mimi

an experiment

/ Ashley Wingert / 11 Comments

As most regular readers have probably noticed, it’s been a little content-lite around here of late…and very horsey-content-lite. There’s actually a reason (aside from my laziness and lack of motivation) for that.

I was dealing with a frustrating and somewhat disheartening issue with Mimi. Even since last year, I’d started having some intermittent problems with her tripping on the hind end, specifically when we were working in the sand arena. I did some basic evaluations of how she moved in-hand (sound), gave her a good trim, booted her all around…and it would still happen, every time I would ride in the arena, we’d hit a deeper patch of sand, and she would stumble or catch her hind end.

It got really, really frustrating, to the point where I basically didn’t ride her for the better part of the summer/early fall. The fatalistic part of me thought, “Well, that’s it…years of use has finally caught up to us, she’s gone permanently crunchy, and one of these days, she’s going to fall down on me.” It was upsetting to me because I didn’t know why (and don’t have the $$$ to throw at a lot of vet diagnostics); it was upsetting to her because she’s a careful, sensible horse with smart footwork — I could see it visibly upsetting her every time she would trip, and she would try so hard not to.

So I gave her some time off from riding. I still went to the barn, still spent time with her, still trimmed her. She was obviously feeling good, watching her run out to the pasture (moving sound!).

About six weeks ago, I needed pony time. Don’t even remember the specifics now, just that I needed to be on my pony’s back. I had gone down to the barn not intending to ride, but something compelled me to hop up on her, bareback, using the only gear I currently had down at the barn, which was her dinky little sidepull.

She was perfect.

She gave me a smooth walk, and her trot was more than eager. My bareback seat is less-than-impressive (especially on what is essentially a 55-gallon drum), so I really don’t do anything other than a slow trot pace, but she wanted to do more.

Hmm.

A week later, I repeated the experiment, this time slightly better equipped with bareback pad and actual headstall-with-brakes. Again, excellent, and even offering to canter. (Umm, no. Canter + bareback = Ash hits the dirt.)

The only thing that was different was a lack of saddle.

A part of my brain had toyed with the idea that maybe my saddle was too narrow (again!) for her. Part of me argued that we did all of our 50s in that saddle without any soreness…but she’s a lot softer and out of shape now. I also didn’t want to look too seriously at this possibility because it would mean needing a new saddle, which isn’t in the current budget. (So, a permanently retired pasture puff was somehow the better option here? Don’t ask me how my brain works sometimes…)

A couple of whiney texts later (that would be me whining), Lucy offered up her spare-spare treeless saddle — a Barefoot Cheyenne model — for me to test out my theory. I got the saddle last week, and after doing a make-over to one of my Skito pads to bolster it up to treeless saddle requirements, I headed out to the barn yesterday to test it out.

all decked out…maybe now we’ll have somewhere to go?

She loved it. We got a good 45 minutes of arena work in — walk/trot/canter/circles — and she was an angel. I’ve had a lot of resistance from her of late with wanting to rush the gate/acting arena sour…and that wasn’t the case this time.

She also offered up the most lovely, rolling, collected-on-her-own canter I have felt from her in for a couple of years now. And that was entirely spontaneous on her part. She was also giving me her big trot — the kind that makes 16hh horses canter to keep up. Awww, pony legs. :)))
The biggest thing was to have all of this happen in the arena. It’s not secret between her and I that we both prefer the trail, and begrudgingly do arena stuff when it’s the best we’ve got. Arena work also is my way of getting honest feedback from her. She’s got an outstanding work ethic (I can only hope any subsequent horses are half as good), especially on trail, and will work through most discomfort if it means getting down the trail. In the arena, her feedback is more honest (a bit ‘Princess and the Pea’-esque, to be honest), so to have her that forward and cheerful about arena stuff was exceptionally good.
Now we just need to get back out on trail. (And if she’s this forward and cheerful, I may bring along that running martingale and remind her that the overabundance of enthusiasm isn’t necessary.)
fuzzy face!!!
she is SO fluffy this winter…all of them are. which
probably means it’s gonna be cold. brrrr.

life lessons from the endurance trail

/ Ashley Wingert / 18 Comments

Endurance riding…and honestly, anything involving horses, ain’t for the feint of heart.

But you know what? Neither is life.

In general, horses and riding have not come easily for me. It’s my life passion, and I’ve yet to find anything I would give it up for…but I’ve had to fight for it every step of the way. Every goal, every achievement, every milestone.

My first introduction to lessons and riding was a rough start when I was persistently and maliciously dumped by one particular horse. I got to the point of being so scared that I would be nauseous and crying on the drive down to my weekly lesson. But I wanted to go…insisted, through the tears and shaking nerves, that I would go and I would ride. (There was also always a slim chance that I would get to ride one of the *good* horses, so I had to take that chance…I think there’s a life lesson about hope and optimism buried somewhere in there.) My parents didn’t force me. In fact, they offered me every out…but I refused to take them up on it.

After about of year of this, they moved me to a different instructor…one who employed reliable, kid-safe, caretaker lesson horses. Early impressions and imprinting are hard to overcome, though, and it would take several years, some patient instructors, and a couple of sainted equines (Deck and Snappy, I owe you everything) to help me piece my shattered confidence back together.

Even now, I’m not a brave rider.

I quit jumping after one wreck too many…I came back one final time a year after my worst incident to “conquer the fear,” which I did in a pretty stellar fashion (5 courses, including a timed jump-off and the highest I’ve ever jumped the pony — 3′) and I haven’t jumped since.

And while we’re on the subject of true confessions? I used to be scared to ride out of the arena. My trainer used to have to literally clip a leadrope on Mimi and pony/drag me off the property. I’m betting I’m the last person on this planet anyone would have ever bet money on becoming an endurance rider. And not just an endurance rider, but one with Tevis aspirations.

Do I still get scared?

All the time.

I hate hitting the dirt. When I part company with a horse, rarely is it the “gracefully slide/roll and stand back up again” variety. It usually involves some kind of story/drama/trauma, and subsequent splat in the dirt.

I don’t get along well with uptight, nervous horses who need lots of coddling and reassurance…or the kind who need a devil-may-care rider who laughs off spooks and misbehavior. I can be confident and guide an inexperienced horse along the trail, provided that horse is the kind of base personality that tends towards bold and doesn’t constantly second-guess me when I say “It’s okay, keep going forward, nothing’s gonna get you.”

And the biggest obstacle I face as an endurance rider is the fact I am paranoid and afraid of breaking my horse. I’ve had enough challenges and issues with Mimi over the years that it’s made me hyper-aware and overly cautious about pushing a horse, let along pushing them too hard. Again, the early imprinting of having to struggle through and hold my horse together to get those miles…every ride completion we have is a victory and a celebration that I don’t take for granted.

But doing endurance has forced me to recognize those issues, to face them, and attempt to deal with them. Last year was an excellent stepping stone for me. I rode lots of new horses. Some experienced, some brand-new greenies. Not just once, but several times, I climbed on a horse I’d never ridden until the morning of the ride, and proceeded to ride 25-50 miles on them. I toughed it out on horses who I didn’t completely mesh with…and really, really appreciated the ones I did.

And I learned to have more faith and confidence, not just in the innate ability of a conditioned, athletic endurance horse, but also in myself that I wasn’t going to break the horse and it wasn’t all going to go horribly wrong. Ever since Mimi’s unceremonious retirement halfway through our last 50 together, I’ve been beating myself up, wondering what I did wrong, what I could have changed, psycho-analyzing every minute detail, and generally feeling sorry for myself and my pony.

It’s taken me some time to get my head around this concept, but sometimes, stuff just happens. You can do everything right, and the stars just aren’t aligned on that day and time. This has been a hard thing for me to grasp. I tend to take it personally when things go wrong, and don’t shake things off easily. Yes, that can be a bit arrogant and self-indulgent…but we are who we are and we all feel, react, and cope differently to every situation. And outside circumstances at the time made it easier for me to just duck and cover, and temporarily go on hiatus from endurance. Even that couldn’t last too long, though, and friends with extra horses started coming out of the woodwork, giving me something to ride.

Yeah, the last couple of years haven’t been ideal, catch-riding and rig sharing/borrowing and generally relying on the good graces of other people when I’m by nature more of a self-reliant person…but it’s better than not riding. I accomplished a number of milestones under those less-than-ideal circumstances, including getting my first endurance and LD mileage patches, going to new rides I’d never been to, seeing friends I wouldn’t otherwise get to see, and facing down some of those above-mentioned personal demons.

Circling back around to where I started, this hasn’t been an easy ride for me. But endurance has been the best soul-searching, horizon-expanding, comfort-zone-shifting thing for me, pretty much ever. Life lessons, indeed. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are no easy answers…life doesn’t come with a handbook…you just have to live it.

Review: Taylored Tack Simple Hackamore Headstall

/ Ashley Wingert / 4 Comments

Bear with me…as with just about everything I do, there’s usually a “why” for it…and an accompanying story.

Funny enough, I have a minimalist of a pony, especially when it comes to tack. It’s taken me a while to realize this, but the less stuff on her face, the happier she is. Too much material, especially around/behind her ears, makes her sweat, which in turns makes her itch. End result of that is she then tries to over-enthusiastically remove the paint from whatever surface she is tied next to (vehicle, horse trailer, railing) by virtue of her itching and scrubbing her face against said surface.

My trailer ended up with more than one scratch in the paint from her rubbing before I was able to remove her headstall. (Powder coating being rubbed by metal buckles does not end well.)

The other thing I struggle with is that she doesn’t have a whole lot of surface area on her face. “Pea head” is the term used on more than one occasion. And as lovely as all of my halter-bridle combos are, they don’t work as well in conjunction with an s-hack when there is limited space available. The struggle I ran into was that in order to get the s-hack high enough on her nose, the chin strap would end up cross right on top of the underside of the halter noseband, which meant it wasn’t engaging with her chin the way it should. (Translation: Less brakes and slower pony response time than I like.) Also, her ground manners are less than stellar in flat halters. (Read: “Let me run right through you during a trot-out.”)

(Interestingly enough, if you look at a bunch of my ride photos, I used the Zilco equivalent of this set-up and never had a problem with space…it was only when I stopped using Zilco and switched to beta that I noticed this, so obviously the proportions of the Zilco halters are different.)

I’ve also used the add-on headstall over a rope halter idea. Her ground manners are much better when I have to lead with that, but I’ll be honest: I don’t love the look of the s-hack with a rope halter. Call me shallow, but…”If you can’t ride fast, ride pretty.” (Or just blame my show background.)

To me, this is just “too much stuff” crammed
on her pretty little face.

I’ve used the standard western headstall set-up (browband, throatlatch) with the s-hack before and it has worked well, but it was still more than what I really needed — browband and two crownpieces behind the ears.

I really liked the look of the clean-line, simple headstalls, so that’s what I ended up getting:

The Taylored Tack Simple Hackamore Headstall

Mimi’s is, of course, purple.


I haven’t had the chance to test it super-thoroughly (as compared to 25/50-mile rides/long training rides with the other set-ups) but the advantage of riding a horse for as long as I have her is I know when something works for her. And so far, I think this is working.

It’s definitely been warm enough to generate the itchy, sweat pony effect, and the fact she’s not throwing her head into my arms to “get this off me, now” is a good sign. It’s also plenty secure, I was able to make all the adjustments needed, and as with all things Taylored Tack, the workmanship is gorgeous. I love how clean-line of a look it is, and it really sets off her pretty little head.

As far as leading/halter underneath…Mimi leads just fine from the s-hack. She yields to pressure from the noseband and chinstrap, and if need be, I do carry a small rope halter in my pack for ER purposes.

This will definitely be a set-up I revisit in the future for any additional pea-headed horses.

Now I’m itching to add a custom TT breastcollar to Mimi’s tack collection, since I’ve never actually found a breastcollar to date that I’ve been completely satisfied with how it has fit her…