Our First Horse

We ignored the advice from our farm friends about buying a two wheel drive tractor for our small horse farm. To this day, they still tell us it’s a waste of money but we think otherwise. Our east Tennessee land gets pretty muddy and it only takes a little bit of rain to make it slick. If we planned on using this tractor any time other than when it was completely dry, we would have been out of luck with 2wd. 4wd isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity where we live and our 4WD Kubota with locking rear differential is serving us well. Here’s a short video (1:24 minutes) showing some examples of why we needed a 4wd tractor:

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Spring 2010 is less than a week away now and the weather is noticeably warmer. While buying feed the other day, I saw another sure sign of spring - a local horse show event schedule. I’ve been saying for a while “this is going to be my year!” but this year I’m serious about it. We have beautiful horses and relative youth on our side but none of us is getting any younger. Sure, we love to ride trails but I’d like to push our horses and ourselves a little more and learn something new. So we’ve asked a gaited horse trainer to help get us all into shape. Now we’re not talking about big fancy horse shows, though those can be fun. We are talking about local shows where you don’t have to show up with a $50,000 horse trailer and flawless fur. It’s in local shows you don’t have to worry about being the newbie, you just need to worry about having some fun. Plus, our two Tennessee Walking Horses, Cash and Valentine, have very nice natural walking horse gaits.

Our first official lesson was supposed to be yesterday but as frequently happens in east Tennessee, we were rained out. At least Cash was groomed. So instead, we spent some time learning about the different show classes, what’s expected and how we can prepare for them. For example, some exercises like butt lifts (lying down and lifting your legs and rear into the air for a few seconds) help prepare your back muscles. Also, balance improvement by riding bareback in the ring. I feel like I have good balance on a horse but I’m winter-green and could always use some improvement. Our trainer also suggested riding in a round pen with our arms out and heads back (it’s safer having some help guiding the horse). Apparently it’s harder than it sounds and we expect to find out on a clear day this week.

We’re looking at the following gaited classes: Open Gaited Pleasure, Go As You Please Gaited, Novice All Age Walk Pleasure and possibly Open Gaited Trail & Pattern but maybe later in the year, as we’ll need to practice a bit more for that class. Additionally, I’m still planning to run Romeo in the barrels, Mikki will run Cash in exhibition poles and we’re considering the Costume Class for Romeo or Cash. Fun!

Don’t forget to check out Our First Horse on Facebook for the latest. We’re still blogging but we’re doing more regular short posts over on Facebook.

Are you showing this year?

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“All the pretty horses come running to her. Even the dust devils pray, they’ll catch her eye.” This is one line from the lyrics of a song called “Green and Dumb” by Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers. The song is based on the hit movie and best selling novel (author Cormac McCarthy) by the same name. We find ourselves being drawn to songs about horses and the horse or cowboy lifestyle and this has always been one of our favorites.

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can hear the full song below.

Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers is one of our favorite bands. Their songs remind us of our southwestern heritage and the romanticized cowboy borderlands in Arizona.

As a horse-person, do you find yourself collecting songs about horses, too? If so, what are your favorites? Have you heard the song above before now?

We have a few other favorites I’ll bring up in later posts.

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If you’re a member of Facebook, please check out the Our First Horse Facebook page. While much of the same content will end of there, we’ll mostly be making shorter, quicker updates there. Don’t worry, we’ll still keeping this blog format but I often feel like sharing some small tidbit and I don’t like filling the blog up with tiny posts, especially because many of you subscribe by email and get an email notice every time we post something. With Facebook we can make those small posts and communicate back and forth with our “fans”. So please check out our page and become a fan!

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When it rains, it pours here in East Tennessee. To make winters even less pleasant, the frequent rain (January is our second rainiest month) is causing us work and making the lives of our horses a little less fun. Even though it was warm Sunday when I shot this little video, I decided to let the horses in to dry off and they seemed to appreciate it. I can’t wait until we have a few dry days to move some dirt. We knew we had some new drainage issues but the big rain storm Sunday made it seem a lot worse. I made this quick 2 minute, 26 second video to show you how muddy our place is right now. Now with voice overs! LOL. Once you get past the first few dizzy seconds, the rest of the video is pretty smooth.

So does your barn and pasture look like this right now, too?

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For the past few years we’ve been passing this junkyard on our way up to the big city for provisions. One day we noticed piles of horse poop so we paid a little more attention next time we went by. Sure enough, there was a horse in there! I have never before seen a “junkyard horse”. I wonder if he bites.

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