I wrapped up a huge project at work and took two weeks off right when my two week wait until full vaccination wrapped up, huzzah!

(well okay I have a few odds and ends I am still worrying about and have to go in early next week to work on them a bit, but it’s close)

I’ve been riding just about every day, doing business development stuff, cleaning my house, reading, and lots of other little things that have piled up while my attention has been consumed by work. I’m going back to CrossFit, meeting up with friends, and trying to dig deeper on some of my civic commitments. This weekend I’m going to watch a webinar on property assessment hearings, wooooo!

Tristan is now one week out from his hock injections and after a few days of light work, back in work. I’ve ridden every day so far, and at the time this post publishes will be in a lesson.

There is definitely some improvement: the slight funniness of his hind end is gone, and he’s much more even. Which is not to say that he doesn’t trip still. He’s always tripped. Whoever started the myth of the surefooted mustang never met my horse, who is 50/50 on any given moment on whether he’s fighting with me or watching where he’s going.

I’ll take even, though. And more springy, for sure. I gather we’ve got a little while longer to see how the injections settle in, and as we notch his work up in intensity, to see if it helps him sit through the hind end the way I was hoping.

I’m hoping to crack down on working with my Pivo over the next week, too, and finally line up all the various dumb things that have plagued me in getting it to work so far: cell phone battery, Pivo battery, crappy indoor lighting, crappy tripod, thunderstorm, forgetfulness, etc.

Anyone else taking advantage of vaccination and the turning of the season to take some time to yourself and re-enter the world?

It’s time for some new designs, so that means a giveaway!

If you’d like to enter to win a free custom saddle cover from my Etsy shop, fill out the short Google Form here.

Here’s one of the designs that is up for grabs.

[if your eagle eyes and memory are thinking “hm, didn’t she do this already?” you’re right; but the last giveaway got lost in a technical snafu, so I’m trying again with a less complicated system this time.]

I still have plenty of horse things to cover, but how about a different kind of animal story?

Despite not being much of a cat person, for the last 10 years or so I have lived with a cat. He is my husband’s cat, given to him by friends of the family when he moved into his first apartment out of college. My husband is very definitely a Cat Person.

Buddy is a large (20lbs at his top weight) longhaired black cat, probably part Maine Coon. He had failed out of two previous homes. In both cases, he was so obsessively over-attached to his people that it caused actual problems with other animals in the household. So he was the perfect cat for a bachelor in a small apartment as the only pet.

I have never been much of a cat person because I did not grow up with them, and because I am allergic to them. Not severely allergic, but I definitely get sniffly/sinusy/blah after extended contact with them. Staying overnight in a house with a cat is tough for me. When I moved in with my husband, I spent the first six months feeling like I had a mild head cold, and then my body finally slowly acclimated to living with a cat.

It’s been over a decade now, and I still don’t really understand cats – it’s like our brains are ships passing in the night, without any true interface. But I have grown very fond of Buddy; he sleeps on my side of the bed, purrs wildly if you so much as look at him, and he and Arya are fast friends. (By the time she came along, he had aged out of his over-obsessive tendencies and was able to share his people with another animal.)

Buddy is declawed in the front (done by his previous owners), and is genuinely not very bright. He loves sleeping, being petted, eating, and occasionally annoying Arya, and he leads a fairly uncomplicated life entirly indoors. He is 17 now, very deaf, and fairly arthritic. He can no longer jump up on anything higher than about a foot, so we got stairs for him to get up to the bed to sleep with us.

So you can imagine how worried we were when about a month ago he escaped out the back porch door and into the world. I was away doing a work thing, and he snuck out on my husband’s watch. We didn’t know he was gone until about an hour and a half after he had slipped out.

We spent the night looking for him, and then the next two days. We looked under every porch, into every shed, through the woods, everywhere. We knocked on doors and called vet offices and animal shelters and posted messages to the town listserv and put up posters everywhere. We put food and clothing with our scent and his in all corners of the yard, and set up a game camera to watch the porch and yard. For days and days and days. It was like he vanished into thin air.

On day 12, we were out picking up takeout for dinner and I got a call from some neighbors two streets over: they thought they saw our cat. We’d gotten a bunch of these calls from lots of very kind people but none of them had panned out; still, we spend home and pulled up in front of their house. They met us right out by the curb and said they’d just chased him into the falling-down foundation of their neighbor’s garage.

I was skeptical but shimmed through one of the large cracks and shone a light in. There was definitely a cat, but I didn’t want to get my husband’s hopes up, so I tried calling out to the cat with no luck. I was contemplating how best to suck my gut in to get the rest of the way through the crack when the neighbor and my husband found an unlocked door on the other side. It took only a second for my husband to confirm that the cat was Buddy, and he scooped him right up.

The rest of the night felt surreal. We got him home and settled in to a closed-off room for peace and quiet. He drank a full bowl of water, but wasn’t that excited about food. He was clearly a bit disoriented, walking around the room and nosing things in confusion, then coming back to the water. My husband slept down with him on a couch that night, and the next day the vet gave him a totally clean bill of health with only some mild dehydration and some soreness in his hind end, both of which were quickly resolved.

The vet called him a little miracle cat, and it felt great to talk to neighbors again and tell them he was home. When I posted on the town listserv to say we’d found him, we got a dozen emails from random people saying how thrilled they were that he’d come home. A 17 year old deaf, arthritic, declawed, indoor cat somehow survived on his own for almost two weeks! My husband’s theory is that he was bumbling around seconds from death at all moments but too dumb to tell, like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

We’re still so, so glad to have him home. We know we don’t have too much longer with him, but we are grateful we’ll be able to say goodbye when that happens, not just wonder.

Well, after waffling over it for literal years, I had Tristan’s hocks injected yesterday.

If you went back in this blog archive you’d probably find me mentioning doing his hocks over and over again, at least the last ten years. It hadn’t been the right choice before for a lot of reasons.

In recent weeks, he’s been having some persistent problems loading the hind end, or stepping it up quickly, or having it give out, that made me feel strongly that we had a clearly identified stiffness/soreness issue, rather than a training hole.

The vet concurred, and we ordered his ACTH test with a mind to checking on his Cushing’s progress. If his levels were not perfect, injecting him with steroids was a clear no-go. But! They were perfect. As in, the lameness vet said they were absurdly good. His exact words were “He just continues to defy expectations, doesn’t he?”

Oh, in so many ways…

I’ll put him back in light work on Monday, then full work on Thursday, and then we will see what we can see. I have the next two weeks off from work (uh, in theory, anyway; I have a few projects I will need to poke at) so I’ll be trying to take the opportunity to restart a few things in my life. Riding is one of them; CrossFit is another. I let a lot of things slide in the last 6-8 weeks of ramping up my work busy season, but now I get to transition back out of that with some thinking and planning time.

I haven’t done one of these in a while, so it’s due!

Generally, actually, it’s a no news is good news situation. Tristan continues to maintain quite happily on one Prascend a day and some careful attention to diet.

Last week, we pulled blood for a ACTH test to check his levels and make sure we were on track.

Pretty much perfect!

He continues to be largely fine, symptom-wise; he shed out just fine this year, and is transitioning on to grass right now with no problems.

He is still showing some immune weakness, but it’s tough to say what is Cushings and what is just old horse. Over the weekend, he got quite a few black fly bites on his sheath and reacted badly to that, swelling up fairly dramatically. That’s a first for him! Some cold hosing and application of Swat has brought it mostly back down.

I am in a hell phase at work, so not riding a whole lot; he is getting longed occasionally and enjoying turnout.

Tomorrow, he gets his hocks injected for the first time – that’s our second reason for pulling his ACTH levels, to make sure those were controlled to help decide his injection cocktail. Fingers crossed for a return to work this week with bionic hocks – I am excited!

Though Tristan’s Cushing’s diagnosis changed many things about the way we managed him, we have so far been generally quite lucky.

He responds well to Prascend, he sheds happily, he maintains his weight just fine. His immune system is shot, and he struggles to keep good muscle on.

One way I’m glad it’s been fairly straightforward is grass. Though Tristan has Cushing’s, he does not have IR, or insulin resistance. They are often paired together, so he might someday develop that, but for right now, though we are careful about what he eats, we are not neurotic about it. He’s never been a horse to get much grain, even at his absolute peak of fitness and work, so keeping him on small amounts of low starch grain is not a hardship.

We are a bit extra careful about him going on grass, still, for two reasons. One is the Cushing’s; he doesn’t get the absolute richest stuff for that reason. The other is his ongoing seasonal allergies, which are probably rooted in his low immunity. Simply put, the horse eats everything. Some of it does not agree with him and causes hives.

At my current barn, there is a slow and careful process to put horses out on grass. I think any responsible horse owner introduces grass in stages, but there is a lot of wiggle room in that. For some people, that’s an hour at a time.

For us, it’s a much more complicated process. I like that about my barn. It appeals to my anxious nature; everything is done carefully, with planning and intention, and with the horse’s welfare as the absolute end goal.

All that is a long way of saying that this week I’ve been hand grazing Tristan in slowly increasing five minute increments. Last Saturday, starting him on five minutes of hand grazing was pretty much the only thing I did the day after my second COVID vaccine shot. Sunday was 8 minutes; Monday was 11 minutes; last night was 11 minutes; tonight will be 15 minutes, and so on. At 30 minutes, he’ll go up to a grass pasture and the add-ons will jump 15 minutes a day, managed by the barn staff.

Some of you are probably reading this aghast. That’s fine. I’m happy with the way the barn takes this slowly, and not every horse gets quite as picky a hand grazing intro as Tristan – we’re extra careful with him (and other horses with a similar profile at the barn).

What about you? Do you go extra-slow or a bit faster or is it something you let your barn manage entirely?

I don’t know about you, but there are some pieces of horse equipment for me that just…disappear. One of those is dressage whips. I’ve probably had half a dozen vanish on me over the years, so I learn not to get too attached to them. Granted, at least some of this is my fault, because I stick them in the holder by the edge of the ring. On the other hand…who walks off with a whip that you know isn’t yours?!

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I broke one of my rules and bought a new dressage whip that I really like. So I’m trying to force myself to always bring it back to my tack trunk.

Usually for my job I have a fair amount of travel, and of course that hasn’t been the case over the last 14 months. That changed about three weeks ago, and I found myself 45 minutes ahead of schedule and passing a tack store in a part of the state I hadn’t visited in years. It was actually my main store when I lived over there, and where I bought my first show coat for IHSA, but now it’s a good 90 minutes away.

I stopped to stretch my legs and look around – it’s turned over at least two owners since the last time I was in there, and I was curious about its new selection. I was really impressed overall – they had a large selection of really good stuff!

I poked at a few things, but then I saw this whip and that was it.

The whip I am saddest about losing was a bit similar, and also from Horze. This whip was also pretty, and had something I really like in a whip: it was very long. 48″ actually, too long for regulation dressage use. Joke’s on the rules, we’re not going to compete recognized ever again!

I like them long because I like to be able to just tickle Tristan’s hind legs without moving my hands too much out of the way, and you can see in this photo (this is how I stick my whips while I’m picking his feet as we leave the ring) that it accomplishes that quite nicely. It can also double as an in-hand whip in a pinch, and sometimes I warm up his hind end crossovers in hand.

If I had a complaint it would be that this isn’t quite as flexible as I usually like a whip. I’m sure everyone has their preferred feel, when you bounce it in your hand and see how much bend it has. I like a pretty bendy whip, but this is also not the stiffest whip I’ve ever used. (I actively avoid those, I just feel like I can’t be very subtle with them.)

Here, enjoy this slightly dizzying photo of it in use.

I couldn’t find the model anymore on the Horze website (which is apparently now Equivania?) so I’m a bad blogger for not telling you where you can get your own, but I like it! Hopefully I can hang onto it for a while, as long as I remember to keep bringing it back to my tack trunk.

You’re all going to be very sick of my sleeping porch, because it’s the main project for this summer.

I spent most of yesterday sleeping off my vaccine shot reaction (not too bad, but still not fun) and woke up this morning ready to go, so I decided to tackle a project that has been on my list for quite a while.

The previous owners had put in these probably very expensive blinds all around the sleeping porch. Maybe two years after moving in, I pulled them all up and they have been that way since. I never once considered putting them down: so, I considered that a fair test.

It took about 30 minutes to remove them.

Each side had three or four screws holding this in, so most of my time was spent standing on a chair and just running the drill. Nothing complicated, just time-consuming.

I had briefly though to try and save them and give them away, but they have been up for so long that they are quite brittle and gross, so in the end I just threw them all away.

I am pretty sure that the piece of wood they were attached to was specifically attached to hold them, so I am debating pulling that down as well. Not today; it will be the next phase, which will follow the exterior renovations. It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me to do a lot of interior work when parts of it may be wholly replaced, depending on the rot from the roof leak.

The end result: a much less cluttered look for the porch! I may put in some accordion shades on the side of the porch that looks into our neighbor’s yard, but then, I may not. During the times of year when we most use the porch, the trees block that view pretty well.

I’m sure you’ll find a dozen or so similar posts in this blog’s history: after a round eight weeks off, I’m bringing Tristan back to work. Years ago this was not a huge deal; by week two or three we were doing light versions of what we’d done before.

Now, with Cushing’s and age, I take a much more measured approach.

This go-around is featuring lots of variety, because we are both bored, and not quite as much hesitancy as I might have had otherwise, because he was in very good shape when we pulled him out of work. So – I have already been doing a decent amount of trotting, and have already asked him to carry himself.

Conditioning generally is something I’ve spilled lots of ink and lots of tears about over the years. I firmly believe in a very slow ramping up of work for my animals. It’s one thing to go back to the gym myself after time away and go just as hard and know that I’ll be sore. It’s another thing entirely to expect that of a horse or dog.

Right now, my approach tends to be short bursts of correct, more intense work, and letting him tell me how he feels. Now, obviously I’m not going to let him gallop himself into a frothing sweat just because he’s being an ass, but if he is feeling good enough to pick up a strutting trot on the longe line, I’m not going to pull him back right away.

I’m also not doing 5 minute shots of full work; more like keeping overall rides to around 30 minutes, and when we do trot, asking him for a proper forward trot while reaching for the bit, rather than the long-rein loose trots I might have encouraged a few years ago. Then, my philosophy would have trended towards lots of loose, long work, and once he got up to 8-10 minute trot sets then I would have picked him up and put him into proper work.

I’m also tossing in more serpentines, more complicated lateral work, more backing up, more turns on the haunches, and so on. Mostly at the walk. I’m using foam blocks under his hind end while grooming, to work on his balance and spatial awareness in the hind end. I’m going to incorporate some hill work soon, hopefully – it’s a question of waiting for things to dry AND getting in a few more long walks in the outdoor to fully bring his outdoor brain up to speed.

It’s not a bad place to be in, this spring. I’m still getting in a few rides a week even with my work reaching a fever pitch, and I’m really, REALLY looking forward to June, when I’m taking two! whole! weeks! off for the first time in over a decade.

Well, okay, when I left off, Tristan was having some weird lameness stuff and muscle twitching in his left shoulder.

We went on and off for a few weeks with different theories, different levels of work, ratcheting up or down and watching carefully, and finally I threw up my hands and added him to the list for the lameness vet.

And…he trotted out sound as a bell on the longe line – this after two days of relatively full work to try to draw out any stiffness.

The vet shrugged and said, “I’m going to say the same thing I always say to you, which is that his hind fetlocks look terrible but he’s so damn sound. And also he’s 26, I mean, of course he’s going to be a bit stiff and have off days.”

Nevertheless, we did full due diligence and flexed the shit out of his hind legs, and…he still trotted off sound and even.

JFC, horse.

The vet did watch some of the vides on my phone, so he saw both the hesitation in reaching with his front end and the muscle twitches. His thought was that it might be more neck than anything else. So he did a full chiro workup, spending the longest he ever has with Tris. Usually he looks him over and either adjusts one thing or says “I’m not adjusting him, you’d be wasting your money.” But this time he spent quite a while with him, and Tris was clearly a bit resistant and then licking/chewing after neck adjustments in particular.

We went back to work for two days, then he got a day off, and then three days after his vet appointment he rolled too close to the fence in turnout and got himself cast in a metal fence panel.

Luckily, the barn staff heard him get cast and got out to him immediately, so had eyes on him the whole time, and just as they were approaching he freed himself. But he was fully hung up for a few minutes.

We went uber-conservative, full standing wraps and short, wrap-less turnout for an hour or two each day. I went every night to check on him, handwalk him, give him a full deep tissue grooming, and put his Back on Track sheet on. (That first night? Two minutes into handwalking he squealed, struck out in front, and launched himself into the air. TWENTY GODDAMN SIX.)

He cast himself on Monday, and on Friday we watched him in hand and then under saddle very lightly. He was pretty darn okay. He was a little less than thrilled about fully using his right hind, but not necessarily in an ouchy way – more of a weakness/stiffness thing. And it improved as we went on and focused on it. So he went without wraps from then on, and the little bit of fill we’d seen earlier in the week never returned.

One week after getting cast, the lameness vet was back for other horses and put hands on Tris. Same pronouncement as always – shaking head in bemusement, pronouncement of soundness. We also talked back and forth some plans for the future and I finally committed to an experiment for the future: we’ll inject his hocks later this month when he’s done his vaccinations for the spring.

Since then, I’ve been easing him back into work on a conditioning schedule. He’s holding up shockingly well, fitness-wise, for not having worked consistently for about eight weeks now. He was feeling spunky enough to try and dump me on Sunday when I did our first road hack / walk around the outdoor. Thankfully I had anticipated shenanigans and put in his kimberwicke for the occasion.

We’re easing back into lessons with half-hour sessions, and I’m trying to transfer some of the things I was working on with Crumble with some success. Fingers crossed that the hocks prove a good experiment and the rest of the spring proceeds uneventfully!