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So yesterday you got the backstory… today you get the consequences.

On Saturday I was up at 6 to feed Henry and continue my quest for finding the farrier. I was one of the first people up and about, and while I didn’t actually find the farrier, I did see that his son’s horse was now in his stall. That meant he had to be there somewhere. I decided to go ahead and braid Henry while we waited for daylight. Judging by all the ground-in poop in his stall, it looked like WildHenry had paced all night, and he was a royal PITA to braid. The idea of a nice pretty braid job went out the door by the time he whacked me in the face with his head for the fourth time, so he just got some big fat braids and I called it good.

By 7 the farrier still hadn’t emerged and I started to get worried. I kept asking around, hoping someone had seen him or knew where he was. By 7:50, an hour before my ride time, I was on the verge of panic. Finally I stumbled across someone who told me where his RV spot was, and I marched over there like a crazy person and knocked on his door, basically begging him to come out and tack my horse’s shoe back on ASAP. He said he’d be out in a few minutes, so I threw my horse at one of the moms (I’m so sorry) to hold for him while I went to get dressed.

Finally we had the shoe back on, we threw some tack on him, tried to knock the dust off, and I swung aboard my wild mustang. And he was LIT. What I really needed was a 15 minute canter and a good 30 minutes of trotting and transitions and lateral work. What I got was 15 minutes of me trying to convince him that I could actually touch him with my leg without him bouncing up and down like a cracked out llama. His sassiness level can always be measured by his tail… the faster is spins, the less fun I’m having. That thing was spinning like a helicopter.

Awesome.

Even that early in the morning it was 80-something degrees and so humid we could both barely breathe. He was dripping, I had sweat streaming into my eyes, and I was sitting on a fire breathing dragon. All I could think was thank god we’re only here to survive, because that’s about all I could expect from this test. It was tense… REALLY tense. I had to ride very very carefully to prevent a blowup, and he seemed to think that the faster he moved his legs, the faster he would get to cross country. It wasn’t particularly attractive. Also I really really hate Training B with a burning passion. Canter lengthenings on a circle are really hard when your horse is built like a QH. Just saying.

I will say, to his credit, he was obedient. He didn’t want to be, and he was angry about it, but he did what I asked him to do. We got through it. That was the most important part. Of course, I forgot to pick up my test sheet (again) so I can’t tell you what the scores or comments were, but they aren’t hard to imagine. If you really want to watch it in it’s entirety, knock yourself out.

The judge gave us a very generous 34.6. It’s a little frustrating because I know that a really good test is lurking just beneath the surface with this horse – he’s been AMAZING at home lately – but given the circumstances of the day, I’m just gonna tuck it away and move on. It could have been a lot worse, all things considered.

Our stadium wasn’t until 3, so he got to have a bath and a graze and go back to his stall to chill for a while. Of course, by the time 3 rolled around it was hotter than the surface of the freaking sun. 95 degrees in September seems excessive.

I let him have a long walk around warmup so we could make sure the little hamster in his brain was actually on it’s wheel. He seemed almost TOO quiet, until I picked up my reins to start trotting, at which point he LEAPED into canter. Ok, so it’s gonna be like that then. Glad I decided to put the Dr Bristol on and not carry a whip. I just let him canter for a bit until I felt him start to actually relax. We jumped a few warmup fences and he felt great, so we just chilled and waited our turn. Y’all know how badly he deals with the heat. No point in pushing him.

The course was a lot of singles, with a really tight turn from 2 to 3 at the beginning. I was a bit disappointed that the jumps looked so SMALL… Henry is much more careful and much easier to ride when he’s a little impressed. Plain and small always equals trouble for us. I need someone to jack the jumps up and put alligators under them, please (for real, I’ll pay cash).

One of my biggest issues in stadium is my tendency to come out of the corner and start pickpickpicking my way to the base, which I knew would be exceptionally easy to do with this course if I let myself be lulled into that. Really I needed to keep the rhythm and use the turns to rebalance us, then allow him to come forward out of the turn. I was determined not to pick.

Which, turns out, even if I had pulled I don’t think anything would have happened, because Henry was still on fire. He actually felt good though, jumping really well through the first part of the course (jumping me out of the tack at fence 5), albeit a bit unbalanced in some of the turns. I really should have puts studs in to showjump on the grass, I had a really hard time keeping that inside hind under him. Lesson learned for next time. Grass should basically always equal studs for this horse.

We were a bit tight jumping out of the second double, a very plain dark brown oxer, and he rolled the rail there. Not a surprise. Then we came around and rolled the next rail too. I just didn’t do a good enough job of getting him balanced back through that turn, and he was too flat coming in. My bad. I do wish they’d left the liverpool under that one for Training, it would have really helped me out!

So while 8 faults looks ugly on paper, I wasn’t disappointed. It was the first T stadium we’ve done where I felt like I actually rode it according to plan, rather than just reacting to whatever happened along the way. Considering this was the first course we’d jumped since the June horse show, I was perfectly ok with it. We weren’t there to win, we were there to put in a decent effort that we can go home and build upon. I think we did that. The polish will come.

The best part of all? We were now done with all the hard stuff… all that was left was XC on Sunday!!!

The Hot Mess Express was running pretty much 24/7 last week. The last Henry update you got was last Wednesday, where I recapped his series of calamities that kept us from actually properly prepping for the show. As of last Wednesday he had pulled a shoe, garnering himself 2 days off, but the farrier came and put it back on. I went ahead and asked him to just redo him, since we were almost at 5 weeks anyway, but he didn’t have his drill press with him that day, so he just tacked the missing shoe back on and came out the next morning to do a complete reset.

That was Thursday.

I get to the barn Thursday afternoon, ready to FINALLY fit a ride in. I went out and set up a few jumps in the field, since it had been, oh ya know, a month since we last jumped. I won’t even tell you how long it had been since we last jumped a course (coughtheJunehorsetrialcough). I set up our little warmup boxes, a 3’3″ vertical, and a 3’6″ oxer. We had a nice stretchy trot warmup, then went for a quick little canter, popped over the jumps a few times, and called it done. He actually felt super, especially considering how long it had been.

And then we went for a walk.

And then he tripped and did this.

Can’t even make this shit up, y’all. He had about 4 hours in these new shoes before he decided he was done with the four-shoe lifestyle. Hasn’t pulled a shoe in a year and now he’d managed two in a week.

I knew my farrier wasn’t going to be very happy with Henry, considering the guy had already been out two days in a row for my ridiculous horse. Turns out it didn’t really matter how he felt, because he had left my barn and gone to Houston to shoe horses for a couple days. No way he’d be back in time to tack Henry’s shoe back on (again). So Trainer confirmed that there would be a show farrier, and I just figured no big deal, I’ll get it tacked on tomorrow when we get to the show.

LOL.

On Friday I worked a half day, got to the barn around 11:30 to load all my crap, and we were on the road by noon. We made good time and rolled in before 2, I got a nice parking spot in the trees so that my tent was in the shade, got Henry’s stall all set up, checked in at the office, and proceeded trying to find the farrier. Someone told me that his son was showing, suggesting I check his stall and see if they were there yet. A little bit of creepy stalking later, I located the stall, but nope – not there yet. No big deal, I’ll just go hang out and wait.

I spent the next 6 hours checking that stall every 20 friggin minutes. By 7 it was obvious that I wasn’t going to get to ride that day, and I really didn’t even want to take Henry out and walk him around since he’s such a baby when he’s barefoot. Getting a bruise the day before dressage wouldn’t be good. We were not exactly off to the start I wanted for the show, not getting to ride him or even get him out of his stall. And with an 8:50 dressage time in the morning, I was starting to get nervous. Really nervous. What happens if the farrier doesn’t show up in time?

I watched my horse looking more and more wild in his stall before I finally did the only thing I could do: go to bed.

This is all important back story before we actually get to the dressage recap. The drama continues tomorrow…

This horse, y’all. He is in So. Much. Trouble.

First of all, I swear he smiled awfully damn smugly when Hurricane Harvey turned toward Houston. It cancelled our grand plan of Henry going down and spending a week with Trainer while I was in Europe… something that would have been really helpful for everyone. But no, instead he spent several days before I left, and the entire time I was gone, standing in his stall getting fatter. Two weeks off total. Well played, Henry. I don’t know how you conjured a hurricane, but it sure did have your signature.

Then I got home from Europe, hacked him once, and showed up the next day to find his big ol’ “I ATE A BEE” elephantitis head. Again, he seemed awfully damn smug as I put all my tack away and wrote a check to the vet instead. Three more days off.

On Monday the swelling was finally pretty much gone, so I tossed all my jump tack on and went out in the field. A 20 minute hack went off without a hitch, so I popped him over a few little jumps. A grand total of 5 fences in and he tripped and came up missing a shoe. And of course, farrier couldn’t make it out until sometime today, and let me tell you who cannot be ridden without a shoe because omg his footie. Two more days off.

I can’t even make this shit up. WTF horse.

This would be much less annoying if we didn’t have a show this weekend. Our first recognized in over a year, and our first recognized Training. Henry appears to be doing his best to get to the show without having been properly ridden in 3 weeks. The good news is that I’ve given up in advance on actually doing well, and now the focus has shifted to just finishing in one piece. Nice dressage? HA. Clear stadium? LOL. Let’s just focus on not dying, how bout that?

 

Trainer is bringing a rosary and some holy water, so maybe it’ll be fine?

It’s officially the last post about our trip, so don’t worry, you’re at the end. There was A LOT that happened that I never did end up covering in the blog posts (mostly because the mobile version of WordPress SUCKS) so I figured I could hit some of the high points here.

4: countries visited – France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

174: kilometers per hour, our top speed on a German highway in our rented Peugeot (which was basically just a hopped up lawnmower), or about 106mph according to Google. It was exhilarating in that super terrifying “omg is the Peugeot actually airborne right now?” kind of way.

2200: kilometers traveled by car, or a bit over 1,200 miles.

8600: miles traveled by air

1: how many times we got the middle finger amid all those miles. It was from a Frenchman that drove like a douche canoe, everyone act surprised.

5: how many times we drove back and forth trying to find Emerald’s barn, since neither GPS knew whereTF it was and there was no sign or street number. You have to be an expert stalker to find that place (don’t worry, Michelle is, she whipped out the satellite view and started looking for arenas).

2: how many times we heard a very techno version of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” playing over the loudspeakers at Bucha. There was a lot of techno. And not at all censored rap. Kind of confusing.

2000: how many cows some Russian guy tried to sell us at the wine bar after he learned we were from Texas (I’m not joking or exaggerating on this one). The best part was that he only spoke Russian and a little bit of German, and I only speak English and a little bit of German, so it included a lot of pantomiming. Use your imagination.

1: hours it took for me to find, try on, and purchase my coveted brown Ego7’s at the trade fair on day one of Bucha. Look people, I don’t mess around.

2: how many Canadians literally thought I worked for a particular vendor because I really liked some reins and they happened to walk up when I was explaining to Michelle why they were so great. This is not the first time this has happened to me.

20%: how much of the German that I actually understood from the Italian guy in line behind us at Aldi. He was undeterred by my vacant nodding and just kept chattering away.

3: schnitzels consumed during our 3.5 days in Germany. By me anyway. Michelle accounts for another 3, so I guess make it 6.

2: number of Kinder Bueno’s purchased and consumed on road trips

6: number of times we said we should have bought more Kinder Bueno’s

9,983,837: number of roundabouts we went through along our 2200km journey (ok maybe this number is perhaps just slightly dramatized)

4: how many stop signs we saw during the ENTIRE trip. I’m not kidding, those people love their roundabouts and yields.

7: times that people grimaced when we said we were from Texas, and also the number of times we had to explain how far Austin and Midland are from Houston, thus why Hurricane Harvey didn’t really effect either of us.

1: how many horses we saw at Bucha that could have literally walked right into the hunter derby ring and won. It finished last in the eventing, obviously it needs a new career. Takers?

6: how many days in a row that I ate french fries and it was a totally valid life choice, stop judging me.

2: how many of my gears are still grinding. One over how amazing (and so important) their pony jumper riders and classes are, and why we can’t replicate that system here. One over the almost saddlebred tendencies of a couple of the young dressage horses, and why in the world we’re rewarding that in dressage.

I’ve been back from Europe for almost a week now. The original plan for Henry was to go to Trainer’s while I was gone, but of course Hurricane Harvey ruined that idea. Instead he got basically two full weeks off, which he didn’t seem to mind. When I got back he kind of looked at me like “Oh, it’s you… got any cookies?”.

Henry seemed to do just fine with the down time, other than the fact that he’s a bit fatter (omg horse, stahp, I can’t feed you much less) and it seems he was quite itchy while I was gone. I dunno what it’s been about this summer, but he’s been Mr Walking Allergy since May. The only thing that’s been able to keep him from rubbing all his hair out is my magic spray, which ran out while I was gone. Thus, I came home to this:

AGGGGHHH.

His face looked almost as bad, it’s just not quite so noticeable since it’s more spotty.

The very first thing he got on Wednesday (after a nice hack) was a very thorough bath, after which I covered his body in every elixir I could find to make him stop itching until my new bottle of magic spray arrived.

Then on Saturday I pulled him out of his stall to find this:

WTF with the elephant head, Henry? I took his temp, checked his respiratory rate, etc. All totally normal. He was acting normal, had eaten breakfast just like normal. Nothing about his routine had changed. He has a bit of a history with random swelling (last summer it was the sheath) so my first thought was some kind of allergic reaction. I texted pics and his vitals to the vet, who said he didn’t think it was an emergency but he wanted to come examine him just to make sure there wasn’t something bad brewing. In the meantime Henry got a little bit of banamine, and we settled in to wait for the vet.

And by “settled in”, I mean someone got a makeover. Fall season officially starts this weekend so it was time to make him look less feral. We started with dying his tail, and then I body clipped him. Yeah, it’s early for a first clip, and not much hair came off, but every little bit seems to help keep his fat ass cool, so I’ve just given in to the fact that I’m going to end up clipping him every 2-3 months by default.

The vet showed up, examined him, checked all his vitals again (still pretty much the same as when I checked them), felt around the edema, and then took a long look in his mouth. He had some irritation to his soft palate, and a kind of suspicious looking little red spot. The vet stood there going hmmm, and then looked at me and said “Honestly, it looks just like a bee sting, but…. inside his mouth…”. Who knows for sure, but if any horse could manage to eat a bee, it’d probably be Henry. He got some dex, the vet left me with a couple more days worth, and said if it’s not better by then to let him know.

Sunday morning it wasn’t much different, size wise, but the edema was definitely softer. On Saturday the pitting had been like memory foam… if you pushed your thumb into it, it took a while to spring back. On Sunday there was no pitting if you pressed it.

I texted the updated pics (and vitals – all still normal) to the vet and got the okay to at least take him on a long walk under saddle to stretch his legs. Someone is going stir crazy. He spent half of our walk jigging sideways and snorting, so I’m going to guess he feels just fine despite the elephantitis throat.

Afterwards I gave him another dose of dex and decided to ice the area. May not help, but it can’t hurt, right? Henry was pissed.

It looked a bit better last night, so I’m hoping by this afternoon it’s made some significant progress. I’m sure Henry thinks this is a swell way (ha, pun) to prolong his vacation, but it’d be cool if I could actually get some real rides in. Details…