Y’all know that viral TikTok sound that’s like

“Look at this”

*GASP*

“PERFECT!”

“Oh my god!”

“Isn’t it great?”

That’s me with Sir Rubert on the daily. I’m obsessed. (Fair warning, throughout this post I will refer to Ruby Bleu solely by different nicknames that he’s garnered already, without ever repeating the same one twice. Do try to keep up.)

As you know, he got here to Ocala last Tuesday. He looked cute in his pictures but in person he’s just wow. It’s one of those horses that just oozes class. He’s super intelligent with a big swinging walk and is every inch an athlete.

Of course, the first few days of a horse coming off the track can be a little nerve-wracking sometimes. It’s a BIG lifestyle change, and they’re always unsettled at first… the only real question is how unsettled they’re gonna be. Since Rubes spent 7 years racing so consistently that his longest gap was 4 months, and he’s a 10yo, I thought for sure he might take a week or two. To his immense credit, he did not.

The first day he was here I gave him a teeny bit of dorm and turned him out for a few hours in the evening. He powerwalked the fence line, stared at cows across the street, trotted a few laps and cantered one or two, but didn’t do anything that made me worried for his safety. A lot of times that first turnout is kinda like “Please don’t hit the fence. Please don’t pull all your shoes off.” even with a little bit of sleepy juice. You could see him thinking about everything rather than reacting or getting spun up, even if he was a little excited.

The next day, Wednesday, he went out for about 5 hours in the morning, and then again for about 3 hours in the evening. That day I just gave him a little bit of trazodone, which mostly just takes the edge off of anxiety or stress. Again, he was well-behaved, and with less fence-walking. He did seem a little confused about exactly what he was supposed to DO out there. He just kept staring across the fence at Henry like “Psssst. What do we do?” and Henry was like “Eat. Sleep. Scratch your ass on a tree. Whatever you want, man”. RuTube was most puzzled.

Funnily enough, he really couldn’t figure out the grazing-on-his-own thing at first. If I went out there and clipped the leadrope on, he would immediately start handgrazing. As soon as I took it off he was like “well now what?”. I hung a haynet out there for him so he could realize that outside is where we eat things, and after a day or so of the haynet he transitioned to grazing on his own.

On Thursday it wasn’t too unbearably hot, so he stayed out all day and I didn’t give him any kind of pharmaceutical help this time. He didn’t need it, he was super. I also knew him well enough by then to know that even if he did get jazzed, he wasn’t the type to do anything too stupid. This was also the day he decided he simply could not with the gnats and started shaking his head so much I thought he was gonna scramble his brains, so I went and scrounged him up a hand-me-down fly mask and fly sheet to wear until his (which I ordered just for him, naturally) arrive. He’s got a whole outfit, it’s a vibe.

Thursday night he was the saddest Ruberto because he had to fast ahead of his gastroscope on Friday morning. He is a good boy but he is go-go-go, so I had a feeling we might find something in his tummy and I was right. It’s nothing terrible by any means, but he has a few grade 2-3 ulcers, both glandular and squamous.

And this, friends, is exactly why we scope before we treat. Gastrogard is the drug of choice for the glandular ulcers, but it won’t get the squamous ones. For that we’ve also added misoprostil, which is a longer treatment period, and my vet advises continuing a lower dose of GG the whole time they’re on miso. So, it’s a total of 60 days of both drugs, with step-down dosages of the GG along the way. Luckily I already had 20 tubes, so it’s not quite as much that I have to buy, and the miso isn’t too crazy expensive. We’ll rescope him again around the 50-55 day mark to see how things are looking.

By Friday he had officially garnered a high enough level of trust to graduate to what is my normal summer turnout schedule for my guys: inside from noonish until 7ish pm, outside the rest of the time. There are only two types of Florida afternoons: nasty thunderstorms or mega heat. My spoiled boys all come inside and eat hay in front of their fans and take a good nap at that time of day instead.

And that’s been Bleubert’s schedule the past several days now. He’s settled in, he knows the routine, and he’s starting to come around to my insistence that he cannot actually walk everywhere at Mach 10 while dragging me behind him. He finds me terribly geriatric, I’m sure.

Henry has been the absolute best little emotional support animal through Sir Snausage’s transition. RubyDoobyDoo has spent a ton of time just watching Henry and copying whatever he does, it’s actually both cute and hilarious. Henry of course has taken this as yet another feather in his cap… like obviously he’s the gold standard example. Duh.

Presto wasn’t particularly sold on him in the beginning (he thought Bleuberry stole his BFF, and he’s not wrong) but now he’s come around. Mostly because they both really like to do mutual groomies over the fence, and that’s all it really takes to win Presto over, let’s be honest.

Overall, Rhubarb gets a 10/10 for his first week here. I’m just so freakin smitten with him. And I have to give major props to his racing connections – never in my life have I gotten a horse off the track that was in this good of condition. His muscling is even, he’s not sore anywhere, his coat is super shiny, he’s in good weight, even the angles of his feet are pretty good. It would be impressive for a horse of any age, but for one that’s 10 years old and raced as much and as often as he has, it’s really noteworthy.

Cheers to the good ones.