Guess who got to come home a little early?

By Thursday Presto was doing well enough to where they really had no reason to keep him anymore. After one last check on Friday morning he got the all-clear, and Michelle went to pick him up that evening. I rented a car after work to drive up there (no more 600+ mile round trips on my truck) and got to the barn just a few minutes before they pulled in, pacing the barn aisle as I waited. How would he look? Would he still be sweet? Was Sadie smooshing him in the trailer? Would he be ok at home? Should I have just left him at the vet til he’s 4? You know… totally rational thoughts.

He hopped out of the trailer with his usual HELLO EVERYONE greeting, and trotted into his stall. Meanwhile, Sadie and Lissa were being complete morons, screaming for each other, with Sadie spinning in circles in her stall and Lissa galloping around her pasture. Mares.

We brought Lissa in to try to calm them down, and she proceeded to try to attack Sadie through the wall. Again… mares. They don’t know what they want. Presto just kept watching them, wondering what in the world they were so worked up about. Finally they calmed down a bit, and I was rubbing on Sadie to see if that would help settle her more (it usually does, she has a one-track mind when it comes to a nice rubdown). Presto couldn’t understand why I was paying attention to her instead of him, and kept creeping up behind me, nudging at me.

Once I paid appropriate attention to all of his itchy spots he was satisfied, and started exploring his stall and chowing down on hay. I have never seen a baby eat hay the way he does, but the vet seemed unconcerned with it as long as he’s drinking enough to keep everything moving. And he does drink a lot… he pretty much constantly goes: nurse, hay, water, sleep, repeat. He’s drinking milk as fast as Sadie can make it. Trying to make up for all that lost time, I guess!

He had all kinds of adventures over the weekend, which I’ll post more about tomorrow, but mainly just wanted to take today to let everyone know that he’s HOME, and that I greatly appreciate how kind everyone has been throughout all of this. It’s the toughest horse-related thing I’ve ever gone through for sure, and at a time when the world is a little crazy and I’d lost most of my faith in the human race, you guys really renewed it. I’m just blown away by the level of caring and by the generosity of so many people – many of which I don’t even know and have never met. It’s just been amazing and I really can’t thank you guys enough. And of course, Presto thanks you too. He’s still got a little ways to go before he’s totally 100% and back to normal for his age, so please continue to keep him in your thoughts. It’s worked really well so far.

For everyone who was asking about a t-shirt fundraiser for him, it has arrived! Fellow blogger Britt made a super cute design for him, using his actual silhouette from a video and adding his now-trademark face markings with a very apropos phrase. There are shirts (unisex and women’s, different fits, and a few color options), stickers, and a mug available in the shop, and it’ll be open for orders until April 21st!

 

 

I’m a little late getting around to calculating the results of this, since, as I said yesterday, all 3 babies ended up being born within one week. The first one on a Monday, then the next one on Thursday, then the last one on Sunday. Once those girls decided to get started they didn’t mess around. But I have to be honest, I was just not in a good enough place emotionally with everything going on with Presto to where I could stand to sit down and go through all my entries and calculate scores. Now that he’s finally doing better, I’ve finally done it. And omg, there was so much math. Thank goodness for Excel spreadsheets and formulas.

I also realized that I left too much room for technicalities, like for instance if someone guessed “star” and baby had a star and snip, you weren’t technically wrong, you just weren’t 100% right. So I gave a lot of half credits for half-right answers. I also gave people credit equally for bay or brown, since I know a lot of people don’t really differentiate. Next time I’ll lay it out better in the rules. For the first two mares, Lissa and Sadie, a lot of people were neck and neck in the points. What really killed pretty much everyone’s chances was Laken’s filly. Lots of people got a big fat 0 points from her (which should surprise no one, because fillies do what fillies want).

First things first.. here are the babies! Willow Tree Warmbloods class of 2017:

Liam WTW “Liam” by Emerald out of Lasilissa 

 

Like Magic WTW “Presto” by Mighty Magic out of Westbound

 

Lorelei WTW “Rory” by Balou du Rouet out of Interlaken

For those who are keeping track, that’s two colts, one filly. One chestnut, two brown (although obviously Rory will go gray). Four whites for Liam, one for Presto, two for Rory. Funnily enough, they all have dots – Liam has a white dot on his nose, Presto has a white dot on his lip and a black dot in his sock, and Rory has a brown dot on her nose. It’s like they all wanted to coordinate with the new WTW logo.

But anyway, without further ado, the winner of the Baby Bets contest is Karley!

Thanks everyone who participated (for real, there were 52 entries!) and we’ll definitely do it again next year!

Presto has had a good week so far. Despite slowly being weaned off of his myriad of medications, his bloodwork has continued to improve.

He’s looked so much better, in fact, that the vets have been hinting at sending him home soon. How soon? Maybe this weekend or early next week!

Considering that this little nugget had somewhere around a 10% chance of survival when he first went into the clinic, the mere thought of being able to take him back home is incredibly amazing. Lucky doesn’t even begin to describe it. This kid is made of some tough stuff.

We’ll see how the next few days go, and see how the vets are feeling about his progress. He won’t be able to come off of all his medications before he goes home (he’ll be on sucralfate for, oh, I dunno… ever? Ok not that long, but a while.) but considering the veritable pharmacy he WAS on, one or two is pretty manageable. I’m sure all of us will be pretty excited when that IV catheter comes out and the elastikon can come off of his poor little neck.

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself and still keep taking it day by day. Babies are incredibly fragile and can go up or down so fast. But, knock on everyone’s nearest wood surface, he’s doing really well right now. The vets don’t really update me anymore unless I specifically inquire, but I know that he’s been increasingly difficult to medicate (which is actually a good thing, it means he feels good enough to protest) and that he’s been pretty darn active, especially in the mornings. Afternoons are for siestas. I’m really hoping that he’s been able to put some weight back on this week so he can start filling out!

I’ve also finally gotten around to tallying up the totals from the Baby Bets contest (oh hey, surprise, all the WTW foals were born within a week) so tomorrow I’ll have the results and pictures of all the babies!

USEA members might spot a familiar Henny face in their mailbox this month! US Eventing magazine asked if I’d be interested in writing about life as an amateur eventer on a budget, and I happily jumped at the chance. Behold my new column: Beyond 9-5.

Although, it’s funny, I write here 5 days a week without having to put a lot of effort into it, most of the time words just flow (it’s not verbal diarrhea since it’s typed, so what would we call it, finger diarrhea? Ok, maybe not…). Writing the column was significantly more difficult. It felt more formal and more serious, being in print. Around here I’m anything but formal or serious. Hopefully it gets a little easier as it evolves and I find my groove, just like the blog did. I’m currently trying to figure out what topic I want to cover next. Tack/equipment shopping on the cheap, tent camping, DIY trailer fixer-upping (pretend that’s a word), dyeing tack, etc? I should probably go back through my blog and see what all I’ve done. Anything in particular amidst my years of shenanigans that sticks out to you guys as a good next topic?

I also have to give props to US Eventing magazine in general. I’ve always really liked flipping through it, but over the past year they’ve really amped up the breeding and young horse development articles and I’m loving it. This one in particular really grabbed my attention in this issue:

Might be slightly biased (ahem) but I have to say I agree.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite 73% thoroughbred, I have some pretty exciting Presto news to share tomorrow (hopefully. if things keep going well. knock on wood.). Look what he made yesterday!!!

Ok so it wasn’t fresh anymore by the time the picture was taken so it’s kinda dried out already, but look at that REAL POOP. Not a puddle, not a patty, but legit normal poop!

Nope, I’m not even a little sorry for putting a poop pic on my blog.

Some of you may have noticed me mention “Uncle Skeeter” in passing in a few of my Presto posts. Since Skeeter has now proven that he is, in fact, a very important part of the Presto family, I thought it was only fair that he get his own little post.

When they first moved Sadie and Presto to an outside pen at the vet clinic, I felt sorry for whatever horse might end up next to them. Momma bear tends to be… well… a bear when it comes to her babies. She even gave serious what-for to her BFF Lissa at home when they were in paddocks next to each other with their babies, and there’s no one in the world that Sadie loves more than Lissa. So I was surprised to see that she was actually quite tolerant of Skeeter, the Cushings gelding that was in the pen next to them. She made some ugly faces at him the first couple days, but Skeeter was quite undeterred by her theatrics and that was pretty much the end of it.

Now Skeeter and Presto love to hang out. Presto will go over there and stick his nose into Skeeter’s pen to sniff him and say Hello. And Skeeter has taken it upon himself to be Presto’s protector. Any time a new horse gets put into the pen on the other side of Skeeter, he makes sure that the horse knows they have to stay at the opposite end of the pen from wherever Presto is. Especially that one polo mare that was there for a few days and, according to Skeeter, kept making very inappropriate eyes at Presto. He kept her herded up into a corner the whole time.

Skeeter is pretty severely Cushings, and has some kind of wound on his face. I don’t know much about him except that he’s been ready to go home for a couple weeks now but no one has come to pick him up yet. I think he’s just someone’s not-very-important pasture puff. I’m kinda glad they’ve left him there, though, because apparently Sadie thinks he’s a crucial family member, too.

They tried to move Skeeter somewhere else last week so they could thoroughly clean his pen (Cushings = pees a lot) and Sadie absolutely lost her mind. To the point where they just turned around and put him back in the pen because she was about to SadieSmash the barn to smithereens. I guess she has decided that Skeeter is the only approved babysitter and he isn’t allowed to leave.

I jokingly (or not) told Michelle that we may end up having to take Skeeter home with us if he still hasn’t been picked up by the time Presto is ready to come home. He seems perfectly suited for the role of babysitter.