Author: Amanda C

It’s almost mid-May, which means spring is pretty much over in Texas. Once we get past tomorrow, the entire 10 day forecast has temps in the low to mid 90’s. Welcome to summer. Around here, that means sweaty horses and stagnant air. Which in turn means that the fly and gnat population, which has really just been moderate thus far, is about to explode.

I buy fly spray by the gallon, pretty much all year long. I’m almost all the way through the first gallon that I bought a couple months ago, so I ordered more yesterday. I also realized it was probably time to replace Henry’s 4 year old fly mask, which was starting to get really worn and kinda pokey at the eyes, so he got a new one a couple weeks ago. Presto didn’t have a fly mask either, but I had bought one for him in my last Riding Warehouse order, guessing at his size.

For Henry I got the Rambo Plus fly mask, which I’m fairly certain might last him for the rest of his life. He’s turned out alone, so he’s pretty easy on his fly masks, and this thing is rugged. His old one was your cheap basic Cashel, which I thought worked fine for him. It always sat a little too close to his eyes for my taste though, especially when he’d rub his head (he is Mr. Allergies this time of year). So I opted this time for a design that holds the mask out well away from the eyes. It’s a good design idea, and it works. But he kinda looks like a walking spaceship.

When I first put it on we all laughed and laughed and laughed at him. He looks absolutely ridiculous. The mask is so big. It definitely gets the job done though, the fabric sits several inches clear of his eyes. Starting this weekend he’ll be wearing it pretty much all the time, so I’ll review the Spaceship Mask at some point.

Presto is still growing super fast and his eyes don’t really jut out from his head quite like Henry’s do, so I opted to take the cheap route and bought him a Cashel. I had good luck with how long Henry’s had lasted, so I stuck with what I knew. Looking at their size options I figured surely the 15h baby warmblood would fit fine in the arab/cob size. I mean, that seems pretty typical. His dam wore cob size stuff as a yearling and 2yo. His leather halter is a cob (okay granted, it’s on it’s very tightest holes). His rope halter is arab sized, which actually fits him pretty perfectly with it’s smaller nose. He outgrew his “yearling” size rope halter at like 9 months old because of how long his head is.

But what I didn’t really take into account is just how narrow his head is and how little his jaw is. His head is long, sure, but it’s narrow. You can’t really tell from this angle, but the mask is huge around his jaw. It’s not even possible to make the velcro tight enough to where it’s anywhere near snug. I’m pretty sure that if he just shook his head, the whole thing would go flying. Not gonna work this year.

So yesterday as I was throwing fly spray and dewormer and salt blocks into my Riding Warehouse cart, I perused the flymasks and found that the Noble Outfitters small equates to yearling/large pony size and it was on sale. His head is just so much more TB-like than his dam’s was. I kind of forgot. He might be tall, but his head is comparatively little. So I tossed the teeny tiny Guardsman mask in the cart, and hopefully that’ll work. The design of it is sorta similar to the Rambo, just not nearly as extreme with how far out it stands away from the eyes.

So now tiny-headed Presto has his own mini-spaceship mask coming. Can’t wait to see the look he gives me when I put that thing on him. I hope they understand that I do this out of love, not just to make them look hilariously dumb. That part is a bonus.

Last week my fly wipes arrived from EnviroEquine and I have to say, I think they’re working REALLY well so far. I’ve been wiping ears/faces/noses/legs with those and have definitely noticed way fewer flies on both boys. They’re especially great for Henry when we ride out in the fields – the head shaking is pretty much gone. The smell is a little funny, but as long as they work like this, I can live with it.

Headed into summer I have one more “care” issue I need to tackle – protecting Presto’s little white nose. He’ll only come inside during the heat of the day in the afternoon, so I’ll need to put something on his nose to keep it from getting sunburned the rest of the day. People with white nosed horses that live on the surface of the sun – what’s your favorite product for sun protection?

A few months ago when I was planning Presto’s move and subsequent, uh, life… I tentatively highlighted a couple of Future Event Horse shows that I might consider taking him to. Caveat being, since he’s a yearling, it would depend on how he looked at that particular moment in time. He’s a leggy, rangey, kinda scrawny looking type of guy. His large percentage of thoroughbred blood is obvious. While I personally think that’ll make him end up being a pretty great event horse type, right now it makes him look a bit like a baby giraffe. Sometimes llama.

While most of the judges at FEH are able to see through stuff like that, it certainly doesn’t put him at his best for the whole in-hand showing thing when he’s in the middle of a particularly giraffey growth spurt. A couple weeks ago he actually was looking like the May 20th show might be possible. He’d filled out a lot, his neck was looking pretty normal, and he almost had a butt. Then, seemingly overnight, he grew another inch and everything went back to mega giraffe mode. Like… he’s cute from only a few very specific angles, and only if he stands very still. I love him, but it’s true. He’s hardcore in the teenage awkwards.

So, the May 20th FEH show is a no-go. I just have a hard time wanting to send in the entry and spend a couple hundred dollars when he’s not in a particularly attractive stage of growth. I thought about just saying screw it and taking him anyway, for the experience, but… it’s a long drive and a lot of money to spend for experience.

There’s another little show here in town this coming weekend at the place where I sometimes take Henry for laid back Combined Tests. It’s cheap, it’s a lot closer, and it still has plenty of hustle and bustle and LOTS to look at. More than the other show, honestly. They also offer one in hand class – “in hand trail”. Presto is definitely not a trail horse. I have never done a trail class in my life. I’m not even totally sure that I know what it is. I mean, Henry and I have wandered over to their trail course a couple times so he could snort at all the pool noodles (there are so many pool noodles) but that’s the extent of my education.

Naturally, I cackled wildly and signed Presto up for in hand trail.

I mean, worst case scenario he won’t go near any of it and we “wasted” our $15. But they let you come school the course beforehand, so we’ll have a little time to snort and freak out at all the weirdness before I have to try to actually get him through the whole thing. I’ll be honest, if I can get him through it all, I’ll be shocked. It’ll be good for him, though.

Last week I did set up a couple of little things with poles in our arena… a square that he had to pivot in, an L shape that he had to back through, and two barrels set about 4′ apart that I “sent” him through back and forth by himself. He understood all of it pretty much immediately, then a few horses neighed in the barn and he forgot his place in the world for a moment. A few corrections later, he remembered.

So I have no idea how any of this will go, but at the very least it will be good for him to get in the trailer and go somewhere alone, get to see the commotion of a show, and be expected to “perform” and pay attention in the midst of it all. It might be a long day for all of us. There will be a lot of those in the next 4 years.

As an aside, I texted the farrier yesterday to ask how Presto was for his trim and he said “Perfect! He gets a gold star.”. Majorly proud mom moment right there. He was not so good before and I’ve been working with him a lot, because I can’t friggin stand it when horses have bad farrier manners. He’s gotten to where he’s really good for me now, but you never know whether those manners will translate in the real world. Very glad he wasn’t a monkey (and so was the farrier)!

This past Saturday was the SO’s birthday. It was also the really cool charity eventing derby that was highlighted, capitalized, and underlined on my calendar. Plus Badminton and the KY Derby. Like, really, not a good time for a birthday, man. But I had been working on this really exceptional plan for over a month now, one that would allow me to go to the eventing derby and still not look like the world’s worst girlfriend. I admit, I generally AM pretty much the world’s worst girlfriend, but I always try to do well on birthdays to help make up for the other 364 days when I suck.

My plan was great. It was plotted pretty much down the half hour, and would work out perfectly to where I could go to the eventing derby and still not lose any face. The SO’s friends were going to take him to this punk festival thing during the day on Saturday, I was going to do the derby, and then we were going to meet up for dinner and drinks afterwards. Sunday and Monday I had planned a whole mini-vacation for us together. It was gonna work out totally fine.

And then the punk festival got cancelled.

And then on Friday morning one of the guys that works with me said “Don’t forget I’m out on Monday”. My head whipped around and I said “No you’re not, I’m out on Monday.”. There are only 3 of us in our department, it’s a big problem for more than one of us to be out at a time. Like… to be avoided except in cases of extreme emergency.

Turns out that he submitted his PTO request online, but never wrote it on our big “department” calendar that we all use to see everyone else’s days off. So when I went to check the calendar before I submitted my online request, it showed no one else being off. Our boss didn’t catch that we’d both submitted PTO for that day. Well SHIT. I am technically the lead, so… I let the other guy have Monday.

That meant that I had to scratch the derby and rearrange all of our Sunday/Monday plans over to Saturday/Sunday. I was not a happy person. I was also a very stressed-out person, especially when I couldn’t move my camping reservation at the state park because there were no available spots for Saturday. After a lot of frantic googling I was able to book us a spot elsewhere, and got everything else moved too. I was really really sad sending that email about having to scratch the derby though.

Saturday we loaded up and headed out toward Glen Rose, about 2 1/2 hours north of us. We stopped along the way in a small town for breakfast, where I tried to really discreetly watch the Badminton XC feed on my phone (because see above about bad girlfriend).

I didn’t feel that bad, he spent the whole time replying to facebook “happy birthday” messages on his phone. Then we finished our drive up to Glen Rose and hit Dinosaur Valley State Park, did some hiking, and looked at the dinosaur tracks in the river bed.

After that it was over to a brewery. I hate beer and hate breweries even more, but the SO is a mega beer nerd, so I just sat there and people-watched (OKAY FINE I WATCHED BADMINTON REPLAYS) while he drank beer.

Then we went to dinner (where I might have also watched the live stream of the KY Derby in a slightly too-loud way. Look, this is the best I can do. This tiger can’t change her stripes.), followed by a trip to the local soda fountain for a malt.

That night we camped in a little RV park I found online. The SO is the one who bought the trunk tent for me in the first place, yet he had never stayed in it. He said he liked it, but I’m 99.9% sure he’s totally lying and would prefer to never stay in it again. He didn’t listen to me about which clothes to bring and ended up freezing his butt off overnight. He’s definitely more of the AirBnB type than the truck tent type. You know what I mean.

Sunday morning after breakfast we went to Dinosaur World, a little park nearby that has bigass dinosaur statues, fossils, and a little museum. Apparently people don’t come there much without kids, because the ticket guy was pretty sure that we were in the wrong place. Can’t a gal just like dinosaurs?

After that we headed home, with a quick stop at a Tractor Supply along the way to get treats for Henry and alfalfa pellets for Presto. We were home early enough that I had time to go fit in another ponying session with the boys while it was still daylight. And there were enough puddles leftover from Friday’s rain to where we were able to drag Presto through some of them. Sorry not sorry, baby event horse.

Today the boys get pedicures (because yeah sure, why not go ahead and write the farrier a fat check just days after writing my first double board check – who needs money?) so we’ll find out how Presto is for the farrier. He’s had trims before, with mixed success, but I’ve been working with him a lot since he got here, so I’m hoping he’s polite. Or at least not a total hellion.

Still really really sad to have missed the show this past weekend, especially because it feels like I haven’t seen anyone in forever, but there are a few more things on the docket in the next month before everything comes to a grinding halt for the summer. Hopefully none of those plans get hijacked too.

I had a much longer, semi-intelligent post drafted for today but I’m too tired for that level of editing, proofreading, and discussion right now. Can’t. Instead you get all the ramblings of the stuff that’s going through my head at the moment. Yeah, it’s okay if you run away now.

First of all, I feel like I should address something.

It’s okay to disagree with me. You don’t have to post comments under fake names or try to hide your IP address (WordPress is better at tracking that than you think, anyway 😉 ) or whatever else. If I couldn’t handle criticism, scrutiny, and dissent, I wouldn’t be a blogger and put my life on blast. I’m always open to rational, polite discussion, either here or privately. My contact page is always open, so to speak. Granted, if you come at me with a lot of caps and a boatload of exclamation marks, I’ll probably ignore you. Otherwise though, I love having a good conversation from someone who sees things differently than I do. Just want to make sure I’m clear on that. And, for the record – no, I don’t support a total zero tolerance blood rule, but I do think something needs to be done. IMO a yellow card system is better and more appropriate.

Heavy stuff out of the way, if you guys aren’t watching the Badminton live stream you’re really missing out. They’ve always got THE BEST commentary, it’s worth watching just for that alone. The Brits, they are cheeky as hell and brutally honest, but still somehow manage to not come off as catty or rude. You have to love it. My favorite comments from yesterday were “The horse stood on his hind legs, waving his front legs in the air very elegantly…” and “really lovely piaffe”.

The XC course this year looks pretty smart, I’m interested to see how everything plays out. I’ll be rooting for MJ & Sam, the two by Ramiro B (Cooley SRS and Cooley Earl), and Lauren Kieffer of course. Watching her performance on Vermiculus last weekend was inspiring (clearly they have a great partnership, I love it) and she deserves a little bit of vindication with Veronica.

It also just occurred to me that the Kentucky Derby is tomorrow. I watched a few of the prep races, mostly by accident, but otherwise have not kept up with racing at all this season. On a very selfish, superficial level, I’ll be rooting for Audible. I admit it, I want the free American Pharoah audiobook.

I’ve been going a little nuts on Audible lately. I drive a lot, so it works. I’m almost done with James Comey’s book (whether you like him or not, it has been really illuminating, I have to say) and have Joe Biden’s, Trevor Noah’s, and one of Buck Brannaman’s up in the queue. That’s something like 24 hours worth of audiobooks, which sadly won’t really take me that long to get through. Sometimes I feel like I live in my truck. There is a busy weekend ahead, with least 12 hours total on the road. Any other must-download books that I should check out? For audiobooks I really prefer either true crime or autobiography/memoir types. I read fiction on my kindle. Can’t freakin stand how most of them are narrated.

Have a good weekend everyone! Who are you rooting for in the Derby and at Badders?

Seriously, though… NUTS.

Yesterday was Presto’s gelding appointment. I’m sure he wouldn’t be happy with me sharing this all over the internet, but his testicles are TINY. Like maybe slightly bigger than jordan almond size. I could clearly feel/see one of them, and I was fairly certain that I was feeling the other one too, although it wasn’t clearly visible.

The vet arrived, felt him up (there is no dignity in what happened, why lie?) and declared that yes indeed both of them had dropped enough to where he could remove them. Great, let’s do this!

So we started with sedating Presto a bit so that the vet could start washing him up and get a plan of attack. Since they’re so teeny and not super dropped, they could be a little tricky. Once we got him sedated (and then twitched, because let me tell you who is NOT OKAY with the big creepy vet feeling up on his nuts) he started prepping. One part of that prep was making sure that it felt like the inguinal ring on either side was closed up enough to where the risk of hernia was not high.

And, well, that’s as far as we got. The left side, the one with the testicle that is the most dropped, felt good. But the right side, the one with the testicle that’s still a bit higher up, felt a little bit too open still, in the vet’s opinion. He said he was 80% sure that we could go ahead and do it, put some sutures in there on that side, and it would be fine. But he thought the risk for hernia was higher, and that gave him pause.

He gave me 3 options:

1 – go ahead and do it, put the sutures in, and hope that between the sutures and the subsequent swelling, it would be enough to prevent the intestines from popping down through the ring.

2 – take him to a vet hospital, have them lay him out on the table, and do a more intensive surgery to make sure the inguinal ring got closed up securely.

3 – Wait a few months, check it again, and see if the inguinal ring has closed up enough on it’s own to pose less of a risk for hernia.

That choice was pretty clear. Presto doesn’t act studdish, doesn’t seem to realize yet that he’s a colt, and he’s nowhere near any mares. We have the ability to keep him segregated without much trouble, at least for the shorter term. So we aborted our mission and the vet will check him again in July when he’s back for Henry’s mid-year vaccinations. Hopefully by then the ring has closed up a bit more and the risk is much lower. Given his history, neither the vet nor myself was very excited at the idea of embarking on a potentially risky venture.

So for now, he gets to keep his nuts. Their days are numbered, though.