Annie’s First TN Ride

I talked with new trainer this week about lessons for the weekend and we discussed him helping me with Annie and then a lesson over fences at his farm. This seemed like a great idea until I remembered that the ginger hadn’t been worked in close to 2.5 months.

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Commence panic. Ultimately I decided to lunge Friday night – arena lights for the win! Luckily Annie still remembers how to lunge like ย mostly civilized creature. Yesterday I went to tack up and turns out that the little red head has been packing on the pounds.

I am very pleased with her condition and TN seems to be agreeing with her. I am having some debate about giving her a trace clip… I am going to wait and see how much colder it gets and how much work NT thinks we should plan to be doing this winter.

How much work warrants any clipping for you all?

Onto our first ride at the farm! Trying to save myself I did throw her onto the lunge line for self preservation. She was super lazy and I should have seen through her guise but I decided to climb on board.

All things considered she was good. There was a lot of activity outside of the arena and while distracted she worked through. I am hopeful that NT will have good suggestions for exercises I can work through with her this winter. I am very excited to get someone to help me with her and that I have the opportunity to ride other horses in lessons so that I can get back over fences! ๐Ÿ™‚

10 comments

  1. Nicku says:

    So glad you’re back on her! I like the trace clip for youngsters in winter so they don’t get as cold backed and frisky when you take the blanket off to ride.

  2. Lauren says:

    To me, any work requires clipping because I hate hair and sweat. Simon is starting to get fuzzy from his 1st clip so I’m counting the days until I can realistically clip him again.

  3. Me says:

    Regarding clipping – this is terrible but after not clipping Charlie last year due to lack of time I will never not clip him again. The whole shedding thing was TERRIBLE! As you know, he has plenty of clothes to keep him warm and he’s going to be a snowbird this year, so clipping was a must. But even if he was staying in the frozen tundra with 2x week rides, he’d still get a haircut.

    Glad things are working out well at the new barn!

  4. L. Williams says:

    If she won’t be ridden much I wouldn’t clip her at all. I ride mine quite a bit and even his first winter i loved having him clipped, he pulled less shenanigans undersaddle clipped than he did unclipped.

  5. Karley says:

    Henry still isn’t clipped yet but I am able to ride during the day so lots of time to dry… When i had to ride at night after work I clipped sooner then later bc we ride hard and don’t let up our workload in winter so I needed him to dry before 11 pm ๐Ÿ™‚

    I agree with L, if you aren’t going to be doing anything hard I’d hold off – unless you want her clipped then go for it lol

  6. Megan says:

    I’m thinking about leaving mine unclipped this year. My barn charges an outrageous blanketing fee- $120+ per month. So I try to keep his evening rides a little lighter so he doesn’t get as sweaty and then he works harder on the weekends when I can ride in the morning. It also doesn’t get too cold here anyway, he’s never worn a blanket (except for bombproofing because I didn’t want to create a coming 6 year old next year who had never worn a blanket lol).

  7. emma says:

    ooh i’m looking forward to seeing what the new trainer thinks of Annie!! also i never bother clipping bc my mare doesn’t sweat much or grow a super thick coat, plus we end up being super limited in how much we can work over the winter anyway

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