A lot of you (like a lot) have been asking me for a Presto update for a while, and the truth is that he’s been a bit… complicated, and I was waiting until I had some kind of actual resolution before I threw all this word vomit out into the void. Plus I just legit could not handle talking about it while there was still so much uncertainty. In the meantime I’ve been emotionally spiraling pretty freaking hard (did I binge eat like 5 boxes of Little Debbie’s in a week and impulse purchase an OTTB to cope with my variety of emotions? Perhaps. Despair tastes like swiss cake rolls, just FYI.) and if I was rude to anyone who asked about him, I’m sorry, please understand that mentally I’ve been in a very bad dark place about this whole thing for like a month. It’s a lot better now that we know what’s going on and it’s not what I had feared, but y’all know how this stuff goes with horse people. I was replaying the worst case scenario over and over in my mind for weeks.

Anyway, this is gonna be a long one so buckle up. When we last left off with our giant intrepid baby hero (ish) he had a very minor suspensory strain that needed a couple months rest. He was sound, the leg was cold and tight, the prognosis was excellent, we did some shockwave to help things along, and everyone was feeling pretty good about things. His final scan appointment was made to check on things one more time before he got the all clear to return to work, and he showed up to that appointment dead-ass lame… ON THE OTHER LEG. The original injury looked fantastic and was clearly not the issue, but now we had to figure out wtf was going on in the other leg. In all this time he has never been lame, so this was a confusing curveball to say the least.

Flexions and hooftesters didn’t show a whole lot. He was a bit reactive to the hooftesters (well, that kind of borderline where you’re like was that a reaction or has he just lost his patience) so the vet was like well his feet seem a bit sore, lets give him a couple weeks, get some films of his feet, get him reshod, pack his feet, etc. We did the films, which looked pristine, talked to the farrier, and we gave him a couple more weeks.

He went back and was still quite lame on that left front. He was no longer reacting to hooftesters, so we did some scans, took some more films of other parts of the leg, and tried some blocking. Again the scans were clear, his xrays looked great (at this point I have xrays of like both front legs in their entirety and they’re beautiful, which is kind of a surprise in and of itself given his size and his history, so there’s that?), and the only thing that really showed up on the blocking is that when he did the coffin bone the lameness definitely improved. It didn’t go away entirely, but it improved. My options were: inject the coffin bone, give him 10 days, and recheck, or – send him straight to MRI for definitive diagnostics. MRI is obviously hella freaking expensive. I asked the vet how optimistic he felt about the coffin injection being the solution and he was 50/50 on it. I asked if he would want to do the coffin injection either way, and he said yes. So I opted to inject the coffin bone and gave him another week.

Presto went back for his next checkup and showed a slight improvement, but not much. Definitely still lame on the LF. At this point it was clear that an MRI was inevitable if we wanted a definitive answer, but the vet needed to try to pinpoint exactly what parts to order the MRI for. This meant we needed to do more blocking. Again he started at the bottom, but this time Presto got LAMER as the blocks went along. It was very weird, and something the vet said he’s only seen happen a time or two before. He took some films of the elbow just to make sure we weren’t missing a cyst or something wild (I told you I now have films of the legs in their entirety), and at that point we had to call off anything else for the day because now his entire leg was blocked and we still had no clue. Another appointment was made for a week later where we’d start over and try the blocks again.

This time he did respond normally to the blocking, and showed some improvement to blocking at the foot and ankle. The vet ordered the MRI for basically everything below the knee on the LF just to be sure, and the appointment was made for a week later. At this juncture we were all thinking that he likely had a soft tissue injury in the foot (probably DDFT or collateral ligament) which is a big deal and potentially career-altering or even career-ending. I’ve had a not-great experience with a collateral ligament injury in the past, and I was replaying that whole thing over and over in my head on repeat. I was already trying to prepare myself for the fact that his eventing career could well and truly be over before it really even began, and I had to make some kind of peace with it. Plus all of this was costing me a stupid amount of money, which is stressful in and of itself. All of that is why I spiraled pretty hard and did NOT like being asked about Presto in general by anyone outside of my inner circle that already knew all the details. I was trying to cope with the loss of a dream that I feared was coming, and everyone asking for Presto updates on social media was just kind of twisting the knife in deeper (not anyone’s fault, totally understand why people were asking, just explaining why I mostly did not respond or may have been testy about it, depending on the day. Sorry for that. This is the downside to being so public.).

So he went last week for the MRI. Which, cue some panic about the anesthesia and all the risks associated with that, plus the cost, plus the absolute cinderblock of dread that had been sitting in my stomach for weeks at what the images might show us. He got dropped off on Thursday for his MRI on Friday, so I knew I wouldn’t hear anything until Monday. I spent most of the weekend just trying not to think about it to be honest.

On Monday I heard from Megan (poor Megan has had to coordinate all this and take him to all of his 9000 vet appointments plus deal with me and Presto and all of our emotions) that the vet had called her and given her an initial diagnosis, but he had some follow-up questions for the radiologist and was waiting to call me to give me the full rundown until those got answered. So what was the initial diagnosis? A bone bruise to P2… an unusual place for a bone bruise and something the vet had never seen before. NATURALLY. Because Presto. But my initial reaction was immense relief, because at least it wasn’t “tear of xyz soft tissue”, which is what we all had feared.

I finally heard from the vet on Tuesday afternoon, and we had a good discussion. The short version of it is that Presto does indeed have a bone bruise on P2, which is very uncommon (I swear to god if one more vet uses the term “medical mystery” in relation to this horse I am going to freaking lose it). Usually bone bruises occur in P3 (not uncommon in jumpers, eventers, or any horses that take a lot of repeated impact to the ground, especially hard surfaces) or P1 (common in racehorses due to the repeated heavy impact on that area of the leg while galloping). P2 doesn’t take impact from the ground the way that those bones do, so it’s most likely that this one is from an impact or repeated impacts with an actual object directly to the area. We’ll circle back to that. He said that the prognosis was very good for full return to work with no lasting effects, and that the treatment recommendation was 90 additional days of rest, one injection of Osphos, and Osteon for the duration.

I had an immediate “ugh no” feeling at the Osphos recommendation, and questioned the vet about it. He said he understood my concerns but that he had never seen any issues using Osphos within his practice on horses age 4 and up. It can absolutely be a great drug and extremely beneficial (it’s intended to be a navicular treatment but is often used for other bone-related things), but there is a lot of debate surrounding how old a horse should be before they can safely receive it or what things it should be used for. There’s an article here if you want to read some of it for yourself or if you haven’t seen it before. But basically some of the concern is that with young horses it can interrupt the body’s ability to lay down proper bone, and cause damage to still-developing bone at the microscopic level. Obviously this can lead to structural weaknesses later down the line.

Y’all, I struggled with this one. I struggled a lot. The official recommendation is age 4, some vets prefer age 5, others prefer age 6. Presto is a couple months shy of 5. On one hand, it’s just one injection and most of the issues they’ve seen have come from repeated use in 2 and 3yo racehorses. On the other hand, Presto is a very very large, very much still growing young horse, and the thought of potentially causing damage to the bones that are still developing (which are important ones like spine and neck) is just… I can’t do it. It would probably be fine but my gut says no and I’m opting to go with my gut. Even if the risk is very minimal, I don’t think I can sleep at night thinking about it. I’d have nightmares of bones with holes in them.

I talked to several of my friends that I deeply respect, and got opinions on Osphos usage in this case from several other vets. The vets were split pretty much down the middle on whether or not they would use Osphos for this. A couple said absolutely unhesitatingly yes, a couple said absolutely positively not. I think that alone gave me my answer. It’s just too much risk for me to feel comfortable with, and not enough potential benefit. Would the bone bruise heal faster with Osphos? Probably, yes. But at the end of the day I’d rather give him more time off, even if it ends up being significantly more time, and not take the risk. He’s young, there’s no rush.

After talking it over more, in the end we landed on 30 days of Equioxx, Osteon for the duration, plus Magnawave and Theraplate. He’ll get 90 days rest in a small paddock, at which point we’ll do another lameness exam and see where we’re at. He might be good to go by then, or he might need longer. Bone bruises take a while to heal, so it’s hard to say for sure how long it’ll be. The excellent and extremely relieving news is that it should heal just fine.

Now, let’s circle back to how exactly we think this happened. If you know Presto at all, you know that his left front foot is his “chaos” foot, in that it’s the one he prefers to use to create all manner of chaos. He likes to put it on things, in things, and whack stuff with it when he’s bored. He’ll stand on fences with his left foot, he’ll put it in buckets and troughs, he’ll whack stall doors or trailer walls with it if he’s bored or feels like he’s being ignored. So it’s very likely that, in the course of resting for his RF suspensory, he found enough trouble with his other foot to where he actually managed to hurt himself for real. This is not hard for me to imagine at all, I have watched him stand there at horse shows and repeatedly whack that exact spot on his foot into his buckets for no other reason than the fact that chaos is his jam. He’s sneaky about it too… if you yell at him he’ll just wait until you leave and resume his mission. Pain does not seem to deter him.

After talking to a few people about it, I’ve decided to send him up to Michelle’s for his rest time. She has perfectly sized small paddocks there, neighbors right next to him all the time, there’s plenty to look at and to keep him company, and it’s pretty darn hard for him to whack his foot on her fences. Plus she has friends with Magnawave and Theraplate nearby, so it’ll be easy for him to have quick and more frequent access to those therapies. And obviously Michelle knows him really well, so I trust her to look after him. And instead of sending Gemma up to Michelle’s, Gemma can just stay here where she’s already settled in well. Change of plan, but I think it works better and makes sense.

While this whole situation has been stressful enough to take a few years off my life, and expensive enough to legit make me curl up in a ball in the corner (heeeey, anyone want to buy some shirts or a BEMER? Ha. Ha. Hahabutreallytho.) I’m extremely relieved to finally have an answer and have it not be nearly as bad as I had feared. In my head I had resigned myself to Presto only being a dressage horse and while I tried to make peace with that, I’ll admit it was a very hard sell to myself. Please no. Kid wants to run and do jompies, and so do I. With any luck he’ll be back in full swing by summer, assuming we can keep him from committing further chaos-inflicted damage to himself. Fingers crossed.

This past weekend was originally meant to be a jumper schooling show at Scissortail for Hillary & Henry and myself & Grace. But then I ended up taking Grace to the breeding farm a bit early (glad I did, last count she had about 20 follicles for them to pull for ICSI attempts!) and then that wicked cold front blew in, prompting them to cancel the show since it was supposed to be 20 degrees and windy on show morning when all the lower level kiddos would have gone. In lieu of the show, the facility was kind enough to replace it with some afternoon jumper schooling rounds and Open XC schooling, free of charge, and the photographer that was going to shoot the show offered free black background photo sessions (you just pay for whatever pictures you want edited).

Really awesome of them to offer that – support your local show facilities! – and honestly it kinda worked out better for us anyway. Hillary and Henry could just go in the afternoon, they’d set the jumps to whatever height she wanted, and she could be in and out quickly. And then I got to thinking… hmmm… it’s really tempting to get some photos done of Gemma. She’s still got weight to gain and all that, but having a few nice shots of her from the beginning would be fun. I asked Hillary if it was crazy to want to take Gemma for photos, and while I’m not really sure if this is a pro or con to our friendship, she was totally down with my idea, listing several other totally valid reasons why it made sense.

So on Saturday afternoon we loaded up Henry and Gemma, and off we went on her first little adventure as a “sporthorse”. She loaded in the trailer great (almost too great, she’ll run your ass over if you walk up there too slow) and make the 25 minute trip like a champion. She ate her hay and was quiet and polite even when Henry made some grumpy faces at her. They were pretty cute.

When we got there we left them on the trailer for a few minutes while we went to check in at the office, and then came back and unloaded Gemma first, then Henry. This facility sits kind of at the top of a hill and there is LOTS to see – arenas, cross country, barns, horses, trailers, a busy highway… a lot of horses are a bit overwhelmed at first. Gemma definitely was a bit wide-eyed (weirdest racetrack she’d ever seen) so we just walked around near the trailer and let her get an eyeful of things. As long as she was polite she was welcome to look, or to walk around. She thought a couple times about doing a little yeehaw but with a reminder she kept her feet on the ground and was respectable about it.

The first order of business was the photo shoot. I figured if we were going to get a few of Gemma then we may as well get a few of Henry too, and it made sense to do the photos before he was ridden. We found Meaghan, the photographer, and hoofed it up to the covered arena to get the pictures. Gemma was really good at posing and seems to look cute from every angle (so photogenic), and the photographer got A LOT of really good ones. It was very hard to narrow it down from her proofs, but she made us a very very affordable package deal so we got several of her and a couple of Henry. I can’t wait to see what the final edited photos look like… I think this is my favorite proof.

You guys will definitely be seeing all of them when they’re done.

The photo shoot seemed to help settle Gemma a bit, and she was less wide-eyed when we went back out to the trailer. Hillary tacked up Henry and got on him, and we ventured with them towards the warmup and the jumping ring, which is where Gemma ended up spending most of her time. We stood near the warmup (and even in the warmup a bit while I set jumps for Hillary and Gemma did her best to knock them right back down with her nose), we stood near the ingate, and at the edge of the XC field beyond. If she wanted to graze I happily let her, but if she started to get antsy or upset then we just walked for a minute until she settled and wanted to graze again.

She was on edge a few times, and standing still for long periods wasn’t possible, but she never lost her marbles or wound up or got naughty at all. Considering she’s a 5yo TB that’s been on stall rest or in a tiny pen for the past 3 weeks and at her first “show-like” experience, I was quite pleased with her. Gemma definitely wants to be a good girl, and I think that’s 90% of the equation at the end of the day. Hillary did a couple classes while I videoed (with mixed results) and then she tossed on a vest and went out on the XC just to gallop a few jumps and jump down the bank. Gemma got a little more anxious when he left but never neighed or got hysterical or anything. If she can keep her feet moving she seems capable of coping, and I’m more than happy to let her do that as long as she does it politely.

Once Hillary was done we went back to the trailers while she untacked, and now that Gemma had had some processing time and seemed more settled, I tied her at the trailer with Henry. She was content to eat cookies (we went through a fairly staggering amount of cookies in a 2 hour trip between the two horses, it’s a little obscene) and some hay and stand there quietly with Henry. Can’t really ask for anything more than that.

We loaded them up and headed back home (again she loaded and rode home great) and just like that, Gemma’s first outing is officially in the books. I think we’ll try to get her out to as many things like this as we can, it’s definitely good for her to start learning what shows and stuff are all about before there’s any pressure put on the situation by riding expectations. We have all the time in the world, so we may as well make the most of it.

Gold star for the baby red mare (and Henny too of course… always Henny)!

It’s starting to feel like every post these days is me playing catch-up. Sorry about that. My brain hasn’t even had time to attempt more structured content. Time flies when you’re busy? Anyway, a lot has happened in the last week, so let’s go.

Last Wednesday I took Grace out to the specialist/embryo transfer vet to drop her off for the breeding season. She was starting to show signs of coming into heat, and given that we’ve been trying to get Grace pregnant for a while, I figured taking her early would be best. They can start tracking her and try to get her bred as soon as it’s looking viable (hopefully in a couple weeks). It would be great if we could get an ET or two out of her this year, plus one for her to carry, but let’s just focus on getting her pregnant first. Since she was already starting to cycle I thought it was best to cut her winter riding a bit short and just go ahead and take her. Plus with work being so busy right now and the ground being so hard, I wasn’t succeeding in getting much riding done with her anyway. Fingers crossed we have some baby-making success this year! I’m feeling positive about it. Plus I got to squee at the two babies already on the ground at the vet’s place… always a highlight and totally worth the drive.

The end of the week was consumed with prepping for a blast of winter weather, which rolled through on Friday and was luckily milder than anticipated. I have a lot of trust issues after Winter Storm Uri last year where they were EXTREMELY WRONG about how bad it would be and how long it would last. Luckily this particular wave was just some sleet and frigid temps, and the sleet didn’t accumulate on anything but the metal gates and my truck since it had been 80 the day before. I was still grumpy AF about it, but after last year I’ll (begrudgingly) take it.

Otherwise the horses have been doing fine (knock on wood) through our continued yo-yo-ing weather. At this point we go back and forth from 80 to 25 so much that they’re just always getting salt and soaked feed, which they seem to be totally fine with. Gemma, to her credit, has been a trooper through all of it.

On a different note, I got a new XC vest last week! I won a decently sizeable gift card during Christmas from Ride Equisafe, and was finally able to get that Champion Ti22 vest that I’ve had my eye on for a long time. It fits great and is super comfortable, so once I actually get to ride in it a bit I’ll have to do a review. I love my Champion helmet, and so far I’m really pleased with the vest too.

And last but not least, I’ve become fairly obsessed with my secondhand Apple Watch (gifted by Hillary – she da real mvp) which I have lovingly nicknamed Twatch. It doesn’t care if I just spent 45 minutes doing a spin class, it’ll still ping me and be like “time to stand up!”. F you, twatch, I just sat down. But also thanks for tracking all my shit so I can look at my metrics. At this point I pretty much only use it for the Activity stuff and to control my Spotify when I’m in the barn, but it’s great for that. I walk a lot more than I thought I did (especially with Gemma here since she’s a little bit higher maintenance, thus I’m back and forth to the barn a lot more). I walked 55 miles the week before last and 49.5 last week. Plus it keeps track of all my workout stuff too, which is nice… I can keep track of my spin classes and weightlifting stuff more formally than what just lives in my head. So fancy. So modern. (I’m like the last person on earth to get with this technology, I know…)

We did have a fairly exciting outing with the horses (yep, plural!) this weekend too, but that’s a whole nother post for tomorrow… stay tuned.

Yeah you’re right, that title was seriously a stretch. It’s 5am when I’m typing this, give me a break.

If you’re like me and have spent this latest cold front hiding inside trying to pretend that winter doesn’t exist, yet are still a huge nerd and always enjoy distracting yourself with horse-related educational material, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some of the videos I’ve watched lately that I thought were interesting!

Q&A with Dr. Barry Miller from the Virginia Tech Helmet Safety Lab. This lab is working on putting together a rating system for equestrian helmets that will finally give us actual safety rankings for helmets rather than just a pass/fail of pre-determined standards. You can learn more about the rankings, helmet safety technology (including MIPS), and the lab/testing itself in this Q&A.

I get people asking me pretty regularly for recommendations on sporthorse conformation/breeding books and reading material, so I thought this webinar might be of interest to some of you. It’s a pretty detailed and in-depth discussion of sporthorse conformation (and yes they do talk about differences between dressage horses and jumping horses) with KWPN judge Marian Dorresteijn.

If you’re looking for stuff regarding lameness, physical issues, colic, etc, Love of the Horse has a good On Demand library. You have to sign up to watch, but it’s free!

USEA has also been posting videos on their Vimeo account of various sessions they had during their convention last month, including but not limited to a couple of the ones that piqued my interest the most during their livestream:

Competing in Thermally Challenging Climates (applicable not just to eventers! This is a great one for us southerners especially… also kind of nice to daydream about what it was like to be hot…)

Equality in Eventing (and equestrian sports in general)

Hope y’all are staying warm out there. If you’ve seen any other good videos lately that are worth a share, drop them in the comments!

I think the initial little few week period when you first get a new horse is a really fun time. You get to learn who they are, what their personality is like, their likes/dislikes, and all the little quirks. Now that Gemma’s been here about a week and a half she’s settled and gotten to know me and is coming out of her shell a bit. For instance, despite being skinny when she came off the track, that girl loves her food. Like, I thought Henry was a screamer for food but Gemma might have him beat. She neighs when I have feed, when I have hay, when I have treats, or any time she thinks I might or should have any of those things. There’s a lot of hollering for food. She’s definitely put on some weight already too, so I’m hoping she’ll join the Chonk Club sooner rather than later.

Since she’s got a very good appetite she goes through hay pretty quickly (we’ve already made two hay runs for her, but as long as she wants to eat it I’m happy to buy it!), and since she’s also currently in ulcer treatment (because racetrack) we’re doing our best to make sure she always has hay in front of her. She didn’t really seem to love eating out of haynets though, but if I put the hay on the floor she drags it around and pisses in it, so Hillary brought out her Porta-Grazer. It took Gemma a few days to figure it out, but now it seems to be doing it’s job pretty well – she finishes most of her hay every night and doesn’t make a mess of it, and it helps the hay last longer through the whole night. I’m not sure that Gemma loves the Porta-Grazer, but she hasn’t really complained too much. Until yesterday anyway. Gemma’s got jokes.

I SWEAR I heard her laughing when I found the poo and said “GEMMA NO! WE DON’T SHIT IN THIS! PORTA-GRAZER NOT PORTA-POTTY!”. She just gazed cooly back at me from her pen with what I can only assume is the horse version of a smirk. Tell me she isn’t laughing.

She’s definitely got plenty of personality, and it’s slowly but surely starting to trickle out. I think she’s gotten to know me well enough by now. She’s still very polite most of the time – not nearly as cheeky as a certain bay gelding we all know and love who I swear whips you in the eye with his tail out of spite – but she’s coming out of her shell for sure. So far I quite like what I see. Enough sass and opinions to keep things interesting (would I even know what to do with a horse that didn’t have opinions?) but nothing extreme or ridiculous or rude. Even if/when she does have a spooky or naughty moment, which have been very few and far between, she’s quick to settle back down and get with the program. She doesn’t build or spiral into a pit of anxiety. Smart girl. I think she’s also very happy to be back on a quiet relaxed farm and not at the track. Her connections didn’t think she liked it there, and I think they were right.

Gemma still sleeps A LOT… whether that’s making up for the lack of good sleep when she was on the track or if that’s just her, we shall see as time goes on. I’m pretty sure she’d sleep through a hurricane though. Or a winter weather/high wind advisory like we’ve got today, at the very least.

GemmaQueenofNaps?