Horsekeeping and backyard training, pets and art by Connie Moses
Honza Blaha, Professional-level liberty work– posted by drivedrunk
Honza Blaha, at liberty part 2
Honza Blaha, two horses at liberty posted by boebelle
Pompei Liberty Parelli Level Three by TPompei
L3 Liberty with Ally by horsesavvyca
U.S. Eventing Assoc. Calendar/Omnibus and results of USEA Events
Search events by discipline at FEI. Disciplines include show jumping, eventing, dressage, driving, reining, vaulting, endurance, para-equestrian dressage and para-equestrian driving, the sanctioned Olympic equestrian sports.
FEITV features online video from FEI equestrian competitions. (Should work for you PCers, uses Windows Media player so didn’t like my Mac browser…)
Some selected events listed at FEI.org (Federation Equestre Internationale):
Dressage (FEI) upcoming competitions and results
Eventing (FEI)
Show jumping (FEI)
Driving (FEI)
Australian website reports Rolex, FEI results…
Show jumping, dressage, eventing… worldwide competition links– up-to-date standings, scores, and news– are gathered in one place on Cyberhorse.net.au:
The Virtual Equestrian
This format is nice, includes international competitions although most of the regional info is Australia and New Zealand of course. Those Aussies seem to really love their horse sports too!
Thrilling Extreme Horse Ski Joring Mix– extreme racing horses pulling wild skiers on competition courses and over jumps, played to Ride of the Valkyries! Northeast Ski Joring Association, see Peaches’ other pix and vids at ski joring
Upcoming Rolex 3-day event April 22-26 will be covered on Eventing Radio Network from Lexington KY. Listen while you work!
Don’t overlook my Webcams in New England (page link at right), including many sunset webcams and others on Lake Winnipesaukee… I have added these new ones recently:
NEW! WEBCAM ON THE M.S. MT. WASHINGTON– May-October daily cruises on the big lake; November through ice out (April), winter-docked in Center Harbor until cruises resume… This cam should be very interesting in season!
Smith Cove Cam– gee, does this one catch Horse Gal’s place???
Paugus Bay Cam which is west-facing I think (if so, will catch the sunset)…
Rattlesnake Island, the Broads Wolfeboro
View from Acadia National Park ME Headquarters ESE towards Bar Harbor
I should have been watching the Winnipesaukee cams during ice-out! Duh! These time-lapse webcam images on a previous post will give you a nice idea of that… Year of Winnipesaukee Weather
These are put up to celebrate fond memories of Joonatan, who was our exchange student from Finland in 2006. Joon is a terrific snowboarder as well as skater, and was so excited to enjoy our own little local Gunstock Ski area!
Crazy! (all vids are on youTube…)
Human skateboard by SneauxShoesVideo (Created using stop motion video.)
AGE 10! — Austin the Awesome Young Skater, posted by rcaphishin
Four year old skateboarder, by schaeffernico
As if New England mud wasn’t bad enough, now’s the time the horses shed out their winter fur too!
Using a shedding blade on Willy mare, April 6. Gross!!!
(Blues music “The Thrill is Gone” by the Juke Joint All-Stars, Beale Street Memphis.)
All the extra “winter coat” fur they grew last fall comes back out again when the temps warm up. This is the price we pay for not having to blanket them in the winter (saving oursleves a HUGE amount of work and expense, and keeping the horses comfortable besides!) Shedding will go on about a month too, lucky us.
Welcome to New Hampshire mud season in April, our least favorite month. Just as we start getting tantalizing previews of warmer days of spring, the combination of melting snow and April showers (often storms) create muck on the ground surface which becomes so slippery that the grass roots get scraped off by horses’ hooves, and they can sink in below hoof level.
Yucky as it appears to us, the horses don’t seem to mind this muck. These are Willy’s white hind hooves.
Willy mare’s left hind… I have to watch her for signs of scratches beginning on her heels, she has gotten them in recent years in the spring or summer when it’s been wet and warm.
Temporary fencing blocks the horses out of the grass paddocks to save the growing surfaces. Once we do let them into the pastures, we will give them limited access by putting them on perimeter tracks, and limit their grass time thru strip grazing and using a grazing muzzle on Gilford, our really easy keeper.
Their walkway goes from being pitted semi-soft hoof-holes to really mucky water-filled hoof-holes. This is like a “track” next to the barn. (Right here they are sort of pacing the temp fence because I am on the other side, and they are saying “Let us out! We can see grass sprouting over there!”)
It’s a significant extra benefit of pea gravel that it helps to stabilize the footing in the paddocks.
Here you see pea gravel spread in the gateway, and what a difference it makes in the depth of the mud.
This peastone gravel was spread into the paddock by the horses, pulled out from under the run-in shed roof. Here it stabilizes the ground as well. We are so pleased with this result that we plan to buy more pea gravel this year to spread in the muddiest areas nearest the barn.
The gravel continues to serve its original purpose too, which is to help keep their bare feet naturally trimmed. Over the winter, from November to March, we only had to trim them once; of course their feet don’t grow much in the winter anyway. Presently their hooves look great and they all have a lot of concavity in their soles. We do have to trim overgrown frogs occasionally.
Note “green” grass peeking out on right, just across the temporary fenceline.
To save our pasture so it can grow, we resort to “penning” our Herd close to the barn, to limit the damage they would do by walking and running around the fields. They are not too happy about this, it’s pretty boring, so we throw them tree limbs to chew on, including prunings from our apple trees.
We tossed these tree limbs into their area for them… they always gotta be chewing! And they go after whatever unprotected (un-electrified) fence rails they can find too.
The boys also go after each other at times. Fortunately we can give them a little exercise now. We have started back into their training and taken them out 4 times so far in April, driven individually (each on a cart) playing follow-the-leader on the streets. Usually I take Glendale in the lead, so he can gain confidence. Today we took each one out solo, then I rode Willy mare out alone a bit too. We’d like to take them out more often but we’re not big on driving/riding in the rain.
They have been good as gold, even their first time out after 4 months of no work. I thank their 24-hour turnout for keeping them sane and reasonably fit, though they certainly are not in condition so we take it easy starting out.
Content whenever they’re eating… as usual.
For video junkies…! WooHoo!
See those two little “arrows” on either side of the movie screen (if a movie is playing, get them to pop up by a “mouseover” of this screen.) Clicking on either arrow will cycle you forwards or backwards thru my videos on youTube without you having to leave the blog. I have not followed it to the end, but I’m guessing it might go through all 300-plus of my (mostly horse) vids. Better grab some popcorn first!!
FYI, the whole image is too big to fit my blog page format, therefore the right side gets blocked by the menus over there. But when this post appears on the bottom of a blog page, I think it won’t be obscured like that. Those little previews on the right show you 8 upcoming selections.
As you can tell, I am frequently observing how horses interact, mostly my own little family Herd. Glendale as a 2 yr.old was away from home for five weeks while training under saddle (in September 07). In his absence, momma mare Willy became very chummy with her older son Gilford (age 4) whereas previously little Glen was her favorite and Gilford was low horse on the totem pole.
Low and behold, when Glen came home and went running to join his long lost family, momma Wil would NOT let him join them! She was threatening Glen and lunging at him as if he were a total stranger, and she was herding Gilford away from him so that the brothers couldn’t get close to each other. What’s REALLY funny is that she showed this same behavior maternally when each of these guys were little foals and she was protecting them from any other horse that happened to be around!
Click this video (not on arrow) to watch it larger on youTube… story is told in captions.
Alpha mare/Herd boss momma Willy (bay Arabian mare) prevents Glendale from joining her and his brother Gilford. Note how subtly horses can communicate with each other– all she has to do is turn her head towards Glen and he backs off. Her stronger threats include pinning her ears back, shaking her head, moving her body towards him, and of course, turning her butt towards him or lunging in his direction.
Poor Glendale was pretty baffled, and I got this bit of video; after a while of this, Glen came over to join up with me as his friend, so I scratched him. They spent the rest of the evening with Glen being the odd man out, but by the next day things were more normal and mom mare wasn’t threatening him anymore. Gilford’s status with momma seems to be a bit higher than it was before, and the brothers get along fine as usual.
Go figure, my alpha mare and defacto Herd boss of her 2 bigger boys just rules the roost– it’s a mare thing. Glen now seems a bit more independent of both of them than before, I found him way separated from the other two a day after this, and none of them were worried about it. In fact, Gilford left mom Willy to join Glen first, and she followed. Glendale is growing up!
[NOTE: The mare didn't keep this up... before long, Glen was her favored once again and Gilford as usual was relegated to third place.]
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