Mariah Almost Killed Carly and I Today

Mariah. She is the sweetest horse you have ever seen. See how good she looks in her sweat blanket? All the girls are Westernaires love her big brown eyes and the fact that she has no problem if lean against her or wrap your arms around her neck. And then you get on her back.

How to catch a horse

There they are, the three Musketeers. The three of them get along pretty well. As long as food is not involved. Then Beamer gets pushed to the side until the "ladies" are done eating. In the picture above all the food was gone so they could be nice to each other.

Vandalized!!

That's right, our barn was vandalized. By our horses.

Apparently, when I went out to feed the other morning (about 5:30am) I got a bit distracted and left on of the stall doors open a bit. About 4:00pm I got a text that said, "Naughty, naughty horses." Since it had been raining I figured that they had been rolling in the mud again. I was wrong. They had discovered the open stall door. It wasn't open very far but they had a fix for that. Simply push against the door until the bottom board holding the guiding wheel comes offthe post and presto, they're in.

Once in, they are staring at about 90 bales of hay. Yum Yum. I imagine the conversation between the horses went something like this:

Horse 1: WOW! Look at all that hay.

Horse 2: Cool.

Horse 3: Which one should we eat?

Horses 1 and 2: One?!

Horse 1: Lets try them ALL!

And so they proceeded to start pulling bales off the pile and sample each one looking for just the right bale.

Horse 1: This one is to small!

Horse 2: This one is to dry!

Horse 3: This one is not sweet enough!

After about 4 bales the grooming isle was so full of hay that they couldn't really get any more down. But they did manage to spread those four bales around pretty well. And then they pooped on it. At some point, the Arabian Bandit (as Beamer will hence forth be known) decided that that tantalizing smell of grain needed to be investigated and figured out how to open the grain barrel.

About 4:00 Kira went to check on them because it was raining and she couldn't see them. Ebony is usually forced to stand in the rain so if its raining hard we will throw a rain sheet on her to help her stay a bit more comfortable. (In Colorado the rain is cold and their summer coat will not keep them warm during a long, cold, rainy night.) She found Mariah in the grooming isle munching on hay. Ebony in the door of the stall with a bale of hay wedged in the door munching away and the Arabian Bandit with his head in the grain barrel contentedly munching away.

Oh-oh. To much grain is BAD for horses. Colic bad. Dead in 24 hours colic bad. I normally give each of them 1 quart in the morning mostly just to supplement the hay. I looked in the barrel and it looked like the Arabian Bandit only ate a few pounds but we had to be careful. Of all the horses to get into the grain, B was probably then best one. He does not take huge mouth fulls, he just nibbles his way through his grain. Takes him twice as long as the other two to eat his grain but that's okay.

The vet suggested that we exercise them a bit so we took them for a walk. We would have liked to ride but it had just stopped raining and the footing was a bit too slippery for comfort. So Kira and I put halters on them and spent the next hour an a half walking the horses around the neighborhood. It was kind of a nice walk actually. Kira and I chatted and I need the exercise as well.

When we got back we checked stomach sounds, all good. Though Ebony got in trouble. Ebony was brood mare and does NOT like an ear pressed into her side. She tried to cow kick me a couple of times. Tried. Enough said.

We put them back in the pasture and then one of the differences between kids and horses became apparent. If the kids had vandalized the barn, they would have cleaned it up. Instead, I was cleaning up the barn while the girls worked on school projects as this is the last week of school. I am bagging up the fouled hay, sorting out the clean hay and cleaning things up. All the while there were three horses following my every move. Ears up, eyes bright, looking very innocent and expectant, wondering when I was going to give them some more hay. The ran away briefly when I turned on a horse eating drill to drive some screws into the stall door guide to fix that.

Just before I went back in to start dinner, I spread out a small bit of hay so that I wouldn't have to deal with the said eyes and mournful faces of three horses who didn't get fed at feeding time. (It was just a small bit of hay and the vet said that would be okay.)

I am happy to report that all three horses were fine the next morning and the pasture was full of poop. No colic.

Horse people must seem really strange to the rest of the civilized world. Not many people find poop an acceptable topic for conversation.

Finding Our Second Horse Mariah or How Not to Buy a Horse

The arrogance of guys sometimes surprises me and I'm a guy. We have had one horse for over a year now. If ridden him for a total of maybe 5 hours but have spent a fair amount of time grooming him. We have learned how to get him into the trailer and hauled him back and fort to Westernaires without any troubles. I am now a horse expert! (Anybody hear reality lining up to administer a full body hockey style reality check?) We have a new house and it is now time to find a second horse.

We actually have few criteria for a second horse. We want a horse with enough training on it so that The Instigator's friends and other non-horse type people can ride it. We want one that is healthy and sound (well, duh!) and we want one we can afford. And since we are horse experts now, our vast knowledge and a vet check is all we need to find the perfect horse. (Reality is skating a bit faster now and starting to line up for that reality check).

My niece found a Craig's Listad for a chestnut Morgan. Cute pictures, nice description and, most important to me, the price was right. So we hop into the car and off we go to see her. Here is a picture taken the first day we met her.


Not the best picture for conformation but since I didn't know anything about conformation (and I am the self-proclaimed horse expert!) its the best I've got.

I think we all fell in love with the big brown eyes. Her barn name was Squiggy. I hated it from the moment I heard it. All I could think of was "Laverne & Shirley" and the two guys known as Lenny and Squiggy. So not going to have a horse named Squiggy. But I digress. Squiggy was trained in dressage and had actually won two or three (sorry, don't remember the exact number) of blue ribbons. She obviously had some good training on her.

The owner brought her into a stall and we saddled her up and its time to ride. The owner put a unique piece of tack on the horse that I had never seen before. I asked about it and she told me they were draw reins. They clipped to the D-ring on the saddle and had a short piece of elastic that clipped to the bit. Thus tacked up, we headed off to the arena to ride. The owner hooked up a longe line and longed her a bit in each direction. She was very well behaved and collected. So The Instigator hoped on her back first and away they went. Squiggy was very well behaved and responded nicely. I got on and rode and she was well behaved for me. Tira-Toes rode her and had not a single problem either. We are VERY much licking what we see.

We decided to go ahead with the vet check. The owner was nice enough to transport the horse to the vet we were using for the vet check. She passed with flying colors. Really, the vet struggled to find anything negative to say. The worst thing he could say is that she has a very slight paddle in her front feet as she moves. So we decide to buy her.

The day we go to pick her up I ride her again. We didn't put the draw reins on her at first and she was a bit ill-behaved. That should have been a warning (reality is skating faster now) but we put the draw reins on her and she was a perfectly collected perfectly behaved horse. We took the saddle off and the owner wanted to show me something. She was starting to train Squiggy to pull a carriage. So she hooked up the long lines, ran then through a training surchingle and I got to drive her around the arena. I have to admit that that was a blast. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much but it was fun. She turned easily to cues and controlled her gait. I was really pleased with the horse and glad we bought her. So we took her down to the trailer, the owner loaded her up and Squiggy officially became Mariah. We headed for home. (Ominous skating sounds in the back-ground)

There were no problems getting her home and out of the trailer. We were still boarding at this time and there was a stall right next to Beamer so we put her in. She was nervous, as yo would expect, but no major issues. The next day we let her run around in the arena and roll and just generally get used to her surroundings.

After a couple of weeks, I decided it was time to ride her. The owner had given us her bridle so I put that on and she stood perfectly calm while I did. I did not have a saddle but I did have a bare back pad and since I was not going to do anything other than walk I figured that would be fine. Never mind that this would be the first time in my life I have ridden bare-back. No problem, I'm a horse expert, right? (skate skate skate) I put it on, cinched it down and lead her into the arena. I took her over to the loading blocks and got up on her back.

BOOM! Reality unloads a full body reality check right on me. As soon as I sat down on her back she took off. I wasn't ready for it and the next thing I know I am sliding off and headed for the ground. Since it is a cold January day, the arena, already wet from snow, is frozenhard. I land on my hip and right forearm and it HURTS! (I also think I hurt my shoulder in that fall. For about six months after that fall I could not use my right arm to lift more than maybe five pounds straight out in front of me. I couldn't pick up a gallon of milk. My shoulder blade moved in strange ways that shoulder blades don't normally move in. It didn't hurt unless I tried to pick something up so I never went to the doctor. Don't tell my mother that. She'll scold me. Now, a year later, I am happy to report that my shoulder is essentially back to normal.)

I takes a moment for me to collect myself before I stand up but I do get up. I limp (boy does my hip hurt) to where she is standing, collect the reins and lead her back to the loading blocks. I get back up on her back and she takes off again. But this time I'm ready so I do not come off again. But I quickly learn that I have no meaningful control over her and I jump off her back. Since this was a planned evacuation, I actually land quite neatly on my feet. Our first ride is done. And now, I admit it, I'm a bit scared of getting back on her.

It was not to long after this that it was time to move the horses to the new house. So we load Beamer right up into the trailer and go get Mariah. We take her to the trailer and she will not get in that trailer. She wont go near the trailer. Rather than force the trailering at this point we take Beamer to the new house and then I go back for Mariah. I am going to have to walk her back to the house. We have to be out of the barn today. Fortunately, the new house is only about a mile from the barn so it is not a bad walk.

I had a good plan for getting her home, I was going to walk her along the ditch road to avoid going up a very busy street. We walked all the way down the ditch road, a much longer walk than expected, only to be met with a locked gate and no way around it. Nuts. We walk all the way back to the barn and now our only choice is to walk along the busy street. My one mile walked turned into about a 3 mile walk due to that little detour. Oh well, I really do need the exercise. I am happy to report that we made it home with no further incident. We now have horses in our back yard. Pretty cool.

A few days later I took her to the trailer and tried again to get her into it with no success at all. None. Not even an attempt by her to put a foot it. Hmmm... I may not be the horse expert I considered myself to be. I need help. Its time to find a trainer. Again.

Now, for those of you still keeping tabs, this is where things are standing on the terms of the promise:

Daughter: $900.00 for horse

Dad: $100 dollars for horse
$950 for trailer
$550 for receiver and hitch.
$300 first months boarding
$450 for saddle, breast collar and cinch
$120 for saddle pad
$200 for headstall, reigns and grooming supplies
$75 for miscellaneous sundries such as muck rake and bucket and the like.
$200 for trailer training
$1200 for four months board.
$50 for grain (Grain! Are you kidding me! Why do hay burners need grain! Next up - nutrition)
$1800 for about 6 months more of board.
$50 for 6 months of grain (we figured out a reasonable ration)
$1250 for knee care
$2300 for Mariah.
$3600 for a year of boarding.

And this does not include the house and some of the things that had to happen there. More on that next time.

When did I know I loved my horse

This post is a little out of sequence but Jane at The Literary Horse asked for our story about when we knew we loved our horses. I have not yet introduced our second horse, Mariah, and I will introduce her and tell you the story of how she came to live with us a bit later. But for now, here is a brief bit of the story.

Mariah is a Morgan. She likes to go but she is a nervous kind of horse. She spooks easily, tends to be head shy and takes a few steps to catch when I go to get her for a ride. The first time I got on her after we brought her home I got on bare back. I was nervous and she was very nervous. The end result was that I ended up on the ground and she ended up on the other side of the arena. She did not run away when went to get her so I took her back to the steps. She stood quietly while I got back on and then she decided to go. In any direction she chose. Discretion being the better part of valor, I jumped off and that ended our first riding experience. I would not be on her back for several more months (five if I recall correctly).

During that period, I got a trainer and learned to do ground work. I did that for a few months and then it was time to get on her again. This time I had a saddle. Even so, as soon as I got on her she started to test me and I had very little control over her. She never tried to buck me off, but she did try to see if she could get me to slide off. I was frustrated to no end and even talked about trading her for one of my trainers already trained horses.

But I continued to ride her. And each time we rode I gained a little more control and became a bit more comfortable with my seat and her speed. Each time I got her to collect a bit more and control her speed for a few more steps. And then I stopped being scared and started having fun. She started to come to me more, something she had never done before, and let me scratch her ears. We were starting to connect. And that is when I knew that she was my horse and that I was not going to get rid of her. We were going to learn to become a team together. Besides, how could you not love a face like this?