Muuli's October in pictures

Even that this post is supposed to show pics only from my mobile, this is taken with my camera. It is so dark already after work that it is impossible to take pics from moving objects with my phone.

Based on my Finnish blog that has been online since 2015 it seems that October is the worst month for blogging. It it starting to get dark earlier every day and I need to leave work very early that I can ride in the day light. From November till end of February I don't have that kind of problem. It will we dark even that I leave work early, so I don't have any reason to go to the sable early.

But let's go to my October!

I was working at the farm last month and I took Muuli with me. I had got my drivings license for a horse trailer a month ago so I borrowed the trailer from our barn and drove to Porvoo to get Muuli. I backed the trailer pretty nicely in the arena so I could close the gate when I loaded Muuli. My cas was in the safe place at the other side of the gate.

Then I hauled Muuli back home. It was dark and rainy but we managed the 50 minutes drive.

Back at home Muuli had her first night inside her box since last spring. At our stable horses are turned out 247 during the summer time.

I use rug on Muuli during the winter time. Usually she has a rug on when it rains. If the weather is clear, she doesn't have the rug on. But in my area we have a lots of rain, so Muuli will have a rug on almost every day.

So you might quess that I have to wash all my rugs regularly, usually I do it once in a year. Last summer I washed many of them but I still had one dirty one. We horse owners from our barn were planning to send our dirty rugs on a laundry but I couldn't find the dirty one! It was blue striped 150g rug and last thing I remember was that it was very dirty and stinky. So how can I loose that kind of rug somewhere in our garage?!

When I was trying to find it I found another rug that is in the picture. I had no clue where I had gotten it from. It was used maybe couple of times and it fitted Muuli well. I posted a picture to my blog's Facebook and asked if someone had sold it to me. It didn't take long time until one of my friends replied that I had bought the rug after her pony passed away.

Finally I also found the rug I was looking for and sent it to the laundry.

Then I tried to find information about "uneven nostrils". My mule does that when she relaxes after the training session. She is not doing it right after the training but does it occasionally if I stay in the arena with her and for example chat with someone. So it might also indicate that she is getting bored.

I took a picture from her uneven nostrils and asked about it in Mule Girls Facebook group. I got many replies but no-one thought that it is okay and that it is a mule thing. It might indicate pain in her mouth, teeth or somewhere else. Her tooth has been floated in every 6 months and the next time is tomorrow, so I'm interested to see what the vet will say.

I also read a couple articles about new research about horses' calming signals. If you are interested about that, please go to this page. It is quite interesting and now I'm looking all the videos and pictures from a bit different angle.

Swedish donkey breed society is making a book about donkeys and they asked pictures for it. I had pics from my mules' hooves so I sent them. They also need picture taken from the front so I tried if mobule picture would work or do I need to use my camera.

 

I want to feed straw for my mule to keep her in good shape. She gets fat easily. Our hay producer brought us a handfull of "hailed crop" to taste. Off course Muuli loved it, but it is not good feed for equines. It has way too much sugar, starch and protein.

Here in Finland it is fed for cows but not for horses.

 

I don't usually ride much at the arena but in October I had to ride there a couple of times. I don't want to go hacking when it gets dark. I'm pretty sure Muuli doesn't have any problem with darkness but because she is still quite green, I don't want to risk my life.

On the arena I focused on mounting (hard for Muuli) and standing still (hard for Muuli). So mainly I just mounted, unmounted and stood still. I trotted couple of circles and did some lateral exercises.

Muuli also pooped on the arena so I had to clean it. I took the pictures after. I don't know how Muuli would have reacted if the fork would have fallen down. So please don't do this at home.

During the night time Muuli has only straw in her box. And during the day time she gets hay. This should keep her fit and in normal weight. the first winter that I had her she got quite fat and I don't never want to see her like that. She is still too fat and could loose 50 kilos.

I bought the rug on the picture from my friend. Horseware rugs are very good quality and quite expensive, so I was happy to get this one for 50 euros. Horse rugs are usually too big for Muuli at the neck, so I sewed this one smaller and took 20 cm off from the neck. Now it seems to fit fine. I had already sewed the rug for this pictures.

I don't like the rugs that have fleece liner inside. This one is 50g slippery liner so it is as warm as fleece lining.

Even that I didn't have much time to ride Muuli, we were hacking too! We had very nice weather this autumn and these pictures are from the last warm day at this year. We were hacking with Muuli's friend Elsa and her owner. We had great time and Elsa and Muuli works great together! They are both slow ones.

I bought a new helmet last month, Back on Track EQ3. I really like it! It fits my head extremely well and is light. This is the most expensive helmet that I have had, but it only cost 170 euros when I got great discount. Mu previous helmet was 30 euros via Facebook flea market.. It is not very vice to buy used helmet but at that time I didn't have money to buy a new one.

After our trail I let Muuli to roll on the arena. She really liked it!

I had bought 12 round bales of straw for our barn and it was time to get first 2. We don't have space to keep them all and I don't have a truck to get them all from where they are located. This straw is from my parents' field but the field is rented to the neighbor who cut them and baled them for me. They have 4 layers of plastic so they won't get bad.

This straw is much more moist than average straw that doesn't have wrap over it. But it smells good and is not dusty at all. And Muuli and the horses likes to eat it!

After 2 weeks the first patch of mold appeared. It seems that weather is too warm to open this kind of straw. Luckily the patches are easy to take off and the rest of the straw is good quality.

This picture shows how small spot I managed to back up the trailer!

I had bought this giant sized slow feeder net last summer. Finally I remembered to take it with me. Now there is no need to fill her net every day. We five straw from the slow feeder to make the loss smaller. If we gave it straight to the box the horses would just stomp and pee over it and wouldn't eat it anymore.

Muuli has Flex Hoof Boots already but I found another boots at her size for very reasonable prize from Finnish ebay. The size is 000 and it was supposed to fit her.. Well, they were way too small and now I need to resell these.  Luckily they were cheap.

We also had the biggest horse show in Finland in October! Helsinki International Horse Show. I got press pass because I have my Finnish mule blog and I was there for 2 days. It was great and I promise that some day we will be there with Muuli.

I also bought Muuli a bag of Stud Muffins. Mainly because Stud Muffins sponsors Wallace the great dressage mule in UK. Wallace was in the news this summer when her rider wanted to compete with him in dressage but mules weren't allowed. It took only a week until the rules had changed and they could join.

So if I give Muuli some Stud Muffins too maybe she will become as good as Wallace..

I ordered measure made tack for Muuli and finally I got the first pieces. I got bridle and padding for her britchen. The padding is almost as expensive as the britchen was but the padding is much better quality!

I will post better pictures from the tack as soon as I get them all. I ordered a lot!

I fit the bridle on and noticed some thinks that need to be fixed. And it was my mistake to tell wrong size for the nose band. It is too tight in the picture and it is in the last hole!

I love the browband!

At the end of the month I also received Boa hoof boots from Belgium. My friend from Hepscheid Longears Trails is very good bargain hunter from local ebay so she bought these boots for me!

I now have 2 boots size 00 and 2 boots size 0. The chart told me that smaller size, 00, is better for Muuli but when I tried these on, 0 is better. I can use bigger ones on front hooves and smaller ones on the back. Now I will use these on the summer time if Muuli gets sore and I can use my another boots during the winter time with studs on.

I also posted a short video in Facebook to show how Muuli walks and trots with Boa boots. She is also wearing her new bridle.


The last pic is taken bu our barn owner. It is taken after a short 1  hour trail ride in awful weather! Usually I don't even go to the stable if it rains but we had already made a plan of trail riding together so I needed to go. And I'm happy I did.

Pic by: Heidi Blom

Lue lisää

Horse keeping in Finland +vlog

As a part of my vloggers collaboration with Sari from Mulography I also made a video from our livery barn. I'm interested to see and hear how horses are kept in different countries and areas so please tell your horse in my comment box!

I think our stable is very typical Finnish horse stable. We have 10 boxes and horses are outside 12 hours in a day. In the summer they are turned out 247 and they are in the pastures. Except my mule, that stays in sand pen. I'm a bit afraid of her getting fat or getting laminitis.


During winter time we rug our horses. My mule usually wears 50-100g rug if it rains/winds a lot and only in coldest days (-15C or colder) she has 150g rug on her. She is unclipped.

If the day is unwindy and it is not raining, my mule doesn't have a rug on, not even when it is cold. So I want to protect her from rain and wind, not from cold.

We don't have indoor riding arena, but we have good outdoor arena with great lights. It is very dark in here let say from November to February. So if I'm going to the stable after work, I really need to put the lights on. It gets easier when we get snow around Christmas.

Here is some random pictures taken from our barn, but you get better image when you watch the video above.

Lue lisää

Working in the round pen, loping on the field, visiting the indoor riding arena..

I am currently working at the horse farm and we have also B&b quests in here. So my job is to take care of the boarding horses, make the breakfast for the quests and clean the rooms. I work here as a private entrepreneur for 10 days.

I took Muuli here with me with the idea that I have plenty of time to work with her too. At this barn we have roundpen, indoor riding arena, outdoor arena and great forests to do trail riding.

I got a photographer Reetta Ollila visiting us at the one day and here I tell about that visit.

First I cut Muuli's awfull long mane away. Her mane doesn't grow very long and it looks quite untidy in it's natural shape.

I tacked Muuli up at the aisle of the barn. Muuli is used to stand there in cross ties. Then we headed out to the round pen. My idea was to do a bit groundwork before riding. And it turned out to be a perfect solution, because after it the mounting was very easy and unstressfull for Muuli. She has a bolting background and she gets very tense when I sit on the saddle. I need to take her head almost to my leg to prevent her from bolting. And then we just stand there until she feels relaxed.

Before mounting I took an empty big barrel to the arena and I wanted to see, how Muuli reacts when I give her a lots of pressure to get her over that weird thing.

These are the cases where she tempts to bolt when I ride. For example if I try to ride over big puddle on the road and give her more pressure, she refuses, turns and tries to bolt. This time I managed to get her twice over the barrel. The problem was the barrel, it was too short so it was very easy to go around.

The weather was challenging to photographer. We had sun and very dark clouds taking turns in the sky.

Muuli had bosal hackamore just because it looks better in the pictures. I can handle her better with the PeeWee-bit. Lickily I had photographer friend with me to call an ambulance if I fell down badly. I walked and trotted a bit in the round pen and after maybe 10 minutes we headed to the road.

This was the second time riding Muuli on the open field and first time alone without horse/mule/donkey companion. And Muuli was perfect!! No bolting or any hesitation. I trotted and loped short strides for the pictures and walked a lot with Muuli. I think we were in the field maybe 20 minutes total.

After the field I continued riding in the indoor riding arena. We don't have one back at home, so I wanted to get Muuli used to it. This wasn't the first time she was in, because Muuli was living in this stable for 3 months right after I got her from Spain. But we didn't use indoor riding arena much back then. The last time she was in arena was a year ago.

There were some working equitation obstacles inside the arena and Muuli didn't really have tolerance for them. So she refused to go to the other side of the arena. This is exactly the situation where she bolts quite easily. She is afraid of something and I try to encourage her to go closer and I don't let her turn away from the scary object.

Here Muuli tried to escape from the scary blue barrel

She tried to turn, but I was ready and did one rein stop and there we were going merry-go-round for a couple of turns until she calmed down. By the end of our 15 minutes session we were able to ride around the arena without problems.

Then I got down and we returned tot he pen with Muuli. Reetta took some conformation pictures and we also played with the donkeys a bit. I had Muuli's bosal with me so we tacked biggest donkey, Lumi, and rode her around the pen for a couple of time. She wasn't very amused but all the other donkeys were!

Reetta and Lumi

Lue lisää