barn life

‘Tis the Season

/ Ashley Wingert / Leave a comment

Mimi has her own Santa hat.  On the years I 1) remember and 2) don’t misplace it, I pull out the hat and take embarrassing pictures of the pony.  It’s the sort of activity that reminds her of a pony’s station in life: to be a little girl’s dress-up toy.

She finds it less than amusing.

This year, I not only was able to find the hat, I remembered to take it down to the barn before Christmas.  Here’s a few of today’s antics and outtakes. I’m saving the “nice” one for Christmas.

It rained today. Funny, it rained last time I was down at the barn.
Mimi’s over the rain.

For a sweet pony, she can pull the bitchiest mare faces.
Grouching at her stall-neighbor.

“Uh oh…I remember this…”

“Did I mention I hate you?”
Reward for tolerating five minutes of indigation: a warm beet pulp mash.
Stall-neighbor Ava wants to share.  Only thing Mimi shares is flying
hooves and teeth.

the weather outside is frightful

/ Ashley Wingert / 1 Comment

So maybe “Let It Snow” is an exaggeration here in the desert (unless you were in Cave Creek/North Scottsdale last Monday when enough snow fell to turn the ground white for a short time), but we do occasionally have our own winter weather in the form of rain.

Today is one of those days.  It started about 7ish this morning, and five hours later, it’s still coming down.  Not a torrential downpour, but a steady, consistent rain.  It’s really a lovely change of pace, and it really makes it feel a lot like winter for me.

It’s also the kind of weather that makes me unashamed to pull the “wimp” card and be relieved I don’t have to be out riding in it, making sure I get my conditioning miles.  Cowgirl up?  Nah, pass me another cup of hot cocoa and a fleece throw.

Mimi certainly isn’t begging to be out in it, either.  She really hates this kind of weather — both times she tied up, it was in cold, wet, rainy weather.  I sometimes wonder if it was deliberate…

(Yes, I know horses can’t deliberately tie up as a way of getting out of working in weather they hate.  But as clever as that pony is, it makes one pause and speculate…)


So on went a hat, waterproof boots, and something heavier and more weatherproof than a sweatshirt, and out I went to brave the elements for a trip to the barn.  Not only did I need to drop off Mimi’s supplements for the week, it was a good excuse to spoil her a little bit with a warm beet pulp mash.  Must encourage drinking in the cold weather.  And, yes, I like to spoil my pony.  Beet pulp, ground flax, a touch of oat bran, a scoop of e’lytes, a drizzle of agave syrup, and chopped up apple and carrots.  Mix together with hot water, and by the time I got down to the barn, it had cooled to a comfortably edible temperature.

She was still licking her lips when I left the barn.

Days like this make me glad for large covered stalls.  I think it’s also the rare occasion Mimi doesn’t mind being in a stall instead of braving the elements.  She, too, knows when to pull the “wimpy show pony” card.

Play Day

/ Ashley Wingert / Leave a comment

Last week, the barn owner asked me if I would be able to help out on irrigation day (I was going to be in the neighborhood anyway) by opening up the last irrigation ditch port and keeping an eye on the last 20 or so minutes of irrigation.

So just for kicks, Mimi and I “monitored” the irrigation as it came in…by riding in it.  Picture an approximately 4 acre pasture, covered in up to a foot of water in some places.  Because it was so newly irrigated and there’s a mature (if sparse) covering of grass in the pasture, it hadn’t yet gotten muddy.  The ground was firm, Mimi’s bare hooves gave her plenty of grip…so we went out and played.

She waded pretty cautiously at first, testing the footing to see if it was solid.  When we ventured into the deeper section, she sniffed at the water, then started pawing at it.  A couple times, she felt like she was going to offer to roll, and that earned her a swift boot in the ribs.  Funny, because she’s never once tried to roll in any other water crossings we’ve done.  Y’know, ’cause water crossing opportunities are so prolific in the desert… ;)

Flooded-out pasture.  Cell phone with its not-ideal camera
was the only camera I had on me.

It was a good chance just to play.  No pressure, no work, and a chance to remind Mimi that the saddle doesn’t always mean doing boring circles.

"Pony" is a four-letter word

/ Ashley Wingert / 1 Comment

Today was a “pony” day, said with much disgust and shaking of the head.  We were due for it…she’s been an angel for the past couple of months, but the “pony” part of her personality is never far below the surface.  Today, it was standing up and doing the hula.

*blinks*  Now there’s a mental image for ya.  (All of the costume classes I did, I never gave Mimi the indignity of a hula skirt.  Missed opportunity…)

We cranked out about half an hour of arena work, heavy focus on the trot and canter (and some rider torture in the form of riding without stirrups).  Brought my GPS out , just for kicks, and discovered that we covered about 2 miles with our laps around the arena.  Cool.  Better than nothing, and it is a sand arena.

She wasn’t all bad.  I dusted off the jumping hackamore and got it adjusted properly, and she was working beautifully in it.  Seems to be a great choice for arena work, and she was even softer in it than the S-hack.  She had a fabulous whoa today, too…but that might have had something to do with the fact that she “didn’t wanna work.”  I don’t think it’ll translate over to the trail quite as well, since Ms. Curb-Your-Enthusiasm needs a little bit of a reminder that blasting off at Mach 3 is not on the recommended itinerary.

But I like keeping arena and trail gear separate.  It’s something I’ve done for years, ever since show days: western bit for western classes, kimberwick for english flat classes, snaffle for jumping classes, and hackamore for gymkhana.  So it’s a principle she’s well-versed in: “X means fun, Y means work.”

Worked on her hooves…they’re looking really good right now.  Picture taking fail today, since I was pretty much done in by the time I got around to working on her feet and out of patience for messing with the camera.  Her hooves are slowing down in their growth as her system readjusts to the ever-decreasing amount of daylight and redirects its energies towards growing a fine, fuzzy winter coat.  In 95*.  Proof right there that horse hair growth is controlled by daylight hours, not temperature.  At least I don’t have to worry about clipping her this winter, and the subsequent “to blanket or not to blanket” question.

It was also warm enough for her to get a shower (Horrors…I removed her protective layer of dirt coating!) after we were done, which made for east-trim hooves.  She was thoroughly hacked off that I had the nerve to get her face wet, and proceeded to whip me with her (soaking wet) tail during the rest of the process.  Thanks, pony.

All was well at the end, since she did her spiffy little bowing trick for a carrot.  Never mind that she almost fell over, she was so excited to see a rare, elusive carrot appear before her.  Carrots cure all ills, at least in her mind.

spiders and "spring" cleaning

/ Ashley Wingert / Leave a comment

The past week or so, I’ve been bitten by the cleaning and organization bug.  This bug usually hits about twice a year, and it makes me go into a cleaning and organizing frenzy.  Most of the year, I’m a semi-organized person.  I have a method to my madness, and can always find what I need, even though it may not look the neatest or cleanest.  (Except for my closet.  That’s my designated black hole that gets a thorough gutting out about once a year, when I get sick of the mess and fear I’m risking my life just by trying to enter it.)

This time, the bug was directed at two locations: the corner of the garage that serves as a “tack room” of sorts, and my corner of the tack room down at the barn.  For years, I used my horse trailer as a rolling storage closet.  It was easier, kept everything close at hand, and I usually worked out of the trailer more than I did the barn.  With the departure of the trailer this spring, I had to pull everything out and find a home for it.  Needless to say, there was a complete lack of enthusiasm for this task, so everything got shoved willy-nilly wherever it fit.

Last weekend, I tackled the garage.  Pulled everything out, sorted it into piles, rewrapped leg wraps (how many sets of leg wraps does one person need???), threw tons of stuff out (Anyone wanna know what 4+ year-old  EasyFoam looks like?  Not pretty…and I had four or five packs of the stuff floating around.  Don’t miss those messy days.), and rediscovered stuff I thought had vanished into the ether, including a pair of Equipedic splint boots, which Mimi and I are in the process of thoroughly testing.  But I digress.  I’ll talk about the splint boots later.

It was an all-day project (18 years of being in horses means I have a ton of stuff), but at the end of the day, I had an organized garage, with stuff stored in crates and stacked neatly on shelves.

Yesterday, I tackled the barn tack room.  Again, stuff had gotten shoved haphazardly into the corner and dutifully ignored for the past four months.  And something I forgot to mention: The tack room is the preferred location for overly-enthusiastic, fast-reproducing black widows (and other toxic AZ spiders of note).  For those of the spider-leery inclination, I very intentionally did not take pictures.  Six years of being at this barn has me mostly immune to the sight of the black widows anymore.

Still…yesterday was an exercise in caution, gingerly picking buckets up, using a long sweat scraper to get rid of the worst of the webs, and stomping on spiders as they scuttled back to sanctuary.  They really like to lurk under the edges of buckets and containers, which was the impetus for this cleaning binge…I had chased a few spiders (black widows and non-toxic) out of the crevices of my HoofJack and from the recesses of the box where I store my trimming equipment.  Sooner or later, one was going to discover the inside of my rasping gloves…

So the goal was to make enough room inside the cabinet (complete with bug-deterring closing doors) to store my trimming stuff.  And get rid of a few dozen bottles of old meds, shampoos, and the like.  I did it.  Everything I have down at the barn now fits inside a four-shelf cabinet and my tack trunk.  And I don’t have to pick sticky-clingy spider webs off my stuff anymore.

And that was on the heels of managing a whole hour and half of very active riding yesterday.  45 minutes of intense arena work, half of which I made myself do without stirrups (my thighs and I are not on speaking terms today), then another 45 minutes of meandering out around the neighborhood.  Well…as much as Mimi ever meanders.  She had to be peddled out to start, but once we got halfway around, she was much more willing to move out.  The faster we go, the happier she is…everything is going to eat her when we’re quietly walking along, but once we’re trotting, we rule the world.  *eye roll*  I love that goofy pony.

And on a totally different note…it’s Man Against Horse weekend, and for the first time in six years, I’m not up there.  Definitely bummed about missing it…I love being up there, even if I’m not riding, but my vehicle had the final say in matters, what with developing a slow but persistent oil-and-other-fluids leak. 195,000 miles…I guess I can cut her a break.  But a road trip didn’t seem like the best of ideas, either.