More Snow Pics

I know everyone is posting snow pictures, and even though everyone else's are better than mine, I'm going to post some anyway. Because it's all I can see, and if I don't post these snow pictures I'll be forced to write about how in my attempt to get to M's on Saturday (I'm farm sitting for a week), I had to abandon my car, get my dad to drive me part of the way here, and then walk the rest of the way. Or about how when I tried to turn the horses out on Sunday, after they'd all been in on Saturday from the blizzard, I had to drug four out of five of them (only the pony was spared my needle) in order to get them out without anyone getting killed. Or through how all of this I was texting SB for moral support--because there's not a lot she can do for me from Idaho--and practically in tears. And I'm sure no one wants to hear about that shit.

The view from the barn yesterday.

Pretty, you say? Bah. HUMBUG.

I stuck my foot in this water trough to see what was going on in there (no, not the broken foot--I was hoping to break this one in the process so I'd have a matching set).

Snow over ice. Quelle suprise.

I had to shovel snow to get this paddock gate closed. Thank fuck I realized I wouldn't be able to close it BEFORE I had a horse in my hand. The hilarious thing is, though, that I didn't turn any horses out here, because it's the farthest paddock from the barn and they were all acting like FUCKING PSYCHOPATHS so I chose a closer paddock and carried water to them in buckets all day.

Hell yeah arm muscles.

WTF vulture? He was like this for a LONG time.

Perhaps alerting other vultures to my immanent demise.

I did, eventually, get the motherfuckers out.

My darling Mo, background, was THE WORST yesterday. Rearing much?

Spike, next to the water trough, has given me five heart attacks per day over the last three weeks.

*shakes fist*

Bailey thinks he's at the beach. It was legit warm, like 46, on Sunday.

I'm sure you're just EXHAUSTED from doing FUCK-ALL, black dog.

 Sigh. Jumps. I miss you.

I do a whole hell of a lot to be able to jump these pieces of wood

.

SuperMom is on her way in a 4WD vehicle to come get me (let's not talk about my car--it's fine but I'm annoyed at it for not being a good snow-driving vehicle). I'll be right back here tonight but at least I can talk to another human, go to work and make money, and wear civilian clothes instead of the same gross barn gear I've been in for days.

I hope everyone is having a better winter than me. Maybe I'll just move back to Florida and panhandle (get it?).

What Fresh Hell is This?

Here's another "winter sucks" post. These will end when winter bloody well ends.

So: I haven't had running water in my barn since... Thursday or Friday of last week, thanks to the goddamn cold weather. Mom and I were smart enough to drag a big trough inside, clean it out, and fill it up, and to fill our little heated muck tub (meant and used only for water) so that for a few days, I didn't have to fill a wheelbarrow with half-full buckets and gallon jugs and drag it back and forth across the ten-acre farm in service of my neurosis about all horses having ten gallons of clean water in front of them at all times--a neurosis which, I can tell you, has saved me from more than one colic. But then that ran out, so wheelbarrow and buckets it was. This was okay until we got five inches of snow, which added a significant cardio element to my day.

Red's reaction when I opened the barn door the other morning
and there was a shit ton of snow.

The plan now is that I take a bunch of buckets and jugs and the things that need to be soaked (Red and Ink both get beet pulp and hay cubes) to the tiny apartment behind my parents' garage, which is heated and has running water. I've taken it over now.

Filling all this stuff out of a kitchen tap takes about 30 minutes.

 Then I got home from work last night and my dad was like THERE IS NO WATER IN THE HOUSE, so we ran out to the barn, and it was flooding. Burst-pipe city!

Water, water everywhere.
And not a drop to drink.

So now I'd gone from not having ANY running water in the barn to water running EVERYWHERE in the barn. Thinking fast, I grabbed some clean buckets and we managed to put them beneath the burst pipe and fill them, and I was refilling horse buckets and our heated tub as fast as I could. That was... gratifying, in an odd way?

Love a soggy tack room.
I just KNOW I can grow mildew in here!

I was already Grouch Level Ten, but I think I broke the scale on this one. Mom and I had to move every goddamn thing out of the tack room and half the "office" (where we just store feed bags and random crap), dump shavings down to soak up the water, and then sweep it up. Only one horse stall flooded and we have a spare so that's okay. But with a low overnight of 10 degrees, we really didn't want the barn to be any more of a skating rink than it already was.

By the time the plumber fixed the pipe, we took advantage of having running water to refill all our troughs and shit, and we cleaned up the water, we were too worn out to put everything back where it belonged (let it dry a little more overnight, we told ourselves) or to sweep the aisle or anything.

This morning when I got out to the barn, I was overchuffed to find that we STILL had running water (how, I don't know), but the barn looked like a train had run through it. It took me five hours to do my normal morning chores (made harder by winter anyway) AND to move everything back where it belonged, and to sweep the aisle, and to generally get my barn looking like it isn't managed by the gnomes in The Hobbit.

Oh wait. I forgot one thing: I broke my toe and almost certainly stress fractured a metatarsal last night. Was it in heroic attempt to save my horses from a dehydrated icy death? No. It was walking past a footstool in my perfectly warm, clean house. So you can imagine how much extra fun THAT introduced into my chores today, hobbling around with my foot all taped up and griping to myself about how I should have chosen long distance running as my sport of choice. Or maybe I should choose some adorable hobby, like knitting.

Winter can eat a bee.

The Owls Approve Blog Hop: Nicknames

The weather here in Virginia is DISGUSTING. Disgusting. We're under a snow emergency right now, so I probably won't see Mo tomorrow, though I might take Red on a snowy hack around the fields if my school is closed. So in the meantime, I'm left to think about how cute the little bugger is. A nicknames blog hop is the perfect thing.

Mo first!

JC Name: Go Big (which is also his show name or M will kick me out of the barn)

Barn Name: Moses (which I was lukewarm about when I bought him. On the one hand, Moses was a liberator, and I'm down with that. On the other hand, as the story goes, he spent 40 years leading people through the desert and then died JUST before they got to the Promised Land. Bad times.)

Nicknames: Mo, Mosey, MoMo, Stripey Face

And for the big guy:

Registered/USEF Name: Amato Rosso

Barn Name: Redmond

Nicknames: Red, Dragon (I need to get his dragon face on video for y'all), Ears, Monster



I love my darlings. Fingers crossed the snow melts and it's in the 60s or something lovely before too long. My dad keeps telling me this is only going to be bad for a couple more weeks, but right now we don't have running water in the barn and I have to drag a wheelbarrow from the house through the snow, so even a couple more weeks sounds like the worst thing. Ugh.

My Horse is Cute

Man, that week got by me fast. Minor crises around the farm seem to have mostly slowed down; major crises are on a temporary break. The good news is, I have a beautiful niece, so another horse obsessive in the making for me!

In addition to cute baby humans, I've been spending this week seriously appreciating how cute my baby horse is. He got most of the week off, but on Friday, M and I hauled him and one of her horses over to a friend's indoor to school. I made the mistake of leaving the door open when I had him in there alone. Lesson learned: next time, the door gets closed. He spent a solid 30 minutes bucking on the lunge line, and then M came in and closed the door and he was fine. So I hopped on, and while it took some effort on my part to get him in front of my leg, once we were cruising he was great. So: first ride in an indoor, checked off the list.

 Yesterday I rode him at M's, because the weather broke and it was in the 40s. It hurts my Florida-grrl heart to say this, but it felt a bit warm. So even tho there was no one around, I felt confident getting on. Not only was he a total delight warming up, we even slipped into the right lead canter with no fuss. I didn't over-prepare, and I didn't over-bend him (M's critique of our canter work). I did my best to look straight out through his ears and keep the reins soft. It wasn't a canter I'd want to do in front of a dressage judge, but for where we are, I was thrilled. And the left lead was good too.

After I hopped off, I let him stand around and feel admired while I took his picture. I miss having people around to take riding pics. Maybe when I end up boarding again I'll have a picture buddy.

 Did I mention I have a sinus infection and can't talk? Right. So today I hauled my sick butt out to M's to ride again because it's still above freezing. Mom was nice enough to come along and help me get my chores done, and then she came up to the ring while I was riding Mo. The footing was a bit harder than I'd expected, so we mostly walked today. But since he's been ridden three times in three days and then not more than once every ten days for the month before that, I think it was okay for him to just have a light day. We practiced walking over poles. We also practiced our national anthem/winner's circle training.

OMG I love him. I grin the whole time I'm riding.

Gotta be able to stand still through the Star Spangled Banner
in case we go international. ;)

"We are men of action! Standing still does not become us!"

"Unless I can chew on your boot, then I'll stand here."

 Mom got a few shots of us trotting around a little, too. Nothing fancy today, on blah footing, but it was a pleasant ride.

I must have been reaching forward to pat him.
Who wouldn't?

Relatively fancy for as casual a day as we had.

I even got what I believe is my first between-the-ears shot on him.You can see how adorable his expression is. It makes it hard to end a ride, let me tell you.

So anyway, that's the boring update, but at least there are some cute pics. With any luck, we'll get a run of mild weather and be able to get some lessons in and then I'll have something to report.

Why I Often Lapse on Blogging: An Example

I. Bloody. Hate. Winter.

"But it's PRETTY!"

A) As much as I love Antares tack and beautiful horses, and I do, don't let that lead you to believe that I will sacrifice function for appearances, because I will not. Ever.

B) Everyone who wants to remind me that winter is pretty is not primarily responsible for the care and feeding of ten asshole horses at two different farms thirty minutes from each other, one of which is on top of a mountain (M's) and the other of which has the least logical paddock layout in history (mine).

C) Nor have they had to take a horse in for an enucleation lately.

Friday was an example of a day that I just wanted to lie down in the ice until I cried myself to a frozen death. My wonderful old horse had to go in for an enucleation because we just couldn't get the eye healed and we were all very worried that it was going to rupture. He's okay-ish now. His eye doesn't hurt anymore, but I think the whole thing is pretty uncomfortable as it heals. He's tough to dose (though not as tough as Red) because he's a pro at spitting stuff out, so I'm not entirely confident that he's getting the bute, which he won't eat in his feed. He's not happy that he's in and he's a bit off his feed. I'll be worried for a few more days but as the surgical site heals, he should feel a lot better.

Still walked onto the trailer like a champ because he's the best ever.

I should say that there was a lot of logistical difficulty in GETTING him to the vet--the roads were a touch wintry, and I don't feel confident pulling the rig in imperfect conditions (especially when I don't know where I'm going). My mom was on call. I had to feed our horses and M's that morning. Mom ended up taking him in and being two hours late to work, and I feel bad about that, but even if I did feel better about my driving, I couldn't have gotten him there on time without ten horses colicking for missing breakfast.

I fed our horses and turned them out, and then rushed over to M's. Her horses had been in all day and all night because of the rain/snow, so the stalls were a mess. It took me three hours to do the barn, and it's only five stalls. So I hurried home from there to do MY stalls before I had to go to work, and found that my little Italian greyhound had had his sides ripped open by my mom's lab. So I called in sick and took him to the vet practice my mom uses. He'll be fine (no internal injury as I feared) but he's pretty miserable now. And scared. I don't blame him. So there's lots of dog-management happening in addition to horse management.

Doesn't do it justice. He's a very pathetic FrankenPuppy.

Plus I got really upset at the way the small animal vet talked to me. I don't know her, she doesn't know me. I showed up in my filthy barn clothes holding a bleeding dog, and I think she assumed I was a shithead and/or stupid. I am not a shithead and I'm not stupid. I love my animals as much as a person can love animals. I spend ALL of my money on them. I'm also a very smart person. So the way she treated me, just jumping from assumptions and not listening to what I was telling her, was unacceptable. Time to find a new practice altogether.

The thing is, while Friday was an unusually terrible day, it wasn't that unusual. Maybe a faculty job will open somewhere with sane weather, like South Carolina. I can handle insane political scenes if it just isn't WINTER ALL THE TIME. And while I love horse management, my old shoulder injury could use a break from mucking.


This coming week is supposed to get worse, but the good news is, my sister-in-law is having her second baby. While I doubt sincerely that anyone can be as cute as my perfect nephew, so far she and my brother are batting 1000 on flawless offspring. So I'm excited!

We took him when we looked for a saddle for Mom.
He kept trying to pull adult-size saddles off the wall
and saying he wanted "just one more."
Finally we talked him into this Beval Junior.
(Which we didn't buy him, because he is two,
but I think I have a budding tack ho on our hands.)

The Rest of the Zoo

So, I should totally have included Teddy in the riding horses post. He's ridden, after all, but my mom rides him most of the time. I did hop on him the other day when my mom was trying a couple saddles (threw one on Red, one on Teddy, and swapped horses/saddles--that was a very fun ride, and productive, as Mom has a nice saddle now). Anyway, I'll lead with him.

Teddy
Teddy's been on the "let's be a veterinary pain in the ass" tip lately. He actually fell down one day, right to his knees, when my mom was on him. She was just walking him on a long rein in the ring, too. Nothing to fall ON. He didn't trip, he just kinda collapsed. Thus began a very VERY long and even more expensive journey to figure out why he did that and what's making him off. The short version is, we never did really figure it out, but through some "diagnosis through treatment" efforts, he does seem to be sounder. He isn't sound enough that I'd show him, but for some light hacking out, he's just fine. And he's still incredibly adorable.

Ink
My darling love Ink is 34 now, and celebrated his advanced age by scaring us TO DEATH the other day. This was the day Mom and I took Teddy and Red to our friend's ring. When we came home, he was lying down, with his butt uphill from his head, in a rocky ditch (our ring is at the top of the short hill--it's all designed this way to drain, and the ring doesn't have a fence around it, just a small panel to keep the footing in). He must have been stepping down the hill from the ring and tripped. He can't really see out of his left eye because he has glaucoma, which we're having trouble managing. So anyway, he's lying in the ditch groaning and kicking at his belly. His gums were purple and sticky. I called my vet and was like GET HERE NOW WITH THE PINK JUICE HURRY, because he was groaning like you would not believe and we just wanted to put him out of his misery ASAP. So Mom and I were sitting in the mud with him and crying when the vet arrived, hopped over the fence, stuck a syringe of banamine in his neck and hurried through an exam. She was like, "Let's get this sheet off, it's kinda tight on him." He was wearing a turnout sheet, and when he slid down the hill, his shoulders really jammed up in the front of it.  We struggled a bit to do so, but when we got the blanket off, he... stood up. Like it was nothing.

So we walked him slowly back to the barn, and he was nudging us and nickering and generally acting fine. After about ten minutes, when he didn't try to lie down again, we let him go in his stall. Where he stood, all pricked ears and nickering, until we gave him a handful of his dinner. He gobbled that up and was super insistent about eating, so we gave him his whole meal. He was fine. Totally fine.

He was just blanket bound. We almost put down a horse for having tightened his blanket on himself.

Not all is perfect with the old man, though. That glaucoma is bothering him (despite rigorous treatment on our part) to the point that he rubbed his eye and gave himself a corneal ulcer you can see with the naked eye. It's a really horrifying injury. Now he gets five drops in that eye twice a day (and three of those drops every 2 hours) in an effort to save his eye. I don't know if it will work. A couple more days and we'll make the call. The encouraging sign is that his eye is vascularizing, so his body is trying to heal it. I do think it looks a bit better today, but maybe I'm being optimistic for no reason.



Rocket
Rocket... is a coming-two draft cross filly, you know? She's beautiful, and sweet, and totally smart. She's also got an ATTITUDE, and is a handful to handle. Nothing out of the ordinary for her age and type, but Mom and I are realizing that we're not really set up to work with her and handle her safely (especially if I do manage to land a faculty job and move away). So... at this point, the plan is to send her to the cowboy we love. He'll pasture board her over the winter, and then in the spring/summer he'll start her VERY lightly (the mare is probably 16hh now and solid as a rock--please do not post anything slamming me or him or whoever for choosing to lightly start an enormous 2yo). Then she'll likely find a new home. Mom and I want to make sure she ends up in good hands. I think she'll be a very nice horse for someone, because she's a gorgeous mover and quite clever. But for us, right now, it isn't realistic. If you're interested in her, shoot me an e-mail and we can chat.

Grayson
Good ol' Grayson is just Grayson-ing around. We thought we'd have to take him in to get a tumor removed, but then it just kinda... went away? So he got to skip surgery. In the meantime, he's still acting like an idiot racehorse when we bring him in about half the time. He's 23. He's totally sound, I could be riding him, but he's a lunatic. So he can just hang out in the pasture and harass Red and that'll be that.

 

Overall, all is well around here. I just wish it would STOP SNOWING and GET WARM. I have important canter transitions to work on.

Gone Fishin'?

Sigh.

Here's the list of reasons I haven't been blogging. You can skip this part if you just want to get to equine updates:
1. All of a sudden I got VERY BUSY, mostly because the academic job search season began. It's still ongoing, so my blog posting might remain sporadic for awhile. We'll just have to see.
2. Related, I really need(ed) to get back into the groove of academic writing and publishing. Between having two jobs, my own horses to take care of, and 2+ horses to ride, it's been a struggle to find time. See #1.
3. I got and remain furious over the events over the summer relating to Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and the other rash of police murders of black people in the US. So writing about horses just wasn't on my priority list, even though my actual horses remain central to my life. I won't write about it here, except to say that #blacklivesmatter.
4. Winter means a lot more effort into barn work (not that it isn't already a lot of work) and the holidays are what they are.

Okay, so! How are all the critters? That's what you really want to know. I'll catch you up on the riding horses, Mo and Red, today. The rest of the zoo can wait, in the interest of actually getting something on the site.

Moses
You guys. You guys. Mo is the greatest. 

Looks sleepy, was actually a bit of a wild man.

His first grid--not the one described. He rocked it.

Okay, so we have a couple of days every couple of weeks wherein he's like "I AM A GREEN THOROUGHBRED!!!" and he bucks and acts like kiiiiiind of a jerk. But M and I just laugh at him and put him to work. If M is in the ring, she'll set up a grid or something. Even if he wants to buck all the way down the long side, he gets into the grid and is a BOSS. Earlier this month, for instance, it was a bounce to a bounce to a two stride to a two stride to a bounce to a bounce. The jumps were low (the middle jump was probably a 2'3" vertical and that was the biggest), but that is a HARD grid. He read it perfectly, every single time. This horse has to be the most natural jumper I've ever sat on. He gets there, he reads the question, and he answers the question. The shape he takes in the air is phenomenal.

After his three-week break.

His flat work is coming along pretty well, too. He's got a butter-soft mouth. Sometimes, of course, he has little temper fits or his body gets sore or his brain is overworked and he doesn't want to give to the bit. But most of the time (even Saturday, when he'd had probably 3 weeks off) he is a treasure. We're still struggling mightily with the canter, and getting that sorted out is my #1 training priority. We need to work on canter departs on both leads (no more starting-gate racehorse stuff, pls), getting the right lead (seriously, horse, you are the soundest animal alive, and one of the most athletic--YOU CAN DO THIS), and then finding a rhythm (fair enough for where he is).

Of course, now it's winter, and we're not riding much, but at least he's still cute to look at. Of course, the weather took a real nosedive shortly after I trace clipped him (terribly--this is a skill I must practice). M and I might haul over to a friend's indoor a few times a week, but that can only happen on days when the roads are perfect. Also, because I work in the afternoons, I have to ride in the morning. Often the footing in M's ring will be frozen in the mornings but thawed by the afternoon, so she can ride but I can't. It's true that I could drive my mom's rig 30 minutes to M's, then another 30ish minutes to the indoor, then back to M's, and then home. But I can't afford the gas to do all that driving, and that's two hours of driving alone. So this might just be a low-riding winter. That's okay--he can have extra time for naps.

When the naps are this cute, you can take all you like.

Redmond
I've actually gotten to ride Red a little more often than Mo. For one thing, the footing doesn't have to be totally perfect to hack him out.

It was about 30 degrees this day. We had a wonderful ride.

Not from the day of our field trip, but how cute is he???

 I know he isn't going to pull any silly baby antics, because he is not a silly baby. I don't have to lunge him at all, and although some walks would be better if I could boot him out in front of my leg to trot a bit, if we can't, it's fine. Mom and I did haul him and Teddy over to our friend's gorgeous ring a little over a week ago, and that was a lot of fun. Red was convinced he was there for a jump school and was on his tippy toes for a solid 30 minutes. He never did one single bad thing, but he was WOUND UP. It was hilarious.







Because Red runs hot, he also got a trace clip. I think I did a better job on his than on Mo's, but whatever. Hair grows back.

This was how I spent my Christmas Eve night because I'm totally normal.

This is the face I'd get when I had to give him meds. Nice, huh?

Red gave me two scares. The first, and more serious, was a bout of colitis. It's impossible to know what caused it. It was a challenging time, because I was worried about how sick he was and because I had to give him so much medicine. Red, I learned, is impossible to dose. I seriously cried a couple times. And he would barely touch feed at all, certainly not when it had evil poison medicine in it.







We got through that, though, and after maybe a week, he cut his inner right forearm and his leg BLEW. UP. Fortunately, by then, his appetite had returned enough that I could sneak the doxycycline in his food. Some doxy, some banamine, and some cold hosing, and he turned around. I've seen a couple tendon sheath infections and I don't need to see any more, but I think his swelling was mostly edema. So now we're back to having fun riding whenever I can.

I redeemed myself with lots and lots of peppermints.

So that's it! I'll be catching up on all of your blogs, too. Sorry you haven't been hearing from me. It's not because I don't care, I promise!