Wordless Wednesday: Friesians and Flowers

And a whole lot of other things, too, of course.

This little sale pony is just too adorable. And this kiddo is going from strength to strength, even though it freaks me out a little that he used to ride in a pony pad not so long ago and now his stirrups are a hole down from mine!

Cute as a button

This divinely beautiful mare has been going so well lately! She's a strong woman, and we're forging the kind of bond you can only ever have with a strong-minded mare.

These ladies came to see the Friesians, and the big group of mares warmed my heart when I called them in the field and they all came running up to the gate together

I absolutely love riding the Friesian livery at my yard, too. Someday I'll have my very own one! A girl can dream.

Holly is one of the kid ponies I ride once a week to keep them tuned up

We have a cat now. Noah will be the subject of his own blog post soon!

Mirror selfies with the cutest little gelding ever. He comes to the gate of the field when I call him, and I just can't get enough of him!

My garden is still blooming like mad even though we've had a few good frosts now. These lobster flowers are my favourite

The canary creeper

The aloe thingy? Honestly I have no idea, my whole garden would be dead if it wasn't for my man remembering to water it (and copious amounts of moo poo making me look like a better gardener than I actually am)

Pretty gazanias

We're only about one month out of the summer grazing, but so far, so good with Skye.

She escaped her field last week and went tearing down the hill looking more sound than she has in years!

Titan completely tuckered out after a long afternoon of driving me nuts while I'm trying to teach lessons

Lessons have been wonderfully full. The kids have interschools coming up, and everyone's been working hard under these perfect skies.

My favourite human sorted out a bigger pen for my little Sebrights. They are like tiny jewels and bring us so much joy!

We spent the weekend farm-sitting for my parents, which included looking after these cuties.

One of my working students grew up to run a riding school nearby, and works off her horse's livery by doing odd jobs for me. She clipped this little gelding, and he came out absolutely amazing.

Golden dapples on silver.

Silver dapples on gold!

My dear man farms with indigenous layers, and they're just too beautiful in the morning light!

Another happy, chaotic lesson afternoon drawing to a close. Winter is good and necessary, but wow, I really can't wait to have my long summer evenings back! It's dark by five-thirty right now.

Scripture reading has grown very poignant to me. I'm reading the last few psalms David wrote during his life, and they are so intimately focused on God's holiness. I will be reading (or rather listening to) Psalm 119 over the next day or so, and I really look forward to experiencing the longest chapter of the Bible in this new context.

God is good!

A Bunch of Groundwork

 Thunder still has two more weeks of walk work only before we can get back to real work after all his ailments. His sweet itch is a lot better, but unfortunately right now only steroids are really getting it under control and stopping him from rubbing himself raw. At least it's nearly the end of the season now, and the itchiness is definitely linked to insects, so we'll only have to give him a couple more shots before the bugs die. I'll have to save up this winter and get him every fly boot, fly mask and fly sheet under the sun to avoid having the same issue next year - but I think it's the bot flies, hateful things.

Anyway, I digress. Since we can only do walk work, and one of us is kind of a butthead on hacks, we've been getting inventive with what we can do in the arena to spend some time together and maintain whatever strength we can.

Backtracking to my last lesson two weeks ago, I'd been struggling with installing the lateral work on my young Friesians. They're smart, and they were getting the hang of the sideways thing, but not the sideways-and-forwards thing. So Coach J taught me how to do more lateral work in-hand. I've always done turns on the forehand/yielding the quarters, but by the end of three lessons with the babies, J had me doing shoulder-in and leg-yield all over the place. If they could only step away from the whip pressure in a turn on the forehand, they didn't yet understand what it really meant.

"Once your horse will do it immediately, no matter where you ask him, that's when it's established." - the oracle himself

life is too short for matching socks

Also, Coach J said that if I get Thunder's in-hand work really good, he'll teach us both to piaffe in hand. Who doesn't need a piaffing Thunder in their life? We spent this week working on some shoulder-in, leg-yield and turn on the forehand in hand, as well as rein back for his sticky stifle, and he's obviously been amazing. He kicked at the whip once or twice, his very annoying go-to resistance, but that diminished a lot as we went on. I think we might finally be achieving his understanding of the whip as an aid instead of a punishment (and the misunderstanding was my fault in the first place anyway).

Thunder has been enjoying himself, especially because there are so many treats involved. I've interspersed a bit of playing around at liberty into his sessions as well. The first attempt backfired when he climbed under the arena gate to get some nice green grass and I had to do the walk of shame to fetch him in front of half the riding school, but after that he decided that he'd humor me and stayed right by my side.

so blurry, but I love his little face here

Of course, groundwork is also a huge part of my daily routine since I back all the baby Friesians (they are THE EASIEST horses to back! So trusting). We also have a baby in for backing here at the yard, a very special one. MS Lady Erin was bred here years ago and sold as a weanling, and when her owner was no longer able to keep her, my bestest friend (and, hilariously, Lady Erin's namesake) stepped in and bought her. I'm the lucky person who gets to put her under saddle now.

She is only four and still has some of the baby uglies going on, but I'm really happy and impressed with how she's developing. She also has a really sweet and chill personality especially for a half WB, half TB chestnut mare.

screenshots for days

I also schooled Lancey on Wednesday and he was quite brain-tired by the end, so I planned to take him out into the fields yesterday. When a bit of spare time rolled around, though, there were a million kids tacking up and I didn't trust them not to get themselves squashed without supervision, so I lunged the little guy instead just for some exercise.

I really should lunge my own guys more regularly. My young Friesians lunge at least as often as they're ridden to build up strength and fitness; in fact, their ridden work is almost entirely brain-work instead of body-work, so that I'm not overloading brain and body in a single session. But with my two boys, who are a bit further along in their education, I'm honestly kind of lazy about lungeing them. I don't get to work them as often as I would like and when I do, I really just want to enjoy some riding.

I think the solution is to teach my lovely groom to lunge with the neck stretcher, then even when my schedule doesn't go according to plan, he can still give them some exercise.

Anyway, Lancey looked lovely and strong, and he was accepting the contact so beautifully! Plus when one of the kid ponies broke loose and started running around, he stood angelically and watched - being held by a sibling who had probably never handled a horse before - while I caught the pony.

In other news, old Skye is looking AMAZING right now. We stayed on top of controlling her itchiness this summer, so her tail - which she rubbed out almost completely a couple of years ago - is growing back pretty well. She's also fairly fat now, about 7.5/10, but she needs all the weight she can get going into the winter. She and Magic are in my last grazing field, and there's still some grass there, but I think it's starting to get too hard and dry for her old teeth. It's a tell-tale sign when she starts standing next to Magic while he grazes at times; her teeth don't hurt, but I think it just gets exhausting to be trying to grind the harder grass down with those stubby little nubs.

Magic is a fat pig on grazing alone, of course

I bought her a bag of Speedi-Beet in the hopes that it'd be soft enough for her to chew. At first she WOULD NOT touch it at all, but we mixed it with some muesli for a few days and now she's eating it nicely for lunch. I've also added some extra lucerne chaff to her senior feed for breakfast and supper. Ultimately I think we're going to have no choice but to feed her soupy chaff and Speedi-Beet as the majority of her roughage intake if we're going to hold her weight this winter.

the rest of the old age home - Toy Town (21) goes for weekly hacks to keep his old joints going, but Conspicuous (25) and Legacy (21) are fully retired

Today's Scripture reading took me to 2 Samuel 21, where there's a terrible famine throughout Israel. The Psalm that went along with it was Psalm 42, which was written by the Levite musicians instead of King David. The first few verses ring very familiar, but reading it chronologically gave me such new eyes to the context in which it was written. When these psalmists wrote "My soul thirsts for You", they were literally starving. "My tears have been my food" isn't just poetic, it's literal. Yet even in times of famine, these people were hungering after God more than anything.

bonus pic: my favourite weirdo and his crazy little Titan 💜

Mastering the Turn on the Haunches

There are some movements that one can more or less fluff through in Elementary even if one has zero idea what one is doing if one is blessed with an obedient horse - or at least, there were for me. Arwen reliably scored well for her extended walk and her leg-yields and her walk-to-canter transitions, and even I could figure out from the Internet how to halt and be immobile for five seconds.

Turn on the haunches is absolutely not one of those movements, and so ever since I rode my first sloppy, hindlegs-crossing, one-foot-pivoting, unbalanced turn on the haunches, I've been getting 4s and 5s reliably regardless of which unlucky equid finds itself stumbling through the movement with me.

The fact that teenage me thought it would be a wonderful idea to teach poor Thunder to be a reining horse, and accordingly installed the clumsiest and slowest spins known to man, was not even remotely helpful. Thunder thinks he knows exactly how to do a turn on the haunches: swing around as quickly as possible, preferably with at least some pivoting on one hind foot for good measure.

It was a few months ago that Coach J, who must have been ready to poke his own eyeballs out by that point, really addressed the turn on the haunches in one of my lessons. And now with Thunder being in light work for two more weeks before we can return to full work, and one of my favourite Friesians also coming back from some time off with walk work, it's the perfect time to finally tackle this awful, hateful, no good, very bad movement.

Anja is not quite at that stage of her education yet but would like the blogosphere to know that she's adorable

I thought my main problem with the turn on the haunches was that I was either riding a sloppy half circle, with my horse crossing the hindlegs, or a swinging turn, with one hind foot planted and pivoting. While this is true, Coach J was quick to pinpoint the actual problem: I wasn't actually keeping any kind of a walk rhythm. I was just sort of... putting on my leg and panicking.

When I tried to hold the walk, keeping the horse forward through the movement, I just made poor old Thunder jiggy and confused. So coach gave me an exercise that I have ground to absolutely l o v e and that is rapidly becoming a part of my everyday walk warmup.

Navarro is the king of turn on the haunches, thanks for the help big bro

The exercise goes like this:

1. From the corner, let's say H, ride a leg-yield left to the quarter line opposite S. It's important that the horse is really straight and stepping off the right leg. (For me, I have to work hard to make sure I'm sitting on my left seatbone and staying stretched in my left side, instead of collapsing onto my right seatbone. I have to think about leaning left to make myself straight).

2. At the quarter line between I and S, ride a full turn on the forehand left, thinking about making a tiny volte with the horse's nose instead of keeping it still.

3. Without slowing down, ride a half-pass left directly out of the turn, continuing on the diagonal line.

4. At the quarter line between L and P, ride a full turn on the haunches or walk pirouette left.

5. Immediately out of the turn on the haunches, continue in half-pass to F.

The main point of the exercise is never to lose the walk rhythm, not for a single step - and, beyond that, to keep the tempo constant, too. I found that the feeling of traveling across the diagonal and the fluency of going from movement to movement helped the horses and I to think of the turn on the haunches as a more fluid, forward-thinking movement instead of an abrupt change of direction the way it's written in all of the tests. Plus, being used to doing a full 360 degree turn on the haunches makes it really easy to ride the half turn in the Elementary and EM tests.

this mane is so amazing

Navarro and I worked on this today, and I hope to play with it on Thunder this Friday as well. Thunder and I have been doing some in-hand work today, but I'll post more about that tomorrow.

I was listening to Psalm 13 today and it happily coincided (or rather, God-incided) with one of my favourite resources, Daily Grace Co's podcast. Today's episode was about lament as a way to process grief within the context of living as a child of God saved by grace in a world broken by sin, and Psalm 13, as David mourns over the way his own son and his own nation betrayed him in 2 Samuel 13-15, is just such a sincere cry of a heart that feels forsaken yet trusts that God is always good.

bonus pic: my newest livery is a Friesian too and I am totally in love 💜

Psalm 13[a]

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

Footnotes

1. Psalm 13:1 In Hebrew texts 13:1-6 is numbered 13:2-6.

Still With Us

 Yesterday was a day of absolutely wonderful news 💜

don't judge my scanner pictures, I have no idea what I'm even looking at right now

At Standerton Show in September 2019, Arwen and I competed against the absolutely divine Wilgerus Dakota and his rider. Dakota had many in-hand and ridden championships under his belt at that point, and so did the dragonbeast; it was a pretty neck-in-neck competition. He was impeccably behaved and inexpressibly beautiful, and as always, I had to admire his classiness and his wonderful, elastic movement - a rare characteristic in the older type of Nooitgedachter. Even though he's only about 14.3hh, he moves like a dressage horse.

Arwen put in a really great test that day, however, and she ended up being the champion - with Dakota as a very close reserve. His owner suggested that perhaps we needed to bring these two champions together. Dakota was very much on board with this suggestion right at that very moment, being reined in only by his impeccable manners. I wanted one more competitive season for Arwen (which turned out to be the 2020 season, lol whoops), and so we made arrangements for Arwen to meet her handsome beau in the 2020/21 season.

In mid-January 2021, after an unbelievable hassle because her royal dragonness simply WOULD NOT show her heats to the mini teaser stallion and also wanted to absolutely murder the real stallion, I finally caved and gave her some Lutalyse to bring her onto heat. Arwen has never had irregular cycles, but she's an undemonstrative mare (surprisingly), and she was not even remotely enamoured with poor little Sputnik despite his best efforts to romance her. I even teased her with one of the bossier geldings - the only one who could elicit a response from Faith - and she ignored him flatly. As for Dakota himself, who was already on the farm to cover Faith and René, her only response to him was flat-out aggression. Teasing with him proved to be as difficult as it was dangerous, not because of the angelic stallion but because of my psycho dragon mare who just wasn't having it. She wanted to jump on her hindlegs and fight him like another stallion.

Don't let the cute-kid-pony look fool you. She crazy

The Lutalyse worked great. I gave her a little flunixin with it to mitigate any side effects, and she was a little sweaty for an hour or so afterwards, but otherwise fine. Three days later, she came into absolutely roaring heat. She stood in the corner of her field positively screaming for the stallion.

OK, then. I took her over to his field, she pushed me out of the way and presented herself with gusto. From that moment on, she was as sweet as pie with him. His owners have stabled him at my place for the whole summer to avoid moving him during the AHS season, and she's been his faithful little wife and companion ever since. We get it, girl. Hormones gonna hormone.

totally in love

The great thing about being able to do live covers in the field, as opposed to AI or covering in hand, is the fertility rate. Nothing beats natural covers out in the field. All three my mares conceived immediately, and were confirmed in foal by scan shortly thereafter. I tried to get a picture of tiny BabyDragon, a mere speck floating around on the screen, but of course Arwen decided that she was done standing still right at that moment.

The first three months of her pregnancy went without a hitch. She was friends with Dakota, who respected her sassy personality and quick hind hooves, and I was coming up with names for BabyDragon. Then, I had five biliaries at my yard in six days, after a very quiet season. We have awful biliary (piroplasmosis) in our region and normally it's pretty easy to handle, but when Arwen's temperature was up at evening check in mid-April, I was horrified. Not only does high fever cause abortion in mares - and at 89 days, Arwen was still in the most fragile part of her pregnancy - but none of the drugs we have for treating biliary have been researched in pregnant mares.

We didn't have a choice, of course. Working with my vet, I treated her as conservatively as I could, which proved to be nearly impossible. Arwen's fever was uncontrollable except with NSAIDs, and as soon as they wore off, it would spike massively again: 40.0, 40.5, 41. Biliary normally has a biphasic fever that gives us a little breathing room every 12 hours or so, but hers just stayed jammed through the roof except under the influence of the same drugs that were also a risk to BabyDragon.

On the third day, my vet and I had both had enough. Longsuffering Non-Horsy Man and I loaded her into the horsebox (transport stress being yet another risk for abortion or resorption of BabyDragon) and drove her an hour and a half north to the veterinary hospital.

When she stepped out of the horsebox, Arwen was already feeling better. Her fever had come down without intervention this time, but the vets were still quite concerned about her. They asked to keep her overnight and run a set of bloods, which I was entirely on board with. Anything the dragon needs, it gets - and I wanted to give BabyDragon a fighting chance. Even though the stress of overnighting in hospital was yet another risk to BabyDragon, it was better than being stuck at home without the top supportive care that Arwen could receive in hospital if she took a turn for the worse. I went home without my dragon and did the last thing I could: I prayed. My dear friends, online and in person, rallied around Arwen, her baby, and I.

The next morning, the news was very good. Arwen had been dehydrated, but she'd quickly remedied that by, you know, DRINKING WATER like a NORMAL HORSE and not requiring ENDLESS IV FLUIDS (looking at you, Magic). Her blood smear showed that the biliary parasites were gone and she was responding great to treatment. By the evening, the vets were happy to send her home. She had made a great recovery, but they cautioned me that between the fever, the stress and the medications, she had a 50/50 chance of aborting or resorbing BabyDragon.

Three very long weeks followed as I waited. The effects of it all could take a few weeks to affect BabyDragon, and I wanted to be sure that we were out of the danger period before I had her scanned. Finally, yesterday, my lovely repro vet came out and gave me the best news ever.

Blogosphere, meet BabyDragon... or possibly just some of BabyDragon's amniotic fluid, tbh I still don't know what I'm looking at, but the vet says there's a foal in there!

Despite it all, by amazing grace, Arwen held on to her foal. She is completely fine and in great shape, and BabyDragon looks just fine on the scan. And this time I had the good sense to have the groom feed Arwen copious amounts of treats so that I could get my first pictures of BabyDragon!

Arwen is a very civilised mare to foal down - she waxes 48 hours in advance, unlike Skye, who NEVER WAXED, WHY?? - and she usually goes for 345 days. If she does the same with this one, she'll be due on Christmas Eve. We're getting a baby dragon for Christmas!

I am really, really excited to meet BabyDragon. Not just because, you know, BEBE HORSE, but because this is the result of a breeding that I'm really confident in. Dakota is not a big stallion but he's very correct and has attributes that will improve on Arwen: his perfect shoulder angle, athleticism, and wonderful elasticity. Arwen brings her stronger neck and bigger bone to the table. They both have absolutely perfect feet and legs. If we win the gamble that breeding always is, this should turn out to be a very correct hony in the region of 14.3-15 hands, with good legs, a good brain, and elastic movement.

Either way, I'm so happy and grateful after all the drama that Arwen and BabyDragon are both super healthy and well. The great vets of Heidelberg Animal Hospital and Witbos Animal Clinic went to such great lengths to make sure my girl would be OK, and I so appreciate that, as well as all the love and prayers from everyone.

Most of all, I stand awed once again by the wonderful way in which God loves. He breathes galaxies into life, controls storms, bids the waves of the sea - He is so mighty, shown in Psalm 104 below. But the God Who builds mountains and placed the sun in the sky is the same God Who hears our prayers about tiny things, things as small as an unborn horse.

If Arwen had lost BabyDragon, God would still be good, but today, I'm grateful to praise Him for this very good news!

Bonus pic: a Friesian fetus, Nita (Tsjerk 328) x Kalvin fan Stal Bellefleur. Nita is quite a bit further along than Arwen and we could see her baba very clearly! Apparently this is the little one's head. You can kind of make out the eye socket.

Psalm 104

1 Praise the Lord, my soul.

Lord my God, you are very great;
    you are clothed with splendor and majesty.

2 The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
    he stretches out the heavens like a tent
3     and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
He makes the clouds his chariot
    and rides on the wings of the wind.
4 He makes winds his messengers,[a]
    flames of fire his servants.

5 He set the earth on its foundations;
    it can never be moved.
6 You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment;
    the waters stood above the mountains.
7 But at your rebuke the waters fled,
    at the sound of your thunder they took to flight;
8 they flowed over the mountains,
    they went down into the valleys,
    to the place you assigned for them.
9 You set a boundary they cannot cross;
    never again will they cover the earth.

10 He makes springs pour water into the ravines;
    it flows between the mountains.
11 They give water to all the beasts of the field;
    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
12 The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
    they sing among the branches.
13 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers;
    the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work.
14 He makes grass grow for the cattle,
    and plants for people to cultivate—
    bringing forth food from the earth:
15 wine that gladdens human hearts,
    oil to make their faces shine,
    and bread that sustains their hearts.
16 The trees of the Lord are well watered,
    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
17 There the birds make their nests;
    the stork has its home in the junipers.
18 The high mountains belong to the wild goats;
    the crags are a refuge for the hyrax.

19 He made the moon to mark the seasons,
    and the sun knows when to go down.
20 You bring darkness, it becomes night,
    and all the beasts of the forest prowl.
21 The lions roar for their prey
    and seek their food from God.
22 The sun rises, and they steal away;
    they return and lie down in their dens.
23 Then people go out to their work,
    to their labor until evening.

24 How many are your works, Lord!
    In wisdom you made them all;
    the earth is full of your creatures.
25 There is the sea, vast and spacious,
    teeming with creatures beyond number—
    living things both large and small.
26 There the ships go to and fro,
    and Leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

27 All creatures look to you
    to give them their food at the proper time.
28 When you give it to them,
    they gather it up;
when you open your hand,
    they are satisfied with good things.
29 When you hide your face,
    they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
    they die and return to the dust.
30 When you send your Spirit,
    they are created,
    and you renew the face of the ground.

31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
    may the Lord rejoice in his works—
32 he who looks at the earth, and it trembles,
    who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

33 I will sing to the Lord all my life;
    I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    as I rejoice in the Lord.
35 But may sinners vanish from the earth
    and the wicked be no more.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

Praise the Lord.[b]