Farm Blog
New Ideas in Trailering
The method of moving your horse from one place to another seems like it’s always changing.
When I was a kid (the dark ages) most folks I knew had a box on the back of their pickup truck with a big loading ramp. I knew another horse owner that had a home-made horse trailer with a tarp tied on the top for a roof. We didn’t think twice about these handy inventions. Hey, you wanted to get your horse from here to there and whatever worked -worked. It was better than riding your horse to whatever show you wanted to participant in (which is what I had to do…).
Today you see everything from huge rigs with living quarters (LQ), to smaller trailers that can be pulled with the family car. I found a new style that just seems smart for the person who has no intention of ever trailering more than one horse.
This nice little trailer looks like your standard two horse with no dressing/tack room. But when you open the back door you see it’s really just a one horse trailer and then a full space for toting around hay, tack, equipment, etc. I do see a lot of people these days pulling their horse trailer with their SUV. Who wants to put hay and manure buckets in the back of their nice SUV? This system means everything horse related can travel right with the horse and safely too. What will they come up with next?
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer: Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Clever and Polite
I always enjoy the antics of a clever horse… to a point. The Houdini horse, you know, the one who’s always figuring out how to get out, can be a challenge. You need to be one step ahead of him.
Well, here’s the opposite. The Houdini horse that lets himself in. And that’s not all. This youtube bit also shows that he knows his manners when the ladies are around.
Enjoy our Fun Friday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wHSLDwRZN60#!
-Hollie McNeil, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm
The End of the Cat Tale
We have the end of the Cat Tale today. The saga of the stowaways on a hay wagon has been going on for a couple of weeks. Were there two cats or one, black or grey? As endings go this is a pretty good one.
To back up for the new reader, a delivery of hay arrived at the farm over the weekend of January 14, 15. When we finally got to the project of unloading the hay, on Tuesday January 17, the fur started to fly. Cats that had sought refuge from the cold at the farm where it was loaded were transported to our farm several miles away. As we dismantled their home they abandoned ship.
I have no interest in more barn cats, as Tigerlilly, our barn kitty, would be highly offended that she’d have to share her fiefdom with any other feline. So, the quest was on to return these critters to their rightful owners. There was a question of whether there really were two cats or one. One night early on, our dog treed the black cat. We weren’t successful in catching her but confirmed that it was a black cat that we were looking for. No sign anywhere of a grey cat. That was until a have-a-heart trap arrived and over the weekend of January 21, 22 a grey cat was snagged in the trap.
At this point I had written off the whereabouts of the black cat. I figured she had moved on to another farm where a St.Bernard wasn’t going to chase her into trees. However, this past weekend, it was in fact our St.Bernard that brought an ending to the two week long adventure of the stowaway cats. There was a serious commotion going on inside what is an old milk house on the farm. We store things like skiing equipment, sleds, balls, and other outdoor sporting goods in the little barn. At first it was thought that Meiko, our intrepid St. Bernard was cornering a rabid Raccoon that had scared the wits out of us the day before (that’s a whole other story…). However, as the commotion from the barn exploded into the yard it was Meiko who had pinned the cat to the ground with her mouth. Sounds horrible, but Meiko just stopped the cat in her tracks, held her there, caused no harm at all, and gave us a chance to grab the cat by the scuff of her neck and get her in a cat carrier.
We made quick work of returning the black cat to the farmer where we got that load of hay. That poor kitty needed to have her little nightmare come to an end. Now, it’s all back to normal on the farm, whatever that is.
-Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
Fun Friday
A fascinating bit of history and horses today.
In the British countryside there are several so-called “hill figures.” Many of them are horses, although not all. A hill figure is a huge symbolic animal that was created by digging out a hill side and then filling in the dug out parts with chalk.
The one pictured here is called the Uffington white horse. It measures about 374 feet in length and is about 110 feet in height. The trenches that mark the lines of the white horse are between 5 and 10 feet in width and 2-3 feed deep. What’s amazing to me is that you really can’t appreciate the horse from the ground. It is so big that you need an aerial view to get the idea that it’s a horse. As Britain’s oldest and most famous figure it’s dated at more than 3000 years old. Obviously it was created long before anyone could see it from the air. The earliest reference to it was in the 1070′s when the white horse hill was mentioned in some document.
The actual meaning of the Uffington white horse is debated. Many believe it represents the Celtic horse goddess Epona, who is known for fertility, healing and death. Among the theories for why it exists is that it may have been created to be worshiped in religious ceremonies.
-Hollie McNeil, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm
A Star Is Born
There’s the old story of the down-on-his luck guy who manages to be in the right place at the right time and somehow hits the big time and becomes a successful movie star. It looks like the same inspiring story could be told about a horse. The big star of the Oscar nominated movie War Horse is proving he’s made of all the stuff that Hollywood loves.
The former race horse, who couldn’t run to save his life, is not only the premier equine star of War Horse but he also did Seabuscuit and has a string of new movies ahead of him.
The New York Times did a great piece on him. Check it out:
Hollie McNeil, Owner/Trainer:Riding Right Farm, Author:40 Fundamentals of English Riding
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