Month: October 2024

I truly thought I posted something last week but turns out that was false. To be fair, I have no idea what day it is, basically ever. So let’s get you all caught up on what’s been going on since my last post, eh?

First and foremost, Rubes’ was officially inducted into the Parx Racing hall of fame! He’s got a fancy plaque and everything, so if you ever find yourself at Parx, head to ye olde Hall of Fame and take a gander at his official spot.

His previous owner/breeder went for the induction ceremony and texted me very excited to saw me on all the screens. Took me a minute to realize what the heck he was talking about, I had totally forgotten about the Zoom interview that I did with the announcer at Parx not long after I got Rubes. If you want to watch it, check it out here. Enjoy watching me fidget mercilessly with discomfort.

In other good news, look who’s back in action!

It took about a week after his glue-on shoe was… uh… glued on… before Presto really started to look normal again. Once he was walking 100% I got on him and started hacking him, because he was literally climbing the walls of his stall and tiny turnout pen. I suppose I should be glad he lasted as long as he did, but once he decided he was done resting he was REALLY done. Every day that I’ve ridden him he’s felt better and better. The first day I’d say he was like 85% at the trot, then 90%, then 95%, and he’s been feeling totally normal and back in flatwork since the end of last week.

Caveat being that he pulled his other front shoe yesterday and took a giant chunk of wall with it (did he have to do that? No he didn’t, the farrier was already coming today for a re-set anyway) so it’s currently wrapped within an inch of it’s life and secured snugly in a boot. I will be surprised if there’s enough wall left on the medial side to nail back into with any level of security, so he might soon find himself in two glue-ons. Superb. Love that. Let’s just hope he’s still sound, because none of us can cope if he isn’t.

Last week I also had a content creation shoot for Riding Warehouse x LeMieux, for one of their fall collection colors. We got “glacier” which is a soft, light blue, and I was a bit skeptical about how it would look on my dark boys. Gotta be honest though, Rubes in particular really pulled it off and we got some great shots, coming soon to RW pages.

I do think it looked a lot better on Rubes than it did on Presto. He kinda just ended up looking like a grumpy Easter bunny. Guess he needs to chat with Rubes about modeling tips.

The big, and not at all relevant to the subject matter, takeaway from this shoot was that uh… my dressage saddle does not fit Presto anymore. I’ve been trying for over a year now to get a Custom rep out here to have it fitted/reflocked and have had zero luck getting anyone to reply to me or follow through. I always use a sheepskin lined pad on him, which makes it hard to see exactly how it’s sitting, and to be honest, I really dropped the ball on actually checking the fit regularly. He has lodged no objections, so I guess I just didn’t think to do it. When I set my saddle on him on top of just the LM pad by itself, I immediately went “oh…. that actually looks really bad”. Entirely my fault, I should have actually set it on his back without a pad at some point in the past year. Moron.

It was clear that it was rocking, and sitting a bit too close to his withers. I buckled down on trying to contact reps and fitters, and tried Custom directly. No luck. On Friday morning I threw a Hail Mary and reached out to my Arion rep, Kristen, to see if she knew anyone, since she does seem to know lots of people in that world. She said she didn’t but would be happy to come over and look at my saddle. To be honest, the only reason I had wanted a Custom rep to come out was in case I ended up having to look at new or new-to-me saddle options instead of just a fitting. I liked my Custom quite a bit, other than the complete lack of available customer service, so it seemed like a good starting point if I did need to look for another saddle. But ya know… if I can’t get anyone from Custom to come out then that won’t really work, will it? And to be fair, I ride in an Arion jump saddle and love it but have been decidedly anti-French when it comes to dressage saddles because I’ve just never had one in the past that I felt was right.

Kristen showed up within an hour, looked at it, and grimaced. I get it because I too was grimacing. We both agreed that the panel and the tree just weren’t right for his more mature shape. Crap. She also had some Arion dressage demos with her, and despite having ridden in an Arion jump saddle for 2+ years, I’ve actually never sat in their dressage model. I wasn’t optimistic because ya know, as mentioned above, my experiences with French dressage saddles have been underwhelming to say the least. So it was perhaps with a bit too much hubris that I swung aboard and settled my ass into that sweet sweet buffalo, expecting to hate it. Spoiler alert: I did not hate it. I loved it.

Part of it I think was the fact that it fit Presto really well (he’s a fairly standard panel in Arion, praise be) and hence it wasn’t rocking or bouncing. Amazing how that helps. Something about how/where the block hit my leg was magical, too. I also tried a second one with a slightly different block (it was thinner at the top), which was nice, but definitely not as magical as the first one. I was shooketh, questioning all the opinions I thought I had.

So anyway that’s how I was just going about my business on a regular Friday morning and then two hours later found myself ordering a new dressage saddle. That taccident really escalated quickly. So quickly that I literally took no photos of the entire process or the saddles I tried or anything, so… I guess we’ll all get to see it in about 4 weeks when it gets here. Surprise.

Alas, there’s really no way in good conscience I could have put the Custom back on Presto again, knowing what I know now, so I kinda felt like my options were:

1) go through the incredibly painful and frustrating process of trying a million random used saddles and hoping something fit that I liked. The mere thought of this option makes me want to off myself entirely.

2) Get the saddle I know the horse and I both like, from a rep and brand that has been really really exceptional to me and fantastic to work with in every way since the very beginning.

Well ok I suppose I could have done a third option and waited, hoping for a used one to pop up with the specs I need, but used Arions aren’t very common and it probably wouldn’t have been much different in price, plus could potentially have taken many months. I don’t really want to be without a dressage saddle for a long period of time, especially with the FL winter show season just around the corner. So… eff it. I will certainly never be the richest bitch in the graveyard.

It was a strange derailing of the intentions I had for my Friday though, I can tell you that much.

In other news, I also voted last week.

It was my first time ever voting by mail, which I quite liked. Didn’t have to go anywhere or stand in line or deal with people, and I felt free to take my time filling out my ballot. Will definitely be doing that again for future elections. Although I do think the Marion County stickers are lame. There should be a horse on them, obviously.

Speaking of horses and Marion County… yesterday myself, Hillary, and our friend Emily recorded a “Everything you need to know if you want to winter in Ocala” type of podcast episode. We cover everything from the different venues, shows, footing, restaurants, things to do, grocery stores, where to get hay, tack shops, vets, etc etc. Basically every question I’ve ever been asked or seen anyone ask when they’re getting ready to come down here whether it’s for the whole season or just a couple weeks. We’re gonna make this episode publicly available, probably on Apple podcasts. I’ll let you know when it’s up!

Oh yeah, hi there. I probably should have been quicker to update after Hurricane Milton but *insert any excuse here*. And while the hurricane was the most newsworthy thing that happened last week, there was also some other stuff that was considerably more fun. Milton was set to hit on Wednesday afternoon/evening so naturally, the day before, we went over and spent the afternoon at the OBS yearling sale. Because if you’re gonna get slammed by the second hurricane in a week, you deserve to have a least a smidgen of fun in between, I think.

To be fair the yearling sale had been in the plan for months. My friend Lija, lover of OTTBs and buyer of our 2023 foal Lucy, had never been to one. When I found that out, I knew we had to remedy that as soon as possible, so we put the next one on the calendar. The October sale is only yearlings, which are fun to look at but I can also be marked entirely safe from… I’m not buying a yearling racehorse. The January mixed sale, that’s a different story, but the October yearling sale, totally safe. We had a good time looking at and analyzing tons of horses (The prices were shit – guess a lot of people didn’t want to fly into Florida the day before a hurricane? Weird. There were so many that didn’t meet their reserve that OBS ended up doing a Second Chance online auction.) and it was a nice break from the neverending cycle of hurricane prep/hurricane clean up/hurricane prep.

On Wenesday morning I finished the last minute prep stuff and brought the horses in around mid-afternoon when the wind started to pick up. I decided that I was gonna sleep in the tack room for this one, because like Helene, it was hitting us overnight. From my house in the dark I can’t see the barn or really even the whole front half of the property at all, which makes me anxious, so this time I just dragged a mattress into the tack room, brought in some snacks and the dogs, and we made ourselves a little spot to sleep where we could still keep an eye on the horses and the barn.

The real meat of the storm started around 10pm, although we manage not to lose power until 2am. I was surprised we’d kept it that long, considering how much rain we’d gotten over the previous days and how saturated the ground already was. I had a feeling we’d lose more trees this time, and losing trees always means losing power. The power hanging on til 2am was a gift.

Tucked inside the tack room of the cinderblock barn made it a lot harder to tell just how ferocious the wind was, but at one point I opened the door to look out and quickly closed it again. Milton was angry. That was some serious wind. Luckily it had passed over by 5am, which was a lot quicker than originally anticipated. The barn and the horses weathered the storm just fine. The trees, unfortunately did not.

All total we had 4 trees down – one just barely missing the back fence line, one in Freya’s turnout, one in a smaller turnout in the back, and the big beautiful shade tree in the riding field in the front. I was shocked when I looked outside and saw that one down. It was just such a big beautiful old tree. I’ve watched many sunrises from the back of a horse through the Spanish moss on that tree and always felt like there as something so quintessentially and magically ✨Ocala✨ about it. There may have been a few tears shed for that tree.

The mare pasture fence also took a bit of a beating, there was a section where the boards all got blown entirely out of the post. I had to go perform some truly janky physics to get that propped back up well enough to contain the mares. Otherwise though, the horses are all fine and the structures are all fine, so we got through both Helene and Milton relatively unscathed. That tree, though, man. That tree. 😭

We had power back by late that afternoon (the linemen are the true hurricane heroes) and since then it’s really just been cleanup. We hadn’t even finished cleaning up from Helene so there are branches everywhere. I’m quite full up on hurricanes for the moment, thanks.

On Saturday we went to the annual giant Horsey Yard Sale at Tack Shack. Last year we set up a table and sold a ton of shit, but this year it just came a bit too quick for us to prepare. Me and a couple friends did go over there to check out the sale, though, because you never know what kind of good stuff you might find. Last year I got a few really good deals, and I do really love a good deal. This year was no exception. I ended up snagging a pair of Kentucky open front boots for $20, some almost-new Forestier mono dressage leathers for $15, a french link eggbutt (I thought Rubes might like it) for $5, and then a really nice Stanley stud kit box with a bunch of brand new grass tips and road studs plus two safety T taps for $10. Once again the sale really delivered.

Plus they had a bunch of local vendors and other retailers set up in the front, one of which was a local feed store. They had a spin-the-wheel-to-win thingy, and a friend that was with us that doesn’t own any horses at the moment won a free bale of hay. I dunno if y’all are familiar with Ocala hay prices but they are sell-your-first-and-secondborn kind of astronomical, so I was delighted to be the beneficiary of her free bale of hay. We hopped in the truck and went right down the street to the store to pick it up. Score.

This week has been a little bit quieter, mostly in that the weather has been much better. No hurricanes… that’s always a win. We also had our first little cold front of the fall, with the past two days staying around 70 degrees and one night getting down to 49. This place turned into a cacophony of dragon snorts that next morning, let me tell you.

Presto got a shoe put back on his abscess foot on Wednesday, which is good news, but the bad news is that his hoof is so freaking destroyed (no sole and no wall) that there was nothing to nail into and he’s still lame. He’s wearing the glue on and maybe looks a tiny bit better, but the dude quite literally has no foot. So…. love that.

And then on Thursday while I was hacking Henry he literally just trotted right out of a shoe. I swear to the horse gods, they are really testing me right now.

I did hop on Rubes yesterday and do like 10-15mins of walk to try to get a feel for what he knows and where his buttons are. To no surprise he really wants to pull and root, so I think I know what our first order of business will be. I mostly just wanted to get him moving through his back and bend him left and right to see how he responded, what was hard for him, etc. It gives me some feedback as far as where we need to start, what exercises I can do on the ground that might be helpful, or what we might need to look at physically. He’s getting better and better with his daily stretches – they’re still a ways off from where I’d ultimately like him to be, but it’s better than where we started.

I’ll do a few walk hacks on him for assessment purposes over the next 6 weeks before he can start his actual re-training for RRP on Dec 1. I was pretty happy with the quality of the walk he gave me yesterday though (there’s a couple clips on his facebook page) and I might be biased but omg he looks so cute under sporthorse tack.

That’s enough. I’ve had enough. I give up, wave the white flag, surrender. Someone please explain why the third hurricane in 2 months is now barreling straight at Florida? I’m over it. Go away, Milton. It’s shaping up to be another bad one and I really just cannot.

We found out from the last hurricane that our generator is not sufficient to actually run the pump to get water all the way down the lines to the farthest fields. So, being responsible, we immediately ordered another one, which was supposed to arrive last week. That would have been great, if it had happened. Instead, somehow the generator ended up in Nevada. There were zero others in stock that could be re-routed to us more quickly, so that one is currently on it’s way to Florida and set to arrive just after the hurricane does. Stupendous. Very helpful. Thanks so much.

In the meantime, the barn worker went MIA last week, leaving me to deal with not only 25 horses in my sole care, but also the cleanup from the last hurricane. I am now conjoined with the zero turn mower, I think. Rob managed to get most of the biggest downed limbs picked up, so as of today we’re like… mostly cleaned up from Helene? Ish. We don’t have enough fence material (again, ordered but not arrived) to repair the fences that really need to be done, so I sure do hope those things decide to stay together through this one. They’re braced as well as they can be.

In the meantime, what little joy was left in my life was snuffed out by a perfectly timed abscess on Presto’s part. Did I panic last week and have the vet out for a lameness eval? Sure did. But we def have an abscess, it’s just the slowest moving thing in the history of abscesses and really refuses to come out despite the best continued efforts of me, my vet, and my farrier. So I had to scratch Ocala, which was set to be our first recognized event in 6 months. Does this completely derail my entire rest of the year plan? Indeed it severely does, thanks for asking.

In addition to the vet visit for his footie, Presto also got both a gastroscope (good news, his stomach looks pretty good) and an endoscope (also good) last week. No I have literally no money left in addition to the dearth of joy, but again, thanks for asking.

There was a point last week where I had three (count em THREE) riding horses, none of whom were actually rideable for various reasons and all missing one front shoe. Now after a farrier visit at least I’m 1 for 3 being rideable. Henry is carrying the team. Not that it matters, since we’re about to get slammed with a hurricane again.

In case you can’t tell, I have no sanity left either. It’s been a long couple weeks and promises to get worse before it gets better.

Fingers crossed that Milton takes it easy on us!

Hurricane Helene has come and gone, and boy was she something. Her path was really similar to Debby, the last one that came through Florida in August. Other than that though, those two storms couldn’t have been more different. And honestly, for Ocala, Helene was probably a bit easier as far as lingering effects go.

We ended up on the east side of both storms, which is the worse side to be on. It gets all the rain, wind, and tornadoes. Debby and Helene were both big storms, with Helene the stronger of the two, but Helene was fast, whereas Debby was slow. For us here in Ocala, that meant Helene was much more violent, but she dropped considerably less rain because she came and went so quickly. Debby lingered, raining for almost 24 hours straight, dropping way more water. So while Helene dropped some trees and downed some power lines, she didn’t cause any kind of lasting flooding around here.

The same can’t be said of states north of us though, which definitely got hit much worse by Helene than we did. Even Aiken took a much bigger hit than Ocala, despite the fact that the eye was only like 90 miles from us when she made landfall. Helene marched north with spectacular rage, and it’s just devastating to see the absolute destruction she left in her wake. If you were in her path, I hope you and your horses and your farms are ok. Seeing some of these places in North Carolina and Tennessee that were literally just wiped off the face of the earth (and in some cases, the earth was wiped away along with it) is absolutely gutting. Mindboggling that a hurricane could do so much damage even that far inland. We absolutely got lucky here in Ocala.

I spent last Wednesday prepping for the storm, which mostly includes deciding which horses are gonna go where, putting away or securing anything that might blow away (stuff in the crossties, anything in the aisles, jumps, dressage arena letters, trash cans, etc), and hoarding water. Like most farms, we’re on a well, so if the power goes out the pump doesn’t work, which means we don’t have water. That’s a problem when you’ve got 25 horses.

On Thursday I did slightly change my plan of what horses were going where, when I saw exactly what direction the worst of the winds would be coming from. It was slightly different from Debby, and the wind speed was expected to be considerably higher. They were forecasting 50-60mph sustained with gusts potentially up to 90mph. The pasture horses stay out in the pastures during these storms, but I decided to bring the stall horses all up to the main cinderblock barn and put them in stalls that had fully enclosed doors. With winds that high, I wasn’t sure how the wood barns would fare, and I didn’t want them in stalls that had open top doors in case there was any flying debris.

So Thursday morning I prepped all those stalls with bedding, several water buckets, and two hay nets each. Helene was set to hit us overnight, so I wanted to make sure they had plenty of hay and water just in case something prevented me from getting up to the barn first thing in the morning. Andy and Rhett are also up at the top barn right now because Andy has a summer sore that requires 1) daily care and bandaging 2) turnout that involves no standing water. Those two kids got put in another giant foaling stall and I just gave them a whole bale of hay. They were delighted. Luxury hurricane suite.

I ended up bringing everyone in around dinner time on Thursday right as the first outer bands were starting to arrive. They weren’t most pleased about not being able to see each other (especially Hillary’s mares) but at least they were safe. I bid them all the best of luck, did one last pass around the farm, and then went to hunker down in my house.

Right around 8pm is when the wind went from breezy to rough, and that’s exactly when we lost power. I was kinda hoping we’d make it a little further into the storm than that, but nope. I basically sat there all night sweating (Helene was hot and humid) and listening to the metal roof rattle in a moderately concerning way while things pinged off the front of the house. I don’t think many of us got much sleep. Our tornado risk was quite high so I was mega paranoid about that too.

Honestly I think we got a little bit lucky with direction the wind came from. The weaker structures on the farm had a bit of a wind block from other things, and the house had the benefit of being a bit down and behind a tree line that helped block some. I mean, we did get smacked with lots of little branches from said trees, but that’s alright. And the biggest trees near our house that would be a problem if they fell, those are all behind it or on the other side.

In the end the farm ended up losing two trees and having a couple spots of damaged fence, along with LOTS of branches and limbs down, but overall it’s much less damage than I expected. Most importantly, the horses were all happy and safe, and I was able to turn them back out the next morning.

I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get power back… I was prepared for up to a week. But we also got lucky in that the major cities nearby (Ocala and Gainesville) didn’t have any widespread power issues, so all the linemen that had gathered nearby were able to get out to us in the rural areas a lot faster. And one side of the farm goes along a bigger road that connects the interstate to a nearby town, so we seem to have gotten some priority. There were 5-6 trees down on the lines between us and that town, but they still managed to get our power back on by dinnertime on Friday, so it wasn’t even out for 24 hours. Other people nearby got theirs back as late as Sunday or Monday, so I was happy to be among the first. It’s too dang hot to not have AC, and it stresses me the heck out when we don’t have water for the farm.

I also lost cell service until late on Friday, which was annoying because I could see that people were texting and messaging me, but I couldn’t actually open any of it. I ended up driving into town in the afternoon to let people know we were alright.

Overall we definitely escaped Helene much more lightly than most of the others in her path, which I’m thankful for. Still though, of the hurricanes that have come through since I’ve lived here (I think we’re on 4 or 5 now?) she was definitely the angriest. Normally this far inland we just get some wind and rain, but this one was more wind than we’ve had so far. Did not love. Especially overnight when I couldn’t see what all the thumps and bumps were.

But Helene only dropped like 1.5″ of rain, compared to 8″+ from Debby. There was standing water for a month. Heck, there’s still standing water from Debby in the front corner where everything drains. At least Helene didn’t give us more of that.

We’ve still got a ton of sticks and branches and Spanish moss to pick up, and some fence that needs to be repaired, but compared to the footage I’ve seen from elsewhere, it feels like we got off pretty scot free with this one. I would really love it if no more hurricanes would come this way for the rest of the year tho. I do believe two in 6 weeks was enough for me, thank you so very much global warming.