Cob Jockey

I had been stalking Facebook Marketplace for about a year, and knew a good deal when I saw one...

(It's amazing how many of my stories start out like this)

And that's how I ended up driving 700 miles round trip to pick up...

(Also this)

Yes, it's true. I, terrified of driving, just bought a cart. I am still as surprised as you all are. But after 18 months of talking to Maude about driving, realizing how much Disco enjoys it, seeing how reliable he is, and acknowledging how ridiculous it is to own two ponies broke to drive and not be able to drive them, I gave in.

In the seller's garage. I need to get some glamour shots of it soon.

Driving is OVERWHELMING, y'all. There is so much to learn and so many ways to do it wrong or to buy the wrong things. Maude graciously looked over each used listing I sent her and gave her opinion - not the right size for Disco, you can't show with bicycle wheels, etc etc. But this one checked out.

And and!! I managed to go pick it up on blogger Teresa's birthday, which is the day before my birthday, so we had a birthday brunch on my way up, which was awesome!

I don't know much about the cart. I think this style is called a gig cart. The paint needs some attention, but the crushed velvet seat is in amazing shape. My biggest concern was getting it home - I waffled for a long time on bringing a trailer or just my truck, because the dimensions were super tight. And they were - it barely fit. But it did fit.

This does mean I can transport both cart and pony to a show, as long as the weather is good.

I was very grateful to whoever ordered this truck new for spec'ing like a million tie down points in the bed. It didn't move a millimeter the entire way home. And it also didn't scratch the cab, thanks to some electrical pipe insulation and a blanket.

Next up, I need a harness, and conveniently, The National Drive is being held 30 minutes from me this week, and they have a tack swap...

My who knows how old cart next to my 1917 (yes, really) manure spreader

Our co-op model's success is due, in part, to a model that requires the bare minimum of us on a day-to-day. The horses will be fed, watered, looked over, and where they are supposed to be, and that's about it. 

But that means there are a lot of "I'll get to that someday" things that pile up, and while I handle many of them myself, I can't handle them all. In fact, I don't think I could have signed on to buy this barn before I learned that lesson - that asking for help isn't a sign of weakness or a risk that cannot be incurred lest I take up too much space in someone's life, but it takes a lot of strength, especially for a card carrying independent woman like me.

Watering and dragging is about as much irregular farm maintenance as I can fit into my life on a weekly basis right now.

So a couple of months ago, I asked the boarders if they would be willing to give up a Saturday before winter for a pre-winter fall cleanup day. They all enthusiastically said yes. So that's how all four boarders, two significant others and the current BO spent a rainy (bless) Saturday last weekend doing well, all the things.

Fudge demonstrating one of many improvements installed on barn cleanup day: a coyote poop washing station in the wash rack

We cleaned gutters and cleared downspouts. We replaced the tines on the Parmagroomer, which had worn down by about 2" over the years. We raked the footing away from the indoor walls. We chainsawed bushes that were growing into the fence. We greased the slam latches on all of the gates and adjusted the hinges so that they close easily again.

He's such a keeper 💗

We replaced worn-out crossties and vacuumed the fans and auto-waterers. We did a lot to the water wagon - pressure washing the algae off the inside of the tank, drilling some additional holes and airing up the tires. We moved jumps from the outdoor to the indoor. We fixed a drippy spigot. We deep cleaned every surface of the barn, threw out anything expired and made a giant "Whose is this?" pile, which everyone went through, picked out their stuff and wrote their initials on it with a sharpie.

We also made a giant donate pile, both from us boarders and from the barn owner who is slowly getting rid of things neither he nor I want to keep from the equipment barn. The donate pile is going to a therapeutic riding barn, and included a barely used double-wheel wheelbarrow and an entire bag of pasture seed mix among many other things, so I can't imagine they'll turn it down.

But it wasn't just maintenance. We also made some improvements that will make our lives easier, like hanging a pull-out drying rack in the bathroom so that we actually start using the barn's washer, putting a 2x4 above one section of the arena kick wall so that we can store bag chairs there, and something I've wanted to do for a long time: replace the barely usable and always dirty fixed wire corner shelves in the wash rack with something much more functional:

Every horse gets one basket, and then there are two baskets for the barn (brushes for scrubbing waterers, etc). Most importantly, they all hang on hooks and can be taken off the wall for regular cleaning, unlike the old shelves.

It was incredibly cathartic to see the list disappear quickly under so many hands. I made a nice lunch for everyone, a Middle Eastern chicken soup and sandwiches, but it was the least I could do for as much work as everyone did. And at the end of it all, every single boarder said, unprompted, that we should do this twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall.

Meatloaf giving me the side eye because she was massively over my shit in the eighth hour of following me around the barn that day.

In all of the biggest and all of the smallest ways, I could not run this farm without these wonderful people in my life, and I will never stop being grateful.

I have a reminder on my calendar to wash and wax my trailer once a year in September. September is always a beautiful month here, very little rain and decent temps (though this year - ugh - we haven't had a good rain since June and my pastures are literally dying, so I would take some less beautiful weather, please and thank you).

Hank showing off my hay field, which is naturally in better shape than the pastures since it's not fenced and doesn't get grazed.

Buuuuut in 2022 and 2023 I just...didn't. Depression, not showing much, blah blah blah. So anyway, there was 3 years' worth of...stuff...to chisel off this trailer.

I'm happy to report that Wash Wax All still did the trick even with it being extra dirty. I washed and waxed the whole thing with 2 gallons of water and six towels. I do also have wash mitts on extension poles, but I mostly only used those on the roof. I didn't find that it saved me much time, and I do like getting up close and personal with the trailer skin once a year, so that I can closely inspect any new rock chips, etc.

In some places, I started with the slightly stronger Wash All from the same company, which contains stronger degreasers and doesn't contain wax. Mostly, this was just because I was lazy and didn't want to have to scrub that hard. Then I followed it with Wash Wax All to give it that protective wax coating.

A fairly obvious before/after of the skin on the nose

Really, it felt good to take care of it. I still adore this trailer. I've had it 7 years next month, and it's been nothing but good to me. I also took the opportunity to spray UV protectant on the rubber seals, and silicone lube on the window tracks.

Before

After

It's also just one of those chores that makes my brain itch, seeing that dirty trailer sitting there every time I walk to the manure pile, feeling that little twinge "You should be doing this and you're not." A lot of things around the farm are like that for me, which is why I'm grateful that my boarders have agreed to a fall clean-up day later this month, when we're going to knock out the "need to get to that" chores all at once.

Lyss, formerly of Gooseback Riding and now of Chantilly Tales, commented on my blog post about Wow saddles to say that she had two barnmates that both had Wows they were looking to sell, and long story short, it ended up that one of those saddles was in my and Eva's exact specs (which are very likely to also be Disco's specs). The seller's horse had hated it and she only rode in it for a couple months before getting something else and putting it in a closet, so it was nearly new.

Not unattractive either, but those f****** blocks (we'll get to that)

Wow has three front-to-back tree shapes: curved, semi-curved and flat, with flat being the most rare, and naturally that's Eva's tree shape. Of everything on the saddle, the seat/tree is the most expensive, so it's the only thing you really want to get right. Everything else (panels, flaps, blocks, billets, headplate) can be easily/relatively cheaply swapped out later.

Because of that, I didn't ask too many questions or request hardly any photos once I learned it was a flat tree in my size. The price was fantastic, the saddle was gorgeous, and the tree was right, so I could deal with anything else being wrong. Lyss ended up facilitating the entire sale for both of us through email, which was awesome.

It wasn't until it got here and I saw the underside of it for the first time that I realized the likely reason why the seller's horse had hated it: that saddle's panels have a combination of features that my own fitter won't sell, and in fact she confiscates them anywhere she finds them, because they create a pressure point on the horse's back that she has seen lead to pain and injuries in horses many times over the years. Her words: "Do not even sit on her in those panels."

The good news? My fitter can add a stitchline to these panels to make them safe to use, AND I had just ordered new panels for Connor's Wow that are basically the same as Eva's except that they don't have tabs, which serve to lower the panel on wider horses with less withers.

Thanks to Wow being Wow, I spent 5 minutes in my living room with a screwdriver moving panels between saddles and voila, I had a saddle I could start Eva in. It fits beautifully, aside from Connor's no-tab panels sitting higher than they should on Eva.

The fit is just freaking perfect. I am in awe of that little plastic Wow saddle fitting gauge every time I see this saddle moving perfectly with Eva like it was custom made for her. Dr. M and the gauge told me what parts to look for, a blogger helped me find it, and from the moment a saddle was ever first put on her back, it fit her.

Such a lucky horse

I love it for me too. The balance is incredible and it sort of disappears underneath me. The only thing I don't love are these giant honking thigh blocks, which do move, but not enough and not in the directions that I want them to.

When I came off Eva, Kate joked that those blocks were like a pivot point for my body as I flew off, lol

Fortunately, Dr. M is both a leatherworker and a Wow enthusiast, so short term, I am just going to take the blocks off the saddle, and long term, she is going to help me fabricate a custom block. Like anything else on the saddle, the blocks are modular and are held on by two flat screws.

You can just tell my body wants these blocks out of my way. With them gone, I will be able to move the stirrup leathers forward and my leg is going to hang in a great place.

So, a big hearty THANK YOU to Lyss for helping me find this saddle. I think I am officially on the Wow train after this experience!

To recap, on Day 1, I just sat on her for a while and then got off.

On Day 2, we introduced steering. And on Day 3, we introduced trotting.

Again, this is a horse that has had no directional steering training beyond leading and lunging. And again, Kate had a well-researched and personally tested system for starting them that worked flawlessly.

She had me using a rudimentary system of aids, using the 4 seconds to light pressure pattern based on how quickly horses process new information, that set the horse up for inside leg to outside rein success later in their careers right out of the gate.

I was to never use two legs on her, not at first. From the halt, we would turn by applying the outside rein against the neck. If that didn't get a response, I would use the inside rein in a direct/opening rein fashion, and at the same time apply my inside leg in a bumping, nagging "Chihuahua barking kind of way".

Then once she was moving, I held both reins out far in front of me and wide, creating a "box" for her to stay in. As long as she stayed in that box, she didn't get any cues, but if she strayed out of it, I repeated the same system of aids.

It wasn't perfect of course, but I was able to generally get her going where I wanted her to go in the whole ring right from the get-go. The biggest problem was me - it required a whole rewiring of my I've-only-ridden-Connor-for-13-years aid system to ride a horse like this, and sometimes the wires got crossed and I'd use the wrong leg or things like that. But, this is a new skill to learn like any other, so I'm not beating myself up about not being great at it immediately.

On Day 3, Kate's last day here, we pushed it maybe a little further than Kate would have if she was at home, but I got the impression she wanted to set us up for success after she left. First of all, we saddled her. No pomp and circumstance, just put it on her in the indoor and she was fine.

I gotta write a whole blog post about this saddle, but for now, let's just say the incredible power of the blogger network strikes again. Can you BELIEVE how well this saddle fits her? It's silly. And how wonderful for Eva to be able to start right off with a saddle that doesn't hurt or annoy her in any way.

We also graduated from the rope halter to a leather sidepull that I had originally bought for baby Disco. Kate: "Um, why do you even HAVE a sidepull this small?"

On Day 3, the wheels fell off the bus in a very honest way. We were introducing trot, and suddenly Eva had a very honest green horse moment and got overwhelmed by me moving around more up there, and my lizard brain didn't even try to one rein stop her as she started very athletically bronc bucking. 

And that's the first time I ever fell off a Welsh Cob, and my first fall off anything in well over a decade. After watching her airs above the ground at liberty, I just knew it would be her and had a feeling I had it coming.

(Side note: although I sure wasn't thinking about it, the video shows I had a textbook Landsafe over the shoulder fall. Protected my head at the expense of my limbs, and my helmet didn't even take a hit. Glad that clinic paid off!)

I have video, but it was so honest of her, I won't put it out there on the Internet, because it was more my fault than hers. I surprised myself that I wasn't even remotely scared to get back on. I understood exactly what happened and why, and I know she's a lazy potato at heart, so I knew it wouldn't happen again. We ended the lesson trotting loose in the ring again no problem.

After the fall. The only casualty was my brand new Canter Culture breeches which got a hole in the knee, wah.

Since then, I have been lunging her with the saddle on and stirrups flapping to get her used to movement up there, and I have ridden her multiple times without an ounce of fear. Which still surprises me. I am much more confident in my late 30s than I was in my teens and 20s. I guess we can thank Connor for that.

So, I started the clinic with an unbroke pony, and I am now able to confidently ride her on my own every day (well, 5 days a week), putting her a month or two ahead of where I thought we'd be. Kate is a wizard.