Quarters By Coyle's

Nice rain

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:55:00 +0000

Wow, wasn't that rain nice to get last night. The wind was a little scary, but we sure needed the rain.

Last night when I was saddling a training horse she thought the saddle was too tight. I always lightly snug the cinch up, then walk them to the arena tighten it a little more, then do ground work and then do the final tightening. Well she must have thought it was too tight and leaned back and laid down right on top of Ruby. The horse scrambled to get back up but fell back down on top of Ruby again. The rest of the night Ruby wouldn't come out of the office. She walked hunched up, but I didn't feel there was anything broken and no blood.

We will be showing at the Natural Gait this weekend near Monona, Iowa and then at the playday that the Root River Saddle Club puts on Monday. We will be hitting a few graduations this weekend too.

Next week we will be preparing for Taylor and Lori's renewal ceremony for June 2nd. Yippeee!!

Have a great weekend!!!!

Results from Dodge County Show

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:20:00 +0000

Wow the weather sure was different this weekend.

We started out at 69 degrees and humid at 4:30 a.m. By 8 a.m. it was 55 and looking like rain and it had become windy and very chilly.

I don't like to emphasize what placings/ribbons everyone gets as I would rather focus on "was your ride or performance better than the one before?" Showing is about learning, applying what you have learned, spending time with family and friends and having a good time.

I know my faithful readers like to know how everyone does so here is the listing:

Emma started out the day winning her showmanship class and then placed 4th in horsemanship and pleasure.

Emily improved in all of her classes. She had a tough showmanship pattern with a pull turn and we haven't worked on that before. She placed 3rd in halter and 5th in 3 yo western pleasure. This is a building year for Emily and Soda as they are a new team and their rides definitely improved from last weekend in spite of the rainy, cold weather. The cold and rain usually bring out the worst in the horses and they did great.

Cube was much more relaxed and placed 5th in the 2yo western pleasure class. There wasn't a big white german shepard sitting by the announcers stand this weekend, what a relief.

Ice was doing pretty good, his old mellow self until bareback when a pony zipped past us uncontrolled and then he got a little upity. We placed 5th in that class. Well then he decided he was going to be a stud man in horsemanship as there was a mare about 10 feet from the rail in the pasture running free and he thought he should be able to join her. Well, I schooled him the whole class using 2 hands. The pleasure class went better.

This was Kenzie and JoZ's debut and JoZ was quite nervous for her first show, so we just warmed her up in the arena before the show started and just had her do halter and showmanship. Barb and Holly were their to support Kenzie and JoZ. I could also see improvement in Barb and Holly's performances too.

I was chilled to the bone from the wind and rain and decided not to do my english classes. I decided to warm up in the truck withTristan and Emma. We ended the day by taking Tristan home with us while Lori ran games. It was just too cold for him to be out in that weather.

On the way home we stopped at Woodward's and I can never leave there without spending $100 even though I was only in there to pick up one thing. He packs a whole lot of stuff in that little tack shop. If you are needing anything he has it. Ha!

A little excitement for a Tuesday night

Thu, 17 May 2012 02:45:00 +0000

The night was going pretty smoothly until Randy went to put Ice back in his pen after putting more new fencing up. Well, he forgot to close the gate and Ice took that opportunity to go visit.

He went over by the east pen of horses, which happen to be mares, and he was reaching over the fence and striking, like all stallions do when they get excited.

We were about ready to put the halter on him and he whirled around and took off up the ditch and on to the road. The ditch is very, very steep . . .so when he came back down in to the ditch he couldn't stop himself and he tried to jump the fence. Instead he ran right into it. It was dark out and we could see sparks flying. It must have been when he hit the fence (barbed wire and netting) the strands of barbed wire must have hit together causing the sparks. I yelled a very loud "whoa" and he stopped in his tracks.

We took him into the barn to assess the damage and all we found were 3 superficial scratch marks from the barbed wire. OMG, I double and triple checked him to ensure he didn't empail himself on one of the steel T-posts. Of course he is a really easy color to see if there was any blood and we didn't find anything else.

We are so very thankful the guardian "horse" angels were looking over him.

Show Results

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:30:00 +0000

What a beautiful day for a horse show and my mother's day was extraordinary as I spent it doing what I love doing . . .showing horses and coaching pupils through their classes.

Emma showed Ginger in halter, showmanship, western pleasure and horsemanship and also participated in the queen's ride supporting the Root River Saddle Club. She placed 3rd in halter, 4th in showmanship, 3rd in western pleasure and 4th in horsemanship. Emma and Ginger have put in a lot of work over the winter and they were very excited to be showing on Sunday. Rochelle brought plenty of food to keep us all satisfied, yummmmmyyyy!!

Emily was riding Scotcholat Good Bar, aka Soda, and this is their first year together, so this is a learning year. Soda is 3, so Emily showed her in halter, showmanship, western pleasure, horsemanship, English equit, English pleasure and egg and spoon. They placed 2nd in halter. Every ride improved from the first one class and they did a great job!!!!

Barb and Holly came early and even showed in showmanship. Way to brave the new class and you both did great. This was Barb's first go of showing English too and she did great.

I rode Cube in the 2yo snaffle western pleasure. He is the first colt out of Ice and he was pretty nervous, but then a white german shephard dog appeared during the 5 minute warm-up sitting along the rail that threw him for a loop. I couldn't get him within 10 feet of the rail on that side. He wasn't having any part of that white looking bear.

I also rode Ice and he was a trooper. We placed 3rd in halter, 6th in English equitation and 1st in egg and spoon. He did might fine with only being ridden 2 times this year, which were in April. He has been busy breeding and I have been busy with training horses, so I will have to make a concerted effort to ride him more to get his mind in the game. He was a very good boy and well mannered.

It is not about the ribbons it is about the experience and learning along the way . . . .you have to ask yourself "was it better than the last ride?" If so you are a winner!

I used both of my new saddles yesterday and absolutely love them. Thanks Connie for such great saddles.

We were joined later in the morning by Tristan, Taylor and Lori as Lori was there to run games in the afternoon. Blaine texted me Happy Mother's Day as it was his weekend to work. So a great day was had by all.

It sure was great seeing the "show families" and seeing all the new horse and rider combinations.

First Show of the Season

Sun, 13 May 2012 03:15:00 +0000

Oh what a busy day we had today getting ready for the first day of showing on Mother's Day, May 13, 2012.

Rochelle, Emma and I cleaned out the trailer and packed it full of show stuff. It is amazing how much trail riding stuff I had crammed in there.

Then in the early afternoon Emma and Emily had lessons and they started clipping and bathing their pony/horse.

I had the challenge of trying to find my showmanship jacket . . . .I wonder where that special place is I put it. I will eventually come across it.

Then there is the weatherbeta sheet of Ice's that I can seem to put my fingers on either. It is a good thing I have alternative sheets with tail covers, so I pulled them out and we will see which one I will use tomorrow.

The labels have been made for the card entries and copies of everyone's coggins is in the brief case, the saddle racks are loaded along with the canopy we sit under and we can't forget the lawn chairs.

The first show of the season is always the biggest challenge. We will see what we forgot, what we need to adjust and then the second show will be a walk in the park.

The weather looks fabulous for the first time in years and years and years.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers who are reading this blog.

May is Bike To Work Month

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:40:00 +0000

If you see a gal biking from Canton to Harmony between 7:15 and 7:45 and 4:30 and 4:45 that would be me.

Ya I know, I have enough on my plate, but this gives me a great exercise plan for the week. Although the amount of time I spend working in Harmony is maybe 1-2 days a week as I am floating around the region (Spring Grove, La Crescent, Houston, Waukon, and Lansing to name a few).

So if you see me riding, give me a wave, try not to honk as it might scare me and I sure don't want to crash.

The Amish ByWay is a challenge to miss all the potholes. If I hit one I may never come out, ha!

Downunder Horsemanship here I come . . .

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:40:00 +0000

I am so EXCITED!!!! I was just accepted to participate in the Intermediate Clinic at Downunder Horsemanship in Stephenville, TX in November.

The ordeal I had to go through to even get the video sent almost put me over the edge. It took Randy and I 2 hours to shoot the video. I thought it would be best to do the ground work in one video and the riding in another. First, I couldn't find the video clip to upload it to my computer. I finally found it and then the software I have to edit it wouldn't recognize the file. So I thought I would just upload the raw video to YouTube, nope, the file was too large. I then tried burning it onto a DVD-R, well that didn't work either because I didn't have the right "codec," whatever that means. So I decided to try to e-mail it, well those e-mails never went anywhere, they are in cyberspace somewhere. My last ditch effort was to just copy the raw video to the DVD-R and prayed that it worked. I waited for a week . . . . . a very long week . . . .before I received confirmation to attend the clinic.

I will be taking Cube as my riding partner, so I have a lot of work to do before we depart.

Now the next step is to decide what route I should take and where I should stop along the way for the nights. I expect it will take me 2 days to get down there and I want to be there a day ahead of schedule to ensure I don't run into any unforseen obstacles like a blown tire like what happened when I went to Buck Brannaman's Clinic.

POA stud colt, surprise!

Tue, 08 May 2012 03:15:00 +0000

We bought Dottie as a lesson pony last fall and to our surprise she was in foal. She missed Cinco de Mayo by one day and we were going to name him Mayo. Now we are looking for some names. We didn't know if he was going to have long ears or short ears.

He sure is a cutie!

It will be interesting to see if he colors out as his mom is a black and white leopard POA.

A Little Ice in May

Fri, 04 May 2012 04:00:00 +0000

No not the hail that Lake City just had, but Julie Chapman's mare had a little palomino stud colt Wed morning.

She has to pick a name yet, so I will post more pictures as he gets older.

Her mare also went 2-1/2 weeks over too, so that was the trend going on this year with the mares.

Christopher's also had a little filly on April 25th and I will need to take some pictures and post them on the web site too. Look back for more pictures.

Lots and lots of babies this year.

Fred, Equine Chiropractor, here April 28th

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0000

Fred, the equine chiropractor, will be at our barn this Saturday, April 28th, starting at 10:30. We have openings at 11:45, 12, 12:15, 12:30, 12:45, and 1 p.m.

Your horse will tell you if he needs an adjustment by trying to bite when you saddle, has a limp at the walk, trot or lope, doesn't flex as good to one side, doesn't take a certain lead or switches their tail when doing a maneuver.

Give me a call at 507-273-6126 if you would like to schedule an appointment. Your horse will thank you for it.

Teresa and Randy :lol: