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On Saturday afternoon my friend Stacy proposed that we meet at Dover and then go get Indian food. Which, if you’re after my heart, that’s the surefire way, it takes about 0% convincing to get me to go along with a plan like that. I didn’t need anything at Dover, but I’m always up to poke around and see what they’ve got. Plus, like… if they had some white breeches that I didn’t hate, I wasn’t opposed to adding a pair.

And then, a couple days before, I found myself lusting after a coat and shirt online.

They’re in the UK, naturally, because every damn thing I love is always from overseas. The brand’s size chart was a little wonky looking, and in centimeters, so I figured I’d do the responsible thing and actually measure myself instead of guessing at size. I measured… looked, and… huh. That measurement was a couple inches less than it used to be. So I measured two more times. Yup, that shit shrunk. This led me to go pull out all my Motionlite coats, which used to fit pretty well, and son of a bitch if they weren’t too big. Like… the bust and arms were saggy. I could fit an arm down the front of the coat. That’s not a cute look for riding clothes, y’all.

I mean, yes… since I got my spin bike in late February I’ve been riding it 6 days a week without fail since the day I got it because I love it. And I added weights 5x a week a couple months ago because turns out I really like that too when I’m in the privacy of my own home and not in a gym being leered at by creeps. I haven’t done it to lose weight though, I’m doing it because I took one look at Presto with a pro on him and was like “Damn bitch, you’re going to have to get a lot stronger if you think you’re going to stand a chance at riding that thing right”. And it’s true, I needed to – and still need to – get a lot stronger. He is a big horse that is A Lot to manage and I want to at least be physically up to the task by the time he comes home. I don’t even own a scale though (bad things happen when you give me metrics like that to obsess over, I learned that a long time ago), or even a full length mirror in the tiny house yet (who knows what I ever look like when I actually go out in public, I sure don’t have a clue). Plus like, 99% of the time whatever pants I have on are elasticized since I work from home these days. I did have to go buy new jeans a month ago and ended up with a size smaller than before so I knew there had been some changes in my size at least. Mostly I’m just excited that I can tell that I really do feel A LOT stronger, my core is noticeably improved, and my arms are starting to get some nice shape and tone. I totally failed to consider what these changes meant for my riding clothes though, particularly my show clothes.

Confession: I don’t put on real breeches that often, I usually wear my tights with the phone pocket when I’m riding at home. So after I tried on my coats I pulled out my whites and they were a bit sad-sacky too, although mostly in the waist. I always shrink from the top down (the boobs are the first to go, and that’s a-ok with me), I’ve got these big old child-bearing hips (that have never and shall never bear a child, thank you very much) and meaty thighs that always stay proportionately bigger than my top half. So now I find myself kind of in between sizes on breeches and all of mine are gapping majorly at the waist. I was hoping Dover might have some that either ran a little big or ran a little small and would fit my in-betweenness nicely, but no luck there. Mostly because out of the many racks of breeches there was only ONE model that I actually liked the feel of the fabric, but they were full seat with way too much silicone. I didn’t even try any on. We need to talk about fabric and how to use silicone appropriately, breech companies. It doesn’t need to look like you used 15 sticks of hot glue on the ass.

Since we were at Dover anyway, I found my way to the rack of Motionlites and tried on the size down from what mine are. I expected the smaller size to be too small still (because in-betweenness) but I’ll be damned if it didn’t fit way better. No more saggy arms or bust in the smaller size. DAMN. IT. My carefully curated collection of Motionlites – 3 to be exact – was undeniably too big. One of mine still had the tags on and another had been worn a grand total of once. I thought for a second that maybe I could just forget how much better the other size was compared to my current ones, but no… it was one of those things you can’t unfeel. Hence me coming home and listing all my coats for sale the next day. As soon as I sell the last one I will replace the navy and the hunter green ones with other size and we’ll call it a wash. All of this to say that if you see me with new coats and shit, or selling things, don’t be judgy… this is why.

I did order the pretty coat and shirt from the UK though, and since I sat kind of perfectly between sizes on their chart (OF COURSE I DO) I ended up just ordering two sizes of the coat and two sizes of the shirt. I’ll sell whichever ones don’t fit for what they cost me to buy it, and someone here will get the benefit of not having to pay UK shipping, and I’ll get the benefit of not having to make a decision and end up with the wrong size. Win-win?

I did buy one thing at Dover though, and that was a sun shirt. As much as I don’t like most of their house brand stuff, I do think their sunshirts are decent, and they had one in a gorgeous steel blue color that I loved. I wore it for my lesson on Monday and 10/10 would recommend, it’s my new favorite color sunshirt I think. Looks on point with navy.

I have a few other sunshirts I need to sell, as soon as I can wrap my brain around it. There was one boon in all of this unanticipated spur of the moment clothes-trying-on at least – my beloved yellow and navy Boy O Boy belt that hasn’t fit in like 3 years actually fits again! And looks smashing with the steel blue shirt/navy pants combo. So glad I kept it!

I need to get another sale post organized when I have the energy. Today is not that day.

Well guys, guess who’s entered in an actual event?

I got to looking at the weather forecast and the temperatures actually look pretty promising for the MeadowCreek show in two weeks. Mid 80’s in Texas in June??? That’s just not a thing. Normally we’re at or near triple digits by now. But indeed the temperatures are supposed to be pretty good, so I was like hmm… Henry could go run around the Novice right? He isn’t the fit, svelte Prelim horse that he used to be, but he still gets ridden a lot and he’s definitely plenty fit for Novice. I mean… is he “tuned up” at this point? Not particularly. Has he worn a bit more than like 5 times in the past 2 years? No. Do I ride him in my dressage saddle at all anymore? Not really. Have we jumped a full course in the past like month and a half? Negative. But even if we’re mega rusty he’s still an experienced event horse, Novice should theoretically be a pretty easy hop-around for him (the after-the-fact benefit of all those years of hard work).

Of course, the reason that the temperatures are staying so mild is that it won’t quit freaking raining. Like for real. Every other day it pours buckets.

Is there a chance of rain every single day in the 10 day forecast? Yup. But, ya know… worst case scenario the show gets rained out or if the footing is too muddy I can just scratch (Henry isn’t drilled and tapped these days, nor was he much of a mudder even when he was). This is clearly a very low key, low pressure affair. If we can go, great, if we can’t, oh well. We aren’t working towards anything, it’s purely just for fun.

But I did start to get a few things together. First, I ran my idea past my trainer who responded with a resounding “DO IT!”, and then I scheduled a jump lesson. It’s rained so much here that my jump field is just a soggy squishy overgrown jungle and that probably won’t change anytime in the near future. I had a jump set up in the dressage arena, but.. ya know… that doesn’t really mimic a jump course nor can you really jump at pace in a small arena. So we scheduled a jump lesson for Monday, come hell or (literal) high water.

Which meant that on Sunday, Henry got clipped.

I usually clip him every summer anyway, to help him deal with the heat, I just moved it up by a couple weeks. I used to be skeptical of the summer clipping thing until I realized just how much hair comes off some of these thicker-coated horses. It’s a lot more than you would think, especially over their back half. Henry always seems noticeably cooler after it’s all gone, so even if there’s nothing worse than clipping a horse while sweating profusely and getting it all completely stuck to you, it’s still totally worth it for him.

I can already tell that I’m cursing myself by even putting this much preparation and thought into it. The show is gonna rain out for sure now…

Anyway. After Friday night’s complete deluge (I haven’t seen rain like that in a very long time, it was INSANE) it was too wet/slick to ride all weekend so on Monday I loaded him up for our lesson with Henry having had two days off. Not a big deal at all, by age 14 he’s pretty much the same horse all the time anyway, with maybe just a little more dolphining in the canter depending on how wild he is. It was the first time I’ve hauled him anywhere in a while though, so there was some mournful screaming for the first few minutes before he settled into his hay.

My trainer’s place got a lot of rain too, so about half of her jump field was quite squishy. What I really needed though, was to jump some lines, and to just have more space to open the canter up to what it needed to be. We had two lines where the footing was good enough, a regular one and a bending, and enough space to get the pace, so it worked just fine. I warmed up, we popped a few singles while I tried to remember what the appropriate jumping pace was (it’s always more than I think, I’ll catch on to that eventually right? Probably not.), and then jumped each line twice. By the third line I remembered how to rev the engine in the corner, re-balance, and then maintain the canter out of it, and tada everything clicked back in. I will say though, I think it’s harder to see a good distance to a smaller fence – they were set Novice height – than it is a larger one. There are just so many tempting options, I want to sample them all. I swear it was easier when they were so big that your only choice was to just keep coming at it no matter what.

Mission accomplished though, and hopefully it’ll dry at least enough to jump a little bit at home in the next couple weeks. If not, well… we’ll wing it.

I’m still waffling on what to do about the dressage part. I’m very tempted to just do it in his jump tack and not really worry about it, mostly because the few times I’ve sat in my dressage saddle lately I’ve just felt really displeased with it, like I’m fighting it a lot. I was never totally in love with how the block hit my thigh (I have a pretty long femur and prefer something more forward), but I think after taking so much time away from it it’s become even more obvious how it’s not really helping me out. Of course, the thought of buying a new dressage saddle for Henry is like… hilarious. Why bother. Granted, if I’m not going to use the one I have I should probably just sell it. All it’s really doing at this point is sitting in my tack room depreciating in value. Not that I want to deal with selling a saddle, which is about as fun as getting a root canal. Anybody want a Devoucoux Loreak? *cries in equestrian*

Hey y’all, hope everyone is having a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend! I’m on my way out the door to head to my first lesson in like… a year(?)… but I do have a couple things for sale that I wanted to toss up here real quick in case any of y’all are interested! You can contact me on my socials or through the Contact page on this site.

Alessandro Albanese Motionlite show coat, espresso size Medium. New with tags. $200

Winston Equestrian washable wool show coat, dark navy with golden yellow piping. Size 40T (french sizing) which is around a women’s 8ish – the bust is 36.5″. $150

I can send more photos of either if you’re interested!

First and foremost – Percy is doing really well. The laxity in his legs has rapidly improved, he’s graduated to a slightly larger turnout space, and he continues to be perky and happy and is eating well.

He’s really started to figure out those limbs now and what was a very spidery canter is quickly turning into a pretty good little gallop. He definitely is still a little on the smaller side and needs to gain some weight, but there’s already marked improvement in his muscle tone even just since last weekend. He should continue to look a bit better (or more like a “normal” foal, really) week over week. He certainly doesn’t seem to know that he’s had any struggles though, judging by his spunk!

It’ll be a while before Percy gets to join the other kiddos in the big pasture, but they did have a new addition to their crew – Teddy joined the party! As usual, Pippa was the first one interested in the new arrival, and the first one to try to approach to say hello. Stormie was not very interested in that.

When attempting to approach by herself didn’t work, Pippa roped her mother into her scheme, maybe thinking that Stormie would be more accepting of a familiar mare.

Stormie, however, still wasn’t particularly interested in that. According to her she clearly has the best baby of the bunch and all the other mares are probably just trying to steal her. And why is Stormie so sure she has the best baby? Because Teddy is a total little Mini-Me. Stormie 2.0 but in Stormie’s original color.

They both have that “yeah we know we’re the best” attitude that ponies so often seem to possess, plus they’re mares, and now there’s TWO of them. Lord help the farm. Luckily Teddy is very snuggly and sweet to people, just like her dam, but they both feel like they’re the Queen Bees of the pasture. Teddy did eventually settle in and play with Pippa (after the camera left of course) so clearly she will deign to mix with the commoners when it suits her.

Pippa is pretty good at entertaining herself though, with her constant zoomies. I swear I could do an entire Foal Friday post every single week with just pictures of Pippa galloping. She’s gotta be fit enough to run around Kentucky by now.

Meanwhile the boys are… well… boys.

Dear sweet Patticakes, even when he’s in Bitey play mode, still isn’t that rough or mean. Mostly it’s just a lot of excitement which turns into bouncing which morphs into biting. Because colt. That’s what they do. Obi is a little bit of a terror so don’t feel sorry for him, he deserves anything Patrick dishes out. Exhibit A:

He spends a lot of time with his legs somewhere on or near Chanel’s head. Which is kind of her own fault, because she hasn’t put a stop to it. The kiddo is rowdy. He’d be like the kid in the restaurant running around to other tables with one shoe on, talking to random strangers and climbing up on the seats and writing on the wall with his crayons.

I think Patrick is emerging as the popular kid of the pasture, able to get along with and play with anyone. He loves to antagonize his brother, of course, but he’s still Pippa’s playmate of choice too.

It’s a hard job being everybody’s friend, but somebody’s got to do it.

As Teddy settles in more we’ll see how the dynamic changes. I’m convinced that her mother is her favorite (and vice versa) but she’ll definitely start playing and interacting more with the other babies. It’ll be interesting to see what she really thinks of Obi. I have a feeling she won’t tolerate any of that nonsense. There’s definitely a pasture full of cuteness out there now though!

You know when your phone rings early in the morning, especially on a weekend, and it’s the person who takes care of your horse? If you’re anything like me your reaction is “ah, fuck” and in the millisecond it takes to hit the button to take the call, you’ve already run through any and all possible scenarios including but not limited to: colic, broken leg, and struck by lightning.

And while this particular scenario wasn’t any of those things (thank every diety, knock on wood, pick a four leaf clover, stuff a few crystals up your butt, whatever it takes…) this past Sunday Presto did have a fever. While he’d been totally normal the day before, that morning he was picking at his food and seemed uncharacteristically lethargic (any and all brands of lethargy are uncharacteristic for that one), so Megan took his temp. 104.7. Yeesh. She was calling me to tell me what was up and that she wanted to take him to the emergency vet down the road, which of course I agreed. Those symptoms immediately make you think viral and ain’t none of us messing around with that given recent happenings.

They got to the vet, did bloodwork, checked him over, etc. All of his bloodwork looked great, and he had no other symptoms whatsoever aside from the fever and lethargy. He got some Banamine and got monitored for a while. Soon the fever broke and he was back to eating at least, even if a bit more subdued than usual. He didn’t have anything terrible so he got to go back home, with instructions to give him more Banamine if the fever came back and monitor him for any other symptoms. When Presto doesn’t feel good he gets particularly mopey and cuddly (the only time in this horse’s life where he’s ever remotely cuddly) and honestly I’m starting to think he likes Megan better than me (which I am supremely offended by considering how much effort it’s taken me to keep him alive to this point) so of course he wants to cuddle her when he doesn’t feel good. Traitor.

The next day he did get a little bit of a fever again, so he got more Banamine. He’s gradually gotten better though and he’s continued to eat, and he seems to be out of the woods now (thank every diety, knock on wood, pick a four leaf clover, stuff a few crystals up your butt, whatever it takes…).

And because Megan is the best and Presto has a way of working his goofiness under your skin, she went to the store and got him some Oatmeal Creme Pies as a special “feel better soon” snack while he was sick. Coincidence that they actually worked? I think not. OCP’s are magical. Facts. An OCP a day keeps the doctor away, or something like that. Pretty sure that’s how the saying goes.

Of course she’s been offering OCP’s to all of her horses too, because as soon as one of them sees a treat being dispensed you have to give a treat to all of them (horse rules, I didn’t make it up) and now they’re all addicted. Yet another new OCP Club inductee. I think Little Debbie at least owes me some swag by now, considering how many OCP sales my horses have generated.

Hopefully Presto is past this little bug and can get back into the swing of things! The struggles of being a baby horse…