15Oct 2012 by myexracer

Let The Games Begin

Barn tales, Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Red=Kicker Pink=Awesome"][/caption] The horse farm where my pretty pony lives is a boarders only barn. This means that there are no school horses, lessons don't have the right away and every one has equal access to the facilities. Most people are pleasure riders, with a few eventers, a few judge trail riders and a couple of show jumpers thrown in for good measure. It's a pretty good group of laid back friendly people. My farm puts on a games day once in a while. Which is basically a judged obstacle course. It was open to the whole barn and about 15 of us decided to participate. It was to take place in the our door arena (weather permitting) and there were to be 20 obstacles to…
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08Aug 2012 by myexracer

Rise and fall with the outside wall

Life with Jezebel, OTTB, Training
[caption id="attachment_266" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Work you say "][/caption] It's been 2 days now of serious ridding for me and Jezebel. Lots of rising trot and many, many circles. The Barn has been very quiet in the afternoons and I've been taking advantage of it and getting down to actual work. Jezebel is doing amazingly well for a horse that has had limited time under saddle. She's listening to me, trying to understand what I'm asking of her and keeping her cool though she is not foot sure all the time and trips a little more then I would like. I couldn't really ask for more then that from her. She wants to work and shes a much happier horse right now im sure because were working. As for me? I…
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03Aug 2012 by myexracer

Whos horse is this?

Life with Jezebel, OTTB, Training
[caption id="attachment_256" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="The girls"][/caption] The rain rot is getting better and it doesn't hurt to touch her in her ichy spots so I started to work her again. It's Africa hot these days so "working" my horse consists of 20 minutes of lunging and yet another attempt to get my girl comfortable in the was stall (which is super scary it appears) I get my girl all ready with her cavason and lunge line, gloves on and we go into the indoor ring for some up down transitions. To my utter delight she does everything I ask. Walk, trot, halt, trot, walk, trot, halt, walk. I try to mix it up and she gets it. Shes always been shaky on  "walk" confusing it with "halt" but on this…
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31Jul 2012 by myexracer

Hissy Fit

Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_250" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Hanging out in my box "][/caption] She's got rain rot, or rain scald or whatever you want to call it. I'm going with rain rot because its rotten to deal with. She's not the only one in my barn with it there are several. This weather isn't making it easy to deal with. The patches on her back and hips are clearing up with my betadine and MTG 1 hour long every single day with out waver treatment. The rain rot on her legs is slow going. My girl hates and I mean hates it when you have to fuss with her back legs, its always a struggle between scraping off the rain rot scabs as quickly and efficiently as i can before she gets too…
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19Jul 2012 by myexracer

At Long Last

OTTB, Saddles and tack
[caption id="attachment_242" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="I can haz saddle?"][/caption] It finally happened, I finally got a saddle that fits my pretty filly! Okay it was during a power outage for all of my regain and me, the boyfriend and the dog were all living in a hotel with AC until our (and hundreds of thousands of others) power was restored. It was also in the middle of a terrible heat wave and my barn was running on generators, so no water (as to reserve the well pump) and no fans for the herd. However the truly awesome people over at Dover decided that they could in fact make the drive from VA to MD for my fitting. (Thanks Melanie you totally rock!) So I met Dover at my barn and tried…
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17Jun 2012 by myexracer

Pennsylvania

Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_220" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="AKA Miss Ten Oaks"][/caption] I spent the day in PA at After The Races. The lovely farm I adopted my adorable filly from. It was really nice to hang out with them, they are good folks doing good things with rehabbing and re-homing Thoroughbreds. They have a slew of great horses all in different stages. Some recovering from injuries, some just getting started under saddle and some being let down and getting used to being horses again. It was great to see "Oakley" being worked in the round pen avoiding obstacles and making good decisions. She was the ex racer I originally went to check out way back in Feb. At that time she had been on the farm just a couple weeks and wasn't ready…
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11Jun 2012 by myexracer

Its hot!

Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_213" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="No, I will not pose for photos..is that a carrot!? "][/caption] This east coast weather thing is crazy. I come from southern California I'm used to hot, I can handle hot. I am however having trouble with this humidity thing. Egads this isn't hot, this is torture! It's hot enough that the horses are in during the day and out at night now. My filly has her fan so I'm hoping that helps to keep her cool. Our 20 minute lunge routine has been cut in half because its too damn hot to work her hard. I'm not sure how I'm going to get her in shape with only 10 minutes a day of serious work. Sometimes its hard for me to believe she actually was…
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12May 2012 by myexracer

The thing that wouldnt quit

Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_197" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="This is what 600+ bucks looks like"][/caption] I am learning more about hoof abscess then I ever thought I would. My filly is still laid up with hers. I called in the vet last week to check her out since her abscess wants popping and she was pretty ouchy. My vet was able to find the track and pop it. Yay! however there are now concerns about her back left hind hoof. The infection was on the same track as the last abscess though my vet feels its a different infection and not a re0infection due to the amount of time that had passed. So in order to address her susceptibility to the abscess we've done a couple of two day wet wraps to draw out…
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04May 2012 by myexracer

Its back!

Life with Jezebel, OTTB
[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignleft" width="257" caption="Getting checked out"][/caption] When I went to get my pretty filly out of the back field the other day she was slow and sluggish. usually shes bouncy and happy the other day... not so much. At first I figured it was the heat. The sun was shinning hot and the humidity was high. I took her to the field trough and let her drink before I took her in for our daily lunge work out. Standing at the trough she was holding her left hind awkward. She didn't seem to be limping at all but on the sharp turns to get her out of the filed gate she was definitely having trouble with the back left. I had one of the trainers at my barn look…
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21Apr 2012 by myexracer

Walk Trot Trot Walk Repeat

Life with Jezebel, OTTB, Training
[caption id="attachment_186" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Pretty filly"][/caption] Ground work, ground work , ground work, that's my new theme. Since I have no saddle at the moment I'm focusing on lunging my filly. I've taken to lunging her for 20 minutes a day trying to get her into a routine. I bring her in from the field, groom her, put on her splint boots and caveson and we do 10 minutes in each direction walk to trot, trot to walk, and back again. Our circles are looking less and less like D's and more and more like circles, which I'm pretty pleased about. She is picking up the voice commands but doesn't have them entirely yet. Her trot is often calm and collected which makes me happy, when shes in a groove…
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