For a quick reminder, my last post ended with this

“So much drama from these horses around here though, my goodness. If we could all just… tone it down for a bit… that would be great.”

Narrator: They indeed did NOT tone it down.

Presto was footsore from his torn-off and put-back-on shoe for a couple days. On Friday Rubes had his follow-up gastroscope to check in on his ulcer situation, and while his stomach looks way way better, there are still a couple grade 1 squamous ulcers. Considering he was on antiobiotics and NSAIDs for his cellulitis in the middle of all the ulcer treatment, and the issues he’s been having with the bugs, I wasn’t particularly surprised by that. But the lack of glandular ulcers this time meant we could discontinue the miso, so that’s good, but he gets another month of 1/4 tube of gastrogard to wrap up the few remaining glandular ones.

By Saturday Presto seemed to be feeling better again, so I texted Ellie and made lesson plans for Sunday. In the meantime, I had PLANNED on going over to a friend’s house on Saturday to watch Burghley XC. Naturally though, because these horses can’t give me one day of peace or let me ever leave the farm, they derailed that entire plan.

First I turned Rubes out and he had a meltdown (first turnout meltdown in several days, to be fair) so I had to deal with that (there were bugs, y’all, and he wasn’t having it). And then Florida decided that actually it was going to rain in the morning instead of the afternoon, which it never does except for the day I need it to NOT do that, so instead of waiting until after XC to clean stalls, I had to go ahead and clean them in the morning like usual, in case I had to bring horses back inside. Which also means stuffing hay nets and scrubbing/filling buckets. And then Tilly lost one of her hoof boots in her turnout and I had to go look for that so I could put it back on, lest she tear up her foot. And then it did start raining.

At that point I gave up. I ended up half watching and half listening to Burghley on my phone while I cleaned stalls and did everything else. It was extra annoying because I had gone and gotten all the stuff to make some dope crepes (Kentucky has trained me to want crepes at 5*’s, what can I say) and that got entirely derailed. I mean I did make myself a banana and nutella and almond and honey crepe for a late breakfast, so it was partly salvaged but still.

I love them so much, and I love having them right outside my front door, but if you want to entirely ruin your social life and make it impossible to make plans, just be responsible for a farm full of horses.

On Sunday (after fixing boards that Freya kicked down in her stall) we did make it over to Ellie’s for our lesson and Presto felt good, praise be. Well physically he felt good. He was a bit wild from his very light week of work, and at the beginning he spooked at himself in the mirror, flipped his tail over his back, and tried to passage sideways. Cute. Let’s just say the rideability for this lesson was not as good as it has been.

She had us doing some turning exercises with simple jumps and he was really convinced he knew exactly where he was going and exactly what he was doing, right up until the second he realized he didn’t, which still didn’t faze him in the slightest.

That’s fine though, because it IS one of the things about him that comes into play sometimes. He’s cocky and sometimes needs to remember that he doesn’t know everything. (he finds that statement to be super offensive)

We also made plans for Alex to pop Presto around some XC. I really wanted to get his thoughts on kind of where we’re at, what I need to be doing better, and if there’s a way I could/should be riding him that will put me in a better place when he wants to do the spooking and spinning shit. We penciled that in for Tuesday.

Meanwhile on Monday, Sadie scratched her ass on the fence so hard that she snapped a board in half and sliced her ass open on it. Fun times with the vet calls. And it’s been raining buckets for over a week now, so the mosquitoes have returned in full force, which means Rubes’ marbles have been officially lost again. Poor guy, he really really really hates Florida nature. To be fair, I’m starting to understand where he’s coming from, I’m covered in so many damn mosquito bites.

Anyway, on Tuesday we met Alex over at Majestic.

Presto was annoyingly well-behaved. Like come on, not even one little teeny spook? Nothin? Turd. It was fun to see Alex pop him over stuff though, and he got to see some bigger/more technical things again. He really hasn’t jumped much XC since the 1*. He was a little surprised at the first couple bigger fences and had the teeniest wiggle about it, but it definitely woke him up and tuned him in. That’s the thing with him – he’s better when it’s harder.

Alex had a jolly good time though, and had a lot of really nice things to say about him. He gave me some ideas for how I should be approaching the XC rounds at the moment, and changes I can make to my position and Presto’s galloping style that might help. I’ll need a XC lesson to actually put it all into place, but I really appreciated him taking the time to stand there and talk to me about the theory and the physics of it… my brain really really needs the “why” and the “how” in order for everything to click, so it gave me something to take home and think about.

It was also fun to just watch my horse go. I haven’t seen anyone else ride him around XC in a really long time and it’s cool to see how he’s matured. He does look terribly unchallenged, which Alex also said “all of this is super easy for him”. Yes yes I KNOW he’s not the one holding this particular duo back.

On Wednesday morning Rubes had an entirely epic come apart when I tried to turn him out in the morning, so I had to really re-evaluate my plan and approach for how to help him deal with the mosquitoes. He was already going out in head to toe fly garb and covered in fly spray, but the fly spray really doesn’t do shit for mosquitoes. I have to be careful using OFF since he already had a reaction to it once, but I went and got some Mosquito Halt. This morning I turned him out in fly sheet, fly boots, fly mask, did a light spray of OFF and heavier spray of Mosquito Halt, and waited to put him out until after 8am when the sun was well and truly up. We had the first entirely no drama morning in days, so hopefully we’re maybe on the right track? He just truly has a menty b about the mosquitos.

To top off yesterday’s drama, Rube pulled a shoe in his stall, the golf cart shorted out and died in the middle of my afternoon chores, and the pressure sensor went out on the well pump last night and we had no water. Fun times on the farm.

On an entirely different note, a few people had asked if I was going to weigh in on the Andrew McConnon situation, and I would have except for the fact that the EN team was putting together a piece that was totally kick ass and said everything I had to say. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s so well done and makes me really proud to be part of the EN team.