Rocket! Stop Freaking Me Out!

My mom went to see Miss Rocket today! I called her after class (I made my class look at a picture of Rocket, obviously) and she was like, "I have to tell you all about the last 24 hours." I took that as a sign to buckle my seatbelt, emotionally speaking.

FIRST! I will tell you that Rocket is fine. Here is proof:

I am wearing a 3-month halter!

Lydia, the lady who owns the farm where Mom sent Somara to foal, has really been earning her money dealing with this little girl. She called my mom last night and said that the vet had seen Rocket and said she felt the umbilical cord and thought it was wet and smelled like urine - a very bad sign. Apparently Lydia and the vet spoke, and the vet asked if anyone had seen Rocket pee, and Lydia said no.

I haven't peed and I'm embarrassed.

The vet was concerned that her bladder had ruptured, given how difficult the delivery was. I don't know a ton about ruptured bladders, but apparently they can go undetected for a few days and then when the foal is symptomatic, it's an emergency. Lydia called the emergency vet last night and they said to keep eyeballs on her - if she peed, she's fine. And if she didn't, well, big problem. So Lydia and her staff stared at the baby girl all night long. No pee. In the morning, she called my mom and said Mom should meet her at the veterinary hospital because she was going to take the filly just to check "ruptured bladder" off the list of things to worry about.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

But! Just in time, the filly peed! Champion!

It's the eye of the tiger, it's the thrill of the fight.

So, thank goodness, we don't have to worry about a ruptured bladder, because that would have been insane to deal with.

Mom and her awesome friend Margaret got to spend some time with Somara and Rocket and watch an imprinting session. One of the reasons we decided to send Somara to Mountaintop Ranch to foal was because they're well-known for their quality work with imprinting and training foals. I know imprinting isn't everyone's thing, but it seemed like a good idea for this little girl. She needs to be as easy for my parents to handle as she can be, and she's so gigantic that I'm glad we went that route. There's not gonna be any pushing this one around. Anyway, Mom said she taped the imprinting session, so when she sends me that video I'll post it.

Lydia - who foals out about 30 per year, so she knows what she's looking at - said that this little girl is impatient and likes to MOVE. That happens to be just the kind of horse I like. I hate kicking a lot.

Gimme that milk! I got places to be!

Okay, see ya.

I am expressing my independence.

Drive-by snuggles.

It sounds as though all is well, and I'm glad she's okay. Lydia said her pasterns lifted two inches today, so she can go play outside for two hours tomorrow. My mom's going to go see her again tomorrow, so we should have MOAR PICSHURS.

I didn't get to see Miss Lex today (I hate Tuesdays and Thursdays for that reason) but I'm looking forward to seeing her pretty face twice tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have another ride update for you! Yesterday she was great. We rode in the ring for a little while and did a brake check, and then I let her trot around in the field, which I definitely prefer. The ring is just so small and the footing is so deep that I feel like we're getting stuck. Yesterday, for the first time, she really stretched down at both the walk and trot. I thought that was great. She is coming along! My friend Barb, who's been riding longer than I've been alive, thinks she looks like a show hunter when she trots. Sounds good to me! I'm a happy kid.

Welcome to the World, Rocket

Finally, pictures of the filly! I have been dying to see them all day. I'll cut to the chase.

Oh hi! I have cute ears! See them?

This is the corner where I was born. Oh, memories.

I have enough white in my tail that it will be a pain in the butt to keep clean! Ha!

Don't mind the dropped pasterns - they'll sort themselves out soon enough.

Look how big I already am compared to my mom. I am going to be ENORMOUS.

So there she is! She is huge, and she is super cute. I can't wait to see what she looks like when she's three, but I guess I'll just have to. My mom will be able to go see her tomorrow and I'll get up there in a couple of weeks. By then I expect that she'll be at least as tall as Somara. (Kidding. Mostly.)

Apparently the birth was really difficult and there were some close calls. Because Rocket is so huge, Somara had a hard time getting her out and they eventually had to pull her. When the lady in charge palpated Somara before she gave birth, she felt what she thought was the head but is actually a hoof. This girl is huge. Did I already say that? Mom told me a bunch more details but I'll have to hear them again later so I can remember them better. I was kind of buzzing with excitement/nervousness.

I'm calling her Rocket because, in the event that I ever show her, I want her show name to be Gravity's Rainbow. It seems like a cool name for a colorful horse with a literate gay rider and - I hope - an over-fences career of some sort. My initial plan was to name all my horses something gay culture-related (the book doesn't have anything to do with gayness or anything, I just like the title) but Afleet Alexia put a kink in those works. I'm not changing her name, no way. Anyway, the reason I went with Rocket for a barn name is because the parabolic trajectory made by the rocket is rainbow-shaped.

So now I have two mares - three if you count Duchess, who is coming back to my field tomorrow, I hope - and I couldn't be more thrilled about it!

Brief Update: It's a Filly!

I got a text from my mom at 2:30am that we had a two hour-old, huge, black and white filly.

EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED!!!

Apparently the labor was tough - if the baby is huge, that's no surprise - but they're both okay now. For a brief moment they thought they were going to send the mare and foal to the vet because the baby would lick but not suck, but then she latched on so she'll be okay. The vet will come check on her later if necessary.

I don't have any pictures yet (the foal isn't at my mom's, she's at a foaling farm 90 minutes away) but I've been promised some soon, and then I will post them all here.

A black and white filly! It's like Somara reads the blog!

Baby Watch 2013

Apparently we're getting really close to FOAL TIME! The lady with the foaling farm e-mailed my mom to say we're getting close. I am both excited and nervous. I don't think I'll be able to sleep until the foal is on the ground.

I realized that I haven't said anything about this whole foal situation, so now's as good a time as any to fill you in. Never know, there might be a baby in the morning.

Last summer my mom bought a Friesian/APHA cross mare who was in foal - theoretically - to a Gypsy Vanner/Friesian stallion. The mare's name is Somara, she's seven, and this is her first foal. I don't have any great conformation shots of her, but I have some from the place my mom got her from and one I took of her when I saw her last fall.

That's an awful lot of bit. How about a snaffle on that greenie?

And here he is, hauling her face off with it. You can see that her mouth is open.

Don't worry! I pulled her mane!

I think Somara's a pretty well put-together mare. Maybe a little over at the knee, but we all have flaws.

The sire has... quite a few.

I has MANE to dazzle you with!

Note that in this pic and the next one, he's cocking the left hind. That makes me nervous, especially considering that insane croup angle he's rocking.

This is a textbook study of conformation flaws. This horse has no business making babies. I hope he's been gelded.

The people my mom bought the mare from are being super cagey about the breeding date, which makes me think someone jumped the fence or something. I really can't imagine why anyone would look at this horse and think, "He really ought to pass those genes along." Anyway, there's certainly a chance that this isn't even really the sire. I'm almost hoping he isn't, because it's hard to imagine anything worse.

So I'm really hoping the foal looks more like Somara than like that horse. For awhile I was comforting myself with the notion that foals tend to take slightly more after their dams, and then I saw Lex and her dad, and realized that sometimes they can look JUST LIKE their sires. Argh.

In addition to a horse that looks more like mama, I am also pulling for a filly and it would be cool if she's spotty, but if the horse is healthy and not a conformational nightmare, I'll take whatever we get.

Brief already-born horse news: Lex was a superstar again today! She even fell asleep on the crossties with her saddle on while I held my friend's baby for her - she had to clip a dog and her baby was going nuts. I'm not really maternal, but I do have the world's cutest nephew and have learned a thing or two about rocking infants. I kept glancing over at her and each time, her ears were further out to the side, her lip was more droopy, and her eyes were more closed. If I hadn't been occupied with baby-holding, I'd have gotten a picture. Such a good girl - and she was great for the ride, too. It only took a couple of tries at turning her nose into the fence before I could slow her down by just thinking about it. Sharon is a miracle worker.

TJ, I'm sorry to report, is going back to Virginia tomorrow. I cried about it at least three times today, including while I was giving him a bath. If he wasn't going to my mom's I'd be inconsolable, but I'll get to see him in a couple of weeks and horses have a great life at my mom's. He'll be okay, I'll just miss his fabulous personality. I'm sure I'll be sobbing my eyes out tomorrow when the truck arrives for him.

Okay, team: let's pull for a healthy spotted girl and a happy mama-mare! Any minute now!

"Baby's First Half-Halt"

Yay! We've officially had instruction!

I love Sharon. She's nice, witty, and a brilliant instructor. She can see things and come up with solutions that never would have occurred to me. Several people at the barn have said that she is great with starting babies, and that is clearly true. Not that I had any doubt.

Because I was a member of the United States Pony Club Association, I cannot show up for a lesson without having my horse and myself turned out as well as possible. Everything, including the horse, has to be clean, which is a challenge in Florida. So this morning while the other horses ate breakfast, the WonderMare got a bath, even though she is pasture boarded and it looked like it might rain. She was not. amused. It's kind of hilarious that this stickler for turnout got a horse who hates everything having to do with being spruced up. So after the bath, I let her "hand graze" while she dried. I put that in quotation marks because it assumes she ate grass. She didn't. She went right for the trees and started pulling the Spanish moss off them.

She is such a noodle. She ate huge clumps of the stuff. I probably hand grazed her for 30 minutes and she barely touched the grass. There's hardly any grass in the fields right now, and there's plenty of moss, so you'd think she'd take advantage of the grass. I guess horses don't think like that.

Anyway, when I got back to the barn this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to find a still-spotless Lex. I'm glad I didn't annoy her in vain. Of course, she was annoyed anyway, super angry about the flies, and she also hates fly spray. That's something we're gonna have to get her over. This is Florida. The bugs will carry you away if you're not careful.

"The lesson, Jess! Get to the point!"

Okay, okay. The lesson was excellent. It was only 30 minutes, but that makes sense to me - we don't want to fry the baby brain, and she's not that fit yet. It was a very blustery day, the kind of day that makes you think it's about to storm any minute, so Lex was as up as she's been since I got her. It took her a little while to settle in. Sharon recommended that I lunge her before I ride her to get some of the wiggles out. I could do that, and I lunged her for several days before I started riding her, but, between you and me? I hate lunging. Hate it. I do a terrible job keeping organized, I dislike circles, I can't stand still, I get bored. My wonderful friend Shelly (hi, Shelly!) gave me some tips on different ways to lunge that should be better for the horse, so I'll try some of those.

But in spite of some wiggles, Lex was a good girl. She spooked once when the wind blew a branch down, but then settled very quickly. And she didn't decide that end of the ring, or that corner, were scary. We never had another problem in that spot for the rest of the lesson. What a sensible mare!

Sharon emphasized the need to put the right basics on the horse that will serve her well no matter what discipline(s) we end up in, and I agree. She was clear that we should interfere with Lex's mouth as little as possible, and said the constant gnawing on the bit is anxiety. By the end of the lesson, she wasn't doing that any more, she was just licking her lips. So when I want Lex to do a downward transition, I should turn her into the fence - not roughly, but just guide her nose that way, and as soon as the fence is working on slowing her down, I let go.

"Will you sometimes hit your toe on the fence? Yes. That's life."

We picked up the trot for a few steps here and there, and when Sharon was convinced Lex was listening to my requests for downward transitions via the fence, I was allowed to trot all the way around the ring. Since Lex got the idea that turning to the fence means slow down/stop, I could just kind of think about turning her toward the fence and she'd slow her trot down. Sharon: "Baby's first half-halt!"

Sharon also encouraged me to think about posting through molasses, barely out of the saddle, to get Lex used to the idea that my seat dictates the pace. Lex is too green to go into the corners or to bend - those things will come with time. Right now, we've got to work on steering. She wants me to carry a small jumping bat in my outside hand so I can kind of tap her outside shoulder with it, as if to say, "Move your withers over there" in order to help teach her to turn. I didn't have a bat with me today, but I'll try that tomorrow.

So overall, it was a great lesson. Sharon really likes Lex a lot (duh) and thought she looked like a hunter pony trotting around. I'm VERY proud of Lex! What a superstar!

I can't wait to see where we are this time next month.

Mystery: Solved

Madame Ponynose and I have a lesson this afternoon! I CANNOT WAIT! I don't get lessons very often because I'm not at a training barn, but a super fabulous dressage trainer named Sharon comes by every now and again. The barn owner is an excellent dressage rider and she trains and shows with Sharon, which would be a recommendation in and of itself, but I took a couple lessons from her on Baron and TJ and had a total blast each time. So I'm really looking forward to it and can't wait to post updates!

But I can't wait any longer to share this exciting news: I spoke with her trainer from the track! I have been dying to know why she left the track and wasn't held onto as a broodmare. As I said before, she has superior bloodlines and is a very well put together mare, and you all know that she's a delight to hang out with and ride. I might use her as a broodmare myself someday in the looooooong distant future, after we've had our fun and I can afford [another] baby. So how did this fabulous horse end up in a vet school study, of all places?

I mean, LOOK AT THAT FACE.

I left a message with her trainer, Terry, a couple weeks ago, right after I bought her, and then kind of forgot about it. He called me back yesterday and was a very nice person to talk to. He remembers Lex very well indeed, for reasons that will become clear shortly. It seems to me that he takes really good care of his horses and teaches them to stand for the farrier, handle cross ties, etc. That certainly explains why she's been so good about all of that so far, and I appreciate the work he and his crew put into that!

Terry said the following things about Lex: She "couldn't run" (which is not unusual - that's why most racehorses retire), she's "nice to be around," she was "100% sound," and she "trains beautiful." At this point I still had a big old question mark over my head. And then he said, "She didn't handle the paddock well. By that I mean, she had a meltdown." It turns out that by the time she got to the starting gate in her one and only race, she had three different riders. The first jockey took one look at her being a maniac in the paddock and refused to get on her. The second jockey found himself dumped pretty hard in the tunnel on the way to the track and wouldn't get back on. Then he finally got her regular exercise rider to ride her in the race and she tossed him THREE TIMES in the starting gate. Then she came in dead last.

So, yeah. I can see why her career ended.

Apparently Terry then called her owner/breeder, and he was like, "Yeah, she did that here too!" and hadn't informed Terry. So Terry sent the horse back down, but since she wasn't going to earn her keep, her owner offloaded her on a dealer, which is how she wound up at UF. She is very, very lucky she didn't wind up in a slaughterhouse. Sounds like a close call.

Terry didn't think I'd have any trouble with her at shows or events, but he was relieved that I won't be racing her anymore. I think that whenever we actually get to show, I'll spend some time getting her used to the warmup ring. Maybe I won't even enter for awhile, just take her to some stuff and hack her around. We shall see.

Our lesson is in three hours! Eeeeeeeeeee! I better go polish my boots! (I oiled them earlier and then turned around and saw my yellow lab licking the oil off them! GROSS!)

Lex: The Vet School Days

I don't get to see the pretty girl today (sad, but I do have to write a dissertation if I'm going to be able to get a job and support her in style). So I thought I'd share some of the pictures and videos I have of her from when she was at the vet school.

But before I do that, I want to give a big shout-out to Sprinkler Bandit. Not only does she write one of my all-time favorite horse blogs (I read all the way back to the beginning - she's a great writer!) but she's been incredibly supportive of this blog and of Lex. If you ever come to Florida, Madame Bandit, you've got a place to stay and some horses to ride!

Like I said in an earlier post on Lex, I found her when the vet school was trying to re-home a bunch of thoroughbreds. I went down to see if she could be a resale project. (HA! I'm never letting her go.) With that in mind, I closely evaluated her conformation and took video of her running on the treadmill. I had never seen a horse run on a treadmill before, so that was fun.

These are just some of the pictures I took of her.

This is the picture I couldn't stop staring at while I was making up my mind. That look will raise the rafters.

Pretty good shoulder for a jumper!

A back end that balances the front end pretty well, I think. That tail is driving me bananas.

Also, she has this soft, pleasant expression all the time, even when she's mad about flies.

This is my good friend Sophie, who is not a horse person. Lex loves her, as you can see.

Find me a person who wouldn't love that face. I dare you.

And now, Lex on the treadmill. YES, she wings bigtime, especially her left front. I think she does it less when she's not on a treadmill and now that she's had good farrier work done. She also breaks over correctly and her footfalls are even, so I'm not really worried about the wing. But let's be honest: she handles being on a treadmill way better than I do. I start having a temper fit after about five seconds. Or I did, back when I tortured myself and went to the gym.

Sorry for the quality. I didn't go to film school for a reason, y'all.