Weatherbeetas are better.

I'm slowly building Baasha back, I'd like him to get more fit. We jog ever-so-slowly up long hills now, and it's really hard for him. It would be nice if we had something steep, and we could just walk up steep stuff, like back home, but this is all easy stuff, so we have to jog. His feet are really sensitive to rock lately and he's always walking on the edges of the trail, for softer footing. Poor baby, I spend a lot of time off of him due to this, leading him. I hope the easyboots arrive soon!

He snorted danger warnings to the entire zip code - this time at cattle. I don't know why they look strange to him, they look the same as American cows to me! But they really set him off! Today we saw some sheep and a goat, and he got all tense and I said, "SHEEP! GOAT!" and didn't let him spend time for theatrics.

We looked for a geocache, didn't find it, found a nice old lady that I'd chatted with before. She said "Oh, the American!" and was happy to see me. I told her I was looking for a cache (bad etiquette to tell muggles....) and she said I should ask the people who live nearby. (so funny!)



There was a gorgeous herd of Haflingers, they get so pretty in winter - some of them have this weird coat pattern where their backs are dark red, but it fades lighter down their sides until their bellies which are almost white. A dappled pattern divides the colors sometimes. Gorgeous! I will try to get pictures. I picked my favorite, a baby with a pure white mane and tiny ears like an Arab.

It's amazing to me that only after one time in an area, Baasha knows it. We rode a particular loop backwards, our second time. He knew it, backwards was no problem, he knew all the turns before I asked, even though he'd never gone that way, and he'd only been there once in his life.

I decided that there's no need to ride with a bit, so I've been either riding with just a halter or his bridle with the bit removed. Without other horses firing him up, he doesn't need it.

He still won't eat bread, like German horses do (as treats), and he prefers carrots to the sour apples that are falling down all over the place now.

This is Baasha's winter blanket. It's starting to get a bit cold, so I took it to the cleaners today to get altered - it's just a bit too long. Thankfully, the lady said she'll do it. That would be cool if it works. I'm sick of poopy too-long blankets. A 70 is just too big, I need to face it. But I'm really mad at the style of the blanket that Schneiders sells. Almost all their blankets have "wither relief cuts" meaning they are fitted to the withers. But this is stupid, cuz it only covers half the withers. It is basically your old fashioned, cut-back blanket that allows the withers to get rained on, and rain to get inside the shoulder area, and puts a great deal of pressure on the wither area. I hate that. I want to really commend whoever came out with the first modern horse blanket that completely covers the withers. You know, the "bag lady" type, but they are so amazingly effective at keeping that much more of the horse dry, and no pressure spots. I have two sleazies and I'm probably gonna have to use them both with the Schneiders blanket. We'll see what happens. I don't want my baby in just a rain jacket as soon as it freezes here. One more stupid thing about this blanket: The velcro adjustable neck straps. What? Those only make the neck hole smaller. That's no good if your horse needs to put his head down, ever.

The Weatherbeeta rain sheet I have on him now is so much better - there is absolutely no pulling under his neck when he drops his head to graze. Look at how low the neck closure is - designed for grazing! There is no pressure on the withers, it completely covers them. Even though I don't like how long it hangs down, so he looks like he's wearing a dress, it's a good design where it matters. You can compare the neck-hole angles and see that this one hangs almost straight up and down. That's better. From now on, I'll only buy Weatherbeetas. (I found a site in England that has them.)

Wuppertal is pretty these days. Here is a picture of the symbols that mark the trails - there are several loops that cross thru and circle around Wuppertal. Many of these are over 100 KM long, taking people through towns and woods. I still don't know which are which. People are scouring the woods for mushrooms. The cooking kind. It's odd, it's totally ubiquitous in Germany now, mushroom seekers are out! Making geocachers less conspicuous!