Author: Amanda

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Liebster Questions

Amanda4 Comments

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?

rehab

Change of Plan

Amanda1 Comment

SOME PONY decided last night to throw an offroad bucking fit through a stand of apple trees.

I’m not naming names, but it might have been certain bay roan mustang who lost his brain and subsequently made poor life choices.

I was staying inside, right? Last night I brought Tris into the ring and, as always, dropped my stirrups and tightened my girth in the middle of the ring, and on the way over to the mounting block he made so many sad, pathetic, longing looks outside that I said ok, fine, we’ll walk on the roads for a bit and then do our trot work in the outdoor ring. He was so very happy and springy!

Then when we were walking on the road back to the barn to work in the outdoor, a big commercial rig pulled up alongside us, and I asked Tris to step a little bit off the road to let him pass. The driver stopped and asked directions to my barn, which was barely a quarter mile over the hill, and Tris got antsy next to the big truck. I finished giving directions, and the horse on the rig let loose a double barrel kick and Tris LOST. IT.

I was never in danger of falling off, but oh man I was pissed. When I got four feet on the ground again I let loose a decent crack with my dressage whip to send him straight and forward back home. In the meantime we were up-and-down-and-spinning through several apple trees just off the road, and I was wearing short sleeves. My arms were white with scratches and I had leaves in my helmet and stuck in the saddle.

We walked back to the indoor and I asked for a 5 minute trot, by the end of which he was huffing and puffing like he’d come off XC. We walked out for a looooooong time and when he’d recovered we trotted again just for 2 minutes or so, and while he was walking out and recovering from that we went to investigate the rig, walked all around it, sniffed it, and generally discussed being a nicely mannered pony with an ounce of brain matter.

Oh, pony.

rehab

Worrywart

AmandaLeave a comment

I am, by nature, a worrier. In case you couldn’t tell that already from reading my previous entries. Most of the time, it’s nothing; sometimes, it ends up helping.

Anyway. Yesterday, I got up early and was saddled up and starting with our walk by 7:30 a.m., so that I could go to a staff meeting at work and then have my day free to run errands. (My second office, in the admin building of my organization, is only 10 minutes from the barn; home is closer to 25; if I was going to go in for the meeting on my day off it made sense to combine the trips.)

Walk felt fine, though he was a bit ticked about working before he’d even had grain. The trot felt, quite frankly, awful for the first 3 minutes or so. I couldn’t get a consistent contact or bend, and he was tripping all over the place. I was worried enough to get off and jog him out and watch the RF.

He’s totally sound on the RF, but he was overall stiff and a bit wonky. At the time, I worried, and I’m still not thrilled, but I’ve reasoned it out: he’d been in his stall all night; Sunday is a shorter turnout day because of the barn staffing; he’s been working hard to build muscle and he’s probably low-level sore.

Sure enough, in our second trot he was much more even and fluid, and when I had him actually moving forward and on a bit of contact he felt like a million bucks. It was when I let him go behind the leg, or when I dropped the contact that he got uneven and a bit trippy behind. (Once or twice when I asked for a bit of bend it was like he’d forgotten how to coordinate his back legs, went for a teensy bit of crossover with his hind legs on the turn and whooooooosh, goodbye hind end, as in it dropped out from underneath me as he tripped. Sigh.)

This week, our pattern is 15 walk – 5 trot – 10 walk – 5 trot – 5 walk, for a total of 40 minutes. We’ll stay indoors so we can work on flat, even, forgiving surfaces and resume a bit of hillwork next week. If it weren’t so bloody cold and rainy I’d be giving him some Vetrolin or other liniment rinses after work, but he’d stay wet the rest of the day if I did that. Summer seems to have forgotten about Vermont.

rehab

Ho Hum

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We had a really lovely ride Thursday, all around the big hay field, a long peaceful walk with Tristan munching on the one bite of long grass he snatched at the beginning, grass brushing almost at my knees at times and the mowed path just barely discernable in spots. The edges, alongside the creek, were squelchy and soft and there were one or two steps that sent my heart to my throat keeping my fingers crossed for his shoes, but he did fine. (And now I know not to repeat that ride until we’ve had a few more days of sun!)

Then up to the outdoor ring for our trot set, which went reasonably well though we had discussions about wiggliness – flinging his shoulders in the direction of the gate, speeding up with the barn in sight, blowing off the far corners. Not an unusual conversation to have with him for his first few rides in the outdoor. He also offered up about a 10 second temper tantrum – 2-3 big arched-back bucks, which I kicked him out of, which led to a high-headed bolt of 2-3 strides, which I stopped by turning him hard and kicking him off one leg to interject bend, then 2-3 decent-sized crowhops which subsided when I pulled his head back up and sent him forward.

I’m not sure whether he took a funny step, had a momentary flash of temper, got divebombed by a bug, or got spooked. (The last would be out of character for him.) Once it was over he went back to well-behaved and orderly and we had some nice trot circles.

Last night, Friday night, was not so good. I was running late from work and unsettled from the things that had kept me there, and he had just finished his (bare handful) of grain, so I balked and moved slowly changing and getting his tack. When we set out he was very looky at the farrier’s trailer, which lives next to the back barn, and which he’s passed a dozen times. He was sluggish and uninterested in hacking out, and I wished I’d brought a whip for our trot. It was shorter overall – only maybe 30 minutes. Maybe he was a bit tweaked from our long pasture ride and his bucking fit, maybe he didn’t want to play after dinner.

It’s not out of character for him to have slower days, though, and I watched the shadows of his legs like a hawk on our road ride, paid careful attention to what I as feeling, and he was moving soundly and evenly, if a little short and lazy.

He’ll get the weekend off as I travel for a family thing, and Monday morning we’ll bump up to 30 minutes walk, 10 minutes trot, and see how he handles that.

abscess · adventures with the vet · budget · surgery

Doing the Math

Amanda5 Comments

If you follow the COTH forums long enough, you’ll see multiple threads about horse budgeting – and in every single thread, at least one person says that he/she never actually looks at how much it costs to keep a horse.

I don’t understand that attitude at all. When I first got Tristan, I was making just under $20,000 a year. I knew where every single penny went – most of them into him. I am doing better now, but I work in nonprofits. I’ll never make so much that I don’t know how much I spend on him.

With that in mind, here is the end result on a project I’ve had in my head for a little while: start to finish, how much Tristan’s coffin bone chip cost. The period in question is June 8, 2012 through May 16, 2013, when he got his fancy glue-on shoes. I’ve broken it down by categories:

Veterinary Care – vet calls and treatment (hands on care)
Farrier Care – shoeing, which he would not have had had he not gone off
Diagnostics – x-rays, mostly
Medications – bute, antibiotics, sedatives, specific supplements
Supplies – epsom salt, vet wrap, duct tape, and the like

I could also do a category called opportunity costs – for the scratched Valinor and King Oak entries, for the 7-8 lessons I pre-paid and left behind when I moved to Vermont, and I’m sure for other things if I thought about it. Easily around $500 or so.

So:

  • Veterinary Care – $2,037.59
  • Farrier Care – $990
  • Diagnostics – $1,070.75
  • Medications – $1,313.70
  • Supplies – $688.05
Total: $6,100.08
Some of my separations were silly; I split the surgery up several ways (vet care, board, diagnostics, medication) when the two days of hospital care, surgery, and drugs cost $2,189.20, which is DIRT CHEAP if you ask me. I am also certain that I missed a few epsom salt and duct tape purchases in reviewing my budget numbers, so that category may be off by $50 or so.
The medications column ended up being the longest, and it was mostly sedatives for his farrier issues. The big ticket items under supplies were his EasyBoots, the two regular sizes and then the third larger size he had to get at the vet clinic. The diagnostics were entirely x-rays, four different sets of them and the one radiologist consult.
Out of all the vet visits, if you look at each visit as a cohesive cost unit, the surgery cost the most, obviously, but after that it was that first visit, the one on June 8 for the first abscess diagnosis that was the most costly. (In more ways than one, since that was the one that sent us down the wrong track!)
In conclusion, this seems astoundingly low to me. In my head it was closer to $10k. Paying for it has still emptied three savings accounts (Tristan’s, my farm down payment, and my tax return) and put a serious dent in my emergency fund. Still, it’s a testament to those early days living on noodles and sleeping in all my winter gear on the couch in front of the wood stove because I couldn’t afford to turn the heat up that I was able to cover it all and that I could pursue the problem to its final solution.
rehab

Cooling Off

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This hasn’t been a problem in Vermont yet, where half the barn is still blanketed overnight and it’s been raining fit to build an ark, but I did enjoy this SmartPak article: Cooling Out a Hot Horse.

At my first barn, when I was eight years old or so, we cooled out after lessons by walking down a fenceline, around the pole at the end, and back up the fenceline, a total trip of about 50 yards or so. At the starting point was a huge tub of water. We were to offer the horses water each time we reached the tub, and to keep walking until the horses spurned the water.

It’s a simple if not ideal system. The horses were almost never worked hard enough to be breathing heavily, and they were all fit lesson horses anyway. I can’t remember ever sponging or hosing off a sweaty horse.

Now I’m lucky to own a horse that isn’t much of a sweater and cools down fairly easily. We always end our rides by walking for at least 10 minutes anyway, more for the muscle recovery than for actual cooling down strategies, though on rare occasions I’ve walked him longer than that when I feel he’s warmer than normal.

He actually usually sweats and dehydrates more because of mental factors than physical ones – when I first started working with him, we’d spend 10 minutes in the indoor at a time, and all I would do would be to groom him slowly and gently, pick up a foot and put it down, and talk to him. He’d go back to his paddock after those sessions and drink and drink and drink. Like a nervous public speaker in front of a crowd of thousands – he’d get an equine form of cottonmouth.

Lately, I’ve been paying more attention to strength than to heat/dehydration. It’s tough to find a flat surface to walk on so we’ve been doing more hill work than I had hoped for, and at the end of our trots (still 5 minutes) I am feeling just a teensy bit of wobbliness. I’m compensating by taking our overall progression more slowly and by making sure he has recovery time – he’s getting tonight off, for instance. There’s already a marked improvement in how eager he is to move out at the beginning of our rides each night.

bromont

Bromont Picspam

AmandaLeave a comment

Here’s a smattering of pictures I took this weekend. My photography skills aren’t the best, but I tried to take enough to get a good overview! (They’re not really in chronological order.)

Friday dressage, with the 1978 Olympics logo on the hillside.

Selena O’Hanlon on Foxwood High sporting some nifty quartermarks.

VIP viewing area.

XC vet box with the VIP tent and some of the course in the background.

XC course.

Front end water.

Backside water.

One of the combined driving obstacles across the lake from the front side of the XC course.

Galloping downhill into the arena.

Last jump on the course.

Buck Davidson taking the 2* drop.

Sharon White on the 2* showjumping. Check out her stirrups!

Team Canada walking the 3* showjumping course.

Jessica Phoenix on Pavarotti, who was an incredible, extravagant jumper.

Will Coleman and Phillip Dutton on their joint victory lap. 
Long view of part of the XC course.

Sloppy morning showjumping in the 1*.

Oxer over a liverpool; these rails came down all day and in fact two of them broke and had to be replaced.

bromont

Bromont Stadium

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Rails, rails, everywhere, and more Han a few riders who wanted a drink.

I don’t think I have ever seen such a decisive series of show jumping rounds. Lots of very tired horses, dropping rails every which way. There were only a handful of clear rounds across all the divisions, and several major changes in standings.
A few rounds stood out in particular for me. Selena O’Hanlon did an absolutely beautiful job with her CCI3* horses, looking cool and elegant over fences that had rattled nearly everyone. I loved Jon Holling’s horse Zapotec B’s extravagant jumping style – I’ve been eyeing that horse all weekend, in fact. Gorgeous.
Will Coleman’s singleminded focus was really something to see. He was the last rider off the course walk, leaving practically as the first rider entered the ring, and his ride on Obos O’Reilly was a portrait of intensity.
One beautiful grey in the CCI2* pulled up just a few fences from home after tripping a bit in front of the jump and them coming up practically three legged a stride or two after landing. It was worrying to see. Eventing Nation is speculating it was a twisted shoe. I hope so, because it’s scary to see a horse go so off, so quickly.
Tonight I’ll work through my pictures from the trip and do a bit of a picspam over the next few days.
bromont

Bromont XC

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Whoooo, cross country day!

We got to the parc equestre just as the 1* division started, the first of the day, and got on course just in time to wait for a very long hold that ended with the rider taken away by ambulance. (She was ok, and I am 99% sure we ended up sitting next to her later that day to watch the water, based on eavesdropping…)
We wandered a bit of everywhere for thy division and then settled in by the back water, and stayed there for the beginning of the 3*. Then the arena, then the drop, then the front water, where we stayed through about half of the 2* division – until it started raining in earnest. 
Now we are in Montreal, full from a dinner of poutine and tired from walking several miles exploring the Grand Prix atmosphere.
I will put up photos and talk more about cross country when I get back home – I decided against bringing my netbook on this trip which means no uploading photos for me!
bromont

Bromont Dressage

Amanda1 Comment

Some really wonderful rides today – despite the weather, which is vile. Cold, cloudy, and rainy.

My highlight of the morning was Kyle Carter’s ride on Madison Park, which was a really beautiful example of perfect harmony. This is the horse that came back from slipping a tendon off his hock on XC, and Kyle was clearly thrilled with the test, giving a huge hug after the final salute. Just a really wonderful accurate, fluid test. Real partnership.
Highlight for the afternoon was Lauren Keiffer on Veronica. Holy mackerel, what an amazing test. I know there has been grumbling on the COTH forums about how often the mare has run, and she has been around an awful lot, but she looked phenomenal today. I was holding my breath for the last minute or so for her, because it was obvious that if she continued as she was, she would win the dressage – and so she has!
Now back at the campsite to warm up and rest, and possibly do some looking about and shopping, and then tonight to a brew pub for dinner and to watch hockey, where my boyfriend will attempt to get himself shanked by being That Bruins Fan in Quebec…