It’s been a couple weeks since my last post and that was, truth be told, entirely intentional. I didn’t post anything last week because Mina got hit by a car on Monday and was in the hospital all week, and it was a real roller coaster. I didn’t know what to say… the first several days were very touch and go and we weren’t sure whether or not she was gonna make it.

She took quite the hit (from a Toyota Corolla – we were able to figure that out from the chunks of their car that were left behind) and had broken ribs, some banged up internal organs, and a collapsed lung. She took a hard blow to the head and spine, but luckily a CT revealed that there’s nothing broken there – just super banged up.

She’s had some complications here and there along the way (the latest was a clot near her gallbladder) but she’s really fighting and looks a bit better every day. Currently she doesn’t have use of her hind legs, but the good news is that she can feel her feet and wag her tail and poop/pee on her own with the help of a harness. Since yesterday she’s gotten the ability to prop herself up a bit on the left one… the right one is still a bit of a struggle to get it to do anything. They’re very hopeful that with time to heal she’ll regain use of those legs. Her demeanor looks a lot like a human who’s sustained a TBI, but she’s bright and happy, eating and drinking, and is very aware of everything happening around her. On Saturday she was still pretty out of it and wobbly, but today she’s really close to her normal demeanor again. Improvements day over day.

She’s a tough girl and despite the astronomical vet bill we’re really lucky that she appears to be able to make a pretty decent recovery and escaped the ordeal with no surgeries. We finally got to bring her home yesterday after 9 days at UF (shoutout to the staff there, they were all amazing) and she seems pretty happy.

In the meantime, life continued to tick on. Last week I had a XC lesson with Presto (our first in like 6-7 months) and it was maybe one of the best XC lessons I’ve ever had. Just really simple advice, but technical exercises and Presto and I both left with a big deposit in the confidence bank. I wish I’d had someone with me to video because he was absolutely brilliant at a big table to corner question and then again at a coffin to corner question. He’s always so much better when things are harder.

He was acting like he was tired by the end of the XC lesson (which wasn’t long by any means) so I was thinking I really need to buckle down on his conditioning. Apparently he was just lying to me last week, because yesterday I took him to Sweet Dixie to trot and canter the big hill and he was an absolute psychopath. Like 40 minutes later he wasn’t even breathing hard but my life had flashed before my eyes at least 3 times (especially the time when he tripped cantering down the hill because he was trying to run away with me, and then he got mad about tripping so he started bucking). I was regretting giving him the extra oxygen with his FLAIR strip.

Rubes also had a pretty busy week last week. I had scheduled a PostPE with my vet, now that he’s had a few months of turnout and R&R. I rode him a couple times before she came, actually asking him to do stuff, so that I could have some feedback for her… a lot of times I think feeling things can be a nice additional bit of information aside from what you can see just from jogging them.

He’s definitely a bit of a spicy boy, and the way his body felt to the left vs the right, plus how the different parts wanted to go vs didn’t want to go… it gave me some good insight that I was able to pass along to the vet.

So she came and we did the usual stuff… jogged him, flexed him, took some films of areas of concern. Truth be told there wasn’t anything remarkable about any of it. He was mildly positive to most of the flexions in the hind end but not super positive to anything. None of his xrays showed anything worrisome (his hocks actually look pretty darn good for a 10yo racehorse that raced 100 times, honestly). He was most reactive to anything SI related, which I suspected – he’s been sore in his SI since he got here, which I think is pretty typical of racehorses – and a bit to his stifles, so we opted to start with injecting those areas. She said to keep doing what I’ve been doing with the core exercises and the poles, and that I can even add in more polework.

After a couple days to let the injections settle, Rubes finally got to move to a new turnout.

The barn in the center of the property closest to my house used to be the “stallion barn” back when this was a TB operation. It’s a cinderblock barn with just 2 stalls and the rest is hay and equipment storage, but each stall has an attached turnout. Presto lives down there because it’s got the highest and sturdiest fences, therefore it’s the only place that can really contain him. The other stall has been vacant since last winter because for whatever reason or other, we either haven’t needed it or some other turnout space has just worked out better for whatever horses we were shuffling around.

I personally am a huge huge fan of turnouts with attached stalls, if and when at all possible. I like for them to be able to make the choice whether or not they want to be in or out, and I like that they have their own little comfy place to hang out if they want to. I’ve been wanting to turn Rubes out down there since he got here, but for whatever reason or other (first the mosquitoes were too bad, then it was one hurricane after the other and the turnout Henry would need to go in was flooded, then Presto fucked up his foot and had to spend a month up in the main barn with a tiny turnout, etc etc).

Finally last week the stars aligned and I was able to move everyone. Presto is back in his normal turnout, Rubes is in the stall/turnout across from him, and Henry has the turnout next to Rubes (no attached stall but lots of trees, so Henry approves). I was worried about how Rubes would handle it because he’s been such a little weirdo about turnout, and very insistent that he not be outside too much. But I guess what he really wanted was the option to come and go, because he’s been absolutely LOVING his new spot. The turnout is considerably bigger too, like 5 times bigger than his previous paddock. He comes inside for a couple hours at a time to nap or eat his hay or whatever, but most of the time he’s outside grazing. He’s been having so much fun discovering all the nature that I’ve started calling him Russell the Wilderness Explorer.

So I’m relieved that the transition went well, and that he seems happy. It also means way less stall cleaning for me (thank the lord, I feel like I’ve been cleaning stalls and slinging shavings nonstop since like May) since they’re all inside a lot less. Horses being outside as much as possible makes me happy in more ways than one.