10/29/2011

This past week has been what you might expect from a working student; mucking, grooming, tacking up horses, turning horses in and out, cleaning tack, sweeping the barns, etc, etc, etc..

BUT. Yesterday I got to clip a horse. I have plenty of experience in body clipping horses, but I’ve never had to worry about whether or not it looked good. This horse hadn’t been clipped before, do he was antsy and I knew they probably didn’t have high expectations because of this, but I wanted to please, of course! :)

So I turned the clippers on and started and all of five minutes into it the clippers stopped shaving. I took the blades apart and put them back together several times with no avail and gave up and let Katrin figure it out. I was then on a roll. Since the horse hadn’t been clipped before I would shut the clippers off every fifteen minutes and give him a break. He was being really good, but the flies bothered him more than anything else and made it hard to clip with him moving around so much. So I guess the breaks were for me, too. I eventually got everything done but the legs and face and by that time the horse was fed up. I don’t blame him. We had been clipping for an hour and the blades were getting hot. But I tried his legs and he kicked my hand twice. Not hard, but still. I have been kicked one too many times to know how terrible it can be. It could escalate and I’d have yet another stitched up hole in me!

So Katrin put a twitch on him and we got the job done without too much fuss. Then I was off to do the rest of my evening routine.

This morning I got up early to go cheer on the Neuss Grefrath Reitclub team at a nearby horseshow! It was a lot of fun. They do a lot of things differently here than in the US, but I expected that. Like, for example, they got their horses ready at the trailers because there was no stalls to put them in. They didn’t wear that weirdo skirts over breeches look you see at Washington County Fairgrounds, but jeans instead. In the warmup ring, everyone goes in one direction at all time (someone asks to change directions if they want to go the other way). Three or four horses show in the arena at once (they all ride the same test and line up single file, except for halts, where they come down the centerline side by side). Even though it was a small show, there was an awards ceremony and they won prizes like saddle pads, polo wraps, and horse treats (jealous!). The levels and patterns are different. And they had a jumping portion of the show that added onto your score, but it was only for people under 21.

Our barn did really well and they all looked spectacular!

We made it back home in time for me to have my lunch. After, I went for another walk around Grefrath. I didn’t feel that I had enough time to go downtown so I stayed close by the barn.

When I got back I made some yummy risotto, watched tv, and talked to Chris and mother until it was time to go to bed. :)