I don’t know what is up with my horses lately, but they seem to be taking turns racking up vet bills. I don’t know who told them it’s a competition, or how exactly a “winner” is decided, but I know it wasn’t and isn’t me.

In the past few months alone I’ve got bills for hock injections (Henry), a tooth float (Henry), two health certificates (Henry and Presto), vaccines (Presto), an allergic reaction (Henry), some kind of light respiratory funk (Presto), a hematoma turned cellulitis (Presto), and now – Presto tried to rip his damn foot off.

I don’t even know how the hell he did it. He was fine yesterday morning at breakfast, and he was out all day by himself in a paddock with hot tape and wood fencing. And it’s a HIND FOOT. It almost looks like he got it stuck in something, but hell if I could find anywhere that might have been possible. Horses. They can try to kill themselves even when given no tools by which to do it.

I texted pics to the vet and he advised that I bring him back home so he could cut the flap of hoof off and address the heel wound. It will need tending and bandaging, and of course it hurts a lot. So I loaded Presto and Henry up and took them both home to the vet’s house last night. I give up. Presto also did this the same day I put his FEH Championships entry in the mail. I do not appreciate his sense of humor.

I don’t even want to know how much I’ve spent in the past few months. All of you people who keep track of your yearly horse spending, I don’t know how (or why) you do it. I refuse to even try to add it up, because everyone knows you can’t put a price on love. LOLZ. But really though, it’s because you can definitely put a price on insanity and I know for a fact I’m hitting that figure. No need to calculate what we already know to be true.

I had finally just been feeling like I’d conquered the last round of problems too. It’s been so hot and Henry’s been having such a hard time in the afternoons that he was getting hosed off several times of day to help keep him cool. Which caused him to get rain rot. And then he randomly got hives for a few days. He’s missing a lot of hair on his butt right now. Presto’s hematoma (or as I like to call it – 3rd butt cheek) got a bit of cellulitis, which we’ve been massaging and draining and hosing and medicating. That’s right – one horse has a lumpy ass, one horse has a bald ass. Finally in the last couple days they’ve both started looking a lot better. I was even optimistic that Presto might not have a lumpy butt anymore by Championships. I should have known trouble was afoot (no pun intended).

Shit, I just remembered that we still have to remove Henry’s cracked back molar next week and take Presto’s wolf teeth out at some point soon.

On the bright side, at least Riding Warehouse’s Labor Day sale starts today so I can stock up on all my med supplies and more Coat Defense powder at a discount? #positivity #cryingontheinside #ilovehorses #sendhelp

Living with my horses this week has been pretty fun. More fun yesterday when it was 90 degrees, rather than the other days when it was 110 degrees, but you know… pretty fun anyway. I love being the one taking care of my boys, and being able to look out and spy on them like a total stalker whenever I want.

It has also been… entertaining. Neither Presto or Henry is lacking in personality, and while their dynamic is always really amusing to me, this week it has been Next. Freakin. Level. As I was describing some of their antics to my friend Stacy, who has two little kids, she pointed out that the behavior of my horses was not that dissimilar to that of toddlers.

I don’t have kids, nor do I want them, so I didn’t really see it until she pointed it out, but man, she’s not wrong. How do they resemble toddlers, you might ask? Well, remember Monday’s story about how the whole reason I went and got Presto was so that he could be Henry’s emotional support animal? So like… I got manipulated pretty hardcore there, let’s admit it, by Henry going on hunger strike. He was totally the kid in the toy section at Walmart having a full blown temper tantrum because I won’t buy him a toy. I eventually caved and gave him what he wanted, to stop the tantrum. That was just the beginning. Because by bring Presto in, I really just doubled up on the toddler-like behavior.

When I got home from work on Monday afternoon, Presto (who was in the paddock that Henry’s stall opens out into) had figured out how to work the door latch and oh so kindly let Henry out. He also pulled the halter down off of where I’d hung it and chewed on it/trampled it into the dirt. I mean, ok, so I don’t have direct evidence that Presto did it, but WE ALL KNOW WHO DID IT.

They were both just looking at me like “oh hello… you’re home early…” when I pulled in the driveway. Turds. Henry, in true jerk-hole Big Brother form, had pinned Presto down in the corner and wouldn’t let him leave (cue me yelling: “I BROUGHT HIM HERE FOR YOU, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS!”). I removed Henry from his guardpost and hosed him off, since he was boiling alive from standing out in the sun like a grade A idiot, and put him back in his stall. Then proceeded to watch him just stand there sulking, not eating his hay, because clearly I had ruined his life.

I have gotten wise to their mind games, so I decided to try an experiment. I moved his hay net from safely tucked inside of his stall, and hung it on the front wall where Presto could reach it. Henry immediately changed his stance on the hay situation. I don’t think he wanted it, but he definitely didn’t want Presto to have it, and started eating with gusto.

He’s been eating his hay ever since I hung it there. Finally, a point for me.

I left them yesterday morning feeling pretty smug. I’d acquired a snap for the stall door, so Presto couldn’t open it again, and hanging the hay in that spot continued to work well. Pret-ty proud of myself.

And then I got home.

Keep in mind, I had left each horse with the shared hay net, and then each of them had their own hay on their respective sides of the stall wall. Henry had two full water buckets, and Presto had a big water tub. So NATURALLY, guess who’s food and water Presto consumed?

So when I got home Presto still had his pile of hay and totally full water tub, but Henry’s buckets were empty and he barely had any hay left. Honestly. Why. Thus began some artful re-arranging to try to keep that damn giraffe out of Henry’s food/water. I will be 0% surprised if I get home today to find that Presto has just climbed over the wall into Henry’s stall. I’m pretty sure he could if he wanted to.

After I finished re-arranging their area, I decided to go ahead and ride Henry, since the weather wasn’t so bad. And what did Presto do? Well… he helped.

After I was done he helped me clean the stall by turning over the completely full manure bucket while my back was turned. Henry didn’t even have the decency to hide his amusement. They were mentally high-fiving each other as I was cursing them both. They might be frienemies most of the time, but when it comes to pulling pranks on me they are 100% on the same team.

We’ll see what new things they’ve come up with by the time I get home today. Lord only knows…

It’s been a bit of a boring summer as far as purchases go. First I was saving for Coconino, then I was saving for Burghley. The purse strings have stayed pretty tight around here. I didn’t even buy myself anything nice for my birthday, and usually I get myself the best birthday presents. But my front porch hasn’t remained totally barren, as I’ve picked up a few “actually needed it” items lately.

First: new bell boots. The pretty navy blue fake leather Horze ones that I bought in Ocala in February died pretty quickly. At the previous barn we were riding in tall grass every day, and it just totally wore away the outer fabric and tore them to shreds. The exposed inner fabric grabbed onto every single burr and sticker, so after a while those boots basically turned into weapons. This time I opted for something a little heavier-duty and went with the LeMieux leather bell boots. I like how the leather ones look, and they can take a pretty good whack without ripping or tearing or coming off.

So far so good, they’re nicely made and rugged and seem like they’ll take some abuse. Definitely way nicer than the Horze ones. I’ve been using the LeMieux for about a month and they still look new.

In the same order I picked up a “real” girth for Presto. His first girth was a very basic $15 ugly synthetic straight-cut type of thing, perfect for holding a saddle on but not much else. That one is getting a little small, and Presto is definitely shaped a little weird – like a horse that needs something anatomically shaped. Plus if I’m going to actually ride him a few times over the winter (even if it’s just 10mins of w/t) I’d like for him to have a comfortable girth. Kind of important. Henry’s are still a bit too big, so I scooped up a FlexRider anatomic girth on sale. It’s cheap, it’s shaped nicely to give elbow clearance, it’s got elastic, it’s got roller buckles and the lining is comfortable. What else do you need in a starter girth? I grabbed a 22″, which fits Presto great (for now), and he’s seemed happy in it the two times he’s worn it. I think it’ll serve our purposes just fine.

I already did a preliminary “preview” of the Premier Equine pads that I picked up for Princess Henry, but I just want to update and say that I really love these pads. The rubbing issues are gone, and Henry seems to really like them. I love how they sit on him, the cut is pretty perfect. I will definitely be picking up some white ones at some point to use as show pads. I do wish PE would make more color combos that aren’t quite so… uh… garish?

I dunno who I have to bribe to get a hunter green/natural or a hunter green/navy, but I’m willing to do that. Even a nice charcoal/navy would be really nice, and no one’s eyes would be bleeding. Although maybe I should be glad that I find most of the colors to be offensive, since it prevents me from buying tons of them.

But anyway, thank goodness that they do have boring navy and boring white (and boring black, if for some strange reason you prefer that to navy, which I would find confusing but ok) for people like me. They really are super nice pads for the price, I continue to be super impressed. They do 20% off sales on different items every day, and these pads seem to come up at least once a week, so that makes them an even better deal.

On a similar note, while I was scrolling through RW getting links for this post, I happened upon these space boots.

Ok they’re ice/compression boots, but they look like space boots. In the coolest possible way. Like… NASA horse. I kind of love them, and I’m really intrigued by them considering that I’m in the market for just this exact type of thing. Anyone seen or tried these boots yet? I have always been a Majyk Equipe fan…

I’m barnsitting this week, and this time I brought Henry along to “camp” with me. A couple days after I wrap up this gig, I get on a plane to head to Europe, so I figured if I want to actually ride him at all before I leave, he needed to come with me. The property has a nice empty pasture in the front that has it’s own little barn, so I thought it would be perfect. Henry can go there and stay separated from the resident herd, and I can ride him in the evenings when I’m done with chores… easy peasy right?

Yeah no. Henry was great when we got there… he was chill, he met the other horses over the fence and seemed 100% disinterested. He sniffed noses with them, declared them to be idiots (as he does), and then walked away to go graze by himself, ignoring them completely. It was a relatively pleasant morning by Texas summer standards (like… only 90 degrees at 10am) so I left him out to graze for a few more hours before I brought everyone in for the afternoon. The herd of Trakehners went to their barn, and Henry went to his.

As soon as I brought him in he decided that he did, in fact, love the other horses, and that he was, in fact, going to die of loneliness over there in the front barn by himself. He never really got frantic or upset, he just… stopped eating. Wouldn’t touch his hay, just stood there looking like clearly I had brought him here specifically for psychological torture. Even though 5 minutes before that, he didn’t even like the other horses. Details. I did get him to eat a flake of alfalfa, to make sure he wasn’t legit dying, but otherwise he just moped around like a real sad sack of horse, staring out the window. I figured he’d get over it. But no, all afternoon he just stood there, hay completely untouched.

I rode him that evening, taking him out to the back pasture for a hack. He was great, and didn’t care about being alone even though we had to pass the other horses to get there. Totally normal and happy Henry. He ate his dinner, I turned him out, and I figured he’d have it figured out by the next day.

Yeah no. We just had a repeat of the first, except this time with screaming. As soon as everybody went in their respective stalls, he just stood there refusing to eat. He even left a few scraps of his breakfast in his tub, which… if you know Henry, that’s relatively apocalyptic. This horse lives and breathes for meal times and never leaves food behind anywhere. Again, he wasn’t spinning or frantic, he was just very clearly unhappy about being segregated and his hunger strike was really worrying me. It’s super hot, the last thing I need is for him to stop eating and drinking. There aren’t anymore open stalls in the other barn, so I couldn’t move him over there, and I figured I was definitely asking for trouble if I moved one of those horses over to where he was. They’re a pretty established herd, so I thought that would have just ended with 6 frantic horses. Henry spent all day fretting over his life, I spent all day fretting over Henry… it was great.

Finally by late afternoon I couldn’t take it anymore, so I threw a hail mary and opted to bring in reinforcements. Yep… I went and got Presto.

And I’m not joking y’all, within 60 freaking seconds of me backing that baby horse down the ramp, Henry was digging into his hay like he was starving. Clearly his hunger strike worked and I played right into his clever plan by bringing his brother to him. The whole time I was driving to get Presto and driving back I was like “This is so ridiculous. What an idiot. I’m literally driving an hour and a half round trip to go pick up a fucking emotional support animal for my horse because he’s sad. Ilovehorses, Ilovehorses, Ilovehorses, Ilovehorses…”

I have to give Presto major props here, too, because he was such a freaking good boy. I got to the barn, loaded him up alone, and he walked right into the trailer with a very happy “OH WOW THIS SEEMS REALLY FUN, WHERE WE GO?” attitude. He rode perfectly well with his face buried in his haynet, and backed very professionally off the trailer at the new place. He looked left, he looked right, and then rudely tried to drag me to the grass. I tossed him into the paddock in front of Henry’s stall, they tried to bite each other, and then Presto settled right down to grazing. The 2yo wins the good behavior gold star for the weekend. I can’t decide if I should be proud of that or embarrassed by it.

As soon as Presto showed up Henry went right back to his normal “I’m so cool I don’t like/need/want any friends” attitude. If Presto got anywhere near Henry’s stall he lunged at him. I don’t even have enough eyerolls in me for that horse. But I rode him again last night and he was good, and he cleaned up his dinner with gusto, and ate lots of hay. I turned them out in the big field at dusk and they ran off together bucking and farting like a couple of real morons.

The moral of this story is that Henry is a rotten animal. I can’t believe he made me go get him his little brother. His 16.1h 2yo emotional support horse. And I can’t believe I DID IT. Who’s the real idiot here?

I will forever believe that you have to be one part masochist and one part batshit in order to want to breed and raise your own horse. I feel like I can say this for certain, having done it more than once. I definitely wonder what’s wrong with me (the possibilities are endless) on a pretty regular basis. BUT, I also have to admit that watching a horse grow and develop – even if it feels like it’s happening at a glacial pace – is also really fun. Well, maybe less fun when they’re hideous, which is like 80% of the time. But when they hit those good phases, which are albeit short-lived, and you see glimpses of the horse they’re going to be when they’re mature… those moments are pretty great. You remember why you’re doing this.

I think the first two years are the worst. You know what’s hideous? A weanling. You know what else is hideous? A yearling. There’s nothing quite so horrifying as when it looks like someone’s put their neck on upside down. The 2yo year is still not great, but I think the attractive phases start to last a bit longer at least. Especially as you get closer to 3 and further away from 2. Presto officially crossed the 2.5 mark a week ago, and he’s looking more and more like a real horse every day.

We’ve been on a mission to get him as attractive as possible before Championships. I mean, there’s nothing you can do about what phase of growth they decide to be in on the day, but you can make some effort to pretty them up a bit. Presto grows so much and so constantly that he can put away hay like nothing I’ve ever seen but still be the scrawniest horse on the farm. It’s like that 6′ tall teenage kid that eats an entire pizza every day for lunch and still weighs a buck ten soaking wet. So he’s been getting pretty much all the hay he can eat (which is a lot), and we started giving him some Amplify, which has actually succeeded in filling him out a little bit.

I’ve also been ponying him again, and doing little bits of walk and trot up the little hill in the back pasture. He’s always been pretty balanced by nature, but like any horse he definitely does move and look better when he’s a bit stronger. But he’s also a baby, so I’m not willing to do any real “work” with him. We keep it fun and short and light, a couple days a week either ponying on the hill or lunging with lots of transitions for 15 or so minutes, and even just that little bit has been enough to add some topline and butt. If we had real hills and giant pastures here I probably wouldn’t have to do anything at all, but alas… Texas. Raising horses here is a bit different.

I’m really pleased with how he handles heat, too. Having one horse that is an absolute puddle of sadness in the heat (poor Henry) has made me acutely aware of just how opposite Presto is. It takes a lot to make that horse hot, and he has no trouble “working” in the heat at all. He actually seems to like it. Which is good, considering where he lives.

At this 2.5yr mark I remain pretty pleased with how Presto is developing (aside from the fact that he’s 16.1h already, which I am choosing to ignore). His right front still turns out a little bit and he’s still got a small roach back, but both of those things have continued to improve over time and I don’t think either will ultimately matter. He’s not a 4* or 5* type of horse (thank god, I don’t need one of those) but from what I’m seeing so far I think there’s more than enough natural talent for what I could ever possibly want to do. He’s an athlete, for sure, certainly better designed for the job than Henry is. I’m so excited to start riding him a little bit next year and start peeling back more layers to figure out what else we’ve got. The ability is there… will the brain and the heart be there too? Time will tell.

I’m pretty freaking exciting that we’ve managed to secure an appointment at his sire’s farm in France while we’re over there in a couple weeks. I reaaaaally want to see Mighty Magic in person to see how he and Presto compare. Many props to my French friend (and Presto’s spirit animal) Mimi for helping us make all these farm appointments around the Normandy region. Between Burghley’s stallion parade and just day one of the France leg, we’ve already got lots of stallions to see, including but not limited to: Leprince des Bois, Grafenstolz, Jaguar Mail, Quite Easy, Future Gravitas, Ulgar Mail, Namelus R,  Cassitano, and Utrillo. I’ve even made plans to kidnap Mimi for the first day we’re in France so she can babysit come with us.

Presto’s Championships entry will go in the mail next week, and then it’ll be a game of trying to keep him looking as nice as we can until the end of September. Hopefully that’s possible…