Category: Uncategorized

Well hello there, long time no update (for me anyway). Last week was absolutely ridiculous… that’s all there really is to say about that.

The t!ny h0use was originally supposed to get picked up last Monday, then they called me the Thursday before and asked if they could pick it up early. It wasn’t totally packed up and unhooked yet so I told them the earliest it would be ready was Saturday and they said that was fine. So I basically put everything else on hold and my dad came out to help me get it everything in bins, the fans down, appliances strapped up, furniture wrapped, etc on Friday, only for them to call afterward and be like jk we’re gonna pick it up Monday like originally planned.

Annoying, but at least everything was packed up now. Granted, it was now no longer livable. The barn owners had already graciously offered to let me take over their guest bedroom in the time between the t!ny leaving and when we actually leave with the horses, so I basically just ended up moving over there a few days early. And, bonus, their house comes with very fluffy malamutes.

Mina is a bit scared of them, which is fair considering they’re 3x her size, but luckily I thought to bring the baby gate. Mina likes to stand on the bed (the safe place, clearly) while Obi stands in the doorway and wonders why she won’t come out and play with him. It’s working out just fine though… Mina comes outside when we’re outside, and when she’s inside she just sleeps on the bed. Not much different from her normal routine really.

Anyway, last Monday a driver did indeed show up to pick up the house, but… he did not have the right hitch on his semi. Which was extremely frustrating considering that a few days before I had spent a half hour on the phone with both the broker and the dispatch, making sure they knew that it wasn’t a standard 5th wheel hitch, and sending them both a lot of photos of the hitch. I felt bad for the driver mostly… he showed up, hung around for a bit waiting for his dispatch to get back to him with instructions, and then left. He never came back, and the broker called to tell me he had another driver booked to come pick it up that evening. A few hours later that driver called and said he wouldn’t make it before dark (oversize loads can’t be on the road after dark) so he was going to come pick it up first thing the next morning instead. Which was fine, but like… I’d already spent weeks being anxious about moving this tiny house and imagining all the things that could go wrong, and here we were with some of them starting to come to fruition. I was stressing.

The next morning the new driver shows up, and once again he does not have the right hitch. It was closer to the right hitch, but still… not the right hitch. He also didn’t have a jack, flags, flashers, a light bar, or any kind of oversize load banners. I am not shitting you. He did have an escort car with him, and that lady had one extra oversize banner, but… he didn’t have what they needed to legally get it on the road. Which was VERY FRUSTRATING considering the specs of the load are included in the job. He knew all that before he came. It’s quite possible that I was on the phone yelling at two different people all before 7am. I hate yelling. Especially on the phone.

At that point though I was either going to get the damn house on the road or set on fire, one of the two, so I was like screw it Mr. Driver, while you’re fixing the hitch issue tell me where to get the oversize shit and I’ll just go buy it my fucking self. He called the closest truck stop and they had everything, so off I drove to spend $200 buying this guy’s oversize load shit that he already should have had.

The house did eventually make it out of here around noon, SIX HOURS after the driver first arrived, and I spent more of my own dollars to make it happen, but… it left. I just really needed that thing to go because it was stressing me out to the point where I couldn’t sleep and was pretty sure I was getting an ulcer.

Of course, I thought that the house leaving would be a weight off my shoulders but it really just opened a whole new set of anxiety flood gates. The night it left I for some reason panicked in the middle of the night thinking that it wouldn’t be able to fit in the gate at the Florida farm (I had already checked that, I dunno why I forgot and freaked out) and laid awake all night in a panicky sweat about it until I could get someone to confirm the gate width the next day. A couple days later the broker sent me a fairly unhinged text (like… are 25 exclamation marks and all caps necessary?) telling me that the driver was having issues with the tires and had 3 blowouts. Which… uh, yeah, not surprising. Look at that thing. And it’s being hauled 1000 miles across some particularly shitty Southern backroads because it’s too tall for any highways or main roads. Also, Mr. Broker who’s job title is literally Logistics Coordinator, is this not your job to handle? Is this not what we paid you for? Why am I getting batshit text messages about something I cannot do anything about?

Anyway. The t!ny did finally make it to Florida yesterday afternoon. At least it’s done. I do feel a bit better about everything now, with that huge worry taken care of. Partially at least, because it still has to be blocked and leveled and anchored and all that stuff. Still, moving it was nothing but a spectacular pain in the ass and 0/10 would not recommend undertaking that particular experience.

Last Wednesday Hillary and I drove up to Midland to pick up Presto and bring him back home. We had quite an adventure up at Michelle’s (even though we were only there for like 15 hours) so I’ll post more about that later this week. But indeed, the Noodle has landed and though he’s been a massive pain in the ass so far (what else is new) I do love having him back. I missed his big dumb face. I’m slightly panicked at having 3 horses to deal with on my own in Florida but… we’ll figure it out.

In between all this I’ve been busy getting all the breeding data prepped for Kentucky. A friend has an “in” with the organizers and John Kyle said he was interested in having the data, so I possibly went extra-crazy with it and triple checked everything in an attempt to make it as thorough and correct as possible. Hillary took my spreadsheets and is pulling the most important data over into easier-to-read-for-commentators PDF’s with our Breed.Ride.Compete. branding so that we can email those over. Our Patrons already have access to the documents for the 4* and the 5* posted to Patreon. I’ve also written an article for EN in collaboration with RRP, a very TB-centric LRK3DE article, that I think will be running Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ll link to it when it’s up.

I also made a couple more BRC swag items for myself to wear this week in Kentucky. Gotta represent. We’ll be there Thursday and are staying on the campground (Patrons, you’ve gotten an invite to a Happy Hour on Saturday at our camper! Check the facebook group!) and while this trip is largely for “business”, I’m really excited to get back to Kentucky. The timing of this whole thing is… uh… not the best, considering we’re literally about to move, but still. I can’t wait. And really I haven’t even had time yet to think about Kentucky because I was so busy with everything else, but now that I can finally devote some brainpower to it, I’m just ready to be there. Bring on the bluegrass.

We get back from Kentucky on the 2nd, pack everything up for the horses on the 3rd, and then officially leave for Florida on the 4th, so time is ticking. Hard to believe we’re so close now. It’s a little overwhelming because even though I’ve managed to mostly take care of things here, there’s going to be even more to do when we get there. Trying not to think about that part yet…

Tomorrow I’ll give you more updates on what the horses have been up to. I’ll do my best to draft a post for this Friday too so that we don’t miss Foal Friday. Beyond that I’m not really sure how much I’ll be blogging or when, but I’ll try my best to get some regular updates for you along the way.

Apologies for being completely MIA this week… it has been… something. This is literally the first morning that I’ve been at my computer at all. I’ll catch you up on all the happenings next week, but for now I wanted to pop in with a quick and fun video Foal Friday post.

First of all, baby Q got a name! Sadly, it’s not Quesadilla (I hope everyone knows I’m actually joking and did not want to name the baby Quesadilla) but almost as cute – Quinlee. I got to meet her this week when Hillary and I went up to pick up Presto, and I have to say I think the name fits her. She is a CUTE little thing and very people-oriented. She’s also very very very into butt scratches at the moment. I definitely enjoyed all the time I spent (which was a lot) standing out there scratching baby bums.

I hope you can live vicariously through me on this one. Happy Friday!

I have been absolutely balls to the wall the last couple days with packing and other moving related stuff, so I don’t have time to write the usual little story that goes along with the Foal Friday post. I didn’t want to skip it completely though, because I dunno about y’all but I NEED the foal pictures to cap off my week. So – here ya go… a little bit of a photo dump of Baby Q from this week’s adventures, and I figured y’all can caption them or make your own little story for them however you see fit. Happy Friday!

Last week/weekend were basically the last relatively free and relaxed weekends I’m going to get for the next month or so. This week the t!ny h0use is being prepped and packed, next week it’s moving, then I have to go pick up Presto from west Texas, then we’re headed to Kentucky, then as soon as we get back from Kentucky we’re packing up the horses and heading to Florida. Between all that stuff and work and other random things, there’s something on my calendar basically every day for the next 3-4 weeks. So, knowing what was looming, we were trying to fit in as much horse time and as many “fun things” as possible into last week.

First noteworthy thing: Hillary finally got to ride Gemma.

The original plan was that she wouldn’t really ride her until way later, but Gemma’s a lot more chill than we anticipated, plus I was like “you really gotta FEEL her though”. Because just watching her you can see some moments of brilliance, but riding her and feeling those moments… that’s a whole different thing. It makes her very exciting. Hillary agreed that the nice moments feel even better than they look, and that we got a nicer horse than we’d even originally thought. That’s always fun.

The next day I rode Gemma again and Hillary jumped Henry, and Gemma’s main job was to stand quietly on the buckle in the middle while he worked around her, and while he buzzed nearby her front and back end. She wasn’t rattled in the least, and I think the “standing on the buckle” ride was her favorite. Lazy animal.

On Friday we headed over to Dover for their tent sale, because sometimes they do have some good deals. I will say though that the term “tent sale” was a bit of a stretch. In years past they’ve actually had a huge tent set up in the parking lot, but this time there was just a pop up canopy that had an empty table under it. They had some tables set up outside with boxes of stuff, a lot of it undesirable, but there were some good deals to be found if you dug around or went through all the returned items. A lot of stuff inside was on sale too but there were so many people crammed in there it was making me claustrophobic. Ultimately I ended up with two pairs of bell boots and a fly sheet (the fly sheet was actually a good deal, 50% off) and a free bucket. Still not sure if it was worth the 45 minute wait in line that it took to check out, though. Probably not.

We had tried the day before to message The TackHack to set up an appointment with them to come by their shop after Dover, but didn’t get a response. Since they’re only like a mile and a half from Dover we decided to try to drive by anyway and see if anyone was there. We called the number on the door but didn’t get an answer, so alas that didn’t happen. I wanted to check out their store at least once before I left Texas but I guess that wasn’t meant to be.

We had some Mexican food for lunch while we were out, and then on Sunday I met a couple more friends for an early dinner at another Mexican food place. I think literally the only perk of Texas is the superior Mexican food, but we’ll see what I can find in Florida. For now I’m stocking up, just in case.

While Dover wasn’t that exciting and TackHack was a bust, I did manage to score a nice used Devoucoux dressage bridle for Gemma from someone on Instagram for an absolute STEAL. I’ve always wanted one of these because I love the noseband, but also I am way (way way way) too cheap to pay $500+ for a bridle. I keep forgetting to try it on her, but hopefully it fits. If not she could probably wear Presto’s and he could wear this one.

Totally unhorse related, I also snagged a couple more poetry books. I’ve been having a definite poetry book moment for the past year or so and I’m not sad about it. Granted, I should probably stop buying freaking books when I know that it’s just yet another thing I have to pack. Details. I don’t have nearly as many books as I used to before I moved into the t!ny so I don’t really feel that bad about it. My book collection still fits on one shelf of a small bookcase.

Today my dad is coming over to help me take all the skirting off the t!ny, and then tomorrow I have a guy coming to prepare it for moving (unanchoring it, taking all the blocks out, checking the tires, securing the hitch, etc). I’m also trying to get the Kentucky breeding data done this week for a couple Eventing Nation projects and get some content done for the Patreon. All of this to say: it’s very possible that I might be more MIA here on the blog over the next few weeks than usual. I’ll keep posting at least semi-regularly until we leave for Kentucky, and then after that you probably won’t hear from me again until we’re settled in Florida. I’ll keep you updated as we go. Crunch time has officially begun!

Hillary and I really wanted to take Gemma and Henry on a fun outing before my schedule went completely off the rails pre-move. The last available weekend for that was this past one, which was maybe sooner than I had planned, but… beggars can’t be choosers. We opted for the little XC place down the road since it’s only a 20 minute haul and they have lots of little tiny jumps on their mini XC course. Gemma had not jumped yet (I’ve only ridden her like 7 times? 8 times?) but I figured this could be a good little introduction. My plan was just to lunge her over some logs and ditches and up and down the bank and into the water, and I figured if she was good for all that then I’d get on afterward and hack her around the field.

Spoiler alert: expectations exceeded.

Henry tried to murder her in the trailer (I love him to the moon and back but I swear to god he is such a freaking butthole sometimes) but other than that it was an uneventful trip. Poor Gemma spent the ride over cowering in the back corner as far away from him as she could get. My horses have chestnut mare vs bay gelding stereotype role reversals.

Gemma definitely had some ants in her pants while I was tacking up – she’s been to that facility once before when Henry was doing jumper classes and I just held her next to the ring. It’s a loud and busy place though, at the top of a hill (therefore windy AF and you can see a long way in any direction) with a highway bordering the XC and lots of traffic noise. She wasn’t being naughty or anything, just wide eyed with her head on a swivel. I put her to work on the lunge line, trotting for a few minutes until her eyeballs settled back into her head, and then asking her for lots of transitions to get her focused on me. Once she was listening we went over to some little logs and I asked her to trot over those on the lunge. Which she did. Quite literally. Just… trotted over. As if they were poles. So we walked a little further and found a few slightly bigger things… same reaction. So then I asked her to to canter a couple, which was harder on the lunge line. She still didn’t care. Ok well, this game now seemed stupid. Screw it, I said, I’m getting on.

I walked her up and down the smallest bank first, then trotted a few little logs and boxes. She was too busy looking around at everything else to even notice the jump until the last second, so she had that kind of approach where she did a hardcore wiggle right at the base. I didn’t have a neckstrap (yes hi, was not planning on really riding) so Hillary had to give me one of her stirrup leathers. Once I had that it was a lot easier to just keep my hands hooked on either side of the neck strap to keep the “tunnel” and put my leg on to keep her straight without worrying so much about keeping my hands out of her way or trying to grab mane. My spare neck strap will be living permanently in my trailer from now on so that Hillary doesn’t have to ride around with one stirrup again.

Gemma didn’t quite understand the game yet, since, ya know…. she’d never jumped before, but she was 0% worried about it and never cared about any of the jumps. The only issue she had was that sometimes when we were trotting things her hind feet didn’t quite remember their job, especially if she was too busy looking at something else. I was like well let’s see what happens if I canter stuff. It seemed to me like she might find that it made a little more sense or was easier at the canter (a lot of them do in the beginning since a jump is really just a big canter step, vs when they trot something and have to be more coordinated about all 4 feet). I mean, have I only cantered her like twice before? Yes. But it’s fine. Off we go.

Once she cantered a few jumps it definitely started to click for her more, how she was supposed to use her body. Then the things we trotted were a lot better too. I was also pretty impressed with her ability to also handle the slope and terrain – nothing about that place is flat really, and you’re constantly dodging bushes, so it’s not the easiest scenario for a wiggly greenie. She was very honest though, and even if she got wiggly at the base, as soon as I re-directed and closed my leg she was like “oh ok”. Pretty sure she was convinced I was just an idiot that clearly couldn’t steer around all these things, but she humored me and jumped them, even stringing a few together.

Then we headed back up toward the ditches, banks, and water. I had Henry lead the way over the ditches the first time, which was… ridiculous. Henry paused and took a hard peek down into them before he hopped over, and Gemma didn’t even notice there was a hole in the ground, she walked over like it was groundpoles. Or if she realized it she just didn’t care. Then we trotted over them by ourselves and again, same thing.

Then we went over to the water, which is narrow and dark here – most horses tend to be a bit spooky about it. We had Henry lead the way across it the first time because I thought she might need a lead. Lol. Clearly I do nothing but constantly underestimate Gemma, because she barely even hesitated before marching right in. When we turned back around to walk through it the other way Gemma was having none of the whole “following” business and surged to get ahead of Henry and lead the way herself. Ok then mare.

I trotted her across the water each direction by herself, and again she gave a last second wiggle and peek but she went. Then we went back to the baby bank and trotted up and down it a couple times. Zero hesitation, she plopped right down like a little champ. Up was a little more awkward because ya know… hind feet are hard, but she did it.

To cap it off I cantered one more slightly bigger box, then called it done with that. She’d done more than enough and… um…vastly exceeded the expectation for the day. Nothing like your first time jumping and your first XC school ending up being the same outing.

It was very helpful for me though, to see what she needs to work on most and how I think I should approach the jumping stuff with her. She’s different than I expected her to be, but in a good way. Less reactive and way more bold. I liked that even when she wasn’t sure what I wanted, she never said no, and even if she looked at something, she still went forward. She’s also got a pretty good jump on her I think, and her balance is super. All traits that I can definitely work with. You sometimes just never really know how they’re going to feel about XC until you take them and go do it, but she wasn’t intimidated by it at all… she ate it up. I think she liked cantering around the open fields especially.

We might just have ourselves an event horse!