Mr. Perfect

It amazes me how GOOD he is.


Yes, we're hanging out bareback with no reins. Prior to this, we were walking around the property on a loose rein. Although I did pick up long enough to walk a circle in each direction. He managed to walk one whole circle to the right without falling in badly! A moment of yuckyness here and there, but no big deal.

Awwwwwwwww!


Oooooh, look at the crazy Thoroughbred!!

Hug your horse today.

You never know if you'll have another chance.

A very good friend lost her horse early this morning. He had had a number of health problems over the past year, but he had been doing very well. Yesterday evening, he began colicking and went downhill. The vet advised her to take him to Cornell, which she did. Unfortunately, by the time they got there he was in bad shape. Tests showed that his intestine had ruptured. He had to be put down.

It's an unbelievable loss...


Even if he was the ugliest pony ever...


He was 12 this year. My friend had been riding him for a long time, but only owned him for 2 years. To make matters worse, she lost her other horse less than a year ago suddenly.

Appreciate your horses, enjoy every moment with them. There will never be enough moments.

Rest in peace, Magic. You won't be forgotten... not by me, the person you bit really hard; not by the person you sent to the hospital; not by the person who had to buy new reins to replace the ones that got broken when you reared her off; not by the people you kicked when they were in your stall... Oh, the fond memories.. We'll miss you, Magical Pony.

(To the tune of "Beautiful Dreamer":
Magical Pony,
come here to me.
Hay and fresh water,
waiting for thee.

[He was hard to bring in from turnout.])

River is a wimp and I'm not happy.

Those two items are completely unrelated, by the way.

River feels that having MTG applied to his head is a fate worse than death. Well, too bad. I'm not the one who insists on grinding her head into the nastiest, wettest, dirties, muckiest mud possible and has developed a skin funk. If he doesn't like having bacon-smelling greased applied to his head, then he can be more careful in the future.


"But lady, it's really really gross!"


Cry me a river. Hahaha, cry me a River! That wasn't even intentional.

So that's why River is a wimp.

I'm not happy because my knee is messed up. The torn ACL and torn meniscus knee that I had operated on a year and a half ago. It suddenly started hurting Friday evening. It's gotten more frequent every day until I woke up today with it hurting. I called my ortho first thing yesterday and have an appointment next Wednesday. The only bad thing about having a really good ortho is that really good doctors tend to be busy. I'm hoping that I'm just being a baby and it's no big deal. I had been at the gym before it started acting up, but I've done the same stuff before with no problems. It's weird.. it doesn't hurt to bear weight, what hurts is when I walk and lift the foot up and bend my knee to step forward. So when it's bothering me, I have to keep my knee straight and walk around with a peg leg. It gets worse the longer I'm moving and sometimes if I twist on it, it flares up.

So now I'm totally paranoid that something is messed up in there and I'm going to be grounded again. Now that I'm finally sound again. I'm finally trusting my knee. I've finally forgotten that it was a problem. Here we go again... But hey. Maybe it'll be fine. Maybe by the time my appointment rolls around, it'll be all better.

But I can't help thinking.. the last time I had this feeling that something is wrong, I had a torn ACL. And if it makes sense, this pain doesn't feel right.

I guess the horses get it easy for a bit. I don't dare try doing much with them if I'm not 100%.

Grrrr. Way to annoy me, knee.

Oh, and my d@mn tibia is acting up, too. I try jogging and it's a deep ache, like having a bad bruise poked, right where the bone was broken.

On the bright side, the finger I broke is doing just fine. *knock on wood*

And River is a wimp.

Funny Pictures

My mare, Irish, and another FLF TB, Gryffin, are BFFs. They're ridiculously attached. Not that they're terrible to separate, but when they're together, they are joined at the hip.

I call these pictures Married... With Chicken




River is being a good boy about not knocking his feeder off the gate and dumping his grain on the ground! Yeah!

I've been a member of a gym for a couple years. Shortly after I joined, they started a "Biggest Loser" contest, where the person who loses the most weight (% of body weight) wins a cash prize. I had entered before and was doing well until I had my accident and was wheelchair bound. Well, a new round started yesterday and I'm doing this thing for real. I'm putting this here for accountability. You guys know I'm doing this, you can expect me to report in, yell at me if I'm not updating!

Gotcha!

Mwahahahaha!!

Okay, yes, he *can* knock it off the gate. But so far he hasn't done it until some time after he's finished eating. Who knows how long it will last, though..

We're back to ridiculous weather.... 40s and RAIN. Driving me nuts! I'd like to ride at some point, but this mud is awful.

Last week I cleaned out my car and found one paddock boot. One. I have absolutely no idea where the other one could be. I rode in my muck boots a few times--I know, I know, bad idea! They're too wide for safety, but I really wanted to ride! The problem (besides the whole safety issue) is that I can't hold and use my leg and ankle correctly. Not that I ever ride correctly.. You know how you're supposed to sort of weight the inside of your stirrup and let your toe point out a bit, keeping your heel down and your leg on the horse? Yeah, that's not how I ride. I weight the outside of my stirrup... so it kind of looks like this from the front or the back: <()> . Sort of. The points being my ankles, the parenthesis the horse.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, mysterious paddock boot disappearance, muck boots, riding... Somehow the muck boots take any stability I have in my ankle so after 15 minutes I can't put any weight in my left stirrup. With the loss of motion from having been broken and the muck boots messing me up, it feels like any pressure on the stirrup will cause my ankle to just snap in half.

So I broke down and went to Tractor Supply for paddock boots. Which is basically the worst possible place to buy paddock boots. I ended up getting a rather ugly pair of endurance-y paddock boots. They're reddish-brown and look fabulous with black half chaps. But I can get my feet in the stirrups without having to wedge them in and I can ride without destroying my ankle.

You know what's going to happen now, right? Either I'll find the missing paddock boot (which I vastly prefer to the new ones), OR I'm going to lose one of the new ones and of course it will be the same foot I already lost. I'm really hoping for Option A.

And on a completely different note.... Before I rode River last week, I groomed him and he took offense to having his belly brushed. He managed to kick up and knock the brush out of my hand. Somehow he did something to my finger. It's been a week and it still hurts just as much. It's not a big deal because I can still use it pretty normally, but any motion that causes it to bend at the bottom knuckle is pretty painful. I guess maybe it's sprained? I don't know. But it's weird.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I spent a few minutes with River cursing him for being a pain in the butt about grain. Then I had a lovely ride on my best guy:

He's the best pony in the whole wide world and I love him more than anything. Sorry, Riv, you just can't compete with this. We're an old married couple--we nag and bicker and annoy each other and love each other. Well, I love him, and I'm assuming he loves me. He nickers when he hears me coming, anyway. And last week he did the cutest thing ever... as I was walking out of the barn, I tossed a quiet "love you" over my shoulder, and he nickered and rushed up to stick his head out!! Isn't that adorable???? So then I squealed and gave him a candy cane. Oh! And back when I was super crippled and was using a walker, he would nicker as soon as he heard the walker rattling! Awwwwww!!!! Gosh I love him.

Oh, and River and Irish and Lily are nice too.

Arrrggghhhhh

"Hey, dude, where's my grain??"


"Oh yeah, I forgot, I dumped it all out of that lovely feeder onto the ground. It happened 3 seconds ago and I totally forgot."


I buy way too much petroleum jelly. In case you were wondering, the Vaseline brand spreads better in cold weather than Wal-Mart brand, which tends to get stiff and forms sheets when you grab a handful, rather than neatly pulling away. And can I just say that dealing with petroleum jelly with your bare hands in 15 degree weather is not enjoyable and River owes me big-time for this.

Impressive.

When I went out to the barn this morning, I saw River from a distance and thought "what? Why isn't he wearing his blanket?" Then I got a bit closer....


Oooooh. He's wearing the blanket, he's just managed to get it so filthy that from a distance it blends in with his coat.

We had a lovely snowy morning...

Do I even need to say that I did not ride today?

It was an early day at the other barn, so I stopped by to see River and Irish again on the way home and feed Riv. Big idiot loves to eat off the ground.. pain in my butt. But at least the snow keeps the grain out of the dirt.

Quick post

No time today to do much with Riv. I had an appointment this morning to get fitted for contacts (yay!!!), so just had to time to stop by the barn and give River and Irish their grain. By which I mean "stand in the paddock with a bucket in each hand holding it while they eat and also chasing off the other horse who always tries to steal Irish's grain because she's too nice to tell him where he can go and also watch the chicken who was wandering around clucking and eating stray bits of grain".

River was annoyed that he couldn't dump the grain out on the ground. Ha ha! So instead he ate rather angrily. You tell that grain, Riv, shove your face in and take a big chomp!

I forgot to mention yesterday.. I tacked up River, walked him to the ring, rode around, rode outside, yaddayaddayadda and he was such a quiet, well-behaved boy. Later, I rode my 25 year old lease horse. Tacked him up, walked out of the barn, and he spent the entire way down prancing and trotting and passaging. What?? You're 25 years old. You are much too old for this nonsense! How does my 12 year old recently-retired OTTB behave better than my broke old man? Horses. *rolls eyes*

Jackpot!

Every time I ride River (okay, so as of today that's 3 times) I am shocked by what a good boy he is and I get more and more convinced that I hit the jackpot with him. I rode him around the ring for a few minutes today and then took him out around the property. We walked through the yard, down the driveway and back, and I got him to trot a few steps. Our very first problem arose when I took him on the motocross track. He, um, didn't understand how to go *down* a little hill. Seriously. I confess, I got nervous and bailed. I hand-walked him back and forth over the hill a few times and called it a day... mostly because it was just too much trouble to go back to the mounting block. But hey, our biggest problem so far has been getting confused about going downhill. I can deal with that. He wasn't actually bad, I'm just a wimp.

The good thing is, I finally got to use his pretty accessories!

Real men wear pink.

After our ride, I made sure his legs were clean and greased him up with Vaseline. Poor guy is a little sensitive to the mud. And he gets a crapload of mud on his head and around his ears, then he gets mad at me for *gasp* brushing it off. Granted, Riv's "mad" is holding his head up and trying vaguely to get away. But still. Dude, if you don't want me to brush your face, then stop getting it caked in mud! Not rocket science! Some of the hair is coming off with the mud, so I rubbed in Gold Bond medicated powder in case there's any skin funk going on... if nothing else, the powder will create a bit of a barrier to keep mud for sticking as much. River's a bit of a delicate princess, unfortunately.

He's also not gaining weight as quickly as I would like. Big D's is doing free shipping on FOB items... so I ordered 5 gallons of Cocosoya oil for him. And 20 pounds of a multivitamin. That's going to be fun when it arrives... something like 60 pounds of horse supplements.

Riverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Gave River his grain last night in a nice big ground feeder.

He promptly flipped it over, dumped the grain onto the ground, and proceeded to eat off the ground.

Mmmmmm, yummy!


It's like a scavenger hunt, trying to find the itty bitty pieces of grain in the mud.


Idiot boy.


So. Um. A friend's barn is having a show in a couple months. I'm seriously thinking about taking River to do walk-trot. Hm, I should probably try trotting him before I commit... We'd have to trot in an indoor with other people. One class has pole(s). If I can get him to move his lazy butt faster than a plod, I'll trailer him to an indoor so we can practice a little. I'm 98% sure he'll be good, but I don't want our first time in an indoor and our first time with other horses to be at a show. Even if it just a little adult walk-trot division. Livin' on the edge, here.

More home internet issues

Ugh. This is getting ridiculous. Internet at home has been down for almost a week. I think something is wrong with the modem again.

Anyway... My farrier was out yesterday. River's feet didn't need anything done. He has little feet and the farrier was a little worried about his front suspensories, but then I showed him the pictures from Riv's listings and he agreed that he looks much better in the picture than in person. Right now, Riv is just a shaggy, muddy mess. I love him and all, but I wouldn't think much of him if I saw him for the first time now. So we'll just wait and see, but I'm not worried. He held up over 90 races. Nothing I do with him can compare to that.

Stupid horses.

I stopped out for a few minutes today to give River his special grain (bit of ration balancer and sweet feed with a good bit of high-fat grain, a multivitamin supplement, and oil). Dimwitted beast that he is, rather than quietly eating out of the bucket that was set on the ground, he used his muzzle to flip it over and dump half the grain in a puddle. And then proceeded to nuzzle the ground looking for every spare bit of grain. Wouldn't it make far more sense to eat the grain while it's in the bucket? Or is that just too obvious? Idiot... Well, I suppose if the price I pay for having a quiet, sensible horse is that he's a moron who dumps his food on the ground and ruins it, I can live with that.