vel's journaly thing

Looong weekend. I am so sore. I don't think I've ever ridden this many horses consecutively before; I rode 8 this weekend. Oh I've guided up to 5 trail rides in one day before, but that's just walking, no actual real riding involved!

( New Horses Seen )

At the moments my favorites so far are Chance and Mystery. Good contenders would be Silvy, Grace, and Caesar.

That's right, I am now actively searching for a horse of my own to buy! ^o^

My requirements: at least 16 hands high, age 6-15, trained for hunter-jumper, dressage, and trails, no more than $5,000.

I've come across ads for about a dozen or so horses that meet my requirements, and I've made plans to see them. Today my friend Tracy and I looked at two horses, a 10 year old 16 hand paint named Confetti and a 15 year old 16.3 hand Thoroughbred named Eddie.

Confetti was pretty much right out. She was extremely pig-headed and marish, wouldn't be caught, hadn't been ridden in ages, danced around in circles and kicked out when we attempted saddling her, and even after a good 20 minutes of round penning would not show any signs of submission at all. She also had a peg leg and it showed when she cantered on the right lead. So yeah, we passed on her.

Then there was Eddie. He's an absolute doll, incredibly sweet and friendly, completely easy-going and not fazed by anything. He's trained in something like 2nd level dressage and jumping, and is a nice ride with huge gaits. He's a bit on the lazy side in that it takes some work to keep him moving at a good pace, but part of that may be that he hadn't been ridden in a while. He'd probably be a perfect first horse if it weren't for my main concern, that being his age: he's the absolute highest age I'm willing to look at, and I'm worried about how many good years I could get out of him and what old-age medical issues might pop up in the not-so-distant future.

I'll be taking a day trip to see another 4-6 horses next Saturday, so we shall see what else I can find out there. Wish me luck!

Today after work I went with my friend Melissa up to visit her horse at the barn where he's getting trained. It's called Williams Ranch, and they specialize in training and breeding draft horses.

( Read more )

Pictures of the new horses here. The ones with their names in quotation marks are to be renamed. The names have to start between Q and Z (because that way I don't have to move as many name tags in the tack room!). Any suggestions?

( Rename that horse! )

(cross-posted to horse_lovers)

It's freezing out and pouring down rain. There's a chance of snow for the hills in the area. Soon I have to leave to go work outside in this all night. What happened to our lovely 70+ degree bright and sunny February? I was enjoying that. Last night at the stable when I left it was 39 degrees and still dropping! =(

In other news, yesterday we got 7 new horses from Nevada for the rent string (I'll post some pictures of them later). One of them is a flea-bitten grey 17.1 hand MUSTANG. He's got the brand and everything to prove it. O_O If he does well with the vaulting team he's going to be quite an eye-catcher at shows...

Eek...I just noticed half of the top of my right foot is completely blue. On Monday night Apache stepped on my foot while I was putting him in the paddock since I couldn't see where I was going (we really need some damn lights out there!). He's a big freaking horse, too. I don't think anything is broken or anything like that (it would hurt a lot, right?), it's just very bruised and kind of tender. But still, I don't think I've gotten stepped on this badly in about ten years. I really need to watch where I'm going when closing since it's so dark out.

Take a virtual Garrod Farms trail ride! I took my camera with me on a ride I led earlier today and took a bunch of pictures along the way. The trails go through the Fremont Older Open Space Preserve in the hills of Saratoga, California. Silicon Valley was a bit hazy today, on some days it's much clearer. The vineyards are really pretty right now with all the leaves changing colors, though. Anyway enjoy the pictures! ^_^

http://photobucket.com/albums/v469/vel-chan/GF%20Trail%20Ride/?action=view&slideshow=true

(cross-posted to horse_lovers)

( picture of the horse I was riding in case you were curious )

So, today I turned 24! I spent most of the day at work. I took my new truck to the stable for the first time, so I'm sure it smells like horses now. For the most part the day was uneventful, which is always a good thing because usually if something happens it's a disaster. The only real event was in the morning when Sultan decided to attack Rusty while I was holding him, so Rusty leaped out of the way and made me jump backwards in a hurry to avoid getting run over. I screamed at Sultan at the top of my lungs for that one *l* Other than that, the day was fairly slow considering the gorgeous weather...it was warm and sunny and just beautiful, so I'm surprised we weren't very busy. But that was fine, less work for me. Good thing because I got two long birthday calls from mahkara and elkrum. I never spend any time on my cell phone at work, so all the girls were rather curious about why I was suddenly on my phone so much. llamalover06 actually snatched it so she could find out who was on the other end, which happened to be elkrum at the time. Then Liz stole it from her and apologized to him and gave it back to me *l* That was funny.

After work I took a nap because I'd been up since 6am, and later I went out with my family to dinner at the Outback and then to a movie. I got two presents, a DVD of Hunchback of Notre Dame (I'm trying to get my Disney collection on DVD, I still mostly have VHS) and Sonic Heroes for Game Cube (I love Sonic the Hedgehog games!). This Saturday will be my birthday party with my relatives (and if anyone else wants to come you're welcome to do so, though I don't know how much fun you'll have hanging out with my grandma and cousins and whoever else *l*), so I'll get more stuff then although I really don't deserve anything else considering my enormous present yesterday! So after dinner the movie we went to see was Robots; it's not fantastic or anything, but it is very cute and entertaining. I was really tired but I didn't fall asleep, so it must've been pretty good to keep me awake.

That's all for now! Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes! ^_^

Here are a few more horse pics I took for my class. I need to go in on Monday to print more or I'll never get the project done on time (holidays next Friday and Monday! that's a bad thing...I need more time in the photo lab). Any ugly little white specks are from my stupid scanner which refuses to get clean.

( more black and white horses )

Today we made our first prints in photography class. Oh man, it is soooooooo much easier than developing negatives! It's a bit time consuming, but it's super easy. It's also a lot more fun because you get to see the results right away. I almost didn't want to take more pictures because it means I'll have to develop more negatives :p But I have to take lots more; I already took a roll this afternoon after class, mostly of Megan working Jay. I wonder how those will come out...anyway, here are the two prints I did today:

( black and white horses )