Blog Hop: Clothes Horse

 There's not much happening here on the horse front - it's just too damn cold to ride. So I might as well join in on the latest blog hop!

My horses live out and I don't show. Their wardrobe mostly consists of outdoor clothing. I try to keep it pretty simple. But I've also had three horses in a row who have all worn the same size so I have some extras that I don't often use. 

Phantom is pretty easy on her clothing. Cisco is not. I refuse to buy any turnout blankets that are less than 1200D so I've got a few blankets that are older and out of the regular rotation but make good backups. 

Here is what they wear.

Winter

Phantom

She is currently sporting an Amigo Bravo 12 Plus (100g fill) and whatever liner is needed based on the weather. 

Currrent colour

Colour a year ago when it was new

I'm pretty sure this blanket is only on its second winter and it's faded horribly. It was originally a dark navy, now it's more of a blue-gray colour. It's held up fine though otherwise. Horseware blankets are the best fit for Phantom, and I refuse to pay the price that they want for a Rambo these days, so I guess she'll be wearing Amigo for a while. 

I still have her Rambo Duo that she wore for 6 or 7 years. It's still in good condition overall, but some of the stitching around the binding has been coming undone and I need to get it fixed. It's now her first backup blanket (or will be once I get the stitching fixed).

The Duo in its regular condition.

She has a full set of liners for these blankets - a 300g, two 200g's and a 100g. The heavier ones are all Horseware and I got them for about $50 each, the lighter one is Greenhawk and doesn't fit her as well. But it works!

Cisco

Cisco isn't such a snob about only wearing name brands so he gets the cheaper stuff.

This winter he is sporting a new Greenhawk Summit North Turnout Combo that I picked up a year ago for about $180. I saved it for this winter as it was time to retire his other blanket which was the previous version of Greenhawk's liner system blanket.

The new one

The old one

It fits a bit differently than the old one, in good and bad ways. It's longer both directions - he could probably go down a size and it would be okay. But the liners still fit the same, so I'm not sure how that would work. The hood is longer and has elastic on the end by the ears, which I thought I would hate but it just kind of folds itself back and is no issue. His mane is growing back this winter and hasn't been rubbed out so I like it because of that!

He also has a full set of liners, all Greenhawk branded.

His old winter blanket is his backup. It's in okay condition, but some of the interior lining has worn through and could use some patches. 

Cisco never gets turned out without a suit of armor over his blanket. Namely, a Kensington fly sheet. In the four winters that I have owned him, he has completely trashed one Kensington and has a bunch of decent sized holes (and patches) in another, but the armor has done its job and his winter blankets have been mostly uncompromised. I picked up a used Kensington that I have in reserve and I always keep an eye out for good prices. I've so far bought three of the Euro-fit Kensingtons for about $125 each.

This is the Kensington that he trashed after two years and I'm probably going to salvage for parts. 

This is first season damage. It got worse.

Other backups - I have a Pessoa Tundra that needs a leg strap sewn back on (only worn one winter) that I stopped using because it always twisted on Phantom. 

There's also a Bucas Power Turnout Extra that either horse can wear. Again, it twisted on Phantom (everything except Horseware seems to on her) so I took it out of our regular rotation but it lives in my blanket box at the barn for backup.

 

And, in a pinch, I have an old Bucas Smartex Extra that my old gelding wore for many years. Its in really good condition considering how old it is because no one messed with that horse. Phantom wore it the first winter I rode her and it was a bit too big and she probably stepped on it when getting up and it tore in the shoulder area, but it's patched and is good otherwise. It doesn't have anywhere to add a hood so its definitely an "in a pinch" blanket.

Over Christmas, I picked up a Bucas Select Extra 300g hood for each horse. I didn't have any heavy hoods and these were on sale for $50 each. I had to buy large ones instead of medium so I had planned to get my mom to shorten them down but I think they will be okay as is. I'll have to use Phantom's Rambo Duo blanket if she is going to wear the big hood as it doesn't have the right attachments for the Amigo.

Phantom has the two other hoods that came with her Horseware blankets and Cisco has his two Greenhawk hoods and a Bucas Smartex hood that I picked up at the consignment store. 

Coolers

I don't need to use coolers very often (my horses don't work hard enough to get very sweaty apparently) but I have a bunch of them. Since I don't use them often I don't have a designated one for each horse, and since they're the same size I only keep one or two at the barn depending on the time of year.

At one time I had a ridiculous number of coolers - something like 8. But I've managed to get rid of a couple and I think I'm down to about 5.

My Bucas Shamrock Power Cooler lives all year round at the barn. And I usually keep a cheaper polar fleece cooler there as well for days when a horse comes in covered in mud after it's rained. 

The fleece one (good thing it's stretchy)

The Bucas cooler

I also have a couple of trophy coolers (1 wool, 1 fleece) that I had won and a wool square cooler that don't tend to see a horse very much these days but I don't want to get rid of them. Oh - and a jersey Bockmann cooler that came with my horse trailer. Forgot about that one!

Fly Sheets

Phantom has a Rambo Protector. It's a few years old and I had my mom replace the shoulder lining last year, but again, is in pretty good shape. I keep my eyes out for a good price on a replacement one but so far I haven't found it for the price I want to pay.

Cisco trashed his Weatherbeeta Duramesh fly sheet within a few weeks. I try to keep him naked in summer as much as possible but when the bugs get bad I have a Kensington that I keep for summer. There is a Kensington hood for it, which now stays on since I had to restitch the straps back on and thought it maybe needed longer straps. 

Phantom needs to wear a fly mask all summer to prevent her eyes from getting sunburn. I keep trying new (cheaper) ones but I always come back to long-nosed Cashel Crusaders, ideally without ears. I have no idea how many I have of these because I keep buying them whenever I find them on sale for sub-$30. She goes through one a year for sure, sometimes I have to start a new one in the fall before the season ends as she has poked the eyes out too much. They're the only ones that she keeps on; everything else she gets off within 24 hours. Arabian is the best size but horse will do if that's what is on sale. 

The Bucas Buzz-Off fly sheet is the only blanket that Phantom destroyed - it didn't even last two weeks. No more soft mesh for me!

Rainsheets

Both horses get dressed in their matching Weatherbeeta rain sheets when they don't need insulation. The blankets are some version in the Comfitec line. Cisco had one first - I had ordered a 75 but was shipped a 72, which I didn't notice until he had worn it. It fits him okay though. The Weatherbeeta shape suits Cisco better than Phantom but they usually wear them short term so it's not a huge issue. I got them on sale for around $80 and have one more in reserve. One of them needs a quick repair (which I should get onto).

If they need a bit of insulation and I don't want to use the shell from their winter blankets I have a Bucas Smartex 100g and a Bucas Atlantic 50g (new). They are backups as I usually just use the shells, but sometimes they need a chance to dry out overnight so the Bucas's come into use. 

Phantom is sporting the Bucas Smartex and a pissy face

Cisco is modeling the Bucas Atlantic. I was hoping the liners I have would work with it - they won't attach without some modifications.

Buried at the bottom of my barn blanket box is a Century 1680D rainsheet. It's a 76 and would fit better if it was a 78, but again, in a pinch, it would work. And I think I still have a navy Greenhawk rainsheet that I keep forgetting I own. 

Stock photo, I have the black one.

Other Blankets

Since my horses live outside all year round, I don't really have a use for stable sheets or stable blankets.  When I had Farly he lived in and we showed and I still have his wardrobe (not that it was all that extensive). 

Baker sheet - Phantom wore it once at the only show we overnighted at. 

Baker style blanket (Can-pro brand?)

I keep trying to sell the Baker style blanket but no luck so far.

A blue nylon stable sheet - can't remember the brand

BMB winter stable blankets (a 78" and a 80") - again, in really good condition (the 80 was barely worn) and I keep them around in case of needing to layer with a blanket that can't use the liners

The 78" BMB

When I got back into riding again with Phantom I intended to show so I bought a Rambo Newmarket striped sheet and an Eskadron rainsheet. They both live in the trailer and have only been pulled out a couple of times for pictures. Of course, I can't find those pictures now so here are stock photos.

My Eskadron is similar but there is a different logo on it. I think. It's been a while since I've seen it!

That's all I can think of without digging through containers in the garage - and it's far too cold to do that without a good reason. It doesn't seem like enough and I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple.... 

Like this Amigo Fly Rider sheet I totally forgot about until I went looking through pictures for this post!

(Blogger was not co-operating when it came to formatting so my apologies if things look wonky!)

Equestrian Blog Hop: Why Did I Start Blogging?

The Equestrian Bloggers Facebook group is starting a monthly Blog Hop. This is September's topic.

Why Did I Start Blogging?

I decided to start blogging about all things Equestrian a couple of months ago when I was on a staycation. With lots of time on my hands, since I will do anything to avoid housework, starting a blog with the aim of writing five posts a week seemed like a great idea.

I've owned horses since I was 12 years old, which was 30 years ago (you can do the math). During that time, I was without a horse to ride for maybe 3 years after my heart-horse was euthanized in 2006 (laminitis) and I was house-poor after buying a house the year earlier. Add another 3 years of riding, but not owning my current horse Phantom, and I have been a horse owner for 24 years.  That's a lot of money spent on board and paid to the farrier - I don't want to add that up and discover that I could have bought a Lamborghini (it wouldn't fit me anyway, I'm too short).

Through most of my riding time, I have kept track in some way of my rides. When I was a teenager I lived in a small rural town so joined the local Light Horse 4H club. I was the only rider who rode English only. One of the requirements of 4H were monthly reports and an annual project book. We were supposed to record expenses, amount of feed used, amount of time spent riding, etc. So I had a calendar up in the tack room that I had to myself and I would write on it with a dry-erase marker after every ride, then transfer the information into my 4H book. I also had a ledger that I recorded all my horse expenses in. I was 14 years old.

This is what started me on tracking my riding. I was in 4H for two years, and after moving to the big city I kept up with the tracking. I moved onto a day-timer type of calendar that I kept in my tack locker. I would record how long I rode, what I did, was there something I needed to keep in the back of my mind, etc. I used this format for quite a while, which came in handy when I had significant soundness issues with my gelding Farly. 

When I got back into riding after Farly went to the big grassy field in the sky, I was doing it in a more casual style than what I had been doing previously. I wasn't really planning on competing, and I didn't know if I would plan on owning a horse again, so recording what I was doing with my riding went by the wayside. I think I also realized that although I had spent time recording my progress, I never looked back at it. It's not easy to see how far you've come from a few hastily scribbled sentences. 

Over the last 7 years of getting back in the saddle, I have had a few attempts at recording my riding, but never stuck with it. I used a journaling program on my iPad - until my iPad died a premature death and I replaced it with a Samsung tablet. I went back to my old method of a day-timer - which worked, but once the year was done I would put it aside and never look at it again. I wrote things down more from habit than anything else. 

This spring, I finally decided to take the plunge and take on a second horse, Cisco. He wasn't broke yet, but I had done a bunch of groundwork with him a couple of years earlier. He had little life experience, as he had lived the first 5 years of his life on the same acreage he was born on. He had never been inside anything other than a run-in shelter. He had never been on a trailer. He had known the same 8 horses all his life. He had a lot to learn on his way to being my riding horse.

One of the items on my horse bucket list is to train a horse by myself, from start to finish. Cisco is hopefully that horse. And I want to have a record of our journey.

So this is the reason that I decided to start blogging in a public format. To share my journey of training Cisco. It forces me to write more than a couple of scribbled lines, and hopefully add some images and video on occasion to mark our progress.

A couple of years ago I started reading some other people's blogs on a daily basis. I love to read the trials and tribulations of my fellow horse lovers. As someone who lives for her horses, finding others who have the same passion for these beautiful, fragile beasts has been delightful. And I hope that there are some horse lovers that will read my blog, and realize how lucky we are to have our equine experiences.

An InLinkz Link-up

Blog Hop: Equestrian Book Collection

I do love to read. I have to read every night before sleep as part of my routine. I also tend to be reading something when I am eating at home. Unfortunately, I tend to read mostly on my tablet these days, whether it be books from the library, other blogs (of course!), or even magazines. I love the convenience of ebooks, and the cost is often lower for new books. But there is something to be said for holding a hardcover book in your hands.

I have gone through many periods of my riding life where I haven't been in a consistent lesson program. So I have always turned to books and magazines for inspiration to keep going.

Here are my shelves:

Ebooks:

Favourites here are:
Dressage 101 by Jane Savoie (so much easy to put to use information)
Horses are Made to be Horses by Franz Mairinger (just a wonderful read, with humor and compassion for the horse)
The Athletic Development of the Dressage Horse by Charles de Kunffy (so many exercises to try)
Equine Lameness by Equine Research (many of the treatments are out of date, but my go-to when I need to figure out if I should panic over something or if it's no biggie)

Missing favourites that are somewhere in my house, but since they are favourites don't usually live in the bookcase:
Cavaletti by Ingrid and Reiner Klimke
Gymnastics Systematic Training for Jumping Horses by James C. Wofford
Practical Horseman's Guide to Riding, Training and Showing Hunters & Jumpers
Hunter Seat Equitation by George Morris

Books that I need to spend some more time with:
The Riding Doctor by Beth Glosten, MD
When Two Spines Align: Dressage Dynamics by Beth Baumert (recently acquired, might not be my style of writing)
Pilates for Equestrians by Liza Randall (this involves actually doing the exercises though.)

Books that are just kind of fun to read:
Dressage Unscrambled by Bill Woods
Talk to the Hoof  by Jared Lee
The 1963 version of The Manual of Horsemanship by The British Horse Society and The Pony Club (my dad picked this up a few years ago from a library sale - interesting to read about the old ways of doing things)

Phantom and Cisco's favourite book:
The Original Book of Horse Treats: Recipes You Can Make at Home for Your Horse! by June V. Evers (they wish I would crack this book open more often!)

This blog hop idea came from Amanda at the $900 Facebook pony. She also mentioned her addiction to buying used horse books at Thriftbooks. So I had to have a look at said Thriftbooks. And consequently, there are another 4 books that will be taking up some space in my bookcase.