What's Up Wednesday

 

Things are a little nutty around here this week. I mentioned before that I was waiting to set my course until the ring was re-graded, and that was set to happen this week. Along with that project, I'm having some privacy fence replaced and a few other odds and ends tended to. I'm glad it was scheduled for this week because my dad's boat captain returns this week also (he stays in the apartment here in the summer) and I noticed this when I was grazing horses the other day:

That's the deck to the front door.... I had thought the boards were just warped, but turns out some of them were also rotten. And then it turned out that the stairway was not good anymore either. So almost the cost of my new saddle later... I have to replace the whole thing. It's good timing since the carpenter is already on premises doing the other projects. But geeze. Horse showing gets more distant every week. Perhaps it's time I create myself a business of some sort. I need more income!

On the plus side, the ring looks SO MUCH better:

And I got the course set on Monday!

Looking forward to popping over it this week! Then maybe next week I can start thinking about some lessons. 

Things are going much better with the horses too! I was super angsty about riding on Tuesday with all the construction happening right next to the ring. But I need not have worried. They were all perfectly fine. Horses are so weird. The things you expect them to be spooky about they aren't. But heaven forbid there's some wind and the leaves on the trees move....

Al really seems to have settled right in here. This horse really just goes right along with whatever you throw at him. He's been much less spooky here than at the boarding barn. I think the difference is that here he goes outside for his turnout time before ride. At the other barn he was on the afternoon schedule for turnout. I think it's great for him to go play before working. If anything, he's been a bit lazy, but I'll take that over spooking at everything. Lazy we can work on easily enough. I haven't done a lot of jumping since the course wasn't set and we're just getting settled here. But we did pop over some single fences a couple times last week. 

He was perfect. Just jumps whatever you point him at. Such a good pony!

Eros is STILL waiting to get his hocks done... If you recall, our first appointment was thwarted when the boarding barn scheduled spring shots the same day as Eros' hock appointment. Can't do both on the same day, so I paid for an evaluation with the plan to inject at future visit. Then my vet got Covid and had to cancel. So he was supposed to come last Friday. Unfortunately, his father passed away and he had to cancel again. The only problem there was the office neglected to tell me that, so I was sitting in the barn waiting for him to show up to see Eros and Shiny. I had worked the other two horses but not them since I figured they would both need a ridden evaluation anyway. Well that was time wasted sitting there doing nothing. Around 3 the scheduler called me about rescheduling and I was very confused. I said I thought he was coming this afternoon? And she was all, oh I have note here that we left you a voicemail that we had to cancel. Uh... nope. No voicemail here. Wonder who they actually called? I mean, I'm not an ass hole. I'm really sorry about his father and totally understand the need to postpone. but I am upset that I wasn't informed. That, and I feel like a real shit horse parent knowing my horse has been in need of maintenance since April. Poor thing. So we rescheduled for this Friday. THEN on Monday they called and asked if I would ship over to the boarding barn for my appointment. I don't mean to be a full on ass, but I said no. It's incredibly inconvenient for me to do that, not to mention I think Pammon will come unglued if I take some of the horses away at this point. He's finally settling in. So I guess we'll see if he even shows up this week. I really love my vet, but it might be time to consider looking into other options. It's just not fair to my horses to not get the care they need when they need it. And obviously, I'm not a big enough client to get priority over someplace like the boarding barn. He's been there five or six times between when Eros got evaluated in April and now. He's been here zero times.

ANYWAY, rant over... Despite being in need of maintenance still, Eros is being a good dude. I haven't pressed too hard about a lot of collection. It's clearly very difficult for him at the moment and I don't want to make him do something that hurts. So his topline is disappearing, but he's happy about not working especially hard. I have let him pop over a few little things too. He enjoys it, and I haven't tried to do any related distances so that keeps it easy for his him too. 

He's not been dragging me around so that's nice! I can't wait to get him feeling his best. Hopefully this week. Fingers crossed!

Pammon seems to be settling in. He's not screaming anymore, and the last couple of rides he didn't whinny at all! Are we still using some ace? Yes. I am weaning him off though, and so far so good! Yesterday I rode him while they were rebuilding the deck AND one of the jumps blew over right behind him, and while that did startle him a little, for the most part he was a steady eddy. And we're almost back up to his full prescribed workout too. We're back to his full 20 minutes of trotting and we're just a few laps behind at the canter. Next week we'll be back where we started. He's feeling good, and I'm hopeful he'll be able to start jumping some little cavaletti and cross rails soon. Though maybe before that we have to try riding without the equiband. Heh.... details. 

I can feel him using his body better these days, and I think it will just be a matter of being really cognizant of how he's using himself moving forward. He's pretty lazy in general, so if he can do it easier he will. It's my job to not let him. Noted. Riding is hard. Lol!

Things are going better with Shiny pants too! I finally got a little tough with her. I'm not sure still if she's sore somewhere or what, but now that I've been a little more demanding, the canter departs are getting back to decent, and she's just working better in general. I swear sometimes I think she just wants to you to be a little mean. She's like a younger sibling, pushes your buttons till you get mad, and then she's a little angel. Mares. Sheesh. Hopefully she'll get seen on Friday. That hind leg is definitely improving but still has some fill. So we'll see if he wants to re ultra sound, put something in there, or maybe just keep on keeping on. Time will tell. Hopefully she'll be able to start jumping again soon too. She hasn't seen a fence since last fall!

In other news, the pool is open!

It's obviously not ready for swimming... but it's open! And that's the first step. Hopefully it clears up soon. I can't wait for some post ride floating!

I also got my annual bracelet order from my favorite horse show, so I pumped those out on Monday:

And I made myself a wrap bracelet while I was at it:

I have some supplies on the way for some fun crafts too. Things have been busy and I haven't been making much lately, so I'm excited to get back into doing some of that. 

And that's about it from here! Did you all have a good week? How accessible is your vet? Do you have to wait weeks for maintenance type appointments or can you more or less do things whenever? I'm trying to gauge where my patience should be...