Crickhollow Farm

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Almost Like Spring

The weather here today is downright pleasant.  Sunny, with next to no wind (those who have visited the farm will understand what a rarity that is), it was a lovely day to be out doing barn chores.  I swapped into one of my not so heavy-duty winter barn jackets and still ended up taking it off for a while.

Yes, I was mucking in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt for a while today and we're not yet out of February.  It's weird.

Annie is starting to shed now, not a day after I was telling Bonni that she hadn't started yet and that normally she would be doing so by now.   Animals do love making liars out of us.  I should try to go after them all with some grooming implements tonight.  Knock some mud off of them (for a brief time, anyway) and work the wind-knots out of Merry's mane.  He's terribly prone to them.  I should keep him in braids, but it just seems warmer to leave it loose in the winter.  He probably wouldn't notice the difference so long as I was consistent.

The horse all were being pests today whilst I was mucking.  Zahr kept trying to open the outer door to his stall and Myf was even poking at the outer door in Annie's stall.  I was using the Deere & spreader today (no snow!) and that was inciting Myf & Morgana to riot, the goofs.  It was entertaining to watch them tearing around the paddock as I'd drive past, though.  I think they're all getting a little stir-crazy.

I also took advantage of the weather & lack of snow to bring up a couple of loads of hay with the Deere.  It makes me feel all productive, even if it wasn't a lot.  Still, I should have enough up now that I won't have to go drag any up through the rain/snow mix they're predicting for most of next week.  I'm not looking forward to that.

Swans

We get our fair share of wildlife around here -- deer, eagles, coyote, cranes, turkeys, etc -- most of which go ignored by the horses.  Last week, though, a pair of swans landed in the field behind Crickhollow and the horses were quite perturbed.  Not sure what it was about them that what so horrifying, but the boys kept staring and snorting, and Morgana would trot over to the fence to stare over it at them and then book it back to the piles of hay I'd put out for their dinner.  (It was her really snappy, impressive trot, too.  Gorgeous.)

I hiked across my hay field with the camera to take pictures of them.  They're pretty difficult to see on the ground-shots, but I got some good ones once they took off.

Horses at Play

The horses were being quite wild & playful this afternoon.  As I was getting ready to go out to give them their evening hay, Myf & Morgana were being goofs on one side of the barn whilst Zahr and Rocky were being goofs on the other. 

Myf was on a rope twirling binge, which seemed to make Morgana jealous.  Myf would buck and run a bit, but mostly she just twirled and twirled...  Morgana stood nearby at one point, looking like she wanted to have the rope, but getting her face too close would have meant getting hit with it.  It was hilarious.  Myf did eventually drop the rope and they went careening around, bucking & hopping.  The jolly ball was even put into play at one point.

Zahr, meanwhile, was trying, semi-successfully, to get Rocky going.  He did run and buck a bit, but mostly it was Zahr hopping about, trying to harass him into action.  He had his tail flagged and was looking quite handsome, as he does when he gets revved.  He almost got Merry going good, but I think he was more concerned about his (woefully empty, just ask him) stomach than playing.  He kept going back towards the barn and poking around for any bits of hay that might've escaped from lunch.

I would have liked to get pictures but, as it was dinnertime, I knew that all action would stop as soon as I opened the back door.  I just stood and watched from inside for a while, until it looked like Rocky would appreciate the rescue.

Napping Horses

I got a shot of the boys napping after breakfast this morning.  Gimli, Merry, Rocky were standing in this perfect three-spoke configuration & Zahr was off on his own.  Of course, they were behind the tree from where I was, looking out the back door, so it's hard to see.  I didn't want to go out for a different angle because they would have heard me and all turned to stare.  They do it every time.

 

And on that theme, some shots of nap time a few weeks ago.  There was no snow then, so it's not as pretty.

War Horse **here be spoilers**

So Bonni and I (and my mum) finally got out to see War Horse this morning.  I really enjoyed it, but I do have to warn you: if you don't want to cry, this is not the movie for you.

Melting

Things are melting again today.  Snow's packing down and getting slick.  There are icy patches sprouting wherever water drips, only to freeze again.  All this just in time for more snow tomorrow.  Joy.  I did manage to make a couple of trips down to the compost heap with wheelbarrows full of manure and a couple trips back up to the barn with hay this afternoon.  All without falling on my ass (or knees), though there were a couple of uncertain moments.

Bonni & I are going to try to go see War Horse this weekend sometime.  I will be sure to post my thoughts if we actually make it to the movie.

The Farrier Visit and New Part-bred Welsh Registry

The farrier was out yesterday.  No one needed much trimmed off their hooves (and this after a nine week interval!), but there was some shaping & filing to be done.  Everyone now has nice, tidy little hooves again. 

Most of them were quite good.  I actually had to bribe Zahr to leave the aisle.  He was ready to just plant himself there for attention.  A nice change from how terribly suspicious he used to be (not that he isn't still wary, in general, but he's much, much more relaxed & happy than when I got him). 

Morgana, on the other hand, was a complete terror.  She did not want to sit still.  It was wiggle, wriggle, poke, poke, hop the whole time.  Considering that during her first time standing for the farrier all by herself she was the best behaved of any of them, I'm considerably less than pleased with her behaviour of last night. 

Probably, she just needs a chance to run and work off her excess energy (this is where an indoor arena would be nice -- give her a chance to go on a tear without hitting ice and hurting herself), but that's not really an option right now.  She was so naughty I found myself wishing for the lead with the stud chain to slip over her nose to get her attention.  I don't even use it that way on Merry, but she was just so fidgety and distracted.  I didn't have it to hand, though, so I spent the time she was getting her feet done trying to brace against her and keep my face out of the way of her head tossing.  I really didn't fancy ending up with a broken nose for my trouble.  Needless to say, she did not get any treats for that performance.

 

In other news, the Welsh Pony & Cob Society of America has opened a Part-bred Welsh registry.  This will allow breeders to register their ponies with the WPCSA when at least one parent is registered Half Welsh.  It certainly opens up some possibilities for breeding programs that are, like warmbloods, more focused on producing a particular pony-type than in purity of bloodlines.  Granted, there is the Sport Pony section of the American Warmblood Society for that to some extent.  For really tracking the breeding of a pony (or horse), being able to tie him or her to a specific breed registry (or registries, plural) is really nice. 

Whether or not it truly makes a horse or pony more saleable in the grand scheme of things, I myself certainly like having registered stock, whether or not they're breeding prospects.  Zahr, for example, is a gelding.  Totally useless for my breeding programme, on hold though it may be, but I'm proud of the fact that I can say that he is a registered, purebred Arabian.  I can look at his pedigree and see horses in it that I like (and yes, some it don't care for as much).  Maybe that makes me snob that I personally value him a little bit more because of a piece of paper, I don't know.  It didn't really factor into my decision to buy him.  He needed a good home, looked to fit in with my circumstances at the time better, and was just plain a better horse than the (unregistered) mare up for sale with him.  Him being registered was incidental, but it's still something I appreciate, now that I have him.

So I'm excited about the new registry and look forward to seeing how it pans out in the long run.  It's definitely nice to know that, once thinks pick up and I can start breeding again, if I breed Merry to Morgana, for example, that their get will be able to produce registrable ponies in his/her own right, not just if s/he is bred back to one of the parent breeds to be half- arab/welsh.

Oh Winter

Weather is verging, once again, on the miserable.  Air temp isn't super cold, but the wind is nasty.  Yesterday was an all-day drizzle/mist which coated everything with ice.  We got snow to top it last night/this morning, which actually helped a bit with the footing.  The snow's stopped falling, now, but the wind is driving it around, forming drifts. 

All of the horses have been divested of their blankets, save for Rocky, since he gets stuck out in the elements the most.  His is going to have to come off at some point, here, because the farrier is coming out this afternoon.  It seems to be a rule that the weather is nasty one way or another whenever the farrier's out.  Thankfully, the wind is coming mostly from the west, so it's not too bad in the barn itself.

It's supposed to be better tomorrow, particularly with regard to the wind, which I sincerely hope is true.  I need to go buy more feed and really don't fancy getting blown off the road in the process.  (I'd actually like to get my mother to take me in her van, since it holds so much more than my saloon car, but it's what you'd call "high profile" and not pleasant, or all that safe, to drive in high winds.)

Adverts, etc.

I get a tonne of equine-related e-mail advertisements in my in-box on a daily basis, mostly from the Arab community.  So much that it's really borderline spammish, though I should be able to unsubscribe.  I don't because every once in a while there's something interesting that comes through.  Mostly, I just delete them unread.

This afternoon, the subject line of one caught my eye and, out of curiosity, I opened it.  It claimed to be offering a "fantastic" dressage prospect.  Now, most of the Arab world wouldn't know what a real dressage horse looks like if one came up and bit them.  There are exceptions, though, which is why I opened the e-mail, hoping for just such an exception.

Let me just say that it's really hard to take a horse seriously as a dressage prospect when the sellers can't even be bothered to see to it that it's kitted out in properly fitted tack.  Having the second photo of the animal be one where it's in faux-hunter get-up doesn't help either.  It just reminded me of why I cannot stand to watch the "hunter" classes at Arab shows.

So, yes, I was disappointed, though not particularly surprised that the dressage prospect was really just another (likely Western Pleasure) horse in fancy-dress, it's owners out to try to cash in on the recent popularity of the (Arabian) Sport Horse Nationals. 

It's just sad because Arabs can be good little dressage horses.  Toad didn't generally care for it, herself.  Crosscountry tended to fulfill her need to go and do much better.  She could, however, do it pretty well when she'd settle in and concentrate on it. 

Concentration is the key, though, and I haven't seen too many Arab trainers/owners/whatever who are willing to concentrate on it.  They want to take shortcuts in training.  They want to be able to swap out tack and enter their horses in more classes to get more points.  They want to have another discipline to list to make their horses more saleable. 

Dressage is a discipline of time and patience, not one of 60-day training.  It takes years, not months, to work up the training scale.  I'm sorry, but if your 20 year-old "dressage horse" is standing there with a swayed back, the likes of which I've only seen before on a 23 year-old Saddlebred, then he has not been trained properly and I will not call him a dressage horse.  Proper dressage training would have strengthened that back, not left it sagging and broken-looking.  That swayed back tells me that you took shortcuts and don't actually understand the discipline.

(Also, if you want to seriously do dressage, you need to be using at a minimum an all purpose saddle, whether during training or in the ring.  A Western saddle is not appropriate.  The balance is completely wrong.  An effective dressage rider cannot have her feet sticking out in front of her.  The Western saddle was designed with a very different task in mind, and you would do well to remember that.)

 

This all just leads me to my main point...

As shocking as it may seem, if I'm completely honest, I have to say that I think the Arabian Horse Association's Sport Horse Nationals are a terrible idea.  At a glance, it seems good, right?  Promoting the disciplines I love in the breed I love.  How could that be bad?

It's bad, because it's not really encouraging the disciplines I love in the breed I love.  It's encouraging the show barns in the breed to play at my disciplines.  It does nothing to encourage the Arab people to make a real go at taking up dressage, for instance, because they only have to compete against each other in the end.  What does it do for dressage if barn A's poorly trained dressage horse only has to beat barn B & C's Western Pleasure horse in dressage tack?  Nothing, that's what.  It also doesn't help raise the breed's profile among outsiders.

To the people who claim prejudice against Arabs at open shows, making a need for the breed show in which to compete, I say, grow a pair.  Retreating to your own private sand box to play is not going to change anyone's mind.  All it does is cement the fact in their minds that obviously Arabs can't compete because they won't. 

Want to show how athletic your horse is?  Show the world that you breed really can do it all and so should be anyone's first-choice?  Then get out there and do it!  Get out there and compete at the open Hunter-Jumper and Dressage shows.  Take up eventing.  Spend time learning the discipline and beat those Warmbloods and Thoroughbreds.  Starting your own show because the "other kids" are mean isn't going to accomplish anything. The only way to get the outside horse-world to take your breed seriously is to get out there amongst them and show them that you are serious and your horses are capable of doing serious things.

I could seriously rant about this for ages, as I'm sure anyone who has sat with me at a show can attest.  I'm not going to this time, though.  Partially because I think I've made my point and don't want to frighten away the few readers I have, and partially because my Arabs (and Welsh ponies) are sure to be staring at the house as I type, wondering where the heck their dinner is.

I just came in from putting the horses up for the night & giving them their dinners. It was eight below in the barn. Brrr. Tomorrow, we are supposed to get snow. By Sunday, the temps are supposed to be up around 30 again.