• Friday - 2 November - Hopi Does a “Long Ride”
• Sunday - 4 November - Riding to Browns Bar
• Tuesday - 6 November - Back on Zinnet Again
• Wednesday - 7 November - Current Horse Goals
• Friday - 9 November - First Lesson with Jeannette Quinn
• Sunday - 11 November - pft has a lesson, Jack gets some trailering practice
• Tuesday - 13 November - Hopi at Dusk
• Saturday - 17 November - Another Lesson for pft and Uno, Another Trailering for Jack
• Sunday - 18 November - Foresthill to Michigan Bluff and Back
• Monday - 19 November - Quilting
• Tuesday - 20 November - Driveway - Swanton V Tevis - Shots
• Thursday - 22 November - Thanksgiving
• Friday - 23 November - Gravelling
• Saturday - 24 November - Hopi Goes Alone
• Tuesday - 27 November - New Arena

• Wednesday - 28 November - ...of Lessons

• Thursday 29 November - Roo Goes to Work

• Friday 30 November - Fingerprinting
  

   

Back to October 2007 • Forward to December 2007

Friday - 2 November
Hopi Does a “Long Ride”

We rode 10 miles on Friday. Hopi led most of the way and did great - except for when he started to back off the ledge of a trail when we met a guy with two dogs; and when he went up the side of the bank because a tree stump jumped out on him; and when he had a hissy because Jess trotted off without us and Hopi wasn't allowed to follow.

But he did good. He even managed to go in the American River and sniff at the water and eat weeds underwater without dying.

We walked most of the ride and were very sore at the end. Too much walking is *not* a good thing, IMO.

And poor Hopi had goose-eggs for armpits from a rubby cinch. Have to figure out what's going on there.

Ann rode him half a mile or so and loved him and I rode Abi and really liked her - except for having to ride on a block of wood covered in shiny slippery stuff.... Ann calls this a saddle, but I have my doubts.

Sunday - 4 November
Riding to Browns Bar

Leslie, pft and I went out for a really nice 17 mile ride this afternoon and had a great time. That's the hardest pft's ever ridden before - he's done longer than that, but not "real riding" like he did today. He's pretty sore tonight and just retired to bed. He and Uno both did very well - except for the one part where Uno spooked, but pft managed to stay on by his fingernails. Leslie and I were most impressed.

Leslie rode Brandy, who's real name should actually be Apple, since she has an apple-butt. Apple is a very cool horse in a weird funky way. She looks like she should be some sort of gaited something because of the way she's put together, but isn't - other than being really smooth. She's a really sweet horse - possibly not the world's most elegant creature - but she's sturdy and square and gets on with her job and is a nice horse to ride on the trail with (except Roo din't think so when she passed him so he tried to bite her on the butt - bad pony).

Tuesday - 6 November
Back on Zinnet Again

After going out to get chicken fud and managing to get the all-wheel drive Subaru Baja stuck in the manzanita on our driveway (how?!), I took Zinnet out late this afternoon to see how she felt.

We went about three miles, just up the lane and back and did maybe half a mile or so of trotting and she felt good - maybe a little short-strided on all four feet (maybe that's why she felt "gaity"?), but she's also barefoot all round and I was mostly trotting on gravel or pavement, so I can't really blame her (I was too lazy to put EZ boots on her - bad Lucy).

The one time we got onto easier footing, she felt like she was striding a bit longer - but that might also be that we were heading home <g>. I never felt her gimp like she had been but I'm still not 100% convinced of her complete recovery - but I was very encouraged...

...we'll see.... does this mean I have to ride three horses now? Urk...

I might be able to pony her off Hopi, since they seem to be getting to be buddies over the fence.

P.S. pft got the Baja unstuck as soon as he got home. He said you need three feet to do it.

Wednesday - 7 November
Current Horse Goals

Roo - continue to try and do a 50 per month to keep him in shape (this means he needs minimal riding in between times - so long as I continue to putz along at the back and don't ask for any kind of "superhorse" behaviour). I'd like him to do at least one 100 in 2008 hopefully as a precursor to "The Big 100 Goal" - have to decide if that will be Swanton or Tevis. I will try and ramp up his work to coincide with this 100 mile activity, but also have to remember not to overdo it, so we'll see how it goes based on how he's going.

Hopi - continue to ride him as much as I can with the idea of him doing an LD (or getting LD fit, at least) by late spring/early summer. I'm not putting a time limit on this, since that way there's no pressure on me. If I don't want to ride, then I shan't, so there (so defiant, this morning!?) If the LD goes well, then I'll move him up to 50s. I'm hoping this goal will go faster than that - that I can ride him in 50s sooner rather than later, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself to do that. Get pft riding him as well.

Uno - Not my problem <grin> - pft hopes to do at least one LD with him at Death Valley this Christmas.

Zini - continue to ride as and when... no particular goal... just see if she stays sound. Probably pony her off one of the others, since she's good fun to pony (what with doing circus tricks, n' all). Consider the idea of breeding her to Echo next summer?

Jack - play at putting a saddle and other items of clothing on him next summer. Start riding him summer 2009? (he'll be four then).

Provo - continue to enjoy his antics and put food in one end and clear away what comes out the other end.

Mouse - find a new pleasure home for her!

Friday - 9 November
First Lesson with Jeannette Quinn

Well, I finally got my lesson today, squashed in between work and farrier Ted.

My "take home notes":

Sunday - 11 November
pft has a lesson, Jack gets some trailering practice

	With the precision of organizing the Normandy Landing, we managed to get pft and Leslie scheduled for a lesson today. That was pft's first ever lesson and I think he enjoyed it. We took Jack along too for some trailering practice, since we were only going to Ann's house 20 minutes away. Jack seemed quite restless in the trailer and whinnied a few times. When we arrived, pft unloaded Uno and Jack got upset that he'd been forgotten - rearing up and getting both front feet stuck in the manger <roll eyes>. I unsnapped him and he managed to get one foot free, but was still hung up on the right front. Luckily, in normal gumby fashion, once pft managed to unhook his other leg, he popped out seemingly with no ill effects whatsoever. He spent a few hours tied to the trailer, munching hay and squawking for Uno during pft's lesson. pft's lesson was as subtle as mine had been. Jeannette gave him some stretches and balancing exercises to work on regularly (she suggested every half an hour). She also prescribed a regular massage for him. Huh. He gets all the luck. She worked on shifting his weight to his weaker side and strengthening his core - this seems to be a reoccuring theme - none of us have any core, and all of us have a strong upper thigh that pulls us all out of whack.
	Afterwards, we amused ourselves by torturing Eagle with clicker training - a game he thought was very fine, especially once he figured out how to get the treat.

Tuesday - 13 November
Hopi at Dusk

Hopi and I went down the lane around sunset and I worked on my weight bearing butt and poise, etc. I'm not sure if I did any of it right (remembering Jeannette the instructor saying she'd rather we didn't spend ages practising the wrong thing), but we tried.

He did fine all alone, even though it was nearly dark when we got back - he wasn't worried at all until we came to a Puddle of Death, which coupled with some wet pavement, caused him to suffer much distress.

We also worked on moving over to the "mounting block" (tailgate of the Baja) - this is very important when you're the height of a tall building. He was pretty clueless as to what I was asking for and finally I thought "Hmm, when I rotate my body to the 'center' (away from the Baja), it puts weight on my 'outside' (towards the Baja) and the horse glides to the 'outside'". So I tried it and Hopi glided over to the tailgate. ...Well, he sorta did, anyway. Maybe "glide" is too definite a word in this case, but we did end up in the right place <click-treat>.

Click-treat training has been a little hard to do with him, since he's never had anyone feed him from the saddle before, so jumps in fear when you reach down with your hand. He's getting the hang of it, though, funnily enough.

His conditioning isn't progressing as quickly as I'd hoped - mostly due to too much work (what? They want me to do real work??) and the dark evenings now. I hate that most about winter - when are we supposed to ride when it's dark all the time?? So no DVE for him :(   We'll get there, though. Hopefully he'll be up and running by the Spring.

Saturday - 17 November
Another Lesson for pft and Uno, Another Trailering for Jack

Uno's such a sweetie in the arena, doing everything he's told. Sunday was his and pft's most recent lesson and Jeanette had them doing figure of 8s - and they were doing perfectly. Us in the peanut gallery (me, Charlotte [the lady who's arena we were using] and Ann - all of whom are also taking lessons) were muttering about "how come he's doing so well? no fair".

After pft's lesson, he let me hop on and ride Uno for a few minutes (that's the first time).

1. He has a really long stride compared to little Roo.
2. He does *everything* he's told. Compared to Roo (who's now had hundreds of miles of me wriggling around on top of him, so he's no doubt tuned me out), he's so responsive to legs. Pah. No wonder they were doing it so nicely <g>

I think maybe pft's going to pass on DVE this year - he's not quite ready and I think it'll be better for him to get his lessons nicely cemented, so he's riding well and centered and solidly (to stay on ) and can enjoy doing it, rather than managing by the skin of his teeth.

All the wriggling around and exercises has made him stand much better and he's generally looking straighter than he has been in a while. Of course, it has also inflamed his knee (we think all that stretching has annoyed his ilio-tibial band), so he's gimpy from that, so after the lesson, Jeannette spent an hour working on him with her sonic maching.

Roo and I did another lesson on Friday and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Sorta <grin>

Jack came with us both times for his trailering practise and is being a good boy. No more jumping in the manger and he's relatively good standing tied to the trailer (only shrieking a bit).

Sunday - 18 November
Foresthill to Michigan Bluff and Back

Leslie and I took the boys out to Foresthill Mill site and rode backwards to Michigan Bluff, then down into El Dorado Canyon before coming back out on the jeep road (which I'd never done before). 

Eagle and Roo did good - at least on the way back. On the way out, I'd all but convinced myself that Roo was suffering from some ailment - what with having peed *too* frequently during our lesson on Friday, and then feeling a bit flat from FH to MB, and making like he wanted to roll in one of the deep puddles (is he colicking??).

We didn't exactly zoom and had to stop often - drinking out of puddles, chatting with some other riders, cutting our way around a locked gate, trying to avoid falling over a cliff when we met some dirt bikes coming up El Dorado canyon, etc... 

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/player/view.mb?episodePk.pkValue=4473627

And here's a Google Earth file to see where we went: FH > MB > FH (at least some of it - just after we left MB, my batteries went dead, so there's a gap in there).

We asked them to trot up a lot of the jeep road out of El Dorado canyon - which Roo was eager to do, since we'd now turned for home and (thank goodness) we weren't going all the way to Deadwood (his fear) (Eagle was quietly worried we were going all the way to Robinson Flat, which Leslie has evilly made him do in the past). Roo also trotted nearly all the way up Chicken Hawk Road, which he's never done before (usually gives up after 100 feet), so I was very pleased with him.

We practised our "positions" and I worked on counterflexing the pone on drop offs. Jeannette would be proud.

I rode without my sheepskin, to see if I could - the instructor said it makes my saddle a bit too snug, so I can't follow Roo's motion enough. Too bad - I *need* that sheepskin to stop my fat little legs abrading, so that's going back on for *real* rides :)

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34GMJkhw9dU

Monday - 19 November
Quilting

Well, my fishie quilt is nearly done. The front part of the binding is stitched on, now I just have to hand-stitch the back - which is the part I'm never fond of.

Fresh with ideas, I started my first "amish" type quilt. I've been looking for flannels in solid, dusky colours, but haven't had much luck, so had to go with what I already had in my stash. As a result, my block size and colour was dictated mostly by how much of each colour I already had.

Initially it went really fast - and then I got to the part where you have to put the main square on point and add the triangles to the outside to make it square again (the beige parts on the attached pic). This was *far* harder than I thought and I struggled for a long time trying to figure out what size triangles I needed to cut out. My "book" told me I had to decide if I was making half triangles or quarter triangles... and I still have no idea.

It's sorta OK, but a bit bulgy in places. Luckily I'm going to quilt the crap out of it (latest idea is a trapunto sun design in the center, and maybe folky rabbits around the outside. They have to be folky rabbits, not cutesy ones, though). 

Diagram to give an idea 
of what I might do:

I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the outer-most corners - I might make it square, so don't have to double up on something the way I've shown here. We'll see. I have to put it on the bed to see how big it is (and see how much green I have left, so how big I can make my borders). 

I think maybe I should have started with small easy "on point" squares, because a big one like this is really hard.

Tuesday - 20 November
Driveway - Swanton V Tevis - Shots

This afternoon the man from Bear Creek Quarry came over to inspect the driveway. If it goes to plan, they start gravelling on Friday. No more Driveway of Peril. Yay! 

And best of all, we're going to put rock down with sand on top up on our "pad" by the garage - 70' diameter horse riding area, so then Jeannette can come here instead of having to drive over to Charlotte's arena - trailering up Sliger Mine on a regular basis is scary as heck, I keep thinking I'm going to fall in the ditch.

Hopefully we'll put lights up there, so I can ride in the dark and do exercises with those pones.

Pros and cons of Tevis V. Swanton

Leslie and I were discussing the Pros and cons of Tevis V. Swanton.

Tevis:

• I really want to do it
• Home trail, so I know it
• I can preride a lot

Swanton:

• Might not be here after this year
• Don't know the trail
• Can't preride easily

Leslie tells me "one of hers" will be doing Swanton next year - she just wasn't sure which. And Crysta is also planning on it.

I really want to do Tevis next year - but if Crysta and Leslie are both riding Swanton , and it's going away, then Swanton would be the better option. I can't do both and Tevis will still be there in 2009 (although to sit it out *again* for another year will drive me nuts). 

With the above in mind, we should take a field trip to Swanton to preride at least the "dark bits". When we rode Sonoma, a nice lady named Michelle Carrera (?) introduced herself - she knew me n' Roo from the 'net. She lives down there and offered to show us the trails if we want to preride any of it, so we should take her up on the offer. 

Shots

After I picked up my truck-n-trailer from Leslie's today (had to leave it there since I don't have any lights on the small white truck - it keeps blowing fuses - so Leslie kindly dropped Roo and I home), I went into Cool to get gas and went by the vets and picked up all my shots for pones.

I came home with a big baggy of WNVs and was getting ready to bring them in the house to put in the fridge when I realised "hey, why don't you put them in the horses?".

I'm proud to say I did Roo, Provo, Zini and Jack loose while they were eating their breakfasts and within five minutes I was done. Whee! I get a gold star.

Thursday - 22 November
Thanksgiving

Spent the morning quilting-quilting-quilting (once you get on a roll, it's hard to stop), then spent the rest of the day over at Ann and Jess's eating, eating, eating. Managed to get 3/4 of the back of the fishie quilt binding hand-sewed while chatting over TG.

"Amish" quilt pieced together.  This has been my Thanksgiving Holiday project.	Fishie quilt front with  nearly all the binding  sewed on.
I'm doing some machine trapunto  on it - that is, adding extra poofy batting to select areas to make  the sun, moons and stars stick  out more. This is the back showing how far I've got so far.	The binding is made  of the same fabric  as the back, so  it goes from  light to dark.

Friday - 23 November
Gravelling

Marty from Bear Creek Quarry came today with four "transfers" (boxes) of gravel and did the top part of the driveway - the part that I fell off the side off and the part that gets a bit dicey when it rains. I spent a happy time sitting on the sidelines, watching him smooth it all out with his digger/grader tractor thing.

Corner of Peril - Before

Corner of Peril - After

pft went through the electrics on the trailer to figure out why it kept blowing fuses in the truck so I had no lights. Finally he found a bunch of ripped out wire from that blow-out we had when we were coming back from fetching Uno from Oregon. He fixed those and I now have lights, so can stay out at night (well, 5 pm).

He also pulled off the remains of the running board on the left of the trailer and straightened all the floor supports that had gotten bent. He just has to straighten the running boards and then it's as good as new (if you don't count the bent front bit on the nose with the broken window that is taped up with duct-tape such that it is "fine").

Saturday - 24 November
Hopi Goes Alone

We rode today - just a shortie... at least it was for Ann and Jess. Jess took my lesson spot on Friday, since we had the gravellers in to do the driveway and I didn't want to drive over the not-yet-packed gravel. Jess was a little sore today, so they turned for home after a couple of miles, while Hopi and I set out into the wild blue yonder (another 5 miles) all on our ownsome.

He did really good - that's the first time I've ridden him on a real ride on his own. He's very scaredy of water crossings, so they were kind of interesting (finally he followed Chili when she got bored waiting for us and went across and up the trail) and was a bit alarmed when we met some hikers with a baby in a back-pack. Even more so when the hiker approached holding out his paper map - ACK!!!

We did quite a bit of leaving other horses - firstly leaving Ann and Jess; then we met Leslie who was out with her son and passed and left them; then we rode for a short while with another lady who was heading the same way as us but later left when we stopped to talk to the same hikers. He didn't do it totally seamlessly, but for a greenie who's not used to much, I was pretty pleased with him. 

His modus operandi when unsettled is to vigorously shake his head and move around a lot - high stepping and twirling. If there's lots of room, I can cope with this (you just get the vague feeling he might step backwards into a hole while not paying attention and fall over), but it's a bit worrying on a narrow drop-off trail, so a couple of times I hopped off and led him for a few minutes until he settled down again before getting back on.

He also did good in the mounting department. At the very beginning of the ride, I tried to mount from the ground but my girth wasn't nearly tight enough and the saddle slipped over to the side and he got very concerned, running around in circles (I'm not sure if it was the saddle off to the side, or the stirrup hanging so low that was worrying him). Once we got him straightened out, I took him over to a mound of dirt and asked him to step up next to me. No luck - this met with his standard swinging his butt away as soon as I tried to step towards the stirrup. Finally, remembering what we'd worked on a couple of weeks ago, I let go of the reins and just swung my lead rope over onto the far side of his shoulder to slap him on that side and encourage side-stepping. He stepped up neatly to the mound of dirt, stood still and let me get on. Huh. Almost like I'd taught him something?

Oh, and he tried very hard - when we got to the end of the Connector Trail between "Magnolia" and Cronin (at the Cronin end), he opted to start trotting up the BIG hill and managed 100 vertical feet before pooping out - and that's a good hill.

Unfortunately at some point he lost a shoe - he's really klutzy with his feet. Not sure if he pulled it off with a back foot (barefoot in back, but long) or side-stepping with a front foot. He's on six-weeks shoes, so I guess that's not so bad.

Tuesday - 27 November
New Arena

This morning the man from Bear Creek came to finish off the driveway and do the "arena".

Ann and Jess came racing over first thing with their chainsaw - there were three wimpy trees that were encroaching onto the space that I figured would be better off gone. So Jess chopped them down for me and I stuffed the remains into the truck and drove it down onto the burn pile at the bottom. I was racing the gravel guy, wanting to keep out of his way (he was on the way down behind me, off to fetch another load). In the process of trying to get out of his way, I managed to reverse the white truck into a tree <squawk>. Lucky that tailgate was already bent, right? :))))) <darts eyes>

Then I had to drag the old-white-dead-fiat out from where it has been parked in the far corner for the last 7 years. Since it doesn't have any steering attached to the front wheels it was kind of interesting. I hitched up the snatch-em strap to the rear axle and just started dragging with the truck. Got it to the middle of the space and then the gravel guy showed up, and he hitched the front end of it to the big diggy-bucket thing on his tractor, raised it up high and raised the front end of the fiat and wheelbarrowed it into its new parking space. Very delicately done. I was impressed.

We started with three "boxes" (basically the bed of the dump truck) of inch and half rock as the base. Considering this was going down on bare dirt (squooshy clay when it rains), this is probably a good thing
Once the rock was down, he added two and half boxes of "coarse sand". Here he's added the first two strips, which is all one box covered once it was dumped. That was the first clue that we'd probably need more...
And here it is - all done - ready for pointy pony feet. This is the lower part of the driveway which was starting to look a little bald...

Wednesday - 28 November
...of Lessons

Roo and I had a lesson on Sunday which was a bit demoralizing. I worked very hard, but didn't feel like I achieved very much. Jeannette commented that "although it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, Roo wasn't perhaps the sharpest knife in the drawer". :(  Personally, I think it keeps him out of trouble, but it does mean he doesn't respond much to my desperate attempts to make him do stuff. As Ann said "he didn't help you at all" during my lesson :(   I also think he's probably tuned out all my wriggling - given how much time I spend twisted around taking photos, etc. Probably just as well, or we'd be all over the place, falling off the trail if he was more of a sensitive flower in that respect.

I mostly just want him straight and even, otherwise I'm going to lose his left front/right rear somehow. So I'm hoping the lessons will get us out of that. Maybe everyone else will end up doing super-stuff and we'll still be stuck trying to get our weight in the right place, but if it keeps him sound, I'll go for it.

I suspect the slow progress is because we've done all that distance and got both rider and horse stuck firmly using the wrong parts of our bodies. It might take a while to come around, given it took so many miles to get it like that in the first place.

Jeannette also said he was a bit weak in the loin (which given how he feels on hills - particularly at Sonoma, I can well believe). She said the best thing right now that we could do to combat that is to ask him to canter uphills - slowing, then speeding up, so that he's using his "pushing off" muscles - which will engage his abs and give him some core (how come *none* of us have any core??), and make his loin stronger.

So we also need to go cantering uphills - maybe Gorman Ranch would be good for that? (poor Roo's going to be pooped out). Of course this would be controlled cantering - speeding up and slowing down in a controlled manner (she said slowing down is good too, since that forces their abs to work, since flying along is easier - but slowing down is harder). This would not be bat out of hell "interval training".  :))))

She did some stretching and tweaking with me - which reminds me, I'm supposed to be doing it on my own. Oops.

And I should probably do carrots stretches on Roopert too for the same reason.

Thursday 29 November
Roo Goes to Work

Since I had to go and get my fingerprints done on Friday in Sacramento, I stayed home Thursday instead. This meant that Roo and I were able to spend 30 minutes in the late afternoon christening the new arena, which was very cool.

Chili came up and helped us by picking up pine branches with fluffy bouncing ends and leaping about next to us in a boingy manner. Roo thought this was a fine excuse to leap about. I was not amused, particularly as his leaping about rucked up the big rock underlay and brought it to the top. It needs to settle a little more before it can cope with leaping-about-ness.

We did circles and serpentines and I finally figured out what I was supposed to be doing with my pelvis/hips to steer the horse ("bumping a pile of books" Jeannette described it as). Yay.

Sally - visiting from England for 48 hours - rode Roo on Friday, taking him down the Powerlines and having him trot slowly back up them again. <tee hee>. Then she did serpentines and circles with him, so he had quite a bit of education this week. 

Friday 30 November
Fingerprinting

My US citizenship application went in at the end of June and on 27 July was officially "received" by the INS. Except it's not the INS - they became part of the Department of Homeland Security and are now named the CIS - US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

As part of the application, I have to be fingerprinted so they can run me through the system to make sure I'm not a closet serial rapist or Unabomber. They did the fingerprinting in West Sacramento, using an electronic digital machine. Because it's winter, my poor fingers are like crunchy dry twigs, so the lady had to repeatedly spritz them with water to get them to register properly, but I am now all official.

The only other time I've been fingerprinted was for my Green Card application, so I'm guessing I'm not going to be a very exciting subject to investigate.

They also gave me a book which covers all the questions I will get asked during my interview - historical facts about the US and about its political system. The two most difficult questions (which I've now memorized the answers to) are:

• The first thirteen colonies: Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts.
• The amendments that deal with voting rights: 15th, 19th, 24th, 26th (slaves getting to vote, women getting to vote, no poll tax, and lowering the voting age from 21 to 18)

Hah.