Category: Horses

Schooling Lily

I tried something new with Lily yesterday: I rode her with my jumping saddle and her current favorite pad when I schooled with my trainer. I don’t believe I had tried this combination on her before.

Trying a new combination on Lily makes me a little apprehensive. When she disapproves, it isn’t a big deal, unless she decides that something is pinching her when she jumps. Then she bucks. These bucks are more impressive when viewed from the ground than they are for me as the rider. She doesn’t crack her back and she bucks in a straight line, so it doesn’t take much to stay with her except sitting up straight and staying relaxed. However, I would prefer she not do so, not least because I hate causing her any discomfort.
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Indy

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We call Indy the miracle horse of the barn. In horses, Indy’s color is called grulla, a form of the dun color. He has the dorsal stripe, and you can occasionally see faint stripes that run at right angles to the dorsal stripe.
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Seabiscuit

I saw Seabiscuit with friends yesterday, and loved it. “Equidaily Racing Journal”:http://www.equidaily.com/sbiscuit.html has pointers to articles all over the web. A “Washington Post article”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A54773-2003Jul28&notFound=true talks about Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the book. An “SFGate article”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/26/SP253593.DTL discusses how Seabiscuit ranks among racing greats such as Man of War and Secretariat. The New York Times has an “archive”:http://www.nytimes.com/ref/movies/25SEABISCUIT-REF.html of Seabiscuit stories, including the article proclaiming his victory over War Admiral.

First Clone Horse

BBC News reports on the first cloned horse born in Italy ten weeks ago. A mule clone was born earlier this year in the United States. Prometea, who is the clone of the mare who acted as surrogate, looks like a sweetie. It will be interesting to see how she develops. The success that resulted in Prometea took 328 attempts.

Trail Ride

I had not taken Lily out on trail ride in several months. It has been one of those “ought to’s” in the back of my mind, but there has just been too much going on. I usually trail ride with my trainer and she has been too busy with her summer camp.

However, she takes Wednesday as her day off, and asked me if I wanted to go out. Lily had been a little too enthusiastic on Tuesday, since I hadn’t been riding her enough last week due to the heat, but had chilled out again today, so I agreed to a 20 minute trail ride and worked for a while in the arena while my trainer got Havoc ready. Havoc is her 22 year old Thoroughbred and former show hunter. He looks like an old dude horse on the trail most of the time these days, except when he doesn’t. My trainer would probably let me trail ride Havoc if I asked her, but I haven’t ever quite gotten up the nerve to do so. I’ve seen Havoc forget his age and do airs above the ground too many times over the past decade. If I want to trail ride a Thoroughbred, I’ve got Hap.
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Riding Hap

In a post last week, I wrote about riding Hap bareback. Here is a photo my trainer took of us today while we trotted around her in a circle:

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I would like to be a little more erect and have my leg dropped down straighter out of the hip, but I love how relaxed and round Hap looks in this photo.