Good news, Bad news

Today I have good news and bad news.  Not really bad news, just bad enough to screw up my routine for the next couple of days, which is frustrating since I'm on holiday!!!!! :-(  But I guess that's the way it goes.  So which do you want first?  The bad news, you say?  Well too bad for you, because I uploaded the good news photo first XP

Good news: After very nearly spending 280€ on a no brand, imported from god-knows-where but pretty and new trail saddle, I got a call this morning from my friend Virginia whose dressage teacher was selling her all-purpose, synthetic English saddle.  For 30€!  With stirrups and girth included!  So obviously I was interested and when they got to the stable, we tried it on Starbuck-- it doesn't fit her perfectly but with some of the filling removed it'll be fine-- and checked it out and I ended up buying it!  So now I have my very first saddle :D :D :D  And I can still buy Christmas presents!!!  Here's a photo of it, when I get around to taking photos of Starbuck with it on I'll post them too.

Bad news: First of all let me set the stage, this morning was one of those crisp, windy, sunny winter mornings that horses like so much, and the barn retirees (four 25+ year old horses who aren't ridden any longer) were grazing next to the arena.  I was longeing Starbuck in hopes of riding her afterward when Ronnie, one of the oldies, suddenly decided he wanted to make friends.  So he ran up with that playful trot horses do and Starbuck reciprocated, completely forgetting about me.  She ran off, I forgot to let go of the longeline (when oh when will I learn that I CANNOT hold her!?) and I fell forward, bashing my left knee into the ground.  It swelled up so much that I finally went to the doctor and had X-Rays taken just in case, but it's nothing but a bump.  Hell of a goose egg, though:

I guess I'll be taking it easy for the next few days... when will I be able to ride Starbuck again?  I feel like at this stage we're regressing, although Marina says that this is a natural learning curve, that horses always go from good to bad to better to worse to not-so-bad to best and Starbuck's just in the "worse" part...  I know also that the weather plays a part and that all the horses in the barn are acting up (just look at old Ronnie pretending to be a foal) but it sure is frustrating to lose her attention in that way and as a result have our training put on hold for a few days.

But in a way it's a good thing because now I know it's something I really need to work on before there's a serious wreck; and it's better for these things to happen and get fixed on the ground rather than from the saddle.  And if she's in the low part of the learning curve then hopefully there's nowhere to go from here but up!

Roots

The other day my friend René helped me try a western saddle on Starbuck for the first time, he's been kind enough to let us borrow it so I'll probably use it to ride her one of these days :-)  I actually think western saddles are really comfortable and give a lot more support to their rider than an english saddle, they're just too heavy for me to want to use it every day.  But she looks great in it anyway!!!

Barefoot Beauty

Lately Starbuck has been getting much cooler about me lifting her hooves, so I finally decided she was ready for the farrier to give her her first hoof trim.  So I called a farrier, Xisco, who I've seen working before with other horses at the barn; I chose him because he's really calm and takes his time in order to make it a completely stress-free experience for the horse, because the hooves he works on are nicely formed and healthy and also because he doesn't mind explaining what and why he's doing.  But even so I was worried about Starbuck behaving herself, so I got to the barn early and did some roundpen work with her before Xisco arrived.

As it turns out I had absolutely nothing to worry about-- Xisco was really patient and let Starbuck get used to the idea of him doing wierd stuff to her hooves, and Starbuck just went along with it apart from lots of curiosity and a little bit of resistance at first.  The farrier said her hooves were healthy and correctly formed except for that she's a little toed out.  He took some extra height off the outside quarters to compensate but recommended that I shoe her.  At first I had planned on not shoeing her until I started taking her on long trail rides and using boots for at least the first year, but I guess I'll do some more research...

The best part was that since Starbuck stayed calm and unstressed the whole time (at the end of the session she had her head down and lower lip totally relaxed while Xisco rasped her hind hooves!), I know that every time she gets a trim she'll be even calmer!  What a good, brave girl!!!  At any rate I wanted to immortalize the moment; so here are the photos: