Progress!

WOW I am very behind on this blog. 

Essentially, in January, I spent three weeks in Uruguay, then got home and was extremely distracted by processing all my photos, working on the journal I kept while there, doing my real life job, working with TC, and I signed up for a Spanish class because being down there for so long and not speaking the language annoyed me. 

It was also rainy, I went on three more trips - in February I went to Michigan to visit Kate, in March I went to Channel Islands National Park, and I just got back from Ireland. I've been so busy and so happy, but the blog took a back seat. 

Cute boy

However, a lot has happened that I want to share! So I will set up some posts to catch things up and hopefully I'll stay in town for long enough to continue writing on this blog. 

Last we left off, Sundance wasn't doing so well. I'm super happy to report that Sundance's treatment went super well! He gained the weight back and looks better than ever now. He is off the steroids and maintaining his weight, and he's now slowly transitioning back to hay after an all-pellet diet for the past 3+ months. We plan to start riding him when he's fully back on hay and doing well, there's no rush to put him back to work. 

Celebrated TC's fifteenth birthday!

TC is doing fabulous. We had a bit of a tricky winter - with all the traveling, an offsite for work, and the rain, he ended up having a flare up of his stifle issue. It was an especially weird one, where he actually got worse with work. Normally a trail ride or two and kinda pushing him through his work with a lot of walk breaks makes him better in a week. This time he had to have a bit of time off and a lot of walking. He recovered though, but it set us back in terms of his fitness. 

Because of that, I decided to see whether one of Kate's students could ride him for me while I'm gone. She's a fabulous rider, riding her own horse at the Prix St George level, and is riding horses for a few people in the area. 

Coincidentally, the week before we left for Ireland, Kate was in town, so I had Kate come out to teach me and bring her student so that we could give her a bit of a boost in riding him.

Ireland was AMAZING, more on that later

In ADDITION, when I was in Michigan, Kate had me ride Flounder (missed him!! even though he bullied me a lot when I rode him) in her collection of Stubben saddles since she is now a rep. I really loved them, and so she ended up bringing one of her students' Stubbens out for TC on the day we had the lesson.

I was FLOORED. I felt like I had my horse back, not even the one I was riding in 2020, but the horse I bought. Then seeing her student ride him and seeing him curious about his work and happily doing things he hadn't in years (like they worked on half pass lol), I was super sold. I texted the local rep and arranged for her to come out the next day.

She came out and again I was just floored by how good TC felt in the saddles. He just felt trained, and so it became really obvious that at least some of this is a saddle issue. 

Trust me when I say he has put on a TON of muscle
in like... two weeks, what the hell?

Luckily, she was able to leave a saddle with me that fits him pretty well so that I could try it for some time. I am also getting another one to try. The plan is for me to get him fit in one of those saddles, then I can order one. I loved how much they seemed to be willing to let me ease into the idea of ordering him yet another custom saddle. But I'm truly blown away the more I ride in it so I'm mostly just waiting for him to pack on muscle since we may end up being able to get a slightly wider tree for him. 

I think this is the first time I've really thought I might get my horse back. We still have the summer to get through, this is the time of year where he feels the best. But he's never felt THIS good at this time of year. Anyway, I'm hopeful!

Always happy on the trails

I think I'll set up a couple more posts, I have more info on TC (we had a lesson!) and then more on the horse aspect of going to Ireland because it was SO interesting!