Truly did intend on making another post last week but clearly that didn’t happen. Let’s catch us up, shall we?

Rubes continues to eschew my efforts to keep 4 shoes on him. He got his left front put back on and proceeded to pull the right front literally hours later. And he took enough hoof wall with it to where if we nail something back on and he pulls it again, there’s literally gonna be nothing left. So now he’s going out in a wrap with a boot over the top and then wearing a canvas hoof wrap when he’s inside. Joyous times. All the horse’s feet (and my farrier) are really really really ready for the end of the rainy Florida summer.

Granted, there’s about to be a hurricane coming right at us later this week, so excuse me while I just internally cry for a minute. I can’t cope. You know what we don’t need? Another hurricane. UGH. We’re just finally drying out from the last one.

But that’s a problem for future me, so let’s talk about more fun stuff instead. Last week I had a jump lesson with Ellie, from which I have no media (Hillary is down and out from shoulder surgery and can’t even drive for a while yet, so I’m largely solo at the moment) but it was fine. It was pretty hot so Presto was a bit lazy, but we did the thing.

And then on Friday we went with Emily and Holly over to FHP to pop around some cross country.

I was hoping to be able to line something up to school with Alex, but his group wanted to go to the open schooling day on Saturday, which is always maximum chaos, and I didn’t feel like that would be the best choice for Presto. So instead we opted for a quieter day with friends, and it was fun! It was nice and quiet and we had the place mostly to ourselves, so it was a low-stress environment.

Presto did want to be a bit nappy about his new BFF’s a few times, but once I gave him some real work to do he buckled down and got to it. I swear, the harder things are, the better he is. He was definitely a bit spooky when we started, but we ended up hopping through some of the T and M combos later on and he settled.

Saturday Presto just went for a walk hack, and then Sunday we went to the POP show! The schooling shows don’t offer any XC levels above Training, so we entered the MT division and did Modified dressage and SJ and Training XC.

I had no one with me on the ground so I the only media I have is some snippets that my friend (who was scribing) got from setting her phone on the side of the booth. Which is exceptionally better than no media at all, but yeah… nothing from the jumping phases. We’ll see if the photographers got anything.

We did dressage at 12:30ish, so I warmed him up for about 15 minutes. Mostly I just get him moving over his back in the walk, move his haunches in and out at the walk and trot, do some up and down transitions, canter both ways and do canter lengthenings both ways, leg yield, and focus on keeping him in front of my leg. He was really well-behaved so even though I started warming up when I was 4 horses out, we still walked for a good bit of that time. It’s a long hot day, no need to wear him out. Make sure the buttons are working, get him loose, and get on with it.

His buttons indeed were working, and he laid down a good test for our personal best score of 21.9. It was probably a bit generous but I’ll take it. Sometimes you get generosity and sometimes you don’t. Either way he was a good boy and it was a very steady test, so I was happy with that.

Then we had a few hours to kill before we jumped at 3:30. I hosed him off and set him up at the trailer in the shade with his fancy battery operated Ryobi fan (he’s bougie) while I scoped out SJ. Which was the same course as the show a few weeks ago. At least I didn’t have to learn a new one? I have no media from SJ, so short version: he jumped great, even when I had a swing and a miss at a single oxer because I got just a bit underpowered out of the turn.

I slapped his xc boots and my xc vest on and then went straight out to XC. We hopped over a brush jump, angled a rolltop, and then headed to the startbox. Mostly I wanted to just have him feel calm and not be spooky out there, I didn’t care much about the rest of it. The course was almost the same as last time (except for the waters) so I didn’t walk it again nor did I have my watch or know what OT was. I truly just wanted to have a nice little lope around where he felt happy and confident and we didn’t go spinning around because of whatever demon he thought he saw in the distance.

And TLDR once again: that’s exactly how it went. He came out and jumped 1 great, was def a bit on edge passing the crater area to 2 (where he spooked last time) but I put him a bit rounder, told him he was fine, and he got on with it. Big pats. After about jump 6 he finally took a deep breath and dug in, feeling more like his normal XC self, and after that he didn’t so much as pick his head up to look around at anything. He finished double clear on his dressage score, winning that one by a mile. Mostly though I was just happy to feel him click back in and be my normal bold brave boy out there again.

I did make an appointment to have my vet come scope him for ulcers again, because I still think he’s being spookier than is typical for him. I suspect the ulcers are back, which is exceptionally frustrating given everything I do to mitigate that. Will be talking to the vet about that too, because if they’re back I literally have no idea what else to do to try to manage this horse’s stomach.

Horses are fun (said both truthfully and sarcastically, all at once).