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.