What do I do with My Horses in Winter?

When people find out that I live in “heart of the Rockies,” the central mountains of Colorado, at an altitude of 7800 feet, the next question is often, “My gosh, what do you do with your horses in the winter?” The answer is, not  much changes for our horses, it’s just that we have to do a heck of a lot more work every day to keep things moving, literally (like water, poop and tractors). I’ve already railed about that enough.

Horses are such amazingly adaptable animals, they can adapt to and thrive in almost any climate on earth. Horses evolved somewhat simultaneously in all corners of the earth. That is why there are different “types” of horses. The Arab evolved in hot and dry climates, which explains the narrow nose—to cool and moisten the air as they breath; the draft horse evolved in colder climates with big honking noses to warm the air as they breath. There are many other such indicators of a horse’s ability to evolve over time to adapt to the harsh realities of its climate.

Horses also can adapt well individually to changes in their current living conditions as I learned when I shipped a mare from FL to CO in January one year. Her coat was SO thin and she wasn’t overly fat but we kept her in the barn and heavily blanketed for a few weeks, then out in the pen and blanketed for a few more weeks and then she was fine. I’ve bought quite a few horses in January and brought them here with thin coats and all have adapted readily—much better than most people do! While some horses have more trouble adapting to climate changes than others, most of them just get with the program.

Sometimes when you bring a horse from a warm climate to the CO mountains, they over-compensate and look like a huge Woolley mammoth the first winter. Such is the case with my cute little spotted saddle horse (an awesome trial riding machine), who now looks like a black and white fuzzy bear. After spending most of his life in FL, he came here and started putting on hair immediately, right in the middle of summer (it’s colder here at night in the summer than in FL in the winter). Next year he would probably grow a thinner coat, but he’ll likely be adjusting to a new climate by then once I find his perfect human.

And the answer is yes, we do blanket our horses in the winter—but not because they need it—it’s because we require it for our convenience. We keep our horses blanketed because we want thinner coats so that they look better (many are for sale) and so that they do not get over-heated in the indoor arena when we ride (this is actually an important safety issue because if a horse is wet at 3-4 in the afternoon, he will stay wet all night in the potentially sub-zero temps).

The only other significant change in our horses from summer to winter is that we pull their shoes in Oct/Nov when the first snows fly and try to leave them barefoot until spring. Since we are relegated to riding indoors because of ice, snow and frozen footing, it is a good time to let their feet strengthen. Once spring and summer hits and we start increasing their workload, riding outdoors, hitting the rocky trials (there’s a reason why they call it the Rockies) and working cattle, we’ll go back to shod horses.

I’ll be glad when the holidays are over and everyone gets back to their normal work routine, including me. I hit the road again in a couple weeks so I am still enjoying time at home and being with my family. We’ll ski today (12” fresh powder) and celebrate the NY with fireworks and a torchlight parade at the ski area then home by 7:00 for a modest celebration with a few friends, my brother and niece. Since Rich will have to be at work by 630a the next morning, we’ll knock off early and be in bed before the ball drops in NY! Let’s talk about New Year’s Resolutions next time.

Happy New year!

Julie

 

 

Winter Horse Chores

I am already sick of winter and it hasn’t even officially started yet. But every time I complain, I hear about someone else who has it worse. I was whining to a Canadian horse breeder the other day about our single digit temps and high winds and she wrote back to say it was 30 below and a blizzard at her ranch in Alberta. Yep, someone’s always got it worse than you.

I spent half the day thawing out frozen waterers; at least three out of four are working now, so it wasn’t a total waste of time. Keeping horses in sub-zero weather is quite a bit of hassle. It’s a lot of work just feeding and cleaning; dealing with snow drifts and frozen buckets is the pits. I’ve been doing it here in the Colorado mountains for 25 winters; 15 winters here in the “Banana belt” of Colorado, the Upper Arkansas Valley. When it’s 25 below in the Gunnison valley, it may only be zero in our valley. It’s all about your perspective.

In the winter we whine tremendously about our high-maintenance automatic waterers. Meanwhile Melissa (who grooms/exercises our horses and lives nearby) is hauling water from her home a mile down the road to her four horses. Yuck. I did that one winter 25 years ago and swore never to have horses again if I had to haul water to them. Even for one horse, it’s a pain. Have any of you been through that? What’s your most dreaded winter-time chore? Maybe draining hoses (or unfreezing them because someone else didn’t)?

I’ve had more than my fair share of my perspective thrown in my face the last few months and I have to say, it is always good to gain perspective on your reality. And that which does not kill you makes you stronger, so they say.

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

 

 

Best Horse Master Episodes of 2009

This month on Horse Master, we are featuring the four most popular episodes of the year, starting with the biggest vote winner, Wave Runner, which will air Dec 9th. It was one of my most favorite episodes ever and one of the few in which I get to ride throughout the whole show. I trained a young sport horse to go into the surf and accept the waves crashing on him. It was a wet and wild ride, and was filmed at Martha’s Vineyard on South beach in the fall of 08 (in September, we film the January episodes for the coming year).

The week of Dec 16^th, Lost In Transition airs. Filmed near Phoenix AZ in January, this horse and rider were hands-down one of my most favorite to work with in the 50 episodes we have filmed. I loved the horse from first site, even though he had a big problem with exploding into the canter and running off bucking with his rider. An Arab/warmblood cross, he was athletic, a big mover and very, very sensitive. Even though I couldn’t see the very talented rider making an obvious over-cueing mistake, he was. Before we could even decide on what training topic the show would feature, I had to get on myself and see what it would take to fix this horse. Turned out that the horse was so ultra-sensitive that just changing the angle of your pelvis was all it took to cue him for the canter—forget using your legs. I also had to school him a little to get rid of the brace in his neck and teach him to come off the bit a little to soften and round his frame. The young male competitive rider was an exceptional student and natural born TV star; he figured it out right away and rode the horse beautifully. I loved working with two excellent athletes.

The week of Christmas will feature our third most popular show, Loaded Up, an episode about a TB gelding who will not under any circumstances step foot in a trailer. Turned out he had a complicating vice—one of the worst vices to deal with. He had learned that one thing we hope horses never figure out-- that they outweigh us by ten times and can use that force against us. He learned how to rip his head up and around when being led, turn dead away from you (so you are looking at his hind feet), and run away hell-bent-for-leather, taking you dirt skiing. At best, you might keep up with him for a few strides but with his whole body pointing straight away from you, you’d never get him stopped, even if you were Johnny Atlas. I had to fix that little problem before we could really do much to work on the trailer loading, since he did it every time you walked him up to the trailer. After running off from the owner, then my assistant and then me, I put a chain on his nose, in addition to the rope halter; this is an extreme measure. Only then I was able to exert enough pressure to keep his nose bent toward me so that he couldn’t run off. Once we came to an agreement on that matter, it didn’t take long for this horse was walking calmly without hesitation in the trailer and backing out slowly on command. Once we eliminated right-left-back as options with the use of the training flag, the horse totally changed course. This episode has sold more copies than any others. Save yourself some money and DVR it on Christmas eve (if you get RFD-TV)!

The last week of December, you’ll see A Bit Too Much, filmed in the South Carolina Low Country in April. When we filmed the opening footage for this episode (the ‘before’ shots), this horse was totally out of control—no speed control at all, little directional control, some bucking, very inverted. She was inappropriately bitted, with the dreaded Tom Thumb bit (there are few, if any horses I would subject to this bit) and so she was just running through the bridle like crazy—the more she ran, the more the rider pulled, the more pain and fear she had, so, guess what, the more she threw her head up and ran—a sad but common bitting problem. We put her in a Myler 3-ring Combo bit, I schooled her briefly, and she worked beautifully—head down, collected slow gaits. A big, quick turnaround (the kind we are hoping for in a half hour TV show!). It would be a while before the owner had the skill to ride her in a proper frame at the trot and canter, but she instantly showed success at the walk.

We’ve already filmed the first 6 episodes of Horse Master for 2010, here at my ranch in the south-central Colorado mountains in September. Thank God we got that shoot done before my son’s motorcycle accident, or we’d be starting the 2010 season with reruns! We got some good shows in the can and we are just now editing the third episode. One of these, is sure to be in the top four for next year. Here's a look at the first one to air in January!

Enjoy the ride,

Julie

P.S. Remember we're only allowed to show a short clip from each episode per our contract with RFD. I wish we could share more!

P.P.S Check out what Julie will do at IEF! If you're on the treasure hunt, you're in the right place!