Zeus is being started

[Baroque]

I'm delighted to report that the young chap is now being ridden and is starting to become a proper horse.

I dropped him off at the breakers last Monday and by Wednesday night he had already ridden him a couple of times and said he was wonderful!

I had done most of the preparation anyway, he's been backed and had lots of inhand and lungeing work over the Xmas break prior to going off to the breaker for more working type preparation and schooling [that his old mum is too decrepit to participate in]. I worked him inhand over the Working Equitation obstacles most days as well, so he had lots of things to think about, his favourite is still the bridge and the random poles and all the cones.

He will learn all about stock work while he's there and the breaker is very keen to have the young horses he trains learning about normal things they will encounter on the farm every day like opening and shutting gates, garrocha, obstacles, ropes, and all the scary flappy stuff with flags and tarpaulins that we also do at home so he should end up with a very solid foundation as a working horse, which will be super for his Working Equitation and display life ahead of him.

I had him collected and frozen back in October so have enough frozen semen stored to start a decent sized horse herd! The stallion handler at the facility said he had a very very high libido.... tell me something I don't know! His progressional motility was very high [92%] and even after freezing it was still up in the high 80's.

He was gelded in November as I really do not need a stallion, especially one with a super high libido - and it makes management of the property with all those mares rather difficult as all our horses live out at grass like most other NZ horse breeders and properties. With a number of excellent PRE stallions arriving here in the past 3 months it meant his future use for stud services would be very limited and so I decided it was much fairer on him [and me] to have him gelded and enjoy him as a wonderful riding partner in the future. He has already started becoming such a nice horse to handle that I'm delighted that I made that decision. Some photos taken a few days before he went off to "school". Please excuse the weeds in the background and the neighbours mess.

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[Chisamba]

Beautiful. Good idea to collect and geld I think.

[Anne]

Great update on Zeus! He looks gorgeous, and you must be so excited to watch his riding progress and looking forward to having him home. How neat that there are some new PRE stallions here - presume one of them is Paseo II (just found a website with some pics of him, looks lovely), and will be interesting to see his progeny!! Also watching the Lusitano breeding with interest..... Please keep us posted on Zeus' progress.

[Baroque]

My Rosa is in foal to Paseo

[Hayburner]

He's Stunning!
How tall is he?
Lovely mane and tail and his build looks super!

Love my PRE mare!

[Baroque]

Thanks! Their manes and tails grow like weeds. I chopped about 400mm off his sister Rosa's mane when I hogged it and it all grew back again in under a year.

Zeus was about 3cm over the minimum height for stallions when measured by the studbook official last March, he has grown quite a bit since and I think he will end up over 16hh. They all seem to keep growing until they are 9yo in my experience.

He scored very highly on their evaluation in all sections [as did his older sister Rosa] so I was delighted when they both passed with flying colours as we had waited over 4 years for a visit from ANCCE so we could start breeding from her. She is now in foal to the lovely Calificado stallion Paseo II so I'm hoping we will get either a dark bay or black foal later this year.

[Baroque]

Update from breaker is that he is being ridden over tarps in walk and trot and getting used to flags and lots of other objects - we had already done a lot of this inhand so getting it nice and calmly under saddle is great for his future work.

He will be doing Working Equitation and some of our jousting displays as well as stock work so I need him to be very relaxed around scary objects as that's what we do here.

He is now doing walk and trot over uneven poles under saddle very nicely, and he is nice and soft and picking up change of bend from seat and leg really well.

The attention span around other horses is still that of a gnat however this will improve as his testosterone levels drop more towards those of a normal gelding and there's always chasteberry... apparently this is super for hormone issues in geldings as well as mares.

[Baroque]

Now doing stock work and is being ridden over poles and tarps and dragging stuff

I had my first ride on him on Monday and he is super light, very responsive to leg and seat and is an absolute joy to work with!

[Kyra's Mom]

Gorgeous...I am glad he is taking to being a riding horse so easily.

ENJOY

Susan

[StraightForward]

Sounds like he has a great brain inside that pretty head!

[Baroque]

He's doing extra well, such a clever chap!

Playing with garrocha and rings..

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[Quelah]

Your cowboy is very Great Basin of California with his gear

[Baroque]

Your cowboy is very Great Basin of California with his gear

He originally comes from Colorado and has been training horses here in NZ for a few years now.

I haven't got around to asking him what the 2nd girth strap on a Western saddle is for, can anyone enlighten me on the reason for it?

[Quelah]

LOL! It's called a flank cinch. The purpose is that if you are actually being a REAL cowboy and upon occasion throwing a rope and catching a cow, when that 5-1,000 lbs animal hits the end of the rope, it can actually pull the back of the saddle UP, which is problematic for the rider and really not nice for the horse's back right behind the shoulder as you can imagine. Western saddles are MEANT to be used with a flank cinch, but rarely are. It stabilizes the whole saddle, which is quite long front to back. Flank cinches should be adjusted as your fellow's is, in contact with the belly. Not snug like the front girth, but you shouldn't be seeing much daylight between the leather and the horse, as it obviously wouldn't do any good otherwise. Many people who do use them have them really loose, like 4-6" of daylight, which is really dangerous. You can imagine the wreck if the horse got his hind foot caught up inside the flank cinch.

My flank cinch funny (to me anyway). When I ride western, I ride in a roping saddle with breast collar and flank cinch. I don't rope, but the saddle without those things, to me, is like a man wearing a suit jacket with board shorts and tennis shoes. It just ain't right. So I've taken a couple of cowboy dressage lessons on Milagro (tacked up as described). The instructor very nicely told me that my tack was correct for cowboy dressage (this I knew) but that no one really uses breast collars and flank cinches. I was like, well, this horse *needs* a breast collar, and since this is a roping saddle, it *needs* a flank cinch. I always snicker to myself when I see someone carrying a rope on a saddle without a flank cinch. Really? Go ahead and tie one off, but keep your weight back when you do and see if you can keep the back of the saddle down. Around here we call that kind of thing "Big hat, no cattle."

[Chisamba]

I like how he looks both relaxed and interested in what is going on

[Baroque]

More stock work photos from the breaker...

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[Baroque]

And this one which I love..

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He loves working cattle and has a huge interest in everything going on.

I rode him again yesterday and he is such a super ride, I am so pleased I sent him here for training because he is nice and light and responsive to ride, and his manners are impeccable [most of the time] - he is still coming down off a testosterone high after serving and then being gelded so the distractions are getting less and he is much more focused on me now.

I loaded him on the truck and brought him home and he is delighted to be back home again!

[chantal]

He is gorgeous, what great photos! You must be thrilled. And I covet that forelock!

[Ryeissa]

how fun! I missed this all till now. He is lovely.

[Baroque]

Well he had a super rest over the winter, he had from the end of May - Oct off! I just started riding him again a couple of weeks ago and he is so sensible and so nice to work with. <3

He has grown up a bit more in his brain and body and is such a nice ride, so I've entered him in our local show for some of the ridden classes even though he's only walking and trotting at this stage - I will start adding canter when I think he is strong enough and is ready for it. We have nice calm canter on the lunge most of the time and he is getting used to me asking for a strike off and few strides on the lunge.

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Here he is wearing a rug for the first time in ages, he went through the winter naked and I'm trying to get all that old hair out and keep him clean now!

[Baroque]

Here he is in the first photo with his girlfriend Desi [on the left] before I started coat stripping..... His mum is on the right stuffing her face as usual.

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[Tuddy]

Very handsome!

[Baroque]

Here are some photos from our show a few weeks ago which was his very first outing under saddle and after he'd had a very long holiday over the extremely wet winter and as a result of all my trips away to places like WEG etc... so he had the sum total of only 10 rides since May, with his first introduction to the bell maze the day before the show cos I like leaving it all to the last possible minute!

Here we are just after ringing the bell and about to reverse down the line of cones.

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And here we are powering on and changing rein in the first group ridden class where I just let him work on a fairly loose rein and was happy for him to relax into the moment because it was all about him [and me] having a great no hassle day and him to learn that shows are nothing to worry about or get silly in. We kept to walk and trot so that he learnt it wasn't all about zooming about like a mad thing when he was in the ring with the other horses, and we haven't cantered at home other than the odd stride because he simply wasn't strong or balanced enough.

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We wore all our normal working tack because he was happiest in it for the day and I didn't want to change the setup and upset him.

Everyone there (especially the judge) was impressed at how laid back he was all day, there were other horses having tantrums and behaving badly so I was extremely proud of his steady and kind nature! The judge said some lovely words about him and told me he'd like to take him home. <3

We only had one oh cr@p! moment where he teleported while warming up because the golf cart they use to take results around the show decided to chase us and we hadn't seen it! It was a very heart stopping moment for me because I had no idea why we moved 20m in a nanosecond but when we turned around to look at it he was like Pfft! its just a car thing and he completely relaxed and let it go past him.

I got some good canter work from him this week, and he is just such a dude to work with which is really good for an old lady like me!

[chantal]

He sure is a handsome guy! I don't know why I hadn't seen this before now, so cool! How are you doing now?