I am admittedly not really myself this week. Monday was the 5th anniversary of my mom’s passing, and the week between that date and her birthday (the 25th) is generally never my favorite. It’s honestly gotten harder every year, not easier. Grief is weird. Normally I’m the type to just shove feelings down and bottle them up so deep that I’m not even sure Jacques Cousteau could find them, but I’ve come to give myself the week to withdraw a bit and indulge in missing her. At some point I’ll crack and have my annual cry in the car, I’m sure, but it hasn’t made its way to the surface yet. I don’t really like to talk about it. But if you notice a decrease in activity on my social media or a weird undercurrent on the blog – that’s why. I’m off kilter.

I’ve distracted myself a bit by working longer hours and – my favorite coping mechanism for anything – disappearing into books. I’ve perfected that particular technique in my 37 years on this planet. But I have also managed to fall into a couple other rabbit holes as well.

I don’t even remember how I found my way to Jump 4 Joy’s page, but I did. Originally I was really eyeballing the giraffe standards (I want these bad)

but then I ambled over to their XC jump page. I’ve seen their jumps at big events before but never really paid them any mind, knowing they’re expensive. And they are expensive, but some of them weren’t nearly as bad as I thought. I was originally eyeballing this super skinny arrowhead

Which, the price of $488 didn’t seem that awful considering it comes with:

• 2x Telescopic Cross Country Stands
  (75cm-105cm).
• 1x Arrowhead Filler – Skinny
  (1.25mtr wide x 1.35mtr)
• 2x Safety Cups.
• 2x Cross Country Flags (with clips)

But then I noticed this one:

At $725 it’s obviously quite a bit more, but it’s also 3 options in one. You’ve got the ladder pieces that could be used as fill, the arrowhead top piece which could be used as a skinny, or all of it put together makes a corner. Plus three of their telescoping standards, which I like (they could also be used for lunging o/f). It’s kind of smart. More bang for your buck. Or I could try to make something similar I’m sure. I’m just… not a builder. I’ve been intending to make a skinny arrowhead panel for like 3 years. Shit, I’ve been intending on buying some brush to make brush rails for at least a year and that’s literally one of the easiest things you can do. I’m clearly quite shit at projects like that. I also have zero jump fillers right now… I should probably acquire at least a brush box or a wall or something before Presto starts jumping.

I dunno. Something to think about the next time I’m in a Treat Yo-self position. I.e. not when we’ve just bought a tiny house.

The other thing I’ve been obsessing about is Presto’s feet. He does great barefoot 9 months of the year, so I don’t want to jump the gun and put shoes on him yet, but the extremely dry weather and hard rocky ground of summer are starting to take a toll. They run and play so much out there, he’s breaking chunks off left and right. It’s really difficult to keep barefoot horses here if they’re super active like that. Henry, who isn’t even active at all in comparison, had beautiful bare feet when he arrived in Texas and they were destroyed within a week. Luckily Presto hasn’t done any major damage yet, he’s a hard-knock kid, but he’s making me nervous. I’ve been putting Henry’s sparkly Cavallo boots on when I ride him, just as a precaution, and they’re working fine, but those are their low-end boots which I got to just be a “lost a shoe, need something to wear in the pasture for a few days” type thing. I feel like a different style would probably be better for riding.

But also if he’s only wearing them for an hour a week for the next month or so until we start getting some rain again and the ground softens a little, it seems a bit ridiculous to drop $150-200 on yet another pair of boots. I was kind of tempted to have him wear them 24/7 but I have a feeling he’d destroy any boot I put on him, plus I don’t want his feet to get softened up by being inside a boot all the time if it’s not 100% necessary. I’m probably overthinking all of this. I just mega-cringe every time I see a new chipped piece of hoof right now, or when I see him gallop off across the pasture. The farrier is coming tomorrow, so I’ll get his take on things. I was planning on putting at least front shoes on Presto next year when his work load increases but… I’d really rather not do that until it’s necessary.

Texas, rain please. Some rain would be great. Plus it would match my mood.

When Presto heard about the Willow Tree Warmblood babies getting their own “lake”, he was a little jealous. I’m pretty sure there was some grumbling about how back in his day they didn’t have so many luxuries and kids these days are spoiled. While I can’t go dig him a water feature in his pasture, I can do the next best thing and buy him a pool. (Ok all of this is a massive lie, I saw a video on facebook of a horse rolling in a little inflatable pool and found it both hilarious and very Presto-like, so I bought him a pool from Amazon with a gift card I got for my birthday. Whatever. Totally similar story.)

I got the pool last week, inflated one of the sections, and asked Presto for his opinion.

Not particularly impressed.

He also got a new ball, so I decided to debut them properly on the same day. If you’re gonna have a pool, you really need pool toys right? So on Saturday I dragged the pool into their pasture, put a few inches of water in it, and tossed in the ball. And while he never did roll in the pool, I wasn’t disappointed in the level of entertainment.

Granted, I think he wasn’t as into the pool until I added the ball. It has definitely remained his favorite toy. Once he was done splashing and biting at the pool, he took off with the ball and chased it around for a while.

And while Presto was distracted with the ball, JB dealt a few death blows to the pool. Presto had already put a few small tears in the bottom with his feet, but JB ripped a big chunk out of the side with his teeth, and then proceeded to tromple over it’s muddy corpse.

I’m totally ok with that. I bought the pool knowing it was probably only a one-time toy, and it’s good to see sometimes-timid JB come out of his shell and be brave about playing with scary things. The pool served it’s purpose. Plus I decided I’m going to cut out the bottom and use it to make a liverpool, so it won’t go to waste.

I am a little less pleased about the fate of the brand new ball though. I came out the next day to find a body slung over the fence into Henry’s pasture.

Didn’t even make it 24 hours, that one. In it’s defense, both of the babies were playing with it pretty hard on Saturday. It got chased, bitten, and kicked up one side of the pasture and down the other by both of them. It’s hard to say who dealt the final death blow and how it happened, but this ball definitely had a rough go of it. Luckily I already had another one waiting in the wings, so they won’t have to go without for very long. They could be a bit less murderous of things though… hard knock pasture life.

Still waiting on that giant rubber chicken to arrive. Maybe that will survive longer than a day? Yeah probably not.

I guess it’s a good thing I like a challenge because that was the common theme of last week’s rides. It started on Wednesday, when Presto was uncharacteristically WILD. Like… WILD. Every once in a while he does that on lunge session days, but I’ve only ever had one other ride like that on him before. I really have no idea what spun him up, he seemed to just wake up on that side of the bed that day. Baby horses, ya know?

Thanks to the Pivo footage I could see that he spent the first 22 minutes flagging his tail like an Arabian. It’s way too hot for that shit, I dunno why he picked one of the hottest days of the year. Sometimes those baby brain cells just aren’t firing. He stared off into the bushes, he scooted away from invisible monsters, and at one point there was even squealing. I had to constantly circle or change direction or point him at a pole to keep his brain semi-engaged. His hamster had fallen solidly off the wheel and it took me 25 minutes to get him to take a deep breath and put an ear on me. But he finally did, and we made it out the other side. As soon as he gave me one good circle we called it quits. I wanted a lot of thoroughbred in my sporthorse, and I got it… felt like I was sitting on something on it’s first day off the track with a stick of dynamite up it’s butt. Hahahaha jesusgivemestrength.

At least he’s still cute even when he’s staring at invisible creatures and not paying a damn bit of attention to me or what he’s doing.

On Friday I took Henry for a “relaxing hack” out in the back, where he was tormented by moo demons. Not even regular moo demons, the dreaded WHITE moo demons (which are the very worst of all, according to him). They came crashing and bellowing through the brush on the other side of the fence from where we were walking, which caused Henry to come to an abrupt stop. I did finally convince him to walk up closer so he could at least see them better, but he was on high alert. There was possibly some prancing. Never trust a moo demon. So much for a relaxing hack.

On Saturday we just did poles, because on Sunday for Jump Day I had plans for a fun new exercise. A few weeks ago one of the pros on facebook posted an exercise with three jumps on a curve, all one stride apart, and came at it from the long side instead of on a circle. I’ve done exercises similar to this with poles and low cavaletti but not with real jumps. And I figured hey ya know, I’ll just put him in his sidepull to up the difficulty a little bit more. I’m a glutton for punishment. 

Really though, it was definitely a challenge but also do-able. It took me a few times through to figure out the ride I needed (very positive and a little bit “attacking”, keeping a steady bend and not losing the shoulder) and had a couple fly-bys in the process. 

That was some weak-ass riding. Doesn’t work well that way, turns out.

But I did figure it out eventually and we jumped it both ways with success.

It needed more of a cross country type ride, which I thought made it a great exercise. I like it when I find things that I’m not successful at right off the bat… sometimes it’s hard to keep challenging yourself when you’re not in lessons and always riding alone, but I don’t want everything to be simple and easy. Not much point in that. This was a good exercise since it doesn’t tolerate complacent riding. Plus it made Henry be quick with his feet, which isn’t always his strong suit. It was harder than I thought it would be.

After I was done with Henry I got Presto out. Sundays are his hacking day, but instead of going out to the back of the property, we went to the grass ring again (where he’d been so wild on Wednesday) and just chilled. We walked, we circled, we stopped and stood in the shade, we walked around and investigated all the jumps.

And yes, by investigate I mean destroy. They go hand in hand with this one. He knocked rails down, turned barrels over and rolled them… whatever. I just wanted him to be relaxed in the space, and if knocking a few things around with his nose helps accomplish that, then fine. We walked around that ring for a while, then over around and into the dressage arena, where we practiced leg yields and lots of changes of direction just at the walk. Then back over to the grass arena, where we walked over some poles, did more circles, and then he was done. He definitely still felt a little perky, plenty of pep in his step, so if I’d tried to come back in here and do a serious w/t/c ride with him again it would probably have just caused an issue. There’s no good reason to put a lot of pressure on him or make demands. So we made it fun and light and easy and chill, just a positive experience. No big deal. Rome doesn’t have to be built in a day.

It was a super hot week for riding, all triple digits, I sweated a lot and ended up with more challenges than I’d really planned. Maybe this week can be a little more chill in all regards. There’s a little bit of relief coming in the form of a “cold front” (dropping the temps from 108 to 99 totally counts at this point), so that’s exciting. I’ll take what I can get!

I think we’ve already established that a certain little pony nugget has a penchant for finding trouble.

If he can’t FIND trouble, he’s certainly not shy about stirring things up and creating it himself.

And when he can’t succeed at creating trouble amongst his herdmates, he will find it in his environment. This time he found it right inside this door (note the little nose smears and teeny teeth marks, henceforth known as Evidence).

That would be the door to the pump house, which is settled into the middle of one of their pastures. It’s just a small innocuous brown building, nothing exciting about it. Well, that is, there was nothing exciting about it, until the day humans were in there doing something and Ollie came in to investigate.

This is the day Ollie learned that the little brown building does indeed OPEN and contain ALL KINDS OF FUN NEW THINGS INSIDE. It was a veritable toy chest designed specifically for baby ponies. Obviously.

Ollie is smart though, and he knows how to wait for juuuust the right opportunity. He didn’t make his first move until he was turned out in the pump house pasture overnight. In the cover of darkness he had ample time to figure out how to get inside the toy box. Doorknobs might be tricky when you don’t have thumbs, but they’re no match for a determined pony. He got in, found the stack of empty feed sacks, and pulled them all out into the pasture for everyone to enjoy. Say what you want about Ollie’s leadership style but he’s not selfish with his conquests.

The pump house pasture isn’t his usual nighttime turnout though, so he again had to wait patiently for his next opportunity to arrive. And, once again under the cover of darkness, this week it finally happened. And this time he took it a step further.

Not only did he open the pump house and once again remove the feed bags, he also dragged out a tarp and began removing the building’s insulation. Because insulation DEFINITELY looks like a fun thing to play with!

Once again there was no shortage of evidence (a clever criminal he is NOT) – he left tiny pony footprints, nose smears all over the place, and a pile of poop behind. He may as well have signed his name right there on the floor.

He left his new “toys” spread all over the pasture, quite pleased with it’s new decoration. But I think Ollie now has officially lost nighttime privileges to the pump house pasture, at least until the door can be pony-proofed a bit better. For such a teeny tiny pony mouth it sure can do a lot of damage. He’s lucky he’s cute.

Happy Friday, everyone!

A few weeks ago Holly pinged me and asked if my Majyk Equipe ice boots stayed cold in a cooler… cold enough to take to a show and use the next day or even two days later. Admittedly I wasn’t sure, because luckily I have a freezer on site at the barn that they can stay in, and I literally haven’t been to a horse show since I got them (thanks covid!). So she did her own experiment with her ice boots and her regular Igloo cooler, but since I have a Yeti that I coerced the SO into buying for me a couple Christmases ago (he thought I actually wanted it for food, not ice for the horse’s legs… adorable), I wanted to give it a try myself with my Yeti.

I already knew that the boots stayed cold for quite a while when used on the horse. I can put them on Henry for 20mins and they’re still frosty when I take them off. But since I was going to do the cooler experiment anyway I figured we’d put some actual numbers to all of it, rather than just vague descriptions. So to start with, I took their temperature coming straight out of the freezer.

And then took it again after 20 minutes on the horse. (note: I took the temp in the middle of the boot, where it had had maximum contact with the leg)

For the next part I put the boots back in the freezer overnight, dragged my Yeti out of the shed (where it’s been since after Coconino last year – I’m not crying, you’re crying), and dumped all the ice in my freezer into it. Which… wasn’t much. Only enough to make like 2 layers of ice cubes. I wasn’t about to wait for the ice maker to fill up again though, or go to the store just to buy a bag of ice (we have found the limit to my dedication), so I figured this could be a “worst case scenario” type of ice + Yeti situation. Just go with it and realize that your results would probably be better if you actually put an adequate amount of ice in the cooler. Anyway, I left a layer of ice on the bottom, shoved the boots in, and then tossed another layer ice on top and shut the lid.

24 hours later I opened it up and checked the temperature of the boots again. They were just above freezing. Definitely cold enough to still be useful, although here is where I was kind of annoyed at myself for not getting more ice because I definitely think they still would have been below 32 if I’d had more in there. Whatever, we’re doing a not-best-case-scenario experiment.

I closed the lid back up and gave it another 24 hours, so it was now at the 48 hour mark total. Opened it up again, took the temperature, and it had barely changed.

So basically – yes, if you have a nice cooler these boots could definitely be usable at a weekend show. I do think the “nice cooler” part is key though if you’re talking multiple days. With a regular cooler you’d probably want to be using the boots within 24 hours.

My main thoughts overall from this little experiment:

• These Majyk Equipe ice boots are definitely top-notch when it comes to staying cold. To still be at freezing temp after icing on a hot horse on a hot day is pretty darn good.

• Ice boots + cooler are actually a viable option if you don’t want the fuss or mess of ice. Of course, in that scenario investing in a nice cooler is probably essential if you need to keep it cold for more than a day. To be honest I had never really considered trying to pack these ice boots to a show… I always just buy a bag of ice wherever I am and use the suspender boots (which Henry HATES). But knowing that these can stay viably cold in my cooler for at least two days means that I could definitely use them at shows… it would save all the fuss and muss (and Henry’s emotional trauma) of dealing with real ice.