Last week was Presto’s last week of vacay (thank god)… it was also very hot, so at least the timing for his break worked out. I rode Henry some, when I could get on him early enough, because much past 9am was getting a bit too toasty for him.

I’m not sure he took a single normal step of canter any of those rides… Henry dolphined me from one side of the farm to the other with exceptional glee. Bless him. I’m glad he’s still so sassy.

Tuesday was farrier day, and all 3 children were well behaved and their feet look good.

You may remember that we pulled Henry’s hind shoes last cycle, and I was a little worried about his feet crumbling to bits. They did in Texas, but it’s so hard to keep any working horse barefoot there with how hard and rocky the ground is all the time. The parts around his old nail holes did chip up a little bit over the 5 weeks, but no real damage, and they had grown out quite a lot, so this trim the old nail holes are all gone. He’s got a couple of quite lovely-looking barefoot hind feet! He hasn’t seemed tender on them at all either… it’s so sandy and grassy here, much easier to cope without shoes. It was a pretty easy transition.

Fey’s feet also are finally looking markedly better. When she came she had a lot of flaring and cracking in all 4 feet, with some of the quarter cracks sneaking awfully close to the coronary band. We’re, what… 4 or 5 trims in now and all the flares and cracks are totally gone aside from the one biggest one on a hind foot. That one is much improved, it’s only about 1/4 of the way up the foot now. Slowly but surely making improvement! Her feet are actually quite nice, now that the trim is balanced they’re wearing pretty well in between trims. She was also the best behaved she’s been for the farrier so far, she only yanked her foot away twice and had one mini-tantrum. We’ve been working on that. She’s got opinions (shocking, I know).

On Thursday the vet came to do Presto’s first vaccine in his re-started flu series (ugh) for his FEI passport. The timing worked out great because that was the day I was also set to take off the wrap over the leg wounds that had had the Regenaflex-M patches on them. She looked at everything, pulled the last couple stitches out of the bigger wound, and said she thought they looked pretty good. His knee def looks great. The other one is trying to make a lot of granular tissue, so she gave me instructions for what to do with that one and said to keep it covered and protected to make sure it doesn’t turn into summer sores. Granted his skin was also getting irritated from being bandaged for so long, so now we’re dealing with that too. It’s been a fun game to try to figure out how to keep it covered in a way that stays, as dry as possible, and also let air flow to that leg. He’s also THE WORST patient for shit like this because he won’t leave anything on his legs alone. Our current iteration features a fly boot that is gorilla taped on. It’s made it 12 hours, that’s a record so far.

On Saturday I swung a leg over Presto again for his first ride back, and… yeehaw, y’all. He is feeling himself. Psychedelically. There was snorting. There was spinning. There was prancing. There was some wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubeman.

Wouldn’t really expect much else would we?

This week we’re hacking and walking poles and stretching his body out, stuff like that, just making sure he’s feeling good and slowly easing him back into work. Hopefully I don’t get murdered… it’s 50/50 every day. It’s been very rainy the past few days, which has kept the temps down (yay) but has meant that they’ve been stuck inside more (boo). It really helps add to the general rodeo vibes.