I’m going to stop leading off my Monday/Tuesday update posts with “last week was busy!” because its starting to annoy even me.

In our quest to continue making sure Presto is feeling confident about drops into water again, we took him back to the original “scene of the crime” (aka where he landed funny and the issue started). This time I didn’t lunge him over anything first, we just did a little warmup, hopped up and down the regular banks from small to large, popped over a couple ditches, then went and did the banks into and out of water from small to large. I opted to put him in his dressage bridle to encourage him to be extra bold and boy did he have some utter delight at taking me for a dolphin spin all around the XC field. Whoa was a suggestion.

He was super good though, he’s back to his normal method of locking on and taking me to everything, no hesitation whatsoever. I did decide to go ahead and have the vet out this week to give him a thorough once-over anyway, just to make sure there’s not something physical that we’re missing. He’s felt great, honestly, but I’d rather be overly cautious and cover all our bases than have any kind of question marks remaining. I mean, ya know, why not give the vet all our money, it’s fine.

I haven’t entered our last two planned events for the year (Rocking Horse M and TerraNova 1*) yet because as of right now I’m still on the fence. If he schools well today and gets an all-clear from the vet tomorrow, then we’ll have the conversation, but as of right now I’m holding off. I do think that 1) assuming we’ve done our due diligence to rebuild his confidence, and 2) if the vet thinks he looks good, it’s in his best interest to go back out and run ASAP. But I also don’t want to spend the entry fees and then have to scratch, so I’ll decide sometime this week.

This past weekend was a fairly quiet one on the horse front. On Saturday there was a big community horsey tack sale at Tack Shack of Ocala and omg y’all I was not prepared for that level of insanity. Hillary and I both have plenty of stuff for sale, so we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get it out. 10×10 spots were $15 and first come first serve. We got there at 6:30am for setup and the line was so long we had to wait almost an hour just to get in and get our spot. There were hundreds of people there. Tents set up as far as the eye could see. It was NUTS, I’ve never seen so much horse stuff in my entire life.

A lot of it was junk, or old, or just not stuff I’m interested in (a lot of western stuff and home decor) but there were also a lot of hidden gems. Tons of blankets and coolers and fly sheets, horse boots, bits, saddle pads, saddles, show clothes, tack… just… so much. I walked around the whole place twice and still didn’t see everything. It was majorly overwhelming. We sold a bunch of shit though, and I found a few good deals. I got a lightweight wool cooler, some woof boots, a cool stud wrench tool, and a nice plastic stud brush/pick thing for $50. I also found a basically brand new full set of Arma XC boots that Hillary and I went half and half on ($15 each) to have a pair of schooling boots so that we don’t have to use our nice white ones.

The people set up next to us had a George Morris talking action figure (I asked if he said “I’m a pedophile”… warning, only some people will be receptive to this comment, apparently plenty of people still like GM regardless) which I really regret not buying, it would have the absolute best/worse White Elephant gift. It was horrendous in the best way.

It was a long day – we packed up around 3 when the crowd started to dwindle – but a fruitful one. I still can’t get over how crazy that was. You gotta love Ocala.