Current Schedule

I seem to have - somewhat by accident - fallen into a riding schedule.

This is not a bad thing! Though I do occasionally wonder if it will get stale. So far, so good.

Sunday: hack (20 minutes or so, usually bareback, focused on mental health)
Monday: dressage intensive (40+ minutes, drilling down on one specific thing)
Tuesday: OFF
Wednesday: longeing (20-30 minutes, side reins)
Thursday: light dressage (20+ minutes, focused on getting in & getting out to nail an overall feel)
Friday: fitness (40+ minutes, hill work, trot sets, long canters, whatever needs tweaking)
Saturday: OFF

last week's dressage intensive

Tristan has always been a harder horse to manage mentally than physically. He just does not love to work, and he really does think things over and benefit from that during time off. At the same time, he's 22 years old, and he is healthiest when kept in regular work.

I am constantly playing catch-22 with his work ethic. His first answer to everything is NO. It has been for over a decade now. That's never going to change. However, his confidence in the work that follows my YES is a really tricky thing to manage. The better his work is going, the more confident he is, and after a warmup he can be downright pleasant if we're on a good streak. The opposite is true: if we're on a bad streak, the ride is just a slog from beginning to end.

springs!

The only way to fix that is to get good work back again, but then you're fighting an uphill battle. How do you get back to good with a horse who is in a grumpy spiral? Time off. Lots of finesse. Backing off intensity - but not too much, because muscle melts off his Cushings body like butter. Lack of muscle means he's less confident in the work, which puts us back at square one. In that same vein, getting too excited about good work means I push too hard, which leads to a backlash.

It suits me, in a way. I would not do well with a horse that has to be ridden every day. My life is too unpredictable. Similarly, the careful constant management teaches me so much as a rider and a horseperson. I'm a really practical person and that sometimes leads to a lack of empathy on my part. Tristan teaches me every day that each small action and decision I take has bigger ripples.

Lessons Learned After Illness

So a couple of weeks ago Tristan was really, really sick. He's totally fine now; the last vestige of that week is his IV site, and even that's halfway grown back in already.

Which means it's time for some reflection. What went right, what went wrong, and what can I do better next time?

First, things that went right.

You may remember that about two years ago, Cob Jockey did a blog hop about taking your horse's resting temperature, pulse, and respiration so as to have that information on hand. I did the blog hop, though too late to enter to win a prize, and learned that Tristan's average temperature is pretty reliably 99.5. So when the barn started taking temperatures regularly, I knew where he stood. Some horses ran closer to 100; others, closer down to 99.

So when he temped at 101.4, I knew immediately that something was wrong, and we started treatment with banamine even though he hadn't quite reached the threshold to start, per the vet's protocol. I'm extremely glad we did start; we got a jump of about 8 hours, were able to give everyone a heads up that things might go south, and overall it was a managed problem rather than a true crisis.

Everyone should spend a week and get this basic information and write it down somewhere safe. It's really, really important. I'm extremely glad that I did that blog hop.

Other things I'm glad about:
- I am a close observer of his regular behavior and attitude, and could usually tell even before temping him again whether his fever had gone back up.
- He is an impeccably well-behaved horse on the ground. I've worked really hard on this over the years that I've owned him, considering when I first met him he could barely be touched. It paid off in spades: he was easy and pleasant to handle even when he felt awful, he stood quietly to get treatment even when he did not like it one bit, and everyone's life was a lot easier than it would have been if he'd been a more difficult horse. The best argument for putting (and keeping!) good ground manners on your horse is not the everyday stuff - it's moments like these.
- I was able to react quickly and be flexible. I have a demanding job but an understanding one, and it was easy to communicate with my boss to let him know when I couldn't be in. Modern technology also helped; I could check emails and respond to anything urgent during downtime. This isn't an accident; it's important to me that I have a job that treats me like an adult and a human being, and it's a crucial factor to me in choosing an employer. Sooner or later, we're all going to have an emergency, and life is easier when you're confident that your job can be put on hold for a few days and they have your back.

3am checks suck, but they're better when you know your horse will behave.

Second, things that did not go so well.

The most important of these is that my first aid kit was a bit lacking. I've written before about spring cleaning checkups for my first aid kit, but when I sold my trailer I got a little over-confident and slacked off on checking regularly. The barn has ample first aid supplies, and I knew I could fall back on them if I needed to.

Well, I needed to. The most egregious thing I had never replaced was my roll of Elastikon, that miracle fiber. I had to buy some from the vet, at a premium, and then I didn't have any to replace/update the bandage for his IV, so we resorted to over-taping it with duct tape. It worked ok, but it was considerably less than ideal.

I also quickly discovered that one my thermometers had a dead battery, that my paste banamine had expired, and that things in the kit itself were in disarray - I'd bought a box of new gauze, for example, and had just shoved it in the box instead of fitting it in neatly. When you're panicky and looking for supplies, you're already going to make enough of a mess. It doesn't help for things not to be orderly to start with!

So, terrible job to me. I've rectified the most urgent pieces of this - new Elastikon, new thermometer battery, new banamine - but I need to spend some quality time looking through the kit and re-evaluating each piece of it and either upgrading or downgrading things now that my situation has changed slightly. I did spend some downtime going through my tack trunk and throwing away expired and empty things, but need to allocate more time to this soon.

Other things:
- My mental state was...not great. I'm really embarrassed that I basically had a meltdown at 3am about the bubbles in the IV line. Horse care and on the ground handling is one of the things I take pride in, and am generally very competent at. It was really frustrating that my anxieties took over my brain and prevented me from doing the best job that I could. Yes, I was sleep-deprived and terrified and doing new and tricky things, but I still let myself and a lot of people down. I need to either be more ruthlessly honest with myself OR find ways to work through that much better. Preferably the latter; I think of myself as someone who's good in a crisis and I need to do more work to keep that up.
- My emergency fund is in shambles. I've been dipping into it a little too freely lately, for really-wants rather than actual emergencies. Yes, it was more than adequate to cover the cost, and yes, I have had a lot of really bad financial challenges this spring/summer, but I can and must do better about building this back up.

Finally, what can I do better?

A few things.

- Commit to more regular cleanouts/checkups on the first aid kit.
- Work on some anxiety-reducing techniques that aren't just crash-and-burn-and-sleep-like-the-dead.
- Build the emergency fund back up: no more discretionary purchases. At all.
- Good biosecurity is important even when no one is sick! No more grabbing a brush from the schoolie shelf just because it's closer and easier than bringing down Tristan's whole grooming kit.

Do you have any lessons learned from a crisis that you always implement now?

Gang Aft Agley

Man, June has been one long rolling disaster in terms of horse time. Either I'm working insane hours, out of town, or, well.

So, back up. A week ago, I had it on my schedule to longe Tris, but there were lessons in the indoor. Given his continuing shithead behavior in the outdoor, I dragged my feet, but the lessons ran super long and eventually I just said screw it and went up to the outdoor.

He was, predictably, an ass. He spent the first solid 15 minutes galloping around, and then when he realized he was attached to me, he did several circuits of a 20m circle bucking and squealing and kicking out.

But he settled in nicely, and gave me some really good work.

I took him back to the barn and hosed him down thoroughly in the wash stall. He hasn't yet exhibited any Cushings-related heat intolerance, but I am neurotically careful in this weather, so he only gets worked into a light sweat, walked out thoroughly, and hosed down ASAP.

While hosing him down, I discovered that he had somehow taken a nick out of his LF - right on the back of the leg, just above the fetlock, directly on top of the tendon. I was a bit nervous, but he had to have done it in his initial flailing around and continued quite sound. There was no swelling, the wound was clean, and I'd used apple cider vinegar to help rinse the sweat off, and he hadn't reacted to it at all. So I wrapped it with Corona and a little bit of vet wrap to keep it clean. Friday, there was still no heat or swelling or any indication of unsoundness, so I rode for ~20 minutes in miserable humid heat, and when he was done covered it in Swat.

I came out on Sunday to find localized heat and swelling and to find him off at the walk and the trot - more like slightly stabby with that LF than truly off.

I grant you that it's not exactly a fat leg, but you can see it best on the bottom picture - mostly to the inside, just above the fetlock. His fetlocks tend to hold fluid anyway, so checking on it was a lot of comparison to the other leg, not to a perfect leg. You can't even see the cut with the way the shade is falling - it's maybe 1/4" around. TINY.

Since then, I've been cold-hosing, doing standing wraps overnight, and doing a light vetwrap during the day to keep it covered. It's been going down steadily. My gut says it was actually a reaction to the Swat more than anything - when that thought occurred to me, I looked at the container, and while I couldn't find an expiration date, it had a label on for a tack shop I haven't visited in at least 7 years. So...yeah. That prompted me to clean out my tack trunk very thoroughly and throw the Swat - among other things - away.

The fashion statement known as "somehow my mom arrived at the barn with only one black standing wrap."

In the bigger picture: this was totally my fault, and totally preventable.

I've known for a few weeks now that Tristan is moving bigger and bigger. That's a good thing! That's what we're working toward! I've put polos on him for his lessons for precisely this reason, and in the back of my mind I thought I should pull his splint boots out of storage for other work. I had not yet gotten around to it (part of my brain was engaged in some magical thinking about buying him some nicer Majyk Equipe boots rather than the $10 Dover specials I own right now, stupid brain).

I've pulled the boots out now (they were neatly packed away with his bell boots, my medical armband, and my XC gloves in a neat little XC box in my traveling tack trunk, sob) and he'll wear them as soon as he goes back in work - which I hope to be this afternoon, fingers crossed, with a long walk and some trot to see how he feels.

Fuck June, anyway. I'd like to get back on some semblance of a real schedule, now.

Dual standards

For about a month now, I have been limping around. 

At first, I thought that I had tweaked something in my right ankle when I made the switch to wearing winter boots. It happens. Big stomping boots change your gait, and I always buy winter boots slightly too large for my feet, because I always end up layering socks within a week or two of wearing them.

Time marched on, I kept limping, and I learned through trial and error that the problem was not my ankle, it was my heel. Specifically, it was the back of my heel, and it was not getting better.

Whatever: I walked less, and I was riding without stirrups anyway.

You can see where this is going, right? It didn't get better. It's still pretty definitively not better. I finally, grumpily, started googling, and pretty quickly made an armchair diagnosis of achilles tendinitis, pretty classically right where the achilles tendon connects to the bone of my heel.

Unsurprisingly, diagnosis did not actually change anything. In fact, things continued to get kind of worse, with the pain sharper when the tendon was expressed and a low-grade burning sometimes even when at rest.

So, for the last 10 days or so I've been resting even more (so many extra holiday pounds that are just not getting worked off, ugh) and icing it every night. That has helped a little bit, but do you know what uses your heel? Driving. And putting stirrups back on your saddle to get ready for a lesson.

I have a doctor's appointment next week. Since I can still flex my ankle just fine - well, it's painful, but mechanically sound - it's definitely not ruptured, but there is a nagging sense in the back of my mind that it's a partial tear. Best case, I'm still looking at quite a while of restricted activity and icing because soft tissue. Damn it.

Sometime last week, while icing my heel and reading, it finally occurred to me.

If this had happened to my horse, I would've had the vet out to ultrasound him a month ago. I would be icing every day, monitoring bute, working to get the inflammation down and watching every step he took with an eagle eye.

It's one thing to vaguely and intellectually know that I treat my horse far better than I treat myself. It's yet another thing entirely to have it so cut-and-dried in front of me. If my horse had a strain of his digital flexor tendon, I would be FREAKING OUT. My own foot? Meh. I'll gimp around some more and after 3.5 think about icing it.

Not that I have any intentions of changing this pattern, mind you.

No Stirrup November

I'm still struggling, but on Tuesday I suited up for my first ride of November.

I actually thought, well, I should make my body hurt as much as my heart and brain. Maybe that will be distracting. So I took the stirrups off my saddle.

Confession time: I'm kind of loving it.

Yeah it's not this green anymore. Mostly putting this in because I need something to break up the text and we both look happy and focused.

I longed him first, to warm up his back. I pushed him through his fussiness, let him get a few good bucks in, and once he was moving freely and easily I brought him back in and jumped on.

I didn't quite plug in to my seat in the trot, and as a result he never really came through his back. I get that. I was ok with it - I was not exactly helping him.

But it felt good to just focus, fiercely, on something. I didn't check my phone. I didn't swallow back bile thinking again and again about people I love(d) who have embraced hatred. I just kept pushing myself to keep trotting, to follow the motion.

Wednesday, I was sore. I worked a 13 hour day, so no barn. Thursday, I went back out and did the same thing: longed, got on, pushed myself through.

Both rides mapped out about the same, 10-15 minutes longeing, 25-35 minutes riding, 10 minutes cooldown. Both times I was glad I had clipped him - he was warm but cooled out quickly.

[repeat caption from above]

Thursday, things went better. I felt more plugged in, had found a better way to engage my core and soften my shoulders to follow. I asked Emilie and the barn manager if I was leaning too far back; consensus seemed to be that I was sitting too far back in the saddle, but not necessarily leaning.

I spent a few minutes thinking that through as I listened to my body's feedback, and I found that I wasn't engaging my core quite enough and was sitting just a hair behind the motion. I settled my seatbones in but kept my upper body soft, and worked that through for a bit.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that toward the end of that trot work - which I interspersed with short canters whenever I was getting too tired - I got a couple steps at a time of lovely soft throughness.

I'm sure it's also no coincidence that last night was the first in 10 days I haven't woken up with an anxiety attack from a nightmare.

Horse Instincts

One of the best things about horses, for me, is how they force me to develop certain qualities.

For one thing, horses do not cope well with equivocation. They want clear, firm direction. They want steady commitment. They don't do that whole "well, I dunno, what do you want to do?" conversation well at all.

I think that's something that so many people who have those "that one time I rode a horse, he bolted/bit me/flipped out for no reason!" stories just don't get. Horses are generally very clear in their communication. You just have to pay attention. Learn to read them, and you can see something coming from a mile away. (Which, ok, is not to say that sometimes they don't flip for no reason - but that is the definite minority of instances.)

see, for example, a horse that is unhappy with literally everything in his life in that moment.

So in order to become a person who works well with horses, I have had to develop those qualities: be clear, be decisive, be firm. I'm not great at them yet, but I am lightyears better than I was. I think it's one of the reasons that horse people are often difficult (from society's point of view) to get along with. People who are in deep with horses, and who relate really well to horses, are often blunt, straightforward people who don't always have patience for the you-first-no-wait-what-now dance that society values. Oftentimes, they're women, for whom being blunt, clear, and not wholly sympathetic is considered a negative.

Here's another thing: horses teach you to be still and to wait.

I suck at this. I am a person who wants to practice frenetic energy in all that I do. I multitask, cubed. I need a million projects. I need to fidget. I need to constantly poke at things.

But I'm learning. For me, the epitome of this feeling lies in the perfect half-halt: that quiet, still, gathering, that moment when you communicate a complicated idea to a horse that you should hold, wait, be still. I think of a good half-halt as a spot deep in my stomach, in my core, that for one split instant contains everything and makes everything possible as a next step.

The more obvious, outward example of this is the ability to stay the calm center of the storm, to hold your body and your mind still when shit is going down. You can do it from the saddle, riding a buck or a bad moment. You can do it on the ground when you're dealing with or approaching a horse that's frightened or cartwheeling around on a longe line. Horses need that. They can read us way better than we can read them. They see our tension, they see our fear, and they feed off of it. But they can do the reverse, too. They can see a person who has let tension drain from their body, who is holding still, who is waiting quietly, and they respond to like with like.

Last week, I took the dog for a short hike down a rail trail near our house.

alerting very hard to something I never did see

I love my dog, but she is not always easy. She is fast, strong, and very tricky to keep focused. She is not great on a leash, but she is absolutely forbidden to be off leash except in enclosed areas. She bolts, instantly. Her recall is not good; she simply doesn't have the self-discipline to have it nailed down yet.

So on this beautiful, sunny day, we went about three miles, and on our return, when we were about half a mile away from the trail head, which was on a very busy road, she took a flying leap off the trail into a muddy ditch. She loves splashing in mud puddles. She was flailing around, sprinting back and forth, and then all of a sudden she was no longer on her leash.

There was no tug, no warning; she wasn't even at the end of her 30' lead. One second she was frolicking, the next she was a brindled blur and the next second she had vanished into the trees.

I ran forward down the trail, yelling for her. She reappeared out of the woods about twenty yards down the trail, crossed the trail, and then disappeared into the woods on the other side of the trail.

Between the moment when she first got loose and I panicked and the moment she crossed the trail again, I fell back on those horse instincts. I could feel my body grow still and quiet, and time slowed down. I saw that when she had crossed the road again she was actually angling in my direction. I saw how amped up she was, and knew that she loves being chased.

I jogged a little bit further in an unhurried way, watching the brush where she'd disappeared, making noise so she knew I was there, and then paused, waiting, called her one more time - and she exploded out of the brush right toward me and flung herself down at my feet.

I grabbed her harness instantly with a shaking hand, twisted my hand around a few times so she'd have to pull it off to get away again, and praised her to the skies, fed her half the treats I had with me.

The harness (her ususal Ruffwear) was in perfect shape. The leash was in perfect shape. The hardware wasn't twisted in any way. There were no tears or loose spots. There was no earthly reason for the leash to have separated from the harness, but it did.

If I had panicked, she would've thought it was a game, and kept running. In fact, she did that once before, two years ago, the first time she slipped her leash (and her collar; it's why she only goes in a harness now). But because Tristan - and the other horses I've learned from - has drummed into me that need to be still and wait, I caught her less than two minutes after she bolted.

Hopefully, I'll keep working on those lessons. They've served me well.

discouraged.

Last night, I left work on time solely due to my bargain with the devil of bringing my laptop home and planning on about another few hours of work later that evening.

It was a beautiful day. I didn't hit any traffic. (Such as it exists in Vermont.) I got to the barn right when I wanted to. Tristan was looking great. I got out my tack, and put together my old figure 8 bridle for an experiment.

I had a good riding plan: I put his old kimberwicke in the figure 8 to see if we could nip the bolting and jackassery in the bud, and settle down to actually schooling outside. If - as past experience indicated - he hit the curb chain once or twice and then settled down, then I had a conditioning ride planned with some long canters. I wanted to get some of the fuss out of him before trying an actual dressage ride in the big outdoor the next day.

I buckled the last strap of the figure 8 and stepped back to take a picture of his new bitting getup, because blogging.

Then I saw that I had missed three calls from my husband. I called him back.

He was stuck in non-moving traffic because of an accident on the main road of the city he worked in. Even if he got on the highway literally that moment, he was still 45 minutes away from home.

I had dropped the dog off at daycare that morning so she could get some exercise and socialization on a beautiful day.

He called at 5:30. Daycare closed at 6:00.

I hung up and stood there for such a long moment, just staring at Tristan's face, at the bridle I had just finished putting on him. I had to focus on breathing deeply. I could feel tears stinging, but I fought them. It was one of those moments of perfect, exquisite misery, when there is only one thing you can do but every fiber of your being is screaming that you don't want to.

I took the bridle off. I took the saddle off. I put my tack away. I put Tristan's sheet back on. I fed him his grain. I closed the barn door. I picked my dog up from daycare, and I went home.

I opened up my laptop, and I worked until 9pm.

I am so tired.

Emergency Chocolate

When I started Tristan, in January 2006, basically everything was difficult.

Every day, I would catch him in his paddock, lead him into the indoor, and groom him.

He was so nervous that he would tremble, sweat, or spook away, to the end of the lead line. When he got back to his paddock, he would drink gallons of water; the stress dehydrated him.

Eventually, I could groom him inside. Then I could longe him. Then he wore tack while longeing. Bridling was especially difficult.

I cried a lot. I am not really a person who cries from frustration. Adversity usually makes me grit my teeth, get angry, and push through. I cry at other people's pain, real or fictional, but not at my own. So when I tell you I cried a lot, that should give you some idea of how miserable I was. For months.

Early on, my trainer gave me one tip that really helped, and I used it for years.

Always keep emergency chocolate in your tack trunk.

I bought peanut butter chocolate bars, much like the one I have pictured above, only not nearly as nice. They were 2/$1.00 at the grocery store, and even that was a stretch, because I was on a really strict budget so I could afford my horse.

But I always found money to keep one in my tack trunk. On really bad days, I would put him back in his paddock, and I would go sit down on my tack trunk. Sometimes I would not even turn the light on in the tack room. And I would eat some chocolate.

Blood sugar is no one's friend. Stress does crazy things to my blood sugar. Forcing myself to sit down, have a moment of pleasure, get some sugar into my stomach, and breath deeply for a few minutes, was a key part of readjusting and getting myself ready for the long, cold drive home.

I haven't kept chocolate in my tack trunk in years, because even our very worst days now are lightyears better than even our very best days were that winter.

But it was still one of the best pieces of advice I ever got for training a young, green, volatile horse.

Pity, Party of One

Not the best ride ever last night.

Riding, for me anyway, is all about plateaus and valleys.

Mostly, we sort of cruise along, plodding ahead. Adding fitness, adding a little bit more suppleness, a little bit better transition.

Then we fall off a cliff.

And we hit bottom and I sort of stare around, dazed, wondering what the fuck happened, and Tristan thinks I am a worthless idiot. Then we wallow for a while, and everything is awful, and nothing works, even the stuff that worked flawlessly 48 hours ago.

Then we start slowly, painfully, crawling back up the other side. Eventually, we hit a spot that's maybe 1" higher than it was before we fell off a cliff.

So we plod along for a while. Then another cliff. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Sometime late last week, we fell off that cliff.

And right now Tris is wondering what the hell is wrong with me, anyway.

So right now we cannot: bend, go on the bit in the canter, trot forward, change direction on the bit, back up, turn left in the canter, breathe, relax at the base of the neck, use stifles. We can sort of get on the bit in the trot. We can in the walk if we want to crawl along flopping on the forehand. Which, obviously, is not ideal.

We also cannot, absolutely CAN.NOT. behave sanely outside. Un-possible. Out of the question. How dare I even think about it.

To be fair, this is his first year in four years when he's arrived into spring both a) very sound and b) very fit. Right now, he's banging out long trot sets and short canter sets and he's tired but still bright-eyed and willing to go. (On days that are not overly warm, anyway, since he's still got a lot of winter coat to blow out.)

But yeah.

Every single time in the last two weeks I've taken him outside there has been some kind of major shit fit. Last night, I set a goal of walking and trotting sanely in the outdoor. 20 minutes of walking, and he finally let go of the tension in his back and his neck - or enough of it, anyway - and I asked for a trot. Tons of little mincing steps, angry head-flipping, flinging shoulders side to side later, and he started to soften to the bit.

And then we got to the far end of the ring and he went sideways in this great scrambling leap, and UP, and down and then up and down a few more times. Still going sideways. Fast, toward home. I swore a lot and sat deep and yanked his head up and then kicked him on. Then it happened again. Then it happened again. I kept him walking.

Then I looked up to see that the barn manager was leaving, and I had one of those moments of utter defeat. I realized if I kept pushing this, I was going to end up on the ground, and there would be no one else around to catch Tristan. I can roll. Tris would head for the hills.

So we went inside, and we spent another 20 minutes attempting to get some semblance of "better than we started." Which was for the most part unsuccessful. I tuned up the trot-canter transitions a little bit. I got some changes of bend on a 20m circle. I got a couple of steps of leg yield. That was it. He was blowing hard, because he had spent the entire time fighting me, grinding his teeth, not breathing.

I called it quits. I stripped his tack. I took him back outside to one of the dry lots, and I let him roll, and then I curried him up and down. It was windy, but sunny, so the strong breeze took the hair away as fast as I could get it off him, and he still wasn't relaxed - he kept pacing, nosing at the hay and not really eating it, but he seemed to hate me a little less by the end of it.

Ugh.

Belated Birthday

April 11 is a big day in our family, and yesterday was a milestone anniversary for both of the April 11 events.

First, Tristan turned 21 years old!

birthday boy post-ride

Realistically, I have no idea when his birthday is. Even his year of birth (1995, coded into his freezebrand) is a bit of a guess, since he was rounded up at age 4. It's a pretty darn good guess, but it could be wrong one way or the other.

So, when I got him, I decided to pick a day for him. April 11 was my much-beloved grandmother's birthday. She passed away from a very fast, very aggressive form of lung cancer six months before I got Tristan. (Actually, very close to her own birthday.) So it was a good way for me to think about her on the date. Yesterday would've been her 90th birthday, and she's been gone for 11 years. I miss her a lot.

I went back and forth on whether to feed Tristan a beer. I ended up not doing it. I might on Friday night. We have a strict no weekday drinking rule in our household, and between a) laziness, b) neurotic doubt and c) that rule, I decided no beer last night.

I ended up doing a short, 25 minute dressage school. He gave me some lovely stuff in that short time, including a couple of trot-canter transitions in which he really lifted through the withers, and some gorgeous big expressive stretchy trot at the very end.

I groomed him hard before and after the ride, and got a TON of hair out of him. I offered him a slice of the maple pound cake I'd made and brought to the barn, but he wanted none of it - pretty typical for him. He's not a baked goods kind of horse, alas.

um, stop taking pictures of me and get on with it already

But! Yesterday was also an anniversary of a slightly less happy kind. Five years ago yesterday, I had colic surgery.

Yes, you read that right. I did. Not Tristan.

See, five years + one day ago, I went to bed not feeling great, but not that awful - just sort of nauseated and unsettled. I woke up at 2am in the worst pain I'd experienced in my life - and I'm really good with pain. I literally crawled to the bathroom and tried to throw up, failed at that, called my mother (she's a nurse) and decided with her and my husband (boyfriend at the time) that I needed to go to the ER.

Thus began a very long day that ended at 2pm with me being wheeled into surgery, entirely unsure what they would be doing. It presented like appendicitis, but my appendix looked ok (not great, but not ready to burst either) on the CT scan, the pain was not any better (they did not give me drugs until noon, so that they could establish that I was not drug-seeking, which I get, but wow, it sucked), and so I signed a waiver on the understanding that they would be doing exploratory abdominal surgery and would remove some part of my inside - definitely my appendix, because why not, but also possibly an ovary (also looking a little dodgy but not definitively so), spleen, pancreas, who the hell knew?

I woke up a few hours later and heard the verdict. Somehow, an adhesion - which is a piece of internal scar tissue - had displaced and had wrapped around and tied off a loop of my small intestine. The pain I felt was from my entire digestive system slowly shutting down. If it had gone too much longer there was a distinct possibility that the tied off piece of my intestine could have died or become infected. It was basically one of the weirdest possible things it could've been based on my symptoms. The surgeon took a photo of my intestines with his phone during surgery and I made grand rounds that week, since it was a teaching hospital.

I ended up in the hospital for two days, and at home flat on my back for another two weeks, and recovering for the rest of the spring. At a post-op appointment the surgeon was carefully explaining to me that they'd chose to go in laparoscopically for the best outcomes, and that was great news, since if I was careful the scars would be minimal and I could wear a bikini again, probably!

I sighed, looked at him, and said very calmly but firmly, "I have never worn a bikini in my life. When can I ride my horse again?"

I swear, the surgeon's whole face lit up, he looked like he wanted to high five me, and we got on famously. I recovered pretty darn well, and never even filled the prescription he gave me (for 30 days of opiates, ah, those halcyon days before drug addiction was a white people problem and so we didn't really care about it). It did set me back in riding for that spring since I had no abs and jiggling around was painful, but for a life-threatening issue that could only be solved by surgery, it was pretty darn quick and straightforward!

It took me a while to realize that what had happened to me was exactly what happens to a number of horses who colic and have to have surgery. Since then I've had more sympathy for the pain horses are in when they colic!

On Momentum & Inertia

I've always found self-regulating to be a challenge. If I'm doing something, I get lost inside that thing. I want to do that, and nothing else. If I am reading a book, I get lost for hours. If I find myself at work for an extra fifteen minutes, I stay for an extra two hours, and then I bring my computer home, and I'm on the couch working until midnight.

The same is true for my riding: if I have a good ride, if I put together a few days of good work in a row, I want to ride all the time. I read COTH all day. I stare out the window and wish I weren't at work.

But there's a flip side. If I fall out of that hyper-focus, it's like things don't exist. I haven't picked up a crochet hook in 9 months, after making a baby blanket a month for almost a year prior to that. Sometimes, I'll marathon a TV show, get interrupted (by sleep, or by having to go to work or do something else) and then I'll forget it exists. There are so many that I've completely dropped that way.

For whatever reason, my brain is not built to do the steady plugging away thing. It's gotten better over the years, in the sense that I am more aware of my natural tendencies, but it's also gotten worse - for whatever reason, as I get older, I get more set in some of my ways. This is one of them.

Sometimes this hyper-focus is a good thing. It's great for working on the house. It's great for the intensive work of dressage. When I really dig into a work project, I can absolutely crush it. When I can turn it to my advantage, I lay waste to a to do list.

One of the biggest struggles of my equestrian life is managing those tendencies, especially in relation to a horse who is basically the opposite.

See, Tristan is a horse who is really, really difficult to manage mentally. He fundamentally does not have a work ethic. There are many horses who will work their hearts out for you - who thrive on being ridden every day, or twice a day - who will keep going no matter what. Lots of people seek that out in their horses, and value that about certain breeds of horses.

That's not Tristan. Work, for Tristan, is a negotiation. He is the equine equivalent of the guy who shows up conscientiously to his job every day, 9-5, plugs away, honest as the day is long but never spectacular, and then spends his weekends on the recliner watching football, beer in hand. Figuring him out physically is a piece of cake compared to keeping his brain on an even keel.

Me? I work 8-7, then go home and paint the kitchen, then re-organize my office, then scheme for new projects. I over-commit and burn out spectacularly and when I force myself to take some rest, within 12 hours I'm itching to re-commit to something new.

So you can see how we might come into conflict.

When I have a good ride, I want to go back and ride every night, all dressage, all the time, for hours. Tristan can't do that. He just can't. Ride 1 is great, Ride 2 is decent, and then the wheels come off. So I'm constantly forcing myself to plan in rest days for him, to vary his work in quantity, quality, and type. To juggle it so that each ride I have the happy, refreshed, and cooperative horse instead of the one who lets out a deep sigh at the mounting block as he's staring into the middle distance.

Here's the other catch. When I give him a day off, I fall into a rut. It turns into two days off, three days off. I tell myself he's happier that way - which is actually completely true. So I fling myself into projects around the house, or into reading book after book after book, or staying super late at work every night, and before I know it, he's had a week off.

I'm not good at the moderating. I'm not good at the plugging away just a little bit every day. I full appreciate that this is a pretty deep character flaw, but I would also point out that learning to work with my natural inclinations has netted me some great results otherwise. The trick is in learning to manage it, to channel it, and to occasionally force myself to put one foot in front of the other, even for things that I love to do, like riding.

No, I'll never be a world-beating rider. But then, I honestly never wanted to be. I love my horse, I love to ride, and I want us to keep getting better. For me, part of that "better" is finding ways to square what I want to do with both my brain and my horse's brain. Sometimes that's challenge enough.

[sorry for the wall o'text - I've had this on my mind for a long time. Hat tip to The $900 Facebook Pony's recent post about momentum that finally spurred me to put this down.]

Puttering Around - Heel Scalping, House Renovating, and Life Changes

Last night, my trailer sold. I put a relative minimum of effort into advertising, listed it at a really good price, and answered 2-3 emails a day for the last 3 weeks. Last night, a young woman about my age came over, and saw all its virtues and its vices clearly. She was nice and cheerful and has a young Thoroughbred mare that she's starting to event. It will be her first trailer.

I am really, really sad, because for a long time that was mine, my ticket to the world beyond, a thing that I loved and slaved over and angsted over and took pride in. But: it is going to exactly the right kind of home, and I realize it is ridiculous to be sentimental about "the right home" for a piece of farm machinery, but I am much happier with this than I would be if it had gone to be someone's utility trailer or left to rust out on the hill.

The money will go into Tristan's emergency fund and to start a seed fund for a new trailer, someday. I might take some of it and install a gooseneck hitch on my truck, as I have the possibility of borrowing a gooseneck rig should I want to haul out places.

Not much else exciting to report. Tristan scalped his RH sometime last week, and you'd think that a horse would only be so idiotic/athletic/talented to do such a thing once - but you'd be wrong.

He kept opening it again and again. Each time I went out it would be pouring more blood and covered in a thick layer of shavings dust, no matter what I did to cover it up: Corona, Swat, Alushield.

Hannah was up this weekend and I put her to work mercilessly both in my house and at the barn and after a lot of back and forth as we stared at his foot and marveled that he was still knocking it (seriously, HOW?), I suggested Wonder Dust. It's not my favorite, but a thorough re-read of the label did say that a) it was ok to use on open cuts and b) it would work as a styric, aka a blood-clotter.

We were both deeply ambivalent, having mostly used it as a preventative for proud flesh, but I squirted some on, covered it in AluShield, and crossed fingers.

Aaaaaand...it worked! The next evening I went out and wiped off a clean, non-bloody heel that was showing evidence of healing around the edges. I think we're in for the long haul, as it is both circular and large, and neither of those things suggests quick healing, but it's at least on the mend now.

I haven't yet put him back on the longe to test soundness - I've been so busy with everything, I have no time to really ride anyway - but I will probably do that tonight or tomorrow.

We've also turned the corner with his white line & thrush problems, and his hooves are firming up and growing cleanly again. We're having some communication issues with the new farrier, which I'm not thrilled about, so I've been using a rasp to back his toes off a bit and help him out so he doesn't stretch the white line further.

We had a good weekend of dog-tiring and drinking and eating delicious things and working on the house. Huge, huge progress on lots of projects in the last few days, and today is a holiday for me so I'm going to plow ahead on a few more.

ZBH Blog Hop: Everyday Fail

Oh hell yes I have had this draft saved for 2.5 weeks. I just needed power back in my home office so I could turn on my computer, because I am one of those losers who still uses a desktop at home.

Anyway! Weeks and possibly years or even decades ago (time moves fast in the blogosphere), Zen & the Art of Baby Horse Management posted this blog hop.

Brace yourselves.

Matching derpface.

Born FREEEEEEEEE

Honestly not sure which of us is failing harder here. At least you can't see my face.

The tried and true dribble method. Look it up. George Morris says it's the best.

NOPE.

We are not only not on the same page we are in different fucking libraries.

Didn't you know that jumping FOR your horse helps him?

Also, I have been staring at Tristan's back legs for a while and can only conclude that he is morphing into a dinosaur in this picture. Go ahead, look closely, you'll see it.

wtf.

no, really, wtf.

SHUT UP I DON'T SEE A PATTERN YOU SEE A PATTERN

GODDAMNIT.

Well, that was cathartic.

Maintaining

I've been in a sort of funny place with my riding. I want to and I don't want to. I crave the feeling I get while riding, but I'm currently exhausted and overbooked, and the idea of getting everything together to go to the barn just to be hot and sweaty and miserable is not appealing, when there's SO much to do at home. So Tris is just sort of hanging out not getting a ton of exercise right now.

It's not like Tris has been neglected; far from. I've gone a few times to pet him on the nose, gather supplies, etc. Other things on the horse front are moving along: I'm washing his winter blankets, and have started showing the trailer. If all goes well, I'll sell it by the end of the week.

Arya's separation anxiety issues have been spiking, too, so it's doubly hard to leave her alone on my days off with her, when she cries and shivers and glues herself to my leg as soon as I start making motions to leave. We may be on the right track to helping her out, but that doesn't make it any easier to see her so miserable.

The house is moving right along. We're in a sort of weird decision crunch right now; the electrician comes on Monday to start rewiring, so I'm picking out ceiling fans, bathroom fans, and trying to line up other things to get done next week so that we're in the right place for rewiring.

We're finally painting in the master bedroom, too, and I am happy with the test color. One more wall to prep & sand, then prime, and some detail work for the priming to do, and then we will finish with a first coat around the room.

In short: not terribly exciting. I have things I want to blog about and ask, but 99% of my at-home internet time lately has been taken up by endless trawling through home improvement blogs to think about what rating ceiling fan I really need, what the Vermont code is for fire walls, and the relative R-values of insulation. Whew.

How I Spend $40 a Week on Groceries

Some time ago, I wrote a post about how I've managed my horse finances. It hasn't always been easy. When I first got Tristan, I was making less than $20k a year. I lived on $20 a week for groceries. Read the original post if you want more details.

I've mentioned on and off over the years that I still only spend about $40 a week on groceries for the two of us, and people have asked me how we do it. I thought I'd sit down and spell that out.

The following list is not comprehensive, and it's important to understand that there are a few things that do not count in our grocery bill: toiletries, pet food, and the occasional splurge, which I usually cover as part of my own personal spending. (See also, the $11 jar of locally made hazelnut chocolate spread from the farmer's market last week. NOT the most efficient use of grocery funds!)

(photos are all public domain, and linked to their originals on Flickr.)

1. Loss leaders

You may have heard this phrase before. "Loss leaders" are items that are on sale that a store will sell at a loss. The goal is to get you in the door for those spectacularly priced items, and then hope that you will buy other things in order to make up the margin. Think the Black Friday sales at 4am.

Here is the trick to loss leaders: don't buy anything else. In a typical week, I sit down with 2-3 grocery store circulars (the sales ads from newspapers; they're all available online on store websites now) and skim through them. I make a note of what's on sale where, and whether it's worth going to two or more stores. Sometimes it is - if they're on my route, if the sale is good enough - and sometimes it's not. This takes about 30 minutes, max. I often do it during lunch at work on a Wednesday or Thursday.

Keep at this and over time you'll get a sense of a few things. Loss leader sales ($1.99 for boneless chicken breast is a good one up here) repeat at regular intervals. They are located in specific places in the circulars, often mixed among mediocre sales and non-sales. The first page is a good place to start, but look through the whole thing until you start learning instinctively where to look.

So shop for those loss leaders, and don't get suckered into buying five other things that aren't even on sale. Eventually you get into a rhythm: you know how much of something that goes on sale regularly you'll need before the next purchase. I buy, for example, about 5lbs of boneless chicken breast for $10 about every 8-10 weeks. I freeze each chicken breast individually, and since they're big, they're about one meal's worth for my fiance and I. A few weeks ago, I bought 12 boxes of Annie's mac & cheese for $0.88 a box. It usually retails for $1.99 - $2.59 a box

2. Compare prices

Shopping for loss leaders only works if you have a sense of what a good price is. I could tell you, off the top of my head, the prices for my most commonly purchased items at 4 different grocery stores that are on my regular commuting route. I am always scoping out new items and new prices and cataloging the in my head. It's one of the reasons my fiance refuses to go grocery shopping with me: I take my time and always look at three times as many things as I end up buying.

It's part of the game for me. I enjoy food. I like buying it and cooking it and figuring it out. So I'm always curious what's new on the shelves, how much it costs, how much it would take to make a meal with, and keep that information in my head when I'm thinking about meals for the week.

Corollary to this rule: don't buy brand name unless you have to. I buy a mix, based on ingredients and personal preference. I'll always try out a store brand and see how it goes. Sometimes it's utter crap and we soldier through a box and then never buy it again. Sometimes it's exactly the same and costs half as much. For example, there is no mayonnaise but Helmann's mayonnaise and both store brand and Miracle Whip are the devil's piss. But generic ibuprofen is totally fine. I have a handful of dietary restrictions that mean I buy name brands more often than I like - high fructose corn syrup, for example, triggers my gout, as do many of the preservatives in cheap deli meat - but it's all about finding that personal balance.

3. Make a list and stick to it

I can't emphasize this enough. Make a list. Write down the things you need to buy and do not buy anything else. Force yourself to walk out of the store if you have to. When you sit down and look at the grocery store circular, you are in a calm, logical frame of mind. Don't make the list when you're hungry, stressed, upset, etc. Reflect on what's in your fridge and your cupboards, on your week coming up, on any longstanding cravings or curiosities. Peruse the loss leaders.

When I make a list, I do two things, which I admit are a bit obsessive. First, I divide the list by grocery store, and then put items in the order they will be found in the grocery store if I'm making my typical route. See above re exploring the grocery store, getting to know the layout and what's available. That means that I spend less time going back and forth and am therefore less susceptible to the traps at grocery stores - and I don't say that lightly. There is actual science in the way that grocery stores are laid out. They are designed to keep you wandering and to attract your attention to buy more food. Don't let them.

The second thing I do is I make a quick notation of price next to the item. I round up for any cents so I'm sure that there's overage. Then I skim the list and do a quick mental tally. If I've reached the end of my must-haves for the week with room left in the budget, that's indulgence money. I think about something I want to snack on at work or the barn, something the fiance loves but I rarely buy, or a new ingredient for a recipe I want to try. If it fits in the budget, then I add that to the list. Some people do meal planning; this has never worked for me. Instead, I have a set list of things that I buy on a regular basis, and a variety of ways to combine them depending on mood and time.

Final corollary to this rule: for the love of little green apples, do not go grocery shopping while hungry. Your eyes will get bigger than your stomach and you'll end up at the register staring at the pile of food you just bought and wondering how in God's name you will a) afford it all and b) eat it all. See also, the three different kinds of ice cream in my freezer right now.

4. Learn to eat creatively

All of my tips assume that you are at least a semi-competent and/or adventurous cook. If you are buying pre-made foods, pizza, quick and easy stuff, then you're screwed no matter what. There is simply no way to put together an affordable, healthy grocery shopping trip buying things you can just throw in an oven or microwave. I'm sorry.

Cooking is not difficult. It takes time, sweat, tears, some ruined food, and patience, but it is not a difficult thing unless we're talking really complicated stuff. Look: if I can spend 9 months killing the rise on every loaf of bread I made, then you, too, can learn basic kitchen skills. Once you do, the world's your oyster. You can be clever and thoughtful about the ingredients you buy and the way you put them together.

Cooking skills are the difference between "aaaaah, there's nothing in the cupboard, I have to order a pizza!" and "hm, I have a few weird ingredients but I think I can make something of this." Learn the flavors you like, and how to play around with food to make them. This will also help you with the loss leaders: typically there are 2-3 items of in-season produce that are dirt cheap. Buying lots of that and learning how to convert it into tasty food is an invaluable skill.

Corollary to this rule: eat less meat. Your bank account and the environment will thank you. I am most emphatically not a vegetarian, but between dietary and budgetary restrictions, I do a lot of experimenting with different kinds of protein. Meat is, for its dietary impact, ludicrously expensive. I only ever buy it on sale. Ever. I really mean that. We eat meat once, maybe twice a week. In the meantime: lentils, beans, eggs, nuts, and other delicious things are great for protein and they're all cheap.

5. Buy in bulk when you can

Say it with me: price per unit. You don't even have to be good at math. You don't even have to have a calculator. Most grocery stores will put the price per unit on the tag on the shelf! The typical grocery store price tag has the name of the item, and the price of the item. To the left of the price of the item is almost always the price per unit - per ounce, pound, gallon, you name it.

Buying small, cute sizes of non-perishable groceries is a fool's errand. I have lived in tiny, tiny apartments, and so I feel confident in saying to you that no matter how small your kitchen is, you can find some things that make more sense to buy in bulk. We're not talking Costco levels of absurdity, here. Just looking for a few seconds longer at the label and realizing something like this: that jar of mayonnaise is $3.89, which is a bit pricey when there's a smaller jar next to it for $1.89. But look! The large jar is more than twice as big, and its price per ounce is $0.15 less. That means that each delicious spoonful of this mayonnaise costs less, and the jar will still fit easily in my fridge. Try not to think too hard about the black magic that means mayonnaise never goes bad.

Obviously, caveats apply: you need to eat these things regularly, you need to have a plan for the food you buy, both for storage and consumption, and you need to be smart about it. Yes, 200 rolls of toilet paper for $0.50 per roll is a great deal but when have moved that same package of toilet paper from three different apartments, you will regret it.

Last piece of this rule is to also think about your price per serving of food. I have rough rules in my head for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and what constitutes a less versus more expensive type of meal. My typical breakfast is $0.50 - $0.75 in food costs: one English muffin ($0.25), 2 tbs peanut butter ($0.15), one mug of tea ($0.10). If I went with an egg and a slice of cheese instead it's closer to $0.75. Still way less even than the dollar menu at McDonald's, and tastier besides!

Let's apply this rule to dinner. I try to stay below $2.00 per person. I most often accomplish this by cooking in bulk and saving servings for lunches later in the week. Chicken casserole, which makes 6 servings: chicken ($1.00), box of pasta ($0.88), chicken stock (free, because I make my own, but for the sake of argument, $1.00), butter ($0.50), flour ($0.25), milk ($0.50). That's a base of $4.25; typically, I'll add some kind of in-season vegetable to it, like mushrooms or broccoli or peas. Let's say that brings it up to $6.00. That's $1.00 per serving. Maybe I have a glass of milk and a salad on the side - another $1.50.

You can make yourself crazy doing the math for every penny, but the really important thing is to just think about it, a little bit.

So, that is the very long, possibly overly-involved way that I keep our grocery spending to around $40 a week. Some weeks more, some weeks less. With the new house, I went on a bit of a stocking up rampage and spent $110 in one grocery trip, which still makes me slightly queasy. OTOH, we are set through most of June, so there's that?

Adult Camp at the Barn

I never really went to horse camp as a kid. Not in the budget, really. I always wanted to.

My barn has an adult camp twice a year - a dressage intensive for older women who come, board their horses with us, get lessons every day and watch the other lessons, get their rides videoed and then analyze the videos over wine, learn about riding to music, so on and so forth.

I have hangups sometimes about the fancy things at my barn, which is that I just ride my horse and I love my horse and if he ever sets foot in a competitive dressage ring again it will be a pleasant surprise.

And there are a LOT of very nice horses at this barn, and they are aimed at Grand Prix, and they are purpose-bred, and they have a lot of money in their blankets and their tack and their vet appointments.

To be clear, the trainer, barn manager, owners, everyone, are the loveliest people and would never, ever judge or treat me differently. They know how hard I work with Tristan, and they love Tristan for who he is, which is all I ever ask. He is valued as the babysitter, as the level-headed sweetheart that he is.

But then people arrive and I get a pang and I think, I would like to spend the whole week in the company of these women, riding my fancy horse and drinking wine together and laughing.

And then I think, I can't afford it.

If I could afford it, my horse would not be up to it - not even sound, much less at the camp level.

If I could afford it and my horse were sound, I would never be able to get a whole week off.

And then? If all the stars lined up? I'd still feel the outsider. Which is all on me, for sure.

So this is always a weird week for me, of being the ghost around the edges. Last night I got there after it was all over and walked with Tristan up and down the hill, and chatted with the barn manager and another lesson kid, and marveled at the new fancy horses in the stalls.

I guess I don't have a point to this post, except that incoherent yearning, sometimes. I adore my horse. I am happy with the path we have taken together (well, ok, I could've done with fewer vet bills, but you get the idea). I don't have the drive, the money, the time to follow that other path.

But, still. Still.

Adulting so hard

One week from today, we close.

Kind of freaking out over here...!

#horsegirlproblems

Conversation last night between me and the barn manager while she was doing chores in the aisle and I was riding in the indoor.

Me: Ow! Hey, [BM], I just broke my nail on my saddle!
BM: Oh no! Wait, your fingernail or your saddle nail?
Me: My fingernail, it caught on the pommel while I was gathering rein.
BM: Oh, well then, get your damn hands out of your lap!

...she's not wrong.

In which I display excessively poor judgment

My truck is a 2WD. It is in every other way perfect, so I work around that foible by letting it have winters off. It sits in the driveway, slumbering away.

Last year, the battery died. Not a huge deal; I'd never replaced the battery, it was a cold winter, it was time. So we towed it out of the driveway (and the several inches of ice it had frozen into, yikes) and got the battery replaced, problem solved. I had a vague thought of pulling the battery and leaving it inside for the winter this year, but one thing on top of another and I never did.

I was not planning to tackle digging the truck out for a few more weeks yet, but it turns out that we will need to move equipment for work back and forth between three different towns and my truck is the only staff vehicle that can cope with that much Stuff.

Ok; so Tuesday night, I tried to start it. Nada. I called AAA, and they tested it: dead. I faithfully ran it for 30 minutes, then tried again: nada. It's fine, said the AAA guy, who also works for my regular mechanic. This is a good battery, and it's less than a year old, so it's still under warranty. Call us in the morning.

The next morning, I called my mechanic and explained everything to him. He said sure, the battery is probably under warranty, but the warranty does not cover batteries that died due to being left to sit all winter and subsequently freezing. Bring it in the next morning, we'll test it, and we'll know for sure.

So that's where we sit right now. Battery is at the mechanic for the day, but it's almost certainly dead as a doornail and will need to be replaced. I am banging my head against any and all hard surfaces in frustration, because earlier this week I spent $250 I don't have on Tristan's pergolide + pentosan + banamine, and now I may have to spend another $250 I don't have because of a really dumbass mistake. (Oh and that's on top of the $550 I don't have that I have to use to pay our home inspector tomorrow.)

I really flipping hate money. And my own idiocy.

Got Issues? I am your worst nightmare.

Amanda's post at The $900 Facebook Pony got me thinking and remembering. So many of you have quirks and things that you're OCD about around the barn.

I get that! I really do! I have a few myself: I triple check stall doors and gates, I really like a nicely swept aisle, etc. You better believe that when I muck out a stall it's clean to the bones, and as the barn manager recently said when I told her about my endless night check, "So you OCD'd out a little bit, didn't you?"

Here's the thing though: there are a whole lot of things that everyone cared very much about that it never occurred to me to even think about, or at least be bothered by.

Tristan's bridle path hasn't been trimmed in 4+ months. I honestly can't remember the last time I figure-8'd my bridle. (Yes, that's a verb now.) It's been 3+ months since I cleaned tack, which, to be fair, I haven't really been using it. Forget trimming fetlocks. I wear breeches and barn clothes into the ground, and then I wear them a few more times, and then I wash them, except in cases of extreme filth or sweat. Usually they're secondhand anyway, or at the very least off the clearance rack.

I have never, not once, not a single time in almost 10 years, pulled Tristan's mane. Not a single hair.

Wild unkempt beastie.

Also, it falls naturally to the left. So I leave it there. I've never had more than a passing thought of training it over.

Ready for the one that would drive most of you absolutely crazy?

Take a good close look at the boots Tristan is wearing in this picture.

Those are Dover's house brand galloping boots, in black. They're Tristan's standard XC boots; he's a relatively careful horse and just needs a bit of extra padding. They wear well, and they're cheap.

Anyone care to guess how long I used them before trimming the extra Velcro straps?

Your answer is never. I never trimmed the extra Velcro off. Every single time I put the boots on, I pulled the Velcro loops snug and left the extra bits flapping in the breeze. It never, not one single time, not once, occurred to me to cut it off.

Then Hannah came with us XC schooling and noticed that I had never cut the Velcro straps and she was horrified, and she would not let me go on course until she had trimmed them properly. See below. You can just see the LF and RH boots in this image: nicely trimmed!

The moral of the story is, I can't be bothered and would probably drive most of you insane if you boarded with me.

In my defense, my horse is happy, healthy, never wants for anything, and I work my ass off to make sure he has what he needs. I just...don't have that gene that needs everything around the barn to be Just Right. Neat? Clean? Relatively presentable? In immaculate shape when we're showing? Hell yes. Any other time? Meh.