What's Up Wednesday

 

I feel a little like I'm stuck in ground hog day over here... Not because everyday is the same, because I personally thrive on consistency. But because I'm still trying to get the same three things taken care of that I've been trying to get done all summer! Namely: get the pool swimmable, get the cable situation sorted out, and get my vehicles attended to. Unfortunately, everything is taking like seventeen appointments to get finished. 

The pool is nearly ready, it's still slightly green tinted, but the chemicals are all balanced and it's perfectly safe to go in. But it's cold and the heater has decided to not work. I've been keeping the electrician very busy. He rewired the heater, but now the pool guy needs to replace something on it and hopefully then it will do it's thing again. 

The cable situation went similarly. Everything was perfectly fine in my house, but the cable in the apartment stopped working sometime between when my last tenant left and my most recent arrived. I had the tech out to fix it, but it turns out he couldn't because I needed to get a stronger internet connection up there. The new boxes are wireless apparently. So back came the electrician to run ethernet to that building. I had him run to the barn too so I can get my cameras up and running finally. (That's still on the to do list though.) I have another cable tech coming this Sunday, so hopefully that will finish up that particular project. 

As for the vehicles... Ugh. So it all started because my emissions were due for the car. The same day I got my notice the check engine light came on. I went in to have it scanned and see what the issue was. It came back as an air pump and the tech said sometimes if they clear it, it will stay off because it can get clogged, trigger a code, and then be fine. I knew that I wouldn't get so lucky, but I gave it a shot. It came back on later the same day. Bummer. So I went back because a day later two more lights came on. (Of course they did.) Sensor problem, not too bad. Tech said lets see if you can get through with these minimal repairs. I did not pass emissions. So I have to bring it back in and find out what the deal is with that air pump for real. My car has 170,000 miles on it, so I'm not wanting to sink a bunch of money into it. But I have to fix it enough to get through emissions otherwise it's worth about zero dollars as a trade in. So currently, I need to schedule and get it back in. I'm just dragging my feet because I don't feel like spending all this money and the hassle of getting someone to pick me up when I drop the car off is annoying. Once the car is sorted out, I need to get the truck in for an oil change, a couple of recalls, and I think there's a nest or something in there because it smells like pee in the air vents... (Keeping it classy over here.)

Anyway, all that is annoying. But you know what's not been too annoying? My horses! Eros and Shiny are both feeling kind of lazy, but despite that, they've been great. Here is some photo evidence from last week of how cute and wonderful they are:

I'm excited to jump the new course this week with them. Hopefully no one has a nervous breakdown because it looks different... Or because I stuffed flamingos in the flower boxes:

Some of my flowers should be here today, but it looks like my fun flower holders won't be here for a little bit. I forgot to check the ship date when I ordered (rookie mistake). Bummer, but it's just a couple weeks. Maybe sooner! Also thanks all for the dollar store suggestion for flowers! That is normally where I go, but this time I sourced elsewhere out of convenience. I did get these flamingos from the dollar store several years go. I bought them a few days before Jamp foundered and thus never got around to putting them out. They sat in the backseat of the truck and I forgot all about them, until I was cleaning out the truck the other day. Good find!

Caught Pammony having a roll the other day

Pammon is still loving his feral life. Although lately he walks away when I pull out the halter for groomies. I'm not sure why, I don't remove him from his buddy or anything. I just put it on so he doesn't wander off halfway through. And he does enjoy his groomies! Horses are weird. He does always come right over when he sees me though! It has more to do with the cookies I bring I think, than it does to do with me, but I'll take whatever I can get. 

Yes, he had only one fly boot left on in that gif. I finally found my shoo fly ones I bought and never used and put those on him last night. I'll see if they're still on later today... Let's hope! I thought these other ones would be as good as the shoo fly, since they looked to be the same design, but alas they did not hold up so well. They didn't tear or anything, but they did get sort of bent. And they definitely did not stay on, He's not one to take his stuff off, so I'm thinking the boots just weren't quality enough for 24/7 use. Bummer because I loved that I could choose the colors. 

That's about it from here this week! How are things with all of you? 

What's Up Wednesday

 

It was a fairly quiet week/weekend around here. Eros has been a perfect boy (obviously) and we ever put the jumps back up to 2'6" for him on Saturday.

He was so good and soft, I basically just jumped one course and called it a day. Which meant our ride was barely 20 minutes long warm up included. I have this feeling like all rides need to be at least 30 minutes (I generally ride 30-40 minutes), but honestly, sometimes I think it's perfectly fine for it to be short and sweet. This week for example. It's been in the 90's with 70% humidity which leads to "feels like" temps in the triple digits. Our horses here in New England are not super acclimated to that, and so our rides yesterday and today were/will be on the shorter side. Probably 20-25 minutes including our cool down walk. Which was stressing me out at first, but then I realized, it's perfectly okay. A few light days now and then aren't going to hurt anyone. 

Speaking of short rides. It's funny how Shiny really does require a no pressure ride each week. I've never had a horse that makes this so apparent. Last week, instead of a no pressure bareback day, they had Friday completely off when I went to visit my friend. So I skipped Sunday funday to make up for  our missed jumping day. Well... Shiny was kind of terrible this whole past week having not had her no pressure day. It took me until this weekend to realize that was the difference. How was she terrible you ask? Well there was this dramatic spook:

Which, Shiny rarely ever spooks unless she's super wild. Which she was not. She also was very much not interested in contact or moving off my leg... or really anything I asked her to do. She was good when we jumped Friday, but she was so behind my leg I couldn't even begin to try and hold contact at all. 

We even (and by we I mean me...) got brave enough to jump the end jump. But without an honest contact, I only found the chip to it every time.

Sorry Shiny... 

Anyway, after last week's frustrations, I made sure that the horses had a Sunday Funday.

Eros had a bareback walk in the ring followed by a half hour of yard snacks

Shiny "trail rode" bareback down to her paddock and back and also enjoyed yard snacks after

I didn't have any braiding jobs this week, but I did get to ride Bellino! 

He was kind of a jerk on Saturday, spooking and spinning at the chairs by the ring when we started. Then trying to leave the ring when I really closed the inside aids to prevent the spook... He wanted to root at the canter which was pretty rude. But by the end he had softened and was a good boy. Sunday he had regrets about how long he made his ride the day before and was a perfect gentleman. So that was fun and rewarding. 

In Pammon news, it looks like his buddy finally stood up for himself as Pammon has a little ding on his front leg that looks like it's probably from a kick. I'm glad that happened because Pammon needed to be stood up to. Whatever the tiff was about, they are getting along so much better. 

They moved to a little bit bigger field yesterday which I'm excited about for them. Not so much because it's bigger, but because it's next to the road. It's a very quiet rode, used mainly by the barn's traffic and the handful of residents off of it, but it has a decent amount of pedestrian traffic. Pammon LOVES people, and I think he'll love seeing everyone who walks by. Especially if they give him some attention. 

He got some new fly boots from Equi-prism this weekend. I'm going to make sure they aren't giving any rubs today when I go out to see him, but he seems to be unbothered by them. They're designed like the shoo-fly boots, but you can pick your own colors. I went with the boarding barn colors since that would match his fly sheet better than my colors.

And that's really all I have to report this week. How about you guys? Did you have a good week? Get lots of riding in? Do your horses have any easy day requirements like Shiny?