Four More Visits?!

A very good thing happened yesterday. I sat and worked on my thesis all day and made massive headway, which felt great! A bad thing also happened yesterday in that I kept myself off blogger not remembering that I hadn't finished/scheduled this post! Oh well, not like very much interesting really happens in my life.

So cute!

On Friday I somehow managed to shove a visit to TC (five hours round trip) into my schedule by getting up early to ride a client's horse, then heading over there, then zipping across the bay to ride another horse and teach lessons. Worth it, I love my baby horse.

Once on the road, I realized that I had forgotten his brushes. Oh well. I still stopped to get him carrots and an apple for us to share.

I can't wait to get a hold of that mane

On Thursday I had tortured Rico and Riot with bombproofing using an umbrella and a tarp. Rico surprised me by being nervous about the umbrella at first, but eventually was fine with it. He was totally fine with the tarp except that he didn't like it dragging on the ground. I felt a million times better about TC that day, because TC let me drag it behind him and next to him no problem, and Rico snorted and skittered sideways away from it.

I brought the umbrella with me to TC because I have a death wish to see how he'd respond to it. Honestly, he handled it better than I expected after what Rico thought of it. I'm glad I worked with Rico on Thursday since he is a horse I'd consider to be as bombproof as they get, but he was nervous about it, so it let me lower my expectations quite a bit for TC.

Extremely tolerant 

Riot took longer to feel okay about the umbrella

Wrapped him up like a present!

The nice thing about bombproofing TC in the stall is that he can't get away from it and has to wrap his little brain around what is happening to him without escaping (that makes me sound like a horrible person, oh well). The bad thing is that obviously this might not translate to when he's in the arena and something spooks him since he can get away. But I'm operating under the hopeful assumption that anything will help him.

He was not bad about the umbrella when it was stationary- open or closed. But when it changed from closed to open or from open to closed, scary! He didn't calm down as quickly as Rico did, and never let me open it anywhere close to him, but he only slammed himself against the wall once.

So cute

The owners came to talk to me real quick and asked me to please not die on their property when they saw the umbrella. I get the feeling that they think he's kind of insane. I don't blame them after having to deal with him at the start of his rehab, I mean that's why he's there! I don't know how much he's trotting, but I think he was at 5 minutes each direction with a walk break in between.

I had ordered supplements from Smartpak- just more MSM and I'm switching him from the Mag 5000 to SmartCalm. He needs two scoops of the Mag 5000 so it's cheaper to do one scoop of the SmartCalm. The SmartCalm also has other stuff in it that might help as well. I fully acknowledge that putting him on a calming supplement is more for my mental health than his, hence trying to be cost effective about it. After this I might try Quiessence if the SmartCalm doesn't seem to help.

I think I'll be switching to smartpaks eventually too, I'm going to have the guys feed him his grain every day when he comes home so that he always gets it. I'm lucky that he doesn't need water added, so I figured I'd just put everything in a bag and they can just dump a bag into his grain bucket. But smartpaks mean that I don't have to obsess over how much grain is set up. We'll see, I want to go through most of his supplements first of course.

He's so awkward, but I think once as he gets some more muscle
on him, maybe his head will look a bit smaller...

We're so close to being done with this rehab shit! I kept trying to tell him that. After riding this weekend at my new barn (that's what happens when rumors go around that a) you're coming back to the barn and b) you're currently semi-part-not-quite-employed), I'm getting excited to bring him back. I love my barn, I love the people there, and I can't wait to be there every day!

It was so fun to ride there. I got to ride in a full size dressage court- first time in a VERY long time, actually possibly the first time since I was in it on TC back in November. I need some practice riding in it again... and I got to ride with mirrors! I can count on one hand the number of times I've used mirrors in the last year and a half. I love riding with mirrors, and I didn't look as awful as I thought I was going to.

I think TC and I are going to have a fun summer there! Hopefully four more visits until TC COMES HOME. WHAT? I can't believe I can say that.