A Visit To The Funny Farm

Last weekend, my darling SO said (after disappearing most of Saturday on a bike ride and then being too sore to move the rest of the weekend) “next weekend is all yours, spend as much time as you want out with the horses.”  Well twist my arm and whack me with a sack of oranges, why don’t you?  So Saturday I left my darling little monkey with him almost ALL day while I went out to revel in some beautiful springy weather and inhale copious amounts of horsehair.

I was smart, and remembered to stop at a tack shop on the way for a proper shedding blade.  And tack cleaning supplies, since my saddle has not been cleaned or oiled since before bringing it over there (so around a year and a half now. Yikes! No wonder it squeaks so much!).  On arrival, my first order of business was to take my camera and wander out to get Most Amazing Bay Mare from the field.  In no time, I was inundated with bunches of curious, sweet TBs, all nosing and jostling for attention.  I also noticed some new guys, which is always fun.  I didn’t save all the pictures on here, but here are a few.

Corcho

Above is sweet Corcho, who came to us from Jess a while back since he needed some time off before getting into work.  He was a pretty chill dude and was very happy to receive some chin rubbins and scratchins.  Unfortunately, poor Corcho, who mostly wanted to chill out and get rubbed down by himself, was soon joined by a couple others.  Most notably, the mare Devon.

Devon is like the Mikey of the giant mare field.  If she sees a person, she immediately has to know what they’re up to and get in their face and visit.  She will follow you all around the field (and I cannot overstate the size of this field. It’s HUGE.) without losing interest. “Whatcha doing? Whatcha doing now? How bout now?” is pretty much what I imagine her saying at all times.  So she came over to see what was so interesting about Corcho

Devon intrudes

Pretty much every time I tried to visit with ANYONE in this field, Devon had to get in the middle.  ME ME ME ME MEEEEE!!! Poor mare.  We really need to find her a job soon.

Devon and Her Minion

Not that she’s alone in this.  Her friend the chestnut mare is almost as bad.  The both of them kept following me around, intruding on my attempts to give others attention and love, for about a half hour before they finally decided to go back to eating.  I will say both these mares are truly stunning, beautiful individuals, but their personalities are basically just like Mikey and Truckee – a pair of troublemakers and attention hounds. 

New Dude

I’m not sure who this sweetie is. I know I should know this, but I don’t, which is what happens when you don’t spend a whole lot of time out there and horses come and go.  He has a seriously adorable face, and was very sweet, though. 

At this point, I decided it was really time to get the show on the road and grab my favorite bay mare for a ride.  And of course, I realized she was in a small group of four horses clear at the other end of the field.  Did I mention how huge this field is?  It’s HUGE. Almost half a mile from one end to the other (I checked via google pedometer!).  And the hill is pretty crazy big, too.  But as is their way, when the TBs saw me coming, they immediately started making their way over to me, because they love to visit. 

Hi!!!!!

That’s Crazy.  I think.  And I’m posting that picture because I wanted to explain the reason I don’t post more pictures – ninety percent of the photos I take end up being extreme closeups of eyes, noses, and ears, where it’s impossible to even identify whose nose is whose.  Pictures that are not extreme closeups of eyes, noses, or ears, are generally taken while I’m frantically backing me up as cute TB gets closer and closer and closer.  Like this one, of my favorite girly girl?

Good Girl!

Yep, I was walking backwards pretty quickly there.  At this point I put the camera down for a bit, so I could grab her and bring her in. 

To prove that I read, and try to learn, and stuff, while I was riding I was thinking of a couple short snippets I read on Jess’s blog.  Things about going forward, how much leg it really takes to get these guys coming up over their backs, etc.  So while I was up, I really wanted to think about getting her powering along with her back end a little more.  She has great cruise control and a good go button, but I tend towards sticking with the comfortable speeds, instead of asking for them to work a little more.  With my neck strap on and hands held still (see? I really have learned, really!) I asked her for just a little more power at the trot than I had been asking for.  And it’s kind of amazing, because while it felt awkward at first, as I kept it up (while focusing almost completely on keeping my hips weighted evenly in the saddle and body straight, a major hardship for me), I could feel the quality of her movement changing a little bit.  At first it felt a little like running, but after a few minutes I could feel more of a pushing sensation, and I felt like there was more out in front of me than usual (instead of curling her neck, she started to stretch a little bit).  That was enough, so we stopped (neither of us is fit), and walked around a bit.

Continuing to remember Jess’s blog (and probably forgetting a million other things while focusing on some small random point), I added leg and tried to work on a more quality walk, instead of meandering around.  And wouldn’t you know, you can actually FEEL it when they try to lift up and use their back and belly more?  The walk almost starts to feel circular, and connected.  And yes, the sheer amount of leg it takes is pretty amazing. 

That’s about as far as I was really able to go, since I’m a year and a half into my no-riding-lessons plan to achieve mediocrity.  But it’s neat to feel a tiny bit of progress, or achievement, or something.  Yes, we did walk slightly better than last time!  I want a gold star!

After getting pretty girl back out to her field I wandered out to visit the horses in the other gigantic field (this time about .35 miles across) to see some of the boys.  I had it in mind to grab the one I’d nicknamed Possum. He’s been there a while and he seemed like a chill dude, so I thought I’d go for a record and ride two actual horses.  On my way out, I met a new guy who is related to good old Truckee.  For now I’m just calling him Truckee Two, because they look EXACTLY alike, except new guy has a star.

Truckee Two

The resemblance is more apparent from the side, but I didn’t upload that picture. Oops!  Unlike Truckee, this guy isn’t totally in your face and business, but he’s new, so give it time.  After a few minutes of scritchins, I walked on down the field, where once again the beastie I wanted was at the complete far end.  When I was about halfway there, I heard a little whinny behind me – turned around, and there was Truckee Two, following me.  Too cute!  I waited for him to catch up and we walked the rest of the way together. 

Possum

I found Possum lounging around near the back corner of the field.  And soon, I’d find out exactly how chill he actually is.  He was fine to catch, but within minutes, I realized just getting back to the gate was going to be difficult.  This guy did not.  not not not. want to go anywhere.  About every ten feet, he’d stop, and just stand there, with a pleasant look on his face, and say “nope. I just walked three steps. We’re done.”  It was almost comical – I felt like I was training my horse to lead again.  A couple times the only way I got him going again was by asking him to move sideways, then sideways the other way, again and again sort of like a sailboat tacking to go against the wind.  About 80 yards from the gate I found nothing worked. Nothing.  He was not going anywhere.

At this point, I was just being stubborn.  We’d just taken forty minutes to come back across the field, I couldn’t stop now! 

Fortunately I was saved by some other boarders.  Possum spied a few horses coming back from a trail ride and a lightbulb went on, and we slowly made it down the rest of the hill as he realized he wasn’t being led off into some horseless no man’s land. Or no horse’s land. Or whatever.

Once out, he got lots of treats and a good grooming, which he really enjoyed, and I got to inspect him a little closer.  He’s a good deal bigger than the mental picture I’d had in my head – for some reason I thought of him as around 15.3, but he’s probably 16.2 plus, and will look bigger as he gets fit and builds topline.  He has good bone and huge feet, and the look of a real athlete.  He was very easy to tack up and once there was a bridle on he led perfectly fine away from the other horses to the little ring.

He was not thrilled by the mounting block, but a few sniffs and some reassurance was all he needed.  He was great, stood for mounting (not sure I should ever be surprised when this horse stands for anything), walked off reasonably smartly, and had no issue going by the flapping laundry hanging on the line or the little road cones in the ring or anything. 

The next four minutes, though, had me huffing and puffing like I’d run a 5K.  He is very similar to how Archie was in the beginning, before we’d really installed a go button.  He’ll trot off great for you, but then every step gets progressively slower, and slower, and slower, until it is all you can do to keep him trotting.  It was taking a great deal of energy from me to keep him at any consistent rate of “speed.”  Strangely (and thankfully), getting him into the canter wasn’t too terribly hard (mostly voice and getting off his back), and he picked up both leads perfectly fine, but again, staying in the canter for any length of time took more and more energy.  I was almost embarrassed that I only rode him for a few minutes, but I could check off all his boxes – stands at the mounting block, good brakes (exceptional brakes, actually), good steering, walks, trots, and canters both ways, calm and non-spooky.  But seriously, my legs are KILLING me today and it’s two days later.  I am sure he’ll be a different horse when he’s fit and whoever is riding him gets the go button in there (Archie sure was – it’s actually the kind of ride I really really like because on those types I never feel awkward or weird about adding more leg or asking for more go).  And I think he’s very fancy.  But it was such a 180 from riding GG that it made me appreciate her so very much more! 

At this point, I was pretty done.  I grabbed my horse and pulled some hair off him, gave him a treat and put him back.  When I got home and found kidlet needed a nap, I was seriously grateful as I was in the same boat.

Handsome Boys

 

TGIF!

Just a reminder to those on MD’s Eastern Shore or with quick access to it, Wicomico Equestrian Center is hosting a fantastic benefit show tomorrow (Saturday, April 6) at Winterplace Park in Salisbury.  For more information see their facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TFAWP

In other news, I’d like to showcase one of our current trainer listings right now – she is just lovely!  Unfortunately there is a bit of a bias towards tall horses – it always seems 16 hands is the magic number for people to pay attention to a horse, 16.2 is better, and if the horse is approaching 17 hands or taller, watch out!  But this blogger has well learned the value of a smaller horse.  A more compact beastie is easier to judge distance on, a little easier to adjust, often more likely to be sound and stay that way, and easier to get on from the ground when you’re out in the middle of the woods and need to get off for some reason. 

So I’d like to introduce Drink and Dial, a 5 YO mare owned by some very nice people at Charles Town (seriously, I try not to be all full of favoritism for our trainers, and objective as possible when people ask if people are “good” or not.  Most of them really are good people if they’re listing with us. Really.  But these folks are wonderfully nice and sincere, and always put their horses first).

Drink and Dial

Drink and Dial is a granddaughter of Langfuhr and Dynaformer (by Roberto, one of the horses I like to see in sport pedigrees, though I’m not exactly a bloodline expert).  She’s raced 16 times and even won her last start.  The catch, of course, is that she’s quite short.  Our volunteer says she’s 14.3, officially a “hony.”  So, go ahead people.  Prove me wrong!  Prove to me that not everybody wants a 17 hander! Show me the love for the little ‘uns!

Her full listing is here.

 Lastly, very excited that tomorrow I’ll be making a visit out to the CANTER farm to visit the horses on R&R.  I’ll do my best to take photos.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Just a Quick One Today

Awww.  What do we have here?

To be fair, I find this picture totally appealing.  But as I’ve mentioned in the past, I am a big fan of sorta derpy looking geldings with big heads.  Not that this guy has a huge head by any means, but it’s not a delicate, typey thing, is it? 

Include The Native was owned by the same folks as a couple other horses I’ve shown here recently, and was part of the same group as Brassy Self (the chestnut I posted a few days ago).  Like Brassy Self, he found his way to Katie at Top Notch Eventing, who said “he looked like a long-backed QH” in that picture!

Katie sent this picture of him before she sold him on, and sure looks like he’s a nice athlete!

Anywho, it turns out I have quite a list to tackle now.  Poking around I found a bunch of horses, and also randomly ran into one on COTH the other day.  I also ran into the girls who own Robb That Glitters, formerly known as Lily, now known as Zoey, who had been in our retraining program.  So many horses to update about, so little time!

OMG The Pressure!

Looks like someone posted a link back to this blog on our facebook page. So I went, rather suddenly, from getting about a dozen hits a day to hundreds and hundreds. I had visitors from Argentina yesterday.  Usually my most International audience is Canada. Not that Canada isn’t AWESOME (it totally is. I LOVE CANADIANS!!!) but getting hits from across the ocean, and from another continent is pretty ego-boosting.  It’s gratifying, but now I feel some pressure. Like, I am DUTY BOUND to find you more pretty thoroughbreds who are awesome even though they might have been overlooked due to the realities of track photography. The problem is, we don’t really get a lot of updates about horses that have sold off our track listings. Finding them is often just sheer dumb luck, being on the right horse forum at the right time when someone asks for a pedigree review, or just happening to be at a local event and recognizing a name.

So while I troll the internetz to find more horses to bring you, I thought I’d go back to one I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before here (pretty sure – but now I can’t find the blog entry, which is alarming given my general competency at finding-things-online). 

Here is the photo we took of a chestnut mare named Isabella G:

Here’s the thing.  It is clear to me, and probably to a lot of people, that the above mare is actually very, very nice.  Strong, smooth back and loin, long pelvis, beautiful build and harmony in her proportions.  But if you only glance at this photo (especially the small thumbnail sized one that you see on our main listings page), the quality might easily escape your notice.  She is standing on the dreaded drainage slope, so she looks downhill.  We’re on the wrong side of the sun, making her backlit and making it hard to see details.  She’s in the process of shifting her weight, and her right front is not fully weighted, making something look just a little funny about her knee and ankle.  Her back legs are a little too beneath her, like she is about to back up.  So it’s easy, when skimming, to miss details like that beautiful shoulder, so well suited for jumping. 

Looking at track pictures is definitely a developed skill   You have to sort of tilt the earth, look at the parts individually, then put them back together in your head.  But mostly, you just have to give it more than the nanosecond it takes to process whether the thumbnail looks nice or not.

Catherine, Isabella G’s new owner, posted some newer pictures on the bloodline brag since I last looked, and her quality is just a little more apparent here.

She’s definitely more mature, with different muscles than a racehorse, and a more substantial overall look, but the parts are the same  

And clearly, the girl can perform!

Can’t jump at all, can she?

Just… OMG. *want*

Photos by Shawn McMillen Photography 

Keep On Dancing

I find I’m having a lot of fun looking up horses from old listings.  It’s nice to be reminded that even the ones you worry about end up landing in awesome places.  This next horse, Keep On Dancing, was another on my worry list, if only for the urgency with which he was sent to us to be posted.  His price was extremely low ($500), and his picture wasn’t great.  Those two things serve to scare people off (paradoxically, when it comes to buying OTTBs, many of the same people who think that $3000 is just too high a price usually assume that one priced under $1000 has something wrong with it.  It makes pricing these guys hard, especially when trainers need to move the horses quickly).   We took this listing for an assistant trainer who was a little worried about where her charge would end up, and this is the picture our volunteer got:

What a face!

By far, not the worst photo we’ve ever gotten, but he’s standing on a slope, making him look downhill, and well… a lot of people would probably skim past this one pretty fast, especially given his height (around 15.1 at the time) and the low price “suggesting something was wrong.”

Enter fate (if you can call long-standing business relationships fate).

An extremely well known and well regarded Area II event trainer and expert-in-picking Thoroughbreds named Phyllis Dawson (Team Windchase) found this guy on one of her visits to the track (on her site, she explains that she has purchased over 300 horses from his trainer, all told).  When we were told he was sold, the assistant trainer who notified us didn’t know this was where he was going, and was still worried since he just sort of disappeared one afternoon.  But a TB going to Windchase has just got the golden ticket – that horse is going to get the great care, great retraining, and will probably find an amazing new home and new competitive career as an eventer. 

Not long after, I randomly stumbled onto his ad on the Windchase website, where he was looking… well… fabulous:

hubba hubba hubba

Keep On Dancing didn’t just turn out to be pretty, though.  He actually turned out to be pretty good at his new job.  Sold to Penny Lynch, he was soon eventing and they were doing well enough to be USEA’s Area 2 reserve champions in Beginner Novice. 

“He’s got the best brain in the world, and he’s calm and quiet, and very easy to get along with.  He LOVES to jump, and he’s probably the most honest horse I’ve ever had.  He may be green, and he may get distracted at times, but show him a jump, and he’ll get to the other side from whatever distance, whatever angle, whatever!”  (from the USEA Area 2 website)

Because I was curious to see if she had anything more to say, I contacted Penny, who definitely loves gushing about her lovely “Danny”:

“He’s just about as perfect as he can be for me at this time in my life.  I feel extremely lucky to have found him.  He’s got THE best temperament a horse could possibly have, and that never ceases to surprise me since he’s a Thoroughbred.  I describe him as my Quarter Horse in a Thoroughbred body.  He’s as quiet and as bombproof as they come.  Sweet, affectionate — sometimes a bit of a comedian!  He has an excellent work ethic, and absolutely LOVES to jump.  But he’s also the type of horse that you can ride every day, or ride twice a month, and he’s always the same horse….  Very steady, very easy-going, very willing and happy to please.
 
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I could go on and on and on about my Danny.”

Of course Penny didn’t see the sale photo that had been on CANTER’s page since she bought him from a third party.  But she did say she probably wouldn’t have gone to look based on that photo. Moral of the story?  GO LOOK! 

To complete this entry, I did also want to get the point of view of Phyllis, who is the one who actually picked this fine gentleman up off the track.  I don’t think she saw the photo either, as I mentioned, she has a long standing relationship with his race trainer and frequently gets horses out of that barn to retrain.  But I was curious about why someone with her experience would pick that particular horse to bring home.

Phyllis said a lot of things – looking at basic conformation (good basic proportions and uphill balance), that it’s often like a lottery “because it’s hard to know what you’re really getting,” and pointed out that being a retrainer/seller of horses makes it a bit easier to buy at the track than it would be for an individual looking for a “perfect” horse. If a horse doesn’t turn out to be suitable as, say, a high level prospect, she can work on it and sell him as an amateur or lower level prospect.  People looking for one personal horse may not have this flexibility.  But one thing she said about Keep on Dancing in particular was that he seemed like a “good soul.” 

This is sort of an intangible thing, but one thing I think it’s really important to remember. A lot of people get caught up in looks, details about conformation, etc,  but the thing that MOST of us need before any of that is a good brain. 

To pontificate for a sec – most of us are not Boyd Martin.  We do not need a horse capable of Rolex.  “Fancy” is nice, but tolerant, kind, and willing are going to get us a whole lot farther in the long run.  OK, done with pretending to know what I’m talking about for the time being

A Golden Ray of Sunshine

 Next up in the parade of misfits to beauties is a lovely chestnut named “Brassy Self”  This horse was listed on our trainer listings a while back along with a bunch of other horses.  We of course had limited time and had to take most of the photos out in the field.  To add insult to injury, our volunteer listed fourteen horses just from that farm that day.  And as sometimes happens on the farms, the person showing her around mis-identified a few of the horses (this doesn’t happen very often at the track, but sometimes does on the farms, where the horses are not in numbered stalls and there are a lot of them!).  So some of the pictures got mislabelled and it took a little bit to get that sorted out.  In any case, here’s the only photo we were able to get of the really nice “Brassy Self”:

Cute, but not a lot to go on in this picture!

For some reason, on the farm, getting horses stood up for us seems to be difficult. Some trainers and owners are happy too, and will even brush them off and give us cookies and milk (true story – my first farm visit ever involved cookies and milk. And I got to play with cute TB foals – win!) but a lot of the time they have to get back to the track or are in the middle of other work, so we have even less time to get photos than we would at the track.  The result? A lot of pictures like this.  We know the horses are lovely, but it’s hard to explain to the rest of the world.

So anyway, what has this handsome guy been up to? Learning to event, of course!  He found his way to Katie Willis at Top Notch Eventing in Virginia, where he’s now on their sale page, showing off a lovely jump and nice forward going attitude.  Here he is schooling in Aiken:

This jumping thing is easy peasy!

There are some other fantastic photos and video on Top Notch’s sale page - go take a look! This guy sure looks great!

Spring is Springing

Finally!  Despite a weird snowstorm on Monday, I think it might be spring.  And with kiddo getting older and more self sufficient, hopefully that means more horse time for me.  Miss Lumpyhead is doing great – I recently took her on a trail ride that went way longer than I anticipated and exposed her to all kinds of things – puddles, car traffic, lawnmowers, big huge loud dogs on ziplines (that scared me more than it scared her), and various other weird little obstacles and things that required her to think.  She was a champ, though I think I overdid it a little and kept her out a little past her tolerance point. On the way back we ended up leaving the group behind because she was getting worried about being held back and was happier at a forward walk.  Lovely mare. I tried to take helmetcam video, but had the camera on the wrong setting so instead just got a load of pictures of the tips of her ears. oops.

In other news, I wanted to get back on track here and showcase some before/afters, and horses whose sale pictures were horrible yet actually are really really nice.  One of the things we run into a lot on our trainer listings are photos that just DO NOT do the horses justice.  This happens for a lot of reasons – the ground at the track is not level ANYWHERE – it is all sloped for drainage. If you are not super attentive, you may not even realize the horse is standing in a hole. 

Fantastically wonderful horse with great conformation, standing on the slant. He’s really NOT downhill! Really!

The horse handlers aren’t great at standing them up, in a lot of cases, even if you explain how you want the horse to look. They will often encourage the horse to hold its head up really high or turn and look at you.

Make sure that head’s up now! No, seriously, this horse has a pretty decent neck, I promise!

Then we have the more nuanced things like proportion, lighting, perspective, which our volunteers rarely have time to think about because we only get a few minutes each time and the horses often think they’re going out to work or do something interesting, and “standing pretty” isn’t on their list of interesting things to do.  So we take what we can get, and do our best, but the result is that a lot of our pictures come out… well, not terribly flattering to the lovely horses we see in front of us.  The sad part is the end result of this is less interest in certain horses.  People often decide whether a horse is even worth a look based on a split-second reaction to a photo – even when a good eye can see the nice conformation and build of a horse in an awkward position, that immediate gut reaction is often what makes or breaks a person’s response to that horse. 

Needless to say, we’re trying to improve.

But I thought it would be fun to find horses who had horrifically bad track listing pictures and see what they’re up to now, and how they look.

First up is a lovely horse who I admit I was a bit worried about way back when.  I got the photos and description and just thought “oh no.”  He was a bit special looking, and the photos weren’t doing him many favors.  I thought for sure he’d sit on the listings forever.

You totally want this, right?

He’s got a range of things not going for him in that picture. He has a droopy lip.  His neck is skinny.  He’s standing in a very tight, weird, sort of hunched way, and the perspective of the photo isn’t right.  While folks like me (who like big ears and plain heads) find a lot about this horse to be endearing, let’s face it, it’s not the most flattering pic in terms of finding an immediate buyer.

But something crazy happened with this horse. He actually was sold pretty fast.  I’m not sure who he sold to initially, but I found him later while wandering through the bloodline brag on the RRTP website (a way I’ve found a bunch of horses that we posted on our trainer listings now that they’re in new careers).  If you’ve bought a horse off the track, I highly recommend posting it there so we can stumble onto you later (or just email us.  But post it there too). 

After being bought off the track, his buyer, from what I understand, hopped on him once, stuck him in a field, and put him up for sale. And then he was purchased by the lovely Heidi Wardle, who is a great area event rider.  She’s since sold him, but I thought I would link to his old sale page anyway so people can see how nice he cleaned up.  He doesn’t look fundamentally different if you look closely, just much better muscles and presented beautifully.  But I’m thinking a lot more people would be interested in this horse:

http://www.teamwindchase.com/Joey.htm

(sorry to make you click the link, but I didn’t want to steal pictures. )

For more on how Heidi found Joey, what he looked like when she got him, etc, check out her blog entry introducing him:

http://takeachanceinva.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/introducing-joey/

(I also really recommend reading along on her blog anyway. It’s a good ‘un.)