Paperwork, Paperwork, Paperwork........

Chelsea and Lindsay are all signed up for Fair now. They seem to be doing soooooo much this year. It's all fun though. We had our monthly 4H meeting last night and tied up a lot of loose ends. We decided on our Fair decorations for the barn (they are going to be soooo cool) of course I can't tell what it's going to be (you never know who reads this.....lol) it's TOP SECRET!!!!!!!

Everyone turned in all the paperwork needed to show at fair so the girls are now all set to go. It seemed like quite a bit of confusion but after almost two hours everyone had all their paperwork in and are set to go. We will be starting next week on making the decorations for the barn. We decided on a logo for our clubs fair t-shirts and signed up to get them. They are going to be very cool too. Chelsea (being the treasurer) reminded everyone that hadn't paid for their club dues or project fees to pay them as soon as they could. Well that pretty much sums up the meeting last night. We will be going to a Hunter/Jumper and Dressage education clinic this Wed. evening, should be very fun to watch. I will update on the clinic later in the week.

I forgot to add that I rode Danny the other night after our trainer rode him for a little while. It was awesome. He did great only one small issue, he is a bit barn sour and was wanting to go back to the barn every time we would get close to the gate out. He was very easy to control though even when he was wanting to go back by his buddies. Both the girls and I will be starting our regular lessons with Danny this week.

Banding your horses mane for a show...

Supplies needed include rubberbands to match your horse's mane color, a comb or a brush, a banding comb and some mousse (I am using Shapley's Mane Mousse, there are other products such as Quik Braid or even stuff for humans that work as well.). A foot stool is also helpful to relieve tension on your arms while working. If you can stand above the horse's neck you won't have to reach up with your arms.

I band the mane right after the horse's bath. The mane will still be wet and much easier to work with. You'll need to find a place to work where your horse will stand still for you. I try not to put the horse in a spot where he can eat (too much head and neck movement from tossing the hay around). Cross ties work best for me.

Comb through the horse's mane to get it laying flat. Spray a small section of the mane with the mousse (only about 6 inches at a time). Grab a few of the rubberbands and put them somewhere that is easy to reach. I load up my fingers on my left hand with quite a few bands, some people toss a bunch of bands in their mouths.

I use the banding comb to part the hair into small sections for banding. This gives you an idea of the width of each section. I make my bands 1/2 inch or smaller...that is usually less than two sections wide on the banding comb. For thicker hair you will want to use the smallest section you can. With a thin mane you can use sections up to 1 inch wide.

See how the banding comb makes perfectly straight parts for each band.

After parting the section, transfer a rubberband to your banding hand. Starting at the top side of the mane, take your fingers and work out any lumpy areas of the section to be banded. Grab hold of the section at the bottom side of the mane and gather it together. Slide the band around the section and wrap it around four times. (I've found that four times around works best for me. It stays in place for a long time yet isn't too tight to cause the mane to stick up.) Be very careful when you are wrapping the rubberband that hairs from the other banded sections or the un-done part of the mane do not cross over into the section that you are working on. You will have much neater and cleaner bands that way. It is also a good idea to keep the section laying down on the horse's neck as much as you can while banding it.

After the section is banded, you will be able to adjust the placement and/or tightness of the band. I usually separate the section into two and pull those sections apart so that the band tightens at the base of the horse's neck (much like a person would do to tighten her own ponytail).

When you've finished the banding, take a minute to trim the ends of the mane to give it a cleaner look. I find that standing at the horse's withers and looking towards his head gives me a better angle to find the shaggy looking areas of the mane. I will use a scissors to trim off the ends and make sure the entire mane is an even length.
You do not need to cut your horse's mane this short. The process works the same no matter what length the horse's mane is.

The finished mane:

Now you can put a slinky on, making sure that the mane is laying flat underneath it. When you take the slinky off before show time, you will have a clean and neat mane that lays flat for the entire day.

Thanks to a good friend of mine for this information.

Too much raining going on....

Hello all,
Well it's been raining like crazy here lately....if it's not raining it's still too wet to even do anything. We did however manage to get Danny into the indoor arena and do some work with him the other day, I believe it was Saturday. It was his first time ever in the indoor arena. He didn't spook a bit and a large firework even went off down the road and he never budged. Both the girls and I took turns walking and trotting with him on the ground to do some work with manners and respect. I lunged him a bit with the lunge line. The lunging was a bit awkward since neither of us (Danny or me) were very used to doing it, but we did it and he did well. I guess that means I did too. :o) The girls cleaned him up all nice and spotless in the cross ties. I was told by his old owner that he would get a bit antsy in the cross ties when she did it (which she normally didn't, she just straight tied him to a post) but he stood very calmly for a very long time, I would say almost an hour straight, while the girls and I cleaned him up. While Chelsea was taking her riding lesson with the lesson horse Lindsay and I took Danny for a little walk to eat some fresh grass in the front yard since there was a small break in the rain. I would say it was a very good bonding day for all of us. Well the rain is supposed to stop this Friday so hopefully we will get some riding time in this weekend, either in the indoor arena or the outdoor.

Hoof Trim

We had the farrier out this morning to have Danny's feet trimmed. This was the first time trimming for me anyways. His first time during the time we have had him. He stood like a champ. I was so very proud of him. And, so very happy that he did so well. Ferriers don't usually like horses that don't stand well while they are working with them. Anyway, that's our news for today! Bye for now.

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a very nice relaxing Memorial Day weekend. The kids played a lot outside, fourtunately the weather was good.

These are a few of our new flowers this year. We didn't even realize this was going to flower. We put it in last year and all it was all summer was the green leaves....now all of a sudden this year they sprouted these beautiful purple flowers.

We planted the garden too.......Of course that was my "big" chore for the weekend and it took all of about 15 minutes to put in....lol. It's looking good so far and at least the rabbits are leaving it alone this year (so far).

We also spent some time working with Danny over the weekend.....he is doing very well....he's has now met all of his new horsey friends and is enjoying being out in the huge pasture with all of them. He is much more calm now that he is out with them too. Our trainer rode him to see what he does or doesn't do and it went pretty well. The only issue was that when she asked him to go into a canter he would do a small buck.....I did however talk with the lady that I bought him from and she said he was never cued to move forward with legs only clucking and asking with words.....we are going to try again tomorrow evening. I think he was just a bit upset with her asking him to move forward with her legs......we will have to teach him though because you can't cue a horse in the show ring with clucking and talking ... he should catch on quickly....he's a very smart boy. We love him sooooo much.

Well that's about all for now. Have a great day!

Danny @ home...

Here is Danny loving being out and about and eating grass. He wasn't feeling very photogenic tonight......that or I was way to slow with the camera (darn digitals) his head was turned toward me a second before the picture actually took....lol....we brought him back up into the barn tonight then groomed him a bit......he is still very alert to everything but doing very well.

Here too......would have made a much better picture if he would have just not moved.......sure just try to teach a horse to just stand there and smile perty.....hehe.

Danny's home sweet home...

The trip to go get Danny went very well. It was a hour and a half one way. He did very well. When we first got there I think he could tell something was going on. (I think he saw the trailer and just knew something was up) I went to get him from the pasture and as we were walking up to the trailer he would stop and plant his feet every once in a while. He would go again when I rubbed his neck and told him everything was OK. He jump right in the trailer like a champ. (with a little bucket of grain in the front window because we weren't sure how he would do) He handled the long ride just fine. Half way through we stopped to check on him and he was doing just great. When we got him to his new home he backed right out of the trailer and stood there looking around. He walked right into the barn doorway like he already knew the place. He is settling in wonderfully. I couldn't get any good pictures of him yet because I didn't want to interrupt the process. I will have some soon and post them for everyone to see. We are so very happy he's doing so well.

Bringing our boy home...

I am going to get Danny tomorrow morning.....It will be a long day I'm sure but I am so excited I don't think I'm even going to be able to sleep tonight. I will probably stay up all night watching all the horse shows on RFD-TV.....lol. I already have the camera packed up and waiting by the door so I'm sure to not forget it so I can get pictures of the baby too. I'm sure I will be updating right away tomorrow night.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all those wonderful Mom's out there. Have a GREAT day........and give those chitlin's a big squeeze.

Starting to create some memories...

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox