Category: Uncategorized

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?

I took advantage of SO being here on Saturday to get some video that wasn’t just us trotting past my phone set on the tripod. And, naturally, baby horse was very blah that day. It had been hot the day before, but Presto and his little 2yo friend had galloped around chasing each other all afternoon anyway, so I honestly think he tuckered himself out. He was overly snoozy from the second I got him out, and required a lot more encouragement to get him moving. Even his typically lovely big gaits were blah. It’s hard being 3, y’all.

He was well-behaved though, so we “worked” for all of 10 minutes. We’ve started working on changes of direction at a trot, with figure 8’s and serpentines, regulating his trot rhythm, and tuning in the “whoa” from my seat that will eventually work its way into a half-halt. Changing directions in the trot kind of confused him at first, he wanted to just default back down to a walk, but by the third one he got it.

We cantered each way, and for the first time he picked up the wrong lead. He initially had the correct lead, then kinda bulged out by the gate a little bit and broke to trot in the process. I clucked and he went immediately back up into canter, but since he wasn’t really balanced/prepared for the transition we got the wrong lead. It wasn’t a big deal, I let him canter down the long side, trotted, then asked him to canter again, and he picked up the correct one. It didn’t really even dawn on me until then that he had yet to have picked up the wrong lead so far at all.

Since he did feel so sluggish and blah, I kept it super short. He was also being fussier in his mouth again, I think probably a symptom of our lack of forward, so we kind of just ticked the boxes for the things I wanted to work on and then I let him be done. He’s going to have days where he’s brilliant and we can do more, and he’s going to have days where we just touch some basics and be done. That day was the latter. For anyone counting, this is still only his 8th ride. We’re very much still in preschool.

He’s getting really good at whoa from the seat though, that might be his favorite. He and Henry have that in common.

Since I did have a groundperson there that day, I decided to end the ride with a bit of a hack around the field. We walked out of the arena and into the field, and made a short lap. Presto walked very politely on a loose rein and never put a foot wrong. He’s certainly not immune to shenanigans, but on that day he was so quiet already from his escapades the day before, it seemed like a good time for his maiden voyage in the field.

I’m quite pleased with how consistent he’s being about a lot of it. He stands well at the mounting block, he doesn’t anticipate or get worried, and he retains everything. The progression is pretty fast, even if some rides he’s tired or some rides he’s looking for his friends, or whatever. The quality of the work steadily improves from ride to ride, even when his mood is different. I like that about him a lot. I think I’m going to keep experimenting with bits though, he still just feels overly fussy in the mouth to me. His mother really liked a Myler comfort snaffle so I’m going to put that on next time and see if there’s any difference. If not we may go back to the Nathe.

And, lest you think he is always Baby Genius, I leave you with this gem:

Yes, he did indeed trip over 3 out of his 4 feet within like a 20′ span. It’s really hard to keep up with all those legs, y’all.

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the tiny house. Everyone’s lives and plans went on hold when this pandemic started, and ours is no exception. We had originally planned to order the tiny house in early/mid April, and clearly that did not happen. At this point I don’t really know when it’s going to happen.

The good news is, we’ve saved more than enough for the down payment we wanted to put down. The bad news is, SO was supposed to start a new job the same week everything went on lockdown, so they’ve pushed back his hire date to an as-yet-undetermined date. He had already given his old job his 2 weeks notice, so when they did layoffs he was naturally one of the first to go. Therefore he’s been unemployed for about a month now. Financially that’s ok for a little while at least (although his money to live is now coming out of that accrued down payment savings) but it does make things complicated when it comes to ordering the tiny house. It’s tricky to get a good loan when you’re technically unemployed.

SO has already applied for other jobs in the mean time of course, since at this point we have no idea what’s going to happen with the other one, but as you probably guess, not a lot of companies are hiring right now. That leaves us in kind of in this weird gray area, having to wait to see what’s going to happen. Once he does start a new job, it’ll be a month before we can go order the house and do all the loan paperwork, and then the houses take 5-6 weeks to build. So… we’re going to end up at least a couple months behind schedule, best case scenario.

But – there is a little bit of a silver lining. This spring the builder released a new tiny home model, one that we actually quite love. They already had a lot to choose from, but we have a king size bed that we are unwilling to give up, and as you can probably imagine, not many of these 399 sq ft tiny homes have bedrooms big enough to fit a king. So originally we only had a few options, which was fine because we really liked one of those floor plans anyway. The new one, though, can also accommodate a king. AND, it has a bigger closet. Plus you can add a back porch without taking away too much of the bedroom space. It does mean that the living room area is smaller, but both of us really like the bigger closet and the back porch.

Technically the one we like is a combination of two of this model’s floor plans:

Basically it’s the bottom one with the loft/stairs, but with the back porch added from the top one (we’d probably do smaller porches – 6′ front and 8′ back). Adding the back porch requires moving the washer and dryer to where the pantry would be, to open up that space for a door. You can see an example of one like what we’re thinking in this video tour.

I actually really like the model in the video. Like a lot. More than I’ve ever liked any other model as-is. There are only a few things I would change: that ugly reddish orange accent color, the kitchen sink (I want stainless), the door on the little pet nook, the location of the closet door (I’d like it opening into the hallway rather than the bedroom, and with a pocket door). And we don’t want/need cabinets up in the loft. And the bedroom door needs to open out, not in. And I’d add an island on casters in the kitchen. But otherwise… I’m obsessed with it. I like the colors (except the red), I like the brick accent, I like the shower tile, I like the closet, and I like the little raised area in the loft that would make a damn fine reading nook. I even like the exterior. That’s rare.

I think the big reason we like this one so much though is because with such a small house, we plan on being outside a lot. We want a porch we can hang out on, when it’s not too hot, and had planned on putting a big front porch on the other model. I had been waffling a lot about screening in a front porch though. I love the practicality of it, because if we’re going to be outside a lot, I’d prefer to not be inundated with bugs, but I HATE how a screened front porch looks on these models. It makes it look exactly like the cabins from the Girl Scout camp I went to as a kid, and I absolutely hate the idea of my house looking like a camp cabin.

But if we did two porches, we can leave the front one pretty and screen in the back one, using the back one as our primary outdoor space. That gives us the best of both worlds. Also having the screen door access off the back porch means that we could make the little fenced in dog-potty area back there, instead of at the front. I would much prefer that. The only downsides to this model are the smaller living room (I think we lose 2′ of length in the living room compared to the other model), slightly less cabinet space in the kitchen (maybe one set of cabinets), and slightly smaller bedroom. Our king would still fit, but it might be up against the wall on 2 sides. We both think we’re ok with those sacrifices, but we need to go look at the inside and see how it feels before we decide for sure.

I thought we’d had everything pretty much decided, but this new model definitely threw a wrench in the plans. Maybe it’s not so bad that we got delayed after all? We may not have seen this one otherwise. Fingers crossed we’ll be back on track soon so we can finally order one!