2012 Sum Up

January 2, 2013

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

It is now officially 2013. 2012 was a great year with the horses, and both Brian and I met our goals. My final stats are as follows: Horseback hours: 153:05 Here's a breakdown of the horses I rode:

And here are all my rides and how long they were:

So, that leaves us with our goals for 2013. Brian and I both going to try for 200 hours in the saddle. This is going to be an outside stretch for us, but I think it's worth shooting for. It will require us to lengthen our average ride, and we might not hit it. But we've reached our goals the last two years, so it se...

Tucson Rides

Robin

December 30, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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We had one last ride on Bear and Steen on December 17th, then weighed anchor and started our holiday travels. We spent the end of the year at my family's home in Tucson, which meant we got the opportunity to ride my Mom's horse and my sister's horse a bit. In the past, Brian has tended to work more with my Mom's horse, Joe, and I've ridden Jak more. This time we swapped things around and I worked with Joe. Mom has had Joe for quite a few years, but I haven't actually ridden him much. We've established on past visits that someone has done quite a lot of groundwork with him. He's a very sweet horse and quite willing to please. His challenges are he's a little herd-bound and can get anxious in new situations, particularly if he doesn't have an established bond with his rider. We spent our first couple of rides just doing basic groundwork and riding on my parents' property. Brian...

Busy Weekend

Robin

December 17, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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We had a lot to get done this weekend, largely of the "preparing for the holidays" variety. Saturday was dreary and rainy. It was pretty much wet all day, and instead of going to the barn we got copious amounts of very "responsible adult" types things done, like cleaning the house, and finishing our Christmas shopping. Fortunately we did offset that in the evening by having a night of port and horse videos. We watched "Road to the Horse" from 2008. I have to admit, watching these are kind of a guilty pleasure for me. On the one hand, I don't like some things about the event. Mainly, I don't think it's the best thing for the horses. But on the other hand, it's so interesting to see the different horses and the different clinicians. We've watched the videos from quite a few years now, and seen trainers I've read about and learned form. My estimation of Martin Black went up a few bill...

Easing out of 2012

Robin

December 15, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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It's time for the obligatory end-of-the-year retrospective post (in which I will reflect on the year in general and provide copious numbers of back-links to previous posts). I'm less than an hour away from hitting my "time in the saddle" goal for 2012, and we still have two weeks of the year left. I think it's pretty safe to say I'll get it. Brian, on the other hand, hit his ages ago. He's about 10 hours ahead of me. This is the second year in a row he's out-ridden me, though last year it was by minutes instead of hours. It's funny. We have a lot of little goofy fake competitions going in our marriage, but I can't say it bothers me in the least that he's clobbering me in the horse department. Part of me sti...

Steen vs the Gate

Robin

December 13, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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I have been a bit lame about blogging because our barn trips have really fallen off. I'm trying to wrap up a bunch of work before we escape to Arizona for a couple of weeks, and it's been cold. Not super duper horrible cold, but just cold enough that it's easy to talk yourself out of spending much time outside. Our last ride was Sunday. I rode Steen again, and he was pretty good. He's mostly just so out of shape now. He has a long back, and when he's not in consistent work his posture gets bad. He has a tendency to let his hind end trail out behind him and heave himself around with his front. Throw a saddle and rider on and this gets worse. Before his injury he was in such great condition. He had the muscles to engage his back properly, he was pulling from behind a lot more and his haunches were strong. It's a bit discouraging to come back to this point. But, on the other hand, it ...

Back to Normal

Robin

December 8, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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Yesterday was Brian's birthday. We both took the day off work and made time for a nice long barn trip in the afternoon. I was pleased to find Steen didn't run to me the moment I appeared at the barn. While I do like that our horses come to us, with Steen you can gauge his overall comfort level by how quickly he comes. The more uncomfortable he is, the faster he makes it to the gate. So if he's cold, hungry, sick, scared, in pain, or otherwise compromised, he comes fast. Lately he's been speed-walking to the fence the moment he sees us. But today he only ambled over, petering out halfway to me and standing to stare for a moment before continuing on up to say hello. His eyes were not longer goopy, and his leg is so so sooo close to being healed. There is only one tiny little section of scab left. The rest is just pink skin. Even the rain rot is almost conquered. We tacked up an...

Working the Hilltop

Robin

December 3, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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Today was warm. Really warm. So warm we found all the horses standing around looking overheated and miserable.

I rode Laredo. I wanted to make sure we included some focused work in our ride. We've been just going from point A to point B with him a lot lately, usually in the company of another horse. He loves exploring, so it's easy to just take him out and poke around.

We rode out into the big pasture again, and after we'd walked around a bit we went to the flat spot on the top of the big hill and decided to work a little. We've never tried to do any "real" work with Laredo outside of his comfort zone. I started out walking circles and figure eights and Laredo was fine, if rather on the sluggish side.

After a while Bear and Brian went off to explore other areas. I kept working with Laredo in the same spot. He was a little interested in where they had g...

What Didn’t Happen

Robin

November 30, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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Brian and I seem to have developed a not particularly wonderful habit of having riding accidents in the fall. It started the year we got Bear - 2010. I had a horrible crash on Halloween. Then Brian came off hard our very next ride. I suffered a concussion and Brian's shoulder bothered him for months. The next year Brian took another fairly hard fall in October. Though I made it through the season unscathed, I also had my roughest rides of the year right around the time Brian fell. We both marked the pattern, and have hoped not to repeat it this year. Today was the last da...

Love at First Ride

Robin

November 30, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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My new saddle arrived late on Wednesday. We unpacked it and I have to say it looks even better in person than it did in the photos. Today I headed out to the barn alone to meet the farrier. Brian had to work but planned to come out and meet me later. I took my new saddle inside, where it immediately got some compliments.

So pretty!

It turned out none of our horses needed their feet trimmed, so I had some time to kill. I worked on cleaning and softening the rain rot around Steen's cut, groomed all three horses then hopped on Steen for a short ride. I stayed in the indoor arena for no real reason. Steen now has a col...

Fresh

Robin

November 26, 2012

Novels for Horse-Lovers

The Tipped Z Ranch books feature fictional stories but real horsemanship.

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We've been out of town for a few days, which means none of our horses have been ridden. Sometimes when we have our pick of who to ride and we're not in any sort of pattern, it can be hard to decide. Today I settled on Steen and Brian decided to ride Bear. Seen's leg is STILL not done healing, and a few days without me tending to it meant the scab had built up quite a lot. He also still has some lingering rain rot and a bit of puffiness all around, so I thought a light ride would be good for him. When we were getting the horses out of the pasture we noticed the gate out to the big pasture is now closed. We often enjoy riding in the big pasture in the fall after the horses have been shut out, so decided to ride out there today. Laredo made us feel bad by trailing after us to the gate and nickering at us when we left him behind (although it was nice to know he was keen to hang out ...