Saddle fitting...part 1...

The saddle fitter was out yesterday and she was great! Very friendly and explained everything clearly. She has to have a tree made for Sophie due to her being more U shaped than V shaped. But, I'm getting a Genesis tree, which means that should I need to use the saddle on another horse in the future I can have an Albion fitter take apart the front part of the tree and attach a new one that fits the new horse.

Sophie was a good girl for the trying of the saddle though. No tantrums or anything. We mainly walked and trotted. Julie loved her though. Apparently she has an Arab/Hanoverian cross yearling that looks just like Sophie. Same color and body type and star on her forehead. I'm going to send her the link for my website so she can show some pictures of Sophie to her filly's breeder.

I ended up ordering an Albion SLK Ultima Platinum. Lots of words, but I think it's a good investment, especially since this saddle's tree can be changed to fit just about any horse (as long as it doesn't have crazy high withers). Now I just have to wait the 5-6 weeks until the new saddle arrives. I'm hoping it takes less time, but who knows, since a hoop tree needs to be made of for it.

Saddle fitter comes tomorrow!

Sooooo excited. It will be nice to get a saddle that fits so I can start riding again. I found the perfect barn should we get Langely next spring, but I really need to kick my riding up a notch if I'm going to fit in. It should be easy, once we get started again, especially if I take 2 lessons a week as often as possible. It'll be interesting to see the process behind fitting a horse and a rider for a saddle.

Jake's in his new home...

I'm not going to say much about it in a public forum, but it's pretty amazing how ungrateful and rude some people can be when you do something incredibly nice and generous for them. But, I guess some people just never grow up. Anyway, Jake is in his new home. The barn is ok...I wouldn't board there due to the horses having no shelter in the middle of summer (or ever), even though they are kept outside 24/7. The stalls are nice, and they have a nice indoor/outdoor ring. They had Jake go in a stall by himself in an empty barn and then didn't care/notice that he was getting worked up from a 3 hour drive and then being by himself. But, the barn owners don't seem to be the kind of people that really take the horse into consideration.


I was a little put off when they said the horses come in for 10 minutes twice a day to eat, and they don't mess around because the horses know they only have 10 minutes to eat and then they're back outside. Jessie would never get to finish his feed if he stayed there. But, I suppose there are worst places for a horse, and fortunately there are plenty of trails very close to the barn, so he'll be able to do lots of trail riding once he's ready. And the story about the horse having seizures twice in two weeks before they called the owners wasn't very reassuring either. Hopefully they'll mention something like that to Jake's new owner when they see her since she'll be out often, rather than waiting until it happens a few times to let her know.

Difficulties...

Well, supposedly Sophie has become hard to catch. Sid often has to leave her in the pasture while he takes Champ and Rosie in and then go back for Sophie. Today the saddle fitter was supposed to be out, so I left an hour and a half early so that I could catch her since I wanted her up and ready by the time the saddle fitter arrived. It's especially difficult because all of the horses are in grass fields, fenced in by electric tape, so no gate to make getting one horse out while keeping the others in a bit harder. So I got out and the horses leave the gate and go to the other side of the pasture. I'm worried, but head out into the field. The other two horses come up to me and Sophie is right behind them. They sniff my hands and then Sophie comes up next to me and takes the treat while I clip the lead on her, no problem. We leave the field, managing the gate despite its awkwardness and make it safely into the barn. Saddle fitter couldn't make it, but we rescheduled for Thursday.

First lesson done...

I had my first lesson with Kim on Sophie today. It was...interesting. Sophie was very upset to be in the arena and not out with the other horses, especially since they were being turned out for the day. So we started out with walking skinny serpentines, doing lots of changes of direction to get her focusing on me, not how miserable she was being alone in the indoor. After she was mainly paying attention to me we started adding in stops as well. Then I would ask her to walk forward solely by lifting my seat. Which she ignored, so I would back it up with leg (though not fast enough for Kim!). We worked on that for a bit and then Sophie decided she was still unhappy about being in the indoor and started flipping her head.

Kim told me to urge her forward, so I would give with my hands while sitting up straight and giving her an open window to be able to move forward. Eventually during a move forward phase she broke out trotting, so we ended up trotting lots of serpentines, with her trying to slow down to toss her head every now and then. But there were breakthroughs...sometimes after a head tossing episode suddenly her head would come down, she would round to the bit and move beautifully. We started doing circles as well and got loads of nice work and less head tossing.

By the end of the lesson we were trotting around the whole ring working on stretching down and out while performing the most amazing trot ever. At that point Kim said she was looking like a Trakehner now and it was wonderful. Kim said that we should score well though and the she's a really nice mover. So that made me feel a lot better about everything.

And an interesting side note, Sophie is the boss of her little group in the pasture, even though she's younger and smaller than the other two horses. But she tells them were to go and they do it. I was hoping to get to The Tack Trunk today to pick up another trial saddle, but I just couldn't make the drive after spending all morning at the barn. My body was pretty exhausted from all of the gardening and cleaning over this last week. So we're going to try to make it out tomorrow morning before meeting up with my sister. Not ideal, but I needed a three hour nap and wouldn't have made it after. Hopefully the perfect saddle is there, and I can look at the KK's.

Success...

Well, our first ride since moving her was a success. Craig came to the barn with me yesterday and we got her groomed as well as possible and then I took her for a spin. It stormed the day before, but the outdoor looked ok, so we headed there. Craig was leading Sophie and got out there first and told me..."it's all mud". I told him "that's ok". Then I closed the gate and stepped into the outdoor and water splashed up around my boot. It wasn't muddy...it was soupy. It was like a layer of arena footing over two inches of water. Crazy. So we turned around and headed back to the indoor.

The indoor was...interesting. there were cones and barrels *everywhere*. I could just imagine our ride viewing what lay before us. I moved everything off the rail while Craig walked Sophie around the arena. I made sure the girth was tight and then mounted up. Craig held the dressage whip while I warmed up a bit and got a feel for how she was going to handle the indoor. She was great, didn't look at anything or get spooked by the stuff on the ground or the sounds being made around the barn as people worked.

We just walked and trotted a bit, but she was a good girl. Kind of tense, which I attribute to either the saddle or the bit. Mine is a hollow mouthed eggbutt and her old bit looked to be a medium thickness regular eggbutt. So I'll get her a new bit from the feedstore and a saddle on trial at Equus Now when I make it up there.