Monthly Archives: July 2020

Remember the Common Mullein? (Here’s my first blog about it.) The “weed” by my front deck? It’s been fun to watch it grow, like a, well, like a weed! From this:   To this!   It’s been a popular landing zone for dragonflies. Honeybees and native bees (there are some […]

Common Mullein and Birds

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Last Saturday, Tonka and I competed in our first show over fences. The Hunter/Jumper world is new to me and I left it to my trainer, Stephanie Plaisted, to decide what classes to enter us in. The class list reads to me like a foreign language. “beginner”, “pre-modified”, “open”, “hunter”, […]

Last and First

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Yesterday Tonka and I entered our very first jumper show! The day dawned hot and was only going to get steamier. We needed to warmup, but not do it so literally that we got heat exhaustion. Tonka is a calm guy at horse shows, so he didn’t need to be […]

Horse Show Warmup

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Yesterday in my lesson I learned a new term: hony. Tonka is a hony. Horse + pony = hony. I’ve never measured Tonka with an accurate stick, but the best guess is that he’s 14.3 hands (a hand is four inches, and you measure from the ground to the top […]

Pony or Horse?

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There is only so much training that you can do for the show ring at home. Some things that happen at the horse show only happen at the horse show. So last Sunday I trailered Tonka to a small, relaxed schooling show. The plan was to expose him to jumps […]

Show Ring Training

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If you have a horse, you accumulate a lot of gear. I have a cubby at the boarding barn, but that’s not enough storage for the not-in-use blankets, sheets, extra fly masks, bits, boots, grooming tools, etc. etc. Those are kept tucked away in trunks and other containers in my […]

Garage Saddle Storage

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Are you and your horse doing what you love? After six good years with Tonka I stumbled onto a sport that he has told me is what makes him really happy. He likes to fly. We’ve had fewer than 20 lessons over jumps. We’re sensibly staying at a low jump […]

Joy of Flying

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Tonka is an amenable horse. To the casual observer it appears that Tonka doesn’t freak out at the sort of novel things that scare other horses. Partly this calm demeanor is his innate nature. However, it’s at least equally the training that I’ve done, and relationship that I have developed […]

Dragging Jugs

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When jumping your horse over an obstacle, that moment in the air when you’re soaring over the fence is the least of it. It’s the getting to the jump that matters. Riders talk about seeing the perfect stride – as you approach you know exactly where your horse’s legs are […]

Getting the Jump Approach Just Right

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