Month: May 2019

In this case I mean lame as in physically, not in the uncool/boring way, although I suppose both could apply. I sprained the shit out of my ankle on Sunday, one of the times I slid down from Presto when I was laying over his back. Ok yeah, that definitely qualifies for both definitions of lame.

Because Presto is pretty big, I was using the mounting block to stand on. I would put my foot in the stirrup, stand up, lay across him, and then slide back down to the mounting block to repeat. Except one time he shifted his weight just enough to change my trajectory, and instead of coming down on the step of the mounting block, I came down right on the edge, rolling the crap out of my left ankle hard enough to where I felt something pop. I stood there bent over for a few seconds, sucking air in through my teeth, waiting for the pain to pass. It didn’t. So then I decided to walk it off, going back in the barn to grab something, and coming back out. It did not walk off. It hurt like a bitch. I’ve sprained my ankle before, many times, but nothing like that.

By the time I was done with Presto and put him away, I could feel it swelling in my boot. I have broken enough bones to know what that feels like, and I definitely didn’t think it was broken, but there was no doubt I’d done a real number on the soft tissue. By the time I got home I was barely weight-bearing, and spent the evening icing and elevating. I’m the absolute worst when it comes to my own injuries and tend to just ignore them and power through, but this one was not ignorable.

It hurt bad enough by the next morning to where I strongly considered going to the doctor. Which, if you know me, is pretty telling. I tend to have a No Doctors policy unless there’s an alarming amount of gushing blood or a bone sticking out. Which is really ironic considering how many times a year the vet sees my horses, but alas let’s not pause long enough to psychoanalyze that. As an example, when a horse landed on top of me at a show and I broke my elbow, I loaded up my trailer, loaded up the horse, drove 3 hours home, and then still had to be dragged to the ER. Where they took 5 hours to do absolutely nothing useful, btw, besides give me a sling and prescription for codeine, neither of which I used.

So instead I watched some youtube videos on diagnosing and caring for severe ankle sprains, my dad and my coworker loaded me up with a brace, wraps, crutches, and NSAIDs, and I decided to be smart and rest it. Mostly because we’re supposed to go to Louisiana this weekend to XC school and I’ve never gotten to XC school at this place before and I REALLY wanna go, so I’ll be damned if this ankle isn’t better enough by then. In what is an exceedingly rare move for me, I took two days off from the barn. In a row. Like… I didn’t go at all.

It was awful.

By yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore, and the ankle has improved enough to where I can limp around without too much trouble (albeit infuriating slooooowwwlllly). I decided to just get on and do some bareback dressage, to give the ankle another day before I put it back in a stirrup.

The hardest part was getting on. Even from the big mounting block, I forgot how much I still need my left foot. Eventually I just launched myself at Henry, clinging to him like a spider monkey to shift up to his back. I almost lost my left shoe on the process, which doesn’t really go on all the way with my brace and wrap, so I decided to just ditch it at the mounting block. Real Pony Club approved, y’all. Real Pony Club Approved.

But we did manage to get a short dressage ride in, and Henry was pretty good. Really spooky, he teleported so hard and fast that he almost left me suspended in midair a few times, but otherwise good. No problem with the ankle. To dismount I sidled up to the mounting block again, swung my right leg across the front and slid down facing outward. That was the easiest part. All the walking around the barn, carrying stuff back and forth… that was the harder part. Mobility is not my strong suit at the moment.

It’s a bit better today, as it’s been a bit better every day this week. Still definitely have a pronounced limp, but the stabbing, take-your-breath-away pain of the first two days is gone. Now pretty much my entire lower leg is just really sore. Also my toes are still a bit sausage-like, which I’m not a big fan of.  But mostly it’s just super annoying how long it takes me to walk anywhere. Today I’ll keep it wrapped and put it back in my boot and we’ll see how things go. I think it’ll be fine enough.

The moral of this story? Mounting blocks are dangerous, y’all. Don’t trust them.

I think the toughest part of ordering fun custom things, especially something like boots, is the wait time. The estimated 8-12 weeks can definitely feel like an eternity, especially when stressful things are happening elsewhere in your life and you really just want something pretty to give you some temporary happiness. Major first world problems.

But I was still pretty darn excited to get the email yesterday saying that my Pioneer boots are on their way. That was a pretty fast turnaround, especially considering they also had to travel from the workshop in Italy to the store I ordered from in Germany before they could start their trek here. It’s been less than 5 weeks since I ordered. They’re shipping here via DHL which, in my personal experiences from ordering overseas, has taken anywhere from 3 days to 4 weeks. Their tracking also sucks. Hopefully they used an airplane for this one instead of pack mules/dolphins.

Not long before the boots shipped, it’s also possible that I ordered something from Australia. Let’s just say that following equestrian apparel companies on Instagram has been my downfall more times than I can count. This time it was a shirt that got me, and I felt like I deserved a pretty new shirt, and the price was good, and it was really easy to talk Hillary into getting something too so we could split the shipping. Mostly I’m just glad that I resisted the urge to buy one in every color. Small victories. Hopefully it fits.

So now I’m watching and tracking both of these packages, coming from opposite ends of the world. The race is on to see which one will get here first. It’s a pretty freaking boring race, though, I have to admit, since none of the tracking has updated in over 24 hours. I keep checking far more often than is reasonable. But nah. Crickets.

I did self-medicate with a couple other small purchases, one for instant gratification and the other a pre-order because I’m a glutton for punishment right now I guess. After my Stockbobble post last week I totally caved and got the other glittery anchor stock tie that matches the one I bought for Trainer. It arrived a couple days ago, and now I’m just looking at it on my kitchen table and realizing that my next show is like 2 more months away. So it was like instant gratification… but not.

I also officially booked my flights for Burghley (yes I bought the actual Burghley event tickets before my flight…) and signed up for my next Yes.Fit race. I just had to do the Nessie one, because the shirt is so awesome, and the promo code YMzLFJU6 still works. The street views of this virtual race are really cool, since your path on the app basically just goes around Loch Ness.

Hey, maybe I’ll stumble across Nessie carrying a Pioneer Boots box.

I think we should take bets on what gets here first – the Australia package or the Germany package? I want my pretty new boots, dangit.

 

Last week after I posted the details about how crazy we got while looking for a barn, including looking up what type of soil the property had, several of you asked how to do that. I have based my last two boarding decisions based at least partially (ok mostly) off of what type of ground they had, and for anyone who is shopping for land or lives in a place where there’s a certain type of ground you want to avoid, or a certain type of ground you want to find, it’s a REALLY helpful tool. I don’t know about you, but as an eventer I feel like my life sometimes revolves around footing. The website is a little bit confusing to use though, so I’ll show you how I’ve used it for myself and that should be enough to get you started.

Web Soil Survey is a USDA site that lets you look up the soil content of any area. From the main page, just click on the big green button that says Start WSS. That’ll take you to this landing page.

From there you have several options for how to look things up. I usually have a specific address that I want to research, so I drop down the Address tab and enter it there. If you’re just browsing a general area you can use the State and County option. Or lat/long if you’re fancy. For this case I’m gonna use the Address option, but you do you.

Once you put that in, the map will refocus to whatever area you specified.

From there you can use the little AOI buttons on the top menu of the map to define what specific area you want to look at.

They’re small and hard to read, but they say AOI (area of interest). If you hover your mouse over them you’ll see that one says “Define AOI by rectangle” which allows you to just draw a rectangle around the area you want to define, and the other says “Define AOI by polygon” which allows you to draw a more specific shape around an area. Once you select which AOI you want to use, you’ll be able to draw that shape on your map.

Once you’ve defined your Area of Interest, look at the tabs along the top of the page and click on Soil Map.

The soil map page is where all the magic happens – this is where it shows what types of soil your selected Area of Interest has.

As you can see, it also shows which area of the property has what soil, as defined by the map unit symbols, as well as the total acreage for each soil type.

This is all well and good if you know your soils pretty well, but if you don’t, you might need further assistance. You can click on each soil type and it’ll pop up a page with some specifics, which may or may not make any sense to you. I tend to scroll down to the “properties and qualities part” personally, but depending on what you’re trying to do with the land, other sections may have more value. I’m really into drainage and generally prefer anything “sandy” over anything “clay”. Clay loam is far better than black clay though, which I have come to avoid like the plague.

I’ve also generally been able to find additional info by using good old Google and just searching the soil type in quotation marks. Here’s the whole USDA page on Behring clay loam, for example. I always pay particular attention to the drainage and permeability section, but if you’re growing hay there’s a lot of great info there too.

When in doubt, just start looking up the soil content of all the places you know that have great soil, and use it as a point of comparison. You’ll find patterns pretty quickly.

The WSS site has a lot of cool features that are fun to play around with, once you’re comfortable with how it works. Explore the tabs. Have a blast. If you’re anything like me it’s really fun and perhaps also highly addictive. Great tool though, it’s certainly proved useful for me over the years!

I did a thing yesterday. A thing that I hadn’t planned on doing, but it was one of those moments where the stars just kind of align and the moment feels right, so you go for it, and I did. And it was a success!

My original plan for the day was to introduce Presto to the western saddle. He’s worn both my jump saddle and my dressage saddle before, but I’d like to do his first few rides in a western saddle, so I figured it was time to put it on him. It’s heavier and louder and clunkier but otherwise not much different, so I figured he wouldn’t really care, and I was right. I put it on him in the crossties, slowly tightened up the cinch, and went out to the arena to let him walk and trot around with it.

That was super boring after about 5 minutes, so I pulled the mounting block over and we did some of our usual mounting block lessons. Working on standing still, me leaning over him, me putting some weight in the stirrup, flapping the stirrups around, smacking the saddle, etc. We’ve done this enough to where he’s also extremely unimpressed with all that.

I upped the ante and stood all my weight in one stirrup, leaning across and patting his opposite side. Again, totally unimpressed.

So as I’m laying there across him I’m like “screw it, I’m just gonna throw a leg over and see what he thinks.”. So I switched his lunge line for a lead rope, went through all the typical pre-mounting stuff again, and this time when I put my weight in the stirrup and layed across, I paused for a few seconds and then swung my leg all the way over.

And next thing you know, I’m sitting on him.

I just sat there for a few minutes, talking to Hillary and the barn worker Ryan. Presto moved a little bit, mostly in small slow circles since I only had one lead rope, but he stayed SUPER calm and was happy to follow his nose around. I didn’t want to actually ride him, I just wanted to sit on him, and that’s what we did. He’s done so much of the pre-riding basics at this point that I don’t even think he realized anything new or strange had happened. He’s been used to me being above him for a long time now, and having my weight leaned on him. If anything, I think he was happier with me actually sitting astride because it was easier for him to balance.

I expected him to feel a lot scrawnier and smaller, considering how narrow and gangly he still is, but he felt pretty normal sized. He’s officially sticking 16h now, and I’m kind of glad that I went ahead and sat on him, because lord it is already a stretch to mount and dismount, even with the little mounting block. I’m definitely gonna need a 3-step by the time I’m actually ready to ride him for real. He’s still just a wee baby (ok maybe not so wee, but definitely a baby) so I won’t be riding him for quite a while yet, but… he’s officially backed. And my butt was the very first one to sit upon him. It’s a pretty special moment considering all we’ve been through in his short life. It makes me happy that I’m his person and he trusts me enough for this to have been such a non-event.

If I had wanted to, I’m pretty sure I could have trotted him around yesterday without any problems. With, ya know… two “reins”. We’ll do some more ground driving this summer and then I think I’ll be able to put a handful of short rides on him in the fall. Then I’ll bring him back out next spring and start hacking/trail riding a few times a week. He’s quiet about things, and he’s smart, and he catches on pretty quickly.

I swear the 2yo year is the longest. Just waiting… waiting… waiting for him to be older. I think I’ll be riding yesterday’s high for a while though.

When we last left off on the barn hunt update, I was stuffing my feelings into double decker Fudge Rounds and slamming them down my throat like it was my damn job. And up until yesterday afternoon, that’s pretty much exactly what was still happening, just with rapidly increasing anxiety (and copious amounts of queso) as one barn after the next didn’t pan out. I can’t really explain the hellscape that is barn shopping in this town. Well, actually, I can try. Let’s rehash what’s happened so far.

Hillary and I knew that we really wanted to stay together, with all 3 boys. Everything is just a lot easier with a barn buddy. Granted, finding space for 3 horses does complicate things. We scoured the shit out of the internet, I don’t think any stone was left unturned. If it exists as a boarding barn within an hour of Austin, we have seen it. She was even stalking private properties on google maps, looking for suitable barns that might possibly take on a few boarders, and driving around desirable areas being a total stalker. Yeah… that is some next level creepy, in the most admirable way possible. She even called realtors for properties that were for sale asking if they would rent. We were open to self care, co-op situations… anything that looked like a place where our horses could be happy and we could have what we needed.

First of all, getting anyone at these so-called boarding barns to call/email/message/text you back is apparently a completely unrealistic expectation. We got 3 times as many *crickets* as we did replies. Then there are all the places who have dealbreaker barn rules, like… you can’t come out before 9am. Ever. How is that a thing? Or that you had to have written permission every time you left the property. Or that you could only jump if you took a lesson with them, which isn’t such an uncommon rule, but I have zero interest in taking lessons with any of those trainers, so that’s a nope. Or better yet, you had to be in a training program to board there, which I completely understand their reasoning behind, but also a nope. I’ve already got a trainer and she’s worked pretty darn well for me.

Several more desirable places were just plain out of my budget, with two horses, especially if they didn’t offer pasture board as an option. Other places seemed in budget, until you started adding up all the extra nickel and diming fees, which could easily tack on another $200+ a month. The other more desirable places were full. They’re always full.

There are a lot of things I can make do with. I don’t need anything fancy whatsoever, but I needed it to be safe. That includes no barbed wire fence. I dunno what it is with horse people here, but damn they love them some barbed wire. Preferably rusty and half falling down. I also needed people taking care of my horse that gave me the sense that they knew what they were doing. Or at least had owned a horse for more than a week. Or knew how many feet horses were supposed to have. Or which was the ass end. Boy do I have stories.

I also need good enough footing to where I’m not going to be out of the saddle for days every time it rains, and to be able to keep my horse sound with all the conditioning we do. THAT is a tall measure around here, where black gumbo soil rules the lands. God it is awful, and I wanted to avoid it. An arena would be nice, but not needed… the more important part is a big enough field to do my conditioning. I can dressage and jump in a field, but it’s a lot harder to condition in a ring. As it is I ride out in the field 99.9% of the time now, and I don’t mind it one bit.

I needed turnout. Like… more than a few hours a day and on something bigger than a tiny dry lot paddock or just a stall run (a stall run isn’t turnout, omg). One of my horses needs to move as much as possible to keep himself loose, and the other is a growing and developing 2yo warmblood. They can’t just stand still 23 hours a day if I expect either of them to stay sound in their jobs. Go ahead and cross several more off the list at that request.

We went to look at a few places. On Monday afternoon we drove out to the one that looked by far the most promising on paper and in pictures. It was… what’s the word I’m looking for here… horrendous? Animals were everywhere, of every species, the place smelled like a dirty zoo, there was shit all over the place, the barn worker was walking around barefoot, the stalls were filthy (and everything looked dried and old, so it wasn’t fresh filth), there were way too many horses crammed in the dry lot pens, and – my personal favorite part – there was a horse chilling in the crossties with wire wrapped around it’s leg. The wire had obviously been there a while, judging by the amount of swelling in the leg. Eventually someone came and cut the wire off, then they ran some water over it and gave the horse some bute. I dunno about y’all, but to me that’s an emergency vet call situation. These people were like “oh it’ll be fine, not a big deal”. WHAT. THE. SHIT.

We couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and immediately hightailed it to a mexican food restaurant to stuff our faces with queso. It’s a healing elixir for PTSD.

With our standards freshly lowered and desperation mounting, we decided to look at pretty much anything and everything. Whoever would call us back and had the few basic things that we needed, we agreed to go look at. Yesterday morning Hillary went out to another place that would be great if you didn’t actually ride, but was definitely a problem if you did. Mostly because who knows where you would do that. Also the stalls were so tiny I don’t think our horses would have fit in them. Not exaggerating.

One of my vets heard our tales of woe and suggested that we call and talk to his wife. She manages his mobile veterinary business, sometimes riding with him to act as vet tech when needed, but they also have a private barn at their home and he thought she might be able to make space for us. It was an incredibly kind offer, and I know it’s not one that just anyone gets. Luckily they both quite like Henry (he can be pretty charming when he feels like it) and I’ve known them for years, so I guess we qualified. I was concerned about how far away it was, 45+ minutes, but I was willing to drive that far if it fit the bill.

Since our levels of internal panic were quickly rising to epic and overwhelming proportions, we cleared our schedules and went out to look at the farm yesterday afternoon. It’s a no-frills type of place, and they’re still in the process of building and adding things and making improvements, but it’s cute and even under construction it’s already got everything we need. The barn is really nice, lots of air flow and good sized stalls with high powered fans and good light. The wife’s ideas and methods about horse keeping line up very closely with my own, from turnout schedule to diet to blanketing and pretty much everything in between. In the summer the horses are rotated between two grass turnouts, also with round bales. In winter they’re turned out in the 6 acre hay field in the back. We can also ride on the neighbor’s property, and maybe even across the street. It looks a lot like what I could imagine having in my own backyard, if I owned property. There aren’t many people and it’s quiet and it comes with the blessed quality of freedom.

There’s a sand arena that’s definitely big enough to do dressage or put a few jumps in, and she didn’t mind if we brought ours and set them up. There’s a round pen if I need it to do stuff with Presto. She’s totally cool with us riding out in the field, parking our trailers on site, bringing all of our shit, riding whenever we want, coming and going to shows all the time, etc etc. All of the horses, even the old retired ones, look really good. They have roughage in front of them pretty much 24/7 and all seem very chill and happy and social. Everything is clean and tidy. The ground is pretty good, even with the insane amount of rain we’ve had this week. Presto wouldn’t be on full time turnout since they aren’t set up for pasture board, but he’d get at least all day or all night turnout, with room to stretch his legs.

The price for both horses is slightly more than I’m paying now, but it’s such a negligible amount that by the time you factor in what I currently pay for fan fees in the summer months (something that is included at this place), it pretty much equals out. I will have to rework my life and my schedule a little bit to make the commute work, but… there’s a lot to be said for your horses living at your vet’s house. It’s a pretty incredible offer and I feel really lucky to be on the receiving end. So on June 1, the boys get a new home.

Mostly I’m just relieved to have something nailed down, and so grateful to everyone that helped and offered us a place to land if we couldn’t find something in time. I was definitely starting to panic. Yesterday morning I came perilously close to ordering those double decker Oatmeal Creme Pies by the case from amazon, but today I’m feeling so much better. There’s plenty to be done, some things to buy, and A LOT to pack, but I’m looking forward to the next chapter.