Month: February 2022

Presto has been at Michelle’s for all of a week now, and I’m guessing that if you asked her she’d say it felt like a year. Perhaps I undersold his general level of day to day mayhem. Perhaps she’s just forgotten since we haven’t heard as much about it while he’s been at Megan’s. Or perhaps Michelle is just too nice and didn’t fully realize what she was signing up for when she offered to let him come stay at her place. Either way… she’s stuck with him now, no takesie-backsies. (just kidding. maybe. not really.)

When we left off with last week’s update he was in the pen next to the 2021 foals. They were obsessed with him, and he had already recruited their Chief Chaos Officer (Teddy) to his cause. It was very suspicious how Presto and Teddy would stand there in the corner just looking at each other, probably plotting all manner of terrible things. And then that next night Michelle came out to feed and found that SOMEONE – I’m not naming Teddy names or anything – had chewed a chunk out of Presto’s tail.

These LITTLE SHITS. I mean luckily it was off the top and I think we can just…. blend that for a while until it grows in, but seriously guys. WTF. Thank goodness Michelle noticed it before they ate the whole thing. But they did immediately lose neighbor privileges, and Presto got switched with Daisy. Now he’s got the end pen with Daisy as his only neighbor, and the babies are another pen away where they can no longer victimize his tail.

Naturally he wasn’t particularly pleased about having his minion army taken away, and did some really fancy arabian impressions while expressing his feelings. Michelle had to spent the rest of the evening dealing with THAT (her trying to make him walk places instead of trot is futile but cute… on the plus side he sure has looked awfully darn sound in all the videos). I’m pretty sure she’s rubbed like half a gallon of lavender oil on him by now in an attempt to just… take all the PRESTO down a notch. Good luck. You’d have to dip that dinosaur in a vat of it to root out all the chaos demons, I think.

And let’s face it, even when he’s chill (which he is most of the time, to his credit) he’s still a wrecking ball in horse form. Maybe I should have warned her that he’s a feed bucket/feed pan serial killer, but, uh… she knows now. He just simply cannot resist the excuse to paw at and put his feet in something that was clearly designed for just that purpose.

Every single place I’ve kept this horse we’ve gone through the gamut of how to feed him without him tossing it all over the place, tearing the feeder off the wall, or putting his feet in it. I’m not sure there’s a bucket/feeder/pan in existence that he hasn’t met by now. Usually things end up bolted to the wall, high enough to where he can’t put a foot in it and designed so that he can’t easily fling the food out. That’s just an accessory of Presto. So he started out at Michelle’s with a regular rubber feeder, which… LOL… and then Michelle went and dragged out her big guns: the red no-turn feeder.

It took him all of one day to master that one, but ya know… A for effort, Michelle? He finds the no-turn feeder to be a very delightful toy. Finally, someone gave him something FUN! He’s smart in all the worst ways but at least he’s never boring?

At this point I think I owe her a few bottles (or maybe just skip straight to a barrel) of Pinot Noir. And some chocolate. Maybe a fancy dinner. Definitely a value-size bottle of tums and some omeprazole, because he’s definitely giving her an ulcer. Welcome to the club, my ulcer is Presto-size and has been there for almost 5 years now.

One week down, Michelle, just… 2-3 more months to go. Hang in there…

Alright I absolutely hate foosball but can we talk about that halftime show for a second? I’ve been a fan of Eminem since he first hit the scene when I was in high school, and my love has not faded over time. I’ve said for years that he’s the greatest lyricist of our time and I stand by that. Also Dr. Dre is still absolutely baller. If they could have just cancelled all the football and let the halftime show go for a couple more hours, I would have been delighted.

In more horsey news, Gemma continues to have very minor and easy “lessons”. Hillary ponied her out on the trails in the back

which Gemma thought was really fun. She does love to get out and see things and explore, and she was super interested in looking around at everything but she wasn’t spooky about it. Not even when two giant helicopters came thundering right overhead. Ears pricked, happy girl. You can tell she’s itching to stretch her legs and let off some steam, but seriously she gets two big gold stars at how well she’s keeping herself under wraps during her rest period. I’ve been bringing her into the barn every other day in the afternoon so she can stand in the crossties, get groomed, and get some Durasole and Keratex on her feet.

She’s understanding the crossties well now, and she stands pretty well. No fuss about leaving the other horses or being alone in the barn (unlike a certain hangry hangry hippo we all know and love) Her feet are still a bit sore, mostly the hinds since they’re barefoot now, but it’s definitely gotten better since those first couple days. The timing worked out pretty well for her shoeing transition since the ground is has mercifully softened up a bit but it isn’t muddy. One thing about Gemma for sure though – she is a FOODIE. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her since she still has a lot of weight to gain, but that girl really likes her food, especially treats. She absolutely SCREAMS at me when I’m coming with food. And not in the way that makes you feel loved… the way where you’re pretty sure she’s saying “Walk faster, peon!”. I live to serve. After all, I was trained by the Chestnuttiest Marey-est horse alive.

Gemma still doesn’t even hold a candle to Henry when it comes to the stereotypical chestnut mare behaviors.

I’ve been riding Henry some though, on the days where Hillary can’t come out. He’s really thriving I think, doing a little bit of “harder” work again with her. He’s a bit stronger than he was, but everything is still easy and infrequent enough to where he’s not being taxed by it. Although she has figured out more and more how to flat him better, which he’s not quite so pleased about. He would appreciate if everyone just believed all his “oh I don’t know what that means” or “oh I don’t do that” LIES when it comes to proper flatwork.

Presto is settling into Michelle’s too… I think she might need a bulk delivery of wine on like a weekly basis while he’s there, but more on all his tomfoolery tomorrow.

One more little newsworthy item – I’ve been officially brought onto the Eventing Nation team to provide some regular breeding articles, as well as extensive breeding guides for all of the major events. We officially kicked it off yesterday with a “fun” Valentines Day themed piece to get the ball rolling. I’m pretty excited to have the opportunity to get all my nerdy info out to a bigger audience, and hopefully see what we can do about getting this info more mainstream. I’m especially interested in doing articles that might appeal to people who aren’t already involved in the breeding business or have experience with breeding, so if you guys have any ideas for what you might like to read about or learn more about, please let me know!

Omg y’all, where the hell is the time going? Henry officially turned 15 yesterday. WTF? I remember when turned 10 and I was like oh man double digits. How did we already get halfway through his second decade?

Henry was not much of a fan of any of his birthday shit aside from all the cookies. The hat? Stupid. The banner? Annoying. The balloons? DEATH MONSTERS FROM OUTER SPACE. And once we finally convinced him to stand close to them without snorting, he then refused to put his ears up at all. Total mad donkey mode. I tried every single sound on the AllEars app but NOPE he wasn’t falling for my bullshittery.

We were busy shooting Patreon content this weekend (patrons check your dashboard – first podcast episode is up!) but Hillary did do a quick bareback flat ride on him yesterday. I’d say that he got 15 cookies, but that would be a lie because he probably got more like 30. I did give him 16 smooches last night at night check though (15 plus one to grow on) which he definitely almost tolerated without looking murderous. Almost.

I rode him a couple times last week, during one of which I propped my phone in my Pivo and got a few shots of him galloping. He was WILD AF that day but we had fun, as always. He’s the best dude.

Well ok there was one pass in particular where I’m not quite sure what he was trying to do… I think he wanted to both run away and dolphin at the same time but somehow it came out looking like a deranged llama. He is beauty, he is grace. Some things never change.

He also got to do some jumping with Hillary (I’m pretty sure she’s rapidly becoming his new favorite person, with her BEMER and her handfuls of cookies and her lack of wanting to smooch his face all the time) which he thought was super fun. Aside from the part where she’s asking him to be more round before and after the fence – he thinks that part is mega stupid.

All in all though, not a bad lead up to his birthday week, and a pretty fine birthday itself. I really need to know how to freeze frame time though… 15 already. Man.

Everyone’s favorite chaos factory (aka Presto) made the trip to Michelle’s yesterday to start his R&R time. I went up there to meet her so I could see her off, grab all his stuff, and give him a proper nose boop.

Megan says he’s been quite well-behaved with all of his down time (something I found highly suspicious, because, ya know… Presto) but indeed he did seem pretty chill about things. Immediately patted me down for cookies in a very thorough and perhaps overly personal full body search, put the sleeve of my hoodie in his mouth, and tried to make me wear his head like a hat, but that’s all very normal. He seems a little bored maybe, but he’s certainly holding himself together a lot better than I anticipated considering how long he’s been out of work.

We got all his stuff loaded up, talked for a bit, and then put Presto into Michelle’s trailer. Not gonna lie, I spent the first hour drive home regretting sending him away instead of bringing him home. I really miss having him around on a daily basis, he’s absolute mayhem YES but he’s my brand of mayhem. Once I got past the emotional side of things though and remembered why I made this decision in the first place I was like oh yeah, that’s right, it was 100% the better choice for him. He won’t be lonely, he’s got a perfect living space, and all of the extra services he needs to aid in his healing are readily available. I do miss him tremendously though, not gonna lie, and every time I see him I’m reminded of that.

Michelle got him home to her place in west Texas yesterday evening and stuck him in a pen next to the 2021 weanlings. The kiddos will be leaving for Ocala soon but for now they think he is THE COOLEST HORSE THEY’VE EVER SEEN and I’m just over here like oh my god what kinds of terrible things is he going to teach the children.

I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough. Poor Michelle, I’m not sure she quite realizes exactly what she signed up for. ^{(too late now, muahahahaha)}

Hopefully he decides to behave himself there too though, so he can get healed up and back to work. I know he’s prefers having something to do and would much rather have a job. Just gotta keep your legs out of trouble, kid, and stop pawing shit so aggressively.

As for a little Patreon update – tremendous thanks to everyone that’s signed up as we launch, I’m really excited about what we’ve got planned and upcoming and it’s giving me so much life to see that you guys are excited for it too. Things are coming together! We’re filming and recording all the first real content this weekend and I’m looking forward to branching out into these new formats. If you’re a Patron you should have already gotten a message with the link to the private fb group (there’s already lots of discussion and updates and some exclusive video there) so please make sure to check that out, and for the Supporter and VIP tiers I also posted a fun thing for y’all this morning – check your Patreon dashboard. 😉

Happy Friday everyone!

Tuesday was farrier day, and conveniently enough Gemma was already synced up with Henry’s shoeing cycle. That meant it was time for her first appointment with my farrier, and also time for her racing plates to come off.

Of course we’re still learning each other, and while I think I have a pretty good gauge on her personality now and how she will react, sometimes you just never quite know until you do things. The perk of racehorses is that they’ve been there and done that and seen a lot, so it wasn’t a matter of whether or not she was well-handled and used to the farrier. We knew that would be true. But, ya know, some of them can still be difficult about it or require sedation or multiple handlers or a chain shank or whatever. Knowing her, I doubted any of that would be the case. She’s definitely sensitive, yes, but she’s clever and a thinker and generally wants to please.

She hasn’t quite figured out the crossties 100% yet though, so I figured I’d hold her for this first time at least. We opted to do Henry first, and I held her nearby the whole time he was getting done. She was a little interested in all the smoke when he was getting his hot shoes fitted, but she never so much as flinched at any of the noise or commotion. Mostly she was just curious (always curious, this one) and was dying to put her nose all over the farrier’s tools.

Once Henry was done we got to work, first pulling off those aluminum plates. She was a little bit rude about holding her own weight up (“you want to pick it up? Fine, you hold it then.” Mares.), but didn’t do anything naughty. We opted to leave the hind feet barefoot for now but put steel shoes on the fronts. It’s not easy for horses to transition from shod to barefoot on our hard and rocky ground, especially one that’s been wearing shoes for most of their life. I also don’t like making drastic changes like that when one is just coming off the track and we’re trying to get their body to relax and unwind. Adding foot ouchiness can just create more tension and stiffness, and we’re trying to do the opposite. So, front shoes it was.

I also kind of get the impression that Gemma might not be the most stoic of horses. She banged her leg on the water trough the other day, not even very hard, but she took off a teeny lit bit of hair. Y’all, she stood there waving her leg around in the air like it was BROKEN FOR SURE, and when she finally decided she could put it back down she was mega lame and very sad about it. This went on for about 15 minutes before she declared that she might indeed survive this harrowing experience. The drama was high. I suspected that the shoeing change might go similarly and I was right… she’s pretty convinced that her hind feet are broken and there’s something very wrong with the fronts to make them weigh so much more. She’s walking a little bit like a goat now. I think she’ll forget in a few days but lord. I can’t even imagine what she would have done if we’d tried to put her barefoot. Laid down and died, probably.

But with the removal of the plates and transition to normal shoes, she’s officially gone from racehorse mode to sporthorse mode, which is an exciting step. Now I just have to figure out what the heck I want to do with her old shoes. I knew I wanted to keep them but I didn’t actually have anything in mind to do with them… ideas?

I also sent off some of Gemma’s hair to Etalon for a full genetic profile. It’s our standard practice to do that on any of the breeding mares anyway (which Gemma hopefully will be one day) and I was very curious to see what her color genetics are. I mean, we know she’s ee (chestnut) but I’m curious about her agouti and especially if she might have any of the W’s. Her white markings have jagged edges, the front one comes up over the knee, and she has a lot of ermine spots in the socks. She doesn’t have as much face white as is typical for a lot of those expressions though, nor does she have any belly spots or roaning. Color, especially for white markings, can be wily sometimes and what you see isn’t always indicative of what’s truly there genetics-wise.

We shall see what the DNA says, it should take a few weeks to get the report back. Aside from all the color stuff they also check to see if she has or is a carrier of a bunch of health-related genetic stuff (some of the testing is more proven than others, but it’s interesting info to have anyway) including PSSM, Equine Metabolic Syndrome, WFFS, uveitis, etc. Cool info to have, for sure!

Gemma’s got about another month left to go in her rest period, but until then I’ve really liked having this low key no pressure time to get to know her… I think she’s gonna be pretty fun.