Samwise is my 10 year old Appaloosa gelding. In 2004, he lost his sight to uveities, also known as moonblindness. According to my vet, many people would not have suffered Sam's blindness and the expensive treatment he needs to keep his eyes comfortable. True, they cannot see--but without the meds he could suffer infections and terrible headaches ( Read more... )

Yesterday I put the western saddle on Phoenix (four year old 1/2 Percheron 1/2 Paint PMU gelding) and ground drove him in the hackamore all over ( Read more... )

I haven't been to all the clinic, nor read all the books, and definitely not seen all the videos, but I have nosed about the training philosophies of different ... we'll call them "Horse Gurus." These are not people who train horses for a specific event. Most of their experience seems to come from simply getting horses to "behave" and work well ( Read more... )

Hey all ( Read more... )

Today, I got out of work late so I was too lazy to get my saddle, and we cantered bareback for the first time :) Since I love nothing better than cantering bareback, this is great news. I love my crazy standardbred.

I would just like to announce:
we trotted on the buckle for the first time today!
He was a saint. Didn't speed up at all. Kept going in a straight line.
This is a big deal for a standardbred who has been out of training for less than a year, and who was always known to be the wild one.

Ozzy did his first in-hand trotting side pass. We may not have much time to ride, but our ground work is coming along beautifully. Now if I could get him to do it going to the right....

Last week before school started back up I went and visited Judy, my old employer. I spent three and a half years working for her in exercising, grooming, and training her horses. She is a great, wonderful lady and is like a third grandmother, but she does have some peculiar ideas about horses and drove me a bit nuts from time to time (some of you ( Read more... )

Doc and I had success last night. I've been a tad bit frustrated about the canter problem, and so asked for help in equestrian. There was one particularly good suggestion and so I vowed to give it a try last night. Little did I know of Doc's plans for the evening ( Read more... )

Cinnamon Strudel had her first ride in the horse trailer yesterday. It consisted of three whole miles and Marty came with me and we chatted as we crept along the road, taking turns excrutiatingly slowly and changing speeds in a gradual manner so as not to jostle our living cargo. She was only tied to one corner (we have a rather open stock ( Read more... )