Hunter Pace Weekend

Last Saturday we attended the Conservation Benefit Hunter Pace hosted by my hunt club.  Part of the proceeds are donated to a local land conservancy, which is awesome, and the rest is used to take care of our pack of hounds, which is essential! :)

Perfect weather, great turnout and a fun course through the woods and fields surrounding the Stingy River in Raymond, NH made for an incredibly awesome weekend.

At Stirrup Cup

Look at all the trailers!  We're the bright red truck in the middle of the photo.

On the trail by the river.

So this was another real test of the Ground Control Shoes, on all four hooves this time.  Putting them on her hinds was a smart move.  The difference in her pushing power (most notibly at the canter) is outta control.  Definitely makes her job easier and therefore more enjoyable for both of us. 

The footing in the fields was boggy.  I was concerned about the rear most nails on the front shoes.  If she stepped on the front shoe with her hind foot, it was likely the nail(s) could pull through the polyurethane shoe.  (the manufacturer recommends using 8mm washers, bent like a taco, on the rear most nails on the front shoes to prevent this from happening)

Sure enough, upon inspection when we returned, the rear most nail on the outside of the left front shoe had been pulled through the shoe.  The nail was still neatly in her hoof.  I brought my shoeing kit and was easily able to remove the offending nail and replace it with another for the time being.  I did not have any 8mm washers, but before the foxhunt on this Saturday, 8/24, I will be sure to pull out the rear most nails in the fronts and replace them with ones set through the washers.

Aside from that little hiccup, (which would have been a non-issue if I had used washers as recommended) the shoes, the protection they offer her, and how she moves in them, are stellar.  We are starting our 3rd week on the fronts and I still have nothing but good things to say. 

Like a different horse

I liked the way Daatje responded to the Ground Control shoes up front, so I ordered some for her hinds to see if that would help her out even more.  (That last 12 mile ride at Bradley Palmer really beat the crap out of her hinds, while her fronts stayed in perfect form protected by the shoes.)

So, last night she got the hinds put on.  There was not time to repair the quarter chips with Adhere, but I do plan on filling them in for appearance sake, if nothing else.  (although it would help prevent the exposed edge of the shoe from getting caught on a rock or root)

 

 

I have to work late today, so I rode her this morning to see how she felt.  "Like a different horse" would be a good way to put it!  Let's go back a little to the reason why I wanted to try these shoes on her in the first place.  The past month of riding has been a struggle.  Daatje was reluctant to move out and wanted to quit at every step.  I was attributing it to her being out of shape from the heat-induced hiatus we took from training, or perhaps low "E" as I had stopped supplementing for vitamin E over a year ago.....but then, on one of our rides in late July I started to feel a head bob pointing to the right front.

Uh-oh.  I lunged her so I could see it.  Sure enough, definite head bob (right front) and tightness in the shoulder and neck muscles.  I booted her up with her Epics and pads and brought her back out on the lunge again.  Head bob gone and muscle tension reduced.  Hmm.  For a multitude of possible reasons, she was not comfortable working barefoot (she hunted last season barefoot and totally comfortable).  Not the best place to be just a few weeks before the hunt season starts!

I looked into a bunch of different plastic horseshoes on the market and selected the Ground Control Shoes for their traction, ease of application and price point (and the fact that they were one of the two that are manufactured in her size!) 

Now that she has them all the way around, the difference in her willingess to move and relaxation through her body have improved dramatically.  This morning she was loose, relaxed, stretching.  Her lateral work was fluid and smooth.  I could almost feel her say "ahhhhhh".

I'm truly impressed and so happy that my horse is comfortable.  She's ready to roll for the hunter pace on the 17th and our first hunt of the season on the 24th!  Nice. :)

More Bradley Palmer

My friend just posted some photos she took of us on our ride at Bradley Palmer yesterday, so I wanted to add them here, seeing as we hardly ever get photos taken of us! :) 



Coming down off the big hill, pasture on my right, corn field on my left.

Hello there spotted horse.

Last leg of the 12 mile ride.

Bradley Palmer - 12 miles, 2 1/2 hours, and the shoes......

........were amazing! 

I hauled Daatje an hour down to Topsfield, MA to meet one of my friends from the hunt.  My friend has Morgans, so I knew we were in for a nice fast ride!  Bradley is such a beautiful place to ride and on such a beautiful day as this, there were loads of people there, biking, walking, dogs, fellow horseback riders...

We covered 12 miles (most of it at a trot and canter) in 2 hours a 30 minutes.  The Ground Control shoes were fabulous.  Traction on *all* surfaces was killer.  Mud, wet grass, rocky slides, no slipping at all on any of it.  We even jumped a bunch of the fences and they stayed put, clinches tight.  Horse felt simply amazing.  Lofty, free, no tension in her shoulder muscles.  Foot perfect.

So, one full week has gone by in these shoes and I've put a couple of good hard rides on them on mixed terrain and they are really holding up to their reputation.  I'm still extremely pleased and have ordered a second pair to see if Daatje likes them on her hinds as well.

My friend and her spicy Morgan mare

Taking a rest between directions, cantering around Moon Hill

This is Myopia Hunt territory.

Cornfields beside us

Horses in the pasture next to us cantered over to say "hello"

She worked really hard today, so I'm going to give her tomorrow off, and we'll go for a nice quiet hack on Tuesday, with a dressage school on Thursday and then it will be the Hunter Pace in Raymond, NH on Saturday!  So happy to finally be out and about with fun things to do! :D

Holy mutha f'in deerflies!

Since foxhunting starts for us in a few weeks, I figured it'd be best to test out the new polyurethane shoes on my trails before we found ourselves in the middle of a foxhunt with a shoe failure.  So Wednesday after work, I ran home, quickly tacked up the mare and embarked on the 1/2 mile hack down the street to the trail head.  It had been cool, so I was hopeful the bugs would be tolerable and heck, if not we could always just trot on, right?

OMG, we made it to the trail just fine, but no more than 30 feet into the woods we were swarmed by deer flies.  Awful, horrible, hateful, nasty things.  Daatje was ok with them as long as I kept swatting them away with my dingbat whacker so we continued on for 3.7 miles.  (most at a strong trot)

The whole ride was a blur of branches, rocks, hills, and the whacker popping my horse on the head, ears and neck to keep the blood sucking horrors away.  I was keeping an ear out for a shoe problem, and a feel for her gaits to detect any abnormalities, but none popped up.  She actually felt fantastic.

Traction was equal to bare, even over rocks, roots and mud, which was encouraging.  The brook we had to cross has a rocky bottom that she doesn't like the feel of.  In the Ground Control shoes, she waded in and stopped, noticing the difference; seemingly pleased with it.

We got back just before the sun set and I inspected the shoes.  Clinches were tight, shoes didn't budge and no stones or debris was caught underneath.

A very positive test result!  This Sunday, we're trailering down to Bradley Palmer in Ipswich, MA to go for a nice long ride so that will be the next opportunity to test the shoes.  Perhaps over some natural jumps........

Daatje's new kicks

I've always been a believer that horses should be barefoot as long as they are able to comfortably meet the demands that life (and their people) put on them.  Daatje has been barefoot most of her life as I've only had her shod when I felt she needed to be.  She wore steel shoes in front from the spring of 2007 to the fall of 2007 and then again for the 2009 and 2010 foxhunting seasons (very wet years).  The drier 2011 and 2012 seasons were hunted barefoot, but this year, things are yet again very wet.  Combined with a change in diet (she's at my house now, out on grass, as opposed to the dirt lot at my parent's house) her hooves don't have the integrity that they've had in the past.

Just from the low level of activity during turnout, her fronts have been chipping out the quarters faster than they can grow in.  (I haven't been riding much for the past two months, due to the insane heat and humidity we've dealt with) If the hooves can't hold up to farting around in her paddock, certainly they won't be comfortable once we start hunting over the rocky New England trails! 

I wanted to try an alternative shoe (to steel or aluminum) as we do hack alot on pavement and I liked the idea of having full frog support, especially on a horse with a basically good foot that is used to going barefoot.

After reviewing the top three plastic shoes on the market, (Easywalkers didn't come large enough, Eponas had mixed reviews on the durability and traction and were more expensive) I decided to go with the Ground Control shoes in clear.

After having the shoes applied over a pack of Magic Cushion and the missing chunks of hoof filled in with Vettec Adhere, Daatje was immediately more comfortable.

Solar view of the Ground Control Shoes

Heel view

New kicks......

That evening I tacked her up and went for a 2.5 mile hack walk/trot/canter and she was floating on air.  Big trot, powerful canter with traction that was equal to bare hooves on pavement, gravel and turf.   

So far, I am very please with the Ground Control urethane horseshoes!  Hunt season starts August 14th (for us the following Saturday because I work M-F) and we have a hunter pace on August 17th, so hopefully she'll continue to move well in them and they'll provide her the protection she needs for the work I'm asking her to do. :)

   

For the love of god, neuter your dogs!

My husband and I both LOVE dogs.  I grew up with Greyounds and their smaller counter parts (Italian Greyhounds) and Jake grew up with Beagles.  For the first 8 years of our married life, we lived in an appartment that did not allow dogs, so we waited, patiently, to find the perfect home.  Not a small task when you have a limited budget, live in Southern NH (very expensive), and want acreage for horses!

After a three year search, we found our dream home (diamond in the rough) on 3 acres in Hampstead, NH.  That was July of 2011.

We weren't ready to add dogs to the family, not just yet, but I couldn't help but start looking.  In October 2011, I found my beautiful, sensitive, princess miss Penny on Craigslist.  She was one year old, not spayed, and very shy, but I fell instantly in love with her.  I brought her home, took care of all her vetting, and once she was settled we decided to wait a while before adding the second member to our canine family, a Beagle for my husband.

Well, in the past month or so, we felt ready to add that second dog and so began to search. 

Last Tuesday I saw an ad on Craigslist for a 2 year old 10" Beagle, male, un-neutered (oy-vey!) that was looking for a new home.  He was about an hour and a half away so Friday, we packed up miss P and went for a road trip to meet him and see if he was a good canditate.

Let me begin by saying that some people should just not have dogs period.  Holy smokes, the chaos in that house hold was overwhelming!  Penny wanted nothing to do with anything there and the look on her face was sheer horror at the thought of us leaving her there.  Poor miss P.

The house was a smaller home in the back ally section of the city.  No yard to speak of.  Within there were many small children and at least 4 dogs.  Various cages of other critters lined the walls.  From out of the mayhem bounces this happy, shiny, smiling (mannerless) and absolutely drop dead gorgeous itty bitty Beagle boy!

His story was told to me as such (with a little improv from my intuition):

Breeder sells to owner #1 for $800.00 as puppy.  Owner #1 wants to use Beagle boy for breeding but Beagle boy develops and underbite so at one year of age, they give him away on Craigslist to owner #2.

Owner #2 felt sorry for Beagle boy.  I imagine he was a kennel dog (based on his house manners) and a year old un-neutered, un-trained kennel stud dog is really not the ideal pet for a house hold with multiple small childred and other dogs!  So Beagle boy gets to spend the next year of his life in a crate in the house or tied in the back yard.  They were told it was $$$ to get him neutered so never did.  His attempts to mount everything in sight were finally overwhelming and despite their (seemingly) good intentions to give a kennel dog a family home, they had reached their wits end with him an put him up on Craigslist for $250.00, which is the ad I saw and what prompted me to go look at him.

So, in his short two years of life, Beagle boy (named Roscoe) has had THREE owners, not including his breeder and why?  BECAUSE NO ONE TOOK THE RESPONSIBILITY TO NEUTER HIM (OR TRAIN HIM).

We brought him home (I did not pay $250, let me tell you) on Friday of last week and have re-organized our home to accomodate a stud dog until his neuter appointment on July 15th.  Penny, my IGGY, adores him, but his hormones are out of control and while he is the most kind hearted dog I have ever met, he cannot be loose in her company for his lack of control over himself.

He's very smart and submissive and learning "off" and "down" very quickly.  He just wants to please, to fit in, to be loved, but he has been denied that for lack of training and LACK OF NEUTERING.  We have our work cut out for us, but with a minor "brain" surgery and a few months of quiet steady training, I really think he has potential to be a wonderful, wonderful little dog.

Without further ado, meet ROSCOE! :D

Just arrived at home and walking around the back field

In the back seat on the ride to his new (and final!) home

Look at that tongue!

I can't believe I'm not in a crate!

I died and went to doggy heaven! :)

I'll be sure to update more on Roscoe as his integration into our family progresses.  He goes to the vet for his pre-op appointment tomorrow and with any luck, he'll be a neutered man next Monday, July 15th!

Step one to a new beginning for this little guy.