UK's Birthday

So Wednesday the 6th was UK's 9th birthday. The weather was wet, cold and dreary. So he got an intensive grooming and much spoiling, along with copious amounts of carrots. 

LOOK! Shoulder muscles!!! All that conditioning work is paying off!

It's very nice to have a horse that actually likes me again. If I had tried to do this with Tess there would have been at least two attempts on my life and an attempt to poop on me while picking her feet. 

Yum! Carrots!

We played around for quite awhile, making him do stretches for the carrots and attempting to remove more hair from him. All his white markings have two to three times amount of winter hair that his chestnut areas do. It was cool when he first grew his winter coat, as all the white really popped, but now it's just more work.

Could you say no to that face? The cute factor is at 9 here.

Now then, UK's one request for his birthday is that he would get to write something his own words for once. I've shown him Jack & Jill's adventures and it helped him understand the whole blog thing better. 

HI!

I'm UK, well you probably know that already... I'm new to this whole internet thing. Mom has shown me a lot of cool things on here, but she also keeps putting up embarrassing videos of me. I don't like that much, that tarp is going to kill, just wait and see, I'm right!

Mom keeps using that camera thing, I do not understand why she is always making me pose for it. It's really annoying in the morning when all I want to do is enjoy my morning hay and try to stay out of Dacharia's way. (She's a bit cranky first thing.)

Did I mention that I love to jump? I really do! I like what Mom calls "bounces", she says they're good for my agility or something but I just think they're fun. Jumping is so much more fun then going around and around the ring with my head low like I used to have to do when I was a western pleasure horse. That was SO boring. 

Mom keeps saying I think too much, but she's one to talk, I know she does it too. Sometimes though she is right, but don't tell her I said that. 

I have to say though, she keeps life interesting! I had never even heard of eventing before I met her, and I had never been ridden english before either. I'd seen some of my old barnmates being ridden english and watched them jump, it was pretty cool but I never thought that would be me eventually! Now she keeps telling me about things she reads about on a place called Eventing Nation, then she showed me some of the stuff they have. WOW! Some of those horses are really cool! I like how they get to jump different things. Not sure how I feel about that dressage stuff though, what Mom calls "flatwork" is not my favorite. At least we don't just go around and around the ring, she makes me do all sorts of things.

Well, I have to go, Dacharia doesn't like being alone very long. I didn't think having a girlfriend meant I would never get time to myself... Ugh. Well, off I go.

Bye!

-UK

I know, I know... I've been bad about posting!

First off let me start out by apologizing profusely for my lack of writing the past couple of months. I had some really hard (non horse) things to get through.
Literally the day after my last post I had a life altering doctor's visit. I'll sum it up thus: There were complications and I ended up loosing my daughter who we named Faith Ann. I was in the hospital for almost a week and spent about a month recovering. Our family and friends were wonderful, supportive and helpful.
Then the holidays commenced and well, I'm sure all of you know how it goes...

As for UK, he's been a peach through everything. We have been working on his big fears (specifically tarps and their plan to eat him alive).
The above picture was a momentous occasion! His feet are actually on the tarp, and it was later followed by actually walking (quickly) over the tarp. (He later ruined all his calm by getting brave and pawing the tarp which of course scared the daylights out of him)

So I was mean and made UK work that morning. I was doubly mean as I moved the tarp from being on the ground to on the fence. The tarp is UK's sworn enemy, he is convinced of this and has been awaiting it's attack for months now.
He started out awesome, then once I started taping he got lazy, which I told him (I cut myself off in the video by accident).
His free lunging has come a long way, as has his jumping. And all that hard work has been paying off! I've now jumped UK undersaddle twice and both times he's been fearless and smart. Thanks to me making him learn how to balance and find his own rhythm he's confident in himself now. Big difference from when I first brought him home. He's starting to even have that wonderful "fifth leg", which has me all excited.
In October UK lost a shoe, again (this time it was my fault, with everything going on I sorta forgot to call the farrier). Here his is pictured reading the manual regarding the proper application of an Easyboot. However the Easyboot didn't last and ended up being returned in frustration as UK made it clear that he did not want it on his foot, not even for an hour.
The upside is his feet are in wonderful health now, and don't chip despite all the rocks...

Then UK was introduced to his new adopted sibling, a black lab mix named General. General is a year and a half old and from Tennessee. UK likes General a lot more then General likes UK.
Their relationship has improved since those first couple of weeks. General has tried chasing UK a couple times, and UK has been unimpressed. UK was even better when Gen escaped and came after us as I was cantering to a jump. I had a heart attack as I saw the black streak come flying towards my horse's back end. UK's reaction? "Whatever" Needless to say Gen was in BIG trouble for that little stunt, and he seems to have learned his lesson. Pictured below they can be seen in their Pessoa blankets... awww.
Winter arrived up here early, with bitter temperatures and biting winds. I sprained my ankle the day before thanksgiving and ended up riding bareback that weekend.
UK has not been staying warm enough, which is surprising, as he was born in upstate NY.

UK was wearing the pictured heavy weight Amigo on a 32 degree day and was not warm.... And I haven't even clipped him at all!
After trying him in my other blankets and finding that quite a few of them don't fit him, ugh. I was forced to order him a last minute Christmas present from the lovely people at SmartpakEquine.com. I got him the Amigo heavy weight stable blanket. It arrived Christmas Eve and he was a very happy pony after I put it on.

After becoming addicted to watching Peter Atkins and HJ Hampton aka "Henny" and joining their fan club, I started to once again pay attention to Eventing (this started in the summer and got worse after WEG). Anyway, I am trying to get to a point. I've decided that this coming year UK and I are going to try Eventing. I talked to my friends, including my friend Kristy who used to do horse trials. Everyone thinks he'd be fabulous at it, and I just know he's got the talent. Now it's just a matter of making it so I can afford it. Ha!
Jumping I've got down, and I know my way around a field with hills and iffy terrain due to the hunter paces I used to do combined with all the crazy stuff I used to do as a teenager. It's the dressage that I'm skeptical about... UK has the moves, but I've never been a big fan of dressage. I did however marry into a dressage family and some of my closest friends do dressage. So it can't be that bad... right? I mean I'm big on flatwork, you can't jump well if you don't do a lot of flat work, but calling it dressage just gives me the heebe-jeebes...

Now I leave you with this festive and ridiculously cute picture of UK showing us how to rock the Santa hat. I mean, I don't think you could get much cuter without someone's brain exploding!

Also I'd like to mention Eventing Nation, this blog has become my new addiction and daily read. The whole crew there have a great sense of humor and make it easy to keep up with all the horse world news and drama.

Now I've just got to try to dig myself a path to the manure pile tonight in the 3 feet drifts left by the blizzard that hit Sunday. FUN....

Toodles, and I promise it won't be another two months before I write again!