Let the 'Breaking' begin!

So today was the first day of the 'Breaking Season'. I'm not sure if it is officially started yet, but close enough. We had polytrack installed in the round pen and the Eurosizer hot walker and they just barely got done working on it yesterday. So four of us walked the horses down the path leading to the round pen and walker. The first horse I led did not want to go, he was pretty scared of the railing and change of surface. Well, there is limited patience on this farm so they let him look at it for a minute and then two of the guys linked arms and pushed behind him onto the path. I then walked him down the path and we walked the four horses around the round pen until Brent (the assistant/yearling manager) decided everyone was quiet enough to go into the hot walker. The horse I had was a little leary of everything, but he willingly went into the hot walker and started to relax in there. He was real easy to walk in the hot walker. After a few times around there we went back up to the barn. Then I grabbed another horse. This guy had gotten kicked in the knee a week ago and still has a small cut. He was in the stall for a couple of days and then in a small pen outside for another couple days. Yesterday we turned him back out in a small paddock with his pasture buddy. So he was feeling pretty good. He is a fairly large horse and pretty confident so when I walked him over to the path he looked at it for a second and then just walked right on. Walking around the round pen with him was interesting because he kept wanting to lay down and roll, so I had to keep him walking, which he did not want to do. Also, we walked around the round pen for quite awhile because one of the horses did not want to go onto the path. When we finally went into the hot walker, this guy really relaxed and seemed to enjoy the change in routine, which is not normal for most of the thoroughbreds I have experience with. They usually like their routine. On Monday and Tuesday we are going to walk them in the hot walker for 15 minutes. We have to walk with them and then hopefully on Wednesday they are comfortable to walk on their own.

Round pen and hot walker under construction:


Some of the other things I have been doing:
I got to ride on a horse van for the first time. The best way to describe it is basically a Uhaul truck with two 'stalls' in the back. The horse is loaded and then backed up into one of the stalls that is fairly wide. I do not even think a very heavy pregnant mare could fill the spot. Well of course I get to ride in the back with the horse with the pelvis issue (this is before we knew what was wrong with him). We have nicknamed him Bird. Well, Bird has been in the stall or a small pen for three months. He is a yearling thoroughbred which I would equate to a teenage boy with way too much energy and way too high hormone levels. Though despite all this he is a pretty good horse, he is fairly calm and easy to handle. So Brent loads him in the van and then I go in there and hold on to him. I had a lead shank with a chain over his nose so hopefully I would have pretty good control. But before they close the door on me, Brent shows me a buzzer that I can hit that he will hear in the cab and then he can turn the intercom. I'm supposed to hit that if I have any problems. The vans ride very different then a horse trailer because you are so far off the ground. Poor Bird cannot stand up very well in the back anyways and a couple of times we had some sharp turns and I thought his legs were going to come out from underneath him. All I kept saying to myself was 'Don't need to hit the buzzer, don't need to hit the buzzer..." Well, I sang some Broadway songs to Bird, particularly Jekyll and Hyde and Les Miserables. And we played "Try to bite Shannon's hand without actually biting Shannon's hand" to distract him. It seemed to work, the only time he got upset was when we both just about fell over because of the turns. When he really got upset, I would whistle to him and he liked that. So that was an interesting experience. I also got to ride back from the vet with him a few days later, he was much better at keeping his balance that time.

Big Bird:


Probably the most exciting thing was I got to ride last week! On the track even! Granted it was just on a 12 year old quarter horse AKA 'pony'. Pony designates any horse that is not a racehorse or a breeding horse. Basically riding horses are 'ponies'. Rooster is about 16 hands and 1400 lbs. (Yeah, a little overweight) He is a very easy ride in the sense that he won't spook and he's fairly push button. So I got to put on racing tack for the first time. First a chamois goes on the horse to keep the piece of leather they consider a saddle from slipping to one side of the others. Then the saddle 'blanket' (it's really a cloth) goes on with the farm logos to the back. Then the foam saddle pad goes on. The front half of the chamois and the cloth fold over the saddle pad and then the saddle, (ok, it is a little bit more than just a strip of leather because it's an exercise saddle not a racing saddle), goes on the horse. They ride all their horses in just an eggbutt snaffle and with a martingale to keep them from throwing their head up. They always give a leg up to get up on a horse. It took me until the end of the week to get that down. Then Brent taught me their favorite little rhyme "Ride long, live long". This is referring to the stirrups. Well he set the stirrups for me and then I got on. Well, the stirrups would be good for jumping, not flat riding. So I lengthened them two holes...he looked at me like I was crazy! Then I remembered he has dealt with jockeys so their 'long' stirrups are about a 45 degree angle bend in their knees. So I was VERY long to him. I guess the way they ride their yearlings is the reins are crossed and you hold onto them with this 'bridge' in them and then you stick your finger in the neck strap of the martingale so that it is harder for the babies to pull the reins out of your hands. So I rode around the training barn for awhile before Clifford, the farm manager showed up. He mounted his horse and then we rode down to the track. The first two days I jogged with him for about half of the track (it is 5/8 of a mile in length) and then he stopped and I continued to jog the rest of the way. Then I would stop and watch him gallop (more like canter but that is the terminology) his horse. The next day I stopped with him and then turned and galloped about ten lengths behind him once around the track. Well, trotting on Rooster is very hard. He is so lazy that trying to keep up with the racehorse is next to impossible! Also, he has a shorter stride so posting the trot took a lot of energy. However, galloping Rooster was only a problem because sometimes he wanted to take it faster than 'easy'. He is a good horse though. It was so cool galloping on a track...practically a dream come true, minus the quarter horse and the slower pace. Well the third morning it was raining so the track was way too wet. So we went on the grass gallop. That was too firm to gallop, so we trotted about a mile and 1/4. The next day the gallop was soft enough that we jogged most of it and then we galloped a mile 1/4. This time we took it even easier, but Rooster really wanted to go, especially since there is a downhill dip in the gallop and he tried to pick up some speed there. Fortunately, I shortened my stirrups a little because I'm barely in good enough riding shape to stand in my stirrups for that long. Actually, I do not believe I ever have stood galloping for that long. Whew!

So that is pretty much most of my happenings right now. I will probably post more to try and keep ahead this time!

I hope all of you are doing well and enjoying life as much as I am!