August Photos

Despite the fact that we've been doing a heaping load of nothing around here, I have somehow met my blogging quota for the year already. I guess I can just quit now. In all seriousness, though, I feel like there's really nothing to report about August. The few trail rides I get to go on are the bright spot in my weeks right now. So here's the photo recap of the last few weeks...

Aneesah and I managed to find our way to some more extensive trails. We had to do some bush whacking to find our way home, but she was a trooper about it, and I feel like we're really starting to develop a working relationship. Even on her worst days, she's a little trail horse deluxe. I'm not sure how long I'll get to keep riding her, but I'm enjoying every minute for the time being. It's a great way to start each week.

Stealing Mike's Photos

 I snagged Mike's memory card again so I could do a photo dump. His pictures are prettier than just about anything going on in the world right now.

Ok, so actually I took this one myself, but only after Mike came to get me to "check out this weird bird". After some internet research, we identified it as a bank swallow, which I've never seen before!! In the process of looking into it, I found a whole ton of other birds we have in NJ that I've never seen. I can totally understand how people get into bird watching. 

Photos From Emily's

I'm officially cranky. The new Blogger sucks and it ate this entry twice in a row.

There's still not a lot to report on the horse front. While I feel fairly comfortable outdoors where it's easy to social distance, I am still keeping things really low key around here. I now know of three people who have tested positive for COVID19 despite wearing masks in public and only doing outdoor activities (and one of them even wore a mask during said outdoor activities!) That tells me that while outside is safer, it's not foolproof. Still, this was a horse blog once upon a time, so I figured I'd share some recent photos.

For starters, Hawk's owner, Jess, has found a new pony to ride for the time being. Emily kindly offered her use of Stella, the adorable but super-green Haflinger mare Emily got as a weanling. Previously, I'd only played with Stella once or twice in passing. She is your typical Haffie: bold, sassy, a little lazy, and too clever for her own good. Despite not having a ton of miles under saddle, Stella is safe enough for kids to ride, mostly because getting her to go takes a lot of work. Getting Stella to actually work and be a grown up riding horse is going to be an interesting and fun journey. Jess is used to Hawk, who was sensitive, forward, and had a great work ethic. While a lot of what she learned in her lessons with him is going to transfer over to Stella, Jess is also going to have to learn a ton of new skills in a very short period of time. Stella is probably the greenest horse Jess has ridden. 

I want to take a moment here to mention that Other Other Jess* has played a huge part in Stella's path to maturity. She is a brilliant rider and has been putting some miles on Stella for about two months now, which has made my job infinitely easier.

*There seems to be an unusually high concentration of Jesses at this barn. Je$$ with Gunner, Jess^2 who owned Hawk, and Other Other Jess who has this gorgeous buckskin mare named Latte that I adore.

Jess has had three lessons on Stella so far and they've already made an incredible amount of progress. So far, we're doing a lot of theory talk and making sure all the basics are in order but the results are visible already.

Lesson 1

Lesson 3.

Herbie Goes Swimming

 It has been too hot to do much around here, but two weekends ago, Mike and I decided to take Julio swimming up in Holland Brook. Herbie made it very clear (by yipping, chattering, and shaking like a chihuahua) that she did not want to be left behind. These days, the old lady pretty much gets what she wants, so we took her with us. It's a short hike over relatively fat terrain with reasonable footing. Worst case scenario, Mike could carry her out. 

At the risk of jinxing it, it would appear that Herbie's current combination of meds, exercise, and Assisi Loop is working really well. 

My first concern was the half hour drive to the swimming hole. Herbie has been stressed on car rides for quite a while now, so we haven't taken her more than ten minutes from the house since lockdown started. I'm guessing the Gabapentin has a calming effect on her because she just curled up quietly in the back seat and hung out calmly all the way there.

We let Herbie lead the way to the creek so she wouldn't strain herself trying to keep up with Julio. I needn't have worried! She marched right down there and splashed into the water without a hitch. 

Last summer, swimming seemed to actively strengthen Herbie and I was hoping she'd be able to manage a little bit this year too. Of course, we put her in her life jacket. I needn't have worried. Herbie splashed right in, pushed off, and swam happily in circles around me. I'd worn water shoes and waded in with her, just in case (and also because it felt good on a hot day). So while Julio ate grass, fetched sticks, and sniffed all the things, Herbie got to have a play day. While not quite as good as an underwater treadmill, wading definitely had its therapeutic benefits, starting with the fact that water provides a low weight-bearing environment. Herbie's weak hind end doesn't matter when she's wading or swimming! Doing this more regularly would definitely strengthen her muscles in a way that walking doesn't because moving through water is a form of resistance training.

About forty-five minutes later, Herbie was still going strong, but we decided not to push it past that. I expected her to be tired and wanted to get her back to the car before she was completely worn out.

I walked Herbie upstream as much as the trail allowed. She seemed happiest to walk in belly deep water as opposed to land. When it came time to head out, she planted her feet in the creek and gave me a pleading look. Then the talking back started!! She definitely didn't want to be done with play time yet!! Mike actually had to leash her and physically lead her out of the water. Poor kid wasn't done yet!

But the best and most surprising part was that Herbie hiked the short distance back to the car under her own power! Mike didn't have to carry her. In fact, she didn't even need to take a break along the way! Despite the most active afternoon she's had in a while, Herbie was still going strong. This past spring, I was really worried we would have to put her down before summer began, so this outing made my heart very happy. I wish we had a swimming hole with good footing closer to home because I'd do this with her every week if I could! 

Herbie did sleep really well that night, and I gave her an extra cycle with the Assisi Loop, but she seemed no worse for the wear. In fact, it may be my imagination, but I think she's been bouncier and more active since our field trip. She's back to walking all around the farm with us on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. She even challenged Julio to a zoomy competition, which was both adorable and pathetic. 

Herbie is definitely old for her age, and it sucks to watch her body slowly failing her when her mind is still 100% in tact, but days like this, I'm grateful for the time we still have together, and for the adventures she can still participate in. I second guess every decision I make with my animals, and I wonder if I could have or should have done more for her along the line, but when I look back at all the various blog entries and photos from over the years, I remind myself that this pathetic puppy that tried to die at less than a month old has had a pretty good life. 

Hopefully, in the future, I'll look back at this post and feel the same way.

My best girl.

Torricane 3: Isaias

 The title is a bit of an inside joke. After the storm I kept reading about the hurricane causing tornadoes as it moved up the coast, which sounded like the plot of some bad Netflix movie.

Anyway, it's Hurricane season in the north Atlantic. As residents of New Jersey, we are rarely heavily affected by these storms. They typically lose power and/or move out to sea before they get this far north. With climate change as a factor, however, I suspect that won't always be the case. 

Back in 2012, NJ made national news after Superstorm Sandy devastated the area. We were personally very lucky during that storm, but living here in the following weeks was pretty surreal, and I know there are people who never recovered financially. 

When Isaias started popping up in the news, we didn't think much of it. It was only a Category 1 hurricane, and we figured it would peter out long before it came this way. The forecast called for wind and rain on Tuesday, so I cancelled my lessons and prepared for a day of reading, cross stitching, and blogging about yoga. 

We rarely lose power here at the farm. The property is located at the corner where four different townships meet. This can be a real pain for things like snow removal or having to get a police report for a traffic incident. The one thing we lucked out on, however, is the electricity. Our side of the street is powered by PSE&G. Across the street and next door is JCP&L. After Sandy, JCP&L customers were out of power for weeks and there were still angry signs dotting the mountain when Mike and I moved up here two years later. The roads up here are pretty narrow and windy, with a ton of tree cover. Once again, Mike and I are lucky in the sense that the lines supplying our power run down our own street, which is the widest (and richest) road, the one that goes directly into town. While our neighbors often lose power if someone sneezes too hard, we've been pretty lucky even during blizzards and ice storms, or Tropical Storm Fay last month.

Still, a storm's a storm, and we filled a bunch of water jugs just in case.

Isaias hit us with surprising ferocity. What started out as merely heavy rain soon escalated and we experienced several hours of 85mph winds with gusts up to 109mph. Two confirmed tornadoes touched down in NJ. Thankfully, Isaias was a fast moving storm and was in and out of the area in what felt like record time. I can't imagine the damage if the storm had lingered like Sandy had. 

The winds towards the tail end of the storm, after the rain had died down.

Yoga Again

(While I was tying up this pose, Hurricane Isaias hit us much harder than expected and knocked our power out for four days. I came back and Blogger updated!!! I'm not good at change, and I apologize for any formatting errors that result from the new Blogger appearing halfway through my draft.)

These days, I spend a lot more time doing yoga than I do on horseback. I'm ok with that for the time being. I can do yoga in my air conditioned apartment. I have like 50 photos from the last two weeks alone. Whoops. I'm trying to be thorough about documenting my progress, which is presenting as obsessiveness. 

It has been an interesting journey. In certain ways I have made progress in leaps and bounds at what seems like an inhuman pace. In other ways, however, the progress seems minimal or non-existent. Eryca and I have talked about end-range flexibility and mobility and how there are a lot of things you cannot speed up even with daily practice.

Patience is hard for me. I am a go, go, go type of person. Yoga is making me change that, physically at least. I'm finally remembering to breathe. Literally. Flow yoga is largely about timing your movements with your breath. Certain things are easier on inhales. Others are better done as you exhale.

I have a tendency to kick into poses or sort of fall out of them when I'm done. I've been actively working on moving more slowly and being more precise in my positioning. Bryce has reminded Eryca  and me to disassemble our poses as carefully as we get into them.

My current obsessions are binds and backbends.

My lower back is pretty shot from years of abusing it on horseback. Yoga has, thankfully, taken care of most of my back pain. In fact, most days I'm entirely pain free, which is awesome. However, I have to be really careful with back bends. I have a decent amount of flexibility, but it's really easy to strain my lower back muscles, and if I over do it, I pay the price the next day. The good news is that I now know how to alleviate that pain through certain restorative poses, but it would definitely better to just not strain my back in the first place.

That's why I got the yoga wheel. I can use the yoga wheel to get into certain back bending postures without pushing up through my lower back. The wheel supports me while I stretch and I can gradually work my way deeper instead of just heave-ho'ing into full wheel pose while things snap, crackle, pop in my lumbar spine.

Binding yoga poses are generally defined as those where one part of the body grabs and pulls against another part. Generally speaking those currently involve grabbing my hands behind my back in all kinds of crazy ways. Since shoulder mobility is another weakness of mine (yeah, 22 year old me probably should have gotten that rotator cuff looked at) these have been particularly helpful.

I'm continuing to take Zoom classes with Eryca as many times a week as possible. Her IGTV flows are a nice addition to the days when I'm not in class. I've also been doing random YouTube videos specifically targeting certain muscle groups or types of poses. The only consistent part of my weekly yoga schedule is that I try to work on splits on Mondays.

At one point, I tried to break all the poses down into basic categories so I could establish a weekly schedule like Mike does with lifting. As it turns out, however, there are so many different types of yoga pose that I still can't do it all in one week. (Back to that lack of patience thing...) I feel like I'm back at school with all the studying and note taking that I'm doing. It's a good way to channel all my anxious brain energy, though, so that's good.

By far my favorite part of the week is whatever day Eryca and I get together on Zoom, just the two of us, and play our regular game of See A Pose, Try a Pose. Nothing like trying and failing to contort yourself into a shape demonstrated by some super-flexible Insta-yogi to keep you humble (but also inspire you to keep pushing and working). I spend a lot of my time face down on my yoga mat, laughing really hard at myself.

I know I keep saying this, but I've surprised myself with how completely I've fallen in love with yoga. I am not an exercise kind of girl, so it's really neat to find a full body work out that actually brings me joy.

My favorite photo from the last two weeks. I do feel like a certain black dog is judging me all the time though...

Racehorse News

Everyone seemed to enjoy my last update about the racehorses so I figured I'd throw another one in here. The race barn had two more winners in July. The two gray girls, Richie and Maddie, won their races at Monmouth and Penn National respectively.

Photo by Bill Denver, EQUIPHOTO