I realize we haven’t posted much since the end of our show season 2014, at which time Fiz was doing really well.  So what have we been up to all winter you ask?  Not much.  Fiz has been off, playing in the field, his show shoes were pulled and replaced with plates up front and he is barefoot behind.  We have been doing a lot of bareback rides, some western rides, and some riding in the fields around the farm to replicate trail riding.  Basically, no serious training has been going on.  I’d just like to share some photos from the “Off Season” with you all, to fill the void of not posting!  

In an effort to further Fizz’s training, we needed to see from the ground what he looked like, what he was doing, and how he behaved under a different hand.  We decided to invite our friend and fellow horsewoman, Emily, out to ride him.  Emily  had all the credentials we were looking for in a rider for our boy.  She is an outstanding equestrian, a member of the U of L Saddleseat team, and an overall awesome chick.

She did a wonderful job with Fizz, and we couldn’t be happier with his progress.  She helped pinpoint a few things we can work on and we will definitely have her out again to ride him.  Check out the pics and video to see how great they looked!!  🙂

We had our last show of 2014 this past weekend at the Shelby County Fairgrounds.  Since Cindy hasn’t been able to show all season, we made sure she was able to show at this one.  She is our resident professional when it comes to rolling equipment, so it was only appropriate that Fizzy’s first driving class be under her direction.  They had a great class bringing home a blue ribbon!!

We also entered him in another open Green Horse class, hoping to finally perfect that canter in the show ring.  And, BOTH directions he took his leads like a champion and we brought home another first place at this show!!!  Our ribbon was pink, which, whatever… I don’t care, all I know is that Fiz ended the show season bringing both Cindy and I willing rides and drives and we had loads of fun!

I’m just going to say, I have never felt more proud of our boy than I have this weekend.  He is finally showing us his potential.  Our hard work is finally paying off.  I can’t say enough good things about him, so I’ll just leave you with these photos to enjoy.  

***UPDATE*** Got a picture from the official photographer at the show.  Here it is!  🙂

A REAL SADDLEBRED HORSE SHOW.  With ONLY American Saddlebreds, with saddlebred knowledgeable judges, and world champion trained horses as competition.  And rain.  Let’s not forget the rain that soaked the entire show.  But, we show in the rain.  We go regardless and we make it happen.

Anyway, the Franklin County Fair was a HUGE step for us, to move into competing in a breed specific show, and we realized that we actually DO belong.  Maybe we aren’t quite perfect, but who is?  At any rate, we were “stabled” (read: parked, since there were no stalls) two trailers over from World Champion horse trainer Melissa Moore (who also had a horse in BOTH of our classes).  We could not be more proud of how Fizzy did, even despite all the faults and errors.

First of all, he cantered BOTH LEADS correctly.  Yes, he may not have taken them perfect every time, but he did it, without backing up, without cross cantering, without being fussy when asked to stop and try again.  He did it. He may not have walked perfect, and he may not have backed perfect, but those are things that CAN be worked on and we CAN go back to another show and try again.  If we can fix the bigger issues, we can most certainly fix the smaller ones.  Looking forward to trying again!!!

We have a few shows in mind, and we are also taking a break in August to possibly do a fundraising event where we will just go and have fun, not compete.  Then we’ll be back at it in September, and hoping we can get it done.  The 2015 show season sure does look bright.  I cannot wait!! 🙂

After over a year of hard work and dedication towards our ultimate goal of showing Fizzy, we FINALLY made it happen!  We are super excited to report that we SURVIVED the madness.  Our eyes have been opened to a lot of the shortcomings and issues, and we are going to work as hard as we can the next 3 weeks before our next show to try and fix these. We did not leave disappointed, and we definitely left the show having learned a multitude of things.  Such as:  Preparing for a show is HARD WORK, packing crap to and from the barns is a pain in the behind, whoever invented electricity and electric fans is a Godsend because without them we’d sweat ourselves to death, and most of all, we’re not quite sure how we would ever survive a horse show without each other!!  I mean seriously, if it weren’t for having both of us, how would we do this???  It really does take an army to raise a child, I mean, horse!!!  He is like our child, our special needs child.  Anyway, enough of my babbling.  Enjoy these pictures from our debut show!

We had a photo shoot, and here are our best shots! Ok, so maybe I’ve watched a little too much Americas Next Top Model. Forgive me.  Thanks to our photographer Eric (Kayla’s husband) who captured these fabulous images!

Just a picture to compare hoof quality from 4-10-14 to 6-13-14.  Fiz now has rear shoes and the damage on the front right hoof has grown out considerably.  The farrier is happy with the way his feet are coming along, but says we still have a way to go.  As you can see, we definitely need more heel, but it seems to grow much less slowly than the toe.  That’s OK though… we are doing our best to be patient. I mean, we are forced to be patient because we have no other choice. I wish we could just snap our fingers and *POOF*… Perfect hooves.  However, neither Cindy nor I is a magician, so no magic tricks here.

I realize this is about a month late, however, we were waiting on a good weekend to do our “One Year” photo shoot, and that weekend finally came.  We got some wonderful pictures made with our boy and we finally finished the video tribute as well.  It seems like yesterday when we picked up our skinny little colt who was scared to death, but he is that colt no longer.  He’s our big, handsome, spunky, full of personality Fizzy that we adore.  A year can make a world of difference, and Fizzy is living proof that given the right environment, proper care, and lots of love, a horse who everyone seemed to have given up on at such a young age can just thrive.  We will let the video speak for us on the rest.  Enjoy!

Now that Fizzy has been on Farrier’s Formula for one month, and we have been using Keratex Hoof Hardner for one month, we needed to do a check in on the quality if his hooves.  We can definitely see small improvements since shoeing, and HUGE improvements since before he was shod.  I wish I had pictures from each angle immediately after he was shod to compare them to now, but I don’t we will have to do our best to judge.  Overall, they are looking better.  In the below pictures they were clean with Keratex applied, which explains the difference in color near the coronary band (dull) to the hoof wall (shiny-where Keratex has been applied).  So please ignore that.

We are evaluating overall hoof quality since being barefoot, then shod (February 25th) to now.  It’s almost time for a reset!  Next month, I will take the same pictures as below, so we have a definite comparison rather than just a guessing comparison.  However, I think it’s clear there has been growth and improvement.  We are going to stay on course with the Farrier’s Formula and Keratex and keep our fingers crossed that the quality continues to improve!  Afterall, no hooves, no horse, right?

We figure, with the upcoming show season and wanting to go a lot of places, we really do need to have our own trailer, so for the last 2 months we have been looking and finally made a purchase!  We are very happy with it (as you can see below, haha), and we hope Fiz will be too!! 🙂 

Looking toward show season, we have been slowly but surely gathering goods and products to help us properly groom Fiz for shows.  There is a plethora of products on the market to help people properly turn out a horse, and we have already acquired many of those things. However, no matter how many products we buy and apply, his tail is not going to miraculously grow to drag the ground overnight. While we grow out Fiz’s real tail, we decided to give him a little help, so we got him a tail switch, or “extensions” for those of you unfamiliar.  Check out how it looks!!  We think it’s perfect.

Our last post, we added some pictures of Fiz’s barefoot feet (and how awful they were looking) and talked about our hoof goals leading up to show season.  Today, Fiz had an appointment with his farrier, Bobby Ordner, who made and custom fit shoes for his front feet.  Back feet will likely be done next time around.  Bobby gave us a “progress report” on Fiz’s hooves, and was VERY informative and helpful.  He worked for nearly 2 hours custom making shoes, and he also hot fitted them so they would be a perfect fit.  Fiz didn’t mind, he stood nicely for almost 2 hours while the shoes were being made even, and didn’t even flinch at all the tools being used, the smoke from the hot shoes, nothing! Bobby says he’d like to see the back feet be a little more hard, more growth in the heels of all 4, and just a bit more toe all around and we will be where we need to be.  He said the farriers formula and the Keratex (which we just ordered today) is a good game plan and will have us where we want to be definitely by the time we want to show.

Anyway, here is the end result.  

A lot of you may know that we have not had shoes on Fiz at all during the time we have owned him.  We have had him trimmed a few times but his feet just do not seem to grow!!  Since we will be getting shoes put on him within this month, we have also decided that we are going to put him on the Farrier’s Formula supplement that SmartPak offers.  We have heard a lot of wonderful things about how this supplement does wonders for horses hooves in the way of new growth, less cracking, and overall hoof health.

Since we plan to show in less than 6 months, and it’s getting close to spring (when hooves can start growing faster due to warmer weather) we feel now is the time to begin this supplement.  We do not have experience with it, and we are eager to see how using it will help his hoof quality.  In order to document the improvement we hope to see by using this formula and putting Fiz in a set of shoes, we have taken pictures of the current condition of his bare feet and we have also taken measurements of his toe and heel on the fronts.  His front right toe is about 3 inches long, and front left about 3.5.  While his heel bulbs are not quite touching the ground, the hoof wall at the heel is not measurable at this time.  It is nearly non-existent, which makes us sad!  He really needs to have good hoof wall growth in this area to be able to move like we suspect he is capable of.  We cannot wait to get his feet in shoes, growing better, and overall healthier.  When the farrier puts his shoes on, we will talk about options for showing later on down the road.  Exciting stuff!!

Also to note, Keratex Hoof Hardner comes highly recommended to us by a friend who uses it on his OTTB mare.  Once it warms up, we may try this in addition to the supplement.  Our friend says he has seen a big improvement in the quality of his mare’s hooves and how she is able to keep shoes on better since he began using this product.

Anyway, here is what we have to document his current hoof condition, which we have analyzed as poor.   His rear left hoof is in the best condition, followed by his rear right, the front left, and the front right being in the worst condition.  He has a bad habit of pawing with his front feet, so we suspect that is what is causing his front feet to be in such poor condition.  We really hope putting shoes on will help keep his feet from getting worn down like they are currently.

I realize that some of our readers may not know the difference between a good hoof and a bad hoof, so let me just show you what we are working toward.  You can see Fiz’s hooves above, and compare them to these pictures below to see something similar to what our end goal is for his feet.

He’s a warm hearted horse, who’ll love me til the end…  Ok, I’ll stop singing now and get on with my point.  Fiz had a big day today.  It was 60 degrees outside and we had plans to work him and wash his tail.  He long lined wonderfully, then he got his crusty disgusting tail washed and braided up. We are glad it’s clean and dandruff free now, and hope it stayed that way for longer than the 30 minutes we watched him in the field before we left the farm this afternoon.  We did discover another thing to add to the list of stuff Fiz thinks is going to kill him.  A hair dryer.  So for now, we have on that list: stationary mounds of gravel, clippers near his ears, and hair dryers.  Kayla coming up off the ground throwing sand in the air is pretty scary too.

Now for the biggest news of the day, Fiz got to meet his new friend and hopefully long term pasture mate, a thoroughbred named Thunder. Thunder has just moved here from Michigan and we are happy he’s a chill guy with a good attitude.  They seemed to get along really well and we are so pleased he will no longer be alone in the pasture!  After all, horses are meant to be in herds, even if it’s just a herd of two, we don’t want him to be lonely! We really hope they become great friends and have a lot of fun together.  Of course, in typical Twisted Sisters fashion, we documented the meeting via cell phone photos, so here they are!

*********************UPDATE********************

As much as we had hoped Fiz and Thunder were going to be good friends and pasture mates, unfortunately it did not happen.  Apparently, Fiz does not play well with others!!  The next day, he kept picking and picking at poor Thunder and try as he might to ignore it, Thunder got tired of being picked at and went after Fizzy but Fizzy just kept on picking until they had to be separated.  I guess Fiz is just destined to be in a pasture by himself!  Oh well.  His choice!!