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So, Presto got demoted from a part-time barn horse to a full-time outside horse. He had been an outside horse when we moved out here initially, living out in the pasture with his 2yo friend. But when the other horses left for Florida for the winter and it was just me here with the remaining 4, it was easier and gave me more peace of mind to just have all of them come into the barn at night. I could easily see them on cameras, I knew they were under shelter if the weather was bad, it’s warmer in there, they were more settled in the group, they each had their own space to eat and snooze, etc. The Florida horses are coming back this weekend so he was about to get moved back out to his full time pasture life again anyway, but he got booted a week early. Why, you ask? OH I’LL TELL YOU WHY.

He figured out how to open his stall door, and the results are just as bad as you might imagine. I came out to feed on Sunday morning and it looked like an actual tornado had gone through the barn. Henry and Presto were both loose. Presto’s stall door was open, Henry’s stall door was open, and the hay room door was open. Boards had been ripped off the front of every single stall. He ate every scrap of afalfa that was in there, which luckily wasn’t very much. He tossed the opened coastal bale all over the place. He ate and pulled down part of one of the shade bushes. He broke a broom and a manure fork and the board that’s used to separate the aisle by the stallion’s stall when he’s here. He knocked EVERYTHING down. Every halter, every blanket, anything and everything that was knock-down-able. He even managed to undo a couple snaps in the process.

From the amount of poop in their stalls and runs I could see that Presto had to have been out for a while, but Henry can’t have been out for very long at all. Also, Henry is a jerk and would never let other horses out or destroy things that weren’t food motivated – totally not his style. He got out one night before and just ate grass in the courtyard. No, this one had Presto written all over it from top to bottom. Why he chose to let Henry out, I’m not sure, because when I happened upon the scene Henry had chased him into a corner and was about to kick the daylights out of him. Releasing Henry was a dumb move. It looked like he had tried to release Quinnie too… her stall has an extra clip on it because she has a history of opening her own door, and he succeeded on removing the clip but didn’t actually finish opening the latch. The only stall with no evidence of attempted breach was his 2yo friend’s. Which, thank god. I can’t imagine the damage if both of THOSE idiots had been out. JB has a history of barn destruction himself.

So that’s the end of that shit. I had already given him a second chance when he pulled down a couple boards in his own stall a few weeks ago. That appeared to have been a one time incident, but no. He certainly hadn’t forgotten, he was just waiting to repeat it on a much larger scale.

You should have seen the complete and utter heartbreak and confusion on his face Sunday night when he didn’t get to come in. Henry and Quinnie came into the barn as usual, and I brought Presto and JB’s feed out to their shed so they could eat. They thought that was odd, but ok. After they ate they both went to the gate like “ok let’s go in now”. And I just laughed at them from the porch as they stared forlornly toward the barn. JB wandered away after a few minutes, but Presto stood there for quite a while.

On Monday I went out to lunge him real quick to try a different bit on him (this bit saga is becoming long already) and he was absolutely exhausted. Clearly he didn’t get his usual 3 hour dead-to-the-world nap that he usually takes after night check, because it took all of my effort just to get him to trot for a few laps each way. If I stopped clucking, he stopped moving. Poor kid. The life of a delinquent is tough. Maybe you should have been more appreciative of your private nap time before you destroyed the barn.

So I’ll be spending the weekend fixing the rest of the Prestnado damage. What a turd. Y’all pray for their shed, I’m worried that it’ll be the next victim. JB already pulled down some of the ceiling insulation a while back…

Remember how, back when everyone was trying to decide whether or not they’d keep riding with all the covid stuff going on, I jokingly said something like “pretty sure I’m more likely to end up in the hospital from something stupid around the barn than from falling off a horse.”.

Yeah so that’s exactly what happened. Except it was urgent care, not a hospital. I was pretty close on that particular prophecy.

It was last Thursday. I had JUST gotten off of Henry. We did the TP challenge, where we may or may not have jumped bareback over the mounting block with me holding 2 rolls of toilet paper. THAT went just fine. I had ridden back up to the barn, dismounted, and led Henry up to the tack room while I stepped up inside to grab him a cookie.

He took a few steps into Presto’s stall so I turned around quickly to grab him, but missed the step and… fell out of the tack room. Like hard. Backwards/sideways. Like a fuckin Kesha song, I went TIMBEERRR.

I don’t even remember exactly how the hell it happened, I just remember one second I was in the tack room turning around and the next second I was hitting the ground like a ton of bricks. I landed mostly on my hip but my head bounced off the ground a couple times. As soon as I tried to stand up my vision got all wonky, everything went VERY BRIGHT, like when your phone camera goes from shade to sunlight and the view is overexposed for a few seconds before it adjusts. It was like that for a couple minutes.

Icouldn’t put weight on my right leg, so I went back down again and decided to just sit still for a few minutes waiting for it to pass. I finally stumbled to my feet and pulled all the tack off Henry (literally, I unbuckled things and it all just fell to the ground where he was standing and that’s where it stayed) and shoved him back in his pasture, then went in the house. LUCKILY I had still been wearing my helmet when I fell, and when I took it off I saw that it was broken.

I could put weight on my leg by then but it HURT, like a lot, and while my vision had returned to normal quickly, my head still felt a little bit fuzzy. I was pretty certain I’d given myself a minor concussion. I waited a little while to see if the hip pain would pass, and somehow managed to take a quick shower (an odd choice, I admit, but I was hot) and I got pretty concerned about my leg. I tried getting ahold of SO but unbeknownst to me he was out on a bike ride, so I messaged Hillary and Karen, and they voted I should go to urgent care. Since I bonked my head I shouldn’t drive, so Hillary came and picked me up and off we went.

It took me until yesterday to realize this, but I’m relatively certain that the urgent care staff totally thought we were a couple of bored dumb girls trying to get painkillers. There was NO ONE in the urgent care except us, and I was still a little weird from the bonk on the head. The APN that saw me asked my story, seemed skeptical, asked me a few questions “what’s your name?” “what’s your birthday?” “do you know you the president is?” (my answer to the last one was “unfortunately”, which I seemed to find a lot funnier than she did). She moved her fingers around and asked me to follow them with my eyes. Most of those tests felt normal but when she moved it quickly from left to right I could feel my eyeballs jumping around a little as if they were twitching. She asked me again about my timeline of events, and when I said it happened around 11 she pointed out that it was now 2pm. Right. Like I said… I laid there a while, then had to take care of the horse, then went inside and sat down for a while, then had to wait for Hillary to come, then had to drive to town, etc. She just kind of squinted at me. But she declared me to be fine, asked me again how it happened, seeming even more skeptical, and then asked if anything else was wrong.

I said yeah actually like I said I’m more worried about my hip, I just need to make sure I didn’t do any real damage because I can barely put any weight on it. I take care of horses and a farm so if I actually hurt it I need to know, so I can make care arrangements. She had me push my foot against her hand, and I was able to put a little bit of pressure on her hand. She inspected my hip for about half a second and said “well there’s no bruise”. No shit Sherlock, I too have eyeballs. It was hot and swollen but she didn’t seem to care about that. They also asked me how often I go to urgent care or ER’s, which I thought was a weird AF question.

She said she wanted to do a pregnancy test for some reason??? This made no sense to me at all, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. She also said that she wanted to xray my neck, just to make sure there was no damage. My neck felt fine, but ok. Since we were going to do an xray anyway I asked if we could do my hip as well, because again that’s what I was more worried about and she’d hardly given it any mind. She was like “I mean if that will make you feel better I can order a hip xray”. Um. Ok. Thanks?

So I peed in a cup, which I asked the techs about because it didn’t make sense to me. I knew I wasn’t pregnant and I didn’t understand how that could possibly have any relevance to my issues. One tech said “oh well that’s just standard procedure if we’re going to xray someone”. I didn’t question it further because I was like ok hip xray, sure, but I thought it was weird that she mentioned the pee test well before she ever mentioned any xrays, and she hadn’t even intended on doing the hip xray until asked.

Luckily nothing was broken, so they sent me on my way with a stack of paperwork and a prescription for an anti-nausea medication. The paperwork said that I had a mild concussion, hip contusion, and bruised kidney (oh hey there was blood in my pee. The lady that saw me didn’t mention the kidney part to me AT ALL, I just read it in the paperwork). Meanwhile I could still barely put weight on my right leg. For the first few days afterward I tried to stay away from devices to help my brain heal, so I retreated to a dark room a lot. SO came and helped me clean stalls, and I could hobble around well enough to feed horses. My head felt better really quickly. My hip still REALLY hurt though, as if someone had peeled back the top layer of skin, burned all the tissue underneath, and then put the skin back. Even a light touch was excruciating, and the burning feeling was constant. I definitely COULD NOT SLEEP because it was so uncomfortable to lay down. It hurt more than my actual broken bones have.

Last night after day 4 of no improvement with my hip I finally talked to Michelle’s husband, who is an ER doc that owns some urgent cares up where they live. He was more helpful in 5 minutes on the phone than the other urgent care place had been. He asked me questions they hadn’t, more specifics about the pain, outlined a treatment protocol, and told me what to do next. We are all relatively appalled by the first urgent care and how dismissive they were.

After talking to him it FINALLY occurred to me… I’m pretty sure the lady who saw me thought I was just trying to get painkillers. Once I looked back on the whole experience from that point of view, it all made sense. Her questions, her attitude, the piss test, the fact that she didn’t seem to believe my story or give two shits about my hip pain. Once we laid it all out that way, we all agreed – that’s the only thing that makes sense.

So that’s relatively humiliating. And offensive. Especially to me, someone who has never done drugs of any kind. I don’t even drink CAFFEINE for god’s sake, and have maybe 4 alcoholic beverages a year. This is the first time I’ve been to an urgent care in my entire adult life, despite several actual broken bones. I was genuinely messed the eff up and she dismissed me completely. I mean, I get it, I’m sure they deal with people coming in with dumb stories trying to get pills and she doesn’t know me from Adam, but… it doesn’t make me feel any less shitty about how I was treated. The fact that it took me 4 days to even put all the pieces together should tell you how naive I am about all that.

That aside, my head feels pretty much back to normal today. And after following what Michelle’s husband told me to do last night, I’m finally seeing some improvement in my hip this morning. It feels like I did some soft tissue damage in there, but hopefully nothing too severe. I’m encouraged by the improvement since yesterday with some actual treatment.

Thank goodness I still had my helmet on. That was definitely lucky. I was kind of hoping I’d never actually test the MIPS system of the Traumavoid, but here we are. This helmet is definitely toast now, but considering the damage to it vs the damage to my head, it definitely did it’s job. Kind of makes me stop and rethink whether or not I should be wearing it more, in the barn…

Stormie finally released her hostage yesterday, and with that we’ve got a new sportpony colt at Willow Tree Warmbloods. Say hello to Ollivander WTW!

This is Usandro’s second US-born foal, the first being Oakley at the end of March, and Stormie’s second sportpony foal. Those who remember Nunez from last year might be seeing some similarities… apparently Stormie really likes to throw her pretty, petite head. I think Ollie’s ears are bigger though.

As you can see, Michelle finally got her grulla, although it looks like Ollie will turn gray… the hyperpigmentation/adult coat color are strong indicators. For now though he’s a really beautiful metallic silver color in the sun, with very obvious dun leg bars, ear caps, and dorsal stripe. I bet he will look beautiful as he grays out at least!

Stormie and baby are doing well so far, although Stormie was pretty tired after foaling yesterday. I can see why – Ollie is a big dude for a pony foal, and pretty well-developed for a newborn. He was definitely out of space in there and will take some time to unsquish all the way.

He’s a sweet colt that was super interested in people right from the start. Very friendly and curious. He also looks as though he will provide us with plenty of Foal Friday entertainment in the weeks to come.

So with the arrival of WTW baby #3 that means we only have one mare left to foal – Sadie, with a Presto half sibling. She’s already passed what is considered the full term mark of 320 days but is still a ways away from the average gestation “due date” of 340 days. She looks quite huge and miserable already so we’re all thinking she might go a little bit earlier than 340, but we’ll see! Sadie definitely does things Sadie’s way.

Happy Monday!

No, we don’t have any new foals to debut for Foal Friday today. Stormie has been teetering on the brink for days now, and both she and Sadie look like they might explode at any second. At this point I think they might sneeze too hard and send a baby rocketing out.

I don’t think Stormie can hold out for a whole ‘nother week, so… tick tock. Hopefully we’ll have some confirmed pregnancies on other mares soon, too! Best season of the year.

Ok, on to what everyone is really here for: adorable bebes.

They’re playing together really well now. Oakley is still FOR SURE the dominant one in the relationship, but Remi isn’t scared of her anymore. Respectful, yes, scared, no. It’s very much a softie big brother/annoying little sister type of dynamic between the two.

Sometimes you have to stop and greet the neighbors fans, though. It’s part of the job.

Ok, back to the fun part.

But two things are still for sure:

1. Oakley is still a little rebel child.

2. They’re both still super cute together

Happy Friday, everyone! Informal bets on how much longer until Stormie and Sadie give up their cargo?

 

After working from home for a while, I had to go into work yesterday to give a presentation and move some inventory around. It was my first time in the city in 5 or 6 weeks, and it was a little weird making that drive that I used to make every day but haven’t in so long. The amount of traffic was about normal, so nothing seemed particularly eerie until I got to work. Seeing everyone in face masks and having all kinds of new procedures in place was interesting. Plus the building was a ghost town, with 80-90% of the company working from home. Our company hasn’t yet put an “end plan” in place for working from home yet, and I think it will go for a least another month if not longer for most people.

But the state is letting the current stay-at-home order expire today, and in it’s place will be an order with fewer restrictions. Bars, restaurants, malls, theaters, libraries, and museums can open but with a limit of 25% capacity. They want other businesses like gyms and hair salons to open by mid-May. The new order also overrides any local mandates for required face coverings or fines if they don’t wear one. The state order encourages wearing a mask but doesn’t require it, whereas most of the local governments in the more populous areas had required face coverings a while ago and now the state order will override that. This is all really interesting considering the number of cases is still increasing and our state has done very little testing compared to most others – we’re close to last on per capita testing with only about 1% of our population having been tested. As for outdoor sports, right now they will be limited to 4 participants, with social distancing practices encouraged.

Of course, horse shows are still on hold. USEF announced an extension to their competition suspension (through at least May 31) and USEA followed suit. I think that surprised pretty much no one, there isn’t much other choice at this point given all the different state orders. During my drive yesterday I was listening to some podcasts about when/how horse shows might get rolling again and that combined with my weird day at work really brought home how, even with things starting to mobilize again, we’re still a very very very long way from “normal”. And that our new normal will look quite a bit different, probably for quite a while. It will be interesting how horse shows choose to handle things going forward, once restrictions are lifted enough to permit them.

Of course, it’s already getting hot down in Texas (we’ve hit 100 already) and we’re nearing the end of what would typically be Henry’s competition season. By mid-late May it’s already too hot for him, so horse shows won’t be happening. We’ll see about the fall season, but I’m not really holding my breath too much considering it stays hot until November. I think instead the focus will be getting Presto out and about, be it on trail rides or to small local shows just to hang out when/if they start happening again. I had no plans to show him in the Future Event Horse stuff this year anyway (which I might be second guessing right now if shows were still happening because he’s actually looking pretty good) but the fact that all of our local qualifiers have bit the dust just kind of cements that. No FEH for him.

USEA still says that they’re planning on going ahead with AEC’s, which if people still need to qualify for they’d have to do it real damn quick. It’s hard to even guess what things will be looking like by the end of August. Will there be a second wave? Will they have relaxed limitations on large gatherings? Who the heck knows. We’re in uncharted territory here. I am starting to think that none of the 5*’s are going to happen this year, although I’m still crossing my fingers for Fair Hill. I am seriously itching for some horsey travel, and we may or may not have already booked an RV site for LRK3DE 2021.

Since I was in town yesterday I stopped to grab food from a couple of my favorite restaurants to take home. That was my first time going inside anywhere aside from the grocery store, so it was bizarre to see all the guidelines and the spacers. Going to lunch is a very different experience these days. I did order one more mask too – right now I have a mask and a gaiter, but I think our office will require wearing masks for a while to come so I wanted to be able to have plenty at my disposal, as well as different options. Giving a presentation while wearing a gaiter was a new experience too.

Like everyone else, I am itching for things to start getting back to normal again. I want SO to start his job so we can order our house and start getting the current one ready to rent. I want shows to start happening so I can get Presto out to see the sights. I want the economy to start picking up so our oil and gas industry can recover and our company can make some money. I’m also just getting bored and stir-crazy. But I also don’t want everything to try to start up again too quickly and make things worse, or put people in danger. It’s a tricky thing and I don’t envy the people making decisions.

For now we’ll be keeping our distance, wearing a face mask, and waiting to see what happens next. What are you guys thinking is going to happen with horse shows this year?