, instead of the cavesson I had an english style hackamore with two sets of reins – one on the shank, one that was just acting as side pulling with no shank action. I had used on our ground work a few times. I walked her out into the arena, still nice and calm. I thought, what the hell, there isn’t much daylight left. So I hopped on and outside we went. She was fantastic! I had forgotten how sure footed she was. It was sooo muddy as we had just caught a break between storms and we walked around the property for about 10-15 minutes before returning to the arena.

Once back in the arena, I asked her again for some LFS both directions at the walk and she did is fabulously! It’s not perfect, but she gave me her all when I asked. Her muscles will strengthen and stretch with time for better quality. Daringly, we moved to the trot and even got a few great steps in both directions! She came back down to a walk when I asked, there was no rushing like before. We were both very relaxed. It was the best ride I’ve had on Annie to date!

I think I won’t ride her next time, I can let myself get too excited about riding and forget the ground work. The ground work is what has gotten us this far, so we need to continue. It’s a great start.. and I can’t believe how relaxed we both were! Thank you Marijke de Jong and straightness training… I don’t know if I would still have Annie if we hadn’t started this type of training

Since we’ve been working with Brady more, and doing lots of new things his confidence is definitely improving! He’s very worried when working with him, like he’s unsure if he’s going to do what you want. That side of him is leaving and he’s starting to be more confident in knowing exactly what I want, which is very exciting! He doesn’t usually do anything wrong, but I feel like before he was only maybe 60% sure of what I was asking of him, and now it’s more like 80%

I rode him again, this time with a hackamore with 2 sets of reins – one set on the shank and another set that was just side pulling. He did very well for him only having a handful of rides. There were even 3 other people riding and running around in the arena and he watched them, but still did what was asked of him, even if he was a little fussy about it, haha. I love how not worried he is about other horses… It’s a nice change of pace from Annie, who is very herd bound and can be a different horse depending on if she’s alone or not… and then there are her heat cycles. I love Annie, but I’m glad there’s only one of her in our herd.

I also have done all of his rides except his first one in the english saddle instead of the western, I just don’t have any photos of us in the english saddle

At the Rolex I also purchased an eggbutt rubber snaffle for Brady.. Then I realized I don’t have a headstall big enough for him! So I ordered a warmblood sized headstall for him that should be arriving within the next week. Not a super expensive one, but hopefully it fits! I think I’m going to put him in the snaffle as soon as the headstall gets here, and use the rope halter to transition him over to the bit. The hackamore worked ok with him, but it doesn’t fit him as well as I would like, so we’re going to stick to the rope halter until the bit comes in. Also if I can get out when it isn’t dark out, I’d like to ride him outside a bit. I think trails and outdoor riding will be good for him since we don’t want to start any real work yet…

So all good news! Have some things to write about Angel too… but will save that for another blog, this one is long enough!

Thanks for reading!

The other night I was thinking of how I would like to add a little pizazz to our work – even with the other horses. Sometimes I have Brady go over ground poles, and the bridge, but that’s really it. So for my own issues with a short attention span, and wanting to build Brady’s confidence I decided we would work over some poles this time. He was walked and trotted over plenty of ground poles, but never more than 2 at a time and he always hits them. This time we started out with 3 poles and the middle one was elevated about 1.5 feet. He has been over this mini jump before, just at a walk. He’s tall enough that it doesn’t even reach his knees! Anyways, so we longed over the 3 poles with the big on in the center and poor Brady was having quite a bit of trouble. He would slow down a bit but couldn’t adjust his strides to make it cleanly over the poles – and we had adjusted and readjusted to what we thought he needed for his stride and no luck.

Then my boyfriend suggested adding another around pole. At this point I thought – that might make him trip over himself worse! But after thinking and talking about it, we decided to add another pole. They are just ground poles anyways… How bad of a situation could we encounter? (haha, luckily not my famous last words.) So a 4th pole was added. I let Brady walk over the poles first and he seemed ok… so onto the trot and I’ll be damned, he did BETTER! What? Maybe just a fluke… so the other way – also better! After doing it a few times to make sure it wasn’t just a coincidence we were convinced he was doing better, but still hitting the poles. So we thought… a 5th? Surely that wouldn’t make him do even better would it? Time to find out!

Pole #5 was added… and on the first try, for the first time ever, Brady didn’t hit one pole! Not even the tall one! So we did it the other way and perfect! Then we stopped on poles for the night so we didn’t push our luck too far.

At first we were a bit surprised, but then after putting some thought to tried to figure out how Brady see’s these things. Our conclusion is that when there are less poles it’s easier for him to go through them without really caring where his hooves are, because it’s over soon, if his stride isn’t aligned with the poles it doesn’t matter – there are only 3 so he can make it through without thinking a lot. But… when there are 5, not being lined up is much more of a problem because if he messes up over the first pole (which he can do) he still has 4 more to worry about, and a tall one in the middle. So, we think having more poles forces him to pay attention and not be lazy-minded

It’s cool to see how his mind works, especially since Annie and Angel’s minds’ work very different because they don’t want to hit the poles. Annie knows if she doesn’t hit any, she usually gets to stop and Angel just tries to do things right. It’s exciting to have a third type of mind with Brady – If it’s not to a certain level there’s no point in thinking about it, haha. At least, that’s how the poles worked.

This evening we also had our 3rd ride and he was great. He is catching onto riding quickly even though we aren’t doing much. We’re mainly just working on leg aids, stopping and going. We did walk over some ground poles this time, but nothing too complicated. I really like how he’s developing mentally and think he’s going to be a great candidate for dressage! It seems like he can get moving, get up and working but then come back down very quickly to being calm. He’s rarely worried about where the other horses are and really tries to please his handler. Now… if only I were rich I’d be buying a sibling of his, haha

Definitely a big day for Brady… Why? Because I got on him! I was fortunate to have another pair of hands helping me (my boyfriend, Jeremy) which I think helped both Brady and I stay a little calmer. Brady wasn’t very worked up, he was more bored than anything it seemed.

We worked with Angel a little bit today, but not Annie… I didn’t have the energy between starting Brady and working with Angel. I’ve been having rather sleepless nights that are really stealing my energy!

• With Angel we really only did basic longeing but we did put the western saddle on her for the first time. I didn’t think it was going to fit her, I really thought it would be too big. But to my surprise the saddle seemed to fit her very well! But we do need a smaller girth, haha. Angel did very well and I hope that we can get on her within the next week or two. Also, thanks to her being on the Liver Support for Silver Lining Herbs her dandruff and sensitivity when brushing seems to be getting better!
• Now to Brady… who’s going to steal the spot light of this blog. I had told Jeremy I was thinking of getting on him this weekend but it depended on how things went at the barn. So we arrived and due to all the rain on Saturday the horses were in. We got Brady out and brushed him down – he was pretty impatient and didn’t want to stand in the cross ties. Then, for the first time ever we put the western saddle on him. He didn’t seem to mind at all. Off to the arena we went! We did a little longeing both directions and Brady put his head down a few times, but wasn’t sure what to do with the western on his back. We trotted a little bit then we walked out to the round pen because I wanted him to canter and move more with the saddle on. However, due to the rain, the round pen wasn’t a suitable place for running around, so back to the arena we went. We ended up putting a longe line on him and had him canter on the line for the first time. Lots of firsts today, haha. He did well and, as expected, tried to buck and fuss a bit more in the canter. Luckily it didn’t last long either direction and he didn’t get too worked up. He stopped when I asked and kept his head about him really well. Then we did some desensitizing with the stick & string to calm things down. Then we did a little more trotting and change of direction before heading to the step up. I attached some reins to his rope halter and did some leaning over on him and putting my foot in the stirrup. He was a little nervous at first but we just repeated it several times (and I continued moving the step up several times) until he seemed less nervous with it. Then I had Jeremy attach a line to him (just incase) and used the stirrup to climb up and lean over him. The first time he was so confused but with lots of petting from both of us, and repeating it several times he realized it was nothing to worry about. Then it was time to go all the way up! Before I went all the way up I honestly had no idea if I was going to lay over him or go on over… If I thought about it too much I would’ve gotten nervous, haha. We sat for a while and then Jeremy led us around. Brady didn’t seem to care at all! Then I had Jeremy take off his lead and asked Brady to bend his head both directions – no problem! I tried to get Brady to circle, he did move his hind end around, but by myself I couldn’t get him to step very forward or move his front end much. I asked Jeremy to come up and just get Brady to follow him – which wasn’t hard at all! Then we followed Jeremy a bit and slowly got further away from him and closer at times. All at a walk. Then we stopped and just petted Brady for a while and relaxed. It came time to jump down and man… it’s easy to forget how tall a horse is when you’re on top! It was a loooooong jump down but Brady just stood there. Overall he did extremely well! We are very proud of our big baby growing up!
• Next for Brady… Well, just more of the same things! He is coming 3 years old so we don’t want to push the riding or work too much. We will do some short rides here and there and still work on our ground work… I think he’s ready for some more of the straightness training and I think it will help him pay more attention to where his hooves are.

We then turned all 3 of them (Annie, Brady and Angel) out in a paddock together… Annie was not happy she didn’t get to do anything. But I’m hoping to make it out again Tuesday or Wednesday and she’ll get some playtime then

I had meant to go back lastnight and check to see how things were going, but I didn’t make it out… Maybe tonight I will. I’m thinking of pre-mixing her grain and adding a little honey to sweeten things up… I also thought of diluting some apple juice and having them squirt it on her feed, but I’m not sure thats going to help just make a bigger mess. Plus anything water based will made her pelleted fed swell up and we don’t want that… So, the next time I go out I’m going to bring a little of the grain home and do a few tests to make sure the honey wouldn’t make it swell up. I also may test this with an oil too, even though I am not keen on the idea of putting Annie on an oil. She is at a good weight and don’t want her to put any more on. Also oil is more tricky than people realize depending on the type due to the ratios of omega-3 and 6. So I’d rather avoid that boat all together if possible. We do have some molasses, and a little might be ok, but I’m not to keen on that either. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the honey will work. The mix will have to be stable for at least a week!

So I guess we’ll see what happens. Hopefully I can get out there tonight and grab a handful of the grain. If not I’ms ure I’ll make it out over the weekend

What do you use if your horse won’t eat their supplements? Ideas are absolutely welcome!

I am a bit crazy at times with regard to this subject. Instead of rambling on about my craziness, I’ll just tell you the bottom line. I wanted to figure out the nutritional details for all of the herbs before giving them to any of the horses. That takes time. But, I finally found time to do it! The herbs I am using currently are red raspberry leaves, rosehips, rosemary leaves and spirulina. Brady is also on MSM and a weight supplement, and he’s not getting the red raspberry leaves. Anyways, I could not find nutritional content for red raspberry leaves. Most of them were available on Self Nutrition Data. but not red raspberry leaves. So, I’m still on the hunt for the nutritional info for those, if you happen to know them please let me know!

• Annie is on 3tsp of rosehips, 3tsp of red raspberry leaves, 1 tsp spirulina and 1 tsp of rosemary leaves. The rosehips for a Vit. C and immune system boost for the season change (also helps with circulation), red raspberry leaves for her mare moodiness, spirulina which is good for horses who don’t have a lot of pasture access and can relieve some anxiety and rosemary leaves which are a great antioxidant and improve circulation.
• Brady is on 2tsp of rosehips, 2tsp of rosemary leaves 1tsp spirulina, 1 tsp MSM and 2 tsp of the weight supplement. He is on the supplements for the same reasons as Annie, he just doesn’t have the red raspberry leaves because he doesn’t have mare moods, haha. He is also on MSM for his joints and a weight supplement since he keeps growing up!

Do you have your horse on any herbs? Which ones and why? I’m always curious to see what people feed their horses!