Month: March 2020

Day 7 of working from home. Still living my best life. Haven’t seen another human since Saturday. I did find a turtle in Henry’s stall yesterday though, and we had a great conversation as I gave him an Uber ride to the pond. His name is Yertle, he’s from next door, and a big fan of Dr Seuss. Look at me, making friends with the neighbors.

Don’t worry, I’m not just having conversations with turtles. I actually talked to more humans yesterday than I usually do, between rolling out new processes at work and recording a podcast. More on that when it comes out. I have no idea what I said, hope I don’t sound like a total moron. I feel like I’m way better in print.

But between Skype calls I did manage to sneak outside at lunch time and ride Henry. Normally when I’m in the office I don’t even take a lunch break at all, I just eat at my desk, so to be able to step outside in the middle of the day for an hour of horse time… this is awesome. 

I’m also super grateful for the fast-draining footing in the dressage arena, because it rained so much over the weekend that there was just standing water all over the farm. And now it’s supposed to be in the low 90’s this week? We have a very weird spring/summer mashup going on at the moment. The grass is BOMB though. It’s grown so much in my jump field over the last week that I can’t really even jump in there anymore, so I let Henry and Quinnie in there to have at it. They are living their best tubbo lives. For now I’ll just move a couple jumps over to the arena until things can get mowed. Not a big deal, we’re not doing anything intense at the moment anyway.

Having more time at the farm also gives me more time to notice and appreciate the little things. Like pretty flowers.

And the fact that Presto is finally starting to leave his damn fly boots alone.

Rumor has it that the shelter in place order for our major city and it’s county are coming out today. I’m in a bordering county, but my work is in the city, so it looks like I’ll be working at home for the forseeable future. Luckily our business is considered essential, so we don’t have to shut down, but they will continue to keep the employees required to be in the office at a bare minimum. Since there are already cases in the surrounding counties I’m wondering if those will be soon to follow with a SIP… I hope so, but we’ll see. I ventured out on Saturday at 7am to make one last trip to Walmart for a few things, so I’m good to go for 3 weeks or so probably before I have to worry about groceries again. At this point I’m definitely trying to avoid leaving the farm as much as possible. We’ll see how things continue to unfold I guess!

Mostly I just feel really lucky to still be out at the farm, where staying at home is a privilege. I have plenty of space to be outside, and my horses are right here with me. I’d be considerably less excited about it if I was stuck at home in the city. I definitely feel for those of you that are unable to get to your horses right now, and hope you’re able to find ways to fill the time. It’s interesting to see how we’re all adjusting to our new normal… humans are adaptable creatures. 

Also, I’ve really been loving all the musicians live streaming little mini-concerts. Did anyone catch Garth Brooks last night on facebook live? I always forget how great he really is. And he sang The Red Strokes, my personal favorite (ok it’s tied with Standing Outside the Fire). There are some really cool things coming out of this otherwise shitty situation. 

I dunno about y’all but if I have to watch one more White House coronavirus press conference, I might stab my own eyes out with a quarantini pick. Thank goodness the apocolypse came during foaling season, because you know what the world needs now? BABY HORSES. And you know who really delivered? PEYTON. Say hello to Remington WTW.

If you’re anything like me, your first thought is OMG ADORABLE. And then a split second later you’re like “Wait, holy hell, how did that come out of two relatively plain bays???”.

I have to admit, when Michelle first sent me a picture I was like why is she sending me old pics of Liam? And then I was like wait no that’s Peyton. WHAT?? It’s possible that I asked her if she was sure she put the Ramiro B semen in and not Emerald (she didn’t, no Emerald LOL). To look for an explanation Michelle went back to Peyton’s genetic profile and found that she does indeed possess a W20 gene, which when passed (it’s 50/50 when they have one copy of the gene like Peyton does) works to boost white markings.

We also know that bay/brown/black tends to inhibit the expression of white a bit… markings are generally more expressive on chestnuts. Getting a chestnut foal wasn’t totally unexpected – we knew that both Peyton and Ramiro B had a red gene, so although odds were definitely higher for bay (75%), chestnut was entirely possible (25%). Bay is always dominant, so both parents had to pass their red gene in order for the foal to be chestnut.

Now, back to the white. If you want to talk about KIT genes and dominant white and W20 we could be here all day, but basically what happened was this: Peyton’s W20 gene took a little bit of white and dialed it up. What otherwise might have been a chestnut with a couple little socks and a stripe or something, put W20 on it, and now *bam* you get Remi. The odds were low, for sure. Only 25% chance of chestnut, and then 50/50 on passing the W20. So… “what were the odds???”… 12.5%.

Where did Peyton get the gene? Likely from her sire. He’s bay, but has 3 little socks and blaze. If he was chestnut I bet he would have had a lot more white.

Genetics, man. They are wild.

I don’t know if anyone in the Baby Bets contest guessed this (I sure as shit wouldn’t have!) since I haven’t looked through to calculate points yet, but if you did – more freaking power to you and your psychic abilities.

As for Remi, he’s pretty perfect. Peyton really knocked it out of the park for her first foal, and she’s being a great mom (if not perhaps a wee bit of a helicopter parent). He’s definitely got the substance of a Ramiro B, and he’s very correct. While already adorable, once he has a few more days to unfold he’ll be downright stunning. He’s going to be a nice rich chestnut, and could you ask for more perfectly symmetrical stockings? Whoever buys this one will definitely hit the jackpot.

Need a good distraction from the world right now? I offer you 2 minutes of adorableness via Remi.

And would you believe that the next mare is already over 320 days? We’re probably only 2-3 weeks away from having another foal, they’re pretty evenly spaced through May, thank goodness. It looks like we’re gonna need steady bouts of adorableness for a couple months. And the next one up is Daisy, the grulla, with the first Usandro foal to be born in the US. PONY FOAL. Stay tuned…

When we last left off with our intrepid baby hero, he was hell bent on removing his new fly boots.

The first day he removed one twice, and then overnight he removed three out of four, tossing one over his stall door for good measure. I wish I could have seen him removing the hind one, that must have been a spectacle. There is no elegance to his removal tactic. It’s not like he finds the velcro’s little tabs and pulls on those. No, he just grabs as much fabric in his mouth as he can and then YANKS and YANKS and YANKS until it finally comes free. These poor boots. I have to give them a lot of credit, considering how forcefully they’ve been violated by his teeth, they still don’t have any holes or tears.

The next day I put all 4 boots back on, put a little chew spray on them, and turned him out. Here’s where I should mention that I have 3 different chew sprays/goops on this property and Presto is not deterred by any of them. I think he refers to them as “seasoning”. Like he will stand there and lick it off because he’s a weirdo. I dunno why I even bothered putting some on the boots.

Anyway, I was convinced that if we could just get over the novelty of having toys on his legs, he would eventually leave them alone. All I had to do was outlast him.

An hour later I looked out and he was missing one already. Dammit. Out I trudged, and found it in the back of the pasture.

I put it back on, went back inside, did some more work, and looked out again a little while later.

Another one was missing. Dammit Presto.

Ok, fine. That’s how you wanna play this? Let’s go. Game on.

That’s right bitches, I duct taped them. A strip around the top and a strip around the bottom. He looks like he’s ready to go work on a construction crew.

Naturally the first thing he did was rip the tape off. I ended up having to go several times around with the tape so it was nice and stuck to itself, and harder to rip through. That finally seemed to do the trick.

That worked to keep them in place for the rest of the day, and I left them on in his stall overnight to see what would happen. The next morning:

SUCCESS. HAHAHAHA I WIN.

A strip of duct tape was missing from one, but they were still on.  And they stayed on all day yesterday, no further problems. I still caught him yanking on them a few times, but he wasn’t successful in getting them off. I wouldn’t say that I’ve won the war yet, but I’ve definitely won the battle and made some major advancements.

Presto also got ride #3 yesterday. I wanted to see if there were any changes with his mouth fussiness since he’s been lunged a couple times in his sliding side reins. I lunged him for a couple minutes in them first, then took them off and climbed aboard in the closed in courtyard. We walked, we trotted, we made circles (ok ovals), we did some transitions… it was maybe 10 minutes total. He was much much better in the mouth, no fighting or head flinging. It’s amazing how much better the steering works when you aren’t having a mini-tantrum.

This was our first ride totally off the lunge, and with no handler on the ground. He was super, really quiet and well-behaved.

Henry watched all of this unfold and you could basically hear him saying “Good, go torture that one, I’m retired.”. No you turd, you aren’t retired. But he did pull a shoe on Tuesday, and I’m not sure when it’ll get put back on. He’s been wearing his glitter boot (boy that thing has gotten a ton of use already) so he’s ok to go out but the one I had was a little bit big to ride in… I bought it sized to fit over a wrapped/packed foot.

I wanted to order Presto more oil anyway so I went to Corro, grabbed another glitter boot (because how could you ever own a regular boot after you’ve owned a glitter boot?) in a smaller size, and some treats to put me over the free shipping threshold.

Given all that’s going on in the world right now I truly had no expectations for when it would ship or arrive, but it shipped same day (Tuesday) and arrived here yesterday. Three cheers for Corro, I’m impressed.

I should be able to ride Henry just fine in the new boot. Or… I could if it would stop raining buckets. Sigh.

Hope everyone else is making it through the week ok! Happy Friday…

Times are a wee bit… unstable right now. Schools and restaurants and bars are closed, events are cancelled, traveling is a real bad idea, and social distancing has become the trend of the year.

As an introvert homebody who has literally read hundreds of dystopian novels over the past few years alone, I feel (for once in my life) well-qualified for the current situation. I am lucky enough to still be living out at the farm, so I have plenty of solo outside space and the horses are right there in the backyard. I’m stocked up on feed, hay, shavings, and supplies. Go ahead and lock me in, I could stay here for months.

I’ve been working from home since Tuesday, which I’m also totally ok with. On one hand, I find myself actually working more, since I don’t have 1.5hrs of driving tacked onto my day. On the other hand, I… don’t have to drive 1.5hrs per day, or spend $75 a week plus tolls getting to and from work. Or like… brush my hair. Or put real pants on. Or see people. Our Skype meetings are blessedly voice-only. I could even sleep in til 6 if I wanted (not that it’s possible for me to sleep that late, but I COULD).

While I could stay locked away for a good long while without complaints, I feel for those of you who are unable to see your horses, or have restricted access. Let’s hope that they can get a handle on this quickly so you don’t have to go too long without horse time. And to those of you on the front lines – thank you. Y’all are the real m-f’ing heroes.

As for me, as you can see I’m mostly living for the memes right now. Even when the world goes to hell in a handbasket, the memers really deliver some levity and I am here for it.

Since things are all looking a little tumultuous and uncertain and maybe even a bit scary right now, I was hoping we could bring a little bit of positivity to the day (jesus, what day is it anyway…) by talking about something good that’s going on in our lives, or even just a positive story that we’ve seen. It’s a crappy shituation but maybe we can try to make the best of it. Hit me up in the comments! It can even be “haven’t run out of candy yet” or “haven’t had to put a bra on for 3 days”. Tell me something good!

Well, Presto hates me.

He got a couple of presents for his birthday – Lauffer reins and a set of Shoofly Leggins. Well ok, I ordered the Lauffer reins (or Phillip reins or sliding side reins or whatever you want to call them) during Black Friday but I hadn’t actually used them or even taken them down to the barn yet until his birthday. And the Leggins just coincidentally happened to arrive at the right time. But whatever, we’ll call them birthday presents.

The fly boots are mostly Henry’s doing. The flies have been ridiculously persistent here the past couple weeks, to the point where I have gone through a gallon of fly spray in that time trying to keep everyone covered. And the flies really don’t even seem that deterred for more than 5 minutes. And they’re biting. Poor Henry the delicate flower couldn’t stand it, he was constantly stomping despite being covered in so much fly spray you could smell him from 10′ away. Presto was stomping too, although didn’t seem nearly as annoyed in general. Still though, if I was gonna buy fly boots for one, might as well by fly boots for both, right?

As soon as I put them on Presto he started glaring at me, and walked off high-stepping. Once he was walking normally I turned him back out and he immediately started pulling at them. Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured might happen. Why do you think he got BRIGHT ASS ORANGE instead of pretty blue ones like Henry? So I can find them in the field when he removes them.

I was hoping that if I left them on overnight in his stall he would finally just settle and accept his fate but HAHAHAHAHAHA. This is what I found when I came out to feed.

He had managed to remove 3 of the 4 boots, hiding two of them under the pile of hay scraps (she’ll never find them here!) and tossing one over his stall door out into the aisle. It seemed very deliberate, like executing a prisoner and leaving the body on display to serve as a warning. I put them all back on while he ate his breakfast, but I have a feeling we’ll be playing this game for a while. He is M-A-D at me. Clearly I’m ruining his life.

Henry at least seems appreciative, he stopped stomping almost immediately.

Presto also wore his new reins for the first time.

Set quite loose, as you can see. Not changing his natural head carriage at all, just putting a bit of a “feel” on each rein. Since he’s still a little fussy about the bit I wanted him to just be able to think about it and figure it out on his own with a very light steady contact mimicking what he would feel from a rider. He wasn’t thrilled but he understood it pretty quickly and stopped fussing, so hopefully a few short and easy sessions will get him more comfortable with all that before I swing a leg over for another ride.

So… yeah. He’s annoyed with me right now. Clearly I’m the worst mother and I’m trying to ruin his life with my horrible gifts. #firstworldhorseproblems