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First of all… I think I love schooling shows. I literally had all of my clothes, including show clothes, packed in a backpack. It took me maybe 5 minutes. I didn’t have to pack a ton of shit, I didn’t have to braid, and it was cheap. Sign me up for this. Ok, but not permanently, because I did miss wearing my Winston coat a little, but it was fun to be casual for once.

On Saturday I was up early (because I’m always up early, because I go to bed early, because I’m 33 going on 85), and as I was leaving my neighborhood I realized that although I had remembered to gather all of Henry’s crap, I forgot to get any food/drinks for myself. Oops. A quick stop at Walmart to grab whatever I could carry (which amounted to 2 Lunchables, an apple, some Goldfish crackers, and 2 waters… spoiler alert this is not enough food for 24 hours) I was back en route. I went to the barn, shoved all my crap in my truck/trailer, and headed out. I’ll be honest and tell you a secret here: I didn’t even clean anything. The forecast for the weekend looked gross, and my give-a-shits just were not numerous enough.

I was one of the first ones to arrive, so I parked my trailer in a primo spot and got Henry settled. Bobby and I were lucky enough to get awesome stabling spots in a smaller barn that is less chaotic and has more space. Loved it. Then Bobby got there, parked next to me (because stalker), we put our tents up, got everything unpacked, and then got on the boys.

Earlier in the week Henry had a day where he just felt kinda crappy under saddle (like SI flaring up again), to the point where I almost scratched. Then the next day he felt super, so I decided to just go and see what horse I had. If he felt weird, I could always scratch. We got on and walked for a while, then I rode him down to the arena and Trainer asked to see him trot and canter. Henry was moving pretty damn great, albeit he was a bit of a sassy dolphin. We quit after a very short ride, just in case, but definitely got the thumbs up to proceed. He might end up being wild for dressage, but he felt good and that was more important. He literally pranced back the barn, fairly certain that we were headed to the start box for XC. He was super bummed when he got a bath instead.

After the boys were settled we went to walk stadium, then walked XC twice. It was warm and humid enough to where I was sweating balls by this point. There was much chafing. Thanks, Texas in January. Overall though, I felt pretty good about the XC and stadium courses (mentally, not physically, because see above note about chafing).

Then we fed the boys, ate dinner (mmm… Lunchable…), socialized a bit, and took the horses for a handwalk. I DID wipe my bridles down with a wet rag and thoroughly brush out my horse’s tail, so… wow, such effort. Then I popped one of Bobby’s ZzzQiul’s and was in bed by 9. With a 7:42 dressage time, it was gonna be an early morning…

 

Yeah, horse show happened yesterday, but I need a day to gather myself before I can write all that up, so a few quick “what’s up in my world” updates:

First – dog update. As I mentioned last week, Stewie had not been feeling so well. The only thing we found amiss in his vet appointment was a low grade fever and elevated white blood cell count. He came home with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, instructions to bring him back if he seemed worse, and a follow-up appointment for this Weds to recheck him. He’s steadily gotten better at night (he’s not shaking for hours at a time), although he’s still not eating very well (granted, he’s never been a particularly great eater anyway). He wants MY food, and treats, but not his own food.

I bought my plane ticket and Rolex tickets last week, so I’m officially GOING. If there’s some kind of blogger meetup happening, lets talk details. I’m so excited!

I finally paid off the Devoucoux! That didn’t take FIVE MONTHS or anything. Thanks, Henry’s giant stack of fall vet bills and newly acquired, very expensive acupuncture addiction.

Because I am obviously so very good at adulting (see above), I rewarded myself with a pair of “oilslick” spurs. They were on sale, shut up.

And last but not least, a few Sadie pictures. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a pregnant mare who’s belly was so perfectly round.

She still thinks she’s fancy though!

More tomorrow, when I’m more awake.

Remember what my main goal for 2017 was? Ah, that’s right: to chill the eff out about being so insanely competitive with myself. So we have our move up horse trial this weekend and I’ve decided to take the “Oh, it’s no big deaaaaaal, it’s fiiiine, not even worriiiieeed, I’ll pack laterrrr…” nonchalant approach. Because if I pretend it’s NBD, my myriad neuroses seem to be able to keep themselves contained.

Normally I’m the queen of pre-show lists. I have lists of lists. Pages of shit to do, when to do it, what to pack, things planned down to the minute, etc. It’s part of what feeds my crazy Type A control freak obsession. This time I’m taking the opposite approach.

My prep this week has been bare minimum. I learned my dressage test on Wednesday and ran through it once (technically we rode it twice last year, so it’s not totally unfamiliar to me) and I’ll run through it another time or two tomorrow. I cleaned up Henry’s tail and gross fetlock hair when I clipped him a couple weeks ago, so I haven’t really touched him at all. He got new shoes yesterday, but that’s about it. My tack will get wiped down tomorrow but I’m not taking it all apart and conditioning it to perfection. I guess I might polish my boots (wearing the brown ones, because so casual) and I’ll pull out my nice helmet. I’m even using my blue “schooling” Majyk Equipe XC boots instead of our fancy “show whites”. So far the only thing I’ve packed is my stud kit, in case it rains. Normally an event takes up every waking thought for at least a week beforehand, but I’ve managed to prevent myself from devoting that much thought to it.

But really, we’re approaching this as one big schooling opportunity. I’m not braiding. I’m not wearing a watch on XC. I’m not even wearing a show coat. These are very weird concepts to me, but I think they’ll help my brain remember that we’re here to get experience, not to compete. The goal is to not fall off and not get eliminated. If I can like… stay chill and not ride like a drunk monkey, that would be a bonus. Aiming high over here. But after a couple years of always feeling lots of pressure, and sometimes crumbling under it, I have to admit it’s pretty liberating.

It’s nice to not be like “I have to get under X in dressage if I want any chance of placing, and I def can’t afford a rail blah blah blah, and I have to get my qualification for X”. I do not give two shits. We can finish dead freaking last… as long as we finish, I’ll be thrilled. Big fat whatevs. We’re just gonna do our best and have fun with it.

That’s how I’m playing it anyway. Gotta somehow make this attitude channel all the way through the weekend. Oh, and if the rain could hold off until after we run XC, that’d be great too.

Dude… wtf is up with this weather lately?

First, it was 18 degrees last week. IN TOWN. It just doesn’t get that cold in Austin. Then the past couple days its been 80+. Such weird weather this year, constantly pinging back and forth from one extreme to the other. Freezing pony, sweating pony, freezing pony, sweating pony. Or really: psycho pony, lazy pony, psycho pony, lazy pony. I think we’re all living in constant fear of colic.

On Saturday I bundled up and went out to do trot sets once it warmed up to 32 degrees. Five layers. That’s how many it takes for a Texan to not turn into a popsicle when it’s freezing outside. Thank goodness for my heavy SSG winter gloves, I really have no idea how you northerners do it. Henry was quite lit, so while I was trying to do trot sets, it was really more of leap/squeal sets. The next day it was in the 50’s, and he was back to normal.

Then on Monday it was SUPER WINDY, and Henry was seeing demons. The same field that he rides around literally every day was terrifying, to the point where he was just standing there staring at random things and trembling. He just about vacated the premises when a bird flew out of a tree. He’s typically not that spooky, so that was a weird and super irritating day.

By Tuesday it was 80 degrees and Henny said it was way too hot to work. I had to kick him just to keep him walking, and he considered most of my aids to be suggestions.

Despite the weird weather, I’m glad that I’ve at least been able to ride. Temps for the next couple weeks look much more stable (60-80, ftw) but there’s also a lot of rain in the forecast. As long as we don’t have any more 18 degree mornings, I can live with it. Y’all keep that below freezing shit up north, please.

I dropped Stewie (my 12yo Jack Russell mix) at the vet this morning. In the past week he’s had several nights where he’s been having what I would call anxiety attacks in the middle of the night.

I talked to the vet at the end of last week when it started and they suggested Benadryl to help zonk him out a bit, and hopefully it would pass. While he’s always been kind of a high energy, anxious type of dog (because JRT) he’s never done anything like this before. Poor guy wakes me up in the middle of the night trembling from head to toe, panting and cowering. Sometimes I’ve been able to get him to settle back down, but other times not so much. By morning he’s okay again. One night last week the Benadryl worked, then over the weekend it didn’t.

Sunday night he woke me up at 1 and neither of us ever went back to sleep. A few hours were consumed with me googling this, reading about other people and dogs who have had this same problem. Stewie has been fairly normal during the day, and sleeps for most of it. That makes one of us. Luckily Monday was a good day and he was 100% normal, and slept through the night just fine with the assistance of more Benadryl (thank god, because I was so tired I was asleep before 9). Last night though he woke me up again at 3.

All I could think the other night while I was trying to get him to settle was “I have no idea how people have babies. Who could do this for like a year straight without jumping off a cliff? And at least the dog isn’t screaming in my ear, he’s just sitting here vibrating.”. On the plus side, I’ve had so much extra reading time (in the middle of the night) that I’ve finished 3 books since last week.

So I dropped Stewie at the vet this morning (with an entire page of handwritten notes and a day by day record, because Crazy Dog Mom) to get a thorough checkup. Hopefully they can come up with an explanation and/or send him home with some drugs so that we can keep this from happening again. They didn’t seem particularly alarmed and said this was actually pretty common (google agreed). But poor dude, I feel so bad for him. It makes me sad to see him like that and be unsuccessful in all of my attempts to help him. I’ve been trying to deny the fact that he’s getting old, but little things have slowly been cropping up over the past year. 😦 Fingers crossed we can get this one figured out.