hobby horse blog hop #27

Here are the rules:

Answer one or all of the prompts. Link back to Living a Dream's post. Visit other blogs. And don't forget to ask a question of everyone else!

1. When it comes to your horse (dog, cat, husband, kid or anything else), tell about a bargain you were thrilled to find.

Hmmm. . .I do love a good bargain, but my husband is much more of a bargain hunter than me. I don't have the patience to search through stuff! Cooper was a great bargain, $25 for one of the best dogs I've ever had! 

Cooper in his costume for his first Halloween with us!

2. How about the flip side of that. Tell about a bargain you discovered that turned out not to be such a bargain after all.

Ah, I am so bad at thinking back! I have to keep consulting my husband! Once, we had to buy a new engine for Mike's car. I had been driving it for some time and did not get the oil changed as I should have. . .oops. We got a pretty good deal on the engine, but a few months after that, I got in a car accident with the car and totaled it. This was about one month after we had paid the car off!

3. Benjamin Franklin once said, "A bargain is something you have to find a use for once you have bought it." Your thoughts? 

I hate having things I can't/don't use. I am a pretty practical person and if I can't find a use for something, I don't want it.

My question: Where do you find the most bargain's for tack or horse supplies?

goofball animals

Goofy Shyloh short stories: 

One day I was talking to someone and petting their horse in the cross ties. We heard a strange noise and turned around. Shy was on her knees, with her butt still in the air, neck stretched halfway across Ryleigh's stall, trying to crawl under her stall guard to get a single piece of hay! It was one of the funniest sights ever and I what I would not give to have gotten a photo of that! I told the chiro and the farrier that story and they both said no wonder she had problems! My horse is a contortionist!

Then, the other day, I was walking Shy down the aisle. Sometimes when I do this, I let Shy sniff and check everything out as we walk. She is so curious! She came upon one of those plastic totes. It was filled with hay replacer pellets for the new horse, Maverick, an underweight and scarred up rescue Standardbred (possibly) . I let Shy fiddle with the tote. She pushed it around with her nose, then figured out how to open it. I just stood next to her watching. Shy sniffed inside, stopped and looked around (I think she knew she was not "supposed" to be in the box), then dove her head inside. The tote moved and Shy jumped in the air and stepped back. But curiosity got the best of her and she went immediately back. Then stepped back, but not as far this time. This happened about six times, each time the reaction (which was completely caused by her actions) was less and less, until she was finally just flinching a little. And I think it was not because she was scared of the tote, but because she knew it was not hers to have. Can that be possible? If not, I'd still like to think so. Anyway, it was rather funny to watch the whole interaction!

I have also caught Shy stretching like a dog, with her butt in the air and her head and front feet down. This horse can make me laugh as easily as she can frustrate the daylights out of me!

As for the dogs. . .

My husband got a phone call from the neighbors saying that we were blaring music  in the house. They could hear it in their house! And we were both at work. It appears that one of the dogs (I am guessing Cooper since he likes to lay on remotes, phones, the computer mouse) decided to nap on the couch, stepped on the receiver remote to turn on the radio, then continued to lay on the volume button until it went as high as it could go. Mike said he could hear the music through the neighbor's phone!

Wasn't me!!

He asked his sister to go to our house to turn the music off. She said she could hear the music from the car! And when she went inside, both Cooper and Maggie were hiding in the furthest room from the source. Oops. . .no more just throwing remotes on the couch for us! 

Didn't do it!!

What goofy things do your animals do?

king of the mountain

Or princess of the hill. In all my blah-ness, I often can't see the big picture. But thanks to the uplifting comments and suggestions from Carrot Top, Martine, 4RRanch , Camryn, Dreaming, and Danielle, I pulled myself out of my self-pity funk and put Shyloh to work.

I dragged some poles out the the round pen. I set a single pole up and a set of three up on the opposite side. What an hilarious disaster to start with! Here is my drawing of the initial path Shy took. She acted like she had never seen a pole before and refused to go over them!

Can you follow this? Try this pattern times 3!

But once she got over herself, she was great! I had Shy do a ton of trotting in each direction and I could see her working her rear end. Being able to see makes a huge difference to me.

Work it!

Work it real good!

After that, a light bulb popped over my head. Dreaming had mentioned using the manure pile as a hill,  but it is not high right now and it is so yucky. But we do have asphalt hills!

I am still not sure what they are for, but hey, we were gonna try them out. Shy did go up them once with a tire half attached to her!

Shy surprised me by actually going up the hills without much problem. I could tell she was really working herself to get up the hills so we did not spend much time on those. These options were much more fun than being in the arena!

Climbing up! We can do it!

At the top! Made it! Tallest Haffie in all the land!

In between hills, she wants to take the short route.

At the top of the tallest hill!

We did the hills again another day and Shy is getting more and more comfortable with them. We can go over all three hills without having to stop at the top and survey all they land around us. The first time we did the hills, we did a there and back, there and back. I counted that as two sets. The next time we did three sets. I plan to keep increasing our sets to work those muscles! And bonus. . .it is a workout for me too!

Princess of the hill! She can keep an eye on all she owns from here

Gotta go down down down down. . . 

Shy went to the other side of the mountain to see what she could see. . .dirt bikers.

monday musings by shyloh #53

I'm so bored!!!

My hay is gone, my yummies are gone, I'm ready to go out!

Puh-puh puh-leeease take me out! I'm bored!

I'll show you, outside is right out this window!

I'm bored! I'll mess up my mane and try to get hay pieces.

So bored! Messing with Ryleigh is no fun today.

What's over here? Nothing but boredom. . .

Yawn! Do you see how bored I am?

I guess I will try to let my own self out! I need to practice my limbo skills anyway!

Stupid stall guard! I bite you! Let me out!

Ooh, some hay scraps I missed!

I stick my tongue out at you! I am so bored! Let me out!!

Mission accomplished! I'm staying the the back!

~Shyloh

feeling stalled

Blah. I have been feeling so blah, but trying my best to spin the blah-ness in a positive light. 

Shyloh had been doing so well since the beginning of March when she started lessons. But then in July, she started being off and I have spent two months figuring out what the problem is and working on fixing that problem. When Shy was getting lessons, there was a measurable difference in her progress. It was: now she is backing better, now she can turn on the fore, now she is responding to leg pressure, now she is not scooting. And I was so happy that she was improving. I was even riding her and working on myself!

But as we are working to build those rear end muscles up. . .I am just blah. I feel stalled in our progress. There is not much improvement that I can see. How do I tell if we are working those muscles, they are developing, and they are developing correctly? 

Plus. . .I can only walk and trot in hand over poles for so long. It is really boring. The only good thing I can *see* is that she is learning to find her feet. Shyloh is still working on finding her feet when there are more poles to navigate. Part of still being young and not worked, I guess. The chiropractor had said the same thing about her having trouble finding her feet on his first visit. The first couple times over the poles it is hit, hit, step on, hit, but the more we do go through, the better she gets. Today, I even raised the middle bar so she will use her rear end more. I had a video, but seriously, it was too boring to watch.

To switch it up, we also worked on Shy's back up. She has a terrible in hand back up. I used clicker training and Shy did fairly well. Not awesome, but good. I was surprised. I want to get her to the point where she will back to the end of the lead and I am standing still. We also worked on lowering her head. She was a rockstar at that! So yay on clicker training!

But as for me and my riding. . .stalled. I feel that I should be further along than I am. I should have more rides and longer rides under my belt. New goals have been set for myself and Shyloh. I plan to continue in hand walk/trot over the poles. Then I plan to get on Shy and ride her, at a walk, over those poles. I must do this for myself and her. No more excuses. Wish me luck!

I also added to and updated the Goals Tab, but here is a fall/winter rundown:

1. Get Shy's butt, literally, in shape through the use of pole work, backing, and hopefully hill work

2. Get myself in shape through yoga and my deep water swim aerobics

3. Ride Shy consistently, plus lessons for us both with Beth

4. Teach neck reining