I don’t know if any horse in the world had a better weekend than Gemma.

On Friday she had her re-check appointment to see how that little suspensory strain was doing. This was also her first time being seen by one of our vets, so we figured we’d get a little baseline idea of how she looked in general. A bit of a post purchase exam if you will. We called in the big guns for this appointment, our favorite sporthorse vet (his wife is an eventer, poor man) from his base a few hours away. He has all the equipment, good assistants, and he knows thoroughbreds and sporthorses really well, so it was worth the extra expense.

Overall, Gemma looked great. Her suspensory is fantastic, a “non factor” at this point he thought, which is always great to hear. Her flexions were pretty good, nothing particularly stood out. The only thing he could detect was some soreness near the coffin/pastern on one foot, and we know just by looking at her feet that they need work in the shoeing department, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. We went ahead and took films of all 4 feet so that 1) we could make sure there was nothing “bad” actually happening in there, 2) we could get a baseline of all her angles and make a plan with the vet and farrier for how best to start correcting those feet.

Her angles are… definitely not great. Like probably worse than they look from the outside. The left front is more negative than the right front, and both hinds are pretty negative as well. Definitely not a surprise – pretty typical of most horses coming off the track, and the vet and I both said “we’ve definitely seen way worse”, but we still need to get it corrected ASAP. So we talked options for her next shoeing cycle (good timing on all this, my farrier was already scheduled for tomorrow anyway) and made a plan. Basically we’ve got to start pulling that breakover back as much as possible to start correcting the angles and get her up off her heels, and maybe put a bar shoe on the fronts for a while and extend the heels a bit behind.

The good news is that there’s no real damage in there though. We also went ahead and did films of the ankles just since they have a little “jewelry”, and to make sure the angles of the feet haven’t caused any issues there. As is typical of racehorses, there’s some slight remodeling to the sesamoid, but nothing problematic or significant – no chips, no arthritis, no evidence of old fractures, etc.

We also discussed gut health – between omeprazole and sucralfate she’s basically been on some kind of ulcer meds all year, so we talked about remaining symptoms, what to do next, and tapering. We also talked about the fact that her heat cycles seem very strong and very… constant. We’ll try a month of Regumate and see if that makes a difference.

The vet liked her and didn’t see anything that would potentially prohibit a sport career, so that’s great news. He said to go ahead and start riding her – she’s good to go. My first question was “when can we put her in regular turnout”. Because as I said last week, while she had been impeccably behaved in her small paddock, I could tell she was dying to get to go out in the big field. The vet said to go for it, as long as she wouldn’t get overly excited and damage herself. Since she still had a little bit of sleepy juice in her system from all her xrays I looked at Hillary and was like “why not now?”. So we indeed marched her directly to the field.

She immediately dove nose-first into the grass like she hadn’t eaten in days. Which… she isn’t a big hay eater, so it was a constant source of frustration for me that she wasn’t getting as much roughage as I would have liked when she was restricted to the paddock. Seeing her out there in the pasture stuffing her face probably made me just as happy as it made her. To her immense credit she never once did anything stupid all day (despite it being COLD AND WINDY AF) – trotted a couple laps, did one impressive bucking festival, but otherwise she barely lifted her head from the grass the entire rest of the day. Since she’s already gotten to know Henry and Quinnie so well in the barn and sharing a fenceline with them, turning her out with them was a non-event. Gemma is bottom of the totem pole and quick to get out of the way, but not enough of a pushover for Henry to take advantage.

I figured the next morning might be the real test, with no lingering sleepy juice in her system. I fed everyone, led them out from the barn, let them go, and… again, her head went straight to the grass. After a few minutes she again trotted a slow lap, during which she spotted the neighbor’s cows on the other side of the back fence. And omg. Where some horses see those cows for the first time and absolutely lose their marbles (ahem Henry ahem Grace), Gemma stopped, looked them over, and then made a beeline straight for them.

There was one pretty brave cow that came up close to the fence a few times, but I think Gemma’s, um, enthusiasm concerned him a bit. When Gemma wasn’t close he would slowly meander up to the fence (close to where Henry was grazing) then Gemma would see him, trot over post haste, and he’d run away. Over and over, much to her chagrin. She wanted so badly to nose boop that cow and he just wouldn’t let her. Her curiosity gene was in full effect, that’s for sure. I’m starting to think she’s kind of a combo of Henry and Presto… Henry’s sensitivity, but Presto’s boldness. Although I think she’s smarter than both of them, of course, since she’s a mare.

On Sunday I decided it was time to officially start her sporthorse training. Hillary’s gone for a couple weeks to Ocala so it seems like the perfect opportunity to start doing some ground work and getting Gemma ready so that by the time Hillary gets back I can start hacking with her and Henry. Ever since Gemma got here I’ve been bringing her in to the barn during the day a few times a week to start figuring out the crossties/grooming routine/behavior expectations. She’s a very quick study and picked all that up pretty quickly, so I figured I’d go ahead and tack her up, then take her out to the ring to lunge her.

The great thing about OTTB’s is that they come knowing all kinds of things, having seen and done so much on the racetrack. But I also never like to just assume that any horse knows how to do anything, or will automatically understand things the way I ask them. So, I wanted to use this time to get an idea of what she already knows, what she doesn’t, and go over all the basics just to make sure we’re on the same page. I also needed to get some tack fitted to her.

I groomed her, picked her feet, put her boots on, and then decided to start with Henry’s regular tack. My jump saddle is a bit wide for her at the moment, but otherwise not terrible. I thought for sure that his girth would be huge on her, but surprisingly it wasn’t. Bigger than it fits on him of course, but not too big. I think she’s deeper in the barrel than she seems, despite her smaller stature. I also grabbed his breastplate, which fit her just fine too. She’s smaller and thinner than he is, but her shoulder is bigger and longer. If anything I needed the straps to be a little longer between her shoulder and the girth. For her bridle I rummaged through my collection of spare parts (I have an embarrassing number of plain cast-off browbands) and grabbed Presto’s cob size bridle from when he showed in-hand as a 2yo, a pair of never used horse size cheekpieces (I have no idea what they’re even from), and took the spiked browband off of Presto’s brown bridle since he’s not using it at the moment. I pretty much always start the babies in a Nathe bit as a baseline, so that went on the bridle as well.

It’s a frankenbridle, but it works for now. Honestly I thought she’d be solidly cob size but she’s kind of in between. The length of her head and width of her crown is more horse size, but her little nose is cob size and a cob size browband would be better I think. I also think she needs her own tiara… I like the spikes on her, but maybe blue ones? Or maybe some small navy crystals? I’m still undecided. Her rich chestnut color does look REALLY good in blue though.

Once we got in the ring I did a quick little desensitization with the lunge line all over her body, then asked her to walk out on a circle around me. She definitely doesn’t know voice commands aside from clucking, but she’s got a good work ethic and paid attention well, trying to figure out what I wanted. Naturally she lunges better to the left than the right… not a surprise. After she walked and trotted both ways I ran the stirrups down, snapping and flapping them a bit until I got no reaction, then I lunged her with the stirrups down. She was super good about it, so after she w/t both ways I let her be done with that. This was a fact-finding mission more than a real working session and I had already gleaned a lot. On our way out of the arena I introduced her to the mounting block, with me standing on it above her, stomping on it with my feet, leaning over and flapping the stirrup on the opposite side, etc. If she wanted to move off I let her circle around, then come back and stand next to it again. Rinse and repeat, and she got better each time. She was confused by it but not worried about it, so that’s a good first step. She’ll get it pretty quickly I think.

We’ll play a little more in-depth with the ground work this week, do more desensitizing, work on those voice commands, and get more mounting block education. And of course get those shoeing changes started. Here’s to the beginning of what will hopefully be a great adventure!

It’s cool how 2 of my 3 horses are currently on the Injured Reserve list right now. Granted, when I bought Gemma she was on the IR list already, and Presto did his *whatever the fuck* in a stall 3.5 hours away, so I’m not taking blame for either of them. Ok maybe I should have raised Presto to be less of a general nuisance by like… shackling all his legs together on a regular basis or something.

Also both of the IR list horses have looked sound for their entire rest periods. Presto somehow managed to be 3/5 lame before his MRI, and then it was like as soon as he felt the money (ALL THE MONEY, FFS) leave my bank account, he was like “ah yes that feels much better” and has yet to take so much as a lame step at Michelle’s. I think this horse is trying his absolute best to take as many years off my life as possible. He is succeeding.

Originally they recommended 3 months of rest after his MRI, then a re-check. It’s been not quite 2 months, and I’m kinda just looking at him like hmm… now what. Since, ya know, he’s looked quite freaking sound as he’s pranced and reared and bucked around his little paddock for the past month (also doing his best to take as many years as possible off Michelle’s life). At this point there’s no rush though, even if he was ready to go back to work I don’t really want to add another one to my plate here right now, and Megan is in Ocala for another month, so… may as well wait a few more weeks for his re-check appointment. He did get some body work done though.

Luckily Gemma has been a more well-behaved patient. Leave it to the OTTB chestnut mare to be less chaotic and easier to deal with than the bay warmblood gelding. I can tell she’s absolutely bored out of her mind in her little paddock, but she’s still been very polite and on her best behavior. Every couple weeks or so she’ll have a minute or two where she just stands there and bucks in place, then she’s back to napping. It’s kind of amusing, honestly.

I can tell she’s just dying to get out in the pasture though, especially to have some GRASS. She loves to graze and dives headfirst into it any time I take her out. Plus she’s really plateau’d with her weight gain and I think the only thing that’s going to help at this point is some actual pasture. She just doesn’t eat hay very well or very enthusiastically. I think being able to actually graze would make a big difference.

Luckily her re-check appointment is tomorrow, so I’m hoping we get some good news and that she can be cleared for more/bigger turnout. Other than being a little footsore behind every once in a while (since we pulled the hind shoes) she’s continued to look great since the day she got here – always looks sound and she’s never had any heat or swelling in her RF, so hopefully that bodes well.

It would be really nice if, by April, none of my horses were on the IR list at all. Surely that isn’t too much to ask? SURELY? We’ll find out soon I suppose. Cross all your crossables for Gemma’s appointment tomorrow, I will accept all the good juju.

About a month ago I ordered a full genetic panel to be run for Gemma… we pulled out some mane hairs, filled out the form, sent in the sample, and proceeded to wait. I’m of the opinion that it’s always a good idea to get the most holistic view possible of any horse you’re going to use for breeding, and indeed all the WTW mares have had full genetic profiles run. The most crucial thing to know is whether or not they’re carriers for Fragile Foal Syndrome (originally thought to be limited to warmbloods but has recently popped up in thoroughbreds as well), but it’s also nice to know their color genetics and if they show any predisposition to other health issues. The more you know about a horse, the better breeding (and care) decisions you can make. And while, as of right now anyway, we’re not planning on breeding Gemma anytime soon, I’m just super curious.

So, let’s get into the results. Gemma’s color panel came back as ee AA.

Since she’s chestnut we already knew she was ee – every chestnut is ee. Chestnut is recessive, therefore in order for a horse to show as red, it cannot possess any E (black), only two e (red). If you want more deep-dive info on this, most commonly called “Extension” or “Black Factor” or “red/black”, there’s a longer explanation here. But basically ee = chestnut, Ee = heterzygous black, EE = homozygous black. Every horse is some combination of such. With a black-based horse, like a bay or a buckskin or a grulla, you have to run the test to see whether or not they have one copy or two copies (Ee or EE). But with a chestnut there’s only one option: ee. They’re red-based, not black-based. A bay/black horse can carry one copy of the red gene, since it’s recessive, but a chestnut horse can only possibly have two copies of red.

The thing you don’t know just by looking at a chestnut is their agouti status – that AA part. Agouti is what’s responsible for making an Ee or EE horse present as bay instead of black. The way agouti works is that it restricts the black pigment to the “points” of the horse’s body – ears, legs, mane, tail, etc as you see on any bay horse. So a true black horse will have an agouti status of aa – totally recessive for agouti and therefore the black is not restricted at all, but rather covers the entire body. A bay horse will either be Aa, heterozygous for agouti, or AA, homozygous for agouti. You can’t tell by looking – there’s no difference between Aa and AA in how the horse appears physically. Since a chestnut doesn’t physically display agouti on their coat at all (since, remember, they don’t have any black and agouti only expresses on black), you have to test in order to know which of those three combinations it carries. Gemma is AA meaning she’s homozygous for agouti, which means that any foal she has will carry at least one copy of agouti. This means that she cannot produce a true black offspring – only some form of bay (or chestnut) – all depending on the stallion she’s crossed with.

For another example, Presto’s sire Mighty Magic is EEAA – homozygous black and homozygous agouti. This means he can ONLY produce bay offspring, since he will always pass an E (black based) and an A (agouti). The caveat to this is if he’s bred to a gray mare or a dilute mare and the mare passes one of those genes – known as modifier genes – on top of the bay… but that’s getting a lot more complicated and off topic so lets not go there today.

Anyway, back to Gemma. I also was interested to see what her test results would be for splash or KIT (also known as Dominant White) genes – the ones responsible for white markings. Given her high jagged front stocking, ermine spots, and flat top on the hind sock, I thought it was possible that she might carry one of the genes responsible for amplifying or adding more white markings. She has some very typical physical characteristics of both, but not ALL the physical characteristics of either. I was actually surprised that all of these tests came back negative – no splash, no KIT.

To give an example of how sneaky these genes can be, WTW broodmare Peyton is actually a carrier of W20, a gene responsible for amplifying white markings. Peyton herself has one teeny tiny sock, but we did see that W20 gene at work on her 2020 foal Remi, the chestnut with 4 high whites and a blaze even though he had two pretty plain bay parents. Sometimes Peyton will pass it, sometimes she won’t, sometimes it’ll be very obvious, sometimes it won’t. Genetics are fun like that. It’s also worth noting that while there are 4 known splash genes and over a dozen known KIT genes, we do also know for sure that there are a lot more out there that just haven’t been identified well enough to develop a test for yet. Probably lots more. So while Gemma doesn’t have any of the known ones, it doesn’t necessarily mean she doesn’t have any.

Moving on past the color stuff and into the health stuff – she’s negative for all the immune diseases, muscle disorders, endocrine disorders, ocular disorders, and hoof & connective tissue disorders, including FFS. All good news. She did pop up as a carrier for RLN (roaring) which has pretty much been the case with every Thoroughbred we’ve tested. None of them have actually been roarers, and neither is Gemma, but they do carry an increased risk – not surprising for the breed. Just something to tuck into the back of my mind when making breeding decisions. She also has one marker (of a possible 8) for Lordosis – not enough to warrant being labeled as a carrier, but something else to keep in mind. I would not cross her with any lines known to carry Lordosis, just to be on the safe side.

For the performance part of things, she has the markers (aka “likely affected” status) for the Endurance gene. Yes, they can test for sprint vs endurance genes! She falls into the “generally has less speed, but greater stamina and endurance” category. She was never really tried at longer distances on the track, her longest races were only one mile (granted, she had her best finish at this distance) but she was more of a come from behind type rather than a first-out-the-gate type, so it does line up in that regard. Maybe we’ll get to find out more about that one in her eventing career.

They also have a test (not quite in the “high confidence” realm of research, but in the “moderate confidence, findings replicated in multiple species”) for curiosity vs vigilance. Basically they define curiosity as an interest in novel objects and a willingness to approach them vs vigilance as the tendency of a horse to examine its surroundings carefully and from a safer distance. I was interested to see what this one would say, because to me she’s a bit of both. Definitely VERY curious, and I would say leans more toward curious than vigilant, but she’s also careful and intelligent about her surroundings. Like for instance, I haven’t tested Presto or Henry but I would be SHOCKED if Presto wasn’t Curious and Henry wasn’t Vigilant – like if that wasn’t the case the test would just be garbage IMO. Gemma though… I could argue both for her. So it’s kind of funny that she indeed came back as having markers for both. That tracks.

The last test is for height, also known as LCORL, which she’s heterozygous for. This is very typical for a TB or a more moderately sized warmblood – meaning that they carry one copy of the gene for increased height and have a 50% chance of passing this to any offspring. So basically, I should expect her to produce to her height (16h) or larger, barring any extenuating circumstances or environmental influence of course.

All good information to know! None of it really changes the list of stallions I had picked for her, but it does give me more things to consider.

Even though I had to leave Ocala to come back home last week (am I super salty about the fact that it’s currently 44 with 9000mph wind here, but it’s a lovely 75 in Ocala? Yes. YES I FREAKING AM.) Megan’s group all arrived last week, so now WTW East is officially up and running, hosting it’s first ever group of sporthorses and seasonal boarders. Patreon members, I posted a full length video tour for you last night (check your dashboard) but I also wanted to share some photos here as well so everyone could see how the farm is looking. I’ve been getting updates about how everything is going now that everyone is settled in, and it’s fun to see some sporthorses giving life to the place.

Not to say that there isn’t normally life at the farm… it’s got a fully-established racehorse mare/foal/young horse boarding business in place and there are plenty of horses on the property, but ya know… an eventing operation is just different from baby horse boarding. Different infrastructure, different routines, different kind of horses, etc etc. The front part of the property has been dedicated to them, with all the young horses and broodmares moved to the back 2/3 so that everything stays totally separate and there’s no intermingling of horses.

The finishing touches are pretty much all completed now, things like crossties and tack hooks, the jumps and cavaletti are being put to use, and there’s a dressage arena marked out. The front cinderblock barn is also full of horses for the first time that I’ve seen. The former racehorse operation really only used this barn to prep the youngsters that were going to the big sales or for foaling out mares (there are two double-size foaling stalls) so as a sporthorse person it’s fun to see it come to life in a new way that’s a little more in line with my own version of “normal”. I mean, I know the seasonals are only here for a little while, but it’s a glimpse into what it could look like for me once my own horses and stuff are out there, and that’s exciting.

The tack room is also complete, all the racks are up and everything is organized the way they want it. This space turned out really pretty I think, Michelle did a great job with the paint and the decorations. Looks fancy! There wasn’t a tack room in this barn originally, this room used to be an office, but this space is perfect and transformed really nicely.

I think the very most exciting thing though – and a very big deal – is that the arena got finished! They had a very short timeline to get this done, especially considering the extremely high demand for arena builders in the Ocala area right now. When I was there they were on the last little bit of base, and now it’s finished, they’re just watering and working it to finish prepping it for the horses. Hopefully they get some rain this week, that’s what it really needs. It’s not a HUGE space, but I think it’s a very good useable size, especially since it’s out in the front field where you can also ride on the grass. It makes for a nice flexible area that you can do a lot with, I think.

It’s hard not to get excited about things when you see the farm being used exactly the way you had envisioned. It was definitely a major time crunch to get things ready in time for these guys to arrive, but everybody really worked their butts off to make it happen, and it shows. Now I just have major FOMO because everybody is there having fun without me. Soon. Soon…

A few people have asked what we’re doing with the t!ny h0use, and we’ve decided it would make more sense to sell it rather than try to take it with us. We already have a place to live on the farm there, and don’t really have any infrastructure in place to be able to easily put the t!ny somewhere. We’d have to build things, which would be a project on top of about a hundred others, and given everything else that we have to consider with this move it just makes more sense to take something off our plate. We LOVE the t!ny and don’t really want to part with it, but it’s definitely the more practical thing to do. If you know anyone who might be interested, let me know, I would love to see her go to a good home!

You may or may not have noticed that I’m having a bit of a black glitter moment. I’ve possibly accrued just a few black glitter items at this point, including but not limited to:

There also may or may not be a show coat, horse boots, saddle pad, bridle, etc… all black glitter. I can’t quite explain my attraction to it… it’s dark which I like but it’s a little fun, thus I suppose it appeals to me greatly. It’s already been decided that Presto will run XC in black sparkles – he’s emo, so it works. It pleases me greatly to see just how much black glitter stuff is out there on the market with equestrian items right now. I need moar.

So naturally when I picked up that Custom Wolfgang Solo dressage saddle for a song, because it’s a bit older and faded:

There was only one possible outcome here. Naturally it was a foregone conclusion that it would get a dye job. I’ve dyed 4 or 5 saddles now and the outcome is always deeply deeply pleasing. It’s a fairly easy project given how much of a difference it makes. So I started gathering my supplies, and had the idea to see if I could find a way to glitterize the piping along the back of the saddle. I fell down a very very deep google rabbit hole before deciding to try Glitterlites – a flexible leather paint that has glitter flake in it. I figured worse case scenario it would suck and I’d just remove it with deglazer. No topcoat is permanent, after all. So I ordered the dye and the Glitterlites (I opted to order from Weaver Leather, since they had everything I needed) and started putting together all the rest of my supplies.

I won’t go over the dyeing steps in detail again here, because I’ve covered that before a couple times in previous blogs. Short version is: I wiped down the saddle very well with just water, then scrubbed it a few good times with deglazer. Once I was satisfied that the topcoat was gone, I applied two thin coats of dye, then got to buffing. I touched up the seat and knee rolls (they had the worst fading) with one more thin coat, did more buffing, then let it dry. I opted not to do a sealant on this one, so after the dye coats were complete I conditioned it heavily with a high-beeswax content conditioner (intentionally keeping the conditioner off the parts I was going to add glitter to). I could have just waited until after the glitter was done to condition it, but I was impatient so ya know.

Anyway… here’s some closer shots of the fading it had before.

And here was the final product.

These are the only kind of craft projects I’m interested in.

Anyway, lets skip back to the glitter application.

So the Glitterlites is really just lots of black glitter inside of a clear topcoat. You just… paint it on. I’m a fairly shit painter – my hands are shaky and I’m impatient with crafting stuff in general – so I opted for set of smaller brushes so that I could just go slowly but also get in all the nooks and crannies. Some sites suggested that you lightly sand the surface of the leather first, but 1) I didn’t have sandpaper 2) I didn’t want to risk accidentally sanding other parts, since sanding a little bit of piping is not that easy. I figured meh – we’ll see it what happens – and jumped right into it with reckless abandon (shocking for me, I know).

Because that glitter is in a clear coat, it does go on looking a little scary. Kind of lumpy and white. I opted to do a decently solid coat on a small piece to start with, let it dry to see how it looked, and then adjusted my application process from there. Honestly though, it wasn’t hard. I ended up doing two coats, and then went in and spot filled some areas after I was done with that to make sure I had full and even coverage. I did the piping around the back of the saddle, the little bit around the pommel, and then the really narrow strip on the back of the cantle (with a teeny little paintbrush). And honestly, it came out even better than I expected.

I think it looks freakin gorgeous, and really similar to the glitter accents that Devoucoux offers on their saddles. I think you’d have to get literally inches away to notice that it isn’t quite as smooth a finish as those… and I don’t think anyone would ever guess it was glitter leather paint.

I’m pretty thrilled with how this one came out. I was perhaps a little more impatient with my buffing step than usual so I might need to go back and do a little more rubbing on the knee blocks, but it’s so freakin pretty. It looks twice as expensive just from $15 worth of supplies, and it’s got whole new sparkly glory to it now. We’ll see how the glitter paint holds up over time… so far so good, even when I accidentally banged a stirrup iron into it. It’s meant to be used on leather, hence why it’s flexible, so hopefully it will last decently well. I figure worst case scenario I have to touch it up sometimes, but we shall see.

The only problem is that now I find myself looking at all my stuff with the “but could I put glitter on it???” eye. Nothing in my tack room is safe from Glitterlites. And while they don’t make it in navy, I did find a custom shoe painter that has mixed their own navy by combining the royal and the black. Hide yo kids, hide yo wives, we bout to be glitterizing errything out here.