Category: Uncategorized

I don’t even like 80’s music at all, so why the hell is a friggin Whitesnake song what came to mind for me when I was writing this title? *shudder* And now it’s stuck in my head. Great. Wonderful.

ANYWAY. This post is about Gemma. Because I think I love her (great, that tossed a Partridge Family song into my head instead and now I just feel old AF. Better than Whitesnake though…). I mean, I already knew that I liked her a lot, just from the day to day handling and learning her personality over the first couple months she was here. But now that I’m riding her and learning more about that side of her, I just continuously keep liking her more and more. She has yet to disappoint, aside from the fact that she’s gross and always smells like pee. Minor details.

I took her out back on the hacking path by herself last week for the first time and of course she was super. No screaming, no spooking, no funny business. Her head is on a swivel and she wants to look around a lot, but in a curious way, not a spooky way. She’s like that about everything and it’s a quality I greatly appreciate. She’s interested and engaged, but not fearful or stupid. I never feel like she’s gonna do anything particularly naughty or go belligerent on me.

I’ve also been riding her out in the jump field for the past few rides. It’s not level like the dressage arena, there’s a good bit of slope to it, but it’s bigger. There are pros and cons to both spaces. She’s a little more naturally forward out in the jump field, which helps, and my poles are out there for her to trot and canter over. I was hesitant about how she would handle the slope… the first couple times I hacked her outside of the ring you could tell she wasn’t used to unmanicured surfaces or having to pay attention to her feet. I think she tripped over every rock, stick, divot, and bump. She’s figured it out pretty quickly though, and now she’s only tripping over things when she loses focus, looks at something else, and forgets to watch her feet.

The slope in the jump field can be challenging though, especially for young and green ones that aren’t that strong yet and are still learning how to balance themselves. The first ride out there she was definitely struggling a little with the steepest downhill parts, but every ride she’s shown great improvement, and now she seems to have figured it out pretty well for herself. You can feel her adjusting her own balance to compensate for the slope… she’s smart and naturally wants to stay up off her forehand, which makes her feel very nice to ride (especially if you’re used to a Henry, where you spend 99.9% of every single ride trying to get him in a more uphill balance). Of all the straight off the track horses I’ve had and ridden, she’s probably got the most natural aptitude for the flatwork as any I’ve sat on. She’s not hesitant about the contact (even if it’s still very inconsistent), she doesn’t try to escape by ducking behind, and she actually wants you to ride her with your seat. Mostly we’re working on getting her more supple through her body and bending around the leg right now. There are 5-10 steps of brilliance every few minutes, and those steps hold a lot of promise. The feeling she gives you in those moments is really nice.

Which… Hillary hasn’t sat on her yet (today maybe!) but Bea got to take her for a spin yesterday. Figures that the kiddo is the second one on her and beat Hillary to the punch. Ever since we brought Gemma home Bea has been saying this is her horse, but I think we all thought it might be a long time until Bea actually got to sit on her. Jokes on us because Gemma is a lot quieter and more chill than we anticipated.

After I rode her yesterday, Gemma gave pony rides to Bea for a few minutes, because what better mount for a 4yo kid than a 5yo ottb chestnut mare? She was super though. Don’t believe stereotypes. It’ll be a long time before they do anything but pony rides of course, but that seems to have appeased Bea for now.

I’ve been making an effort to upload videos of her to my Instagram regularly so you can follow along with her progress… it’s easier than posting them on Vimeo and then embedding them.

Gemma is making me wish I had the budget to do an embryo transfer on her this year so I could “have my cake and eat it too” by getting a baby out of her but still continuing to ride her. That’s not in the cards though, so the baby-making will just have to take a backseat… I’m having too much fun riding her.

We’re now officially about a month out from the big move and it’s totally fine. No one is panicking. Definitely not me. Things are about to start ramping up hot and heavy in preparation for All The Things that have to be done (it is a lot. A. Lot. I have anxiety dreams on a nightly basis and constantly think of more things I need to do – the list of Notes in my phone is getting fairly grotesque) and I’m in this weird stage where I’m trying to mass purge unnecessary shit because I don’t want to move it, but also I need to gather things I’ll need when I get there. Which, some things I can get after I get there yes, but other stuff I’d like to already have on hand so I’m not trying to go hunt things down for the horses while also ironing out my own living and work situation at the same time. Reasonably prepared is what I’m aiming for. Remains to be seen if that will be attained.

This has involved getting (among other things) fly sheets, although I still need one more. I nabbed a couple zebra ones on super sale from Epplejeck, and I think they’ll be fine for Gemma and Presto, but if Henry stands any chance of wearing a fly sheet without absolutely roasting to death, he needs the lightest weight, finest mesh fly sheet ever created. Which I have not quite found yet. Fly sheets are a bit of a new concept to me, the extreme heat and sun here means they aren’t really a thing, but they are definitely a thing and a desired item in Florida. Suggestions on one that might work for our favorite pal, Mr. MightDieofHeatStrokeAnytimeItsOver75Degrees?

I also went ahead and replaced my barn boots, because hell if I was going to drag holey, destroyed boots 1000 miles with me to the land of frequent rain. Girl no. I snagged some new ones on sale last week and the old ones are currently residing in the trash can. One less thing to deal with and I won’t be mad about moving them. Granted I’m not really sure how I feel about these new boots, they’re a different brand, but… they’ll do for now. Mostly I needed something that didn’t have giant holes in it so my feet wouldn’t be wet all the time, and they do meet that criteria at least.

I have a whole bin of stuff packed up and ready to go to consignment, and have already started some mental Tetris in my head to figure out how and where to pack everything else. I’ve never in my life been so glad to own fairly little stuff. Or I’m glad I got rid of most of it when I moved into the t!ny h0use anyway. Stuff = stress. Moving all the horses’ stuff will be bigger objective in all this and I’m way ok with that.

Other than moving stuff, I’ve also started thinking about prep for LRK3DE. We are going this year and I have some commitments with EN, particularly with creating a breeding guide. I’ll also provide detailed breeding data to the event, although whether or not it gets used on the live stream commentary depends a lot on who’s commentating. There’s one big name person in particular who has already expressed zero interest in having or using that data, which is frustrating, but… they’ll get copies of it nonetheless. In prep for that I made a few pieces of BRC swag for Kentucky for Hillary and me.

Getting that whole “business” off the ground will really be more of a summer project, but I wanted to start getting the branding in place before Kentucky so we had it for our paperwork and for ourselves to rep, so we can look perhaps a little more legit for some meetings. Bless the Cricut for it’s services to this endeavor. I actually think the stuff came out looking pretty good, considering the logo was something I just threw together on my own. It’ll work.

Hopefully I’ll have some Presto news for you soon. For now he’s still just living his normal day to day life out in Midland, although he did have a complete meltdown about the new baby last week and had to be moved further away from them. I’m pretty sure he thought it was his own personal toy and it certainly is not. He still, knock on wood, has yet to take a lame step since he’s been out there. Sure is luxuriating in all his MagnaWave and bodywork and knee deep piles of hay though. Rotten little $hit.

Speaking of little shits, Henry’s food baby is due any day now.

He really exploded when the spring grass came in, but honestly with all the upheaval and changes that are about to be happening I’m fine with him carrying a little bit more weight right now. He always loses some when he travels, and he is not particularly good at handling big life changes. And when I say not particularly good I mean atrocious. He’s atrocious at it. So I have a feeling some of that weight will come off on it’s own anyway soon… he can keep the food baby for now.

Which reminds me… I need to start stocking up on Ulcergard…

HAPPY FIRST FOAL FRIDAY OF 2022!!!! I am perhaps maybe a little excited about it, because baby horse season is my favorite time of year. And while there is only one WTW foal this time year, Inca really made it count, because man…. this one is cute.

Please say hello to… ok we’re still calling her baby Q because she doesn’t have an official name yet (it’s a Q naming year) but whatever. Look at her. LOOK. AT. HER.

I know I say this every year but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a cute bebe animal in all my life. Her little nose. Her little eyelashes. Her little stripe. I have died of cuteness overload and if this is how I go, then I’m ok with that.

Michelle is of course delighted because she really wanted a filly out of Inca, who she loves almost more like a dog than a horse. This is Inca’s first foal and she’s been a great mama so far (although sometimes she does have this very distinct “someone come get your child!” look on her face when Baby Q starts winding up). Inca is the sweet one of the mare group who actually likes cuddles and attention, and so far Baby Q seems to have much the same inclination.

Also bonus points to her sire Frosty (Faustino de Tili, the same sire as Patrick and Obi from last year) for not passing on his gray gene.

This kiddo definitely seems to be made of sugar and spice, because while she is very sweet and likes human attention, she’s also got some pretty good zoomies already. Or really, leapies. She is airborne a lot considering she’s only a couple days old. Reminds me a lot of a certain someone from last year.

Just in case there was any doubt that she’s a filly though, she does have a little bit of sass and judgement residing in those eyes.

She’ll get to move out to the bigger field in a few days once she’s mastered her legs a bit more, but right now she’s mostly focused on eating, sleeping, and yeehawing. Mostly eating and sleeping, with a heavy emphasis on eating. This girl is big boned (those hocks are massive) and I have a feeling she’s gonna chunk right up pretty quickly at the rate she’s eating.

Happy Friday everyone? Baby horse season is back!

Gemma’s now got 4, count em FOUR, post-track rides under her girth, so I guess you could say things are getting pret-ty serious.

Just kidding, we’re still walking and trotting and learning about circles.

She is, however, a very good girl. Truth be told, she’s a lot different than I expected. I thought she would be a bit hot and quick and tense… which, ya know, is fairly standard for most horses off the track, especially sensitive mares. But she is not hot, nor is she quick, and not nearly as tense as I expected. If anything, she’s got a tendency to be slightly nappy and her preferred gait is walk. But she’s also definitely sensitive too. It’s an interesting mix.

Her first real ride (real meaning doing more than 3 mins of walking) was last Thursday, and we walked and trotted for about 15 minutes. I set up my Pivo so I could get an idea of what she looked like under saddle.

We started out at the walk again, doing some walk/halt transitions, moving left and right off my leg, making some circles and figure 8’s of varying sizes. Then I asked her to trot, and… crickets. Asked again and she trotted a few steps then walked again the second I took my leg off. Interesting. Not what I expected. We trotted again, with me immediately asking her to be a bit more bright and forward, and then we were cooking. I didn’t do a whole lot, just asked her to trot forward and straight. It was a little bit like riding around with the parking brake on… if I so much as thought whoa, she stopped. Which, I appreciate that she isn’t a lunatic that tries desperately to avoid leg and has a default “run away” mode, but also… riding around with the parking brake on isn’t the right answer either. So from this first ride I got a pretty good idea of what we would need to work on first.

A couple days later I got back on her again, doing pretty much the same thing but asking her to be quicker and more responsive to my leg. She was a little better but it’s interesting because she doesn’t want you to ride around with your leg touching her, but she also isn’t really inclined to go forward if your leg isn’t touching her. Honestly she would prefer to just stand there and get cookies and be told she’s pretty. Fair enough. She started Regumate last week and is still on ulcer meds, so some of this may be due to her heat cycles or whatever lingering tummy issues might still be there, but I also think (from all the other work I’ve done with her and knowing her pretty well by now) that she’s a little lazy in general. I rewarded her every time she immediately moved off my leg, although she’s definitely less responsive off the left leg than the right. Another interesting tidbit gleaned.

For this ride I also put her in Henry’s eggbutt Neue Schule. Her mouth is a little small so she seems to prefer a slightly thinner bit, and she was steadier in the eggbutt than she was in a loose ring. Gemma is not averse to contact or seeking the hand, which is great… I think she’ll get that part of things pretty quickly. The way she’s built helps a lot, she naturally carries herself in a good place. I’ve been keeping her noseband very loose as she figures things out, and she’s gotten quieter in the mouth every time too. She strikes me as the kind that would very much resent having her mouth strapped shut, so we’re… not gonna do that. Force is never the way, but it especially won’t be with this horse.

After that ride I took her out in the pasture to walk around for a bit – her first little hack out! She seemed really happy out here… she’s curious and likes to explore and see new things, so she was very content to walk around on the buckle, watch the turtles in the pond, etc. She still had a little bit of a gravitational pull back towards the barn, but didn’t require much convincing to march forward and away.

Yesterday I enlisted the assistance of a dressage whip, thinking it might help make my point a little bit more clearly. We also started working more on moving her body laterally around my leg, bending slightly to the inside and outside, etc. Suppleness – she needs it. I’ve been riding her with my leg on but not active, and she’s getting less annoyed about it. Makes sense, she’s never felt this much leg before, being a racehorse. If I ask her to go forward or move off my leg and get no response, I touch her lightly on the butt with the whip and that seems to get my point across. I love that she’s not frantic and tense and trying to move her legs 1000 miles an hour, but she still has to be forward and responsive to my leg. There’s a middle ground, and I’m confident that she’ll find it. She’s smart and does want to be a good girl ultimately, so I think as long as I make the expectations very clear and consistent, she’ll get it pretty quickly. This is all very different from anything she’s done before, after all.

I also took her for another little hack in the front field yesterday after our ride. Even with the guy weedeating across the street she never so much as flinched. At this point I’m still keeping our rides very short, under 20 minutes, and so far it’s just been walk/trot. We’re in no hurry so I want to wait until she understands things a bit better before we add in any canter, and there’s no point in putting longer rides on her right now… just enough for her to understand what I’m asking and give me some good efforts. I think if I started pushing too hard and too fast it would just make her sour or want to fight, so – slow and steady it is. I want to make it fun for her and make sure she understands. Not to mention she was just off work for 3 months and is transitioning between two very different careers. I want to give her body the time it needs to build up correctly.

Today I think we’ll venture out to the way back to the hacking path and see what Gemma thinks about that!

I’ve not been so great lately about the weekend recaps and I feel like I’m skipping over all the little fun things that maybe no one cares much about except for me, but… I am entertained by those things. Gonna try to remedy that today by cramming a bunch of little shit in one post, yay everyone’s favorite randomness (please read that with heavy sarcasm).

First and foremost, I need everyone to see what I snagged last week at Dollar General.

Ok that’s not a picture of the actual item, it’s a picture of the result. I found a unicorn cake pan for $4 so did I buy it? Of course. Am I an actual child? Also yes. Has my giant unicorn brownie brought me extreme joy over the past several days? Also yes. I ate his face first and he smiled at me the whole time. 10/10 would do again, I have zero regrets about this purchase.

Anyway, moving on. I spent much of Friday and Saturday glued to the Carolina live stream. There were lots of horses I wanted to watch spread around the various divisions, so naturally I had my spreadsheets up and my notes out. I also got to see my most favorite Mason for the first time since Maryland last fall… he looked delighted (if not perhaps a bit wild a few times) to be out and about again. I love watching that horse though, I swear you could put a camera just on his face for the entirety of cross country and it would be riveting coverage. I’m excited to continue stalking him as he aims for Badminton this spring.

While I was stalking Mason on the live stream, a particular redhead was stalking me here at home. Gemma has figured out that I live in the little gray house, and has spotted me through the window a few times. Now every once in a while I look out and she’s straight up staring into my window, using her laser beam eyeballs to try to will me into bringing her treats (I assume).

It’s very amusing to me because either the other horses haven’t figured out I’m in here or they just could not possibly care less. When Presto was here there were a couple times I caught him looking in here, but not quite as intensely as Gemma does. She keeps showing me all the ways she’s smart (and also that she is extremely rotten and probably gets waaaaaaaay too many cookies). I have not dared to actually go outside when I catch her staring in, because I think the second I do that she’ll plant herself by my window and never leave. It would be flattering if I didn’t know it was 99% about food with her.

Aside from watching Mason and being watched by Gemma, I’ve also been checking in on Inca on her foaling cameras. She’s looked imminent for DAYS now, and her milk test has been in the “within 24 hours” range for almost 3 days. Poor Michelle is a walking zombie by this point, having hardly slept, and even Presto (who seemed excited about his midwife duties) has started to give up and lose interest. These maidens always keep you guessing, so Michelle is watching her like a hawk, but I think we’re all ready for her to just spit that baby out already. I don’t know what she’s waiting for.

Aside from all this watching, there has also been plenty of doing. Hillary is still in Ocala and won’t be home for another week, so I’m still riding Henry. He still seems to be not particularly pleased by this, but I did make him happy this weekend and do some jompies. His favorite. It’s been getting hot here in the afternoons so I’m starting to have to shift my days around again to try to get done with the horses a bit sooner.

I’ve also been riding Gemma, but we’ll talk more about her tomorrow… too much to cover on that front to cram it all in this post too!

One more worthwhile mention… last week I nabbed a pair of black Espoir breeches that I’m freaking IN LOVE with… the black glitter piping is *chef’s kiss* and these are the first breeches I’ve ever had that managed to do a very subtle and actually nice looking cell phone pocket. I’ll have to do a deeper review of these after I’ve washed and worn them more, but these might be vying for my new favorites. These are the same brand as the black coat with glitter piping that I bought at Maryland last fall… clearly I like their styling (and their glitter).

I also got an Epplejeck box yesterday… a couple weeks ago I ordered some stuff to use up a gift card I had, and then promptly forgot about the order. When the box showed up yesterday I couldn’t even remember what I had gotten, so opening it was a fun surprise. I mean, there were some interesting things in there that I have no idea what I was thinking when I ordered them, but it was entertaining nonetheless. I need to get pics of all that stuff so we can all have a good laugh.

We’ve now entered crunch time mode as far as getting things organized for the move and I’m pretty sure I’m going to require a round of Ulcergard for myself by the time all is said and done. Uprooting your entire life to move everything 1000 miles away, especially with horses, is stressful as hell. Fingers crossed all this stuff comes together though, I feel like I’ve got about a thousand things up in the air right now and the anxiety is real.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!