The first part of this month I read Elwyn Hartley Edwards "Complete Book of Bits and Bitting". On page 50 I read about a bit I had never seen or read about before, the Wellep bit. Mr. Edwards called it the first new method of making bits since 400 BC. I was intrigued, I am always looking for stuff that makes the horses I ride more comfortable and for bits that help make up for the limitations of my hands. Going to the web I found the site…

An absolutely wonderful thing happened on Wednesday when I rode Mia.

After our usual warm-up of two speeds of the walk and threading our way between and around the jumps I prepared for a trot, shortening the reins, getting my heels down, and then I politely asked Mia to trot. To my utter amazement, Mia trotted off the first time I asked her to! After 18 months of urge, urge, urge before she would shuffle off in a slow trot, she…

Ah, summer is coming, and this week we got a foretaste of what is coming in a month or so. It has been so muggy that in the morning it almost looks like it is raining, and the heat just adds to the misery. This weather is not doing my MS symptoms much good, my left hand started to drop things and my fingers started working against each other instead of cooperating. I was sort of worried about riding in the heat (I go through this each year), but once I got up on…

Both mares I ride have been showing their approval of my change to the smooth rowel spurs. While I still irritate them sometimes as I put the spurs on my internal "body-map", I am getting much better responses to my legs even when I do not apply the spurs. I do not know if this is just from the presence of the spurs, as my toes have stopped going to east and west and are now staying nicely at a 30 degree angle or less to the horse's sides. This way, when I close…

Luckily, last week when I made it to the tack shop again they had gotten new spurs in, including a short shanked smooth rowel spur. On Wednesday I showed them to Debbie, and this time she liked my new spurs. This was good, Mia had gotten irritated the one time I had tried the POW spurs, and I was sort of prepared for further irritation as my smooth rowel spurs are as long as my POW spurs, but Debbie was right. Everything worked well, Mia showed absolutely no…