Weekend Update: Killer Bees, Lunging and Show Recap

Besides obsessing over the Olympics and watching every second of it while I do homework and work work, I spent most of my weekend lunging B and organizing my stuff for The Great Move (more later in a sec). Not a horrible way to spend a weekend, honestly. Also, Yanks & V competed in a recognized BN event in Michigan, so I have news on that as well.

Brace yourself for a shitload of lunging pics. Sorry in advance.

Before I get to Bacardi, just wanted to catch everyone up on the super exciting world of eventing (have you watched Rio XC from today??---holy SHIT) and how V & Yanks did this weekend. Probably a good thing I wasn't there to be honest, but she rode quite well in the jump phases. Dressage is her weakest phase and they did poorly. Dead last after dressage, they went into stadium with gusto & determination in which she rode the windy, maxed out BN course brilliantly. I could definitely tell how hard she has been working on this phase, and I was so proud of her! She moved up from 20th to 14th after stadium, which I found impressive. XC was apparently pretty tough too for a BN course and she ROCKED it going double clear. They were cooking' (from what I could see on the FB live feed) and actually had to circle him a few times, but hey, she rode well and they went double clear and moved up to NINTH after XC. Moving up 11 places from dead last is seriously impressive and I was really proud of her. She also told me exactly what she did wrong in dressage without prompting and how to improve and it made me feel super confident in her. V will go nose to the grindstone when she knows she needs improvement, so I know after this show they will do some work on the flat together. Overall really happy with that, and that Yankee handled the haul wonderfully and came back looking fantastic!

are those...peppermints?!

Also, our BO bought a new farm and since there are resident boarders there and at EME, she prefers we consolidate sooner rather than later and move ASAP. As in, the next two weeks or less. Originally the move date was October, but now its now, haha. I am pretty jazzed for the new place though. I think we might lose our big grassy XC field, but BO is putting in a brand new, massive and glorious outdoor, revamping the stalls and the turnout is wonderful. 60 acres of turnout yo. That will be amazing in winter, since before our pastures were too small to safely turnout because of ice and mud. Pretty excited!

So there's that. Yay!

Then there's B. He's honestly improving so much faster than I am that its a little depressing. I lunged him every other day during the week then Fri, Sat and Sun this weekend. Continuing lunging that often is not something I want to subject his joints to, so my wonderful barn friends have volunteered to ride him 4x/week for me. Bless them.

His feet also look fucking amazing for only having been out of shoes fully 3 weeks now.

Not too shabby

I think I might get slightly obsessed with his feet and their changes throughout this process, so bear with me. Here  they are so far;

OK, so we need comparisons now because just looking at that is like, useless. So here we go;

To me and my super uneducated opinion on feet, it looks like an improvement...kind of. I might be wrong but it looks like his frog has actually collapsed a little and lost its definition. Most likely because its actually touching the ground 24/7... I don't know. However, the edges of his foot look rounder and less brittle. I've been rasping the rough edges, but not messing with the shape of his foot at all, because I am not a farrier. Overall, I think this is an improvement AND he's 100% sound on everything but the rocky path....which I would not expect him to be.

The left was his worse foot and the one we couldn't keep a shoe on to save his life. The shape of the foot hasn't done much except round out on the edges...but that frog! Is it just me or did it actually expand just a little bit?? Like near the heels. Not really sure, but I'm loving these comparisons. Also 100% sound on this foot as well.

In a few weeks the farrier will double check him again and see if he needs trimmed, but he thinks the foot looks pretty good for now. 

I am seriously impressed he's 100% sound already. Our arenas are actual cement lots rights now, so I wouldn't dream of trying him on those, but in the grass he's great.

Friday he was foot perfect, despite the killer fucking bees swarming us constantly. Saturday he was less forward but still great and then yesterday he was raging to get moving. He was so amped...poor guy was probably bored to death lunging.

Seriously, the bees were vicious. FUCK YOU BEES

Since the damn bees were trying to eat us alive, I kept all the sessions under 15 minutes, but he seriously looks brilliant. Sunday I was daring and tacked him up fully and actually hopped on to cruise around the neighborhood after. Again, mistake, since I essentially couldn't walk afterwards, but it was mostly worth it. I am literally dying (and gaining a bajillion pounds) not riding or working out, so I just had to for another 10 minutes.

Here's the part of the blog you can skip, but I just have to share since its all I have right now. I've taken probably about a 100 pics over this week and there's only so many to post before it gets incredibly boring, but at least he's getting fat and shiny and he's moving forward and 100% sound. All I can ask for really. 

His worse direction, moving out nicely

Shiiiiiiiny

muscleyyyyyy

ADORE

The shine, I can't :D

Round and lovely

He's still bit stiff to the right at the canter, but I am positive this is from lack of work, not his feet. I am hoping that getting ridden will help him carry himself even more correctly and get him back to where he used to be.

I HATE that I'm still out of commission when my horse is going so well, but I luckily have amazon barn friends to help. Just wanna heal faster, I am SO over this!