Fashion police! Those Stripes don't go with that Paint

Recently I posted about why I clip and blanket, and mentioned that Cash has his old Rambo blanket along with a nice warm under layer. Until recently, the under layer was a fleece sheet - one of the old-style ones with a closed chest and just leg straps. I think I've had that sheet for as long as I've had his Rambo, which is now 15 years (!!!!). For whatever reason, this year the fleece seemed too small for Cash, so Red inherited it since Red is one size smaller than Cash. This left me in a bit of a pinch for a lining layer for Cash.

I looked for another fleece sheet, but it seems like all the manufacturers have gone to "dress" sheets and are no longer making sheets that are intended as liner layers. I then purchased, from our new local Dover store (DANGER DANGER DANGER) a Rambo blanket liner with 200 g of fill. I got it home and put it on, only to find out that the Rambo liners do not go with the original Rambo blankets. Not only that, but they don't have a second set of Ds so that you can use leg straps with them... fail. So the Rambo liner got returned, and I spent my lunch hour with one of the very helpful folks at the Dover store as we sifted through every single option they had in a size 75. It went something like this:

*sorting through blankets*

Helpful Dover Person: How about this liner?

Me: It's lined with cotton. I want it lined with the slick Poly stuff so it doesn't rub.

*more sorting*

Helpful Dover Person: What about this stable blanket?

Me: The material feels really cheap. I know it's going to be used as a liner, but is there something a little sturdier?

*rummaging even deeper. Apparently every horse in south central Texas wears a 75?

Helpful Dover Person: How about this? (Holds up a Rambo Newmarket sheet that I've secretly been lusting after for years)

Me: Ooooh... 

Not going to lie, y'all. This sucker is THICK. It's HEAVY. It's obviously very well made (Horseware, how I love you), and it looks super warm. Also, I just love the colors. I was so tempted... and then I thought about how it would look on this horse:

I'm really not a stripes sort of guy. Maybe plaid instead?*

Alas, my sense of fashion got the better of me, and I put the lovely Newmarket fleece back. Instead, I ended up getting Cash a nice, plain, black Amigo stable blanket, which fits perfectly under his Rambo and is keeping him super toasty warm.

The Newmarket fleece might not look too bad on Paddington, though... ;)

*Photo courtesy of MC, because apparently I only take pics of Cash when he's covered in mud.

Friday Haffie Math Quiz - How much cuter is a Haffie?

Last week's math quiz was, of course, about Thanksgiving. Our question for the week was:

If you invited a dozen Haffies over for Thanksgiving dinner, how many apple pies would you need?  

Paddington is pleased that blog readers selected his favorite choice:

Option 4: Paddington gave all the other Haffies bad directions and they got lost on the way to Wyvern Oaks. Therefore, Paddington gets ALL THE APPLE PIES.  

Paddington would now like to know when I am going to deliver all the apple pies to him. There goes his diet! Also, he promised an up-close and personal picture of his nose, so here you go:

Where are my apple pies?

And now, on to this week's quiz. Several of the comments this week focused around how adorable the Grand Prix haffie Starwars TOF is. As a haffie, Paddington concurs with this sentiment, although he thinks he's the most adorable haffie ever. So, this week's quiz is an effort to quantify haffie cuteness. 

If a Haffie does a Grand Prix dressage freestyle, how much cuter is it than if a normal warmblood does a GP freestyle? (You can watch the video here.)

• Option 1: i^4 + 1 times cuter (bonus points if you leave what that equals in the comments)
• Option 2: Eleventeen times cuter
• Option 3: Infinity + 1/Haffie times cuter
• Option 4: What was the question again? I got distracted by teh kyoot.

Remember to vote for the BEST answer over on the poll on the right. Paddington promises adorable fuzzy poneh ear pics if you do!

Annnnd can-TER! Can-TER! No really, CANTER, DAMMIT!

About the canter that we aren't talking about. These vids were taken about 2 weeks ago, and I'm posting them so I will remember (in 6 months) how far we've come from the disaster we started with.

You're going to watch them and go "oh, that's not so bad" but I assure you, what you see on video and what you feel underneath you are not the same thing. Left lead isn't too bad (except the part where he pops his right shoulder out and falls to the outside like we're doing a canter leg yield). We even have a few moments of balanced brilliance where he's not careening and/or ripping my arms out of their sockets.

But the right lead, he literally cannot pick it up without half a circle of a few running trot steps. If I demand a good transition into the right lead, he just picks up the left lead. Every. Damn. Time. And then we just sort of careen around at mach one-haffie in a disjointed, rushing mess. I feel like I'm all over the place in the tack. What I would not give for a buffalo hide saddle (instead of slick French bridle leather) and some Grip-Tek full seat breeches. Oh and also I would like to be able to ride like a real dressage rider.

Truly cringeworthy.

I have shown Paddington this video of Starwars TOF, a Haffie doing Grand Prix dressage, and told him that he needs to envision this guy when we work on canter.

Drooool. Maybe someday, in a galaxy far, far away...

Sticking with a program? What program?

Other bloggers are a terrible influence. Take Lauren over at SheMovedToTexas, for example. She did a great post the other week about “sticking with the program,” which got me thinking that maybe I should get myself back on a program. You know, where you take lessons and have goals and go to shows? What a concept.

With everything that's happened this year, I really haven't given much thought to making any kind of horsey plans in a long, long time. Heck, I feel weird making plans two weeks in advance.

But, now I have a Paddington. Paddington can Do Things. Sure, he’s got holes in his training the size of one of those Mexican sinkholes. Did you know he can jump 3' but doesn't know how to do trot poles, or even just trot up to a jump and trot away from it? Or that he can canter from a walk but not from a trot? Whoops.

Objects in image may not be entirely representative of actual size of training issue. 

But the only way we can fix those training holes is to actually get on and ride consistently, and work on strengthening and suppling exercises so that he CAN do those things. Lessons help too, because while I can bumble along on my own for lots of things, there's nothing better than competent eyes on the ground. So that means I need to figure out some sort of "program." 

Over the summer, I was taking lessons from my H/J instructor, as well as from a very good dressage instructor. The H/J instructor can be hard to schedule with because she doesn't teach much in the evenings during the week, and she's often gone on the weekends to shows. But the lessons I do get from her are golden, so I sneak them in whenever I can. The dressage instructor is easier to schedule with and closer to me, plus there's a covered arena to ride in. So we're going to try to get weekly lessons with her, as often as we can.

Of course it's the rainy season too, which means the trails and fields we usually ride in are closed. Unfortunately, that leaves road work as our only option for most rides, unless we haul out. While I admit that riding up and down the road (.8 miles round trip, in case you're curious) isn't super fun, you can actually get in a lot of work. Here's what my rides have been focusing on:

• Lap 1: walk warm-up
• Lap 2: trot, focusing on steady rhythm. Paddy's preferred trot is this huge rushy park trot, so we are working on long and low and slow.
• Lap 3: Shoulder fore and leg yields at the walk and trot.
• Lap 4: More laterals at the trot, interspersed with walk/halt transitions.
• Lap 5: walk cool-down

Sometimes Red goes with us for company.

And wouldn't you know, now that we've been working on things consistently, he's getting much, much better. The trot is so much steadier. The canter is... um, let's not talk about that. We've had a few jumping lessons and he's improved 1000% between each one. And the dressage lessons... wow. If we can get the canter together, I'm going to have a super nice dressage horse.

So, I have cobbled together a Program that fits my schedule and that of my instructors. It's not as consistent as if I boarded at a show barn, but it's what we can make work. I've even got some goals for 2014, which I'll share soon. 

And most importantly, I'm having FUN. Because that's the whole point of this, right? :)

Four Years at Wyvern Oaks

Last week marked the four year anniversary of us owning Wyvern Oaks, and the four year anniversary of this blog. Today, the Wyvern Oaks blog is mostly about horses, with a few home improvement posts thrown in. But four years ago, this blog was all about plumbing, electrical work, and the never-ending project that is farm ownership.

The early days - learning how not to electrocute yourself.

We bought Wyvern Oaks because we could keep our horses at home, and because it's so close to Austin (we are literally five miles from the Capitol building). We hadn't really planned on purchasing a property at the time, and we definitely hadn't planned to get a place that was such a fixer-upper. To give you some idea, the house had a hole in the roof when we bought it, the fence was barbed wire, and there was no barn. I can't list all the things we've done in the last four years, but here are some of the highlights:

The original pink bathroom was gutted and remodeled. We also redid the yellow bathroom.

I SO do not miss this classy pink thing. Looks like someone barfed up a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

We enclosed the outdoor kitchen and turned it into hubby's workshop.

He has to have some place to store all the tools we've needed over the years!

We tore down the second carport (in one night).

Seriously. 6 hours and this sucker was gone. We had to remove it in order to have new electrical service run to the house... which we found out the day before the electrician was due to start.

We had a bull show up one morning, met our resident rat snake, and had a neighbor's horse appear for breakfast. Seriously, it's never dull around here.

I learned how to hot-wire a tractor.

Apparently a green soft brush is required for said hot-wiring procedure. Who knew?

We added a wall to create a third bedroom.

Fledgling wall. 

Hubby models the almost finished product.

We got a new roof on the house, which included fixing the hole in the roof.

Not an hour after they finished, the sky opened up and it POURED. Good timing for once!

We rode the horses to the farmer's market to do our weekly shopping.

Naturally, we always bought carrots for the boys.

We tore down the cisterns, the well house, and the storage shed.

The well house and storage shed. This is where the barn stands now.

I joked that only paint was holding the sheds up, and I was partially right. We pulled off the corrugated metal siding, and the left side of the shed just collapsed.

The cisterns. Damn these were ugly.

Seriously, watch the video. BEST USE OF A TRUCK EVAR!

We built the barn. I love our barn, I really do!

The barn! Not the fanciest thing ever, but SO practical and functional.

We bought almost 600 bales of hay from Canada to get us through the 2011 drought.

Barn aisle optional. Hay more important.

We created the Taj Mahal of tack rooms.

You know you want a tack room like this one. (Note to self: why is it not this clean any more?)

Cash and Saga enjoyed their bromance. I think Cash still misses him, and it's been almost a year since we lost Saga.

Joined at the hip. This is one of my favorite pictures of them.

We created a garden space, and did a quick weekend remodel of the kitchen.

Before. Hard to imagine we lived with this nasty floor for two years before we finally got sick of it and did something about it!

New tile floor, new paint on the walls. Not too bad for a weekend and less than $300!

We replaced the floors in the den and repainted everything. Which apparently I never took pictures of and never posted about. Oops.

We replaced the front gate - in the dark, by truck headlight. I apparently ALSO never posted about this either, but I have pictures somewhere.

We did a lot of fox hunting. It continues to be one of our favorite equestrian activities.

I may also have the cutest foxhunter EVAR. Just sayin'. 

What does the next year hold for us? Here's my list:

• We get rid of the damn shed. Seriously, I'm tired of looking at it.

Don't worry, the crazy leaning telephone poles are long gone. BUT OMG THE SHED IS STILL THERE.

• We get the house painted. 
• We put up shutters and solar screens.
• We replace the nasty carpet in the bedroom with tile.
• We start replacing the fencing. Maybe we finish replacing it too?

I'm semi-confident that we might actually get most of this done, with the exception of the fencing. Well, I think we'll at least get the front fence done, but the rest of it might have to wait until after we do the addition so that we don't have to tear down fencing to let construction equipment through. When will that happen, you ask? Probably in 2-3 years, after the kids get out of college.

After the addition is complete, I plan on hiring a lawn care service, horse care service, and maid, then lounging in the hot tub every morning with a cup of tea and reveling in our perfect property.

Yeah right. Then I'll get bored and decide to change the paint color in the dining room or something. It's a never-ending project, for sure, but I don't think we'd have it any other way!

Many, many thanks to all the people who have helped make Wyvern Oaks what it is today, and what it will be in the future. We could not have done it without each and every one of you!

** Note the new blog header! Thanks to SheMovedToTexas for putting together a new one in honor of four years of Wyvern Oaks.

Friday Haffie Math Quiz - Thanksgiving with Haffies

Let's have a quick recap of our last quiz question, shall we?

If you clip half a Haffie, how many Haffies do you have? 

The overwhelming choice for the "best" answer was:

Option 3: A Haffie and a half - the original Haffie, plus half a Haffie of hair  

Paddington is slightly disappointed that more people didn't think he was adorable even with the bad haircut, but I fed him some treats and he's mostly over it now.

This week's quiz is all about Thanksgiving. Paddy is thankful for the special half-flake of alfalfa he got yesterday, and for his poofy forelock that makes him even more adorably irresistible. 

Poof is important when you are mooching treats.

But he wanted to invite some of his Haffie friends over for Thanksgiving (especially Shyloh, he thinks she's cute). This got me thinking about how many pounds of sweet potatoes and apple pie I'd have to provide if I had to feed a herd of Haffies. So this week's question is:

If you invited a dozen Haffies over for Thanksgiving dinner, how many apple pies would you need? 

• Option 1: 6 pies - half a pie for each Haffie (they're all on diets) 
• Option 2: 12 pies - one pie for each Haffie
• Option 3: 18 pies - one for each Haffie and then seconds for half the Haffies
• Option 4: Paddington gave all the other Haffies bad directions and they got lost on the way to Wyvern Oaks. Therefore, Paddington gets ALL THE APPLE PIES.

Remember to vote for the BEST answer (not the "right" answer, because this is Haffie math and there IS no right answer!) over on the poll on the right. Paddington promises an up-close-and-personal pic of his adorable nose if you do!

Tack Sale!!!

I've finally gotten around to cleaning out my tack room, and I have a TON of stuff I need to get rid of. Most of it's from Saga and Oberon (sniff) that doesn't fit anyone else, so if you need size 81 horse clothes, I've got extras with the extras. I've added a new tab with all the items on it, and I'll keep it up until I've gotten rid of everything.

Leave a comment or email me directly if you see something you want! jenjobst at gmail dot com.