The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread NINE

See our "who's who" page! ^

[HairOfTheDog]

The FreeRepublic Saddle Club - Who's Who *pics*

This is a horse chat thread where we share ideas, ask for input from other horsemen, and talk about our riding and horse-keeping. We have a lot of different kinds of riders and horses, and a lot to share. In the previous threads we have had a great time talking through lessons, training, horse lamenesses, illnesses and pregnancies... and always sharing pictures and stories.

I always have a link to this thread on my profile page, so if you have something to say and can't find the thread in latest posts… look for it there and wake the thread up!

I also have a ping list for horse threads that are of interest, and MissTargets will now be pinging everyone most mornings. Let MissTargets and/or me know if you would like to be on the ping list. As FreeRepublic is a political site, our politics and other issues will probably blend in…. There are many issues for horsemen that touch politics… land use, animal rights/abuse cases that make the news…. Legislation that might affect horse owners.

So... like the previous threads, this is intended as fun place to come and share stories, pictures, questions and chit-chat, unguided and unmoderated and that we come together here as friends. There are lots of ways of doing things and we all have our quirks, tricks and specialties that are neat to learn about.

Previous threads:

The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - thread ONE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread TWO!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread - Thread THREE!
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FOUR
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread FIVE
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SIX
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread SEVEN
The FreeRepublic Saddle Club thread! - Thread EIGHT

New folk and occasional posters, jump right in and introduce yourselves, tell us about your horses, and post pictures if you've got them!

[CindyDawg]

I roller skated. Still do sometimes still but much more conservatively.

[CindyDawg]

I don't know. As Hair said it's a good hurt. Sticking your finger with a sewing needle hurts too though but not nearly as exciting:')

[CindyDawg]

I tried to water ski one time. I couldn't come up out of the water. My family laughed and it made me mad and I went to the car and read a book.

[HairOfTheDog]

That's about what happened to me. I fell backwards on one of the attempts, and the bar you hang on to caught me right between the thighs as it pulled through... I had HUGH welts on both legs.

I never tried again, but I was a pretty good spotter and I'd drive the boat. :~D

[tuffydoodle]

I found that pic on a google search. I had actually posted 2 thin horse pics but one of them wouldn't work right. It came up when I first posted it but after that it quit working. It was a moderately thin horse, you could see his ribs, but he didn't look nearly as bad as the other one.

[tuffydoodle]

I didn't know that Rusty was in that condition when you got him. Was he a rescue horse?

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

No. He belonged to the son of a lady I do CTR's with. This boy has a lot of problems, drugs, schizophrinic, I think his parents were trying to make him responsible. NONE of their other horses ever looked like Rusty did when I got him. It was a sad deal, and they didn't realize Rusty had problems like he did. I think they just turned a blind eye to what was happening. When I first saw him I was shocked, but watching the horse work I knew he had the potential to look and act great. I had no clue there would be so many lasting problems. The lady felt bad later when I took Rusty to some pleasure rides she was at and people saw how nice Rusty had turned out.

I think the main reason she even traded with me was the horse I wanted to trade had been raised and trained by these other ladies who CTR, and they were all good friends. Rusty's owner just knew she could get that horse over the twitching problem he had, and then they could blame the problem on me and not on the training. IOW's Rusty's owner was trying to play peacemaker, altho as far as I was concerned I wasn't blameing anyone as long as they didn't blame me. That's what I told them, but I think undercover they were blaming me. They won't hardly speak to me at the rides now. The funny thing is the horse still is twitching. They've never been able to figure out what his problem is.

Becky

[MissTargets]

Good Morning.

You guys made me chuckle this morning. Between the water skiing and the hurting...lol So funny, the things we will try and fail at. One time I tried to hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. The balls were all grounders. Not one went into the air. That was my first and last time trying any kind of golfing. Except for putt-putt.

[FrogInABlender]

Oh, sorry then. It must've been somebody else I was thinking of. SOMEBODY I was talking to had a friend send a horse to a female trainer and they tied it to something and were "sacking it out" and the horse broke it's neck. But now I can't remember who it was that told me that. I'm getting senile in my old age I guess.

[FrogInABlender]

...Would it be like diabetes in a human?...

It's exactly like that. Type 2 diabetes. I'm not sure how they test for it exactly but I read something about a fasting blood glucose test, so they may do similar tests to what they do to people.

[FrogInABlender]

...I don't know why, but if the horses back is wet, 9 X out of 10 they will react like they have a sore back when checked, but will be fine when they are dry...

Interesting!!! You know, last Sunday when I rode Bob in the new saddle, I told y'all that his loins were sore when I got him back home. Well, I was checking him as I was giving him a bath and he was flinching big-time. When I palpated him the next day he didn't react at all. I still had the dry spots. They were still there when I started hosing him off and took much longer to get as wet as the surrounding hair, but he didn't seem sore there at all. So I may not have as bad a problem with the new saddle as I thought. I'm glad you told me that. I'll give it a few more trys. Thanks!

[FrogInABlender]

I've had rides like that, where everything just seems to "click". It's like you're doing everything right and your horse is doing everything right and it just seems to flow. It's a wonderful feeling.

[HairOfTheDog]

The saddle, particularly an imperfect fit, does restrict blood flow to the areas under it... just because of the weight, the blood vessels and muscles get compressed.

Allowed to cool naturally, the blood vessels expand and bloodflow slowly comes back in... perhaps if you spray them with a cold hose right then it constricts the blood vessels as they're trying to recirculate more blood.... it's a theory.

[FrogInABlender]

I'm not a huge fan of water skiing either, even though there are huge lakes nearby on the Tennessee river and watersports are a big thing around here. I just never picked it up as a kid. On the few times I tried, I'd always fall forward, then forget to let go until I had half the lake up my nose. I guess I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. ;o)

The other thing that I tried was "tubing", where you tie an inner tube to the ski rope and ride on it behind the boat. It looked like fun so I thought "Why not? It can't be that hard". But you can't sit on the tube with your butt in the hole because the water coming through it will beat you black and blue, so you have to kinda lay on your belly across it and hold on to the rope. Well, I found out the hard way that you don't need to be doing that in a 2-piece bathing suit.

On the first pull up out of the water, my bottoms got jerked down around my knees. So here I am, going what seemed to be 90 miles an hour on an inner tube, bare butt shining for all the world to see. I was afraid to let go because I knew that the bottoms would probably come completely off when I hit the water, so I hung on, debating my options. And even though I had my knees bent all the way up to my butt, trying to keep the bottoms from slipping any further, they were slowly making their way down around my ankles.

About that time, the driver of the boat, my BIL, who had no idea about the little mini-drama that was unfolding behind him, decided to turn the boat and head back the other direction. So whereas I had been in the relatively smooth water between the wakes behind the boat, I now was being swung outward onto the wake, and that was all it took. The tube flipped and I went rolling like a ball, first on top of the water and then underneath, and when I came up, the bottoms were nowhere to be found.

As the boat came back to pick me up, I was franticly waving them off because the only other occupant of the boat besides my BIL was one of my male cousins. I informed them of my problem and asked them if they had a towel and they said no, but there happened to be a pair of shorts in the boat that one of the other girls had left, so they threw me those. Whew! That was my last attempt at tubing. I'll stick to my horses, thankyouverymuch! Less chance of losing articles of clothing that way. ;o)

[HairOfTheDog]

ROTFL! Pictures?

[FrogInABlender]

Heh! Thankfully not!

[FrogInABlender]

Let me further clairify that I was a (much thinner) teenager when this took place. Otherwise I would not be caught dead in a 2-piece bathing suit. IMO, there should be laws against 40-somethings wearing bikins or speedos in public. And thankfully too, people didn't walk around with cameras permanently attached to their person like they do now. I guess it was kinda inconvenient carrying around something the size and weight of a brick. Who'da ever thought they'd get as small as they have now.

[Beaker]

But the best thing about being sore after riding is that it's a good sore. An "I accomplished something" sore. My knees bother me too after I ride, but that's mostly because I had a green horse screw them up for me. My hips are usually sore, but that's because the lingaments in my hip sockets are super tight, but my back is fine. Sometimes it gets sore while I'm in the saddle, but that's usually because I'm doing something wrong :-)

Glad that you had a good ride, Cindy. :-) It's always a great feeling.

[Beaker]

Oh Lord, Frog that's hysterical. I too have tried water sking and water tubing but failed miserably at both. With sking, I couldn't get out of the water (Like Cindydawg) and with tubing, I just ingested half the lake. Neither was as fun as it looked.

I've also tried to ski... and fell down the mountain more than I ski'd. I also fail horribly at golf, baseball, tennis... anything involving a ball, count me out. I gave fencing a shot, but nearly killed my instructor, so I gave that up. (Instead of going for his chest I kept hitting his neck... I never meant it I swear). However, I do like going to the range. I consider that sport. :-D

[HairOfTheDog]

I don't know how this is gonna end up, but it's interesting to watch ;~D

Funny thing is, Tweek's not really going after the squirrel, she's just interested... Almost looks like she'd sniff and rub up against it if it would sit still. And the squirrel is cautious, but not overly afraid. He runs up the tree a couple feet when he gets a little spooked, and then comes ~back~.