What's Up Wednesday

 

The weather was crazy this week. We had rain and temps in the 50's but it dropped down to the single digits that same night. Gross. Ice everywhere. Despite that craziness, the horses have been mostly good. 

Shiny skipped her lesson this week. She got trimmed a hair too short and was feeling a little sore on her tootsies and I didn't think she needed to jump on sore toes. She didn't mind the break. I still kept her flatting lightly, and by the weekend she was feeling much better. 

Al also wound up skipping his lesson this week. After his free lunge Thursday morning, he was feeling a little sore behind. It's not the first time this has happened. He very much enjoys his free lunges but does not pay attention to his own feet. Sometimes he winds up whacking himself and then feels sore after. He's not the most stoic horse I've ever had either so he makes it very well known when he has a booboo. So we just observed the lesson we were supposed to be participating in. He's already feeling mostly better thankfully. Our vet will be out Friday this week, so if he has time, I'll have Al looked at just to be safe. 

Eros DID have his lesson, and he was wonderful as has been the norm lately. He was a touch fresh, but no torpedos, so that was nice. 

One of the things I enjoy most about the boarding barn is that they don't close for holidays. Staff gets Christmas off (other than feeding) but boarders are welcome. They even do potluck breakfast. This year, after breakfast we did an obstacle race bareback. Obviously, I chose Shiny for this particular shenanigan. We had to trot through (as in parallel to) some poles on the ground, trot over a little crossrail, canter a circle around some cones, grab a Santa hat from a standard, canter through a line of poles, then open and close a "gate" (a lead rope clipped to a standard that we had to unclip, walk through then re-clip, much easier said than done), then finally gallop through a set of standards that acted as your finish line. There were about ten of us participating and it took about 2-6 minutes a piece (depending on how the "gate" went mostly). Shiny went last, and I thought for sure I'd struggle to get her moving. But I gotta tell you. I think games is Shiny's calling in life. She was PUMPED! We only lost because of my lack of hand/eye coordination. I missed the Santa hat like three times. It took her a bit of time to figure out her role at the "gate" but I do think we were one of the fastest through that particular obstacle. We finished in fourth. Someone video'd but I don't have it yet, otherwise I'd have shared. It was super fun. You'll have to take my word for it. Afterwards I rode Eros bareback and decided to just handwalk Al since by then everyone had gone and he still wasn't quite 100% the day before. Figured a little break wouldn't hurt him. 

As mentioned yesterday, I'm in Florida for this week, so the horses are having training rides and/or hacks from whoever is a capable match for them. I got a video of Al yesterday in which he looked pretty good. Maybe a little stifle-y but that's kind of how he goes. He's definitely got some weird stifle action, probably from all the breeding he did before he came here. I may go down south and visit my horsey friends tomorrow morning. I have to see who's around. 

Florida has been fun so far. The day we arrived was a quiet one in which we just hung around the boat. (We're still staying on it despite not going anyplace.) Yesterday, our first full day, the kids went to the pool, and pretended I knew how to hit golf balls with my dad and stepmom at the driving range. They actually do know what they're doing. I do not, but I managed a few times to hit the ball straight and with some air. Lol. I'm really terrible at golf. It's fun though!

The boat is docked in one of those developments that Florida is known for. They're like mini towns. My dad and stepmom own a small house in the same development so that they can have access to all the amenities. There are multiple golf courses, a couple restaurants, a playground, pools, etc. So it's like staying at a resort. For this holiday week, they have all kinds of events planned. Last night was Carnival night, and they legit brought in a full carnival just for the evening. Games, rides, all the food... It was pretty impressive. The kids had a blast, and honestly, us grown ups did too. I'm still full this morning from all the donuts I ate. 

My brother and I each won these purple ponies
for the girls at the water gun game. I think the 
one on the left is a mare.

These guys looked even cooler when it got dark out.

Literally all of this was brought in for a single night.

Tonight there will be retro arcade games and ice skating. I think it's that fake ice skating with the plastic sheets, but it sounds fun either way. I'm about as good on ice skates as I am at the driving range, so I imagine hilarity will ensue. Will report back on that. Lol!

That's it from here! How was your holiday weekend? Are you still off, or do you have to work in between xmas and New Years?

What's Up Wednesday

This past week was kind of busy around here! Wednesday night I had a braiding job, just for one horse, so that was nice and easy. I got to take care of my boys before I had to leave, so they got their walks in.

I was home at a reasonable hour which was also nice!
Thursday was just a day. Work, ponies, bed. The usual. Friday got a little weird. Originally I was supposed to have two horses to braid: 1 mane, 1 mane and tail. But they asked if I could do the mane and tail horse in the morning instead because he was a terrible rubber. I agreed. So I did just the one horse Friday evening.

How cute is that little nugget? She's a large pony. She was a bit of a moving target to get braided, but hey, it got done. For some reason they look like they're lifting up in this photo, but they weren't. I think they're just throwing little shadows.
I got home around 10:30 and pretty much just went right to bed. I had to be up at 4:00 am to braid the other horse!

He also was a bit of a nudge this time to braid. But he came out just lovely, so that helps. I was all done by 6:15 am, and figured I could get a lot done that morning! Only problem was, not much is open at that hour on a Saturday. So I did what any basic white chick would do...

Went to Starbucks. Ha. I sat down and drank my giant coffee until things started opening up. Of course then I had to pee... So I stopped at McDonalds to use their restroom and bought another beverage. Hydration is important my friends. I then picked up my glasses that were having their lenses replaced, and got my car in for it's oil change. Next I picked up dog food, and then headed back to the farm. It was only 11 am, so i still had some time before I was scheduled to go ride my neighbor's horse. Enough to change, hang with the pooches for a bit, and feed the big kids their lunch.
I had SO MUCH FUN riding my neighbor's new horse! He's an adorable chestnut, about 16.2, I think he's 7 or 8. And I forget what kind of warmblood he is. (I'm so good at details...) He did dressage for a long while and now he's learning how to be a hunter horse. He's SUPER laid back (ok, maybe a bit lazy) and a lot of fun to ride. Not much seems to faze him. Neighbor had me do some work trotting a cross rail with takeoff and landing rails. A couple of times he got confused and pretty much demolished that X... but he never got flustered by it. He was like oops... let's try again! And he'd come back and be fantastic. No overjumping, or being nervous. Nothing like that. I wish I could have done more with him, but my asthma was really acting up and I had to keep taking walk breaks. Hopefully next time I'll be more useful!

I went back home after my ride, and got the boys out for groomies and their walks. Pretty uneventful.
For the evening, I met up with my mom and we went to the carnival in her town.

 It's a pretty small one, but we had fun playing games and eating fair type good. (Loaded baked potatoes for dinner and fried dough for dessert!) I won a pug!

I think it cost me $40. Whatever, look how cute! Plus proceeds benefit the fire department. The same FD that put out the fire at my barn back when I was a teen. So I don't mind throwing my money away for them! (And you know... for the stuffy.)
Sunday I was pretty lazy. I got up late (much needed) and then headed to the farmer's market. Followed that up with a little straightening in the house. Of course, then the clouds started rolling in, so I very quickly pulled the boys out for their walks. Jamp was so weird though, maybe some of you have some ideas about this... When I first took him out it was cloudy and I was rushing, so I just grabbed the lead on his door (no chain) and didn't bother stuffing his ears. He's been so lazy on our walks, I wasn't worried about any of that. (I haven't had to give him any ace for several weeks.) Well. Bad plan. He was a nut job! I reeled in my Jamp kite and brought him inside to calm down. Brushed him off until he was more relaxed, then stuffed his ears and got the chain lead. When we got back outside the sun was back out, and he could barely keep his eyes open.

I'm wondering if the sunlight is bothering his eyes or something? It just was so odd that he could go from a nutjob to a leadline pony in about 5 minutes flat. I'll discuss with the vet when I see him next, just in case it's something brewing.
He's also dropped some more weight, so doc and I have him building up his diet some. We've increased the amount of chopped hay he gets (that's for his meal, in place of grain) and have also added alfalfa.  He LOVES that alfalfa!
Rio of course was a gentleman and enjoyed his walks and grazing.

Photo actually from another day, hence the blue skies

I got them back inside just in time for the skies to open up. I hung out until it was time to feed, and then meandered my way over to the lake. It had stopped raining by then, but there was a threat of some thunder and lightning so the band was canceled. I got my lobster roll anyway. Don't need music to eat a good meal!
I took the pugs out to play in the yard for a bit since it was finally cooler out. They had a good time!

And the next thing I knew it was Monday. Monday I had a client lunch, so I took a half day. We went to a vineyard for lunch which is actually right by my house. I figured I wouldn't want to go back to work after. I figured right. I had some time to take care of the ponies, and then we had our book club meeting in the evening.
Last night we had a TON of much needed the rain, so the boys stayed in and just had some nice groomies. They seemed happy with that.
I don't have any rides on the schedule for this weekend yet, but I'm hoping someone will offer one up! I may go visit Badger too. We'll see.
How was your week and weekend? Do anything fun? Get much riding in or any horse shows?

What's Up Wednesday

Wednesday... Thursday... I don't even know what day it is! My morning was spent watching my computer update itself rather than typing out an exciting edition of What's up Wednesday. Super fun. Like watching grass grow.

No kidding it will take awhile. An hour and a half to be exact. Should have slept in!

This past week was far more fun and exciting than my morning computer update thankfully. As you all know, I've been having some troubles with Romey and his unwillingness to move. But I've been trying every day. And I think I may know what some of the issue was. Many months ago I started Romey on a supplement called Total Calm and Focus. I haven't found that it really makes him lots calmer (he's more or less a pretty chill guy, except for when he's not) but I think it does help with focus quite a bit. The place I order it from made a mistake and sent me a one day tube in error the last time I ordered. Because I ordered a bit late, I ran out of the daily powder before the replacement arrived. THEN, the replacement was wrong too. So he was off it for almost two weeks. Just about the same amount of time that my #inanimateottb problems arose. The correct item finally arrived Monday, so he's been back on for two days now. And today, he finally moved. I got him to walk pretty willingly for a decent amount of time. We walked, we halted, we walked again. There was a battle initially, but he finally gave in. We battled once more over the trot, but he gave in there too. We shall see if he continues to improve or if I just got lucky today....
But let's not dwell on Romey. It was a busy weekend full of ponies mostly, and a trip to the local carnival.
Saturday morning started early. I had a few horses to braid for Derby day at a local horse show. I planned to meet them at 6:30 to get started. Fortunately, the local venue is the barn where I grew up riding, which is only 15 minutes from my house.

I haven't done tails in awhile, but they all came out great (phew!).

I was done braiding by 10:00 am but I stuck around and watched for a little bit. My friend's daughter (also the junior from my green eyed monster post last week) was catch riding a medium pony in the 2'6" derby. I was dying to witness the #ponysquishing! She did a great job with him, and they wound up 5th.

Then I went to leave and got stuck waiting for a horse to load that REALLY didn't want to. There's one long driveway to get in and out of this venue, and that driveway is NOT the place to load horses.

I couldn't believe that's where these people decided to load. Thankfully the second horse got right on the trailer.
And then it was back home to work my own kids!

Jampy had a jump school, and he was mostly great. I say mostly because he did for some reason keep spooking down the one line I have set up. Eventually he got over whatever it was that was scaring him.

He's definitely getting stronger and jumping better. Hopefully he'll keep it up! I think we're ready to start putting the jumps up a little more. Nothing crazy, but I'd like to get him jumping around 3' so MAYBE we can get to a horse show. Or maybe he'll just be a derpy model forever:

Rio was perfect as always.

Even if he did want to meander the barn before getting untacked. He's such a voyeur, I think he was just checking out the new neighbors.

After ponies, I headed out the carnival a few towns over. I wasn't sure if I was going to go, so didn't make plans to meet up with anyone. But I had a great time on my own. I played some games:

In between gaming I stuffed my face with a baked potato and then more than my fair share of cotton candy. By the end of the night, I accumulated all sorts of crap prizes. I won this magical creature:

My friend asked me what I was going to do with it. I had no answer for her other than it was awesome. I mean, do you need a reason to have a neon green unicorn? Perhaps it shall be the new Winthrop Corner mascot.
I also won poop emojis for the pups and stocked up on candy apples for the tall kids:

Sunday morning I slept in a little cause I'm lazy. Then headed to town for a breakfast sandwich and the farmer's market.

There's a stand there that always has carrots, and they gave me a bag full of carrot greens for the ponies. They really made out well with the snacks this weekend!
Then it was back home for more riding. Rio and Jamp just flatted, and Romey pretty much did nothing while I tried to ride him. Thus, Romey lost his candy apple privileges. Jampy devoured his:

Rio ignored his. He normally likes them, but he can be picky. I gave his to Jamp eventually. No point letting it go to waste.
Post pony time I decided to walk down to the lake to listen to the band for a bit and have a lobster roll.

I would eat a lobster roll from the Snack Shack everyday if I could.... So buttery! So delicious. Monday brought high humidity and temps in the 90's so we've been taking it semi easy. We're still riding every day, but keeping it short and easy. It should break by Friday, so I'm hoping to jump Jampy around after work.
And that's what's up this Wednesday (or Thursday as the case may be). What's up with you?

Weekends really should be longer....

Summer weekends are the busiest of weekends that is for sure! After two weeks of early mornings braiding followed by the normal work and horse schedule, I was ready for a relaxing weekend! Unfortunately, I did not schedule one of those! But that's lucky for you because that would be pretty boring to read about, wouldn't it?
Saturday morning, Jampy and I had a horse show on the schedule. I got up at 5:45 (not too early!) and got him all braided and ready to go. Of course I got there too early as is my norm, but that was nice as it gave my helper and me plenty of time to get organized. I was pretty nervous about showing this weekend as none of my trainers were in town to help me out. It was just Jampy, my helper, and me! Yikes! I had to prep my own horse! Fortunately, Jampy and I seem to have gotten our acts together and we only embarrassed ourselves in one of the classes. Want a recap?? Sure you do! (Oh also, my helper took pictures this time!)

My first class was a flat class with 9 people in it. (Which was really odd as most classes at this horse show had maybe 4 people in them, it was really small!) Jampy was perfect the first direction, but the second way he started to get a little excited. I had to hold his mouth the entire way around to keep him from getting too excited. But it worked out ok as we won! Woohoo! (Good boy Jampy for holding it together!)

After the flat we went out to school over some jumps. He was still a little excited, and was pulling me to the jumps. I decided to let him play on the lunge line for a few minutes and work out the crazies. I'm not sure that was the best call though....
Our first jumping class was pretty close to perfect! We won that one too out of 13 riders. Good pony! Fence class #2 went pretty well, though Jampy was getting a bit tired. I was getting to the jumps just a little off our stride. So we were slightly further away from the ideal "distance" and the take off was just a little weak. I think it must have looked a little prettier than it felt though as we finished in 2nd. (My photos later will show a yellow ribbon, I thought we were third in the class, but we were actually second, oops!). The third class, I have to admit, was a disaster. DISASTER! My distance to the first fence was sooooo close to the jump, Jampy had to pop up to make it over. (That's really unattractive!) The next few jumps were nice, and then as I was coming around the turn to jump the line RIGHT NEXT TO THE JUDGE, Jamp broke to the trot. SUPER BIG NO-NO! I got the canter back in time to have the jumps work out well, but then I got much to close the last fence as well. Ugh. This all happened because poor Jampy was exhausted, and clearly, I was not helping him out much! Poor guy. Needless to say, we didn't get a prize in that one! Thankfully we had a little break before our last class.

The last one for us that day was the NEHC medal. This class is a qualifier for the Finals in October. I had shown in the class once earlier this year and placed second, meaning I was 4 points shy of qualifying. Third place is 4 points, so it looked like I had a decent chance of getting it done! There were only 4 people in it, so the odds were on my side! The break did both Jampy and I some good, and we managed to win the medal class too! Whoa! Good day at the pony show! We finished up Champion in the Adult Equitation Division (two weeks in a row)!

But here's where the day gets really good... My vet happens to also be the horse show vet, and I asked begged him to stop by on his way home to give Rio a quick little check up. I've been pretty worried about him since he's had so much muscle loss in his face, and really wanted a professional opinion as to his health status. Well... I'm so glad he stopped by! He inspected Rio's face and watched him walk and jog, and told me he thinks he's doing great! He feels that the recent atrophy is more residual to the original infection and not a relapse. He even thinks there's a chance he'll improve. Holy good news! Yay!

After ALL this, I met my brother, sister-in-law, and niece at the local carnival. My niece is too little for most of the rides and things, but she loved seeing all the flashy lights and kids running around. So cute!

She's the little one being held in this photo. I don't feel right posting other's people's kids on my blog, so no faces, sorry! But you'll have to trust me she was having a blast! On my way out I won the fried dough lottery (two pieces stuck together, counted as only 1! Mmmmm), and got some treats for the ponies of course:

Is it me, or did Saturday seem like a full weekend all in itself? Somehow it was only one day. WHOA. Sunday I slept in. Yes. Till 9. It was glorious. Until the knock on my door from my weekend barn cleaner at 9:05. Apparently Ducky who had gotten this fat lip:

Decided to rub it against the fence until it started bleeding. Then he decided to bleed alllll over the barn door. Oh no, not the door inside his stall. The outside door where all the world can think there was some kind of massacre at the farm. <<Sigh>> Kids. So I put on some jeans and a shirt, and set out to clean up Ducky and the barn door. Thankfully it's nothing major, and almost everything cleaned up fairly easily.
Next stop was the farmer's market where I managed to come home with mostly non-healthy goodies... oops. Here are my spoils:

In case you can't see, here's what I got:
A baguette, a loaf of English Muffin Bread, Honey Butter, cupcakes, four different cheeses, blueberries, cucumber, tomatoes, and potatoes. Mmmmmmmmmm

Next was the real adventure! This guy right here:

went off to spend a month (or maybe two) at cowboy camp. His antics have gone on long enough, so it's time he learned some lessons from the professionals. I really hope he comes back with a better attitude! I dropped him off and chit chatted with the trainer and owners at the farm. (I had another horse spend some time there a few years back, so we're all old friends!) Ducky seemed to settle in well enough. I am excited to go visit him in a week or two and see how it's going. It's definitely a little strange in the barn with only Jamp and Rio. Ducky always knickers at me when I walk in, and the other boys are so quiet!

My last weekend event was a quick visit to see my friend and her new baby boy. He is so itty bitty! I played trains with her older son for awhile, which was seriously just as fun as when I was a kid. (I'm pretty sure I'll never grow up.) Such a sweet family they are!

I got home around 8 and hung out with the pugs. They really know how to do weekends:

I followed their lead and napped on the floor with them until bedtime. Yep. Wild and crazy over here at the farm!

How was your weekend? Do anything crazy and fun?