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Lake Washington Saddler
April, 2015
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Editor: Caroline Callender
Upcoming soon!
Equestrian’s Institute schooling dressage show - April 12
Earth Day work party - April 18
LWSC Jumper/Hunter shows - April 25 and 26
Cowgirl Rescue tack sale - May 2 - Sammish Grange 14654 148th Ave. in Woodinville
LWSC Bridle Trails Classic B-rated show – May 1, 2, and 3
Snohomish Co. 4H show – May 9
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Before we forget . . . . Have you renewed your membership?
Is this Goodbye?
If you haven’t renewed your membership for 2015, then this is the
last Saddler that you will receive. Don’t miss out on all the news,
renew now on our website.
Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way . . . .
Nature’s Diary
Today I had the pleasure to ride out solo in the park and just absorb one
of the prettiest, most soulful spring days I‘ve ever seen. The woods
were just “ringing” with birdsong. Better than the soundtrack to the
Waltons! One of the most boisterous and complex calls you’ll hear
belongs to one of the smallest birds you’ll see in the park; the Winter
Wren. You may not actually see them that much, as they flit through
the salal, but I bet you’ve heard them plenty of times!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvdwamHv_fk
The other old friend that I saw today was the trillium. They line the trails in
many locations, just as if they were planted there for our enjoyment. There is
something comforting in how they come back, reliably, every year. Somehow, if
the trilliums are still coming up, not all can ever be that bad . I knew they were
a special flower, and a short bit of online research taught me this:
They start out white, and then often turn pink and magenta. The green leaves
you see are really a “bracht”, which is more like a petal than a leaf, biologically,
yet CAN photosynthesize. The berry-like seeds are dispersed by ants. And the
stem you see grows up from a rhizome (kind of like the iris plant), and pulling off
the flower can KILL the whole plant. You’d think it would just grow back next
year, but it won’t. In some urban areas, people feel so inspired by their elfin
beauty that the just have to pick them. DO NOT PICK them. Leave them to
meet you again, next spring!
And lastly, as I rode along on this lovely, warm day, suddenly I heard the cracking
and popping, then crashing of a tree, likely leaning off to one side for years,
spontaneously falling down. Not a breath of wind, no rain. It just got one
molecule too rotten to stand another minute. Maybe a squirrel walked out on
one branch and the added weight was what tipped the scales. I don’t know, but
I do know that I am mighty glad it was not right next to, or on top of, me! (Oh,
and by the way, that’s just a picture off the internet, not the tree I actually
heard. But, it could have been . . . .)
Horse Health - Grass, grass everywhere!
These long spring days are bringing out the grass so fast you can almost see it growing. those of us that keep horses on
pasture may need to pay attention to how much of that green grass our horses are getting. I know the horse I ride can
pack on the pounds really fast when the grass starts to come in. This got me to thinking . . . how can such a big animal
survive on such a lowly food source? How many calories DOES grass have? I mean, how a 1,000 pound animal can pack
on all that flesh and bone . . . from GRASS!
What we call Calories are really Kilocalories (1,000 small calories), in scientific terms. for use in determining a horse’s
caloric needs, due to their size, they use “mega-calories”, which are 1,000 Kilocalories. An average horse in not hard
work will need about 15.2 Megacalories, or 15,000 Calories as we think of them. About 9 times what we need to
maintain. My Google search brings up pasture grass has having about 800 Calories per pound, though another source
sets it at about 250 Cal/pound. The average horse, kept solely on pasture, would need to eat about 20 – 30 pounds of
grass to maintain his weight. Does that seem right?
For more information on horses and spring grass, go to:
http://www.lakewashingtonsaddleclub.org/articles/spring-pasture.pdf
For information on how to judge your horse’s body condition score, check out this video from thehorse.com:
http://www.thehorse.com/videos/30355/whats-your-horses-body-condition-score
Refer to this chart to determine you horse’s score:
http://www.lakewashingtonsaddleclub.org/articles/body-condition-score-chart.pdf
Hunter / Jumper News
Show season gets under way this coming April 25th and 26th, with the LWSC Jumper
show on Saturday and the Hunter show on Sunday. A message from our
hunter and jumper show managers:
We love Volunteers!!
Are you looking to get your year-end award qualifying volunteer hours done early? The April Hunter and Jumper
Fun Shows can use you! We are looking for, announcers on both Saturday and Sunday, ribbon kids for both days,
and a tear down crew for Sunday after the hunters are finished. Remember that you need 8 total hours to be eligible
for year end awards! Sign up here: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0b4aa5ae23a0fd0-april
April H/J Fun Show participants: get your stall reservations in NOW. We will have 40 stalls available first come first
served and are already 2/3 filled on hunter day and 1/2 full for jumpers! Stalls are $30 for each day and $10
overnight. Please email [email protected] to reserve your stalls - trainers please send one
email to reserve a block for your whole barn for simplicity sake.
And one more thing: each Hunter Fun Show this year will offer a free Fun Class which will different at each show.
April’s is a ride a buck class! Here are the descriptions to all of them, so you can be ready to join in!
Dressage News
Summer is fast approaching and the Lake Washington Saddle Club is again offering four dressage schooling shows. Our
shows are held in the beautiful setting of Bridle Trails State Park in Kirkland. Besides great footing and friendly top-level
judges, the park has miles of safe riding trails.
We welcome all levels and all types of USEF/USDF approved dressage tests including Eventing, Musical Freestyle, Gaited,
Para-Equestrian and Western Dressage.
Great news this year – you can enter and pay online, or you may mail your entry with a check payable to LWSC.
REMINDER – Our shows fill up long before the entry deadline, so enter early to avoid disappointment.
http://www.lakewashingtonsaddleclub.org/forms/dressage_entry_online.html
We are happy to welcome Heather Andreini and Tina Lanzinger as the dressage co-managers this year. And we thank
Indra for all her hard work over the last 5 years. Maggie Phillips is still onboard as show secretary.
The schedule:
June 14th, Sunday – Judge Kellie Larsen
July 19th, Sunday – Judge Molly Martin
August 9th, Sunday – Judge Carrie Gregory
September 13th, Sunday (our dress up show) – Judge Wendy Meyers
Please visit our website for entry forms, contact information and the show rules.
Playday / Gymkhana
We are still hoping someone is interested and willing to take on the management of our
Playday/Gymkhana shows. Currently, dates for shows are scheduled for June 13th and
September 12th. These are one of the easiest to manage, as there is NO pre-show sign up for
classes. All is done the day of. The attitude is pretty loose and the fun atmosphere makes the
“work” seem like play. We’d love to have someone who was, perhaps, involved in 4H as a youngster, and wants to see
that sort of tradition carry on down the generations. Riding should be about fun, as well as “discipline”. Please take a
leap of faith, and take on this position! Email me at: [email protected]
Our Club at Work!
Arena footing is something that a rider can take for granted, but if it’s NOT right, then it can be a real problem, even
resulting in injury to horse or rider. The care and maintenance of the footing in the big arenas at BTSP is part of the
many things that our club does that benefit EVERY rider who enjoys the park. Over the years, we have spent tens of
thousands of dollars on the footing. Not only the footing, but the base of the arena must be carefully maintained with
regular dragging and patching or repositioning of layers.
Recent work by Nick Whitman to redistribute the top layers of footing should have made the surface much nicer to ride
in. The entire top layer of material was pulled into the middle of the arena, the base condition assessed and some
corrections made, and then the top layer replaced so that the “crown” of the arena was, to some degree, restored. I
think it looks a lot better, don’t you?
Here is a general type of arena construction, not necessarily ours, just to show the slope:
This will hopefully improve the conditions, but it is only a temporary measure, as the crown of the base is what is most
critical for drainage, and this has lost enough of its slope to make improvements via dragging the top layers of limited
benefit. What it means is that the entire arena will need to be redone, in the near future.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who is familiar with arena footing (not me!), since all arenas have a limited
lifespan, and it’s not as long as you’d imagine. With the type of footing, use, and exposure to weather our arena
experiences, you’d assume an approximant ten year lifespan. We have, with judicious patching and padding, made the
current footing last much longer. But, we cannot ignore that soon enough, we shall have to make some major
expenditures to redo the entire arena. This is where you can see what a valuable service out club performs for all
equestrians who ride here with us. Bully for the Lake Washington Saddle Club, and all we do, and a special big thanks to
Gail Magnuson for all the work she did researching this and putting the repairs into motion.
Other infrastructure concerns being addressed by and financially supported by our club will be future improvements to
drainage for the temporary stalls in the parking lot, where flooding has been an issue in the past.
Tidbits
We hear that long time member Jeanne Wolfe is recovering well from her stroke and so do not be surprised to see her
out walking her adorable little dog around the picnic area, or even out riding her lovely paint horse.
I hear on the grapevine that Suzanne Kagan has a new Andalusian horse in her barn. Or at least, she’s trialing him.
Shsss. Don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret!
Sue Shecket is off to Spain in May, to take in the annual Andalusian Horse Fair , in Jerez. I tried to get her to take me as
a Spanish-speaking trunk monkey, but it’s a no go. http://www.andalucia.com/festival/jerez-horse-fair.htm
Swag! Yes, it IS coming, and you are going to just love it!! Big thanks to Olinda Blackburn.
Purple Horse?
Seems that either not a single person has had a boo-boo, or no one’s letting me in on it.
And, just to embarrass him , here’s Shawn Tobin, our State Parks NW Regional manager (south area), who wanted to
gain some “cred” with us by showing what a horseman he was, age 8, riding “Bandit”.
Yep! The horse joke is coming . . .
One day a man passed by a farm and saw a beautiful horse. Hoping to buy the animal, he said to the farmer: "I think
your horse looks pretty good, so I'll give you $500 for him."
"He doesn't look so good, and he's not for sale," the farmer said.
The man insisted, "I think he looks just fine and I'll up the price to $1,000."
"He doesn't look so good," the farmer said, "but if you want him that much, he's yours."
The next day the man came back raging mad. He went up to the farmer and screamed, "You sold me a blind horse. You
cheated me!"
The farmer calmly replied, "I told you he didn't look so good, didn't I?"
Caroline’s Art Corner
As Saddler Editor, I get the unique honor to share with you some of my artwork. This is for your enjoyment, my ego, and
possibly to generate business for this overweight but “starving” artist, as I DO take commissions for custom portraits,
and I DO have original and print artwork for sale.
You can see some of my “Blue Horse” series at the Arteast Gallery, in downtown Issaquah. My first gallery showing
ever! So, for April: Blue Horse Beauties!
I just gotta say, again, as a new member to the board, my head is STILL spinning with all that is being dealt with by the
Board. In particular, I am so very much impressed with the dedication that long time board members offer, voluntarily,
to this club. I take my hat off to you all!