Last week was Presto’s last week of vacay (thank god)… it was also very hot, so at least the timing for his break worked out. I rode Henry some, when I could get on him early enough, because much past 9am was getting a bit too toasty for him.

I’m not sure he took a single normal step of canter any of those rides… Henry dolphined me from one side of the farm to the other with exceptional glee. Bless him. I’m glad he’s still so sassy.

Tuesday was farrier day, and all 3 children were well behaved and their feet look good.

You may remember that we pulled Henry’s hind shoes last cycle, and I was a little worried about his feet crumbling to bits. They did in Texas, but it’s so hard to keep any working horse barefoot there with how hard and rocky the ground is all the time. The parts around his old nail holes did chip up a little bit over the 5 weeks, but no real damage, and they had grown out quite a lot, so this trim the old nail holes are all gone. He’s got a couple of quite lovely-looking barefoot hind feet! He hasn’t seemed tender on them at all either… it’s so sandy and grassy here, much easier to cope without shoes. It was a pretty easy transition.

Fey’s feet also are finally looking markedly better. When she came she had a lot of flaring and cracking in all 4 feet, with some of the quarter cracks sneaking awfully close to the coronary band. We’re, what… 4 or 5 trims in now and all the flares and cracks are totally gone aside from the one biggest one on a hind foot. That one is much improved, it’s only about 1/4 of the way up the foot now. Slowly but surely making improvement! Her feet are actually quite nice, now that the trim is balanced they’re wearing pretty well in between trims. She was also the best behaved she’s been for the farrier so far, she only yanked her foot away twice and had one mini-tantrum. We’ve been working on that. She’s got opinions (shocking, I know).

On Thursday the vet came to do Presto’s first vaccine in his re-started flu series (ugh) for his FEI passport. The timing worked out great because that was the day I was also set to take off the wrap over the leg wounds that had had the Regenaflex-M patches on them. She looked at everything, pulled the last couple stitches out of the bigger wound, and said she thought they looked pretty good. His knee def looks great. The other one is trying to make a lot of granular tissue, so she gave me instructions for what to do with that one and said to keep it covered and protected to make sure it doesn’t turn into summer sores. Granted his skin was also getting irritated from being bandaged for so long, so now we’re dealing with that too. It’s been a fun game to try to figure out how to keep it covered in a way that stays, as dry as possible, and also let air flow to that leg. He’s also THE WORST patient for shit like this because he won’t leave anything on his legs alone. Our current iteration features a fly boot that is gorilla taped on. It’s made it 12 hours, that’s a record so far.

On Saturday I swung a leg over Presto again for his first ride back, and… yeehaw, y’all. He is feeling himself. Psychedelically. There was snorting. There was spinning. There was prancing. There was some wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tubeman.

Wouldn’t really expect much else would we?

This week we’re hacking and walking poles and stretching his body out, stuff like that, just making sure he’s feeling good and slowly easing him back into work. Hopefully I don’t get murdered… it’s 50/50 every day. It’s been very rainy the past few days, which has kept the temps down (yay) but has meant that they’ve been stuck inside more (boo). It really helps add to the general rodeo vibes.

I won’t apologize for the title. I just won’t. It was begging to happen.

I’m a few days late for actual Independence Day, but it still counts, right? Foals in outfits is always a hit. We had to wait for Foal Friday for the reveal but it was totally worth it.

This year Rhett was our enthusiastic volunteer to dress up for some July 4th themed photos. Well, it was more of an offer to put everything in his mouth and attempt to destroy it, but close enough. He was hired.

While he was not the most cooperative foal we’ve ever had (I think that honor goes to Ollie), he didn’t mind wearing the majority of the stuff. For the most part.

He thought the tutu was a little sketchy (as did Chanel)…

but his favorite thing was the little red, white, and blue braided headband. He didn’t want to give that back.

Once he decided he wasn’t being murdered with taffeta he got pretty into it, wanting to check out everything (aka put everything in his mouth).

Once he decided his beloved braids were secure, he took them for a test drive. Outfit on point. Murica.

Happy Friday!

We are now officially 10 days into Presto’s summer vacation and yeehaw, things are starting to get… fun?

He’s getting wilder by the day, and bringing him up to the barn yesterday for a hose and a fly spray was an actual snortfest. He’s seeing sounds and hearing colors.

The original plan was two weeks completely off and then two weeks of hacking… assuming his wounds from the trailer incident are healed up enough to start hacking this weekend, we’ll stick with that plan. Naturally he popped the stitches out of both of them early last week so that’s just superb. Luckily I was able to get a Regenaflex-M patch from Hilltop Bio, so I put that on there last Thursday. Ideally they want it to stay on for 5-7 days… today would be day 5. At this point Presto has like an entire roll of Elastikon layered on his legs, getting it off is gonna be a real bitch, but I have be determined to keep it on there.

I haven’t used the Regenaflex patches before, but I’ve heard good things about them. My vet thought it was probably overkill considering the wounds aren’t that severe, but ya know… I like overkill sometimes, it makes me feel better about things. The Regenaflex-M patch is made from amniotic tissue, and it’s supposed to help it heal faster and reduce scar tissue and inflammation. It’s a very thin piece of sorta tissue-papery membrane that goes directly on the wound. It can even be stitched in, but in this case I just top dressed with it and then wrapped over top. We’ll see what the wounds look like when the wraps come off.

Presto also got a chiropractic visit, because I was certain he probably had to be all sorts of jacked up from getting high-centered on a chest bar and then falling sideways off the ramp of a trailer. But aside from some soreness around the middle of his back, she said he felt quite good actually.

I took a week off from riding too, because I figured it might be good to just have a bit of a break myself. I had lots of work to catch up on anyway, so having a little more time back wasn’t a bad thing. Since then I’ve been putting in some rides on Henry, mostly just playing around, letting him dolphin to his hearts content and hacking all over the farm.

It’s been quite hot here (not Texas hot, but very hot for us – low to mid 90’s) so I don’t want to do too much with Henry since he doesn’t sweat that great, but I think he’s enjoying getting more attention again.

Mostly things have just been chill around here. Feed horses, clean stalls, medicate horses, try to keep everyone cool and happy… that sort of stuff.

The only other fun thing that happened was that Presto’s FEI paperwork came back.

This is not the final complete version… we actually have to restart his influenza series because I don’t have suitable records to meet the FEI’s very particular criteria for that particular vaccine. Even though he just got that booster in March, I don’t have enough of a documented history to suit their requirements (like… I’d have to track all the way back to his original foal series). Anyway, luckily our chiro vet is also an FEI vet/steward so she knows all the ins and outs of this FEI crap. She looked over everything while she was here and we set up appointments to get his flu vax done (AGAIN) in a way that will satisfy the FEI’s timeline requirements. Once those are done, about a month from now, I can send everything back in to USEF for it’s final approval. What a fun process. Why did I want to do an FEI again?

Hope you guys are staying cool out there!

I feel like this is very important for everyone to see. Rhett is the Captain of Chaos, the Master of Menace, the Dealer of Doom. At least if you ask the ball, anyway.

Hillary is going to have a really good time trying to stay on top of this one. Somebody get the popcorn ready!

Happy Friday everyone.

Also, unrelated to foals but very related to Friday, if you haven’t yet checked out the Riding Warehouse Bargain Bin deals for their Fourth of July sale, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. There are Kastel and San Soleil sunshirts as cheap as $20, Anique as cheap as $25, show shirts for $25, $5 fly masks, $5 Dreamers and Schemers socks, $25 breeches, $50 horse blankets, etc etc. You have to dig a little bit but it’s worth it!

Well this post should have been a show recap but SOMEONE decided to something STUPID and HURT HIMSELF before the show even started. Horses, man.

We left for Aiken early on Thursday, arriving around 1pm. It was an uneventful drive, and a fairly easy one. Long enough to make me question how I used to stay sane while driving that far for literally EVERYTHING in Texas, but ya know… it wasn’t that bad. We hit some rain off and on but nothing too heavy, so it mostly just helped keep things cool.

We were stabling and staying offsite at a friends farm, but we went straight to Stable View so we could ride around and let the boys see the sights. This was a new facility for both of them. It was a little cool and drizzly, which was a-ok with me, and Presto was really super for his flat ride. We rode in the covered and in one of the outdoor warmups and he was just really focused and felt great.

Hillary was showing in the Training on Friday and Saturday, and I was supposed to show in the Modified on Saturday and Sunday. I was hoping that some of the other horses with us would be staying at the farm on Friday so Presto wouldn’t have to come to the show, but no such luck. I couldn’t leave him there alone, so onto the trailer he went as a tag-along.

When Hillary got on to do her dressage I got on Presto and went for a hack and then came back to the warmup rings and did another flat ride. He was nappy AF when I first got on him, just being a real premium toolbag about leaving Lex, but by the time I got to the rings for his flat ride, he was super. He neighed a couple times but otherwise was really fantastic. Like… the make-the-5-star-rider-stop-coaching-to-watch-him kind of fantastic. I mean, did someone else see all the screaming and spinning that happened before that and ask if he was recently gelded? Maybe. Ignore that.

We went back to the trailers and hung out for a bit, then Hillary had to get on Lex for show jumping. Rather than leave Presto in Hillary’s trailer by himself, I put him on Steph’s trailer so that he would have two friends with him. Seemed like the better bet.

While it probably WAS the better bet, it was not sufficient. This mofo tried to jump over the chest bar and out of the trailer.

As you can imagine, that didn’t go well. He got hung up halfway and eventually flopped his way out, but not before he sliced up 3 out of 4 legs and banged the absolute shit out of his stifle. Luckily the show vet was very close and in less than 10 minutes Presto was getting stitches.

He had abrasions on his chin, stomach, and both stifles, a deep laceration that cut an L shaped flap of skin on one front knee, and then a jagged and gnarly cut on the inside of the other front. Somehow, by pure fucking luck and miracles, he managed to miss anything important. None of the lacerations were that close to joints, there was no tendon or ligament damage, and he somehow jogged up pretty darn sound the next morning.

Still, he gave me an actual stroke. Are we even keeping track of how many years this horse has shaved off my life by this point?

Naturally, we had to scratch. I was disappointed to not be able to run him, of course, especially because I think he would have been extremely competitive. The courses and footing were fantastic, the XC looked well within his wheelhouse, and he’d felt so good for our pre-rides. Mostly though I’m just super incredibly fucking relieved that he didn’t damage himself worse. That could have easily been really really really really really bad.

Someone remind me: why did we choose horses as a hobby, exactly?

Anyway, needless to say his summer vacation got an early start. He’s also been an absolutely terrible patient for his wraps and stitches. Shocking. I’m doing my best to keep them clean and in one piece but he’s not making it easy (because when does he ever). Fingers crossed we can get through this without any complications.

In other news, I’ve been hired on to the team for the big Educational Three Day that’s happening down here in Ocala in the fall. I’ll talk more about it in another post (and I’m working on the website right now) but if anyone out there – a business owner or otherwise – is interested, what the event needs badly is sponsors. Lots of them. Opportunities start at $750 to sponsor an XC fence, and go up to $10k for the title sponsorship. The plan for this event is really cool – lots of educational opportunities for participants, the classic format competition, clinics, big name riders teaching… it’s a Whole Big Thing. It’s got to raise not an insignificant amount of money in the next 5 weeks in order to stay viable, so if you, your company, or anyone you know might be interesting in sponsoring, let me know and I can send the info packet!