Tevis Time

July 23, 2015 / Ashley Wingert / 1 Comment

We’re at under a week now until I take off for my Annual Tevis Adventure, so probably time for me to come up with something to say for my Annual Tevis Musings. I’m not sure what I can add that I haven’t covered in past years…search for the “Tevis” tag under categories on the right sidebar if you want to see all of the previous posts.

Last year’s post with links to videos, information, and other resources.

I’m crewing for Kaity again this year…she’s be riding her newer horse Ani, the one she took on last year‘s pre-rides. She is rider #85, which we have concluded is a Good Number. If you visit http://www.teviscup.org starting on Friday, 7/31, there will be a link to follow along with the webcast, with as-close-to-realtime-as-possible (wilderness areas, strictly radio communication, limited internet access points) updates, photos, rider statuses, pull lists, and more. Rider numbers have been posted, and as of 7/22, there were 205 sign-ups (limit is 210).

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Fergus at Robinson Flat, 2014

Kody at the Finish, 2013

Ahead of Tevis, part of my work for Renegade Hoof Boots is rider coordination — finding out who is intending to ride Tevis in the boots, and what size and style they need, and making sure they get their boots well ahead of time to be able to do any adjusting or re-sizing if need be. During the ride, there’s not much for me to do — these are experienced riders who have successfully completed rides with the boots and have a sense of what they’re doing, and everyone is highly encouraged to carry spares or back-ups should they encounter a patch of boot-eating trail. (It happens. Rugged trails tend to eat horse hoofwear of all kinds. Nothing out there is perfect.)

While I’d love to do a repeat of last year’s Tour de Tevis Trails, this year won’t involve quite that much time away…but I’m still hoping to sneak at least one ride in to help dial-in boot fit (photos and online troubleshooting can do a lot, but sometimes, I just really like to get my hands on the horse/boots, especially for some of the more challenging ones…sometimes something can be hard to explain, but you can feel when you get the fit dialed in, and then subsequently be able to show someone what you’re talking about).

This’ll be year #7 for me to crew…at this point, I could almost hang out my “professional Tevis crew” shingle, eh?

Play Days

June 28, 2015 / Ashley Wingert / 2 Comments

It’s summer in Arizona, which means it’s hibernation season. Other parts of the country may hibernate in the winter due to snow/mud/impossibly frigid temperatures…we’re sort of the opposite in that we ride in the winter, and then lay low in the summer. For the most part. Unless you have active ride goals and plans, and then you spend the summer getting up at 3AM to try to get a couple of hours of riding in before it gets unbearably hot, or you ride at night (still hot), or you trailer up to higher elevations (which are still warm but not quite as brutal).

Right now, I have no active goals, plans, or activities…and the part of me that likes sleep is really enjoying not having to get up quite so early. I’ll do it if I need to, but it better be a very good reason.

So right now is just about relaxing, enjoying barn time as I can get it, and trying to find a balance between heat acclimation (it does make Tevis crewing easier) and hugging my air conditioner.

I got a little lax with hoof trimming for the past few weeks, and she paid me back for it with longer-than-ideal front toes. *sigh* I can always tell, because her boots then don’t fit the way they should (long, low toe leaves a gap at the top of the boot shell). Trimming in triple-digits is always fun,but I’ve taken to standing her in a small pan of water as I’m working on one hoof, and doing a rotation around of “nip wall, trim bars/anything dying to some out of the sole, rasp, mustang roll.” This pony’s hooves still kind of drive me crazy sometimes because there are just so many things about them that are “not ideal,” but that’s one of the trade-offs of not having the power to create an “ideal” living environment for her, so until I’m in a position to be able to do that, it means a lot of proactive hoof management. (That I sometimes get lazy/slack off on and then she rewards me with long toes and higher heels. Owner fail.)

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I really don’t get tired of just looking at this pony and spending time with her.

Today was a “good day” in Pony-ville. She actually really likes the warm weather (less-crunchy joints) so she was quite cheerful to have me doing stuff with her today. I also had to miss last weekend’s barn trip due to extra-busyness at home, so I think she may have actually been missing me.

And it was a “let’s mess around with headgear” day…I have a vosal that I’ve had for a number of years that I’ve played around with off and on, but never used on her for competition, mostly because I was never happy with the headstall it was on and that I could never get it adjusted short enough. After eyeballing my tack, I discovered the headstall for her s-hack is sized smaller than the vosal headstall, and that I had more adjustment with it. One swap later, and I was able to seat the noseband higher up on her nose.

Little peahead. My constant refrain when it comes to tack-buying has been “it doesn’t adjust small enough.”

We didn’t ride a ton today (really hot by the time I was done with hooves) but I really like how she worked in it. Super light in the face, which is a Big Deal in Pony-ville. Granted, it was the arena, which is not the most “stimulating” environment for her forwardness…but I liked it enough that I’ll probably keep messing with it. If nothing else, it’s something *different* and she seems to crave difference and change-up, even just in gear.

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In a photogenic mood today and showing off for her new boyfriend. Someone please tell the 22-year-old mare that she’s too old to be that flirtatious?

And after riding, she got a full bath. Up to this point, she’s just gotten water-only spray-offs, but today was a full soap bath. “Yellowtail” is a type of fish, not a proper pony color designation. Plus her hind legs were all nasty and peed-upon from her aforementioned flirtations. And the flies and mosquitoes are out, so she’s itchy. And it was triple-digit temperatures. All good reasons for a thorough scrub-down.

I judge the temperature levels by her willingness to get her head wet — normally she really hates water on her face and it’s a wrestling match to try to get her face as white as her body.

Today, she stuck her head under the hose running at full blast and let me scrub her face and rinse it. Without me even holding her head down to a reachable level.

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I have to say, she does look good for 22-years-old. Maybe a slight dip in her previously tabletop-flat back, and she has a *different* look to her face (more mature?)…but I’m very pleased with how she looks right now. Not fighting trim, but still reasonably fit.

And finally, she got a fly sheet today. The next-door neighbors at the barn train bucking bulls for rodeos, so there are a lot of cattle on the premises…which tend to attract more flies, no matter how good the barn protocol is for stall cleanup and maintenance (and it’s very good). The barn owner is apologetic, but there’s really nothing she can do about it — the downside of an area that has properties in somewhat close proximity to one another — but she’s willing to fly spray/fly mask/fly sheet all the horses as long as we provide the materials.

So one online visit to Riding Warehouse later, I found a flysheet that met my criteria of: belly band, neck cover (for mane protection — she sticks her head through the stall bars to get at her neighbor’s hay and has rubbed the middle section of her already-pathetic mane out), Euro cut, and not completely bank-breaking, since she has a history of being hard on sheets/blankets, and while I’m under no delusions that one will have a long, happy, snag-free existence, I would at least like to not cry when she does inevitably destroy it.

I ended up with the Saxon Softmesh Combo Fly Sheet. I will say the mesh isn’t quite as soft as they make it out to be…but good enough. And I’m guessing wear/dirt/washing will soften it up as well.

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Unimpressed mare is unimpressed by the new addition. The look was definitely a “Really? Are you seriously going to make me wear this?” She should be grateful I haven’t gone off the deep end and gotten leg wraps as well.

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Spotty pony! Her spots have gotten crazy — and you only see it when she’s wet, when her dark skin shows up through the wet hair. Sometimes you can kind of see it this time of year when she’s in her summer-bald coat. But she’s got a crazy Appaloosa blanket color pattern…had she not greyed out, she would have been a flaxen chestnut with the frosted blanket.But as striking as that would have been, I absolutely prefer her as a grey. It suits her. And makes her look even more like the little Arab she tries to be.

Another weekend gone, another week approaches. Monsoon season is starting, with a major dust storm last night and a minor one threatening this evening. Monsoon rain in the forecast…it’s just gotta cool off enough to not evaporate the rain out of the clouds. Summer plans on the horizon, some horsey (Tevis crewing, again) and some not (camping trips). Stay cool, pop electrolytes, and hug an air conditioner!

History Made

June 6, 2015 / Ashley Wingert / Leave a comment

American Pharoah won the Triple Crown today. 37 years since the last Triple Crown winner.

I’d not yet experienced a Triple Crown winner in my lifetime…born in the decade after the Triple Crown winners of the 1970s. It’s something I’ve followed and hoped for ever since I figured out what horse racing was…Silver Charm’s bid for the Triple Crown in 1997 was the first one I remember actively following.

An extraordinary horse and an extraordinary accomplishment. History in the making.

Functional Pony Roulette

June 1, 2015 / Ashley Wingert / 1 Comment

Part of having an older ~~horse~~ pony is management…and part of management is recognizing they have good days and bad days in terms of how “functional” they are.

From a “normal” perspective, Mimi is still very functional. But my perspective is a bit skewed, coming from the angle of a high-demand performance sport…so I’ve had to learn to readjust my settings to better align with what she is capable of offering me at this time.

It’s a bit of a roulette game in that I’m never quite sure on any given day what her level of function will be. Since I’m pretty sure what I’m dealing with is a creaky/crunchy/arthritis/aging joints scenario, “function” or lack thereof generally relates to how she’s moving, and her general outlook on life, and I have to go down to the barn ready to either move forward with potential plans for activity, or be willing to alter/cancel those plans at the last minute is she’s just not feeling it that day.

“Trails” around the barn, such are they are. At least it’s open space and (mostly, sans some gopher holes) good footing.

Fortunately, as the weather gets warmer, the happier she is, and a 10-minute loose-rein walking warm-up goes a long way towards better performance as well.

Yesterday was a good day, so after an arena warm up, we headed out around the barn neighborhood…not my favorite compared to real trails, but better than ~~nothing~~ endless arena circles.

She’s always very “up” in a urban/semi-urban setting, despite having lived in some kind of a more-urban-than-rural setting for the past 18-1/2 years. Some of that is probably me — we had some “incidents” fairly early on, including a spin-n-bolt parting of the ways that resulted in me splatting and road rash sliding on pavement at a young-and-impressionable enough age that I’m pretty sure I’m still subconsciously cringing.

Yes, I can handle narrow, drop-off, cliffy trails way better than I can handle a stroll around the urban neighborhood. Judge at will.

But honestly? Most Arabs don’t have anything on this pony in terms of “up”ness, reactivity, and the power to pull a fast one.

And yet I still adore this pony. She makes me a better rider, even now, and I have to actively ride her shenanigans and manage the zoom-brain. (There’s a reason she’s the original Go Pony.)

In a very cheerful, “let’s do something!” mood.

I also finally managed to make the English hackamore I’ve had laying around here for ages work properly. In the past, I always issues with the shanks sitting up too high (to the front of her face, not height in relation to length of the face), thus bringing the headstall cheekpieces way too close to her eyes. So I pulled off the traditional fleece-padded leather noseband that comes standard on many of these types of hackamores and replaced it with one of my longer and lower-profile beta nosebands.

And it worked. I was finally able to position the hackamore in a way that was functional and not too close to her eyes.

Why mess around with another headstall?

Because I can. :) I love messing around with different bits/hackamores/headstalls/etc, just to see how they all work, and the different effects of each one. This style of hackamore is very mild in terms of leverage and severity; and I know I definitely had “less” brakes with this set-up on this particular horse than her standard s-hackamore or a bit. Probably good I never got it rigged up for an actual ride, but for yesterday’s purpose — a ride that requires some pretty good contact and “hold” at points — it worked quite well, as she was not in a frame of mind to be allowed too much loose rein, but I didn’t have to feel to bad about hanging on her mouth or exerting too much pressure on her.

(Will also likely be a good introduction to bitless riding for future young horses without quite as many/as strong pressure points as the s-hack.)

It’s also an environment that encourages very good control of your horse — despite it being a residential area, people zip by really fast, and there’s some real redneck-in-the-worst-sense-of-the-word behavior, especially when it comes to driving…not at all uncommon for people to speed up, rev engines, or squeal tires. So you might call it defensive riding, but there’s not a ton of leeway there to be able to handle overreactive spooks or antics.

Scratch those itches!

Fortunately for us, the idiots were not out in force, so I only had to give the stink-eye to a couple of people that went zooming by, and the pony’s only major indiscretion of the whole time was to forget herself in her “want to trot” quest and trip on a pavement-to-dirt transition, for which she was spoken sharply to and then made to walk as punishment. The horrors.

Vacant property was housing a hawk — we stopped to watch him for a few moments, and he was holding some kind of prey (gopher, looked like) when he took off.

“Open space. Can I GOOOOOOO???”
(No, you may not, since cars like to zip by at way-over-the-speed-limit on the [residential] road next to us.)

And then once we were done, she got a nice bath, as it is officially summer here in the Valley of the Sun. Really can’t complain, though, as we were fortunate enough to have an unseasonably-pleasant May. And hot weather just means the inevitable overspray from horse bathing feels really good. All told, we did about 4 miles, which, for both of our fitness levels, was good enough.

And so summer (and heat conditioning) begins.

Happy 22

May 26, 2015May 26, 2015 / Ashley Wingert / 1 Comment

Happy Birthday, Mimi! 22 years old today…and still such a pony. She’s an interesting dichotomy. In some ways, I can say she’s definitely aged. Physically, I can see it…although it’s a case of not seeing it unless I go back and look at photos and compare to today…and of course she has her on-and-off days of physical crunchiness, especially in her hocks. But mentally she hasn’t slowed down at all…still smart, sassy, and always within a couple seconds of pulling a fast one on me. Now seems like a good time for a photo spam day.

Leading ears at Mount Elden in Flagstaff, AZ. June 2009.

Man Against Horse 50. October 2009.

Horse camping at Little Elden Springs, Flagstaff. June 2009.

Bad hair day. Usery Mtn Park, January 2015.

First LD. Man Against Horse 25, October 2005.

Fashion plate? January 2010.

Las Cienegas 25, Sonoita, AZ. Dec 2006.

Sulking out of camp on loop 2 at the Valley of the Sun 50, February 2009. (Two miles of sand wash = sulky pony.)

Finding the ribbons on the Man Against Horse trail. October 2007.

Evening training ride.

We can never be sure what the future holds…I can only hope for a number of happy years still to come with her…she may be competition retired, but she’s not ready to be put out to pasture quite yet!

Go the Distance Endurance

The Trail Goes Ever On and On