Bye, Bye to My Black Beauty

The final sale in the purge of our herd will mark number 8...Ebony is a mare that I bought in 2007 and was in foal to my 2 yr old filly Ellie that we sadly sold a couple of weeks ago... Ebony was originally purchased with intention of her being DD's horse but being in foal D obviously didn't ride her for very long then she was off after she had Ellie so by the time she was ready to be ridden D had such a strong bond with Pete that her and Ebony just didn't click!




Ebony is a very particular horse, she is picky about everything in her life! What I have found with her is you either hate her or you love her and vice versa, she either hates you or she loves you! When we sent her to a friends for her tune up last summer they fell in love with her and she was a perfect angel while she was there! After we took her home she did great for a little while but she is a horse that requires being ridden every day!! But with my back and 14 horses we hardly had the time to devote to her. When we purchased Krissy a few weeks ago it was part of our plan to sell Ebony along with the others, but her sale was going to be a bit more difficult as we were asking more for her and she also requires a more experienced rider who has time everyday to devote to her.





So last week the Q's came out and had every intention of focusing on Ebony as they had been checking her out on my website. We had taken her back to our friends as he was riding her everyday and we were pondering the idea of a possible trade out with him for Ebony because he and his daughter LOVE her!! So we showed up with Pete and the minute I got out of the truck I could see her in the stall about to come unglued! She was pacing in circles whinnying like crazy! But we took Pete and Krissy into the arena and left her till the Q's got there and when we went to bring her in she was SOAKED!! I thought it had been down-pouring outside by the looks of her! But no, no rain...It was sweat! She had herself all worked up! So we got her saddled and rode and she was doing good, so buyer Q decided he wanted to try and ride her and instantly she froze...Wouldn't move, being absolutely stubborn! I could not believe her!! Our friend was talking to Q and coaching him through what to do to get her to go and everytime it worked but he had to work at it for a minute...I was SO annoyed with her behavior, this is why we don't get along! I don't want to deal with a horse that is this finicky!! So Mike (the trainer) gets on her and gives her a good attitude check and of course she rides out perfectly smooth! Buyer Q gets back on her and dead-lock! So obviously they then rode Pete and realized he was the polar opposite of Ebony and then decided Pete was the horse for them!





After the Q's left we were chatting with Mike and he said he could not believe how Ebony was acting he had never seen that out of her and I told him well that's how she is at home! Very stubborn and an out right chore to ride! He said he felt it from the moment we pulled Pete out of the trailer that she was being buddy sour, it was funny for him to say this because I have never thought Ebony to be "barn sour" but yep buddy sour she was!! So Mike finally got to witness the side of her that we've been explaining LOL!







The next day we had a gal and her husband come out to ride Ebony and this lady too loved the way she looked, she has a 3 yr old gelding that she's been riding and I guess he's not what she's wanting hence her horse shopping. So she got on Ebony and there was a slight moment of hesitation on Ebony's part then she rode out perfectly fine! This lady rode her for about 1/2 an hour and never had another issue with her at all! Of course Pete was not there...So she came back again the next day and rode her some more and decided YEP that's the horse she wanted! So Ebony will be going to her new home soon! She is still at our friend's while the new owner gets her other horse sold as she boards and it's outrageous to pay for more than 1 at a stable.

They LOVE Each Other....Krissy and DD!!

Krissy is just an amazing horse....After having her that first week and having the "hives" issues I was a bit worried! She took her 3 days of meds and seems to be recovering just fine. She still has some bumps on her skin but I wonder if it is from the hives or maybe some mosquito's have paid her a visit?! Have I mentioned yet how SOFT Krissy is?! I totally thought when we bought her that they had lubed her up with some secret potion to make her that way but I have figured out that nope she's just a softy! And I love it!! She's like petting a velvet blanket LOL!










DD has been working with her and they are doing GREAT!! I cannot express enough how happy I am with this horse! DD is loving the fact that Krissy is smaller framed because that helps her knees LOL, she has always had a problem with getting sores on the insides of her knees from riding but she hasn't had that problem with Krissy. She just beams from ear to ear when she talks about that! Funny the things that make a kid happy!







We are currently spending some time getting DD's riding techniques back in check. All of this dramatic stuff she went through over the Winter has taken it's toll on certain things she does while riding. Like the placement of her feet, she had gotten so used to losing her stirrups that she would tuck her feet back to hold herself on and she carries that into when her feet do stay in the stirrups! She has been doing really good with that and a few other "technical" issues. So obviously she has worked the barrel pattern with Krissy but only 3-4 times each time she rides. She will walk her the first couple of times and trot 1 or 2 times around the pattern. The only thing we haven't let her do is a full blown out run on her, I am thinking that will only happen after I feel like her technique is back...










All in all I think we could not have asked for a better horse for DD, she is so pleased with her and so are we. Krissy is definitely the type of horse that before she is saddled she doesn't really want to much "attention" but after she is saddled she acts like a little lady so that is fine with me. Of course after she is done riding she likes to be loved on! I am so thrilled for their future together and cannot wait to see what this mare can do!

Horses...A Little of This and That!!

About 3 weeks ago we made the decision to sell half of our horses. So here I am 3 weeks later and that half equaling 7 horses is now sold....Well I guess 1 is still in process of selling, that one would be Pete. He will go tomorrow for a vet check per request of a couple that wants to buy him (which he just had one by our vet mid February so he will pass with flying colors)!

Friday afternoon we met with a couple that was really interested in purchasing 2 horses but in particular wanted to look at Ebony. They came and rode both Ebony and Pete and figured out really quick that Ebony is a horse that requires total relaxation and a lot of experience as she will test you if she can get away with it.. The husband did a great job with her but it was not a match made in heaven that's for sure! Ebony is the kind of horse that you will either love to death or wish death upon her LOL...Just kidding...Well kind of, at least about the death part! But you might just hate her! She's got looks to kill and an attitude the size of Texas!

Test drive on Ebony....She's sure a beauty!!



So while the husband was riding Ebony the wife wanted to ride Pete so she did, and guess what?!....She LOVED him! She had her hubby ride him and he just loved him! So they wanted a little while to think on it and called a few hours later and laid their claim on him! Now of course you may be wondering about his issues and where he stands with them now. Pete has been with a friend of ours who runs/checks cattle on a daily basis and after approx 3 weeks riding him we have decided that Pete's main issue is when he is given a job he goes into over drive. When he is being ridden on trails for pleasure he is an absolute gentleman and when he is given the job of tracking a calf he does just that! And sometimes the ending result of that is purely him getting hot and wanting more.. SO we discussed with the couple buying him that he is NOT to ever be ridden for any eventing and really should never be used for anything but pleasure trails. Which is exactly what they want! I do want to throw in here that since pulling him from rodeo we removed his tie-down, the reason we put the tie down on him in the first place was his lack of response when checked and turning the barrel. After putting it on him he responded much better, but after taking a step back and looking at the situation we decided that for the most part the rearing was him fighting the tie-down. As since we have removed it he hasn't reacted in that manner, but he also hasn't been rodeo'd so it is what it is, right?! Also DD did ride him Saturday and I am really glad she did because after one trip around she was cheesin and he was happy! So I am glad that before he is gone she got one last ride to reaffirm their bond....The Hubby is a bit sad about losing his horse but he knows that Pete needs to be in a different environment so he accepts that.

My Hubby enjoying his last ride :(



Later the story on Ebony's sale...

I'm Lovin this Filly!!! Who Knew She'd Ride so Well!!

A few weeks ago I partially introduced you all to one of my 3 yr old Filly's Macy...Macy had been sent to the trainers to be broke and on her last day when we were supposed to pick her up we couldn't because she had an injury right by her left eye...I did a post about this here. She has literally been healing for 45 days now!! When we brought her home my job was to simply keep the wound as clean as I could and remove the stitches.. So I did but the swelling in her eye was horrific, and it is still swollen!! I think it has something to do with the weather, like when the weather is nice out her swelling goes down, when is hot the swelling comes back!

Macy with her eye injury when she came home



Poor baby she could barely keep her eye open!



So Saturday August 1st was our County 4H Horse Show!! We were very excited about riding her and also had plans to ride DD's mare Ebony but as we now know she is out in her back and hip and can't be ridden.. So more on them in a later post :) We like to take our horses that we are training or new ones that haven't been in this environment just to test them and see how they do.

Now Macy I don't think we've done a proper introduction of her yet. So I will just give you a bit about how we acquired her. A very dear friend of ours was going through a rough patch and he had this paint mare and a beautiful black stallion that had bred unbeknownst to him and come the Spring of '06 out pops a beautiful black filly...Unfortunately he was not able to care for her so as soon as we could wean her I took her and put her with another weanling and have been nourishing her ever since...So fast forward a few years and here we are, she is now 3 years old and just as beautiful as can be!!

So we sent her back in May to a friend that was looking for a horse to break (lord knows we don't have the time or facility for that yet) so away she went!! Due to the weather they had some off days but in the end he got around 40 days on her before her injury. So after she had gotten hurt he refused to let us take her home, he felt like it was his responsibility to take care of her...He even fought with me about the Vet bill!! He only let me pay half of it...So anyhow he was going to take her back for a week after she healed just to give her a refresher, but really we ran out of time. The Hubby is gone so much for work that she never got over there. So we went ahead and signed for Hubby to run her in the open classes just to get a feel for her and how she is riding around the other horses..

Now when we got there it was too funny because I rode over with J in his Suburban and I walk up to the trailer thinking "why is Ebony saddled"?? Then I look and see Ebony, so no it's not her....OH DUH it's Macy LOL!! I had never even seen a saddle on her at all LOL!! She looked just beautiful, and I decided that I would do the testing the waters as I can't afford for Hubby to get injured :~) So I step up into the stir up...nothing....bounce a little...nothing....lay over her seat...nothing...WHAT?!?!....OK so I climb on and try to get my feet into the stir ups but OH YEAH it's not my saddle LOL!! I let me niece use mine for rodeo because she likes it real well.. So I am not going to ride her far because this is how I broke my back, by riding in a saddle that didn't fit me and a fresh horse...So Hubby decides he's going to lead me around a bit, I'm like SERIOUSLY?!?! I'm a big girl LOL, I can handle this :) He is overly concerned sometimes! So finally I said give me the reins I won't go far, I just want to walk her and see how she does...OH did I mention that NO-ONE had ridden her in 45 days and WE had never ridden her at all LOL!! So we just walked a short distance and turned and came back.. She did well, there was one point where she wasn't sure what I was asking her to do so she got a little frustrated but all's she did was show frustration, no crow hopping, no pawing, nothing!!!

Hubby watching the other events


Their one of maybe 2 or 3 semi-fits!!




Better Now!!



So Hubby rode her for all of the events; Trail, poles, barrels, flags, and a few other local fun races. The goal for him was to just get her used to him riding her. He said he fully expected to get bucked off because she is a little hot on the ground..They did GREAT!!! I was so proud of them, there were a couple of times that they got frustrated with each other but they worked through it. He of course did all of the speed events at a walk because we are not trying to train her in those events we just simply want her exposed. So there was some friends and family that were kind of like come on already LOL!! But they all understood she was brand new and we all thought they did great!!!

Trail class..


Backing through the L in the Trail class

Are we Making Progress Here??

Well it has been a couple of days since I have been able to get on and ride Ebony who we just got back from the trainer's Saturday night. Our first night of riding we knew something wasn't right with her and upon investigating her we found that she had started milking again because we put her out on our 5 acre pasture up front here so that she would be easy to catch, but we have the yearlings out there also and one of those yearlings is her filly Ellie. They had been separated for over 9 months but I guess with her that wasn't enough. So we moved her to the 17-20 acre pasture out back.

Ebony's yearling Ellie..


So today we decided that to ride her we were going to take her to our friends house and use their riding arena, in hopes to have Ebony's full attention so we could work better. Of course since we were going there we took DD's rodeo horse Pete and let her and her bestie Tay ride.

My beauty Ebony!!


Well as we started our workout Ebony was pretty set on returning to where her halter had been removed as to say OK I'm done now! Ha not gonna happen!! We worked first through some bending exercises, and moved on to just walking the arena for a bit. Every time we would circle the arena she would always want to stop in the same place, so we reversed and went the other direction. It didn't make a lot of difference but it was enough to keep her attention in the right place. From that point as she continued to have issues with that spot we circled large circles until she would ride through without stopping. We then moved on to a slow paced trot and up to a fast paced trot. It is a bit difficult for me to do these gaits because of my back however my new theory is "it's not going to fix itself, so it will either get worse and they'll fix it. Or it will stay the same and I will deal with it"!! One issue I spoke about in my first post about her training is that they continued to use martingales on her which I wasn't totally thrilled with because that was something we wanted her graduated from...Well I am not riding her in martingales, I would typically use a tie down on a horse who carries their head to high but with Ebony she isn't carrying her head high she just doesn't respond as well...She is also very tender mouthed so I have to be very cautious to not pull the bit to harshly on her. Of course I say that but when she is throwing a fit I am pulling her head down to my knee in a hurry and that does hurt her a bit. Hubby nicely reminded me that the trainer said if you frustrate her she will lose all attention span to you, well I told him I don't care if she gets frustrated at that point because she is not behaving and she needs to be corrected not babied. Another thing we are not allowing for her right now is a full lope, because she needs to master her steering at all of the other gaits first!! I did walk the pole pattern with her when I was working on getting her attention back and I agree with the trainer that she will be a great pole bender. She has great flex, and moves her butt out pretty quickly, so I am excited to see what the future holds for her!! So for our riding session tonight we got a good 2 hours in, which I was thrilled with!! And hopefully we will have her back out within the next couple of days...May be a little hard to do as DD has a softball game tomorrow night, then we rodeo Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday Justin has a football game for a special passing league he is playing in...OHH I will figure it out LOL!!

Of course being that I was on the horse this time I have no riding pictures to share with you :( I will work on that next time LOL!!