Owwwwww

I did my first full set of barn chores this morning, something I haven't done in...five years? Maybe a little bit longer? Whew. Turnout, stalls, water, sweeping, bringing back in, topping off water. A little over 4 hours, which puts some time in the bank for lessons when Tris is ready. I watched lessons while eating a granola bar, including a faaaaaaancy Andalusian gelding working on his trot, and then took Tris for a road hack that would've been longer had the bugs not discovered us halfway through.

Since I last swapped barn work for lessons, I've divested of some of my barn work gear. In particular, the rubber muck boots I used to use are long gone; they were $10 boots from Walmart to begin with and they leaked constantly, so I chucked them a few moves ago. I have no idea what happened to my work gloves. My raggedy jeans have too many holes even for the barn. I did chores this morning in my riding gloves (I use the leather palm/crochet back kind) and Ariat Terrains and a new pair of jeans that I've retired from daily wear to barn wear. Only the jeans worked out. The Terrains, much beloved as they are, are not built for chores and my feet were swampy and swollen and aching by the end of the day. The riding gloves did reasonably well but the way the stitching was done my fingernails kept bumping the tips of the fingers and now my fingertips hurt quite a bit. (*world's smallest violin*)

That puts me in the market for some new stuff. I stopped by Tractor Supply on my way home, hoping to pick something up since I'll be working again tomorrow morning and since I had a 10% off coupon. I tried on all the boots I could put my hands on and every.single.pair. was too big for me. I do not have small feet! I wear an 8 or 9! And yet, everything was women's size 10 plus. WTF, people. Ditto again on the gloves: all the kinds I liked were floppy and too long on my hands. (Admittedly, I have short stubby fingers and small hands, so that is not unusual.)

I struck out again at Agway in the boot department - though they had some, none worked for my feet and if I am going to spend actual money on these and do hours of chores in them I want them to be comfortable, not barely adequate. I did much better with gloves, picking up a pair of sturdy but kind of cute teal/beige gloves that will suit nicely, for under $10.

So: any suggestions for good chore boots? I may go back by Tractor Supply and find a salesperson tomorrow afternoon - everyone was jumping around busy on this summer Sunday and I wanted to get home - or I may widen my radius a little bit and try a few other hardware stores; there must be a few more farm supply places around that I just haven't found yet.

Slowest rehab ever?

I'm beginning to think I might be overly cautious in my rehab schedule. (Which will not shock anyone who knows me...)

Tris is 100% sound, and we're not worried about rehab-induced re-injury; it's not a soft tissue problem. His hoof has healed over, the bone has sealed, etc. Our only limitation is fitness: muscles, wind, and old-horse joints (he is 18 this year).

So here's our schedule, followed 5 days a week with 1 day completely off for recovery and starting this week, 1 day of a long road hack with hills. We are about to start Week 7.

Week 1: 20 minute walk
Week 2: 30 minute walk
Week 3: 15 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 10 minute walk
Week 4: 20 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 15 minute walk
Week 5: 15 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 10 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 5 minute walk
Week 6: 15 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 10 minute walk, 5 minute trot, 15 minute walk
Week 7: 15 minute walk, 7.5 minute trot, 10 minute walk, 7.5 minute trot, 10 minute walk (Day 6: 60 minute road hack @ walk)
Week 8: 20 minute walk, 7.5 minute trot, 10 minute walk, 7.5 minute trot, 15 minute walk (Day 6: 60 minute road hack @ walk)
Week 9: 15 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 10 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 15 minute walk (Day 6: 60 minute road hack @ walk)
Week 10: 15 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 5 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 5 minute walk, 2-3 minute canter, 10 minute walk (Day 6: 60 minute road hack @ walk)
Week 11: 15 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 5 minute walk,  10 minute trot, 5 minute walk, 5 minute canter, 10 minute walk (Day 6: 60 minute road hack @ walk)
Week 12: 15 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 5 minute walk, 10 minute trot, 5 minute walk, 10 minute canter, 10 minute walk

At Week 12, I'll feel comfortable chucking the more rigid timing and going back to work based on feel. Right now the trots are mostly straight lines, with him in the bridle but not really properly on the bit, more focused on rhythm and softness and rideability than dressage. Last night, we trotted up a small hill, and I'll continue to incorporate that and poles and other strengthening exercises as he feels able. We should finish the second week in August. At about that time we might introduce some hand gallop in the ring. I'll have to do some thinking about a proper gallop set; there isn't really anywhere flat with decent footing for this nearby. All the good fotting is on some sort of an incline, and all the flattish stretches are on hard-packed dirt road, so it will depend on how he feels in hill work at the trot and canter. We'll also take jumping as we see fit; certainly not until this schedule is complete but it may be that we take advantage of the dressage trainer before she goes back to Florida and hold off on jumping until the eventing trainer comes back to clinic in the winter. Then again, I might get too tempted by the jumps in the upper ring before then and pop over a few.

eta: I might also add lessons in at Week 10, once a week, to focus on re-starting the canter right - that's always been our challenge and it would be good to have some help from the beginning.

What do you think? Most pointlessly over-cautious and slow rehab in history, or a sensible, gradual plan?

Poof!

I gave Tristan the night off last night after the barn manager texted to tell me he looked fine to her.

Got to the barn tonight and walked, then trotted him out in the indoor: 100% sound, tracking up, etc.

Well, okay then! I'm just going to smile and nod and move on.

He's really starting to get into a rhythm with his trots, and I'm introducing a few steps of leg yield here and there. The 40 minutes of walking we do feels excessive right now but starting next week we will swap it for trot, 5 minutes at a time.

I'm going to start working at the barn now and then to pay for lessons as soon as he's fit again, and I've gotten advice from friends about a fitness plan for fix hunting this fall. Basically, we'll aim for BN fit with lots of road work and we'll be fine. I'm looking forward to it!

God Damn It.

Last night I wasn't quite feeling it - it had been pouring rain all afternoon and I mostly wanted to go home and curl up with a book - but I headed out to the barn, tacked up, and got on.

We did 15 minutes of walking, then 5 of trot, and while it was stiff to start off with we really hit a nice rhythm by the end. I'm focusing hard on rhythm more than anything else, and in the last few rides we've really nailed it. This was the first ride we nailed it in the first trot.

Then we walked again, and about three minutes into the walk, he went lame. No funny step that I could feel. Literally from one step to the next he went from ambling along on a loose rein to stumbling drunkenly. I pushed him through a few strides, then got off and walked him in hand to watch, then put him on the longe line.

Definitely off, definitely left hind. His right front, his surgery foot, was totally fine, but his LH was not tracking up and was swinging to the outside. It was far worse tracking left, and he was head-bobbing. He looked alllllmost ok to the right. When I halted him he rested the LH.

I brought him back to the aisle, untacked him, and ran my hands down every inch of his leg, palpated all over, compared with the RH, did everything I could possibly think of to detect ANYTHING, and nothing. No heat, no swelling, no nothing. He kept picking up his foot when I poked at his fetlock but that is SOP for him (it's his favorite foot), and while it had some fill it matched the RH fill and again, not at all out of the ordinary for him. (Front legs were clean and tight all the way down.) I rubbed some Biofreeze into the fetlock because I had some samples and I wanted to do something, however likely useless it was.

Ok; I walked him up and down the barn aisle to see if something had resolved, and again, not quite tracking up, swinging a bit to the outside, and when I turned him in the aisle to the left to go back he stumbled - like when he put his weight on that LH to swivel he couldn't balance on it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Hopefully he took a slightly funny step, tweaked a muscle, and just needs a few days of rest. All of our work has been focused on building up his hind end, so he may have been a bit overstressed. The barn manager will let me know how he walks out of his stall today, we'll keep an eye, and he'll have a massage on Monday that will help with assessment and possibly treatment. If there's no improvement or clear cause, we'll get re-acquainted with our vet next week.

Liebster Questions

Hannah tagged me for the Liebster Award that's going around, so here you have it. 11 random facts about me, followed by 11 questions.

1. I have had colic surgery. No, really. A few years ago I wasn't feeling great and went to bed early, then woke up with excruciating abdominal pain, then went to the emergency room, then went in for exploratory surgery when they couldn't figure out what was wrong from the tests, and when I woke up they told me that an abdominal adhesion, a bit of scar tissue, had wrapped around and tied off my intestines. Which is basically exactly what happens in a torsion colic.

2. I once held Bruce Davidson on course. True story. Read all about it. I was quaking in my boots. (No reason to, he was perfectly nice, but the guy has a statue at the Kentucky Horse Park, for crying out loud.)

3. I used to live in a nunnery in France. I'm not even a little bit Catholic, but that was the housing my college arranged for the three of us who chose to live in the random provincial French city instead of Paris. It was awesome, except maybe for the bells for the 7am mass every day.

4. Speaking of France, I also rode for a year at the equestrian center there and I'm fairly certain the French system of equitation is basically the Thunderdome. If you live, you are a damn good rider. We would routinely have 20 horses in two circles in their large indoor, doing these insane lessons, WTC. Picture the worst warmup ring you've ever been to and now imagine riding in that every day.

5. I am a third generation Star Trek fan. My grandfather owned a set of collectible original series Franklin Mint plates and displayed them on the den wall and now they are a legit family heirloom that I hope to inherit someday. There is at least a 1 in 2 chance I was named after Spock's mother. (The other option being the Doberman my mother's family showed when she was a child.)

6. I studied medieval military history in college, and wrote my undergraduate thesis on the crossbow. I had so much fun doing it. My advisor - with whom I am still close and see a few times a year for dinner or coffee - still talks about it at dinner parties.

7. I am NOT a cat person. I am such a curmudgeon as to push the barn cat off my lap when he settles there while I'm watching a lesson. (And yet, I live with one. Sigh.)

8. I have gout. Yes, the same thing that fat old man villains in eighteenth century novels get. My body does not process uric acid effectively, and so it builds up in my joints instead and eventually causes pain. The incidence rate in pre-menopausal women is a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but it is also hereditary, and apparently I lost the genetic lottery.

9. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in history, and I actually use them! I've been lucky to piece together a career in museums and I'm very deeply involved in the field. I serve on national and regional committees, blog professionally, and a lot of my travel is museum-related.

10. I was on the board of the Save Farscape campaign. Yep. Insanely geeky and yet it taught me SO much about community, advocacy, and passion.

11. I have an almost paralyzing fear of driving on bridges over water. I break out into a cold sweat almost every time, especially if we're high up or the water is wide.

Here are my questions:

1) Why did you choose your current horse sport or discipline?
Compromise; I wanted to focus on dressage after one too many falls on my head, and it turns out Tristan really likes to jump and run cross country, so we event.

2) What is your horse-related Big Goal, if any?
I'd like a small farm some day. My dream is to be able to retire Tristan to my own land.

3) Pick a horse-related thing about which you have changed your mind. Why?
Rope halters. When I first started Tristan, I liked them a lot and while I never bought one I always had plans to, and I would do ground work with him in them. Now I haaaaaaate them. It makes me twitch to see people tie with them, especially, because if a horse pulls back against them it's awful. All those pressure points!

4) Favorite apocalypse?
The EMP kind - where all technology is obliterated at once. Probably not a coincidence that that's the one I think I'd best be able to survive, what with all my living history/agricultural experience.

5) Horses and riding as social outlet: pro, con, or it's complicated?
Complicated. Some of my best friends and my favorite people have come from barns, but my real reason for going to the barn is to see my horse. He's my motivation, not a social scene - which is good, because right now 90% of the time I'm at the barn I'm alone!

6) What's the oldest piece of tack you own?
I have this beautiful, wonderful dressage saddle from the 1940s. It was a gift from a friend who has since passed on, and she rode in it on her horses when she was my age. It's caramel-colored and flat as a pancake. I'm fairly certain the tree is broken and in any case it would need a lot of work to be usable again, but I love to look at it.

7) Is the glass half-empty or half-full, with what?
Half-full, but it could turn half-empty in the blink of an eye, so you should be ready at any time! I am a prepping, have fifteen plans maniac. I drink almost exclusively water, so we'll go with that as the liquid.

8) Time to colonize some other planet! It's a one-way trip. Do you go?

Not unless I can take Tristan with me. I might've gone to grad school in England except Tris couldn't have come. If he can come with, I'd probably do it.

9) What's the best horse-related time- and/or labor-saving trick you know?

I dunk my bit in Tristan's water bucket after every ride, and keep a towel tied to the front door of his stall to wipe it off. It takes 2 seconds and it works like a charm. There's very little horse-related that squicks me out faster than a bit with dried foam and bits of hay stuck to it.

10) Recommend me a poem.
Margaret Atwood, The Loneliness of the Military Historian, which strikes rather near to home, as you can imagine.
Excerpt:
My trade is courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don’t ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.

11) What's on your keychain?
Half-lanyard, flashlight, keys to my vehicles and home(s), a bottle opener (though I don't drink so I'm not sure why), the key to my tack trunk that I have literally NEVER locked, and the key to my great-great-uncle's dump truck, because we found it when we were cleaning out his house and I think it's awesome.

So, um...I'm not sure I can fill out 11 blogs with less than 200 followers because I'm still kind of new to reading horse blogs regularly. So how about I write 11 questions and if they strike your fancy, steal them and answer them. That work?

1. How old were you when you started riding?
2. Favorite season, and why?
3. Most memorable moment on horseback?
4. Do you have an affinity for a particular breed of horse? Why?
5. Favorite cheesy horse movie? (Feel free to pick a non-cheesy movie, but I'm not sure there are any.)
6. What living rider would you most like to emulate in style?
7. What's the furthest you can imagine yourself going in your chosen sport? IE, how high do you want to jump, or how big or often do you want to show?
8. What's one country you've always wanted to visit but haven't yet?
9. Marvel or DC?
10. What's your guilty pleasure meal, ie the one you eat totally for comfort after a long day?
11. Have you ever played an instrument?