BABIES!!!

Since I subjected you all to the breeding process, I thought I'd share with you what happens 12 months after breeding. You get babies!!!

They are so stinkin' cute!

Cowgirl Out.

These Boots are Made for Walking (and so is other stuff)

     There's an awful lot of equipment that goes along with walking horses. Today's post  is all about the shoes and saddles you need to for a walking horse.

This is a Western saddle. This what most people think of when they think of a saddle. The original purpose of western style saddles were spread the rider's weight over a larger area of the horses back. This is to make things more comfortable for the horse for long rides. It also has a little more equipment to help the rider stay on the horse (keep reading, I explain this later), 

     The other kind of saddle is an English style saddle. It is much smaller than the western saddle, and is made to hold the rider closer to the horse. This guy scares me a little bit, because I feel like nothing is there to keep me intact if things get a little rough.

     In the walking horse world, the different kinds of saddles are in divisions of horse shows (such as the Celebration). Divisions are called "classes."

      You guys should know that I like to make stuff. I feel like making models of things gives me such a better understanding of what things are and how they work. So this is my model of a western saddle (originally, it was going to English, but I just like western better). To break down the parts of a saddle, I have color coded arrows. The yellow arrow is point to the saddle horn. The red points to the part of the saddle that holds you in. This is much more pronounced in western saddles than in English saddles. Purple points to the seat of the saddle. The light blue arrow shows the leather flap, which protects your leg from the buckles and such that attach to the girth (the thing that goes under the horse and ties on the saddle). The light brown arrow shows what I call "The Oh No Handle." It's pretty self explanitory, if something happens that makes you want to say, "OH NO!" then grabbing the oh no handle, might be a good idea. Last but not least, the pink arrow points to the saddle pad, which is not actually part of the saddle. Its job is to protect the horse from the saddle's buckles and such (much like the leather flap goes for the rider). It also absorbs sweat, like a sock.
    Much like people do, horses need shoes for walking. There are LOTS of different kinds of shoes. I'll show you pictures, but I'm not going to bore you with all the different purposes and uses for them. (Partially because you would loose interest, and partially because I don't remember everything, and I don't want to tell you guys the wrong thing) It really surprised me that there were so many more kinds of shoes other than just the typical horseshoe shape.

Cowgirl Out.

Warning Kids: This Could Get Messy

!!!WARNING FOR ALL THOSE NOT-SO-HORSE-PEOPLE!!!

TODAY'S POST IS KINDA GRAPHIC

     I just want ya'll to be aware of that. A few days ago, I went to the barn on breeding day. It was an interesting day to say the least. Let me tell you, I learned ALL about the breeding process, and now I get to share it with you!

     First of all, we need to know the terms. A stallion, or stud, is a male horse. Breeding studs are male horses with favorable genetics. Mares are female horses, and brood mares are mares that are used to breed and have babies. This (that picture over there -->) is an AV, which is short for Artificial Vagina (If this already bugs you, then just quit reading now, and wait for me to make my next post.) And AV is filled with hot water that is the same temperature as a female's insides. A plastic liner is inserted through the middle of the AV. At the end of the liner, there is a bottle with a filter in it.
     When the AV is ready, it is time to collect from the stud. Mike leads the stud (This one is Gen's Armed & Dangerous) to the phantom dummy, and when once the horse is all hot and bothered, he mounts the
phantom. Christy then directs the penis into the AV, and the semen collects bottle at the end. Sometimes, to get the stud in the right mood, they put a tease mare next to the phantom. This is a mare that is in heat. Other times, they collect into the AV off of a tease mare's back. The other option for collecting a stud is just the old fashioned, live action way to do things. (I'll spare you the images of that.)
      After the bottle has been detached from the AV liner, and the filter has been removed, it is time to take things to the lab!

    Mike takes a small sample of the semen and puts it in a machine that calculates how many million sperm are in one cubic milliliter of semen. He then puts the sample under a microscope and eyeballs what percentage of the sperm are alive and moving (he then subtracts 5% from what he thinks to calculate in for human error). The sperm density and the amount of semen collected factors how many brood mares can be bred from the one collection. The semen is then measured out and mixed with a nutrient-rich liquid. This helps the sperm survive until insemination time.
     At this time, if the semen is being shipped somewhere, it is packaged and taken to the airport. Live semen cannot legally go through any mail carrying service, but it can be shipped through commercial airlines, such as Delta and Southwest.
     Once the semen has reached its destination (sometimes its across the country, other times, its across the barn), it is ready to be artificially inseminated. The semen is poured into a syringe, but instead of a needle, there is a long tube at the end. The brood mare's birth canal is washed (you start from the inside and work your way out) and then Mike inserts the tube into the mare, and injects the semen near the cervix. He massages the cervix to encourage it to open up, increasing the likelihood of out foaling out the mare (that's horse speak for "getting the horse pregnant").
     In a few days, the doctor will come to the barn to do an ultrasound. Hopefully, the mare will be pregnant and twelve months later, there will be a baby.
    Man, I sounded really technical there. More importantly, I watched it enough times the other day, that I'm not super grossed out by it. I think that makes me much more of a cowgirl than I was when I started off that morning!
Cowgirl Out!

Not Sure How Good This Will Work, But Hey, I'm Tryin'

Hey My Cowfolk-To-Be,
     Today, Christy taught me how exactly a horse bit works in controlling your horse. I tried to get pictures, but they didn't come out very well, so please bare with me.
     Christy has this really cool looking metal horse head that she uses to teach her riding students about several things, including how a bit and bridal work. ( <-- That's it with a bridal on.)
 Like I said, these pictures are really hard to tell what's going on. But here is the bit inside the metal horse mouth. Notice how the bit arches up into the horses mouth. This lightly touches the soft palette on the roof of the horse's mouth. By pulling on the reins, the bit applies pressure to the soft palette, and the head is directed either left or right. This pressure encourages the horse to be submissive to the turning of his head, so he goes in a new direction.

 Different bits have different pressure ratios. The bit that started my adventure, the one that Strolling Jim used back in the 1930's, has a 1:1 pressure ratio. This means that for every one pound of pressure you pull on the reins, it apples one pound of pressure to the horse's mouth.

Here is another picture of the bit in the metal horse mouth. The top lip cuts across the top of the picture, and the bottom lip is the part is the semi-circle toward the bottom of the picture. You can sort of see how the bit goes into the mouth and touches what would be the roof of the mouth. Once again, I apologize for the bad pictures.

How the Horses have Devoloped

Howdy ya'll! (I'm sounding more cowgirl, right?)
     Over the years, like anything else, the breed of walking horses has developed. What makes a good walking horse has gotten more specific, as the industry has grown.
The biggest difference in these two horses (Strolling Jim first, then Gen's Armed & Dangerous, the 1994 Grand World Champion) is their stance. Jim's legs pretty much go straight down from his body. Armed's back legs go out at much more of an angle. This is called "parking out," and it is a posture designed to accent the horses good features. Because Armed is parked out, the muscles in his front shoulders and chest are accented. When parked out, horses hold their heads much higher. This obviously makes them look taller, and it once again accents their chest muscles. Since the back legs are not directly under the horse, the horse appears much longer. Armed's tail is also much longer. The only real purpose of this is simply for looks.

Strolling Jim

     The first ever Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration was won by Strolling Jim in 1939. His owner was Col. C. H. Bacon (which is an awesome name) and his trainer was Floyd Carothers. He was originally a work horse and had worked on several farms before he began his career as a show horse. before being crowned World Grand Champion, he won twelve consecutive sweepstakes classes in different horse shows throughout the south. He also used the horse bit that started my adventure to become a cowgirl who knows what she's talking about.
     There is an annual 40 mile run in Wartrace, TN (near Shelbyville, where the Celebration is held). This doesn't really relate to anything, but I thought it was interesting.
     There isn't much else interesting I can find about good ole' Jim, other than his tombstone, but oh well. I guess that's all have to say about him.
Cowgirl Out.

My (wrong) Attempt at Thinking Like a Cowgirl

Hello all,

     This post upsets me a little, but only because my attempt failed. My sculpture teacher gave us an assignment to pick a somewhat common object and to create a model of what it may have looked like several decades ago. The example he used was a watch. Now, a watch looks rather modern (then he showed us his hi-tech waterproof fancy watch). A hundred years ago, a watch would have looked quite different. He wanted us to really get into character to do this. We had to research a person who may have created our object in the past, and really come up with reasoning for the decisions we made about our object. 

     Since my current mission in life is to become a cowgirl, I wanted to make this project related to walking horses. The object I chose was a pair of stirrups. I thought about the first Celebration taking place in 1939. This was a hard time for farmers and other in agricultural fields, because of the Great Depression. If your stirrups broke, you were just out of luck if you couldn't afford new ones. If I was a cowgirl working on a farm, and I needed new stirrups, I would cowgirl up, and make them myself.

     I started looking up pictures of stirrups, and there are about a million different kinds. That did not make my project easy, because I didn't know what kind of stirrups to make. My logic is that if I live on a farm during the depression, I'm going to make something functional. So I made the simplest, functional stirrups I think of. This is what I came up with (It's bigger than the picture looks). I left all my edges rough, because if I'm working on a farm, I don't really care what it looks like, I care that it works. 

     I showed my project to Christy, and she told me that even the simplest of all stirrups had a loop at the top for the leather strap of the saddle to go through. So even though I was wrong, I learned that all stirrups have a place for the saddle strap to go through. This gets me one more step closer to being a cowgirl, a very small step, but I'll take it! And I got a good grade for my project, which is also important.
     Even though I was wrong, Christy let me try it out. I didn't like it, purely because I didn't feel like it was going to hold my weight for me to climb on, but it did work!

Cowgirl out.

First Things First. The Names.

Hello again to my fellow not-so-cowfolk!
     I believe in putting first things first, so I solved the biggest (or at least the most annoying) mystery first: horse names. You've heard my rant about how weird they are. Now I know why, and if you keep reading, you will soon know, too.

     Shakespeare once asked, "What's in a name?" Well, apparently, there's a lot more than you would think. In the horse world, a name is much more than what you call someone. It shows the horse's history and his bloodline. Horse names incorporate the names of the horses parents, especially their daddy. One of the horses at my barn, Generator's Got Color (we call him Ben) is a prime example. His mother's name is not really involved in his name at all, but you can tell that his great-great-granddad's name impacted his great-granddad's name, which impacted his grandpa's name, and I think you get the point. If not, refer to the chart. If a horse has a parent that is a big deal, then you want that to be known. If a horse has great genetics, then they are likely to become something great as well.
     This makes sense to me, but horse names are still weird. I just want a horse to be named Fido. It is a pet name.
     Another thing I learned this morning about horse names is that you can't register a name more than once. This also contributes to why horse names are so strange. Once Generator's Got Color dies, there will never be another Generator's Got Color. The Walking Horse Celebration has been going on for 75 years. Over those years, all the normal pet names (like Fido and Spot) have probably been taken. If you want to register a horse named Jasmine, you can't, because its been used. You have to get a little creative. Lots Of Jasmine becomes the alternative.
William S., now you know what's in a name.

The Bit that Started it All...

I just thought I'd share with you guys that horse bit that Strolling Jim used when he became the first ever Grand World Champion in 1939, so here it is. I had Christy send a picture of it for me to show you guys. Here you go!

Why walking horses? Why now?

Hey guys,
     I've never done a blog before, so I don't really know where to begin. I guess I'll tell you who I am, and why I'm starting this blog. My name is Holly Hagan, and I'm on a mission to become a cowgirl.
     It all starting when I was doing a friend a favor and helping her clean out some storage space at her horse barn. (check it out. http://newhorizonstable.com/ For all your breeding needs!) I stumbled upon this old, beat up display case with a horse bit in it. It looked like at one point in time it was important, but now it doesn't look like much. I wasn't sure if I should organize with all the other bits (that were hanging on the wall, not in display cases) or what, so I asked. My friend, Christy, said that her dad inherited it years ago, and that even though she and her husband hadn't treated it like so, it is actually kind of a big deal. Apparently, it was used in the first ever Walking Horse Celebration by the first ever World Grand Champion, Strolling Jim. (She also told me to keep the bit, but trash the display case, because it was already pretty much trashed, but that's neither here nor there.)
     I didn't think much of it at the time, but now, three days later, when I'm wide awake and I can't sleep, it's occurred to me that I don't know anything about walking horses or the Celebration. This probably isn't a big deal to most people. But I am not most people. New Horizon Stables is like my own personal sanctuary. Christy and her husband, Mike, lead my small group at my church, and they are like my extra set of parents. Whenever I need something therapeutic, I go to the barn, complain about whatever my problem is, until someone puts me on a horse. Then, I ride in circles, until I'm relaxed and have to get off, because I'm about to fall asleep. After that, the world is a better place for me.
     I feel like if the best way for me to get peace when I need, it involves walking horses, then I should know something about walking horses. I know that they're big, furry, and have four legs, but that's about it. I mean, why are they such a big deal? What makes this breed different from other breeds? Why are they "celebrated"? Why do they have such weird names? (Really, that one bothers me. Haynes Peacock is a horrible pet name. I just Googled "Grand World Champion names" and that horse was the GWC of 1940 and 1941. His owner's last name was Haynes. Why would you name a pet after yourself? Fido is a good pet name. Not Strolling Jim. What kind of pet strolls?) What exactly do Mike and Christy do? I could go on with questions, but I'll spare you with just those.
     I really just don't know anything about something I spend so much time around. So I've decided to cowgirl up and learn about what I'm dealing with when I go to the barn. The point of this blog is for me to track my progress and what I've learned, and to share it all with you readers (assuming that there will be readers).
     Hopefully, by the end of this, I'll be a full blown cowgirl.