I’m obsessed with the new trailer. Like when I drive up to the barn every day and see her sitting in her spot, I can’t help but smile lovingly at her… that type of obsession.

But I am admittedly a little overwhelmed with all the possibilities here. I knew from the start that I wanted to put fans and a camera system in the horse compartment, but otherwise that part of the trailer is good to go. The other trailer was essentially just a horse compartment, so I’ve had a long time to think about things I wanted there. But the tack room… that big, beautiful tack room… there are so many possibilities, and a whole new world.

On one hand, I know what I don’t want. I don’t want that space to end up having a whole bunch of crap in it. I rarely show out of my trailer, I don’t need a full set of grooming equipment, sprays, ointments, extra tack or spares or whatever else. I don’t want to open that tack room door and be like good god why is all this shit in here. When I go to shows the vast majority of my stuff is in my tack trunk, and that’s how I want it to stay. Even if it’s organized, I still don’t want to have a bunch of crap in the trailer. Gridwall is out. Gridwall would inevitably end with me putting All The Things in there, junking it up, and making it into exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I do not want it to be a general storage space. I hate clutter, even organized clutter.

I also want to keep the floor relatively clear, or at least have it be quick and easy to shuffle stuff around to make it relatively clear. I ordered a little twin air mattress to take to shows if, for some reason (like extreme rain or cold), I don’t want to set up my trunk tent. That might happen one night a year, if that. Probably less. But the twin mattress fits perfectly into the length of the tackroom and the width of the door opening, so I want to make it easy to clear that part out and sleep there if I need to. I also want to feel like I can change clothes, hang out, or sleep in there without knocking stuff down or drowning in crap. Right now there aren’t saddle racks in the tack room, but they’re on order and I already know where they’ll go. That will be a decent chunk of space, obviously, but not floor space.

That said, there are certain things that I do want to keep in there, and ways that I want to maximize the space I do have. Some stuff HAS to live in there, period, and will come out when we get to shows – like the muck cart, buckets, little trunk of show-only supplies for stall setup, etc. So essentially the only things I really want on the floor are the things that will come out when we get to a show. Or things that are small, or that can be easily moved to the horse compartment once I’m parked and unloaded if necessary (the water jug, the traileraid, extra bag of shavings, etc).

I’ve already bought a few things, including but not limited to:

• two broom grippers to put on the wall, to hold the muck fork and the broom
• a folding step stool (which stores flush to the wall behind the blanket bar that I also stuck the head divider behind)
• various bungee cords and carabiners, because those are always useful. (these will go in the tray on the door).
• a small wall mirror (which goes… on the wall, obviously)
• a rug (floor, obviously)
• a hanging organizer (left wall, the big open space)

The trailer also has a built in clothing/blanket rack across one front corner, where I can potentially hang all kinds of stuff (currently I’ve only stuck a rain coat there). I also have 6 bridle racks, and the little leftover corner space behind the spare tire has proven to be the perfect holder for a folding chair.

All the other things I can think of that I want to keep in the trailer will fit in the hanging organizer that I bought. I’m not feeling much of a need to buy more crap to hang on the wall at this point, but maybe I’m not thinking it through well enough. Nothing on any of the trailer accessory websites is jumping out at me either. I think I might buy another fan just for the tack room though. Kinda digging those.

So, what are the most useful/favorite things that you’ve put in your trailer tack room? Or what do you wish you’d done differently?

Guys, I got actual scientific verification of Presto’s species. Let me set the stage for you…

I was sitting in Discount Tire on Monday afternoon, delighted to have found a National Geographic while pawing through the magazine collection in the waiting room. Can we all agree that National Geographic is the best magazine? They definitely have the best pictures, at least.

Anyway, I was thumbing through kind of mindlessly when a little blurb at the top of an article caught my eye.

I know that animal. That’s Presto!

National Geographic seems to think they’re extinct, but I definitely have one. It’s official: he’s a Girmoose.

Even the height part of the girmoose is starting to feel a bit too accurate. While Michele was here on Tuesday I asked her to help me measure him for a blanket. I can normally guess pretty well just by looking at a horse, but his proportions are so ODD that hell if I even know. He’s really long but really narrow. And yeah I know, it’s way too hot to even be thinking about blankets right now, but this is prime blanket-buying season and my favorite HUG sheets were on sale.

After we did that she asked me how tall he was now, and I said I dunno I stopped measuring him. But I also cave to peer pressure pretty easily, so we sticked him and… he’s freaking 15.2h. He’s grown an entire hand since March – so about an inch a month. What the hell, kid? Usually that’s how much you’d expect them to grow in their entire yearling year! If he would like to pump the brakes a bit on the height and focus on his topline, I’d be ok with that.

Surely that growth rate has to start slowing down at some point, right? RIGHT??? His mother didn’t do this, she grew really really slowly. He’s already as tall as she was as a 2 year old.

I ended up ordering him a 72 sheet. Really I wanted to order him a 70, he’s a few inches shy of that right now, but figuring he won’t wear it until Dec/Jan, I was trying to guesstimate what might fit by that point. But for some reason the 72 was $30 cheaper than the 70… so he might be wearing a bit of a dress. Or it might fit. Who knows. Trying to guess how big a girmoose might be in 5 months seems fairly hit or miss.

I also caved to a clearance sale and snagged him a pretty navy and hunter green scrim sheet for $20. I figured he can wear it at FEH Champs to keep the dust off and look fancy. Or to cover up all that kind of embarrassing sun-bleaching until the last possible moment before he goes in the ring. Whichever.

I’m not sure if the ponying on the hills is helping or if it’s just natural maturity, but he does seem to be filling out at least a little bit. Sometimes, anyway. He looks different every day. He’s almost as wide as a 4×4 now, instead of a 2×4. Of course, FEH Champs are still 2 months away, so who knows what he’ll look like by then. Fingers crossed it’s a little more horse and a little less girmoose.

 

 

In case I haven’t mentioned it 10,000 times already, it’s hot as balls in Texas right now. Like… 30 seconds outside and you can literally feel your skin melting off and your eyeballs shriveling up. That type of hot. If you’re unfamiliar with Texas summers, go turn your oven on and stick your head in for a while. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I usually try to give Henry a decent “vacation” period every year anyway, so it wasn’t exactly a hard choice to do it after Chatt when we came home to triple digit temps. Pretty much the same thing we did after Coconino 2 years ago, really. People who live in normal climates do winter vacations for their horses… but winter is way more pleasant here. Very early mornings are still kind of bearable for riding (I mean, compared to afternoon, anyway) but still, the horse has earned some downtime.

Of course, Henry being Henry, this doesn’t mean that he just gets to be turned away for a month in a pasture. 1) HAVE I MENTIONED IT’S REALLY HOT? He spends days snoozing in his stall in front of 3 fans. And even then he’s fairly miserable. 2) He doesn’t actually do well when he isn’t ridden at all. He loses that SI and hind end strength pretty quickly, especially since he’s fairly sedentary in his pasture at night, so I’ve been getting on him bareback with his sidepull every other day and going for a 45 minute brisk walk hack out in the big fields. 3) He would die without a dozen cookies a day and his 10 minutes of currying, pretty sure.

Henry actually quite likes his walk hacks, I think he enjoys getting out of the barn area for a change of scenery. I’ve been taking Presto with us too, hoping to get a little bit of “conditioning” on him before FEH Championships. I mean… walks in the field won’t hurt either of them. Keep the event horse loose and retain some fitness, and try to put a little bit of a badonk on the baby. I think the only part Henry doesn’t really love is that Presto tags along, but… thems the breaks, kid. Big brother duties, that’s just how it goes. It doesn’t stop him from spooking at every bird that flies within 30 feet of him. The yearling is less spooky than the 11yo.

Also Henry gets SO sweaty with this heat that I have to hose him off and put skin stuff on him regularly or he would be totally hairless. As it is, I’m barely keeping the rest of the hair on his face. He’s just so gross right now, he gets sweaty and crusty and itchy in an endless cycle.  He does seem to enjoy his afternoon baths too, though. He seemed to be handling the mid-90’s temps decently enough, but the 105-110 degree days have just been killer.

He’ll get a couple more weeks off and then I’ll slowly start putting him back into his regular program. I don’t have any show plans for him until October, so no rush. He’s already getting a little fat though… might have to cut his food back a bit!

We’re all just laying low right now, taking a bit of time to recharge the body and mind, and dreaming of some cooler temps.

Some of you may remember my trailer, Black Betty turned Betty White, that I bought a few years ago for $500 and subsequently fixed up to make road-worthy. The $900 horse in the $500 trailer… it was quite apropos. Betty is the first trailer I’ve had in a very long time, and though she is far from fancy, she granted me the priceless qualities of freedom and independence. I’ve spent the last 2.5 years driving that old 1980’s model trailer all over the state of Texas. She’s logged many many miles and been nothing but a faithful servant throughout.

However, even with all the remodeling I did a couple years ago, she really shouldn’t be anything other than a “runaround town” type of trailer. She’s sound and solid, but she’s really old, and she’s not had the easiest life. Now that I have two horses to haul around, am traveling a lot, and logging more miles, it was well past time to upgrade to something newer and more suitable.

I made this decision only a few weeks ago. I was cleaning Betty out, checking her over, and thinking that I was probably pushing my luck by asking as much of her as I did. Hauling long distances with both horses in it was likely toeing the line of trouble. So I did some online research, figured out what kind of budget I was looking at, and started very casually window shopping. I knew that I wanted pretty much the same configuration – a 2 horse bumper pull straight load, no mangers, with a ramp. I really wanted a dressing room this time (I have a lot of crap, y’all) and it definitely had to have the capability to take the divider and centerpost completely out to convert to one big box stall for long hauls. I also wanted at least 7’6″ interior height since it appears that Presto is going to be… large.

On the east coast, that would be a dime-a-dozen type of trailer, popular and easy to find. Down here in Texas, not so much. This is the land of the western QH… most people either have little tiny 2 horse coffin trailers with mangers, or they have big slants with living quarters. They definitely DON’T have them in extra tall height, either. Plus the budget that I was comfortable with meant that I would definitely be shopping for a used trailer of a good brand, because my only new options would be pretty low-end. I hunkered down and prepared to wait until the right trailer came along, even if it meant I had to wait 6 months or even drive out of state to get it.

And then, as if the horse trailer gods heard my silent wishes, she appeared. I was browsing fairly mindlessly through the trailer ads when I stumbled across a 2 horse Sundowner that was located just a couple hours away at a dealership. I closely examined all the photos, called and talked to their sales manager, and made an appointment to go see it a couple days later. The price was excellent, below market value (like I said, these kinds of trailers aren’t exactly high demand here), and I had their sales people draw up the financial paperwork so I could get an idea of the exact numbers I’d be looking at. From there I decided how much of my savings that I wanted to plunk down for a down payment (bye money!) and was surprised at how relatively quick and painless the payments would be. Hmm… interest piqued.

I went ahead and got all of my own paperwork in order, money moved around, insurance plan in place, etc, and then drove up bright and early Saturday to look at it in person. I mean, why not, right? They’d actually done some work on it since the online photos had been taken, replacing some lights, light covers, wheel caps, given it an acid wash and full service, etc. It looked good. Really good. I was the only one at the dealership that early, so the mechanic who had done all the work on it went around and told me/showed me everything he’d done, while I thoroughly checked out the trailer. If I was being super picky I wish the head windows were dropdowns instead of sliders, and the tack room actually does not have any saddle racks in it. Those are quite minor though… I can live with the windows and I can put saddle racks in easily. The floor, roof, and all the major components are in excellent condition. Clearly the previous owner really cared for this trailer well. Aside from a few minor dings in the horse area from some naughty hooves, it’s pretty darn spotless.

It also had all the main qualities I was after, including a generous dressing room and a 7’6″ interior height. The horse compartment is huge. Plenty of room for Presto’s donkey ears in this thing!

So even though I hadn’t really been planning on buying a new trailer yet, I couldn’t think of any good reason not to buy this one. It seemed almost serendipitous. Since the paperwork had already been done, it was just a matter of signing things and writing checks.

One of the buttbars had been set exceptionally high (I’m assuming a draft horse occupied that spot?) so I did ask them to lower that down to a normal height, in line with the other one. That took all of 5 minutes. As did changing out the ball on my current hitch, which of course was a different size. Within 40 minutes of my arrival at the dealership I was back on the road home, this time with a very shiny, very fancy, VERY upgraded Betty White 2.0. She hauled easily (although wow she is definitely bigger than OG Betty) and Henry seemed very interested in checking her out once I got home.

Aside from saddle racks I’m also going to add a fan on each side and a wireless camera system so I can see the boys inside the trailer. All of those things are already here, ready for installation. Along with a lot of other really random stuff from Amazon that I wanted for the tack room. I’m still deciding exactly how I want to set up that space, but that’s a post for another day.

Otherwise there’s not much to do. She’s road-ready! Granted, we’re on a mid-summer pause in activities, so she might just end up sitting for a little while. I won’t get tired of looking at her any time soon though. Hope you like your new chariot, boys!

These horses, they are really rotten.

As for OG Betty, don’t worry, she’s going to a great home. I’m passing her on to a friend of mine who bought her own farm a while back and doesn’t have a trailer yet. She has two teeny kids at home so she doesn’t really haul anywhere, but now she’ll at least be able to if she needs to, or when the kiddos get a little older and her schedule frees up a bit. It’ll be the perfect semi-retirement home for OG Betty, and she’ll get to bring someone else all the freedom and happiness that she’s brought to me. Happy Trails, OG Betty, and welcome home Betty 2.0!

I finally got all my digitals from Chatt and wow, the photo series from our rider miss/horse save are pretty impressive. Impressive enough to where I just had to share all of them in sequence today, because this is definitely a #misseditmonday if I’ve ever seen one.

First, how about that OH SHIT look on my face when I realize that we are really about to be screwed.

Yep… this is a problem.

Oh god.

Henny the Magician, pulling a rabbit out of his hat and saving both our butts. Pretty sure this is that fabled “fifth leg” that eventers are always talking about, in action.

And then, like… phsyics happened, and I came perilously close to becoming a lawn dart. You can see Henry questioning all the life choices he’s made that have led him to this destiny of being an amateur rider’s horse.

After that I just took a nap for a while I guess, while Henry was trying to decide whether or not he should jump the roll top with that sack of potatoes flopping around up there like that.

Then he realized he was on his own here, and maybe he shouldn’t jump the rolltop with me hanging off the side of him like that. At least one of us is capable of making good decisions. He veered gently left, and I finally got an arm back underneath me to push myself back up.

 

Alright, let’s try that again.

Take 2 went a lot better.

Henry for sainthood! Don’t botch an upbank, guys. 0/10, do not recommend.