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I had every intention of posting this yesterday but I spent a while struggling with trying to get photos uploaded before I figured out that I had finally exceeded the photo storage amount for the blog’s “premium” level account. And then the farrier came, and then I had work stuff to do, so… I didn’t circle back around to it until late afternoon. I had to upgrade to a “business” account to get more photo storage (it was either that or start mass-deleting old posts, which I didn’t want to do) which is 3x as expensive per year. That’s… fun. But anyway, here we are, back up and running.

The first full week in Florida was pretty great.

It’s just gorgeous here. Every time I walk outside I think that. Definitely a stark contrast to Texas, and this place makes my heart sing in a way Texas never did. Florida also decided to do me a solid and make the weather absolutely freaking STUNNING for my first week. Mornings in the mid to upper 50’s, afternoons in the low to mid 80’s, and nothing crazy on the humidity. Considering it was 106 back in Texas (and I dunno why everyone thinks Texas is a dry heat, where I was from in South-Central TX it was humid ALL THE TIME) I was luxuriating in the fact that I needed a hoodie to go feed the horses in the morning. You don’t have to keep selling yourself to me Ocala, I am already well past sold. Thanks for the lovely welcome though.

Mostly I’ve been trying to lay down a routine. Obviously I have 3 horses to shuffle through, but I really only have time to ride 2 every morning before my first meeting of the day. I could probably squeeze all 3 if I tried, but I like spending the time grooming them properly and not feeling rushed when I’m riding. I’ve got a schedule for them so that they get staggered days throughout the week and nobody gets more than one day in a row off. I go out in the morning around 6:15 to feed, come back in and get myself and Mina fed and answer some work emails, and then go out around 7 to tack up the first horse.

Riding in the mornings is the best way for me to structure my day. Being an hour ahead of the rest of my group is advantageous in that regard… I get an “extra” hour in the morning before I have to be on that first call. Of course, it has meant that I’ve found myself logging in for a meeting or two at 6pm, but still… I love having the morning to get all my own stuff done.

I’ve slowly put surely been booking appointments for all the things I need to take care of with the horses. Saddle fitters, farriers, bodywork, dental, etc etc. I had stuff that needed doing that was really difficult to coordinate in Texas, so I put it off. Last week it was the Custom saddle rep/fitter – I called her to come see if she could fit my dressage saddle to Presto and/or Gemma. It was definitely sitting too low in the front on both of them, too wide and not enough wither clearance, but they’re a fairly similar shape so I was secretly hoping she could make it workable for both of them. We talked about where they are in their training, age, etc (they’re both at the point where they should fill out and add more topline in the next 6 months) and she looked at it on both horses.

She agreed that it def sat too low in the front and was too wide on both of them, but she felt pretty confident that adding flocking to the front would be a great improvement. Off she went to her truck, fluffed up the front, and then we put it back on both of them. It’s not a perfect fit, but she felt it was certainly a workable fit. She recommended a sheepskin pad for both of them (lucky for me I have sheepskin built into all my pads…) but didn’t think any shims were required. She said to ride in it and let her know how I and the horses feel, and she can re-assess as needed. She’s only 15 minutes away, which is something I finding with basically all of this kind of stuff… everyone is so freaking accessible in a way that blows my mind a bit.

BTW, I always feel a little weird when presenting an old saddle to a fitter, like “gah please don’t try to make me buy something new or act like this is a burden”. No such experience here though, she saw the saddle and went “omg this is an original Wolfgang Solo, these are so hard to find. *intense eye contact* NEVER SELL THIS.”. Duly noted. No one tell her I paid peanuts for it. Great experience though, I liked the saddle fitter a lot and was glad that she didn’t try to make me feel any certain way about my old saddle and trying to make it work for two horses.

Since I’ve set aside the morning pre-work time for my horses, the late afternoons are for farm stuff. What that may look like depends on the day. Last week I spent an afternoon taking one of the thoroughbred race mares (a boarder… we don’t have any race mares of our own obviously lol) across town to get bred. The barn manager warned me that it was pretty far and Ocala traffic could be bad. It was 40 minutes, and I sat at like 3 stop lights. Adorable. I mean, I get it… on the road at the farm you might have a car passing by every 15 or so minutes, and all these rural roads out here are lightly traveled. Plus everything is close. Like 20 minutes can get you basically anywhere you need to go. So yeah I suppose if that’s your “normal”, then 40 minutes and driving through an actual town are a lot. By my standards of living outside a major city with tons of traffic and having to drive across it all the time, that drive was very easy. I pulled up at Ocala stud, waited for them to come get the mare from the trailer, then waited for them to bring her back, and off we went on home. I don’t mind being the shuttle driver, especially right now when I’m still trying to learn my way around.

Other afternoons I work with the WTW babies. Percy and Patrick are here living their best lives in the yearling colt herd with all the race baby boarders, and they both look great. They do still need to be handled regularly though to make sure they don’t go feral, and to start prepping them for any kind of in-hand showing that they may eventually do. Patrick looks fantastic, he always has been a good-looking colt, and Percy has really improved a lot in the past few months as well. Being out here is really helping him catch up from his rough start, I think. He’s filled out a ton since I last saw him at the end of February, and he’s looking way less gawky.

Other days I do little projects around the farm, like finishing painting the rails that the saddle racks are on. These had to be put up quickly before the seasonal boarders arrived in March, so there wasn’t time to get the wood painted before then. There’s time now though, so I circled back and got it painted, and it looks way better.

There are lots of little projects like that all over the farm, as well as lots of old stuff to go through, throw away, etc. They’ve done soooo much already in a short period of time, but it’s a big farm with lots of stuff, and there’s always more to do. There will be no end to the projects for a while I think. I don’t mind it though, it’s rewarding to put the time into something and see this place start to come together bit by bit. Plus if nothing else I’m definitely getting my steps in (since I’ve been here I’ve averaged 9.4 miles of walking every day) and sleeping pretty darn hard. I’m tired at the end of the day!

This week has already been full of stuff too, I think I’ve already got something booked every day, so I think for a while these week-in-review posts might at least be interesting.

Quinlee is nothing if not entertaining. She’s cute and sweet, but she’s also bold and precocious, so she’s running her poor sweet mother ragged with her antics. Luckily they’re now living out in the field with another mare and both of the yearling fillies, so at least Inca isn’t Quinlee’s only source of entertainment. And while a lot of foals are really shy around older bigger horses at first, Quinlee has had no such reservations. She wormed her way right on in there with Pippa and Teddy especially, whether they really wanted to be friends with her or not.

She also really likes her human friends, like MK.

But her bestest most favorite friend?

Say hello to Hay Bale.

I mean, how could you not love Hay Bale?

You can nap on him…

You can roll on him…

You can smoosh him…

You can climb on him and be REALLY TALL…

You can – oh crap, oops –

Anyway, you get the point. There’s no disputing the fact that Hay Bale is the ultimate BFF, even if sometimes your other FF’s might get a little annoyed about it.

Happy Foal Friday!

I figured I should do a recap post of the long weekend and everything that happened while Hillary was here, with getting the horses settled and my shit unpacked. But then I also figured that no one really wants to hear about my shit getting unpacked or the mundane tasks and errands associated with a move, so let’s talk about the fun bits of what we did while she was here instead.

It felt like we were busy doing shit from sun-up to sundown every day, and well… we were. But we made sure that the first couple hours of the day were set aside for the horses and riding. Partly because it’s a fun way to start the day before you have to get into all the drudgery, and partly because I think it’s important to keep the horses moving and keep their routine, and to be able to get on them and feel how they’re feeling.

We did a light stretchy hack with Gemma and Henry on Friday morning, and they both felt as good as they looked. Which was really nice because in addition to the long trip they’d also had a couple weeks off before that. Gemma went around like she hadn’t missed a day or traveled 1100 miles.

Henry looked shockingly good to me too. Usually time off and travel make him look stiff and weak really quickly, but nope… he was quite spry. We just did a few minutes of flatwork to get them moving and then went for a walk around the farm.

We had a bunch of errands to run that day (including picking up our awesome new-to-us Jump4Joy chevron from Kyle Carter, who brought it back from Kentucky for me, where Jen had brought it from Indiana… this jump is well-traveled), and we had to stop by Seminole and Tack Shack to get some things for the horses, which obviously got slightly sidetracked.

After that we had to run out to Tractor Supply, which is very conveniently located around the corner from a BOMB little ice cream place that has some of the best Italian Ice ever. It’s only 15 minutes from the barn which is information I probably didn’t need but will definitely use (frequently) over the summer.

The rest of the day was work and sweat and carrying things. After we finally got dinner and got settled at home and were about to go to bed, a big ol’ storm rolled in out of nowhere. Out we sprinted to bring the horses in, which was… super fun to do at almost midnight. They were pissed to be inside, but once we got back to the house the skies REALLY opened up and there was tons of lightning, so… it was the right choice even if they were mad.

On Saturday morning we were up early again to turn them out and clean stalls, then Hillary got on Gemma and I got on none other than everyone’s favorite Noodle.

Lord he’s tall. And long. Just a lot of horse and surface area. I forget sometimes, especially since Gemma and Henry are both a good hand smaller and waaaaaay more compact. It’s like being on top of an elephant, but a really nice elephant. I didn’t bother lunging him or anything, I just tacked him up and got on, and away he went like no biggie. I hadn’t ridden him since last September, and he hadn’t been ridden at all since October, so I was pleased that he pretty much got right to business. He’s a good kid in the ways that count, even if he drives me crazy with his continued removal of his fly boots ALL THE DAMN TIME.

I only trotted him for a few minutes since he doesn’t have much muscling or topline left to speak of, and then I asked Hillary if she wanted to take him for a spin. Zero arm twisting was required, and she got on and trotted him a few times each way too. He’s definitely a very different feeling from the other two – aside from being about 45 miles long he’s also got a lot a lot more suspension in his gaits and requires a lot of core strength to keep together.

Once we were done with the kids I put out a couple jumps for Hillary to pop Henry over, including setting up our new chevron out in the field so you could ride out of the ring and jump it. Henry was absolutely delighted to be doing his thing and happily christened the new jump.

Before we arrived we had already scheduled bodywork for the horses on Saturday mid-morning with Jen Oliver, who is fantastic. She did all 3 of them and spent some time chatting with us about them and what she was seeing and feeling.

Despite the long trip she thought they all felt pretty good. There were some tight spots here and there and some knots to work out, as expected, but generally it was really not bad considering their journey. A comfy trailer ride (it never ceases to amaze me how much better my horses look and feel after traveling long distances in a straight stall vs a slant) and then lots of turnout time seemed to do the trick.

After that we had an afternoon of more errands and unpacking (there is no end to any of it, I think), and then had a quick hour or so free before we were meeting someone to talk about training. So ya know… we headed over to WEC. Because why not. Well ok I’ll tell you why not – there was a massive car show going on at the same time and therefore it was crawling with muggles, but we quickly hit some of the main shops anyway. Technically I grabbed something for the barn at FarmVet so it wasn’t an entirely self-indulgent trip, and at least we were quick about it, but… ya know. I don’t feel bad about it.

Sunday was pretty much the same thing on repeat. Ride in the morning, then work and errands. Pretty sure I’ve put more miles on my truck in the last week than in the last 2 years. The good news is at least I kinda know my way around pretty well by now since I’ve seen most of Gainesville and Ocala and Williston and everything in between by this point.

We rode in the morning again, just another light stretching ride and then hacked out. Presto met his official fan club (aka the yearling colts) and now really wants to know why he can’t go live in their pasture. God, can you imagine what it would be like if he had 9 little yearling dumbasses as minions? The farm would implode.

We were pretty freaking exhausted by the afternoon, after days of running around and doing shit, so we gave ourselves a few hours of luxury to sit inside and watch the Badminton cross country replay. It was definitely something. How about that XC performance from Mason (aka Presto’s brother from another mother) though? That boy just romped right around there for fun! After having watched him come up the ranks for so many years it’s really fun to see him doing so well especially at something like Badders.

Monday was Hillary’s last day here, and we opted for just an easy road hack with the horses in the morning. Figured it was best to do that for the first time when both of us were here. Presto was a little snorty about everything but Gemma and Henry enjoyed it. One great thing about living here is that people passing you on the road in vehicles don’t go ZOOMING past, or honk at you, or whatever the fuck else. They know horses, so they slow down and they’re friendly about it. Blew my mind a little after so many years of road hacking in Texas, where you never know how many people are gonna try to deliberately run you over.

After that we did a little more stuff around the barn, ran a few more errands, and then it was sadly time for me to drop Hillary off at the airport. Big sads. So many. She tha real MVP though for giving up an entire week of her life to help me move myself and the horses. There’s no way in hell I could have done it without her. I still have plenty to do here on my own, and riding 3 horses requires some schedule juggling, but it’s manageable now since we got a lot of the big stuff taken care of in those first few days.

Now I’m flying solo! There’s still a lot going on this week, which I’ll catch you up on with next week’s recap post, but that brings you up to speed for moving weekend at least…

It’s officially official – myself and the horses are Florida residents!

We left Texas last Wednesday, overnighting in Pensacola, and arriving in Ocala on Thursday afternoon. It worked out really well that the barn owner in Texas, Rejan (who is also moving full-time to her Florida property down near Wellington) had a 4 horse trailer and only one horse to bring down with her. Their trailer is a nice big airy insulated head to head complete with fans and all the horsey comforts, so my 3 kiddos were able to ride in luxury with hay and water in front of them at all times. It was probably the best any of them have ever traveled.

I drove my truck and trailer behind them, so we had a little caravan going. My poor truck and trailer were crammed full of STUFF – mostly t!ny h0use accoutrements (like the stairs, tank, etc), all our tack, various farm equipment, some trunks, etc. My Titan has been a loyal servant the entire time I’ve owned it but let’s be real, she is 11 years old and has 161k miles on her at this point. She doesn’t really tow over these long distances as well as she used to, at least not when she’s fully loaded down like that. True to form though she did her level best, and she got us through… it was the trailer that caused us issues.

The trouble started pretty early on when we were at our first gas stop on the far side of Houston. I thought one of the tires looked a bit low (I had checked them all the day before) so I drove around to the air thingy to check it. When I stopped over there I could see a spot on the tire that was a blowout waiting to happen, so we changed that tire out to the spare. We almost made it the rest of the day without any further drama, but then when we only had about an hour to go until our layover, that spare tire blew out in the middle of nowhere Mississippi. It was just too old – I should have replaced it before the trip but didn’t even think about in with everything else going on. We called ahead to the trailer with the horses to let them know, and together we limped to the next exit and off the interstate.

We made a plan to send Hillary and the BO’s husband Justin with my trailer to a tire place a few miles away that (very luckily) was still open and had a couple tires that would work. We slapped the previous about-to-blow-but-hasn’t-yet tire back on and away they crawled. The BO and I went on ahead with the horses, crossing through the tip of Alabama and into Florida. We split up that way because my name was on all the health paperwork for the horses, so I had to be there with them at the ag stop in Florida. We got through the ag stop quickly and made it to our layover in Pensacola just after dark. The horses had ended up spending about 12 hours on the trailer, but all of them came off looking bright and happy and hydrated.

In the meantime, Hillary and Justin took my card and got two new tires for my trailer. It was honestly pretty lucky that the whole fiasco happened when and where it did… at least there was a tire place not too far away and they were still open. They were able to get it in and get the new tires on it quickly, so Hillary and Justin were only about 30 minutes behind us by the time we’d done the ag stop.

We got the horses unloaded in Pensacola, bedded down, fed, the trailer cleaned out and prepped for the next day, and then headed to the hotel. By that point it was 10pm so we pretty much just showered and passed out. We were back in the truck at 6:30 the next morning to go feed and hook back up, then make our way to Ocala. Rejan and Justin were going to drop my 3 off and then proceed the other 3-4 hours down to Wellington with Quinnie. We knew she wouldn’t be very happy to be left in the trailer alone so we planned a very quick unloading… essentially we just dropped the ramp, took my 3 out, closed the ramp, and away they went. Quinnie is nothing if not intelligent with an excellent sense of self-preservation, so she quickly settled down and rode the rest of the way just fine solo.

As for my 3, they were VERY HAPPY to be out of the trailer after 2 days of driving.

They were a little pissed at being separated into individual turnouts, but sorry kids, thems the breaks. Henry is way too mean to Presto and Presto drives Gemma nuts and Gemma makes Henry clingy, so… that’s just how it is. Quinnie was the only thing that made that group dynamic work. It’s fine though, because their paddocks aren’t really big enough (or are so shady that the grass isn’t quite as lush) to support multiple horses on them without murdering the grass. This way is better for everyone.

After a few gleeful minutes of galloping they all settled down fine, and we made sure all 3 of them knew and understood their waterers.

Then Hillary and I had some quick errands to run before stuff started to close for the day. We went to the feed store to get hay and grain since mine eat different stuff than what the racehorses get. We also picked up a few little things for the tack room and house, hit Horse & Hounds for dinner, and then stopped at Publix to pick up some groceries.

That takes us up through last Thursday, arrival day! We made it, the horses made it… everything is now officially here in Florida. As for everything else that’s been going on since then, that’s a story for another day.

That was… epic. There’s just no other freakin word that can fully encompass the experience that was LRK3DE this past weekend. We’ve been planning this trip for a while and it got delayed thanks to covid and then I considered cancelling this year altogether with the move, but man I’m so glad I didn’t.

I don’t have time this week to give a detailed play by play of the whole weekend and everything we did. Today I’m busy working and packing, and we’re rolling out of here bright and early tomorrow morning, so this is probably the only post you’ll get from me this week at all. We’ll hit the details at some point later on, but for now we can touch on the main points.

The way I see it, you really make the trip to LRK3DE for a few main reasons: the competition itself, the shopping, the comradery, and the memories. This year really delivered on all counts.

First – the competition. Look, maybe I’m a massive traitor, but if Michael Jung is in the house, I will always be rooting for him. Watching him ride is just such a pleasure, you can learn so much from sitting there and observing what he does. He’s a master of the sport and I was absolutely delighted to see him win. I mean… maybe he didn’t have to trounce the Americans quite so soundly (18 points between him and the top American – OUCH) but he absolutely deserved it. Once again, he gave us a master class in all 3 phases. Last time I was in Kentucky I watched him win aboard Rocana, and seeing him do it again on Chipmunk was equally as thrilling. It was also fun to see Pippa. My own personal favorite horse/performance of the weekend though? Palm Crescent. I’ll take one of him to go, please. No need to wrap it. He impressed me last year in Maryland and continued to impress me even more here. He’s got so much try in him.

On to the shopping. Ouch. All I can really say is ouch. I went there looking for one particular thing (a sheepskin monoflap girth for Gemma) and it felt like I came home with everything BUT that. It wasn’t for lack of trying though, I looked in every single freakin vendor and didn’t find anything that was exactly what I wanted or not 9 million dollars (possible slight exaggeration). I did find plenty of other things though, but basically everything was on sale so I don’t feel that bad. And a lot of it was clothes, which I do kinda need more of since I got rid of most of my clothes when I packed the t!ny h0use. Whoops. Marie Kondo ain’t got nothing on me when I’m in the mood to get rid of shit. I’m pleased with the things I got in Kentucky to help fill that void, though.

The final tally is:

• 5 t-shirts: Majyk Equipe, Ride iQ, a TB-centric short sleeve, a TB-centric long sleeve, and a Mango Bay “Beware the Mare” short sleeve.
• 2 sunshirts: one navy and white, one gray, both from 70 Degrees (really love this brand, it’s gonna be dangerous)
• 1 jacket: a black mesh jacket from 70 Degrees that I’m weirdly obsessed with, it’s like a scrim sheet for humans.
• a pair of breeches because damn you Harcour for making the prettiest dark green and putting GLITTER PIPING on them. I was powerless.
• a lightweight down vest that was on clearance at Free Ride for a great price and it’s packable so I refuse to feel shame about this since I sold or donated all my other vests.
• a Ride iQ hat
• a black sparkly Majyk Equipe XC helmet cover (it was free with purchase, so it really doesn’t even count)
• a black XC Majyk Equipe pad, the new style one that just came out with the built in half pad. The fabric is so nice and lightweight I thought it might be the perfect Florida pad for Presto. We shall see.
• navy and silver Majyk Equipe XC boots for Gemma. Look… I really wanted the navy and silver ones when that first limited edition came out however long ago, but I waffled for too long and ended up being just hours late on snagging some, they sold out so fast. So when I trotted my happy ass down to the Majyk Equipe tent and saw that they had restocked that color combo, I just didn’t really have any choice did I? Henry’s XC boots are too big for Gemma anyway. We’ll call it serendipitous and leave it at that. They’re beautiful.
• I also snagged an OTTB iron-on patch that’ll go on something for Gemma at some point.

The freebie stuff that places were handing out was hit or miss. I got some cool stickers and several new pens (I always need pens) and a couple chapsticks and some nice little microfiber towels that I will definitely use. Some places had hats and keychains and cups and all kinds of stuff, but I didn’t need any of that and wasn’t sure if it would fit in my bag anyway. All in all I’m pretty pleased with my final haul. Definitely not what I planned on getting but ya know… here we are. I also got to sit in some saddles (Arion and Voltaire in particular) and got a couple contacts to try to work out a new jump saddle once I get to Ocala, so hopefully that ends up being fruitful.

Next up – the legendary LRK3DE comradery. It was like a girl’s weekend on steroids. I went with old friends, made new friends, saw tons of people I haven’t seen in forever (it always astounds me how small the horse world is sometimes), do some business networking for BRC, and met people in person that I’ve known on the internet forever. I somehow have SEVEN new contacts in my phone, and I dunno how even. I’m generally not the most social person to say the least but when you’re in Horse Girl Heaven it’s a little different. I had a fucking blast with our friend group and with so many other people as well. You can’t possibly ask for better company. Nothing bonds you more than blackout level shopping and 4 straight days of sweaty chafing ass cheeks.

And last but most definitely not least, the biggest reason you come to LRK3DE is for the memories. I feel like I have so many stories from this weekend that I could literally write a novel in trying to retell them. I laughed so much and so hard that my abs were hurting the entire time (and still are, btw). We did ridiculous shit, indulged in all that is horsey, and let the rest of the world just fade away for a few days. We went on course walks, stalked a crepe vendor, lost an RV key in someone’s underwear, crammed a couple jumps into an SUV (shoutout to Jen, the jump fairy), drank a fairly obscene amount of cream soda to wash down what felt like a few buckets of cheese curds, hiked from one end of the park to the other about 100 times, and sat in the Kentucky bluegrass and sunshine just enjoying the sport and the horses and the return to something that felt blissfully like normalcy after two years of covid. Oh, and maybe we got some permanent souvenirs.

I’ll tell the tattoo story in it’s entirety when I have time to do it proper justice, I promise. The weekend was quite the adventure, that’s for sure.

Until then – to everyone I saw at Kentucky, it was fabulous to see you again. To everyone I didn’t see, I hope to catch you next time. To Hillary, you remain an impeccable travel companion/enabler/instigator. To my other two RV roommates Holly and Lindsey – never at any point did I want to suffocate either of you with a pillow, and I can’t think of any higher praise than that (although I fear Lindsey may never be the same again after a weekend with us). To those who weren’t able to make it to Kentucky this year, get your asses there next year and do some ridiculous shit with us, please. What else are horse friends for?