Here, There, and Everywhere

I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but the past week has been a crazy roller coaster. Between hauling horses, the show, crazy weather swings, and being shorthanded at work I feel like all I do is run around.

 Last Thursday I took Tia in for a uterine exam. The clinic was a little over an hour away, but they're one of the top repro vets in the state.  It had been raining off and on all week and cooler, in the 60s, but the day I was to haul her up called for 30-50mph winds.  Not exactly what I want to haul in.  Luckily the wind wasn't too bad, except for the last five miles home.  The exam itself went well; Tia was the picture of perfect uterine health. No cysts, no edema, no visible scaring. I did opt to do a uterine biopsy and culture just to be safe.  The culture came back negative but we won't get the biopsy report back for another week or so.  The vet recommended rebreeding her (hopefully next week!) and putting her on Regumate to make sure her hormone levers are sufficient to maintain the pregnancy.

Mare is not amused

Originally my show was supposed to be on Saturday, but because of the rain, they moved it to Sunday.  It was a USHJA Outreach show held during a rated show and show management was moving some of the rated classes around to save the footing. I was fine with the show being moved back a day, gave me extra time to prep and I spent most of Saturday getting everything cleaned and ready instead of rushing around Friday night.

Gelding is not amused

 But of course Sunday dawned sunny and hot. It was over 20* hotter on Sunday than it had been earlier in the week.  And of course my classes didn't go till early afternoon.  We got to the show around 8 and I was glad I had gotten a day stall.  We threw Peebs in and went and watched some of the junior/AO hunters and the jumper ring. We also grabbed lunch of delicious grilled cheese sandwiches and the teen from our barn that I forced asked to be my groom/ground person found a $360 hunt coat marked down to $20 that fit her perfectly. She's mainly a western rider but is doing English pleasure and dressage in 4H and open shows so she needed a coat. I wish I could find deals like that!

Unfortunately Peebs was not in a horse show frame of mind.  He was super looky and spooky and tried to take off with me in the canter during our warm up.  We spent a lot of time walking around trying to get his head on.  I didn't even think to bring a lunge line, but he could have used a nice long lunge.  I will for sure be bringing one next time and doing an early morning lunge just to be on the safe side. I was debating trying to jump him in the warm up (would it wind him up more or calm him down?) when there was an open gate for our ring.  I said screw it, I'm hot and they're 18" jumps, and I think getting him in the ring and focusing on something will calm him down.  So we went in with no warm up jump.

Molly is not amused

We trotted into everything and cantered down the lines, and the first class was a shit storm. He was spooky, tried to run across the diagonal line, and wouldn't come back to the trot after our last line.  So I stopped him hard, made him wait, then walked out of the ring. I think that knocked some sense into him because our second round was much better.  Still jumper-in-the-hunter-ring like, but we actually got the correct number of strides, and decent transitions without having a battle over it. 

While waiting for our third trip and flat class they brought a water truck and tractor into the warm up.  Peebs lost his shit at the water truck and went flying backward and spun.  I hopped off to hold him and every time the truck came at us or close to us he'd try to vacate stage left. At one point he backed into a trainer who wasn't paying attention.  Luckily she was fine and I apologized profusely. I was really hot and done at that point so I scratched the rest of my classes and took him back to the stall.  I figured he was an ass in warm up and the first round but we redeemed ourselves in the second round and while I was pissed at him for being THAT horse at a show, I was never scared or felt like I was going to die.  I didn't get mad at him, tried to keep my hands down, and release in the half halts.  And the 18" fences looked tiny. Big wins for me! He was just not his normal unflappable Peebers self, but we survived and got better, at least until the water truck.

I wasn't expecting to place at all considering most everybody else in the class cantered the fences and we exuberantly trotted everything. But I checked the results online when I got home and we somehow managed a 2nd for our second round, out of 8.  I was shocked! Not shockingly we did place 8th out of 8 for the first round.

We're going back to the same show ground for a two day Outreach show in July and I will for sure be lunging him and avoiding water trucks!  Hopefully he won't be as much of a nutcase!

Hunters!

The first being that Buddy and I are playing hunters on Sunday!  We're doing the 2'3" division at a local hunter show.  We had a lesson last night and while he wasn't doing anything bad, he wasn't doing anything good either.  He was basically asleep the whole time and no amount of me kicking, smacking with a crop, or squeezing the life out of him was going to get him to go forward. In hindsight, I should have gotten my spurs!  Oh well!  At lest away from home he's more forward, so hopefully we won't have the same problem.

The second Hunter is an 18yr old, strawberry roan, TB named Hunter, at our barn.

Who knew TB's came in strawberry roan?! His show name is Strawberry Daiquiri.

 He's a former champion A circuit hunter who had a suspensory injury and is now a beginner lesson horse.  He can do some xrails, and small verticals but not a whole lot.  He's normally great, just point and shoot kinda horse.  There's a girl leasing him who is learning to jump with him.  Due to her school schedule she hasn't been able to jump him much in the past month.  In her lesson on Sunday, Hunter was being very naught, for him.  He kept flipping his head and yanking the reins away.
I got on him today to school him.  He felt very supple and forward (for him)! The jumps from my lesson last night were still up so after a quick warm up we played over a few x's.  He really wanted to go, so we worked on waiting and stopping straight after the fence.  Once he calmed down a bit we canter a few fences.  You could tell he was having so much fun! He was arching his neck and prancing a bit.  It was so sweet to see the old man have a good time! He reminds me of Cuna.

Back in his glory days