Riding on Water: Sometimes Love is a Bridle

February kicked off with the show at Penbritte and then grew somewhat quiet on the equestrian front. Thunder recovered from a pulled tendon early in the month and then promptly damaged his other front leg by getting into an argument with Diablo (25, one-eyed) about who was Rene's boyfriend. (Rene was content for them BOTH to be her boyfriend during the most violent and raging foal heat I have ever seen). It wasn't major, just a lump on the outside of his cannon bone, but Mr. Stoic got time off until it healed anyway.

Raya continued to be super adorable. She got herself into her first trouble (of much trouble, judging by how the horses have behaved lately) when Samule got away from Kathleen during his lunging session and decided that he HAD to capture and investigate Raya. He ran through a couple of fences (did I mention that a lightning strike took out our energiser, too?) and chased poor baby Raya through a couple more, separating her from her mom. Thankfully, Dusty showed up, chased Samule away, and kept Raya by her side until I got to them. Raya was none the worse for wear except for a small scrape on her nose. Samule spent the rest of the month in jail until we got the new energiser.

Lancey only had a couple of rides in February, but he was fabulous. Amazing to hack - obviously - and even better in the arena. In fact, I would have loved to take him to Horse of the Year, but the Arabs are on a weekday which is difficult to swing at the best of times and impossible given all the vet bills these dudes incurred this month.

Arwen had a chill first week in February. She went for a long hack after the show and behaved impeccably - solo is no problem for her these days. Is the dragon maturing? Perhaps we can hope so now that she's 17.

Rene had a photo shoot with her actual owner, who's hopelessly outgrown her now but had a few beautiful years riding her. Raya photobombed accordingly.

Despite Raya's best efforts, the photos still turned out totally spectacular.

photo by Erin Vogler Photography

BarnRat has her lovely new horse but is still competing Midas at SANESA this year as long as she doesn't grow too much more. He's jumping like a beast for her. We took them out to a clinic at E2's yard in Meyerton and he stopped hard at first, but kiddo rode him thoroughly through it, and they ended with a .90m track in fine style including fillers and things.

He's given this poor child a hard time, but she's also developed a fabulous seat, so there's that.

Raya's overwhelming cuteness made it really hard to get anything done. She's been one of the easiest foals we've had, although we had some trouble getting her to quit eating her mom's concentrates - I've never seen a foal eat so much solids so fast. This girl was two weeks old and chowing down on grains and hay already.

Lancey was out of work for most of February because I had a pea-sized melanoma cut out of his butt early in the month. It was the only one I could find and I wanted to get on top of it, so the vet cut it out with nice big, clean margins. He was shaky under the sedation and gave me a fright, but came out of it easily. The wound healed with no fuss at all.

The vet asked if I wanted to biopsy the lump, but like... it was a nasty black thing with octopus tentacles on a grey horse. It was a melanoma. I opted out.

Everyone had flu shots on the 7th as well, so Arwen took it fairly easy that week. The next week, though, we got right back to work and kept ticking over nicely for the rest of the month. We did a ton of work on her halts, trot-canter and walk-canter transitions, and flying changes.

Honestly, I'm not sure how we got anything done at this yard in February because of this Raya cuteness.

This is my new friend and client A's horse, Mawarda, a picture perfect little Arabian. He was kind of ribby when we got him in the winter, but these days he's a shiny, round boy.

(Relax, it's khakibos, an invasive but weirdly beneficial weed. Not that kind of weed.)

Faith was incorrigible at the show, so much so that I didn't even put her kid on her. She wasn't dangerous, just really tense and wiggly - definitely not suited for a 10-year-old. So I switched the kiddo onto Flashy instead. He's been a bit of a dunderhead lately but improving with every ride.

Hubby was allowed to start cycling in the beginning of February, and riding with him has become one of the most exquisite pleasures in my life.

Toy Town and BarnRat joined us on this particular ride, which always introduces an element of chaos. It was some of the most fun I've had on horseback this year - and I've had a lot of fun this year.

Running this place can be stressful, but it's got to be some of the most beautiful land the Lord ever made.

Tarka, also belonging to A, had difficulty gaining her weight back after she arrived with her foal Azai at foot last year. These days, though, she's starting to look a little like an overstuffed sausage.

Despite some very dry weeks in January and early February, the grazing is holding up fine. Perhaps a little too fine - I'm more worried about fat horses than thin ones right this moment.

Despite being in full work, Arwen is one of the fattest ones. We're working on restoring the fences now that we have the new energiser and we're going to move the fat ones off the best grass, so we'll see how that goes. They'll lose much of it naturally in the winter.

Wedding Bliss and BarnRat have gone from strength to strength. Wedding could be quite rude and throw a few bucks, but E2 jumped on her for me and sorted her out with one ride. Kiddo handles her extremely well. They've been jumping gymnastics and tracks of 0.80m already, which Wedding finds practically effortless. She's also finally gaining some weight on the nice grass - hopefully we'll get the ribs totally covered before winter.

Arwen and I took our new livery, Donker, and his lovely owner, IG, on a hack with Flash and her non-horsy boyfriend. He was admirable about the whole thing and Flash, of course, took perfect care of him - despite having launched a poor little kid only a few minutes earlier. This is the first kid to fall off Flashy, though, in four years of riding school work, so I can't be too mad.

Our neighbor is renting our southern pastures this autumn and winter, so he put up a new fence for us.

I'm not sure I ever introduced Samule. Hubby has been pestering me for months to get him a horse of his own, but I did not. Instead, I got him a tiny, somewhat feral mule. He's much less feral these days - we've had him a few months - and becoming a really cute pet. K is training him for me and we plan to put him in harness eventually. His talents include following us around the pasture and escaping from absolutely any fence that isn't loaded with at least five thousand volts.

I sent this to Erin joking that his front legs kept getting injured so I'd just chopped them off. This was actually his first time back at work with two functioning forelegs - a lungeing session that involved a lot of squealing, leaping, and even, embarrassingly, getting away from me and running around the arena while K was trying to ride Faith. Good to know he was feeling fine, I guess.

My birthday was at the end of February, and I wandered into my house after running around all afternoon to find K, Rain, hubby, and Erin (via video call) gathered inside yelling "Surprise!" like in the movies. They'd all chipped in to buy the most epic birthday present.

After buying Arwen's brown Wintec last year, I didn't really have brown tack to match. It came with a snaffle bridle that mostly matched but had a crank noseband and rubber reins that aren't really showing legal. I bought some mismatched reins and a noseband that also didn't quite match and cobbled them together for Pre-HOY with an old Pelham that I had lying around. She goes in a Pelham - not like she goes in the double, but she goes - so I was happy with that for HOY. Nothing exactly matched, but I wasn't going to fork out a bunch of cash for a bridle that was only really necessary once. Dressage judges might get a twitchy eye from a black bridle and brown saddle, but they won't mark you down like in showing.

At the tack shop where I got the reins, though, there hung a thing of beauty: a brown double bridle exactly the same as Arwen's black one, which is perfect for both showing and dressage and suits her face really well. I thought it would be a good match for my saddle and it wasn't that expensive but, again, I'm still paying off expenses from when hubs was in hospital so it wasn't going to happen. Except that it did. They all got together and bought it for me, and it matches not just well, but perfectly.

Sometimes, love is a bridle.

K put ribbons on it

Donker has been a generally very good boy, but he presumably got into an argument with one of the others - likely Flashy - and received a kick. Being an older boy, he hasn't been healing particularly well, so I spend some time obsessing over his leggy each day.

In the absence of a tractor, an issue we've been dealing with for over a year now, hubby hooked the harrow to his SUV - which he is very precious about - and spent hours dragging the arena for me. It made an enormous difference. This man, you guys <3

M lunged Thunder a few times for me because I was embroiled in HOY prep and not able to pay him a ton of attention in the last week of February when he came back to work. I rode him on the Wednesday, though, and while - as always - he needed a little convincing to get in front of my leg, he felt as strong and supple as ever.

Arwen felt amazing as we prepared for Horse of the Year. We worked on flying changes, hoping to fit one into our show riding test for extra marks, and while she was still a little messy right to left sometimes, her changes left to right got to a point where they felt almost perfect. She skipped softly through them so lightly I could barely feel them.

Her extended trot became effortless again with the arena harrowed, too.

The main herd is quite large now - eleven horses - but they're getting along so well. Arwen is, obviously, the boss mare and she keeps everyone effortlessly in line. Flashy is the Big Stallion in his little mind and Midas acts as a sort of lieutenant. Faith is also quite dominant, and the rest are pretty happy to just eat grass and not have complicated social lives. Flashy and Midas are even getting along, to my surprise.

Raya and Rene temporarily got put into the arena while my hands were busy. Raya galloped madly around the arena but never came close to the non-electrified white tape surrounding it. She is very clear on the fact that fences are not for touching, a great relief to me. There are few things more frustrating than escapees.

I had professional photos taken of Raya because I'm sad not to have better photos of baby Wynnie, so I look forward to posting those.

I may be a little worried about their weight right now, but I still truly appreciate the low maintenance of these Nooitgedachters. It hardly costs me a thing to keep these two beauties in show condition. They're only on pasture with a fistful of balancer for the micronutrients, and even in full work, these girls simply blossom. No shoes, great mouths that only need the dentist occasionally, cast-iron legs, and they don't even seem to need a ton of bodywork. Thank you ladies.

old man Vastrap in the background living his best retired life

Arwen and I didn't practice our show riding a ton - we have Easter Festival dressage coming up so that's taking up a lot of our attention - but we did make the effort to play with a working riding test and ensure that the halts are still steady. Spoiler alert: the effort paid off.

Kiddo and Midas at their clinic at E2's lovely yard. They have SANESA coming up and I'm interested to see how they do. Midas jumped well at this venue last time and both he and kiddo have improved a lot - she's put in an amazing amount of work.

Another livery also went to the clinic and did this to himself in the horsebox, so that was fun. Horses gonna horse. It was surprisingly superficial and he's basically fine again now, but it was not a good moment when I stepped into the blood-streaked box.