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Month: September 2007

Mired Down in Real Life

Mired Down in Real Life

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Not that horses aren’t “real life,” of course, but lately our non-horse pursuits have taken over. Apparently some of you have noticed – wow! How flattering! We appreciate you all, and promise we’ll be back soon. In addition to work, school, parent-teacher conferences and my birthday (the big 2-9, again…), we are working on a huge, non- horse-related video project with a deadline of Sunday. Weird deadline, I know. It’s for our church; it’s our pastor’s 20th year with the church and Bill and I got suckered into willingly volunteered to produce a video montage of his 20 years there. (Just kidding; it’s very time-consuming and stressful but we’re happy to do it, it’s gonna be great). So we should be back next week. In the meantime, here are some upcoming topics to look forward to:

  • Putting up hay for the winter – we spent one recent Saturday in a hay field collecting freshly-baled hay.
  • Learning to train in a round pen – can’t wait to have time for that!
  • An overnight trail ride – if we can get Valentine in shape in less than two weeks, I’m going camping with him along with my best horse buddy, Shari, and some friends of hers in mid-October.

…and on a related note:

  • Why you should own and use a riding helmet.

See ya’ll soon!

Curiously Fun Barn Names

Curiously Fun Barn Names

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Barn NamesI was making my way through the October 2007 issue of Horse and Rider magazine this week when I came across what I thought was a great premise for an article. It’s called “Barn Names” and it discusses something near and dear to my heart – the names we actually call our horses on a regular basis. For those of you newer to horses than I am, the official or fancy name (as I call it) given to a horse is typically derived using a combination of the names of the mama (dam) and daddy (sire) horse. So if Mitsy’s Goober and Trackside Smooch decided it was time to have a baby horse, the foal could quite possibly be referred to as Goober Smooch, Goober’s Smooch or Smooche’s Goober. That’s actually a cool name but usually it’s something like “YR All Dun Playin”, a real life example given in the article. I can’t imagine many people go around calling their horse by their fancy name (“here YR All Dun Playin. Who’se a good YR All Dun Playin?”). That’s why most of us have come up with cutesy, easy to say barn names like…well…Moonshine and Valentine.

The article was interesting but a little disappointing. I guess I expected more funny or clever names. Still, “Beau-Zo”, “Preacher” and “Lolly” are all fun and they all had stories behind them. But I know there must be some doozies out there. Have you come across a particularly interesting barn name? Do you know the story behind it? If you have a horse, what do you call him/her and why? I’d love to hear your stories.

You probably already know this by now but here are ours:

Valentine – our first horse. He had another name when I bought him but since he was a Valentine’s Day present for Mikki, the Kid and I came up with “Valentine”. It seemed to fit and it’s easy to say.

Moonshine – my first horse had some goofy fancy name that had the word “moon” in it. I couldn’t remember what it was (still can’t) so as a joke I called her Moonshine. Hey, we live near the mountains in east Tennessee and moonshine was a big deal around here during prohibition and some say it’s still made by the old-timers. So it was kind of a local joke, too. And lastly, she sure is pretty. I think she stands out like the glow from a moonlit night.

Romeo – a leopard Appaloosa, one of Romeo’s spots is in the shape of a heart.

Cash – derived partially from his fancy name “Cash to Coins” he also fittingly has a dollar sign marking.

Okay, your turn!

We Have a Round Pen!

We Have a Round Pen!

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Yesterday evening we went over to our favorite horse friends’ house and picked up a portable arena they weren’t using. We loaded it onto our trailer when we got there, enjoyed a nice dinner with their family, and headed home a little after 9:00 p.m. So do you think we parked the trailer somewhere and left it for tomorrow? Heck, no! We were out in our dark pasture with the truck lights on, plus our Jeep facing in from the other way, hauling that thing off the trailer and setting it up. If we didn’t have to get the Kid to bed for school, we probably would have tried it out with a horse. We’re so excited!

We have eleven 10′ panels plus a 5′ gate; that gives us a round arena (well, eventually it will be round; it was pretty dark out there when we were setting it up) – that’s about 37′ across. Just about perfect for working a horse with a longe line. Also, it’s not so big that my Tennessee Running Horse can take me for too much of a ride. 😉

And, just in time, we’re supposed to start getting cooler weather this week. I do have this big project I’m working on with a deadline looming…but I’ll find a way to squeeze some arena time in too.

Did I mention that we’re really excited? We are really excited!

3rd horse – should we or shouldn’t we?

3rd horse – should we or shouldn’t we?

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Three horseshoesWe’ve been toying with the idea of getting another horse. We have two now and our barn is setup with three completed stalls. Here’s our reasoning: we could use a practice horse, one that’s well broken (bulletproof, as they say). Our horses are awesome but they need work. Sometimes one of us just wants to go for a ride. A third horse would let us do that. Also, once we whip our horses into shape for trail riding, what’s the kid going to do? We can’t just leave him home. He needs a horse to ride, too. And speaking of the kid, he’s a little afraid of our two horses. They’re young and energetic. He’s heard of my fall on Moonshine and Mikki’s wild ride on Valentine. If we had an old, broken horse for him to ride maybe it would increase his confidence. Plus, we’d love for him to have the experience of owning a horse as a kid. Not many kids get to do that. I know I wasn’t able to but I would have loved it.

The cons…well probably the biggest con at this point is the expense. Horses are cheap but maintaining them isn’t. We’re hoping to get a good deal for our winter hay in the next week or two and we’d have enough for a third horse. Supplemental feed is reasonable. The shoeing is expensive, though, as is medical care, as needed. We’d need aother saddle, but that’s a one-time expense. And then there’s the age thing. If we get a 20-25 year old horse, it could live 10 more years, or 1 more year. Also, the kid hasn’t especially expressed an interest in having his own horse. I fear Mikki and I would be stuck taking care of it. It’s not hard, since we’re already caring for two others, but I want to teach responsibility.

What do you think? Should we do it? Not that we’ll listen to advice or reason, since we tend to purchase/acquire animals on intuition emotion anyway. But I’d love to hear your thoughts.