Month: March 2022

If you’re looking for a creature to give you an ego boost about yourself in general, let me tell you who not to go to.

Hillary has been in Ocala for over a week now (god it’s ONLY been that long??) which means that Henry is once again my full-time ride. One of us has been pretty pleased about this. Hint: it’s not him.

See, Hillary has bought his love. Like many times over. She comes armed with what seems like thousands of German Horse Muffins, doesn’t spend a lot of time fussing with him, rides him, doesn’t demand as much of his performance as I do, and then she leaves. It’s his ideal relationship.

And then there’s me.

I think he’s been a bit lazy lately about carrying himself, being uphill in his canter, and keeping a good shape, so those are my priorities for the time Hillary is gone. I come swooping in there with a bit (he’s really sure he doesn’t wear a bit anymore at all, after almost 3 years of very rarely wearing one) and ask him to be round and uphill and push some of the more intense flatwork buttons that she does not. This is not to say that I ride him better or anything like that at all, just that I’ve been riding him for 8 years so if I didn’t know how to ask for more and push all the buttons by now, it would be pretty sad indeed.

Henry though… he’d much rather give about 50%, and pretend like it’s the best he can do. I know him better than that, so I insist on his 100%. Now that he’s been living his best life with Hillary for a few months, he thinks I am a walking case of Bullshittery, and he’s not totally convinced that he’s required to participate at that level, considering that he’s now seen an alternative. This horse would really love to be a low level schoolmaster and ignore your opinion most of the time, I swear.

The day after these pics, I went out to go get him for a hack and he took my cookie, slapped on his devil horns, and hightailed it to the back of the pasture before I had a chance to put the halter on. Rude. The ultimate in rude. He hasn’t done it since then (I guess he thinks he made his point), but I also haven’t dressaged him since, so… ya know. He remembers, and he is very opinionated. People who don’t know him don’t always believe me but man. If you anger or annoy him in some way, you WILL know about it and you WILL pay for it. It’s Henry’s world and we’re all just living in it.

I’ve also been trying to get him shed out, including the 9000lbs of shetland pony-esque hair on his legs, which requires extra general fussing-with-him, which he hates. Cookies, jompies, fuck-offies. That’s what he’s interested in. If you’re looking for a horse to make you feel loved, he is not it. Even though I know that deep down he does love me in his own Henry way.

We’ve done a lot of pole work and hacking and a couple jump schools, which have all improved his mood. He’s noticeably happier and more agreeable when you go to get him on the days after he jumps. Anyone who wants to say that horses aren’t smart or emotionally developed, I beg to differ.

He’s still got another week to put up with me before his lady in shiny armor comes back to save him from this ridiculousness. I don’t know what he’s gonna do when we move and Hillary isn’t there to baby him at all. He might just go on strike completely.

Week one of Gemma’s new sporthorse career is going well! I’m really enjoying having a green horse again… maybe I’m some kind of glutton for punishment or something but I do really enjoy these beginning stages.

I think it’s because everything is so much simpler when they’re at this stage. Expectations are low, tasks are simple, and every little thing is an achievement. They also make very quick progress with all these simpler things, so it’s easy to see the changes from day to day. It’s a “tougher” stage I suppose because they don’t know as much, but I think it’s super rewarding. Like when’s the last time I was mega proud of Henry for standing like a rock in the crossties while I spent a few minutes digging around for something in the tack room? Or being very polite for the farrier? Or actually stopping when I said whoa? He’s far enough into life that those things are just expected of him, but for Gemma they’re new and worth celebrating.

She got her feet done on Monday, which she was really good for. Better than the first time for sure (where she wasn’t totally certain that she had to hold up any of her own feet, and may or may not have attempted to lay on the farrier) although I still chose to hold her rather than put her in the crossties. I think next time we can shoe her in the crossties with me just standing nearby. Since she got her fancy new Nikes I’ve put her on an every other day work schedule. The first time was Tuesday, where I tacked her up, did a little work on the line with voice commands and moving her shoulders/haunches, and some basic desensitization. She’s very sensitive, and if things come at her quickly or unexpectedly she can be a little reactive… not in a panicky way usually but definitely a little bit worried. When she first got here she was particularly jumpy if you came at her face quickly and/or without warning. She’s already gotten better about that, but I do think she could be a little less reactive to things in general. I don’t want to make her dull, but I do want to take that sharpness away that’s caused by nervousness. Thus: desensitizing.

I started with the lunge line, tossing it over her back, neck, haunches, and around her hind legs. She didn’t care much about that. So I decided instead to use the lunge whip, which she was much more leery of. Luckily she isn’t the type to panic and bolt for the hills, she just gets wide eyed and shuffles away. When I first started moving the whip back and forth in front of her she mostly tried to slowly tiptoe backwards, hiding behind me. Cute, but… not quite what we were after. I just kept going and waited for her to stop and relax, then I stopped moving the whip and praised her.

Then I did the same thing on either side of her, which was fairly uneventful. After that I moved on to actually touching her with the lash of the whip… rubbing her neck and haunches, dangling it over to the other side, dragging it across her and lightly tossing it around her legs. At first she couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted, but every time she stood still I patted her and stopped moving the whip for a few seconds before starting again. It didn’t take her long to figure out that the game was to just stand still.

After that I progressed to tossing it back and forth over the top of her head. I figured that would be the thing she was most worried about so I’d saved it for last on purpose, and by this point she didn’t care much. She kept one ear on the whip, just in case, so not as totally relaxed about it as we will eventually aim for, but she didn’t move her feet.

I let her be done with that, and spent a few minutes standing at the mounting block putting my foot in and out of the stirrup, leaning over her, flapping the stirrups around, etc. They don’t use mounting blocks at the track so for that stuff I basically just treat her like an unbroke horse.

Yesterday we did pretty much the same thing again, but with more trotting in the lunge work and the introduction of some very loose side reins, so we can start talking about contact. She remembered the voice command work from the session before, and her “walk”, “whoa”, and “trot” are getting better. Whoa is probably the best at this point… the rest is more hit or miss. Still better from the first time though, so she’s definitely getting it.

We followed that with a little more of the same desensitization work with the whip, and then more lessons at the mounting block. Nothing was perfect of course, but everything was an improvement over the first session, and that’s all I’m after at this point.

I do think that she’s starting to become a bit bonded to me. She’s the type that’s a little more distrustful of strangers, especially men (judging from farrier and vet appointments anyway) but she seems to have figured out that I’m a safe space. She will leave the other horses to come up to the gate if she sees me, and when they come in for dinner every night she stands and waits for me to block Henry so he can’t try to bite her when she goes past. She’s really starting to look to me first for guidance when she gets concerned about something, which I love.

For now I think this is exactly the kind of stuff she needs, and we’ll keep doing groundwork and laying down the base for a little while longer. So far I’m really pleased with her – she’s smart, she learns well, she wants to please, and she’s people-oriented. She’s brave about her surroundings and confident enough in herself not be herdbound or worried about where the other horses are. Those are all traits I can work with, and all the reasons why I love thoroughbreds so much. It’s been a while since I had a young green OTTB… I’d almost forgotten how much I love them.

She does make me wish that I could breed her and embark on her sport career at the same time though, a little Gemmette would be adorable. Too bad embryo transfer is so expensive! Eventually…. just not yet.

Yesterday was Presto’s 5th birthday, can you guys even believe it? I’m convinced that the first 3 years of a horse’s life take a decade to pass, and then after that every year is like 3 months long. Maths and time don’t make sense. Five. FIVE! He’s a real boy now. Well… ok… as real as Presto could possibly ever be.

I couldn’t be with him on his birthday, since he’s way up in Midland “resting” (ha), but I could make sure that he still had a banging birthday party, so I got on Amazon and ordered a few things to send to Michelle. What was the theme of this party, you ask? What other possible theme could there be?

He got an outfit, an inflatable bop-it, a banner, and a pinata, along with a bag of treats to put in said pinata. If there’s one thing we know about Presto, it’s that he loves murdering things with his mouth and feet, thus I figured that stuff was right up his alley.

So, step 1 for throwing a Presto party: you gotta decorate. It helps set the tone, ya know?

Step 2: get dressed. Gotta have just the right outfit. And if you don’t have thumbs you may require some outside assistance.

Step 3: Revel in the majesty of yourself and how you look in all of your chic birthday glory.

Step 4: Invite some friends over for your party.

Step 5: As birthday boy, your next priority should always be your presents. Presto’s attention went to the bop-it first, since it was bigger, but he was honestly pretty unimpressed with that. It occurs to me that perhaps I have set the bar a little too high with what is now required to actually captivate Presto’s attention.

It took him a minute to figure out that the real treasure lay inside the piñata. And when I say “took him a minute” I mean that quite literally… from the moment he first saw the piñata to the moment he managed to bust it open and get the treats out was 1 minute 16 seconds. Honestly that’s about 30 seconds longer than I anticipated. He kept trying to roll it like his old treat ball, expecting it to spit out a cookie with each shove. Took him a beat to figure out that further violence was required for this particular item, which he was then quite pleased to dole out.

Once he got to the good stuff his attention was solidly focused on eating on the giraffe guts. Er, horse treats. Honestly a bit of a boring party for him, given his history. I expected a little more fanfare… a little more giraffe murder. Maybe he’s actually growing up a little bit?

In all seriousness though, yes I do go a bit overboard with the silliness on his birthdays, but it’s because we came so precariously close to never getting to celebrate any at all. Every year I still vividly remember that sad little sick foal that almost died more times than I can count, and every year I’m grateful all over again that he made it through. Even when he’s a dumb giraffe that can’t keep his chaos feet to himself and manages to bruise his P2 and spend all my money on MRIs. Indeed, even then.

How boring would life be without a Presto in it?

Presto is good at a lot of things. Rest and recuperation or rest and relaxation… those maybe aren’t on the list. I think his version of R&R more likely stands for rumpus and raucous.

He’s doing pretty well at Michelle’s though, aside from causing his usual level of chaos and mayhem, which in turn causes enough stress in his humans to remove a few years off their life. Ya know… standard Presto behavior. Knock on wood though, he’s remained looking sound and has refrained from any particularly damaging trouble to this point.

Although yesterday Obi somehow did sneak over into Uncle Presto’s paddock (no ones sure if he went over the fence or under it) and Presto was delighted to have a temporary friend.

He plays a bit too rough to keep a yearling as a friend (although points to Obi, he can dish it out pretty well for a little dude) so Obi had to go back over to his own paddock, but they did get to have an hour or so’s worth of fun before it got broken up. Presto probably had more fun than Obi, who now may or may not be brain damaged from being hit in the head repeatedly with Presto’s feeder, but… ya know. Those are the risks when you enter Presto airspace. The real question is – will he sneak back over there again, or did he learn his lesson the first time? We’ll find out I guess.

Aside from just being a general pest (aka himself) Presto’s gotten some nice little therapy sessions. Last week you saw his laser and chiropractic session, and he’s also getting some regular Magnawave from his friend Mk, who looks comically tiny next to him.

He seems very responsive to the Magnawave, offering some big dramatic releases. He’s probably the kind of horse that would really benefit from having a BEMER to use on a regular basis (I’ll just tuck that information away in the back of my brain for whenever I have money to burn LOLOLOL). He’s always responded really well to bodywork stuff in general… probably because he does play so rough all the time he’s constantly doing some level of something to himself. He’s looking really good though, even if he’s not so sure about all of this stuff sometimes.

It’s very nice that Michelle has friends local to her with all this good equipment that are willing to help him out. And also nice that these friends have a good sense of humor and can deal with his antics… he often gets called “busy”. Um… yeah sure, that’s the nice word for it. We’ll go with that.

He’ll keep getting regular MagnaWave while he’s there, and Michelle is going to start booking his swimming sessions too. We all think that he would like that a lot, even if just to have something to go and do. He’s bored bored bored…. never has been one that handled downtime very well (ahem HOW HE GOT INTO THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE), he needs a job and an outlet for all that “busy-ness” of his. Those hamsters in his brain start running amok after a while.

Presto’s birthday is tomorrow (can y’all believe he’s FIVE????) and I may or may not have sent Michelle a whole bunch of themed birthday party stuff for him. Gotta keep up that tradition. Plus hopefully it’ll result in some good entertainment for all of us. His friend Mk will be there doing his MagnaWave anyway so he invited her to his party.

There’s never a dull moment with this one, that’s for sure.

The one and only 2022 foal is due in the next couple weeks, so hopefully we’ll be back to Foal Friday content soon! The chaos is a lot cuter when it comes in a little fuzzy foal-sized package rather than a 17.1h giraffe suit.

I don’t know if any horse in the world had a better weekend than Gemma.

On Friday she had her re-check appointment to see how that little suspensory strain was doing. This was also her first time being seen by one of our vets, so we figured we’d get a little baseline idea of how she looked in general. A bit of a post purchase exam if you will. We called in the big guns for this appointment, our favorite sporthorse vet (his wife is an eventer, poor man) from his base a few hours away. He has all the equipment, good assistants, and he knows thoroughbreds and sporthorses really well, so it was worth the extra expense.

Overall, Gemma looked great. Her suspensory is fantastic, a “non factor” at this point he thought, which is always great to hear. Her flexions were pretty good, nothing particularly stood out. The only thing he could detect was some soreness near the coffin/pastern on one foot, and we know just by looking at her feet that they need work in the shoeing department, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. We went ahead and took films of all 4 feet so that 1) we could make sure there was nothing “bad” actually happening in there, 2) we could get a baseline of all her angles and make a plan with the vet and farrier for how best to start correcting those feet.

Her angles are… definitely not great. Like probably worse than they look from the outside. The left front is more negative than the right front, and both hinds are pretty negative as well. Definitely not a surprise – pretty typical of most horses coming off the track, and the vet and I both said “we’ve definitely seen way worse”, but we still need to get it corrected ASAP. So we talked options for her next shoeing cycle (good timing on all this, my farrier was already scheduled for tomorrow anyway) and made a plan. Basically we’ve got to start pulling that breakover back as much as possible to start correcting the angles and get her up off her heels, and maybe put a bar shoe on the fronts for a while and extend the heels a bit behind.

The good news is that there’s no real damage in there though. We also went ahead and did films of the ankles just since they have a little “jewelry”, and to make sure the angles of the feet haven’t caused any issues there. As is typical of racehorses, there’s some slight remodeling to the sesamoid, but nothing problematic or significant – no chips, no arthritis, no evidence of old fractures, etc.

We also discussed gut health – between omeprazole and sucralfate she’s basically been on some kind of ulcer meds all year, so we talked about remaining symptoms, what to do next, and tapering. We also talked about the fact that her heat cycles seem very strong and very… constant. We’ll try a month of Regumate and see if that makes a difference.

The vet liked her and didn’t see anything that would potentially prohibit a sport career, so that’s great news. He said to go ahead and start riding her – she’s good to go. My first question was “when can we put her in regular turnout”. Because as I said last week, while she had been impeccably behaved in her small paddock, I could tell she was dying to get to go out in the big field. The vet said to go for it, as long as she wouldn’t get overly excited and damage herself. Since she still had a little bit of sleepy juice in her system from all her xrays I looked at Hillary and was like “why not now?”. So we indeed marched her directly to the field.

She immediately dove nose-first into the grass like she hadn’t eaten in days. Which… she isn’t a big hay eater, so it was a constant source of frustration for me that she wasn’t getting as much roughage as I would have liked when she was restricted to the paddock. Seeing her out there in the pasture stuffing her face probably made me just as happy as it made her. To her immense credit she never once did anything stupid all day (despite it being COLD AND WINDY AF) – trotted a couple laps, did one impressive bucking festival, but otherwise she barely lifted her head from the grass the entire rest of the day. Since she’s already gotten to know Henry and Quinnie so well in the barn and sharing a fenceline with them, turning her out with them was a non-event. Gemma is bottom of the totem pole and quick to get out of the way, but not enough of a pushover for Henry to take advantage.

I figured the next morning might be the real test, with no lingering sleepy juice in her system. I fed everyone, led them out from the barn, let them go, and… again, her head went straight to the grass. After a few minutes she again trotted a slow lap, during which she spotted the neighbor’s cows on the other side of the back fence. And omg. Where some horses see those cows for the first time and absolutely lose their marbles (ahem Henry ahem Grace), Gemma stopped, looked them over, and then made a beeline straight for them.

There was one pretty brave cow that came up close to the fence a few times, but I think Gemma’s, um, enthusiasm concerned him a bit. When Gemma wasn’t close he would slowly meander up to the fence (close to where Henry was grazing) then Gemma would see him, trot over post haste, and he’d run away. Over and over, much to her chagrin. She wanted so badly to nose boop that cow and he just wouldn’t let her. Her curiosity gene was in full effect, that’s for sure. I’m starting to think she’s kind of a combo of Henry and Presto… Henry’s sensitivity, but Presto’s boldness. Although I think she’s smarter than both of them, of course, since she’s a mare.

On Sunday I decided it was time to officially start her sporthorse training. Hillary’s gone for a couple weeks to Ocala so it seems like the perfect opportunity to start doing some ground work and getting Gemma ready so that by the time Hillary gets back I can start hacking with her and Henry. Ever since Gemma got here I’ve been bringing her in to the barn during the day a few times a week to start figuring out the crossties/grooming routine/behavior expectations. She’s a very quick study and picked all that up pretty quickly, so I figured I’d go ahead and tack her up, then take her out to the ring to lunge her.

The great thing about OTTB’s is that they come knowing all kinds of things, having seen and done so much on the racetrack. But I also never like to just assume that any horse knows how to do anything, or will automatically understand things the way I ask them. So, I wanted to use this time to get an idea of what she already knows, what she doesn’t, and go over all the basics just to make sure we’re on the same page. I also needed to get some tack fitted to her.

I groomed her, picked her feet, put her boots on, and then decided to start with Henry’s regular tack. My jump saddle is a bit wide for her at the moment, but otherwise not terrible. I thought for sure that his girth would be huge on her, but surprisingly it wasn’t. Bigger than it fits on him of course, but not too big. I think she’s deeper in the barrel than she seems, despite her smaller stature. I also grabbed his breastplate, which fit her just fine too. She’s smaller and thinner than he is, but her shoulder is bigger and longer. If anything I needed the straps to be a little longer between her shoulder and the girth. For her bridle I rummaged through my collection of spare parts (I have an embarrassing number of plain cast-off browbands) and grabbed Presto’s cob size bridle from when he showed in-hand as a 2yo, a pair of never used horse size cheekpieces (I have no idea what they’re even from), and took the spiked browband off of Presto’s brown bridle since he’s not using it at the moment. I pretty much always start the babies in a Nathe bit as a baseline, so that went on the bridle as well.

It’s a frankenbridle, but it works for now. Honestly I thought she’d be solidly cob size but she’s kind of in between. The length of her head and width of her crown is more horse size, but her little nose is cob size and a cob size browband would be better I think. I also think she needs her own tiara… I like the spikes on her, but maybe blue ones? Or maybe some small navy crystals? I’m still undecided. Her rich chestnut color does look REALLY good in blue though.

Once we got in the ring I did a quick little desensitization with the lunge line all over her body, then asked her to walk out on a circle around me. She definitely doesn’t know voice commands aside from clucking, but she’s got a good work ethic and paid attention well, trying to figure out what I wanted. Naturally she lunges better to the left than the right… not a surprise. After she walked and trotted both ways I ran the stirrups down, snapping and flapping them a bit until I got no reaction, then I lunged her with the stirrups down. She was super good about it, so after she w/t both ways I let her be done with that. This was a fact-finding mission more than a real working session and I had already gleaned a lot. On our way out of the arena I introduced her to the mounting block, with me standing on it above her, stomping on it with my feet, leaning over and flapping the stirrup on the opposite side, etc. If she wanted to move off I let her circle around, then come back and stand next to it again. Rinse and repeat, and she got better each time. She was confused by it but not worried about it, so that’s a good first step. She’ll get it pretty quickly I think.

We’ll play a little more in-depth with the ground work this week, do more desensitizing, work on those voice commands, and get more mounting block education. And of course get those shoeing changes started. Here’s to the beginning of what will hopefully be a great adventure!