A perfect Ride

Greetings!

I got a lot done yesterday but man, I was exhausted at the end of the day! But it was a good tired.

I had a wonderful ride on my horse, who’s been sorely neglected over the last week. He worked like a champ—he’s got more heart than any five horses and is a blast to ride. I rode with my two friends, Lucy (after whom my dog is named) and Cheryl and I got to pick on their riding a little bit. They couldn’t get enough of it so I put them through some exercises and we practiced fun things like roll backs.

Today, if they are up for it, I am going to make them ride through the workout I have planned for my next riding audio CD—which I probably won’t be able to record until January. I’ve been cranking hard on some new products that will be released in the next couple months. My rope reins are awesome (same rope as my training leads with some cool features that make them easy to connect to bit, easy to know when they are the right length. I’ve been working on the design for some time and am excited to get the first shipment in the next few weeks.

This weekend I will start filming  my new video on bitting. I have two horses for the video: a two year filly that is barely halter broke (I’m having to do some pre-video training on her now) and an older gelding who is hopelessly high-headed and hollow backed (inverted) and throws his head. I’ll start the video with the tabula rosa and end with the remedial training using my elbow-pull leather bitting rig and teaching the horses to give laterally and vertically to pressure on the bit. It should be fun and hopefully the horses will train up nicely.

I’m also working on an arena guide to go with my exercises video, in fact, I need to get to work on that now so I can ride again with my friends this afternoon. I believe this will be the warmest day of the fall (mid 70s) and without a lick of wind (so far). It will be nice to spend some time in the arena.

Until next time,

Julie

 

 

Flying Lead Changes on Horse Master this Week

Good Day!

Another glorious day and I am getting a much-dreaded and put-off-to-the-last-minute chore done—washing winter blankets! The truck bed’s loaded with blankets, I’ve got five rolls of quarters in my pocket and my special horse blanket soap in my hand. Tonight, the horses will be wearing fresh clean blankets—the cleanest they will be for the next year! And they won’t be chilly beans tomorrow morning with the 30 degree temperatures we are having now.

But don’t get me wrong. We do not blanket our horses because they need it or for their comfort, but solely for our own convenience. Since we ride indoors all winter, long hair coats are difficult to manage since they get very sweaty and then we can’t get them dry before nightfall and they have a very chilly night. Plus, most of our horses are either for sale or being shown, so aesthetically, we like to keep their hair coat short and slick. How many of you kid yourself into believing the horse needs something like a blanket for his own well-being instead of our own? Not that some horses don’t need blankets, but if left to their own devices, a healthy horse is perfectly capable of adapting to any climate and fending off the weather—no matter how extreme it gets.

This week on Horse Master is one of my favorite shows where I get to ride my horse Dually and help my friend Dave Currin figure out his lead changes—how to set your horse up, how to cue and correct. I had a great comment after this show ran the first time that a gal who had been struggling with lead changes for years got it right away after watching the show! That was really cool feedback. We love all the feedback we get about the show, so keep it coming!

This week’s episode is also about the National Versatility Ranch Horse Association and how the ranch horse competition works. I hope you’ll be able to watch—set your DVR to record one of these time slots: WED 5:30p EST, THU 3:30a EST or SUN 1:30a EST (that’s Saturday night at 9:30p for those of you on the west coast—nearly prime time!)

My good friends are coming for a ladies riding day today so at least I’ll get some time on my horse and with my friends. It doesn’t get any better than that but for now I’d better get the chore done!

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

 

Sun in My Face, Tail Wind at My Back

Greetings!

After weeks of still days we finally had a blustery morning when I went for my daily two mile walk. Naturally it was the first day of fall.  I walked uphill with the wind at my back and the warm sun on my face and felt the courage of my convictions behind me gusting the sails of my wind breaker. It’s always good to have a tail wind when you’re going uphill, but sometimes you have to turn around and face the wind. Maybe there’s a metaphor for life there, you think?

At my regular turnaround spot (the bridge over the creek) I did my stretching routine then turned back into the wind, like a trail horse headed for home. The wind hit me so hard in the face I had to crank my itunes to max volume and could still barely hear the music with my head tucked down to keep my hat on. It really wasn’t too bad, but if it had been 10 degrees instead of 50, I think the treadmill wins out.

Sadly for me, riding isn’t enough exercise unless I ride bareback or do 10 minutes posting trot without stirrups, both of which I don’t mind doing on occasion. But I like my constitutional walk every morning early. As I approach 50, it’s harder to maintain my weight; I’d rather exercise than not enjoy meals but I am not sure I can exercise enough to balance out the meals I like to enjoy. What about you? What’s your exercise routine? Or are you over 50 yet?

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

Another Glorious Day

Good morning!

It’s another spectacular fall day here in the central mountains of Colorado. The Aspen have turned, there’s frost in the air and, most importantly, there’s no wind! This is about the only month you can count on that-- we get about 6 months of really relentless blow, being just below the continental divide in line with the river canyon. It’s the price we pay for living in such splendor.

Every morning I walk a couple miles. I used to walk indoors on the treadmill watching CNN (I’m a news junkie) but for the last month, I’ve actually been walking outside in the neighborhood. I can walk twice as far without getting bored and sometimes I am fortunate to be accompanied by my neighbor Cheryl (who is also on the crew for the TV show). Lucy, my Westie, has learned to love the walks as much as I do.

It’s great to be home this weekend but today will be bittersweet. We will say goodbye to two geldings, Tucker and Tequlo, who will load in the semi-van on their long road trip to central California to their new home. It will only be bittersweet because Rich will say goodbye to Tucker, his beloved gelding who is on his way to his new “retirement” home. After being a show horse for 10+ years, we are happy that he will get to serve out his next decade on easy street.

Once Rich realized that he didn’t have time in his day to ride two horses, we started talking about what kind of home we would want Tucker to go to and what type of human would best appreciate his solid gold temperament and stellar training. We toyed with many scenarios before we settled on the perfect one for Tucker and were fortunate to find a family that fit the bill to a T and they jumped on the offer to buy him. Tucker has been a cutter/reiner for all of his show career, so you might expect that at 15, his joints would be shot like mine. I knew they weren’t because in the 3 years we’ve had him he’s been sound as a dollar (maybe that’s a bad pun) and healthy as a horse. We were happy to see him fly through his vet exam with flying colors and happy to know his new owner will have many good years left on him. He’s been on Cosequin ASU for the past few years and I am sold on that joint supplement!

Congratulations to Peggy and Rod on their new horses, both fine geldings. It’s a lot easier to send Tucker off with his old buddy Tequlo, who will be Rod’s new fun Western project. After riding jumping horses for the past few years, he’s excited to learn cutting and he couldn’t have made a better choice than to buy a finished 9 y/o cutter, who also happens to be drop-dead gorgeous and very gentle.

I love buying and selling horses and it is sort of my hobby. I don’t really make much money off of it by the time I pay all the costs of keeping horses but I sure love to find really nice horses and pair them up with the perfect new owner so that both are blissfully happy together. I grew up in an environment where we traded horses all the time, so this comes natural to me. We had one or two horses that were keepers, like the old Morgan broodmare (my first horse), but my dad constantly bought and sold horses in search of the perfect gelding—of which we’ve had a lot of.

Old wisdom says that you are lucky to have one really good horse in your lifetime, but I know I’ve had  more than my share. I’ve got one perfect gelding now and I’ve had several others in the last 35 years since the old Morgan died when I was 14. And I’ve sold quite a few dream horses to people that now have their horse of a lifetime. I just bought a palomino gelding that will be someone’s perfect horse. What’s been your experience? Have you had that horse of a lifetime? Have you had more than one?

Most of the people I deal with in my business are loathe to sell a horse and move on to a new mount, even when it has become painfully obvious, literally, that they are mounted on the wrong horse. When do you know if you’ve got the wrong horse? Maybe when the medical bills surpass the purchase price of the horse?

If you are in the sport for the lifetime and especially if you have big goals in your riding, you’ll find that you’ll need a succession of horses to fit your needs throughout the years. You will outgrow your beginner-safe first horse and need to upgrade to something with more training and maybe more get up and go; this pattern will continue throughout your riding career. It’s unreasonable to think you would keep all those horses and chances are the horses would be happier in a home where they get attention and feel useful. Moving on to a new horse should not be seen as a failure or abandonment, but a commencement for both you and your horse. Would you agree?

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

 

I'll die with my boots on...

Greetings!

That’s a favorite line from our theme song, Cowgirl Creed, written and performed by Templeton Thompson. The song has many favorite lines of mine, like “I’ll always saddle my own horse,” “Don’t call me baby,” and the best one, “ride like the wind.” It’s a great song and I sang it out loud on my walk this morning, thinking about being in my boots, pretty much sunup to sundown the past three days and how exhausted I was last night.

Nothing a good nine solid hours of sleep won’t fix. It was great to be in the barn the last few days but I don’t know how I used to ride 10 horses and feed 25 head twice a day, six+ days a week. On Wednesday, the brand inspector was here to write papers on four different horses, two bought, two sold. By the time I was finished with Brice, a client had already been waiting 20 minutes to look at sale horses—by the time we got back from our ride, my vet was already here to work on several horses—the first job already done. As we rode up to the farm, I could see Leslie walking away from the round pen as Susan gently placed the blanket over Digg’s face to keep the sun off him as he lay prostrate in the middle of the pen. It’s not what you’re thinking, although some guys may disagree. As Leslie said, it’s probably the best day of his life; ‘brain surgery’ others call it. Digggs woke up to the first day of the rest of his life as a gelding.

By the time we’d finished a lameness eval on Dually (I was pleased with the result) and done pre-purchase exams on two horses, it was well past lunch time and more like happy hour. Had to stop at a nearby ranch to look at a semi-load of hay and tip my hat to the old rancher guard in the valley on the way to get a sandwich in town and talk business with my sales client.

Back at the barn, I had to wash up Diggs and get ready for the load of hay coming. My tack room has been in a constant state of remodel/reorg since I got my new Equi-racks for saddles, blankets and bridles. Seems like there’s never enough room for all that stuff, but the racks really help. My tack room is plenty big, I just have a lot of stuff and a real hard time getting rid of tack I no longer use. I have bridles hanging on the racks that have not been used in this century. I remember the days when I first started working for myself (1985) and had nothing but a saddle and a couple bridles—it’s hard to get rid of perfectly useful stuff. Do you know what I mean? How much unused tack is in your barn?

It took me a few more hours to finish the projects I had started in the tack room while my client messed with the horses and next thing I knew it was well past feed time and I momentarily wondered why the horses had not fed when it dawned on me it was my night to feed—the first time in a  month that I had put myself on the schedule. Lucky me, there were a few gracious men around to help carry water buckets and throw hay. When we finally sat down on the deck to kick off our boots and relax, it was already getting chilly as we watched the sun set.

It felt good to be in the barn all day and I was only slightly stressed by the fact that there might be mountains forming on my desk. I spent the first couple decades of my career working D2D7 (dusk to dawn/7 days per week) in the barn. Gradually I have spent less and less time in the dirt and more behind a computer, on the phone or on a plane. It felt great to be in my boots, in the barn on a D2D schedule again and I am so happy with the way my tack room looks with my space saving racks. But today, the beautiful view from my office windows as I sit at my desk and watch the geldings romp in the field, is very relaxing.

Hasta la vista,

Julie

 

In Search of the Perfect Ride

Greetings!

Well, I had a busy weekend and there may be too much to say to get it all on one posting. On Thursday, Rich and I headed to T Cross Ranch, between Colorado Springs and Pueblo, to participate in a ranch horse clinic on Friday and Saturday. Since they only had outdoor pens made of temporary corral panels, sharing a fence with a strange horse, we elected to board our horses at a nearby facility with luxurious box stalls. It’s a little bit of a pain in the neck trailering back and forth and adds about a half hour to your morning, but we wanted our horses to be comfortable. Plus Rich’s horse is still a stallion (for at least three more days) and he can’t be kept next to a strange horse without some fence remodeling.

It turned out to be a good decision because it rained all night Thursday and most of the day on Friday. This is a very unusual occurrence here in the high desert. I can count the number of times we get rainy days in a year on one hand and still be able to make a peace sign. Usually it is the hot blazing sun we are protecting our horses from by boarding them indoors in a box stall.

Because of the rain, all 34 horses and riders crowded into the indoor, instead of breaking into three groups and utilizing the outdoor arenas too. So we practiced cutting most of the day, but with so many horses, we spent most of the time waiting to go for your two minute run. Dually cut remarkably well considering I hadn’t had him on a cow in 6 weeks (since the last cutting clinic I did).  We putzed around on the trail course for a short time too, but Dually’s petty good at that stuff too so I didn’t’ want to over-practice on him and have him get bored. I ended up putting up Dually early because I don’t like to sit there on him for two hours then have him go cut a cow. That sitting around kills you and then he’s not really warmed up adequately for the cutting. I nurse too many physical issues with Dually to do that to him. Friday night there was a great barbeque, conveniently held at the ranch where we were boarding. Most of the group was there and it was fun to sit around and swap horse stories and get to know your fellow riders.

Saturday the weather was blue-bird Colorado—cool and crisp in the morning, warm in the afternoon. I know it’s not supposed to be fall yet but here in Colorado, it definitely turns fall around September 1^st (sometimes earlier here in the mountains—we had snow on the mountains in August this year). We spent most of the day practicing the classes for the competition the next day. Rich did not ride in the reining/cow work in the morning because Diggs had a sore spot on his hip. Turned out he was fine (I think it might have been a welt from a bug bite) so he rode later in the ranch riding (pattern work and rail work) and then in the roping and he was very happy with his progress.

I tried a new saddle pad on Saturday and Dually worked awesome. I am not sure if it was entirely due to the pad but I was happy with the results. I’ve been trying out a lot of pads in search of the perfect pad. Dually’s a great guinea pig because he is so very sensitive and I can tell even before I get on if he likes the pad/saddle/bit or not sometimes even before I get on. I’ve tried a few pads I really like but before I throw my name behind a pad, I want to be sure it’s the right one and to look at as many different pads as I can. I don’t really think there is one pad for every horse but I’ve found some pads that I love and some I hate.

Rich and I came home on Saturday night, electing not to participate in the competition this time. Rich is still getting to know his new horse and does not feel ready to compete on him yet (even though he would probably have done really well). Probably a smart decision; with horses, it’s best not to do something if you don’t feel totally comfortable about it. It takes time to get in sync with a horse enough to compete on him in such a demanding event as Versatility Ranch Horse.

We also wanted to come home early because here in Salida this weekend was our annual VRH event, a memorial event for a friend and trainer from the area which we sponsor so we wanted to support that event—plus one of our sale horses was entered and we wanted to see how he did. Tequlo, our cute little buckskin cutter, did quite well—winning the halter and placing in every class, winning third overall. He possibly would’ve won but his rider two-handed the reins in one of the cow classes—resulting in a DQ for that part of the class. We all make mistakes at some time when showing, especially when competing in such a complicated event. I can’t criticize her at all for her mistake because Dually and I entered the ranch horse jackpot (a 4:30 minute class where you ride a pattern with trail obstacles, do a little reining, then cow work) and we should have won it but I went off pattern in the trail portion of the class. Dually was nearly perfect but I let him down. Stupid. Oh well. I am not sure your horse knows the difference in a blue ribbon and a yellow one. Actually, I am not sure how I finished because I left before it was over but I am guessing with my bone-head mistake, we would be knocked down a few places. I wish I could say it was my first or last mistake, but it’s neither. But the more you compete, hopefully the fewer mistakes you make.

I am looking forward to a few weeks at home—four actually! Wow. I can actually unpack and put the suitcases away! I bought a new horse this weekend—a pretty palomino reiner-- and I think he is going to be a great addition to our sale string. So I am looking forward to some casual riding and being at home and maybe even working on some of my projects—videos and audios. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Thanks for reading and for your comments,

Julie

 

 

A Whirlwind Week

Hello from Salida!

It’s good to be home. Sleep in my own bed, watch the sunrise from the hot tub, take a brisk morning walk with my friend, ride my horse in the evening—it doesn’t get any better than that! Lots of people think it must be hard to work on the road but it sure makes you relish the time at home. Just like a three hour drive to and from the airport seems long, but driving back into our alpine valley and seeing the Collegiate Peaks is a breathtaking welcome home and makes the drive worthwhile.

Now two days after starting this post, I am headed out of town again and I only got to ride my horse once. I got totally high jacked this week by the demands of running my business. Imagine that.

This time I’m leaving town with my husband and our horses. Headed for a ranch horse clinic at the T Cross Ranch. I’ll try to write while I’m on the road.

Best,

Julie

 

 

Three Long Hard Days

Good Day!

Well, we survived the week here on Martha’s Vineyard and have six new episodes of Horse Master “in the can.” These episodes will not air until January but I’ll be excited to see the finished results once they are edited.

Our first episode was shot on the beach at sunrise on Tuesday. We had a youngish Clyde-Paint-Thoroughbred cross, trained as an eventing horse who had a tendency to spin and bolt when he encountered a scary object.

This is not a good quality in any horse, but especially not in a cross-country jumper who has to jump new and unseen obstacles on a regular basis. We took him to the beach--knowing he had never seen the surf--to teach him that spinning and bolting was not an option. The owner was still recovering from a broken collar bone—a result of a fall off the same horse—so I did all the riding for this episode. And it was certainly a wild ride! There were a couple moments when I thought I might be going for an unscheduled swim, but I managed to stay on and get the horse into the ocean. At one point there were waves breaking over his back—I was completely soaked! It was probably the most fun episode we did--and although the horse was very challenging in the end, he did really well.

Back at the farm, we had a young rider on a very cool horse that I sold her a year ago. He was trained and shown as a reiner, but she has been riding him English since she got him. The episode was about learning to ride Western and to cue him for the reining maneuvers he knows so well. It’s amazing that even though the horse has been doing dressage and jumping for more than a year, he immediately reverted back to a finished Western horse as if he’d been doing it every day.

Next we had a woman and her mule who were arguing over who was in charge. As it turned out, the mule was really quite sweet and compliant—the rider had just been letting him get away with a lot and condoning his bad behavior so in his mind, she was not in charge. It wasn’t hard to change his opinion once the rider knew what to do.

On the second day of the shoot, we ran into some delays when one of our young riders took a digger off her pony when a big bird flew up in his face suddenly. Only eight years old, this rider was tough and she managed to shake herself off and start over after a break. At a very young age, she's learning to feel her diagonals so that she won't have to look down. What a skill for a young rider!

We also had episodes on an older Arab who was downright dangerous when you tried to administer oral medications such as a de-wormer and a three month old Friesian filly who needed to learn some manners before she headed to the Keur (breed inspection).

I think all of the episodes came out really well and, as usual, we are all glad that it’s over! It’s three long hard days at a shoot—sun up to sun down, literally. We finished about 6:30 last night then cleaned up and headed to a friend’s house for our “wrap party." It was very fun. This morning the island is totally socked in with fog and a light mist. We are so lucky this didn’t happen during one of our shoot days or we would have been forced indoors. Hopefully it will clear off because the husband of one of our cast members (the Friesian owner) offered to fly us over to Nantucket for lunch and that sounded like a lot of fun! Hopefully this fog will lift, along with the fog in my brain.

Until next time,

Julie

Happy Labor Day!

Greetings! It’s a bitter sweet holiday since it signals the unofficial end of summer. Summer is such a brief season in the Colorado mountains that we try to savor every day—even the hot ones! But September is one of the most glorious months in CO, with warm days, cools nights and windless days. I’ll be home for a lot of the month and I hope to get a final push on riding Dually. Rich and I will go to one more Versatility Ranch Horse clinic this month but will probably not compete this time. I just haven’t gotten enough time in the saddle this past month and Rich feels like he needs a little more time to get in sync with his new horse Diggs. But we’ll attend the clinic portion, which is a lot of fun and we get good concentrated practice in.

For now, I am here in MA preparing to film new episodes of the TV show the next three days. Shoot days are long and hard for everyone on the crew. I am really fortunate to have such a hard-working and talented crew around me that it makes my job pretty easy—just show up and talk. We always have a good time at shoots, but work really hard too.

We start filming at first light, which I discovered this morning is about 6:30a here. If the day goes smoothly, we should be finished filming by 4-5 in the afternoon. We’ll start three episodes tomorrow, then finish them up the next morning, after the riders have had time to practice their new-found skills. Then we’ll start three more the second day and finish them on the third. By Thursday evening we’ll have six new episodes “in the can”; these shows will play in January 09. On Friday, we’ll be catatonic.

This morning will be spent organizing wardrobe, scouting shoot locations, and making sure all the equipment and props are ready to go first thing in the morning. Once we’ve got those details out of the way, we hope to head for the beach to enjoy what’s left of the holiday.

Tomorrow is Rich and my wedding anniversary and I am sad not to be spending it with my husband, but sometimes work gets in the way. It is certainly not a reflection of how I feel about our relationship, because I value it every day. We’ll find a way to celebrate it when I get home next weekend. Oh yeah, I’m not going home then, just to Denver, where I’ll attend the Western & English Trade Assn. fall market show. It’s a good time to see all the manufacturers in the industry and get in touch with the retail side of things. I always enjoy the market—even when it delays my trip home.

I hope you have/will enjoy your holiday weekend and the last lazy days of summer.

Enjoy the ride!

Julie