Remodeling (end of month 1...of 5)
Our house was built in 1970. While it had renovations and additions since then, let’s just say they weren’t all done to code (okay, all the wiring was a significant fire hazard). The wallpaper and windows must have been the original and with the height of the toilets and showers being for people much, much shorter than us, we knew a remodel was in our future when we bought the place. What started out as a remodel of the bathroom and floors…well…took on a life of its own.
We’ve taken everything down to the studs! Its terrifying but very exciting as well. While we are not moving the walls (except knocking one down), so the design of the house will remain the same, the house will no longer look like it was built last century. Hopefully.
We are very fortunate to have a place to live during the remodel. The one bedroom studio efficiency apartment, minus a kitchen, has its own separate AC/heat, electricity source on the breaker, and water line…since they have shut off all power and water to the main house. Shawn and I are living here for four months with 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 reptiles (and Jareth comes home from college next month). Its a tight squeeze but we feel lucky to have it and to be able to make our house our own (and not a fire hazard!).
This is one of the openings in the wall that got moved. Our contractor has a sense of humor, this is his way of telling the demo crew to take this section down!
The crawl space is getting renovated as well, with new insulation and a radon mitigation system (because the previous owners opened the windows during the inspection’s radon test, making the radon level seem safe, but during the late fall and early winter it got well above safe levels).
Macchi watched them haul the new crawl space insulation across the yard….I wonder how much of that new insulation has dog poop in it from that?
Robert Dover comes to town!
The Northern Colorado Dressage Association hosted Robert Dover symposium. Volunteers were needed to drive him back and forth from the hotel to the farm. Our farm truck got a last minute self detailing and multiple washes (thank you unlimited monthly car wash subscription!). Kelly got to drive him on the second day of the symposium. While it wasn’t a long drive, she did get a chance to ask him a couple of questions. Watch for her take aways from that chat and symposium in June’s SEBB Times (if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter, see one of the posts below or on the ‘Services’ page).
Serene Equine: Bodyworks and Biomechanics gave away auditor bags that included some not so healthy snacks to go along with the healthy options provided by the NCDA as well as a KT tape application (with QR code to a video tutorial), as well as some dressage and equine muscle quizzes to work on during the break.
Our first newsletter!
We’ve released the first volume of SEBB Times! Every other month we will release a science and fun filled newsletter that includes DIY massage and taping tips/techniques, book reviews, case studies, and some fun. If there is a topic you’d like to see covered, send me an email about it: SereneEquineBB@gmail.com
To receive the newsletters, joint the mailing list! See details below.
Join us for the Science Behind Bodywork presentation
Kelly is presenting at the next Northern Colorado Dressage Association meeting. The zoom meeting opens at 6pm for some socializing, then 6:30pm presentation, and 7:00pm meeting. Join us!
To get the zoom link for them meeting, email Andrea at: ajc2314@gmail.com
https://noco-dressage.org/
Ode to Fascia
Its amazing to me still how a seemingly seem amount of motion in the myofascia can have such a large effect. The largest releases I’ve gotten recently have been during myofascial release therapy over the lumbar region.
Spring is in the air!
And so is the hair. I wore the wrong color clothes to work on a shedding buckskin fjord pony today!
Success in Taping!
Before: both hind legs laterally rotated, the right leg very much so; camped under
After: significant improvement with little to no rotation of hind legs and more normal leg position
Thank you Hobby Horse Farms
Kelly spent a fun filled day at the Hobby Horse Farms dressage schooling show getting to know some of the riders and boarders at their great facility!
https://www.hobbyhorsefarmco.com/
A little Continuing Education by the Fire
It has been a couple of very cold and snowy days here! The horses get an extra feeding of hay and an extra feeding of soaked pellets to help keep them warm and hydrated. Even with (-20) degree windchills over night, they were as comfortable as they could be.
In between lunch #1 and lunch #2 for the horses, a bit of studying for exams!
Kelly was out an extra hour early to make sure the coldest part of the morning the horses had hay again. The hay warms them up while they are eating it and then a few hours later when its being fermented in the gut.
Kelly is always working on some kind of education. This semester, she is taking Clinical Kinesiology as “the big one” and then smattering some online webinars and seminars for equine education. Clinical Kinesiology will add to her tool box of how the rider muscles work on a very detailed level.
Even the outdoor cats were happy to be indoor kitties.
Follow SEBB on social media for educational, interesting, and/or fun facts
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for educational information, biomechanics tips, fun and/or interesting tidbits. The first series of posts will include the physiological effects of bodywork on your horse. And we’ll put a smattering of fun content in there as well, including the Meet the Serenity Farm herd series.
Snow!
The warm weather took a break and we had some pretend snow flakes! Macchi was feeling the weather and he tried to get everyone to play with him. I think they were still bit tired from the journey last week and were more grumpy with him than usual.
Yeah…I think I’ll wait a little bit longer before trying to ride…maybe spring? Just kidding.
It was defiantly a blanket day for my more sensitive souls. Summer is the only one who has a thick enough winter coat for the Colorado winter. But to encourage her to keep drinking, she also wore a blanket last night (and was the only one who ran from me when I brought out the blankets.
Colorado Bound!
On October 22nd, an army of Serenity Farm family helped to load up 7 horses to head to Colorado.
The horse hotel on wheels showed up just at day break.
Everyone took a horse, and we had a couple extra handlers for those potential trouble makers.
Macchi was the first horse on the trailer. That wasn’t the plan, but I knew plans were just a rough sketch for today. He went first as the back most stall was the largest and well, Macchi is a giant among Serenity Farm horses.
Everyone loaded nicely…well, I would like to say that. Jayden got her self in a bit of a tizzy and took…longer than anticipated to load. Note the broken side…yes, that was from her.
But, she did get on, once she decided it was more work than just getting in the trailer with all her friends.
The horses headed out for the drive and I ran back to the house to put the last few things in the truck, load up the dogs, say goodbye to Shawn (who will join us when the house sells, or 3.5 weeks later if it doesn’t).
My realtor, who is a horse person, met me at the Colorado house with pizza and a friend to help out the final touches on the yard (magnetic flash lights, reflective tape and poles, water tank filled, hay piles out, etc.). The week before I had been in CO for a few days setting up fencing and making a safe arrival area for the horses, knowing it would likely be dark when they unloaded.
And it was. At 11:00pm, 14 hours after they left Bentonville, the horses arrived. The rig was able to turn around in the pasture and then park where the driveway was gravel and safer for unloading.
We took the horses off two at a time so they wouldn’t be alone in the pasture. Jayden unloaded much quieter than loading.
While I was settling the horses in, the drivers unloaded all the bedding and manure. That’s 7 horses worth of shavings and leftovers (both of hay and what the hay turns into). It may or may not still be sitting there a couple weeks later…
While they were tired from the journey, they did trot around a little bit before settling in for some hay. They had hay and water in front of them for the whole trip and since they all had box stalls, the hay was on the ground so they could stretch their necks and clear their airways.
My helpers left shortly after knowing the horse were settled (remember that the trailer didn’t get in until 11pm, I don’t blame them and will be forever thankful for their help), the hotel on wheels left just before midnight.
I stayed up with them until 1:00am before getting a few hours rest and checking on them again around 4:30am
Then a couple more hours of sleep and starting our first day in Colorado at 7:30am
Even though we did everything right, horses will be horses. Jesse did end up with a bit of a tummy ache but after a couple days at Colorado State University, he is all better and happy to be settling home with his friends.
The view is beautiful and we were fortunate enough to arrive in temperate weather conditions. The horses seemed to have settled very quickly into the new routine. Though, some of the more chilly mornings they are rather excitable.
Skeleton in the closet
Kelly has been taking online college anatomy and physiology classes to further her biomechanics work. Here is where one of pieces of the take home lab equipment lives, a skeleton in the closet! 🤣
We're moving!
Serenity Farm is relocating to northern Colorado! We have talked among ourselves about moving north for some time now. While we thought it would still be a year or two out, a good opportunity came about this summer and we took it.
At the end of October, the horses will be loaded into a commercial air-ride tractor trailer rig with all 7 having their own box stalls so they can travel in whatever orientation they want, can drop their heads, have hay on the ground, and hopefully recover quicker when we arrive.
It has been a fantastic 10 years teaching dressage and fundamentals of good basics and biomechanics in NWA. We have seen riders grown as horsewomen and as people and will always be grateful for the start we had here in Arkansas.
The view from our new back porch. There will be a riding path that goes around the edge of alfalfa/grass hay field, riding towards the Rockies.
Using new toys!
Development of correct muscles to carry the rider, and for dressage, is important for our horses, no matter what age or fitness they are in. During the massage certification course, students were introduced to the use of multiple modalities to help the clients’ horses feel better and improve.
Serenity Farm recently got in two new tools, the EquiCore Bands and two of the slanted SureFoot Pads!
The EquiCore system was scientifically researched for years to develop the correct material at the right pressure to stimulate the abdominal muscles of our horses. While it looks like a belt, it is not a brace that lifts the belly muscles. Instead, it acts on the sensation receptors, reminding the horse that they have ab muscles and to use them. It is so effective that when first starting with the band, they suggest only the belly band and not the butt band and only for about 5 minutes at a time until the horse gets used to it. Over time, the horse can use the belly and butt band on the lunge line and under saddle for a few minutes during warm up to help remind them where their muscles are. Its kind of like when Kelly keeps telling you to pull your belly button to your spine again and again. Instead of a verbal reminder, its a tickling sensation reminder.
The other tool we recently received can be used for pain relief and for core muscle strength. Have you ever stretched a muscle just to the point of feel good and not beyond, and just held it for a while? Have you ever stood on a squishy balance ball and felt your core muscles tremble after a few minutes? The SureFoot pads do both of these things. They come in varying degrees of firmness, with the super squishy being for the horses who are used to the pads and have sufficient core strength and confident. They also come in slant for all the firmness as well.
Here Summer is demonstrating the way she prefers these pads for a bit of self release.
Adding tools to our tool box at Serenity Farm
Continuing education is important in every field of study, and the horse world is no different. We all know that our rider biomechanics can have positive or negative effects on the way our horses move. It can cause them to carry stress in their muscles, just like we do. While we work hard on and off the horse to make our bodies more symmetrical and stronger in our cores, Kelly has been studying ways to help the horses get some relief while we are working on that, which, by the way, is a life long pursuit for most of us. The past few months she has been studying the material provided by the Animal Rehab Institute out of Florida. We are happy to announce that after months of studying and a week long in person training, Kelly is now certified through the Animal Rehab Institute as an equine massage therapist!
Not only did Kelly work through a sports massage course, since the class size was small (thank you Covid) and the students in the class were very well prepared for the course, she worked hard on myofascial release, range of motion exercises, core exercises, work with Equibands, and experiment with different SureFoot pads and their results.
She is super excited to bring this back to our farm. If you’re interested in talking to Kelly more about how your horse can be helped with sports massage and/or myofascial release, please send her an email at:
SerenityFarmNWA@Gmail.com
Pond Guests
Some Canada geese came to hand out and watch Liz’s lesson today and swim in the pond. While they were swimming, Caper came over to investigate and the geese were a bit annoyed by him spying on them and ended their swim early. Does the return of the geese mean spring is on its way?
Hay Hay Hay!
Yay! 120 more bales of hay! That should be our last load of the season until the fresh cut hay smell once again fills the air! This family brings their skidstear to unload the hay. The farm truck had to jump start the battery for the trailer butt’s lift so they could drive it off the trailer. Jayden is inspecting the job and hoping for a taste!