If you follow WTW on social media then you got a little bit of a head start on this news.

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I’ve been trying not to spill the beans on this for months (not until everything was signed and done and dusted and certain), but a lot of you already had a pretty good idea via context clues. WTW has officially purchased a second location!

I haven’t mentioned it but we’ve been throwing this idea around for years, really. The Texas location is great in that it’s where Michelle’s family is, she has nice big foaling stalls, all of her breeding equipment is there, etc. What it’s lacking is space and lots of nice grass for babies to grow up. Plus it’s not really the best location to sell foals from – there’s nothing else nearby to draw people to the area. A second farm on the east coast would be much more ideal for raising foals as well as the commercial aspect of the breeding business, so we’ve been poking around for quite a while now.

At first the search was kind of all over the east coast, but eventually we narrowed it down to Aiken or Ocala. It just makes more sense, with those being major hubs. People are through those areas often, there are a ton of horse shows and events locally that make it cheaper/easier to get young horses out and about, and the warmer weather is easier for us Texans to cope with. At the end of the day, though, Ocala just ticked a few more boxes than Aiken did. Originally we were thinking longer term, more like a few years from now, but with the explosion of the Ocala area since WEC opened (and now with the news that they’ve purchased OJC to turn into an eventing/polo facility as well), it was kind of a “now or never” thing as far getting a farm with enough land and not being priced out.

Bobby and I looked at couple places when we were in Ocala in April, and it was pretty much right after that that the search began in earnest. Michelle and her husband flew down over the summer to look at a bunch more, putting an offer in on one that was under contract already but accepting backups, but that one didn’t pan out. Option B was this place, a 58 acre farm that’s been a racehorse breeding/foaling/raising facility for the past few decades. They put in an offer, it was accepted, and so began all the red tape and BS that comes along with a big purchase like this.

Michelle and I flew out to see the farm in October before we went to Maryland, and that was my first time seeing it. We spent a few days walking around, taking in the layout, thinking through all the options for how it could work, and making lists. With 5 barns, tons of turnouts, round pens, two homes, and a eurocizer, it’s got some really great bones. It’s even got a breeding lab and two foaling stalls with viewing windows from the office, so it does have the capability for breeding/foaling to happen there in the future as well. There’s definitely some work required to get it cleaned up a bit, get some fences repaired, old equipment cleared out, things painted and restored to their former glory, some landscaping put in, road repair, etc. It’s perfectly functional as-is though, so a lot of those things can be done over time, which is the plan.

The idea is that the racehorse mare/foal boarding aspect of the business will stay, as those boarders want to stay on. The barn worker also wanted to stay on, so essentially no part of that will be changing, at least for a while. The facility is large enough to accommodate multiple things. The first “new” thing that’s happening is preparing it for it’s new seasonal trainer – Megan. Michelle and Megan have had a working relationship for a few years now, Megan has some WTW horses and Michelle plans to send her more, so… it makes sense for her to have a permanent place in Ocala that she can base out of in the winter. Getting the property ready for a riding operation to come in for a few months requires a little bit of scrambling at the moment, but it should work out. The first order of business is putting in a new all weather riding arena – something that also everyone else in Ocala is trying to do right now. The location of the farm is hard to beat though, we drove to some of the main facilities while we were there to get a feel of how far they were and what the drive was like – 10mins or less to OJC, Sweet Dixie, and Majestic Oaks, 18mins to WEC. It was blowing my mind just how close everything was. For someone who has to drive 2 hours each way just to get to the closest XC schooling venue I can’t even fathom having 5-10 options all within half an hour, much less all the different shows happening everywhere all the time.

Going forward once the foals are weaned at the original WTW location, they’ll be shipped out to WTW East to grow up in the big lush pastures of Ocala. Anyone interested in purchasing can view them there, and if desired they can continue to board the foal there until it’s riding age, something we hadn’t been able to offer before. As a business it gives us and our clients a lot more options. And the person in charge of giving them their early education and raising them to be good equine citizens? That’ll be me. I have a lot of stuff to wrap up here, tons of logistics to figure out that I haven’t even started on, and even more things to get in order, so the move won’t happening be right away. Most likely guess would be about 6ish months. We’ll just have to see how things shake out. The current barn worker onsite at WTW East is plenty capable of taking care of them in the meantime. Michelle will remain at the Texas location to do the breeding/mare care/foaling out.

About a million people have asked me about the t!ny h0use – will it stay or go. That I don’t know yet. The Ocala farm has a little house for me (well I claimed it immediately anyway, so… it’s mine now lol) so we will have to decide if we want to sell the tiny, keep it here and rent it out, or take it with us and turn it into a rental. A lot of yet-unknown factors weigh into that decision, obviously, so for now I’m not sure which it’ll be. The little house on the farm is also small, maybe 600 sq ft if I was guessing, which is the perfect size IMO. It has 2 bedrooms though, which would be nice for the SO to be able to have room for all his stuff. It’s also about 40 feet away from the small cinder block barn that I’ve claimed for my horses, and all of it is toward the middle of the property, away from the seasonal rental front barn and well back off the road.

So there ya go – beans officially spilled, cat finally out of bag. I think this mostly gets you caught up on everything that’s been happening behind the scenes over the past few months. Now there’s even more to do, we really haven’t even begun yet, but I’m pretty freaking excited to finally have sight of what’s next. This is the beginning of the next phase for WTW and for myself!

How are we only a week away from Christmas already? I’m definitely not ready, but Michelle is a big Christmas fan (she’s one of those people that binges Hallmark movies, help me) so naturally she added some decorations to the barn. The babies were inside anyway since it was also farrier day, and they were quite interested in the decorating process. Or, in some cases, just posing with said decor when it was up. It made for some cute pics.

And while eventually they weren’t very impressed with the decor…

when it was first getting pulled out and hung up, they had a few opinions on all that stuff.

Once the barn was decorated they got to try on their outfits for next week’s “formal” Christmas shoot. We figured we’d do one more themed Foal Friday post/photo shoot for them, especially since next week’s falls on Christmas Eve. Couldn’t resist the occasion! So out came some hats.

Merry-almost-Christmas-week from the WTW babies!

You know how sometimes these random bits of horsey information just live in the back recesses of your brain until you actually see/do something that brings them to the forefront again? I’ve been having that experience over here this week.

I don’t even know where I originally heard or saw this, but I knew there had been some kind of study done about horses seeming to prefer drinking out of of blue buckets. Specifically light blue or turquoise.

Maybe I heard it on a podcast, maybe I’d seen someone post it on facebook… who knows. I had definitely heard about it, but it just kind of went in one ear and out the other since it was information that really didn’t pertain to me. I’ve never in my life owned a turquoise bucket, I always tend to buy ones that match my stuff, like navy, black, dark green, etc. I was skeptical that it was particularly true at all but reasoned that it probably just had something to do with how horses see color. I know that horses have dichromatic vision, so they mostly see blue and yellow with everything else in shades of gray or brown… mostly red is really indistinguishable for them.

I have an app that I like to use on XC at shows to see the jumps how the horses do – it’s always really interesting. What seems bright or crazy colored to us almost never looks like way to them.

Anyway, back to buckets.

When Grace got here and we got her stall ready, we originally pulled the two red buckets out of the stack of barn extras. Then we realized that one of the red buckets had a crack in it, so it got traded out for the next bucket, which happened to be turquoise. She had a red bucket and a turquoise bucket in her stall, and I didn’t think anything of it. Fast forward about a week and I started to notice that no matter where the turquoise bucket was (I dump and clean the buckets daily so sometimes it ended up returned to the corner spot and sometimes it ended up in the middle spot) she ALWAYS drank more of the turquoise bucket than the red one. Even when she came into her stall and went to get a drink, she would pass the red bucket and go straight for the turquoise one.

Once I noticed it I started moving the turquoise one around on purpose, and sure enough EVERY single night she would pretty much empty that one and barely touch the red one.

But, ya know… maybe it was just Grace? I figured a better test would be Henry. He had two purple buckets, and he ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS uses his corner one just for discarding his unwanted hay scraps into (he won’t drink it unless he’s absolutely desperate in the middle of summer and he’s already drained his other bucket). So I grabbed the second turquoise bucket out of the storage barn and put it in the corner position. I’ll be damned, y’all. I’ll be damned.

It’s been 3 nights now and he’s drank more from the turquoise corner bucket than he has from his previously preferred bucket every single night. I can’t even stress how bizarre that is, he just does not drink from the corner bucket ever.

I have to admit that I think there’s definitely something to this whole bucket color thing. I mean, I’m not sure that they’re drinking more overall than usual, but they definitely do seem to show a preference when it comes to which bucket they drink from if given a choice. Don’t mind me, just off to buy a bunch of ugly turquoise buckets…

I always keep photos in my phone so I remember to circle back or mention stuff in blog posts, and then sometimes that never actually happens. I have no way of even going back now and making it cohesive so we’re just gonna dump all this stuff from the past couple weeks into one post with some mini-updates and call it done.

First, all the Black Friday stuff has arrived. I don’t have full opinions on everything yet – I haven’t even used everything yet – but it’s all accounted for at least, even the overseas stuff. I’ve worn the sunshirts from Urban Stride, definitely a good buy. They’re a great weight and really cute. I love the sleeve detail.

I’ve also worn the Pomme breeches, which I definitely like, but don’t quite love as much as my Quur. I don’t love anything as much as those right now. The Pomme have a nice higher rise, and I think they’re fairly flattering, but just a couple fit tweaks would make them better for me personally (more booty space, less knee space). They’re comfy though, and I’ll definitely wear them. I think the styling of them is really cute too.

I think my favorite detail is how the knee patch is little silver silicone letters of their brand name.

I also got the ROM breastplate which just came a couple days ago. The shape of it isn’t quite right to the horse’s anatomy, it’s a bit too square in the collar, but it still sat fine enough on Grace. We’ll see if maybe it improves a bit as it breaks in. Likely I’ll probably use this one at home and save my custom one for special occasions. I do like that the ROM comes with a girth strap and running attachment, so you can just put that on to use a running with it rather than having to use a different breastplate entirely.

The other big thing was Henry’s nebulizer, which I have yet to even take out of the packaging. This isn’t the time of year when he needs it, and my brain just cannot handle having to think too hard about this right now. We’ll play with it in a few months when the weather gets hot again and I (maybe) have more brain capacity.

Speaking of weather, Texas has been doing it’s usual Drunk December thing. For the most part it’s been warmer than usual (it’s been… really nice actually? which just makes me nervous, I don’t trust it…) but last weekend it went a bit off the rails for precisely 24 hours.

It’s the kind of forecast I think every horse person fears the most, going from 85 to 30 and then back to 80 in a short period of time. I soaked everyone’s dinner and added extra salt to make sure everyone stayed hydrated. Quinnie said I ruined her meals and thus her entire life and called me some rude names. Henry and Grace both seemed to like their mushy meals, slurping it all up and licking their bowls clean. We all escaped the weather swing in one piece, at least.

Well, ok, the human was cold. I think I’m still traumatized from the Snowpocalypse in February, I am NOT A FAN. I put on a lot of layers, including my ski pants, and my hands were still so cold they hurt. I might bitch a lot about the heat, but at least it doesn’t make my hands hurt. Cold is the worst.

Other than that one day it’s been pretty warm and humid though, so… I guess I can’t complain too much yet. I’m glad I clipped the horses last week because they were both getting sweaty even just in turnout, and Henry especially had a ton of hair.

Grace was definitely the better behaved of the two, Henry is just so dramatic that he’s twitching before you even touch him with the clippers. Plus I was really having to play musical clipper blades because the 10W I got SUCKED, I forgot how bad the finish is on the Oster blades, so I was having to use the last bit of sharpness in all my old T-10’s. The current T-10 shortage is a real problem. I was able to use my new blade sharpening kit (remember that silly black friday purchase? It actually WORKED. It was a PITA, but it did work) to bring a couple of them back to life well enough to get both horses clipped.

I mean, did I make my hands bleed in two places while trying to sharpen the blades? Maybe. Minor details. It worked out in the end.

As for Presto, he’s been granted turnout access again, which he immediately seized the opportunity to be his naughty, trouble-making self.

Luckily he didn’t run around or anything, thank goodness, but he did free himself and a bunch of other horses so quietly that the people in the barn didn’t realize what was happening until he’d accrued his own little herd. Typical.

Guess what I did 8 years ago today?

Indeed it’s Henry’s Gotcha Day, and I can’t even believe it’s already been EIGHT YEARS. On one hand, I don’t remember what life was like without Henry in it, but on the other hand it still feels like only yesterday when I was like “surprise, internet! Look at this random horse I bought off facebook after thinking about it for like an hour! No, of course I didn’t pre-purchase him! LOL”. I’m crazy, yes. These days it’s kind of normal to buy them sight unseen off of facebook though, isn’t it? Whatever, it’s fine. “To live greatly you have to risk greatly”… or something like that.

This year things are a little different in that Hillary has the ride on Henry for the winter. I thought I couldn’t possibly love that horse any more than I already did, but seeing him bop around with her over some bigger jumps and give her confidence over tougher questions is so friggin cute it feels like my little black heart might explode on a daily basis.

To know him is to love him, and while she was already a Henry fan before and has sat on him a few times in the past, riding him regularly and taking him XC schooling this past weekend really seemed to seal the deal. Now she comes rolling in here with her BEMER blanket and her arms full of bags of cookies and boxes of Oatmeal Creme Pies and he’s like “FINALLY someone who appreciates me properly!”. As if the world didn’t already revolve around him before. Please. That horse gets an obscene amount of cookies every day and my whole life revolves around making sure his needs (aka wants) are sufficiently met. Details, he says.

Hillary’s jumped Henry at home a few times now, and last week I went out and bumped some of the jumps up to Prelim height for her. Part of me was wondering what she’d do… would she rise to the challenge and attack it with the gusto I know she has in her? In true baller fashion she jumped them all without even bugging her eyes out at me once. So proud. And the reason I wanted to bump up the showjumps at home was in preparation for the Pine Hill trip over the weekend.

It’s hard to fully explain to someone who hasn’t ridden him, but XC is Henry’s element. He’s a totally different horse out there than he is anywhere else. He’s very bold, he’s forward-thinking, he’ll take care of you, and he really wants to find the flags. All he really requires is that 1) you keep your shoulders back 2) you don’t shut down his gallop too much. If you can do those things, he’ll take you to anything with a smile on his face. And if you don’t do those things, he’s quick to let you know with some pinned ears and a wringing tail. EXCUSE ME HENNY NO LIKE.

I figured that if I could get them comfortable together over some height at home, it’d be more likely that Hillary would be comfortable pointing him at some of the Prelim questions. I mean, the entire point of her riding him this winter is to get more experience over bigger/harder/more technical questions, so… if we’re gonna do it, let’s do it. And boy did they.

They started over mostly some Training stuff, getting him solidly in front of her leg and getting her used to carrying more pace and riding him positively up to the jumps. They did some Training combos easy peasy, and as we went around the course and got more comfortable together, they started tackling some of the Prelim ones. Y’all, it was cute. So cute I have died a thousand times over since then from sheer cuteness.

She rode him really well, and you could totally watch things coming together through the combinations. If he needed to set his feet back down and add, she sat and supported and let him do it. She found the skinnies out of the combinations and rode up to them like she was hunting them down. She controlled her body up and down the terrain questions. By the end she was even willing to jump down the trio of banks, and Hillary hates down banks. I was sitting there feeling like I was watching something big clicking into place, and it was SO fun to have a front row seat. I don’t know who I’m prouder of, Hillary or Henry. Sharing is caring, but on a selfish level I get a lot of joy out of it too. I could watch Henry jump around XC all day long with hearts in my eyes, I just love him so much. Plus I’m very familiar with how fun XC Henry is, so seeing him put a smile on someone else’s face… I know that feeling exactly. Being able to give that to someone else is pretty awesome.

@breed.ride.event

Henry is the goodest boy, I love watching him take my friends around! #gobestfriend #equestrian #eventer #eventing #ottb #horsegirls #hearthorse

♬ TWINNEM – Remix – Coi Leray

I seem to find myself humbled by this horse’s kindness and generosity on a regular basis, and this is no exception. Henry has done so much for me, and seeing him happily give miles and confidence to a good friend like Hillary makes him even more priceless, if that was even possible. Being able to put someone on him and know for a fact that he’ll a) teach them something b) keep them safe… there’s a lot to be said for a horse like that. He is the most golden egg from the inside out, even when he’s making nasty faces at me in the barn for taking too long with his dinner or putting his blanket on in a way that doesn’t please him (he’s always got complaints about “the help” aka me). Never change, Your Highness, it’s your world and we’re just living in it.

Would he pass a vet check? No. Is he ever the fanciest horse in warmup? Definitely not. Is he a top tier athlete? Nope. Would anyone ever pick him out of a crowd? Doubtful. But he’s living breathing proof of why you shouldn’t overlook or undervalue these kinds of horses. Very few of us need a world-beater, but we all need one that’s kind and genuine and safe, and that’s exactly what Henry is, in spades. It took time and patience to build him, but the payoff is more than worth it. Henry is absolutely the goodest boy ever, and he’s got a home with me for life. Here’s to hopefully many more Gotcha Days.