If you read my update posts after Galway you may remember me talking about how Presto is going to be staying with Megan through the spring now, and how at the disappointment of not bringing him home as planned, I spiraled pretty hard and found myself looking at OTTB’s (my classic go-to spiral maneuver, don’t judge me). Hillary will be riding Henry this winter, and I was mega bummed to not have Presto coming home for me to ride. I was really looking forward to starting a new challenge, something different to work on and do stuff with. I was deep in the OTTB facebook spiral when I told Michelle what was happening and she was like “why don’t you just come get one the mares to ride over the winter instead”, because she’s less insane than I am. I happily took her up on that offer.

The two best candidates were Vee or Grace, who are very different. Vee of course is a TB, has been ridden a little bit since her racing career concluded but is basically not much further along than just off the track, although from the riding Michelle has done with her she’s been quiet and simple.

Grace is an Irish Sporthorse (although mostly Selle Francais and Holsteiner with just a wee bit of actual Irish via Clover Hill) who had evented pretty extensively with an amateur before joining the broodmare herd.

I was kind of on the fence… I love OTTB’s, I’ve always found them really rewarding and fun to work with. Pretty much my entire riding career has been built on them, after all. But there was also a lot of appeal to Grace, who could slip into my routine quickly and easily and be able/ready to go do things without a lot of prep or foundation-building. Admittedly there are some activities coming up over the winter that I would love to do and not have to worry about having to prepare a super green horse for or coax a super green horse through. Like foxhunting and xc schooling.

Both mares are pretty good in a herd, and the care for each was about the same (ok Grace is an easier keeper food wise – no surprise there) so one didn’t really win out over the other as far as how they would fit into the farm. I mentioned it to Megan and she immediately said “Grace! Go get Grace. She would be PERFECT for you.”. Megan has taught Michelle some lessons on Grace before so she’s fairly familiar with her and likes her. I knew Grace when she was competing (Henry and I showed against her some) so from what I knew of her, I had to agree. Plus Michelle has been riding her some already, so she’s more legged-up than Vee is at the moment.

All that to say, Grace is coming to me this weekend on loan for the winter! She’ll have a little time to settle in, I’ll have some front shoes put on her, and then I’ll start playing with her and see how it goes. Hillary will be able to come ride Henry while her horse is away for training, and I’ll have Grace so we can still ride and go on adventures together. We won’t be doing anything strenuous or ambitious but it’ll give us both something fun and different to do over the winter. And then in March when breeding season starts I’ll just take Grace straight over to the specialist vet that does Michelle’s ET work, since she’s not that far from me anyway.

Michelle as usual is the real MVP and has really saved the day on this one. She da bess. More updates next week once Grace is here!

Things are a bit quiet around here at the moment. I’m enjoying it because I know that it’s the calm before the storm, with a lot of things happening in the next few weeks.

Henry was back to 100% within a day of having his shoe pulled so his abscess could drain. He’s having to wear a boot on that foot because he’s not getting re-shod until next Monday and he’ll chip it up otherwise, but luckily we’re used to working with hoof boots since he has a history of pulling shoes (although way less with this current farrier than any others before). I don’t really like jumping in them, although we have before… it just feels a little clumsy, but he can flat just fine so back to “work” he goes.

Naturally he is FULL OF BEANS having had over 2 weeks off total, between my Cali trip and his abscess. There’s been a lot of dolphining around the hacking trail. It’s like a Sea World audition, although with the current state of his dad bod the sounds that come from him are more like grunts than squeals these days. It’s entertaining either way, and he feels great. LOOKS a mess… needs a bath and a mane trim and another body clip, but…. he FEELS great.

This weekend we also took Mina down to the river refuge for some hiking.

She continues to not like car rides and she definitely has anxiety about unfamiliar places. Plus no one ever taught her how to walk properly on a leash, omg. Her shelter notes said “strong puller” and they were not playing. At home she’s really never on a leash, because farm dog, but we’ve been working a lot on her verbal recall, and thankfully it’s translating over to the leash walking. She’s learned “wait” now, which helps tremendously when she wants to start shooting ahead and pulling. It’s light years better than when we started.

Luckily the place we went was largely deserted, so we only came across a few other people and dogs. I had her step off the side of the trail and sit while the others passed us, so she wouldn’t spiral. She just gets overexcited and overwhelmed easily, trying to prevent that from happening seems to be the key when she’s out and about in public.

At home she’s a fabulous farm dog. A bit overly enthusiastic sometimes, but she’s really settled into farm life well. It’s a good outlet for all of her energy, and she likes the routine of it. On days when I hack Henry she comes with us and runs around the pasture… it’s the only way to actually get all her energy out. I have no idea how the hell she was ever an apartment dog, she’s off the charts energy-wise. Methinks that has a lot to do with why she ended up back at the shelter. Her nickname Beans really suits her because she’s permanently full of them.

The weather here is cooling off and the leaves are starting to fall… I can’t believe it’s already Thanksgiving week. What the heck. Where did the whole year go?

I go today to get my covid booster, fingers crossed that it’ll go as easily for me as the first two shots went. I’ll have my first draft of the Black Friday sales post up on Wednesday, so be looking out for that! And more fun horsey news tomorrow…

Well guys, next week is it – Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday. It has caught me completely off guard this year (how the f did it get to be the middle of November already?) and I realized yesterday that I’m already way behind the eight ball on starting to prepare my equestrian Black Friday Sales post. I both love and abhor that list, if I’m being honest. It’s gotten me some great deals but it’s also a mega huge pain in my ass to put together and maintain. Normally I run several updates, adding sales a few times a day each day in that time period. This year I’m going to be away from my computer on Friday and Saturday, so I’m trying to start gathering sale information early to get as many in that initial post as possible. Thus, if you’re a company with plans for a BF/SBS/CM sale, please send me the info (via my contact page) as soon as possible to make sure I can get you included early on.

In other news, Henry would like everyone to know that despite his near death experience (his words) he seems to have recovered use of his broken limb (his words). It was touch and go there for a while (his words) but he thinks he may just pull through after all.

Naturally I’m talking about his abscess. He was fairly convinced that this was the end for him, because his drama level is always 11, but we got it sorted out.

I had a feeling that the abscess was trying to come out under his shoe, because that’s what they do EVERY TIME with him despite my best efforts to pull it elsewhere. On Monday I texted the farrier and asked if he might be in the area anytime in the next few days and would have time to stop by and pull that shoe off. Luckily he doesn’t live super far from me and has other clients around, so he said he would stop by on his way home that afternoon. As soon as we pulled it I knew I was right, you could smell it immediately. Vomit. I got some on my hand the other day when I was changing out his animalintex wrap and I thought the smell was never gonna come off my skin. I’m not normally sensitive to smells but I legit gagged.

It was gross, and oozing some seriously nasty black goo. The farrier dug out a tiny bit just to make a better track for it to drain, and I opted to just leave the shoe off for now since Henry is on the schedule to be re-shod after Thanksgiving anyway. It’s a hind foot and I’ve got hoof boots, so he should be fine until then and I can keep it cleaner. The hole itself is actually quite small.

Henry hates wearing his glitter-boot-of-shame on a hind foot but he’s already like 98% better and it seems to be almost done draining now. I’m glad we pulled his shoe off for sure, it’ll drain and heal a lot faster. Funnily enough this is the exact same foot and almost the same spot as where he blew his last abscess, almost exactly 6 months ago. Against all odds (his words) he’s survived two near death experiences (his words) in one year. What a trooper.

I finished up the last of my four Airrosti appointments before all of my October travel started, and I was really interested to see if/how the program worked out for me throughout all that was to come. All of my trips (Ocala, Maryland, Cali) entailed a lot of standing, walking, carrying… all the things that are oh so great for someone with back problems.

One thing that I had already known to be true before I even finished my Airrosti treatments was that it wasn’t like all my back issues just magically disappeared. It helped resolve the acute pain and swelling, sure, but what was most beneficial to me about the whole program was finding the cause of my reoccurring issues and then figuring out what to do to help prevent them from happening, or how to go about working some of them out on my own. That included stretching, foam rolling, and targeted strength exercises to make up for all of the muscle imbalances that I’ve spent basically my entire life creating.

I travelled with my lacrosse balls and resistance bands, since they’re small and easily packable. I also screenshotted all my exercises so I wouldn’t have to keep logging into the Airrosti portal to remind myself of what all was on my docket. Granted, by then I had pretty much memorized them all anyway, and expanded on some of them to ratchet them up a notch in difficulty.

While I didn’t run through every single one of the exercises every day (which isn’t the point anyway) I started to figure out which ones help me the most before or after which activities. On days where we sat a lot, I’d do more of the strength exercises and stretching. On days where we spent a lot of time standing, I spent a lot of time using the lacrosse balls on my lower back and glutes to help with the tightness. It helped a lot, and any problems I did have (there were a couple days where my back was legit killing me at the end of the day) were able to be helped a lot by the targeted exercises so that I didn’t carry the pain and/or stiffness into the next day.

For me I think the program as a whole was extremely helpful. My lower back isn’t constantly swollen and angry like it was before, and I’m a lot more comfortable in my day to day life. I think what was most valuable though was how much it’s helped me figure things out about my own body and how I move. Like the fact that when I think about standing or sitting up straight, my go-to maneuver is to hollow and hyper-arch my lower back. Which… causes a lot of my problems. I have scoliosis, so it’s even more important for me to always support my body with my core than it is for a normal person. My back can’t take it when I try to do that to my spine. So now I constantly find myself being much more aware of using and supporting with my core in literally everything I’m doing… even (or especially) when I’m just standing around. The second I hollow out my back, trouble starts. I’ve kind of had to re-learn the biomechanics behind doing even the most basic things.

And that’s also not to say that I’ve been 100% successful in my execution of all this. I haven’t. I still have a lot of strength to build up and imbalances to correct, which will take a lot of time. But I do feel now like I have a way better understanding and awareness of my own body and what’s happening to cause all these issues I’ve always had. It translates a lot to my riding too, where I tend to always want to “protect” my back a bit with my posture, which *shockingly* doesn’t work.

I will say that I think a large part of the success that someone has with Airrosti depends a lot on their particular issue as well as the provider they end up seeing. I was very lucky that the woman most local to me actually knew a lot about riding and how it affects your body (and vice versa) so I wasn’t having to explain a lot of things to her – she got it. But for me personally I feel like it’s helped me tremendously and changed the way I think about and approach a lot of things, and I’m definitely glad I did it.

For about half the year I live in sunshirts or tank tops, since Texas is balls-hot (scientific temperature reading) most of the time. However, once it stops being so aggressively Texas and things dip below 70, I feel like I’m always struggling to figure out how to dress myself. Layers tend to be key, since even when it gets “cold” here, it doesn’t tend to stay that way for long. Right now we’re doing the thing where it’s in the 40’s or 50’s at night and swings up to the 60’s or 70’s during the day. Which… it’ll do from basically now until April, with about a month’s worth of colder temps somewhere in there. I feel like every fall I’m caught off guard and find myself scrambling for long sleeves that aren’t sunshirts. Last year I found myself eyeballing the Anique shirts a lot, or the similar Lulu style long sleeve workout tops. I struggled with the idea of paying $70-$120+ for what was essentially just a baselayer though.

I ended up spending most of last winter in the Sporttek tech shirts, which worked out fine. They aren’t as fitted and don’t tuck in or layer as nicely, but the weight was suitable and they were only like $20. But over the past year a lot of equestrian brands have been popping up with Lulu knockoff type shirts like the one above for closer to the $40-50 mark, which was more enticing to me. One company put them on sale at one point over the summer and I snatched up two, just to see how I liked them, and well… I’m fairly obsessed. They’re fitted, they’re soft, they’re super stretchy, they’re comfortable, they’re the perfect length, they’re warmer than a sunshirt but not hot, and they have thumbholes (which I love when it’s chilly). I’ve been wearing them basically every single day that the weather is cool enough to allow it.

When I got them though I noticed that the packaging was VERY generic. Not branded in any way, and looked like something you’d buy off Amazon. I went to Amazon and scoured the listings of shirts like these but couldn’t find any that looked exactly the same. I ordered a light blue in a similar-looking one, and yeah… not the same. The cut was a little boxier and the fabric was slightly different. Then Holly had the idea to look on AliExpress and bam – found them. The exact ones I had ordered from the equestrian brand, like the same exact packaging and tags and little quote on the inside hem. They even come in the exact colors that a couple of the equestrian brands sell, so I’m pretty confident that this is where they’re sourcing them from. Except straight from AliExpress they’re $15 vs the $40 or $50 that they’re charging at resale. Granted, I think other people have figured this out too, or some brands have done a big order recently, because right now their online stock is pretty low. I’ve ordered 5 more myself now – 3 long sleeve and 2 short sleeve.

They ship from overseas so it does take a while to get them – mine took 3 or 4 weeks. I’ve spent a grand total of $74 though on 5 shirts, which would have cost me $200 even buying from the cheapest equestrian brand, so… to me it was worth the wait. I really love these shirts a lot and think they’re super versatile for the cooler months. Great to layer, and perfect to ride in. Since they’re fitted and aren’t too long (if you’re familiar with the Lulu Swiftly shirts, these are shorter like their race version), they tuck perfectly into breeches and stay put. I wear them a lot with jeans too though, especially if I’m doing anything active. They would make great cross country shirts too since they do sit so nicely under a vest.

I have a 35″ bust and bought the small, since I did want them pretty fitted for layering. They’re very stretchy but if you prefer a looser fit you should go up a size or two from your regular size. I was pleased with them at $40 a pop but I’m even more delighted at $15… can’t beat that!