What's Up Wednesday

 

Holy moly guys I am doing a terrible job of managing my time lately. I have been in the barn until 8 pm the last two nights. On the bright side, I have gotten a lot done! I'm chipping away at all the winter laundry, clipped the pony, rearranged the feed room. There's still a million more things to do, but at least progress is happening. 

The horses have had a pretty easy time of it for various reasons this week. I like to let them ease back into things when we move and the weather very much forced that on us too. It's like mother nature was like, oh you don't have an indoor to use anymore? How about a months worth of rain in two days? That mother nature. So funny.... 

We moved home last Wednesday, and didn't ride that day because it was a busy long day. But we did ride Thursday and everyone seemed pretty happy to be home. Poor Al nearly lost his marbles before I even got on though. And it wasn't his fault! I may have already told this story last week, but I can't remember. So here it is again:

I chose to ride Al first, as I normally do, on Thursday. We were taking our hand walk around the ring which is part of our pre ride routine. (It takes me forever to get this horse worked every day.) One lap each way before we get on. It seems to put him at ease a bit so that's what we've been doing. He often comes out breathing anxiously, but by the time we've walked about half a lap he usually settles down. Anyway, we were wrapping up our stroll, heading away from the neighbors property, when Al bolted past me, nearly knocking me down. I got him stopped and we both turned to face the neighbor's property. At that moment, said neighbor tossed something that sounded like sand straight into the very thin tree line that we share. This is the exact spot where Al spooked two years ago and tossed me. So already a questionable area of the ring for him. I actually said something to the neighbor and while I'm not sure he actually apologized he did say he didn't see us. I was really worried Al would spiral and I'd never get him over there again. I had a few options of how to handle this situation. But drawing on previous experiences with him, it seems like when things like this happen, I need to let it be. If I make a big deal out of it, and try to get him over it, he will never forget. If I just set it aside for the day, most often he's forgotten about it by the next day. So I chose this approach. We did some ground work in other parts of the ring to get his mind off his angst. And then I climbed aboard for our ride. I chose to just ride the quarter line on that side of the ring that day. And you know what? It wasn't that bad! It wasn't a hard ride, and we didn't do anything fancy at all. But we walked and trotted and did a little canter. We made some circles. No one died! And sometimes that's all you need. 

The next day he was fine about that long side. He's always a little suspicious over there, but so are the others. I get it. There is a terrifying monster over there. Fair. So does he stare out of the ring on that side of the ring? Yep. But that's okay, he's allowed to use his eyeballs as long as he keeps his legs moving in a forward trajectory. And he's been doing that. Good boy Al! We are starting to wean off the ulcer meds this week, so please cross all your crossables that he keeps his sanity. He can't stay on all of that forever! He continued to have easy rides through the weekend as I'm also adjusting to doing all the chores and then riding all the horses. Guess who isn't all that fit?? THIS GIRL! Monday is their day off and it poured buckets all day long. Tuesday was supposed to be more of the same, but it wasn't raining when I went out to the barn. The radar said I had time to get at least one worked so I chose Al and we got about half a ride in before the skies opened up. We made it back inside just before the brightest bolt of lightning I have ever seen. We got quite wet.

Today he gave me a really nice ride. He started out a little angsty and I didn't have high hopes. But by the end of the ride he was moving out in a HUGE trot and making circles without spooking at the jumps. It as lovely. I MIGHT, maybe try trotting some little jumps with him tomorrow depending on what's happening next door of course. We shall see how it goes. 

Eros has been his usual perfect self for the most part. He also has it pretty easy since we got home. I think he's much happier in my footing than he was at the other barn because he's been much more forward. He's been a little sassy, but not in a bad way. Today he did some grown up horse work like counter canter and lateral work. Vacation's over kids! I'm going to hold off on jumping him for a little bit. I haven't been thrilled with his soundness up front, so I want to take it a little easy and work more on fitness and flatwork. He's due for shoes, so I'm hoping once we get that done he'll feel a lot better. 

I have so much to report on with Shiny! First off, she's like a whole different pony back here at home than she was at our winter barn. I had really been struggling to get her moving there. Like full on having to whip on her. It was upsetting, and I was really starting to worry that something was very wrong with her. (Which I haven't fully let go of, but more on that shortly.) While she still does the Shiny shuffle for her warm up, since we've been home, the rides have been so SO forward. And I don't have to beg for it! I think maybe the heavy footing outside there was too much for her. 

The not great thing that's been going on with her, is ticks. We went on that fun trail ride for our last ride at the other barn, and I THOUGHT the 8 ticks I pulled off her were all of the ticks. BUT THEY WERE NOT. She started having all these tick bites all over her. She really reacts to them, so I knew what they were. Of course when more kept appearing I started to panic that maybe it was something else. So during my spiral, on Sunday evening after doing all the chores and riding all the horses, I decided to clip her fetlocks so I could clean up the bites on her legs better. But she had bites higher up too. So I ended up doing all of her legs up to her body and planned to finish clipping her Tuesday. 

It looked like she forgot her pants.

I found one more tick during this clipping. But then Tuesday (when her and Eros' rides got rained out)  and I finished clipping her body (except her ears, I need sedation for that part) I found more. Four more. And more bites. And then I found ANOTHER one today in her forelock. She now has nearly 30 bites on her. I really think I've found all the ticks, but her tail is so thick at the top, as is her mane, that it's still possible there's more. I'm worming them all tomorrow, and I've heard Ivermectin can help, so hopefully that will be the end of it. But I feel TERRIBLE about all these ticks. And this is why I don't trail ride. I'd forgotten. But now I remember. 

Nakee pony, covered in tick bites.

We have the vet coming out next Wednesday for our second round of shots, and Lyme titers for everyone! She has a chronically high titer normally, so I have a feeling there will be some doxy in her future. I also want to talk to him about her allergies. She hasn't coughed at all in several weeks, and she came off the Ventipulmin earlier this week. My other vet mentioned possibly getting her a nebulizer, so I'm curious to see what this one thinks when he listens to her lungs. Especially now that she's off the meds. I'm not against getting that for her if she needs it. But I'm hopeful her allergies are better now that she's home. The last thing I need to talk to him about is her body condition. I'm really happy with her weight, but I'm not thrilled with her muscle tone. Though this could very well be due to her lack of interest in you know... working the last several months. I've never seen her without a giant round bum, so that freaks me out a little bit that it's so not round now. 

Like... where's the rest of it? I'm pretty sure my ass is bigger than my pony's now. Awkward. Her topline is looking better than it was earlier in the spring when I had the vet out for her. So that's good news at least. I really need to find some money and get her a better fitting saddle soon. Nebulizer, saddle... this pony is getting expensive! Good things she's the cutest. 

In other news, I made the most exciting discovery the other day. I had thought my custom trunk from the old barn was bigger than my trunks I had at home. But I measured it in preparation of starting the hunt for a green cover for it. And it's the same size! So I just pulled the cover off one of my pretty trunks and put it on the blue one from the old place and my tack room looks so much better now. I need to rearrange things in there though. With the addition of that trunk, I should be able to rearrange things and take out a few other things in there to make everything less cramped. Work in progress. For now though, at least things match again.

I'd much rather look at this one uncovered. So pretty!

I got a new cabinet in the feed room so I could get ride of the Smartpak drawers. I put that together on Monday, and started moving things around in there. I think I want to get a few more cabinets and do more rearranging, but that will probably have to wait a little bit. After Shiny gets what she needs. 

New cabinet in between the feed bins and the boot cabinet. 

This is the mess that needs more cabinets. Work in progress.

There's a ledge that's about 10 inches wide on the two outside walls of this room. So nothing would be flush against the wall. Which would make a lovely home for rodents. So I'm not sure what I want to do exactly. I'm thinking maybe put the feed bins against where the ledge is on one of the walls, since they're not tall and easy to clean behind (and keep an eye out for unwanted visitors) and then have cabinets along the wall where the bins are now. OR I can see about getting a little extension made for the ledge so the cabinets could be flush with the wall and just slightly elevated. But that sounds more expensive. Plenty of time to figure it out since I'm not buying them just yet anyway. 

And my last interesting thing from this week is that I got to braid for one of fellow winter boarders on Saturday night. She shows dressage and asked if I could do something fun. So I tried this:

His mane was a little too thin toward the bottom so it didn't come out exactly as I'd hoped. But I've only ever done this once before, so I think I can improve on it in the future. The customer was happy though, and that's the most important thing! They won their class too!

And that's it from here! It's been a long week, but it's so nice to have the kiddos home in my backyard. Time to start getting to work!